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A couple months ago, the community approved adding:
to the criteria for speedy deletion.
There have been a number of problems with this, but for the moment, I would like to just focus on one. What does If the assertion is disputed or controversial actually mean? I can come up with at least three different situations where it might apply, and I would like to get a sense of what the community actually means/wants.
In my experience, I think nearly everyone agrees with point #1. That is to say, nearly everyone agrees that questioning the truth of someone's biography is something that needs the discussion that AFD brings rather than speedy deletion. Points 2 and 3 are more uncertain. Some people, myself included, believe that any article which attempts to explain why the subject is significant or important deserves a hearing at AFD, even if someone might judge that the claims are not notable enough to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia. The examples I would give are articles containing claims like: "John Smith is a star quarterback and three time MVP of his regional high school football league." and "Jane Doe is a regional supervisor for Big Time Pharmaceuticals responsible for 200 distributors and $24.5 million in product sales last year." In each case, I would say that articles like this are trying to assert notability, though in neither case do I generally believe such a person is notable enough to warrant an encyclopedia entry. In my opinion, since articles like these are trying to establish notability they deserve to be sent to AFD. Other admins simply judge that such persons are not sufficiently notable and speedy them, citing the criterion above. In my mind, disputes about how notable is notable, is one of the things that the criterion expected to be sent to AFD.
The third point above relates to what "disputed or controversial" should mean after the fact. If admin BioKiller decides that Sally Somebody's biography is not notable and it gets deleted before anyone has a chance to protest, what happens now? Should VFU be the place for arguing that it is notable and to get it restored? If so, should it still require a consensus for undeletion even though there was never an established consensus for deleting it? What about cases of "Whoops, I can make her sound more notable if you allow me to expand the article"? AFD allows people time for improvments, but that is substantially harder to do at VFU. In the alternative, should articles speedied as non-notable bios be undeleted and sent to AFD whenever someone asks? (Or perhaps anyone other than the main author?)
Thanks to everyone is advance for giving feedback on these issues. Dragons flight 19:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
"If it's disputed" means what it says. If someone disagrees. Remember that any administrator can undelete an article that was deleted out of process, and sending to AfD would be a good thing to do in the case of a serious dispute. There is a gray area where an administrator may want to let VFU decide, but in practice AfD is much better at this kind of decision, not only because VFU has tended to get bogged down in process, but because on AfD the article can always be seen and edited . fvw's comment is a correct statement of policy, although not all administrators follow, or are even aware, of policy. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 22:38, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I think part of the problem is that deletion and undeletion are seen as a "big deal". (Technically, only admins can do these things, so I assume that's part of the reason why.) What if these actions were viewed as being closer to "just another edit"? Granted, they're major fairly edits. Still, the worst that would happen is, one person deletes an article, then another person strongly disagrees and undeletes it. At this point, at least it's obvious that it's a controversial issue. If there's still disagreement, rather than engaging in an edit war, interested parties stop and talk it out. After all, everyone follows the one revert rule, right? Isn't this how normal content disputes should be handled? Why not handle delete/undelete disputes the same way? Friday (talk) 23:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Not suprisignly i disagree with both User:Tony Sidaway and User:Dragons flight here. I have always understood the "If" caluse to mean "If there is an assertion of notability but you disagree with its accuracy take the matter to VfD/AfD" as AfD is better suited to setter factual disputes. it is not always beter suited to settle policy issues, which is what the qusttion "What kind of statement constitutes a calim of notability" is. Dragons flight says that if anyone disagees with tagging a particualr article that makes the application of the tag "disputed" and the matter should go to AfD. I would say "not always". Insofar as there is a clear policy consensus, a single person objecting to the application of that consensus does not make the kind of dispute that AfD is needed for. "Joe is a really neat guy" is pretty close to the classic example of an nn-bio as described in the original proposal for A7. But soemone might claim that there are too few "neat guys" so being one is notable. IMO that "dispute need not go to AfD. DES (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC) IMO "Fred is a good plumber" or "Jane is a first rate professor of history" are no more claims of notability than is "Joe is a really neat guy", and no more create a need to go to AfD, even if soemone disputes this. I tried to lay out in considerable detail what i thought the implications of A7 are, and to get some general policy consenses on what is and waht is not a "claim of notability" at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Interpretation of WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios). This discussion had slowed, but not IMO stopped, when it was recently archived. i have just restorted it from the archives, and i suggest that further discussion move there, as this may pe a larger and linger discussion than the pump easily supports, and should ultimately be archived alonge with WP:CSD in my view. I do hope this excahnge here at the pump will lead to greater participation in the discussion there, (I had announced that on the pump before, but not so well phrased to attract attention). I thank Dragons flight for calling renewed attention to this issue, which i agree is important, and i agree should be setteled by a wide consensus. DES (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
I am rather surprised by the claim, mentioned by some people, above, that invalid speedies should not be undelted "on sight"(and listed on AfD, as a courtesy), but, instead, taken to VfU and only undeleted after 5 days of review. I have not been following that - and no-one has objected - and it dosn't seem right to me either; if speedies are deleted "on sight" they ought to be able to be undeleted "on sight" - speedy deletion should only be used for uncontroversial issues; if someone objects, then, at least in my view, it's not a speedy candidate. Thoughts? JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
He's wrong. Obvious bad speedies can be undeleted. If you get any hassle just pop a afd tag on it and turn it into an article for deletion. If the article was worth undeleting in the first place, it'll sail through AfD. No need to muck about on VFU for bad speedies. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 00:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
The cruftier among you may (or, indeed, may not) want to know that a large number of The Simpsons episodes articles are presently listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 September 21. They thus fall to the axe sometime after the 28th. If anyone wants them rescued they should either a)get WP-compatible permission or b)re-write the articles on their /temp subpages (please write them there; it makes life easier for the clearing admin who does not have search the diffs for the versions to restore). - Splash talk 00:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Dispute resolution reform - for listing specific ideas in a coherent way. Use the talk to state ideas which arent formatted to fit into a logical - point by point structure. - St| eve 22:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that in general a laundry list of "quotes" placed inside an article about a person is a recipe for disaster in that these sections are either skewed or invite drawn-out edit wars as each side jockeys for the quotes that make their POV about the subject look best. It seems like I see these types of laundry lists most often in fairly controversial, usually political, figures, such as Pat Robertson or Ann Coulter, etc. So I wanted to take a barometer of how folks feel about having these sections in general. My personal opinion is that they're almost never a good idea, particularly for someone who is controversial or political in some fashion. Having someone's voice in an article about them is useful, I think -- but rather than having a laundry list of quotes that can be used out of context or as a bludgeon (or pedestal), select a few quotes and include them inside the text of the article where they can be fully contextualized. Beyond which, isn't that what we have Wikiquote for? Aside from seemingly inviting edit wars, it seems redundant. I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts. · Katefan0 (scribble) 12:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
If I may echo and extend JamesMLane's point, I think that sometimes a list of quotes is appropriate. In particular, when the subject is primarily, or at least to a large extent, known for their use of language. Here, Coulter is a great example. She's not known so much for her critical thinking, but for the flamboyant way in which she expresses her views. As such, the list of quotes goes very directly to her notability. Her language is really the essence of her notability, that's why she became famous, not for her rather unoriginal take on politics.
I think the same point applies to some extent to other characters such as Jim Hightower, Yogi Berra, or H.L. Mencken. While, of course, they all have broader importance, certainly the colorful language is a very important part of why each of these is famous. An exhaustive list would clearly be inappropriate, but 5 or 6 quotes can add quite a bit to the exposition of an article. Just because Wikiquote exists does not mean we should never include a few quotes in an article. I know that some feel "context" should always be provided for each quote, and thus object to a list. On the contrary, another word for such context might be spin, not necessarily bias, but spin. Often, such quotes stand better on their own, as there is then no point of view to be agonized over in the context. Some would argue that the selection of quotes is inherently biased, why should this be more true for a quotelist than for any other aspect of an article?
As a contrast, I think that a quote list for the likes of Clinton or Bush is inappropriate because language is really a trivial part of their notabilty. Derex @ 03:21, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
This is partially a technical proposal too... How about we add something in the software to check edits and if it contains something that may be an email (e.g. something of the form XXX@XXX.XXX), either remove it automatically, or pop up a warning notice? There is no reason at all for any wikipedia page to have an email address. So, would this be workable/desirable? -- 137.205.17.180 18:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC) (Fangz)
Forgive what's probably a stupid question, but do permission notices belong in the article text, as in the Vincent Saint John article? -- Calton | Talk 06:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
It is proposed that citations using only (URL-only) inline links be deprecated in preference to more complete citations. As guidelines recommend, inline links may be used because they are better than no references. But inline links being deprecated will mean they are not considered an acceptable citation style and replacement with more complete references is encouraged.
Inline URL-only links should be converted to have a link text, or better to full web references as described in Cite your sources including information such as the last modification date and author. Even minimal web reference citations are preferable to URL-only citations, as their title or description provides information to readers and records some information about the source in case the URL becomes invalid. —( SEWilco 07:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
SEW, I have no objection to the use of more complete citations, but the use of inline links are not incompatible with that.
Examples:
{{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
and |year=
/ |date=
mismatch (
help){{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
and |year=
/ |date=
mismatch (
help){{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
and |year=
/ |date=
mismatch (
help)Obviously the first one is not very good (I wouldn't go so far as to say it is bad), but any of the other 3 are complete in themselves and should be acceptable, even though the second and third have inline links. In the past you have advocated replacing inline links with footnotes throughout, which I still believe is a bad idea as it requires two clicks to find the reference rather than one. While I wouldn't object to modifying WP:CITE (or whatever) to discourage form 1, I do think that Harvard style references with links (i.e. options 2 and 3) should still be allowed or even encouraged. (P.S. Edit wars over citation formats are WP:LAME). Dragons flight 16:27, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
From a simple practical point of view, I want to strongly support this proposal. I spend quite some of my time verifying references. Plain links seem to be broken about 20% to 50% of the time. Fixing them is an almost impossible pain. To see what I mean, go to a random article several times till you find one with many links. Try opening each link from that article and verifying it. Repeat this, say, five times. You will soon realise that the task is hopeless and that sometimes you don't even know why the link was there. Try the same thing with proper references (with any system) and it is much easier.
The important point is that the person who makes the link can, in just about 30 seconds, make a full reference, whilst the person who has to fix it later will probably loose about 10 minutes per link. Both plain links and no references are unfair to those who come later. There is no excuse for them. Mozzerati 21:57, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
It is difficult to know how many articles actually have citations without the use of the citation templates, though I'm sure that some clever SQL could tap that information from the Wikipedia servers. To try and get a little perspective on this, though, I took a quick look at the templates in use for citing peer-reviewed journal articles and here's what I found:
I'm not sure what this says beyond "the citation templates are not heavily used. It also presents a plethora of options for the potential citation-adder to choose from (consider PMID 11138768 for a study of shopping behavior in the face of varying degrees of choice). One thing that could contribute to the lower usage for peer-reviewed journal templates is the ability to create an inline link to Pubmed by using the syntax PMID 15621726. This functionality was created to assist in the production of in-line links, albeit to a database of citations. Meandering on ... this points up that not all in-line links are created equal. In-line links to the WWW frontier ("Joe's Web Site and Info Repository") are likely to break unpredictably and frequently. Maybe we can find a middle ground here where we discourage links to the frontier while encouraging links to established information repositories, though that word "established" is a sticky one and a little too close to "establishment", with all that implies. Courtland 23:18, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Although I wouldn't use the expression "just guidelines", I agree with SlimVirgin on this one. -- Francis Schonken 06:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I think footnote citations are better, for several reasons. The first is that with more information. When a link becomes stale. The classic examples a citing a newspaper which then restricts access (good old NYT and the Indy) if the author and the date is in the footnote then all is not lost (and often a blog "fair copy" can be found). Second it encourages people to cite pages from references which may not be on line. But while I think footnotes should be encouraged, I do not think that in-line links should be discouraged. Philip Baird Shearer 08:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Some phrasing indicates confusion between "URL-only inline links" and "links in text to citations elsewhere". The former is what in this discussion is often referred to as an "inline link". The former is less preferred than the latter, which are some sort of link to a citation. Although the latter may involve a link in text, a term such as "footnote" is common. Footnotes might use a linked number or Harvard reference notation, but both are just indicating the source material (which has a detailed citation elsewhere in the article). ( SEWilco 01:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC))
Dear SlimVirgin, trying to tailor wikipedia guidelines according to What I do, on the pages I edit,... is Original Research. Continuously messing with the text of WP:CITE while screaming "I don't know what this is about", and not seeking consensus here prior to performing such changes, is at least un- WP:CIVIL, and very near to disturbing wikipedia to prove a point. Sorry, probably indeed you don't understand what this is about thus far, so need to talk about it, don't you think, prior to changes? -- Francis Schonken 09:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
A recent Arbitration Committee decision adopted as a principle a proposal on stalking. I have added it to Assume Good Faith, as the formulation relates to that guideline, with a view to adopting it as good practice. Future arbitration cases are likely to revisit this principle. Please review and comment, and modify if required. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 13:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Gave partial execution to the points above (while someone had already erased the "Stalk" connections from WP:AGF), please check whether I did a good job! -- Francis Schonken 12:08, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
This topic grew from a conversation between Willmcw and myself here and here.
My original idea is that lists should cite sources like any other page, for example Greek dialects lists these dialects: while experts have developed differring systems for grouping the ancient dialects, that page gives three lists, each with a reference to the expert making this particular listing.
So, when we speak about stand-alone lists, usually in the format [[list of ....]], surely the thing is not different and there should be references also, for example List of compositions by Franz Schubert has an external reference to the Deutsch catalogue (which is the "official" list of compositions by Schubert).
A specific case is when inclusion in a list can be a matter of debate: for example List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers has a footnote system to indicate which sources justify which inclusion in the list. (PS: the footnote system of that page is a bit antiquated, and should be converted to wikipedia:footnotes standards, but that is not the question here).
Now List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people and List of gay celebrities use another principle: presently there is not a single external reference, for which justification is provided by Willmcw:
Although I see the point of this justification, I think the system is not as flawless as presented by Willmcw:
-- Francis Schonken 07:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, there's no "complaint" of mine. Just trying to figure out what's best for wikipedia. Personally I favour the "external references", but I also understand the reasons to do otherwise.
Would it be possible to provide some link to where the present approach for lists was discussed and finally decided. I would have no problem to adapt WP:CITE mentioning this exception, if that is the consensus in the wikipedia community, and a link can be given to where the rationale is explained. -- Francis Schonken 09:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Re. Erik Satie:
In general I suppose I think this division of "chores" between "list editors" and "article editors" more prone to getting off-track somewhere in the process, than direct external references for every list. But again, that is only my personal view, based primarily on the Erik Satie example: a single example is maybe not enough to decide either way - for that reason I'd like others to join and tell what their experiences are, which might go in another direction than my personal experience. -- Francis Schonken 09:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
This is listed as just an essay and it's pretty much stating the obvious - we don't fork articles. But for those editors prone to rules lawyering, is there a policy or guideline that does spell it out? If not, why not paste a policy template on this essay? SchmuckyTheCat 05:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Expanded Wikipedia:Content forking a bit, for example made a connection to wikipedia:summary style which explains a technique how to split, while avoiding content forking. And added an example where POV split was denied by wikipedia community.
Also put the {{ proposed}} template on top, so that the community can assess whether or not to make it a guideline ("policy", as in Category:Wikipedia official policy probably not so suitable IMHO, implicitly it is covered by NPOV policy)
Asking for other guidelines who reflect the no content forking: the wikipedia:naming conventions (people) also indirectly advises to give each person one single article, with the most obvious name, and only use "summary style" type of splits for those so famous that they get more than one page (which, all in all happens not so often, and is as far as I know normally not from a "circumvent NPOV" outset). Whether a similar guideline can be found re. articles not on people I do not know. -- Francis Schonken 21:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
In articles whose subjects are controversial and disputes exist, the NPOV policy requires that we describe the controversy, present conflicting views without asserting them, without advocating any one of them, and with the understanding that views held only by a minority should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all, etc.
What happens when we create a category that is based on a POV? For example: Category:Charismatic religious leaders. This category states: :This category contains religious leaders whose main basis of authority was or is based on charismatic authority, following's classification of authority. The creator of this category then proceeds to add a number of people to this list. My concern are several:
In summary, my concern is the use of categories to bypass the non-negotiable policy of NPOV. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 12:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Are there any guidelines for which namespaces should or shouldn't contain user-specific information, and how? I know that many users use things in the Image: and Template: namespaces for their userpages, but there's been a long debate on WP:CfD where people are saying that it's not appropriate to have categories for organizing your userpages. Is the Category: namespace different? I've asked several times on the page why other users think that categories for organizing userpages are harmful, and I've been unable to get an answer. -- Creidieki 04:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed a bad habit by Wikipedia writers of calling their chronology articles "timelines." But a timeline is a graphical representation of history, usually involving a horizontal line crossed by short vertical lines accompanied by dates. Other graphical elements can be involved, such as icons or pictures.
So, generally, an article called by the name Timeline is really a Chronology and should be retitled accordingly. This misuse of the term "timeline" is widespread throughout Wikipedia and needs to be changed with a new policy. Therefore I've posted a notice to two articles that there is a dispute over a factual issue, in this case the issue is linguistic: the use of the most correct word for titling the article. Those articles are Timeline of the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, where the conversation began, and List of themed timelines.
I will now set forth my case, as stated in the talk sections of these articles.
Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Random House Unabridged Dictionary
Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Wikictionary
As for the definition of chronology, I don't think that's in dispute. Nonetheless, the Second College Edition, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it as:
Now, given all this, it is clear that we have two different words for two different things and can therefore, when using them properly, clearly distinguish between the two. But some people will counter that language is a changing thing (which it is) and so, given the definitions provided, the meaning of "timeline" may be in transition. Thus, if "timeline" is used to mean "chronology" frequently enough, such as in hip venues like Wikipedia, it will soon come to actually mean that.
And this hypothetical projection into the future is true enough. But if that were to occur it would be an unfortunate development. We would then have two words for "chronology" and no word that would unambiguously indicate the graphical representation of time in a true timeline. Therefore, when we meant this latter, we would have to add an adjective, as in "true" timeline, "graphical" timeline, or whatever. This is needlessly cumbersome.
Therefore I recommend that Wikipedia establish a policy for the correct use of these two terms consistently through the various articles and that editors carry this policy out.
-- 68.49.159.131 Fred
Your citations above show that pretty much all of your sources include "a chronology" or a "schedule" as a meanign of "timeline". The "graphical represntation" meaning may be the most common, but it is clearly not the only meaning of "timeline" so your argumetn falls to the ground. DES (talk) 02:29, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
More importantly, no Wikipedia article is only an image, so if an article is entitled "Timeline," it means a metaphorical one. There's no confusion. As a gentle reminder, Wikipedia will take you much more seriously if you get a user name. Superm401 | Talk 03:36, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I can't imagine what purpose it would serve to change every appearence of timeline in every article to chronology or some such thing. Timeline can be used the way Wikipedia uses it; I doubt very much Wikipedia will kill the graphical meaning as long as there are 3rd graders and construction paper. ;) -- SCZenz 21:27, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to bring up this topic, but I've noticed that there has been a spurt in vandalism of articles featured on the main page. Much of it has consisted of pictures of genitalia and such, along with expletives that need not be mentioned. This raises the issue of whether prominent articles should be protected as long as they are featured on such an accessible page. The last thing I want to look at when inquiring about the status of Saddam Hussein's legal proceedings is a penis or an anus. I can only imagine the shock a first-time visitor would experience at such a sight, and the attendant damage it would cause to the encyclopedia's reputation. Impaciente 01:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Some templates are using capitalized parameters and some are using lowercase parameters. This has been particularly awkward when switching between similar templates. I suggest lowercase be the standard, following the conventions of using lowercase when it is not required. (Conversion can be simplified by using the new default syntax, i.e. {{{url|{{{URL}}}}}}, to accept two template names until existing invocations are converted.) ( SEWilco 15:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC))
Has anyone ever suggested having a separate English English wikipaedia , so as to avoid the universal American bias of articles ( an example being the article on Registered Nurse (R.N.)). Also , a separate English English wikipaedia would also satisfy those of us who would prefer to read an on-line encyclopaedia in our own language instead of encountering the unusual spellings of American 'English'. This would stop the ongoing discussion of the spelling of the word color /colour.
Yes , to me , all American spellings are unusual. Why can't I read wikipaedia in my language as I am used to reading it. If not , then wikipedia should admit to being an exclusively American production , and then I would appreciate that I'm reading something American rather than international.It sould then be called American English wikipedia.
in "category:1988 births" user:SoothingR has added him/herself (or some one else has added him/her). Is this allowed? I don't want to dob him/her in, but surely we can't all put our names on these kind of lists? -- Ballchef 02:02, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I have gone through and removed all users from the categories, from 1940 to 1999. There's one who used a biography template that put him in the category, who I left a message with and will follow up on. -- SCZenz 05:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Recently, Aranda56 deleted two season's worth of game results from the article USC Trojans Football. I'm not necessarily questioning that decision (and in fact I think the article looked rather cluttered with too many scores), but the edit summary "WP:NOT a scoreboard" made me think. WP:NOT does not say anything about wether or not lists of sports scores are encyclopedic. They would seem on one hand to fit the "indiscriminate collection of information" criterion, but on the other hand to be an almanac-style listing of information, which is considered suitable for inclusion. Another thing to note is that while listings of sports scores do not seem to be generally prevelant on Wikipedia, we do have extensive listings of sports scores for some topics, particularly the 2004 Summer Olympics. See for example: Volleyball at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's Beach Volleyball, Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's 400 metre Freestyle, etc. So, is there a policy on the inclusion of sports scores? If not, should there be one? Is there consensus? -- Tyler 03:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
What is the current policy for advertising? I have spotted a user 70.60.164.150 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) which is spamming pages with advertising links. Is this vandalism? Where should this be reported (if it should)? Any guidelines?
Federal law [5] requires that Wikipedia maintain records on the subjects of sexually explicit photos and media which we host, including real names, ages, and identification documents for verification, if the images and media are not from Florida. Because Wikipedia has no such records, has no appropriate mechanisms for such records, and should not be exposed to the penalties that law prescribes (fines, 5 years imprisonment), I have proposed a criterion to speedy delete these images. Please see the Wikipedia_talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Images of Sexually Explicit Activity to help reach a consensus. -- Mm35173 21:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
A copyvio tag has been placed on List of Guantanamo Bay detainees and the contnet otherwise blanked (as is normal for alleged copyright infrigments). The claim is that the page infringes the copyright of the Washington post in its published list of detainees. Several editors have stated that under the circumstances, there is no copyright infringement. WP:CP has a long backlog.
There is some discussion of this on WP:CP, but rather more on Talk:List of Guantanamo Bay detainees. Please visit and comment on this issue. Note that this page recently survived a deletion debate, and that the person who placed the copyvio tag voted to delete the page during that debate.
I am tempted to take the unusual step of restoring the content to visibility, but retaining the copyvio tag, given the unusual circumstances. i would like feedback on the wisdom of this course before I take it. DES (talk) 15:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to ask your opinion about fixing survery guidelines proposal. When this project was first proposed in June, it received some support on my userpage and no objections on the official page. Since there have been no comments for over 4 months, I am begining to assume there is a general consensus for those changes and I will update the survey rules accordingly in a few days, unless there are some new significant comments. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I spotted this article AK-47_vs._M16. It's a detailed article and involved some work but it just really doesn't look like it fits in the Wikipedia. Why is the article even necessary? It's more of a primary research than an encyclopedia article. Undoubtedly, one would not find this in a traditional encyclopedia. The Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia and covers a much wider range of topics. However, this particular one really doesn't fit. Are we going to do other articles comparing the M16 to the G3? What about a Mustang to a Corvette?
With that said, however, I feel that the information would be wasted if we simply deleted it. I'm at a lost as what to do with this. Please advise. Comatose51 03:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
There's been some edit warring on George W. Bush over a hidden warning at the top of the article ("Anyone who vandalizes the page may be blocked for 24 hours or more without further warning"). In order to get consensus on whether it is OK to block people for vandalizing a high-visibility article, I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Instant blocking for vandalizing high-traffic articles. Rhobite 00:21, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
In patrolling recent images lately I've noticed a pretty constant number of submissions with no article showing the actual picture. Recent examples with a vanity motive: Image:Spacebattles.jpg and Image:Shemp1.JPG. Kudos to the creators for providing the correct license tags, but this clutter will never make it into an article.
Orphan images should be automatically deleted after a couple of days if no article is ever linked to them. Preferably a bot should do this rather than relying on editors to notice the issue. Tempshill 22:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I just went through the mildly traumatic experience of having a biography deleted because there were "not enough Google hits" on the individual's name.
The biography that i wrote depended upon newspaper sources and a book about the individual. There are scores of newspaper articles about this individual from across the country, all written in 1927 and 1928. I obtained access to these sources by paying a subscription fee to a research service.
This particular individual captivated the nation for a few months. Newpaper reporters gave her nicknames, and she attracted attention wherever she went. She toured the country on a speaking tour. She became associated with a popular song of the period.
A new book has just been published about her; i edited this new book, in which another writer detailed the woman's exploits.
The verifiability page states, "Fact checking is time consuming. It is unreasonable to expect other editors to dig for sources to check your work . . . " That appears to be the main (if not the only) reason the article was deleted.
If my sources are for the most part not searchable on Google, should that disqualify this biography on verifiability grounds? (I note that the biography, and its source references, might have been written more closely to Wikipedia guidelines...) -- Richard Myers
I need some sage advice, or a pat on the back, or some such. I tend to be result-oriented person, and in the case of Wikipedia, what I want to see is a crisply-written, NPOV, informative encyclopedia. It often seems to me that this result is sacrificed in the name of process. We proceed slowly and calmly, assuming good faith, with POV warriors, vandals, and the ill-informed. We have try to negotiate with people who won't discuss their edits, can't write acceptable English, who use sock puppets and anonIPs to revert until they get their way, etc. Someone has to be very outrageous for a very long time until being banned -- and then, as like as not, jumps back into the fray with another username. I find it an exhilarating process to work over an article with well-informed editors who can change their minds and compromise; there's back and forth, lots of cogent criticism, until something emerges that's better than any one person could do. But it seems that the majority of our time is spent trying to negotiate with people who won't negotiate, inform the ill-informed, teach politeness to the impolite, etc. At times I feel as I'm trying to save the world, one fugghead at a time.
Now as a Buddhist, I spose I've signed up to do this, so I ought to get with the program -- Wikipedia as the university of last resort <g>. But I hate hate hate for badly inaccurate written articles to stand, actively DECEIVING readers, while we try to work towards compromise. So I get angry and impatient and impolite in my turn, which is not good.
So, I need some reassurance: OK for the junk to stand while we make slow progress towards soothing the savage POV warrior? Can we assume that Wikipedia readers are all canny enough to figure out that an article is less than standard? Should I take a deep breath and concentrate on kind, calm progress rather than perfect articles? Zora 23:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC) ( a not-very-good Buddhist)
Should we use 1) Template:Infobox Country on Austria or 2) Template:Infobox Country on Template:Infobox Austria which is used on Austria?
See Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Country_Specific_Infoxboxes_that_only_redirect_to_Template:Infobox_Country. -- User:Docu
What is the policy on links to possibly racist websites? A link on a page I'm working on says some things which seem racist (to me anyway), but also has a POV which is not currently represented, and some statements that look like they are probably factual. Are links like this permitted? Banned? What about the content, can/should it be paraphrased and/or cited? Is it up to editors discretion?
Also at issue is whether the site linked to is notable -- it is not a reputable publication (not time magazine), but the sites analysis of and collection of information would probably never be accumulated by a reputable publication, though presumably the information exists elsewhere.
There's been a low-grade edit war brewing on this and I haven't been able to track down any policy on this, though I think I read something about intolerance some time ago. Thanks for any guidance. - 155.91.28.231 18:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Recentlt WP:CSD A8 was added to make "blatent" copyright infringments from "commercial content providers" subject to speedy delteion. This seems to have been widely misunderstood or mis-used.
I have recently found a number of uses of the tag for this case mis-used -- several were on images, and some on obvious non-commercial pages (people's home pages for example -- exactly the kind of over use the restrictions were intended to prevent). i hope admins are double-checking that the source is actually a commerciual content provider and the otehr restrictions have been adhered to. What can we do to make people aware of the restrictions? Should the CSD be reworded to make them clearer?
The CSD is explicitly for articles, that is for text, not images. Images can be speedied if thy have been tagged as "no source" or "no copyright info" for 7 days, or qualify under another of the CSD, otherwise they must go to WP:IFD or WP:CP.
The CSD is explictly for text copied from "commercial content providers" -- by which is meant people engaged directly in making money from content. The reason for this restriction is simple -- such sites are virtually certian not to grant a release for content to be freely reused. If there is any other category of site of which this can be said, it wasn't brought up during the debates over the formulation of this CSD. If anyone can suggest such a category now, the criterion can always be amended. But while the rule exists in the current form, it should be adhered to. DES (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Copied from Wikipedia:Help Desk)
When uploading photos to Wikipedia, I have tried to avoid adding any that show people whose faces are recognisable. However, if you look at the original photo (not the thumbnail in the article itself) there are a few images where an individual *might* posssibly be identified. All of these picture were taken in public places, and the photos do not show anyone doing anything embarrassing or disreputable. Usually they're just people walking down the street or standing in front of a building. I have looked at the two PDF documents concerning this from the Help section, and as I read them, these photographs do not violate any individual's rights since they were taken in public places and the people depicted were not in a situation where they had a right to assume privacy. But that just covers the UK and US. My photographs were taken in other countries. I have experimented with blurring the faces slightly, but that just makes it look like the individual is a criminal or innocent bystander to a crime. Not what we want, I don't think. I haven't found a document in the Help section that deals with this with respect to W--have I missed it?
JShook | Talk 13:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article on the Catholic Encyclopedia states that the text of this encyclopedia is in the public domain. However, on that encylopedia's website ( http://www.newadent.org), at the bottom of each article, is a message stating that the online version is copyright 2003. How did the Wikikpedia administrators/owners/operators determine that it is permissible to lift text from the online version as if it were in the public domain? (I'm not arguing for either side). Thanks in advance! -- Dpr 03:47, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Having just accidentally been blocked gave me access for the 1st time to the page you get when you are blocked. What surprised me is that when editors are blocked they are not only blocked from editing but also from viewing the text source of articles (I have no idea whether they can view the source on the previous uneditable versions of the article), but this is clearly unlike when a page is protected and you can view the source text. I wonder why we deny blocked users access to the source text of articles, whether this has been discussed before as an issue, and whether denying blocked users the ability to view the source of articles as it is is what wikipedia as a community wants or not, SqueakBox 00:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I have marked a couple of recently uploaded pictures as speedy delete candidates because there was no copyright tag and they seemed unlikely to be PD/GFDL/fair use. Is this OK? The speedy delete page doesn't say so, but there's word of a Jimbo Wales decree that picture uploads with no copyright tag should be shot on sight, rather than waiting for 7 days.
Another question, what to do about recently uploaded pictures that are orphans? Nominate to AFD?
When each of the above happens, it's usually a new user, so of course I like to welcome them and mention something about picture uploading.
Thanks in advance. Tempshill 00:53, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
What's our policy on porn photos? Where is it articulated? Tempshill 00:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
As I get into this and begin to write and edit more articles, this thought recurs quite frequently: "There is a lot of good, authoritative info on topic X already available on the Internet, so why am I writing all of this--I should just be finding and reviewing the existing sources and adding links to them" The articles I work on are mostly well-known topics, not obscure, so much already exists. Is Wikipedia just redundant in many cases? I doubt I'm the first person to think this. Is there an archived discussion on it somewhere? If not, I'm starting one now.
Jeeb 00:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I recently had to revert the robot page to a 15 day old version because there was significant vandalism which went unnoticed that whole time. (About half the page was deleted and the rest was un-wikified)! I took a look at the past 100 edits (50 days worth) and this is what I found: (This was just a quick eyeball count based mostly on the edit descriptions and is probably not 100% accurate).
Because it is so easy to sign up for a wikipedia account, I do not think it is unreasonable to require login to edit non-sandbox pages. It will significantly reduce the vandalism, reduce the load on the servers, and improve the encyclopedia. So why does wikipedia not restrict editing to only logged in users?
BAxelrod 21:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
We have one user, Newsquestpaul adding links to the websites of local newspapers to a number of UK place articles and another Owain removing them as spam.
From the user name, I'd guess Newsquestpaul is associated with the publisher of these newspapers but, on the other hand, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have a link to the local newspaper for a place. Certainly, for the specific article I noticed, Herefordshire, The Hereford Times is the main local paper and the disputed link is to their site, http://www.thisisherefordshire.co.uk.
Thoughts? -- Cavrdg 19:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about posting this to two village pumps, but this started off as being misc and has now wandered into policy. I've proposed new policy at Wikipedia:Quick and dirty Checkuser policy proposal, please have a look. -- fvw * 14:31, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I've started a page for discussion of what form of naming should be used for "nationality x" categories pertaining to the United States. Please participate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)/Usage of American. Editors highly skilled in consensus building are requested to help moderate. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I work for a local newspaper and we have a story about a Yellow-breasted Warbler in the paper this week. However we have had trouble locating a picture and would like to use the one from the Wikipedia page. Are the pictures on free to use and publish?
Matt
Sorry - it should be yellow-browed warbler! Matt
Thanks for all your help guys. Matt
After meetings with ESA officers, we are working on proposals agreeable both to them and ourselves about using their images on Wikimedia projects. See m:ESA images. (There are delicate legal and institutional matters involved, so please read the whole article before commenting. Remember that this is a public page and that we are negociating with ESA, so please keep comments civil and on-topic.) David.Monniaux 11:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Moved to perennial proposals. Steve block talk 18:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
I have recently moved The Gap, Brisbane, Queensland to The Gap, Queensland, to maintain the locality naming conventions for Australian towns and suburbs. Another user has complained about this, claiming that they were compelled to move all links (about half a dozen), from the old articles to the new article. I believe that, as I left a redirect in place, such a move was not necessary, but I'm going to seek opinion here in the interest of harmonious consensus.
Lankiveil 10:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC).
This may not be the first time this was mentioned ... or maybe I'm the only one that finds this a problem. I've only been around for a little bit but the tendancy for articles to contain masses of links instead of properly explaining their content really seems to undermine Wikipedia's usefulness as an encyclopedia. I understand the need to condense the articles to keep them readable, but let me provide you with an example. I am interested in linguistics although I'm not a linguist (I study languages to communicate.) If I look up 'Latin' because I would like to learn some about it and I may be interested in studying it, very quickly I'm faced with words like 'synthetic', and 'declension' which as a non-linguist I can't really grasp in the context of Latin. So I click through and I'm faced with another slew of Linguistic jargon like 'morpheme', 'agglutinative', and 'isolating-synthetic-polysynthetic'. Now I will give credit to the authors and Wikipedia itself that I now do understand these terms, and a comprehensive article on Latin would most certainly contain quite a few terms that the average person would not know, but in some cases it does seem that many of Wikipedias articles are not written to be readable to the general public.
I believe that in theory, every single article in Wikipedia can be written in a way that anybody who can sufficiently read English would be able to understand. If it's an article on a 'quantum harmonic oscillator' then you most certainly would have to click down a few levels and spend quite a bit of time researching the basics before you could move back up, but I believe it could be possible. Right now it just seems that references to other articles are being placed rather irresponsibly and one finds themself clicking down a few levels only to become completely lost as the article begins to discuss an entirely unrelated point and basically leads to no conclusion. Am I being unlrealistic? Freshgavin 07:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm new to WP so would appreciate some guidance here. There have been questions as to whether or not several related pages involving alternating current, reactance and power, and mains power might be best merged or made more consistent with each other. I made a proposal to make them more consistent. The answer from a user was immediate: the page AC Power has just been destroyed by a redirect. Its contents were not merged into the target page, Alternating Current, but simply destroyed, together with its discusion page, except for those familiar with WP and who know how to access prior versions of pages.
Shouldn't the relevant content of a page be merged into the target page before it is redirected? Is there any procedure for determining a consensus for such an action? (I don't consider that there was.) JohnSankey 00:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Republic of Moldova is a small county in South East Europe, formerly part of Soviet Union, and most of its inhabitants speak the Romanian language, as in neighbouring Romania. Until 1989, the language in Moldova was written in the Cyrillic alphabet, as Russian, after that it was changed to the Latin script as in Romania. Cyrilic is still used in the breakaway region of Transnistria.
There exists a Wikipedia written in this "Moldavian language", that is, Romanian with cyrillic characters, see mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Паӂина принчипалэ. It has around 250 articles now, with the absolute majority transliterated from the Romanian Wikipedia. Should this Moldavian encyclopedia exist, given that the language with this script is used only in the breakway region of Transnistria which is not recognized by any country and which is ruled by a thugish regime? Oleg Alexandrov 20:43, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
The Norwegian encyclopedia has Norsk (bokmål) and Norsk (nynorsk). From what you are telling me this "Moldovan" is still Romanian. It's like English. We don't have an American, Canadian, British, Australian, Newfoundlandish or New Zeelander wikipedia. We only have one wikipedia for the English language in general. So what you guys may want to do is call "Romanian" the wikipedia which uses Romanian in the Latin script since Romanian is already a midium-sized wikipedia and call this 250 article Wikipedia "Romanian/Moldovan-Cyrillic". The way I understand it, "Moldovan" is written in the Latin script outside Transnistria so it would be unfair to call the Transnistrian variant Moldovan and the non-transnistrian varient Romanian. But Moldovan in Latin is Romanian so hence the Cyrillic varient and the Latin varient are the same Romanian language. Dow 22:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
There is no point in having a Moldova Wikipedia because, as it was argued by others, there is already a Wiki covering that language: Romanian. If we are to cover nations, and not languages, then we might as well add Mexican Wiki, instead of Spanish; Brasilian Wiki, instead of Portugese, and so on. Also, the Moldova Wiki has its structure set incorrectly. Romanian in Moldova - or as they call it over there, Moldovan - is written in the Latin alphabet. May I then ask why the Moldova Wiki is written in the Cyrillic alphabet? That makes as much sense to me as having the English Wiki written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Node ue hates Romania and Romanians. This is the reason he does this. Even in the English Wiki, he reverts the Republic of Moldova page to suit his idea of what is true. Node ue is a Russian who was sent to colonize Moldova. He's here to destroy the Romanian spirit by using propaganda. -- Anittas 05:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I think people are right about going to wikimedia. I would suggest organizing a vote for deletion there, at Meta:Requests for deletion. Oleg Alexandrov 15:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
In fact, people that want to have a Wikipedia in "Moldovan" don't even speak what they call "Moldovan language" and they want this Wikipedia just in polical purposes. All articles in "Moldovan Wikipedia" are just transliterations from Romanian one. So, I agree with removal of "moldovan wikipedia" -- unsigned anon post
The Arbitration Committee will be having elections again in December. However, the arbiration process is presently pretty throughly backlogged with 17 open cases, including one dating back to June. Comments from resigned Arbitrator Ambi and others seem to indicated that being overloaded is chronic fact of life at ArbCom.
If I understand the history correctly, ArbCom was orginally created in the start of 2004 with 12 members and has not been expanded since then. However, the number of active editors (those making at least 5 edits a month) has grown in a fairly exponential fashion averaging 10% a month for years on end. A little math will tell you the same thing as the wikistats, we have increased the active population of editors about ten-fold over the last two years.
Presently, there are already some proposals to have 20 or 30 arbitrator positions, and maybe that is enough. Though even at that level there may be problems finding enough people to volunteer for a hard and often thankless job.
An alternative might be to make the Arbitration process itself less formal and centralized and make Arbitrator another class of authority like Admin / Bureacrat. In other words, allowing the community to continuously appoint Arbitrators through a process like requests for adminship and ensure that the process can grow to suit the need, then there should always be a pool of trusted individuals to review any dispute.
So what does the community think? How many Arbitrators do we need? 12, 20, 30, 50, 100? And should we stick to fixed terms and fixed numbers throughout the year, or should we move to flexible process of continuous appointments to match our continuous growth?
Dragons flight 05:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
There's an unfortunately widespread tendency among editors to create, at the end of the article, a section entitled "Trivia" or "Miscellaneous facts" or somesuch, where they place a bulleted list of a few facts that they couldn't fit into the article anywhere else. There are two big problems with this:
It's relatively easy to nip this in the bud, when the list contains only a few items. When it has metastasized, as in the Amiga example above, fixing it becomes a herculean task: for every fact on the list, one has to check that it's accurate, check that it's not duplicating anything else, and find an appropriate place for it. This is not easy. If it isn't fixed, however, it not only makes the article look bad and read poorly, but actively contributes to its degradation, as editors add to the list rather than the structured prose above it.
So:
I am inclined to think that removing such lists to the talk page, or a subpage thereof, is the best solution. The information is not lost or buried in the history; editors can, at their leisure, integrate the facts into the article properly; and the section is no longer actively causing damage. Would there be support for a Wikipedia:Trivia section guideline along these lines? — Charles P. (Mirv) 20:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I would disagree. I think it helps keep a concise record of information regarding a given subject, especially in the case of media. In cases of something that spands several series, integration of such information would require more expansion in an already limited area (which tends to cause another article being created to accomodate the size). It is easier to go directly to a certain factoid rather than having to process the entire subject. However it depends on how well the information would be integrated into its respective topic as well. Ereinion 21:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
* On October 14, 1978 President Carter signed into law a bill that legalized the homebrewing of beer and wine.
There's trivia and trivia. While this is supposed to be a commonsense thing, some editors (usually anons) seem to have difficulty with this. I've had this on Golem and Metatron, two articles where the trivia section at some point was longer than the remainder of the article. Pop culture references are two-a-penny. In seventy years few people will remember The Simpsons. JFW | T@lk 03:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I recently revived wikipedia:trivia: that had been a separate (proposed?) guideline a long time ago, then it became for several months a redirect to wikipedia:importance (but that guideline is "proposed" for ages without coming to a conclusion). Then someone changed trivia to redirect to BJAODN. Then I revived it as a separate guideline proposal a few weeks ago, and this morning it got sorted in category:wikipedia notability criteria, a wikipedia guidelines subcategory.
Guidance on "trivia lists"/"trivia sections" can be found in wikipedia:trivia#Trivia policy. I don't know whether I did a good job of describing the present policy regarding trivia in that section (I can only say that during the week the revived trivia guideline proposal was on wikipedia:current surveys nobody commented on that section). So please have a check whether that section answers the present questions, and improve and/or suggest improvements on its talk page. -- Francis Schonken 08:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I am deeply troubled that Wikipedia uses a badly biased naming scheme of entries for people. I have two important things to say.
A., Why there are articles titled like "Marilyn Monroe"? It should only exist as a redirect! Why is "Norma Jean" a redirect, when it should be the title of the article about the silver screen godess? You can't escape your name. When you are born it is written in both the church book and the state/secular register. Everything else or later is just a pseudonym. Especially the artists and celebs change their pseudonyms often, e.g. why move the silicon megabreast scandal lady article every two weeks when a certain "Pamela Anderson" adds Denis or Lee to her signature?
Wikipedia should always use the birth name of people, because that is the only thing unchangeable and objective. An encyclopedia must have stability and lack of stability is currently the biggest problem of wikipedia.
Also, this would eliminate inherently controversial article titles like "Queen Elisabeth II" or "Pope John Paul II". These should only exist as an automatic redirect that points to the person's birth name, wich is the article title. The USA does not recognize any kind of nobility or monarchic title. Many many people and countries of the world are offended by such claims of title, since the idea of nobility and feudalism are against the nature and the only source of authority is the body of population. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, which is a kind of thingie invented by the enlightment movement, it should follow that philosophycal ideology, which states liberty, egality, fraternity and thus all people are equal by nature and that is unchangeable. Thus inheritable or feudal/religious titles are out of the question.
If you use the birth name only and always the birth name of people for article titles, not even the monarchists can accuse you of bias, because it is an objective matter of fact, written in ink on the register's paper. As a sidenote, monarchs can be removed and that happens sometimes. If this happens you do not need to change the name of the article, only its contents. E.g. there is a very small finite possibility the crowned lady of UK will end her days cleaning streets in the Islamic Republic of England, where UBL is the ajatollah. In this case neither article needs to be renamed if you use the birth names.
B.,
> Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) starts from the idea that names in the format > <First name> <Last name> are usually the least problematic as page name for an article on a single person.
Please note, even this sentence is very problematic, because most non-native speakers of english cannot reliably remember what "first name" and "last name" mean and the whole idea is inherently ambigious. Please always use the phrases "family name" (e.g. McPherson) and "given name" (e.g. John) so everybody understands what is it about!
Regards: Tamas Feher from Hungary <etomcat at freemail.hu> 195.70.32.136 11:53, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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A couple months ago, the community approved adding:
to the criteria for speedy deletion.
There have been a number of problems with this, but for the moment, I would like to just focus on one. What does If the assertion is disputed or controversial actually mean? I can come up with at least three different situations where it might apply, and I would like to get a sense of what the community actually means/wants.
In my experience, I think nearly everyone agrees with point #1. That is to say, nearly everyone agrees that questioning the truth of someone's biography is something that needs the discussion that AFD brings rather than speedy deletion. Points 2 and 3 are more uncertain. Some people, myself included, believe that any article which attempts to explain why the subject is significant or important deserves a hearing at AFD, even if someone might judge that the claims are not notable enough to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia. The examples I would give are articles containing claims like: "John Smith is a star quarterback and three time MVP of his regional high school football league." and "Jane Doe is a regional supervisor for Big Time Pharmaceuticals responsible for 200 distributors and $24.5 million in product sales last year." In each case, I would say that articles like this are trying to assert notability, though in neither case do I generally believe such a person is notable enough to warrant an encyclopedia entry. In my opinion, since articles like these are trying to establish notability they deserve to be sent to AFD. Other admins simply judge that such persons are not sufficiently notable and speedy them, citing the criterion above. In my mind, disputes about how notable is notable, is one of the things that the criterion expected to be sent to AFD.
The third point above relates to what "disputed or controversial" should mean after the fact. If admin BioKiller decides that Sally Somebody's biography is not notable and it gets deleted before anyone has a chance to protest, what happens now? Should VFU be the place for arguing that it is notable and to get it restored? If so, should it still require a consensus for undeletion even though there was never an established consensus for deleting it? What about cases of "Whoops, I can make her sound more notable if you allow me to expand the article"? AFD allows people time for improvments, but that is substantially harder to do at VFU. In the alternative, should articles speedied as non-notable bios be undeleted and sent to AFD whenever someone asks? (Or perhaps anyone other than the main author?)
Thanks to everyone is advance for giving feedback on these issues. Dragons flight 19:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
"If it's disputed" means what it says. If someone disagrees. Remember that any administrator can undelete an article that was deleted out of process, and sending to AfD would be a good thing to do in the case of a serious dispute. There is a gray area where an administrator may want to let VFU decide, but in practice AfD is much better at this kind of decision, not only because VFU has tended to get bogged down in process, but because on AfD the article can always be seen and edited . fvw's comment is a correct statement of policy, although not all administrators follow, or are even aware, of policy. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 22:38, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I think part of the problem is that deletion and undeletion are seen as a "big deal". (Technically, only admins can do these things, so I assume that's part of the reason why.) What if these actions were viewed as being closer to "just another edit"? Granted, they're major fairly edits. Still, the worst that would happen is, one person deletes an article, then another person strongly disagrees and undeletes it. At this point, at least it's obvious that it's a controversial issue. If there's still disagreement, rather than engaging in an edit war, interested parties stop and talk it out. After all, everyone follows the one revert rule, right? Isn't this how normal content disputes should be handled? Why not handle delete/undelete disputes the same way? Friday (talk) 23:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Not suprisignly i disagree with both User:Tony Sidaway and User:Dragons flight here. I have always understood the "If" caluse to mean "If there is an assertion of notability but you disagree with its accuracy take the matter to VfD/AfD" as AfD is better suited to setter factual disputes. it is not always beter suited to settle policy issues, which is what the qusttion "What kind of statement constitutes a calim of notability" is. Dragons flight says that if anyone disagees with tagging a particualr article that makes the application of the tag "disputed" and the matter should go to AfD. I would say "not always". Insofar as there is a clear policy consensus, a single person objecting to the application of that consensus does not make the kind of dispute that AfD is needed for. "Joe is a really neat guy" is pretty close to the classic example of an nn-bio as described in the original proposal for A7. But soemone might claim that there are too few "neat guys" so being one is notable. IMO that "dispute need not go to AfD. DES (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC) IMO "Fred is a good plumber" or "Jane is a first rate professor of history" are no more claims of notability than is "Joe is a really neat guy", and no more create a need to go to AfD, even if soemone disputes this. I tried to lay out in considerable detail what i thought the implications of A7 are, and to get some general policy consenses on what is and waht is not a "claim of notability" at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Interpretation of WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios). This discussion had slowed, but not IMO stopped, when it was recently archived. i have just restorted it from the archives, and i suggest that further discussion move there, as this may pe a larger and linger discussion than the pump easily supports, and should ultimately be archived alonge with WP:CSD in my view. I do hope this excahnge here at the pump will lead to greater participation in the discussion there, (I had announced that on the pump before, but not so well phrased to attract attention). I thank Dragons flight for calling renewed attention to this issue, which i agree is important, and i agree should be setteled by a wide consensus. DES (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
I am rather surprised by the claim, mentioned by some people, above, that invalid speedies should not be undelted "on sight"(and listed on AfD, as a courtesy), but, instead, taken to VfU and only undeleted after 5 days of review. I have not been following that - and no-one has objected - and it dosn't seem right to me either; if speedies are deleted "on sight" they ought to be able to be undeleted "on sight" - speedy deletion should only be used for uncontroversial issues; if someone objects, then, at least in my view, it's not a speedy candidate. Thoughts? JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
He's wrong. Obvious bad speedies can be undeleted. If you get any hassle just pop a afd tag on it and turn it into an article for deletion. If the article was worth undeleting in the first place, it'll sail through AfD. No need to muck about on VFU for bad speedies. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 00:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
The cruftier among you may (or, indeed, may not) want to know that a large number of The Simpsons episodes articles are presently listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 September 21. They thus fall to the axe sometime after the 28th. If anyone wants them rescued they should either a)get WP-compatible permission or b)re-write the articles on their /temp subpages (please write them there; it makes life easier for the clearing admin who does not have search the diffs for the versions to restore). - Splash talk 00:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Dispute resolution reform - for listing specific ideas in a coherent way. Use the talk to state ideas which arent formatted to fit into a logical - point by point structure. - St| eve 22:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that in general a laundry list of "quotes" placed inside an article about a person is a recipe for disaster in that these sections are either skewed or invite drawn-out edit wars as each side jockeys for the quotes that make their POV about the subject look best. It seems like I see these types of laundry lists most often in fairly controversial, usually political, figures, such as Pat Robertson or Ann Coulter, etc. So I wanted to take a barometer of how folks feel about having these sections in general. My personal opinion is that they're almost never a good idea, particularly for someone who is controversial or political in some fashion. Having someone's voice in an article about them is useful, I think -- but rather than having a laundry list of quotes that can be used out of context or as a bludgeon (or pedestal), select a few quotes and include them inside the text of the article where they can be fully contextualized. Beyond which, isn't that what we have Wikiquote for? Aside from seemingly inviting edit wars, it seems redundant. I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts. · Katefan0 (scribble) 12:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
If I may echo and extend JamesMLane's point, I think that sometimes a list of quotes is appropriate. In particular, when the subject is primarily, or at least to a large extent, known for their use of language. Here, Coulter is a great example. She's not known so much for her critical thinking, but for the flamboyant way in which she expresses her views. As such, the list of quotes goes very directly to her notability. Her language is really the essence of her notability, that's why she became famous, not for her rather unoriginal take on politics.
I think the same point applies to some extent to other characters such as Jim Hightower, Yogi Berra, or H.L. Mencken. While, of course, they all have broader importance, certainly the colorful language is a very important part of why each of these is famous. An exhaustive list would clearly be inappropriate, but 5 or 6 quotes can add quite a bit to the exposition of an article. Just because Wikiquote exists does not mean we should never include a few quotes in an article. I know that some feel "context" should always be provided for each quote, and thus object to a list. On the contrary, another word for such context might be spin, not necessarily bias, but spin. Often, such quotes stand better on their own, as there is then no point of view to be agonized over in the context. Some would argue that the selection of quotes is inherently biased, why should this be more true for a quotelist than for any other aspect of an article?
As a contrast, I think that a quote list for the likes of Clinton or Bush is inappropriate because language is really a trivial part of their notabilty. Derex @ 03:21, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
This is partially a technical proposal too... How about we add something in the software to check edits and if it contains something that may be an email (e.g. something of the form XXX@XXX.XXX), either remove it automatically, or pop up a warning notice? There is no reason at all for any wikipedia page to have an email address. So, would this be workable/desirable? -- 137.205.17.180 18:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC) (Fangz)
Forgive what's probably a stupid question, but do permission notices belong in the article text, as in the Vincent Saint John article? -- Calton | Talk 06:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
It is proposed that citations using only (URL-only) inline links be deprecated in preference to more complete citations. As guidelines recommend, inline links may be used because they are better than no references. But inline links being deprecated will mean they are not considered an acceptable citation style and replacement with more complete references is encouraged.
Inline URL-only links should be converted to have a link text, or better to full web references as described in Cite your sources including information such as the last modification date and author. Even minimal web reference citations are preferable to URL-only citations, as their title or description provides information to readers and records some information about the source in case the URL becomes invalid. —( SEWilco 07:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
SEW, I have no objection to the use of more complete citations, but the use of inline links are not incompatible with that.
Examples:
{{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
and |year=
/ |date=
mismatch (
help){{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
and |year=
/ |date=
mismatch (
help){{
cite web}}
: Check date values in: |date=
and |year=
/ |date=
mismatch (
help)Obviously the first one is not very good (I wouldn't go so far as to say it is bad), but any of the other 3 are complete in themselves and should be acceptable, even though the second and third have inline links. In the past you have advocated replacing inline links with footnotes throughout, which I still believe is a bad idea as it requires two clicks to find the reference rather than one. While I wouldn't object to modifying WP:CITE (or whatever) to discourage form 1, I do think that Harvard style references with links (i.e. options 2 and 3) should still be allowed or even encouraged. (P.S. Edit wars over citation formats are WP:LAME). Dragons flight 16:27, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
From a simple practical point of view, I want to strongly support this proposal. I spend quite some of my time verifying references. Plain links seem to be broken about 20% to 50% of the time. Fixing them is an almost impossible pain. To see what I mean, go to a random article several times till you find one with many links. Try opening each link from that article and verifying it. Repeat this, say, five times. You will soon realise that the task is hopeless and that sometimes you don't even know why the link was there. Try the same thing with proper references (with any system) and it is much easier.
The important point is that the person who makes the link can, in just about 30 seconds, make a full reference, whilst the person who has to fix it later will probably loose about 10 minutes per link. Both plain links and no references are unfair to those who come later. There is no excuse for them. Mozzerati 21:57, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
It is difficult to know how many articles actually have citations without the use of the citation templates, though I'm sure that some clever SQL could tap that information from the Wikipedia servers. To try and get a little perspective on this, though, I took a quick look at the templates in use for citing peer-reviewed journal articles and here's what I found:
I'm not sure what this says beyond "the citation templates are not heavily used. It also presents a plethora of options for the potential citation-adder to choose from (consider PMID 11138768 for a study of shopping behavior in the face of varying degrees of choice). One thing that could contribute to the lower usage for peer-reviewed journal templates is the ability to create an inline link to Pubmed by using the syntax PMID 15621726. This functionality was created to assist in the production of in-line links, albeit to a database of citations. Meandering on ... this points up that not all in-line links are created equal. In-line links to the WWW frontier ("Joe's Web Site and Info Repository") are likely to break unpredictably and frequently. Maybe we can find a middle ground here where we discourage links to the frontier while encouraging links to established information repositories, though that word "established" is a sticky one and a little too close to "establishment", with all that implies. Courtland 23:18, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Although I wouldn't use the expression "just guidelines", I agree with SlimVirgin on this one. -- Francis Schonken 06:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I think footnote citations are better, for several reasons. The first is that with more information. When a link becomes stale. The classic examples a citing a newspaper which then restricts access (good old NYT and the Indy) if the author and the date is in the footnote then all is not lost (and often a blog "fair copy" can be found). Second it encourages people to cite pages from references which may not be on line. But while I think footnotes should be encouraged, I do not think that in-line links should be discouraged. Philip Baird Shearer 08:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Some phrasing indicates confusion between "URL-only inline links" and "links in text to citations elsewhere". The former is what in this discussion is often referred to as an "inline link". The former is less preferred than the latter, which are some sort of link to a citation. Although the latter may involve a link in text, a term such as "footnote" is common. Footnotes might use a linked number or Harvard reference notation, but both are just indicating the source material (which has a detailed citation elsewhere in the article). ( SEWilco 01:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC))
Dear SlimVirgin, trying to tailor wikipedia guidelines according to What I do, on the pages I edit,... is Original Research. Continuously messing with the text of WP:CITE while screaming "I don't know what this is about", and not seeking consensus here prior to performing such changes, is at least un- WP:CIVIL, and very near to disturbing wikipedia to prove a point. Sorry, probably indeed you don't understand what this is about thus far, so need to talk about it, don't you think, prior to changes? -- Francis Schonken 09:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
A recent Arbitration Committee decision adopted as a principle a proposal on stalking. I have added it to Assume Good Faith, as the formulation relates to that guideline, with a view to adopting it as good practice. Future arbitration cases are likely to revisit this principle. Please review and comment, and modify if required. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 13:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Gave partial execution to the points above (while someone had already erased the "Stalk" connections from WP:AGF), please check whether I did a good job! -- Francis Schonken 12:08, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
This topic grew from a conversation between Willmcw and myself here and here.
My original idea is that lists should cite sources like any other page, for example Greek dialects lists these dialects: while experts have developed differring systems for grouping the ancient dialects, that page gives three lists, each with a reference to the expert making this particular listing.
So, when we speak about stand-alone lists, usually in the format [[list of ....]], surely the thing is not different and there should be references also, for example List of compositions by Franz Schubert has an external reference to the Deutsch catalogue (which is the "official" list of compositions by Schubert).
A specific case is when inclusion in a list can be a matter of debate: for example List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers has a footnote system to indicate which sources justify which inclusion in the list. (PS: the footnote system of that page is a bit antiquated, and should be converted to wikipedia:footnotes standards, but that is not the question here).
Now List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people and List of gay celebrities use another principle: presently there is not a single external reference, for which justification is provided by Willmcw:
Although I see the point of this justification, I think the system is not as flawless as presented by Willmcw:
-- Francis Schonken 07:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, there's no "complaint" of mine. Just trying to figure out what's best for wikipedia. Personally I favour the "external references", but I also understand the reasons to do otherwise.
Would it be possible to provide some link to where the present approach for lists was discussed and finally decided. I would have no problem to adapt WP:CITE mentioning this exception, if that is the consensus in the wikipedia community, and a link can be given to where the rationale is explained. -- Francis Schonken 09:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Re. Erik Satie:
In general I suppose I think this division of "chores" between "list editors" and "article editors" more prone to getting off-track somewhere in the process, than direct external references for every list. But again, that is only my personal view, based primarily on the Erik Satie example: a single example is maybe not enough to decide either way - for that reason I'd like others to join and tell what their experiences are, which might go in another direction than my personal experience. -- Francis Schonken 09:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
This is listed as just an essay and it's pretty much stating the obvious - we don't fork articles. But for those editors prone to rules lawyering, is there a policy or guideline that does spell it out? If not, why not paste a policy template on this essay? SchmuckyTheCat 05:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Expanded Wikipedia:Content forking a bit, for example made a connection to wikipedia:summary style which explains a technique how to split, while avoiding content forking. And added an example where POV split was denied by wikipedia community.
Also put the {{ proposed}} template on top, so that the community can assess whether or not to make it a guideline ("policy", as in Category:Wikipedia official policy probably not so suitable IMHO, implicitly it is covered by NPOV policy)
Asking for other guidelines who reflect the no content forking: the wikipedia:naming conventions (people) also indirectly advises to give each person one single article, with the most obvious name, and only use "summary style" type of splits for those so famous that they get more than one page (which, all in all happens not so often, and is as far as I know normally not from a "circumvent NPOV" outset). Whether a similar guideline can be found re. articles not on people I do not know. -- Francis Schonken 21:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
In articles whose subjects are controversial and disputes exist, the NPOV policy requires that we describe the controversy, present conflicting views without asserting them, without advocating any one of them, and with the understanding that views held only by a minority should not be represented as though they are significant minority views, and perhaps should not be represented at all, etc.
What happens when we create a category that is based on a POV? For example: Category:Charismatic religious leaders. This category states: :This category contains religious leaders whose main basis of authority was or is based on charismatic authority, following's classification of authority. The creator of this category then proceeds to add a number of people to this list. My concern are several:
In summary, my concern is the use of categories to bypass the non-negotiable policy of NPOV. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 12:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Are there any guidelines for which namespaces should or shouldn't contain user-specific information, and how? I know that many users use things in the Image: and Template: namespaces for their userpages, but there's been a long debate on WP:CfD where people are saying that it's not appropriate to have categories for organizing your userpages. Is the Category: namespace different? I've asked several times on the page why other users think that categories for organizing userpages are harmful, and I've been unable to get an answer. -- Creidieki 04:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed a bad habit by Wikipedia writers of calling their chronology articles "timelines." But a timeline is a graphical representation of history, usually involving a horizontal line crossed by short vertical lines accompanied by dates. Other graphical elements can be involved, such as icons or pictures.
So, generally, an article called by the name Timeline is really a Chronology and should be retitled accordingly. This misuse of the term "timeline" is widespread throughout Wikipedia and needs to be changed with a new policy. Therefore I've posted a notice to two articles that there is a dispute over a factual issue, in this case the issue is linguistic: the use of the most correct word for titling the article. Those articles are Timeline of the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, where the conversation began, and List of themed timelines.
I will now set forth my case, as stated in the talk sections of these articles.
Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Random House Unabridged Dictionary
Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Wikictionary
As for the definition of chronology, I don't think that's in dispute. Nonetheless, the Second College Edition, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it as:
Now, given all this, it is clear that we have two different words for two different things and can therefore, when using them properly, clearly distinguish between the two. But some people will counter that language is a changing thing (which it is) and so, given the definitions provided, the meaning of "timeline" may be in transition. Thus, if "timeline" is used to mean "chronology" frequently enough, such as in hip venues like Wikipedia, it will soon come to actually mean that.
And this hypothetical projection into the future is true enough. But if that were to occur it would be an unfortunate development. We would then have two words for "chronology" and no word that would unambiguously indicate the graphical representation of time in a true timeline. Therefore, when we meant this latter, we would have to add an adjective, as in "true" timeline, "graphical" timeline, or whatever. This is needlessly cumbersome.
Therefore I recommend that Wikipedia establish a policy for the correct use of these two terms consistently through the various articles and that editors carry this policy out.
-- 68.49.159.131 Fred
Your citations above show that pretty much all of your sources include "a chronology" or a "schedule" as a meanign of "timeline". The "graphical represntation" meaning may be the most common, but it is clearly not the only meaning of "timeline" so your argumetn falls to the ground. DES (talk) 02:29, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
More importantly, no Wikipedia article is only an image, so if an article is entitled "Timeline," it means a metaphorical one. There's no confusion. As a gentle reminder, Wikipedia will take you much more seriously if you get a user name. Superm401 | Talk 03:36, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I can't imagine what purpose it would serve to change every appearence of timeline in every article to chronology or some such thing. Timeline can be used the way Wikipedia uses it; I doubt very much Wikipedia will kill the graphical meaning as long as there are 3rd graders and construction paper. ;) -- SCZenz 21:27, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to bring up this topic, but I've noticed that there has been a spurt in vandalism of articles featured on the main page. Much of it has consisted of pictures of genitalia and such, along with expletives that need not be mentioned. This raises the issue of whether prominent articles should be protected as long as they are featured on such an accessible page. The last thing I want to look at when inquiring about the status of Saddam Hussein's legal proceedings is a penis or an anus. I can only imagine the shock a first-time visitor would experience at such a sight, and the attendant damage it would cause to the encyclopedia's reputation. Impaciente 01:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Some templates are using capitalized parameters and some are using lowercase parameters. This has been particularly awkward when switching between similar templates. I suggest lowercase be the standard, following the conventions of using lowercase when it is not required. (Conversion can be simplified by using the new default syntax, i.e. {{{url|{{{URL}}}}}}, to accept two template names until existing invocations are converted.) ( SEWilco 15:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC))
Has anyone ever suggested having a separate English English wikipaedia , so as to avoid the universal American bias of articles ( an example being the article on Registered Nurse (R.N.)). Also , a separate English English wikipaedia would also satisfy those of us who would prefer to read an on-line encyclopaedia in our own language instead of encountering the unusual spellings of American 'English'. This would stop the ongoing discussion of the spelling of the word color /colour.
Yes , to me , all American spellings are unusual. Why can't I read wikipaedia in my language as I am used to reading it. If not , then wikipedia should admit to being an exclusively American production , and then I would appreciate that I'm reading something American rather than international.It sould then be called American English wikipedia.
in "category:1988 births" user:SoothingR has added him/herself (or some one else has added him/her). Is this allowed? I don't want to dob him/her in, but surely we can't all put our names on these kind of lists? -- Ballchef 02:02, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I have gone through and removed all users from the categories, from 1940 to 1999. There's one who used a biography template that put him in the category, who I left a message with and will follow up on. -- SCZenz 05:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Recently, Aranda56 deleted two season's worth of game results from the article USC Trojans Football. I'm not necessarily questioning that decision (and in fact I think the article looked rather cluttered with too many scores), but the edit summary "WP:NOT a scoreboard" made me think. WP:NOT does not say anything about wether or not lists of sports scores are encyclopedic. They would seem on one hand to fit the "indiscriminate collection of information" criterion, but on the other hand to be an almanac-style listing of information, which is considered suitable for inclusion. Another thing to note is that while listings of sports scores do not seem to be generally prevelant on Wikipedia, we do have extensive listings of sports scores for some topics, particularly the 2004 Summer Olympics. See for example: Volleyball at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's Beach Volleyball, Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's 400 metre Freestyle, etc. So, is there a policy on the inclusion of sports scores? If not, should there be one? Is there consensus? -- Tyler 03:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
What is the current policy for advertising? I have spotted a user 70.60.164.150 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) which is spamming pages with advertising links. Is this vandalism? Where should this be reported (if it should)? Any guidelines?
Federal law [5] requires that Wikipedia maintain records on the subjects of sexually explicit photos and media which we host, including real names, ages, and identification documents for verification, if the images and media are not from Florida. Because Wikipedia has no such records, has no appropriate mechanisms for such records, and should not be exposed to the penalties that law prescribes (fines, 5 years imprisonment), I have proposed a criterion to speedy delete these images. Please see the Wikipedia_talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Images of Sexually Explicit Activity to help reach a consensus. -- Mm35173 21:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
A copyvio tag has been placed on List of Guantanamo Bay detainees and the contnet otherwise blanked (as is normal for alleged copyright infrigments). The claim is that the page infringes the copyright of the Washington post in its published list of detainees. Several editors have stated that under the circumstances, there is no copyright infringement. WP:CP has a long backlog.
There is some discussion of this on WP:CP, but rather more on Talk:List of Guantanamo Bay detainees. Please visit and comment on this issue. Note that this page recently survived a deletion debate, and that the person who placed the copyvio tag voted to delete the page during that debate.
I am tempted to take the unusual step of restoring the content to visibility, but retaining the copyvio tag, given the unusual circumstances. i would like feedback on the wisdom of this course before I take it. DES (talk) 15:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to ask your opinion about fixing survery guidelines proposal. When this project was first proposed in June, it received some support on my userpage and no objections on the official page. Since there have been no comments for over 4 months, I am begining to assume there is a general consensus for those changes and I will update the survey rules accordingly in a few days, unless there are some new significant comments. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I spotted this article AK-47_vs._M16. It's a detailed article and involved some work but it just really doesn't look like it fits in the Wikipedia. Why is the article even necessary? It's more of a primary research than an encyclopedia article. Undoubtedly, one would not find this in a traditional encyclopedia. The Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia and covers a much wider range of topics. However, this particular one really doesn't fit. Are we going to do other articles comparing the M16 to the G3? What about a Mustang to a Corvette?
With that said, however, I feel that the information would be wasted if we simply deleted it. I'm at a lost as what to do with this. Please advise. Comatose51 03:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
There's been some edit warring on George W. Bush over a hidden warning at the top of the article ("Anyone who vandalizes the page may be blocked for 24 hours or more without further warning"). In order to get consensus on whether it is OK to block people for vandalizing a high-visibility article, I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Instant blocking for vandalizing high-traffic articles. Rhobite 00:21, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
In patrolling recent images lately I've noticed a pretty constant number of submissions with no article showing the actual picture. Recent examples with a vanity motive: Image:Spacebattles.jpg and Image:Shemp1.JPG. Kudos to the creators for providing the correct license tags, but this clutter will never make it into an article.
Orphan images should be automatically deleted after a couple of days if no article is ever linked to them. Preferably a bot should do this rather than relying on editors to notice the issue. Tempshill 22:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I just went through the mildly traumatic experience of having a biography deleted because there were "not enough Google hits" on the individual's name.
The biography that i wrote depended upon newspaper sources and a book about the individual. There are scores of newspaper articles about this individual from across the country, all written in 1927 and 1928. I obtained access to these sources by paying a subscription fee to a research service.
This particular individual captivated the nation for a few months. Newpaper reporters gave her nicknames, and she attracted attention wherever she went. She toured the country on a speaking tour. She became associated with a popular song of the period.
A new book has just been published about her; i edited this new book, in which another writer detailed the woman's exploits.
The verifiability page states, "Fact checking is time consuming. It is unreasonable to expect other editors to dig for sources to check your work . . . " That appears to be the main (if not the only) reason the article was deleted.
If my sources are for the most part not searchable on Google, should that disqualify this biography on verifiability grounds? (I note that the biography, and its source references, might have been written more closely to Wikipedia guidelines...) -- Richard Myers
I need some sage advice, or a pat on the back, or some such. I tend to be result-oriented person, and in the case of Wikipedia, what I want to see is a crisply-written, NPOV, informative encyclopedia. It often seems to me that this result is sacrificed in the name of process. We proceed slowly and calmly, assuming good faith, with POV warriors, vandals, and the ill-informed. We have try to negotiate with people who won't discuss their edits, can't write acceptable English, who use sock puppets and anonIPs to revert until they get their way, etc. Someone has to be very outrageous for a very long time until being banned -- and then, as like as not, jumps back into the fray with another username. I find it an exhilarating process to work over an article with well-informed editors who can change their minds and compromise; there's back and forth, lots of cogent criticism, until something emerges that's better than any one person could do. But it seems that the majority of our time is spent trying to negotiate with people who won't negotiate, inform the ill-informed, teach politeness to the impolite, etc. At times I feel as I'm trying to save the world, one fugghead at a time.
Now as a Buddhist, I spose I've signed up to do this, so I ought to get with the program -- Wikipedia as the university of last resort <g>. But I hate hate hate for badly inaccurate written articles to stand, actively DECEIVING readers, while we try to work towards compromise. So I get angry and impatient and impolite in my turn, which is not good.
So, I need some reassurance: OK for the junk to stand while we make slow progress towards soothing the savage POV warrior? Can we assume that Wikipedia readers are all canny enough to figure out that an article is less than standard? Should I take a deep breath and concentrate on kind, calm progress rather than perfect articles? Zora 23:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC) ( a not-very-good Buddhist)
Should we use 1) Template:Infobox Country on Austria or 2) Template:Infobox Country on Template:Infobox Austria which is used on Austria?
See Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Country_Specific_Infoxboxes_that_only_redirect_to_Template:Infobox_Country. -- User:Docu
What is the policy on links to possibly racist websites? A link on a page I'm working on says some things which seem racist (to me anyway), but also has a POV which is not currently represented, and some statements that look like they are probably factual. Are links like this permitted? Banned? What about the content, can/should it be paraphrased and/or cited? Is it up to editors discretion?
Also at issue is whether the site linked to is notable -- it is not a reputable publication (not time magazine), but the sites analysis of and collection of information would probably never be accumulated by a reputable publication, though presumably the information exists elsewhere.
There's been a low-grade edit war brewing on this and I haven't been able to track down any policy on this, though I think I read something about intolerance some time ago. Thanks for any guidance. - 155.91.28.231 18:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Recentlt WP:CSD A8 was added to make "blatent" copyright infringments from "commercial content providers" subject to speedy delteion. This seems to have been widely misunderstood or mis-used.
I have recently found a number of uses of the tag for this case mis-used -- several were on images, and some on obvious non-commercial pages (people's home pages for example -- exactly the kind of over use the restrictions were intended to prevent). i hope admins are double-checking that the source is actually a commerciual content provider and the otehr restrictions have been adhered to. What can we do to make people aware of the restrictions? Should the CSD be reworded to make them clearer?
The CSD is explicitly for articles, that is for text, not images. Images can be speedied if thy have been tagged as "no source" or "no copyright info" for 7 days, or qualify under another of the CSD, otherwise they must go to WP:IFD or WP:CP.
The CSD is explictly for text copied from "commercial content providers" -- by which is meant people engaged directly in making money from content. The reason for this restriction is simple -- such sites are virtually certian not to grant a release for content to be freely reused. If there is any other category of site of which this can be said, it wasn't brought up during the debates over the formulation of this CSD. If anyone can suggest such a category now, the criterion can always be amended. But while the rule exists in the current form, it should be adhered to. DES (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Copied from Wikipedia:Help Desk)
When uploading photos to Wikipedia, I have tried to avoid adding any that show people whose faces are recognisable. However, if you look at the original photo (not the thumbnail in the article itself) there are a few images where an individual *might* posssibly be identified. All of these picture were taken in public places, and the photos do not show anyone doing anything embarrassing or disreputable. Usually they're just people walking down the street or standing in front of a building. I have looked at the two PDF documents concerning this from the Help section, and as I read them, these photographs do not violate any individual's rights since they were taken in public places and the people depicted were not in a situation where they had a right to assume privacy. But that just covers the UK and US. My photographs were taken in other countries. I have experimented with blurring the faces slightly, but that just makes it look like the individual is a criminal or innocent bystander to a crime. Not what we want, I don't think. I haven't found a document in the Help section that deals with this with respect to W--have I missed it?
JShook | Talk 13:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article on the Catholic Encyclopedia states that the text of this encyclopedia is in the public domain. However, on that encylopedia's website ( http://www.newadent.org), at the bottom of each article, is a message stating that the online version is copyright 2003. How did the Wikikpedia administrators/owners/operators determine that it is permissible to lift text from the online version as if it were in the public domain? (I'm not arguing for either side). Thanks in advance! -- Dpr 03:47, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Having just accidentally been blocked gave me access for the 1st time to the page you get when you are blocked. What surprised me is that when editors are blocked they are not only blocked from editing but also from viewing the text source of articles (I have no idea whether they can view the source on the previous uneditable versions of the article), but this is clearly unlike when a page is protected and you can view the source text. I wonder why we deny blocked users access to the source text of articles, whether this has been discussed before as an issue, and whether denying blocked users the ability to view the source of articles as it is is what wikipedia as a community wants or not, SqueakBox 00:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi,
I have marked a couple of recently uploaded pictures as speedy delete candidates because there was no copyright tag and they seemed unlikely to be PD/GFDL/fair use. Is this OK? The speedy delete page doesn't say so, but there's word of a Jimbo Wales decree that picture uploads with no copyright tag should be shot on sight, rather than waiting for 7 days.
Another question, what to do about recently uploaded pictures that are orphans? Nominate to AFD?
When each of the above happens, it's usually a new user, so of course I like to welcome them and mention something about picture uploading.
Thanks in advance. Tempshill 00:53, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
What's our policy on porn photos? Where is it articulated? Tempshill 00:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
As I get into this and begin to write and edit more articles, this thought recurs quite frequently: "There is a lot of good, authoritative info on topic X already available on the Internet, so why am I writing all of this--I should just be finding and reviewing the existing sources and adding links to them" The articles I work on are mostly well-known topics, not obscure, so much already exists. Is Wikipedia just redundant in many cases? I doubt I'm the first person to think this. Is there an archived discussion on it somewhere? If not, I'm starting one now.
Jeeb 00:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I recently had to revert the robot page to a 15 day old version because there was significant vandalism which went unnoticed that whole time. (About half the page was deleted and the rest was un-wikified)! I took a look at the past 100 edits (50 days worth) and this is what I found: (This was just a quick eyeball count based mostly on the edit descriptions and is probably not 100% accurate).
Because it is so easy to sign up for a wikipedia account, I do not think it is unreasonable to require login to edit non-sandbox pages. It will significantly reduce the vandalism, reduce the load on the servers, and improve the encyclopedia. So why does wikipedia not restrict editing to only logged in users?
BAxelrod 21:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
We have one user, Newsquestpaul adding links to the websites of local newspapers to a number of UK place articles and another Owain removing them as spam.
From the user name, I'd guess Newsquestpaul is associated with the publisher of these newspapers but, on the other hand, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have a link to the local newspaper for a place. Certainly, for the specific article I noticed, Herefordshire, The Hereford Times is the main local paper and the disputed link is to their site, http://www.thisisherefordshire.co.uk.
Thoughts? -- Cavrdg 19:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about posting this to two village pumps, but this started off as being misc and has now wandered into policy. I've proposed new policy at Wikipedia:Quick and dirty Checkuser policy proposal, please have a look. -- fvw * 14:31, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I've started a page for discussion of what form of naming should be used for "nationality x" categories pertaining to the United States. Please participate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)/Usage of American. Editors highly skilled in consensus building are requested to help moderate. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I work for a local newspaper and we have a story about a Yellow-breasted Warbler in the paper this week. However we have had trouble locating a picture and would like to use the one from the Wikipedia page. Are the pictures on free to use and publish?
Matt
Sorry - it should be yellow-browed warbler! Matt
Thanks for all your help guys. Matt
After meetings with ESA officers, we are working on proposals agreeable both to them and ourselves about using their images on Wikimedia projects. See m:ESA images. (There are delicate legal and institutional matters involved, so please read the whole article before commenting. Remember that this is a public page and that we are negociating with ESA, so please keep comments civil and on-topic.) David.Monniaux 11:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Moved to perennial proposals. Steve block talk 18:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
I have recently moved The Gap, Brisbane, Queensland to The Gap, Queensland, to maintain the locality naming conventions for Australian towns and suburbs. Another user has complained about this, claiming that they were compelled to move all links (about half a dozen), from the old articles to the new article. I believe that, as I left a redirect in place, such a move was not necessary, but I'm going to seek opinion here in the interest of harmonious consensus.
Lankiveil 10:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC).
This may not be the first time this was mentioned ... or maybe I'm the only one that finds this a problem. I've only been around for a little bit but the tendancy for articles to contain masses of links instead of properly explaining their content really seems to undermine Wikipedia's usefulness as an encyclopedia. I understand the need to condense the articles to keep them readable, but let me provide you with an example. I am interested in linguistics although I'm not a linguist (I study languages to communicate.) If I look up 'Latin' because I would like to learn some about it and I may be interested in studying it, very quickly I'm faced with words like 'synthetic', and 'declension' which as a non-linguist I can't really grasp in the context of Latin. So I click through and I'm faced with another slew of Linguistic jargon like 'morpheme', 'agglutinative', and 'isolating-synthetic-polysynthetic'. Now I will give credit to the authors and Wikipedia itself that I now do understand these terms, and a comprehensive article on Latin would most certainly contain quite a few terms that the average person would not know, but in some cases it does seem that many of Wikipedias articles are not written to be readable to the general public.
I believe that in theory, every single article in Wikipedia can be written in a way that anybody who can sufficiently read English would be able to understand. If it's an article on a 'quantum harmonic oscillator' then you most certainly would have to click down a few levels and spend quite a bit of time researching the basics before you could move back up, but I believe it could be possible. Right now it just seems that references to other articles are being placed rather irresponsibly and one finds themself clicking down a few levels only to become completely lost as the article begins to discuss an entirely unrelated point and basically leads to no conclusion. Am I being unlrealistic? Freshgavin 07:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm new to WP so would appreciate some guidance here. There have been questions as to whether or not several related pages involving alternating current, reactance and power, and mains power might be best merged or made more consistent with each other. I made a proposal to make them more consistent. The answer from a user was immediate: the page AC Power has just been destroyed by a redirect. Its contents were not merged into the target page, Alternating Current, but simply destroyed, together with its discusion page, except for those familiar with WP and who know how to access prior versions of pages.
Shouldn't the relevant content of a page be merged into the target page before it is redirected? Is there any procedure for determining a consensus for such an action? (I don't consider that there was.) JohnSankey 00:25, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Republic of Moldova is a small county in South East Europe, formerly part of Soviet Union, and most of its inhabitants speak the Romanian language, as in neighbouring Romania. Until 1989, the language in Moldova was written in the Cyrillic alphabet, as Russian, after that it was changed to the Latin script as in Romania. Cyrilic is still used in the breakaway region of Transnistria.
There exists a Wikipedia written in this "Moldavian language", that is, Romanian with cyrillic characters, see mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Паӂина принчипалэ. It has around 250 articles now, with the absolute majority transliterated from the Romanian Wikipedia. Should this Moldavian encyclopedia exist, given that the language with this script is used only in the breakway region of Transnistria which is not recognized by any country and which is ruled by a thugish regime? Oleg Alexandrov 20:43, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
The Norwegian encyclopedia has Norsk (bokmål) and Norsk (nynorsk). From what you are telling me this "Moldovan" is still Romanian. It's like English. We don't have an American, Canadian, British, Australian, Newfoundlandish or New Zeelander wikipedia. We only have one wikipedia for the English language in general. So what you guys may want to do is call "Romanian" the wikipedia which uses Romanian in the Latin script since Romanian is already a midium-sized wikipedia and call this 250 article Wikipedia "Romanian/Moldovan-Cyrillic". The way I understand it, "Moldovan" is written in the Latin script outside Transnistria so it would be unfair to call the Transnistrian variant Moldovan and the non-transnistrian varient Romanian. But Moldovan in Latin is Romanian so hence the Cyrillic varient and the Latin varient are the same Romanian language. Dow 22:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
There is no point in having a Moldova Wikipedia because, as it was argued by others, there is already a Wiki covering that language: Romanian. If we are to cover nations, and not languages, then we might as well add Mexican Wiki, instead of Spanish; Brasilian Wiki, instead of Portugese, and so on. Also, the Moldova Wiki has its structure set incorrectly. Romanian in Moldova - or as they call it over there, Moldovan - is written in the Latin alphabet. May I then ask why the Moldova Wiki is written in the Cyrillic alphabet? That makes as much sense to me as having the English Wiki written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Node ue hates Romania and Romanians. This is the reason he does this. Even in the English Wiki, he reverts the Republic of Moldova page to suit his idea of what is true. Node ue is a Russian who was sent to colonize Moldova. He's here to destroy the Romanian spirit by using propaganda. -- Anittas 05:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I think people are right about going to wikimedia. I would suggest organizing a vote for deletion there, at Meta:Requests for deletion. Oleg Alexandrov 15:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
In fact, people that want to have a Wikipedia in "Moldovan" don't even speak what they call "Moldovan language" and they want this Wikipedia just in polical purposes. All articles in "Moldovan Wikipedia" are just transliterations from Romanian one. So, I agree with removal of "moldovan wikipedia" -- unsigned anon post
The Arbitration Committee will be having elections again in December. However, the arbiration process is presently pretty throughly backlogged with 17 open cases, including one dating back to June. Comments from resigned Arbitrator Ambi and others seem to indicated that being overloaded is chronic fact of life at ArbCom.
If I understand the history correctly, ArbCom was orginally created in the start of 2004 with 12 members and has not been expanded since then. However, the number of active editors (those making at least 5 edits a month) has grown in a fairly exponential fashion averaging 10% a month for years on end. A little math will tell you the same thing as the wikistats, we have increased the active population of editors about ten-fold over the last two years.
Presently, there are already some proposals to have 20 or 30 arbitrator positions, and maybe that is enough. Though even at that level there may be problems finding enough people to volunteer for a hard and often thankless job.
An alternative might be to make the Arbitration process itself less formal and centralized and make Arbitrator another class of authority like Admin / Bureacrat. In other words, allowing the community to continuously appoint Arbitrators through a process like requests for adminship and ensure that the process can grow to suit the need, then there should always be a pool of trusted individuals to review any dispute.
So what does the community think? How many Arbitrators do we need? 12, 20, 30, 50, 100? And should we stick to fixed terms and fixed numbers throughout the year, or should we move to flexible process of continuous appointments to match our continuous growth?
Dragons flight 05:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
There's an unfortunately widespread tendency among editors to create, at the end of the article, a section entitled "Trivia" or "Miscellaneous facts" or somesuch, where they place a bulleted list of a few facts that they couldn't fit into the article anywhere else. There are two big problems with this:
It's relatively easy to nip this in the bud, when the list contains only a few items. When it has metastasized, as in the Amiga example above, fixing it becomes a herculean task: for every fact on the list, one has to check that it's accurate, check that it's not duplicating anything else, and find an appropriate place for it. This is not easy. If it isn't fixed, however, it not only makes the article look bad and read poorly, but actively contributes to its degradation, as editors add to the list rather than the structured prose above it.
So:
I am inclined to think that removing such lists to the talk page, or a subpage thereof, is the best solution. The information is not lost or buried in the history; editors can, at their leisure, integrate the facts into the article properly; and the section is no longer actively causing damage. Would there be support for a Wikipedia:Trivia section guideline along these lines? — Charles P. (Mirv) 20:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I would disagree. I think it helps keep a concise record of information regarding a given subject, especially in the case of media. In cases of something that spands several series, integration of such information would require more expansion in an already limited area (which tends to cause another article being created to accomodate the size). It is easier to go directly to a certain factoid rather than having to process the entire subject. However it depends on how well the information would be integrated into its respective topic as well. Ereinion 21:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
* On October 14, 1978 President Carter signed into law a bill that legalized the homebrewing of beer and wine.
There's trivia and trivia. While this is supposed to be a commonsense thing, some editors (usually anons) seem to have difficulty with this. I've had this on Golem and Metatron, two articles where the trivia section at some point was longer than the remainder of the article. Pop culture references are two-a-penny. In seventy years few people will remember The Simpsons. JFW | T@lk 03:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I recently revived wikipedia:trivia: that had been a separate (proposed?) guideline a long time ago, then it became for several months a redirect to wikipedia:importance (but that guideline is "proposed" for ages without coming to a conclusion). Then someone changed trivia to redirect to BJAODN. Then I revived it as a separate guideline proposal a few weeks ago, and this morning it got sorted in category:wikipedia notability criteria, a wikipedia guidelines subcategory.
Guidance on "trivia lists"/"trivia sections" can be found in wikipedia:trivia#Trivia policy. I don't know whether I did a good job of describing the present policy regarding trivia in that section (I can only say that during the week the revived trivia guideline proposal was on wikipedia:current surveys nobody commented on that section). So please have a check whether that section answers the present questions, and improve and/or suggest improvements on its talk page. -- Francis Schonken 08:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I am deeply troubled that Wikipedia uses a badly biased naming scheme of entries for people. I have two important things to say.
A., Why there are articles titled like "Marilyn Monroe"? It should only exist as a redirect! Why is "Norma Jean" a redirect, when it should be the title of the article about the silver screen godess? You can't escape your name. When you are born it is written in both the church book and the state/secular register. Everything else or later is just a pseudonym. Especially the artists and celebs change their pseudonyms often, e.g. why move the silicon megabreast scandal lady article every two weeks when a certain "Pamela Anderson" adds Denis or Lee to her signature?
Wikipedia should always use the birth name of people, because that is the only thing unchangeable and objective. An encyclopedia must have stability and lack of stability is currently the biggest problem of wikipedia.
Also, this would eliminate inherently controversial article titles like "Queen Elisabeth II" or "Pope John Paul II". These should only exist as an automatic redirect that points to the person's birth name, wich is the article title. The USA does not recognize any kind of nobility or monarchic title. Many many people and countries of the world are offended by such claims of title, since the idea of nobility and feudalism are against the nature and the only source of authority is the body of population. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, which is a kind of thingie invented by the enlightment movement, it should follow that philosophycal ideology, which states liberty, egality, fraternity and thus all people are equal by nature and that is unchangeable. Thus inheritable or feudal/religious titles are out of the question.
If you use the birth name only and always the birth name of people for article titles, not even the monarchists can accuse you of bias, because it is an objective matter of fact, written in ink on the register's paper. As a sidenote, monarchs can be removed and that happens sometimes. If this happens you do not need to change the name of the article, only its contents. E.g. there is a very small finite possibility the crowned lady of UK will end her days cleaning streets in the Islamic Republic of England, where UBL is the ajatollah. In this case neither article needs to be renamed if you use the birth names.
B.,
> Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) starts from the idea that names in the format > <First name> <Last name> are usually the least problematic as page name for an article on a single person.
Please note, even this sentence is very problematic, because most non-native speakers of english cannot reliably remember what "first name" and "last name" mean and the whole idea is inherently ambigious. Please always use the phrases "family name" (e.g. McPherson) and "given name" (e.g. John) so everybody understands what is it about!
Regards: Tamas Feher from Hungary <etomcat at freemail.hu> 195.70.32.136 11:53, 26 October 2005 (UTC)