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Most of User:GreenReaper's edits ( contribs-500) seem to be intended to promote their WikiCities websites [1], [2], [3] [4] and/or their employer [5], including inexact disamb pages [6] (especially given that according to google, "desktop pet" is a common generic term, of which the Stardock version (released yesterday) is but one of many?), but are otherwise completely legit. I think allowing someone to use Wikipedia for personal financial gain is a bad precedent to set, and counter to the spirit of Wikipedia, but I don't know of any written policy that it violates. Ideas? Comments? 24.17.48.241 17:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
In my mind, the second-biggest problem of Wikipedia (behind potential inaccuracy) is a failure to make articles accessible to a general audience. There is perhaps no worse example of this than the policy at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation) that only the International Phonetic Alphabet should be used to explain pronunciation, and that all other methods, such as spelling out "pro-nun-see-AE-shun", should be discouraged.
The IPA is undoubtedly the most-accurate form of representing pronunciation, especially when dealing with multiple languages. Its defenders point out that alternatives might not be understood by non-native speakers.
However, I would assume that very few people are used to using IPA. In the U.S., all dictionaries aimed at the general public use a system based on the "phonics" symbols taught to most children at age 6 or so. (For copyright reasons, no two dictionaries use exactly the same set of such symbols.) Only linguists and some language teachers in the U.S. use the IPA. I know IPA use is more widespread in other countries, but I doubt most people on the street in any country could tell you what all the symbols mean.
As a result, trying to understand how something should be pronounced can be quite frustrating. For example, the given pronunciation for Enver Hoxha is ɛnvɛɾ hɔʤa. Now, I have no idea how "ɛ" is supposed to be pronounced. I have to click on IPA and find the little symbol in a chart way down the page. I get to the page on the open-mid front unrounded vowel. The page explains that "ɛ" is pronounced like the "e" in "bed" as pronounced in "GA," that is, "General American." One down. Then I have to find "ɾ" on the IPA page. That links to alveolar tap. The description of the "alveolar tap" in English is not comprehensible to a non-expert, but I read that it's like the "r" in Spanish, which I understand. If I've downloaded the .ogg codec, I hear a guy saying "rah-ah-rah." I've now spent 5 minutes and can still only pronounce the first name. That's hardly how a reference site is supposed to work.
It would be helpful for quick-reference purposes to repeat the pronunciation in a way easier for the common reader to understand. For example, we could use both IPA and phonetic spelling: " IPA: ɛnvɛɾ hɔʤa. Approximate pronunciation: /en-ver haw-jah/, with rolled 'r.'" (The pronunciation given in the article doesn't say which syllable is stressed. If I've botched the pronunciation, that's a case in point as to the weakness of our current system.) This is what's done in the Illinois article, which says, "pronounced /ˌɪ.lɨˈnɔɪ̯/ or 'ill-i-NOY.'" Another option would be to use both IPA and a common American system, as in "en-ver haw-jä." But the official Wikipedia policy calls for the exclusive use of IPA.
I know I am not the only person who has a problem with this. Other people have complained on Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet. Matthew White's WikiWatch blog makes the same point. But unfortunately, the only people who appear to read Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation) are, for want of a better term, pronunciation geeks who seem to be too wedded to their craft to countenance any concession to ease of use. My concerns fell on deaf ears in that forum.
I suppose it is bad form to try to round up opponents of IPA exclusivity to take on its backers on the style guide talk page. So what can I do to have the concern addressed?
Mwalcoff 05:07, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I am at present too lazy to write this up at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals), but a perennial proposal it is. See Wikipedia:Simple pronunciation markup guide, the pages it links to, and especially the extensive arguments the talk pages contain. Executive summary: IPA may have problems, but the other proposals have even more problems, and only IPA's problems are solvable through education. JRM · Talk 17:56, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I sympathize with the original poster's complaint, because I'm an ignorant American who can't "read" IPA at a glance, but I think it's worth pointing out that (as far as I know) IPA is commonly used as the default pronunciation format in dictionaries in other countries, e.g. Britain and Germany. So while this may be a problem for most American readers, it is not such a problem for readers worldwide, and a suggestion to adopt a "common American system" might be viewed as rather parochial. Steve Summit ( talk) 19:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
It occurs to me that this would be a good application of a hypothetical user-settable or -customizable view filtering feature. Given that IPA is distinct from ASCII and nicely unambiguous, it would be relatively straightforward to transliterate it, on output, to something more to a particular user's liking (e.g. i → ee, ʌ → u, u → oo, ŋ → ng, ʃ → sh, θ → th, ɹ → r, j → y, e → ā, etc). (This would be very similar to the hypothetical way that the "directional" or "curly" quotes “ and ” -- which some people like and some people loathe -- could both be transliterated, at a loathing user's option, to the ordinary nondirectional ASCII " quote mark. Note that the inverse transliterations are next to impossible, which is why having the unambiguous forms in the database is vastly preferable.) Steve Summit ( talk) 22:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
This is just another example of how a dedicated group of peoplpe with specialist knowledge make decisions that just make no bloody sense at all for anything other than extreme niche academic publications. It's absolutely insane that we are "suppposed" to use a pronounciation system nobody understands except for those people who would already know how all the words are pronounced without the guide anyway. It's similarly insane that we are "supposed" to capitalize all animal names because a bunch of bird specialists capitalize the name of birds, or that we are "supposed" to use archaic Icelanic spellings for topics on Norse myths and so forth. These wahoos need to understand that we're writing for the public, not some specialist academic journl that not even academics bother to read. All our guidelines need to follow the guidelines used by real offline dictionaries and encyclopedias if we are to be taken seriously. One of the major flaws with Wikipedia is that it's so big and massive that only specialists vote on niche areas and so we get bizarre nonsensical guidelines. 01:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I've come up with a proposal that is designed to balance the need for review of failed AFDs with the desire for finality. Please see the above page and comment. Firebug 03:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Hello,
Perhaps this has already been suggested, but I didn't find it so I might as well offer it.
I think most of us will agree that some edits are better than others whether in terms of factuality, grammar, spelling, or vandalism. Therefore, I suggest a mechanism to try and address this issue.
Imagine a system of ratings, whereby a user's edits are graded by their peers. With such a system, you could configure your view into Wiki to show the latest post on an article for which the poster's rating exceeds some threshold choosen by the viewer. In this way, you would presumeablely be shielded from vandalism since I imagine any such posts are either anonymous or by a user with a low rating in this proposed system. You might combine the rating a person receives on their posts together with the number of edits they have made to produce a more reliable number. That is a person with only one excellent post would not rate as high as a person with 100 posts that average good by their peers. It might make sense to weight the system such that users with high rankings count more in their opinion of others to avoid robotic vandalism where the robot creates many accounts that rank themselves high.
This might allow us to keep the ability of non-registered users of creating new articles, as such articles would probably be filtered out by the default settings a viewer would normally use.
What do others think?
Thanks.
WilliamKF 01:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem with that solution is that most vandals, such as myself, are unconcerned with our reputations, and pretty much carry out most of our vandalism within 20 or 30 minutes of our first edits, we generally expect to be blocked before the end of that period of time, making such a safeguard, useless, the only exception are the long term troll, and pagemove vandal, both are a sorry bunch, who will devote many days, weeks, years to skillfully crafting an identity, only to blow everyone out of the water by going on a vandalism spree, of course the plus side to pagemove vandalism is that it always gets blamed on willy, so you're pretty much off the hook, ideally a well prepared vandal has at least 11 standby user names, should the need arise, now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to create template:penis and insert it on as many user pages as I can find-- Ropo 02:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
But I fail to see how this would not deal with so-called vandalism? Vandals could continue their pranks to their heart's desire, and other users could see the content they desire. Why you could even imagine that a person's rating varies by the viewer akin to the movie rating system as seen on netflix. A person who likes to see vandalized pages might rank vandals highly and thus see those kinds of edits and block out what to another person is a good edit. For that matter, one could view as vandalism what another views as a good edit. Users could tailor their view to meet their desires. In this way we would avoid one groups so called objective view of what is good from being imposed upon the rest. Each so called group getting their own view of each page.
WilliamKF 02:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I've proposed a possible mechanism that I believe may greatly reduce vandalism, particularly on popular pages. See: Wikipedia:TimedArticleChangeStabilisationMechanism, it does not rely on voting-voting seems problematic for a number of reasons including collusion, sockpuppet voting, unwieldiness and lack of liveness (i.e. some articles may never be published even if they are perfectly fine just due to lack of voting.) WolfKeeper 00:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
WP:CSD R2 provides for speedy deletion of redirects that point into User space from the main article space. Is there some reason why we couldn't/shouldn't expand this to cover all redirects pointing into user space that emerge from other namespaces? → Ξxtreme Unction| yakkity yak 18:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem: A lot of garbage on Wikipedia is inserted into articles by anonymous editors; the overwhelming bulk of blanking, graffiti, and other vandalism is by anonymous editors. In turn, an enormous amount of time is spent by responsible (almost always registered) editors in reverting stuff: this is totally unproductive time, better spent doing something else. And if I'm typical, something worse: after a while, we don't revert or fix minor errors; as a long-time contributor here, I used to revert all that stuff, but now usually don't — there's too much of it, it's discouraging, and I have better things to do, as do we all.
Now the problem is not usually very serious: it just makes Wikipedia look silly, a very iffy source of information (I almost never link to it from my own site), and wastes a lot of everybody's time. But sometimes it becomes something much worse: the current controversy over Wikipedia's article on John Seigenthaler Sr. (q.v., and the Talk page), in which the subject of the article discovered that for several months he'd been obliquely accused of having something to do with two assassinations, is not unique: see this section of the Talk page on John Seigenthaler. Mr. Seigenthaler has gone on national media, quite successfully putting Wikipedia in the same category as wacko Internet stuff, blogs, etc.: even if we are not concerned with libelling people (and one of these days some court is going to award damages), izzis the publicity Wikipedia wants?
The solution is simple. Require registration (log‑in) before you can edit. While there are a few anonymous editors who do contribute usefully, the overwhelming majority of them do not; conversely, there is very little vandalism by registered users. (Not talking about POV issues here, which can't usually be classified as vandalism.)
Registration is easy, free, spamfree. If a registered user is so foolish as to libel someone via Wikipedia, they can be held accountable; protected by the laws governing ISP's (see the Seigenthaler Talk page again) anonymous "users" cannot. Bill 13:24, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
It's been brought up many times: Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. -- Interiot 16:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I would support limiting new page creations to those who are logged in, perhaps even requiring them to build up a few edits first, like we already do for page moves. It's much harder to deal with bad articles than bad edits. The vast majority of new articles created by anonymous users, that I've seen, could be called "bad". However, bad doesn't mean vandalism. A lot of it is vandalism, but the articles that are CSD and AfD material unintentionally, combined with copyright violations puts the number of bad articles over good. On the other hand, I've seen a much better bad to good ratio for edits. However, this is just my experience and perception, which can be unreliable. It would be good to have some precise numbers about the problem.
Also, while the potential loss of good editors resulting from changes like this is a valid concern, there are consequences to accepting a higher level of bad articles. We may lose editors we already have when they get sick of dealing with the articles. A more significant consequence is the amount of time good editors waste deleting bad articles. How many good articles and edits are don't get made because they are busy nominating or voting them for deletion, or reporting them to copyright problems? I don't know which loss would be greater, but there are definitely consequences to doing nothing.
If we do make a change, we could limit it to a week or a month and collect information on whether it works and whether new editors are lost. -- Kjkolb 18:29, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Restricting non-logged in users from editing is a throughly counterproductive idea. The reason most vandalism comes from "anons" is that the people vandalizing don't have to log in. If we required logging in, most of them would. The supporters of this seem to be regularly confused as to what the intended target of such a restriction would be: at first, they often claim it would help with libel or other major damage to the 'pedia - when it is pointed out that such a policy would make the identification, fixing and tracking of such material harder, they switch to the argument that the policy would act as a speed-bump and stop trivial, minor vandalism. When it is pointed out that such vandalism is a minor problem already, and not worth a major policy change with many downsides (less minor good fixes, a great barrier to gradually getting involved with the wiki) they often switch back to a mid-range argument, ignoring the fact that both ends of the argument have been defeated. The reason the proposal keeps coming up is the natural human desire to find scapegoats - "it must be the anons; let's kill 'em!" is a simple and obvious response to the crap-flood which we are, in fact, facing. It is also thoroughly wrong; anon's are not a separate group from logged in users; we're all people; anon's are just people who wish to be less strongly affiliated with the site at this particular time. They are not a separate class that can be blocked as such. It's a bad idea, folks, and one we have rejected many, many times. Pardon the vehemence of my above comment (late at night). JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:36, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Other open source projects typically require providing a valid, verified e-mail address just to be part of the discussion lists; and require actual participation (sending patches that get incorporated into code) before becoming allowed to commit changes unsupervised. My wife (head of her department at a four year college) tells me that Wikipedia is being regarded by Internet savvy academics as an unreliable source, and some are requiring a second source whenever Wikipedia is used as a reference by students. I believe that we should require edits to be by Wiki users who have registed, including a verified active e-mail address.
I cannot see how requiring registration would identification or tracking of malicious or other bad material harder. Having the IP address only makes it much harder - ISPs will not respond to the question of who has an IP address on at a given point in time except to subpoenas and warrants. Having the e-mail address is great. I speak from experience, having had this as a job responsibility.
Sock puppet claims might be a thing of the past. Wrolf 04:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
What about a process in which new pages created by anonymous users are held in a special, non-publically viewable area? Pages living there would have to be approved by an admin (or perhaps by a logged-in user or something in between) before they were made visible to the world via the main namespace. Edits to existing articles would not be affected. This would still allow non-logged in users to create articles, but rob the effectiveness of their efforts: why create a Rob is soooo kool! page if you can't share it with your friends? The downside would be the amount of effort for admins to filter the pages, but that really depends on the number of admins available. Even allowing logged-in users to approve the pages would be a great help, as this would require quite a few steps for your random bored schoolkid to create a page. Conversely, if the "any logged in user" requirement is too low, and the admin requirement is too high, it could be something like "logged-in users who have existed for XXX days and/or have made at least XXX edits." Adjusting those XXXs should allow a large enough pool of willing people so that valid new-anon pages should be visible very shortly after their creation. Articles meeting CSD could be immediately removed by an admin. Turnstep 19:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Creating bogus new articles is not good, but someone using wikipedia for research is highly unlikely to even notice a new article with a bogus title. Adding plausible but incorrect material to a biography of Cyrus Vance or Hillary Clinton is a much more serious problem, in terms of the inconvenience to readers, and the harm to wikipedia's reputation (IMHO). I support the proposal (to make users register "login" names on the theory that it will probably cut down vandalism a bit, at a minor cost, recognizing that it will do nothing to discourage the serious vandal. Morris 03:02, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
My 'Kwanzaa' contribution has disappeared from the list of my contributions. I can understand why it might be removed or deleted from the 'talk/discussion' pages but not from the personal list. My definition is not science fiction.
On the other hand, my 'Rod of the Seasons' entries can be reduced (by -2), since they are all the same as previously mentioned. >beadtot@aol.com
I have proposed at MediaWiki talk:Edittools to add the following to the bottom of that section of the edit page:
As I stated there, I believe that the imposition of an arbitration clause (in the same way that we currently impose the GFDL) would head off some legal threats. I'd like more input from the community in that discussion. Cheers! BDAbramson T 15:54, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I've gotten a severe problem with Zoe over the Wahine Volleyball article. With only one warning, Zoe is threatening to ban me over stating that the Wahine Volleyball team players are mostly Christians due to the nature of the playing scheduel. Can I get some clarification if it's not allowed to mention information about players beliefs? Or was Zoe way out of line in impossing the no Christinaity limitataion?-- Masssiveego 06:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Please note on my talk page.
Warning number one.
"Please don't reinsert the religious bigotry into the Wahine Volleyball article again. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)"
I reword the edits to state the reason, why this Christianity is prevelant in this team. Just because an edit is deleted, has no signficance in itself, it does not mean it's wrong, I just have to either prove my facts better as there is always the possiblity of human error overlooking the merit of my edits.
Final Warning.. This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I consider final warning to be different from first warning, and I read the policy is 3 warnings for vandalism. First warning has no wording of Vandalism, the "final warning" does. The first warning in my interpretation was to say, a requirement for a more NPOV, not a warning that this was vandalism. For zoe To automatically recieve a final vandalism warning was a surprise, a shock, and a problem as I cannot safetly edit the article after that. However I agree I failed to support my facts strongly enough, Ashley Watanabe is a strong Christian, as is virtually the Volleyball team. They ALL are on local television news all the time, in way way or another praising Jesus for their victories. This was the same for the team for the last 5 years as far as I can tell. All 100% christians. This is a significant fact in my opinion that says it's almost an requirement to be Christian to be on this team. The problem is I'm having the problem finding the articles that states exactly that for the last 5 years. However I do have single articles that state Christian beliefs from single players time to time, such as Ashley Watanabe, Susie Boogaard, and Victoria Prince directly attesting to a christian belief, of that they "accepted Jesus". I'm just having a problem going player by player when somebody deleted my bio sheet that I was working on that would had the player by player religous beliefs stated toward the media. However if I'm wrong for putting that kind of information in the article, I would like to know where the policy is and where I can read about it to avoid future mistakes of putting in "bad" information, such as Christianity. -- Masssiveego 19:38, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Regarding WP:Vandalism, another relevant quote is "NPOV violations: The neutral point of view is a difficult policy for many of us to understand, and even Wikipedia veterans occasionally accidentally introduce material which is non-ideal from an NPOV perspective. Indeed, we are all blinded by our beliefs to a greater or lesser extent. While regrettable, this is not vandalism." Essentially Zoe's *sole* basis for calling this vandalism, is the POV-pushing nature of the edits. Calling this vandalism, is a personal attack. Any future blocking (hopefully none is needed), should be done by a neutral party. Zoe, if a block is justified, you should have no difficulty in getting another admin to do it. We don't let admins prevail in content disputes, just because they have blocking powers. Though not relevant, on the content issue, I do agree this is junk that should have been removed. -- Rob 13:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
"Vandalism" is not the right word, but Zoe is otherwise correct. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:51, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand the need to propose stubs when they could just be made, particularly when it's unclear who they're being proposed to. Do we have to propose articles before they're made? No, of course not. Until I get enough people to delete it, I'm going to WP:IAR in regards to WSS/P unless i'm unsure about a stub, and even then, I still might make it and if users don't like it, it'll be on WP:SFD soon enough. karmafist 23:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
As people before me have said in other words, the whole thought behind proposing a stub before creating it, is to prevent a wildgrowth of barely viable and irrelevant stub templates. In the past, we've had several users who went on template creation sprees. They created dozens of stub templates that went against every format and structure, and which had barely any articles. Some of them were edited and put to use, others were deleted via SFD. One of them even created a {{ Hot Jewish Actress-stub}}, which if I recall was BJAODN'ed. That is what the proposal process is trying to prevent. It also helps us to know what other users are doing. Some are involved in sports-related articles, others in geographical or biographical articles. Knowing who is doing what helps us prevent doing things twice. It helps participants know what to focus on and what others are already focussing on. You basically say that if a stub type is reasonable, then why bother proposing it first, right? Let me answer that with a counter-question: if the stub type you want to see created is viable, serious and contributes to wikipedia, then what have you got to fear? We stub sorters are no cannibals ;) Other contributors might point to problems you may have overlooked, because four eyes see more than two, and twenty eyes see more than four. Aecis praatpaal 19:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Karmafist, to me saying that stub templates should be proposed first is akin to saying that articles should be proposed first, and we simply don't have that implemented, as that's not really part of the core principles of Wikipedia. You shouldn't delete a stub template simply because it wasn't proposed following some arbitrary procedure, you should evaluate each stub that's created based on it's usefulness, and nothing else. Let's not come down on people simply because they don't follow your particular wishes, there's no guaranteeing someone will even visit that page to even notice that requirement, I first heard about it after I created a new stub and even helpfully added it in to the stub types listing. To me that just smacks of instruction creep. If you get a bad stub template that doesn't work, by all means delete it, and do what you have to do to make it work, but calling for approval for any new stub types is a bit ridiculous. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 17:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Agree with karmafist, it shouldn't be necessary to propose a new stub. Fromt he looks of the stub sorting project, it seems they've unilaterally decided to take control over a specific (and fundamental) part of Wikipedia. (I note that WP:SFD was created with a consensus of 12 editors (not that I think SFD is a bad idea, but it's alarming that something so fundamental seems to have been created with so few participants)). I'm curious how many people supported creating WP:WSS/P. — Locke Cole 20:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I just asked this on Karmafist's talk page, but he removed it almost immediately, without anwsering. Can anyone else here (since this is where stubs are being discussed, I guess) enlighten me, pelase? I really don't know what he was on about.
Andy Mabbett 20:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
He seems to think that we are trolls because some of his redirects to stub templates have been nominated for deletion. I don't see what trolling has to do with that, because the nominations are in good faith, are not vandalistic and are completely consistent with Wikipedia's deletion policy. He also disagrees with us on the merits of the WikiProject. It may be that he sees our defending the project as "inflammatory" or "disruptive" (from internet troll). Aecis praatpaal 19:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Aecis, if you think making it more difficult to make and put stubs on stub articles is defending the project, you definately have a strange definition of defense. I've learned, particularly from others on this thread, that the best way to get what you want is to just ignore what doesn't make sense and keep on plugging along in good faith (or like some people in the thread, appearing to be in good faith) until what you're ignoring eventually becomes irrelevant. I've probably added about 70 or so of the stubs proposed for deletion by the stub cruft regulars, pretty much at random because there are alot of stub articles having to do with New Hampshire, and I put them on there in rapid succession, there's no need to refer to some arbitrary list that has random guidelines decided in some dark room somewhere.
I was wrong to bother thinking about proposing deletion of any of the stub ownership projects, it's more productive to just help build an encyclopedia instead of stooping down to that level. karmafist 00:13, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
agree, but it's still a bad idea: propose first It does feel silly to verify and check with everyone to propose a new stub if it's 'obvious' it's appropriate and needed. However, the process is there because it's important to give input and make people think about things they may not have considered. Furthermore, even though you (theoretically :) may always have good ideas for stubs, we can't have a whole bunch of hosers running around creating stubs at will. The process is a bit of a pain, but necessary.
I know I have common sense. I also acknowledge I do screw up sometimes. I suspect you know you have common sense as well. But some people are... not... so... um, blessed? -- Kat 09:45, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
This proposal is intended to be a centralized location for guidelines and suggestions for avoiding reverts. There's been a few "rules" created regarding reverts and this is an attempt to bring them all under one roof. The one line summary of this proposal is "Before you revert an edit, try to find an alternative. Reverts should only be made to maintain the quality of an article." After more editors have reviewed this proposal and it becomes a lot more polished, it hopefully could become a guideline. Please take a look at this proposal and help to edit it into shape. Carbonite | Talk 19:58, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry if this has already been discussed (if so please point me there). I would like to propose the deletion of new unsourced articles, as follows:
This would work much like {{ no license}}, {{ no source}} does with images. It wouldn't apply to older articles, as we simply have far to many large articles on major topics, with no sources (sadly). But, we can do a better job on a go-forward basis. This proposal requires just one source to be safe. However, articles with indequate/unreliable sources would still be subject to deletion under WP:Verifiability through AFD, as they already are (and in many cases under other existing speedy criteria). This would reduce the work load of AFD participants, as articles would only go to AFD *after* they have a at least one source added. -- Rob 19:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Rob, don't worry, it is! Wikipedia:Citing sources is rather schizophrenic though - SlimVirgin says it is only a style guide, yet it contained the bulk of the "why you should add sources" text. So I moved that stuff to it's logical home, Wikipedia:Verifiability. That probably set the cat among the pigeons somewhat :-) Dan100 ( Talk) 09:06, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I would like to call your attention to a development at an ongoing ArbCom case, that will set a precedent which could affect all Wikipedians. Fred Bauder has proposed that I be penalized for criticizing the fairness of the proposed decision as it applies to other affected parties [10]. Please note that there were no findings of fact against me; this is a case involving numerous parties, and my involvement was peripheral. I could have kept my mouth shut, and gone on editing with no penalty. However, I found the conduct of the ArbCom in this case to be outrageous, and felt that I should say so in the manner of J'accuse. Others felt the same (see Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Nobs01 and others/Workshop.) If you are uncomfortable with a precedent being set, that Wikipedians can be penalized merely for criticizing a decision of the ArbCom, the time to speak out would be now.-- HK 15:41, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
(from Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others)
This ArbCom decision sets a precedent that will have a lasting and highly destructive impact on the entire Wikipedia project. For the first time, to my knowledge, the ArbCom has taken it upon itself to administer penalties against Wikipedia editors with no finding of fact and no explanation.
Since presumably this page will be archived, I will spell it out. In this case, I was the sole respondent that was not mentioned in the Findings of Fact [22]. There was no discussion of any misconduct by myself. I roused the ire of the ArbCom simply by declaring, on the workshop and talk pages, that I felt that the penalties being proposed for the other editors involved were inequitable.
The original wording of the penalty against me tells the story:
Then, in an act of cowardly CYA, arbitrator Raul654 simply removed the explanation (edit summary: "removed controversial part" [23]), leaving a penalty with no explanation whatsoever:
Lacking a better explanation, I must conclude one of two things:
I've started a discussion some time ago at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Expansion of A7 but I suppose the proper procedure would be to add it here to make a it formal policy proposal.
In short, my proposal is to expand CSD A7 to include non-notable groups of people as well as individuals. This would apply to bands, clubs, organizations, couples, families, and any other collections of individuals that do not assert their importance or significance. Discussion has been taking place on the talk page so please add your comments there, but I'll start the voting here. howcheng [ t • c • w • e ] 22:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm wondering what should be the order used in citing the three Abrahamic religions to achieve NPOV. Should it be in an alphabetical order or by popularity (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), or chronogically (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)? I noticed this issue when my edit in Human has been reverted. Is there a policy related to this issue? Has this idea been discussed before? CG 21:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Since WP:MFD is something of an isolated backwater, I wanted to let a larger audience know that someone has proposed deleting the current incarnation of WP:BJAODN and presumably would like to see the other pages deleted as well. Dragons flight 17:58, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
What is the status of notability on Wikipedia? Does something or someone have to be notable in order to be included here? Wikipedia:Notability says "[t]here is currently no official policy on notability". However, WP:CSD permits the deletion of "non-notable biography". Isn't this contradictory? What is the official position? JoaoRicardo talk 02:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I've taken this up at wikipedia talk:trivia#Categorisation in "Wikipedia notability criteria"? -- Francis Schonken 13:28, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
The Bayesian filters on the Thunderbird email client are amazingly good at sorting out spam from good posts. Is it possible that Wiki could use a similar technique to decide whether a page modification is vandalism or valid content adjustment?
If changes that bona-fide admins delete or revert were flagged as 'spam' and changes that remain in place for days or weeks without being touched were flagged as 'good' - then the filter would theoretically learn the kinds of things that vandals say when they trash a page. Because this is content-based, it does not require that we know who the vandals are - or how they got here - only that the content they contributed was in the 'style' of a typical vandal. Even if a new vandal with a different writing style came along, he/she would rapidly and inadvertently train the filter to recognise subsequent changes in similar style.
This sounds like it would come up with a lot of dangerous 'false positives' - but practical experience with Thunderbird and spam suggest that this is not the case.
Perhaps this kind of control could be mixed in with other measures of vandalism probability (age of account, number of other accounts created from the same IP, number of accepted edits, etc) to push the probability of vandalism way down. -- Steve Baker 17:41, 17 December 2005 (CST)
I put a question about WP:3RR on the talk page there, but it hasn't gotten much notice so I'm bringing the issue here.
Copyvio policy says to revert copyrighted text in an article to a version without it, but three revert policy excludes only vandalism and vandalism policy doesn't classify copyright violations as vandalism. So it seems like, as the policy currently stands, you should revert copyright violations on sight... but if you do so to the same text four times in 24 hours you should be blocked.
Should we classify copyright violations as vandalism or otherwise exclude them from three revert? This isn't just an idle question - an admin was blocked in relation to this sort of reversion and the situation has now blossomed into an RfC, in part fueled by different opinions of whether reversions of copyright violations should be exempt from 3RR. -- CBD ☎ ✉ 23:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
This appears to be what got User:RickK blocked -- reverting repeated insertion of a copyvio. And due to that block, he left the project. Zoe ( 216.234.130.130 17:26, 23 December 2005 (UTC))
Hi all, I have a policy/guideline/principle question.
In attempting to settle a content dispute (which included charges of Libel), I rewrote an article to what I still feel is quite close to NPOV. In response, one of the disputants (a primary source) emailed me directly, criticizing my technical errors, attacking my presumptions from lack of detail, and other semantic issues.
Seeing as how WP is an open and collaborative project, and as they say "democracies die behind closed doors", I posted the content of this email, full of content complaints as well as a threat of negative publicity, with my responses to the Talk page for the article (currently under protection).
The disputant then responded, upset that I'd posted his email, primarily because his opponents in the matter saw the email and lambasted it on their own web site.
In your opinions... Did I violate policy, guideline, or principle? Or did I do right in upholding the open and collaborative nature of Wikipedia and its content?
Regards, Keith D. Tyler ¶ 19:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, anyway, it's no longer my problem. I notified of the issue on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Posting emailed content disputes I think the people reading that will be wiser in knowing what to do next than I am. -- Francis Schonken 22:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
IANAL, but I thought it was established that, like the writer of a letter, the writer of an email retains copyright in it. You don't get to publish someone else'e work just because they emailed it to you, unless they include a GFDL licence (with a c). I believe that, somewhere, User:Angela has a copyrights page in which she explicitly releases her emails to Wikien-l into the public domian, the implication being that hers is the right so to do. If this is the case, then one should not post them on Wiki without the authors' licensing (with an s) under the GFDL. - Splash talk 23:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Anyway, as I said above, I'd rather solve this with politeness than with slapping semi-amateurish legal advise on each other's head. Askolnik is a wikipedia contributor, and I see no reason in scaring him away. Keith is a contributor, and I see no reason to scare him away either. If Askolnik asks to remove, and if Keith sees that permanently delete the contested e-mail's content from that talk page is no threat to the openness of the Wikipedia community (well, do you, Keith?), there's only an admin to be found prepared to do the job. Are there still any other problems I overlooked? -- Francis Schonken 23:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I want to apologise if I contributed in similar nonsense. Anyway, my modified statement would be something in the sense of not wanting to lose neither Keith nor Askolnick as wikipedia contributors, *especially* not the more scientifically orientated one of the two (which would be Askolnick, as far as I can see) - as researchers on peckish topics already often have to deal with a "fair amount of nonsense" in this encyclopedia, which doesn't help it forward."Connolley has done such amazing work and has had to deal with a fair amount of nonsense."
Well, I wasn't expecting such a seeming consensus on my actions as negative. I don't really think that consensus takes the underlying matter into consideration. The whole point of my involvement was to attempt to settle a dispute between two other people. Emailing me privately turned me into a disputant. While I could repeatedly beg for permission to repost emails that shouldn't be sent to a closed party, I think from now on I simply will not respond to an email that attempts to turn an open matter into a closed one. WP article content disputes belong in WP's deliberative spaces, because it is a community project, not a one-on-one project. The email sent to me did not discuss personal matters, but WP ones.
Other than that, I am unthrilled by comments as to who is the more worthwhile editor -- the upset party only started editing on Dec 9 to edit the article in question, and had done so on an anon basis before that; aside from a sprinkling of other edits their contributions have been by and large related to that article. I guess I've learned a lesson here. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 20:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
This question is probably discussed somewhere (or in several different areas) but I have not been able to find it. Plus, I am not exactly sure this is the best place to ask, so please excuse me for both. My question is based on the Festivus article. There is a growing list of references in the real world to this holiday and they are being added to the Festivus#Other_references section. Some seem notable enough to keep (the Festivus Maximus=Super Bowl note), others seem somewhat notable (the Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor) and some just seem entirely non-notable and practically unrelated (the Australian non-Christian group seeking to rename Christmas "festive"). I was wondering what constitutes notablitity within an article? What information is pertinent? Obviously this list can and will go on indefinitely if every celebration of Festivus is listed. - Ektar 04:48, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm interested in getting WP:BEANS raised to guideline status. What level of consensus would be needed for this? Firebug 05:54, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
(I posted the following on the mailing list earlier today, but have had no reply yet.)
I once registered as a user of Wikipedia, and I know that anything I write there may be copied and re-used according to the GFDL. However, I did not sign up for the Pornopedia, Nazipedia or Spamopedia.
What is written on user pages and user talkpages is also released under the GFDL, and if somebody wants to copy it or quote it, fine (as long as it is attributed)! But there is no reason to automate this process or make it easy for webspammers and other creeps to do so. I do not want my user page to be copied to various Wikipedia mirrors, as happened a while ago with the Nazi copy of Wikipedia. I would be even less happy if I had signed up under my real name. The appearance of a name in such a context may actually be harmful to somebody's reputation.
I question whether some other type of free but non-commercial license wouldn't be more suitable for user pages, but that may not be realistic for various reasons. But the removal of these pages from the dump really shouldn't require a change in license. It will just force somebody who wants to copy the content to do so manually. The webspammers obviously won't bother with that. Tupsharru 22:32, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
In connection with the discussion here [31], I'm impelled to point out that too many users are willing to defend cut-and-pasted text with only cosmetic changes as neither constituting copyright violations nor being plagiarism. A large part of the problem, I suspect, comes from the copyright violation policy page, which is intended to address only a particular, unmistakable sort of violation, but is framed in a way which suggests Wikipedia is not concerned with less overt violations. It should be clear in Wikipedia policy that simply lifting text from another source (or sources) and making cosmetic changes is generally unacceptable Monicasdude 15:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Inactive administrators (2005) and indicate whether you support this proposal on the talk page. Thank you. -- Rick Block ( talk) 01:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I am proposing a change to FAC reasoning, eliminating the rule that suggestions that an article should never be frontpaged be ignored. Please come discuss it at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candicates/never_proposal -- Improv 19:35, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Who are we? Why are we here? I'm not speaking of the entire project or our grand mission, only of the small group of regulars who work within TfD. What are we doing here?
Each one of us will have a different answer to that question; so to guide us in our efforts, we have a written process. Process should not act as a straitjacket, but as a way for us to agree to respect each other's differing views.
If all of us had the same exact opinion on each template, there would be no need for the Wikipedia:Templates for deletion page -- not in its present form, at any rate. We would each individually mow down templates we found insupportable, and log the deletions. No need for debate, no need for discussion. And since we would all be in perfect agreement, we would have strong justification for refusing to hear appeals from other members of WP.
But it is not so. I think {{ widget}} should stay and {{ blivet}} should go; El Supremo thinks {widget} should go and {blivet} stay. Sometimes, we can discuss these issues and find a meeting ground. Maybe I can accept some changes to {widget}, with which El Supremo can tolerate its continued presence. But what do we do when after a week of wrangling, I still say "Widgets forever!" and El Supremo grunts, "Blivets or death!" -- what then?
Our process specifies that after seven days on TfD, if consensus is not reached, the nominated template is free to go -- the matter is over. We also say that a template should not be renominated for a month, if then. No good purpose is served by chewing old bones.
Recently, the nominated template {{ divbox}} came to the end of its seven-day roasting. There was considerable controversy, a more or less even split of opinions (4 delete to 3 keep), and certainly nothing approaching consensus, or even overwhelming majority. Our process says {divbox} goes free, and that's the end of the matter -- at least, the end for this month. Those determined to keep a dog in the fight may do so on the nominated template's Talk page.
Shortly after I removed the offending listing and carefully began to archive all its debate -- not merely the debate within the TfD workflow, but wherever I could find a scrap of it -- a certain user, without discussion of any kind so far as I know, restored {divbox} to the TfD page and simultaneously juggled the entire contents of the page, including our written process guidelines. Am I the only one in this project who finds this a bit questionable?
If we have come to the point where everything is up for grabs, please let me know, and I will start work on Jimbo's home page, VfD, CfD, RfC, RfA, and all the other pages which manage the way we manage the work we do. If I don't need to discuss any of my changes before making them, then why should I? And if someone disagrees with me, why should I not alter existing process to make his disagreement illegal?
If we have not come to that point, and we still cling to shreds of social fabric, then I ask you to take whatever action you think necessary to hold those shreds together, and allow me to return to the work I do best -- making things that work for us all. Thank you. — Xiong talk 10:54, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)
The article Tennessee voting example seems to be unique in the sense that it's about an example that was specifically constructed for multiple Wikipedia articles and isn't itself about something that "exists" for encyclopedic description. Should this article be allowed or not? What about in another namespace? -- Dissident ( Talk) 13:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Please note that this page, currently marked as a policy page, has been brought to MFD, as MFD is not highly read, I thaught a link here would be approriate. xaosflux Talk/ CVU 05:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
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Most of User:GreenReaper's edits ( contribs-500) seem to be intended to promote their WikiCities websites [1], [2], [3] [4] and/or their employer [5], including inexact disamb pages [6] (especially given that according to google, "desktop pet" is a common generic term, of which the Stardock version (released yesterday) is but one of many?), but are otherwise completely legit. I think allowing someone to use Wikipedia for personal financial gain is a bad precedent to set, and counter to the spirit of Wikipedia, but I don't know of any written policy that it violates. Ideas? Comments? 24.17.48.241 17:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
In my mind, the second-biggest problem of Wikipedia (behind potential inaccuracy) is a failure to make articles accessible to a general audience. There is perhaps no worse example of this than the policy at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation) that only the International Phonetic Alphabet should be used to explain pronunciation, and that all other methods, such as spelling out "pro-nun-see-AE-shun", should be discouraged.
The IPA is undoubtedly the most-accurate form of representing pronunciation, especially when dealing with multiple languages. Its defenders point out that alternatives might not be understood by non-native speakers.
However, I would assume that very few people are used to using IPA. In the U.S., all dictionaries aimed at the general public use a system based on the "phonics" symbols taught to most children at age 6 or so. (For copyright reasons, no two dictionaries use exactly the same set of such symbols.) Only linguists and some language teachers in the U.S. use the IPA. I know IPA use is more widespread in other countries, but I doubt most people on the street in any country could tell you what all the symbols mean.
As a result, trying to understand how something should be pronounced can be quite frustrating. For example, the given pronunciation for Enver Hoxha is ɛnvɛɾ hɔʤa. Now, I have no idea how "ɛ" is supposed to be pronounced. I have to click on IPA and find the little symbol in a chart way down the page. I get to the page on the open-mid front unrounded vowel. The page explains that "ɛ" is pronounced like the "e" in "bed" as pronounced in "GA," that is, "General American." One down. Then I have to find "ɾ" on the IPA page. That links to alveolar tap. The description of the "alveolar tap" in English is not comprehensible to a non-expert, but I read that it's like the "r" in Spanish, which I understand. If I've downloaded the .ogg codec, I hear a guy saying "rah-ah-rah." I've now spent 5 minutes and can still only pronounce the first name. That's hardly how a reference site is supposed to work.
It would be helpful for quick-reference purposes to repeat the pronunciation in a way easier for the common reader to understand. For example, we could use both IPA and phonetic spelling: " IPA: ɛnvɛɾ hɔʤa. Approximate pronunciation: /en-ver haw-jah/, with rolled 'r.'" (The pronunciation given in the article doesn't say which syllable is stressed. If I've botched the pronunciation, that's a case in point as to the weakness of our current system.) This is what's done in the Illinois article, which says, "pronounced /ˌɪ.lɨˈnɔɪ̯/ or 'ill-i-NOY.'" Another option would be to use both IPA and a common American system, as in "en-ver haw-jä." But the official Wikipedia policy calls for the exclusive use of IPA.
I know I am not the only person who has a problem with this. Other people have complained on Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet. Matthew White's WikiWatch blog makes the same point. But unfortunately, the only people who appear to read Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation) are, for want of a better term, pronunciation geeks who seem to be too wedded to their craft to countenance any concession to ease of use. My concerns fell on deaf ears in that forum.
I suppose it is bad form to try to round up opponents of IPA exclusivity to take on its backers on the style guide talk page. So what can I do to have the concern addressed?
Mwalcoff 05:07, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I am at present too lazy to write this up at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals), but a perennial proposal it is. See Wikipedia:Simple pronunciation markup guide, the pages it links to, and especially the extensive arguments the talk pages contain. Executive summary: IPA may have problems, but the other proposals have even more problems, and only IPA's problems are solvable through education. JRM · Talk 17:56, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I sympathize with the original poster's complaint, because I'm an ignorant American who can't "read" IPA at a glance, but I think it's worth pointing out that (as far as I know) IPA is commonly used as the default pronunciation format in dictionaries in other countries, e.g. Britain and Germany. So while this may be a problem for most American readers, it is not such a problem for readers worldwide, and a suggestion to adopt a "common American system" might be viewed as rather parochial. Steve Summit ( talk) 19:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
It occurs to me that this would be a good application of a hypothetical user-settable or -customizable view filtering feature. Given that IPA is distinct from ASCII and nicely unambiguous, it would be relatively straightforward to transliterate it, on output, to something more to a particular user's liking (e.g. i → ee, ʌ → u, u → oo, ŋ → ng, ʃ → sh, θ → th, ɹ → r, j → y, e → ā, etc). (This would be very similar to the hypothetical way that the "directional" or "curly" quotes “ and ” -- which some people like and some people loathe -- could both be transliterated, at a loathing user's option, to the ordinary nondirectional ASCII " quote mark. Note that the inverse transliterations are next to impossible, which is why having the unambiguous forms in the database is vastly preferable.) Steve Summit ( talk) 22:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
This is just another example of how a dedicated group of peoplpe with specialist knowledge make decisions that just make no bloody sense at all for anything other than extreme niche academic publications. It's absolutely insane that we are "suppposed" to use a pronounciation system nobody understands except for those people who would already know how all the words are pronounced without the guide anyway. It's similarly insane that we are "supposed" to capitalize all animal names because a bunch of bird specialists capitalize the name of birds, or that we are "supposed" to use archaic Icelanic spellings for topics on Norse myths and so forth. These wahoos need to understand that we're writing for the public, not some specialist academic journl that not even academics bother to read. All our guidelines need to follow the guidelines used by real offline dictionaries and encyclopedias if we are to be taken seriously. One of the major flaws with Wikipedia is that it's so big and massive that only specialists vote on niche areas and so we get bizarre nonsensical guidelines. 01:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I've come up with a proposal that is designed to balance the need for review of failed AFDs with the desire for finality. Please see the above page and comment. Firebug 03:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Hello,
Perhaps this has already been suggested, but I didn't find it so I might as well offer it.
I think most of us will agree that some edits are better than others whether in terms of factuality, grammar, spelling, or vandalism. Therefore, I suggest a mechanism to try and address this issue.
Imagine a system of ratings, whereby a user's edits are graded by their peers. With such a system, you could configure your view into Wiki to show the latest post on an article for which the poster's rating exceeds some threshold choosen by the viewer. In this way, you would presumeablely be shielded from vandalism since I imagine any such posts are either anonymous or by a user with a low rating in this proposed system. You might combine the rating a person receives on their posts together with the number of edits they have made to produce a more reliable number. That is a person with only one excellent post would not rate as high as a person with 100 posts that average good by their peers. It might make sense to weight the system such that users with high rankings count more in their opinion of others to avoid robotic vandalism where the robot creates many accounts that rank themselves high.
This might allow us to keep the ability of non-registered users of creating new articles, as such articles would probably be filtered out by the default settings a viewer would normally use.
What do others think?
Thanks.
WilliamKF 01:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem with that solution is that most vandals, such as myself, are unconcerned with our reputations, and pretty much carry out most of our vandalism within 20 or 30 minutes of our first edits, we generally expect to be blocked before the end of that period of time, making such a safeguard, useless, the only exception are the long term troll, and pagemove vandal, both are a sorry bunch, who will devote many days, weeks, years to skillfully crafting an identity, only to blow everyone out of the water by going on a vandalism spree, of course the plus side to pagemove vandalism is that it always gets blamed on willy, so you're pretty much off the hook, ideally a well prepared vandal has at least 11 standby user names, should the need arise, now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to create template:penis and insert it on as many user pages as I can find-- Ropo 02:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
But I fail to see how this would not deal with so-called vandalism? Vandals could continue their pranks to their heart's desire, and other users could see the content they desire. Why you could even imagine that a person's rating varies by the viewer akin to the movie rating system as seen on netflix. A person who likes to see vandalized pages might rank vandals highly and thus see those kinds of edits and block out what to another person is a good edit. For that matter, one could view as vandalism what another views as a good edit. Users could tailor their view to meet their desires. In this way we would avoid one groups so called objective view of what is good from being imposed upon the rest. Each so called group getting their own view of each page.
WilliamKF 02:43, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I've proposed a possible mechanism that I believe may greatly reduce vandalism, particularly on popular pages. See: Wikipedia:TimedArticleChangeStabilisationMechanism, it does not rely on voting-voting seems problematic for a number of reasons including collusion, sockpuppet voting, unwieldiness and lack of liveness (i.e. some articles may never be published even if they are perfectly fine just due to lack of voting.) WolfKeeper 00:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
WP:CSD R2 provides for speedy deletion of redirects that point into User space from the main article space. Is there some reason why we couldn't/shouldn't expand this to cover all redirects pointing into user space that emerge from other namespaces? → Ξxtreme Unction| yakkity yak 18:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem: A lot of garbage on Wikipedia is inserted into articles by anonymous editors; the overwhelming bulk of blanking, graffiti, and other vandalism is by anonymous editors. In turn, an enormous amount of time is spent by responsible (almost always registered) editors in reverting stuff: this is totally unproductive time, better spent doing something else. And if I'm typical, something worse: after a while, we don't revert or fix minor errors; as a long-time contributor here, I used to revert all that stuff, but now usually don't — there's too much of it, it's discouraging, and I have better things to do, as do we all.
Now the problem is not usually very serious: it just makes Wikipedia look silly, a very iffy source of information (I almost never link to it from my own site), and wastes a lot of everybody's time. But sometimes it becomes something much worse: the current controversy over Wikipedia's article on John Seigenthaler Sr. (q.v., and the Talk page), in which the subject of the article discovered that for several months he'd been obliquely accused of having something to do with two assassinations, is not unique: see this section of the Talk page on John Seigenthaler. Mr. Seigenthaler has gone on national media, quite successfully putting Wikipedia in the same category as wacko Internet stuff, blogs, etc.: even if we are not concerned with libelling people (and one of these days some court is going to award damages), izzis the publicity Wikipedia wants?
The solution is simple. Require registration (log‑in) before you can edit. While there are a few anonymous editors who do contribute usefully, the overwhelming majority of them do not; conversely, there is very little vandalism by registered users. (Not talking about POV issues here, which can't usually be classified as vandalism.)
Registration is easy, free, spamfree. If a registered user is so foolish as to libel someone via Wikipedia, they can be held accountable; protected by the laws governing ISP's (see the Seigenthaler Talk page again) anonymous "users" cannot. Bill 13:24, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
It's been brought up many times: Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. -- Interiot 16:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I would support limiting new page creations to those who are logged in, perhaps even requiring them to build up a few edits first, like we already do for page moves. It's much harder to deal with bad articles than bad edits. The vast majority of new articles created by anonymous users, that I've seen, could be called "bad". However, bad doesn't mean vandalism. A lot of it is vandalism, but the articles that are CSD and AfD material unintentionally, combined with copyright violations puts the number of bad articles over good. On the other hand, I've seen a much better bad to good ratio for edits. However, this is just my experience and perception, which can be unreliable. It would be good to have some precise numbers about the problem.
Also, while the potential loss of good editors resulting from changes like this is a valid concern, there are consequences to accepting a higher level of bad articles. We may lose editors we already have when they get sick of dealing with the articles. A more significant consequence is the amount of time good editors waste deleting bad articles. How many good articles and edits are don't get made because they are busy nominating or voting them for deletion, or reporting them to copyright problems? I don't know which loss would be greater, but there are definitely consequences to doing nothing.
If we do make a change, we could limit it to a week or a month and collect information on whether it works and whether new editors are lost. -- Kjkolb 18:29, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Restricting non-logged in users from editing is a throughly counterproductive idea. The reason most vandalism comes from "anons" is that the people vandalizing don't have to log in. If we required logging in, most of them would. The supporters of this seem to be regularly confused as to what the intended target of such a restriction would be: at first, they often claim it would help with libel or other major damage to the 'pedia - when it is pointed out that such a policy would make the identification, fixing and tracking of such material harder, they switch to the argument that the policy would act as a speed-bump and stop trivial, minor vandalism. When it is pointed out that such vandalism is a minor problem already, and not worth a major policy change with many downsides (less minor good fixes, a great barrier to gradually getting involved with the wiki) they often switch back to a mid-range argument, ignoring the fact that both ends of the argument have been defeated. The reason the proposal keeps coming up is the natural human desire to find scapegoats - "it must be the anons; let's kill 'em!" is a simple and obvious response to the crap-flood which we are, in fact, facing. It is also thoroughly wrong; anon's are not a separate group from logged in users; we're all people; anon's are just people who wish to be less strongly affiliated with the site at this particular time. They are not a separate class that can be blocked as such. It's a bad idea, folks, and one we have rejected many, many times. Pardon the vehemence of my above comment (late at night). JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:36, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Other open source projects typically require providing a valid, verified e-mail address just to be part of the discussion lists; and require actual participation (sending patches that get incorporated into code) before becoming allowed to commit changes unsupervised. My wife (head of her department at a four year college) tells me that Wikipedia is being regarded by Internet savvy academics as an unreliable source, and some are requiring a second source whenever Wikipedia is used as a reference by students. I believe that we should require edits to be by Wiki users who have registed, including a verified active e-mail address.
I cannot see how requiring registration would identification or tracking of malicious or other bad material harder. Having the IP address only makes it much harder - ISPs will not respond to the question of who has an IP address on at a given point in time except to subpoenas and warrants. Having the e-mail address is great. I speak from experience, having had this as a job responsibility.
Sock puppet claims might be a thing of the past. Wrolf 04:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
What about a process in which new pages created by anonymous users are held in a special, non-publically viewable area? Pages living there would have to be approved by an admin (or perhaps by a logged-in user or something in between) before they were made visible to the world via the main namespace. Edits to existing articles would not be affected. This would still allow non-logged in users to create articles, but rob the effectiveness of their efforts: why create a Rob is soooo kool! page if you can't share it with your friends? The downside would be the amount of effort for admins to filter the pages, but that really depends on the number of admins available. Even allowing logged-in users to approve the pages would be a great help, as this would require quite a few steps for your random bored schoolkid to create a page. Conversely, if the "any logged in user" requirement is too low, and the admin requirement is too high, it could be something like "logged-in users who have existed for XXX days and/or have made at least XXX edits." Adjusting those XXXs should allow a large enough pool of willing people so that valid new-anon pages should be visible very shortly after their creation. Articles meeting CSD could be immediately removed by an admin. Turnstep 19:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Creating bogus new articles is not good, but someone using wikipedia for research is highly unlikely to even notice a new article with a bogus title. Adding plausible but incorrect material to a biography of Cyrus Vance or Hillary Clinton is a much more serious problem, in terms of the inconvenience to readers, and the harm to wikipedia's reputation (IMHO). I support the proposal (to make users register "login" names on the theory that it will probably cut down vandalism a bit, at a minor cost, recognizing that it will do nothing to discourage the serious vandal. Morris 03:02, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
My 'Kwanzaa' contribution has disappeared from the list of my contributions. I can understand why it might be removed or deleted from the 'talk/discussion' pages but not from the personal list. My definition is not science fiction.
On the other hand, my 'Rod of the Seasons' entries can be reduced (by -2), since they are all the same as previously mentioned. >beadtot@aol.com
I have proposed at MediaWiki talk:Edittools to add the following to the bottom of that section of the edit page:
As I stated there, I believe that the imposition of an arbitration clause (in the same way that we currently impose the GFDL) would head off some legal threats. I'd like more input from the community in that discussion. Cheers! BDAbramson T 15:54, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I've gotten a severe problem with Zoe over the Wahine Volleyball article. With only one warning, Zoe is threatening to ban me over stating that the Wahine Volleyball team players are mostly Christians due to the nature of the playing scheduel. Can I get some clarification if it's not allowed to mention information about players beliefs? Or was Zoe way out of line in impossing the no Christinaity limitataion?-- Masssiveego 06:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Please note on my talk page.
Warning number one.
"Please don't reinsert the religious bigotry into the Wahine Volleyball article again. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)"
I reword the edits to state the reason, why this Christianity is prevelant in this team. Just because an edit is deleted, has no signficance in itself, it does not mean it's wrong, I just have to either prove my facts better as there is always the possiblity of human error overlooking the merit of my edits.
Final Warning.. This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. User:Zoe|(talk) 04:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I consider final warning to be different from first warning, and I read the policy is 3 warnings for vandalism. First warning has no wording of Vandalism, the "final warning" does. The first warning in my interpretation was to say, a requirement for a more NPOV, not a warning that this was vandalism. For zoe To automatically recieve a final vandalism warning was a surprise, a shock, and a problem as I cannot safetly edit the article after that. However I agree I failed to support my facts strongly enough, Ashley Watanabe is a strong Christian, as is virtually the Volleyball team. They ALL are on local television news all the time, in way way or another praising Jesus for their victories. This was the same for the team for the last 5 years as far as I can tell. All 100% christians. This is a significant fact in my opinion that says it's almost an requirement to be Christian to be on this team. The problem is I'm having the problem finding the articles that states exactly that for the last 5 years. However I do have single articles that state Christian beliefs from single players time to time, such as Ashley Watanabe, Susie Boogaard, and Victoria Prince directly attesting to a christian belief, of that they "accepted Jesus". I'm just having a problem going player by player when somebody deleted my bio sheet that I was working on that would had the player by player religous beliefs stated toward the media. However if I'm wrong for putting that kind of information in the article, I would like to know where the policy is and where I can read about it to avoid future mistakes of putting in "bad" information, such as Christianity. -- Masssiveego 19:38, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Regarding WP:Vandalism, another relevant quote is "NPOV violations: The neutral point of view is a difficult policy for many of us to understand, and even Wikipedia veterans occasionally accidentally introduce material which is non-ideal from an NPOV perspective. Indeed, we are all blinded by our beliefs to a greater or lesser extent. While regrettable, this is not vandalism." Essentially Zoe's *sole* basis for calling this vandalism, is the POV-pushing nature of the edits. Calling this vandalism, is a personal attack. Any future blocking (hopefully none is needed), should be done by a neutral party. Zoe, if a block is justified, you should have no difficulty in getting another admin to do it. We don't let admins prevail in content disputes, just because they have blocking powers. Though not relevant, on the content issue, I do agree this is junk that should have been removed. -- Rob 13:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
"Vandalism" is not the right word, but Zoe is otherwise correct. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:51, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand the need to propose stubs when they could just be made, particularly when it's unclear who they're being proposed to. Do we have to propose articles before they're made? No, of course not. Until I get enough people to delete it, I'm going to WP:IAR in regards to WSS/P unless i'm unsure about a stub, and even then, I still might make it and if users don't like it, it'll be on WP:SFD soon enough. karmafist 23:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
As people before me have said in other words, the whole thought behind proposing a stub before creating it, is to prevent a wildgrowth of barely viable and irrelevant stub templates. In the past, we've had several users who went on template creation sprees. They created dozens of stub templates that went against every format and structure, and which had barely any articles. Some of them were edited and put to use, others were deleted via SFD. One of them even created a {{ Hot Jewish Actress-stub}}, which if I recall was BJAODN'ed. That is what the proposal process is trying to prevent. It also helps us to know what other users are doing. Some are involved in sports-related articles, others in geographical or biographical articles. Knowing who is doing what helps us prevent doing things twice. It helps participants know what to focus on and what others are already focussing on. You basically say that if a stub type is reasonable, then why bother proposing it first, right? Let me answer that with a counter-question: if the stub type you want to see created is viable, serious and contributes to wikipedia, then what have you got to fear? We stub sorters are no cannibals ;) Other contributors might point to problems you may have overlooked, because four eyes see more than two, and twenty eyes see more than four. Aecis praatpaal 19:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Karmafist, to me saying that stub templates should be proposed first is akin to saying that articles should be proposed first, and we simply don't have that implemented, as that's not really part of the core principles of Wikipedia. You shouldn't delete a stub template simply because it wasn't proposed following some arbitrary procedure, you should evaluate each stub that's created based on it's usefulness, and nothing else. Let's not come down on people simply because they don't follow your particular wishes, there's no guaranteeing someone will even visit that page to even notice that requirement, I first heard about it after I created a new stub and even helpfully added it in to the stub types listing. To me that just smacks of instruction creep. If you get a bad stub template that doesn't work, by all means delete it, and do what you have to do to make it work, but calling for approval for any new stub types is a bit ridiculous. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 17:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Agree with karmafist, it shouldn't be necessary to propose a new stub. Fromt he looks of the stub sorting project, it seems they've unilaterally decided to take control over a specific (and fundamental) part of Wikipedia. (I note that WP:SFD was created with a consensus of 12 editors (not that I think SFD is a bad idea, but it's alarming that something so fundamental seems to have been created with so few participants)). I'm curious how many people supported creating WP:WSS/P. — Locke Cole 20:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I just asked this on Karmafist's talk page, but he removed it almost immediately, without anwsering. Can anyone else here (since this is where stubs are being discussed, I guess) enlighten me, pelase? I really don't know what he was on about.
Andy Mabbett 20:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
He seems to think that we are trolls because some of his redirects to stub templates have been nominated for deletion. I don't see what trolling has to do with that, because the nominations are in good faith, are not vandalistic and are completely consistent with Wikipedia's deletion policy. He also disagrees with us on the merits of the WikiProject. It may be that he sees our defending the project as "inflammatory" or "disruptive" (from internet troll). Aecis praatpaal 19:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Aecis, if you think making it more difficult to make and put stubs on stub articles is defending the project, you definately have a strange definition of defense. I've learned, particularly from others on this thread, that the best way to get what you want is to just ignore what doesn't make sense and keep on plugging along in good faith (or like some people in the thread, appearing to be in good faith) until what you're ignoring eventually becomes irrelevant. I've probably added about 70 or so of the stubs proposed for deletion by the stub cruft regulars, pretty much at random because there are alot of stub articles having to do with New Hampshire, and I put them on there in rapid succession, there's no need to refer to some arbitrary list that has random guidelines decided in some dark room somewhere.
I was wrong to bother thinking about proposing deletion of any of the stub ownership projects, it's more productive to just help build an encyclopedia instead of stooping down to that level. karmafist 00:13, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
agree, but it's still a bad idea: propose first It does feel silly to verify and check with everyone to propose a new stub if it's 'obvious' it's appropriate and needed. However, the process is there because it's important to give input and make people think about things they may not have considered. Furthermore, even though you (theoretically :) may always have good ideas for stubs, we can't have a whole bunch of hosers running around creating stubs at will. The process is a bit of a pain, but necessary.
I know I have common sense. I also acknowledge I do screw up sometimes. I suspect you know you have common sense as well. But some people are... not... so... um, blessed? -- Kat 09:45, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
This proposal is intended to be a centralized location for guidelines and suggestions for avoiding reverts. There's been a few "rules" created regarding reverts and this is an attempt to bring them all under one roof. The one line summary of this proposal is "Before you revert an edit, try to find an alternative. Reverts should only be made to maintain the quality of an article." After more editors have reviewed this proposal and it becomes a lot more polished, it hopefully could become a guideline. Please take a look at this proposal and help to edit it into shape. Carbonite | Talk 19:58, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry if this has already been discussed (if so please point me there). I would like to propose the deletion of new unsourced articles, as follows:
This would work much like {{ no license}}, {{ no source}} does with images. It wouldn't apply to older articles, as we simply have far to many large articles on major topics, with no sources (sadly). But, we can do a better job on a go-forward basis. This proposal requires just one source to be safe. However, articles with indequate/unreliable sources would still be subject to deletion under WP:Verifiability through AFD, as they already are (and in many cases under other existing speedy criteria). This would reduce the work load of AFD participants, as articles would only go to AFD *after* they have a at least one source added. -- Rob 19:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Rob, don't worry, it is! Wikipedia:Citing sources is rather schizophrenic though - SlimVirgin says it is only a style guide, yet it contained the bulk of the "why you should add sources" text. So I moved that stuff to it's logical home, Wikipedia:Verifiability. That probably set the cat among the pigeons somewhat :-) Dan100 ( Talk) 09:06, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I would like to call your attention to a development at an ongoing ArbCom case, that will set a precedent which could affect all Wikipedians. Fred Bauder has proposed that I be penalized for criticizing the fairness of the proposed decision as it applies to other affected parties [10]. Please note that there were no findings of fact against me; this is a case involving numerous parties, and my involvement was peripheral. I could have kept my mouth shut, and gone on editing with no penalty. However, I found the conduct of the ArbCom in this case to be outrageous, and felt that I should say so in the manner of J'accuse. Others felt the same (see Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Nobs01 and others/Workshop.) If you are uncomfortable with a precedent being set, that Wikipedians can be penalized merely for criticizing a decision of the ArbCom, the time to speak out would be now.-- HK 15:41, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
(from Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others)
This ArbCom decision sets a precedent that will have a lasting and highly destructive impact on the entire Wikipedia project. For the first time, to my knowledge, the ArbCom has taken it upon itself to administer penalties against Wikipedia editors with no finding of fact and no explanation.
Since presumably this page will be archived, I will spell it out. In this case, I was the sole respondent that was not mentioned in the Findings of Fact [22]. There was no discussion of any misconduct by myself. I roused the ire of the ArbCom simply by declaring, on the workshop and talk pages, that I felt that the penalties being proposed for the other editors involved were inequitable.
The original wording of the penalty against me tells the story:
Then, in an act of cowardly CYA, arbitrator Raul654 simply removed the explanation (edit summary: "removed controversial part" [23]), leaving a penalty with no explanation whatsoever:
Lacking a better explanation, I must conclude one of two things:
I've started a discussion some time ago at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Expansion of A7 but I suppose the proper procedure would be to add it here to make a it formal policy proposal.
In short, my proposal is to expand CSD A7 to include non-notable groups of people as well as individuals. This would apply to bands, clubs, organizations, couples, families, and any other collections of individuals that do not assert their importance or significance. Discussion has been taking place on the talk page so please add your comments there, but I'll start the voting here. howcheng [ t • c • w • e ] 22:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm wondering what should be the order used in citing the three Abrahamic religions to achieve NPOV. Should it be in an alphabetical order or by popularity (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), or chronogically (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)? I noticed this issue when my edit in Human has been reverted. Is there a policy related to this issue? Has this idea been discussed before? CG 21:30, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Since WP:MFD is something of an isolated backwater, I wanted to let a larger audience know that someone has proposed deleting the current incarnation of WP:BJAODN and presumably would like to see the other pages deleted as well. Dragons flight 17:58, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
What is the status of notability on Wikipedia? Does something or someone have to be notable in order to be included here? Wikipedia:Notability says "[t]here is currently no official policy on notability". However, WP:CSD permits the deletion of "non-notable biography". Isn't this contradictory? What is the official position? JoaoRicardo talk 02:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I've taken this up at wikipedia talk:trivia#Categorisation in "Wikipedia notability criteria"? -- Francis Schonken 13:28, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
The Bayesian filters on the Thunderbird email client are amazingly good at sorting out spam from good posts. Is it possible that Wiki could use a similar technique to decide whether a page modification is vandalism or valid content adjustment?
If changes that bona-fide admins delete or revert were flagged as 'spam' and changes that remain in place for days or weeks without being touched were flagged as 'good' - then the filter would theoretically learn the kinds of things that vandals say when they trash a page. Because this is content-based, it does not require that we know who the vandals are - or how they got here - only that the content they contributed was in the 'style' of a typical vandal. Even if a new vandal with a different writing style came along, he/she would rapidly and inadvertently train the filter to recognise subsequent changes in similar style.
This sounds like it would come up with a lot of dangerous 'false positives' - but practical experience with Thunderbird and spam suggest that this is not the case.
Perhaps this kind of control could be mixed in with other measures of vandalism probability (age of account, number of other accounts created from the same IP, number of accepted edits, etc) to push the probability of vandalism way down. -- Steve Baker 17:41, 17 December 2005 (CST)
I put a question about WP:3RR on the talk page there, but it hasn't gotten much notice so I'm bringing the issue here.
Copyvio policy says to revert copyrighted text in an article to a version without it, but three revert policy excludes only vandalism and vandalism policy doesn't classify copyright violations as vandalism. So it seems like, as the policy currently stands, you should revert copyright violations on sight... but if you do so to the same text four times in 24 hours you should be blocked.
Should we classify copyright violations as vandalism or otherwise exclude them from three revert? This isn't just an idle question - an admin was blocked in relation to this sort of reversion and the situation has now blossomed into an RfC, in part fueled by different opinions of whether reversions of copyright violations should be exempt from 3RR. -- CBD ☎ ✉ 23:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
This appears to be what got User:RickK blocked -- reverting repeated insertion of a copyvio. And due to that block, he left the project. Zoe ( 216.234.130.130 17:26, 23 December 2005 (UTC))
Hi all, I have a policy/guideline/principle question.
In attempting to settle a content dispute (which included charges of Libel), I rewrote an article to what I still feel is quite close to NPOV. In response, one of the disputants (a primary source) emailed me directly, criticizing my technical errors, attacking my presumptions from lack of detail, and other semantic issues.
Seeing as how WP is an open and collaborative project, and as they say "democracies die behind closed doors", I posted the content of this email, full of content complaints as well as a threat of negative publicity, with my responses to the Talk page for the article (currently under protection).
The disputant then responded, upset that I'd posted his email, primarily because his opponents in the matter saw the email and lambasted it on their own web site.
In your opinions... Did I violate policy, guideline, or principle? Or did I do right in upholding the open and collaborative nature of Wikipedia and its content?
Regards, Keith D. Tyler ¶ 19:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, anyway, it's no longer my problem. I notified of the issue on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Posting emailed content disputes I think the people reading that will be wiser in knowing what to do next than I am. -- Francis Schonken 22:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
IANAL, but I thought it was established that, like the writer of a letter, the writer of an email retains copyright in it. You don't get to publish someone else'e work just because they emailed it to you, unless they include a GFDL licence (with a c). I believe that, somewhere, User:Angela has a copyrights page in which she explicitly releases her emails to Wikien-l into the public domian, the implication being that hers is the right so to do. If this is the case, then one should not post them on Wiki without the authors' licensing (with an s) under the GFDL. - Splash talk 23:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Anyway, as I said above, I'd rather solve this with politeness than with slapping semi-amateurish legal advise on each other's head. Askolnik is a wikipedia contributor, and I see no reason in scaring him away. Keith is a contributor, and I see no reason to scare him away either. If Askolnik asks to remove, and if Keith sees that permanently delete the contested e-mail's content from that talk page is no threat to the openness of the Wikipedia community (well, do you, Keith?), there's only an admin to be found prepared to do the job. Are there still any other problems I overlooked? -- Francis Schonken 23:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I want to apologise if I contributed in similar nonsense. Anyway, my modified statement would be something in the sense of not wanting to lose neither Keith nor Askolnick as wikipedia contributors, *especially* not the more scientifically orientated one of the two (which would be Askolnick, as far as I can see) - as researchers on peckish topics already often have to deal with a "fair amount of nonsense" in this encyclopedia, which doesn't help it forward."Connolley has done such amazing work and has had to deal with a fair amount of nonsense."
Well, I wasn't expecting such a seeming consensus on my actions as negative. I don't really think that consensus takes the underlying matter into consideration. The whole point of my involvement was to attempt to settle a dispute between two other people. Emailing me privately turned me into a disputant. While I could repeatedly beg for permission to repost emails that shouldn't be sent to a closed party, I think from now on I simply will not respond to an email that attempts to turn an open matter into a closed one. WP article content disputes belong in WP's deliberative spaces, because it is a community project, not a one-on-one project. The email sent to me did not discuss personal matters, but WP ones.
Other than that, I am unthrilled by comments as to who is the more worthwhile editor -- the upset party only started editing on Dec 9 to edit the article in question, and had done so on an anon basis before that; aside from a sprinkling of other edits their contributions have been by and large related to that article. I guess I've learned a lesson here. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 20:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
This question is probably discussed somewhere (or in several different areas) but I have not been able to find it. Plus, I am not exactly sure this is the best place to ask, so please excuse me for both. My question is based on the Festivus article. There is a growing list of references in the real world to this holiday and they are being added to the Festivus#Other_references section. Some seem notable enough to keep (the Festivus Maximus=Super Bowl note), others seem somewhat notable (the Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor) and some just seem entirely non-notable and practically unrelated (the Australian non-Christian group seeking to rename Christmas "festive"). I was wondering what constitutes notablitity within an article? What information is pertinent? Obviously this list can and will go on indefinitely if every celebration of Festivus is listed. - Ektar 04:48, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm interested in getting WP:BEANS raised to guideline status. What level of consensus would be needed for this? Firebug 05:54, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
(I posted the following on the mailing list earlier today, but have had no reply yet.)
I once registered as a user of Wikipedia, and I know that anything I write there may be copied and re-used according to the GFDL. However, I did not sign up for the Pornopedia, Nazipedia or Spamopedia.
What is written on user pages and user talkpages is also released under the GFDL, and if somebody wants to copy it or quote it, fine (as long as it is attributed)! But there is no reason to automate this process or make it easy for webspammers and other creeps to do so. I do not want my user page to be copied to various Wikipedia mirrors, as happened a while ago with the Nazi copy of Wikipedia. I would be even less happy if I had signed up under my real name. The appearance of a name in such a context may actually be harmful to somebody's reputation.
I question whether some other type of free but non-commercial license wouldn't be more suitable for user pages, but that may not be realistic for various reasons. But the removal of these pages from the dump really shouldn't require a change in license. It will just force somebody who wants to copy the content to do so manually. The webspammers obviously won't bother with that. Tupsharru 22:32, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
In connection with the discussion here [31], I'm impelled to point out that too many users are willing to defend cut-and-pasted text with only cosmetic changes as neither constituting copyright violations nor being plagiarism. A large part of the problem, I suspect, comes from the copyright violation policy page, which is intended to address only a particular, unmistakable sort of violation, but is framed in a way which suggests Wikipedia is not concerned with less overt violations. It should be clear in Wikipedia policy that simply lifting text from another source (or sources) and making cosmetic changes is generally unacceptable Monicasdude 15:36, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Inactive administrators (2005) and indicate whether you support this proposal on the talk page. Thank you. -- Rick Block ( talk) 01:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I am proposing a change to FAC reasoning, eliminating the rule that suggestions that an article should never be frontpaged be ignored. Please come discuss it at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candicates/never_proposal -- Improv 19:35, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Who are we? Why are we here? I'm not speaking of the entire project or our grand mission, only of the small group of regulars who work within TfD. What are we doing here?
Each one of us will have a different answer to that question; so to guide us in our efforts, we have a written process. Process should not act as a straitjacket, but as a way for us to agree to respect each other's differing views.
If all of us had the same exact opinion on each template, there would be no need for the Wikipedia:Templates for deletion page -- not in its present form, at any rate. We would each individually mow down templates we found insupportable, and log the deletions. No need for debate, no need for discussion. And since we would all be in perfect agreement, we would have strong justification for refusing to hear appeals from other members of WP.
But it is not so. I think {{ widget}} should stay and {{ blivet}} should go; El Supremo thinks {widget} should go and {blivet} stay. Sometimes, we can discuss these issues and find a meeting ground. Maybe I can accept some changes to {widget}, with which El Supremo can tolerate its continued presence. But what do we do when after a week of wrangling, I still say "Widgets forever!" and El Supremo grunts, "Blivets or death!" -- what then?
Our process specifies that after seven days on TfD, if consensus is not reached, the nominated template is free to go -- the matter is over. We also say that a template should not be renominated for a month, if then. No good purpose is served by chewing old bones.
Recently, the nominated template {{ divbox}} came to the end of its seven-day roasting. There was considerable controversy, a more or less even split of opinions (4 delete to 3 keep), and certainly nothing approaching consensus, or even overwhelming majority. Our process says {divbox} goes free, and that's the end of the matter -- at least, the end for this month. Those determined to keep a dog in the fight may do so on the nominated template's Talk page.
Shortly after I removed the offending listing and carefully began to archive all its debate -- not merely the debate within the TfD workflow, but wherever I could find a scrap of it -- a certain user, without discussion of any kind so far as I know, restored {divbox} to the TfD page and simultaneously juggled the entire contents of the page, including our written process guidelines. Am I the only one in this project who finds this a bit questionable?
If we have come to the point where everything is up for grabs, please let me know, and I will start work on Jimbo's home page, VfD, CfD, RfC, RfA, and all the other pages which manage the way we manage the work we do. If I don't need to discuss any of my changes before making them, then why should I? And if someone disagrees with me, why should I not alter existing process to make his disagreement illegal?
If we have not come to that point, and we still cling to shreds of social fabric, then I ask you to take whatever action you think necessary to hold those shreds together, and allow me to return to the work I do best -- making things that work for us all. Thank you. — Xiong talk 10:54, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)
The article Tennessee voting example seems to be unique in the sense that it's about an example that was specifically constructed for multiple Wikipedia articles and isn't itself about something that "exists" for encyclopedic description. Should this article be allowed or not? What about in another namespace? -- Dissident ( Talk) 13:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Please note that this page, currently marked as a policy page, has been brought to MFD, as MFD is not highly read, I thaught a link here would be approriate. xaosflux Talk/ CVU 05:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)