This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191
[Copied from here]
One of the reason for WP:ASR is because Wikipedia content is widely distributed under the GDFL to other websites. A good example is Answers.com. This link will hopefully show you their version of the Wikipedia disambiguation of the name Leonardo (you may need to scroll down the page): answers.com disambiguation page for Leonardo. As you can see, the "See also: List of all pages beginning with "Leonardo"" link does not work there. I doubt it works on other mirror/redistribution websites either.
Which brings me to another point. The pervasiveness of Wikipedia results on web searches should be emphasised as widely as possible to all editors of Wikipedia - maybe even in the editing boilerplate text. I fear that people who are not aware of how widely the content is redistributed will "check facts" using web pages that are just regurgitating the thing they are trying to check! A horrendous exercise in circularity. Carcharoth 03:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
[end quote]
This has probably been discussed before, but does anyone have any comments?
I personally find it very annoying when I try and check something with a web search, that the top tens or so of hits are just mirrored/redistributed versions of teh Wikipedia article I am trying to check. This is bad on so many levels. I am sure some people already "reference" an article by referencing copies of Wikipedia.
Can I propose, if it hasn't already been done, that a strongly worded warning is added to the various boilerplate warnings about verifying content, that people don't verify content using copies of Wikipedia! Carcharoth 03:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have the same concern. I think perhaps it would be a simple fix to update wikipedia's licensing so that regurgitation web sites must clearly label that their content comes from wikipedia. I myself have seen a page I created simply copied on one of those sites. However, in some cases it looks like articles on wikipedia are a copy edit OF a regurgitation site - although its hard to tell where the original copy first was published. Fresheneesz 03:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have seen that very statement used often for justifying the retention of articles on otherwise non-notable individuals and events. While WP is not paper, it still uses resources, and I believe it is supposed to (ideally) maintain a certain level of content by application of multiple policies to any given situation. For example, an AfD I put up on Kristi Yamaoka in accordance with WP:BIO and WP:NN has in both instances come down to applications of "well, WP isn't paper, so it's no big deal" or "she's notable because she was on the Today Show" or "somebody will expand it" (and no one has in weeks). At the same time, there are plenty of other policies that the article fails miserably, and while I suppose this will end up staying until someone else gets tired of it next year, I'm sure that similar things have happened in plenty of other cases as well. I understand that "WP is not paper" allows for more leniency with respect to what can go into WP, but at the same time, there are other policies and standards that prevent every day's news from becoming encyclopedia articles when the topic does not merit it.
In short, "WP is not paper" is the catch-all when no other reason to keep applies. So, perhaps something needs to be done regarding AfD policy such that failures of multiple policies are considered with greater weight than the one instance of one policy that said article passes? MSJapan 05:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I see a webpage which has content replicated on Wikipedia. But there is no way to tell if it is one of us taking their content, or that site taking ours. What is the policy in this (I would assume fairly common) situation? Do I report it as a GFDL issue or a copyvio or list it on both pages?.
This is the article in question: Guy Fawkes
Lurker 13:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I originally had this on the WT:CSD, but robchurch recommended that I move it to the village pump to get a wider range of opinions.
T1 is so ambiguous that nobody can agree what it means. This has caused a lot of undesirable wikiFriction as of late. If we can clarify T1, maybe we can all cool down a bit. Thus, I propose that T1 be broken into subsections that specifically state what is and what is not acceptable, with examples. For instance, T1 should state specifically whether the following controversial beliefs are acceptable in templates:
Such a reformed policy should also include a statement that templates that do not fall into the above categories should be decided by the TFD process. Personally, I think that if such a system were to be put into place, all of the above except for wikipedia related beliefs and general political statements that are only meant to help inform people of possible bias should be allowed. What do you people think of the matter? Wh e re (talk) 04:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe that divisive and inflammatory userboxes should be deleted. I am convinced by the events of the last few months that they should not be speedied. This proposal makes abundantly clear the amount of judgment involved in the application of T1; other speedy criteria can be verified trivially, and usually all reasonable editors will agree when they have been met. (TfD will also usually get rid of something faster, since speedies will often be listed on WP:UBD; and Undeletion will be seriously discussed and often approved.) Septentrionalis 15:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
When I first started editing, I came across a section that suggested that it was against the rules to remove a NPOV template from the top of an article. I can't find it anymore. Can anyone point me to some useful page or pages?
If I have added a NPOV tempate to the top of a page, and I later edit it to say why I have added it, can that edit be reverted as NPOV? In my opinion it wasn't, but the other party won't accept anything that reflects badly on their contributions. Engjs 01:29, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I've been seing more and more often stuff like "stub prevention" as an excuse for removing currently redlinked links. I always though that the whole point of redlinks was to spur people in crating the articles in the first place.
When and were did we turn on red links? Circeus 20:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, it is described in WP:CONTEXT in these terms currently:
(Third bullet of What should not be linked:) Subsidiary topics that result in redlinks (links that go nowhere), such as the titles of book chapters and the songs on albums, unless you're prepared to promptly turn those links into real ones yourself by writing the articles. It's usually better to resist linking these items until you get around to writing an article on each one.
I use fewer links than I used to. But the formulation of the WP:CONTEXT guideline is a little too edgy as far as I'm concerned. When I start a new article I very often check what links here to see whether there's any "demand" for it (or whether there's an ambiguity that should be resolved): removing redlinks thwarts such proceedings: without redlinks it is somewhat more difficult to trace which other articles should be updated with additional bluelinks after the article has started (so usually I don't bother to follow that multi-step process - I'm not a robot!).
Probably it comes down to: use yr common sense: something that's worth a good article can be redlinked without reserve; something that's in the notability border zone should better not be redlinked (while than you would give a fellow wikipedian that tidies up after an AfD extra work). -- Francis Schonken 20:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Redlinks in context often make sense. What I object to are lists where 90% of the items listed are redlinked. This is where "stub prevention" is a valid reason to avoid redlinks, only I prefer to think of it as "bad-article-about-non-notable-whatever prevention". -- Donald Albury( Talk) 21:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Refuses discussion and simply puts sign "do not feed the troll" beneath my statements [1]. I consider it a serious breach of civility and personal attack. Is it a personal attack and does deleting this count as 3RR ? -- Molobo 07:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Memes are like viruses, bits of "information" or some other concept, that travels by word of mouth and spreads, sometimes, globally. They are a social phenomenon in certain cases, when memes become massive, particularly in the case of internet memes like the goatse phenomenon. Sometimes a meme can play a significant part in people's lives, or simply be a thing that's been around for years and years and is known by thousands and thousands of people.
However, some memes are inherently unverifiable, and WP:V does not allow any articles which are not verifiable. Unverifiable memes tend to be the type that exist through pure word-of-mouth continuance, and often are also just phrases or games. Not only does no one need to write about these in reputable sources (and they don't), some of them are intrinsically unverifiable, and the most obvious case of this is the The Game (game) meme, which is an anti-memory game, the object of which is to forget the meme; this basis has, of course, turned it into a massive global phenomenon. However, because the idea of The Game is to not talk about it, many people are totally unaware of its existence, and "sources" of any sort for its existence don't extend far beyond the odd blog entry; the sparsity of these entries demonstrates how widespread the meme is, and how notable it is; however this page has been deleted due to unverifiability.
I am suggesting a new policy that works specifically for memes, and nothing else. It is simply this, that WP:V can be overriden if consensus agrees or proves that the meme is notable. Notability may in these cases be verified by underpar sources such as a significant number of web-blogs or forum-posts, or even a significant number of Wikipedian testimonies. The new policy would be overriden itself by non-notability and would not permit stubs. -- Alfakim -- talk 19:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Note: this policy has been suggested specifically with reference to the The Game (game) contention. The Game is very article-worthy, but doesn't quite pass WP:V.
I don't agree with the argument that this (or anything) is "inherently unverifiable", because it implies that everyone who hears about The Game (presumably including journalists, authors of books on games, and so on) wants to play it and no-one wants to document it or describe it to a general audience instead. Seems to be begging the question. Ziggurat 22:07, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
User:Alanmak has insisted on adding "Photographed by Alan Mak on December 4th, 2004" in obtrusive letters onto Image:HongKongGoldenBauhinaSquare.jpg and we've gotten into a revert war there on whether this should stay. Please comment on what you think should be done here. -- Jiang 01:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I know this may seem a bit harsh, but here goes: what would you all say to a policy that makes it that people shouldn't add images to their signature. I know it may be a bit mean and it is seen only as a cosideration on Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages but mainly becuase it:
What would you say? K ilo-Lima| (talk) 16:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
We're having a bit of a problem here in the interpretation of the fair use for images. Currently, over at the article lolicon there are two images which shows the example of lolicon manga. User Brennan removed BOTH images on the grounds only one example can be posted on the article, due to his interpretation of the fair use policy. I've placed back the first picture that was in the article before the the second picture violated the fair use policy, and now this is being contested as well since, as he claimed, they both are in violation now, therefore, both must go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lolicon#Fair_use Arguments are stated above. Clarification would be most appreciated Jqiz 19:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I suggested {{ See also}} for deletion, and before the day was out the TfD had been removed, debate closed, as speedy keep. All this without giving me a chance to respond to some of those voting (who admitted that they didn't understand my point — perhaps because, as editors hanging round the template pages, they're so used to them that they don't understand the problems faced by other users).
I suggested it for TfD in part because, after I'd posted a comment making the same point to Template talk:See also, after some time the only response had been one that agreed with me. It seems to me that the "speedy keep" was precipitate at best. The template is frankly absurd; it offers virtually no advantages over creating a "see also" section manually, and simply places another obstacle in the way of casual or occasional editors (who are perfectly capable of adding a bulleted link to a section, but have no wish to look up the template in order to work out how to use it. It seems to me that there's a regrettable tendency in Wikipedia to replace simple editing methods with geeky ones. -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 16:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
{{Main|Wikipedia}}
or :Main article:[[Wikipedia]]
? Too many silly templates on a source page can intimidate new users. As a matter of fact, I would have started editing Wikipedia several months before I did if I hadn't been turned away by all the confusing templates. I didn't know how they worked, and I was afraid to edit around them. All those templates do encourage consistent style throughout the encyclopedia, though, so it will probably be hard to change
the current trend. --
Tantalum
T
e
lluride 01:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but once you'd noticed, what you needed to do was obvious — part of standard Wiki-markup. We can't legislate against typos and mistakes (you could just as easily make a mistake typing the template). -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 21:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to try and come up with a standard format for discographies. At the moment there are various ways of doing it; lists, tables, galleries, and each differ a lot. Not sure we'll have any success, but if anyone would like to comment... Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) SaltyWater 18:53, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Some of you might have noticed that, recently, quite a few articles about Chinese stuff have been moved to titles that have diacritics indicating tone. For instance, Yuan Dynasty moved to Yuán Dynasty and Zhuge Liang moved to Zhūge Liàng. I've started a discussion about whether or not this is a good idea at: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Titles_of_articles_to_include_tone_marks? - Nat Krause( Talk!) 01:03, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to put forward a conceptual policy question and I'd like input about how, in concept, it should be handled.
An article we will call Votefortruth is presently dominated by a relatively small group, which we'll call teamtruth. Teamtruth is, however, about 3 times the size of any other group interested in the article. Because of this, sources get ignored and, instead, consensus is demanded for everything before a change is made, regardless of how many WP:V sources are provided. The result is the article remains nearly the same with most of the changes coming based on what teamtruth likes instead of what fits the WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR policies.
To sum up my POV, or my bias if you like, I think this violates all policy, and even the Consensus guideline itself (see Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus vs. other policies).
The problem is, so now what? Is their a policy solution? Or does one have to go outside policy and round up their own majority to get more votes and edits/reverts on their side?-- Pro-Lick 00:00, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Related, if you're looking for some fresh ideas: wikipedia:criticism - this was revived as a proposal not so long ago. -- Francis Schonken 11:52, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been cleaning up new articles lately, and I've been encountering some unhappiness regarding vanity articles from the "almost famous", usually self-promoting entertainers. The "speedy delete", "proposed delete", and "AfD" processes are available, but add "db-bio" to some unknown performer's page and they scream. Some will take off a "prod". AfD works, but is a hassle for everyone. Some current examples:
Can the "almost famous" be dealt with in a more graceful, or at least a less labor-intensive, way? Or is this about normal? Advice?
Maybe a "Further information is needed to determine if this article qualifies for inclusion in Wikipedia. Information needed is: ... If this information is not provided within N days, the article will be deleted." template. Effectively, this would be equivalent to "prod", but nicer. -- John Nagle 21:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
In most cases, policies are followed, and the consensus prevails. But the situation can arise when a couple of editors will "ignore" policy, or provide their "opinion" on why policy can be interpretted in another way, by selectively choosing their facts.
Since Wikipedia Consusus is a guideline, it seems to me that Wiki Policy takes precedence. Some policies claim to be "absolute and non-negotiable" (eg. Wiki neutral point of view).
I have personally wasted MONTHS of time arguing with certain individuals over their point of view, despite being able to VERIFY my position with Wiki policies, and they have been unable or unwilling to verify theirs. There has to be a more effective way of enforcing basic Wiki policy, or at least ascertaining whether policy has been followed or contravened? -- Iantresman 15:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I went to Mediawiki recently in hopes to find the same Wikipedia governmental resources there, as I had a post that didn't relate to Wikipedia in general, but more broadly, to mediawiki in general. I"m appauled to find there ain't the same governmental resources there. I mean, wikipedia has these resources to include everytying, so then why hasn't mediaiki have that yet?!?! PLz include it!!!.
But here's my post
So, I put a bit of though in this issue. I looked at the GNU document, and it seems like that someone just decided to make this licence. Well, I could make my own licence. Wikimedia could make their own licence. And I think they should, if it the new liicence is ammended so that accounts can be deleted, I mean, if wikimedia wirtes its own licecense, it could be so universal like the current liceces its using, that other applications in the world could us the licecese; [the licence could be written nonexclusivly, so that in other things (sorry i don't have a very good vocabulary:Pjk), where appliplicable {[as in] not refering to accounts} could be posslibe]; they if contributers and users want to vanisih, they sould be allowed; freedom of speech also gives the freedom to be silent. 24.70.95.203 16:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there a policy that explicitly states that articles about e.g. films or books that have never been translated into English are or are not acceptable? The absence of a policy prohibiting such articles would seem to indicate they are acceptable. Additionally, some guidelines seem to indicate they are acceptable, e.g. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Sources_in_languages_other_than_English and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(books)#Title_translations. There are articles on WP about primary source materials that have not been translated into English like e.g. Akkari-Laban dossier and 23 (film) and I think there are probably many others. However, sometimes such articles show up on AFD and some people believe that the fact that they have not been translated is a valid reason for deletion. It would help to know if there is a policy on the matter that is being overlooked, or if there is not one whether one might be needed. Thanks, Esquizombi 20:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
There is not now, nor has there ever been, such a policy. We write our article in English, but the subject of the article may be from any field or culture. We may have a slight bias towards English-speaking topics because most of the editors are English speakers, but we do everything we can to fight that bias. Please, if you have a good article about a non-English topic, add it to the encyclopedia. - lethe talk + 21:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Should there be an explicit policy on this? Or is it enough to say to someone who wants to delete such an article that there is no policy prohibiting them? Esquizombi 18:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be very useful to have paths on the top of articles, so that one can navigate back and forth through articles in an organized way. The current fasion of having scattered links on the page, and in See also sections are extremely useful, but they don't allow someone to see specifically what an idea or concept falls under (ie a more general category). This is what i'm proposing: put a path on the top of each page denoting what pages directly precede it and a button to view "Subsections" for a list of pages that linearly follow the current page. For example on the page Monomial, this would be at the top:
Mathematics Algebra Elementary algebra Polynomial Monomial Subsections |
An example of the subsections for the page Elementary algebra (this would appear as its own otherwise blank page):
Elementary algebra | Polynomial | Monomial |
Binomial |
This would allow users to browse wikipedia in an organized fasion that can't be provided by portals and c ategories. Comments please? Fresheneesz 03:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Mathematics Algebra Elementary algebra Sections related to Polynomial Subsections |
In those instances where areas do admit such an obvious tree structure for organizing the data, we already have one. A perfect example is provided by biological species; a transcluded speciesbox shows what Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species it belongs to. Similar boxes exist for languages. Probably other areas too. It's probably the case that this is not a useful way to try to categorize all wikipedia articles. Perhaps you would suggest that mathematical objects could be so categorized profitably, but I don't think I agree with that either. - lethe talk + 15:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Although it is not possible to enforce the policy of No Personal Attacks outside of Wikipedia, there have been occasions in which some users use public forums, blogs and personal home pages to attack editors of Wikipedia by name, alias or both, while at the same time demanding that the WP:NPA policy and WP:AGF guidelines are observed to the letter in article's talk pages. I am referring here not to a critique of an editor, but to obvious personal attacks such as the use of vituperative and obscene language and making pernicious and disparaging comments about them.
I personaly believe that such a position is indefensible and should be considered disruptive behavior. It creates an atmosphere of ill-will, animosity and lack of trust, that are not conducive neither to collaboration on editing articles, nor to community building.
I would appreciate comments from editors about expanding the WP:NPA policy to include some wording that will address the attempt to bypass policy and game the system by an editor "outsourcing" his personal attacks against other editor(s) to public forums in order to "get away with it". ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 01:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Many movies have entries in Wikipedia. Yet, Wikipedia doesn't have, probably never will have, and perhaps should not try for the comprehensive coverage of the Internet Movie Database. Wikipedia just isn't the right tool for this job. IMDB is a database, with links for actors and directors, connections to the Directors' Guild of America for correct credits, links to trailers, and similar supporting machinery. Trying to emulate all that manually within Wikipedia is like pounding a screw.
I'd suggest that Wikipedia only have articles for "historically significant" movies, defined in some objective way, like "won an Academy Award". I'm not sure what the criterion should be, but it should be an objective one. -- Nagle 18:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
IMDB, In My Doubtful Belief, is most dutifully basic. I must dare boldly imitate mechanically de brains involved making dat base. WP Won't Progress with plenty wordy dang.
We find e.g. movies, music albums, games, gamers and football players where we want an encyclopedia. That it is not paper (see the same questioning theme one or two sections further) can't allow to create stubs or plentiful articles for things only known today and that you will be happy to forget tomorrow. It is fun, we are submerged with publicity, but one should feel responsible for a content that means something for more than half a generation : or Britannica beats us. -- DLL 17:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Is there a word which can be used as a generic term meaning "city", "town", "village", "municipality", etc? All of these have a legal definition and I'm looking for a general term to use which could mean any of them "colloquially" (such as a category including all of them). The only one I have found so far is "community", but that seems odd when a category includes Chicago, St. Louis, etc. (community sounds like a small place). I can't find anything in Wikipedia which addresses this. I started to use "town" for some smaller places, then found out it had a legal definition, too! If anyone knows, or can direct me to the proper place it would be appreciated. Thanks. Rt66lt 04:15, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
We seem to have another Bobblewik these days. Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs) is running SmackBot ( talk · contribs), and it is very clear from the speed of the edits and the context of various changes that he's not actually reviewing the edits before commit.
There are loads of complaints on his talk page. This has been an on-going problem. He's been blocked (at various increments) repeatedly.
Last week, it was screwing up US and UK.
The most obvious today is delinking dates.
Now, it just unlinked " max may med" to " max May med" at List of three-letter English words. There is no possible way that a human reviewer would have made that mistake.
The idea that a bot should ever again run around delinking dates, days, months, or anything else has been so long discredited that it leads to apoplexy. (I still remember when another AWB delinked 1947 in Israel.)
Heck, it's worse than that! Reviewing the contributions (that it's making every 6 seconds), I see that it moves the trailing ]]s to s]] on piped links. That's against Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Form.
I'd suggest that the bot be blocked until he certifies that he's personally reviewed and fixed every single edit ever done by the bot.... At a rate no faster than 1 every 2 minutes.
I created Wikipedia:Significance as a proposal which hasn't so far garnered much support. It's been suggested to me that I repropose it as a notability proposal. Therefore I have moved it to be a subpage of WP:N, Wikipedia:Notability/Proposal, and ask all interested parties to help evolve the proposal to a stage where it has achieved community consensus. Steve block talk 08:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Please note that the idea is to build a proposal which espouses the nutshell idea that:
There has recently been a proposal on Talk:Human to split up the article on human beings into a POV fork in order to sidestep controversy regarding the science/religion issues (such as whether "human beings are Homo sapiens", the dictionary definition of the word human, is "just a POV", and whether we should spend several paragraphs of the intro discussing the human soul and spirituality); homo sapiens sapiens has been created as an article for the biological details of humanity, in an attempt to heavily restrict biological information from being included in human in the future; human, meanwhile, is planned to become a purely spiritual and cultural article. I can see several problems with this, such as that the word human is used equally in all circles, scientific and religious, that it is original research to separate "human" and Homo sapiens sapiens without research, and that there are already plenty of daughter articles for both biological and spiritual articles (for example, why use Homo sapiens sapiens for biological details rather than Human biology?), but I'm mainly here to discuss whether this will set a precedent for other articles to be similarly forked, like having one article for cat (discussing the cultural significance of cats to humans only) and one for Felis silvestris catus (discussing the biology of cats); certainly having such a prominent article so dramatically forked will having a huge influence on hundreds of other articles that are similarly controversial among editors.
I would like to bring this to the community's attention, and get a wider array of feedback on the idea, mainly because if this fork is implemented and approved by the community, it will be the first time in the history of Wikipedia that a Wikipedia article has been forked in such a way without subsequently being reverted/deleted, and since there's currently a large number of editors on the Talk page who seem to support such a fork, and the process of splitting the page has already begun, there's a very large chance that this article will be divided in this way soon. As such, this certainly merits a more thorough and broad examination of the situation by as many Wikipedia editors as possible: should Wikipedia begin the shift away from WP:NPOV (presenting all noteworthy sides of controversial issues side-by-side and centralizing related topics on a single top-level page) and towards Wikinfo-style articles (where a separate page is created for every possible perspective)? I can see valid arguments for both sides, so I think this is a very important discussion to have. - Silence 19:53, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I've been looking through Category:Screenshots of Windows software and I'm noticing quite a number of items in this category that don't look like they belong. For example, there are screenshots of characters from Flash animations [5], political maps [6], band pictures [7], logos [8], and even satellite images of cities [9]. The problem seems to be that people are assuming that, because they were able to obtain the image by taking a screenshot using SnagIt or whatever, that this somehow makes Template:windows-software-screenshot the correct copyright tag for an image, which I'm pretty sure is a wrong application of this particular copyright status. What's the right path forward in a circumstance like this? Warrens 15:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
A policy should be created regarding pseudoscience. Should we include pseudoscience in science articles? Because if we excluded them, then it wouldn't be NPOV (or so I think). But if we included them... well, then Britannica will have something to say. So there should be a policy on whether excluding pseudoscience is non-NPOV or not. In fact, should we create a poll on this topic?-- Exir Kamalabadi Join Esperanza! 12:55, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Having read the pseudoscience page, which is a good article, I don't think a general policy is a good idea. I would say a good guideline is to read the pseudoscience article and decide on a case-by-case basis. Carcharoth 13:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
User:Nixer and me have recently had a dispute regarding the spelling of the name of a certain Russian airport ( Ostafievo International Airport). I am not going to bore everyone with the details of what the dispute is about, but a google test was used to prove certain points. The problem, however, is that a different google count is obtained by both sides. When googling for "ostafievo -wikipedia", I get 220 hits (see a screenshot), while Nixer gets 1,470 (see his). I tried two different computers (with different ISPs), and I still get ~220 hits. The discrepancy is just too huge to ignore, and as google tests are quite common in the community, I would like to request public comments as to what may be the cause.— Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 15:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I get 215 in Australia. I've suspected in the last few months, specially since the China controversy, that google gives diff results in diff countries. BTW what % of web does it now index? Mccready 16:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
And this all is just another reason to avoid Google "tests". Who cares how many folks badly spell a word? As we wrote at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places):
What's most important is that the company that built the place has an official name: " Ostafievo".
I have brought this issue up before, several months ago, I think. I asked whether articles with disambiguated titles, like tables (board game), should have a link at the top to a disambiguation page. I thought that it was unnecessary, since a person will not get to an article with a disambiguated title by accident. Others here, or possibly at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), agreed that such as link is unnecessary. However, Wikipedia:Disambiguation now seems to be in conflict with what was agreed upon. Here is a quote from that page.
Are such links necessary, and if they are, why? Thanks, Kjkolb 03:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia serves as all Wiki Projects' highest form of governemnt; I don't think that's right. I think that Wikimedia should be where Help, Reference Desk, Proposals, Policy, etc. should be located. Also, Beer Parlour & Tea Room should be deleted, etc. & if there are any other institutions like as mentioned in this comment, then they should be deleted to. User pages should also be consolidated into 1 central location, namely Wikimedia, or a separate place, but these are draft ideas, but the general idea, would organize Wikimedia & save resources. Taking the point of saving resources, Accounts should be allowed to be deleted.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me <redacted> [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNU licence hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
thanks
24.70.95.203 14:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Please can people check out these afds and noticeboard below as I believe a seriously misleading campaign of self promotion has been going on involving multiple websites and if we don't take a stand on these articles Wikipedia is going to be vulnerable to further claims reinforced by marketing/agency websites promoting their clients: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Possible_advertising_scam, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_5#Rikki_Lee_Travolta, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_5#My_Fractured_Life, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_5#Twilight_Serenade. Arniep 16:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I have a rather interesting issue to discuss. Recently, there was a high profile rape case (Louise Nicholas) in NZ in which the defendents were found not guilty. A few days after the verdict was annouced, a feminist group distributed flyers which listed some details that have been temporarily supressed. According to one TV news channel, these details are accurate and were with held from the jury. I don't know if they will be permanently supressed.
In any case, at the moment publishing these details would be contempt of court for NZers (the group is under investigation). Of course, NZ courts don't reach out side NZ and if one publishes these details outside NZ you can't be held accountable. It is possible that people who publish the info could be held of contempt if they ever visit NZ but I'm not a lawyer or clear on the law here and I don't think it is the case (unless you further publish the details in NZ of course).
This is not the first time supression orders have come under controversy. In at least one case I recall, the name of an All Black (national rugby team player) who had assaulted his pregant wife by dragging her back to the home was permanently supressed. This name was later published in a UK and/or Australian paper. Note in this case, the permanent name supression was largely to protect the victim and her children.
Anyway what I'm wondering is, is there a policy for dealing with these matters? Since wikipedia is hosted in the US, editors from outside NZ are free to add details which have been supressed. However this would mean the article, could potentially become a no edit zone for NZers. Even debating whether these details should be included on wikipedia could be a risky activity for NZers IMHO. Since these articles will primarily be of interest to NZers, it creates a disturbing trend. Furthermore, publishing these articles in NZ whether by mirroring wikipedia, distributing on DVD, printing or whatever will almost definitely be in contempt of court unless the details are specificly removed or the articles excluded.
To me this raises serious concerns about the GPL and 'freeness' of wikipedia. Of course, there are some copyrighted images which are similarly in dubious positions outside the US but these are at least tagged. Perhaps we could require that supressed details at least be tagged like we do for spoilers or something? Similarly there are some details published in wikipedia which would probably be considered illegal in countries such as China but court ordered supression isn't in quite the same league as limitations on speech to protect the government and/or community harmony. Of course it may also arguable whether details that have been supressed are important enough to be included in an article and whether publishing them would violate NPOV. And you could also argue that publishing the details might be unfair to the victims in cases such as the All Black case.
And in the Louise Nicholas rape case, you could argue that a flyer cannot possibly be considered a reliable source although as I have stated, media reports imply that the details are accurate. Also, if the people who distributed the flyer are held for contempt of court, this is basically an admission the details are accurate? However I guess you'll also need a copy of the flyer and you'll need to show the flyer copy you have is accurate reproduction of the original. In the case of the All Black, I guess the fact that it was published in a paper might give it more sufficient credibility to be included if the detail itself is considered worthy/fair to include.
So I guess what I'm asking is, how do you think we should handle court ordered supressed details? Should we allow them to be published if they are considered worthy and fair of being published? Should we tag them? Note I'm not necessarily against publishing supressed details on wikipedia but think it's a controversial and important issue that we should discuss first. This is perhaps an even more interesting issue for wikinews but I'll cover that another day.
About the Louise Nicholas case, it actually isn't covered particularly well on wikipedia at the moment. It is mentioned at New Zealand Police (under Historic sexual misconduct). From usenet, I came across a claim that an image of the flyer is available here [11] however I haven't visited it so it could be a shock image for all I know...
Finally, as you may realise, this is a new account. I have specifically created it to make it more difficult to identify me. It's possible that by giving a link, even though I'm not sure what it contains I might be in contempt of court. I'm not currently in NZ but I am a NZer as you might guess.
New Zealand Kiwi 19:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I believe the flier is not a source trusted enough to allow us to present the info as fact. On the other hand, statement that the name of perpetrator was withdrawn by the court but such and such group distributed a flier alleging so and so might be verifiable and relevant. I am not a lawyer but I do not think sun an info could be qualified either as a libel or as a contempt to the court. abakharev 04:11, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
There's been some discussion on the WP:NAME talk page about a possible tweak to the naming convention guideline for album and song titles. The current guideline suggests capitalizing according to standard English conventions; the proposed rule suggests capitalizing according to primary sources (liner notes, official promotional material), and using standard conventions where primary sources are ambiguous or inconsistent. Your feedback is welcome. -- Muchness 02:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Hello. I'm not sure the appropriate place to discuss this, so if there is a more appropriate venue, please feel free to direct me to it. I noticed that the page Fellow of the British Academy redirects to Category:Fellows of the British Academy. This is the first time I've seen a main namespace article redirect to the category namespace, and I wasn't sure if this was allowed. I've looked for guidance at WP:R and WP:CAT, but haven't seen this issue addressed. My first thought is that this shouldn't be allowed, and that an article should either be developed, or redirected to something such as British Academy. Lbbzman 15:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Some of you may have heard about the recent debate produced by a Rfc relating to the deletion of an image, by a sysop, of an image which is of questionable taste. I would strongly recommend that everyone views the archived debate, and adds to the topic by continuing the debate below as it seems that this is a very key point to do with Wikipedia, and is likely to be a situation we will face more and more in the future. -- Wisd e n17 14:34, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
There is also a poll going on at Wikipedia:Censorship about whether or not it is ok to delete images because they are immoral, as opposed to deleting them for any of a thousand other reasons. The point it that the editorial discussion on deleting can or can not include cultural standards concerning morality. Vote one way or the other, please. WAS 4.250 22:23, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
After reading around these Wikipedia pages: Wikipedia:Move; Wikipedia:Merge; and Wikipedia:Deletion; I started looking for instructions on the opposite of a merge: a split, or spinning content off from one article to create a new one. I looked at Wikipedia:Fork, which was more about POV forks but which led me to Wikipedia:How to break up a page, which is really about why it is sometimes necessary to break up a page. Unfortunately there are no instructions on that page on how to break up a page, and in particular on how to preserve edit histories (as required by GFDL). I then looked on the talk page and realised that I wasn't the only person to have this concern, see here.
In general, I presume that if the content being spun off an article is small (eg, a section of the old article) and has a small history, then the origin can be noted in the new article's edit history, and this satisfies GFDL. When the split is more complicated though, what should be done? Does it need an admin to sort out the edit history? I've also raised this at the Help Desk. Carcharoth 11:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
-- Dameyawn 12:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)I think all wikipedia articles should include a pronunciation key. I've come across countless articles where I've been unable to determine how the word or name was meant to be pronounced. An audio clip would also be nice, but at the least, a standard written pronunciation description should be included.
There has been much press lately about the varying quality and accuracy of content in the Wikipedia and I know wikipedia.org is doing much to improve this. I haven't posted content to Wikipedia and my comments are based on what I have read, so excuse me if I show an ignorance of the process.
I thought of a way of sharing a solution to the quality problem with the end user. The model I'm basing this on is the ratings system for vendors on EBay, but with significant differences in who does the ratings. My idea is to request people to submit content with references supporting it. Upon submission, a quick check of the quality and quantity of these references would get the posting a star rating from one to three. If there are no supporting references, the content would be unrated. Content that had gone through a proper peer review would get 4-5 stars.
I hope I'm wrong, but I assume this would cost a significant amount of money to do (especially the peer review) and that would be seen as a limiting factor. If that is the case, I would suggest having 3 levels of membership to Wikipedia. Level one would have, as it has always had, no cost to the user involved. This type of member would see the content as it posted currently, with no rating system. The second level of membership would cost a very small, nominal sum, enough to generate revenue to offset the cost of doing the first level of quality checks. This level of membership would allow the user to see the ratings from one to three and it would include the references submitted and verified. The last category of membership would be more costly. This level would see all rating levels including peer reviewed material. A level 3 user could also request a peer review of any article (up to a reasonable number of articles per year before additional charges are incurred) to verify it's claims. The pricing would be set with the idea of maintaining Wikipedia as a non-profit, but solvent organization.
All users would still see peer reviewed articles in their entirety, but would not know that they had been peer reviewed. Level 2 users would see the 1-3 star rating that the article had before peer review. When material is edited, the same process would apply. For articles with multiple submissions, each submission would be identified with it's own rating when necessary. There are still many details to think out. For example, there should probably be a mechanism for retaining higher rated material when it is replaced by lower rated material and there should probably be one-article-only membership upgrades possible.
In this way, the user has choice as to the quality of information they require when using Wikipedia. I hope my comments will be of some use in stimulating discussion.
Bob Kennedy Bobkenn 13:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes I see quotes in an article that have words inside the quote hyperlinked. I'm worried that having various words inside the quote link off to other pages is subtly misrepresenting what the author originally said. What is the policy on this, are links in quotes disallowed, or encouraged, or what? – Tifego (t) 13:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Here is one example of what I mean (and it's not the only one I've seen recently). I'm not sure how to justify removing those links (or if it's even the right thing to do) or whether any attempts to do so would be treated as vandalism. – Tifego (t) 00:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
While I admire the concept of Widipedia, I think its format is very confusing. May I suggest that its administrators examine the Yahoo!Finance Message Board for stocks and see if they can incorporate its format for Widipedia. In Yahoo!Finance Message Board posters read and react to each others' stock performance comments and post them instantly in as many times and ways as they want. Accessing comments, deleting them, moving them, renaming them, etc. all are easy and natural, without viewers or writers EVER getting lost in the labyrinth of subscreens within subscreens. I think the idea of Widipedia is too important to be left to its current confusing format. This suggested format change will catapult Wikipedia to the popularity that it really deserves, bringing it much needed contribution for making it into a household tool of true non-biased expression for any worthy issue, as no paid reporter can ever be free or non-biased (I know this for fact as I used to be one of them). Good Luck, Cyrus Pakzad [e-mail address removed] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.199.80.100 ( talk • contribs)
This proposal has been kicking around for some time, and previously mentioned here. Its contents are mostly a consolidation of practices from other guidelines pages. Its categories and templates have survived (or been renamed according to) CfD and TfD over the past month. This seems to be the time to upgrade to the guideline notice.
Sorry, I'm confused. Surviving CfD and TfD does not, I believe, make the current use of the category or template valid; does it alone make your proposed guideline an official one? You did not post this to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies until yesterday, and Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Abbreviation expansion shows that otherwise, this page has not been widely publicized. I thought there had to be positive consensus to adopt a policy or guideline, with many people involved. Is lack of consensus to delete sufficient to adopt a guideline? (If it is, great—I've suggested a few guidelines in my time that have had a mute or ho-hum reception—I thought that meant they were not adopted, but if I was wrong, I'll go change the tags on those, too.) -- TreyHarris 01:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I keep coming across articles that seem to be simply a cut-and-paste from another online source. can someone drop me a line on my talk that points me towards policies and guidlines that cover how this is to be delt with? Thanks, Mike McGregor (Can) 05:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I got to thinking about this in the last few days when I came across USS Saratoga (1814) which mostly comes from [ page] and Lake Chicago taken from [ incredibly poorly written page]. I was pointed towards WP:CSD A8, but that seems to apply to pages using a commercial source. These 2 articles are copied from government sources. Is there Is there policy that's ment to be applied to plagiarism as opposed to copyright infringment? Would a new Cleanup tag saying something like: "To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. This page appeares to be plagerised in part or in whole, from this source. blah blah blah...," be uesful in situations like this? I don't want to start seeing these kindes of pages deleated, just improved. Thanks, Mike McGregor (Can) 09:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
What I'm looking for clarification on is wether or not an article copied verbatum word-for-word from a government or PD source is an acceptable arrticle on wikipedia, or If articles like that should be cleaned up to include multiple sources and so that the information from those sources is written into a "new" article unique to Wikipedia (until bots from other sites re-post it elsewhere...). Mike McGregor (Can) 23:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have the same question. I was reverted by an adminsitrator and accused of plagiarism when I took 3 sentences of fact from a copyrighted "About" page. I cited the source but was still accused of plagiarism because it was word-for-word. My understanding is that factual content need not be reworded (just cited). The only concern therefore would be copyright, but since this was significantly less than 300 words and only a small portion of the page and it conformed the sites usage, I didn't think that applied since it was fair-use. Is my interpretation of plagiarism incorrect? Cited and factual seems adequate to avoid plagiarism. -- Tbeatty 21:39, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I just came across the article McCain Detainee Amendment and I had a copyvio question. In the section called McCain Detainee Amendment#Statement by Senator John McCain on October 5, 2005 we quote a speech made by Senator McCain at length, and putting aside the stylistic reasons why we may not want that, I was wondering if that would be a violation of his copyright? I mean, I realise that I'm being extremely paranoid, and it's not like he is ever going to sue us, but still. It is quoted in full, so it can't really be called fair use.
I know very little of copyright law (just enough to get by on wikipedia, really), but isn't a speech protected like anything else? Oskar 21:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Copyrights "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts."
Alternately, whenever someone adds content to Wikipedia, it says underneath "Content must not violate any copyright and must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL."
The former is arguably freer (and IMO is the best option for Wikipedia), but it adds conditions that the contributors didn't agree to when they submitted the text which is dubious, legally.
Note: This is a clarified version of an earlier topic. I have (re)posted because an unfortunate typo in the original derailed the discussion; if the double-posting is inappropriate, please delete the earlier version. Irrevenant 12:13, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Possibly, quite possibly, peoiple are tired ot disinterested with this issue. However, at its heart is a question about how policy is enforced, and that to except a certain page or issue from policy needs the strongest consensus attainable. Dsicussion of the issue is at Talk:Lolicon#Link inclusion policies. Thank you for your contribution. Steve block talk 08:11, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I appricite any feedback at Wikipedia talk:Infestation. -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 07:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Why is there a need to close no-consensus AfD's? Say there's an AfD on an obscure article, it's unclear what existing policy says to do, so there's slow ongoing discussion which involves some off-wiki research. After 5 days (or whatever the mininum normal closure period is) the vote is 6-3 favoring deletion and the AfD is closed as no consensus. Why not leave it open for a while longer? This particular article was a vanity bio from a publicity seeker, and discussion revolved around what notability consisted of for someone in that field. (I won't name the article right now because I'm asking this as a general policy question, rather than to keep scratching at that specific article, which was unimportant in the scheme of things). Phr 02:46, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Often when a new version of an image is made it is for various reasons (such as its a hybrid image or a different format or just modified enough to deserve a new name) uploaded under a new name to here or commons. Then the original gets deleted as OB or OR. The result is we are losing a lot of information on the history of our images and quite probablly violating the GFDL too. Plugwash 21:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
A poll has started on the revised policy, please see the talk page to see changes and vote. Thank you. Loom91 08:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm wondering what the relationship is of items for deletion discussions to policy proposals. Two examples:
I thought proposals were supposed to gain consensus or fail on their talk pages. But it seems that surviving a deletion discussion can be used as evidence that the proposal has gained consensus to become policy, or that the merits of a proposal can be hashed out in a deletion discussion (where, presumably, if the consensus is to delete, the proposal would be summarily aborted). Do XfD's trump talk pages? If so, is there any obligation on the part of the lister to publicize a deletion listing so that those participating in the ordinary talk-page process can move their discussion there? -- TreyHarris 09:26, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Following a discussion in a FAC then an RFC the following proposal has been organized. Obviously if you have an alternative proposal, please voice it, and vote no matter what if you have an opinion. Basically the proposal includes 3 slight alterations to allow archives to be used as source on Wikipedia provided that additional information is included in the citation to prove the archives existence, public accessibility, and reliability. Staxringold 00:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
There's been a fair amount of well-reasoned discussion about this concept (including not one, but 5 related proposals) over the last couple of months. It may be time for an overhaul; please comment. John Reid 05:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
The above is the expected events tag, which I believe was designed for movies, sports events, and other predicted events. I do not believe it should be used on the pages of individual years or decades because:
I think we should officially remove the future tag from the future years/decades pages ( 2007 onward). Captain Jackson 05:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
While I have nothing in particular against your proposal, I care about the issue slightly less than about which end first I should eat my boiled eggs. Given the interest people have shown in discussing this here, I suggest you wait a few more days and, if no opposition emerges, go ahead and remove them citing this discussion. You might want to post pointers to this discussion at Template talk:Future and other relevant talk pages first. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 12:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I can't believe that the tag on 2007 wouldn't be removed within days of the next 1 January. It's too obvious. - Runcorn 15:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I propose to discourage really long article titles. Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (books)#Article title length. Thanks, Melchoir 23:14, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I've created this proposal to bring about a fundamental change in the deletion policies and review our approach towards the process of deletion. Please discuss it at the talk page (not here please, keeping the discussion centralised helps editors see the various different views). Thank you very much for participating. Loom91 18:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło to stop this monstrosity from happening.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 14:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Please join in constructing a policy concerning the notability of internet memes/phenomena at Wikipedia:Notability (memes). Thank you, Urthogie 15:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there any sort of "Wikipedia is not a novelisation of a movie you like" policy? Reading up on a few films ( Sideways springs to mind), I'm taken aback at these ridiculously long and detailed summaries of the entire plot of a film. Does an encyclopedia really need to list the blow-by-blow sequence of events in movies minute for minute? It seems fansiteish, somehow, to have these 1,000-word summaries floating around. -- MattShepherd 20:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
YOU SHOULD NOT COMPLICATE EVERYTHING UP TO INSANITY,BECAUSE IT CAUSES ONLY CHAOS.YOUR INSTRUCTION ABOUT WIKIPEDIA SHOULD BE ONLY ON ONE OR TWO PAGES. ONLY YOUR ADMINISTRATION SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO DELETE TEXT. HOWEVER, EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO WRITE.WHAT'S MORE,YOU SHOULD MAKE INDEX LIKE GOOGLE INDEX.
TRULY YOURS, PETER
I have a draft of changes to the Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms guideline, and I am looking for input from other editors.
As described in the current discussion, the goals of the rewrite are as follows: 1) to clarify the distinction between writing using neologisms and writing on neologisms; 2) to incorporate concerns about neologisms as dicdef entries; 3) to clarify the position of WP:OR on neologism pages such that simple google searches can't support articles on neologisms; 4) to respond to the kinds of arguments that I've seen in AfD in support of neologisms.
The draft is located here. In order that discussion takes place in one location, may I suggest adding your comments to the discussion on the existing guideline's talk page here. Many thanks. -- cmh 04:32, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
During a discussion with some other users today, the topic of the enormity of the cleanup backlog (currently 1.33% of wikipedia) was raised, and I think I have an idea to help with that, so I'd like to propose it here. What I was thinking of is a sort of 'recommendation taskforce' to help spread the workload and get new (perhaps less experienced) users involved. Here's my thinking: We get experienced users into pages tagged for cleanup, not to actually do the deed, but to write up a laundry list on the talk page of things that need to be worked on in the article (as most pages merely have the generic cleanup tag, and even with the more specific ones it is sometimes unclear what is needed). Not only would this make cleanup quicker for the actual cleaners, but as I said, it could allow users less aquainted with wikipedia style guidelines to put in work on some of these articles. Whaddya think? -- InShaneee 21:56, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Hasn't the cleanup tag turned into a "replace me with a more specfic tag or tags", and should only be left on an article if the editor doesn't know what one of the subtag is called? Or is their cleanup not covered by some of the tags?-- Rayc 05:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191
[Copied from here]
One of the reason for WP:ASR is because Wikipedia content is widely distributed under the GDFL to other websites. A good example is Answers.com. This link will hopefully show you their version of the Wikipedia disambiguation of the name Leonardo (you may need to scroll down the page): answers.com disambiguation page for Leonardo. As you can see, the "See also: List of all pages beginning with "Leonardo"" link does not work there. I doubt it works on other mirror/redistribution websites either.
Which brings me to another point. The pervasiveness of Wikipedia results on web searches should be emphasised as widely as possible to all editors of Wikipedia - maybe even in the editing boilerplate text. I fear that people who are not aware of how widely the content is redistributed will "check facts" using web pages that are just regurgitating the thing they are trying to check! A horrendous exercise in circularity. Carcharoth 03:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
[end quote]
This has probably been discussed before, but does anyone have any comments?
I personally find it very annoying when I try and check something with a web search, that the top tens or so of hits are just mirrored/redistributed versions of teh Wikipedia article I am trying to check. This is bad on so many levels. I am sure some people already "reference" an article by referencing copies of Wikipedia.
Can I propose, if it hasn't already been done, that a strongly worded warning is added to the various boilerplate warnings about verifying content, that people don't verify content using copies of Wikipedia! Carcharoth 03:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have the same concern. I think perhaps it would be a simple fix to update wikipedia's licensing so that regurgitation web sites must clearly label that their content comes from wikipedia. I myself have seen a page I created simply copied on one of those sites. However, in some cases it looks like articles on wikipedia are a copy edit OF a regurgitation site - although its hard to tell where the original copy first was published. Fresheneesz 03:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have seen that very statement used often for justifying the retention of articles on otherwise non-notable individuals and events. While WP is not paper, it still uses resources, and I believe it is supposed to (ideally) maintain a certain level of content by application of multiple policies to any given situation. For example, an AfD I put up on Kristi Yamaoka in accordance with WP:BIO and WP:NN has in both instances come down to applications of "well, WP isn't paper, so it's no big deal" or "she's notable because she was on the Today Show" or "somebody will expand it" (and no one has in weeks). At the same time, there are plenty of other policies that the article fails miserably, and while I suppose this will end up staying until someone else gets tired of it next year, I'm sure that similar things have happened in plenty of other cases as well. I understand that "WP is not paper" allows for more leniency with respect to what can go into WP, but at the same time, there are other policies and standards that prevent every day's news from becoming encyclopedia articles when the topic does not merit it.
In short, "WP is not paper" is the catch-all when no other reason to keep applies. So, perhaps something needs to be done regarding AfD policy such that failures of multiple policies are considered with greater weight than the one instance of one policy that said article passes? MSJapan 05:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I see a webpage which has content replicated on Wikipedia. But there is no way to tell if it is one of us taking their content, or that site taking ours. What is the policy in this (I would assume fairly common) situation? Do I report it as a GFDL issue or a copyvio or list it on both pages?.
This is the article in question: Guy Fawkes
Lurker 13:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I originally had this on the WT:CSD, but robchurch recommended that I move it to the village pump to get a wider range of opinions.
T1 is so ambiguous that nobody can agree what it means. This has caused a lot of undesirable wikiFriction as of late. If we can clarify T1, maybe we can all cool down a bit. Thus, I propose that T1 be broken into subsections that specifically state what is and what is not acceptable, with examples. For instance, T1 should state specifically whether the following controversial beliefs are acceptable in templates:
Such a reformed policy should also include a statement that templates that do not fall into the above categories should be decided by the TFD process. Personally, I think that if such a system were to be put into place, all of the above except for wikipedia related beliefs and general political statements that are only meant to help inform people of possible bias should be allowed. What do you people think of the matter? Wh e re (talk) 04:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe that divisive and inflammatory userboxes should be deleted. I am convinced by the events of the last few months that they should not be speedied. This proposal makes abundantly clear the amount of judgment involved in the application of T1; other speedy criteria can be verified trivially, and usually all reasonable editors will agree when they have been met. (TfD will also usually get rid of something faster, since speedies will often be listed on WP:UBD; and Undeletion will be seriously discussed and often approved.) Septentrionalis 15:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
When I first started editing, I came across a section that suggested that it was against the rules to remove a NPOV template from the top of an article. I can't find it anymore. Can anyone point me to some useful page or pages?
If I have added a NPOV tempate to the top of a page, and I later edit it to say why I have added it, can that edit be reverted as NPOV? In my opinion it wasn't, but the other party won't accept anything that reflects badly on their contributions. Engjs 01:29, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I've been seing more and more often stuff like "stub prevention" as an excuse for removing currently redlinked links. I always though that the whole point of redlinks was to spur people in crating the articles in the first place.
When and were did we turn on red links? Circeus 20:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, it is described in WP:CONTEXT in these terms currently:
(Third bullet of What should not be linked:) Subsidiary topics that result in redlinks (links that go nowhere), such as the titles of book chapters and the songs on albums, unless you're prepared to promptly turn those links into real ones yourself by writing the articles. It's usually better to resist linking these items until you get around to writing an article on each one.
I use fewer links than I used to. But the formulation of the WP:CONTEXT guideline is a little too edgy as far as I'm concerned. When I start a new article I very often check what links here to see whether there's any "demand" for it (or whether there's an ambiguity that should be resolved): removing redlinks thwarts such proceedings: without redlinks it is somewhat more difficult to trace which other articles should be updated with additional bluelinks after the article has started (so usually I don't bother to follow that multi-step process - I'm not a robot!).
Probably it comes down to: use yr common sense: something that's worth a good article can be redlinked without reserve; something that's in the notability border zone should better not be redlinked (while than you would give a fellow wikipedian that tidies up after an AfD extra work). -- Francis Schonken 20:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Redlinks in context often make sense. What I object to are lists where 90% of the items listed are redlinked. This is where "stub prevention" is a valid reason to avoid redlinks, only I prefer to think of it as "bad-article-about-non-notable-whatever prevention". -- Donald Albury( Talk) 21:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Refuses discussion and simply puts sign "do not feed the troll" beneath my statements [1]. I consider it a serious breach of civility and personal attack. Is it a personal attack and does deleting this count as 3RR ? -- Molobo 07:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Memes are like viruses, bits of "information" or some other concept, that travels by word of mouth and spreads, sometimes, globally. They are a social phenomenon in certain cases, when memes become massive, particularly in the case of internet memes like the goatse phenomenon. Sometimes a meme can play a significant part in people's lives, or simply be a thing that's been around for years and years and is known by thousands and thousands of people.
However, some memes are inherently unverifiable, and WP:V does not allow any articles which are not verifiable. Unverifiable memes tend to be the type that exist through pure word-of-mouth continuance, and often are also just phrases or games. Not only does no one need to write about these in reputable sources (and they don't), some of them are intrinsically unverifiable, and the most obvious case of this is the The Game (game) meme, which is an anti-memory game, the object of which is to forget the meme; this basis has, of course, turned it into a massive global phenomenon. However, because the idea of The Game is to not talk about it, many people are totally unaware of its existence, and "sources" of any sort for its existence don't extend far beyond the odd blog entry; the sparsity of these entries demonstrates how widespread the meme is, and how notable it is; however this page has been deleted due to unverifiability.
I am suggesting a new policy that works specifically for memes, and nothing else. It is simply this, that WP:V can be overriden if consensus agrees or proves that the meme is notable. Notability may in these cases be verified by underpar sources such as a significant number of web-blogs or forum-posts, or even a significant number of Wikipedian testimonies. The new policy would be overriden itself by non-notability and would not permit stubs. -- Alfakim -- talk 19:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Note: this policy has been suggested specifically with reference to the The Game (game) contention. The Game is very article-worthy, but doesn't quite pass WP:V.
I don't agree with the argument that this (or anything) is "inherently unverifiable", because it implies that everyone who hears about The Game (presumably including journalists, authors of books on games, and so on) wants to play it and no-one wants to document it or describe it to a general audience instead. Seems to be begging the question. Ziggurat 22:07, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
User:Alanmak has insisted on adding "Photographed by Alan Mak on December 4th, 2004" in obtrusive letters onto Image:HongKongGoldenBauhinaSquare.jpg and we've gotten into a revert war there on whether this should stay. Please comment on what you think should be done here. -- Jiang 01:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I know this may seem a bit harsh, but here goes: what would you all say to a policy that makes it that people shouldn't add images to their signature. I know it may be a bit mean and it is seen only as a cosideration on Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages but mainly becuase it:
What would you say? K ilo-Lima| (talk) 16:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
We're having a bit of a problem here in the interpretation of the fair use for images. Currently, over at the article lolicon there are two images which shows the example of lolicon manga. User Brennan removed BOTH images on the grounds only one example can be posted on the article, due to his interpretation of the fair use policy. I've placed back the first picture that was in the article before the the second picture violated the fair use policy, and now this is being contested as well since, as he claimed, they both are in violation now, therefore, both must go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lolicon#Fair_use Arguments are stated above. Clarification would be most appreciated Jqiz 19:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I suggested {{ See also}} for deletion, and before the day was out the TfD had been removed, debate closed, as speedy keep. All this without giving me a chance to respond to some of those voting (who admitted that they didn't understand my point — perhaps because, as editors hanging round the template pages, they're so used to them that they don't understand the problems faced by other users).
I suggested it for TfD in part because, after I'd posted a comment making the same point to Template talk:See also, after some time the only response had been one that agreed with me. It seems to me that the "speedy keep" was precipitate at best. The template is frankly absurd; it offers virtually no advantages over creating a "see also" section manually, and simply places another obstacle in the way of casual or occasional editors (who are perfectly capable of adding a bulleted link to a section, but have no wish to look up the template in order to work out how to use it. It seems to me that there's a regrettable tendency in Wikipedia to replace simple editing methods with geeky ones. -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 16:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
{{Main|Wikipedia}}
or :Main article:[[Wikipedia]]
? Too many silly templates on a source page can intimidate new users. As a matter of fact, I would have started editing Wikipedia several months before I did if I hadn't been turned away by all the confusing templates. I didn't know how they worked, and I was afraid to edit around them. All those templates do encourage consistent style throughout the encyclopedia, though, so it will probably be hard to change
the current trend. --
Tantalum
T
e
lluride 01:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but once you'd noticed, what you needed to do was obvious — part of standard Wiki-markup. We can't legislate against typos and mistakes (you could just as easily make a mistake typing the template). -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 21:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to try and come up with a standard format for discographies. At the moment there are various ways of doing it; lists, tables, galleries, and each differ a lot. Not sure we'll have any success, but if anyone would like to comment... Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) SaltyWater 18:53, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Some of you might have noticed that, recently, quite a few articles about Chinese stuff have been moved to titles that have diacritics indicating tone. For instance, Yuan Dynasty moved to Yuán Dynasty and Zhuge Liang moved to Zhūge Liàng. I've started a discussion about whether or not this is a good idea at: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Titles_of_articles_to_include_tone_marks? - Nat Krause( Talk!) 01:03, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to put forward a conceptual policy question and I'd like input about how, in concept, it should be handled.
An article we will call Votefortruth is presently dominated by a relatively small group, which we'll call teamtruth. Teamtruth is, however, about 3 times the size of any other group interested in the article. Because of this, sources get ignored and, instead, consensus is demanded for everything before a change is made, regardless of how many WP:V sources are provided. The result is the article remains nearly the same with most of the changes coming based on what teamtruth likes instead of what fits the WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR policies.
To sum up my POV, or my bias if you like, I think this violates all policy, and even the Consensus guideline itself (see Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus vs. other policies).
The problem is, so now what? Is their a policy solution? Or does one have to go outside policy and round up their own majority to get more votes and edits/reverts on their side?-- Pro-Lick 00:00, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Related, if you're looking for some fresh ideas: wikipedia:criticism - this was revived as a proposal not so long ago. -- Francis Schonken 11:52, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been cleaning up new articles lately, and I've been encountering some unhappiness regarding vanity articles from the "almost famous", usually self-promoting entertainers. The "speedy delete", "proposed delete", and "AfD" processes are available, but add "db-bio" to some unknown performer's page and they scream. Some will take off a "prod". AfD works, but is a hassle for everyone. Some current examples:
Can the "almost famous" be dealt with in a more graceful, or at least a less labor-intensive, way? Or is this about normal? Advice?
Maybe a "Further information is needed to determine if this article qualifies for inclusion in Wikipedia. Information needed is: ... If this information is not provided within N days, the article will be deleted." template. Effectively, this would be equivalent to "prod", but nicer. -- John Nagle 21:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
In most cases, policies are followed, and the consensus prevails. But the situation can arise when a couple of editors will "ignore" policy, or provide their "opinion" on why policy can be interpretted in another way, by selectively choosing their facts.
Since Wikipedia Consusus is a guideline, it seems to me that Wiki Policy takes precedence. Some policies claim to be "absolute and non-negotiable" (eg. Wiki neutral point of view).
I have personally wasted MONTHS of time arguing with certain individuals over their point of view, despite being able to VERIFY my position with Wiki policies, and they have been unable or unwilling to verify theirs. There has to be a more effective way of enforcing basic Wiki policy, or at least ascertaining whether policy has been followed or contravened? -- Iantresman 15:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I went to Mediawiki recently in hopes to find the same Wikipedia governmental resources there, as I had a post that didn't relate to Wikipedia in general, but more broadly, to mediawiki in general. I"m appauled to find there ain't the same governmental resources there. I mean, wikipedia has these resources to include everytying, so then why hasn't mediaiki have that yet?!?! PLz include it!!!.
But here's my post
So, I put a bit of though in this issue. I looked at the GNU document, and it seems like that someone just decided to make this licence. Well, I could make my own licence. Wikimedia could make their own licence. And I think they should, if it the new liicence is ammended so that accounts can be deleted, I mean, if wikimedia wirtes its own licecense, it could be so universal like the current liceces its using, that other applications in the world could us the licecese; [the licence could be written nonexclusivly, so that in other things (sorry i don't have a very good vocabulary:Pjk), where appliplicable {[as in] not refering to accounts} could be posslibe]; they if contributers and users want to vanisih, they sould be allowed; freedom of speech also gives the freedom to be silent. 24.70.95.203 16:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there a policy that explicitly states that articles about e.g. films or books that have never been translated into English are or are not acceptable? The absence of a policy prohibiting such articles would seem to indicate they are acceptable. Additionally, some guidelines seem to indicate they are acceptable, e.g. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Sources_in_languages_other_than_English and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(books)#Title_translations. There are articles on WP about primary source materials that have not been translated into English like e.g. Akkari-Laban dossier and 23 (film) and I think there are probably many others. However, sometimes such articles show up on AFD and some people believe that the fact that they have not been translated is a valid reason for deletion. It would help to know if there is a policy on the matter that is being overlooked, or if there is not one whether one might be needed. Thanks, Esquizombi 20:09, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
There is not now, nor has there ever been, such a policy. We write our article in English, but the subject of the article may be from any field or culture. We may have a slight bias towards English-speaking topics because most of the editors are English speakers, but we do everything we can to fight that bias. Please, if you have a good article about a non-English topic, add it to the encyclopedia. - lethe talk + 21:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Should there be an explicit policy on this? Or is it enough to say to someone who wants to delete such an article that there is no policy prohibiting them? Esquizombi 18:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be very useful to have paths on the top of articles, so that one can navigate back and forth through articles in an organized way. The current fasion of having scattered links on the page, and in See also sections are extremely useful, but they don't allow someone to see specifically what an idea or concept falls under (ie a more general category). This is what i'm proposing: put a path on the top of each page denoting what pages directly precede it and a button to view "Subsections" for a list of pages that linearly follow the current page. For example on the page Monomial, this would be at the top:
Mathematics Algebra Elementary algebra Polynomial Monomial Subsections |
An example of the subsections for the page Elementary algebra (this would appear as its own otherwise blank page):
Elementary algebra | Polynomial | Monomial |
Binomial |
This would allow users to browse wikipedia in an organized fasion that can't be provided by portals and c ategories. Comments please? Fresheneesz 03:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Mathematics Algebra Elementary algebra Sections related to Polynomial Subsections |
In those instances where areas do admit such an obvious tree structure for organizing the data, we already have one. A perfect example is provided by biological species; a transcluded speciesbox shows what Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species it belongs to. Similar boxes exist for languages. Probably other areas too. It's probably the case that this is not a useful way to try to categorize all wikipedia articles. Perhaps you would suggest that mathematical objects could be so categorized profitably, but I don't think I agree with that either. - lethe talk + 15:59, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Although it is not possible to enforce the policy of No Personal Attacks outside of Wikipedia, there have been occasions in which some users use public forums, blogs and personal home pages to attack editors of Wikipedia by name, alias or both, while at the same time demanding that the WP:NPA policy and WP:AGF guidelines are observed to the letter in article's talk pages. I am referring here not to a critique of an editor, but to obvious personal attacks such as the use of vituperative and obscene language and making pernicious and disparaging comments about them.
I personaly believe that such a position is indefensible and should be considered disruptive behavior. It creates an atmosphere of ill-will, animosity and lack of trust, that are not conducive neither to collaboration on editing articles, nor to community building.
I would appreciate comments from editors about expanding the WP:NPA policy to include some wording that will address the attempt to bypass policy and game the system by an editor "outsourcing" his personal attacks against other editor(s) to public forums in order to "get away with it". ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 01:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Many movies have entries in Wikipedia. Yet, Wikipedia doesn't have, probably never will have, and perhaps should not try for the comprehensive coverage of the Internet Movie Database. Wikipedia just isn't the right tool for this job. IMDB is a database, with links for actors and directors, connections to the Directors' Guild of America for correct credits, links to trailers, and similar supporting machinery. Trying to emulate all that manually within Wikipedia is like pounding a screw.
I'd suggest that Wikipedia only have articles for "historically significant" movies, defined in some objective way, like "won an Academy Award". I'm not sure what the criterion should be, but it should be an objective one. -- Nagle 18:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
IMDB, In My Doubtful Belief, is most dutifully basic. I must dare boldly imitate mechanically de brains involved making dat base. WP Won't Progress with plenty wordy dang.
We find e.g. movies, music albums, games, gamers and football players where we want an encyclopedia. That it is not paper (see the same questioning theme one or two sections further) can't allow to create stubs or plentiful articles for things only known today and that you will be happy to forget tomorrow. It is fun, we are submerged with publicity, but one should feel responsible for a content that means something for more than half a generation : or Britannica beats us. -- DLL 17:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Is there a word which can be used as a generic term meaning "city", "town", "village", "municipality", etc? All of these have a legal definition and I'm looking for a general term to use which could mean any of them "colloquially" (such as a category including all of them). The only one I have found so far is "community", but that seems odd when a category includes Chicago, St. Louis, etc. (community sounds like a small place). I can't find anything in Wikipedia which addresses this. I started to use "town" for some smaller places, then found out it had a legal definition, too! If anyone knows, or can direct me to the proper place it would be appreciated. Thanks. Rt66lt 04:15, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
We seem to have another Bobblewik these days. Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs) is running SmackBot ( talk · contribs), and it is very clear from the speed of the edits and the context of various changes that he's not actually reviewing the edits before commit.
There are loads of complaints on his talk page. This has been an on-going problem. He's been blocked (at various increments) repeatedly.
Last week, it was screwing up US and UK.
The most obvious today is delinking dates.
Now, it just unlinked " max may med" to " max May med" at List of three-letter English words. There is no possible way that a human reviewer would have made that mistake.
The idea that a bot should ever again run around delinking dates, days, months, or anything else has been so long discredited that it leads to apoplexy. (I still remember when another AWB delinked 1947 in Israel.)
Heck, it's worse than that! Reviewing the contributions (that it's making every 6 seconds), I see that it moves the trailing ]]s to s]] on piped links. That's against Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Form.
I'd suggest that the bot be blocked until he certifies that he's personally reviewed and fixed every single edit ever done by the bot.... At a rate no faster than 1 every 2 minutes.
I created Wikipedia:Significance as a proposal which hasn't so far garnered much support. It's been suggested to me that I repropose it as a notability proposal. Therefore I have moved it to be a subpage of WP:N, Wikipedia:Notability/Proposal, and ask all interested parties to help evolve the proposal to a stage where it has achieved community consensus. Steve block talk 08:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Please note that the idea is to build a proposal which espouses the nutshell idea that:
There has recently been a proposal on Talk:Human to split up the article on human beings into a POV fork in order to sidestep controversy regarding the science/religion issues (such as whether "human beings are Homo sapiens", the dictionary definition of the word human, is "just a POV", and whether we should spend several paragraphs of the intro discussing the human soul and spirituality); homo sapiens sapiens has been created as an article for the biological details of humanity, in an attempt to heavily restrict biological information from being included in human in the future; human, meanwhile, is planned to become a purely spiritual and cultural article. I can see several problems with this, such as that the word human is used equally in all circles, scientific and religious, that it is original research to separate "human" and Homo sapiens sapiens without research, and that there are already plenty of daughter articles for both biological and spiritual articles (for example, why use Homo sapiens sapiens for biological details rather than Human biology?), but I'm mainly here to discuss whether this will set a precedent for other articles to be similarly forked, like having one article for cat (discussing the cultural significance of cats to humans only) and one for Felis silvestris catus (discussing the biology of cats); certainly having such a prominent article so dramatically forked will having a huge influence on hundreds of other articles that are similarly controversial among editors.
I would like to bring this to the community's attention, and get a wider array of feedback on the idea, mainly because if this fork is implemented and approved by the community, it will be the first time in the history of Wikipedia that a Wikipedia article has been forked in such a way without subsequently being reverted/deleted, and since there's currently a large number of editors on the Talk page who seem to support such a fork, and the process of splitting the page has already begun, there's a very large chance that this article will be divided in this way soon. As such, this certainly merits a more thorough and broad examination of the situation by as many Wikipedia editors as possible: should Wikipedia begin the shift away from WP:NPOV (presenting all noteworthy sides of controversial issues side-by-side and centralizing related topics on a single top-level page) and towards Wikinfo-style articles (where a separate page is created for every possible perspective)? I can see valid arguments for both sides, so I think this is a very important discussion to have. - Silence 19:53, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Hello, I've been looking through Category:Screenshots of Windows software and I'm noticing quite a number of items in this category that don't look like they belong. For example, there are screenshots of characters from Flash animations [5], political maps [6], band pictures [7], logos [8], and even satellite images of cities [9]. The problem seems to be that people are assuming that, because they were able to obtain the image by taking a screenshot using SnagIt or whatever, that this somehow makes Template:windows-software-screenshot the correct copyright tag for an image, which I'm pretty sure is a wrong application of this particular copyright status. What's the right path forward in a circumstance like this? Warrens 15:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
A policy should be created regarding pseudoscience. Should we include pseudoscience in science articles? Because if we excluded them, then it wouldn't be NPOV (or so I think). But if we included them... well, then Britannica will have something to say. So there should be a policy on whether excluding pseudoscience is non-NPOV or not. In fact, should we create a poll on this topic?-- Exir Kamalabadi Join Esperanza! 12:55, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Having read the pseudoscience page, which is a good article, I don't think a general policy is a good idea. I would say a good guideline is to read the pseudoscience article and decide on a case-by-case basis. Carcharoth 13:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
User:Nixer and me have recently had a dispute regarding the spelling of the name of a certain Russian airport ( Ostafievo International Airport). I am not going to bore everyone with the details of what the dispute is about, but a google test was used to prove certain points. The problem, however, is that a different google count is obtained by both sides. When googling for "ostafievo -wikipedia", I get 220 hits (see a screenshot), while Nixer gets 1,470 (see his). I tried two different computers (with different ISPs), and I still get ~220 hits. The discrepancy is just too huge to ignore, and as google tests are quite common in the community, I would like to request public comments as to what may be the cause.— Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 15:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I get 215 in Australia. I've suspected in the last few months, specially since the China controversy, that google gives diff results in diff countries. BTW what % of web does it now index? Mccready 16:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
And this all is just another reason to avoid Google "tests". Who cares how many folks badly spell a word? As we wrote at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places):
What's most important is that the company that built the place has an official name: " Ostafievo".
I have brought this issue up before, several months ago, I think. I asked whether articles with disambiguated titles, like tables (board game), should have a link at the top to a disambiguation page. I thought that it was unnecessary, since a person will not get to an article with a disambiguated title by accident. Others here, or possibly at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), agreed that such as link is unnecessary. However, Wikipedia:Disambiguation now seems to be in conflict with what was agreed upon. Here is a quote from that page.
Are such links necessary, and if they are, why? Thanks, Kjkolb 03:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia serves as all Wiki Projects' highest form of governemnt; I don't think that's right. I think that Wikimedia should be where Help, Reference Desk, Proposals, Policy, etc. should be located. Also, Beer Parlour & Tea Room should be deleted, etc. & if there are any other institutions like as mentioned in this comment, then they should be deleted to. User pages should also be consolidated into 1 central location, namely Wikimedia, or a separate place, but these are draft ideas, but the general idea, would organize Wikimedia & save resources. Taking the point of saving resources, Accounts should be allowed to be deleted.
Please leave one if you'd like more clarification on this issue. You could also contact me <redacted> [since they haven't instituted the option to delete your account, made their own licence, or the GNU licence hasn't changed yet, I haven't signed up].
thanks
24.70.95.203 14:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Please can people check out these afds and noticeboard below as I believe a seriously misleading campaign of self promotion has been going on involving multiple websites and if we don't take a stand on these articles Wikipedia is going to be vulnerable to further claims reinforced by marketing/agency websites promoting their clients: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Possible_advertising_scam, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_5#Rikki_Lee_Travolta, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_5#My_Fractured_Life, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_5#Twilight_Serenade. Arniep 16:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I have a rather interesting issue to discuss. Recently, there was a high profile rape case (Louise Nicholas) in NZ in which the defendents were found not guilty. A few days after the verdict was annouced, a feminist group distributed flyers which listed some details that have been temporarily supressed. According to one TV news channel, these details are accurate and were with held from the jury. I don't know if they will be permanently supressed.
In any case, at the moment publishing these details would be contempt of court for NZers (the group is under investigation). Of course, NZ courts don't reach out side NZ and if one publishes these details outside NZ you can't be held accountable. It is possible that people who publish the info could be held of contempt if they ever visit NZ but I'm not a lawyer or clear on the law here and I don't think it is the case (unless you further publish the details in NZ of course).
This is not the first time supression orders have come under controversy. In at least one case I recall, the name of an All Black (national rugby team player) who had assaulted his pregant wife by dragging her back to the home was permanently supressed. This name was later published in a UK and/or Australian paper. Note in this case, the permanent name supression was largely to protect the victim and her children.
Anyway what I'm wondering is, is there a policy for dealing with these matters? Since wikipedia is hosted in the US, editors from outside NZ are free to add details which have been supressed. However this would mean the article, could potentially become a no edit zone for NZers. Even debating whether these details should be included on wikipedia could be a risky activity for NZers IMHO. Since these articles will primarily be of interest to NZers, it creates a disturbing trend. Furthermore, publishing these articles in NZ whether by mirroring wikipedia, distributing on DVD, printing or whatever will almost definitely be in contempt of court unless the details are specificly removed or the articles excluded.
To me this raises serious concerns about the GPL and 'freeness' of wikipedia. Of course, there are some copyrighted images which are similarly in dubious positions outside the US but these are at least tagged. Perhaps we could require that supressed details at least be tagged like we do for spoilers or something? Similarly there are some details published in wikipedia which would probably be considered illegal in countries such as China but court ordered supression isn't in quite the same league as limitations on speech to protect the government and/or community harmony. Of course it may also arguable whether details that have been supressed are important enough to be included in an article and whether publishing them would violate NPOV. And you could also argue that publishing the details might be unfair to the victims in cases such as the All Black case.
And in the Louise Nicholas rape case, you could argue that a flyer cannot possibly be considered a reliable source although as I have stated, media reports imply that the details are accurate. Also, if the people who distributed the flyer are held for contempt of court, this is basically an admission the details are accurate? However I guess you'll also need a copy of the flyer and you'll need to show the flyer copy you have is accurate reproduction of the original. In the case of the All Black, I guess the fact that it was published in a paper might give it more sufficient credibility to be included if the detail itself is considered worthy/fair to include.
So I guess what I'm asking is, how do you think we should handle court ordered supressed details? Should we allow them to be published if they are considered worthy and fair of being published? Should we tag them? Note I'm not necessarily against publishing supressed details on wikipedia but think it's a controversial and important issue that we should discuss first. This is perhaps an even more interesting issue for wikinews but I'll cover that another day.
About the Louise Nicholas case, it actually isn't covered particularly well on wikipedia at the moment. It is mentioned at New Zealand Police (under Historic sexual misconduct). From usenet, I came across a claim that an image of the flyer is available here [11] however I haven't visited it so it could be a shock image for all I know...
Finally, as you may realise, this is a new account. I have specifically created it to make it more difficult to identify me. It's possible that by giving a link, even though I'm not sure what it contains I might be in contempt of court. I'm not currently in NZ but I am a NZer as you might guess.
New Zealand Kiwi 19:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I believe the flier is not a source trusted enough to allow us to present the info as fact. On the other hand, statement that the name of perpetrator was withdrawn by the court but such and such group distributed a flier alleging so and so might be verifiable and relevant. I am not a lawyer but I do not think sun an info could be qualified either as a libel or as a contempt to the court. abakharev 04:11, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
There's been some discussion on the WP:NAME talk page about a possible tweak to the naming convention guideline for album and song titles. The current guideline suggests capitalizing according to standard English conventions; the proposed rule suggests capitalizing according to primary sources (liner notes, official promotional material), and using standard conventions where primary sources are ambiguous or inconsistent. Your feedback is welcome. -- Muchness 02:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Hello. I'm not sure the appropriate place to discuss this, so if there is a more appropriate venue, please feel free to direct me to it. I noticed that the page Fellow of the British Academy redirects to Category:Fellows of the British Academy. This is the first time I've seen a main namespace article redirect to the category namespace, and I wasn't sure if this was allowed. I've looked for guidance at WP:R and WP:CAT, but haven't seen this issue addressed. My first thought is that this shouldn't be allowed, and that an article should either be developed, or redirected to something such as British Academy. Lbbzman 15:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Some of you may have heard about the recent debate produced by a Rfc relating to the deletion of an image, by a sysop, of an image which is of questionable taste. I would strongly recommend that everyone views the archived debate, and adds to the topic by continuing the debate below as it seems that this is a very key point to do with Wikipedia, and is likely to be a situation we will face more and more in the future. -- Wisd e n17 14:34, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
There is also a poll going on at Wikipedia:Censorship about whether or not it is ok to delete images because they are immoral, as opposed to deleting them for any of a thousand other reasons. The point it that the editorial discussion on deleting can or can not include cultural standards concerning morality. Vote one way or the other, please. WAS 4.250 22:23, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
After reading around these Wikipedia pages: Wikipedia:Move; Wikipedia:Merge; and Wikipedia:Deletion; I started looking for instructions on the opposite of a merge: a split, or spinning content off from one article to create a new one. I looked at Wikipedia:Fork, which was more about POV forks but which led me to Wikipedia:How to break up a page, which is really about why it is sometimes necessary to break up a page. Unfortunately there are no instructions on that page on how to break up a page, and in particular on how to preserve edit histories (as required by GFDL). I then looked on the talk page and realised that I wasn't the only person to have this concern, see here.
In general, I presume that if the content being spun off an article is small (eg, a section of the old article) and has a small history, then the origin can be noted in the new article's edit history, and this satisfies GFDL. When the split is more complicated though, what should be done? Does it need an admin to sort out the edit history? I've also raised this at the Help Desk. Carcharoth 11:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
-- Dameyawn 12:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)I think all wikipedia articles should include a pronunciation key. I've come across countless articles where I've been unable to determine how the word or name was meant to be pronounced. An audio clip would also be nice, but at the least, a standard written pronunciation description should be included.
There has been much press lately about the varying quality and accuracy of content in the Wikipedia and I know wikipedia.org is doing much to improve this. I haven't posted content to Wikipedia and my comments are based on what I have read, so excuse me if I show an ignorance of the process.
I thought of a way of sharing a solution to the quality problem with the end user. The model I'm basing this on is the ratings system for vendors on EBay, but with significant differences in who does the ratings. My idea is to request people to submit content with references supporting it. Upon submission, a quick check of the quality and quantity of these references would get the posting a star rating from one to three. If there are no supporting references, the content would be unrated. Content that had gone through a proper peer review would get 4-5 stars.
I hope I'm wrong, but I assume this would cost a significant amount of money to do (especially the peer review) and that would be seen as a limiting factor. If that is the case, I would suggest having 3 levels of membership to Wikipedia. Level one would have, as it has always had, no cost to the user involved. This type of member would see the content as it posted currently, with no rating system. The second level of membership would cost a very small, nominal sum, enough to generate revenue to offset the cost of doing the first level of quality checks. This level of membership would allow the user to see the ratings from one to three and it would include the references submitted and verified. The last category of membership would be more costly. This level would see all rating levels including peer reviewed material. A level 3 user could also request a peer review of any article (up to a reasonable number of articles per year before additional charges are incurred) to verify it's claims. The pricing would be set with the idea of maintaining Wikipedia as a non-profit, but solvent organization.
All users would still see peer reviewed articles in their entirety, but would not know that they had been peer reviewed. Level 2 users would see the 1-3 star rating that the article had before peer review. When material is edited, the same process would apply. For articles with multiple submissions, each submission would be identified with it's own rating when necessary. There are still many details to think out. For example, there should probably be a mechanism for retaining higher rated material when it is replaced by lower rated material and there should probably be one-article-only membership upgrades possible.
In this way, the user has choice as to the quality of information they require when using Wikipedia. I hope my comments will be of some use in stimulating discussion.
Bob Kennedy Bobkenn 13:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes I see quotes in an article that have words inside the quote hyperlinked. I'm worried that having various words inside the quote link off to other pages is subtly misrepresenting what the author originally said. What is the policy on this, are links in quotes disallowed, or encouraged, or what? – Tifego (t) 13:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Here is one example of what I mean (and it's not the only one I've seen recently). I'm not sure how to justify removing those links (or if it's even the right thing to do) or whether any attempts to do so would be treated as vandalism. – Tifego (t) 00:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
While I admire the concept of Widipedia, I think its format is very confusing. May I suggest that its administrators examine the Yahoo!Finance Message Board for stocks and see if they can incorporate its format for Widipedia. In Yahoo!Finance Message Board posters read and react to each others' stock performance comments and post them instantly in as many times and ways as they want. Accessing comments, deleting them, moving them, renaming them, etc. all are easy and natural, without viewers or writers EVER getting lost in the labyrinth of subscreens within subscreens. I think the idea of Widipedia is too important to be left to its current confusing format. This suggested format change will catapult Wikipedia to the popularity that it really deserves, bringing it much needed contribution for making it into a household tool of true non-biased expression for any worthy issue, as no paid reporter can ever be free or non-biased (I know this for fact as I used to be one of them). Good Luck, Cyrus Pakzad [e-mail address removed] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.199.80.100 ( talk • contribs)
This proposal has been kicking around for some time, and previously mentioned here. Its contents are mostly a consolidation of practices from other guidelines pages. Its categories and templates have survived (or been renamed according to) CfD and TfD over the past month. This seems to be the time to upgrade to the guideline notice.
Sorry, I'm confused. Surviving CfD and TfD does not, I believe, make the current use of the category or template valid; does it alone make your proposed guideline an official one? You did not post this to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies until yesterday, and Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Abbreviation expansion shows that otherwise, this page has not been widely publicized. I thought there had to be positive consensus to adopt a policy or guideline, with many people involved. Is lack of consensus to delete sufficient to adopt a guideline? (If it is, great—I've suggested a few guidelines in my time that have had a mute or ho-hum reception—I thought that meant they were not adopted, but if I was wrong, I'll go change the tags on those, too.) -- TreyHarris 01:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I keep coming across articles that seem to be simply a cut-and-paste from another online source. can someone drop me a line on my talk that points me towards policies and guidlines that cover how this is to be delt with? Thanks, Mike McGregor (Can) 05:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I got to thinking about this in the last few days when I came across USS Saratoga (1814) which mostly comes from [ page] and Lake Chicago taken from [ incredibly poorly written page]. I was pointed towards WP:CSD A8, but that seems to apply to pages using a commercial source. These 2 articles are copied from government sources. Is there Is there policy that's ment to be applied to plagiarism as opposed to copyright infringment? Would a new Cleanup tag saying something like: "To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. This page appeares to be plagerised in part or in whole, from this source. blah blah blah...," be uesful in situations like this? I don't want to start seeing these kindes of pages deleated, just improved. Thanks, Mike McGregor (Can) 09:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
What I'm looking for clarification on is wether or not an article copied verbatum word-for-word from a government or PD source is an acceptable arrticle on wikipedia, or If articles like that should be cleaned up to include multiple sources and so that the information from those sources is written into a "new" article unique to Wikipedia (until bots from other sites re-post it elsewhere...). Mike McGregor (Can) 23:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I have the same question. I was reverted by an adminsitrator and accused of plagiarism when I took 3 sentences of fact from a copyrighted "About" page. I cited the source but was still accused of plagiarism because it was word-for-word. My understanding is that factual content need not be reworded (just cited). The only concern therefore would be copyright, but since this was significantly less than 300 words and only a small portion of the page and it conformed the sites usage, I didn't think that applied since it was fair-use. Is my interpretation of plagiarism incorrect? Cited and factual seems adequate to avoid plagiarism. -- Tbeatty 21:39, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I just came across the article McCain Detainee Amendment and I had a copyvio question. In the section called McCain Detainee Amendment#Statement by Senator John McCain on October 5, 2005 we quote a speech made by Senator McCain at length, and putting aside the stylistic reasons why we may not want that, I was wondering if that would be a violation of his copyright? I mean, I realise that I'm being extremely paranoid, and it's not like he is ever going to sue us, but still. It is quoted in full, so it can't really be called fair use.
I know very little of copyright law (just enough to get by on wikipedia, really), but isn't a speech protected like anything else? Oskar 21:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Copyrights "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts."
Alternately, whenever someone adds content to Wikipedia, it says underneath "Content must not violate any copyright and must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL."
The former is arguably freer (and IMO is the best option for Wikipedia), but it adds conditions that the contributors didn't agree to when they submitted the text which is dubious, legally.
Note: This is a clarified version of an earlier topic. I have (re)posted because an unfortunate typo in the original derailed the discussion; if the double-posting is inappropriate, please delete the earlier version. Irrevenant 12:13, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Possibly, quite possibly, peoiple are tired ot disinterested with this issue. However, at its heart is a question about how policy is enforced, and that to except a certain page or issue from policy needs the strongest consensus attainable. Dsicussion of the issue is at Talk:Lolicon#Link inclusion policies. Thank you for your contribution. Steve block talk 08:11, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I appricite any feedback at Wikipedia talk:Infestation. -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 07:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Why is there a need to close no-consensus AfD's? Say there's an AfD on an obscure article, it's unclear what existing policy says to do, so there's slow ongoing discussion which involves some off-wiki research. After 5 days (or whatever the mininum normal closure period is) the vote is 6-3 favoring deletion and the AfD is closed as no consensus. Why not leave it open for a while longer? This particular article was a vanity bio from a publicity seeker, and discussion revolved around what notability consisted of for someone in that field. (I won't name the article right now because I'm asking this as a general policy question, rather than to keep scratching at that specific article, which was unimportant in the scheme of things). Phr 02:46, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Often when a new version of an image is made it is for various reasons (such as its a hybrid image or a different format or just modified enough to deserve a new name) uploaded under a new name to here or commons. Then the original gets deleted as OB or OR. The result is we are losing a lot of information on the history of our images and quite probablly violating the GFDL too. Plugwash 21:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
A poll has started on the revised policy, please see the talk page to see changes and vote. Thank you. Loom91 08:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm wondering what the relationship is of items for deletion discussions to policy proposals. Two examples:
I thought proposals were supposed to gain consensus or fail on their talk pages. But it seems that surviving a deletion discussion can be used as evidence that the proposal has gained consensus to become policy, or that the merits of a proposal can be hashed out in a deletion discussion (where, presumably, if the consensus is to delete, the proposal would be summarily aborted). Do XfD's trump talk pages? If so, is there any obligation on the part of the lister to publicize a deletion listing so that those participating in the ordinary talk-page process can move their discussion there? -- TreyHarris 09:26, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Following a discussion in a FAC then an RFC the following proposal has been organized. Obviously if you have an alternative proposal, please voice it, and vote no matter what if you have an opinion. Basically the proposal includes 3 slight alterations to allow archives to be used as source on Wikipedia provided that additional information is included in the citation to prove the archives existence, public accessibility, and reliability. Staxringold 00:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
There's been a fair amount of well-reasoned discussion about this concept (including not one, but 5 related proposals) over the last couple of months. It may be time for an overhaul; please comment. John Reid 05:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
The above is the expected events tag, which I believe was designed for movies, sports events, and other predicted events. I do not believe it should be used on the pages of individual years or decades because:
I think we should officially remove the future tag from the future years/decades pages ( 2007 onward). Captain Jackson 05:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
While I have nothing in particular against your proposal, I care about the issue slightly less than about which end first I should eat my boiled eggs. Given the interest people have shown in discussing this here, I suggest you wait a few more days and, if no opposition emerges, go ahead and remove them citing this discussion. You might want to post pointers to this discussion at Template talk:Future and other relevant talk pages first. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 12:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I can't believe that the tag on 2007 wouldn't be removed within days of the next 1 January. It's too obvious. - Runcorn 15:09, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I propose to discourage really long article titles. Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (books)#Article title length. Thanks, Melchoir 23:14, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I've created this proposal to bring about a fundamental change in the deletion policies and review our approach towards the process of deletion. Please discuss it at the talk page (not here please, keeping the discussion centralised helps editors see the various different views). Thank you very much for participating. Loom91 18:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło to stop this monstrosity from happening.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 14:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Please join in constructing a policy concerning the notability of internet memes/phenomena at Wikipedia:Notability (memes). Thank you, Urthogie 15:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there any sort of "Wikipedia is not a novelisation of a movie you like" policy? Reading up on a few films ( Sideways springs to mind), I'm taken aback at these ridiculously long and detailed summaries of the entire plot of a film. Does an encyclopedia really need to list the blow-by-blow sequence of events in movies minute for minute? It seems fansiteish, somehow, to have these 1,000-word summaries floating around. -- MattShepherd 20:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
YOU SHOULD NOT COMPLICATE EVERYTHING UP TO INSANITY,BECAUSE IT CAUSES ONLY CHAOS.YOUR INSTRUCTION ABOUT WIKIPEDIA SHOULD BE ONLY ON ONE OR TWO PAGES. ONLY YOUR ADMINISTRATION SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO DELETE TEXT. HOWEVER, EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO WRITE.WHAT'S MORE,YOU SHOULD MAKE INDEX LIKE GOOGLE INDEX.
TRULY YOURS, PETER
I have a draft of changes to the Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms guideline, and I am looking for input from other editors.
As described in the current discussion, the goals of the rewrite are as follows: 1) to clarify the distinction between writing using neologisms and writing on neologisms; 2) to incorporate concerns about neologisms as dicdef entries; 3) to clarify the position of WP:OR on neologism pages such that simple google searches can't support articles on neologisms; 4) to respond to the kinds of arguments that I've seen in AfD in support of neologisms.
The draft is located here. In order that discussion takes place in one location, may I suggest adding your comments to the discussion on the existing guideline's talk page here. Many thanks. -- cmh 04:32, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
During a discussion with some other users today, the topic of the enormity of the cleanup backlog (currently 1.33% of wikipedia) was raised, and I think I have an idea to help with that, so I'd like to propose it here. What I was thinking of is a sort of 'recommendation taskforce' to help spread the workload and get new (perhaps less experienced) users involved. Here's my thinking: We get experienced users into pages tagged for cleanup, not to actually do the deed, but to write up a laundry list on the talk page of things that need to be worked on in the article (as most pages merely have the generic cleanup tag, and even with the more specific ones it is sometimes unclear what is needed). Not only would this make cleanup quicker for the actual cleaners, but as I said, it could allow users less aquainted with wikipedia style guidelines to put in work on some of these articles. Whaddya think? -- InShaneee 21:56, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Hasn't the cleanup tag turned into a "replace me with a more specfic tag or tags", and should only be left on an article if the editor doesn't know what one of the subtag is called? Or is their cleanup not covered by some of the tags?-- Rayc 05:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)