What is going on here: A lot of work was done (in large part by StuRat) in developing two pages; /rules and /guideline. There was accusation of POV-forking. Then TenOfAllTrades developed a draft based in the previous work and discussions. There was consensus that that draft would be an appropriate continuation. To that end, and to prevent discussion of the same topic, proposed RD policy, taking place in multiple locations, I am bringing it all here. The /rule and /guideline are archived here for reference only. Please do not edit those. The Ten draft can and should be edited.
Please discuss edits only on the associated talk page, Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/guidelines. -- Justanother 15:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
This page is divided up as follows.
Obviously in its current format it's unsuitable for direct placement on the Ref Desk. Further discussion is needed and welcomed about how these guidelines should be incorporated into our existing framework, and what changes or additions are needed.
I'm keeping this in my userspace for now because I'm trying to keep a lid on any potential edit warring over this content. By all means direct brickbats, kudos, and suggestions to the talk page, and we'll see if we can synthesize something useful.
The purpose of this page is to present what I think is a reasonable (and close-to-consensus) view of the purpose and philosophy of the Reference Desk, as well as some guidelines for users and contributors that I think fall naturally from that philosophy. Note that I am not addressing enforcement mechanisms at the moment.
We need to be clearer about what kind of "sense of community" we're trying to promote. Enhancing the Wikipedia community mostly means being good to newbies and showing them how we do things here, and of course that's great. However, conversation and chatting mostly just promotes camraderie for a subset of the ref desk regulars—and I'm not sure the ref desk should be for that purpose. Consider the recent issues with Wikipedia:Esperanza, which was strongly requested by outside users to modify their structure, because they were developing their own community to the exclusion of the Wikipedia community. -- SCZenz 17:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
The "sense of community" is facilitated by allowing conversations, not just curt, factual answers. This includes conversation not only with the question asker, but between responders and others who want to join the conversation. This may also lead to some drift from the original topic, which is OK, so long as the question itself is addressed. Here is a good example: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Parasitic_Worm. StuRat 18:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
The problem with "Wikipedia community" is that its so nebulous, there's little agreement on it. I (and, from what I can see, others) have purposely gone out of my way to avoid being part of a "community", because I strongly feel that a shared goal is enough, and no other sense of "community" is needed. Indeed, in many cases, the "community" gets in the way of the shared goal. Now, I'm not going to run around trying to prevent people from feeling like they're part of a community, but I sure won't encourage this, either. So, in short- we're introducing needless complication by introducing this concept here. If people want to debate the merits of community, let them do it at Esperanza or Wikipedia:Community or elsewhere. There's no need to tack the notion of community onto the reference desk, any moreso than any other project page. We have enough work to do on this guideline without expanding its scope needlessly. Friday (talk) 18:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
This is going to be a big point of contention, but we might as well start. I disagree with this addition. Personal opinions should certainly be avoided on clearly factual questions, and it is better to turn opinion questions into factual questions whenever possible. I'm not interested in focusing on what's "permitted," but this guideline should not say anywhere that giving opinions is "encouraged." -- SCZenz 18:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Stu, what do you object to in my edit. I am sure we can accomodate your concerns. -- Justanother 19:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Until we see some agreement that it belongs, I'm against the re-addition of language saying that personal opinions are encouraged. So far the talk page discussion leans that way too, so I'm not sure why we'd think this removed was caused by an accident of software. Friday (talk) 19:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's my take on opinions. (This is a continuation of some thoughts begun here and here.)
In general, I think we should discourage matters of opinion, both in questions and in answers. Wikipedia tends to favor objective scientific fact, and it definitely disfavors P's OV, and opinions are obviously P's OV. If nothing else, discussions about matters of opinion tend to degenerate into long debates, not the succinct, fact-based question-answering that the RD is supposed to be.
Now, with that said, and before someone takes my head off, I hasten to add that I do not think we should disallow all opinions. I do not think that our discouragement to questioners should be as harshly worded as the "While we have opinions, we're not going to tell you what they are, so don't ask for them", which once appeared on Wikipedia:Reference_desk/guideline. And I think that, under some circumstances, answers which merely supply opinions, or which speculate in a sort of armchairey way (i.e. by doing something other than coldly citing elsewhere-published factual answers) are perfectly appropriate. And I think it's useful to explore when opinions aren't and are useful (which I will now do, in an opinionated, armchair-speculationey sort of way).
First, some questions just clearly aren't worth trying to answer.
The Reference Desk, I think it's safe to say, is not an opinion poll. Reference Desk contributors are valued (and queried) for their knowledge and expertise, not for their random opinions. There may be places on the net to debate these imponderable questions, but the Wikipedia Reference Desk is not it. (Although with that said, it turns out that my third hypothetical question does have a definitive answer, which you can read about on slashdot.)
One reason pure-opinion questions aren't appropriate for the Reference Desk is that there's nothing special about Reference Desk answerers which qualifies them to answer such questions. You could walk down the street asking random strangers what their favorite color was, and you'd get the same selection of answers with precisely the same authority.
Contrariwise, I think it's acceptable for Reference Desk answerers to offer opinion when doing so definitely adds something of value to the discussion, when the opinion has some value beyond "I'm a person and I have it". If the question being asked doesn't have a definitive answer, and you know that it doesn't, your informed opinion may be valuable. If the question being asked involves some particular aspect or nuance of an otherwise objective fact, such as "how do I explain X to someone who believes Y", speculation on the Reference Desk may be appropriate.
Two examples, one con, one pro:
You may disagree with the specific criteria or examples I've suggested here, but the broader issues I've raised are, I think, relevant. Even so, though, the "guidelines" I've suggested here are quite loose, and require quite a bit of thinking and (possibly opinionated) interpretation themselves. (Which is why they're not even guidelines.) But I don't see any way around this. If opinions are going to be tolerated at all, and if their use is not going to regularly trigger long, rambling, speculative, opinionated debates, people have to be circumspect about posting them, have to really think about their particular opinion and its relation to the particular issue. People can't just say, "Oh, I'm an intelligent person and this is an interesting question and I'm in a posting mood today so I'll just spout whatever's on my mind." You have to know enough about the issue to know whether or not there are people who know more about it than you do.
In the end, the guidelines for posting opinion may end up being quite similar to the guidelines for posting humor: "in moderation, and only when it contributes to the discussion".
— Steve Summit ( talk) 05:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
If someone adds something, and someone else disagrees strongly enough to remove it, it's generally bad form to just re-add it. So I ask everyone to edit conservatively in this regard. Friday (talk) 19:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Do the schmucks who go around deleting good-faith questions and answers not realize what major pricks they are? -- Nelson Ricardo 19:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that unwarranted deletions performed in an inappropriate manner have been a problem. You might want to review the proposed rules for deletion here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/guidelines#Deletion and tell us if you agree with them. StuRat 20:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines.
I just browsed through it, reading all the interesting bits. As close as I can figure, it's perfect. Absolutely not a trace of 'uptightness' or 'ruleslawyerness', which is good. :)
And reading it a second time -- it's actually good for a laugh as well. Vranak 21:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
This needs to be sorted out here; we don't need to have a confusion on the page itself.
While all editors agree that the reference desk's primary purpose is to be informative, there are differences of opinion regarding whether the reference desk should focus solely on encyclopedic information, or whether any and all information is fair game. One could argue that WP:V and WP:NOR are less important here, since the reference desk is not in 'article space'.
-- Justanother 23:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
-- Light current 03:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Realised that we should split these as it is responses by RD "staff" that are deserving of full user talk page process, not inappropriate questions. Questions would only go to the RD talk page if there is a dispute about inclusion in which case it stays in until settled. -- Justanother 04:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I've got a problem with the latest draft of this page... the line "Something like half of people in the United States still go online using a dial-up modem. This fraction is lower in Western Europe and Canada, and higher in many other places." is completely unsourced. This is Wikipedia, we have to cite sources for everything. And "Something like" is a weasel word too, I think. This is horrible writing for Wikipedia and has no place here! [The preceeding comment is meant to be taken entirely tongue in cheek... I think the current draft is great, and hopefully we can get enough people to agree to it to put all this debating behind us] -- Maelwys 13:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
The guidelines as I write these words are very, very lengthy. The result of much wikilawyering, I guess. I absolutely cannot be bothered to read them... and I'm actually interested. Which leads me to ask what is the purpose of them. Is it to help newbies understand the Ref Desks (in which case, IMHO they currently fail utterly and completely) or is it so that regulars have a stick with which to bash people should they contravene the guidelines (in which case, they're probably succeeding beautifully)? -- Dweller 13:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Is the most important. And here it is:
This strikes me as perhaps a touch zealous and cult-ish. Thoughts? Vranak
Is now
The primary purpose of the desks is to provide improvement of, and access to, the encyclopedia.
How about something like,
To provide information not readily found in, or not neccessarily befitting, the Wikipedian encyclopedia
Though this sort of negativistic definition probably won't sit well, it's probably more accurate to what the RD is used for currently.
At any rate I'd suggest trimming down Desks to Desk; it sounds better. Vranak 03:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
How about:
Its purpose is to provide guidance in using the encyclopedia and to help improve its quality and keep it updated by reader/user feeback.
OR
Its purpose is also to attempt to make available to readers information that has been omitted from the encyclopedia for some reason.
-- Light current 09:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I am just going to come out and say it: the first four points don't say much at all. I mean, the spirit of what is being said is quite correct, but the way that it's said leaves me a bit confused... and the word gobbledegook comes to mind.
And yes, after complaining three times, I should really have a go myself. But I consider myself a bit of a Wikipedian radical, so I shouldn't be messing around with official policy. Vranak 16:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
You might want to scratch point three, but honestly, it is a de-facto feature of the RD. Vranak 18:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Someone emasculated this section since yesterday (specifically, since this revision). I don't have time to fix or discuss it and won't for several days, but I wanted to register my disapproval. In particular, saying "Inappropriate questions and responses on the desk should be removed through the normal wiki editing process" is not adequate. It was an assmption that the "normal wiki editing process" could be used, without further interpretation, to address content disputes on the Reference Desk that caused all the infighting that led to the attempt to craft these guidelines to clarify things. But this guideline's current wording doesn't clarify anything. — Steve Summit ( talk) 13:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I think there are two responses possible for inappropriate comments, and it is a matter of judgement which to use when:
Any disagreement about a specific comment should be resolved on the commenter's talk page, and if either party is unsatisfied with the resolution the issue should be brought to the RD talk page. If someone deletes a comment of yours and you disagree, don't re-add it without discussing it first. If someone asks you about a comment you made, think about modifying or deleting it. I would call this the "wiki" way. BE BOLD, but not reckless. I suggested a while ago we replace inappropriate comments with a template indicating a comment was deleted, but haven't gotten around to creating it yet. If folks are polite to each other, I don't see a particular need for such a template but if the notion of someone using their judgement to delete comments (and notifying the commenter) is simply abhorrent to the folks who frequent this page I'd be happy to create such a template. -- Rick Block ( talk) 00:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I am aware that they are too long. At the moment I am still trying to itemise and clarfiy all the points that were inclued in Tens version. Once we have completed clarifiction, it will be easy to see redundancies and eliminate them, but I dont want to start chopping things out just yet in case I throw out the baby.
I suspect the last section is where some major savings can be made, but I have not really started to clarify that bit yet! Bear with me, and of course please leave any comments on my edits here. 8-)-- Light current 14:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Am I the only one? The only one that thinks that this entire process is pretty much about whether or not the below exchange (from here) is appropriate?
I am overstating the case a bit. But again, I do not think that any policy re the desks can move forward until this issue is handled for once and for all, at least among ourselves. Above you see a harmless bit of banter. It does not insult women, gays, or Scientologists. It started with an on-topic reply, then continued with off-topic free-association and "harmless" plays on words and puns.
Stu, if you want to make any lists I think you would safe to put that threadlette on your page and classify us as thinking it appropriate (or OK), inappropriate, or undecided/neutral.
Personally, I have to come down on weak inappropriate. Not because I dislike banter. I LOVE banter. But so does just about everyone else here. The regulars. The lurkers. The n00bs. The saints. The dicks. We are all witty SOBs (and DOBs). So unless we want to open up every single question to multiple off-topic free-association and "harmless" plays on words and puns; if we do not want that (and I, for one, certainly don't) then we must deny it to all. That is only fair isn't it? That thread did not continue because, for one reason, lots of people here do not think adding to such is appropriate and we refrain from doing so.
Stu, what we really need is a "chat channel", or a back room, or some mechanism to have a sidebar chat while the question answering continues in the foreground. I don't think we are going to get that (laff). The next best thing we already have - our talk page. Here is my idea. If you want a side bar discussion then put a link in the main question like this
So, can I get agreement that there is a better way to handle our desire to have friends and make jokes than 1) inserting them willy-nilly in the answer stream, or 2) deleting them on sight? Can I get agreement that we need to fix this issue first? Because many of the people most invested in this process are also those most invested in their opinion on this question. I think I have a good compromise here. What do you think? Group hug!! -- Justanother 02:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
On the one hand, Justanother is right, this is pretty much the fundamental issue, and the borscht exchange is a very nice example. But on the other hand, I don't think we can decide these cases once and for all in isolation, and I think it sets up a false dichotomy to even try.
We are never going to have a guideline that says "no humor is allowed" or "all humor is allowed". It is always going to be something like "some humor is allowed, in moderation". But what does "in moderation" mean? It depends. For one thing, it depends on how many painful puns had already been posted on the Reference Desk that day in other threads... — Steve Summit ( talk) 03:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
The standard we decided on quite some time ago was that jokes and banter are OK, so long as they don't interfere with getting the correct answer. Thus, any jokes or banter inserted after a good answer is given, can't possibly interfere. Those inserted before, could, however, if the discussion moves on to a new topic, leaving the original question unanswered, with readers assuming it was answered, due to the length and number of "replies". I suggested adding a template like this when this happens:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
StuRat 15:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I think the fundamental issue we need to resolve is actually just how to reach a good-faith consensus. I hate polarizing the issue with boxes like this, but if for notational convenience we speak of the "banterers" and the "critics", we need to find a way for the banterers to say, "we agree that the banter can get out of hand, and we're going to try -- really try -- to keep it to an acceptable minimum", and have the critics believe it. We need to find a way for the critics to say, "we're not trying to take over the reference desk or put straitjackets on everyone or delete everything we don't like, we're just concerned about off-topic content which doesn't help the project, and may hurt", and have the banterers believe it. We need to make sure that the banterers won't take criticism of a borderline joke, or the occasional deletion of the occasional truly objectionable off-topic comment, as a personal attack or a call to arms. We need to make sure that the critics are seeing the big picture, are not out to "fix" every borderline case that happens to catch their eye. Most importantly, I think we need to have both sides (a) come to a pretty solid, shared, good-faith understanding (based on whatever guidelines we can come up with here) of what is and isn't appropriate, and (b) agree that polite critiques of borderline cases will be listened to and acted on, such that those polite critiques will be effective in affecting future Reference Desk content, such that polite critiques can be used instead of outright deletion. — Steve Summit ( talk) 04:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC) [edited 05:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)]
One sexist joke aimed at men is:
Grow your own dope: Plant a man!
Now I find the wordplay in this one very good. I have italicised the double entendre words for those from different countries. Im not offended by it at all. I (think) I know what women see as the male stereotype. Its not a problem to me.-- Light current 16:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman within one hundred miles to hear it.
Long pause
Is he still wrong?
I don't quite agree with this:
While I agree with the principle, I don't agree with the suggestion. Usually, when something is particularly easy to find, I don't provide a direct link to Google. I only offer a or several search term I used, which found the results. I do this because I feel when IMHO people are either being lazy or would gain something from learning that it's easier doing things themselves, it's better to provide an extra barrier so that they are more likely to read what's been said, and find out it's easier to do it themselves rather then waiting for people to provide them links so they can just happily click and get what they want. I know everyone is not going to agree but IMHO, there's nothing wrong with making it harder then it would be if they searched themselves.
To a greater extreme and this is going to be controversial, I have once or twice not provided any search terms. Instead, I just mentioned I searched and found the result (with perhaps some commentry of how easy it was). I only do this when the contributor claims to have spent a while searching, but the search term is so simple and obvious that the contributor is either lying or really, really doesn't know how to search. An example would be if the contributor asks, what's ABC and I search ABC and the result is the first or second result. (Actually I can only remember one specific example and in this case, the person claimed to be a college student as well so I felt there was no reason why they would have such greater difficulty searching and it was a homework question.). Some people would suggest it's better to ignore such people, IMHO it's better to basically tell them we read what you have to say, but we're not going to help you when you apparently can't be bothered helping yourself. Obviously this should be done with care keeping a decent level of civility but IMHO it's otherwise ok
Nil Einne 12:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I wrote the original guideline above. Now, I think that your idea of giving them search terms is good, with one possible problem: Different people apparently get different search results when using the same search criteria in Google. We weren't able to determine why this is true, but have verified that it is. Thus, saying "search for 'idiot Bush' and click on the second result", may give different sites for you and others. This is why I suggest linking to the search results list. Although, maybe this varies, as well; here is my search results for that search: [1]. I found 2,050,000 matches when not using any restrictions on language, filtering, etc. Does everyone else find the same number of results when doing the search on "idiot Bush" (no quotation marks) or when picking on my link ? Are your results presented in the same order as mine ? I've noticed that one's preference settings are applied to the search, even when picking a link, so maybe we still have a problem, even that way. It looks like we may have to give the actual site, if we can't rely on Google to always give the same list of sites. StuRat 14:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
What about Google Books, is there any way to link to a specific page with a URL which works for everyone? EricR 19:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
If it's really easy, what I do is give them the result link and drily comment "it was the first result for x on google" -- froth T C 19:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I keep hearing that "we need guidelines" to tell us specifically what's OK or not, because there's been such disagreement. Well, if we're miles apart on specific, actual cases, how the hell are we going to generalize this to a guideline that we agree on? I don't see how it can work, except by leaving the guideline vague. We already have the "have a sensible sense of humor" part of the guideline, which is good as far as it goes, in my opinion. So, I have a suggestion: for those that say it's not specific enough, I invite you to read that part of the guideline and think about it. And, whenever you're tempted to post a joke, read it and think about it again. I'm sure we're all reasonably smart people, and I'm confident that with only a little bit of effort, a reasonable adult can indeed display a "sensible sense of humor", if only they just try. Friday (talk) 15:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
A lot of people come to the Maths RD to ask for help, but they're not familiar with the TeX formula system we use so they put their maths into normal HTML. This is, however, horribly difficult to read. Are we allowed to edit the posts of others to convert complicated formulas to TeX so everyone can read them easier? Maelin ( Talk | Contribs) 03:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I really hope no one freaks out about this, but I've created a template that could be used when deleting an inappropriate comment. The idea is that a deletion would be indicated in the visible page, rather than a comment just vanishing. I'll add a comment below and delete it, just so folks can see the effect. The template is template:delcomment (usage indicated there) but I recommend no one use it before there's some discussion about it. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Looks good, but it should say something about why it was deleted, shouldn't it ? StuRat 14:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:delcomment|url=HTMLdifflink|Personal attack}}
expands to
I would expect that someone using this template might also notify the original poster of the comment; in some cases it might be better to expand on the reason semi-privately rather than start an argument on the Ref Desk. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 16:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I've now made the URL optional (I think, but it may not be working quite right yet) - it defaults to the diff of the edit that is removing the comment. The "reason" parameter defaults to "Inappropriate", so
{{subst:delcomment}}
expands to
(the link immediately above will be to the edit adding this comment).
I'm not exactly sure what Light Current's and StuRat's comments above mean. To clarify, I'm guessing the comments mean "sure, use this in cases where comments are being deleted but we still categorically oppose any unilateral deletion of comments except in the most extreme circumstances" as opposed to "use of this increases the transparency of deleting comments sufficiently to address our concerns about comment deletion". Per TenOfAllTrades's comment, any use of this template definitely should be accompanied by a notice on the poster's talk page. -- Rick Block ( talk) 17:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I like this template. Perhaps, if 1) everyone avoids deleting comments except when they're of great concern and (when necessary) uses this template for greater transparency, and 2) everyone does their best to keep posts mostly on-topic and avoids being offensive to no purpose, and 3) we all avoid making a big issue about occasional disagreements... then we have a solution that avoids edit wars and removes the need for giant arguments about the philosophy of the wiki. -- SCZenz 22:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Rick, I think I'm being a bit dense here. Do we have to put the URL or diff in manually of does it do it automatically? If the latter i can't get it to work any suggestions? David D. (Talk) 22:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:delcomment|url=http://...}}
To clarify my position: I like the template, but this in no way justifies unilateral deletions. With the exception of extremely disruptive posts (which prevent Wikipedia from functioning), all deletions must be based on consensus. Also, the author must be notified of every deletion, including extremely disruptive posts. StuRat 17:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
What do you'all think of the below for inclusion in our draft?
While some degree of off-topic banter is permissable, but not encouraged, in the responses to a question on the Reference Desk, any off-topic comment that might be offensive to the original poster or to a particular gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., e.g. jokes based on stereotypes, may be deleted if egregious or moved to the poster's talk page if not. Legitimate on-topic responses that fall under the above categories of potential offense must be in direct response to the question asked and must be sourced and not presented as the poster's opinion. Such sourced views are not to be presented for debate but so that the asker can see the various positions and come to his own conclusion.
I continue to try to fine-tune and find middle ground to what I consider the core debate. -- Justanother 17:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I hereby nominate "TenOfAllTrades" for draft co-ordinator. He would be responsible for making all changes to the draft based on the consensus(es?) that we reach here. I do this for a number of reasons:
1) It is disruptive to engage in edit-warring on the draft. We will never finish it that way.
2) Ten came up with the text that we are using as our rallying point.
3) StuRat was previously our draft co-ordinator but he seems to be involved in various disputes and, with due respect, seems to have a POV that there is a battle going on, and that POV is not conducive to developing consensus. I believe that Ten is a neutral party (or neutral enough) and sufficiently interested.
This is, of course, contingent on Ten's acceptance. If he accepts, he should probably work out the mechanics. -- Justanother 18:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
:If you are replying to me, please indent properly. The above is not a reply to my question.--
Light current 19:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's a perminant link to what were entitled the "archives" [2]. Please don't clutter up the guidelines with bits that have a 0% chance of ever being guidelines. Thanks! Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. They were put there for a reason, they should not be hidden away. StuRat 16:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I notice StuRat is repeatedly re-inserting the archives. But, I see that nobody has given a reason here why they're helpful. What's the deal? Friday (talk) 16:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
The following sentence was added to the "don't edit war" caution in the "Dealing with inappropriate questions and responses" section:
Not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but this could just as easily say:
I'd suggest we simply don't take sides here and either leave it the way it was, or say something a little more neutral like:
By "one revert" I mean don't re-add (without discussion) anything anyone deletes and don't re-delete (without discussion) anything anyone re-adds. I'll admit this rule superficially favors deletes over adds, but I'm assuming everyone understands deletes are never to be done without a good reason. IMO, if you add something that anyone feels strongly enough about to delete and you disagree, a discussion needs to happen. I notice there's nothing in this section about using template:delcomment. Do we want to suggest using this template here as well? -- Rick Block ( talk) 23:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with the idea that anyone can delete anything unilaterally "if they think it's a good idea", but that restoring the material requires a consensus. The deletion is the first revert of the original material, and it therefore needs a consensus. Restoring the deleted material is merely undoing the damage of the non-consensus deletion. One can assume that the original poster wouldn't have posted their contribution with the idea that it would be deleted. Therefore, there is one person in favor of keeping it and one against, hardly a consensus that justifies deletion. StuRat 16:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
StuRat and I got into a discussion of how comments whose correctness is challanged should be handled. I argue that if a question-answerer cannot provide a source for something they said upon request, they should either fix their comment or withdraw it. He argues that, to the contrary, the onus is on others to claim a statement is false.
Well, I double-checked what we do for articles, and Wikipedia:Verifiability says that (for articles) the onus is on someone adding information to source it—ideally when added, but in any case upon request. Is there any reason, given that we aspire to provide answers that are as accurate as the encyclopedia's articles, that Wikipedia:Verifiability should not apply to the reference desk as well? -- SCZenz 00:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I just reverted a bunch of edits to the guideline page by Light current. They generally took the form of changing or adding headings, re-ordering things, and consolidating text. I didn't think these changes added very much (if anything, it seemed a bit more confusing), and there was one very large concern: LC removed several nuanced passages and changed them to much shorter passages whose sense fits with how he thinks the ref desk ought to operate. At this stage, I think it's clear that if these guidelines are to work, they need a certain amount of nuance and compromise language... but of course I'm happy to discuss. -- SCZenz 00:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Since the discussion above has apparently become personal, can I ask other users to look at Lc's edits (he restored all of them)... I think he has removed a significant amount of hard work and good phrasing. -- SCZenz 01:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I am in the process of boiling down the guidelines to the essentials so that they can be discussed. There was a lot of repetition which I am removing. I am also attempting to condense the page as it was to long.
The process is nearly complete. Please bear with me. When Im satisfied with its length etc. I will invite other RD editors to discuss the whole thing to death and come to agreements on any necessary modification. Until then I would ask people just to let me get it into a a state where we can discuss it ,.Thanks. Remember, this is not the final version and any thing I have removed can be discussed for reinclusion (in the right paragraph of course) 8-)-- Light current 09:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
OK I have now basically completed the rewording etc that I thought was necessary. I was intending to have the deletion procedure incorporated as well but it has been removed twice by different editors, so I ll leave it out for now. I do think discussion is in order asto whether to have this procedure in or not. Any way, apart from the deletion procedure, it seems to contain all the points that were initially mentioned. (unless someone knows differrent) and so it is ready for the main discussion IMO. Over to you lot! 8-)-- Light current 13:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
The purpose section really needs defining properly so that we can all work to achieving the stated aims. One thing i found was :
(REf librarians) primary duty when they are at the desk is to help library users find what they are looking for.
Would that be our prime purpose also?-- Light current 14:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
List of things a real ref desk does (from our page)
Services that are often available at a library reference desk may include:
A sign up sheet for reserving time to use computers that have Internet access, or word processing software.
If a desired book has been checked out, one can place the book 'on hold', which prevents the person who has checked it out from renewing it, and the person who placed the 'hold' is notified when the book has been returned. (Some libraries provide this service at the circulation desk)
Interlibrary loan of books and other material from other branch libraries in the same library system, or from a cooperating library anywhere in the world. (Some libraries provide this service at the circulation desk)
- The opportunity to recommend that the library purchase something for its collection that it doesn't have, which may be needed or of interest to other library users.
The librarian who sits at the reference desk can usually do the following by virtue of their professional training and experience:
- The librarian can look up a brief, factual answer to a specific question.
- The librarian can use the catalogue to find out whether the library owns an item with a particular title or author, or that contains a short story, chapter, song, or poem with a particular title, or to compile a list of books by a particular author or on a particular subject.
- The librarian can briefly teach the user how to use the catalogue and how to use its advanced features, or recommend the proper subject words or terms that are used in the catalogue for the topic the user has in mind.
- The librarian can often take the library user directly to the shelves with books on a certain topic without using the catalogue.
- The librarian is familiar with the contents of hundreds of reference books, and can recommend books that might contain the answer to a particular question.
The librarian can teach the library user to use online databases such as magazine and newspaper articles, andrecommend words and search strategies for the topic the user has in mind.
- The librarian can recommend reliable web sites, give advice on searching the Internet for information, and evaluate the reliability of the information on web sites.
- If the library doesn't have information on a given topic, or if the library user wants more information, the librarian can refer the library user to another library or to an organization that can be contacted by phone or mail.
I have struck out what we cant or dont need to do. So maybe we should be doing all the rest? -- Light current 14:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
OK now translating the above into Wikipedia language we have:
Anyway those are my translations of the Ref Librarian tasks. Now which ones should we be doing or not doing? Im not fussy- I just want to know what the purpose of the Rds is.-- Light current 16:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
The librarian can look up a brief, factual answer to a specific question. 8-)-- Light current 16:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Can I make an appeal to ALL interested parties to consider carefully and comment on both the desired purpose of the RDs (options above) and the draft guidelines which I have basically finished messing with (for now).
I think the former is more important as, without knowing our purpose, it will be rather difficult stating how we are going to achieve it. So over to you again! -- Light current 16:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Why is Australia named Australia . What does the word mean. Where did it come from.
I have reposted this question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Australia where you are more likely to get a good answer. David D. (Talk) 19:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
By the way, wikipedians, don't remove this so the OP can find the redirect if they bookmarked this page. -- froth T C 05:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The goal of this guideline is to provide a brightline test such that troll-enabling refdeks chatters can try to drive off people who believe in WP:ENC. It will never pass muster. Unless someone can demonstrate that the guideline will not be used to enable bad behavior, it is clearly rejected. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't see that people misunderstanding/misusing guidelines means that the guidelines aren't good- I see it rather as a sign of a problem editor. Heck, there's long-standing and widely-accepted consensus about a lot of things that editors often ignore. In other words, if editors refuse to do things the "wiki way", this doesn't mean the wiki way is what's broken. Friday (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Unsurprisingly, the debate over Reference Desk guidelines is also raging on talk pages other than this one. In particular, here are two "position statements" from elsewhere which probably belong here. When I have time, I'll see how compatible they are with the evolving guidelines, and perhaps try to integrate them with the evolving guidelines (unless someone beats me to it...). — Steve Summit ( talk) 17:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
[This is from Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#"on Holy Wars, and a plea for peace", and it's possible that further discussion on these ideas has occurred there.]
I think we all have to agree on five things going forward.
If everybody can unreservedly agree to all five of these, I think we have a decent chance of putting all the acrimony behind us, and moving forward with Reference Desks we can all enjoy and be proud of. The various policies and agreements do not absolutely guarantee perfectly harmonious success -- nothing on this vale of tears can ever guarantee that -- but they should be workable, and we should be able to understand and deal with any exceptions as they arise.
In particular, here are two exceptions that might arise, and how we might deal with them.
I've got some more to say on this, but that's enough from me for now. — Steve Summit ( talk) 05:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
[This is from Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/StuRat 2#TenOfAllTrades' response, and it's possible that further discussion on these ideas has occurred there.]
Here's a quick-and-dirty sketch of where I stand.
TenOfAllTrades( talk) 17:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with these statements, but I still see a problem: The people giving these well-reasoned statements don't really need a guideline- they already understand what to do here. The folks that maybe do need a guideline probably won't benefit from one, because they really need a set of exact, strict rules. Maybe I'm saying nothing more than "interpret all rules" and "use common sense", but some editors here seem unwilling to accept those longstanding traditions. Friday (talk) 17:20, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
These statements are good. Certainly my hobby horse is fully addressed by number 6. With respect to humour, i agree a bit is great. But when it descends into crudity that is where i draw the line. It's not that I'm a prude, but that type of humour has no place on a ref desk, or wikipedia for that matter. There are much better forums for such humour. With such guidelines in place and with the regulars leading the way by example, there is a good chance that answers never have to be deleted. Then the only issue is the blatantly disruptive questions. Best case scenario is, if in doubt, ignore it. If trollish questions get no answers then they'll give up and move on to more fertile hunting grounds. David D. (Talk) 20:02, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
This para in the guidelines is very weak ATM IMO. If we can get a consensus on the purpose of the RDs , then I feel everything else will fall into place. So... what do we want the RDs to do?-- Light current 01:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
The two items currently listed are good, but the order should be reversed. Our primary goal should be to provide answers. StuRat 04:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Seems like editing has slowed down a bit on this proposal. I know I was one who expressed initial skepticism that a guideline was needed or helpful, but what we've got here is pretty sensible in my opinion. Thanks to everyone who has worked on this. Friday (talk) 06:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
See Reference desk to see what a real library does.-- Light current 18:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I think there's a generally-accepted idea that good-faith contributors using reasonable judgment are given pretty wide latitude on the ref desk. What I mean is, while we say "don't ignore WP:NOR", we also aren't really hurt by questions like "How much do cheeseburgers cost in your town?" or "How common is this slang usage?" Such questions are generally asking for people to answer based on their own experiences. These questions aren't really what a reference desk is meant for, but I doubt most people would want to remove them, either. To me, these kinds of questions are more acceptable than "Will gay people get into heaven?" which should be answered with great care to not let it turn into a big, potentially ugly, debate.
So, my question is.. should the guideline try to talk about this sort of latitude? Or, is this sort of thing better left unsaid, since it's taken as "understood" by responsible contributors? Friday (talk) 15:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
In answer to Friday's original question: it's a tough call. On the one hand, I agree that a certain amount of "nudge nudge, wink, wink" is appropriate in a guideline like this. But on the other hand, I'd really like it if whatever guidelines we came up with could be well and truly agreed to and accepted in genuinely good faith by both (all?) sides of the recent debates. Given the tenor of the debate, however, it's clear that if our guidelines seem (as written) to too-strictly disallow things like speculation, research, or even the occasional opinion, some of our regular contributors are going to reject the guidelines out of hand, and the consequences then (if the guidelines were otherwise adopted) could be even uglier than they are now.
With that said, though, I don't know how to achieve the right balance between de jure guidelines and de facto accepted practice, and although I've been reluctant to admit this, it's quite possible that (given the willful truculence of some participants) a perfect balance may not be possible. — Steve Summit ( talk) 13:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
The following is a proposed addition to the RD guidlines. Most of the proposed guidlines were originally compiled by TenOfAllTrades. I want to see if we have consensus on these issues before I post the guidlines on the policy page. The guidlines assume that we (at least most of us) agree that medical advice should not be allowed on the RD. — LestatdeLioncour t 17:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Are we also going to have guidelines for:
etc, etc, etc, etc, etc ?-- Light current 00:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Any posted comment containing a diagnosis, a prognosis based on that diagnosis, or a suggested form of treatment or cure, in response to symptoms presented in a question, is considered medical advice.
The "page in a nutshell" box states that the NOR rule generally applies to the RD like the rest of the project. But the only discussion I've seen on that on this page is it being nice under certain circumstances.. definately not the absolute rule it is in the mainspace. Original research is extremely important to the RD, I don't like how that's mentioned as one of the big three in the page in a nutshell. And as for verifiability.. heh. I'd encourage you to check out the computing RD. In computing, "common knowledge" is basically the most authoritative answer possible since things tend to be.. extensively memorized by everyone :) -- froth T 08:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I have added the medical advice section into the guideline page, with an intro of my own divising. What do you think? -- SCZenz 13:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
The RD talk page has a link to these guidelines, with the line "We are currently drafting a proposal". Is this still correct? Are these guidelines still in draft form? If not, someone should remove the line. -- Richardrj talk email 09:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I've changed the header template from guideline to No-consensus. For the most part, contributors to the desks are simply ignoring this document.— eric 16:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
{{
historical}}
. It is not clear that the change from "proposed" to "guideline" reflected consensus, but the discussion has not died out, so "historical page" is not the right label. I've gone back to {{
proposed}}
. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
I made a change to reflect what people do in real life, and what was being said on the talk page. It was reverted. IMO the requirement of notifying people on user talk page is 1) never going to be followed in real life and 2) not a reasonable demand to make anyway. Now, hopefully people will get the idea what the ref desk is for, and removing people's comments will not be common, but we should do it like it's done on the entire rest of Wikipedia. This means people may explain in the edit summary, on the ref desk talk page, or in user talk. I see user talk as mainly for people who do this regularly and therefore it's a user conduct issue. Thoughts? Friday (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed a lot of ill-informed or outright wrong answers being given on the RDs when the correct answer is a simple Google search away.
Should we address this somehow in the guidelines? -- Mwalcoff 01:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I propose that we simplify the (draft) guidelines by considering them to be guidelines for the volunteers who are answering the questions. Rationale:
What do people think? -- Lambiam Talk 18:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
What is going on here: A lot of work was done (in large part by StuRat) in developing two pages; /rules and /guideline. There was accusation of POV-forking. Then TenOfAllTrades developed a draft based in the previous work and discussions. There was consensus that that draft would be an appropriate continuation. To that end, and to prevent discussion of the same topic, proposed RD policy, taking place in multiple locations, I am bringing it all here. The /rule and /guideline are archived here for reference only. Please do not edit those. The Ten draft can and should be edited.
Please discuss edits only on the associated talk page, Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/guidelines. -- Justanother 15:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
This page is divided up as follows.
Obviously in its current format it's unsuitable for direct placement on the Ref Desk. Further discussion is needed and welcomed about how these guidelines should be incorporated into our existing framework, and what changes or additions are needed.
I'm keeping this in my userspace for now because I'm trying to keep a lid on any potential edit warring over this content. By all means direct brickbats, kudos, and suggestions to the talk page, and we'll see if we can synthesize something useful.
The purpose of this page is to present what I think is a reasonable (and close-to-consensus) view of the purpose and philosophy of the Reference Desk, as well as some guidelines for users and contributors that I think fall naturally from that philosophy. Note that I am not addressing enforcement mechanisms at the moment.
We need to be clearer about what kind of "sense of community" we're trying to promote. Enhancing the Wikipedia community mostly means being good to newbies and showing them how we do things here, and of course that's great. However, conversation and chatting mostly just promotes camraderie for a subset of the ref desk regulars—and I'm not sure the ref desk should be for that purpose. Consider the recent issues with Wikipedia:Esperanza, which was strongly requested by outside users to modify their structure, because they were developing their own community to the exclusion of the Wikipedia community. -- SCZenz 17:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
The "sense of community" is facilitated by allowing conversations, not just curt, factual answers. This includes conversation not only with the question asker, but between responders and others who want to join the conversation. This may also lead to some drift from the original topic, which is OK, so long as the question itself is addressed. Here is a good example: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Parasitic_Worm. StuRat 18:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
The problem with "Wikipedia community" is that its so nebulous, there's little agreement on it. I (and, from what I can see, others) have purposely gone out of my way to avoid being part of a "community", because I strongly feel that a shared goal is enough, and no other sense of "community" is needed. Indeed, in many cases, the "community" gets in the way of the shared goal. Now, I'm not going to run around trying to prevent people from feeling like they're part of a community, but I sure won't encourage this, either. So, in short- we're introducing needless complication by introducing this concept here. If people want to debate the merits of community, let them do it at Esperanza or Wikipedia:Community or elsewhere. There's no need to tack the notion of community onto the reference desk, any moreso than any other project page. We have enough work to do on this guideline without expanding its scope needlessly. Friday (talk) 18:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
This is going to be a big point of contention, but we might as well start. I disagree with this addition. Personal opinions should certainly be avoided on clearly factual questions, and it is better to turn opinion questions into factual questions whenever possible. I'm not interested in focusing on what's "permitted," but this guideline should not say anywhere that giving opinions is "encouraged." -- SCZenz 18:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Stu, what do you object to in my edit. I am sure we can accomodate your concerns. -- Justanother 19:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Until we see some agreement that it belongs, I'm against the re-addition of language saying that personal opinions are encouraged. So far the talk page discussion leans that way too, so I'm not sure why we'd think this removed was caused by an accident of software. Friday (talk) 19:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's my take on opinions. (This is a continuation of some thoughts begun here and here.)
In general, I think we should discourage matters of opinion, both in questions and in answers. Wikipedia tends to favor objective scientific fact, and it definitely disfavors P's OV, and opinions are obviously P's OV. If nothing else, discussions about matters of opinion tend to degenerate into long debates, not the succinct, fact-based question-answering that the RD is supposed to be.
Now, with that said, and before someone takes my head off, I hasten to add that I do not think we should disallow all opinions. I do not think that our discouragement to questioners should be as harshly worded as the "While we have opinions, we're not going to tell you what they are, so don't ask for them", which once appeared on Wikipedia:Reference_desk/guideline. And I think that, under some circumstances, answers which merely supply opinions, or which speculate in a sort of armchairey way (i.e. by doing something other than coldly citing elsewhere-published factual answers) are perfectly appropriate. And I think it's useful to explore when opinions aren't and are useful (which I will now do, in an opinionated, armchair-speculationey sort of way).
First, some questions just clearly aren't worth trying to answer.
The Reference Desk, I think it's safe to say, is not an opinion poll. Reference Desk contributors are valued (and queried) for their knowledge and expertise, not for their random opinions. There may be places on the net to debate these imponderable questions, but the Wikipedia Reference Desk is not it. (Although with that said, it turns out that my third hypothetical question does have a definitive answer, which you can read about on slashdot.)
One reason pure-opinion questions aren't appropriate for the Reference Desk is that there's nothing special about Reference Desk answerers which qualifies them to answer such questions. You could walk down the street asking random strangers what their favorite color was, and you'd get the same selection of answers with precisely the same authority.
Contrariwise, I think it's acceptable for Reference Desk answerers to offer opinion when doing so definitely adds something of value to the discussion, when the opinion has some value beyond "I'm a person and I have it". If the question being asked doesn't have a definitive answer, and you know that it doesn't, your informed opinion may be valuable. If the question being asked involves some particular aspect or nuance of an otherwise objective fact, such as "how do I explain X to someone who believes Y", speculation on the Reference Desk may be appropriate.
Two examples, one con, one pro:
You may disagree with the specific criteria or examples I've suggested here, but the broader issues I've raised are, I think, relevant. Even so, though, the "guidelines" I've suggested here are quite loose, and require quite a bit of thinking and (possibly opinionated) interpretation themselves. (Which is why they're not even guidelines.) But I don't see any way around this. If opinions are going to be tolerated at all, and if their use is not going to regularly trigger long, rambling, speculative, opinionated debates, people have to be circumspect about posting them, have to really think about their particular opinion and its relation to the particular issue. People can't just say, "Oh, I'm an intelligent person and this is an interesting question and I'm in a posting mood today so I'll just spout whatever's on my mind." You have to know enough about the issue to know whether or not there are people who know more about it than you do.
In the end, the guidelines for posting opinion may end up being quite similar to the guidelines for posting humor: "in moderation, and only when it contributes to the discussion".
— Steve Summit ( talk) 05:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
If someone adds something, and someone else disagrees strongly enough to remove it, it's generally bad form to just re-add it. So I ask everyone to edit conservatively in this regard. Friday (talk) 19:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Do the schmucks who go around deleting good-faith questions and answers not realize what major pricks they are? -- Nelson Ricardo 19:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that unwarranted deletions performed in an inappropriate manner have been a problem. You might want to review the proposed rules for deletion here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/guidelines#Deletion and tell us if you agree with them. StuRat 20:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines.
I just browsed through it, reading all the interesting bits. As close as I can figure, it's perfect. Absolutely not a trace of 'uptightness' or 'ruleslawyerness', which is good. :)
And reading it a second time -- it's actually good for a laugh as well. Vranak 21:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
This needs to be sorted out here; we don't need to have a confusion on the page itself.
While all editors agree that the reference desk's primary purpose is to be informative, there are differences of opinion regarding whether the reference desk should focus solely on encyclopedic information, or whether any and all information is fair game. One could argue that WP:V and WP:NOR are less important here, since the reference desk is not in 'article space'.
-- Justanother 23:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
-- Light current 03:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Realised that we should split these as it is responses by RD "staff" that are deserving of full user talk page process, not inappropriate questions. Questions would only go to the RD talk page if there is a dispute about inclusion in which case it stays in until settled. -- Justanother 04:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I've got a problem with the latest draft of this page... the line "Something like half of people in the United States still go online using a dial-up modem. This fraction is lower in Western Europe and Canada, and higher in many other places." is completely unsourced. This is Wikipedia, we have to cite sources for everything. And "Something like" is a weasel word too, I think. This is horrible writing for Wikipedia and has no place here! [The preceeding comment is meant to be taken entirely tongue in cheek... I think the current draft is great, and hopefully we can get enough people to agree to it to put all this debating behind us] -- Maelwys 13:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
The guidelines as I write these words are very, very lengthy. The result of much wikilawyering, I guess. I absolutely cannot be bothered to read them... and I'm actually interested. Which leads me to ask what is the purpose of them. Is it to help newbies understand the Ref Desks (in which case, IMHO they currently fail utterly and completely) or is it so that regulars have a stick with which to bash people should they contravene the guidelines (in which case, they're probably succeeding beautifully)? -- Dweller 13:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Is the most important. And here it is:
This strikes me as perhaps a touch zealous and cult-ish. Thoughts? Vranak
Is now
The primary purpose of the desks is to provide improvement of, and access to, the encyclopedia.
How about something like,
To provide information not readily found in, or not neccessarily befitting, the Wikipedian encyclopedia
Though this sort of negativistic definition probably won't sit well, it's probably more accurate to what the RD is used for currently.
At any rate I'd suggest trimming down Desks to Desk; it sounds better. Vranak 03:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
How about:
Its purpose is to provide guidance in using the encyclopedia and to help improve its quality and keep it updated by reader/user feeback.
OR
Its purpose is also to attempt to make available to readers information that has been omitted from the encyclopedia for some reason.
-- Light current 09:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I am just going to come out and say it: the first four points don't say much at all. I mean, the spirit of what is being said is quite correct, but the way that it's said leaves me a bit confused... and the word gobbledegook comes to mind.
And yes, after complaining three times, I should really have a go myself. But I consider myself a bit of a Wikipedian radical, so I shouldn't be messing around with official policy. Vranak 16:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
You might want to scratch point three, but honestly, it is a de-facto feature of the RD. Vranak 18:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Someone emasculated this section since yesterday (specifically, since this revision). I don't have time to fix or discuss it and won't for several days, but I wanted to register my disapproval. In particular, saying "Inappropriate questions and responses on the desk should be removed through the normal wiki editing process" is not adequate. It was an assmption that the "normal wiki editing process" could be used, without further interpretation, to address content disputes on the Reference Desk that caused all the infighting that led to the attempt to craft these guidelines to clarify things. But this guideline's current wording doesn't clarify anything. — Steve Summit ( talk) 13:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I think there are two responses possible for inappropriate comments, and it is a matter of judgement which to use when:
Any disagreement about a specific comment should be resolved on the commenter's talk page, and if either party is unsatisfied with the resolution the issue should be brought to the RD talk page. If someone deletes a comment of yours and you disagree, don't re-add it without discussing it first. If someone asks you about a comment you made, think about modifying or deleting it. I would call this the "wiki" way. BE BOLD, but not reckless. I suggested a while ago we replace inappropriate comments with a template indicating a comment was deleted, but haven't gotten around to creating it yet. If folks are polite to each other, I don't see a particular need for such a template but if the notion of someone using their judgement to delete comments (and notifying the commenter) is simply abhorrent to the folks who frequent this page I'd be happy to create such a template. -- Rick Block ( talk) 00:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I am aware that they are too long. At the moment I am still trying to itemise and clarfiy all the points that were inclued in Tens version. Once we have completed clarifiction, it will be easy to see redundancies and eliminate them, but I dont want to start chopping things out just yet in case I throw out the baby.
I suspect the last section is where some major savings can be made, but I have not really started to clarify that bit yet! Bear with me, and of course please leave any comments on my edits here. 8-)-- Light current 14:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Am I the only one? The only one that thinks that this entire process is pretty much about whether or not the below exchange (from here) is appropriate?
I am overstating the case a bit. But again, I do not think that any policy re the desks can move forward until this issue is handled for once and for all, at least among ourselves. Above you see a harmless bit of banter. It does not insult women, gays, or Scientologists. It started with an on-topic reply, then continued with off-topic free-association and "harmless" plays on words and puns.
Stu, if you want to make any lists I think you would safe to put that threadlette on your page and classify us as thinking it appropriate (or OK), inappropriate, or undecided/neutral.
Personally, I have to come down on weak inappropriate. Not because I dislike banter. I LOVE banter. But so does just about everyone else here. The regulars. The lurkers. The n00bs. The saints. The dicks. We are all witty SOBs (and DOBs). So unless we want to open up every single question to multiple off-topic free-association and "harmless" plays on words and puns; if we do not want that (and I, for one, certainly don't) then we must deny it to all. That is only fair isn't it? That thread did not continue because, for one reason, lots of people here do not think adding to such is appropriate and we refrain from doing so.
Stu, what we really need is a "chat channel", or a back room, or some mechanism to have a sidebar chat while the question answering continues in the foreground. I don't think we are going to get that (laff). The next best thing we already have - our talk page. Here is my idea. If you want a side bar discussion then put a link in the main question like this
So, can I get agreement that there is a better way to handle our desire to have friends and make jokes than 1) inserting them willy-nilly in the answer stream, or 2) deleting them on sight? Can I get agreement that we need to fix this issue first? Because many of the people most invested in this process are also those most invested in their opinion on this question. I think I have a good compromise here. What do you think? Group hug!! -- Justanother 02:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
On the one hand, Justanother is right, this is pretty much the fundamental issue, and the borscht exchange is a very nice example. But on the other hand, I don't think we can decide these cases once and for all in isolation, and I think it sets up a false dichotomy to even try.
We are never going to have a guideline that says "no humor is allowed" or "all humor is allowed". It is always going to be something like "some humor is allowed, in moderation". But what does "in moderation" mean? It depends. For one thing, it depends on how many painful puns had already been posted on the Reference Desk that day in other threads... — Steve Summit ( talk) 03:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
The standard we decided on quite some time ago was that jokes and banter are OK, so long as they don't interfere with getting the correct answer. Thus, any jokes or banter inserted after a good answer is given, can't possibly interfere. Those inserted before, could, however, if the discussion moves on to a new topic, leaving the original question unanswered, with readers assuming it was answered, due to the length and number of "replies". I suggested adding a template like this when this happens:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
StuRat 15:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I think the fundamental issue we need to resolve is actually just how to reach a good-faith consensus. I hate polarizing the issue with boxes like this, but if for notational convenience we speak of the "banterers" and the "critics", we need to find a way for the banterers to say, "we agree that the banter can get out of hand, and we're going to try -- really try -- to keep it to an acceptable minimum", and have the critics believe it. We need to find a way for the critics to say, "we're not trying to take over the reference desk or put straitjackets on everyone or delete everything we don't like, we're just concerned about off-topic content which doesn't help the project, and may hurt", and have the banterers believe it. We need to make sure that the banterers won't take criticism of a borderline joke, or the occasional deletion of the occasional truly objectionable off-topic comment, as a personal attack or a call to arms. We need to make sure that the critics are seeing the big picture, are not out to "fix" every borderline case that happens to catch their eye. Most importantly, I think we need to have both sides (a) come to a pretty solid, shared, good-faith understanding (based on whatever guidelines we can come up with here) of what is and isn't appropriate, and (b) agree that polite critiques of borderline cases will be listened to and acted on, such that those polite critiques will be effective in affecting future Reference Desk content, such that polite critiques can be used instead of outright deletion. — Steve Summit ( talk) 04:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC) [edited 05:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)]
One sexist joke aimed at men is:
Grow your own dope: Plant a man!
Now I find the wordplay in this one very good. I have italicised the double entendre words for those from different countries. Im not offended by it at all. I (think) I know what women see as the male stereotype. Its not a problem to me.-- Light current 16:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman within one hundred miles to hear it.
Long pause
Is he still wrong?
I don't quite agree with this:
While I agree with the principle, I don't agree with the suggestion. Usually, when something is particularly easy to find, I don't provide a direct link to Google. I only offer a or several search term I used, which found the results. I do this because I feel when IMHO people are either being lazy or would gain something from learning that it's easier doing things themselves, it's better to provide an extra barrier so that they are more likely to read what's been said, and find out it's easier to do it themselves rather then waiting for people to provide them links so they can just happily click and get what they want. I know everyone is not going to agree but IMHO, there's nothing wrong with making it harder then it would be if they searched themselves.
To a greater extreme and this is going to be controversial, I have once or twice not provided any search terms. Instead, I just mentioned I searched and found the result (with perhaps some commentry of how easy it was). I only do this when the contributor claims to have spent a while searching, but the search term is so simple and obvious that the contributor is either lying or really, really doesn't know how to search. An example would be if the contributor asks, what's ABC and I search ABC and the result is the first or second result. (Actually I can only remember one specific example and in this case, the person claimed to be a college student as well so I felt there was no reason why they would have such greater difficulty searching and it was a homework question.). Some people would suggest it's better to ignore such people, IMHO it's better to basically tell them we read what you have to say, but we're not going to help you when you apparently can't be bothered helping yourself. Obviously this should be done with care keeping a decent level of civility but IMHO it's otherwise ok
Nil Einne 12:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I wrote the original guideline above. Now, I think that your idea of giving them search terms is good, with one possible problem: Different people apparently get different search results when using the same search criteria in Google. We weren't able to determine why this is true, but have verified that it is. Thus, saying "search for 'idiot Bush' and click on the second result", may give different sites for you and others. This is why I suggest linking to the search results list. Although, maybe this varies, as well; here is my search results for that search: [1]. I found 2,050,000 matches when not using any restrictions on language, filtering, etc. Does everyone else find the same number of results when doing the search on "idiot Bush" (no quotation marks) or when picking on my link ? Are your results presented in the same order as mine ? I've noticed that one's preference settings are applied to the search, even when picking a link, so maybe we still have a problem, even that way. It looks like we may have to give the actual site, if we can't rely on Google to always give the same list of sites. StuRat 14:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
What about Google Books, is there any way to link to a specific page with a URL which works for everyone? EricR 19:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
If it's really easy, what I do is give them the result link and drily comment "it was the first result for x on google" -- froth T C 19:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I keep hearing that "we need guidelines" to tell us specifically what's OK or not, because there's been such disagreement. Well, if we're miles apart on specific, actual cases, how the hell are we going to generalize this to a guideline that we agree on? I don't see how it can work, except by leaving the guideline vague. We already have the "have a sensible sense of humor" part of the guideline, which is good as far as it goes, in my opinion. So, I have a suggestion: for those that say it's not specific enough, I invite you to read that part of the guideline and think about it. And, whenever you're tempted to post a joke, read it and think about it again. I'm sure we're all reasonably smart people, and I'm confident that with only a little bit of effort, a reasonable adult can indeed display a "sensible sense of humor", if only they just try. Friday (talk) 15:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
A lot of people come to the Maths RD to ask for help, but they're not familiar with the TeX formula system we use so they put their maths into normal HTML. This is, however, horribly difficult to read. Are we allowed to edit the posts of others to convert complicated formulas to TeX so everyone can read them easier? Maelin ( Talk | Contribs) 03:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I really hope no one freaks out about this, but I've created a template that could be used when deleting an inappropriate comment. The idea is that a deletion would be indicated in the visible page, rather than a comment just vanishing. I'll add a comment below and delete it, just so folks can see the effect. The template is template:delcomment (usage indicated there) but I recommend no one use it before there's some discussion about it. -- Rick Block ( talk) 03:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Looks good, but it should say something about why it was deleted, shouldn't it ? StuRat 14:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:delcomment|url=HTMLdifflink|Personal attack}}
expands to
I would expect that someone using this template might also notify the original poster of the comment; in some cases it might be better to expand on the reason semi-privately rather than start an argument on the Ref Desk. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 16:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I've now made the URL optional (I think, but it may not be working quite right yet) - it defaults to the diff of the edit that is removing the comment. The "reason" parameter defaults to "Inappropriate", so
{{subst:delcomment}}
expands to
(the link immediately above will be to the edit adding this comment).
I'm not exactly sure what Light Current's and StuRat's comments above mean. To clarify, I'm guessing the comments mean "sure, use this in cases where comments are being deleted but we still categorically oppose any unilateral deletion of comments except in the most extreme circumstances" as opposed to "use of this increases the transparency of deleting comments sufficiently to address our concerns about comment deletion". Per TenOfAllTrades's comment, any use of this template definitely should be accompanied by a notice on the poster's talk page. -- Rick Block ( talk) 17:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I like this template. Perhaps, if 1) everyone avoids deleting comments except when they're of great concern and (when necessary) uses this template for greater transparency, and 2) everyone does their best to keep posts mostly on-topic and avoids being offensive to no purpose, and 3) we all avoid making a big issue about occasional disagreements... then we have a solution that avoids edit wars and removes the need for giant arguments about the philosophy of the wiki. -- SCZenz 22:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Rick, I think I'm being a bit dense here. Do we have to put the URL or diff in manually of does it do it automatically? If the latter i can't get it to work any suggestions? David D. (Talk) 22:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:delcomment|url=http://...}}
To clarify my position: I like the template, but this in no way justifies unilateral deletions. With the exception of extremely disruptive posts (which prevent Wikipedia from functioning), all deletions must be based on consensus. Also, the author must be notified of every deletion, including extremely disruptive posts. StuRat 17:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
What do you'all think of the below for inclusion in our draft?
While some degree of off-topic banter is permissable, but not encouraged, in the responses to a question on the Reference Desk, any off-topic comment that might be offensive to the original poster or to a particular gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., e.g. jokes based on stereotypes, may be deleted if egregious or moved to the poster's talk page if not. Legitimate on-topic responses that fall under the above categories of potential offense must be in direct response to the question asked and must be sourced and not presented as the poster's opinion. Such sourced views are not to be presented for debate but so that the asker can see the various positions and come to his own conclusion.
I continue to try to fine-tune and find middle ground to what I consider the core debate. -- Justanother 17:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I hereby nominate "TenOfAllTrades" for draft co-ordinator. He would be responsible for making all changes to the draft based on the consensus(es?) that we reach here. I do this for a number of reasons:
1) It is disruptive to engage in edit-warring on the draft. We will never finish it that way.
2) Ten came up with the text that we are using as our rallying point.
3) StuRat was previously our draft co-ordinator but he seems to be involved in various disputes and, with due respect, seems to have a POV that there is a battle going on, and that POV is not conducive to developing consensus. I believe that Ten is a neutral party (or neutral enough) and sufficiently interested.
This is, of course, contingent on Ten's acceptance. If he accepts, he should probably work out the mechanics. -- Justanother 18:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
:If you are replying to me, please indent properly. The above is not a reply to my question.--
Light current 19:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's a perminant link to what were entitled the "archives" [2]. Please don't clutter up the guidelines with bits that have a 0% chance of ever being guidelines. Thanks! Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. They were put there for a reason, they should not be hidden away. StuRat 16:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I notice StuRat is repeatedly re-inserting the archives. But, I see that nobody has given a reason here why they're helpful. What's the deal? Friday (talk) 16:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
The following sentence was added to the "don't edit war" caution in the "Dealing with inappropriate questions and responses" section:
Not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but this could just as easily say:
I'd suggest we simply don't take sides here and either leave it the way it was, or say something a little more neutral like:
By "one revert" I mean don't re-add (without discussion) anything anyone deletes and don't re-delete (without discussion) anything anyone re-adds. I'll admit this rule superficially favors deletes over adds, but I'm assuming everyone understands deletes are never to be done without a good reason. IMO, if you add something that anyone feels strongly enough about to delete and you disagree, a discussion needs to happen. I notice there's nothing in this section about using template:delcomment. Do we want to suggest using this template here as well? -- Rick Block ( talk) 23:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with the idea that anyone can delete anything unilaterally "if they think it's a good idea", but that restoring the material requires a consensus. The deletion is the first revert of the original material, and it therefore needs a consensus. Restoring the deleted material is merely undoing the damage of the non-consensus deletion. One can assume that the original poster wouldn't have posted their contribution with the idea that it would be deleted. Therefore, there is one person in favor of keeping it and one against, hardly a consensus that justifies deletion. StuRat 16:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
StuRat and I got into a discussion of how comments whose correctness is challanged should be handled. I argue that if a question-answerer cannot provide a source for something they said upon request, they should either fix their comment or withdraw it. He argues that, to the contrary, the onus is on others to claim a statement is false.
Well, I double-checked what we do for articles, and Wikipedia:Verifiability says that (for articles) the onus is on someone adding information to source it—ideally when added, but in any case upon request. Is there any reason, given that we aspire to provide answers that are as accurate as the encyclopedia's articles, that Wikipedia:Verifiability should not apply to the reference desk as well? -- SCZenz 00:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I just reverted a bunch of edits to the guideline page by Light current. They generally took the form of changing or adding headings, re-ordering things, and consolidating text. I didn't think these changes added very much (if anything, it seemed a bit more confusing), and there was one very large concern: LC removed several nuanced passages and changed them to much shorter passages whose sense fits with how he thinks the ref desk ought to operate. At this stage, I think it's clear that if these guidelines are to work, they need a certain amount of nuance and compromise language... but of course I'm happy to discuss. -- SCZenz 00:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Since the discussion above has apparently become personal, can I ask other users to look at Lc's edits (he restored all of them)... I think he has removed a significant amount of hard work and good phrasing. -- SCZenz 01:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I am in the process of boiling down the guidelines to the essentials so that they can be discussed. There was a lot of repetition which I am removing. I am also attempting to condense the page as it was to long.
The process is nearly complete. Please bear with me. When Im satisfied with its length etc. I will invite other RD editors to discuss the whole thing to death and come to agreements on any necessary modification. Until then I would ask people just to let me get it into a a state where we can discuss it ,.Thanks. Remember, this is not the final version and any thing I have removed can be discussed for reinclusion (in the right paragraph of course) 8-)-- Light current 09:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
OK I have now basically completed the rewording etc that I thought was necessary. I was intending to have the deletion procedure incorporated as well but it has been removed twice by different editors, so I ll leave it out for now. I do think discussion is in order asto whether to have this procedure in or not. Any way, apart from the deletion procedure, it seems to contain all the points that were initially mentioned. (unless someone knows differrent) and so it is ready for the main discussion IMO. Over to you lot! 8-)-- Light current 13:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
The purpose section really needs defining properly so that we can all work to achieving the stated aims. One thing i found was :
(REf librarians) primary duty when they are at the desk is to help library users find what they are looking for.
Would that be our prime purpose also?-- Light current 14:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
List of things a real ref desk does (from our page)
Services that are often available at a library reference desk may include:
A sign up sheet for reserving time to use computers that have Internet access, or word processing software.
If a desired book has been checked out, one can place the book 'on hold', which prevents the person who has checked it out from renewing it, and the person who placed the 'hold' is notified when the book has been returned. (Some libraries provide this service at the circulation desk)
Interlibrary loan of books and other material from other branch libraries in the same library system, or from a cooperating library anywhere in the world. (Some libraries provide this service at the circulation desk)
- The opportunity to recommend that the library purchase something for its collection that it doesn't have, which may be needed or of interest to other library users.
The librarian who sits at the reference desk can usually do the following by virtue of their professional training and experience:
- The librarian can look up a brief, factual answer to a specific question.
- The librarian can use the catalogue to find out whether the library owns an item with a particular title or author, or that contains a short story, chapter, song, or poem with a particular title, or to compile a list of books by a particular author or on a particular subject.
- The librarian can briefly teach the user how to use the catalogue and how to use its advanced features, or recommend the proper subject words or terms that are used in the catalogue for the topic the user has in mind.
- The librarian can often take the library user directly to the shelves with books on a certain topic without using the catalogue.
- The librarian is familiar with the contents of hundreds of reference books, and can recommend books that might contain the answer to a particular question.
The librarian can teach the library user to use online databases such as magazine and newspaper articles, andrecommend words and search strategies for the topic the user has in mind.
- The librarian can recommend reliable web sites, give advice on searching the Internet for information, and evaluate the reliability of the information on web sites.
- If the library doesn't have information on a given topic, or if the library user wants more information, the librarian can refer the library user to another library or to an organization that can be contacted by phone or mail.
I have struck out what we cant or dont need to do. So maybe we should be doing all the rest? -- Light current 14:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
OK now translating the above into Wikipedia language we have:
Anyway those are my translations of the Ref Librarian tasks. Now which ones should we be doing or not doing? Im not fussy- I just want to know what the purpose of the Rds is.-- Light current 16:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
The librarian can look up a brief, factual answer to a specific question. 8-)-- Light current 16:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Can I make an appeal to ALL interested parties to consider carefully and comment on both the desired purpose of the RDs (options above) and the draft guidelines which I have basically finished messing with (for now).
I think the former is more important as, without knowing our purpose, it will be rather difficult stating how we are going to achieve it. So over to you again! -- Light current 16:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Why is Australia named Australia . What does the word mean. Where did it come from.
I have reposted this question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Australia where you are more likely to get a good answer. David D. (Talk) 19:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
By the way, wikipedians, don't remove this so the OP can find the redirect if they bookmarked this page. -- froth T C 05:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The goal of this guideline is to provide a brightline test such that troll-enabling refdeks chatters can try to drive off people who believe in WP:ENC. It will never pass muster. Unless someone can demonstrate that the guideline will not be used to enable bad behavior, it is clearly rejected. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't see that people misunderstanding/misusing guidelines means that the guidelines aren't good- I see it rather as a sign of a problem editor. Heck, there's long-standing and widely-accepted consensus about a lot of things that editors often ignore. In other words, if editors refuse to do things the "wiki way", this doesn't mean the wiki way is what's broken. Friday (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Unsurprisingly, the debate over Reference Desk guidelines is also raging on talk pages other than this one. In particular, here are two "position statements" from elsewhere which probably belong here. When I have time, I'll see how compatible they are with the evolving guidelines, and perhaps try to integrate them with the evolving guidelines (unless someone beats me to it...). — Steve Summit ( talk) 17:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
[This is from Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#"on Holy Wars, and a plea for peace", and it's possible that further discussion on these ideas has occurred there.]
I think we all have to agree on five things going forward.
If everybody can unreservedly agree to all five of these, I think we have a decent chance of putting all the acrimony behind us, and moving forward with Reference Desks we can all enjoy and be proud of. The various policies and agreements do not absolutely guarantee perfectly harmonious success -- nothing on this vale of tears can ever guarantee that -- but they should be workable, and we should be able to understand and deal with any exceptions as they arise.
In particular, here are two exceptions that might arise, and how we might deal with them.
I've got some more to say on this, but that's enough from me for now. — Steve Summit ( talk) 05:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
[This is from Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/StuRat 2#TenOfAllTrades' response, and it's possible that further discussion on these ideas has occurred there.]
Here's a quick-and-dirty sketch of where I stand.
TenOfAllTrades( talk) 17:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with these statements, but I still see a problem: The people giving these well-reasoned statements don't really need a guideline- they already understand what to do here. The folks that maybe do need a guideline probably won't benefit from one, because they really need a set of exact, strict rules. Maybe I'm saying nothing more than "interpret all rules" and "use common sense", but some editors here seem unwilling to accept those longstanding traditions. Friday (talk) 17:20, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
These statements are good. Certainly my hobby horse is fully addressed by number 6. With respect to humour, i agree a bit is great. But when it descends into crudity that is where i draw the line. It's not that I'm a prude, but that type of humour has no place on a ref desk, or wikipedia for that matter. There are much better forums for such humour. With such guidelines in place and with the regulars leading the way by example, there is a good chance that answers never have to be deleted. Then the only issue is the blatantly disruptive questions. Best case scenario is, if in doubt, ignore it. If trollish questions get no answers then they'll give up and move on to more fertile hunting grounds. David D. (Talk) 20:02, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
This para in the guidelines is very weak ATM IMO. If we can get a consensus on the purpose of the RDs , then I feel everything else will fall into place. So... what do we want the RDs to do?-- Light current 01:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
The two items currently listed are good, but the order should be reversed. Our primary goal should be to provide answers. StuRat 04:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Seems like editing has slowed down a bit on this proposal. I know I was one who expressed initial skepticism that a guideline was needed or helpful, but what we've got here is pretty sensible in my opinion. Thanks to everyone who has worked on this. Friday (talk) 06:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
See Reference desk to see what a real library does.-- Light current 18:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I think there's a generally-accepted idea that good-faith contributors using reasonable judgment are given pretty wide latitude on the ref desk. What I mean is, while we say "don't ignore WP:NOR", we also aren't really hurt by questions like "How much do cheeseburgers cost in your town?" or "How common is this slang usage?" Such questions are generally asking for people to answer based on their own experiences. These questions aren't really what a reference desk is meant for, but I doubt most people would want to remove them, either. To me, these kinds of questions are more acceptable than "Will gay people get into heaven?" which should be answered with great care to not let it turn into a big, potentially ugly, debate.
So, my question is.. should the guideline try to talk about this sort of latitude? Or, is this sort of thing better left unsaid, since it's taken as "understood" by responsible contributors? Friday (talk) 15:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
In answer to Friday's original question: it's a tough call. On the one hand, I agree that a certain amount of "nudge nudge, wink, wink" is appropriate in a guideline like this. But on the other hand, I'd really like it if whatever guidelines we came up with could be well and truly agreed to and accepted in genuinely good faith by both (all?) sides of the recent debates. Given the tenor of the debate, however, it's clear that if our guidelines seem (as written) to too-strictly disallow things like speculation, research, or even the occasional opinion, some of our regular contributors are going to reject the guidelines out of hand, and the consequences then (if the guidelines were otherwise adopted) could be even uglier than they are now.
With that said, though, I don't know how to achieve the right balance between de jure guidelines and de facto accepted practice, and although I've been reluctant to admit this, it's quite possible that (given the willful truculence of some participants) a perfect balance may not be possible. — Steve Summit ( talk) 13:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
The following is a proposed addition to the RD guidlines. Most of the proposed guidlines were originally compiled by TenOfAllTrades. I want to see if we have consensus on these issues before I post the guidlines on the policy page. The guidlines assume that we (at least most of us) agree that medical advice should not be allowed on the RD. — LestatdeLioncour t 17:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Are we also going to have guidelines for:
etc, etc, etc, etc, etc ?-- Light current 00:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Any posted comment containing a diagnosis, a prognosis based on that diagnosis, or a suggested form of treatment or cure, in response to symptoms presented in a question, is considered medical advice.
The "page in a nutshell" box states that the NOR rule generally applies to the RD like the rest of the project. But the only discussion I've seen on that on this page is it being nice under certain circumstances.. definately not the absolute rule it is in the mainspace. Original research is extremely important to the RD, I don't like how that's mentioned as one of the big three in the page in a nutshell. And as for verifiability.. heh. I'd encourage you to check out the computing RD. In computing, "common knowledge" is basically the most authoritative answer possible since things tend to be.. extensively memorized by everyone :) -- froth T 08:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I have added the medical advice section into the guideline page, with an intro of my own divising. What do you think? -- SCZenz 13:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
The RD talk page has a link to these guidelines, with the line "We are currently drafting a proposal". Is this still correct? Are these guidelines still in draft form? If not, someone should remove the line. -- Richardrj talk email 09:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I've changed the header template from guideline to No-consensus. For the most part, contributors to the desks are simply ignoring this document.— eric 16:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
{{
historical}}
. It is not clear that the change from "proposed" to "guideline" reflected consensus, but the discussion has not died out, so "historical page" is not the right label. I've gone back to {{
proposed}}
. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
I made a change to reflect what people do in real life, and what was being said on the talk page. It was reverted. IMO the requirement of notifying people on user talk page is 1) never going to be followed in real life and 2) not a reasonable demand to make anyway. Now, hopefully people will get the idea what the ref desk is for, and removing people's comments will not be common, but we should do it like it's done on the entire rest of Wikipedia. This means people may explain in the edit summary, on the ref desk talk page, or in user talk. I see user talk as mainly for people who do this regularly and therefore it's a user conduct issue. Thoughts? Friday (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed a lot of ill-informed or outright wrong answers being given on the RDs when the correct answer is a simple Google search away.
Should we address this somehow in the guidelines? -- Mwalcoff 01:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I propose that we simplify the (draft) guidelines by considering them to be guidelines for the volunteers who are answering the questions. Rationale:
What do people think? -- Lambiam Talk 18:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)