User talk:DGG/temparchive

Reminders

Topical Archives:
BLP (Biographies of Living People)
Deletion reform, Speedies, Notability , Sourcing,
In Popular Culture, Fiction, Bilateral relations.
Academic things & people, Journals, Books & other publications,
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2010: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr , May , Jun , Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2011: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr , May , Jun , Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

User:DGG/LG

In December I gave a presentation to librarians in Pittsburgh area. Would you like me to send you my presentation slides? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

After a day of fighting with my email and then Wikimedia, I finally gave up and uploaded a file to rapidshare. At least it works :) Download. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 06:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Noticeboards, noticeboards, noticeboards!

you deleted my page stating that no notability was stated on a page that was 15 minutes old??? 

can we apply the same rules to your page and delete it for being irrellevant??? I think I remember you chiming in when the No Original Research noticeboard was created as it being just an extra page to watch. We've now got the Fringe Theories, Fiction, NOR, and NPOV. I'm wondering if we're not spreading ourselves too thin over too many boards. Any ideas? MBisanz ^talk 03:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

We also have COI, and BLP, and RS, and the duplicative pair (ANB and AN/I), and BONB, and a number of similarly functioning pages, such as WT:SPAM, CP and its family, the various VPs and RfCs, WQA if it survives, the widely ignored RM and PM, and those I dont even know about). And the XfDs, the Ref Desks and the Help Desks, and AIV, 3RR and their relatives. And the talk pages for every policy and guideline prominent and obscure. And user talk pages where interesting stuff tends to be found. I organize what I do with bookmarks: I've got a group I call WPck (wikipedia check), and how far I get down the list of 30 or so 51, now that I've actually counted-- each day is variable--but I've never gotten to the bottom. Some in my opinion in practice tend to serve for POV pushing, such as BLP and FRINGE. (At some I agree more with the trend--like RS, so I don't call it POV pushing)

I forgot the talklists and IRC. I prefer to forget about IRC, and I wish I could really forget about the talklists.

But look at it in a positive way--it's forum shopping which keeps there from being any one WP:LOC.DGG (talk) 04:43, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Def going on my best of list. MBisanz ^talk 17:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: User:Jbmurray/Madness

(Copied over from my talk page:) DGG, many thanks for your comment. I'm glad that my text may be useful for the NYC meet. I'd be pleased to have any feedback or reactions that come out of that. And I do now indeed intend to publish a version of the essay somewhere. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Flagged articles

Hello again ...

Would you please take a look at User talk:Matthewedwards#Category:Flagged articles, and then add your comments on the cats I have created to compliment the templates?

Happy Editing! — 151.200.237.53 (talk · contribs) _{07:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)}

Category:Flagged editors

Hello again ... {{Flag-editor}} now has an optional assist parameter that makes a friendly offer to help, for those thus inclined, instead of defaulting with making the offer. :-) — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 15:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

getting there! I'll check the details later. Next goal, perhaps: making it shorter while still making it friendly. and maybe copyvio should be different --if it's clear it should be db-copyvio, if not, suspected copyvio already has the template "copypaste". DGG (talk) 17:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I realized that, but the point is, "I don't have time to check right now, but it's suspicious, so I'll flag it with this generic tag" ... maybe Some Other Editor will check it out in the mean time, and decide that it's {{Db-copyvio}}-able. :-) — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 04:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

For example, Liliam Cuenca González (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) was part of a WP:COI/N and WP:COPYVIO that led to a site being blocked and removed by a bot as WP:LINKSPAM ... it's all the sins in one (unfortunately repeated) case, but it certainly can be improved if editors are aware of the situation ... hence Category:Flagged articles. — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 04:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

)

Articles

I highly suggest stop altering articles to your bias you have a nasty habit of changing articles you don't like and posting information you like regardless of sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.73.78.193 (talk) 17:32, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Fringe

In Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee, you wrote but situations of a single person with a completely far fringe view are dealt with fairly well already. There are cases where a real-world minority- or fringe-view is overrepresented on Wikipedia. There are also cases where a majority- or wikipedia-majority-view silences a minority view or reduces their weight well below their real-world due weight. This can happen by one side outmaneuvering the other into a behavior violation or by simply driving them away from the project in frustration. I don't think there is a good solution, other than to have affected articles watched by people who are informed about the article's subject matter but with no emotional stake in the article. This tends to happen more on articles on political or social topics, where way too many editors have a personal agenda, and on articles about people, places, or groups, where fanboys may succeed in turning the article into a virtual press release. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:07, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

as I said there, I think that dueling by taunting each other into unacceptable actions is not a really rational approach. . Perhaps it survives because the people who have been here a while tend to know just how far they can safely go & some of them have gotten quite good at it. But perhaps also it works because the people who are for good or less good reasons committed to an agenda with a zeal and devotion and purpose which transcend rational argument tend to be rather easy to lose proportion and descend into unacceptable actions. There is nothing wrong with zealotry when one is right, but it has to be pursued elsewhere--those who care more about their cause than objective editing encyclopedia are a danger to the encyclopedia.

Unfortunately, the attempt to deal with it otherwise tend to amount to an appeal to authority, which does not do much better--one can find authorities for almost anything. And so one argues about the relative merits of the authorities. People both in the right and wrong of it (as if w could tell) are equally likely to what to prevent their opponents from making a fair case. What is necessary is a way to determine what objective editing is, and enforce it. My current thoughts are mandatory mediation with enforceable remedies--not by subject experts necessarily, but by people with common sense and proven impartiality.DGG (talk) 03:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

• I think informed with no emotional stake goes to the "noble dream" and assumes an ability for scholarly detachment that has come to be held as out of sync with reality in studies on the philosphy of history in the last three decades. It also ignores the fact that the edit war rules in theory cause patience, but with the three reverts rule, they really just mean that if the supporters of the status quo of the article are dilligent enough they can keep it at its current situation. There is also the issue that positions that are supported by the main-stream media can win out over ideas that are mainly supported in blogs or publications linked to specific groups.John Pack Lambert 22:19, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Consistency

BIO has become very nebulous, especially because one can interpret "significant coverage" and NOT NEWS to produce any result whatsoever for many of the articles you have in mind. We need to make up our mind abut what depth of local figures we intend to cover. We need to make up our mind about whether to cover the central figures of human interest stories. And then stick to it, whatever the decision is. You and I would probably disagree on one or both of these in general, I at least would much rather accept almost any stable compromise rather than fight each of them from over-general principles. DGG (talk) 16:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

We'd probably be closer together than you might think. Yes, the community as a whole does need to thrash out local notability-- something that a narrow constructionist can rely on but which would allow some flexibility. Any standard, even one I loathe, would be better than none. As you say, any result is possible the way things are. A dice roll would be less stressful and do as well. This is why I avoid AFD. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 14:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Stress

as with any democratic type of process, it works better if the good people stay in. The way I avoid stress is by commenting once or twice, and then not looking back--either my arguments is accepted, or not,and then on to the next. I generally do not look back to see what the result is, or I would get too often angry, or at least disappointed. Not that it's a game for me, but that I can be effective only by keeping detached. DGG (talk) 16:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

archiving

I no longer remember how it was done but if someone knows or wants to talk to the bot operator, look at what's done for the museums project. In archiving it creates an index which includes topic and which archive it's in. I don't know if it can be done retroactively. TravellingCari 12:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at documentation, though I can change the names of the archives, the indexing is done as it makes the archive. I would have to remerge everything. What happened of course, is that a/I never imagined at the first they would get so large b/I started with topical archives, and this takes more maintenance than I've actually done, and , of course 3/ there have been some very long postings here, not all by me,some interesting enough that I want to keep visible. Expect slow improvement. till and maybe a new normal system in January 09 DGG (talk) 14:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

1. Indexes, what indexes?
2. At User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo there is a pointer to User:HBC Archive Indexerbot. I think this is the bot alluded to above by Travellingcari, currently used by WP:MUSEUM. EdJohnston (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

prod

"unreferenced" is not a reason for deletion. Unreferenced and unnotable, maybe."tried but could not find any sources for notability" much more convincing--when you say something like that, I'd probably accept your view. But of the 2 you marked unreferenced, one seems to have had a ref . tho not a good one Blaqstarr--I didnt check further, and the other Esa Maldita Costilla, is probably notable given the performers involved. DGG (talk) 07:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess our standards differ. Stifle (talk) 08:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Your instincts were right on this one, DGG. I know this is kind of necro-bumping, but better late than never... Chubbles (talk) 21:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 October 19#Comparison_of_web_based_file_managers

You raise an excellent point there. I seem to be averaging a DRV on one of my closures every second day (although the majority are being endorsed). The recent phenomenon of DRVs when one isn't satisfied with the result, but dressed up as "certain arguments weren't addressed, so the admin should have closed it my way" is worrisome, not least because a DRV would have been even more certain if the debate had been closed the other way. This is liable to put good admins off closing AFDs because of a perceived stigma in having your decision posted at DRV, especially when users decline to discuss matters with the closer first as the DRV instructions twice require (a matter about which we have repeatedly butted heads). Where can we go from here? Stifle (talk) 13:43, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I've moved this down, in case you missed it. Stifle (talk) 08:12, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

still working on an adequate response.DGG (talk) 12:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

User:TTN

Since you have had repeated experience with this user's AFDs like, I thought I'd contact you. This user's AFD behavior is appaling especially how he refuses to bundle nominations in the same universe for which he uses identical reasonings. He also continually fails to consider the option to merge or redirect without intervention of deletion and makes no evident efforts to look for sources himself (there's a difference between unverified and unverifiable), instead preferring to force the issue by nominating for AFD (which causes a 5-day deadline for improvement) and which is specifically considered to be improper.

The articles in question might well require care, merging or even deletion, but the way he goes about it is unneccesarily terse and bitey.

I think it's time to launch an RFC. Would you consider helping gather evidence and supporting it? - Mgm|^(talk) 15:27, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Before you start, you might consider seeing how the RfC/U on Gavin.collins goes first, since different facets of the same issue are involved.DGG (talk) 17:37, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

An offer of help, other inclusionists, and suggestions

Your name came up prominently at Talk:Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia#Prominent inclusionists? I was wondering:

1. How I can help?
2. If there are other inclusionists you can suggest I talk to, or if there are any groups you belong too.
3. Any suggestions about how I can help form policy to be more inclusive.

Thank you, Inclusionist (talk) 00:31, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

the best way of helping attain a better and more inclusive encyclopedia is by finding sources for worthy articles that do not have them, especially those immediately under attack. I see you are already a member of the WP:Article Rescue Squadron. You can also look for articles in areas of interest to you that might be challenged in Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup or at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles. This can be done most effectively after learning carefully the rules for proper sourcing given at WP:Reliable sources and the talk page and noticeboard associated with it. We already have a considerable amount of discussion, and it is practical work that is needed more. It is easier to talk about why articles should be kept, than to do the work to keep them. And when you do participate in Afds, never do so without a good argument that the majority of people will accept; weak arguments are counterproductive. Remember that by any rational standard most of the articles there should indeed be deleted. I find a good way to keep perspective is to a do a little WP:New page patrol, and to see and identify all the junk that really must be kept out of the encyclopedia. If you want to help policy become more inclusive, first think carefully about just what you want to have included and why it would enhance rather than diminish the encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 01:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

You are me

Sorry David, but you are apparently me. --David Shankbone 05:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

all David's are actually clones; we use disguises to conceal the fact, but they don't work 100%. DGG (talk) 09:13, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Shankbone is the cabal. --KP Botany (talk) 09:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

the person who does the photos can control the world. DGG (talk) 09:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You're awesome by me! I originally thought the page was about me, but apparently it is about you. Jeez, if you're going to have haters hating on you, at least get your name right! I'm guessing they put as much thought and research into their self-promotion as they did into that Facebook group. --David Shankbone 14:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

New York Public Library classes

Hi David, I've started something at Wikipedia:Wikipedia at the Library‎. Hopefully this can be a space for us to work out our ideas, and I look forward to your contributions.--Pharos (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

NAS

I believe I used this utility to convert a CSV list into a wiki table. — BRIAN0918 • 2009-02-26 17:50Z

Were you able...

...to read the article? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 06:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

thanks for asking, still not yet. I'd appreciate a copy directly.DGG (talk) 09:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Libraries & the Cultural Record

I thought this new article might interest you. Cheers. Thanks for all your help. ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Clickety click

DGG, I thought you might have something worthwhile to say about this AfD and also a relevant part of "WP:CREATIVE" (on which see also my comment). -- Hoary (talk) 00:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Heh heh, I'm enjoying this: DGG (ever the inclusionist) tending toward deletion of what's unenthusiastically backed by Hoary (ever the deletionist). Your comment on the meaninglessness of those particular library holdings is spot on: this says less about Powell than it does about the inadequacy of critical thinking behind "WP:CREATIVE". Um, anyway, could you revisit your comment in the AfD? As of a few seconds ago, it needed formatting and other attention. -- Hoary (talk)

I think I've said delete more often than keep today & the last few days. I think that's because fewer articles have been nominated for deletion the last week or so- by and large only the worst stuff is still being nominated, the passable stuff isn't. As for WP:Creative, where it does seem to work is that visual artists in conventional media who have works in the permanent collection of two or more museums does seem to indicate notability. It's easy to delineate things that certainly do indicate certain notability. It's easy to find careers that don't. The question is whether there's a concept of "notable, but not very notable," & what to do with such. DGG (talk) 03:12, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

mediawikiblacklist

I ask you because you're active there--am I correct that any enWP admin can deal with things also? DGG (talk) 05:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, although you need at least some knowledge of regular expressions. Stifle (talk) 09:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Students' Guide

I noticed your involvement with Wikipedia:Wikipedia at the Library. I've got a draft of what is called the Wikipedia Student's Guide, which isn't a perfect fit for those getting instruction at the library, but might be useful. In any case, if you have any suggestions, they would be welcomed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:40, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Extinct editors

this must be one of the funniest AfD comments I ever came across! Owen× ☎ 16:35, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

thanks!DGG (talk) 19:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Kudos, comment & question

Dear David, I salute you for the various ideas expressed, and your sense of integrity. Your experiences from Princeton & Berkeley were also significant credentials to bring to bear. I have a comment about your working group for science and academia. Someone in the group lamented on how to distinguish "men from boys". At least in the science world it's quite easy. Below the obvious Nobel level, the next 2 are well known -- Academicians and Fellows. If WP can include all people on these 2 levels, it'd be quite a complete collection. Of course I'm only speaking about the US situation. I suspect that they have similar pecking order in other countries. Now a question unrelated to the above. When you have a chance, take a look at the discussion page for Deep Ng, and see my proposal to delete. Please advise if it's reasonable, and if so, the next step. Much obliged. --EJohn59 (talk) 18:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

commented there based on general considerations. You do realise it's not the least my subject.DGG (talk) 23:21, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Your comments are reasonable & helpful--EJohn59 (talk) 04:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

Your comment at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(fiction) - well said

Just saw your comment on 08:51, 29 May 2009 - excellent! Thanks for taking out precious time to deal with this depressing situation, that a number of editors are so keen on purging fiction articles from Wikipedia. I can sure understand and fully respect if they find the fiction articles to be of such minor importance that they opt not read the articles themselves; but why they so persistently insist on deletion, hindering other people in reading the articles, is a mystery. A sincere appreciation of your work. Power.corrupts (talk) 14:36, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

-- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 21:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

my comment is at the Wikiproject. DGG (talk) 18:49, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks you. I have refraised my response, putting this rather black and white, in an attempt to get to the bottum of things. I hope you can take an other look... Thank you. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 22:19, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to draw your attention...

... to WP:SJ, a rather old essay of mine that I decided was ready to move to mainspace.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 20:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

WP space, you mean. I suggest you add some references to the discussions at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals the relevant parts of WP:RS, & the great many discussions at WT:RS and the RS and FRINGE noticeboards. . I assume you've seen the key problem areas at pseudoscience, controversies over psychiatric & psychiatric medicines, and ethnic controversies. Do you intend this as a revision of guidelines, or an explanation of them? I'll take a further look in a day or two. DGG (talk) 20:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, WP space.

With contributions only from me and Drmies, it's not ready to be a revision of guidelines. All it can be at this stage is a counterpoint.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 21:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia at the Library

Hi David, you can check your email for some recent developments on this. Thanks!--Pharos (talk) 18:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Optional request for opinion AfD

Hi. I know you had some minor concerns about my AfD work, so could you review my recent closures and let me know if I've addressed the issues you noticed? Cheers. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject TRANSWIKI

Hi. In light of recent events and community concerns about the way in which content is transferred I have proposed a new wikiproject which would attempt to address any of the concerns and done in an environment where a major group of editors work together to transfer articles from other wikipedias in the most effective way possible without BLP or referencing problems. Please offer your thoughts at the proposal and whether or not you support or oppose the idea of a wikiproject dedicated to organizing a more efficient process of getting articles in different languages translated into English. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 13:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

DSB project

Hi DGG! Thanks so much for everything this past weekend -- I got home intact, if a couple hours delayed from the storms.

Here's my subpage on my DSB project -- the citations are formatted to link to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, so if you check the "what links here" from that article you can see the ones I or others have done already. The redlinks on my page are bios that weren't already written that are in the DSB; the bluelinks are bios that have been written since I started the project. There's also a dump of bios in the print version that Ruud Koot did. I haven't been writing down my progress, but I'm somewhere in the middle of the print "B" volume at the moment, so anything starting later than that would be helpful -- we could start keeping track of how many bios we've covered. Best, -- phoebe / (talk to me) 02:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Pity the picnic never actually happened.

--the links seem to go to the print version only, not the online also. Additionally, at least some show the part in the main vol, not the added parts for those who have them in the supplementary New Dictionary of Scientific Biography I think it might be better to add the online links & complete the ones for the supplement first, before continuing alphabetically, so we know that at least some part is complete. (I recall you said the online version wasn't available to you at the beginning of the project). That the New Dictionary did not include a complete list of scientists with main entries in the entire work is one of the principal defects in that reference work--and one of the defects in our reference work is that the listing in "what links here" is not sorted alphabetically. DGG (talk) 03:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Our online version is through a (subscription) Gale interface, so there aren't easy links to the articles (I get something like this), and even if there were it wouldn't be helpful to nonsubscribers. But what they are providing seems to be an HTML version, but additionally a straight pdf scan of the original print -- so actually providing the print page #s & reference is still helpful no matter what version it came from. The new DSB volumes are just tacked onto the end of the original set, from what I can tell (they start over with the alphabetization) and the "complete dsb" is just a scan of the whole thing. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Coatrack

Just a reminder: On Wikipedia talk:Coatrack, you wrote "to be continued" in February. — Sebastian 15:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

too many things keep happening here for one human being--or at least for me. I will try to get back to it. DGG (talk) 16:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:CiterSquad

There is a lot of stuff at the bottom of Wikipedia:CiterSquad#Volunteers, which seems to me should be in on the talk page, would you take a look and let me know if I am mistaken in my apprasial, if it should be moved, please do so. If I move it, there would be conflicts. Thanks Jeepday (talk) 17:59, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yep. Some of us want any newcomers to this non-citing project to know that there is significant dissent. (It's not a project to add cites; it's a project to add "unreferenced" tags.) Some of my objection departs if the Orwellian name goes away. DGG, apologies for butting in on your talk page. Antandrus (talk) 19:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Arnaiz-Villena Biography

Could you please send your Email to aarnaiz@med.ucm.es  ? AAV has asked me to get in touch with you. Thank youSymbio04 (talk) 18:20, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

afd procedure

Hi, I'm wondering if it is allowed/discouraged, for users to remove all incoming links to an article that is at AfD, if the outcome is uncertain? I thought I'd seen that action mentioned in the guidelines, but can't find it.

Specifically, a user is removing (eg) all links leading to -logy, which he nominated at afd. Is that acceptable? -- Quiddity (talk) 18:03, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

the basic guideline is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#How to discuss an AfD, but it does not specifically address what is likely to be contentious:

the question is whether or not it improves the article. Some people interpret that, as improving its chances of passing AfD, which is usually but not always the same thing. But I have seen people change an article at AfD to make it worse, in order to get it deleted. Most of the times, this is done just before nomination, where it's less visible to the high proportion of commentators who don't check the history. (I was wondering about WP:BEANS here, but the people who do the dirty tricks tend to be regulars who already know about them.). As a example of doing this well, if the article contains a linkfarm, and this is one of the reasons for deletion, it's good to remove it, but if the links add to the value of the article, then it is not. If the article has borderline references, it's good to remove them and substitute better ones; but to remove borderline ones and leave it unreferenced is not helpful. When it's done just before deletion I consider it evidence of bad faith, just as much so as stubbifying an article and then saying it covers the subject inadequately.

Where something like this one is on the scale, it is something I'd rather comment on at the AfD. DGG ( talk ) 18:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, dirty tricks like Canvasing? Hey, how bad is this guy being in the review? I'm not going to ask you to vote against it, but did you know about it?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:04, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I knew about it. I'm a little behind in checking AfDs, and hadnt gotten to it. I try to pick out the ones where I have something to say, and if I miss something likely to be interesting to me, I like to be told. About half the time, what I say is not what the person asking me may hope for. People looking for unqualified support from someone know enough not to ask for it here. You nominated another prefix or suffix or two, where I did not bother to comment because the deletion is correct, and will happen just as well without me. DGG ( talk ) 02:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't intending to canvass. I was asking an experienced admin whether preemptively delinking an article was actually prohibited somewhere, or if it was just really poor etiquette. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:54, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Now that the afd has been closed as keep, who is responsible for reinstating any of the useful links that were preemptively removed? (I won't have time to get to it till at least next week). (You can copy/move this thread to Talk:-logy or elsewhere, if that'd be more appropriate). -- Quiddity (talk) 18:54, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

All the links referred to foreign words and were linked inappropriately and are now linked appropriately. Nobody looking at those links would have had much idea where they led; I removed no visible links to -logy. If you want to go through and add links to -logy, go right ahead. So far as I can tell, none of the words I changed were derived from -logy, they were all derived directly from the greek or latin. The suffix -logy seems to be essentially a backronym. Or, if you're declaring an edit war, and intend to go through and simply undo all my edits, then I'd appreciate DGG giving you a suspension now, which should save time.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:16, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

It is not edit warring to revert your removal of links if a good faith user disagrees with your action in removing them. The edit war starts when you revert back without discussing and if you do that we will know where the blame for the edit war lays won't we.... You seem to take a very combative approach to discussing deletion. You know, you catch more flies with honey and your behaviour on the -logy AFD was certainly unhelpfuly muddying the discussion that I closed. Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

It will surprise no one that I agree with Spartaz about this. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Tonxxx (talk) 01:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)Regards, Anthony |^talk]] at 01:54, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

SOD/CAT

I wondered if you might review the deletion of SOD/CAT. I'm concerned about the speed at which the article was deleted after being relisted for review. I am also concerned that the main catalyst--Dr Vickers--behind the deletion effort has made a large number of edits to a competing technology, Protandim which may indicate a COI. I do not know what the next step to appeal for an undelete would be. I appreciate your insights. RGK (talk) 21:48, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

It was listed for the regular 7 days, and then an additional 8th day--I suspect the only reason it was even kept open was that I had previously declined a speedy deletion on the article; at that point two additional good editors commented to delete, and it was appropriately closed. In all 6 editors, 5 of them excellent editors with considerable experience, said to delete, and only you , who apparently have a commercial interest in the product, said to keep. The admin who evaluated and closed the discussion is also experienced and competent; no adminwould have decided otherwise. Earlier, as reviewing admin when it was nominated for speedy, I declined the speedy deletion , saying " I think this shows at least some minimal importance, so not appropriate for speedy deletion." This does not mean I thought it should be kept; rather, that it said enough to require a community discussion before deleting it, and that is exactly what it has had. I did not participate at the AfD, as I did not think it necessary, but I too would certainly have said to delete. It seems clear from a scan of the references for the article that they are all or almost all general, and that there are no published studies about this particular product, but Superoxide Dismutase in general--except for an uncited Russian one of which a translation is posted on the company's web site. The other purported publications were in unreliable non-peer reviewed sources.

Tim vickers I have long known as a very experienced Wikipedia editor of the highest integrity. He edits articles on many subjects in his area. He, like myself, has a doctorate in the biochemistry/molecular biology. In fact, the reason I do not participate very much in this subject area is because the people there--of which he is perhaps the most active--do it extremely well, & I therefore work on other areas where help is more needed. He and I --and everyone here -- have a strong conviction that the quality of Wikipedia depends (among other things) upon keeping out advertisements for commercial products. Unbiased articles giving information on notable commercial products are another matter, if there are adequate references to show their notability. I advised you how to improve it, but although you fixed up many details nicely, it was not improved in the basic problems--from which I conclude that there was not enough appropriate specific material to support an article. I agree 100% with the deletion. You have the right to ask for restoration at WP:Deletion Review. I would advise against it. Even though Deletion Review is unpredictable, the chance for this one is approximately zero & all you will get there is further explanations of why this material is not suitable content for an encyclopedia--both because it is advertising and because the product is not notable. As for attacking the reliability and objectivity of T.V., I cannot think of anything which would harm you more. DGG ( talk ) 22:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your response DGG. I accept your judgement and acknowledge your support for T.V.'s independence. I will not be pursue an appeal of the SOD/CAT article. RGK (talk) 00:44, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

You may be interested to know that a form of the article has been moved from Robert Kavanaugh/Sandbox2 back to main space by MuZemike. I don't know why. ^Bongo_matic 01:11, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I assume he did not realize, and I speedy deleted it as a re-creation. I do not see that any of the objections were met. RK, did you mean to re-create the article or abandon it? DGG ( talk ) 01:21, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Abandon for now as per above. I'd saved a copy in what I thought was a personal sandbox. Apparently, its not personal, and someone I've no relationship with moved back to SOD/CAT. Thank you for fixing. Over and out. RGK (talk) 01:40, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

The confusion was probably caused because it was in mainspace - Robert Kavanaugh/Sandbox2 - instead of User space - User:Robert Kavanaugh/Sandbox2. I noticed this because I just now userified Robert Kavanaugh/Sandbox1. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:40, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the usefulness of keeping it there either, as it is extremely unlikely sources will be found. DGG ( talk ) 03:52, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I made no attempt to judge its merits. Looks like some chunk of a larger article (perhaps of the deleted one for all I know). --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:27, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Postmortum: DGG please see the breaking news re: [1]. I thank you for your original support for my article and also included the forgoing url reference as an FYI. Much will be revealed in the coming months about Sirtuin 1 activation, soy isoflavones, antioxidant enzyme induction, etc. I am grateful to you for seeing the potential in the information and article. Too bad I failed to garner additional support, because the information in the article was very much on point as you can see.

the actual paper that refers to is "Can soyabean isoflavones mimic the effects of energy restriction on healthy ageing?" by L. Ions, L. Wakeling and D. Ford in Nutrition bulletin Volume 34 Issue 3, Pages 303 - 308 (which is a peer-reviewed Wiley journal). I notice this was done in vitro. I will be glad to see peer-reviewed in vivo results in humans, but I suspect it will be more than a few months. DGG ( talk ) 03:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I've seen twenty+ years of in vivo (anecdotal) proof, so I was appreciative of the in vitro work as a proof of concept. Still, I don't believe diadzein is the magic isoflavone. My money is on diadzein's metabolite S-Equol. The actual work which was performed by Rasbach and Schnellmann and published in 2008 as Isoflavones Promote Mitochondrial Biogenesis appears to support my hypothesis, but I've insufficient experience as a amateur biochemist to be confident that I'm right. I'm not sure why the Brit's article got all the press, probably better PR people. :) I'm now in touch with Dr. Ion's via email, and based on our discussion, she intends to examine S-Equol as a Sirtuin 1 activator. Her follow up work will be an in vitro experiment too. So, I guess we'll get to see. I compared the structure of [equol] from wikipedia to Rasbach and Schnellmann 2008 work in which they noted that a free hydroxyl group is necessary to promote SIRT1 deacetylase activity. They state:

“The presence of the 5-hydroxyl group in genistein and biochanin A blocks the ability of these compounds to promote SIRT1 deacetylase activity, whereas the absence of the 5-hydroxyl group in daidzein and formonenetin promoted SIRT1 deaceylation activity, substitution of a methoxy group for a hydroxyl group at the 7-position, as seen in 7,4' D and 5,7,5'-T, blocked SIRT1 activation, suggesting that a free hydroxyl group is necessary at the 7-position to promote SIRT1 deacetylase activity. It is interesting to note that the flavone apigenin (5,7,4'-trihydroxyflavone) does increase SIRT1 activity, although it has a hydroxyl group in the 5-position (Howitz et al., 2003). Thus, shifting the phenyl group from the 3-position of isoflavones to the 2-position of flavones decreases the importance of the 5-position, and it allows the activation of SIRT1 in the presence of a hydroxyl group at position 5. Removing the phenyl ring at position 3 while maintaining the hydroxyl group at position 7, compound 7-C, is sufficient to activate SIRT enzymatic activity. ... 7-C is the basic isoflavone pharmacophore necessary to promote the activation of SIRT1 deacetylase activity.”

If this subject has captured your curiosity sufficiently, it would be great if you'd look at the structure of equol (as per wikipedia) and compare it to Rasbach and Schnellmann's work as repeated above. Did I get this right? Doesn't equol appear on paper to be an ideal SIRT1 activator based on their finding on other isoflavones? If it's asking too much for you to consider this question, then forgive me for asking it of you and thank you anyway. I must say I really appreciate your thoughtful mentoring as I struggled to publish my first wikipedia article. After my initial experience, I'm still a bit too timid to contribute to an existing generic subject like phytoestrogens, but perhaps it's best to watch from the sidelines for awhile before jumping in the game. . .

I unfortunately do not really have time to investigate the subject, especially as I am not familiar with this class of compounds. As for learning Wikipedia. start by making small additions or corrections to articles in your general field of interest, and then making small related articles--none of which should be related to anything with a conflict of interest. For suggestions, see our page about various ways to get started here. And see chapter 6 in particular of the free online version of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton (also available in print) DGG ( talk ) 21:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Anhel GmbH

restored. Icewedge (talk) 02:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Re:International Theatre Vienna

Hi DGG. It's absolutely fine with me! If any articles subject to deletion can be salvaged, I would be happy to support the effort. I have restored the page. Cheers, FASTILY ^(TALK) 03:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Knew you would. thanks. DGG ( talk ) 03:41, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Ditto for A.D.A.M., Inc.- see my response on my talk page. ~ mazca ^talk 07:00, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I have proposed ADAM for deletion - a search on Google revealed lots of hits, but mainly the information on websites seems to be based on the company's own press releases. I have left a more detailed reason on Talk:A.D.A.M., Inc.. (By the way, the talkback below is about another article, so please read it!) -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 09:23, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

As you admit their principal product to be notable, proposing the company for deletion seems a strange choice. did you even try to check the implied references there to Fortune and Forbes? DGG ( talk ) 14:05, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I checked the Forbes and Fortune websites, as well as newspaper articles (looking for any mention which did not basically say ADAM said that they have been selected to be on the Fortune list. I could not find any verifiable references. The WP:Notability (organizations and companies) guidelines say that An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources - since all the hits I checked used the company's own press releases, then they would not be counted as independent. Other references I found are covered by this (from the same guidelines): Neither do the publication of routine communiqués announcing such matters as the hiring or departure of personnel, routine mergers or sales of part of the business, the addition or dropping of product lines, or facility openings or closings, unless these events themselves are the subject of sustained, independent interest

I may not have been clear: being selected for those lists is notability. One way for things to be notable is for good secondary sources to consider it notable. But no point discussing it further here. DGG ( talk ) 18:00, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Phantomsteve's talk page.
Message added 08:40, 17 August 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

as you recognize there, the material will need to be found with other approaches than Google. I consider it less than ideally productive to nominate for deletion articles whose check will require resources you do not have available, but which will very obviously be found in printed sources. What you are essentially doing is forcing others to work on the subjects you challenge them to--and least, forcing them to do so if they care about information in the encyclopedia for material older than 2000. If you do not have a good print library available, you would help the encyclopedia more if you worked on subjects that did not need one. DGG ( talk ) 13:53, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Phantomsteve's talk page.
Message added 15:34, 17 August 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Nicolo Giraud

A year and 11 days ago, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicolò Giraud resulted in a keep. Today, it is a featured article. You were the first to see value in the page. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:41, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

yes, working here successfully requires a long time scale. We need a few dozen skilled people with interest in other periods and countries. DGG ( talk ) 01:20, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Removal of PROD from 16th World Economic Forum on Africa

Hello DGG, this is an automated message from SDPatrolBot to inform you the PROD template you added to 16th World Economic Forum on Africa has been removed. It was removed by Gallador with the following edit summary '(Enhanced English, updated a bit, removed prod)'. Please consider discussing your concerns with Gallador before pursuing deletion further yourself. If you still think the article should be deleted after communicating with the 'dePRODer,' you may want to send the article to AfD for community discussion. Thank you, SDPatrolBot (talk) 20:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC) (Learn how to opt out of these messages) 20:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Talkback - eo Baeck Institute

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Talk:Leo Baeck Institute.
Message added 03:26, 1 October 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

since I'm not sure if you're watching there. Poke me if you respond - I'm not around much these days. StarM 03:26, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

me again 18:04, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: Debate over Oral Torah

Dear DGG,

I thank-you for helpful sugesstions, I have made some needed adjustments for the article. Presently, I do not know how to access the deletion review.

I hope you could please keep in mind, the article is not the same as the old document "criticism of the Talmud." They are unrelated. I worked hard on this article. I am not trying to pick sides here. I am sincerely trying to be fair a wide range of belief. I mentioned the Orthodox party, because if I spoke only of the more critical groups it only be a narrow one-sided debate which would be unfair to Orthodox group. I did so out of respect.

As I hope you noticed, the article barely menetions the Talmud. Which is hard to do, since that where the oral traditions are recorded. I adjusted, and re-adjusted the article based of many of your suggestions. I hope you will please consider once again kindly reviewing it. Please remember, that one must mention the rabbinic party. I not attempting to make an article to fault-find the rabbinic party rather show the wide-range here of different belief regarding the subject. Thank-you!--Standforder (talk) 20:37, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Perspective

Two figures -- one is captured in crisp focus and the other is blurred.

The explanatory comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joshua Greenberg were useful for me.

Pondering the array of views in this thread helped me to step back only slightly; but even small movements do evoke a changed perspective, a new appreciation of our focal point. --Tenmei (talk) 16:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, the AfD thread resulted in an improved article. Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge your contributions specifically. Your pointed comments helped me to develop a broader perspective. My imperfect understanding of what WP:Notability and WP:PROF require may need further tweaking in future; but this was a constructive step towards something better. Thank you. --Tenmei (talk) 18:36, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Just a hello...

...since there's a 2007 hello from you on my user page ;-) I'm teaching wikipedia this semester using Lih's book and Phoebe Ayers as a guest speaker. Could not remember how to find you until I saw your 2007 post :-/ Students adding to WP as part of their coursework. regards DGG! Katewill (talk) 02:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Coombabah State Primary School

Please have a look at User talk:Orderinchaos#Coombabah State Primary School. This action looks so contrary to policy that, as I said, I am staggered. TerriersFan (talk) 00:14, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the sanity check. TerriersFan (talk) 00:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I have left two extensive notes there. DGG ( talk ) 04:23, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

MTV Generation: Wikipedia has no fixed definition - it happens!

Hi, I recognise that you stated that you had no interest in working on the MTV Generation article, but I've written (rather a long) comment on it in response to Peregrine981's request for comments on the discussion page. I won't ask you to read it, but it struck me that there is also little agreement on what constitutes a pair of shorts (e.g compared to trousers, kneebreeches, knickerbockers etc) , but little controversy in having a decent page about them. If you have time, could you please add any further comments you might have on the MTV Gen issue to the page? I found your previous comment quite helpful. Any response meant for me on my talk page, thanks. Centrepull (talk) 21:54, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Journal categories

Hi DGG, you may be interested in this discussion. --Crusio (talk) 00:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Connel Fullenkamp

Hi DGG. I nominated Connel Fullenkamp for deletion. You deprodded the article in June 2009, so I thought that your input might be valuable for the discussion. CronopioFlotante (talk) 21:33, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for a Job Well Done

|DGG, Thank you for participating in Chzz's RfA. Many of us suspected that Chzz was a problem user, but it was work by people like you, who saved the day. Rogue Admins. and Bureaucrats pose a real risk to Wikipedia. Thanks Again - Ret.Prof (talk) 18:28, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

It was necessary, but I take no pleasure in this, any more than in similar cases; I hoped he would have eventually been a credit to us, and I regret he chose otherwise--and I am sure you feel similarly. DGG ( talk ) 18:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I do! - Ret.Prof (talk) 18:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

|

Re A7 Speedy Delete

Hey DGG, was hoping you could help me out with this as you seem to be both interested and in the know. I use the A7 CSD category in AfD discussions a lot, because (a) it's one of the most stringest deletion tests on Wikipedia and (b) if it's broken policy it needs attention called to it and discussion. It seems to my view to specifically set a higher bar for an article to exist than WP:N - that is, that not only must sources exist, but that those sources must attest to a claim of notability, not merely existence. That's a position I support, and it's in line with the essay WP:MILL but it doesn't really seem to be in line with any of the other notability policies. Are you able to educate me at all on the reasoning and history behind this controversial CSD category? - DustFormsWords (talk) 05:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me for butting in, but I don't agree with that interpretation of A7. A7 states that the article, not the sources, must make some claim that would, if true, give rise to a reasonable inference of notability per any notability guideline. So it's a low, not high, bar. ^Bongo_matic 05:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that was indeed synthesis. A7 only refers to the article, but the inference to be drawn from it is that when considering the higher bar of WP:N, no amount of sources can save an article (of the A7 classes: organisation, etc) that does not itself assert notability, and in that sense acts as a precursor condition that significantly raises the level of sourcing required to satisfy WP:N. - DustFormsWords (talk) 05:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Bongo, you're right, and I am in the middle of writing a full explanation why. DGG ( talk ) 05:49, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

it merely has to indicate on its face that there might be some realistic reason to think it's significant or important. This is much less than notability, and requires no sourcing at all. The criteria as given are very specific about that, as are multiple discussions on the talk pages. Even three years ago when I started and things were much more erratic that was the case. In fact, it avoids using the term notability to avoid confusion with WP:N. Now, anything that does meet WP:N will do so because it indicates the importance and has sources for it, and will never fall within A7. But a lot else will pass A7--if there is any plausible chance that someone acquainted with out general practice might think it notable , it passes. That may seem absurdly low, but, as you clearly suspect, there is a reason for putting it so low. The reason is that this is enough to get rid of the impossible junk, without cutting out anything where there is a chance of an article. Let's look at current New Pages:

1. Clarendon Plantation House -- this is actually N because all places on the historical register are as one of the Common outcomes, & it has a source for that. It also passes A7 because asserting a building is of historic interest is an assertion of importance if it is at all reasonable, and this is.
2. Sunil Reddy is in my opinion an A7. Because it will have been deleted, here's the contents: "Sunil Reddy, born 1974 is an Indian business consultant. He is the publisher of The People's Economics, an online Economics & Political magazine published semi-regularly. He is also a Technology Consultant for Internet, Telecommunication, Software and Alternative Power Generation Systems." Publisher of a journal would normally be enough of an assertion to pass, but not if it is an online magazine published only semi-regularly--this is not a plausible assertion of notability as I see it. This is a little borderline--some admins might think it does pass.
3. Abhijit PG Pandya asserts he has written a book. If so, and the book is at all important, he might conceivably be notable. Chairman of the Birkenhead society might be notable also, but I know nothing about it. It passes A7. Whether it will pass AfD will depend on what is found in looking for references. I've tagged it according. It will need checking. There are no present sources, but if what is asserted is true, there will be.

You are confusing N and V , which is easy to do--attempts to combine them have however never gotten consensus. Even if something would appear to be N, if there are no sources whatsoever, there is no way of writing an article, and it will be deleted. This can happen. But it is never a question for speedy deletion. We can not delete until we have looked for sources, and failed to find them. The condition is unsourceable, not unsourced. If the article is plausible, this is something which requires community input and some time to look. According to WP:BEFORE, we really should look before we put any kind of deletion tag on; if it goes to AfD , people will look--if it goes to prod, the few of us who patrol prod will at least try to look. But if you can find the source yourself, you should, before putting on the tag, or you will be embarrassed at AfD if you have guessed wrong. We don't delete on guesses. The sourcing has no relevance to the A7--except that if something is unclear, we should at least attempt to see if it might be ore important than the author realized, or knew to say. The key word here is asserts, which means indicates, not demonstrates. Think about this, look at that last example, try to source it, and come back tomorrow if you have questions. for now, I'm going to sleep. DGG ( talk ) 06:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for the reply DGG. My questions (when you're awake and online again) are: was this intended to be a separate rather than lower test than WP:N? It seems to act that way. A local restaurant, for example, may be able to source three separate significant reviews in independent, reliable local papers, which would prima facie put it over the bar for WP:N. However that same restaurant, barring some other factor, would be unable to make a claim asserting its notability rising higher than "The restaurant has been reviewed in three newspapers." It's a case of an article that would (theoretically) pass WP:N being struck out by A7 speedy delete. I can't read it as other than that asserting notability is a condition that needs to be addressed before WP:N can be explored, rather than a lower standard of the existing WP:N test. My second question is: why don't we require every Wikipedia article to assert notability? The threshold test of requiring an assertion would focus editing and provide a clear delineation of keepable articles from non-keepables. And the third question, being a compansion to that, is: why is A7 limited only to the classes of articles mention in that criterion? What's magical about organisations that doesn't apply to software, for example? Thanks. It's just that I so often see A7 described as "commonly misunderstood" without any accompanying reference to policy or discussion that would help it be "properly" understood. - DustFormsWords (talk) 06:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it was intended to be a separate and lower test. When there was first a formal deletion process, it was called VfD, votes for Deletion -- after a while when the volume got too large, it was split: the hopeless articles were permitted to be deleted immediately without any vote, just by listing them and then a single admin would decide. A very narrow set of criteria were used, and gradually additional ones were introduced--the most recent being A9. Proposed deletion was added, for articles that it was thought might be un controversial deletions, but were not in those restricted classes--for PROD, any reason good under Deletion Policy applies. So it is intended to be a rough screen only. The conditions are for those where the deletion will be uncontroversial to anyone acting in good faith, had a reasonably unambiguous criterion, would not give a significant number of false positives, and would occur frequently enough to be worth the trouble of setting a criterion. It is accepted that there will be many false negatives, but these are handled by prod and AfD. It works very well as a screen--about 1/4 of the newly submitted articles are deleted under it as impossible, and another 1/4 get deleted by prod or AfD. Notice, btw, the effectiveness of tagging--when the author of the Abhijit PG Pandya article saw the tags, he withdrew the article, realizing that it was unlikely to stay. This is much friendlier than if we had deleted it--and easier, because we did not have to make the decision and be concerned about whether we were right.

"The restaurant has been reviewed by three newspapers" is handled by WP:LOCAL -- it needs to be known outside its immediate area. in my neighborhood there are two good local papers, and they review every restaurant in downtown Brooklyn. This does not establish notability. If any one of the New York or the New Yorker or the NY Times reviews it also, then it is notable, for they have a very wide circulation beyond Brooklyn and are considered to have very high standards for what they choose to review. If any of the other NY papers reviews it, then it would depend--their reviews are not considered as reliable. If we did not have WP:LOCAL, we would still reject local papers, because in general their reviews are not discriminating, and too much influenced by PR, and thus not reliable for notability. They would be reliable for details about a restaurant otherwise notable. This is how we deal with things that would pass a naïve application of the GNG--by specifying in some more detail what sources count. Now for A7. An article with the statement of being reviewed by three newspapers if it specifies the newspapers and if they appear credible RSs, would pass A7. Saying that a place has been so reviewd is a statement of possible importance, which might or might not be considered credible. If it did not specify the newspapers, most of us would not consider it a reasonable statement of importance, and it would not pass. where the problem comes is if it did not specify the newspapers -- but they happened to be important, the article being written by a very unskilled beginner here. A careful admin in a case like that is supposed to actually check the sources in a preliminary way to see. There will be false positives--how many depends on the carefulness of the admins. My estimate of false positive A7s is about 10%, which is too high--it should be 5%--better than that is unlikely to be accomplished . Some other criteria have a higher error rate, like G11. Some have a lower. A9 if properly used, should have a very low error rate--this was empirically checked before the criterion was accepted. (Restaurants can be a problem--check the full history of Mzoli's, where the original article, written by Jimbo, did not assert notability & was deleted)

Some types of articles are even more problematic with respect to assertions of notability--software for example, or books. Experience shows that articles on notable software or books often fail to assert notability--this is particularly true for children's books--a good example is Brown Girl, Brownstones which is actually famous == but the person who wrote the article said nothing to indicate it--it was rescued from Prod when I recognized the title. thus products and creative works are not included in A7--quite deliberately. The argument is that this is the sort of subject where many people should have the chance to see it, and try to add more, and this is proven by experience. As for organizations, this is a problem. I am not altogether happy with their inclusion in A7, and so I try to use G11 in addition when possible--or G12, copyvio when that's the case, as it often is. The reason it stays in is that there are a considerable number of obvious cases.

Think of patrolling this way: I patrol speedy (or recent changes) not just to delete hopeless articles, nor to save ones that can possibly be saved, but to sort the two. Many people submit inadequate first articles, but if treated in a friendly way, go on to write better ones. Deleting their first article does not encourage them to try again; showing them how to rescue it does. DGG ( talk ) 17:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to provide insight into this process DGG! Your experience and expertise are much appreciated, and I think I have a better understanding of the philosophy behind the CSD now. - DustFormsWords (talk) 22:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

7

AfD nomination of Denialism

An article that you have been involved in editing, Denialism, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denialism (2nd nomination). Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Unomi (talk) 06:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Commented . I said weak keep before, but the established usage has now become clearer. DGG ( talk ) 14:32, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, I do hope that you will reflect on my response to your rationale. All the sources that I have seen so far demand cherry-picking as they employ the word loosely and arbitrarily, they are only useful for supporting a preconceived notion of the word, and only then by willfully ignoring the uses which go against ones desired conclusion. Of the many sources listed on the article a great deal of them do not even contain the word denialism. Unomi (talk) 15:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Your user page

Hi DGG. It looks as if you may have been in the middle of adding content to your user page, but were interrupted before you could finish. You appear to have had this on the page for the last several days. All the best, Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 20:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

yes, things have been too busy here. I find it difficult to get the necessary oppotunity to do more than fire-fighting. I'm glad somebody noticed! DGG ( talk ) 00:52, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Jewish Labour Bund Task Force

I thought you might find this interesting, considering possible outreach to Yiddishist groups. It's a surprisingly active project.--Pharos (talk) 04:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Psychology of AFD

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at User:Milowent.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

//Blaxthos ( t / c ) 19:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

I just happened to come across this -- in light of recent events, thanks for keeping that article alive.--Epeefleche (talk) 15:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Scraping

As I mentioned at the new user CSD, I could start scraping this information. Which class A7, A5, etc. would you consider examining first?Ikip (talk) 00:34, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

When I did it, I went directly from the deletion logs. The problem is, first, removing the irrelevancies, most of what is in the log is article talk pages, or files, or user space etc. & of the articles, most are expired prods, or AfDs , or for moves, or copyvios. Out of 100, there are about 10 worth examining for all other speedy reasons put together. I am not sure how a scrape of deleted articles would help analyze them. since I can see them easily enough. I thought about scraping the log to sort, but I'd lose the links. Any ideas? DGG ( talk ) 04:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

When you scrape a page, you can retain the links.

What I was thinking is having a self contained scapper program (meaning that you would not need any extra programs to use it, simply download and click).

For example, it could run every minute, scrapping G1. Patent nonsense, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nonsense_pages_for_speedy_deletion.

Any page in that category, would have the whole article scraped, and the page history scraped. or any combination that we wish. The information could either be downloaded to a file (any format, including excel), or loaded to another wiki, created as a new page.

I could write some of it myself, but my friend User:TodWulff is a master in using autohotkey. Ikip (talk) 04:57, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I see. But this is to audit the one nom'd for deletion. I just want to see those actually deleted. I'm interested in the admins not the taggers--taggers, who are usually relative beginners, can be expected to make many mistakes. That would be about half. I can see how to use it, though, once I get the links in Excel. We could try A7--the errors are easier to understand & less ambiguous. What would really help me do it the way I've been doing, is a program to go from the deletion log to a spreadsheet that I could run, since it would have to run with admin privileges open. I can manipulate links from there. FWIW, I use Mac 10.5. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't test or refine a scraper with admin priveleges.

"program to go from the deletion log to a spreadsheet that I could run" do you have a PC emulator?

so you would want to scrape the deletion log, this would not require admin rights correct?

Here is the deletion log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_patrol_log=1

Each entry could be put on a spread sheet like this:

Date	Name	Comments
2009 11 19 22:40	Secret	deleted "Developement Centre of East-Iceland" ‎ (A7: No indication that the article may meet guidelines for inclusion)
2009 11 19 22:40	Dlohcierekim	Deleted "JoeBob Mcgee" ‎ (A1: Not enough context to identify article's subject: although tere are ghits for person with this name, thic content insfficinet. same article deleted earlier. wold need rewrite from scratch)

What kind of spreadsheet? Excel? That is the only one I have, so to test and refine and debug, it would have to be excel.

Better yet, I could simply scrape the deletion log data then post it on a wikipedia page, as a sortable table. Say User:DGG/CSD 2009 11 19 or User:Ikip/CSD 2009 11 19, one for each day (or even one page for each week). [Or we could simply make each page a template, {{User:DGG/CSD 2009 11 19}}, and then post several of these individual pages/days on other master pages]

That way everyone that is interested, could work on this together. Anyone who wanted to copy and paste this info into a spread sheet could.

It appears like autohotkey doesn't run on mac. Ikip (talk) 22:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I did some experimenting. The simplest thing is to take the deletions for a day and sort it by deletion reason . Any spreadsheet, or in Wikipedia, if a wikitable that large would work . DGG ( talk ) 01:17, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

actually, I probably could do it with word, using find and replace wildcards, without even bother Tod. You can search by 5000 edits at a time, simply by adding &limit=5000 to any page history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_patrol_log=1&limit=5000

Wow, am I reading this right?

From 02:17, 20 November 2009 to 01:32, 18 November 2009. Two Days, FIVE THOUSAND pages were deleted.Ikip (talk) 02:20, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

not quite. For example, a good number of these are a./ deletions of talk pages associated with deleted articles, or redirects to deleted articles. b./ deletion requested by sole editor, or userspace pages requested by user c./ files. Wikipedia gets even more files per day submitted than articles. Many of them have copyvio problems. d./ technical deletions, including deletions to permit a move over a redirect. The actual number of article deletions is about 1000 a day. About half of all submitted articles get deleted, almost all of them very rightly. But now do you see the extent of the problem? DGG ( talk ) 04:09, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

"But now do you see the extent of the problem?" Problem? How many problem articles we have? Yes, I knew about the massive amount of bad submissions we get. I saw this problem patrolling AFDs and monitoring the deletion log. Big problem. Is that what you are talking about?

Or the problem of investigating the articles? Ikip (talk) 07:57, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Nearer the second--the problem of making sure we catch them all, check them properly, and deal appropriately not just with each of the articles but with each of the users. I mainly patrol speedy & prod, & delete or untag 10 to 20 articles a day. To follow up each one properly and give the necessary personalized warnings and advice, & correct the erroneous taggings, warnings, and advice by some of the less careful or less experienced, and explain things to them also, would take about 20 -30 min each, considering followups and disagreements. I do maybe 3 or 4 as fully as I think should be done, & comment on 1 or 2 mistaggings, & I know no admin who is able to give full attention to much more than that. If I actually rewrote the ones that could be helped by it, it would be at least twice as long. I do maybe 1 a day at best; again, many people do similarly, but nobody has time for much more, unless they did nothing else. DGG ( talk ) 20:03, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so every article deleted A7, for example, will have A7 in the subject line?

It looks like, for example:

20:28, 21 November 2009 Kinu (talk | contribs) deleted "Panohar" ‎ (A7: No indication that the article may meet guidelines for inclusion: A1: Not enough context to identify article's subject)

Many do have A& in subject line. To scrape effectively you need something that differentiates one passage from another.Ikip (talk) 20:38, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

That's technically the edit summary, not the subject line.As in the example you gave, essentially every article deleted via A7 will say either A7 in that summary or the phrase that follows. Articles deleted under multiple grounds will cite multiple reason & be picked up twice, which is fine. Deletions where the reason given is incorrectly specified or not of those listed or not given will not be picked up, unless we sorted and checked everything. Sometimes an edit will tag as A7, and the deleting admin will see copyvio or nonsense and simply change the reason to that--this does not pick up such cases either. But if you only look at the original tagging, it won't pick up the changed ones. This is just a first sample. DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Might ..

you be able to fix the name of the Faraday article to the full name (if you agree that is appropriate)? Beyond my skill set, I'm afraid.--Epeefleche (talk) 03:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

will do, once it gets kept. DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

tx.--Epeefleche (talk) 04:17, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

I created resource room, and appreciate your help in making sure it wasn't deleted my a newbie who seems to be trigger happy (a self-described "deletionist"). Also, I did read your note on the fact that it needs to be expanded, but I am new to this, and want to make sure it is done right. Just when I lose my faith in this site, a person like you comes and makes sure good articles stay!

Jim Steele (talk) 19:18, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It is messages like your's that help me keep my own faith that my work here is worth the effort it takes. DGG ( talk ) 20:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

(UTC)

Something you may be able to shed light on

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#BYU Studies. ^Bongo_matic 00:25, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Will you have another look at the talkpage of R1a?

See latest results: [2], [3].--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:06, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Please read the replies to your latest posts. Please do not go yet.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to look again. Wondering what you think of this proposal: [4]--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

User:Kurtd71

Dave, you might want to keep an eye on this user. He or she has been very combative in comments on my talk page regarding spam articles that have been speedied. Thanks. Hope you're doing well. - Realkyhick (Talk to me) 08:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

commented there; if further help is needed, let me know. DGG ( talk ) 19:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Adam Lyons

Hey DGG, I responded about your concerns about Adam Lyons on the AfD page. My question is on a slightly different topic- basically about 5 users that voted delete have been blocked now for being sockpuppets and I was wondering if there was any procedure like removing their votes or adding a tag to their votes so an admin who doesn't know they have all been blocked can take that into consideration. I have mentioned it in my lengthy comment, but I don't know if there is anything else that should be done. DRosin (talk) 10:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I normally handle it by striking the vote with <s></s> and adding a <small>comment saying the user was blocked for sock puppetry. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:01, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

AN

Courtesy notification. You were involved here and is now being discussed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Defying_an_AFD_decision Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 00:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

over something other than Fiction. last thing I would have expected. DGG ( talk ) 01:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The policy question is unresolved (what is the correct process). However, we've swept all conflict away as now I'll just notify people. Whether they want to re-create the article now that merge is off the table is up to them . Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 01:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is indeed a larger issue, though ANB is not the place to discuss it. . We have 2 contradictory practices: that merges and redirects are matters for normal editing, and not questions of deletion, but on the other hand they are among the possible closes for an AfD, discussed during afds, and very often resorted to as compromises. We try to accommodate this with the basic current rule is that a AfD decision can give a very strong but not binding recommendation of a merge or redirect. The key reason why that rule does make some sense is that a merge or redirect can be reverted by any editor, and an admin has no special prerogative for it. However, it not infrequently happens that someone pursues the obviously unfair tactic of trying to remove material when they know they could not get consensus for deletion by first merging, and then removing the material. Trying to do this is not editing in good faith, and if we have no specific rule against it, then IAR is certainly applicable. However, for one person to try to delete, and another to edit out the material not in the context of the original AfD can be in perfectly good faith as it was here. We still need to deal with the basic problem--not that I have any idea except to centralizing all contested merge and redirect discussions, which would essentially double the AfD-type work and is not at all an ideal solution DGG ( talk ) 01:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your insight. I have no problem with West Baltimore but am satisfied that you see that there is a potential manipulation problem, possibly more in fiction. As long as we act nicely and fairly, Wikipedia is for the better. If a few of us are aware that manipulation can exist, then Wikipedia is also for the better. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 02:13, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

collaborative work systems vs collaborative working systems

Thanks for adding the proper tag. The content of the article is based on the notion of a Collaborative Work Systems which is described in the literature as such. I have no objection to changing the name to Collaborative working system if that is within the Google scholar literature review however I did made two searches one for each proposed designation and indeed I notice the term "collaborative work" is much more consistent accross the literature so I propose to stick to the original name "collaborative work systems". As for the proposed merge with "Collaborative Working Environments" that is precisely the reason I have wrote this article in the first place: both notions are different. A "collaborative working environment" is a concept that emereges from a different research point of view, centered in the individual work of professionals that become e-professionals because they perform their work (e-work) within a networked environment, using not only collaborative software, but also videoconferencing systems which are not necessarily software-based. The concept of a collaborative work system on the other hand, is related to the organizational context of the work that occurs whenever two or more individuals collaborate for a given purpose. So the focus is not on the type of computer support to that work, but instead to the non-computer variables that affect that quality of work. It is important that one reads Beyond Teams, to see the difference on perspectives. Also, one needs to admit that a whole series of books dedicated to "Collaborative Work Systems" is sufficiently worth of having such a concept explained in wikipedia, independently of other related notions. Nunesdea (talk) 22:11, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

A key reason to not use "work" is because of the name of a company that was mentioned in the original article, Collaborative Work Systems. The article was marked for attention as an advertisement for the company, which is how I happened to see it, and indeed many spam articles are written in exactly that fashion--using the title does give such impression, even when another company is mentioned as well. (In any case Wikipedia always uses the singular as a mater of style: system, not systems; environment, not environments. As another matter of style, Wikipedia removes capitals in phrases that are not proper names--that too gives an impression of being promotional.--if not for a company, at least for the concept--just went through the CWS article & did this--I didn't have time yesterday.) As for the merge of the two articles, the explanation you give here seems a little clearer than you give in the articles. I have looked at the articles listed in the see also, and I see the same attempt to make many articles out of what are overlapping contexts. I would very strongly advise you to concentrate on fewer but stronger articles of substantial length, rather than one of each possible subdivision of the concept. We're an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. Myself, every setting I have ever been in, from kindergarden on, seems to meet the definition of a collaborative work system--they all of them were consciously designed to facilitate the functioning through group interaction, and I think this applies to anyone not a hermit. I admit I am not an expert, tho. To an nonexpert, both articles read like jargon. And I do not see how " "System" has a self explanatory power " -- "system" is such an extremely general word that the application of it will usually suggest jargon, not explanation, unless there is some specific meaning which will not be obvious. DGG ( talk ) 01:05, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I want to establish a mutual purpose among us, as I also want to preserve Wikipedia from being devalued. However for that reason we should stick primarily to scientific arguments as valid reason to nominate an article. There are a lot of literature published within the field of "collaborative work systems", too bad it is also the name of a small company. On the other hand the concept of a "system" always subsumes an "environment" so I would have "environment" as an element of a "system" and would include the notion of collaborative working environments within the notion of "collaborative work system" this being the main article. Also concerning the CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work) definition (which is nowdays abriged as computer supported collaboration) the notion of a "collaborative work system" (CWS) can be a useful concept as it explains the non-computer based part of collaboration.Nunesdea (talk) 02:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

. In ordinary language, envirnment and system can sometimes be synonyms: the rule set, formal and informal, of Wikipedia forms a system, and also defines the working environment in which we edit. To me, so far as there is a distinction, they're inherently pair, aspects of each other. A system is meaningless in the total abstract and an environment is not worth talking about until there is something in it. Environments and systems exist inside one another, and any of the levels can be regarded as either. As a hierarchy, the parts of a computer form a system, and exist within the real or virtual office environment which requires certain functions of it; this environment is itself a system, which exists within the larger environment of a business organization, which itself is a system that exists within the environment of the whole economy, which.... In terms more natural to me, the early earth existed before there were living beings, and formed the environment in which living systems arose, but the biogeochemical systems the organisms established created new environments, in which further systems evolved, eventually getting us where we are. What you say makes sense to you, but not to me, although I can understand it, by thinking in what I consider an artificial context. But it does not matter how you or I look at it, but how the literature does--and since this is a general and not a scholarly encyclopedia, it's how both the popular and the scientific literature look at it--and you need sources not supporting only your view, but a search to find those that support opposing views also or that reject this formulation. that's call NPOV. We write to=not to advocate a theory, but to explain it.

The academic students of management may have their own vocabulary for all this, and use words in special meanings. But a vocabulary of this sort is not natural language, and is apt to sound like impenetrable and unnecessary jargon to those outside it. If you're going to use it, you have to define the universe within which it is applicable, and you're going to have to prove, not assert, that it is well established and how it differs from the general use of the English language. In the Wikipedia environment -- or system-- articles that are not clear to ordinary readers tend to be nominated for deletion, and science has very little to do with it. Some fields' jargon is accepted by people here more easily than others, and as a fact of life here, however much you or I may deplore it, it's only fair that I advise you that there tends to be very limited patience with the applied social sciences DGG ( talk ) 03:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Of librarians and Eguor admins

Hope you'll indulge a casual drive-by question. (Saw you comment on a matter at ANI, and followed the link here.)

If I begin with random praise about librarians, it may surely sound like sucking up, but I have little notches in my brain linking the concepts of librarian and "important acts for freedom." (e.g., Not that I'm a huge fan of Michael Moore's, but I always remember the librarians who made sure "Stupid White Men" was published at that time.)

Anyway, my question is do you think there is a (natural?) correlation between the values/temperament of librarians and Equor administrators?

(Feel free to ignore, tis the holiday season and surely you've much else to do, and perhaps you may already answered this somewhere, if so, a link would a blessing.) In any case, happy holidays and many blessings in the coming year. -- Proofreader77 (talk) 19:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

As a preliminary matter, yes, intellectual freedom and librarianship, at least in the US, are linked traditions. (It has been different elsewhere, such as the USSR.) But other people care equally--notably, most of the people who built up the web and free culture generally.

However, I wouldn't identify Wikipedia:Eguor admins with intellectual freedom specifically. Admins and other Wikipedians of all dispositions generally are almost all of us here because of our commitment to intellectual freedom in multiple ways--it's even one of our basic principles, as NOT CENSORED. The concept of Equor ( basically, anti-rogue ) is a little different--to use admin powers in a way that as careful and discreet, rather than heavy-handed and authoritarian. I do not actually agree with everything on that page--in one sense, adminship should indeed be regarded as a big deal, for the potential power of admins to harm Wikipedia is very great. But the point I have been trying to remind people of in recent weeks is that we do not exercise admin powers to express our view of what Wikipedia should be, but to enforce the consensus view of what Wikipedia should be. We don't have to agree with it, but we cannot use the tools in opposition to it or regardless of it. I asked for the tools for two reasons originally: to check whether deleted articles could be possibly rescued --with the community given another chance to decide if they were in fact rescuable, and to carry out the implied will of the community in removing ones that they obviously they would never support. Anything else I've done I've done incidentally--I will not pass over vandalism or disruption if I see it, but that's not what I go looking for (many others do, and they certainly should--we don't have to all emphasize the same things.) Unfortunately, all too many admins who work in all areas seem to regard themselves as infallible. They forget that we're not chosen for our great skill in policy--just the general knowledge of policy every active Wikipedian should have, but are needed primarily for having sound judgment and care in expressing it. DGG ( talk ) 03:42, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Smiling. Beautiful. (Don't mean to be gushing.) My eyes water sometimes when I read things that make good sense—in an environment where it's clear that you know such "reasonable" perspective sometimes appears to be nonexistent. I care very much about "saying things well." In the holiday gift you have taken your time to give me, I have found beautiful fragments to savor. And wish the whole of your remarks was more representative of the rank of the bit than, sadly, it can ever be. My sincere thanks. (And see previous closing:-) Proofreader77 (talk) 03:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, well said. The other key issue is (if one is entrusted with admin tools) is calming rather than inflaming heated debates, such as dealing to aggrieved editors who have blown a gasket. This is a key headache which needs looking at from time to time. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I was completely satisfied with that beautiful exchange of gift and thanks, but then Casliber's comment "dragged me back in." :)

I guess my reaction in a nutshell is that most admins (present company excepted, by all means, if you wish exception) often seem to be the wrong animal to calm the waters — many believing there is only one species, and it's their kind. :-)

But I can only say that nut's worth after having written the below, which you can skim if you like, or just gaze across the waters. Cheers.
-- Proofreader77 (talk) 06:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Nova Science

Dear Dr. Goodman!

I ask you to fix the Nova article; I tried my best today to bring it into a more objective and better shape.

Wikipedia is not the place for the gymnastics of publisher downgrading, if people have a grudge concerning a publisher, they should sort it directly with them in a civilised way.

Franz Weber —Preceding unsigned comment added by Franz weber (talk • contribs) 18:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Skema school., business

Hi DGG, remember this? Skema Business School . The article is becoming a primary sourced advert edited by a single editor (a former student they state) I mentioned it to them on their talkpage User talk:Julien Schmidwhat do you think is the way forward? Off2riorob (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting and helping out DGG, also...Happy Xmas to you and yours. Off2riorob (talk) 20:42, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

RFC/CENT

2/0 makes a good point:

Support - could some kind soul notify me if I seem to have missed it when this is announced as a centralized discussion?

Care to make the AFD suggestion a cent/RFC? Seems like support for this proposal is very strong initially. Ikip 00:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC) RE: Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#Move_a_disputed_merge_to_AfD.2C_retitled_Articles_for_Discussion

You probably already noticed: [5] Ikip 00:45, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Sebastian already did it, and it is at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Proposal 1. Myself, I;d have waited till after the holiday. DGG ( talk ) 01:08, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

American Health Lawyers Association

I tried to cut out the violating material. If it's still a copyvio, then tag it again. Bearian (talk) 06:34, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

The Holocaust

DGG, just to let you know there is a discussion ongoing here. Do you care to weigh in with an opinion? Bus stop (talk) 22:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:Oldcsd

Another editor has created Template:Oldcsd, which can be added to the talk page of an article by an administrator who has declined a speedy delete. You may find this a convenient way to discourage repeated csd taggings of the same article for identical reasons. - Eastmain (talk) 22:17, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

That urge to prod

Though actually I've been feeling less deletionist of late, and have been compensating for this with extra evil. I've just come across this. It's in no way blatantly promotional and my guess is that its content is all true. Yeah yeah, not truth but verifiable fact is what matters hereabouts; yet as this is a (sort of) published item, arguably (hmmm) it provides its own verification. Now, I'm all in favor of more and better articles on photography magazines -- Japan has had dozens of demonstrable, verifiable significance -- yet I feel queasy when I see an article on a manufacturer's freebie. As User:Wageless seems to have departed, you'll have to stand in for him as benign inclusionist in the Big Question: Shall we prod? -- Hoary (talk) 01:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

the magazine is not in WorldCat or in Ulrich's, so probably the best course would be to merge it into the manufacturer, since it is a leading company. I feel just the same about such publications as you; as with self-published books, the presumption is against them. DGG ( talk ) 01:21, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Well said. Here we go. -- Hoary (talk) 03:54, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

AfD for John Rosatti

I am in the peculiar position of nominating this article despite preferring to keep it, because the limited sources and BLP issues made it seem like the best course of action. If you're so inclined, I'd be curious to see what you have to say if you weigh in on the debate. You often have "keep" arguments that I hadn't considered.--otherlleft 15:14, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

commented. Deleting because an article is a BLP magnet is not part of Wikipedia policy if the subject is notable. People sometimes suggest it as an easy way out of coping with the need for proper watching and editing. It is the sort of practice that would lead to the elimination of all articles on highly controversial subjects. DGG ( talk ) 16:58, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I am still wrestling with the question of whether or not those sources are good enough - my knee-jerk reaction was yes, but I'm not finding it as cut-and-dried as I would have expected. As expected you surprised me - I really didn't think the business-related stuff was significant, but then again I've never seen the dealership.--otherlleft 21:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

note: final result was delete. DGG ( talk ) 17:52, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Nicely done

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 22:39, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Highgrove Luxury Condominiums

Is The New York Times article an advertisement since it is located in the real estate section? Cunard (talk) 06:36, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

It's legit. They are editorially responsible there also. DGG ( talk ) 19:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you find the article to be promotional, and would that disqualify notability? The "delete" votes are basing deletion off that fact. Cunard (talk) 21:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I commented there and will comment again. I do not find the NYT article at all promotional; I find the Wikipedia article a little promotional, so I edited it a little, as is appropriate for overly promotional articles on notable subjects. DGG ( talk ) 21:35, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I rather lost my patience a little in the reply, but it is certainly not targeted at you--I very much appreciate your calling my attention to a place where what I said might need repetition or clarifying even if you do not agree with it. DGG ( talk ) 21:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, which have helped clarify The New York Times source. I fully agree with what you have said at this AfD. Although you recommended that the "delete" votes improve the article, I highly doubt they will do that, so I have done a little editing myself. Cunard (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI

User_talk:Penwhale#.22.5BJack_Merridew.5D_does_not_bait_me_or_you--he_baits_those_susceptible_to_it.2C_and_is.2C_I_must_admit.2C_very_skilled_at_this.22

I quoted you. Ikip 13:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Sarah de Guademar

Thanks for chiming in on that article (original Sarah E. Meyer). The clarification on unsourced vs. unsourceable is excellent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougluce (talk • contribs) 05:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Coffee is bullying and threatening an editor about removing PROD tags

As an admin can you look at this please? I message a couple of other admins too. User_talk:Power.corrupts#Warning. Ikip 05:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hartmut Esslinger

Thanks for setting me straight and picking up the ball I dropped. I should have known better--BaliUltimate and JBSupreme (interesting, those modifiers in their names) in the edit history of a BLP means valuable stuff may have been cut. Anyway, thanks; I appreciate your due diligence and I mourn my lack thereof. Drmies (talk) 04:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

JB's other recent contributions also need some attention--I've checked only the ones where I feel I have sufficient subject competence. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Sympathy of Interest

I was struck by your comments at WP:Requests for comment/Wuhwuzdat and realised that you are a librarian. The whole sad AIP business has made me think hard about how we treat those editors who are the target of WP:GLAM, as I don't think that page does the job we want it to. The more I've thought about it, the more I'm forced to the conclusion that we actually need to provide special treatment for them. There are a lot of people out there who actually have the same goals as wikipedia does, and I suspect we are intellectually arrogant to act as if only wikipedia was in the business of spreading free knowledge. What I think I mean, is that we should have a concept of "Sympathy of Interest" – the antithesis to Conflict of Interest. When new editors are identified as having SoI, surely we should be doing everything possible to encourage them to contribute? Perhaps require other editors to make an absolute assumption of good faith (not the conditional WP:AGF that we use now).

I know I'm "preaching to the choir" here, but I'd appreciate any thoughts you had on what I'm suggesting. Am I hopelessly over-optimistic that we could adopt a SoI policy one day? --RexxS (talk) 20:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I've seen too much spam here--even from organizations that should know better, some of them being libraries, to suggest an automatic assumption of good faith. Some change in what we need is attitude:

1. to actually mean our AGF, rather than assume a high level of suspicion. This goes for all editors, not just GLAM.
2. to not act precipitously. This goes for all editors also--but there is the problem that we do sometimes need to stop people from continuing until the matter can be discussed. I have a few times myself blocked people from institutions, in order to convince those contributors to discuss what they are doing.
3. to have a greater sympathy generally with academic interests and organizations. There is first the general cultural bias, especially in the US, of not taking academic interests seriously, particularly in the humanities. Additionally a great many Wikipedians are students, and unfortunately students frequently have, often for good reason, some lack of positive feelings towards the educational system.
4. to recognize that the ways in which other organizations and professions work have a rationale of their own, and there may be some adjustment needed eon both sides when working with others. We should not assume that we have everything perfect. Equally, we need to be realistic that some people who in other settings who are used to having their authority respected and cannot adjust to us, may possibly not be well suited for our project.

In addition we need

1. some way of identifying people coming from institutions quickly, and then bringing in people to help them who know both when and how to intervene. Often the best way of doing this is off-wiki, and I have when needed contacted both academics and publishers directly. I am considering how to deal with this in the text of WP:GLAM to emphasize this.
2. an appropriate policy change, to one supporting role accounts for institutions upon approval, perhaps by the bureaucrats, who are responsible for other naming problems that take discretion and judgment. this would provide a good way to identify them early. Like many changes here, it will take a good deal of patient urging.

The conventional place for notices about this is the COI noticeboard, although it is mainly looked at by people having exaggerated ideas of what constitutes COI and spamming. Another channel of communication is the wikipedia-en list; I suppose I must also mention IRC, though many people, including myself, choose to never participate there. I urge anyone who thinks they have been treated unfairly to contact me. I can at least give them advice on whether what they want to do is reasonable, and if so, how to do it without raising unnecessary antagonism. What I of course cannot do is guarantee success in convincing others . DGG ( talk ) 22:30, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

David Goodman's Projects

I wish you well on your current projects
1. Rescuing worthy speedies & prods in all fields & discussing the procedure. As of Jan 2010, I have at least succeeded in changed the time from 5 days to 7 to allow fairer notice and better discussion.
2. keeping articles about academics & academic organizations from deletion.
3. upgrading "list of journals in .." and "...open access journals"
4. adding articles for major ref. sources
5. keeping important "in popular culture" articles from deletion, and upgrading their content
6. Changing AfD to "Articles for Discussion" and considering all good faith disputed merges and redirect there also. As of Jan. 2010, this is about to be adopted.
7. making some possible changes to speedy deletion criteria. I have been reluctant to add to the work at Del Rev by appealing the many incorrect speedies I come across but which are for articles that have no chance of surviving AfD, but perhaps we really should be doing this to make the teaching point.

Btw what is your email ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Polysophia (talk • contribs) 03:42, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Note sure I "get" something

I'm not sure I understand your criterion that is set out in this discussion, and elsewhere. (See my question there.) What am I missing? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:40, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I see also you tried to make this part of the guidelines here. I think we would need a discussion about that prior to doing so, since it seems to make little logical sense, unless we're trying to completely change the standard to one in which all populated award categories are OK. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:12, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah! I see you indeed did start a discussion about it. I've taken my concern there. (Imagine! Someone actually starting a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization. It boggles the mind!) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:19, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Single-source citation templates

I asked some questions at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2010_January_23#Template:EGA_I, which I hope you will be able to answer.

Thanks. —Dominus (talk) 14:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pete Williams (journalist)

Do you care one way or the other any more? Bearian (talk) 18:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments at the AfD. I hope that you don't consider my contact of you as canvassing. Bearian (talk) 19:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

as you couldn't have known what I would say, of course it was not. In general I do not consider notifying me of a discussion to be canvassing, as I am very open to changing my opinion if there is a good argument for doing so--or even if I think more carefully about the problem. ` DGG ( talk ) 19:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Food_and_Chemical_Toxicology

Opinions? PubMed listed, but its reliability has been questioned. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

AfD

I really don't want to do something like that. I've already had a lot of trouble with admins that go out of process and I wouldn't like to repeat it in a case like this because all that it did was make me look bad. Which it might me look bad again because of the whole unreferenced BLP issue. Joe Chill (talk) 22:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess there is some advantage in already being an admin in terms of self-protection. :) given that I've already said a good deal, I will appeal Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dillon Dougherty if nobody else does--I think that close one of the worst of the year. So far--admittedly, 90% of the year is still to come. DGG ( talk ) 22:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

That's an interesting close - it looks like the closing admin invoked a nonexistent policy, is my read on that off-base?--otherlleft 23:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The policy applicable to that close is WP:POINT. DGG ( talk ) 23:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

FYI....

[[6]] :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Re: Pierce Biotechnology

Fair enough. :-)

Please could you restore the page, as it needs to be an admin who does that? (I can't access the relevant archive pages.) thisisace (talk) 07:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

RfC

Maybe you can comment at the SambaStream AfD. It involves as source a trade journal, Information Today, Inc., which should be familiar to you. Pcap ping 18:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

hoax?

This was not an error, nor does it reflect laziness. This was a valid removal of an incorrectly applied template. There is no onus on the reviewer of speedy nominations to inquire further when a rationale is incorrect, though this particular administrator frequently does. I "realized" it when I saw the note on this talk page and did a little sniffing around. This is a collaborative effort, and we all do our different things (although DGG does a larger amount of a wider variety of things than many). The great thing about this place is if you don't like the way someone else is doing things, you can always do it yourself. ^Bongo_matic 16:34, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

as I see it, there is an onus on every user to deal with vandalism and attack pages--if a non-admin to tag it, if an admin to delete it. A hoax often is regarded as vandalism, though this one had been around for over 2 years. There is indeed some real junk in the unsourced BLPs. DGG ( talk ) 17:16, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Philippines–Romania relations has been nominated for deletion again here

You are being notified because you participated in a previous Afd regarding this article, either at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Argentina–Singapore_relations or at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philippines–Romania relations, and you deserve a chance to weigh in on this article once again. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

You certainly do, DGG. I do as well. Like Virginia Wolfe, let's not have our ideas forced into a corporate or sociopolitical mold but instead exercise our first- and second-amendment rights over at that AfD. -- Hoary (talk) 00:57, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Two academic journals from India

I noticed articles created by another editor for two journals published in India which may not be notable, Indian Journal of Botanical Research and Indian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. The articles may have been deleted by the time you see this message. A handful of citations show up at Google Scholar but not the journals themselves. I don't have access to Ulrich's online. If you think they might be notable, please add any evidence for that to the articles. Many thanks. - Eastmain (talk • contribs) 07:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

as the only way to delete them would be PROD, they'll be here for time enough to look carefully. DGG ( talk ) 12:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Problematic AfD relistings.

Once again, Spartaz has relisted a fictional AfD that has overwhelming consensus to keep: Last time was Technology in Stargate at 8 to 3, this time it's Unseen University at 6 to 2. Gotta say, I don't see this as a positive and productive trend. What do you think--am I being too paranoid? Jclemens (talk) 07:24, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

• Yes i'd say you were and how come you didn't discuss either action with me before going to complain to someone else? Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
  • It's called "perception checking"--asking someone else, independent, whose opinion I respect to provide an evaluation of my perception. But, since you're watchlisting this page: Please justify your relistings against keep consensus in both the cases I just cited. Jclemens (talk) 07:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
    • I guess it depends on whether you assess consensus by counting noses or reading arguments. I often relist if I think there is a useful ongoing discussion that it would be a shame to curtail. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:42, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
      • What "useful ongoing discussion" was underway in either case? In both of these cases, there were at most 2 !votes among 3 total comments in the four days prior to relisting. Considering that's over half the discussion period, I'd be hard pressed to call that ongoing discussion in comparison to the initial few days' of activity. Jclemens (talk) 07:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Spartaz, I am not willing to close a disputed AfD on a fictional topic as keep unless against my own opinion; but if it were most topics I would revert your relisting and do just that. There was a substantial early discussion, in which several of the redirect !votes changed to keep on the basis of the links and arguments presented. Given such a trend of the discussion, I think its pretty clear. Since I had not joined the discussion previously I suppose the way to say this best is to look at the article and go there and give my opinion. But JC, you really should have asked him first. I notice another editor did that just a few minutes after you came here.

But while we're here there a more general issue. You have written a essay to explaining how to appeal your closes User:Spartaz/Rescuing Deleted Content, saying in it you were more deletionist than average. As you say there that you mainly deal with deletion, I assume that means you get a very large number of complaints. Checking against the contributions log, I see that in the period since Jan 12 you closed 26 AfDs as delete to 5 as keep,with 5 as no-consensus or redirect, and 5 as relist. Going back as far as August, you have not closed a single AfD related to fiction as keep. DGG ( talk ) 12:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm really not sure what your point is DGG but I should say that the relisting may not have been one of my better decisions and I'm not really fussed one way or the other if you want to revert me. On the general point of my closes, bearing in mind that my timezone means that I get to AFDs by the end of the log and therefore have a high proportion of difficult closes in the mix I have a pretty good record of deletions being endorsed at DRV and since I am aware of my biases and am firmly opposed to measuring consensus by headcount rather then assessing arguments I am careful to stick closely to GNG and assessing sourcing in my closing rationale. This is intentionally to counter any personal bias in my assessmeng of consensus. If I were consistently being pulled up by DRV for erroneous closes then I would accept that there was an issue in the way I approached assessing consensus but your comment doesn't really demonstrate there is an issue at all. I'd be interested in your telling me how many of the AFDs I have closed since the start of the year have been fiction related ones and in how many of those it has been demonstrated that my assessment of the consensus was wrong. I think I have closed relatively few AFDs in 2010 so this sample probably isnt representative of my overall approach and, if you looked at a wider sample, I think you would find that the vast majority of my closing of fiction related material has been in accordance with the compromise to merge and consolidate fiction related material rather then deleting it outright when its not properly sourced.

I also think its a pretty low blow to try and use a personal essay that is designed to help users to rescue deleted material as some kind of smoking gun to deter me from closing AFDs at all. I think it would be a very thin wikipedia if we rejected every editor or admin with a personal opinion from closing deletion debates and I would suggest that it is far better to have editors who are aware of their biases and who are honest about it. I get the impression that you would prefer that admins whose opinions you disapprove of should not close AFDs because you don't like the outcomes. I'm not going to recuse because I don't think there is a general problem with my AFD closing and if there were, I would regularly be getting tanked by DRV for getting it wrong. Since I'm not I can't accept that my personal opionions about article inclusion should prevent me from closing AFDs (Fiction related or otherwise) but I am always very open to discussing specific closes if you feel that I made a mistake. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:09, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The reason we're here (or would instead be at your talk page, had you not joined the discussion here) is because I saw an issue twice, and commented on it. Are relistings subject to DRV? I don't even know, because this issue hasn't gotten to the point where a DRV is appropriate. It's a discussion at this point, as it should be. I'm glad to know you don't get overturned at DRV very often, but that's a pretty low threshold given the inertia at DRV. I suspect far less than 1/4 of all contested DRVs are overturned. I personally shoot for, and have maintained to this point, zero overturns at DRV.

No one has asked you to not close anything. All I have asked is that you explain the rationale behind relisting of two separate fictional topics where sources were present in the AfD and 75+% of the !votes were some sort of keep, and the majority of !votes were outright keep. DGG has endorsed my concern in part, and likewise that my venue (raising this here first, vs. at your talk page) was incorrect. Given that there appears to be a trend, it is absolutely appropriate to look at both your past behavior and your personal writings, as you are welcome to look at mine: Wikipedia conduct is public, hence we're unable to have this conversation in private, which is unfortunate.

The fundamental problem as I see it is that you've at least twice relisted something against consensus, but in line with what I presume to be your own personal feelings. You've been given an opportunity to explain both of these specific relistings, but failed to do so with any specificity. I have absolutely no problem with you !voting delete on fictional topics--your personal level of deletionism is far from outside the norm, and is a welcome addition to any conversation. What does concern me, however, is the apparent relisting of discussions on the presumed basis that you don't like the outcome. If that's not the case, then please, take a bit more time and detail and explain the relisting rationale in these specific cases. But if I'm right, all I would ask is that if you see a !vote that's going a way you disagree with, then by all means comment and !vote, rather than relisting against the clear consensus. Jclemens (talk) 20:27, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I think my response to DGG below probably address a measure of your concerns but I did want to acknowledge again that the relisting was a poor decision and let you know that this conversation has given me plenty of food for thought. If I do something off the wall in future you are welcome to leave me a note on my talk page because I do genuinely care about getting the outcome right and, even if its just a sanity check, its something that I can benefit from too. That said, I am generally content with my decision making at AFD and, outside of the Wendy Babcock AFD which was a deliberate breaching experiment to explore the consensus on closing BLP AFDs, I am struggling to remember a recent case where DRV has trouted me for closing a discussion the wrong way. That said, a trawl through the last couple of weeks AFDs does suggest (at least) that I'm at risk of allowing my biases to get the better of me, so I'm going to take a couple of days off AFD closing to give me time to mull over things and properly think through the issues you and DGG have raised. I hope we have come out of this with no hard feelings and better understanding of each other's approaches. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:53, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'll pile on the apology club--given your response, the outcome clearly would have been better had I just come to you and politely expressed my concerns in the first place. My initial reply, as well, reads as curt and overly direct in light of the subsequent meaningful discussion here. Having said that, in light of your introspection and issue acknowledgement, I don't see this issue as meriting an admin review. If you're genuinely concerned that you have other blind spots that would benefit from additional community feed back, be my guest... but you needn't do this on the basis of this now-resolved (at least in my mind) issue. Jclemens (talk) 05:02, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Spartaz, I seem to have been being irritable yesterday, more than my usual, and I apologize for that. As for your subpage, I actually like it very much, and agree with almost all of it, except the insistence on two sources--I would restore on one if its good enough. But maybe you're right in terms of what advice to give, for, like you, when I advise people, I tell them not how to get things to just squeak by, but tell them to make the article really sound. As to the issue, I think jclemens put it just above perfectly. I'm not sure you noticed the trend. That's sometimes what friends on the other side are for. DGG ( talk ) 02:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad you like the subpage and, while I'm not surprised that we have a slightly different perception of the threashold for inclusion, I'm pleased that you generally agree with the content. I think most admins who regularly close AFds could benefit from something similar in their own area - not just because of the relief it gives in focusing challenges against AFD closes but also because we should all be honest about where we stand in the deletion range. Openess and honesty are one of the most effective ways of dispelling suspicion and bad feelings that I know. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:53, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess I am also joining the apology club because I can recognise today that my own responses were far from optimal and unnecessarily combative and unhelpful. Sorry. I think I started off on the wrong foot and then found it difficult to interpret what you and Jclements were saying because of the red mist obscuring my view. I hope you won't mind my having one minor quibble against your last sentence though. I don't agree with "sides" because its labelling and restricts your vision in a binary "black - white" way. I think the reality is that there are shades of option in deletion and a continuem of varying shades of grey. Minor quibble aside, I certainly do value feedback and advice - not least because one of the ways I can combat my biases is to look at decisions through a different POV. Today I can see the relisting was a poor decision that I will shortly rectify. I'm not going to claim that I'm doing this as a guesture of good will because I can recognise myself that my action was plain wrong and will put it right. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you about "sides" this is just a convenient shorthand, and should not be taken to mean that there are inflexible views on either sides. My opinions about various Wikipedia topics has changed since I've been here and continues to change, and I think this is true of most other active people here DGG ( talk ) 16:44, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• For information, I have copied this conversation into a user subpage at User:Spartaz/Admin_Review/Background as background to an admin review I just opened. Please let me know if you object to this and I will delete it. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:29, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that might be better that, if you want an admin review, to start fresh, with less focus on this particular instance. DGG ( talk ) 16:47, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing

Just so you know, I've been vocal trying to deal with this unnecessary attack on Wikipedia, but I've also been busy sourcing articles in my area of expertise. I know what these unreferenced stub BLP articles look like. Yes I wish others would too. The big problem is the blowhards who just want to delete the stuff they haven't bothered to look at.Trackinfo (talk) 02:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

yes. but yo be fair, some of our strongest opponents do also work on articles. I see some of their fervor in this as impatience that not enough other people have been helping them--and that is certainly true. Some of them have tried to justify it as their desperate try for proper attention to sourcing, and I think they are in good faith about that. DGG ( talk ) 02:39, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Request for comments on user essay

DGG - I’ve just completed drafting my first WP essay in my user space: Creating A Better List. As of yet it is not linked anywhere except through the {{Essay}} template. My ultimate objective is to move this essay to the project space, but at this point, that is premature without some feedback from fellow editors. As such I would appreciate your opinion on the essay, especially on two points. 1) Have I made any statements contradictory to WP policy or guidelines? 2) Are there additional examples that could be included to demonstrate my points more effectively?

Thanks in advance for your review and feel free to make any editorial changes you think would enhance the essay. Please provide comments here, as I am asking several editors to comment and would like to keep them all in the same place.--Mike Cline (talk) 00:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

quick comment: you should really add a fifth reason--as a way of providing some information on topics that do not justify a separate article or even a section of a combination article. I'll look at details further.~ DGG ( talk ) 00:14, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I won't comment there without being invited, but this seems like a good topic for an essay. I've recently raised the subject of bringing the once-infamous List of bow tie wearers to featured list status, and I think your draft is a good start towards a better guide to list building.--otherlleft 02:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Proding of Lists

Hi there. Just wanted to inform you that the editor who has been randomly placing prod-tags into Wikipedia Lists has indicated on his talk page, that in the past 2 weeks he already had 2 articles deleted via prod. It might be a good idea to undelete these 2 lists given the fact that the editor's prod-nomination on these Lists is unnecessary. Amsaim (talk) 23:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Normally, anything removed by prod can be restored at the requenst of a good faith editor, but be prepared for it to be taken to afd. For List of American music artists and List of Greek musical artists, ask JClemens to restore. he was the deleting admin. I see no reason why he wouldn't. DGG ( talk ) 00:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, I'll get in touch with JClemens. Meanwhile, isn't such prod-tagging disruptive editing? Amsaim (talk) 00:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

anyone can remove a prod, so don't bother making an issue over it, unless it continues. I and a few others normally check, but I don't usually look at anything to do with popular music, because checking prod requires a ability to recognize what might be notable & sourceable-- I do not work in this area & would make too many misjudgments. The others were in a block, so they got noticed DGG ( talk ) 00:25, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thnx again for that info. Amsaim (talk) 00:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination for Mark Sparnon

Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Sparnon, and article whose proposed deletion you objected to. Cnilep (talk) 18:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

DYK for R2C2

On February 17, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article R2C2, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Ucucha 18:15, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

That's an interesting article. Thanks for writing it. Pcap ping 04:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

AfD of interest

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Softlink, a maker of library management software apparently. By the way, is there a WikiProject for library-related stuff, so I can post there instead and not look like I'm canvasing a well-known inclusionist? (The only other librarian I know here is User:PamD, but she's not active here anymore). Thanks, Pcap ping 04:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I left a comment - DGG/

Writing an essay

Since you've expressed an interest in these matters before I thought you might be interested to know that I've been working with another editor on this: User:Equazcion/Editing controversial subjects‎. If you have any input it would be welcome. Thanks. Equazcion ^(talk) 03:57, 19 Feb 2010 (UTC)

I added a little. DGG ( talk ) 04:41, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I copy-edited a little but it looks good. Feel free to keep tabs and contribute more in the future. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:55, 19 Feb 2010 (UTC)

EContent

This was speedily deleted a couple of times, but as far I can tell it's a division of Information Today, Inc. Can you check if that was the article contents, and if so merge it? If not I'll create a redirect. Also, do you have access to the magazine? It has articles on CMS companies that are regularly brought up at AfD, e.g. Ektron. Thanks, Pcap ping 07:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Multiple meanings. Yes, It is one of Information today's publications, but that does not seem what the actual article was about. The publication is in my opinion notable, and I will try to write an appropriate article, or section. Though they used to send it to me, , I do not now have ready access-- but i will check around how I can get to it., DGG ( talk ) 08:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Eurasia, Rivista di Studi Geopolitici

You're my go-to guy on scholarly journals. Could you have a look at this new one? --Orange Mike | Talk 03:49, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Attrition and selectively choosing consensus

Sigh:[7]

I am so tired of this, and that is what many editors are hoping for. Okip 14:32, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The actual state of BLP consensus is undeterminable because of the complexity of the discussion. As I see it, there was agreement at first that a Prod process was desirable, rather than anything more drastic; various changes to prod were suggested, but it gradually became evident that most were just minor tinckerings to try to tighten it up, or discussions of how fast to do them. the only substantial change, that a prod could not be removed without adding sources, did not have consensus. Overall, it was never agreed that any of the changes were better than the normal way prod is done at present.

there are people at Wikipedia who are willing to do productive work, and people who prefer to discuss how other people should do the work. The people who participate in policy discussions tend to be largely from the second group. As many of them so much prefer that other people do the work that they themselves have no conception at all of what is actually involved, it is futile to argue with them, and I now rarely attempt it. So of course do most sensible people, with the inevitable result that the zealots lead the way, and the ignorant follow.

We will still be able to keep Wikipedia from falling in the ditch, because whatever rules are passed, my experience is that it is possible to adapt to them. DGG ( talk ) 19:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

And the more out of sync with community practices the rule is, the more likely it is to be ignored. Bad rules do damage, certainly, but the community is still able to find its way through a minefield of bad policy.

I've been mostly ignoring the BLP RfCs because I was watching the problem actually get solved while everybody jawed at each other. Miraculously, most people involved at the RfCs seem to have caught onto that fact as well, and have accepted that the best solution is not telling people how to fix it, but just letting them fix it.--Father Goose (talk) 04:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is true that a great number of people are working on these articles, thus proving that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, no matter whether the rest of the wagon is coming apart , but more quietly. Less cynically, projects and campaigns are generally an effective way to get people interested. DGG ( talk ) 06:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

A little PROD process critique solicited

DDG - I was reviewing PRODs and chose to remove one from this article. I added appropriate tags and rationale here, and I added a note here for the editor that placed the PROD. I also began some article improvements. Did I apply the process correctly? (Not worried about my rationale here, just whether or not I followed the procedures correctly). Thanks--Mike Cline (talk) 16:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Looking at what you did, first, yes, you did the process right. (Had it been a speedy, I would have removed the deletion tag before making the improvements--with an edit summary saying I was about to make them-- to prevent it getting deleted in the meantime, but that's not a concern with prod except at the very end of their 7 day lifetime.) I agree with almost all of what you said, also. My own view is that this is the sort of article that should never be deleted by prod for several reasons: first, there are no firmly established criteria for this sort of list article, so it's always going to be controversial and an AfD is required. Second, the history shows that it's the split of the examples section from a very long established article, megaproject. If the stand-alone article is not justified, it should be merged back, not deleted. You clarified the scope, which was needed, and suggested a move to Examples of megaprojects, not List of megaprojects. I'm not sure about that change of title--it does remove the list of ... heading which tends to attract deletion from a small group of people who dislike list articles in general. On the other hand," list of " is our standard wording. "example of" might be seen as indicating subjectivity, which could be considered OR, whereas "List of " would normally include every Wikipedia article that falls within the scope. ` DGG ( talk ) 17:10, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

DGG - Thanks good feedback--Mike Cline (talk) 17:15, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Question about notability of Journal

Hi DGG, I am hoping you'll be able to give me some idea of how notable the scholarly journal Slavic Review actually is, which I came across in the Mark D. Steinberg article (I see that the article claims it is quite notable, but I trust your judgment more than our articles when it comes to this kind of issue). If this is a significant journal, then would I be correct in believing Steinberg's status as "Editor" probably meets WP:PROF under "The person is or has been an editor-in-chief of a major well-established journal in their subject area"? Part of what makes me wary here is that the associate editor of the journal is his wife, it's run out of his university, and his article was initially what appears to be his CV from the Slavic Review site; on the other hand, I really haven't the knowledge to assess how "typical" this is of a well-regarded journal. Thanks for any thoughts you may have on the subject. Risker (talk) 01:34, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Probably the most important English language journal in the field world-wide. Held by over 850 worldCat libraries. It's in WebofScience, which lists very few humanities journals. The e-i-c of it would be unquestionably notable. (He has also published 5 very widely reviewed books. The article is a bit of a mess, due to the incomplete rewriting of a copyvio from his cv, so I'm fixing it, and adding back what is needed. DGG ( talk ) 02:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh fantastic, DGG; I'd been asked to address an issue related to this article for reasons unrelated to notability, and with all the back and forth I was concerned it might be susceptible to a deletion request that wasn't really appropriate. Thanks for taking a look and tidying it up. Risker (talk) 03:35, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

DRV question

How is a DRV for an article like Ambarish Srivastava supposed to work ?

• Is the discussion supposed to decide if the article draft meets our notability guidelines and should be kept/deleted, or
• Is the discussion on whether the article has changed enough from the previously deleted version, and is good enough not to be speedied, and therefore can be moved to mainspace (and possibly nominated for AFD to judge notability).

I didn't find anything at WP:DRV that addressed this point, and thought you'd perhaps know. Regards. Abecedare (talk) 20:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I was also confused by your "acceptable for user space now" vote. Does that mean the article has to go through another DRV before it can be moved to mainspace ? Abecedare (talk) 20:59, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Oops--my typo--I meant to say its ok for MAIN space. I've corrected myself at the DRV. You are right that what I mistakenly wrote would have been self-contradictory, and I thank you for catching it. DGG ( talk ) 22:06, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Fastest production car

Hi, could you stop removing appropriate templates, you can say your opinion in talk page --Typ932 ^T·C 21:33, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

According to WP:PROD, a prod tag, once removed, can not be replaced; prod is for uncontested deletions, and if anyone removes a prod, it means they are contesting the deletion. I've explained why I think the article should be kept on the article talk page. If you still disagree, use WP:AFD and the community will decide. DGG ( talk ) 04:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

According to the template "You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason. However please explain why you object to the deletion, either in your edit summary or on the talk page. If this template is removed,"

you did not give any good reason for removing the tag, its wrongly removed, you explanations in edit summary was not enough, that article is definately deletable material. --Typ932 ^T·C 13:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I gave the reason as "appropriate list , sourced, not equivalent to any part of article cited as covering the subject" 3 good reasons, answering the 3 key objections to it that had been made. Since any objection at all is enough for a prod, the advice to give a reason is good advice, because saying why is more likely to lead the prodder to consider not sending he article to afd, rather than if one said just "I object". If you continue think it deleteable, send it to AFD. The community makes the decisions there, not me, not you, not the WikiProject. AfD is unpredictable, so I usually avoid guessing in advance, but I think it has better than an even chance of being kept. DGG ( talk ) 17:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Klim

DGG, I'd appreciate it if you too continued to keep an eye on Christopher Klim. (See its talk page.) -- Hoary (talk) 03:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The magazine is at AfD. -- Hoary (talk) 00:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't be more wrong, and I'm really getting desperate there. Could I be off my meds? If so, at least I forgo multiple exclamation points and the like. ¶ I suspect that the magazine, if it even existed, was not notable (in the normal sense of the word), but that 1500 copies (if true) was rather more than the figure for, say, the Vladimir Nabokov Research Newsletter (later The Nabokovian), which presented the occasional newly discovered fugitive piece by VN himself and was I think notable. -- Hoary (talk) 17:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

As you know, for small or niche literary magazines, copy number is not relevant to notabity. A very small circulation publication can have great influence. The reason why this one is not notable is because it was essentially vanity publication, a means to entice the authors, and there is no evidence that anyone else ever bought it. That he published it is a valid part of his biography. DGG ( talk ) 18:15, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Riverview Psychiatric Center

Some troll created this, it was Prodded, I found it, and voila! I've nominated it for a certain day's DYK. Please, can you help source it? Bearian (talk) 01:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Wiki2Touch

I don't know what you had in mind when you stated that Wiki2touch was a "major software for a major site" in deprodding the article, but reading that article, it would seem to me that the Wikimedia Foundation was not involved in the making of this software. A jailbreak is even required to run it. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 02:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I was careful to word it for a major site, not part of a major site. DGG ( talk ) 03:53, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Merging "List of Presidents of Mexico by longevity"

Hello, DGG. You contested the proposed deletion of List of Presidents of Mexico by longevity with the concern, "needs merging, not deletion -- material not in citd article," but you did not specify which article or articles you think the material should be merged to. Could you either carry out that merger or specify the target you had in mind? The {{mergeto}} tag may be helpful. Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 18:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, I thought it obvious enough that it would be merged to a list of Presidents of Mexico, which in this case, is a part of the article List of heads of state of Mexico It would require adding columns for the birth and death dates, and turning it into a sortable list, which would be a good idea in any case. DGG ( talk ) 18:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

RSN input request Journal of Genetic Genealogy

DGG, can you comment on the reliability of the publication Journal of Genetic Genealogy at this this RSN thread  ? The debate has been active for over two weeks, and input from uninvolved editors essentially drowned by lengthy back and forth between the disputants (User:Andrew Lancaster, rudra and User:DinDraithou). Abecedare (talk) 20:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Admin advice re Jason Sarrio

I was wielding the mop and bucket while in the airport in CSD and came across this one CSD-G7, where the nominator is actually not the author of the content and it appears that the author challenged a PROD but blanked the page, then re-added something, that was then blanked by another editor. There's no doubt it needs deletion but CSD-G7 doesn't seem appropriate after an apparently contested PROD. Thoughts for a novice admin??--Mike Cline (talk) 14:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Eeekster obvious lost track of just what reason to give. I always assume good faith in that, especially with G7, because it's easy to select it when you mean A7. I have even made that mistake myself a few times--though I have also seen once or twice occasions when G7 was added clearly not in good faith. tyrenius, an experienced admin, did what I would have done, which is deleting it via the obviously intended reason, which was A7--since a quick check of Google shows no reasonable listing for Jason Sarrio, e.g. [8]

However, a check in Google for the name of his company (which in actuality I tried first, though I cannot say why--perhaps because i unconsciously guessed that tyrenius would possibly have already checked the person name) shows that he is not a real person, but a fictional character in Battlestar Galactic, & thus not covered by A7. Unfortunately, actual reading of the BattleStarWiki page and a search there shows the inventor of the Meta-Cognitive Processor in the story was Tomas Vergis, who might or might not need a separate article, and that there is not actually any character with the name of Jason Sarrio. (Checking yet further, the invention shows up in [[List of Caprica episodes|episode 1 of the prequel Caprica, but the name of the inventor is not mentioned there, nor has anyone ever tried to write an article on him. Thus it would make sense to simply add the name to the description of the episode, which I am about to do, without even making a redirect, as the Battlestar wiki does not indicate that he ever actually appears in the show, which is my criterion for when a redirect is needed. The obvious conclusion is that someone wrote the article as a joke, presumably JS or one or his acquaintances, and that A7 is right after all.

Thus a nice case study about the need to check thoroughly. . Do I check every speedy this carefully? no. Ought I to? yes, but there are so many articles to check that we need to use reasonable assumptions based on intuition and experience. This is how error gets into the encyclopedia, and why the only solution is to a/develop more systematic ways of checking, and b/get more active people here to do it. Nothing I did required admin powers, except looking at the content of the deleted article. DGG ( talk ) 18:11, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - Book in mail in the morning--Mike Cline (talk) 21:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Query about an international relations article

Hi, I posted a proposal a section for deletion [link title citing the reason it was not relevant to the subject of article. I just noticed you removed the deletion tag without specifying any reason to do so on the discussion page. I would appreciate it, if you could cite a reason as to why this is related to the subject of the article. I thought deletion tags could not be removed without a discussion, perhaps I may be wrong in that. If so I would appreciate a feedback on the same. Cr!mson K!ng (talk) 13:52, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Deletion tags are only used for deletion of entire articles. I said this in the edit summary. ( You said in the tag that you only wanted to delete the section, not the entire article. ) As for removing tags placed properly, with the intent of deleting an entire article, anyone at all can remove a prod tag, even the author. For a speedy delete tag, anyone can also remove it, except the author. What cannot be removed is the tags for articles for AfD discussions. -- See WP:PROD & WP:CSD and WP:Deletion policy

As for the substantive issue of deleting the section , the correct course is to propose it on the talk page. Technically, you could simply remove that section according to WP:BRD, but that change would be certain to be reverted, so it is more practical to discuss it in the first place. If what you object to is overcoverage, though, it would seem to make more sense to shorten it. DGG ( talk ) 18:44, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information. It was helpful :). I hope you didn't mind me asking as I have recently joined Wiki. Cr!mson K!ng (talk) 20:21, 5 March 2010 (UTC) school, it does not sound implausible. The university web site does not seem to be working except for the main page, or it would be much easier. BTW, I do not understand your suggestion to merge to the college page, because if he is not in fact notable, we would not include him there. WP is not a faculty directory. If he does have an article, only then do we list him as one of the distinguished people from the university. I look at a lot of university pages, & one of the things I routinely check is additions of people without articles or not obviously qualified for one, & I always remove them.

Confirms my position: First look for sources, & if not found, only then nominate for deletion. The opposite approach, delete if nothing is visible on the face, is what does not help the project. I would word it much more strongly than that if this were a general discussion. DGG ( talk ) 18:30, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

thanks for the additional item. I think your removal of currently unsourced information about his honors was inappropriate, though, as was your hypercriticism that the links showing him at the medical school and hospital did not specify his exact position. One could dissect almost any bio article except the FAs in that manner. DGG ( talk ) 18:35, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

AfD process

Thanks DGG. One more: Recommendation: After writing a new page, it is recommended that, after one month if you think that if someone has flaged it for notability check, you nominate it for an early afd or ask help from admin to nominate. Thx. --kaeiou (talk) 17:48, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I do understand the afd process and I have followed it technically. The difficulty with me and many is how wiki defines the WP:BEFORE. They have failed to list the tools that users need to identify whether a particular page needs the afd process. I recommend wiki listing in WP:BEFORE all the tools such as [9]that wiki admin uses to find out why someone is not wiki notable. That should solve my problems of nominating wiki pages for afd process. Thx.--kaeiou (talk) 02:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

In practice, it means to search where things would likely be found, which is something to be gained by experience. But as a rough guide we have the automatic search appearing with an AfD nomination--ideally , it should occur before--and it only works if the title of the article is actually a good search term. For most current non academic topics in politics or sports or the arts, I find the most useful search to be Google News Archive. If a US topic of that nature yields no results, it's certainly indicative of problems. For anything academic or historical, Google books + google scholar. (in principle everything in GB is supposed to be in GS, but it just isn't so). For topics in popular culture that if notable would be widely discussed in google, google is a good place--otherwise it gives too many hits and needs checking very far down. For books, the place is worldcat. WorldCat also now searches all book reviews that appeared in journals covered in Muse or JTOR, so it is very useful in seeing if an academic book is significant. For the publications of an academic author in science, Scopus or WoS, which are unfortunately not free, so people use PubMed in biomedicine and Google scholar for the rest. You are right that this should be written down and kept up to date. I'll give it a try. Nobody can search everywhere, which is why there's the 7 days for people to look.

But the key thing is simply to say where you looked! If someone sees you did anything at all, they can check the other places. (It's also good to give a link to your search, so people can see if a better search term might help.

However, I disagree with you about : "After writing a new page, it is recommended that, after one month if you think that if someone has flaged it for notability check, you nominate it for an early afd or ask help from admin to nominate." If after one month nobody has added anything, there are two steps to take: one is to remind the author. the second is to look again yourself. A third, if it looks like it ought to be notable but you cannot find anything, is to ask at the Wikiproject. That;s what the wikiproject banners are for. but this depends on degree of non-notability--if it's borderline, I now just leave it be, in order to get rid of the stuff that's way below borderline. It's when you think its completely or mainly bogus that you need to be sure to follow up. Leaving these things in is very harmful. It's tempting when cleaning house to take off the top layer of dirt, but what is really needed is to get at the utter filth that's hard to spot. DGG ( talk ) 03:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I would like to see the URL of these: WorldCat, Scopus or WoS, UAD search in WP:BEFORE or in a separate section called "help for afd - Tools". Does Wikipedia have a license for Scopus or WoS? Can these licenses be shared with users? What is the process to withdraw a nomminated afd? Sorry for asking so many questions - Saturday/Sunday are the only major days that i try to spend time here on wiki -also during evening hrs if possible. thx.--kaeiou (talk) 15:02, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

/w does not have a license for Scopus or WoS, nor is it imaginable that we would get one. The rate for each of these databases, depending on the size of the college and options, is usually between $20,000 and $100,000 a year--and upwards. As we are open to anyone in the world ... , we'd destroy their customer base. However, the possibility of getting access in some manner to some commercial databases has been discussed on the Wikipedia lists, and I am willing to open negotiations with the various providers, but these two are among the least likely. If however you are enrolled at a college, it is probably that one or both of these are available, and if they are, they are almost certainly available off campus and you can connect through your library interface as a bookmark. DGG ( talk ) 18:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Articles for Discussion

How do we get the momentum back to get this implemented? I was reminded of it as Sebwite is getting impatient and is proposing yet another process, see Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#Proposal:_Articles_for_merging_.28AfM.29. We've got consensus for a name change of AfD and for it to incorporate merges, so the rest is detail, but it is getting bogged down in people rehashing the arguments that were already resolved. Here's what I think needs to be done:

1. Rename WP:Articles for deletion to WP:Articles for discussion, and ensure that all linking pages in policy and guidelines are updated.
2. Change the wording of WP:AFD to make it clear that nominators are allowed to propose merges and redirects using AfD (and should specify that this is what they are doing), that merges may still be discussed on talk pages, and that merge or redirect is an acceptable outcome of an AfD discussion (even if the article is originally nominated for deletion).
3. The templates also need changing to include fields for whether it is a deletion, redirect, or merge nomination.
4. WP:BEFORE should have a sub-section for what nominators should consider before proposing a merge, summarising and linking to Wikipedia:Merging.
5. Wikipedia:Merging#Pages to merge should note that WP:AFD is now a venue for proposing and discussing merges.
6. Wikipedia:Proposed mergers should be marked as historical.
7. Help:Merging should be updated to note that controversial merges go via AfD.
8. Update WP:DRV so that it becomes "Discussion review" and notes that reviews of merge decisions made at WP:AFD are allowed.

Have I missed anything? Fences&Windows 17:36, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's a mockup of a merge template for AfD: User:Fences and windows/AfD. It could be incorporated into the existing AfD templates by using a parameter "type" that would take "delete", "merge" or "redirect" as an input (defaulting to delete), or it could be a separate template, whichever would be the most user friendly. Fences&Windows 17:57, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

There's one remaining problem I did not consider adequately before: RfD. Unlike RM, it is still active, getting about 5 to 10 requests a day. Looking there, it seems that half of them are trivial changes, but half deal with things that should better be presented at AfD, including at least one current attempt to defeat an AfD consensus at a less conspicuous spot. I was thinking of doing this as a second step rather than reopening the discussion to include them now. It would mean merging the processes.

Also, it needs to be emphasised the merges that would not be likely to be contested need to go to afd. I'm not sure I completely prefer the actual removal or RM instead of keeping it to list them. DGG ( talk ) 21:01, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

We can roll in merges and then worry about RfD later. Perhaps if it is being misused as a sneaky way to delete articles (e.g. Timeline of the War on Terror) then such discussions could be 'upgraded' to AfD by an admin (by closing the RfD and opening an AfD). I agree that it should be emphasised that AfD will not be the only merge discussion venue, and I can see the value in leaving RM where it is (though highlighting that merges can now be done through AfD). So, how do we get all this prepared? Fences&Windows 22:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you about how to do redirects, but then we need to be careful not to say more about redirects than we are actually proposing at this time, to avoid confusion. That upgrade concept sounds a possible way, and we can think how to word it later. Thing is, then the p. will be even more invisible, and we might simplify things to just roll it in. another 5 a day will not hurt us.

I suggest: Revise with respect to mergers, and copy it on a new subpage of AfD talk. , with a note on the present talk p. and ANB, and possibly elsewhere Expand to a more detailed list of changes, ask for other pages affected to be listed, and ask for people to propose key wording changes there & if OK'd, on the talk p. of the affected notice. and then once the minimum key parts are written , to make the key changes on a particular date, and then fill in the others. Announce that we are collecting suggested wordings at ANB and AfD talk. we also have to notify some of the people who maintain the various gadgets). Suggested target date, for changes, March 16, 10 days ahead. It doesn;t have to be perfectly synchronized. I'll watch your contributions page, and follow up afterwards saying i agree with the process DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I propose that a template and category be created to tag and track pages requiring changes. I'll write something if you think it's a reasonable idea. Flatscan (talk) 04:47, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Fences&Windows 00:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I whipped up {{Afd rename}} and Category:Wikipedia Pages requiring changes for Articles for discussion. Feel free to edit or rename them. Flatscan (talk) 05:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

they seem good. Next in line, the statement of AfD talk about the steps to be followed. ` DGG ( talk ) 05:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I just saw this. if I had a wish as to a mess that needs sorting, this is it - i.e. the funnelling of the all-but-ignored merge discussion pages into the highly polarised AfD. Where do I sing up? Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:40, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

start thinking of how to change the instructions for WP:RM and related pages. DGG ( talk ) 05:49, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Speedy Deletions

I was helping clear out CAT:CSD this evening and found that I was declining a surprising number of tags, especially A7's. Could you take a look at [10] and [11] and make sure that I'm using reasonably criteria. If you don't have time or energy to do it, that's fine too. Thanks! Eluchil404 (talk) 06:52, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Rehman Azhar is a correspondent. Most such news anchors do not make it past afd. He has a more extensive career than most, and he just might. It was probably tagged without realizing it was a little different. (obviously there is a question about whether we should speedy an article if the only basis is that in practice it would be 99% likely to fail afd--according to the rules we should not, but if it is clear enough some admins stretch the rules here, instead of using PROD.

Rhye's and Fall of Civilization passed afd. It should therefore never have been nominated--but I think you too did not check the history.

[Rsbot]] was tagged as an A1, no context, not A7. The context was pretty obvious. A1 is often used wrongly, to mean "i think it is an inadequate article"

Sandhosh kumar certainly passed A7 and might or might not pass afd. However, you should have moved it to the proper capitalization. There actually are some people who tend to look for failure to capitalize the last name as an indication of incompetent writing and at least partial grounds for deletion.

Sarah Killin I would have speedied--since you declined it I sent it to AfD. Being chosen at random for mention on a tv show is not in my opinion a plausible claim to notability. I consider it a classic BLP 1E. But who knows what the community will think. You may be right & I wrong. If one thinks the community will support something I myself think ridiculous, that does mean I should not speedy it, for it would be a controversial deletion.

for the user page, the relevant criterion is "Where there is no significant abuse and no administrative need to retain the personal information, you can request that your own user page and user subpages be deleted" from WP:USER. But the user history on this one is a case where there was significant abuse and an admin need to retain the information.

I have not yet reviewed the ones you did delete, but the proportion that you didn't is no higher than usual. Of course the proportion one finds depends on when one does it and what one looks for. I try to look for the ones there several hours than other admins apparently preferred not to figure out, and i delete only about half of those. But if I do a random assortment, what you found is not at all unusual in my experience. I looked to see if it were perhaps one person tagging them, which would require some advice to them, but this wasn't the case. When it's isolated cases like this I do not notify the person whose tag I removed, because they should be able to figure it out from the edit summary. If tagging by whoever wants to do it gives a 10% or 20% error, it would not be more than would be expected. That's what we admins are here for. the hope is that between their tagging it and our check , there will not be more than a 5% error. This is too high from the point of view of treating new editors properly, but it's as good as can be hopen for by our processes. DGG ( talk ) 17:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

• • Thanks a bunch for taking a look. I certainly can't be sure Rehman Azhar or [Sarah Killin]] would pass AfD, but if they don't meet speedy criteria, I'm not going to delete them based on my personal reading of WP:N. I don't consider BLP1E to be a speedy criteria. Though I remember a DRV where I endorsed a speedy under it on the grounds that the AfD outcome was morally certain. As I recall, you disagreed. The close was messy and I don't recall what the exact outcome was. I knew that Rhye's and Fall of Civilization seemed familiar, and your right, one should always check the history when considering a speedy deletion. RSbot was the worst tagging I came across, not even close to a genuine A1, I made the fuller comment to note that I had considered deleting it under A7 in the alternative. Wolfteam Prides that I deleted earlier had been tagged A1 which it didn't meet but as it was a clear A7 I deleted under that criterion instead. As I said before, I am very grateful for your input. Eluchil404 (talk) 08:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

In the past, we have sometimes declined to undelete at Deletion Review on the grounds that the article is hopelessly unlikely to pass and instead userified the article--sometimes this does serve the purpose of being the most useful way of potentially getting a decent article, but it has the disadvantage of not sending the appropriate message to the admin who did the incorrect deletion. I consider the second of them the more important in some cases where the admin makes frequent errors of the sort, and I have usually opposed such decisions. I wish I could figure out a way of doing both. It is only repeated reversal at deletion review that will have an effect on some closers, and, if necessary, build material for an RfC. DGG ( talk ) 22:51, 8 March 2010 (UTC) .

Hi, please let me know what portion of the David F. Alfonso page contained copyright infringement, I would like to tighten that up so that I may re-post. Thanks.AcquisitionGuru (talk) 14:54, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Updating articles

If we do want to make a step towards quality that might be compatible with this project, perhaps you can help me figure out a practical method for the periodic revisiting and updating of all our articles. As time goes by, this will be a problem that whose severity will inevitably increase. and it won;t be easy. As only one aspect, essentially every number in the encyclopedia needs to be checked to see if it is still accurate. every author and artist needs to be checked to see they have not produced further work. Every statement with a date after 2000 is likely to need changing, and every statement without a date is needs checking to see if it needs changing. Every reference list needs checking to see if there are newer works, and if the old ones are still the best. Every external links section needs checking to see not just if they are alive, but if they are still the best for the purpose. DGG ( talk ) 16:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

= G7

I don't want my name on these biographies. Please delete them. If you want, recreate them yourself. -Atmoz (talk) 07:11, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Usually the request is made by someone who realizes what they have been writing about can't possibly make a sustainable article, and there is then good reason to remove it. Sometimes there are special cases that can be taken into account. When i detag them I take responsibility for them., so you need not worry about maintaining them, if that;s the problem. Or do thepeople have views that you now disagree with, or what? What is the case here? I don;t follow the topic, so if there is something special going on, you'll have to tell me. Unless you convince me, I'm not deleting them, you irrevocably released the material, and it is no longer under your control. DGG ( talk ) 07:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing special going on. These people are just as Wikipedia "notable" as they were when I created the articles. I doubt their views have changed. What's cha nged are my views. G7 doesn't mention any of the nonsense above. It says that if an author requests deletion in good faith and the only substantial text was contributed by one author. That it. So by declining my request, you're saying it wasn't in good faith. I don't see why you want to keep these crappy articles. They're going to stay like they are from now until Wikipedia gets shut down. The only edits will be by people adding the words poop or other nonsense. Nobody cares about these people. They are not public figures. They do not need biographies. And the bit about "irrevocably releas[ing] the material" is nonsense. Thousands of articles get deleted everyday, and they all irrevocably released the material. -Atmoz (talk) 07:49, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

• DGG see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Incivility / application of G7 which is related. I think Atmoz is saying above s/he doesn't want their name attached to these, so perhaps maybe to fulfill their wish, the article could be deleted and you could re-create it under your hand (noting the other previous minor contributors in the initial edit summary). If Atmoz releases their contributions to the public domain their name does not need to be in the edit history. –xeno^talk 20:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

as i commented there just now in more , the license is irrevocable, some of the people are unquestionably notable-- Lin is a member of the National Academy of Sciences--and the editor does not own the article. I regard what I did as correct; I would have regarded deleting the articles as incorrect, for I do not consider it a reasonable request. Anyone has the right to remove a speedy tag from an article (except the author)--this isn't even an admin matter. Atmoz has now been blocked by another admin for comments related to this; I do not want to make this personal, and I have expressed my willingness to unblock , but someone has objected at AN/I. DGG ( talk ) 21:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Potential essay

I liked your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/R. C. Johnson where you respond to the statement "notability is not inherited" and you frame it as an "improper use of the term" -- I think there's a potential useful wikipedia essay in that.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:43, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

yes, but it might be simpler to revise WP:NOT. Please go ahead and try -- either or both! DGG ( talk ) 03:53, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Mentorship

One aspect of mentoring success is demonstrated by the slow process through which your words are captured, studied, parsed and re-examined in a context not anticipated in your original remarks.

I do not know whether imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; but I do know that I have adopted your words as if they were my own here.

I would prefer that you construe no flattery. Rather, I would hope you think that this only shows a recognition of common sense reasoning.--Tenmei (talk) 19:42, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Incidentally I see that I had made a typo in line 1 of pt A, which I just now fixed in the original; I'm not sure how closely part C fits the situation., but I have no objection to the way you used them. Good luck with it all. DGG ( talk ) 20:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

BEFORE question

Hello D - what is the standing of WP:BEFORE, in your view? It's not described as a guideline; I've never seen any AFDs that were speedily closed after an editor posted multiple reliable, online sources in the AFD itself, or pointed to a topic's inherent significance (e.g. Nursing in Pakistan). I also haven't seen that adding refimprove, no refs, etc. templates to an article can prevent or end an AFD, despite BEFORE's wording. The deletion process does sometimes galvanize editors into improving articles. So then it might be framed as a means v. ends issue. If this has been discussed elsewhere, pls let me know. Sincerely, Novickas (talk) 01:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I know what WP:BEFORE ought to be--it ought to be a very strong guideline about how to proceed before nominating any article for deletion by PROD or AfD. It ought to be enforced, by delisting , & returning such nominations when there is no evidence of prod to the listers for proper searching and reentry if necessary. every nomination by either method should require ea statement of why merge, redirect, or stubbify is inapplicable, and , when relevant, where sources have been looked for. There so far has not been sufficient consensus to adopt it firmly as a requirement, but I think there now might be, and if not yet, that there soon will be.

I think many AfDs have been closed when people find sources and bring them up for discussion during the afd. Usually this occurs when the nominator see the material, and withdraws. Otherwise, if sourced or added during the discussion, I would disagree with a speedy close, for I think it would be normally less subject to abuse to let the discussion run the full time, or, if added late in the discussion, be relisted.

I think also many good people who challenge an article do refrain from nominating when sources are added. The problem is with those who do not. A few careless nominators can make for a lot of unnecessary work and trouble. DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC) .

Excuse me for butting in on this thread DGG , but you have my every support for a stricter implementation of WP:BEFORE, even if it's not technically easy to enforce. Please let me know if have any ideas how it can be done.--Kudpung (talk) 02:45, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if it might be possible to have the number of Google News, Books and Scholar hits of prodded and/or AfD'd articles reported somewhere. Abductive (reasoning) 05:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

If nothing else, having it as a guideline would cause the closing admin to give weight to arguments along those lines. I support the concept, as well.--~TPW 18:05, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a first step. After all, we have many rules we have no real way of enforcing. But what I had in mind was something like what Abductive suggested, to have a nomination process which would require the the listing of the standard search in Template:Afd2 using Template:findsources, devised by PhilKinight back in 2007, but using it before , rather than after, the AfD is actually entered, with a place to confirm that the nominator wants to proceed with the nomination. (not that the standard search is particularly good, if applied mechanically, but it's at least a start to weed out the obvious) -- see [12] where an ed. objected to even including it in the template with the wording, " Anyone who wants to link to Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL for an AFD can do so. " I think we've come a good way since then, and it's time to do the next step, moving this to a stage before the nomination gets entered on the page. . What I'm not competent to figure out, is how to program this. DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, DGG. Why don't you have a chat to Kingpin about it?--Kudpung (talk) 07:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

27 JSTOR articles

Greetings, DGG. I have entered the world of academic research rather abruptly, and have amassed in the span of one day this list of articles from JSTOR. Daunting, I know. I should be grateful if you could send me copies of, or otherwise give me the opportunity to read, at least some of those. I am not in a hurry, so if you decide to assist me you can work your way towards the bottom of the list at your own pace; whenever you decide you've had enough, I'll go bother someone else and they can pick up from where you will have left off. What do you think?

PS: Comments about my use of {{Cite journal}} are also welcome. I have probably included more information than what appears to be the default. Waltham, The Duke of 05:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Update: the above project has been completed. My thanks to all those who have offered or considered offering their assistance. Waltham, The Duke of 04:19, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Clement Bowman

Dear Mr. Goodman,

You kindly offered to rewrite the article (biography) about me Clement Bowman. Reference: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clement_Bowman.

The article does a reasonable job in documenting bibliographic information about me but I wholeheartedly agree with you that it could be improved. In particular, it does not fully portray the global importance of the Canadian oil sands (the resource is of size comparable to the oil in Saudi Arabia), and the role that I was fortunate to play at three key stages (helping to launch the first surface mining projects in the 1960s, initiating joint government/ industry projects on the deeply buried oil sands in the 1970s, and currently addressing the major environmental issues as Energy Task Force Chair for the Canadian Academy of Engineering). There are also a small number of facts, patents, supporting citations and 3rd party references that do not appear in the article yet are of significance to the organizations I worked for.

If you are still interested in rewriting the article, I will gladly assist you in whatever way I can. I have references for the items mentioned above as well as other supporting information that may be of use or interest to you. I must admit that at 80, I am not comfortable attempting to edit an article on Wikipedia. I am however, most willing to assist someone who is.

Thank you for considering my request.

Kind regards,
Clem Bowman (e-mail) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Clembowman (talk • contribs) 16:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I've begun, though I have a good deal more to do--in my experience, a relatively short article is more likely to be acceptable. Please do not add back material I remove. What will help is add the following directly to the article or it's talk page" 1/ third party cites for each of the awards. 2/Are there any articles written about you besides the two in CCN? 3/is there evidence of your personal responsibility for the Calgary proposals? 4/Are there any additional sources for where your methodology has been used? I very strongly suggest you not edit the article except for providing such factual information. DGG ( talk ) 17:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Goodman, thank you for your time, questions and revisions. I have posted responses (references) to your questions on the article's talk page User talk:Clement_Bowman. I welcome any further questions or requests to verify the content.
Kind regards,
Clem Clembowman (talk) 15:38, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

User Essay on Inclusionists and Deletion

DGG - I just put this essay in my user space. It still needs some work, but would appreciate any thoughts. Also, who else might I ask to weigh-in to help improve it? Am on the road this week in Pittsburgh and South Carolina so I'll have some time to work on it. Thanks--Mike Cline (talk) 17:22, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Where do we go from here?

		The Socratic Barnstar
		for your eloquent, well reasoned statement at Request for clarification: Summary out-of-process deletions [13] Pohick2 (talk) 20:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

it seems to me, that lacking leadership, we need to provide leadership such as you. i've been looking for a Wikipedia:Improvement Cabal, modeled on the Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal, building on Wikipedia:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive; Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia Reform/Attrition/Study. (adding to your statement) some of the problem is the peter principle, where editors who have become admins are not trained, or experienced in the management of an organization or process.

we need to improve quality using the principles of Edwards Deming; a cabal could implement continuous wiki improvement, apart from "official" channels, using consensus.

do you agree? how would we recruit like minded users, and implement some quality improvement? Pohick2 (talk) 20:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

we are already in a process of continual improvement, and I support any effort to do it better. In my view, the main problem --and solution -- is the education of contributors. People need to learn how to write and references. The skill of writing clear prose and doing effective elementary research for sources is not natural or inborn, and we can not assume that it is taught effectively in schools--and least not in the United States. It is learnt by guided experience. What I try to do is better called teaching , than leadership--except to the extent that it is leadership by example. Our current approach to people who have problems with the articles they are writing is to give them a general notice and a link to an exceptionally complex and confusing ill-written mass of instructions. What they actually need is individually tutoring, and the more experienced editors will need to take the responsibility.

to a certain extent, the admins are one such group of editors--as we have the responsibility for deleting impossible articles, we have the responsibility of helping improve the possible but still unsatisfactory very poorly suited for this. Admins here do not need to know administration in the ordinary sense of the word, any more than our editors are editors in the ordinary sense. They are administrators in the sense of routine web site administrators: they have the ability to remove material, block individuals. and carry out a few technical functions. fortunately, none of this requires knowledge of management, though some of it requires an understanding of people.

Wikipedia is an example of trying to do without formal management, except to the extent needed to operate within the rules of legality and to raise funds to support the technical resources. Leadership, to be sure, we need and we have, in the sense of the informal leadership characteristic of human societies. What is distinctive here, is the extremely large scale at which we are trying to work in such a pattern. I do not think there has ever been so productive an organization with so little formal structure--except perhaps the open source movement of which we are a derivative.

There is one special problem basic to any approach to quality: we do not have what Deming called a constancy of purpose. We do not have the same vision of what the encyclopedia should be, and we have no means of obtaining one. We have no source of authority, and have permanently rejected having one. The necessarily detrimental effect of this on quality will need to be tolerated. The best means of producing a quality reference work remains the conventional method requiring professional researchers, writers, editors, and publishers. DGG ( talk ) 02:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

(adding my 2c worth) the more I think about this, the more we move to a professional-looking referenced encyclopedia, the absolute critical processes worth bolstering are DYK, GA and FA process - also Peer Review. These are where folks learn by example and I think the majority of the real spit and polish of substantial articles takes place these days. Unless an article goes though here, one often sees little change despite lots of edits over months or even years. I also promote them as places we can get 'points of stability' where we can compare articles after some vandalism or degradation has taken place (like a maxiflagged revision). Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you have an argument for these processes. I think we could agree to use external consultants on these, at least for FA, not as decisors, but to guarantee a fresh but informed viewpoint. I'm not sure the other projects are worth the effort involved--though I am personally not satisfied with the quality of vetting at DYK. If you make such a proposal at the VP, I will support it. DGG ( talk ) 07:51, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

we have Arbcom and Whales acting as management, which in the volunteer environment seeks change through coaching, and leadership, (and less effectively through "crises" like BLP) i see little acknowledgment of quality improvement principles. rather we have ad hoc rules, built in response to the latest crisis.

I would like to see quality improvement organized in a proactive way, either from above, or below. Pohick2 (talk) 16:14, 23 March 2010 (UTC).

Chippewa Middle School

We need a way for information on Chippewa Middle School to be shown on Wikipedia. Go to Talk:Chippewa Middle School, Shoreview, MN for more info.Ratburntro44 (talk) 21:08, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

It has been consistent practice that middle schools and elementary schools are not ordinarily considered suitable for separate Wikipedia articles, unless there is some special notability, As our general WP:N rule, the notability must be shown by references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online (but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases, or routine notices of events in local newspapers. Experience has been that very few such schools do have such sources. The sort of information that has proven significant in the past is Blue Ribbon status, or some award at a national level. State level awards are sometimes, but not always, taken as significant. Pinewood Elementary School (Mounds View, Minnesota) was named one of the "Minnesota Schools of Excellence" for 2008-2009 Turtle Lake Elementary School received a GreatSchools rating of 10. Sometimes that level of a GreatSchools rating is considered significant; the Minnesota rankings by the state's association of elementary school principals might possibly be. but I would personally be reluctant to support that, because. There are 950 elementary schools in the state;[14]; 140 of them have been endorsed as schools of excellence, which is not a very high proportion. [15]

My advice is to write expanded sections in the article on the school district for each of these schools, including the ones with existing articles, and then make a redirect from the school name. The first step in expanding them would then be to make a separate combination article for the elementary schools, and one for the middle schools. It will be possible to expand these eventually.

I'm just saying what we normally do, and giving you the best advice I can as an editor with considerable experience here with all sorts of school articles. DGG ( talk ) 01:17, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I gave an example with merging Greenwood Elementary School just now. DGG ( talk ) 22:28, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Dave Favis-Mortlock

Taking up your offer, I have closed this MfD as "keep for DGG to improve and restore to main space". Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Great big-picture ideas about Wikipedia improving its processes

I'm really glad I stopped by to read people's comments at an important discussion at ArbCom.

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification#Statement_by_DGG

I hope you'll forgive me posting a short positive critical comment here on your ideas offered for community consideration.

You made a number of points, several struck me as very practical and positive, even if a bit of a challenge for us to actually embrace as a project. The first point that I want to highlight is: "the entire thrust of Wikipedia policy should be devoted to the encouragement of new people". I think that is very much in keeping with modern management best-practice. A deliberate strategy of recruiting and mentoring new staff has been advocated and proven to be effective in organizations for something like a decade now, and I think it's enlightened of you to see how the Wiki project screams for some such deliberate policy. Now I'm phrasing this positively, but I think it is salutory for us to appreciate that we not only fail to encourage new people, we have bad habits that work precisely against this aim.

The next point I'd like to note I appreciated was: "The proper reaction to an unsourced article is to source it, ideally by teaching the author how to do so". This follows as a very practical implementation of the policy of encouraging and mentoring new people. Of course, the truth of this is obvious. What is valuable imo about your comment is that you dare to point out that the Emperor has no clothes. What I mean is, we permit people to be "Wikilawyers" and use policy standards to delete things, which is very short-sighted. The policy standards are not grounds for obstruction, they are pointers to what kinds of additions are necessary. In many cases, sadly, we see tendencies in the current (hopefully temporary) culture of the project that mean we are shooting ourselves in the foot, destroying content and intimidating potential recruits from being partners in the project.

Even more practical, a third point struck me as absolutely spot on: we need more stubs and fewer lists. A stub invites contribution, it demonstrates care, it sets an example. A list looks daunting, it feels like work. Perhaps, if the truth be known, people who don't want certain kinds of material at Wiki, will content themselves if sketchy articles and stubs are removed and simply become redlinks on lists.

Returning to an abstraction, but perhaps the most profoundly good suggestion among all your points, you said: "the thought that we would want to remove what we have not looked at is about as rational as removing every tenth article from the encyclopedia blindly". You said this in a context that made it clear that you believe there should be some kinds of qualifications for those who'd propose deletion. As it stands, people can propose deletion in seconds, waving an arm in the general direction of a policy somewhere. Of course, that'll be fine in obvious speedy cases, but in other cases, it simply precipates unnecessary disharmony, between people who know something about the content and care that content remains available to readers, and those who insist that unless they are personally satisfied a topic is worthy it should fall to the censor's pen. It's a conflict systematically biased in favour of pedants and interest groups who want to silence "the opposition".

Although your solution is not fleshed out in detail, I like what I can pick up: essentially, if deletion proposers are required to actually "write for the enemy" first and seek sources and so on (precisely what academic standards normally presuppose), although this might not lead to a change of perspective, it would lead to more information being made available for decision making (delete or not), hence the possibility of rational conclusions based on common sense (read consensus), rather than the council of despair: "we don't know, so it must go!"

To draw what has already become too long to some kind of conclusion, you also boldly said: "the only people qualified to judge are those who are prepared themselves to work". Of course, I expect you recognize well enough that there are plenty of places where willingness to work can be presumed on the evidence of contribution-history and so on, but I, for one, really take to heart your point, even in the specific case of any individual deletion discussion. I'd offer the following refinement of your argument. The reason only those who've worked can be qualified to judge is because at Wikipedia editors must be presumed ignorant and their opinions irrelevant, only those who've worked sufficiently will know the reliable opinions that can be discerned from sources. Donors expect the Foundation to uphold processes and the volunteers who staff those processes, who will provide access to reliable sources, not censorship, nor decisions that reflect the inexpert opinions of volunteer amateur editors, however good their faith.

To conclude, I must thank you Dave, because you articulate ideals that I thought transparently obvious from the policies I read when joining the project some years ago. Very early on, however, I observed that there were plenty of administrators and editors who did not seem to be clear about these principles. So be it, thought I, we are all learning together. Policy describes ideals. Getting the policies right is only step one. Working together to help one another strive for and progress towards those ideals is, as in "real life", an ongoing imperfect work. But that's precisely what Wiki is and always will be. At least until human beings know everything there is to know, and everyone is a Wiki editor, that is.

Thanks for your service to readers, donors, Foundation and editors, Dave. Keep it up! Alastair Haines (talk) 04:17, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi DGG. That test you did seems interesting. Please keep me in the loop about the results. The reason I'm trying to address this as a whole is because the way we're handling it isn't scaling. If we rely on editors to use current methods of deletion, and require people to investigate each article they nominate (while 10x more articles are being created) we'll hardly make a dent in the backlog and it won't stop new unreferenced articles from being created which basically fill the backlog right back up. Do you have a suggestion that can improve our rate of cleaning out the backlog that is in line with the views you expressed in the discussion regaring new users? If we can somehow get article creators to use good practices without stepping on their toes, we can have the best of both worlds. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:42, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

took me about 20 min. to do them all, including the prod and speedy, but I admit I bypassed things that looked tricky. I didn't search for sources, just screened what was there. Relied a good deal on experience/intuition at Speedy and NPP, and on my set of keyboard macros. About half the "sourced"articles did not really have what I would consider adequate sources if the articles were to be challenged. Upgrading all the articles to what they ought to be would take considerably longer--I estimate 15 to 30min/article if I do it to my real standards. Normally, when I check speedy or prod, I rely a good deal on intuition and experience for what sources might be there, & sometimes do not check if Im convinced no probable source is likely to be adequate. and I've been known to miss sources I could have found, or to misread or not understand. It takes me 1 to 2 minutes each for the easy ones, counting notification. I do not always notify if its clear it wont do any good. I check some to see if they need user warnings, but not all. The ones left over at the end of the day because no admin really wants to do them--those few are problems. I try to do my share of them. The usual rule holds: 90% off the articles take 10% of the time, the difficult 10% take 90%, I take one short cut that is not recommended--I let someone else nom for afd if they think it needed. And another--I do not routinely follow up to check re-creation or prod removal. I think I'm about as careful as most of the careful people, but certainly not perfect. My guess is a 5% error rate.

this is a different question from sourcing unsourced articles. This I looked at earlier and have to recheck. Getting some kind of minimal source in, just enough to honestly say its no longer unsourced, is easy for about 2/3 the material if i stick to fields I know. Maybe 5 minutes each, counting a minimal cleanup as well. Just the Googles and WorldCat and the other language WPs--GBooks and GNews keep getting better by better,. If I need to check something academic, I use Scopus, which runs fast. About 10-15 minutes per academic. If I have to find a hidden home p, it can take a while. And remember, I think I know very well how to search optimally on all of these, with years of experience at it. Full proper sourcing for a seriously challenged article, or to GA standard, is another matter. For the sort of topic I work with, if it can be done on line, it takes me about 1 hour and up per article. If it needs print, once I'm in a library I know well it can be almost as fast, but I have to get there. And I have many many years of experience in finding things in print & in working in my favorite libraries. Normal undergrad level people, multiply by 2, after some help from a good librarian.

but besides me, look what others find at AfD. The hardest is popular culture--I avoid it because I do not actually know the indexing & the reference sources, but the people who do it well, it can take many hours an article in difficult areas--very much longer , even if you know the language. India has no index to periodical content and no national catalog of books. For those who know Chinese and Japanese, though, there are excellent indexes, most of them online and available in the US at specialist libraries.

so , can we keep up with screening new articles: YES. There are 2000 new pages a day. 1/4 are obvious speedy deletes, 1/4 obvious keep, There's about 1000 to actually look at. If we have 200 people looking, 5 a day each will do it. There will be about 10% that must go to the specialist WorkGroups. Can we keep up with screening edits as they are made? not really on any practical basis without automated tools. I wonder how much the abuse filter will help--it just might.

can we handle the backlog? Minimally, also a YES, we can handle the few thousand unsourced articles in subject batches--90% are easy to do minimally. Can we handle them well--no, we need more people. Can we check everything more than 3 years old for updating, which is what is equally needed? No, again, we need many more people. The planning for Wikipedia never seems to have dealt with sustainable updating. If we want full fact checking, a professional can do an article a day, working full time. The New Yorker can try to do it; we can not except for special articles. We did pretty well with the election campaign. We will never reach that level of quality in general. Ask Ottava Rima what it takes to do one of his articles properly--and in a field he already knows very well. DGG (talk) 09:35, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Questions? DGG (talk) 09:35, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Correcting and Reposting: David F. Alfonso

I will be rewording the David Alfonso page (22:05, 12 March 2010 DGG (talk | contribs) deleted "David F. Alfonso" ‎ (Speedy deleted per CSD G12, was an unambiguous copyright infringement. using TW)) and then will seek to repost the article. Wiki asks that I contact you first. Is there a way to revive the deleted page? As for the reason for deletion, I can fix that easily. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AcquisitionGuru (talk • contribs)

I am not the only admin to have deleted it. I deleted it under the name David F. Alfonso]] as a copyvio of http://foundation.fiu.edu/docs/alfonso.htm . A year ago, the almost identical same material was deleted under the name David Alfonso by Ged UK for being "does nothing but promote some entity or product and would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic. " -- it had not yet been checked for copyvio, which it was also.

Alfonso is probably notable as chairman and CEO of Empire Investment Holdings, which is a sufficiently large investment company.

I see no reason why you need the original article: you already have it in the original of the copyvio. As you have an email, I am emailing you the reference list. Though they prove he is ceo of the company, they are not about him specifically, but rather routine coverage of the mergers and acquisitions of the company, so I can not be certain whether any of these will be considered to show significance, and you should if possible find a reference providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, of him specifically. Expect that the community will decide this at AfD.. The correct title for the article, btw, is without the middle initial. DGG ( talk ) 17:53, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that you once commented on Empire Investment Holdings, I recently created the article and am battling a speedy deletion. Could I ask you to take a look and offer some help or guidance? Thank you. ReMiami (talk) 16:26, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I did receive your email, thanks. The reason I ask is that the entire article cleary wasn't copied from the FIU site, thus saving me the time difference between rewriting the entire thing versus correcting the copyvio issue. Last, your recommendations are well received and noted. Thanks again AcquisitionGuru (talk) 18:38, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

DGG, hello I declined the CSD on Empire Investment Holdings, LLC. today. However, I think its creator may a COI issue. I left a note on ReMiami's talkpage to contact you if he had any questions. I am not sure it would survive an AfD. You do a way better job of being the Shell Answer Man than I. Besides, the characters seem much happier on your talkpage than mine. I get unhappy customers. --Morenooso (talk) 20:41, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

BTW, who's the jerk that left the message below this one? Wait, that was me. . . --Morenooso (talk) 20:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Nice bushwacker you have there. Hey, what do you think of an admin with a user:Department of Redundancy Department? I filed a report on WP:AIV a week a go or so and he basically canceled it without much comment. I actually DoRD was a Foundation type agency, clerk or admin. --Morenooso (talk) 22:24, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Re comment made in Woodward Court AfD

DGG - You made the following statement in the AfD - Every major work of a famous artist is notable. Given that statement, would the statement Every major work by a famous author is notable be equally valid? Not debating the statement you made, because I like its simplicity, but can we take this logic further into other genera? Thanks--Mike Cline (talk) 16:37, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I intended to indicate exactly that. I used the word "artist" in a very general sense, meaning much more than visual artist. I think that in general this has been our practice--with the problem that some writers and some artists are extremely prolific and we do not have people to write the detailed articles. Note that I used the word "famous", not merely "notable". I also said "every major work", not "every work", but at the highest level of world-wide fame, "every work" is appropriate. This even satisfied the GNG, for famous can be defined as those artists whose every work is discussed to a significant extent in secondary sources. DGG ( talk ) 17:56, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

SAIS Bologna

Hi DGG

Last year, what appears to be the communications department of SAIS Bologna made this edit, which despite some promotional-sounding stuff, I didn't revert.

Now they have done this number on the article. Is a wholesale reversion appropriate? Would you be willing to have a word with the editor? I feel your nuanced approach is likely to have better results than other avenues.

Thanks, ^Bongo_matic 00:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

removed most of the promotional material and protected the page. I will warn the editor. DGG ( talk ) 01:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello,

I edited the SAIS Bologna Center Wikipedia page and am confused as to the problem with my edits. I am a current student and am beefing up the article to make it more like the SAIS DC page. I understand if there is a problem with linking to the faculty pages on the BC website, but am confused as to why it is promotional to list the available concentrations and languages taught. All of this information is on the SAIS DC Wikipedia page, which I used as a guide. I'm just trying to make the two pages more similar in their format and include more information on the BC page as it is significantly less robust than the DC page.

Best,

Rebekah —Preceding unsigned comment added by Communications-BC-SAIS (talk • contribs) 01:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I shall check the DC page also; thanks for mentioning it. The problem is that praise of how good the program is is appropriate to promotional media or the school website, but not an encyclopedia. Additionally, a list of all the faculty is not appropriate, nor a list of all the academic courses. The degree programs can be mentioned too, but not such details as the specific levels of the language courses available. If the concentration lead to a specific degree, it might be possible to add a list of them, but we normally do not list all the major available at a college. I am not sure a view of the city as taken from the campus is relevant either, there are a good many promotional details to remove still in the article. I am a little confused at your user name; you say you are a student there, but the school does not offer a program in communications. Such a name is more likely to be associated with a public relations office of the school administration--and you earlier said in an edit summary " I represent the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna Center" . In any case, it implies an official connection with the school--and no such edit names are allowed, whether or not they refer to any actual relationship-- see WP:Username. Please choose another. DGG ( talk ) 01:38, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello,

Understood. I've changed the username. I am a student at SAIS BC who works for the Communications office. I was tasked with making our Wikipedia page more substantial by making it mirror the SAIS DC page. Please let me know what is acceptable/unacceptable so I don't waste time making edits that will just be deleted. Is is OK to list faculty, concentrations, and languages as long as I don't put the levels offered or link to the BC page? Can I put in a section on our Speaker Series and/or the History of the school? I'm just confused as to what is considered OK/not since I'm merely reformatting the DC page for our program.

Thank you for your help!

Rebekah —Preceding unsigned comment added by OdetteBR (talk • contribs) 16:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

One more quick question. There are some factual errors on the page that I would like to change, but I can't figure out how to edit the sidebar/overview. They are: 1) the building renovation was completed in 2006 and 2) there are 190 students in the program (sidebar). Additionally, can I change the main heading to: "The Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna Center" instead of 'SAIS Bologna Center' since that is our official name?

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by OdetteBR (talk • contribs) 21:57, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The sidebar is called in our jargon an "Infobox" ; when you edit the page, the code for it is at the top . It's easy to mess it up--use the preview button before you save. As for the name change, I have just done it.

It is not OK to list faculty, unless you limit it to those who have a Wikipedia page, or are so notable that they would be clearly entitled to one, ether for their academic distinction, or for other aspects of their career. Call the section "Notable faculty" not "Faculty". for the ones with WP pages, just give the link to that page. Check the page to make sure the link to their current official page at the Center is given in the external links & add or adjust it as necessary--that's where the link belongs. For the ones without pages, you need to give a link to some evidence to show their obvious fitness--you might want to consider making pages for them, but see WP:BIO for the standards-- academic distinction in the social sciences is normally shown by having a number of published books from major university presses, or major national level awards. Notability in public service is normally shown by being an ambassador, or a civil servant of similar rank, and having references to reliable published sources about them.

Personally, I think that a foreign service school offers languages is a matter for its own web site. Similarly, the various concentrations tend to be fairly obvious, and are best suited for that also--I cannot see how any of the encyclopedia users not considering applying to the school would care, but some articles do include it. . I will be removing the various promotional wordings unless you get there first, as well as the picture of the city. And the reference cited for ranking seems to refer to the entire school, not this center, & is therefore irrelevant. DGG ( talk ) 00:17, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Dear DGG,

Thanks for your help! A few more questions: 1. Since the Bologna Center is a part of JHU SAIS rather than a separate entity (about half of all incoming students spend their first year in Bologna and their second year in DC), it is appropriate to have the ranking up as it encompasses all of SAIS' campuses (DC, Bologna, and Nanjing). We are one institution with multiple campuses, not separate universities like CSU- Long Beach/CSU- Fullerton. 2. How can I upload a photo of the school? I understand that the view from the terrace isn't necessarily relevant, but I'd like to upload a panorama of the school building.

Thanks!

Rebekah —Preceding unsigned comment added by OdetteBR (talk • contribs) 14:10, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

If it is the ranking for the main program, it belongs in the article for the main program, not in the article for each center as if it applied to it specifically What you have just said is in fact a good argument for not having a separate article for the Rome campus, if it is merely the location for one year of one program in one school of a university. JHU gets an article as a matter of course, and a prominent school within it such as SAIS justifies an article, but a separate article for the Rome center of SIAIS within JHU is a little dubious and can only be justified if the center is independent. . You're trying to have it both ways--the more I think about it, the more I think the original idea to put this information into the main SIAIS article with only a redirect for the name of the center might be best. DGG ( talk ) 01:42, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Dear DGG,

A quick update that I changed the photo on the SAIS Bologna Center Wikipedia page from the view from Abernathy Terrace (which there were concerns about its relevance) to a panorama of the school itself (seemed more "encyclopedia" and relevant). The photo was taken by Elizabeth Garvey and we have secured her permission to use it on the site. She is currently writing an official letter of permission to send to Wikipedia. Please let me know if I need to do anything else to make sure that the photo complies with Wikipedia's policies.

Best,

Rebekah —Preceding unsigned comment added by OdetteBR (talk • contribs) 09:03, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Question re line of argument

At this AFD [16] I seem to be pursuing something along the lines of a tip-of-the iceberg argument; that is, if an editor can find multiple Gbook search results on an article's topic, it's presumed worth an article. There's an underlying assumption there - that Gbook search results are always only a partial representation of what's been written - and so (especially during an AFD) showing some Gbook results implies wider coverage. Yes, there is the issue of only passing mentions in those results (which IMO doesn't apply in that AFD case); but am seeking your opinion, links to precedents, Gbook cultural under-representation that would lend more weight in some cases, general thoughts, etc. Sincerely, Novickas (talk) 23:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

aha. you have discovered the real secret of our article writing practices. Except for a relatively small number of particularly conscientious editors, a great many of the references in Wikipedia are not really trustworthy. A trustworthy reference is based upon reading and understand the material. Many citations in all sorts of articles here are based upon finding an item in the googles but not actually reading it. Sometimes this is because it is not readily accessible except in the largest research libraries; sometimes, though reasonably accessible through the sort of public library resources most of our editors have or from some free site not obvious in the google citation-- but they do not bother trying; sometimes, even if it is right there linked in public for anyone to read,--still they do not read it. A culture where a three paragraph comment tends to get a tl;dr objection is not one where people will likely read all of a hundred page document pdf, or the relevant chapters of a PD book, or even all of an article from an old PD encyclopedia or from an open access journal.

No librarian would be surprised. It is a basic result of information science that people when they want information get it in the easiest way they can, even if they know it is not a very good way, and stop looking when they have got the very minimum they think barely enough. (After all, that's why so many readers come preferentially to Wikipedia in the first place.). People do not normally want to work with information, they want information so they can work. The abnormally interested, the ones who consider it their work to find out as much as they can, become scholars or dedicated hobbyists.

in an afd, it is often enough to show that information is available. One of the virtues of the googles is their manner of summarizing the critical information in the excerpt in the search results--a summary taken from the whole item, not just the part that is unrestricted for display. By now, their algorithms for this are truly splendid, and to me even more impressive than their method of finding results. Of course nobody would trust them for serious purposes; and it is just one of the reasons why nobody would trust Wikipedia for serious purposes--except for those purposes where our method of sourcing is in fact adequate and our contributors sufficiently skilled at using it.

As for what is or is not worth an article, as I've said before, our concept of article-based notability is basically a hold-over from the days of conventional print encyclopedias. We organize our product as people expect to see it. There's no sound basis for how we do it, except keeping the articles short enough for dial-up connections. It is influenced by another factor: our readers , and the world in general, consider having an article here as a sign of importance for the company of person or school or product. WP:N goes to some pains to explain why this is not the case, but everyone inevitably acts as if it were. DGG ( talk ) 02:03, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

hey ignore the man behind the screen, don't disillusion the newbies, the sargasso sea of laziness is gonna swamp this thing, you left out the love of the online blog link, versus the hard text in the stacks. how is it we can make it fun for the experts and stylists to contribute? you shouldn't underestimate the wikimedia google nexus - it shoves the wiki to the top of the search queue, making it the first word on the online conversation. (this is why i think it particularly important to get bios on writers; artists done so that interested readers can find their other work.) Pohick2 (talk) 03:18, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey D - thanks for your reply. I plead guilty to wishing I could just call Katherine Hepburn at that library and get a brief, authoritative answer to any question. But in a larger sense, I was looking for your input on how an AFD argument along the lines of 'here are some mentions of an entity - they imply wider coverage' is currently accepted. Sometimes I come across such things - in the form of Gbook snippets or pay-to-view scholarly snippets - but because I won't add them as references they don't seem good arguments in an AFD. Something like a snippet 'In K. Hepburn's analysis, the Rights of women in Foobar improved during the reign of...', but if all I can get my eyes on is a series of snippets like that...burden of proof issues. Sincerely, Novickas (talk) 23:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC) Some background - not to say anyone should create an article based on snippets; but the issue of pointing to potential sources during an AFD, when not followed up by actually adding the sources, was raised at the Village Pump a day or two ago [17]. Novickas (talk) 16:08, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Hi, perhaps you can have a look at this (marginally-notable) journal, where two editors are butting heads... --Crusio (talk) 22:51, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar time!

		The Socratic Barnstar
		For your comment made at WP:AN here. I am not able to say what you said there any clearer than what you said right there. –MuZemike 07:56, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Good barnstar :) Unomi (talk) 09:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Criteria - a kind of connectedness to content

I was musing on this with BLPs after the discussion here. I had never heard of this character (now deleted) and found the page amusing due to my background (psychiatry) and interest in observing how people relate to others, but concede that there is precious little 'encyclopedic' I guess apart from his notability. You mention GNG - and it got me thinking - one sort of refinement could be that a BLP has to be related to or be an example of somehow otherwise notable content? - either part of a notable list (eg list of elected politicians) or related - we already have authors have to be notable for writing something of a certain standard, actors, sportspeople etc. The more I think of these the more we have covered, are there any gaps then? I guess there were for this person...pardon the stream-of-consciousness writing though, I suspect this discussion has been had elsewhere (??) Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:27, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Authority control

DGG, this stuff is complete gobbledy-gook to me: User talk:SandyGeorgia#Gustav Mahler FAC closure. The information in those External links at Gustav Mahler means nothing to me. Would you have time to put a plain English explanation on my talk, where others will see your explanation, so we'll know what to do with these at FAC? Or perhaps work on getting some plain English into Authority control so non-librarians can understand what purpose this info serves? Is this an appropriate External link? I just don't get it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:43, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Authority control in general is like our decision of what to use for an article title and what for a redirect. Author authority control , which is what we're talking about here, means deciding what name to use for an author, in order to bring all their works together despite the different ways they appear on the title page--for example, whether to use a middle initial. I think all of this will sound familiar to a Wikipedian, for we frequently have discussions over this sort of thing. It's much easier in libraries: a small committee at the Library of Congress generally makes the choice, and everyone else lives with it--it having been decided about 50 years ago that it is better for a user to find things under the same heading in whatever library they might use, than each library doing it the way they individually think best, or , even worse, bothering to argue about it. The Library of Congress when it decides on a name, gives it a LCCN, just like it does for books. For example, the record for Gustav Mahler is n 80067106 and is found at [18], where you will see that their standard for the English language spelling and especially the birthdate is the New Grove, which we use here as our most reliable authority in the subject also. Each country does its own; the equivalent German library does similarly , and calls it Normdaten ; their record for Mahler is [19]. There's an international cross listing, the VIAF, and their record for Mahler is at [20]. The template at the bottom is just a way of bringing these together.

Now, we do try to match good external standards. One example is in fact people's names: our persondata system is meant to link into a developing network of such records. If you don't see a box with it at the bottom, you need to change your user preferences--see WP:Persondata. This will all link with multiple projects--see [21].

I'm not sure who's organizing this at the enWP, but the use of this template should probably be brought under control of the WP:WikiProject Persondata. DGG ( talk ) 02:52, 29 April 2010 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 02:49, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much (and for the plain English :) ... you're invaluable! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd like your input....

Please visit User:MichaelQSchmidt/The GNG and notability for actors and share your thoughts. Thank you, --10:27, 2 May 2010 (UTC)Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.}

Thanks for Help and Advice

All of these pages were deleted. I think all of them had NPOV. There were also explanations of notoriety for all of them. There was no process or debate before any of these were deleted. 1. (Deletion log); 17:56 . . JzG (talk | contribs) deleted "The Bargainist" (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)
2. (Deletion log); 17:56 . . JzG (talk | contribs) deleted "Ben's Bargains" (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)
3. (Deletion log); 17:56 . . JzG (talk | contribs) deleted "Tjoos" (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)
4. (Deletion log); 17:53 . . JzG (talk | contribs) deleted "KidsCamps" (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)
5. (Deletion log); 17:52 . . JzG (talk | contribs) deleted "CruiseMates" (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)
6. (Deletion log); 13:26 . . Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "3FatChicks" (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content))
7. (Deletion log); 13:23 . . Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "Talk:GrooveJob" (G8: Page dependent on a deleted or nonexistent page)
8. (Deletion log); 13:22 . . Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "GrooveJob" (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content))
9. (Deletion log); 13:22 . . Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "Dave's Garden" (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content))
10. (Deletion log); 13:22 . . Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "Splitcoaststampers" (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content))
11. (Deletion log); 13:21 . . Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "HuntingNet" (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content))
12. (Deletion log); 13:19 . . Redvers (talk | contribs) deleted "ExpertHub" (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content))
Also: World66 page.

This seems very unfair. Any help and advice welcome. LuvWikis (talk) 03:55, 5 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by LuvWikis (talk • contribs)

Example of notoriety explanation: # 04:15, 28 March 2010 (diff | hist) N User:CellarDoor2001/Dave's Garden ‎ (moved User:CellarDoor2001/Dave's Garden to Dave's Garden: initiating page; significant business-- largest gardening community in the world with more than 500,000 members and millions of unique visitors per month) (top LuvWikis (talk) 04:07, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

It is my intention to go back to these after I finish dealing with the ones that are still here, and meet any challenges to them at afd. It is however quite possible that some of these should be combined.There is no need for anyone to ask permission to put in a better article that meets the objections, to replace a deleted one. But I need to warn you that I think you would be well advised not to do it yourself--the material that you have been adding , both the articles and the links, is so promotional that you will probably be quite justifiably blocked if you continue. I support removing spam and fixing articles. I do not support keeping spam, far from it. I do not think the admins who removed the other articles were necessarily wrong, but my approach is to fix when possible. I do it for the good of the encyclopedia, not for anyone personally, and there is no need to thank me. DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

The Irving Literary Society

Hello David – can you stop by the deletion discussion going on here The Irving Literary Society. Discussions are being moved - !votes are being moved. On one hand I can understand the editors reasoning behind the reformatting. On the other, it could be construed as stacking the deck. Appreciate your thoughts and input. Regards - ShoesssS ^Talk 17:32, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

the attempt to delete this remarkably excessively detailed article reflects an apparent trend to remove initially unsatisfactory articles rather than try to improve them--see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CarsDirect, where the argument is being made that all articles substantially contributed to by spammers should be removed rather than the spam removed from the articles. Needless to say, such a tendency goes against the basic principle of communal editing--and is substantially destructive to most of the work I have been doing at Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 17:42, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Stillwaterising's talk page.
Message added 10:05, 7 May 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Stillwaterising (talk) 10:05, 7 May 2010 (UTC) ructions. DGG ( talk ) 04:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

For telling the truth at AN/I about AfDs. --Cyclopia^talk 18:25, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at GregJackP's talk page.
Message added 17:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

GregJackP (talk) 17:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

This is about the provision in BLP PROD at [22], that a blp prod can be replaced if anyone thinks there is a policy based reason why a source is not reliable. As I see it, this section is still disputed. It will be a sad day when it becomes WP policy that the mere dispute over the reliability of a source is reason enough to delete an article. The place to resolved such disputes is afd, or if more focused discussion is needed, at the RS noticeboard. DGG ( talk ) 17:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bullshido.net (4th nomination)

Hi, DGG. Because you participated in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 October 2#Bullshido.net, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bullshido.net (4th nomination). Cunard (talk) 21:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments at DRV inspired this essay

DGG - I trust you are well - Your comments (and others as well) at an ongoing DRV inspired me to finally bring this essay Archimedes was deleted to light. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.--Mike Cline (talk) 13:50, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

not as a direct response, but there are three different levels of question: The first is what sort of articles we want in the encyclopedia. The second is how much detail we want in the content. The third is how to arrange it. My view on the first I call moderate expansionism, down to the level that we have problems in judging other factors such as WP:V or NPOV; moderate because I think that a/ purely local topics are too many to deal with properly here,and should go in some sort of local supplement, b/ original essays as well as fanfic writing belong elsewhere, because they cannot be judged by our standards and c/that there is a degree of very minor importance which should stay should draw the line, such as self-published novels and local amateur sports teams. As for judging whether particular content is suitable, I think we need to judge by the content, not the article. I'm not necessarily in favor of multiplying articles--it's a strategy that is sometimes necessary to counter the slow subversion of content.

as for processes, most wp processes would benefit greatly from the participation of more users. I'd support such steps to encourage this as limiting the number of replies by a single individual in a single discussion, the requirement of some degree of diligence before initiating deletion process, and the like, but the most important step to encouraging participation is a very strict rule about NPA, and its equitable enforcement. Such enforcement is more likely by avoiding drastic penalties, working in a way similar to 3RR--and I would also encourage a rule about language during debates, even when not NPA. Language both reflects and encourages hostility.

with "pure wiki deletion" in which articles are hidden but not deleted, I think there would be a possible role if limited to questions of WP:N, and not other factors, including spam, OR, and blatant POV. The first thing an encyclopedia must be is trustworthy; we've had great difficulty getting to out moderate level here, and we should not compromise it in order to get additional content. As an example, I do not object to deleting unsourceable BLPs, just to a system that encourages doing so without a thorough effort to source them in a practical way. DGG ( talk ) 00:40, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I am about to lose my mind, or at least my temper

If you have a few minutes, would you please consider explaining the concept of self-publication over at WT:V? I've been told repeatedly today that multinational corporations do not publish their own websites, and are, in fact, incapable of authoring or publishing anything because there are too many lawyers and marketing professionals involved.

Apparently a couple of ignorant editors believe that the number of employees at the publisher is the primary factor for figuring out whether the name under "author" is the same as the name under "publisher" -- so that a small, but properly published, traditional newspaper is probably "self-published", but corporate websites are published by someone other than the corporation that wrote it, published it, and is legally liable for its contents. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for not stepping into this sooner, but I see that Crum is in my opinion dealing very competently with the matter, with respect to accuracy, to WP policy, and to clarity, and there is nothing additional that I could add. DGG ( talk ) 05:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I admit that I am a little surprised; at the time you posted this, Crum had just been saying that Wikipedia shouldn't provide a simple dictionary definition for wikt:self-publishing at WP:SPS because he found it so hard to figure out the identities of authors and publishers. I would not have expected you to share his confusion.

I think, though, that the odds of getting SlimVirgin's unverifiable definition (according to her, press releases and corporate websites, even though written and published by a corporation, can't be self-published because too many corporate lawyers are involved) contradicted are very low at this point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

What I understand her to mean, is that among self published sources, the official web sites of large organizations have a certain degree of reliability. She is correct. This is just a more detailed statement of the accepted policy that self published sources can be used for the description of the basic facts about the organization if uncontroversial, and in any case about its official position about things and events. Since there seems to be some residual confusion about this, I shall go there and say this. DGG ( talk ) 22:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I am concerned that your sentence "Whether a source is self-published is determined not by the ostensible facts of publication, but the editorial control" will be taken as meaning that a corporate website like Coca-Cola.com is non-self-published on the essentially irrelevant grounds that it is (reasonably) reliable.

My goal is to convince the community that a corporate website can be both self-published and potentially reliable. (They can also be both self-published and unreliable.) Exactly zero reliable sources define self-publication as "when the author and the publisher are the same, except if there's enough editorial control to make us trust it". It really is the (actual, not ostensible) facts of authorship and publication that determine this status. Editorial control tells us a good deal about reliability, but nothing about self-publication.

As a point of clarification, I have proposed retaining every single word of the existing policy, and merely adding a straightforward, verifiable definition to the top. It would not change Wikipedia's policy, but it would make it clear what types of publications it applied to (e.g., corporate websites, but not newspapers). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I do not think we actually would be likely to disagree on any particular issue. Your question about how my words might be taken matches my experience that discussing these matters in general terms does not help very much. All the more so about trying to summarize or encapsulate in a single sentence a policy that needs detailed discussion to be meaningful. Such attempts have led to repeated confusion-- and persistent quibbling over the meaning of individual words--all over Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 00:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Talk page discussion that may interest you

Hi. A discussion has opened at Wikipedia talk:College and university article guidelines#notability of non-accredited and non-degree granting institutions on a topic about which you have historically expressed opinions. You might wish to comment there. --Orlady (talk) 16:28, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

The New York Times and the Holocaust

Would you be willing to put this article on your watch list for a while? There has been a dispute over the right version, and editing is locked. But instead of talk page discussion to resolve the issues, perhaps with a compromise, there was started a vote to merge....which has not been properly done. A look at current discussion will make it clear why merging without resolving the editing dispute is problematic. 173.52.182.160 (talk) 12:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

• It appears the some administrative input would be helpful here per this diff by DustFormsWords [23]. Although none of the proper procedure for merging an article that is highly disputed has been followed, and although the voting shows nothing approaching consensus, DustFormsWords states in this diff that he intends to merge anyhow. 173.52.182.160 (talk) 13:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Template

So you don't have to keep making it from scratch:

• <ref>{{cite news |author= |coauthors= |title= |url= |quote= |work=[[New York Times]] |date= |accessdate=2024-11-14 }}</ref> (Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ))

thanks, & I even know about the refTools gadget. For almost all the work I'm doing now, I'm engaged in salvage, and I'm just trying to give sufficient documentation to prevent deletion--working at top speed & adding just the minimum material, for which I have my own macros in TextExpander. But I may follow your suggestion & make some more elaborate ones incorporating the cite tags for when there's time to fill in the fields. DGG ( talk ) 17:41, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Gay Bride of Frankenstein

How is an unreferenced article written by one of the writers of the play who has spammed two other articles with self-promotional blurbs anything other than spam? Are You The Cow Of Pain? (talk) 01:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Except for the last sentence, it is straight neutral description. the criterion for deletion is " exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic". If its serves both a promotional and descriptive, it doesn't meet the speedy criterion. Declining a speedy does not mean I think the article should necessarily be kept. I thought about removing the statement about the forthcoming professional production, but I decided it was appropriate in context also. If I can find a reference, I will remove the prod you placed, and the community can decide in the usual place. DGG ( talk ) 02:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

It's called a press release. Press releases describe the product and its history. They are designed to promote. This article is "My play is called Gay Bride of Frankenstein. I wrote it a couple years ago and we performed it a few times, and we're going to perform it again soon." It's blatant self-promotion. Are You The Cow Of Pain? (talk) 02:49, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

If this was a press release, it was a lot more restrained than any press release I;ve seen before. PRs for literary works are normally written with extravagant or at least unjustified praise of the work, explanations of the great importance of the work and its author, unsourced quotes from his friends, mu.ltiple repetitions of the authors name and a heavy reliance on adjectives. They do not simply say this is called X, it was written by Y, and performed at Z., and lists an award. that sort of thing is called an announcement, and it can be perfectly usable in an encyclopedia if the work is actually notable -- which would here be a question of whether the award is significant or if there are any reviews. In the speedy criterion, note the wording: exclusively promotional. This may be promotional , but it's also descriptive. I am not going to speedy the article. It does not meet the criterion. The set of things that can be speedy deleted is only a subset of the ones that need to be deleted. G11 is sometimes used as an ersatz A7 for things that don't fit in A7 but appear non-notable. There's a reason creative works in general are not in A7--they can't be judged without actually checking carefully. There are indeed a few admins who assume the criteria don't limit them, and that anything which won't stand in the encyclopedia should be speedy deleted. I try to prevent this, not imitate it. We won't get any further by arguing over it. DGG ( talk ) 03:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Query about articles about Soho Center's Work

Dear DGG,

Thanks for your comment that the Soho Center's inclusion in Wikipedia is not entirely promotional. I have a question.

A LOT of the local and regional coverage of the work the Soho Center has done appears in local and small regional newspapers and newsletters - everything from the Madison (VA) Eagle to the UN's Secretariat News). Unfortunately little (if any) of this coverage is on-line to be cited. We have extensive files of this coverage in print form but little that can be linked. As such can we create PDF or graphics files of these articles, store them on one of our servers, and then create links to them? They will be true copies of printed articles and might serve as third party verifications of Soho's efforts as well as inform readers of Wikipedia of our work as seen by outsiders. Any thoughts you have would be very much appreciated.

Thanks! George Beker --Wikigbjgb (talk) 11:24, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Online sources are preferred, but according to WP:RS, print sources are fine. Libraries still exist, and local newspapers are available in the area they;re published. Just cite them using the cite news,template, ignoring the fields for online links. It may turn out in fact that the sources are on line through one of the commercial services--it's worth checking with a librarian. You can host pdfs if you want (but beware of copyright restrictions) but it is not necessary unless someone actually challenges the content. Try to list references from newspapers that have at least regional impact, use newspapers rather than newsletters, and that report on the project, rather than just repeat your public relations. Let me know if there are problems. DGG ( talk ) 15:43, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

PSTS

Hi, I am currently involved in a proposal for a guideline on primary, secondary and tertiary sources. I have just discovered that you were once involved in a similar proposal a while ago - either in contributing to it directly or in discussing it on its talk page. You may wish to get involved in the current proposal and I would encourage you to do so - even if you just want to point out where we have gone wrong! Yaris678 (talk) 23:45, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the existing situation is probably clearer and better understood than any attempt to rewrite it, because of the large amount of interpretation at WP:RSN and elsewhere that has been based on it. . DGG ( talk ) 00:52, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

The intention of the proposed guideline is not to deviate from the current situation, it is to bring together all the relevant guidelines and policies and document how they are being interpreted. Obviously, this isn't an easy task because different people have different interpretations. I think it is worth it though because it will give people something to refer to in future. Yaris678 (talk) 01:27, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I recognize that. The problem is that trying to codify something like this inevitably involves reworking and reorganizing to the degree that it is very difficult to keep the same meaning; people are accustomed to arguing on the basis of the current wording, and find it serves them well enough. I agree it is harder to learn than a more rational systematic arrangement would be, but to be effective this would require a total rewrite of the policies for inclusion of material. Every time we try this, it turns out to affect various special interests that have built up in various areas, and people are unwilling to accept it, because they have learned to live with the status quo, and cannot be sure how it will affect them. And, in any case, experience shows that an attempt to codify and simplify is inevitably followed by a gradual proliferation of special rulings and exceptions.

In my first two years here, I spent considerable time on this, because of my preference that we should have a logical structure. But by now I've learned that the rules can be much less important than the way they are interpreted in individual cases, and I think I can make more progress towards a better WP working at this end of things. The only time I really want to get involved in rule making is if we would consider a complete reworking of the fundamental idea of notability, which I think needs to be divorced completely from the GNG sourcing-based concept, and accompanied by a reworking of WP:NOT into a positive guideline for what we did want to include. respect to the RS guidelines,

Additionally, I have seen all too many arguments that were basically on content resolve into quibbling over the narrow specifics of the relative reliability of sources. We need some way of resolving these in a final way. If I had anything I thought both workable and in keeping with our basic way of working I would propose it.

And finally, what we need most here is not refining the rules, but dealing with the 50% st least of articles that are not based on adequate reliable sources. DGG ( talk ) 02:42, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Journal of Information Ethics

Good call on the keep for this article. I was a bit lax deciding on notability (one Google search and I missed the publishers page :(). I did some work massaging what you added to make ammends. Cheers. --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 08:52, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

the publishers web site is a singular mess, btw. But it should in any case have been prodded, not speedied. Except for web content, A7 does not apply to media. And this shows the reason for the 7 days that prod provides: I spotted it because I knew the journal. Things like books, movies, magazines, etc are hard for one person to tell, whereas trivial web content is usually obvious from the description. DGG ( talk ) 18:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

That was the main source of my confusion - at first glanced it seemed the typical "journal" which is just a web page updated now and again. Will pay more attention in future. BTW is Ulrichs a valid reference? It seems to be behind a paywall - I've never messed with journals articles before so just checking. --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 18:46, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

there is no objection to using a reference behind a paywall, or, for that matter, a printed book in a library. (The entire London Times is going behind a paywall next year, but that does not evaluate our references to it) For the basic common reference sources, most public and college libraries have subscriptions, many of which are available to anyone among their clientele with a library card from outside the library.For the less common ones, many large research libraries and a few very large public libraries have subscriptions. Additionally, most of them are available in print. Ulrich's is a database used mostly by librarians, so it's rarely made accessible outside the library. It's also in print, and many libraries have that, though it like most print reference sources tends to be a year or two behind.

If someone challenges a print or paid-access source, one is expected to be able to give a quotation with a page number to show that one has in fact seen it. When it gets really controversial, one of the parties usually goes to the trouble of actually checking the reference--people have been known to misquote or even to invent them. Sometimes, as for book reviews, the ed. here puts in a quotation in advance--there's a place for it in the cite templates. (Ulrichs is a little tricky, because there is no actual url--one has to make a query within the system). DGG ( talk ) 01:47, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, good to know. When I was last editing (early 2006) that was still under some discussion [I remember because I mediated a pretty heated dispute about the whole thing on one article] --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 07:48, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Need some Librarian advice

David, I was out deproding this morning and removed the PROD on this one: Air University Library's Index to Military Periodicals. I am intimately familar with this index as I was on the faculty at the Air Command and Staff College for 3 years and used the library extensively for research for many years. As a Librarian, where should I be looking to find references about the importance and usefulness of this index. Am certain it is notable within the context of military (especially Airpower) research, but don't have a clue where to start looking for that kind of recognition. Any thoughts would be useful. As well, do any other projects come to mind that might be appropriate for the article? Thanks and hope all is well in NYC. PS, I will be in NYC on 27-30 June and may have some time on the 27th or 30th to get together if you are available. I'd be delighted to meet you in person. I will be in the Greenwich/Soho area of Manhattan on business. If interested, let me know by email.--Mike Cline (talk) 17:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I know about it also, though I've never actually seen it until I looked just now. I think the most important one or two indexes in each significant subject field should be considered notable, We have no formal rules for databases, but I think that's the sensible criterion. They will almost certainly have reviews in various librarian type journals and guides to research. I added one standard reference , and will find some others. I will remove the journal list: most analogous indexes have thousands of titles and they change fairly frequently, so its better to link to the list on their web site. But the list you made can be used for List of journals in military science, which we do not seem to have yet . As for NYC, I've emailed you. DGG ( talk ) 01:07, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Two things

First, would you mind doing some serious archiving here? 250 sections is kind of ridiculous and the page is 436kb. Second, do you have any interest (or wherewithal!) to revisit the stalled Articles for Deletion proposal and try to effect its implementation? ÷seresin 00:59, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

1. I'll try to reform and do 50 a day
2. yes, I've been meaning to.

This is what comes of fire-fighting. I've been trying to rescue every possible BLP Prod, but they've gotten too many for me. Real pity, as 80% can be saved. DGG ( talk ) 03:12, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I see you've discovered the impetus for my comment here! Let me know when you're going to try to get things moving and I'll join you if you need. ÷seresin 06:10, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists (television)

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists (television). Taric25 (talk) 02:01, 21 June 2010 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}})

NPOV

Hi. If and when you get a chance please look at this [24] I and another editor have taken the time to edit the special education article. Also see the novella that is the talk page. Apparently someone think it is biased towards the U.S., though we have presented numerous evidence to the contrary. Including research articles from journals from all over the world. In my opinion it's someone with an axe to grind. You've got a great eye for detail so I'd like your input. I'm assuming good faith but patience is wearing thin...Jim Steele (talk) 14:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC) C)

most of the nasty treatment people receive here is equally from non-admins as admins; the true distinction is between the long-established and the relative newcomers. I'm afraid its inevitable. I'm not really in the well-established class-- I've learned how to back off very quickly when I challenge certain people. One thing I know from experience, it's even worse in the Real world. The thing is, it does not affect your real life,so it is possible to have a fairly detached attitude to it. Some people use that as an excuse to give their temper free rein; I use it as a way to be more peaceful than my actual personality. . DGG ( talk ) 04:20, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Good point. All we wanted is a chance to resolve it, and were under the apparently mistaken impression that WP:NOTPERFECT really meant it when it said: "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed." But that goes back to my main point - apparently there are some pigs that are more important than other pigs, to badly quote Orwell... Anyway, thanks again. GregJackP Boomer! 05:52, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposed List of Wikipedia deletion policies and guidelines to be included in lead of Afd - feedback request

Hello David. Recently I saw an AFD closure rationale that analyzed 'to what extent were WP policies and guidelines cited'. I saw that as a Good Thing, but after several years here, while I have a general sense of the existence of many policies and guidelines governing deletion, I still find it hard to navigate among them. Probably newcomers would find it even harder. What do you think of creating a List of Wikipedia deletion policies and guidelines and linking to that from the lead of the Wikipedia:AfD page? It could go: 'WP:Verifiability is a core principle of the project. Other policies and guidelines governing the question can be found in (list article)'. Deletion policies are currently a section within Wikipedia:List of policies; but topic-specific guidelines are often cited in AFDs too, which is why I think a stand-alone list of both would be useful. Would you support its creation and its inclusion in the lead of WP:AfD? Sincerely, Novickas (talk) 21:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the page you mention, there are also two good summary page: for general practices, WP:Guide to Deletion, for the policy on what articles and other things ought to be deleted, WP:Deletion policy. Both are only summaries, and there is a danger in summaries: summary and codification leave out the nuances, and it is the nuances which are the cause of disputes. To use your example, saying something must meet WP:Verifiability is certainly true, universally agreed on here, and gives rise to no disputes. What gives rise to disputes is the interpretation: the question is always the extent to which an article is sufficiently verified. The question with WP:GNG is not what it says, but whether it or another rule applies, and, if it does apply, the details of the wording and the extent to which they are rigid requirements. It is easy to say WP:NOT DIRECTORY--we all agree on that; it is much less easy to decide on the applicability to a particular article. I would suggest that what you might want to do first is look at those two pages and see that they do reflect the present consensus. Even that is likely to be contentious.

As a personal preference, I no longer engage much in discussions of general policy, except to warn that some proposed statement is not as simple as it is thought to be. To the extent to which I want to influence the proper direction, it seems more productive to influence it n by working on individual instances. I seem to think here as a lawyer, not a legislator. I do not mean to say that the formal rule-making side should not be attended to, but the process for determining that here is so interminable, impermanent, and subject to special interests, that I find it too frustrating. At least an AfD comes to a conclusion, even if the conclusion is only to discuss it further at some future date. I like reasonable compromise, and I can argue for reasonable compromise under any set of rules.

Additionally I am not comfortable with the entire general approach of "deletion policy", of approaching the encyclopedia by finding reasons why something should be deleted. What we need is an explicit inclusion policy, for in what manner and to what extent things should be included, without a primary focus on the individual "article"; I would be much more interested in working from such a direction. Defining the scope of Wikipedia should be essentially in the nature of a book description --it defines what the book is intended to include, and how it treats it--a similar type of documentation is a course syllabus. It is necessary to differentiate it from other books, or other courses, but this is generally done more by implication. We do have one good starting principle: we are a free contemporary general adult encyclopedia. We then decide what that should include, based in part upon what such works have in the past included, and in part on what such works could now reasonably include. The proper approach to material, is how can we best handle it--in some cases, it will be only by starting over, or moving it elsewhere, or even realizing that there is no suitable way to use it. DGG ( talk ) 02:00, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for replying, always a pleasure to hear your thoughts on these matters. I may be more resigned than you to the idea that a group's set of shalt-nots will be invoked more frequently than its mission statement. In WP's case the first principle, 'the sum of all human knowledge', can't be cited at AfDs. Perhaps some unusually eloquent and resilient people could succeed with it but the rest of us must make do with referencing existing rules.

My thought for this list was to just make it easier to navigate the deletion bureaucracy. The prose at Guide to deletion is nice, just that sometimes consulting a list is easier and faster. Frankly I see it as good for those of us doing quick salvage work, we can add references to an article but it's also clearly helpful to include specific policy/guideline links at an Afd, and finding those can take some additional searching time.

You seem to be advocating a WP:Guide to inclusion. That sounds wonderful. Sorry to hear that you no longer wish to join general policy debates; they certainly are exhausting and frustrating. Surely the Consitutional Convention was too, but they had an advantage in that their goal, to codify founding principles in a binding way, was more-or-less sanctioned. WP hasn't moved to that point. I'd like to see it do so, maybe someday it will. There would always be room for a Lincoln to come along and convincingly argue that a founding principle overrides the constitution. (Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America).

Above you mention two pages, WP:GNG and WP:NOTDIR, as possible venues for further deletion policy discussions. But the level of commitment it takes to follow thru...the eloquence factor...thin-skinnedness...the community standing factor...etc. So Im afraid I shall just hope that new and evolving editors carry on there. Best, Novickas (talk) 17:19, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I think it fact it might be a good role for new editors, who are not bound by our preconceptions. DGG ( talk ) 01:11, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Of course you did

Do you not know me well enough as an editor to know that I look for sources before PRODing? Do you get how insulting it is for you to remove tags with edit summaries that imply that I don't? Is there really any point in editors PRODing articles given your propensity for kneejerk removing the tags? Otto4711 (talk) 12:39, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

(If DGG doesn't mind me commenting in his talk page): In your contributions it appears that you have PRODded no less than 21 articles between 18:12 and 18:22 of 24 June 2010 -which means a rate of 1 prod every less than 30 seconds. We can assume good faith as much as you like, but it is completely unreasonable that you really looked for sources for each article. It seems that you simply PRODded every Law&Order episode. --Cyclopia^talk 16:38, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

What I actually did was search for sources for each episode first and, finding none, prodded the articles. I assume that it's acceptable to you that I did the work in that order. Otto4711 (talk) 17:30, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

From 17.49 to 18.12 ? About 1 minute per article (Still better than zero, but...) - Unless of course you did it even before and then kept note of that for the occasion. Which is a strange course of action, but well possible. I am frankly perplexed but OK, it is indeed not impossible. --Cyclopia^talk 18:38, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

(sigh) Um, no. I did the reference search for all of the articles first. I did not note the time I started or the time I stopped. Then I put the PROD tags in place, which took however long it took.

You know what, why am I wasting my time explaining myself to the likes of you? Believe me or don't, in the end your opinion means absolutely nothing to me. Otto4711 (talk) 06:31, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Otto, feel free to fight with me here, but not with other visitors. -- if you would reply to my comments below, and we might have a useful discussion here. DGG ( talk ) 14:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

And the reason the person who started the "fight" has not received a similar admonishment is...what exactly? Whatever. Otto4711 (talk) 18:12, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I considered that the first sentence of the previous comment represented a significant escalation into personal attacks. Anyway, you surely noticed I agreed with you (in point 3 below) on the matter of good faith that he raised. I thought that such was a sufficient rebuke to him. DGG ( talk ) 18:17, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

1. I look at edits in terms of the edits, not the editors: in judging something like deletion, I do not necessarily even look unless I go afterwards to leave a message. I leave brief advisory edit summaries, as appropriate to the edits, whoever might have made them. It's meant to be helpful not just to the last editor, but anyone seeing the history. If I see what appears to be incomplete or incorrect work, I comment accordingly, even to my friends, and I expect to be treated likewise in turn, and not deferred to. (Basically, I do not agree with the essay WP:Don't template the regulars -- the regulars can deal with criticism, it's the beginners who need special handling.)

2. This was one of my semi-standardized messages, not a template . Though I dislike the wording of most of our templates on many counts, I do use templates for routine matters, because they are placed by the automated tools necessary to use to deal with the amount of material I deal with. I try to supplement or replace them with more closely tailored messages, sometimes set phrases of my own devising that I use a keyboard macro to put the essentials and modify as needed. The actual message I placed was "First look for sources, & if not found, consider for merge, or redirect--always preferred-- See WP:BEFORE. Since a redirect is possible at worst, no need for deletion & deletion tag removed"

3 I think its perfectly rational to try to look for material for all these episodes together, and then having seen what could be found, deal with the articles quickly in series. Some parts take time, some can be done quickly. I gather that's what Otto is saying, and it makes perfectly good sense to work that way.

4As for the search, I commented at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Art (Law & Order: Criminal Intent). I also commented there on the alternatives of merging, an alternative that Otto did discuss in the AfD. I'm glad to see we are beginning to do that. I still don't see why he wanted to delete rather than open a discussion on the redirect for the entire series.

5. If I were placing a personalized edit summary adapted to the editor, not the editor, I would have said, and probably should have added. Episode deletions for major series are never uncontroversial, so prod is inappropriate. I do consider it useless to try to place prods on articles of this sort, and I generally do remove them for that reason if I can recognize its a major series. As the Prod policy says "Proposed deletion is a process used for nominating pages for uncontroversial deletion".

6 More generally, I am perfectly willing to delete articles; I delete at least ten times as many as I am am able to rescue. So far, I've removed about 11,000. Even for criteria I personally disagree with, I delete if there is clear express or implied consensus. I think BLP prods a poor idea, but when they expire, if I cannot find sources, I delete them. DGG ( talk ) 20:36, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Colour is inappropriate to convey information

• User talk:Moonriddengirl/RfC#Colour is inappropriate to convey information

Hi. I've commented at the above concerning List of Gilligan's Island episodes and issues I see with this article. I've also commented on the note you left on the thing's talk page back in March. That whole subpage is a sort of workshop for an RfC (or multiple RfCs) concerning the whole issue of colour use, and wikiproject authority. Cheers, Jack Merridew 03:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, David; you know that's my real name, too? The other theme on that subpage concerning wikiproject authority relates to the issue of who can assert control over things such as colour. Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:05, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

p.s. I saw a huge horizontal scroll bar on this page, so I'll go find and fix whatever bit of text has a leading space, which is the usual source of this annoyance.

Have you seen this discussion?

[25] --Mike Cline (talk) 18:31, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Launched

The RfC we've been discussing on color and consensus is launched and located at Wikipedia talk:Consensus/RfC. I am in the process of publicizing. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Public Policy campus ambassadors

Please see User talk:Alin (Public Policy)#Princeton ambassadors and Wikimedia NYC. I think Gabriel has also expressed some interest in being involved in the Syracuse one.--Pharos (talk) 04:27, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at 69.181.249.92's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The Sugar Creek Gang

Hi DGG

If you have a chance, could you please look at this entry and its deletion discussion? As I commented in the discussion, establishing notability for books from this era is not straightforward with online sources only, but I thought your knowledge as a librarian might come in handy.

Thanks, ^Bongo_matic 04:06, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment there, which (unless the process breaks down) should be determinative. Your comment that "it doesnt take specialist to see it" was a little snippy if addressed to the nominator (totally justified if addressed to me!), as WorldCat is a specialist tool (although it is mentioned in passing in WP:NB—it might be nice to add a link to WorldCat Identities there, too), and is not widely known. Perhaps it also should be included in {{find sources}}. ^Bongo_matic 06:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

not meant as a snap, just as a hint to check worldCat, which by my standard is the first place to go to verify anyone who seems to have written a book. I'll stick in a mention of WC identities in a few places, but about the same can be done by directly searching for author, though that doesnt show the nice graph -- & the link to the WP article. DGG ( talk ) 06:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

DGG, please look at my recent Keep iVote item. WP:NBOOKS and its criteria are very specific about how historically significant authors and their books are treated here on Wikipedia. I have begun to add to the Reading list section I built. I have to leave for a while but can add to it. BTW, you did me a favor long ago and like elephants, bears have long-term memory. Please consider this a slight down payment. ;) ----moreno oso (talk) 17:15, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

This may surprise you, but I think the BOOKS criterion considerably too inclusive, especially for nonfiction. Most serious non0fiction books from an established publisher will have at least 2 review sources, though at present it may be hard to find some of them. (The 2 RS criterion is also going to stop working for people at least in he US, as soon as G Books and News archive get further along. It was designed for an earlier period in the internet, and is now unworkable. We may have to go to considering what makes someone or something intrinsically notable, or get really picky about what sources and what portions of those sources we count as suitable.)

With respect to some of the special criteria you mentioned he is not an "historically significant author" in the sense intended--this is meant to include people from Shakespeare down to Stephen King. Nearer the present case, it has been discussed whether some prolific authors, like Zane Gray or E. Nisbit are in this category, & it remains undecided. As for the DVDs, it seems from the descriptions in WorldCat they are just routine dramatizations of the stories, as is now common practice with any franchise, not indepedently notable films. DGG ( talk ) 20:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

AfD question?

David, I was out and about reviewing and closing old AfDs and this one: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jessica Bird (TV character) was one of the last ones for July 6. I relisted it mainly because it confuses me. The nom claims non-notable (OK maybe) but argues for brief discussion in main article Sea Patrol (TV series). Yet the character is already listed in both the main article and season article Sea Patrol (season 4). Another editor argues to merge into a list that doesn't yet exist except as an embedded list in each of the main articles. What confuses me is that all the other main characters in the show have standalone articles (not all that well sourced) but they have not been nominated for deletion. My gut tells me this is a keep, primarily because it is part and parcel of a family of articles that cover the Sea Patrol show reasonable well. Notability/referencing issues aside, it would seem that all the main characters sould be handled in a consistent manner and deleting this article would begin to break down that consistency. I need to bone up on TV fictional character guidelines I guess, but do you have any thoughts? Thanks--Mike Cline (talk) 19:23, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it would make sense that all the main characters be handled consistently with their role, but I cannot tell if she is a principal character because the description is too short.At this point the Wikipedia entries on the entire series needs development--it seems to be written only asa reminder for fans who have all the information in their heads anyway. The main thing is that we expand it, not whether we do it in separate or combination articles. DGG ( talk ) 02:43, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

List of locations...

Of the like or similar lists and/or similar article construction that have gone through AFD, at least that I have record of: (Format: Name - List date - Close date - Result)

• Lists
  • WP:Articles for deletion/List of Batman television series characters - Mar 1, 2010 - Mar 9, 2010 - Keep
  • WP:Articles for deletion/List of characters in the Fantastic Four film series - Jan 24, 2010 - Jan 30, 2010 - Delete
    This one also listed:
    • WP:Articles for deletion/List of characters in Captain America (1990 film)
    • WP:Articles for deletion/List of Ghost Rider (film) characters
    • List of characters in the Iron Man film series
    • List of characters in the Punisher film series
    • List of characters in the Spider-Man film series
    • List of characters in the X-Men film series
    • List of characters in the Blade film series
  • WP:Articles for deletion/List of characters in the Hulk film series - Feb 28, 2010 - Mar 14, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/List of characters in the Superman film series - Mar 1, 2010 - Mar 16, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/List of locations in the Superman film series - Mar 1, 2010 - Mar 15, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/List of locations in films based on Marvel Comics - May 15, 2010 - May 22, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/List of objects used in films based on Marvel Comics - May 15, 2010 - May 22, 2010 - Delete
  • List of storylines adapted in films based on Marvel Comics - May 15, 2010 - May 22, 2010 - Delete
• Construction
  • WP:Articles for deletion/Blade (Marvel animated universe) - Mar 21, 2010 - Apr 11, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/Captain America (Marvel animated universe) - June 2, 2010 - June 10, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/Doctor Strange (Marvel animated universe) - Mar 21, 2010 - Mar 30, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/Flash (DC animated universe) - Apr 10, 2010 - April 17, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/Legion of Doom (Batman: The Brave and the Bold) - Jan 20, 2010 - Jan 27, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/S.H.I.E.L.D. (Marvel animated universe) - May 15, 2010 - May 22, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/Superman (DC animated universe) - May 15, 2010 - May 22, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/Wonder Woman (DC animated universe) - Apr 10, 2010 - Apr 17, 2010 - Delete
  • WP:Articles for deletion/X-Men (Marvel animated universe) - Jan 13, 2010 - Jan 20, 2010 - Delete

And the related PRODs that never went to AFD:

• Lists
  • Batman music - Feb 28, 2010 - list replaced with a dab page prior to PROD expiration
  • List of Spider-Man film characters (video games) - June 3, 2010
  • List of Iron Man film characters (video games) - June 3, 2010
  • List of storylines adapted in the Marvel animated universe - June 7, 2010
• Construction
  • Batman (DC animated universe) - May 5, 2010
  • Green Arrow (DC animated universe) - May 5, 2010
  • Green Lantern (DC animated universe) - May 5, 2010
  • Legion of Doom (The Batman) - Jan 16, 2010
  • Legion of Doom (DC Universe Original Animated Movies) - Jan 17, 2010
  • Legion of Doom (Filmation) - Jan 17, 2010
  • Legion of Doom (Super Friends) in other media - Jan 17, 2010
  • Wingmen of Thanagar (DC animated universe) - Feb 16, 2010

- J Greb (talk) 17:50, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

The funny thing is that 24 articles listed through AfD and 12 uncontested PRODs, a single kept through AfD would be considered grounds to contest the current PRODs. But then again, maybe showing the full list at an AfD would be enough to show a current consensus that this type - back fill lists created through copy-and-paste from multiple articles - of articles is deemed a bad content fork and the wrong way to go about creating this type of article. - J Greb (talk) 20:05, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Any good faith disagreement by any editor is reason to decline a PROD--prods are not precedent bound, they're much more like unanimous consent motions. Jclemens (talk) 23:40, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

We have no real way of handling type decisions. The problem with not using precedent is that things will be treated erratically; the problem with using precedent is that a single bad decision would have extensive effects because of failure to see the overall picture. My general feeling is that we should pay more attention to consistency; but at this point i care more about rescuing individual articles than in establishing general rules--the practical benefit of inconsistency is that though many will always be lost, a few will usually be saved as a model for reconstruction. DGG ( talk ) 01:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Re:

IAR is to improve the encyclopedia; the article in question is blatantly unencyclopedic. Having a process doesn't need to result in process wonkery- give me one good reason why that article should stay besides it not exactly fitting into a CSD category. By the way, read WP:SNOW. It basically says that if an article doesn't have a chance in hell of surviving, it should just be deleted, even if it doesn't fit into one category. Why waste time on this nonsense, when it can be dealt with infinitely more efficiently with the exact same result? (and yes, I know WP:SNOW isn't a policy, but it's meant to prevent the time sinks that result from situations like this) The Blade of the Northern Lights (talk) 02:07, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

yes, an AfD with a request for SNOW is the way to handle it--I apologize for not suggesting that. It has the advantage of publicity. Given the various behavior of administrators, IAR is too dangerous for speedy deletion, & we have to balance the improvement with the risk. IAR for use in circumstances that do not permit easy general review is a very dangerous tool. It would have a potential use in removing something actually harmful for which no other reason can be found, but in three years patrolling there I have never seen such an instance--Vandalism, BLP, and copyright take care of everything of this order. This was not nonsense, just a very primitive attempt at an article. The need here is to educate the people who enter articles like this and not scare them away by calling the work nonsense--to try to guide them to things that they can usefully do. It does take a certain amount of education to write a good article, but many smaller tasks are things within the capabilities of anyone who can use a keyboard.And even the person who cannot contribute usefully this year may be ableto next year--we want them to have a good opinion of us. DGG ( talk ) 04:32, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Ahh, I see. I don't hang around AfD, so I'm not all that familiar with the processes over there. I see the logic in your statement now. I guess a part of it was that I just got finished tagging a whole raft of ridiculous vandalism/attack pages, so I was a bit more bloodthirsty than normal. Honestly, I thought about tagging it as G1, but it wasn't quite nonsensical enough. As an aside, one issue that isn't well addressed in CSD is when something comes up that might be notable, but is rife with OR to the point that there's nothing salvageable- I've seen early incarnations of many band articles end up like that. Instead of being speedied for being full of OR, they're usually deleted as A7, which has far more of a chilling effect. Don't know if you've ever come across anything like that before. Anyways, I suppose this should be a quick, (relatively) painless AfD. At least I hope. The Blade of the Northern Lights (talk) 07:03, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

There is actually another option, and another admin thought of using it: CSD A10," Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic ". Probably I should have done that yesterday. When an article comes up that is notable but full of OR, the thing to do is to improve it. It's pretty well established that we should only delete what is not realistically improvable, and it is also established that there is no deadline on improvements. Band articles are something I can not judge, so I do not deal with them except in the most obvious cases. If improvable articles that might meet WP:N are being deleted as A7, they should not be. The bands articles are included in A7 under the assumption that while it may be hard to tell if one is notable, there are many which obviously and totally are not conceivably. If this is not the case, they should not be in the criterion, but someone other than I will have to make the argument for it. DGG ( talk ) 14:27, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Lists, templates and categories

You may want to comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of white nationalist organizations. Is there an essay somewhere that discusses this subject? I am inclined to support all three types of navigation aid, but recognize there is a maintenance problem with keeping them in sync. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:09, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

See WP:LISTPURP. categories have the advantage of almost automatic maintenance, but otherwise they are complementary ,as lists can contain more information--they are only a problem if nobody is interested in maintaining them, which in my experience is rare. DGG ( talk ) 18:55, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

PubMed and PubMedCentral

I would like to hear your opinion on an issue that I noticed today. Some journals (like most published by Medknow Publications or The Open Virology Journal) seem to meet our notability guidelines by claiming that they are included in PubMed. If I go into PubMed's journal database[26], I indeed see these journals, but with the remark that they are not currently indexed for Medline. If I do a PubMed search, I find articles published in these journals. However, these are all marked "Free PMC article". Does this mean that PubMedCentral is less selective (or perhaps even not selective at all) than PubMed itself? Do you think these journals are notable? --Crusio (talk) 15:08, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

1 - PMC is operated independently of PubMed and has its own standards. I will need to do some checking.

2 - With respect to Medknow, most of their established titles are notable, but not the newer ones. See the list at [27] with the differences in indexing.

3 - With respect to Bentham, the publisher of Open Virology Journal, the publisher is clearly notable for a variety of reasons, but I am very cautious about considering any of the journals notable, and I believe most librarians are also. I would like to defer a full discussion, but see meanwhile [28] and [29]. I consider the authors of those posts reliable authorities in the field. And see also the peer-reviewed review of this publisher in [30] (and for some other similar publishers, see the reviews at [31] and [32]). DGG ( talk ) 16:23, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, I'm aware of the Bentham problems. (By the way, the links you gave to the Charleston Advisor don't work for me). And I know that PMC is independent from PubMed. However, it looks like PubMed indexes all articles deposited into PMC, so that people could argue that the journal is indexed by PubMed. Up till now, we have taken PubMed coverage as sufficient proof of notability, but this "backdoor entrance" seems to open the floodgates for any open access journal (as far as I know, PMC will take everything that authors or publishers upload). --Crusio (talk) 16:32, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

will check links & find alternates. I have always been reluctant to take pubmed coverage as proof of notability, though I take noncoverage within its field (for a US journal) as proof of nonnotability. I am getting a little reluctant to accept Scopus either at this point, though I still accept WoS. I think indexing has to be seen as a contributing not a determinative factor. (Unless of course we go another route, and simply add articles for all recognized journals.) DGG ( talk ) 19:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

• I agree complete regarding Scopus and what you say about PubMed coverage/noncoverage. And although I am not against including all journals, the problem will be to define "recognized" and I fear that it will be almost impossible to get that accepted by the community... BTW, when I click the links I get a screen saying "you have been logged out because of a too long period of inactivity". --Crusio (talk) 19:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

• I think we should disregard PubMed coverage, as it includes anything that goes into PMC, which is not selective at all. What is more relevant is MEDLINE, which is fairly selective. --Crusio (talk) 10:52, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

The PubMed / Medline coverage statement by NIH is at [33]. To summarize the salient points,PM includes Citations to some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral and receive a qualitative review by NLM. and Citations to author manuscripts of articles published by NIH-funded researchers (since PMC has the obligation of including all NIH sponsored author manuscripts). I agree with you that only the Medline coverage is significant at all.

Crusio, you are probably clicking the links from within your university. Charleston Advisor uses Ingenta as a server, and your university undoubtedly uses Ingenta also. Simply try logging back in. Or try the links from outside; although much of Charleston Advisor is paywalled, these particular articles are open access. Try going on thru the journal site, at [34]. let me know what works .

I have considerable doubts about the accuracy of the indexing statements in the Medknow journals listing. for the journal listed below, I could verify the CAS but not the PubMed.

There has been considerable discussion on the wikiresearch-l list about a system possibly under the WMF that will include a page for every item of published material, including every known journal and book and possibly article. DGG ( talk ) 17:33, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

• I came here to let you know about Journal of Young Pharmacists (AfD discussion), thinking it to be right up your street, but I see that you're already well enmeshed in this. ☺ You probably already know that there are thirteen other articles on journals currently listed on Proposed Deletion. Uncle G (talk) 12:41, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

High school notability

Hi DGG! I have come across this edit you made, and the edit summary puzzled me greatly. I was always under the impression that not all high schools were notable for Wikipedia purposes, and indeed most were not (as per WP:CORP). Is there a new or updated guideline that I missed? Thanks, Ynhockey ^(Talk) 11:37, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Though the WP:SCHOOLS guideline was not formally adopted, no high school that has a real existence has been deleted at AfD for the last 2 years at least, though they are occasionally challenged. On the other hand, very few no elementary or intermediate schools brought to AfD have been kept, unless there is some special factor. See the discussions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cary High School. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Banksia Park International High School,Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middle Creek High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fremont High School (Indiana), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Everest Public High School and the other AfDs cited in that discussion. DGG ( talk ) 15:13, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

For another view, see my standards. In any case, only the smallest or newest high schools get their articles deleted. Bearian (talk)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Individual Choose Your Own Adventure Books

Hi, DGG. What is your opinion on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Individual Choose Your Own Adventure Books, where 50 articles have been nominated for deletion? I'm inclined to believe that the discussion should be speedily closed for being an improper mass nomination of articles that does not give editors the chance to individually evaluate whether each one is notable or not. Cunard (talk) 05:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:CANVASS is relevant here. David, you once told me that we need a new system for AfDs. I think that's true. It's very interesting to me that this editor thinks it would have been better had I kept each and every AfD up separately. I actually had you in mind when I culled the AfD listing! ScienceApologist (talk) 05:46, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Canvass is not relevant here, unless many others were asked. This is a field of particular interest to me, and I have no settled opinion about the notability of books such as this to the extent that my view can be predicted. As for my doing as desired, rather than using my own judgement, that does not happen. I'm not sure what to say in fact, and have written now two different answers, neither of which really satisfy me. Both of them are different from either of yours. I'm going to try a synthesis of the two and see if I like it, but I do not know if I have time to write it out in full.

As for a new system of AfDs , yes we need it, but this one is better than most, for it seems to have attracted sufficient discussion. Unfortunately, the discussion is biased by the people automatically saying delete without adequate consideration & thinking the issue out, just as some discussions attract people saying keep without adequate consideration. The only adequate discussions would call for a response by each person to each argument, considering all the possible solutions.

What we need more than better AfDs is a clearer concept of what sort of articles belong in Wikipedia, working from what unquestionably belongs, rather than from what does not belong. The WP:GNG is bankrupt--in this particular case, it seems to give random results. If we had access to the full array of possible sources, almost anything in some fields would meet the GNG, including, for example, every high school football player. We try to keep it more rational by tricky definitions of what sources are acceptable for the purpose--I could take almost any such argument, and argue it either direction. We have enough policies including an insistence of IAR over-ruling everything else that the very concept of a policy-based argument is nonsense, since "I think this warrants an exception" is a policy based argument. DGG ( talk ) 16:37, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Can a list be transcluded into a navigational template?

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:GongolaStateGovernors. I thought this was a neat trick, but now am not so sure, although I can't see anything wrong with it. Whatever the merits of this particular case, it raises a more general question, related to the ongoing debate about redundancy of lists vs templates vs categories. Should it be debated in a broader forum? Aymatth2 (talk) 02:20, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

lists , template, and categories are intended to be 3 separate complementary ways of organizing material, that each have their limitations. Categories are automatically populated, and can be included easily into larger categories & divided into smaller, in a hierarchical structure--this sort of structure is a basic need in a large encyclopedia. Lists have the disadvantage of requiring an item to be added each time, and of not lending easily to hierarchical arrangement, but the have the advantages of being able to include redlinks for articles not yet written, and of giving some information about the item for identification. Templates work very well for static groups, where the number of items is relatively small and unlikely to change much, where they can be reused for each of the articles. Each has its purpose, and we should do all three whenever opportunity offers and people are available. Different people prefer one or another--personally, I find categories a nuisance for browsing but great for maintenance work, and templates handy, but a distraction. Lists and outlines are the way I think and that's what I personally like to work on. Others feel differently. As long as we have the editors to do the work, we can accommodate all needs and all preferences. As far as I am concerned, we settled this long ago, and people trying to favor one over the other or deprecate one on a consistent basis are not doing constructive work here and making difficulties to no purpose. Encyclopedias necessarily have redundancy at many levels. After thousands of years of classifying books and parts of books, no one has ever found a scheme that fully satisfies anyone other than themselves. DGG ( talk ) 03:59, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I sense your frustration at having to explain this for the 137^th time. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 15:03, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tia_Keyes_(2nd_nomination)

Dear DGG, Just a little note to say I have quoted you - perhaps unsuccesfully - in an attempt to prevent Tia Keyes from being deleted. Hope it is OK and best wishes, (Msrasnw (talk) 14:14, 2 August 2010 (UTC))

Dear DGG, sorry to bother you again. I just thought I might bring to your attention that while trying to defend this article I found what might be an error in our use of Web of Science. I think we missed out on Tia E Keyes' first publication which seems to have been written as ET Keyes with 135 citations. (So we should use something like Author=(Keyes T E OR Keyes E T)) I obviously hope to nudge into having another look at this case if you have time but best wishes anyway (Msrasnw (talk) 09:35, 5 August 2010 (UTC)) PS: Would you know, as someone knowledgeable about Chemistry, if her having written an entry in Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry(Forster, R. J. and Keyes, T. E. 2001. Ion Selective Electrode for Environmental Analysis Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry) was of much use for notability?

Thanks!

I really appreciate it! I always value your contributions to such discussions (including, and especially, this particular one) so I really appreciate your comment. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:02, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Discussion at Novels

Hey did you see the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Novels#Category:American_novels, the discussion is kindof stalling and we could use some new thoughts. Sadads (talk) 16:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Could you also comment on leaving articles in Category:American novels once they have been diffused to Category:American novels by genre? Thank you very much, that is where the conversation seems to be stalling. Sadads (talk) 17:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Put together a new proposal at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Novels#New_proposal, Sadads (talk) 19:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A very rare thing indeed

If I did barnstars, you'd get one for this. Sadly, the quality of being willing to admit we are wrong is one strangely lacking in most Wikipedians. We ought to have an essay WP:IAMWRONG, although I could be wrong about that too. All power to you.--Scott Mac 09:14, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Quick question

What's the best way to look into how many libraries carry a given journal? I've tried WorldCat, but without much success. I'm looking at a couple of relatively obscure journals, and I'd like to find out a) the nearest library which might hold the journal, and b) some measure of how widely carried the journal is, as an indicator of its prominence/obscurity. I figured you'd have some good suggestions on the topic. Thanks, and happy editing... MastCell ^Talk 19:00, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

1. Ulrichs will almost always give an accurate or estimated circulation figure. Most large libraries have it, or I can check in it. It doesn't separate out libraries from total.
2. OCLC Worldcat does not necessarily show all library subscribers, or even keep track of those who have discontinued, because many libraries do not update frequently. Additionally, there is total confusion about whether libraries submit record for the print or electronic format, or both. In addition it is not even approximately worldwide--the coverage for the US is much better than other Anglophone countries, while almost no non-Anglophone libraries beyond a few national libraries are included.
3. If the journal is a conventional paid subscription print journal published in the US and distributed by 3rd class mail, there will be a USPO statement hidden in very small type in (usually)the last issue of the year. This gives the total print circulation, but one cannot tell how many of them are libraries.
4. If the journals takes much advertising, there will be an audited figure, usually obtainable somewhere on the publishers site. It also doesn't separate out libraries.
5. One can count libraries from their individual catalog, or do a partial count and extrapolate. But
   1. If the library receives the subscription through a aggregator like Ebsco, it may not be listed separately
   2. Contrariwise, if a aggregator's package contains a journal but the library isn't interested in it, the library may or may not list the title anyway. Some do list them all.
   3. If it's a free online journal, the library may or may not list the title. Some few list everything they can find, interested or not, regardless of whether they would have bothered to pay 2¢ for it.
6. Even for paid subscriptions, many libraries have a bulk deal for all e-journals from a publisher through a consortium, and again, they might or might not bother to list them all or want them all.

True library subscription figures are for most publishers a closely held trade secret. The reason they're a trade secret, is that they tend to be considerably lower than people would think. I & others have in a few instances been able to figure it out, using our own knowledge of the business. So what's the journal(s)? DGG ( talk ) 22:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that very helpful response. At the moment, I was curious about Energy & Environment and Postgraduate Medicine. In particular, our article on E&E states that it's found in "47 libraries worldwide", but the cite is to WorldCat and I was having difficulty confirming this. More generally, it's something that comes up often when red-flag-type claims are sourced to a journal that I'm not familiar with. It would be helpful to have some semi-objective way of assessing a journal's prominence and impact, beyond the basic impact factor, which is not universally available (at least, I have not found it universally available). MastCell ^Talk 18:59, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

first, the two articles, E&E can best be handled by saying how many of its articles have been cited how many times: that can be easily filled in from Scopus, and by what journals--at this point, that has to be hand-compiled from Scopus, as it is not in JCR which gives this information directly. this is just a quantization of the common sense rule, to see how important it is, and what it's biases are, see how much it is used, and how. EB is a major source because it is widely used in many sorts of context. used as one with the intention of giving a definitive source (for which of course it is not actually that good , if carefully analyzes). WP is important because it is widely used, but for the purpose of getting quick information, not definitive answers (for which of course it is actually a little better than just that in many topics). As for PGM, its a major trade journal for physicians; postgraduate being used in the UK sense of having graduated & therefore practicing, not as undertaking advanced studies or research as in a postdoctoral fellowship. If you don't do the article on it , I will.

The free equivalent of WoS / Scopus is GScholar.see [35] , use the field for "within publication" & limiting to 2008-2009 if you want the equivalent of WoS's impact factor.(do not enter a subject term) Despite the example given on the advanced search page, full journal namesusually work best. The results come as typical GS results, most cited at the top. It has been shown several times that in most fields the relative values from GS will correlate fairly well with numbers from Scopus & WoS, though the actual values are typically 1.5 to 2 times as high, as citations by other publications besides journals are included. DGG ( talk ) 02:40, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

There are other open access compilations of equivalent measures--I need to check for links. DGG ( talk ) 02:40, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to improve watchlists

Hello. I have revived a discussion you took part in back in 2008. It's about improving watchlists to allow a little more user control. Perhaps you would like to contribute? --bodnotbod (talk) 08:24, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

ChinaJoy

Hiya,

Re. this article, I do understand your removal of the PROD, as I pretty much said in the PROD reasoning itself [36] and I did debate what to do with it - ie, I did realise that it was 'potentially notable'.

The difficulty arose, really, through the speedy / advert being declined, which I queried; please see User talk:Extransit#ChinaJoy.

I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on this sort of thing.  Chzz  ►  09:50, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Found a WP:RS, listed it as "Further reading". PamD (talk) 10:56, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

A reliable source for what, exactly? PamD, my query here is not actually regarding whether or not an appropriate article could be written on the subject. I imagine that it could. The point is, because it only had primary sources, and is overtly promotional in tone, the only way to create an acceptable article would be to rewrite it. That is why I initially believe that it should have been speedy-deleted under G11, and that is what I explained in the proposed deletion. The author, China JOY2010 (talk · contribs) has a pretty clear conflict of interest, and the article promotes the event. Wikipedia does not permit advertizing. If someone wishes to create a valid article on the subject, of course that would be fine. That also does not detract from my deletion argument regarding this blatant advert. Chzz  ►  11:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think WP would be better served if you removed the unsourced material you consider to be advertising and left the bare bones of a sourced stub, rather than seeking to delete the whole article for an event which appears to be notable. I've provided a source. PamD (talk) 12:43, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

In cases where I think the article can be rescued, I do not delete it--even if I am not able to rescue it immediately (in this case, because most of the sources will be in a language I cannot personally work with). My responsibility as administrator is to delete the articles that I am reasonably sure cannot be made acceptable--them, but no others. DGG ( talk ) 13:27, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

DGG I do understand that perspective - I really do. A straight question though - do you think this version met the criteria for speedy deletion, or do you think I made a mistake?

As it now stands, if I had to remove all the promotional material, we'd end up with something like ChinaJoy is a digital entertainment expo in Asia. - and that'd be it. And I just know that if I did that, I'd be accused of all kinds of things; I have been before.

Almost a year ago, I CSD-tagged this; when declined, I did this and this, and was firmly admonished for it[37] [38].

I absolutely want Wikipedia to have articles on any and all notable topics. However, I do not think it should be used for advertizing. Currently, we have an outrageously opinionated article, for all to see: ChinaJoy is a great platform...top-notch digital products...a great opportunity...much bigger...has grown tremendously...because of the way it is run — and it isn't just selected words, it is the entire article. We are advertizing, we are providing the world with spam; it is not Encyclopaedic.

Now...possibly, one of us could try to write an article about this company - we'd have to start from scratch. Personally, I have lots of other things I'd rather write about. The author has flagrantly abused policies and guidelines, and yet we are spending good time helping promote their organization.

So...am I totally wrong here? I honestly would like to know; I try very hard to improve Wikipedia, but I don't see how keeping this advert is helping. Best,  Chzz  ►  03:57, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

How far to rewrite an article is a matter of judgement. I certainly do not rewrite every bad article that could use it--I haven't the time, but I do try to rewrite one a day, usually one that is very promotional, but clearly very notable--and one that I am competent to rewrite. I remove promotional language from some additional ones too, whether or not encountered in patrolling deletions. Promotional language for an organization typically consists of repetition of the names of the organization & its executives, extensive staff lists, praise of the organization's work or products, assertions of how important the general field is, appeals to register for forthcoming events, and extensive listing of minor details about its events or products or publications, and over-emphatic formatting. Much of this is very easy to remove. If only a stub is left, the stub can be expanded by someone else subsequently. (I will frequently reduce absurdly promotional university articles to stubs, in particular). I usually leave a note explaining tailored to the circumstances. If the material is restored, then I sometimes do delete as G11 on the grounds that normal rewriting failed. Some people in that circumstance take it to AfD. If there's a serious doubt or challenge, I do not argue the matter for a reasonably good faith speedy, but use or suggest AfD, which has the advantage of making it clear what the community thinks, which may or may not be the same as what I think--I claim no infallibility. Perhaps this is what you should do here.

There is an inherent dilemma, that even the most objective NPOV description of a product or organization does serve to promote it to some extent. This is true, for example, for all our articles on media or entertainers or professional athletes. But the purpose of the article has to remain to describe it, just as for an article on a political movement. If people use that information to support it, or to reject it, that's their decision.

The article of Everything was kept at AfD because there were unusually good references for such a software product. The original version was somewhat promotional,and would not have been easy to quickly improve. This is still the case. I'm going to give it a try right now (another editor had already removed some of the excessive background detail). DGG ( talk ) 11:48, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I do understand all of that, and I spend lots of time helping people with a conflict of interest. Question remains - was I wrong to CSD tag it? If not, then we're shoring up a blatant advert (it appears to me).  Chzz  ►  04:44, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

There is more than one right approach, and the only definite thing I can say, is that if the article gets kept if challenged in an AfD , the result proves you were wrong to CSD it, and that my default when I do not know what to do is the same as when I first came here, to let AfD decide, rather than try to get everything perfect by myself. Judgements vary. My personal judgment when I saw it was that it was important enough to try to save it, but not important enough to do the work myself especially if it turned out to have only Chinese sources. DGG ( talk ) 06:01, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Respectfully, I have to disagree there. Normally, keep at a subsequent AfD would indicate that CSD was inappropriate, in the case of A7, etc. But in the case of G11, that is not the case; G11 has nothing to do with notability; a blatant ad gets deleted, regardless of whether or not the subject is notable (I believe?).

Thus, we are back to the original question - and forgive me if you're groaning at seeing yet-another-reply to this...I am not looking for long, drawn-out discussion; it's just that I want to get this clear, in my own mind, so that I don't make mistakes.

So - I understand your personal judgement, and felt pretty much the same; I actually googled it at the time, saw hits, but read it and thought it so blatantly promotional that - regardless of whether someone wrote a valid article - there was nothing to keep. No refs, entirely promotional, "would require a fundamental rewrite" - I think, probably, we're agreed on that. Point being that, if THAT version was deleted, it would be no loss; if a valid version were later created, that's great. But...we're keeping it...and it's an advert...and that feels wrong, to me.

However, I don't want you to think I'm just arguing for the sake of argument, and I'm more than happy to drop the stick; thanks for your input.  Chzz  ►  06:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

In practice, at AfD I've found a borderline article with respect to notability is much more likely to be deleted if it is spammy & makes a bad impression, or if the person arguing for it is foolish about it. People tend to judge holistically.

"One of the problems with G11 is that there are no fixed standards.People have sometimes suggested at the CSD talk p. that G11 be eliminated for this reason--of all the criteria, this seems to be the one where interpretations by admins differs the most. But there is material so outrageous that it must be removed, so the criterion has been retained. But note the word "blatant" -- I interpret this to exclude from speedy any article which has informative content that can be kept, even if it can only be kept by stubbification. DGG ( talk ) 18:50, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes; I think we are broadly in agreement, but our definitions of 'blatant advert' may differ. Believe me, I have spent time almost every day helping editors with COI, and whenever they are prepared to work within guidelines, I am more than happy to try to help. The sad fact is that the majority of new editors have a COI and are here to just get their specific co/product/band/book advertised. Well over half the queries in live help are of this nature, as are the massive number of feedback requests and articles for creation; I have helped with hundreds, in fact thousands, of those.

It is very frustrating to spend so much time helping people use Wikipedia as an advertising medium, and if at all possible, I do try my best to get them on a good course; see User:Keegan/Butterfly for an essay I started on that.

Hence, it frustrates me greatly that a company can come along, create what I consider a blatant advert - and clearly here, they breached many policies - and then for so many of us to spend time trying to salvage it, when there was absolutely no referenced information; I am convinced this article met the G11 criteria, based on the wording would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic.  Chzz  ►  05:00, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ChinaJoy. thanks,  Chzz  ►  14:02, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I consider the current version of it proof that my guess about rewritability and notability was correct. Not that it always is. And AfD seems more effective than speedy or prod in forcing a rewrite. DGG ( talk ) 18:15, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, totally, about the current version. Where I seek clarification is in my original CSD tagging as blatant spam; I've asked the admin who removed it for clarification, but haven't heard anything back. I want to know if I was correct in tagging it, or if I made an error - so that I do not repeat the mistake.

My current viewpoint is that it should have been CSD deleted, as a blatant advert. That tag was rejected, and as a consequence many of us (including you and I) have expended considerable time helping out a user who, in the first place, disregarded all our policies against blatant advertizing.

If I am incorrect in that approach, I want to learn why; I really want to understand this, because it is a real, ongoing problem. Chzz  ►  22:29, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Recent PRODs

I notice you've been poring through my PRODs again contesting them with some spiel about how being unreferenced isn't a reason for deletion. It is. Quotes: "All material in Wikipedia articles must be attributable to a reliable published source", "This is strictly applied to all material in the mainspace", and "Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed", "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material". If you actually find a source for something, please feel free to add it, but I must insist that you stop interfering with my work enforcing the verifiability policy citing nonexistent requirements that I have to prove I've searched for sources and not found any before nominating deletions. Stifle (talk) 11:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

You will note that several other editors correctly deprodded the articles only after they found and added references, which is how it is supposed to work. Stifle (talk) 12:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

• FYI, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Academic probation (2nd nomination) seems to be a related case. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry just happened upon this discussion.. Stifle, "unreferenced" by itself is NOT a reason for deletion. "Unreferenced" does NOT mean "unverifiable" or "unattributable". Most importantly, WP:V states that only material "challenged or likely to be challenged" requires a reference absolutely. But I'm sure you already know all of this. Of course you're free to follow a deletionist philosophy and nominate anything for deletion for whatever reason you want, but I have to question your motivations if you're consistently nominating unreferenced articles for deletion ONLY BECAUSE you're resting safe in the knowledge that the burden is UPON SOMEONE ELSE to source it. -- œ^™ 13:46, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I feel compelled to come to DGGs defense and generically to the defense of any editor who removes a PROD, for whatever reason. The PROD guideline is extraordinaryly clear on this. If any person objects to the deletion (usually by removing the {{proposed deletion}} tag), the proposal is aborted and may not be re-proposed. There is no requirement to justify the removal and even if a rationale is provided and its wrong (not necessarily in this case), that's irrelevant. Once a PROD is removed, for whatever reason, we move on to the next available courses of action as necessary. I find the comment above: I must insist that you stop interfering with my work enforcing the verifiability policy completely ignores the fact that anyone can remove a PROD and doing so is not interfering with anyone or anything on WP. PROD removal is merely another mechanism in WP to help retain and improve content.--Mike Cline (talk) 14:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Stifle, attempts to make "unreferenced" a reason for deletion have repeatedly failed. The proof of this is that it was thought necessary to adopt a special rule permitting it for the narrow class of unreferenced BLPs, which was justified primarily on the possible susceptibility to BLP violations in such articles, and even so barely barely passed. I've discussed how useful I find it just above. (In summary, I support it only when accompanied by a requirement of WP:BEFORE, and, though I have deleted a hundred or so expired BLPprods, there's always been an additional reason for deletion as well that would have served.) The thing to do with unsourced articles is very clear: to source them if possible. The result of not doing so is to miss more serious things--a good number of unsourced articles are copyvios from obvious places, and I deleted 2 or 3 of them just yesterday; a good many others are obvious violations of other speedy criteria. The first thing I check in reviewing Prods is whether I can get any off the list by speedy.

I shall certainly continue to deprod all articles prodded with "unsourced" as the sole reason, unless of course I can find another reason for deletion, which is very often the case--in such a case, I change or add the reason. Or unless I try to source it and fail, in which case I add a prod2 saying exactly that, or send to AfD for others to try. Often I do try and add a source, but not always. The burden for adding sources goes as follows: Primarily the article writer, secondarily anyone who reviews the article and is capable of sourcing, third the deleting admin before actually deleting. This means I will not delete as unsourced without looking for a source. It does not mean I will not deprod it without looking for a source--I use my judgment over what is sourceable, and if anyone finds I'm wrong, I'll !vote for deletion at an AfD. (I hope you'll check before sending to AfD; those who send an item to AfD only to find that others source it, damn well ought to feel embarrassed, and I think that has some effect on anyone capable of feeling embarrassment.) I patrol prod and speedy to delete the articles that must be deleted and only the articles that must be deleted. If I deleted improveable articles--articles that could be improved to the point of being keepable--I would be exceeding my authority. I consider any admin who does so to be doing wrong; the only reason I do not challenge every such deletion is that s number of admins still do it, and I wish to avoid conflict with my colleagues.

Don't confuse this with article content. What normally happens with uncontroversial unsourced content is people leave it alone--people who make unreasonable demands for sourcing will find they get encouraged to stop doing that. What happens with controversial content is according to BRD: someone removes it; someone else restores it; and then the matter is discussed on the talk p. & people try to source it. Someone who removes it again without such discussion will be considered to be edit-warring. Remember, the rule is that "anything that lacks a source may be removed;" not must be removed. This is correctly interpreted in practice as "may be removed, and will be removed if challenged and nobody can source it."

Stifle, the conclusion I draw from your argument, is that we must require WP:BEFORE to the extent applicable in all deletion processes. Then everyone will be satisfied. By requiring people to try to source to a reasonable extent, and to consider merge and redirect, we'll both get rid of what we must delete with less controversy, and save what can be saved. Even now, if anyone wants a prod or AfD to go smoothly to a justified delete, they should show that they have tried to source it and failed. If they don't try, they are not doing their share of the work. DGG ( talk ) 17:42, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to write such a long reply. I do (and probably will always) disagree with your interpretations of these things, but I welcome the fact that you respect mine while disagreeing with them, and hope to be called to order should I ever cease to respect others'. I would also note that I get overzealous from time to time on removing content, but equally there is a requirement for material to be referenced here unless it's so notorious as to be obvious to anyone (judicial notice being a similar concept).

I would just point out that WP:BEFORE is a guideline which applies to AFDs (and just the same way as attempts to make "unreferenced" a criteria for deletion have failed, so have numerous attempts to make the steps at WP:BEFORE mandatory before nominating an article), and BEFORE yields to WP:V, which is a policy. Stifle (talk) 19:58, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

== Question about DRV ==

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional characters who can fly
• List of fictional characters who can fly (et al)

I'm seriously considering this one for DRV for various reasons (See Good Ol'Factory's talk page).

What do you think? - jc37 02:19, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

The first step would always be to ask HJM for a further explanation of his close. (In fact, I'm going to ask him myself.) And depending on his answer to me, consider asking him to consider a change to non-consensus. After that, the problem is to consider the results if we should lose--it makes re-addition more difficult. I cannot predict the odds--they're about 50-50--and make no mistake about it, advice about AfD or deletion review is a matter of predicting the odds. Might it not be better to improve the articles to the extent possible and then add back a new article. Any substantial change that improves sourcing would prevent G4. Proper sourcing would consist of a footnoted quote from each work. It might even be possible to find a secondary source for some of them--someone may have written a book of paper on just that topic. This is where I most miss A Nobody, who knew this sort of material better than any of us. Frankly, these articles are a hodge-podge, and we should be able to do better than their final state. DGG ( talk ) 03:51, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge

Hi, do we normally make articles on university departments? --Crusio (talk) 10:50, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Only if they're famous. This one, I'm not sure--the COI author obviously did not check for secondary sources, but there almost certainly are. The question is what counts as famous--I think the accepted meaning would be criterion is that "famous" means unquestionably one of the top few international departments in a major field: the material in the article shows the department to be one of the top nationally, but we judge academic people by international, not national, standards and so should we universities and their departments. Actually, I've been meaning to make some such articles for the universities I know best: at Princeton & Berkeley we could have at least half a dozen each. (In some cases, we might do the article for the Laboratory, not the Department; that's a more accepted type of article) There's also place for articles where there's a famous disciplinary group of departments at a University, such as the several biology departments at Berkeley, though I do not know what to title them. We cannot rely on the GNG: as for academic people, the GNG will give erratic results, in this case usually too broad, certainly if we included substantial chapters in books or statements of quality in authoritative sources. There do exist ratings, all or almost all national only, all of them with unvalidated methodology--& some totally fake. I should write up something on them--the forthcoming new NRC ratings in the US will be an good place for an article.

There's an alternative view that represents by true feelings, but probably would not have consensus. Going by the standards we use for some more generally popular subjects, the notability of academics and academic institutions here is severely under-rated. If we include all US state senators, we should certainly include all departments at major research universities and all tenured faculty there. I am reluctant to argue about intrinsic value across general areas of human interest, as we all base this on personal interest & opinion. Going by number of available sources is in my opinion ridiculous, for it depends entirely on how we quibble about the definitions of what we consider acceptable, and such vague terms as "permanent" or "historic" importance. Everything in the world either has historic importance or will have it, as one historian I knew put it. (& at this point, permanent importance might depend upon whether we include it in Wikipedia) The academics at these levels have at least an equal ultimate though usually indirect influence on the world than many accepted inclusive groups of people and things. The reason I do not now advocate this, is that in the present atmosphere at Wikipedia, I think it's too much to ask for. It is better to concentrate of getting the top levels; that is sometimes difficult enough around here. DGG ( talk ) 21:45, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Here's another thought (not necessarily contradicting DGG's) on this. Basic descriptive information about a department—without any commentary, historical context, or other features that wouldn't be expected to be found in a brochure or the department's web site—may merit inclusion. However, simple descriptive data (that is more likely to be current on the department's website) isn't encyclopedic information even if the department is notable. On the other hand, if there is important information that isn't brochure-like in nature, it can be included in either the main entry for the university or in a separate page, depending on its length. ^Bongo_matic 00:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree very strongly that history and commentary of the sort you suggest is very desirable content, & the purpose of an encyclopedia , though I would hope that many websites would have something to be used as a base for this--and if not, they could start by copying and crediting ours'! To expand a little on what you said about suitable material. Some descriptive information is basic material, and perhaps we should specify it by modifying an infobox for the purpose. It's the same here as with any organization's article: the general rule is information helpful only to current or prospective visitors/customers/students is not suitable. Rapidly changing information is not suitable, though there needs to be some indication of such things as department size, even though it changes each year & will need updating. Detailed description of routine facilities or buildings is not helpful, though there needs to be mention of special facilities & historic buildings. Detailed contact information is not helpful; a single link to the web site is sufficient. Detailed site data is inappropriate, though a link to the university map is appropriate, and some mention in words of location within the university. Non-specific puffery is never helpful--asserting something to be a leading anything is never helpful, in contrast to specific awards or designation or positions. A list of all faculty or staff is not helpful, but a list of those sufficiently notable for Wikipedia articles is appropriate just as it would be on the main university page--and for most departments that would qualify, that ought to include most of the senior staff (I can even see using something like that as an informal criterion). (I don't see us disagreeing on this at all--I worked it out a little further as a guide to help my own thinking about these articles & consider what would be needed to improve the one leading to this discussion.) DGG ( talk ) 02:06, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

New DNB WikiProject

For information: I have set up Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography, since the time has certainly come when there should be a place for collective discussion of the DNB adaptation effort. Please come and participate. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:30, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

User:Sonia]]

Hello, thanks for your work with the article. It was a pleasant orange bar when I woke up. If you don't mind giving me feedback: upon some thought, I guess I am quite strict when reviewing articles; I can see how this would discourage newer editors. Do you think that I should be less demanding? Or maybe just take more initiative to fix things myself? Cheers. sonia♫ 22:16, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

There are different good approaches, and there is no simple answer about how to work with beginners. In working with new editors, we want to teach them what the best practices are, and show them how to write articles that we be unquestionably helpful contributions that will stay without problems and improve Wikipedia; but just the same, great insistence on following style guidelines can be a little off-putting, and so can insistence on meeting a higher requirement than the actual standards. Looking at it from the article side, the best way of getting good articles is teaching people to make them, but it can sometimes be more directly productive to take what they have and improve it. Looking a third way, we want to encourage good, not just mediocre articles, but in the other direction if we are no attain completer coverage we can't insist on the highest level of workmanship. We do not want to attract new editors who never will do adequate work, but we want to encourage those who may not do very well now, but will learn as they go on.

My own focus here these days is in keeping every article that is potentially improvable, and removing only the 30-40% of submitted articles that are not; I consequently will sometimes go to great efforts to fix an article rather than delete it if the subject is sufficiently important. I similarly usually fix only to the minimum standard, not the best I am capable of, because there are so many to work on. True, I'd rather do more precise work, but there are a great many people around who like improving details.

It's not a matter of strictness, but of strategy. As a teacher, I know people do not learn everything at once. A first course in a subject will not try to cover every possible topic in full detail: it will try not to say anything actually wrong, but it will omit some topics and simplify others.I will not advise someone to write an article with no references and hope somebody else adds them, but I will tell him to put in what he conveniently has, and people with more resources will add others. This applies to more than just writing articles: when I tell an editor they would do well to search before nominating an article for deletion, I do not tell them they must check more than the obvious on-line free places; in discussing or reviewing the nominations, I and others will examine some of the more difficult likely sources, and try to explain them so that those paying attention can learn about them. As a librarian, I showed people enough to answer their question--and also to indicate that there was more available, but I did not try to bring out everything the library held on the subject. An incompetent librarian would not have been able to properly answer the question; an inexperienced one would likely have given more than was wanted.

And on this particular topic, I have been frustrated dealing with articles on computer programs that did not have any third party reviews, or just one borderline brief mention, so I was delighted to see an article which listed four good detailed articles about the program. DGG ( talk ) 01:53, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Lists of scientists

You deproded lists of scientists, could you weigh in why you think it should be kept and what kind of an article it could be on the talk page? I think it would make the most sense moved to list of scientists and similar to list of inventors. But I'm open to other options. Thanks, — sligocki (talk) 03:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you that it would be a very good idea to have one big merged list, like List of inventors--but both of them would be more useful as sortable tables. However, the problem is that there are many more of them than there are of inventors--possibly so many as to make the table too large to load easily. The question then is whether there is also a need for the lists by discipline and by country, and if so, where to we give people a guide to which ones are available. If we cannot do a sortable table, then I think we do need separate lists, by nationality, century, and discipline. If we can do a sortable table, then maybe not, because people would generate them as needed by sorting. The reason , as always, why categories cannot do the job is that the items in categories cannot have annotations. (What we really need for categories, and I am sure it must be codeable, is a way of generating ad hoc intersections. This will eliminate about 90% of the arguments at CfD, and let people do as they please. This would meet some of the need--but only some, because it still couldn't handle the items such as name of invention and dates--essential for browsing, which is one of the key uses of an encyclopedia. )

The way I approach a work of reference, is to figure out as many ways of making lists from it as possible. In fact, that's what I do for other things in life also. (I use Excel, fwiw,--an extremely flexible program.) People's mental predispositions vary. Since we are not paper, we can meet them all.

the main thing that page needs immediately to show its utility, is the addition of all the other relevant lists.

I've copied this to the article talk p., but I suspect it will be the more noticed here. DGG ( talk ) 04:11, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Alphabetical questions

DGG, could you help me understand how libraries alphabeticize book titles? Over time, WP:FA gets out of alpha order due to article name changes; in trying to correct that, I'm discovering my ignorance.

1. When "The" or "An" is part of a book title or work of art, how should it be alphabeticized?
2. We have a discrepancy with foreign language articles, when "El", "La", "Los" etc. is part of the title.
3. Are books and works of art handled differently than regular alpha rules?

See in particular the Art and Literature sections at WP:FA. Since WP:MSH has us avoid "The" or "An" in article titles, my confusion mostly occurs in books and works of art. The two issues combine iin El Señor Presidente, which is a book with "The" as part of the title; do I put that under "El" (as in "The") or Señor?. What about the Artwork An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, and all of the others beginning with "The"? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, Video gaming, when the title includes "The". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that many titles sound really weird in English (and even more so in other languages) without the initial articles. However, it helps find things to have a uniform rule, even if it does sound weird sometimes. The traditional library rules in American libraries are:

1. Initial articles in English are not included in the alphabetization for book and journal titles, though they are included in the title itself, as found on the title page.
2. For other languages, Initial articles in the nominative case are not included. It requires knowing the language to get this right in all cases.
3. If what looks like the initial articles is actually a number, it does not apply.
4. It does not apply to personal names that have an article as the prefix--these always go under the article.
5. There are multiple special cases and exceptions, which were of much greater importance in card catalog days.
6. I would also make exceptions on the basis of common sense, e.g.Las Meninas would go under L because i would imagine everyone thinks of it with the article. I do not think "An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" is in that category--myself, I think of it without the article.
7. FWIW, the only place where I think this matters is in categories. Lists can have cross-references. For categories, redirects can now be included in categories, and this is the solution here also. I think this should be done rarely, only when there is some real reason to think it is best known with the article. Copy this if needed at a discussion, & tell me where. DGG ( talk ) 22:14, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much, DGG-- I will copy this over to WT:FA momentarily. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Notability of academics

Hi DGG

What number of citations as a reasonable rule of thumb would demonstrate notability? I suppose it depends on what topic (number of scholars working in a topic will determine how many might cite an article), but is there a general rule? What do you think of this?

Thanks, ^Bongo_matic 14:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

there is no general rule. One way of looking at it is Lotka's Law, that approximately 20% of people in a field do 80% of the work. This applies to scientific productivity, (& a great many other things, including productivity at Wikipedia, though the 20% is approximate, but is almost always in the range of 10:90 to 30:70). Fields are, as you say, very different. The rough guide I use is the standard in the field for promotion to tenure--this can be judged by see what work other people have done. My rule is that what it takes to get tenure at the very best first rate research universities in the subject are notability , because people attain such positions because the most senior academics judge them to be sufficiently leaders in the field to attract other scholars to the university.

But it is not just number of citations, but also where they are from, where the original papers were published, and the role of the person among the authors. Like everything else, this is a matter of judgment.

In this case, Reiss is in my opinion unquestionably notable. She has published several papers in PNAS & PLOS Biology, scientific journals of the very highest quality ; her other work is mostly in first rate journals also. The citation count in GScholar is excellent--in all fields, multiple papers with counts over 100 clearly show acceptance as an expert. And I noticed an interesting paper of hers, "Dolphins in Popular Literature and Media" -- I can email a copy. DGG ( talk ) 18:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Not much of a start. Very crappy but maybe others can help. ^Bongo_matic 01:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Bookland

See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 September 29#Bookland pls. ╟─TreasuryTag►inspectorate─╢ 17:17, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll state here for the record: I give !votes in XfD and Deletion Review on the basis of a holistic judgment of what should be done with the article in accord with existing policy, and when I make an argument there, I use whatever policy-based arguments I think will be persuasive. But WP:N, much less the GNG, is not policy. They are guidelinea, and it is up to the individual members of the community to judge when to follow it. My own opinion is that the WP:GNG is obsolete, except as a rough guide, and I rarely use it in making a personal judgment of whether an article belongs in Wikipedia.

Needless to say, in judging consensus at AfD I follow the expressed consensus, not my own view. I normally close only where my own view is in accord with consensus, or following a very clear consensus even though my own view is in disagreement with that consensus. Similarly, when deleting expired Prods or AfDs I follow the the implied consensus of what I know to be general practice.

When I advise people, I advise them in what I hope will be a useful manner: on how to satisfy the general opinion here as fully as possible, not on how to satisfy me personally. My standard advice for an unsourced or poorly sourced article is: "You need to show notability with references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources." DGG ( talk ) 23:18, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank-you for your resumè. Now perhaps you could consider turning your mind to the question I asked? ╟─TreasuryTag►person of reasonable firmness─╢ 07:51, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

It should be pretty clear from the above that in this case I think WP:V is satisfied, and that independent secondary sources are not required. for WP:N. And it seems the view that the sourcing is sufficient is endorsed by everyone there except yourself. DGG ( talk ) 12:53, 30 September 2010 (UTC) .

Any person who suggests that the article has a single third-party independent source is a fool, obviously, since there are none and that is a question of fact. Anybody who suggests that such sources exists yet declines to improve the article is, in my opinion, not to be relied upon! ╟─TreasuryTag►assemblyman─╢ 13:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I think you are saying that everyone but you at deletion review is a fool and not to be relied on. I don't see the point of further discussion here. DGG ( talk ) 13:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

You might like this

You might like this; http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1 Abductive (reasoning) 07:02, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

absolutely. Shows all of the reason for not using university press releases as a RS for the science involved. It would be nice to do similarly for some types of Wikipedia articles--as I systematically work through the public policy articles feedback exercise Category:Article Feedback Pilot I see some possible templates. DGG ( talk ) 17:49, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Peter Lang

Hello! You recently deprodded the deletion proposal for Peter Lang Publishing--a proposal I made on the grounds that it was not notable. You claimed that the subject is an "important academic publisher". You seem to be experienced with these matters, so I understand I might be missing something, but I thought that Wikipedia articles must be notable and demonstrable as such, and this article does not seem to meet the standards for a notable organization, specifically that "'Notable' is not synonymous with 'fame' or 'importance,' and even organizations that editors personally believe are 'important' are only accepted as notable if they can be shown to have attracted notice. No organization is exempt from this requirement, no matter what kind of organization it is." It would be helpful for me to know your reasoning. Please explain. It might be best if we have this conversation on the talk page of the article in question in case the issue comes up again later. I'll look for your response there. Thank you. --Lhakthong (talk) 03:31, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I think I will answer here, where it is likely to get more attention, and undoubtedly a few people strongly disagreeing with me.

Wikipedia articles must be verifiable, (and must avoid the prohibitions at WP:NOT, and follow other policies). Verifiability can be handled by primary sources if they are good enough. WP:N is a guideline, and in most cases we insist upon it, but it is not policy. Additionally, the means of showing WP:N vary. The usual one is WP:GNG, but, in addition to the specific special policies, quite a range of other reasons will do. For a company, being a major presence in the field is notable. I agree the article needs improvement to demonstrate it adequately, and I plan to do that. The actual standard for notability in any given case is whatever the consensus is at AfD. It is enormously easier to nominate an article for deletion than to find good sources; I am normally working on dozens of articles at a time this way, so I would be grateful if you did not press me too hard; if you do, I will deal with it, but I will have to omit dealing with other important things. There are not enough people here willing to actually work on sourcing.

I remind you about WP:BEFORE--have you in fact looked for sources? If you'll tell me where, it will facilitate my work since I will not have to duplicate. DGG ( talk ) 05:23, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

More generally, I personally would abandon the GNG in most areas, for with the growth of the Googles, it is becoming all too easy to satisfy. Most people now admit this in practice though they won't say it, and a literal reliance in a naïve way on the GNG is rarely argued in either direction. Rather, the arguments for keeping unimportant material out of Wikipedia usually get down to hair-splitting about "significant" coverage and "reliable" sources and the extremely vague and oversimplified provisions of WP:NOT. I have a good deal of experience in arguing in any direction--once you learn the lingo, it's quite easy. Fortunately, most people use common sense in deciding what to argue for, so the results are less chaotic than they might be. DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:BELIEFS

A long time ago you were part of the discussion on the WP:BELIEFS proposal. I went away for a while and I am trying to come back slowly, so I thought I would start with updating that page and reactivating the conversation. Please join in if you still would like to be part of that discussion. Low Sea (talk) 20:21, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

International Organisations Research Journal

Hi, what do you think of this journal and in particular the list of journals that is mentioned in it? --Crusio (talk) 21:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

This journal seems to be virtually non-existent. I only found it in the Russian National Library. It's definitely not easily available in a library in Vienna and in fact doesn't seem to be available in any German-speaking. And that's on top of the red flags raised by the article. Hans Adler 21:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Notability of a journal need not be world-wide: as with almost everything else, national level notability is sufficient. It is not reasonable to evaluate the notability in Russia of Russian language journals with the English-language based citation indexes, nor from English or German-based bibliographic sources. . There are Russian sources for evaluation, but I am not familiar with them, although I can read, slowly, a little of the language, at least for bibliographic purposes. There is now a Russian union catalog, [39], though I have never used it; There is also a Russian citation index [40], that I have also never used. I intend to try to figure them out over the next week or two. As for the list of journals cited in the article, it appears to be an not very discriminate list of all academic journals published in Russia: the well-known journals I recognize are certainly included. I am not sure I can get effective access to the Citation Index. As an additional complication, many Russian journals are published in Russian and English, sometimes parallel editions, sometimes translations. And if you think this is a problem, think of the difficulties with Japan and Korea, where there are also union catalogs and citation indexes, but I am totally unable to use them.

As a practical solution, I wonder if the organization sponsoring the journal is important enough for an article? DGG ( talk ) 01:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Big Hand for DGG

		The Helping Hand Barnstar
		Thanks for giving User:Rangoon11 a second chance. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:17, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Hornblower ships

We seldom agree in AfD discussions, so it's nice to see one on which I suspect we both agree. --EEMIV (talk) 03:32, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Not quite, but we're close.

1. In principle it shouldn't matter a bit where the content is, and the system should be designed to arrange it in multiple fashions. We should be able, for instance, to read an article on one ship together with the complete plot details from the books and full background on the people involved in that particular segment, or we should be able to read just about that ship in particular, or to read, comparing the various ships, or to read it in parallel with a discussion of individual real ships on which they may have been modeled. This will take considerable software development, but it will be mostly in the interface--the fundamental coding is present in the semantic wiki extension. This is the key thing that databases can do that paper cannot do. Many people, though, think we should not convert to a semantic wiki, but maintain the concept that we are writing individual coherent articles. I personally reject that , both because of the flexibility in presentation, and because we have many more people able to fill in boxes than we do who can competently write long or complicated articles--and I think not one single person who can do this in first-rate interesting prose. People who can do this, tend to write for publications like the New Yorker and get paid for their craftsmanship. But all this is long-range planning, not writing for the present structure.
2. In a Wikipedia structured at present, I agree with you that there ought to be no reason not to have a combined article; in principle I favor having relatively long articles grouping fiction elements together, because this is easier to follow, and makes it unnecessary to write everything many times over.
3. In practice I consider it best to keep separate articles for all major elements of important fiction. If we merge into combined articles, content will be lost. Important content, by those who probably think it enough to have a list of the ships matched up with the years and the individual novels, without discussing the role of these key elements of setting in the story. There's a literature discussing it enough to provide some sources, some of which are mentioned in the linked talk p. discussion. The only hope for keeping content is to keep separate articles. The motivation for the people who want to reduce content for fiction--and there are those who do want to reduce it overall, not just improve it--is presumably the survival of the 18th and early 19th century view that fiction is not serious literature and unworthy of a place in an formal work like an encyclopedia. (Indeed, many 19th century public librarians had this position--recreation was unimportant as compared to instruction). I do not intend to refute this view here, except to say that I think the readers of Wikipedia think otherwise, and that we ought to be writing for them.
4. That's not to say these are good or even adequate articles--they're sketchy and absurd, and something could be said for the view that the content is not worth preserving, and is best started over. I disagree with that approach. I think that for everyone here confident enough to can write an article from scratch, 5 or 10 people can expand one, often working bit by bit, as shown by the history of most of our good articles, and facilitating this is the main advantages of communal writing on a wiki in the first place. In any case, kept, merged, or deleted, i will add them to my long (currently off-wiki) list of articles that ought to be reconstructed or greatly expanded. In practice, I find I cannot do this when there are so many articles that need to be defended on minimally rewritten--I would rather not be so much involved in my current sort of rescue operation, but I think they're important and there are too few people willing to do this--and I find I can not psychologically ignore persecuted content any more than persecuted people. DGG ( talk ) 21:34, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Law Reviews -- RSs?

A discussion as to whether law reviews are RSs it taking place here. Given the apparent confusion and lack of familiarity of some editors with the review and fact-checking process of a typical law review, I wonder whether at some point it may be helpful to clarify at the guideline?--Epeefleche (talk) 21:56, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Consensus building

I know I'm not seen as the most co-operative Wikipedian. However, I'm beginning to wonder if there's any possibility of exploring common ground and seeing if there's any way to build coalition behind some modest agreements. I've set out my thoughts at User:Scott MacDonald/Pragmatic BLP. I'm thinking to invite some thinking people who radically disagree with me, and see what's possible. Do you think this has any merit?--Scott Mac 10:44, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I want to thank you for initiating this. If it goes on in the adversarial way we have all be going, it will take a very long time to reach any kind of a working agreement. I;'ve responded in two parts: on an immediate level, I've proposed a measure for when we need patrolled edits for BLPs and other articles --I'm working out some trial numbers. On a more general one, I;'ve mentioned again) the one thing that can really help: recruiting another generation of editors more dedicated to quality that the previous one. the first goal was to see if we can build a large free online multilingual encyclopedia--we've seen we can do it. The next goal is to see if we can build a truly good one. In terms of how to think about it, it's almost like starting over. DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Median professor

I've been meaning to ask you whether there's some organized system in the real world that would help us determine what normal is for WP:PROF's "more notable than average" rule of thumb. I have the impression that the number of papers written, quantity of citations, etc. varies by academic field, so that what is "barely any papers published" according to one field might be "quite a lot of papers published" in another.

On the assumption that such a system exists for bureaucratic evaluation of academic employees, is there any way we could get a list that says something like "Professor of economics: Median publications, 12; typical range, 4 to 24. Professor of mathematics: Median publications, 8; typical range, 6 to 12."? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

There is in the US no unified profession, and no central bureaucracy; institutions are drastically unequal, and one cannot merge standards across the entire profession. There are only 96 "very high level" research institutions in the US, according to the standard classification, which enroll only 14% of the students. But the list [41] include two of my Alma Maters, Rutgers and Berkeley, and nobody pretends that the average quality of the tenured faculty of the two are quite at the same level

The way I think of it, is to use the requirements for tenure at the very best research universities (which are more or less equivalent to the standards for full professor at the level of research universities in general). They intend the standard to indicate acceptance of the person as an independent scholar in their own right, of sufficient quality to attract post-graduate fellows, and the best graduate students--in effect, to add to the reputation of the department and university, not just contribute to it. In the US, for most humanities it is fairly simply: 2 books by university press or major academic publishers, one of which at least must be independent of the thesis. With the decline in the number of publishers willing to publish such books, at some of even the best places it is trending towards one book and 3 really substantial papers in good journals. In the sciences it is not quantitative, not just because of the variation in fields, but because in many places one is permitted to submit only a fixed number of one's best papers for evaluation--usually, the best 5. The standard then is their quality. To some extent this is judged by the journals they are published in, to some extent by citations, but in theory it is judged by the qualitative evaluation by the senior faculty,

The additional complication is judging the "best" universities. There are now a number of new analyses, agreeing only roughly. But for the purposes of the above paragraph, one can say simply that they are whichever ones have the highest standards for tenure.

Another possibility is to consider comparison with existing qualified people who have such tenure. This is roughly like our standard in the visual arts: works in permanent collections of multiple major museums.

Yet another, is simply to go by rank, on the assumption that the faculty of major universities are more qualified to judge in their fields than we are. I don't see how anyone can deny that realistically--even in fields where we have first rate academics here, they are very few and may not be representative. (But we properly give great respect to the opinions of those we do have).

The one thing that I know to be totally wrong is to go by count of the number of publications. The only places I know that work that way are the lower tiers of would-be research universities. In any field at all, 5 exceptionally important papers is not just notable, but very highly notable, but 50 mediocre ones may not even be notable. DGG ( talk ) 00:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, there goes my shot at tenure. ;) Seriously, keep your fingers crossed for me please. Drmies (talk) 04:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Deletions of Jewish lists

Hi. I don't know where you will come out on this, but as you give matters great thought, and this seems to be a combustible one, I thought I would mention it to you.

There is currently an energetic effort afoot to delete lists of Jews. Some of the lists have withstood such efforts in the past. This is taking place even where there are articles and entire books about the intersections. I'm not sure that the AfD process works best here, as the same discussions are repeated again and again, in various AfDs ... it would seem, until an AfD is successful somewhere. The number of participants in any discussion can vary, and the core issues are generally the same, though secondary issues differ. Any thoughts? For example, does this call for a more focused discussion of the core principles? It seems to me that what we have is a less than sensible process, open to vagaries that we might want to avoid. Some current such AfDs are efforts to delete the lists of Jewish Nobel laureates, entertainers, inventors, actors, cartoonists, and heavy metal musicians.--Epeefleche (talk) 04:04, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Isn't this the same Yworo on Nobel laureates that's intimidating EPE and siding with that WJE fellow that deletes terrorists caught in the act? Doesn't seem constructive to me. Bachcell (talk) 05:12, 30 November 2010 (UTC)... maintain inclusion. Yworo (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
• absolutely ridiculous--just as much sense to delete all ethic lists, and I suppose next all national ones also. (there can be more than one possible reason for these deletions-some of them are obvious, and one at least of them is traditionally totally unmentionable here, and another, more or less the opposite, is the negative sense of politically correct. I decided not to say this at the AfD, because I do not want to single out individuals, because they may have this view out of some sort of misconceptions that I do not understand. The view that it is unimportant to us, even if the world thinks the opposite, is POV; the view is that though it might be important, but we should not cover it anyway, is CENSORED. Alas, CfD has made analogous deletions, all of which are in my opinion wrong. The principle should be that every defined binary ethnic or religious or national intersection with occupations or professions or anything else ought to be kept, both as a list and a category--the only ones that should require evidence of the intersection itself being significant are tertiary intersections, and the standard of proof for that should not be very onerous. The only difficulty with these in particular is whether to regard "Jewish" as ethnic or religious or genetically related population group--that debate is not going to be settled at Wikipedia, so all we can do is go by the broadest sense, including any one of these, using the criterion of either self-identifies or generally recognized by multiple reliable sources including those from outside the group involved--i.e., a Ruritanian source is likely to over identify people as being Ruritanian in dubious cases. (the onluy podssible except is that for a living person, known refusal to self-identify trumps there being RSs.) People come to encyclopedias for this sort of collected information, and in case of doubt, that should be our criterion--with respect to our own identity: free, and open, and uncensored, however important, are just adjectives qualifying the truly basic concept, that we are an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 05:55, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
  • And I think it better not to bring an RfC on this, there is nothing to be gained from a long discussion that will make Wikipedia appear ridiculous. And, as I said, I don't even want to do so to individual editors, however much they may merit it. DGG ( talk ) 05:59, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
  • It's worth reiterating the point, that you touched upon, that this isn't an all-or-nothing thing. The problems with the idea of Jewish heavy metal musicians (when the world at large only recognizes the categories of Jewish punk rock and Jews in Rock 'n' Roll) have already been outlined, for example. Uncle G (talk) 12:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not likely to have much to contribute to a discussion of categorization in popular music, but it seems reasonable to me that that the narrower we go , the less national or ethnic characterizations is needed. But using my rule, if there are are more than a very few Jewish heavy metal musicians who self identify or are referred to as such, then there would be a reason for a list and a category. Such lists & categories are primarily a navigational device, and it was settled at a recent RfC that it was not necessary for the topic of a list to meet GNG in any literal sense. I've commented on the first two, and will do the others later today. It extension of what I said yesterday, some have said in the discussion that being Jewish is not of any significance; I hope they mean that being of a nationality or religion or ethnic group is not of significance, rather than Jewish specifically. But even if they mean the general case, it's one of the basic ways in which humans characterize people--as important as their occupation. Denying the importance of ethnicity is what I meant by "hyper politically correct." DGG ( talk ) 15:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me, I came to your talk page to learn more about you and your thinking -- isn't Epeefleche's rather one-sided description here of a group of AfDs a kind of WP:CANVASSING? There was an initial AfD of List of Jewish Nobel laureates; very soon afterward one of the strongest proponents of keeping that list filed AfDs for entertainers and Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Jewish_actors. Somebody else has filed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of ethnic Chinese Nobel laureates, and so on. There is not a monolithic effort by some cabal to delete Jewish lists. betsythedevine (talk) 02:54, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

No matter who asks me to look at something, I follow my own judgment, and even when I've had a previous opinion, when asked to review it I review the matter from scratch, and my conclusion is not always what it was the first time. Sometimes people may hope for a particular opinion, but I give the opposite opinion to what they might have hoped for a good deal of the time. Sometime, in fact, I convince them. Nor does my presence at an AfD necessarily determine the issue. since I tend to look at the troublesome ones, I'm at least equally accustomed to losing than winning.

Thanks for calling the others to my attention: I thank you for the opportunity to express my view more generally than is fitting at a particular AfD, a place where I never like to discus smotives. As for the Jewish ones, yes, I know the views are not monolithic, and I never implied everyone had the same motive, but many of the arguments are specific to Judaism and have been seen at previous discussions in various places. I'm not going to separate the threads here, for I know only some of the individuals and their motives, and it is unfair to them because I do not know the others. Yes, some of the nominations may be pointy ones in response to various challenges. I've seen quite a lot of such retaliatory deletion nominations.

This applies both to the case you mentioned and to the general idea of removing these lists and categories. I've commented also at [[WT::Biographies of living_persons#BLPCAT_proposal]]. If such a restrictive proposal goes through, the encyclopedia will be the lesser for it. BLP restrictions have a real but narrow purpose, which is to do no harm. BLP is a convenient catchword, but the discussions at various places here are not actually about it, but about various ideologies of what is important. Wikipedia should follow no ideology: as the world thinks wining a Nobel Prize important, it categorizes such people in every possible dimension, and we should follow it, by following the sources. But I myself do have an ideology: the suppression of ethnicity information and the guides to finding it is censorship. the particular type of censorship is the infantile leftist disorder known as political correctness, which at least has the excuse of being an attempted response to the barbarism of ethnic prejudice. Just as for any form of censorship, I do not think either compatible with the concept of open culture. DGG ( talk ) 04:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

(restart indents) There is a proposal to create some unified RfC on these topics, which I would welcome. Speaking for many if not all of the people seeking to delete List of Jewish Nobel laureates, the goal is not to suppress ethnicity information in Wikipedia, it is to end putting a Wikipedia stamp of approval onto ethnicity misinformation from partial and prejudiced sources. After that AfD was started, 2 more were created by one of the laureate-list's supporters, and other list supporters egged on Bulldog to demonstrate his sincerity by filing more AfDs. Of course all those AfDs are now being used as "evidence" for "an energetic effort afoot to delete lists of Jews," as Epeefleche worded his request for your assistance. Again, i would welcome a unified RfC. I think that if such lists used a public and defensible criterion for "Who is a Jew?" and respected the BLP-privacy rights of living people, such lists could be a useful feature of Wikipedia. betsythedevine (talk) 18:14, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

At this point there may have to be an RfC on these intersections; I cannot deny that a few such RfCs have led to stable solutions. But it must be divorced from the question of who is a Jew, about which I hope there will not be an RfC. I strongly disapprove of the wranglings at Wikipedia between those with different views of particular ethnicities or nationalities. Such disputes have led to repeated arbcom cases and the imposition of drastic remedies. That this should happen with yet another such problem is not constructive. (And I shall find it the more unpleasant the closer it may come to matters regarding my own self-identification, which so far I have managed to avoid specifying on-wiki--I realize that's a matter of form--it actually should be pretty obvious). There is no agreement in the real world about who is a Jew, and there will consequently be no agreement here--all that we can do is clarify the different views.

You are correct that the desire to dispute the question is indeed another reason, but, as I said a little earlier,it is POINT. Some of the people wish to make sure that their own view of Jewishness is the one adopted at Wikipedia, and are prepared to sacrifice the content of the encyclopedia in order to do so. What you regard as "ethnicity misidentification" simply means that someone wishes their view of who is a Jew accepted here as standard. I am not looking to see who endorses which view, for that does not matter & I consequently usually try to avoid looking at any such personal implications. The way to avoid misinformation, as I said here and at some of the AfDs , is to include anyone as a Jew who meets any of the definitions; except, as a courtesy to the living, excluding living people who are known to reject the identification. I personally have no view; I regard it as an unanswerable question, because the different definition are all correct in their different aspects, and trying to sum it up has fuzzy boundaries, just as does the word "scientist". We can in principle determine who publicly follows the Jewish religion, or any particular denomination of it. If we have the data, we can define who meets the Orthodox halachic definition, or the very different Reconstructionist definition. If we have the data, we can now determine the objective genetic makeup in remarkable detail. We can determine who was raised as a Jew. We can determine who has been identified by others as a Jew, for friendly or neutral or hostile reasons. We can determine who thinks of themselves as a Jew, if they have determined which of the aspects apply to themselves. We cannot determine which of these aspects best sum up the identity, and we do not need to.

I do not think you can really claim to speak for all the people who have opposed one or more of the different articles, or I for all those who have supported them. As I said, I agree with you that retaliation is one of the reasons for some of the actions. But I do not agree with your statement that it is a question of objective misidentification, for if there are sources for any of the possible criteria, they are not misidentified, but it is rather a question of different standards of identification. Nor do I find it easy to determine who counts as a prejudiced source in such matters--every source is either partial or copying the definition of some partial source, in many cases without realizing it.

There is, by the way, no such thing as "Wikipedia stamp of approval". We take no unified position on this or any other matter of article content. There is possibly the consensus of the individuals who are present at a discussion, but we must combat the outside tendency to think of Wikipedia as having an authoritative voice in anything at all. (I know people will inevitable think so, and this gives us all very good reason to be very careful, and to emphasize that the encyclopedia just reports the sources--ever since I came here, I have been trying to get the individuals who work here to accept a greater sense of responsibility to the users.)

As a side issue, I see the provision for living people as usually a matter of courtesy, not privacy rights--anyone notable who has made public their feelings on the question of their ethnicity or religion no longer can expect it be hidden. But privacy rights do arise if it is proposed that we should respect a personal declaration through OTRS. We respect some such declarations--we will remove birthdays, but not birthyears. We will certainly remove names of minor children. (There are of course some complications: if someone inserts ethnicity, and we remove it, it is no longer private that the person objects to it.) And there is the superseding consideration which will now fortunately be rarely applicable--the claim that if someone is identified as a Jew, it will lead to person harassment--any apparently valid claim for this reason about this --or about almost anything else--must ordinarily be respected for all living people except major public figures. DGG ( talk ) 19:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I do not think that Wikipedia should create a Wikipedia definition of "What is a Jew" but rather I think that each article should specify what definition was used for the purpose of that article-- at the very least some WP:RS that takes the trouble to say if it is talking about ethnicity, religion, culture, self-identification, or some combination thereof when applying the one-word descriptor "Jewish." betsythedevine (talk) 19:33, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Using any one particular descriptor, and making separate lists for Nobelists who practice the Jewish religion, Nobelists with a Jewish moth, Nobelists with 1 Jewish grandparent, Nobelists who are mitochondrial decedents of the Ashkenazim, Nobelists whose Y chromosome is found in men traditionally considered Jewish, Nobelists whom reliable Jewish sources list as Jewish without further explanation, Nobelists who have been denounced as Jewish by anti-semites, and so on would not really clarify matters. The place to detail the sources is in the article on the person. A list like these is merely a navigational device.

But you are right we do needs some sort of standard, and I proposed one--Nobelists [etc] who are Jewish by self-identification, or by any reasonable criterion as verified by any reasonable source. Similarly for Chinese, etc. e.g., someone born in a Chinese family in Malaysia is both Chinese and Malaysian. This will give some complicated situations, but some people's ethnicity just is complicated. DGG ( talk ) 20:22, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I've always felt there's a conundrum here. Lists of "British people" or "Mexican people" are not a problem as generally they can be predicated on the objective criteria of citizenship. If reliable sources say "x is an American citizen" there you go. So nationality is not a problem. The problem comes with ethnicity, religion and (I suppose) sexuality - where there's a subjective element, at least at the margins. How do you settle it. You can't settle it by saying "it simply needs sourced", because then all you've got is the subjective opinion of one source. There's a Jewish daily calling Andre Geim Jewish, so there's a reliable source. Except other reliable sources don't mention it, and the subject himself disowns it. I can find a source that says George Bush is an evangelical Christian, but your mileage may vary. From BLP perspective, self-identification would seem the least problematic way. Except, it fails two tests. Firstly the "Pope test" - if the Pope had never, in fact, self-described as a Roman Catholic, can we call him one? (I realise he may well have done so, but you get the point). The other test is the Ida Amin test. Amin claimed to be Scottish, in fact the rightful king of Scotland. So, there's self-description. Except.... I've never quite worked out how you square this circle.

Of course, we could go with common sense, and simply exclude any dubious examples altogether. However, Wikipedia is just too full of POV-pushers determined to get anyone with a Moldavian grandmother on that list. What to do? Dunno.--Scott Mac 21:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed there are problems, and I too can see objections to any of the suggested solutions, including my own--to the extent that I just saw it was necessary to strike out part of a comment I made at an ANI discussion earlier today. But the guide to what we do is that we include at least everything that other encyclopedias do, and they include such information.

Nationality is in fact a problem also: By Mexicans, do you mean people with Mexican citizenship, those born in Mexico regardless of their present citizenship, or those who live permanently in Mexico--I can think of some other possibilities also. Such attempted combinations as Mexican-American are useful, but it is very hard to define their limits. All encyclopedia writing is a matter of judgment. Almost nothing here is mechanical.

Geim is interesting, as his article seems to have ignited the present round. He meets some clear criteria, but does not consider himself Jewish. Fortunately, he is not merely notable but famous, so it's appropriate to discuss it and say in whatever necessary detail just what the facts are. Similarly the situation with GW Bush is complicated: he started as an Episcopalian, changed to the United Methodist Church, which according to our article on it is mainline Protestant with evangelical elements. Certainly many reputable Evangelical Christians consider hims to hold many views in common with them--and I think many people not in that group of denominations would agree that he does hold them, for better or worse. I have not yet read his autobio, so I don't know what he himself says about it. I note that our article on him omits religion entirely except for the infobox, which is exactly opposite to the right way to do it. There's an article Early life of George W. Bush which covers the period of his change of denomination, but even that does not discuss it. I cannot easily think of a more absurd example of our avoiding the subject. The present attitude seems to be, if it will raise a discussion we find difficult to handle, we do not include it. The solution is finding better ways to handle such discussions. As a rough guide for handling them, I'd suggest that most of the difficulty comes from attempts to find one-word summaries, and the way to handle something about there are different opinions is to cover all of them. Conveniently, we already have such a policy, NPOV. DGG ( talk ) 22:03, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you have hit the nail on the head about the one-word simplification being a source of contention. What might satisfy the concerns about bad sourcing at List of Jewish Nobel laureates is something like what is done at List_of_Nobel_laureates_affiliated_with_Princeton_University: there is a column describing the person's affiliation with Princeton. That is a suggestion that was brought up on the talk page. For some laureates, such as Aaron Ciechanover, his Jewish identity an important part of his self-description. Any future researcher into these matters could benefit from our including a mention of Jelinek's Jewish father, Geim's Jewish great-grandmother (unless BLP protects him from being described in a way he carefully avoids describing himself), etc. Albert Einstein became very active late in life advocating for Jewish concerns and for Israel. All these matters could be mentioned within the scope of the same page, giving a much richer and more nuanced sense of the subject. betsythedevine (talk) 00:19, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

At that point, one might as well write an article about Jewish Nobel Laureates, naming all the people currently included in the list. In fact, if the BLP proposal requiring self-identification for inclusion in ethnicity-based lists and categories passes, then that is the only thing editors hell-bent on including Geim could do. And you know what? It would be a far less contentious page. A much better service to our readers. We could explain exactly which sources say Geim is Jewish. We could explain what he says, the whole shebang. We could cover the various theories about Jewish intelligence. We could cover Feynman's letter, the discourse about who is Jewish, the lot. One could write an FA about this rather than have a pathetic list warzone. --JN466 01:01, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

/// I have referenced Epeefleche's outreach to you, which I think is part of a more extensive canvassing effort, at [42]. betsythedevine (talk) 01:00, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. You should rather have said that this resulting discussion shows the good effect of Epeefleche's note to me. To accuse me of being susceptible to canvassing is something I do not take lightly. He may possibly have thought I was, but nonetheless it would be an ameliorating factor. DGG ( talk ) 17:19, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

What I said then: "Another Nov. 30 outreach by Epeefleche to a respected admin, who has now joined Epeefleche in a strong concern that Jewish lists are being "targeted""? Meaning, Epeefleche carefully picked somebody he saw as a potential partisan for his cause--which you in fact became on Nov. 30 here and elsewhere, although before his canvassing you were not involved in those AfDs. That is the point of canvassing, not to convert random weak-minded people, which of course you are not and I did not mean to imply, but to recruit and inflame those who in other discussions revealed agreement with the desired POV-- for example, as per your Keep argument here. If you think it would be an ameliorating factor for Epeef to describe my earlier attempt to engage in civil discussion here with someone whose views are different from mine but clearly intelligently formed and expressed, feel free to do so. I did not consider it relevant to the ANI.betsythedevine (talk) 22:07, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Because I supported an article on a particular way of applying the term "Black" implies I will support a particular use of the word "Jew"? As you said, the question here is focussed in part on the uniquely multiple specifics of Jewishness. The overlapping meanings between heritage/race/ethnicity/self-identification is somewhat simpler in many ways than the overlapping between heritage/ethnicity/religion/self-identification, and for various reasons, I am not sure the identical solution would hold; indeed the solution I prefer for this is different from what I advocated at the AfD you reference. I have not checked and do not care whether or not he shares it. That I support the principle of having ethnic lists in general is known to those interested, but that I support it as strongly as I now do is the product of these discussions--the arguments against such lists have helped me see how very important people hold the matter, and therefore how necessary it is for us to cover it in lists and articles. I support (or oppose) many things in general; that I will support (or oppose) any one in particular is not however predetermined. In fact, I think I'm sometimes thought a little too erratic. DGG ( talk ) 02:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, much to my frustration I have never been able to predict DGG's stance on any AfD matter, other than that it will be carefully thought about, well explained, and have inconvenient, wide-reaching implications. If Epeefleche was contacting DGG in the assumption that DGG would be partisan it only speaks to Epeefleche's poor understanding of his fellow editors. - DustFormsWords (talk) 02:47, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I will be sure not to canvass DGG myself then. ;-) But I mentioned the other Nobel AfD only as an illustration that a Keep voter there, particularly one who is articulate and forceful, might be a tempting canvass target --although of course I do not really know why Epeef chose DGG out of all our admins to ping, and I certainly do not know if he said to himself "Let me canvass somebody good" (probably he did not see it that way at all). We are all mysteries to one another and perhaps that is just as it should be. Now, as for ethnic lists in general, I do not want to see them eliminated, but the only one I know of firsthand has been such a prickly battleground of POV disputes and bad sourcing that I was just about ready to see it removed as a serious local embarrassment to Wikipedia.betsythedevine (talk) 03:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Holiday Inn fire

See here. 1978 Holiday Inn Fire is up for deletion. I created an article History of hotel fires in the United States which I'm currently writing as a proposition to merge this article into it as Orange Mike believes it non notable. I found a list by the national fire association of a relatively low number of hotel fires with ten or more fatalities since 1934. I believe that to be an assertion that they arenotable fire events, given that thousand sof fires obviously have broken out in total over the years. The 1978 fire is the least notable on that list with 10 fatalities but with the sources provided just scrapes it in my view even though I initially thought delete it. I am using the material I wrote for it in the history article anyway, but should it be redirected?♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:42, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I consider the list, [43], as providing an authoritative cutoff. A cutoff has to have a cutoff point, and they are best suited to determine it. If they say 10, we have no basis for saying >10, despite our personal inclination. We keep saying we rely on outside sources for importance, let's see if we mean it or whether we prefer to use our own personal views of what is of permanent importance. It was certainly reasonable to ask me, considering your own divided opinion. DGG ( talk ) 15:48, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Especially if you consider how many fires have likely taken place throughout history in hotels I'd say the list contains the most notable fires. And in researching most of them there is an abundance of sources and many of them were the worst fire disasters in the given cities so are definately notable. Obviously the least notable ones are the 10-15 death toll ones but i think they should qualify given that the national fire association thinks them notable and that many of them are mentioned in books and magazines. I'm usually pretty good actually with deciding the best way to use information. I'd imagine there is actually a great dea more about such fires if somebody did some research into the local archives..♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:33, 4 December 2010 (UTC) I've emailed you. Can you check your email?♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

email on the way. DGG ( talk ) 23:03, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

You are one extraordinarily odd, unpredictable person... I have no idea what exactly your intentions are on here but you go from extreme inclusionist to all out delete with very little moderation... DO you really think an ideal solution to improving wikipedia is to stick deletion tags on every article needing work and open up the possibility of any admin deleting them if they haven;t been improved within a short amount of time. Because I think it is potentially highly damaging. I cannot but try to understand why you think it would be a greater idea but for the chance that editors will actually improve them and source them. Its very risky.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:42, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree I am odd, but not that unpredictable. For many types things I tend to be inclusive, for a few types of things not. What is consistent is that I try to go by the importance of the subject as well as a count of sources, and I like clear rules that can be used without argument. Let me give a few contrasts:

I'm not inclusive about local organizations except when there is some unusual factor; but I support finding ways for Wikipedia to handle them in a separate project or perhaps compartment--and I'm a little involved with such a project for NYC. However, I support articles on basic local infrastructure.

I am very inclusive for news events of a public nature, and not at all for ones of a tabloid nature.

I take a very strict view of BLP's rule on do no harm when it applies, but I apply it rather narrowly, especially to public figures.

I support popular culture material very broadly, but am quite dubious about web memes.

And for some types of things I am inclusive only as a temporary measure: characters and episodes, until it is accepted that the sections of combination articles on them should be considerably detailed. (And there are some areas I do not work much in where I think the rules should be different, but have indefinitely deferred challenging them in order to deal with the areas I do concentrate on.) And I make mistakes also, so what have I done lately that you think I should have done otherwise? DGG ( talk ) 23:03, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you think prodding articles with a big fat ugly PROD deletion tag in your face, even ones which are clearly notable like mountains/populated places etc is a better solution than an editor like Jeep actually asking me or another active editor politely to source/improve it myself? Because I'd be more than happy to if I'm asked to improve it rather than threats. Providing I don't get too many requests thrown at me at once I'd be willing to improve articles people request. Maybe if I ignored the request after a week or so then a prod might be neccesary. But do you realise how many people have ever actually asked me to improve an article first before taking it to AFD or prodding it? I just find it very odd you are happy to see big prod warnings on valid stubs like Knúkur which just require a few sources and a bit of expansion and then in annther instance you will say that populated places every tiny hamlet is inherently notable like you did with the Scottish villages. Well do you think if I went and drilled every unreferenced British village sub stub with prod threatening warnings the article creators with deletion this would be a great thing? Probably not, so why then did you actually encourage Jeep to continue doing so and said you;d do it yourself some time? Very strange DGG... [♦ Dr. Blofeld 23:10, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

What I encouraged J. to do was, when he does prod, to leave notice on the project talk pages as well as to the editors. I think that is often a good idea, I should indeed be doing it more, & I'd like to find an scripted way to do it. A few people such as you & I patrol unexpired prods, but we cannot do it all, so the project pages seems a way to attract people who know and care about the subject. And except for BLP PROD, it is perfectly permissible to remove a prod and say in the edit summary something like, First look for sources, & if not found, only then nominate for deletion. See WP:BEFORE.
Of course when the problem is no references to support notability, prodding without checking is usually not a good thing to do. But too many editors here do this to make it impractical to confront each of them, and in any case I do not like to confront people if it is unlikely to change things. I'll typically find a way to show I am paying attention, as I think I did there, & see if it does some good. A newcomer is another matter--there's hope, so I'll instruct them. There is no practical way to enforce good behavior in established Wikipedians when it is something many people ignore. Even when they do something clearly wrong, AN/I has become a drum-head court martial, for RfC to accomplish anything it is a rare exception, and arb com is a place nobody comes away from the better. The only hope is that new people will join & dilute them. At least prod is less likely to scare them away than speedy. DGG ( talk ) 00:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

School Notability

FYI I have recommended a change to the language of the guideline for schools Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#School. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:55, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi DGG. I'm a bit concerned about User talk:Jeepday's campaign of PRODDING long standing, innocuous pages, such as mainline railway stations, just because they may not, in his view, be adequately sourced. I would have thought that admin time could be better used in serious areas such as BLP. I'm not an admin, I don't know how to approach this. I want to avoid hurting anyone's feelings, but this kind of thing makes me feel I'm wasting my time on Wikipedia. Season's greetings, --Kudpung (talk) 03:25, 25 December 2010 (UTC)PS, I've come across other instances of this admin wanting to revert accepted guidelines, such as schools, for example, and where you have kindly come to the defence of these policies.--Kudpung (talk) 03:38, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

When I came here 4 years ago, I discovered to my surprise that even the smallest railway station was considered intrinsically notable. I soon came to realise that first, there was a great advantage in not having to argue about 100s or 1000s of individual stations and, second, the rule was already well established and it was not productive to try to disturb it. The reasons are just as good today. Just deprod them. There are quite a number of railroad station enthusiasts, who can defend them better than I if they come to AfD.

But this does not hold true of metro stations, though I think it should: anyone with access to local print sources could find enough material for an article. Someday I intend to demonstrate this for the one in NYC, but there have always been a great many even more important things to do here. For the metro stations he has been redirecting, I see there are articles on them a little fuller in the Spanish Wikipedia. We normally give great deference to the national languages Wikipedia in considering something relevant, though all the Wikipedias do have different rules for inclusion. However, the articles as translated for the enWP were defective: they did not include all the information, and they especially did not include all the references, a very common error in translating material from another Wikipedia. There are thus two courses to take for them: One is to revert the redirects and add the references. It would then need to be discussed on the talk p, probably of the main articles. The Wikiproject may have a rule, but the rule needs general consensus. What the consensus will be, I cannot predict on this one. The other, is to add at least the key material that was omitted in the merge/redirect: the photograph of each station. That is clearly relevant content, even in a combination article, and if challenged, can very easily be defended.

The only general basis for solving inclusion disputes is me to let others include anything reasonable however uninteresting or trivial I find it that does not violate basic policy (& WP:N is not policy. but a guideline & therefore applies only where we collectively want it to apply), on the grounds that then they will let me include on a similar basis what I think is worth including.

And, btw, that he (or I ) is an admin is irrelevant entirely--we have no more role in deciding on content than anyone else here. All we can do about content is enforce whatever the community decides. Sure, it would be nice to be dictator, but I believe some others would think that also. We can accommodate all such desires: anyone who does want to be dictator can fork their own wiki and do as they please with the content: several have tried. If someone wants to do a wiki of selected Wikipedia articles, by whatever criteria they please, there's nothing to stop them. DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you to Kudpung and DGG for offering me an opportunity to discuss this. At Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles I work the articles tagged the longest as needing the most to come up to wikipedia standards. As there is really no effective way to sort the unreferenced articles by knowledge base it means it means I am usually working on a article were I have little or no knowledge on the subject (Actually I usually work them alphabetically). Everything in Wikipedia is here because someone care enough to volunteer there time and knowledge to write an article, I by no means want to devalue that contribution. Significant contributors know that not every article is appropriate for Wikipedia, and we know that WP:V and WP:N are the areas that strongly guide what is included. The measure of meeting WP:V and WP:N is WP:RS in the article or available. When a contributor tags an article with {{unreferenced}} they are indicating content that they beleive needs to have WP:RS included in the article. Both the writer of an article and the person requesting references are working to improve Wikipedia (WP:AGF). If the writer or some other interested contributor find and add reference(s), then the {{unreferenced}} comes off, sometimes to be replaced by another template indicating ways to continue improving the article, at some point the template {{Featured article}} will be on the article (in a perfect world). This is all nice and wonderful, but is not the root of the discussion. so...

The real wiki-implications are, there are article that have been tagged {{unreferenced}} for about half the life of Wikipedia, (WP:URA is currently working {Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2006) and they are not getting attention. For many of these articles a quick check on Google books (gBooks) finds hundreds or even thousands of published works going into significant detail about a subject that only has a small unreferenced stub on Wikipedia, for these if I can easily find a single reference that covers the majority of the content in the article and other references I am seeing support the basic content of the article, I add the single reference mark it with {{refimprove}} and move on to the next article, meeting URA Goal. If there are lots of reference that seem to support the article content but would require significant work or special knowledge to reference I leave it for later and move on to the next article.

Now for the part that is less fun, but someone has to do it. If there are few or no gBook references, what is next? The internet is currently so full of wiki mirrors and content sourced from Wikipedia without attribution that unless you are very familiar with the subject it difficult or impossible to identify as WP:RS. gBooks searches are now coming up with multiple wiki mirrors (Books LLC), even apparently trust worthy sources are now using wiki-content un-attributed as fact. So there is lack of reliable sources, there is republication of unverified and possibly unverifiable or even completely fabricated article content. Not even DGG who is a librarian, has reasonable access to every reference in the world.

So there are two choices;

1 You can ignore it, that is what everyone else has been doing since the article was written

or

2 You can put {{prod}} on the article, and liberally spread {{proposed deletion notify}} hoping that someone familiar with the article subject will give it a second look and maybe have references at hand and add them or will know that the content is not appropriate for Wikipedia and add a {{prod2}}

Wikipedia without WP:V and WP:N is the internet, not a reliable encyclopedia. When a user types their article contribution the message "Encyclopedic content must be WP:Verifiable" is directly under the edit window. WP:AGF indicates that we always assume that every contribution is intended to be appropriate for Wikipedia, and most is. But some small parts are not, when an article gets a {{prod}} people who care about a subject, may think that the person adding the prod is questioning not only the article content but also the persons involved in it's creation. If you found the prod because of {{proposed deletion notify}}, then you can safely assume that you are being asked to help, because I looked and am not sure if the content means Wikipedia standards. If I signed with Prod - Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles; you can help!, then that means this article is in the group of articles longest with questionable status for WP:V, I have looked and without your help this article will be deleted, please help by adding references to the article and/or coming to WP:URA and helping other articles. Jeepday (talk) 13:26, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I work that section also from time to time, but I normally cherrypick the articles I know I have some ability to fix, that I think others may have difficulty with. But what I do regularly has similar problems: I try to check every proposed deletion, a little while before it will be deleted to see if it can be fixed (and, often, check the newest ones also, mainly to see if there is anything there better removed by speedy but also to see if there is something unreasonable). I often find myself checking things I am totally unfamiliar with--though some come up so frequently that I have become familiar. What I do depends on the article: if I think it might not be worth saving, I let it be deleted, or delete it if the time is expired. If I think it is worth saving, I remove the prod tag. If the problem is easily fixable, I fix it; otherwise I make sure the problem is tagged, and leave it. I cannot fix everything wrong here myself, and therefore I think it wrong to delete what others can fix. if the problem is unreferenced and it is not subject to the recent unreferenced BLP special restrictions, I try to reference it; but, although I can potentially get practical access to most ordinary reference sources in many languages, I cannot always do so quickly. I do not try to do a complete search unless it is particularly important--it can take several days. If I can't, I remove the prod & leave the unreferenced tag. If it's subject to the BLP PROD restrictions, consensus--though a weak consensus-- unfortunately is that this is not acceptable, so I try particularly hard to find at least a minimal reference (unless it is relatively unimportant and by someone submitting multiple such articles, where I instead let the article be deleted, leave them a very strong personalized warning, & am prepared to block if it continues.)

WP:V is indispensable. I agree that without it we are not an encyclopedia. I will not leave in an article that I cannot verify if I am sure I have tried every reasonable pertinent method and my methods have failed to find it. If I know my methods are inapplicable (such as requiring Indic language print sources) I do not delete. WP:N is different from WP:V. WP:V is satisfied by proof of existence of the key facts. WP:N is a matter of judgment. I agree we need criteria of what is to be included based on some notions of importance or encyclopedic suitability. I strongly favor simplifying this by having fixed inclusion categories, and I consider the proper role of the GNG to be only a backup guideline when nothing directly relevant to importance can be shown. (Most people here do not quite agree, and think it to be the basic guideline and the fixed categories as subsidiary special cases where it does not apply. The eventual results should be very close to my way of looking at it.) In practice, about half of the discussions at WP:AFD, & essentially all of the really difficulty ones, do not rely upon the GNG, but on the various special cases of exclusion under WP:NOT,

If I place a prod, it's not because I am unsure whether it meets the standards. If I am unsure, I send an article to AfD. I prod according to the policy at WP:PROD, which says Proposed deletion is the way to suggest that an article is uncontroversially a deletion candidate, but that it does not meet the more stringent criteria for speedy deletion. Note the "uncontroversially": If you are prodding because you are merely unsure, you are prodding excessively and against policy. You are putting a time limit on checking and improvement, and there is no time limit.

As for sources: Reliance on GBooks alone is in my opinion inadequate for most subjects. Surely you mean Google News Archive in addition when relevant? Those, plus WorldCat when relevant, are what I use for a quick check myself. But I am also aware of what is on the web that is not in those 3 databases but is in Google--this includes many reliable news sources. To avoid deletion, I will check this as thoroughly as I have time for, using G translate when necessary. (This, not access to rare sources, is where the librarian skills really counts--one gets a feeling for where there might be sources, and one gains patience in examining them.) I'm also aware what is in the web, but not directly searchable on google: the simplest example is athletes, who can often be verified by finding the page for the team (or officials, who can be found through the page for their agency, or professors, through the page for their department--many agencies & universities do not let individual web pages be crawlable.) Beyond that, I use the basic general databases--and most people in most countries have access to at least some of them through their public libraries, even at home. Almost anyone can do as much as this. Beyond there it sometimes takes some special access--but about half of all Wikipedians have access to some college library. DGG ( talk ) 20:27, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

You both have good additional comments and I do look in the areas you have described as appropriate to the subject mater. Other language articles are one of my preferred sources to begin searching for references on some subjects, usually right after related article on English Wikipedia, thought the Asian and Arabic pages are harder to mine. You can never be sure that articles subject does not meet WP:V, you can only know if there are reference that you can find. If the references are not on the article, and a Wikipedian makes a reasonable effort to find references, then the article fails WP:V, the subject may be well addressed in references not readily available to the Wikipedian, or the references may be under a different spelling or more common term. If/when references are provided then the Article can be shown to pass WP:V. WP:N is much less definable, in general if there are no references, it probably does not pass WP:N, but as we all know there is no strict guideline, it comes to community consensus. So you can never truly know that a subject fails WP:V and/or WP:N you can only assume it does based on the available data. I am often very pleased to find, that my assumptions were incorrect, I am also amazed how long apparently complete fabrications remain on Wikipedia Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ahmed Abdel Haye Kira, and is repeated as fact. A 2005 entry by an IP now it gets six gBook hits, and over a thousand web hits. Jeepday (talk) 14:09, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Definition of academic journal

Do you know any examples of journals that are generally accepted as being academic journals or scholarly journals, but not peer reviewed? To me, academic journal is more or less synonymous with "peer reviewed", but perhaps I'm too much of a purist... --Crusio (talk) 05:06, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I would call the Columbia Law Review, for example, an academic and scholarly journal. And it does not have a peer review, in the strictest sense of that term. Same with most U.S. law school law reviews.--Epeefleche (talk) 06:10, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• I can't find anything on their website that says anything about peer review, whether they have it or not. What makes you think they don't? I have no time to search, but I seem to recall (although I admit to the weaknesses of my memory... :-) that some law journals mention peer review. But you may well be right and perhaps in that field it is more exception than the rule. --Crusio (talk) 09:55, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Personal experience. And experience of my peers with that and other Ivy League law reviews. Feel free to ping others, such as Bearian, who also have personal experience. And I think I left an entry somewhere (RS noticeboard perhaps) detailing the process, with refs.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:23, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Journals like that are best seen as specialized peer-review; the term "peer" is open to several possible interpretations. I Even in the sciences its routine for reviewers to be junior to the people they are reviewing--a great deal of peer reviewing is done by post-doctoral fellows.There are other specialized forms also: there are a number of journals that rely upon members of the Editorial Board, which is not strictly speaking peer-review in the formal sense--in the humanities, I think this is much more prevalent, but I'd have to ask around for examples. Until recently, PNAS was an example--members of the Academy could publish whatever they cared to (& thus Pauling was able to publish his papers on Vitamin C there)--in the 19th century such a practice was universal, and I suppose this happens still with less prestigious society journals. Nature has been known to publish works without formal peer review also, relying on the judgment of the editor-in-chief, but whether a journal ever makes an exception to peer review is not exactly the same question. The actual quality control is in any case not by the peer-reviewers, it is by the editor in chief in selecting the peer-reviewers, & making sure they understand the standard (high or low, as the case may be). DGG ( talk ) 06:16, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks, I'd forgotten about PNAS. Do you know of any contemporary examples outside of the humanities, in the sciences perhaps? --Crusio (talk) 09:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment

I have proposed the renaming of a category, and wanted to know if you would consider commenting on the proposed renaming over at that link? ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 04:43, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Opinions needed on journals

If you have a minute, could you look at [44]? I don't do much with journals, and so I don't know what the usual notability standards are for journals. Thanks, — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. The thing I don't understand is, if the usual practice is to have redirects to the publisher's page, why don't we already have these for the Springer journals? I would think that if a journal is reputable enough for Springer to publish it, it ought to have a link to somewhere. But I don't usually deal with journals and I don't know what the past discussions have been, so I appreciate your help figuring it out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:23, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

One more question - do you have a sense of the requirements to create an article on a journal? It may be that some of those math journals should have articles. Is there some collection of statistics I should look at, and if so how high should they be? Of course this can't be precise, I'm just looking for a safe rule of thumb. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:53, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Cfd that you might have an opinion on

Hi, the upmerging of lists of scientific and medical journals is being discussed. I thought you might have an opinion on which way to go. Cheers, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:53, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

(this involves the distinction between professional magazine and journal, whih is a one of those things that is much fuzzier than it looks at first glance. DGG ( talk ) 16:35, 17 January 2011 (UTC)