Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 29

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Proposal to recommend adding a measure of popularity or rating to comparison pages

Wikipedia has many comparison pages (e.g. of software programs that perform a specific task) that often only point out basic objective facts about the compared things that turn out to be relatively minor.

Often however decisions are made more on based on popularity (since it is very strongly related to quality and growth potential) or based on a comprehensive quality assessment made by an authoritative reviewer.

So I propose to have a policy that recommends that comparison pages include such data, citing the most recent and authoritative versions of it.

Practical examples could be sales, market share, number of users, website search engine rankings, review scores at popular sites, adoption by high profile adopters (e.g. Linux distributions for open source software), date of the latest release of the product, benchmark results.

While this data is subject to change, it can still be very useful to have it all collected and I think Wikipedia is the best place for it, provided that "as of" annotations and disclaimers are properly added.

BTW, is this the correct place to write this? If not, which is the correct one? 192.167.204.15 (talk) 19:00, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Basic, objective facts are the cornerstone of Wikipedia. Popularity doesn't really enter into it. Wikipedia isn't set to help people decide what products to purchase, just to provide encyclopedic information on the product. -- Kesh (talk) 19:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you are looking for Consumer Reports? Keeper | 76 21:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Keeper, it is often said that verifiability has nothing to do with facts, because it has nothing to do with "truth." Saying, "Popularity doesn't enter into it," doesn't appear to be an objective fact itself, given the existence of WP:WikiProject Pokémon, WP:HALO, and WP:The Vines, while at the same time an important subject like WP:WikiProject Robotics is relatively small and relatively new. Even something like WP:WikiProject Buddhism appears to not have gotten the attention it deserves. Your assertion is a claim about Wikipedia philosophy, what it ought to be, not a description of what it currently is. That should be clarified and often WP:NOT is inappropriately stated as a "description," which encourages complacency in policy reform.

Anonymous user: Wikimedia and the Wikipedia community has thus far been incapable of collecting reliable statistics on the most basic of information, like userbase-growth. I support your idea, anonymous user, but Wikipedia first needs to work on WP:STATS and stats.wikimedia.org before getting into anything advanced, like you propose. But I do think it's a good idea. Wikipedia needs to work on WP:STATS and stats.wikimedia.org

Here's an idea: Create a tool which models editing clusters. In other words, create a tool which records every edit made by ever user and creates a correlation between their edits and the edits made be every other user (# of correlations generated = userbase^2, for each edit to the same article between two users, add 1 to the correlation for those users), possibly even a secondary layer which correlates these clusters, with even higher order editing clusters (clusters of clusters). Then you generate results of the most common "editing clusters" (tendency for the same users to gather around the same types of articles) and this can help identify:

• Sockpuppetry
• Systemic bias
• Cabals

It would be a logical, effective way of addressing it rather than the current system, which is horrible. So horrible that we have to rely on granting administrators the power to secretly make alternate accounts for arbitrary reasons, liberally use checkuser, and collude on off-wiki IRCs, as if they were some kind of secret police. Granted, I'm not opposing these things -- they're clearly necessary ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

There's a reason why such a thing is probably unfeasible - as it says, it grows with order n². stats.wikimedia.org is updated "regularly" (as in 2 years regularly or something on the English Wikipedia) with database dumps - I guess anyone is welcome to help refresh that webpage. But I'm not sure something of the order $n^{2}$ is feasible. I mean, we have 6,000,000+ users, which gives us 36,000,000,000,000+ records. If every record is a byte in size, that's 36 terabytes; would anyone care to donate disk space? For that reason, it's simply a lot easier to employ more "primitive" methods such as checkuser. x42bn6 Talk Mess 01:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It does not seem to make much sense that Wikipedia could not afford to have servers capable of pulling statistics from wikis. Again, the gaps in data in the smallest of wikis, like Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia seem unexplainable by the claim "the dumps are just too darn large." As noted before, one cannot blame the database dumps for being too difficult to deal with. Either the databases need to be somehow optimized for efficiency in size and data collection or more resources need to be spent on servers.

Terabytes aren't amazing things anymore. You can buy a terabyte hard-drive for $350 if you shop around, with a total cost of $13,000 for 36 of them, which seems reasonable, considering the amount of donations Wikipedia has gotten, based on their past financial reports. I've been considering getting one myself, just for my own stuff.

Then there's also the possibility that they could avoid the high costs of buying the servers themselves through exploiting distributed computing. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not purely the size of the data (and the 36 terrabytes is a very generous lower bound - the naive implementation would need at least a two-byte counter (doubling the data in a naive implementation). And all that memory needs to be accessed over and over again. Yes, we can pull "statistics" from the server. But most statistics can be computed in linear time and constant space. Going from linear to quadratic with an input set of size 6,000,000 will be 6,000,000 times more expensive in the relevant resource. That said, the desired result could be implemented in an O(n*log(m^2)) time algorithm (where n is the number of edits and m the number of users) using O(n) memory. Still bad, and the resulting data structure is much harder to handle for further analysis. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:50, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

In plain English, please. "A generous lower bound" could've been easily been stated without invoking mathematics as "A generous underestimate." You said it would be "6,000,000 times more expensive." Are you actually suggesting that it would require a hard drive the size of 216 billion terabytes and\or that it would cost well over 6 million dollars to purchase the necessary resources? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 15:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

How about a request for book information page?

In the course of my Wiki career, I have bought a couple of tomes on obscure subjects in order to help me write an article. I know a number of other Wikipedians who have done the same.

It occurs to me that it might be useful to have a page devoted to requests for information from particular books, because there might already be users out there who have the book who can verify the information sought without the user having to buy the book himself. Any comments? Gatoclass (talk) 00:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. It would need to achieve a high level of use to be useful to people, but it couldn't hurt to start it.

(I myself recently purchased Alberta's Local Governments (ISBN 0888642512) for Wikipedia purposes.) Sarcasticidealist (talk) 03:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You could always try to restart WP:LIBRARY which used to do this back in the day. Seems to have been lacking in input for a while. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 03:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Also see the Wikipedia group at LibraryThing.com. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes on pages about chemical elements

These contain important numerical data relating to the elements and can be edited even by anonymous users. There is always the risk of some "prankster" slightly changing the atomic masses of a few elements for example. How well can this be detected and corrected? I know it can happen as I just checked the last 50 edits of carbon's infobox and found most to be vandalism or nonconstructive. Assuming we generally have the correct numbers in these infoboxes in the first place, a legitimate need to edit them should be a rare occurrence. To me it would seem that the merits of locking down these boxes from anonymous edits (prevention of hard-to-detect vandalism) would always outweigh the slower pace of editing them due to some version of a lock down. The reason why I am posting this is because I noticed some discrepancies between the numbers listed on the actual infoboxes and the numbers that should have been there according to the reference pages for the infoboxes.

If I understand, there is currently no policy or precedent for locking down non-controversial pages due to a standard vandalism threat. What I would like to discuss is if there should be consideration given for how static the infoboxes' contents are. The values on these boxes are fairly black and white: the boiling point of oxygen at a given pressure has a correct value which isn't going to be changing anytime soon. It is very easy to hide fake data in these tables since no one would notice a change of 254.4 to 254.3. Even values that are completely off from the real value are hard to detect if one does not know what range of values to be expecting for a given property. What good arguments can be made for keeping the chemical element infoboxes open for everyone to edit other than it's the status quo? Do you think the infoboxes will be of better quality being open for everyone to edit or locked down given that they are practically complete?Dwr12 (talk) 08:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

The infoboxes aren't separate pages, so it's not possible to lock them without locking the entire article, which I'm certain isn't justified in most cases. Vandalism on these articles should be dealt with just like vandalism on other articles; via watchlisting and reverting. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:38, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I take that back - it appears that I was ignorant of how chemical infoboxes work. I'm still not convinced that protection is required, though - why can't they just be watched and reverted? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, now that I think about it, there's ample precedent for what you're proposing; Template:Infobox Officeholder, for example, is continually locked for the reasons you describe. I hereby reverse myself and endorse protection of these boxes.

(For future reference, Sarc, think first, post second). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Sarcasticidealist, it is possible, even likely, that every contribution you ever make to Wikipedia will be destroyed by troll mobs or random vandals. Don't worry about it too much. And stop thinking about what you're doing. It tends to stand in the way of making constructive contributions to Wikipedia. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 08:54, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

The reason why I think the standard "watching and reverting" is not optimal is because the infoboxes have reached more or less a state of completion. Conceive of a page with the sole defined purpose of storing the value of the expression 2+2 and nothing else. It current only has a single character on the page: 4. Now in this little example the page is "perfect" given what it was designed to do. Keeping the assigned role of the page fixed, any edit to the page would make it worse. Now I am not claiming the element infoboxes to be "perfect," but along the lines of my example, they have nearly all the data that should be there. I feel we have perhaps reached an equilibrium in the quality and quantity of our chemical elements infoboxes. Excluding certain cases (such as the recently discovered elements), new information is not really being added to the boxes and the bulk of all edits to them seem to be vandalism and reversions. I think it would be a good move to tighten the editing process of these boxes given the state they have attained.

This goes beyond the scope of what I intended to discuss here, but I think the same principle could be applied to several places on wikipedia, mostly in math/science and mostly on pages without prose. Pages like this one are quite static and easy to vandalize. Pages like these have or will eventually reach a limit on how comprehensive and accurate they can be. At that point, there might not even be anything to be gained from further legitimate editing. At the very least, we might want to consider giving slight protection to these pages to try to cut out the edits made in bad faith.Dwr12 (talk) 10:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

So the proposal is to have elemental infoboxes in protected pages? -- SEWilco (talk) 00:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

External map service links

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:External links#Issues with inclusion or exclusion of map service links on the external links guideline for keeping external map service links in Wikipedia articles or not. More comments from people would be appreciated to find community consensus. --Para (talk) 17:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Image renaming

• Bugzilla link: 709

While it's not currently possible to move/rename images, Betacommand has a bot that can perform the function for us the hard way.

Requests for image movement should be placed at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:Image renaming. Admins are automatically authorized for the use of this tool, and non-admins may be added by having an admin list you at the bottom of Wikipedia:Image renaming, which also includes instructions on using the tool.

There is no "Requests for" process involved, you just need to have a reasonably good edit history.

Related pages can be found in Category:Image renaming ~Kylu (u|t) 06:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Censorship

I was reading "No sex please, we're Wikipedians" and "Deletion Policy" categories above (contents in WP:VPP). I think the issue is whether to censor or not.

Censorship is something tricky, if not actually outright dangerous in a free society, for it might make it less free or not free anymore.

Freedom is and ideal welcomed in a civilized society; if used rightly, it encourages many good things, specially happyness. So i support good freedom.

Certainly freedom can be something like in the jungle, where animals are in complete natural freedom, which includes things like killing and maiming at will.

The question is then where to draw a line, if one has to be drawn.

An encyclopedia, is a compendium of knowledge -literally, to circle the knowledge, to gather it all- so basically the more things you add to it the better. In a cosmic view theres no need to censor to fill that definition. But the enciclopedia is mainly by and for humans (some extraterrestrial beings might be using it as well but thats another topic) so we have some main issues: storage, the larger status quo that restricts the free flow of information, the human mind itself (for information is a factor in the behavior of people and their reactions).

So basically the information provided has to fit in the container that will carry it (wikipedia servers), comply with the laws of the land where the servers are located (mainly USA i believe) and make the most powerful people content (which would be the people involved that has the most power to administer the topic or wikipedia at the time -including owners, administrators, users, local authorities).

So censorship has to be carried trying to balance out those main issues (and maybe others i cant think of right now). So, if there are too many topics, some have to be deleted -for space; which one becomes the question. Some people might put the formula for some super ultrasecret medicine and wikipedia might be coerced into deleting and banning. Or some information migth be used to be able to bypass some law. Maybe some information might be used to or make the effect of trigger harming instincts in some people (psychos, terrorists, stupids). Also, peoples cultures might be offended by some content they deem inappropriate and want to get it delete it ("oh, that word is so ugly it shouldnt be here", "oh, naked people!", "oh, mating humans!").

Everything that means more knowledge is a legitimate part of an encyclopedia. I think the goal is to know everything. But as mere material earthly mortals, we have to draw a line between good and evil. That is we have to censor stuff out. Now for wikipedia that might mean not getting information in an evil way but get it if in the process of getting it nothing is like harmed more than just causing envious feelings or similar stuff. For the users it means not using the information in evil/stupid ways. But we live in a life where there are more shades than light and darkness. So its virtually impossible to have a perfect process. Some people might hurt themselves with seemingly inocuos information (how to make a tomato salad). I dont know if that means information shouldnt be available.

But i tend to lean in the availability of all information. Just because someone gets angry or annoyed or ashamed or blushed or something doesnt mean information shouldnt be available. People have different beliefs. Some for instance, believe sexuality is something if in public view immoral and call it pornography, others believe is something sacred so for them pornography wouldnt be but sacred images. For others is just a pattern of instinctual/ biological processes in living beings.

Some people go delete some content in pages because thats how they think it is. Some others add gibberish that might mean actually something. Many add unreferenced opinions or definitions. Maybe a nobel prize winner is one of them. Or a president. For me, it should be a different version of each page updated. No deletions ever. Pure and simple. If storage possible. Or, go first and ban movies like Saw, Hostel. Ban also eisntein physics because it caused the atomic bomb to kill thousands of people and we are still in who knows when we blow the whole planet apart. And also Nobel because he introduced explosives. And ban the chinese, they made possible the infamous bullets. Ban cars because thieves get away too fast and thousands die horribly disfigured each year in car crashes. Ban also computers because they might facilitate the work of terrorists and, who knows, one day they might take over and want to exterminate the human race. --WonderingAngel-aesc78 (talk) 12:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I added paragraphs to make it readable. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 13:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Well we do some kinds of things that fall short of outright censorship while addressing the same concerns. For example, the popular List of sex positions has only drawings instead of any pictures. Check out the thing on top of Rorschach inkblot test which, as it says, may invalidate the test for you if you do look at it. There are a lot of things like that around. MilesAgain (talk) 16:17, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I read through most of it. My response: Inclusionism is evil. However, censorship is more evil. Wikipedia would be better with more naked people and random offensive expletives, because it would scare away oversensitive people who would want to ban things for the sake of their own personal preferences.

To some degree, WP:CENSORED should apply to both articles and users, not just articles. Basically, if you're not infringing on anyone else's right to make a constructive edits, you should be able to say, believe, and do whatever you want. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 19:26, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Originally, the policy said, "Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of minors." That inferred it was not censored for indecency. But after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, it was changed to simply "Wikipedia is not censored." I don't like this new language because Wikipedia obviously is censored -- it's censored for relevance, it's censored for "notability," it's censored for appropriateness, etc. I think the wording of the line ought to be changed to narrow the policy a bit. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:44, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your point, Mwalcoff. I think the term "vetted" is more accurate when it comes to stopping non-encyclopedic stuff from getting through. The word "censorship" tends to connote the idea that certain OPINIONS aren't allowed. For this reason, I'm OK with the language and I think it's annoying when people say it doesn't apply to user comments and user pages, because it does. If I don't have freedom of opinion on here, true open-source collaboration can't work. That freedom ends when it comes to me being disrespectful or disruptive. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored for moral outrage. How's that?Wjhonson (talk) 00:47, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I think when the cartoons controversy happened, they should have applied a narrow rather than a broad solution: "Wikipedia is not censored for indecency or blasphemy." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:45, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Whenever I revert any attempt at censorship (usually on smegma), I generally state as an edit summary "Wikipedia is not censored for minors or morality." Indeed, it amazes me how many people come along and try to get Wikipedia to conform to their morals and belief systems and not the other way around. I do agree that a narrower interpretation such as the one I use or the one Mwalcoff advocates is better for Wikipedia in the long run because of the risk of misinterpretation of the policy to "neutralize" sensitive topics, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Eastern Europe problems, the Troubles,the 2008 American Presidential Campaign... the list is endless with this broad of a definition. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 21:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

• How about Wikipedia is not censored? Does that cover all bases, or did it miss one? Hiding T 14:19, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

In principle at least i think there should be no censorship at all. And i also think it should be 'wikipedia is not censored'. --WonderingAngel-aesc78 (talk) 12:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

New Forms of Notability?

note - I originally posting this hypothesis on my talk page for an initial round of comments and discussion prior to moving it here.

Is there no leeway for cases of artist that are popular in new online media formats like YouTube.com? While they may not be reviewed in any traditional media channels, would the fact that their art [music/film/etc] has been viewed by millions viewers (independently tracked by the site) not make them notable simply based on that popularity? What if they had 10 million viewers? 100 million? When might we have to acknowledge this artist, or at least their art, as notable, regardless of receiving any traditional sources?

It seems that Wikipedia's two most important policies are notability and verifiability. Can a case be made that this example might prove both, albeit not in the currently defined framework?

I also am a little confused where the line is drawn on what is trivial or significant where artists are concerned. Historically, Musicians' and Authors' work is more notable than themselves as a person. So, for example, if a musician releases a hit song and it is reviewed heavily but, for whatever reason, the artist's life is not explored in the press. Does that make only the song notable? Can a song be notable and not the artist that made it so?

Thoughts? - Operknockity (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

• Actually, that is one doggoned good question. Personally, I like the idea of including an artist with sufficient hits on alternative media. I've found that this site has become less and less inclusive as of late. Anything of note has basically been covered and all that seems to be coming in are articles on obscure English footballers. I had an article on a fairly notable new radio controlled model run up on the Articles for Deletion page...and sure enough, it's gone. Back when the site was fairly new, I was amazed at the number of red links on what I thought to be notable subjects. A few examples which I started under a previous username include Ridge Route, U.S. Highway 99, Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, Academy of Model Aeronautics, Operation Lifesaver and Automobile Club of Southern California to name a few. The articles on the Ridge Route and the Mercedes went on to become features. For the life of me, I am fresh out of ideas beyond the possibility of a bio on a world champion radio control pilot and model designer. Getting back to what you asked: I think the idea is more than meritorious and should be posed at one of the community pages like the village pump. You'd sure have my support. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 07:18, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

• You just called WP:N "...one of the wikipedia's two most important policies." I just double-checked. Notability remains a guideline -- its not a policy.

• I notice many wikipedians pushing to treat notability as if it were a policy -- a kind of policy creep. In my experience, for controversial topics at least, judgments of a topics "notability" are often deeply intertwined with the POV of the persons making the judgment.

• The wikipedia covers lots of topics I personally have no patience with -- like homeopathy. But I recognize that perfectly valid articles can be written on those topics, that cite verifiable sources. I'd never dream of trying to suppress biographies of the main figures in homeopathy, provided they referenced truly verifiable, authoritative sources. But, unfortunately, I have found lots of wikipedians are happy to call "not-notable" anything connected with any topic they personally don't find credible -- without understanding how thoroughly POV those kinds of judgments are.

• I think the wikipedia should deprecate "notability", except, perhaps, for topics that are truly not controversial. I am not disputing that cleaning out cruft is important. But I think we need less subjective measures than notability for determining what is and isn't cruft.

• Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 09:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I find that the Notability policy/guideline status isn't really an important disticntion anymore. WP:N as it stands now is merely a restatement of WP:V. There have been many cases where an article failed some early definitions of Notability, but were still verifiable so they were kept. Qubit Field Theory is the canonical example provided by Jimbo Wales himself of a "non-notable" theory that is verifiable, and therefore acceptable to be kept.

Getting back to your specific question, it is sometimes difficult to establish notability for non-mainstream areas of interest. For example, I am a fan of Alternate reality games, but by their nature they are difficult to establish media coverage that is independent of the source. It would be great if we could accept certain blogs and community forums as reliable. Unfortunately, that is likely not going to change any time soon.

In the case of a YouTube video, there are ways of finding reliable sources, but generally it has to involve making the transition to an appearance in mainstream attention, (such as appearing on Oddball.) In the other example, I've never seen a case where the song gained enough coverage to be notable without the artist being deemed notable as well. If nothing else, the artist's claim of notability would be definied by the song.

I don't know any of these ramblings help your case or not. I lament the inefficiencies of the system, but I try to work within them. There are ways to find the evidence to prove notability to others, it's just a matter of making the case. -- RoninBK _{T C} 12:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:N goes far further than WP:V. WP:V asks that a topic be covered in a third party source. WP:N takes that ball and runs off the pitch with it. Of course if it really does restate WP:V we can safely deprecate it as redundant. Hiding T 14:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I'd argue that WP:V is redudant if WP:N restates it since WP:N requires more than WP:V, so that an article meeting WP:N automatically meets WP:V. However, I storngly discourage taking this approach for exactly the reason stated above: WP:N is a guideline and thus should be considered flexible, while WP:V is a hard-strict rule.

Also a point to consider for internet memes (including "YouTube stars") is that there is a difference between a topic that is newsworthy, and a topic that is noteworthy. The former gets coverage today, but but may simply be a flash in the pan, and any likelihood of long term notability is very low. It's one thing for memes like the Star Wars kid or Numa Numa, where they did have sufficient notability to recieve coverage, but these are exceptions to the rule for a typical meme. There are certain areas where editors should be cautious about trying to rush to put up information about a topic when that topic is new; WP is not a news source, and we should wait for appropriate sources to establish notability (or at least verifiability) to appear instead of including it right away. --MASEM 14:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd love to deprecate WP:N, but that's neither here nor there. The point I was getting at is that the reason Notability tends to have the quasi-Policy force behind it is that if something is found to be non-notable, it is also likely to be unverifiable. The beauty of WP:N now is that while some people use it to bash articles they don't like, it also provides the mechanism to get those people to sit down and shut up. Because once I have the objective evidence to meet the notability criterion, the subjective personal judgments don't matter anymore. -- RoninBK _{T C} 15:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

• I am glad to hear that pointing to verifiable sources works for you to get wikipedians with an unrecognized bias distorting their POV to back off. I do a lot of work on articles related to the "Global War on Terror" -- aka the GWOT. And this policy creep has the opposite effect there to the one you describe. In my experience a not insignificant segment of wikipedians are willing to accept the official line on Guantanamo, namely: (1) that the captives are all "terrorists"; (2) who were captured on the battlefield; (3) whose treatment complies with US law, International treaties; and (4) all claims to the contrary are simply disinformation from al Qaida operatives who were trained to lie about being tortured.
• In my experience, to the extent a wikipediian's comments suggest they accept the official line is inversely proportional to their willingness to call any information to the contrary "non-notable".
• In my experience a claim of a lack of notability, when the topic is controversial, is often simply an unacknowledged instance of WP:IDONTLIKEIT.
• In my experience, pointing out how verifiable your references are is not generally helpful when arguing with someone whose claim that a topic is not notable is based on their unsubstantiated POV that some central premise is not credible. Geo Swan (talk) 16:50, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

A reoccurring claim in these discussions is that notability is not a policy but a guideline and that 'the lack of demonstrated notability is not a criteria for speedy deletion, nor is there any deadline to improve such articles, though good faith improvements are expected as part of the editing process.' [ref Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Dealing with non-notable fictional topics ] However, in practice I am seeing section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion based on grounds of reliable source when A7 actualy only requires you 'indicate why its subject is important or significant'. - Operknockity (talk) 14:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

• If a page was obviously deleted "out of process", then an admin may choose to undelete it immediately. Hiding T 14:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Would it be an idea to throw WP:N at the "policy" vote ? Cause whatever you may call it, it sure ain't a guideline anymore. We throw away 1000s of articles a day that don't pass WP:N, and on the HELPDESK, I think it's the most quoted "policy/guideline/procedure" of them all. As such I assert that it is no longer a guideline, but a policy. Calling it anything else would be "truthiness" instead of truth. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I would strongly urge not to go this route, at least right now with the present issue of an open ArbCom case dealing with notability, and rather resistant to this in the future. Not that I don't support notability, but it is, at least for works of fiction, an extremely contentious issue, and an attempt to make notability policy, while likely to satisfy some editors wishes to see a lot of "fancruft" removed, would also likely to fracture the WP community. As mentioned above, notability is a guideline for the reasons that it is meant to be flexible, because the fact that notability, even defined by "significant coverage in secondary sources", is subjective, while the guiding policies of V, NOR, and NPOV are rather objective. Some time from now, making notability policy may be appropriate, but certainly not at the present time.

Instead, I would argue that like the approach of WP:V (policy) deferring to WP:RS (guideline) for an explanation of what reliable sources are, having WP:NOT (and maybe WP:V) defer to WP:NOTE to define what WP's inclusion guidelines are. --MASEM 16:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Not in a million years would i dare go that route. Actually, that's kind my problem with the whole "state of the Wikipedia non-union" :D --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Back to the original topic, I'd say the number of times something is viewed on YouTube is not notable at all. I'm sure random fan-videos from World of Warcraft get thousands of views, but that doesn't mean anything. It's a transient thing that gets forgotten a few weeks later. For the same reason, we don't consider page-hits for websites or Google hits on searches to be valid: quantity doesn't matter. What we need are WP:V verifiable third-party sources that show people have not only seen the thing, but that it has had an impact'. People have taken the time to research the subject, study it and publish their findings. That's notability. The Statue of Liberty gets millions of visitors a year, but that in itself does not make it notable. The history, scholarly studies and news reports show why it is notable. -- Kesh (talk) 19:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, there is a notable difference between thousands of views on YouTube and millions of views on YouTube. I also think any statue that gets millions of visitors a year is notable. Honestly, are we afraid to use a definable metric and if so, why? (serious question...there may be a good reason) 24.153.178.210 (talk) 22:50, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Original topic again - I concur with Kesh that popularity on its own does not confer notability. In fact, I'm not sure that notable is the right adjective to use: the guidelines amount to saying that someone/something must in fact have been noted by a reliable source. This doesn't mean I think the hit counters on YouTube are unreliable: just that (IMHO) YouTube itself is not a good guide to what is genuinely important. For those tiny numbers of videos or performers who do make it out and get recognition by mainstream media - fine, they've been noted, let them have an article.

I don't believe we need a new notability guideline for YouTube or similar new media performers/performances. Category:Wikipedia rejected proposals is full of similar attempts to elicit specific criteria for different topics. Almost all have been rejected because the basic criteria for notability in practice work fine - whether they are in theory a guideline or in practice a de facto policy. Kim Dent-Brown ^(Talk) 19:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps what is needed for now is simply a method for discouraging section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion abuse. The biggest problem I see is the misinterpretation that A7 allows for CSD of articles that lack sufficient sourcing. (If that were the case, wouldn't we have to kill all stubs?) A7 only requires an assertion and rational for notability and if you think it is poorly sourced then your option is AfD, not CSD. At least that would allow for some discussion. 24.153.178.210 (talk) 22:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

"Notability" has eroded on Wikipedia in recent years. Now, you have folks like Geo Swan above who support cruft. No, cruft is important -- we just shouldn't have any policy against it, except on controversial topics. Rite. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 22:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Notability and verifiablity are quite different. Notability is a topic inclusion standard, and verifiability is an information inclusion standard. While they are linked in that they both have the requirement of sourcing as their touchstone, they operate in fundamentally different spheres. This is easily shown by the fact that there are numerous examples of articles that can meet the one and not the other. The starting post ignores the fact of what this place is. An encyclopedia is a tertiary source and must by definition synthesize already published information. So, we must publish information citing to sources. That is non-negotionable if we are to remain an encyclopedia and not something else. We can, of course, cite to crap sources and remain an encyclopedia, but then we'd be a crap encyclopedia, so reliable sources are a must. How then could we ever provide "leeway for cases of artist that are popular in new online media formats like YouTube.com." By this, you are implying that verifiability and notability are policies/guidelines imposed on what are already encyclopedic subjects/information. That's not the case. Both policies distill and describe in words standards to recognize and police what is already true—what is implicit—for encyclopedic content. So, some online subject is viewed by a billion people. In order to write an encyclopedia article on it, the only way to do that is through synthesis of sources, and the only way to do that properly is with reliable, independent sources. Full circle. That youtube video can't be written about here (except of course if it has been the subject of suitable sourcing), not because it fails these standards, but because this is an encyclopedia. Of course, if a subject gets a billion views, it will inevitably get written about in third party reliable sources and thus be good fodder for an article.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

My own general view is that the present concept of general notability (2RS=N) is hopelessly flawed, and nobody follows it, even the least inclusionists:

First, we have never decided whether the special criteria are required instead of it, required in addition to it, required as an alternative to it, or are simply reasons why we might assume it would be the case.

Second, we do not always accept having 2RS as being notable (nor should we). We have made exceptions: purely local sources do not always count for local events, student newspapers generally do not count, self-published books do not count, sources published the same year as the even do not count, and so forth--all on the argument that they are not really reliable for what they cover, but this is only used in order to keep out articles that the general feeling is are not appropriate.

Third, we often accept things without 2RS , if it is clear to everyone that they can be found, as for ships and railroad stations, and we tend to stretch this a good deal, for some of the material. The material we traditionally approve of, that is. For the ones we dont, we reject it, however opposed to common sense it is. If it does not have conventional sourcing, that';sa reason to reject it. More and more of popular culture, of the internet, of computer science,will not have conventional sourcing, and we will therefore not cover it if this is the effective criterion. We would become an encylopedia appropriate to the date it was founded in 2001, not the way the world is 7 years later and the way it will change/

the only reason we accept this is because we have not been able to find a replacement that will satisfy all parties--and that is in fact a good reason. Instead we work around it with ad hoc rules such I and others have listed. At least it works. Now, the reason it will not satisfy all parties is that there is no agreement on what ought to be included in the encyclopedia I do not think we could get even a 60% agreement of any complete non-trivial statement, let alone meet the requirement of consensus in finding something everyone could live with, if not like.

I do have of course a rule I like, and I might as well say it: articles are suitable for an encyclopedia if they are either A/ covered in a substantial way by 2 or more reliable sources appropriate to the subject or B/Meet specific standards of notability as established for their particular class of articles or C/are the most popular representatives of their class (this also to be established class by class).

But I agree with MASEM that this is not the time to pursue it to an immediate decision. Better we disagree and stay together in a discontented but livable way than engage in the fight that would ensue and risk splitting the encyclopedia. This is not now the sort of thing for polling. That would come much later./ The first step is an exchange of views, like we are having. DGG (talk) 04:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Operknockity, in response to your original question (my mind glazed over about halfway through this thread, so my apologies if this has been stated already)... Manymany views on YouTube or the like could pass notability, but the problem you have is that you still need verifiability and reliable sources. The scant info found in YouTube itself does not qualify. So you need other sources to write an article. An article saying only [Title] is a popular video featuring a song by [Artist]. It can only be found on YouTube, should be deleted. Once you have reliable sources to report other important info, you will probably meet notability requirements too. -Freekee (talk) 04:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Verifiable references.

Just a thought. Should references be able to be seen without having to log-in to any external source? I have just removed a reference from Ken Bruce as on trying to verify it I needed to log in (and presumably acquire) an id from the referring pages. In my view this isn't very "free", but what do others think? 217.42.254.177 (talk) 19:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Um. You seem to be asserting that references have to exist online and be freely available? What would you do if someone referenced a book you could not get hold of? Hiding T 19:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Hiding; you seem to be under the misapprehension that references on Wikipedia have to be free. In fact, that Wikipedia provides free information that was not hitherto available in free form is one of the most useful things about it. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

In essence, the situation is no different from non-internet sources. No one has a home library big enough to be able to reach over to the shelf and verify any given citation to a printed source. But if the bibliographic entry in the WP article is properly and completely provided, it can be assumed that the source actually exists. It would still require actually consulting the book (etc.) in question for confirmation. As for Internet sources, if the log-in source is something like JSTOR or a government, institutional or similarly authoritative site one can assume the reference is good - but one would still have to either sign up or go to the library to truly verify it. In your case, IMdB is always a grain-of-salt source (to say the least), but while the linked source is inaccessible without signing in, it's still a credible reference link, and there should be a copy of the original source, Debrett's People of Today, at any local library (failing Debrett's, there's always Who's Who, which should provide the same info). May require leg work... Pinkville (talk) 19:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I think a good analogy is "free as in beer, not free as in air". Beer costs money and is only available in limited locations, but everyone can have access to it. Similarly, a restricted resource that needed you to jump through hoops and tests and rules that restricted access further than simply with respect to registering an account, money, or academic ties, would be inappropriate. Another example would be a work within a private collection. If said owner allowed reasonable access throughout the year for everyone interested, then the work may be used. Whereas if they only allowed access for one hour in the middle of the night on a weekday on top of a mountain after a four hour hike, or if they only allowed access to their close friends, then it would be an inappropriate source to use. When faced with a restricted but publicly available source, try asking around. A number of editors here have Athens or other such systems access rights and might be able to review the source for you. LinaMishima (talk) 19:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It was WT:V where a similar discussion recently took place. Freedom has nothing to do with the acceptability of a source. A source might be copy 1 of the Gutenberg Bible, a book published today whose publisher refuses to sell to libraries, the back side of the Mona Lisa, or an obscure 1881 tome on rat poisoning. A source does not have to be easily available nor free. -- SEWilco (talk) 20:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't quite agree with LinaMishima. An example, the library at the institution where I work has an extremely rare (possibly unique) book published in the 16th century... Regardless of the fact that it's inaccessible to anyone who can't make it to this library, and that even then it can only be consulted after a series of procedures and vetting of the researcher, it remains a completely viable source. One reason it's viable is because it is in an established collection, another is that there is a catalogue record for it. An established web source - like JSTOR, which is only accessible to members - is nonetheless a good reference, even if one can't get access to the cited work itself. In such a case the JSTOR link functions as a catalogue record. Similarly, The New York Times website is a pay/register to visit site, but can be and is cited in WP articles. One should prefer sources that are more easily accessible, but they are not always available. Of course, you're right about asking around and using Athens, etc. Pinkville (talk) 20:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I've used half-a-year-old, Czech newspaper and nobody complained. Those are way harder to get hold of, if you don't live in the Czech Republic. Plus, you'd have to learn Czech to read them. Compared to that, a members-only resource is a breeze. Puchiko (Talk-email) 11:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I would, Puchiko. In one article, a person used a Korean newspaper that isn't published in English or archived online. It is not possible to follow verify a source if your source is somewhere hidden in the mountains of Shangri-la. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 14:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

If your source is hidden somewhere in the mountains, it's questionable whether it is a reliable source. In any case, what is acceptable requires some judgment. Registration is irritating; paying to gain access to a newspaper online is even more irritating; and most books aren't available online in any case. But those aren't reasons, per se, to removed a source.

Appropriate considerations include (a) is the text in the article that is being referenced plausible in and of itself; (b) is the information about the source complete - author, publisher, date, page, etc., so that it's possible in theory for others to find it, as well as to judge it's reliability; (d) is the source available via a good public library (interlibrary loan, microfilm, etc.); (e) how credible is the editor who posted it - new? have an expressed, strong point of view? single purpose account? and (f) is it reasonable to ask for a better source to support the same point - a national newspaper or magazine, for example - or is this a local fact where the source provided may be the best available? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

1) Learn Korean 2) Visit Korea 3) Find a public library 4) Examine newspaper archives 5) Be happy :D

Or skip 1 and 2 and use the power of the internet to locate a local person you trust. They're bound to exist. Or simply ask for a copy of the piece. Get it posted to you, even.

Less jovially, see John Broughton's comment above. LinaMishima (talk) 16:50, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Nobody complained in my case :) But my source isn't hidden in some fictional mountains, it's available in several Brno libraries. I even provided the ISSN. I think it's a verifiable source. However, I used multiple sources, so you caould pick the one that's manageable for you to obtain. Puchiko (Talk-email) 14:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Cheerleading is a SPORT!!! (or, excessive references)

Have a look at the first three words of Cheerleading. I have several issues with what is happening there:

• I'm not sure how many references one needs to make some statement true. To me, one is enough, and also, aren't there an equal number of "references" that also say it is NOT a sport?
• Being in the middle of the sentence, it highlights that particular word. The MoS says to put references after the punctuation of the sentence or clause, but why is that overridden here?
• Could it also be construed as an element that is POV? Those references must come from picking out the ones that conclude it is a sport, and therefore present only one side of the issue.
• I know that at least in California, there is a big stink about whether or not it is a sport, but I am not sure if that "debate" occurs around the world, so it may also be an expression of America-centrism. (already noted and templated)

I bring this up here because I've seen this in at least one other article (Association football), where the statement that it "is the most popular sport in the world" is referenced five times. The main questions I ask are: how many references are needed, and, isn't this bad style? ALTON .ıl 00:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Excessive referencing is not a major problem on Wikipedia: in fact, it's usually under- or a lack of referencing that is the concern. In cases where three or more references are provided for a single statement, it is usually because that statement has been highly disputed in the fact, and no other option is available.

In the case of Cheerleading, you might want to dig through the present discussions at Talk:Cheerleading, or the archive pages, and have a look for any disputes. Alternatively, post a thread to the article's talk page itself. However, I don't think the existing guidelines on referencing require any amendments to include standards of over-referencing: the contributing community to individual articles subject to the phenomenon are usually more than able to cope with it amongst themselves, and strike a suitable balance. Anthøny 14:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Funny how the article starts with a referenced statement that it is a sport, and closes with a section about the debate on whether it is or not. -Freekee (talk) 05:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Deletion policy

I'm asking this in a few places at once, but I'm not sure where to go with it so....

• Looking at the WP:DEL#REASON I see no reference to content issues as being a reason for deletion. However, in both AfD discussions and closing arguments, I've seen things like WP:PLOT as a reason for deletion. Or WP:FICT citing that the article is written in an "in-universe" way. Are those valid reasons for deletion? I thought those were reasons for cleanup. Hobit (talk) 03:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• Those fall largely under "Content not suitable for an encyclopedia." But ignoring the letter of the policy: the current state of an article should not be the only complaint that leads to deletion. I have seen lots of cases where the demonstrated lack of improvement over a long period of time was used as the main argument, and in some cases that leads to a deletion consensus. Mangojuice^talk 03:52, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to" ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:36, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedia-SF spam at the top of my Wikipedia Pages ???

Why am I receiving what I consider to be banner ads/spam at the top of the regular Wikipedia page telling me that "Bay area Wikipedians may be interested in the wikimedia-sf mailing list." That really creeps me out because it means that even though I am signed in Wikipedia is stalking my current IP address. I thought that if I was signed in my privacy was protected. Besides when I went there it is just an advertisement message board for businesses like party planners and architects and I thought that Wikipedia was about NO advertising! Saudade7 05:12, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"Top of the regular Wikipedia page"? Which page is this? --Carnildo (talk) 08:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You cannot be completely anonymous unless you use an anonymity network. The site has to know your IP in order to send the packets to the right place. Also, blocking abusive editors practically requires an IP address to prevent sockpuppets. I think you'll find that it's just not practical to get rid of IP logging.

So the issue really comes down to the spam issue. superluser_tc 2008 February 03, 08:52 (UTC)

You are never anonymous on the internet, and if you think you are, then you really should learn better. This system that you have experienced is Geonotice btw. It has its advantages at times (local wikipedian meetings), though i am not sure if local mailinglists should be spammed trough such a thing. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a WP:Geonotice. Nobody is stalking you (no human can see your IP). It shouldn't be used for advertising, only for Wikipedia meet ups, so if it's being used incorrectly be sure to drop a line at Wikipedia:Requests for geonotice (where there already is a complaint) or its talk page. Puchiko (Talk-email) 14:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

This is certainly not advertising for party planners or architects. Though I admit, it can make for confusing reading if you don't know what it's all about. It's the archives of a mailing list for Wikipedia/Wikimedia people in the San Francisco area, and among the discussions raised is who the Wikimedia Foundation should hire for party planning, etc.--Pharos (talk) 05:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)