Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 56

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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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Bias with Admins

• I've prepared a section of the RFC for you to make your comments, R123, just click here and enter your views. Don't forget to sign in the endorsement section. –xeno (talk) 13:48, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

date auto-formatting chaos

One of the articles on my watchlist recently had all its wikidates removed. In the almost four years I have been using wikidates there have been other instances when someone undid wikidates. All those earlier instances had been the work of vandals, or newbies who didn't know about wikidates.

• This change had an edit summary with a cryptic link to a similarly brief and cryptic section of a style guide that very said that wikidates were officially deprecated.
• This brief, cryptic section of the style guide had a footnote.
• The footnote referred readers to a discussion in late August.

I spent ten or fifteen minutes trying to make head or tail of this discussion. Valid points were raised by both sides.

Proponents of deprecation kept dropping hints to earlier discussions where their points had been explained in greater detail. But the proponents of deprecation didn't actually link to those earlier discussions.

Was a binding decision made that wikidates were to be deprecated? Proponents wrote as if it had been.

Less than one hundred people participated in this discussion.

After the proponents of deprecation started writing as if the binding decision had been made some cooler heads pointed out the practical difficulty of explaining the reasoning behind this decision -- of drafting a document that clearly and briefly laid out the perceived advantages of deprecation -- prior to setting loose robots to strip out the wikidates.

These cooler head pointed out how alienating this decision would be to all the good faith contributors who spent a lot of effort putting those wikidates in in the first place.

Unfortunately, no one made the effort to draft that clear, brief explanation. A cryptic edit summary... that points to a cryptic section of a guideline... that has a cryptic footnote... that points to an acrimonious and divisive discussion -- this is a fundamentally inadequate attempt at explanation. I agree with the writers in the August discussion who suggested that many of the wikipedia's good faith contributors, who spent a lot of energy using wikidates, would be alienated by this policy change, if a good-faith effort to explain it wasn't made first.

From my reading of the discussion it sounds like this could be an instance where a proposal was repeated, over and over again...

Was this discussion, by one hundred people, or a couple of dozen people, really sufficiently broad to justify a change to practically every article on the wikipedia?

And, if it was, why didn't anyone take the responsibility of trying to provide that clear explanation of its benefits, prior to loosing the robots?

Candidly, Geo Swan (talk) 06:19, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it could have been explained better to the community, but there were no serious arguments advanced against deprecating date linking for autoformatting purposes: it was an obvious case of WP:OVERLINKing, producing no actual benefit (at least, only the negligible benefit of being able to see dates round the other way, and only to a negligible percentage of readers anyway). Don't get upset about seeing "your" articles changed - the changes don't affect the content, and probably improve the presentation (particularly if there were also mixtures of different date formats there before, masked from editors who had the autoformatting option enabled), so be cool and take consolation from the fact that you don't have to make the unnecessary effort to link dates any more.--Kotniski (talk) 09:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

"From my reading of the discussion it sounds like this could be an instance where a proposal was repeated, over and over again..." Sounds about right to me. I've decided to not care about the delinking (except when someone decides to arbitrarily change date formats along with the delinking), but it would have been nice if it had been done through a method other than "push and argue until everyone else gives up". Anomie⚔ 12:58, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

On this occasion I think the clear arguments won the day. But of course it would be nice to have an ordered and moderated process for deciding about substantial policy changes - hence I will take yet another opportunity to encourage support for the proposal at WP:Policy/Procedure.--Kotniski (talk) 13:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

A large majority of Wikipedians will not keep up with all the style guidelines discussions and article reviewing discussions. That's perfectly all right. That's how most writing gets done in the real world ... some people contribute content, other people worry about copyediting and publishing issues. The article where Anomie reverted is Calvin and Hobbes, which the style guidelines people correctly converted to the American date format when they de-datelinked, since it's an American comic strip. Conversely, many people who contribute to style guidelines and article reviewing don't also have time to hang out at a lot of wikiprojects, getting a feel for how style issues look through their eyes. Anomie brings up a good point here: when there are endless discussions among style people on a topic, it can come across as trying to win by excess rather than having an honest debate. The best approach is usually gentle and usually involves more listening than talking. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Kotniski, are you suggesting that the current situation -- where the robots have been loosed, with no effort made to explain this decision to the 99.9 percent of the wikipedia's contributors who were unaware of the discussion(s) is acceptable?

You may think that this discussion is clear. You called it "obvious". Sorry, nothing is obvious.

IMO this delinking should be stopped, immediately, until it can be done properly. Properly meaning with that essential clear explanation. Geo Swan (talk) 01:17, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry, but if that is really what you meant? Geo Swan (talk) 01:17, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's keep a sense of proportion here; it's only dates changing colour. Ever since I've been on WP there have been bots (not to mention humans) going around doing things to the articles I've edited - if they're making them better, or bringing them into line with policies I didn't know about, then that's great - I've never felt the need to object because I personally haven't been consulted on every detail. These date bots and their masters are doing valuable work removing inconsistencies and pointless links - we should be positive about the fact that there are people making the effort to do this work.--Kotniski (talk) 07:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes. By all means, lets use the proper perspective here.

Sober thoughtful participants in that discussion strongly recommended the preparation of a clear explanation for the decision. Sober thoughtful participants in that discussion strongly recommended that rather than simple delinking the wikidates be wrapped in a template -- a template that would currently just render them as if they were unlinked, but preserve the effort -- the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of hours of good-faith effort of those contributors who complied with the earlier standard.

Yes, by all means, lets use the proper perspective here. The discussion used to justify loosing the robots was one only an very small fraction of the wikipedia's contributors participated in, or were even aware of.

I am one of the wikipedia's more prolific editors, having made over 30,000 edits. I've supplied a lot of references in those edits, where I used wikidates. Making sure I put the dates in my contributions in wikidate format probably represent more than 100 hours of my time.

I strongly urge you to withdraw your claim that the advantages of delinking wikidates is "obvious". I am not a beginner. And it was not obvious to me.

You acknowledged that proponents of delinking wikidates had made previous attempts -- which failed. I suggest the existence of previous attempts which failed proves that the advantages of delinking wikidates were not "obvious".

I repeat, the robots should immediately be stopped, and a good-faith discussion over how to address the decision on the manual of style page in a responsible manner. Anyone who thinks making the effort to provide a clear, simple explanation of this massive change is a waste of effort is ignoring the enormous good faith efforts of the contributors who complied with the standard over the last four years.

Ignoring the suggestion that the wikidates should be preserved, but wrapped in a template, because it is too time consuming to discuss, or would be too time consuming to set robots to work performing that task, is ignoring the enormous good faith efforts of the contributors who complied with the standard over the last four years. My 30,000 edits probably represent something like 0.0001 percent or less of the wikipedia contributions over the last four years. If the 100 hours I spent complying with the wikidate standard are a useful yardstick then wikidates represented a million hours of effort. If it represented something like a million hours of effort then it is worth spending time to make sure deprecating it is well explained. It is worth spending time delinking or encapsulating the wikidates is done in a well-thought-out, responsible manner.

Candidly, Geo Swan (talk) 17:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not just dates changing colors, it's dates no longer being linked to other articles. It's also dates losing the linkage which allowed a person's Preferences to be set to a specific format. If the original editor entered [[October 6]], and my preferences are to view dates in European format, the removal of the linkage now makes my set preference moot, and I'm being forced to see the date in a format I don't prefer. It also means that there is no simple way to go over to the October 6 article, nor to the 2008 article, to view the event in the perspective of other events in the same time frame. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 19:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

As a WP editor, you ought to be pleased that you can now see dates in articles in the same way your readers can - this will enable you to notice (and correct, if you feel like it) inconsistencies between date formats that were hidden from you before. The linking arguments are none too strong either - you won't find any historical context by linking to October 6; and it has long been the policy (enforced by bots, without any noticeable opposition) not to link solitary years, so there seems no reason to do differently when a year happens to be accompanied by a day and a month. I agree with GS that this change could have been handled in a more ordered way, but now the reasons for doing it have been made clear, I would hope (too optimistically perhaps) that we can now move on from this issue. --Kotniski (talk) 10:24, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

There are many arguments in favor of delinking dates, and I don't want to imply that this is the best one, but it's a sufficient one. GS says "Making sure I put the dates in my contributions in wikidate format probably represent more than 100 hours of my time". How does it benefit Wikipedia to require all future editors to spend their time the same way? Most editors don't read guidelines or policy, they try to copy what they see in articles. Even if we had a guideline that said "link or not, your choice", the practical effect would be that editors would look around, see that most dates were linked, scratch their heads, and spend proportionate time linking their own dates. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

P.S. See User:Tony1/Information on the removal of DA for 6 reasons that dates should usually be delinked, and User:The Duke of Waltham/Auto-formatting is evil for 8 reasons. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Reply by Tony1: Geo Swan, thank you for your inquiry. The issue had been debated from time to time at MOSNUM and elsewhere for some two years until June this year. During a six-week period, there was intense debate at those places, which was flagged at other style guide pages and the Village Pump. The decision has been widely welcomed, despite the misgivings of a few WPians. I myself cut and pasted positive reactions here until mid-August, when there were so many that I just didn't bother any more. You may find this page useful background information.

Please note that the purpose of date autoformatting has never been to link to chronological pages: it was a formatting device to conceal from WPian editors the raw date formats, apparently to stop them squabbling about which format to choose for which article. WP has matured since that time, and like our highly successful article-consistent guideline on WP:ENGVAR, we have clear guidelines on the choice of date format. There has, to my knowledge, been no edit warring since late August, when we've been able to see in display-mode the frightful mess of inconsistencies and wrongly chosen date formats that our readers have had to put up with for all this time.

I do apologise for having chosen international rather than US format for the Calvin and Hobbs article. It appears that I was fooled by the sentence in the opening paragraph "The pair are named after John Calvin, a 16th century French Reformation theologian, and Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century English political philosopher." I like to think that this is a rare mistake, since I try to be meticulous in choosing the right format. The purpose of the monobook script (as opposed to a bot) is to scan the automatically produce diff before pressing "Save".

You're welcome to post any further queries/feedback on my talk page. Tony (talk) 10:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggesting revision of Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials

I am proposing a revision to Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials, giving donors information on how to contact the Wikimedia Foundation themselves rather than suggesting they leave a note for another contributor to do so. I feel this process is inefficient, as it creates a needless middleman. It is also not inline with practices described elsewhere, including WP:IOWN. Please offer feedback at Wikipedia_talk:Donating_copyrighted_materials#.22someone_will_contact.22_redux.2C_suggest_revising. I'd be appreciative. I'm publicizing this at relevant places because I don't see any evidence that anyone monitors that talk page. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Honesty

Wikipedia:Honesty is, once again, being considered for guideline status. --Barberio (talk) 23:28, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions on countries with same name.

Please discuss on Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(country-specific_topics)#Naming_conventions_on_countries_with_same_name. --Fixman^{Praise me} 06:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Keep cleanup banners to talk pages

The proposal starts with a realization that placement of certain well-meaning templates at the tops of articles is getting out of hand, and in most cases these templates cater to editors rather than readers and do not contain any information pertinent to the article subject, so they constitute talk content, and should be placed in the talk space rather than the article space where they end up effectively supplanting the article lead. Stubs in particular should not be topped by lengthy multiple tags that only state the obvious. The proposal has garnered support (and as yet no substantive opposition) in the discussion here. Robert K S (talk) 20:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

You are misinterpreting the discussion. There is clearly substantive opposition on the page you mentioned, and has been there for several days. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 19:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is substantive opposition. There hasn't been any disputation of the two main points outlined (or their bolded conclusions), and no one has put forward an objection supported by a solid rationale. People have said "I like tags" and "tags are useful", but I think the reasons against them outweigh the reasons for them. They are talk content and belong on the talk page. At the rate they're proliferating, pretty much any talk message you want to plaster at the top of an article, there were soon be a template tag for it. Let's reign this in. Robert K S (talk) 04:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I see no need to further characterize the discussion here, anybody who goes there and reads it knows what the state of it is. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 00:59, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Main page content

...as vigorously as others wage war" Ghandi. So, why not shift focus away from war-related "On This Day" material on the Home Page. Why not look for and publish the good news that ALSO occurs each day in history: the times a brother helps another, the peaceful events that start social changes without violence, the times Peace treaties/parades/councils occured, etc???? Thank you so much, AMIG —Preceding unsigned comment added by Amuseingrace (talk • contribs) 02:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

huh? Bilodeauzx (talk) 03:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Deletion policy

Please take a look on my proposal for restructuring the deletion policy. The readers of this policy is often non-administrators. For them the information on alternatives to deletion is more important that the deletion rules. I also think it should be more important to try to improve the article than to try to delete it. -- Hogne (talk) 10:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• I don't like the idea of "Courtesy blanking", which smacks of censorship. You might want to consider adding reference to WP:USERFY to your proposal as well. --Gavin Collins (talk) 15:16, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
• I like it; I don't think the current version does enough to stress revision and improvement over rampant deletion. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 10:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

"rampant deletion"??!! We have over 2.5 million articles, do you want more? If anything we are too tolerant. Articles should given a period under which to comply with Wikipedia's quality guidelines, if they failed they should be deleted.

"Editor time" is a finite resource. EconomistBR 05:22, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

When to use hidden/collapsible sections

copied/refactored from the VPT archive

We really need some recommendations about when/when not to use the "hidden" code, outside of footer-navboxes.

See:

• Template talk:Hidden#Within article text
• Wikipedia talk:NavFrame#Accessibility of collapsed sections
• Wikipedia talk:Accessibility/Archive 1#Hide/show buttons?
• the discussions about the entirely-hidden-infobox experiment at Ponte Vecchio
• people using it whimsically in vertical-navboxes, such as {{Alpha Phi Alpha articles}} and {{Video RPG}}

Questions:

1. Are there any more links to relevant discussions about hidden/collapsible sections?
2. The various hiding-templates often get used to hide content that some editors simply cannot agree on whether to display or not (see the "influences" sections in some Writer-infoboxes (e.g. William Gibson), the Ponte Vecchio experiment, the vertical navboxes linked above, etc). Is this a usage we want to encourage or discourage?
3. What code should be used? Wikipedia:NavFrame says it is deprecated, but it is widely used by all of the hiding templates ({{Hidden}}, {{Show}}, {{Hidden begin}}, {{HiddenMultiLine}}, {{Hidden section top}}, {{Hidden infoboxes}}) none of which mention deprecation.
4. Any suggestions as to what we should be using for guidelines? Or where we should be discussing it? -- Quiddity (talk) 04:42, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

My general intuition is that hidden/collapsable sections should never be used except for navigation elements. The reason is to facilitate moving articles to print form - everything has to be fully expanded in print. Dcoetzee 20:47, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, while some dynamic content in articles would be nice, there's generally no reason to show/hide article text. Mr.Z-man 21:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this is within the scope of the question, but I think it's legitimate to hide the solutions of "puzzle" boxes, e.g. chess diagrams or colour vision tests. -- Philcha (talk) 21:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Until we have a way to show collapsed sections on non-standard browsers (eg text-to-speech) and for printing, collapsed sections should be avoided. --MASEM 01:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

CSS can define separate rules for display and printing, so that's an internal technical matter. In the case I raised, it's all done via a template, so if someone defines a CSS class "hide when displayed, show when printed" it can be applied very easily.

I've never used a text-to-speech reader. Do these have options to speak hidden text? If not, that sounds like a deficiency that the suppliers should resolve.

In any case the cases I cited are chess diagrams and colour vision tests, which would be pretty unintelligible to text-to-speech readers. -- Philcha (talk) 08:44, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I would hope (though I'm not sure) that screen readers would just act as a browser with JS disabled (where all the text should show by default), though I'm not sure. Printing is still an issue though, AKAIK. Mr.Z-man 16:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Screen readers should be fine (as collapsing is done by JS), but that's why printing fails; I asked this before and it's not just changing the media type for CSS; IIRC, JS will react independent of the CSS media setting, so if tables start collapsed on a page, they will stay collapsed when the page is parsed for printing. We should be avoiding any collapsed media until this can be (if ever) resolved, despite the fact it can really help a page with lots of secondary information. --MASEM 16:32, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I'm still not certain what the consensus is though; A few specific questions:

For hiding things like:

• the "influences" sections in biographical-infoboxes as a standard practice (this information is not always duplicated within the article-text)
• anything, just to avoid argument (entirely hidden infobox at Ponte Vecchio)
• anything, to save random space (hidden timeline at Elizabeth Smart#Legal proceedings (now fixed))

are we recommending against these practices? How strongly?

To which guideline/policy page would we add any sentences related to this? (and discuss further there)

Besides the printing and usability problems, there are isolated text overlap problems (e.g. Ant infobox).

I'm also concerned that some readers will completely tune-out [show] links, because at a glance they look just like [edit] links, down the right edge of the page. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the question: we already have a guideline (and I note that none of the pages linked above considered that it's already dealt with at MoS) ... do people just forget that we have a Manual of Style when they're off discussing Wiki-wide style issues on individual template pages?

• Wikipedia:MOS#Scrolling_lists

Scrolling lists and boxes that toggle text display between hide and show are acceptable in infoboxes and navigation boxes, but should never be used in the article prose or references, because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, such lists and boxes may not display properly in all web browsers.

Agree with Mr. Z-man, already addressed at MoS, which is where the discussion should occur anyway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! That's what I was looking for. It took 3 weeks to get that answer! And for the record, no, I haven't had time to read/reread all 200+ guideline pages recently...

On further analysis, it appears that section did not mention hidden-text, until you added it on Aug 27 2008. Please don't be condescending just because we don't all watchlist & scrutinize the same pages that you do... :)

I will transfer this thread to that talkpage in a few days. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia ads

i was perusing Jim Wales's user page and saw his wikipedia ad template. I thougth wikipedia did not have ads? What is the deal? Bilodeauzx (talk) 04:43, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Strong consensus throughout the history of Wikipedia has been shown against the inclusion of for-profit advertising. The use of banners to advertise on-Wiki efforts, however, has generally not met such opposition, and is generally considered ok as long as they do not become obtrusive (and given that Jimbo keeps his user page open to editing, it's reasonable to say that it's ok to have a few such ads there). Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 05:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't like it though. I think this might be a way for Jim to "backdoor" some paid advertisements on wikipedia before we knew it. First on userpages, next on articles. A paranoid conspiracy maybe, but it just doesn't sit well, and I dont think i'm alone in that regard. Those banner ads look just like google banners. Bilodeauzx (talk) 05:45, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Um, apart from them appearing on his user page - what exactly have these ads got to do with him? They're community made and are included on Template:Wikipedia ads. There are even instructions there for hiding them. Nanonic (talk) 06:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an excellent article on this topic. See Slippery slope#The slippery slope as fallacy. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

The ads are only for Wikipedia related stuff. You won't see a ad advertising a product of anything. Techman224^Talk 03:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

What's the deal with the 'There is no picture' templates?

When I look at articles about people, I often see things that say something like 'We don't have a picture'. For an example, see Ann Robinson. It seems to be due to:

• Replace this image female.svg

We don't put 'work in progress' or 'under construction and I think that is just as silly. If there is no picture, then just... er... don't put a picture... What is the deal? Lightmouse (talk) 14:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Probably to prompt new users /readers to upload them... –xeno (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

These are, as of a few weeks ago, officially discouraged in the Manual of Style. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. I looked at Wikipedia:MOS#Images but couldn't find the discouragement. Can you provide a reference please? Lightmouse (talk) 15:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Just remember that discouraged =/= an encouragement to remove them all. –xeno (talk) 15:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems pretty synonymous to me. Which ones do you think should not be removed?--Kotniski (talk) 16:06, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The ones that are already in place. Basically, there's no need for a bot to mass-remove them all. –xeno (talk) 16:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

So are they considered a good thing or a bad thing? Or are some good and some bad? In any case I don't see how their desirability can be dependent on whether they were added before or after some arbitrary date. --Kotniski (talk) 17:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

If we don't remove the ones that are there, people will keep adding more—most people base article style on what they see in other articles. Darkspots (talk) 17:30, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Last I heard, there was a consensus that the current images are ugly but no consensus on what to do about them. Anomie⚔ 18:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders for further reading. --Sherool (talk) 20:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Can somebody point me at the reference in the MOS please? Lightmouse (talk) 22:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah those templates are stupid, esp. when the silouhette figure looks nothing like the actual subject of the article (a white middle class westerner). Bilodeauzx (talk) 02:32, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

See: Proposal to deprecate and remove images that say 'this is not an image please add one'. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 12:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

New proposal - provisional adminship

See discussion here (permanent link). Jehochman ^Talk 08:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Image:Idealisticgreece.png

This is making separate in the Balkans. Please look there and do something... Thanks *** Эɱ®εč¡κ *** ^{...and his friends} 16:40, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I take it this has to do with a political border dispute. The image is not being used in any articles at present, but does exist on a user's page without explanation (although there is a suggestion there as to what it's about). It's not worth worrying about at this time. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 22:42, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Hm, someone's trying to revive the Megali Idea? (By the way, the designer has forgotten to balkanise the Balkans; Yugoslavia is in one—slightly reduced—piece.) Waltham, The Duke of 01:45, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Arbitration Policy - proposed updating

By popular demand (I don't think), a proposed revision and updating of the Wikipedia:Arbitration Policy can be found at Wikipedia:Arbitration policy proposed updating. Comments on all aspects of the policy and related issues are welcome on the talkpage. Thank you. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:05, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

All my external links were removed

Today a I added links to my site which I considered relevant and informative to the main topic. All of them were removed.

An example:

To this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlands_Hammock_State_Park

I added the link: http://epicroadtrips.us/2006/winter/highlands_hammock_state_park/

Why was this considered innappropriate? -Mike

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.163.168.102 (talk) 23:39, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:External links#Links normally to be avoided, in particular "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." The photos might make it slightly unique, but generally sites containing simply photos are not linked. --NE2 23:44, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

My site contains more than just photos, have antother look. I strive to make my travel pages of real use and value to the veiwer. This is why I try to add good offsite material such as that from WikiPedia in addition to my own original material. -Mike

And much more importantly, you write "I added links to my site" (emphasis added). See Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy, Wikipedia's External links policy and WP:How not to be a spammer. -- Mwanner | Talk 00:03, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

"My" is a personal site, correct? So, regardless of the value or pertinence of the information they cannot be added? Does this mean only .gov, .edu and .com sites can be added? This is confusing to me. - Mike

I'm very disappointed. I actually living adjacent to Highlands county, and looking at his contributions, his photos on the site are better than any of the external links [8] [9] [10] [11] and he gave a neutral description of the park, and he quoted the source. This guy is an asset to wikipedia and I hope he'll consider releasing his pictures under the GNU license and will share them with us, if we haven't driven the guy off. This guy isn't a spammer, he's a potential gem to our community if we can treat him fairly and demonstrate the rules we use and guide him into following our complicated set of rules. Also, Mike, we too are volunteers trying to build a useful, encyclopaedic body of knowledge. Hope you will give this another try. Ask any questions on my talk page, (I'm not really as knowledgeable as everyone else, but I'm friendly and patient). Just click here and I'll try to be of help. Sentriclecub (talk) 07:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement! -Mike

I don't see the responses as unfriendly, or likely to drive the original poster away. He asked some questions, and got the right answers. I'm sure he will appreciate your additional advice and offer to help. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 09:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I may not be driven away, but current policy disallows me from adding any of the material I think might be useful to WikiPedia users because it is from "my" site. How, then, am I going to be able to add content? This policy seems unnecessarily rigid and counterproductive to achieving the goals of WikiPWedia. -Mike

On the contrary, you may add photos and text to Wikipedia's articles. We are looking to create excellent encyclopedia articles, not short articles followed by long lists of links to other websites. If you spend much time reading Wikipedia articles, you will come to appreciate the reason. Please read Wikipedia's External links policy; it has been written by the users of the encyclopedia with the intent to make the articles better. -- Mwanner | Talk 12:47, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

It is a tough thing to operate. Those articles which you helped contribute to, would absolutely love your attention. Try to put your stuff directly into the body of the article. To add pictures, the best way is to create a free flickr account at http://www.flickr.com and upload your photos and select the license option called "creative commons share alike" and then simply come to my talk page, and I'll upload them to wikipedia commons (which is a little bit complicated) and I will absolutely do the process for you. Would love more articles about nature on here. Highlands Hammock is a beautiful place, so peaceful and relaxing, just reading the article again this morning was soothing, and viewing the pictures and remembering the catwalk trails and chirping birds, I felt the ambience of the park right from my computer seat! Add content straight to the article, your summaries should go directly into the body of the wikipedia page, and those pictures would be excellent and are much better than the current ones in the gallery. Hope you'll help our articles on parks. If you need any more help, ask here or my talk page. Sentriclecub (talk) 15:02, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how lovely the park is, or how wonderful the website is. Bad advice is being given when you recommend that Mike put his "stuff" directly into the body of the article, especially if this refers to text as well as pictures. There is a copyright notice right at the bottom of his web pages. An editor would be right to remove anything copied from that site, for apparent copyright violation. Learn the rules, and understand why they exist; it's all explained in help pages cited in previous replies. The niceness of the subject matter doesn't give it exemptions. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 02:01, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

If Mike himself is holder of the copyright there is not necessarily a problem. Only be aware that if you copy stuff into Wikipedia you give free use license to all, which will seriously damage any claims to the copyright of your other sites. Arnoutf (talk) 02:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

So far, there is no evidence that Mike is interested in adding anything other than links to his own website. -- Mwanner | Talk 11:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I am interested, but distracted and busy at this time. When you all get the copyright issues sorted out, let me know. There seems to be differing opionions on this. -Mike —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.163.168.102 (talk) 16:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Mr. Breiding Please wait because I'm going through the appropriate channels to make sure you have an accurate and confident understanding of our policies. Please check back to this page within the next 48 hours, or considering creating an account with us so we can leave you messages on your talk-page (which is better and more reliable than email). Just so you know how important you are to our community, I've spent the last two hours trying to find some help for you, and arguing with the users A Knight Who Says Ni and Mwanner as the three of us are in discussion of the applicable rules. We lose a lot of great people like yourself because our anti-spam measures identify you as a false-positive, and hope you can forgive our measures. Since we are run entirely by volunteers, and have lots of bots to help us with our job, we are only human and make plenty of mistakes from time to time. Sentriclecub (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like

(copied from the WP:RD/L per suggestion)

I'm sometimes missing something when reading a WP article (an easy example: Granophyre) and the subject pronunciation is described in IPA. I look at the the IPA symbols and have no idea how to pronounce the subject. Am I in the minority about this? Would it be non-encyclopedic to include a sounds like descriptor? When I encounter this situation would I be diminishing the article to include "sounds like" in small print? Is reading IPA so prevalent that I'm a "dinosaur"? I've seen some articles that include both IPA and "sounds like" but I'm uncomfortable about adding the "sounds like" as I've not found any guidelines. My personal opinion is that the less educated (non-IPA) folks who want to reference WP ought to at least be able to pronounce properly without jumping through IPA hoops so, both should be included -hydnjo talk 02:22, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I feel the same way, but there are two problems with "sounds like" methods. First, it's easy to find examples that work for your own dialect of English and not someone else's -- "caught" may or may not sound exactly like "cot", "merry" may or may not sound exactly like "marry" and/or "Mary", "whine" may or may not sound exactly like "wine". Second, there are some sounds in English where there's no combination of letters that clearly represents that sound and no other. For example, suppose someone's name sounded like "thin" except with the "th" pronounced as in "that", and you were writing an article about that person -- how would you write a "sounds like" for that name?

In fact the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation) recommendation is that IPA should always be used, but it is acceptable to supplement it with "sounds like" methods if you are careful to avoid problems. --Anonymous, 03:24 UTC, October 12, 2008.

This would be a good discussion to post at the Village Pump (or wherever appropriate), because while I do understand IPA and appreciate it, no single IPA transcription can represent every English dialect. I find it especially annoying that some of WP's articles contain the RP IPA while other contain General American. Perhaps we could begin a project to complement every IPA transcription with a Merriam-Webster-like, WP-approved pronunciation?--el Aprel (facta-facienda) 03:51, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

That no transcription system could apply to all dialects is an issue that has been brought up in regards to our transcription conventions laid out at WP:IPA for English (very close to what you've suggested). Take a look at the talk page there. I think the inconsistancy has more to do with the sheer size of Wikipedia and the inability of frame-pushing transcription homogenizers to keep up than with a standard that accepts variation. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 06:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks all for your time, attention and thoughts. Given that, I think I'll just add a phonetic pronunciation where I deem appropriate and not feel badly about it. If I get rv'd I'll not war - one unpronounceable at a time I say! ;) hydnjo talk 23:25, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

(end of copy)

Another problem with the sounds like is that not all foreign sounds (and hence names) can be constructed from Enlish sound. For example I have no idea how to represent something like schaap (Dutch for sheep) in english sounds like (the ch here is the typical Dutch guttural g (some kind of growl/scrape sound in the back of the throat (something like the Welsh "ll" combination, and the aa combination is an open vowel, a longer and rounder version of the a sound in Defra...). I have no idea of any word in English that uses these sounds completely Arnoutf (talk) 03:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

If I had to write schaap phonetically in English, it would wind up as skop, which would only be close. I've been writing pronunciation guides for Dutch Christmas carols for some of the English-only members of a caroling group, and I've found that k is the best transcription for ch and g if I want them to sound intelligible. Fortunately, the Dutch singers add enough of the gargly noises to compensate.—Kww(talk) 03:28, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a Movie, Book or TV Guide

Should Wikipedia become a one stop Movie, Book or TV Guide?
Please make your views known at WT:NOT#Wikipedia is not a Movie, Book or TV Guide. --Gavin Collins (talk) 09:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Template coord missing placement centralised discussion

To note: there is a centralised discussion of the placement of {{coord missing}} here. The issue: should it be in article or talk space? --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:51, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

False alarm, inline category disabled. MBisanz ^talk 19:02, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Musical Genres

Why do album and artist articles no longer have a genre classification in the right hand infobox? Just wondering. 98.196.177.110 (talk) 00:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music. The discussion seems to have taken over that entire talk page. Anomie⚔ 02:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah thank you very much, I did not know where to look to find the discussion over this. 98.196.177.110 (talk) 03:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

LyricWiki

I can't think of another case where we forbid links to a Wikia-based Wiki, but this seems like we should. Isn't this an entire Wiki devoted to wholesale copyright violation?—Kww(talk) 20:57, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It sure looks like it to me. WP:EL specifically says, If you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work.. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 21:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be hosted by Wikia. Mr.Z-man 16:06, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any way that could possibly violate fair use. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any way that LyricWiki could be fair use. It's got large-scale copying of copyrighted materials (song lyrics) without any hint of transformative use. --Carnildo (talk) 23:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

LyricWiki is not Wikia - it just uses Mediawiki software. The Wikimedia Foundation is not connected to it in any way. Like YouTube, they're probably operating by responding opportunistically to DMCA takedown requests. Dcoetzee 02:13, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Significance of articles listing questions put to councils

Is there a policy on creating articles that list questions put to councils? I encountered Edmonton municipal election, 1963 due to problems with quotes and units. I didn't examine the article itself till now so it has just occured to me that if we created articles listing questions put to councils there would be thousands of articles like it. Is there something unique about this article that I can't see? Lightmouse (talk) 19:08, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Ancient Egyptian)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Ancient Egyptian). I cross-post here because if adopted it will become one of the few exceptions to the existing policy at Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Andrewa (talk) 14:00, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Responded there. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:54, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Website Notability Guidlines

What does it take for a website to have an article on Wikipedia? For Example: http://www.kleinmuslims.org/

Would that website be notable enough to have it's own article? What does it have to do? Thank You--Obaidz96 (talk • contribs • count) 23:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

See WP:WEB for some guidelines.-gadfium 03:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

City disambiguation from metropolitan area

I live in Victoria, British Columbia. On reviewing relevant Wikipedia content, I find

1. a disambiguation page for "Victoria"

2. a page for the city of Victoria, British Columbia (a legally established municipality)

3. a page for "Greater Victoria", the metropolitan area that includes the city proper.

The fly in the ointment is that next to nobody calls the area "Greater Victoria". It seems to me that the normal English usage in a reference work like the Wikipedia would refer to "Victoria (metropolitan area)". Indeed, it seems to me that a great many similar situations exist where there is a narrowly and legally defined city of a certain name and a larger, informally defined metropolitan area around it.

Indeed, in the page List of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in Canada we see an entry for the Victoria metropolitan area. Paris and Los Angeles are obvious examples of other cities in the same boat.

I would like to suggest as a matter of policy that in such situations, the normal structure of wikipedia entries would be two pages, for example Victoria,_British_Columbia_(city) and Victoria,_British_Columbia_(metropolitan_area)

Both pages would be referenced in any disambiguation page.

It is clearly not practical to alter all the many existing Wikipedia pages affected by this, but hopefully with a policy on the books to give guidance to contributors, this part of Wikipedia will gradually become organized along more rational lines than at present. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Floozybackloves (talk • contribs) 01:09, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

A google search on "Greater Victoria" turns up a lot of hits, many looking like respectable places. The Greater Victoria Public Library says "The Greater Victoria area, also known as the Capital Regional District, is made up of 13 municipalities and three electoral areas." I'm not arguing against your idea, which sounds reasonable to me. Maybe Greater Victoria should redirect to Capital Regional District, unless Metro Victoria is the same thing. Pfly (talk) 06:21, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Portal guidelines has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Portal guidelines (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:55, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Alert re German abuse of system

Ever since April this year, only Admin have been allowed to post articles and improvements in German Wikipedia. Joe soap is only allowed to submit drafts for their approval. This autocratic policy, it seems to me, is completely contrary to the founding principles of Wikipedia. I have protested in no uncertain terms within the system, but have merely been threatened with blocking -- or, alternatively, with being made 'one of the gang'. In my view, the leaders of the international Wikipedia project should be requested to withdraw the Germans' privileges until the policy is changed -- including the privilege of calling themselves 'the free encyclopaedia'. I'd make the request myself if I knew where to send it (replies to my personal page, please). I hope others will join in.

Otherwise I fear that this may be the beginning of the end, and we shall start, as in the 1930s, to see the lights go out all over Europe... --PL (talk) 10:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

That seems like a worrying development; according to German wiki it is a try-out of the flagged revision system see their page in German Anyway this may not be the best place to discuss. Arnoutf (talk) 12:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. In that case I should like to know what is!

It states that the new system of markings is designed to increase the reliability of articles and to give readers a better idea of their quality -- which sounds laudable enough. There are three categories:

1. Neither inspected nor checked out

2. Inspected, but not guaranteed for accuracy

3. Inspected and guaranteed by specialist

But first of all an article or revised version is treated merely as a draft or project (Entwurf), and doesn't appear as an article as such until the above assessment has been carried out by a 'Sichter' (actually, not quite an Admin, but a co-opted old hand). I can understand why this appeals to the tidy German mind, but it loses all the spontaneity of the traditional policy and is open to a great deal of abuse, as well as more or less guaranteeing a whole lot of ‘inspected idiocies’ that no specialist is prepared to pronounce on. Certainly ‘’I’’ am not, under these circumstances! --PL (talk) 15:16, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

You're talking about the FlaggedRevisions extension, it's being trialled on the German Wikipedia with the full support of the Foundation. If you don't like the way they're doing it, you need to discuss it on the project itself. This is the English Wikipedia and is completely separate, we have no power to make German admins do anything. --Tango (talk) 15:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

You can discuss it on EN as well, see Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions. Mion (talk) 16:24, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Looking at option 2 and 3, maybe the DE wikipedia should interwiki with Citizendium -:) Mion (talk) 16:48, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to set one thing straight: the original trial phase for FlaggedRevisions on de.WP has ended. There was a with a majority in favor of continuing to use it. I wouldn't argue with anyone who still wants to call it a trial -- nobody knows if it will really work, after all -- but it is no longer the original trial which was basically started without asking the community. --Tokikake (talk) 10:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

So why is it still going? Has it acquired a momentum of its own?--PL (talk) 10:35, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Question about the vote, the 80 or 90 % good IP editors were they invited ? I see only registered users. Mion (talk) 12:23, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Interesting vote. With at most 59.3% in favour this seems like a majority vote, but not even a 2/3 majority (e.g. needed in many countries for constitutional reform) let alone anything near consensus (where weak consensus usually requires at the very least 75% majority). As Wikipedia is not a democracy I am very, very sceptical about the procedure followed at German Wikipedia. I think to be able to make such a dramatically important decision forv each editor on a project based on a mere majority vote (ie no consensus), each and any editor, admin or IP who has ever contributed to that specific project shoud have explicitly been invited to vote with the clear message that failing to vote within a reasonable time span (let say a few months) would have serious consequences for their editing abilities. Without such normal procedure for any democratic vote the definitely non-consensus (only 59% majority) outcome should not have been taken as authorative. Arnoutf (talk) 12:39, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

No opinion on the issue (besides the fact we're the English Wikipedia and can't make the German Wikipedia do anything), but free in "the free encyclopedia" refers to free content, not freedom of speech/action/whatever. x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:28, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The German policy is in direct conflict with the whole Wikipedia philosophy: "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." It will extremely difficult for non-mainstream theories to find its way in the German Wikipedia. I don't believe this has anything to do with a higher quality. Mr.K. (talk) 17:35, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

All of the above is fine and dandy as idle conversation, but ultimately people at en.wiki have no standing to make decisions for de.wiki; if this has been declared implemented by their own standards, then the only recourse is to take it up at de.wiki. If anyone wants to create an account at de.wiki and try to work within their system to get this changed, that's great. We can bitch about how we don't want it here (let me make it clear, I don't want this flagged revision stuff here), but ultimately its pissing into the wind... We don't set policy for any other Wikipedia than our own. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

No, but we can exert influence: for example we could remove all DE interwiki links until the policy is reversed. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:44, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

The opening statement Ever since April this year, only Admin have been allowed to post articles and improvements in German Wikipedia is wrong. Everyone with more than 300 edits gets the right for flagging revisions of a site - this happens automatically. Before jumping to conclusions, you should rather inform yourself about this new feature. PL has clearly an agenda when depicting things in a deliberately wrong manner. --Baldhur —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.97.145 (talk) 07:34, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Although I disagree with PL in some points and don't think that it will "start, as in the 1930s, to see the lights go out all over Europe", I don't know if PL has an agenda, since I assume good faith. I think the approach of Andy's talk is extremely interesting. The English Wiki has no responsibility or power over the German Wiki, however, the German Wiki also has no power over the English Wiki. The English Wiki - as a truly free Wiki - don't have to link to non-truly free Wikis. IMHO, the minimal count of 300 edits implies that random users will not be able to sporadically add to the knowledge of that Wiki. There is no more "freely share in" in that. Mr.K. (talk) 08:24, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, they are absolutely able to add their knowledge. The only difference is that the edits need to be confirmed by a user who has the rights to do so. This was meant as a means to cut vandalism down, not to keep newbies from editing Wikipedia. As for free, see the comment by x42bn6 above. And removing interwiki links - well, I trust in the majority of users of en-wiki that they see things in a more reasonable way. --Baldhur —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.97.145 (talk) 08:44, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

x42bn6 explained the meaning of "free content" above. "Free" here meaning "free of copyrights". As I say "freely share in" (like in the motto of Wikipedia) this "free" has nothing to do with "free content", it means that people can add up their knowledge/views/whatever to wikipedia.Mr.K. (talk) 09:16, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

You're replying to my post; to which conclusion(s) do you think I have jumped? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:02, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely! Moreover, the alleged fact that the German system is as described by the unsigned person above was not made clear to me as a user -- nor have I the slightest idea whether I have made 300 edits or not. So, at the very least, far more openness is needed. --PL (talk) 08:32, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

At least, we could perhaps agree that the German move should not be interpreted politically (like "help!, the Germans are rolling again!"). They are just un-wiki. Mr.K. (talk) 09:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Please try the following operations on de:wp

• Is everybody (every IP) allowed to start an article? (Yes)
• Is everybody authorized to edit an article? (Yes)
• Is it possible to read all the new articles and edits from the first moment after saving? (Yes)

What are the main differences to en:wp?

1. On en:wp it is not possible for an IP to start an article
2. On de:wp newly made edits by IPs are not shown to the readers first. They have to click the button "Entwurf" (draft) to see the recent changes. They may also edit the draft. There are several thousands of users with 300 edits, to put the flags to new revisions. Nobody has to wait too long to see the latest revision, which is better than the old one in most (but not in all :) cases, at the first click. The reader has one more button to chose the revision.

--Regiomontanus (talk) 21:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

In the meantime I realised that the new feature is under discussion in en:wp as well. So we will probably see it in the one and only "truly free wiki" as well in the near future. --Baldhur —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.97.145 (talk) 05:43, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Guide to image deletion

• Wikipedia:Guide to image deletion

I'm hoping to be able to officially launch this soon. It has been under development since October 1st and publicized since that time at various appropriate forums, including this one. It has been publicized at Wikipedia talk:Images and media for deletion, Wikipedia talk:Image use policy, and WT:CSD. It is currently linked at Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Processes, Wikipedia:Guide to deletion, Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators#See also and Wikipedia:Image use policy#Deleting images. It has also since October 2nd been listed at RfC, here. I think it has received sufficiently widespread exposure, and so far all feedback has been essentially positive. (One fellow, here, objected to actual deletion policy, but as this document is only a compendium of deletion practice, I pointed him to the appropriate forum to discuss his concerns.) Discussion has primarily centered around specifics of wording; there seems to be general consensus that the compendium is useful. Any further feedback or guidance in launching this would be helpful and greatly appreciated...right down to some guidance on at what point "proposed" is removed. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:16, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'm "relisting" this at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), since it's really a "how to" guide and doesn't actually involve any proposed change to policy. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:03, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Expert Peer Review process (or lack of such) for Science related articles

Hi - I posted the section with the same name on my talk page. My posting relates to potential policy change. I am asking anyone involved/interested to please take part in discussion ! Thanks ARP Apovolot (talk) 14:37, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Romanization of Ukrainian/Archive 20081024 has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Romanization of Ukrainian/Archive 20081024 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:36, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

question...

What is the current consensus on "notable awards"?

In a recent {{afd}} a Hungarian wrote an article about a Hungarian soldier from World War 1. I asked the creator for clarification, because I had a recollection that being awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor or the Victoria Cross was considered sufficient to make a receipient pass the "notability" test. I looked for the policy or guideline I had a vague recollection of. Our Hungarian confirmed that the soldier had won the Hungarian equivalent of the Medal of Honor.

WP:Notability (awards) says it has been deprecated, because consensus is now unclear.

It had originally said that some awards made the receipient automatically notable. The two examples offered were: the Nobel Prize and the Congressional Medal of Honor. No mention of the Victoria Cross, or the highest awards of other nations.

I don't think there is any doubt that every Nobel Prize winner merits coverage here. But, personally, I don't think the highest national award of the nations in the anglosphere should be considered more significant than those of other nations.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 19:42, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Please refer to it as the anglophone world, not a term you appear to have created, the "anglosphere." Wasn't that a Pauly shore movie? In any case, the Noble Prise is the highest honour award in the world, even those parts of it that speak other languages, and even non-West. Swinglineboy G (talk) 19:47, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

If only there was some free easily accessible source of information to tell whether Geo Swan created the "anglosphere"... PrimeHunter (talk) 00:40, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that any post-Civil War Medal of Honor recipient and every Victoria Cross recipient could have an article and that would be fine. Obviously both medals are awarded extremely selectively.. I also think that we can't assume that every country gives out their highest military award in the same fashion. The highest French award, for example, the Légion d'honneur, has been given to ten thousand Americans, many more Americans than have received the Medal of Honor. It has to be a case-by-case or at least a country-by-country basis. The military medal question is interesting because (in stark contrast to the Nobel for example) they are usually/often awarded to people with no notability independent of whatever they did that day they earned the medal—and the story of some of those days make for terrifically good reading. Darkspots (talk) 05:26, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

There is the WikiProject Military History's notability guideline which states that "Recipients of a country's highest military decoration...will almost always have sufficient coverage to qualify", although this is a WikiProject essay, not a policy. As Darkspots says, notability probably needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis, as some are awarded more liberally than others. The Légion d'honneur in particular has various grades, it might be possible to say that the highest one or two or three grades lend inherent notability while the lower grades do not. I personally agree that any award that is as selective as the MoH or VC makes a recipient notable. The problem with non-anglosphere awards is that there usually aren't as many readily-available references, and without references an article will be deleted, notability or not. — jwillbur 21:38, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

"...will almost always have sufficient notability" means that the award of the medal will almost always result in the existence of WP:V reliable sources. Going the other way, the absence of any press coverage of a particular award is evidence that the award is not notable. Here is a case where (in my opinion) sufficient non-english press coverage establishes notability, while a lack of press coverage (regardless of language) indicates non-notability: If the award is covered in at least one major national-level newspaper of the country in question, then I think we should consider it to be notable. With regard to the US Medal of Honor: In addition to some dubious awards during the civil war, there were some dubious awards during the indian wars. The same rule should apply: no press coverage, no notability. -Arch dude (talk) 01:57, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

It is to be noted that the Légion d'Honneur has several ranks, the highest of which are very rarely given. I think the criterion should simply be how selective the award is; anything given to dozens of people every year obviously isn't notable. — Coren ^(talk) 03:38, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The great part of the primary notability guideline is, though, that this is already built in! We don't have to worry about how "selective" the award is, or argue over whether recipients are notable or not. Either there is enough reliable and independent material on the recipient to write a full biography, or there is not. If so, we have an article on that person, if not, we don't. No need to complicate it farther. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:15, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Case on Norwegian Wikipedia: want input

I'm currently involved in a debate on Norwegian Wikipedia. The case goes as follows.

1. Female crime reporter working for TV2, the largest commercial Norwegian TV channel, dates suspect accused of, and on trial for, terror.
2. Identity of said reporter gets known to the media.
3. One large financial newspaper, one small local newspaper and one state-run radio channel publish the reporter's name.
4. The rest of Norwegian media keep silent about the identity of the crime journalist.
5. Administrators on Norwegian Wikipedia block attempts to include the information published by the two newspapers, stating that it cannot be included since it does not represent the majority of Norwegian media.

I strongly believe that deleting these entries and locking the relevant articles are violations of WP:NPOV. Please, Village Pump, give me some input on this issue. 79.142.225.74 (talk) 22:33, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

You may be on the wrong page since this is for discussing policies rather than content that violates policy.

You didn't mention what kind of article you are dealing with. If its a Biography of a Living Person WP:BLP, and if the sources are not impeccable and the information conclusive, it may be appropriate to remove the material since it could cause some damage to the person in question. BLP articles on English Wikipedia are treated with much greater stringency in terms of references and sources than other articles just because of the damage that could be done. I assume the same stringency applies to Norwegian Wikipedia.(olive (talk) 23:08, 23 October 2008 (UTC))

You are right, it is a BLP article. However, three references to her name from credible sources surely must be enough to include this information? 79.142.225.74 (talk) 23:13, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I vote that we delete the whole article as non notable. JBackus13 (talk) 00:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I !vote that this is the wrong venue for discussions about content on the Norwegian Wikipedia. Other than that, the Norwegian Wikipedia, like the English Wikipedia is driven by consensus. Looking at no:Wikipedia:Torget#TV2-journalisten i Bhatti-saken we see that several editors have commented on the issue, and not one other than OP feel that the name of the reporter is relevant. Taemyr (talk) 06:40, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

How would you arrive at that conclusion from reading the section on no:Wikipedia:Torget? Several other people have expressed support for some of my arguments (see diffs [12], [13]). Furthermore, people have expressed concern that blocking me for a week over creating a summary of the discussion is abusing power (see diffs [14] and [15]. Nobody has told me what bomb trigger I set off by creating this summary, the reason given was simply "disturbance of Wikipedia".

If ten people decide that it is best to hang a convicted felon at the gallows, then that may be a consensus -- but does not make it right. The analogy to Wikipedia is that a consensus is needed whenever Wikipedia policy does not make it a clear cut case. The current consensus seems based on a variety of personal opinions (see diff [16]) and not based on an actual debate based on relevant policies. This is reflected in the arguments which have been thrown in the debate: discrediting of editors of well-known newspapers, demands that I upload a scan of my passport, claims that any information relating to a person's credibility does not belong in a biography. I could go on. 79.142.225.74 (talk) 17:34, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I may have missed comments in that thread. But I stand by my previous comment, none other than you argue that the inclusion of the name of the reporter is relevant in no:Bhatti. The two diffs you provide is editors that argue that there are reliable sources that provide the name, which is a different question. Several editors have expressed concern over the block, it looks dubious to me, but this is the English wikipedia and we have no authority over the Norwegian wikipedia. Taemyr (talk) 19:59, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, at least one user thinks I have provided solid arguments for including this information (diff [17]). I can agree with you, however, that this is probably not the place to take this discussion. 79.142.225.74 (talk) 21:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

RFC on process for delisting a good article

There is a RFC on the process for delisting a good article here You can find what are claimed to the current guidelines here. Editors involved with the Good Article Sweep Taskforce dispute that these are the current guidlines. I would like people who do not normally show any interest in Good Articles to comment here. Most of the comments are pretty degerenate stuff based around a case in point, Ireland's delisting. You would be advised to skip most of that. I would really like to know if editors feel there is any reason the current guidelines shouldn't be followed.--ZincBelief (talk) 12:11, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Navboxes as external links

Look at the navboxes in United_Kingdom#External_links they are listed in the external links but they are internal link . Should we separate internal links to move navboxes to a see also section ? Gnevin (talk) 15:40, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Covered by the Wikipedia:Layout guideline. It is standard practice to place most of them at the very end of the article, partly so that they display next to the category box.

I like the compromise of placing the most relevant single navbox at United Kingdom#See also, and leaving the rest at the end. (Though I dislike how many shells of "hide" there are in the group at the end, but that's a different issue...)

It could be better, but not without reorganising the vast majority of articles. It might happen if/when the site is completely overhauled (See http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:GP1 for some older hints of the possibility). -- Quiddity (talk) 18:50, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Eaton Harbors Corporation

I would like the eyes of more experienced editors to please take a quick look at Eaton Harbors Corporation. I don't know the whole story on the subject of this article but it appears to me to be a real estate corporation. I know many well known corporations are on Wikipedia but it just has the appearance of promotional link spam to see "A business corporation that maintains land in Asharoken and Eatons Neck" in the See Also section of the Asharoken, New York and Eatons Neck, New York articles. Again, this may all be fine but I thought I should ask for feedback about these links. Thanks. --Fife Club (talk) 00:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Anybody? --Fife Club (talk) 00:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like someone's adding some pretty good articles, and this one just doesn't meet the same standard as the rest. The only reference book available is EXTREMELY limited in availability. No news, no ghits, no outside coverage, no cover in other books. CSD'd. No assertion of notability at all. -- Logical Premise ^Ergo? 17:22, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I-tunes as a reference

Has anyone found a way to confirm Itunes listings or rankings since it seems one would have to actually have Itunes to access this information? They have revolutionized the music business but I'm unsure how to utilize itunes as a reference as of yet. -- Banjeboi 10:36, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Ask someone who has it to take a screenshot to backup the claim, maybe? I'd be happy to, if that would help -- Logical Premise ^Ergo? 17:07, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a great idea! Would you be willing to do a screenshot for David Archuleta (album)? It looks like they have some contract with Itunes so might be released there first. We could use a screenshot for the article which only has one image. -- Banjeboi 21:33, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

A screenshot would almost certainly be a copyright violation. There's no requirement that all sources be easily available online. And if the content isn't published anywhere else, is it really worth including? Mr.Z-man 00:02, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Good point about the copyvio. We are however in rather uncharted area with Itunes because it is verifiable to a point and similar to YouTube is newer technology that is increasingly covered in mainstream media. We can use YouTube as a source in limited areas - Artist X is a vlogger and here is the work they posted on their YouTube channel but Itunes doesn't seem to have their charts or other information avaiable outside their universe. In this case it certainly seems appropriate to list here are the tracks of this artist's album. Perhaps we should just use Itunes as a stand-in source until more easily verifiable sources are found. Amazon will certainly list it soonly. -- Banjeboi 00:36, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

a very quick question regarding creative commons licensing

i couldn't for the life or me find a page giving an explicit, straight-up answer to this: is cc-by-nc-nd 2.0 a valid license (or fair use) for publishing material (by which i mean a flickr photo specifically) on wiki? --Kaini (talk) 23:54, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

No. The n(on)-c(omercial) licenses are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:24, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

No derivatives is also an unacceptable restriction. CIreland (talk) 08:41, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Creative Commons license info, and Flickr image licenses, may be better explained here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&uselang=fromflickr --Timeshifter (talk) 19:42, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

AFD - content or notability

I recently nominated Manuel Gonzalez Hernandez for deletion (AFD here). The majority (all, in fact) of the respondents have !voted Keep with the rationale that the athlete passes WP:ATHLETE. While I agree that the general notability requirements have been met (the subject plays for a professional sports team), the article is seriously deficient in other ways. Specifically, there is almost no content in the article at all (he exists, his birthdate, he plays football), and there are absolutely no sources at all. One of the respondents has stated that:

AfD is only a forum for deciding whether or not the subject of an article is encyclopedic - it doesn't have anything to do with the actual content.

Apparently everyone else who commented on the AFD also agrees... am I missing something here? Let's not get stuck in the particulars of this nomination specifically, and focus more on the policy implications of the macro issue: Doesn't AFD necessarily evaluate policy compliance as well as notability guidelines? If not, what teeth do any of our policies have? Should the community have a pile of articles on subjects that may be notable, but are original research, mostly empty, unsourced, and seem to exist for the sake of existence? //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 21:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

In theory ... AfD should determine whether an article has the potential to be an article worthy of being on Wikipedia. The current state of an article has a large bearing on that process but the lack of sources, for instance, on the article doesn't mean that sources don't exist. If the AfD process addresses the concerns of the nominator then it's likely the article will remain. All articles must rise to the GNG but alt notability guidelines can help guide the process. Sometimes AfD drills into policy implications and sometimes policies are ignored and articles kept or deleted anyway. It's not a perfect process and is run by humans who are notoriously inconsistent at times. Articles can be recreated and articles can be renominated for deletion. It can be cumbersome but consensus isn't always pretty. -- Banjeboi 22:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The point, simply put, is that if the topic is notable then the article can be salvaged. It's much better to fix the article that outright delete then. — Coren ^(talk) 23:04, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Should wikipedia have a bunch of articles that fails to meet our guidelines on? No. This means that even if an article is kept at AfD it might be appropriate to stubifiy it until only uncontroversial facts remain. Eg. "Manuel Gonzalez Hernandez plays for C.D. FAS". That said this is an instance of a problem that have been pointed out earlier. Ie. that the specific notability guidelines occasionally causes us to create articles with essentially no content. Taemyr (talk) 23:36, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

This is essentially the conflict of immediatism versus eventualism (see definitions on Meta). Basically, the philosophy is that it's okay for articles to not follow policies, for a limited time during article development. Without this provision, articles wouldn't have an opportunity to grow. In practice AfD is a mix - not only must the topic be a legitimate topic for an encyclopedia article, but it must be less effort to improve the current article than to just start over from nothing. This is a pretty low bar. Dcoetzee 01:42, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Whether or not an article has sources does not relate to the purpose of AfD. If an article is extremely short, has no sources, etc., then that's for CSD or prod - but once you bring it to AfD the criteria for keeping, deleting, etc. are quite different. For instance articles on individual Pokemon violate no policy, but evidently they violated some guideline and that's why they all got merged. Meanwhile this article violates a policy in the sense that it has no sources, but because it satisfies the notability guidelines, most people will end up voting keep on AfD. ugen64 (talk) 02:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I think me and Ugen64 agree, but to clarify, there are no criteria for speedy deletion on the basis of either length or lack of sources. Articles lacking context may be candidates, and some but not all short articles satisfy this. There is, ideally, no article that can be deleted under CSD that would be kept at AfD. Dcoetzee 04:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

If something is to be deleted due to quality at AFD, the article almost has to be harmful in its current state. The fact that an article is underdeveloped does not make it harmful, as even an underdeveloped article can have some valid information. If an article is a complete hoax however, it is harmful, and it can be deleted. I remember an article on a verifiable high school (such articles are usually kept), which contained statements about it being built in 1337, with 1337 students, a 13:37 student teacher ratio, and a radioactive swimming pool. It did not survive AFD, though a real article has since come in its place. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:50, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Like I said at the AfD, an article being underdeveloped is not a reason for deletion in and of itself. If it was a BLP about a problem subject, then perhaps, but that isn't the case. AfD is a mechanism for determining, primarily, the notability of the subject and the 'encyclopedic-ness' of the same. Those are the only two things that matter, since they are the only things that can't be changed by editing processes. If something can be changed by editing, then deletion isn't a good solution; even in instances where starting over is a better idea than continued editing, it doesn't make sense to delete the previous revisions; the page should just be blanked and then replaced by a draft from userspace or something. There's no need to spend five days arguing about it. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 12:22, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

So, just to be clear, it is the consensus here that the only applicable issues at AFD are WP:N (and sub-guidelines), and WP:BLP/WP:HARM as applicable? //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 20:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The essential quality of a deletion candidate, provided the topic is suitable for the encyclopedia, is that it can't be trimmed down to a reduced version which is not harmful or useless - typically, its entire contents are harmful or useless, and the article might as well be rewritten. Dcoetzee 22:13, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Whatever policy governs AfD should state at the top and emphasise that "If it is possible to improve an article, it is always better to do so than to try to delete it" - see Wikipedia_talk:Notability#Draft_proposal. Today I

saved an article from deletion, and any of those who initially voted for deletion could easily have done what I did - it already had 2 good sources and Google threw more at me. -- Philcha (talk) 23:42, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Correct process to put problamatic images through

I have been looking through the backlog of {{PD-self}} images for obvious inappropriate use of the that template, like where it is a scan/photo of a 2 dimensional image and the photographer would not actually hold the copyright of the image to be able to release into the public domain. Some of these may simply need a more appropriate tags as the may have fallen out of copyright anyways. Others may need to be processed as non-free content with the appropriate justifications written up. What would be the appropriate process to put these image through in the cases where I cannot figure out an appropriate free content license to use? Should I just list them at copyright violations or is there a better process to use?--BirgitteSB 21:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

WP:PUI might be helpful, at least the ones that may have fallen out of copyright and such. Anomie⚔ 23:44, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks that is what I was looking for. I knew we had some extra process besides Copyright problems.--BirgitteSB 01:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Impact of the ongoing survey

I am concerned about the impact of the survey being conducted just now on Wikipedia's future. For instance, one of the most fascinating features of wikipedia is the variety of languages and dialects in which encyclopedic content is shared. Will the survey lead to the deletion of existing language versions and/or giving up the Incubator? Since fatally the number of users reading & contributing to some of those will be low. Cristixav (talk) 21:21, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

No, none of the foreign language editions of any WMF project is going to be shut down based on the survey. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:27, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Currency templates

I have recently come across the {{£}} template and have subsequently created Template:$ and Template:Yen (as Template:¥ is banned from being created for some reason). What do people think of making their use official policy (as opposed to typing out things like [[United States dollar|US$]] manually)? It Is Me Here (talk) 13:22, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems like excessive work. You could use [[US$]] for the US currency. The dollar sign is a standard in any keyboard. The £ (pound symbol) or the ¥ (yen symbol) is harder to come by as is the euro symbol and a number of other currency symbols which should exist as redirects. I do not however believe a template is necessary. It is easy enough to copy & paste the symbols and you would need the symbol itself anyways to use the template. I would support templates like {{Yen}} or {{Pound}} for the convenience. A bot can symbolify/subst: the templates routinely. Such template usage would save human editors time. -- Cat ^chi? 19:16, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, I've moved {{Yen}} to {{¥}} so they both work now. I suspect that whichever blacklist entry that triggered on it is a bit overbroad and ought to be tweaked. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:20, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! It Is Me Here (talk) 21:58, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

So what do people think of adopting these templates as formal MOS policy? It Is Me Here (talk) 10:13, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I still think instead of using symbols we should use text. How about three letter abbreviations like EUR for euro and USD for US dollars? I'd recommend a template scheme of {{money|USD}}, {{money|EUR}}. I can create such a template scheme with ease. -- Cat ^chi? 18:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_99#Currencies_query and Template talk:USD. The puzzle is complicated by the temporal variation in exchange rates. I'd suggest that {{USD|100|JPY|2008-10-29}} could be made to render as "US$ 100 (JP¥ 9969 as of 29 October 2008 close in New York)" and similarly for all the currency acronyms. Parameter "last" could represent "last night's close". Other markets could be used, but I believe NYC would be the least problematic.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Template:€ created. It Is Me Here (talk) 12:35, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

A wiki equavalent of CSI (developing idea)

In actual law enforcement forensic scientists (CSIs) act as independent third parties to collect and analyze evidence and present their findings to court. CSIs are trained for this purpose. The evidence is gathered using scientific means and the results of the crime scene investigation can be reproduced. The findings of CSIs can incriminate the accused or do the exact opposite.

In the current workings of how arbcom works in general we expect/require the "victim(s)" to gather the evidence and present their analysis to arbcom. That is in general accompanied by a lot of white noise (ranting) which is useless to arbcom. In addition to that the "victim(s)" in general are inexperienced in how to gather good evidence which adds to the noise ratio. In addition trolls generally exploit the opportunity to provoke "victim(s)" to act improperly in front of arbcom. Inexperienced users often do not have the restraint seasoned editors do.

What we need is a CSI equivalent on the wiki. We do actually have a CSI-like body. Fundamentally that is what arbcom clerks, checkusers, oversight and etc do. Unlike a CSI-like body our version is poorly organized. For example checkusers hardly ever show up in arbcom cases to comment. Any checkuser analysis would have to be RFCUed weeks prior to a case before it is kicked in front of arbcom. Bringing a "good case" in front of arbcom requires weeks of preparation of various processes like RFCU. Most people do not have the experience and/or patience to prepare a "good case".

This proposal isn't really something new. To date outside opinions by uninvolved parties in arbcom hearings were never banned. On the contrary they are encouraged. You may have seen various section headers titled such as "Statement by uninvolved User:Foo".

“ Ideally we want truly uninvolved third parties with no vested interests to collect and analyze evidence and present the finished version to arbcom. ”

This is a developing idea. I am not exactly sure how "wiki CSIs" would be chosen/elected or how such a body would be structured. I welcome any ideas.

-- Cat ^chi? 16:10, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Try to leave the material above alone and comment on the below subsection. Thanks

Ideas

Feel free to write ideas below. Make sure you sign each post.

• "CSI"s are chosen among the community - established users -- Cat ^chi? 04:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• "CSI"s have four levels
  • Level 1: candidates
    • Only allowed to collect evidence under supervision
    • This is like a proficiency test for candidates
  • Level 2: trainees
    • Only allowed to collect evidence
  • Level 3: qualified users
    • Allowed to collect evidence
    • Can supervise candidates.
    • Allowed to start new "CSI" cases
  • Level 4: experienced users
    • Allowed to collect evidence
    • Can supervise candidates
    • Allowed to start new "CSI" cases
    • Allowed to close "CSI" cases and post the findings to arbcom.

  -- Cat ^chi? 04:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

It seems like you're trying to limit discussion to only comments that support your basic premise. I think a general discussion section would be useful. Darkspots (talk) 19:18, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I am trying to develop an idea. There will be room for additional community-wide discussion once we have a basic outline of the idea. I resent the accusation. -- Cat ^chi? 22:00, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Resent away. I merely opened the floor for general comment—if your idea is too fragile to withstand comment from the community without restriction, it's too fragile for this website. Darkspots (talk) 04:10, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I did not realize I was restricting the community in any way. "Ideas" section does not ban discussion. I merely wanted the discussion slightly more organized than your average VP discussion with an "idea and reply" format. For that reason you have rained accusation after another at me. What happened to AGF? -- Cat ^chi? 14:11, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I think there is definitely value in having impartial Wikipedians who volunteer to investigate issues. Some people might be motivated by the desire to encourage fair representation, but I wonder if there'd be enough of these people to go around - people with both the desire and the training. Dcoetzee 19:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Imagine people writing an encyclopedia without getting any pay for it. This would be a crazy idea nine years ago. I am sure people would volunteer. ;) -- Cat ^chi? 22:00, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

• There is no impending need for this. The problem with evidence in most crimes is that it is hidden or obfuscated in some way. On wikipedia, every edit is preserved in the edit history; it is a trivial (though time consuming) matter for any member of ArbCom to recreate any sequence of edits. By introducing additional layers of interpretation, then we introduce bias into the system. Since this CSI would be given leeway to present its evidence as it saw fit, there is no guarantee that it could, for example, present diffs which are favorable to one party in a dispute and ignore those favorable to the other. The issue of "white noise" is moot; ArbCom members are wise enough to ignore polemic; difs can and do speak for themselves. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:14, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

  You are missing the point.

  The problem is arbcomrs DO NOT spend the time to collect the evidence (in general - vast majority of the time). They simply do not have the time. The task of collecting evidence is not a trivial task as you claim particularly if the user has over a thousand edits. Reviewing whats relevant and what isn't is time consuming. Diffs do not collect themselves.

  By not introducing a "layer" you are asking the involved individuals to come up with their interpretation. That is far more biased that the interpretation of a group of users who have no vested interest on the mater. The "CSI"s (mind the plural) would post a joint statement. That is far better (less biased) than what we have right now. "CSI"s do not overrule arbcom. They merely present evidence to arbcom on behalf of the community rather than advocating any point of view or individual. That doesn't mean arbcom will ignore evidence presented by others. "CSIs" merely toss in an uninvolved third opinion.

  The issue of white noise is not moot. Have you seen any arbcom cases lately? Anything even partially complicated creates a lot of rant. Pages and pages of it. Arbcom can of course dismiss the noise but that degrades the quality of the evidence.

  -- Cat ^chi? 22:00, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

• I think there are good and bad points to it. I'm afraid I can't see the whole "trying to limit" the discussion thing. (Perhaps I'm dim?) White Cat seems to be suggesting that ArbCom cases should receive a higher quality of "evidence" and that sometimes people don't get the whole story. I'm wondering if what we need is less like a CSI and more like lawyers to handle the arbcoms. -- Logical Premise ^Ergo? 17:11, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

  Logical Premise, my intention was to develop the idea first and then discuss the fine points. Shame I will not have that... -- Cat ^chi? 07:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

  But who's the but of all jokes about corruption? Lawyers. Why? Because they're corrupt sometimes What doesn't Wikipedia need? Corruption.

  If we introduce lawyers, the person with the 'best' lawyer will win - not necessarily the right person. DendodgeTalk^Contribs 18:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

  Last thing we need is a wiki installment of Judge Judy. -- Cat ^chi? 06:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

  We already have a system wherein the right person doesn't necessarily win. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 12:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

  I think that's a good idea, but Arbcom is still far too powerful for that to work; that is, if the side they like seems to be in the wrong, they just rewrite policy so that is no longer the case; for what you say to work, we have to bind arbcom to policy, not the other way around. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 12:11, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

  While I am myself very critical of arbcom from time to time (like right now), I believe giving "CSI" any binding power over arbcom would compromise their integrity. CSIs should never be a "side" on matters and instead present evidence as is without any strings attached. The evidence speaks for itself. I do not believe arbcom is as suicidal to ignore evidence for the sake of siding. -- Cat ^chi? 18:46, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Is this necessary? This proposal aims to create a new (four-tier!) bureaucracy that seeks special authority to do something that any editor is already free to do. Any editor is free to collect, analyze, and summarize evidence for the ArbCom, and to propose and comment upon findings of fact and remedies. A massive organizational framework is both unnecessary and likely to be harmful.

If anyone wishes to attempt to collect and neutrally present information for cases, I wish them well. If anyone sees them doing a good job, give them a barnstar. If the ArbCom finds their contributions helpful, the ArbCom can speak up. (Or the editor can ask the ArbCom.) If those helpful users want to chat about useful techniques in presenting information or how to interpret evidence, they're free to spend their Saturdays however they see fit. Badges and titles and layers of authority and special powers and permissions are utterly superfluous.

The bulk of evidence that the ArbCom deals with doesn't require special procedures or permissions to gather. It's all there in the contributions lists and logs. The small amount of confidential material that the ArbCom faces (mostly involving stuff protected by the Privacy Policy like detailed checkuser logs and real-world personal data) is both limited enough in volume that the Arbs and Checkusers can already examine it without outside help, and sensitive enough that it wouldn't be released to a bunch of amateur detectives anyway.

If Cool cat/White cat (or anyone else) thinks that independent evidence collection and summaries would be useful to the ArbCom, he's welcome to go right ahead and start working on them. He doesn't need permission or a new policy. (Before he gets started, though, he probably should review the role of Arb Clerks and Oversighters; those groups don't perform the evidence collection and presentation tasks that he seems to think that they do.) Let us know how the experiment goes. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Who talked about special authority? You made that up! You have any freaking idea how difficult arbcom is to work with? "Likely to be harmful" based on what? Explain your accusations and their basis. You cannot randomly rain accusations. -- Cat ^chi? 18:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

What accusations? I've commented on your proposal, which is what one does when something is presented at the Village Pump.

I believe that you've proposed the creation of an unnecessarily elaborate bureaucracy to perform tasks which could – right now – be performed by any Wikipedian who set his mind to it. You've designed a body that would be able to put some sort of official-looking imprimatur on its so-called 'neutral' summaries of evidence, privileging its interpretation of evidence over all others. The only reason to create this organization would seem to be to try to add extra weight and authority to the opinion presented, yes? (Making a change from An outside comment by White cat into An official evaluation by White cat, Level 4 CSI.)

Look, doing something useful – instead of designing new committees – is easy and straightforward. Here's what you post to WP:VPR:

I think that Arbitration could be made fairer and more efficient if independent parties could review each case and present neutral summaries of evidence. (Many times, one or more parties to Arbitration are inexperienced, and unable to effectively present information.)

To start off, I'd like to try my hand at preparing neutral summaries of cases for a month. Afterwards, I will ask the ArbCom and involved parties for feedback, to see if they found the assistance helpful. I'm hoping to work with a few other Wikipedians to prepare summaries and gather evidence, and to be sure that the summaries generated are as neutral as possible. Please contact me on my talk page if you're interested in participating. Thanks!

See? You build the elaborate organization after you've demonstrated that you can find people with the necessary skills, and you've demonstrated that you can produce something that is actually useful to Wikipedia.

Note that while you haven't mentioned WP:AMA, I hope that that isn't what this proposed body will turn into. We've already been down that (unsuccessful, unpleasant, adversarial, wikilawyering) road. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:02, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I was not intending to be a part of the body - no one even pretends they care about what I have to say anymore (okay people started pretending very very recently like Flonight's post on my talk page). While I'd love to help, I do not see myself treated with the slightest bit of respect on this site.

I just felt the underdog is underrepresented. Trolls and other freaks are given a free ride in our overly b'cratic system almost no one is familiar with. What I wished to have was a group of people who would help the underdog against trolls who know their way around the system just enough to avoid blocks - effectively trolling people. I was certainly abandoned to deal with Jack Merridew completely on my own for the past four years. All my efforts evidently were in vain which become clear right after I drafted this idea.

What I was trying to do is get a group of people experienced in evidence gathering who have proven themselves to be trusted users. It doesn't require a phd to learn the deal and it isn't that hard.

I just drafted the four level idea as I spent the past few days thinking on what would be good. I figured the idea wouldn't develop itself. The reason I thought of the four levels was to keep trolls from existing in the group. I do not think an election would work well. It evidently doesn't work... Just look at arbcom. If you have a better idea on how the thing should be organized, feel free to shoot.

Have you ever collected evidence for arbcom? For a case that goes back like three years. Didn't think so. You clearly do not have any experience on just how much time and effort it takes to build an arbcom case. It is a b'cratic nightmare to get anything done.

Strange you bring AMA into the discussion. I think I clearly established the group of people were to be impartial. If you actually read the discussion before jumping from a conclusion after another you'd see that the intended nature of the group of people would be unofficial by nature.

-- Cat ^chi? 20:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh if you are wondering why I have a level of steaming anger towards arbcom, take a look at the bottom of my talk page. I doubt you will read it though... You could prove me wrong but I heavily doubt it. No one cares about helping others on this site anymore. -- Cat ^chi? 20:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I tried to be fair in that whole mess (if you remember, I argued for maintaining the ban on Jack Merridew after his deception was revealed). What you encountered was a different problem, and one that plagues any system of justice: no one wanted you to be right. You had managed to irritate, annoy, and frustrate so many people for so long that many people wanted you to be wrong so there would be a good excuse to block and eventually ban you. You can't fix such problems systemically. Even if there is a cadre of dedicated, neutral investigators, things will break down if you manage to piss off every neutral investigator available. There's no system so perfect that human nature can't screw it up.—Kww(talk) 20:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I irritated, annoyed, and frustrated absolutely no one. People may have racist or political reasons to wish to "be rid of me". Not because of my conduct. It isn't like I harassed anyone. I edited articles on anime on my own for heavens sake. I avoided articles on politics or any real world content like plague. I have avoided all contact with people aside from when dealing with Jack Merridew. I have been dealing with that single case since May 12, 2005. No one truly helped me deal with this same freak for the past four years. This is because the system makes no effort to help the underdog. It only favors the loud mouth who can intimidate arbcom to "avoid the drama" and overlook unacceptable behaviour.

If my memory serves me right, you were defending Jack Merridew until his confession which made a lot of his buddies who defended him look silly. IIRC, you were defending him because of his anti-episode & character stance not because you hated me. Am I incorrect so far? I may be. This paragraph wasn't intended to be an accusation.

You stated "no one wanted you to be right". Maybe. I would be the last person to know what everyone thinks collectively. You seem to know. We return to what I said above: Evidence speaks for itself and it never lies. Even if everyone wants to manipulate the truth for the sake of their own political or personal goals an independent and impartial group of people that cycles through evidence would help expose such detestable acts. Intention to purge all episode and character articles from the site can certainly can be a motive to intentionally or unintentionally overlook improper behaviour. Above people complained about the very same thing. The concern mainly is "what if CSI manipulates the truth" but in fact the "truth" is manipulated on a daily basis on this site. CSI would make such manipulation very difficult or impossible. Your statement evidently affirms this notion.

Think of it this way had someone (me) not spend the time to collect evidence on Jack Merridew would you have changed your stance on him. If it wasn't for the slam dunk evidence, I doubt he would be remotely inclined to confess.

I was not an objective third party so the evidence I presented was by very nature one sided. Ultimately what I am proposing here is uninvolved third parties gathering the evidence particularly in complicated cases.

-- Cat ^chi? 22:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

User removing all links in to Years in film in Actor bio's on basis of wp:overlink

I came across this User Dismas removing all links to Years in film in Actor bio's on the basis of mosnum , wp:overlink . What most concerns me is removing the links in the Filmography section ( which if you click goes to the article for film events , releases etc of that particular year ) . Doesn't it rather defeat one of the reasons for compiling the Year in film articles if all links in Actor bios ( or other revelant film articles ) are removed Garda40 (talk) 22:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

What did he say when you asked him about it? CIreland (talk) 22:37, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

He didn't. And as far as removing those links, they are being removed in accordance with WP:LOW. The script that removes them unfortunately doesn't state that guideline when removing "year in X" links in filmographies. And I haven't been putting it in my edit summary manually every time. If someone were to have asked, I would have gladly pointed them to WP:LOW, which states: "Solitary years remain unlinked (preferred) and should not generally be 'piped to articles (e.g. [[1989 in music|1989]". Dismas|^(talk) 22:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(After edit conflict ) Nothing since I raised it here first. From previous experience in similar situations ( someone going through a large number of articles on a particular mission ) I have found it doesn't matter if you discuss it on your talk pages since you usually end up here or some other noticeboard . So in this case I just cut to the chase by posting it here first .I have informed them of this discussion .Garda40 (talk) 22:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

So much for WP:AGF, eh? Dismas|^(talk) 00:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Nothing to do with WP:AGF.Everytime I have encountered this type of situation it has ended up on a noticeboard so why not go straight there .

(Reply to Dismas comment ) So course the reason why there was only solitary links in the article that he edited that caught my attention Sarah Michelle Gellar , and I then checked other of his edits to actor bio's , was that someone a few weeks ago had gone through it and delinked most dates . Dismas also delinked the dates in the article text before delinking the Filmography section and I don't see how that comes under WP:LOW .Either way I don't see how any guidelines is meant to be used to delink all dates in articles whether in the text or Filmography section . One set of them I can understand but both . Garda40 (talk) 23:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, to answer the question about delinking of dates in general, MOS:NUM has been changed (about two months ago?) and the linking of dates purely for the purposes of autoformatting has been deprecated. As for links to "Year in X" in the body of an article, I see it much the same as WP:LOW. The links are of little to no value. Dismas|^(talk) 00:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

So linking of the year that a movie came out to an article that explains the events which happened in the movie world that year (other releases etc ) is of little to no value. .I really can't believe you said that .

One other thing wp:overlink is being used as the justification for the links being removed .It's name itself implies that there are links to be left in the article in whatever section so again while I can see the justification for removing one set of links how wp:overlink can be used to remove every date link escapes me .Garda40 (talk) 00:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I could see the "Year in X" links being in the body of an article if it were talking about the history of filmmaking or something like that. But I don't foresee that many people following a link to Year in X in the average actor's bio. In the bio, you're discussing the actor and things immediately relevant to them should be linked. Naturally, the title of works that they were in get linked. But taking the intro for the Sarah Michelle Gellar article for example, who is going to say to themselves "Oh, The Grudge was such a seminal work that I need to know what else came out that year"? Answer, nobody. Now if we were to say something like, "Halloween had a big impact on the horror film genre. Its release inspired the studios to produce double the number of horror films in 1979, the year after Halloween was released." In this case, the year is being directly referenced for being part of an event that was a direct result of the article in question. (I'm just using Halloween as a hypothetical example, I have no idea what effect it had on the film industry). Basically the films in actor bios aren't being mentioned because of their historical value, just because of their relation to the actor. Therefore, the year doesn't have much value to the reader. Dismas|^(talk) 02:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• This is really something that ought be decided by the Wikiprojects that work on the film articles. I know the VG articles link to "year in gaming" and the like in the infobox - and the WPVG would likely be opposed to these links being removed. While I can understand the argument to deprecate date autoformatting, it is not entirely unlikely that someone would not like to view other works that come out in the same year as the article they are viewing. Let's not forget that our many distinct readers like to browse for content in different ways than you or I. –xeno (talk) 02:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I am by no means saying that the Year in X should be taken out of the articles of the films themselves, merely actor bio's. For instance, I'll use the Halloween article again as an example, the first line of the article starts with "Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film...". In that case, the link is of value because it's talking about the film and the year it came out. There is has value and relevance. Saying an actor was in this that year and that this year doesn't hold the same value, IMO. Dismas|^(talk) 02:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Film naming conventions

When writing about foreign language films, is it conventional to leave them in their native language or use their English title: i.e. Bihisht faqat baroi murdagon versus To Get to Heaven, First You Have to Die (both the same film, in Tajik, alternate titles). For the meantime I've kept the title in Tajik but I don't know whether I should list it by its English name. LGF1992UK (talk) 23:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films). PrimeHunter (talk) 23:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Restaurant notability proposed guideline

I've recently started Wikipedia:Notability (restaurants) and am looking for help from like-minded (and others with constructive criticism!) editors in order to deal with the influx of non-notable, marginally-notable, and restaurants with unknown notability. I hope to provide a reference so that Afd's can go much easier (or can be mostly avoided). Right now, there is no reference for restaurant notability and unfortunately this is leading to some large assumptions (for example, that any restaurant given a review by a major newspaper is automatically notable...even if the review was not positive). Thanks for any advice and help! --Kickstart70TC 05:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It would probably be easier for people to evaluate your proposal (and I have no idea how complicated of a request this is) if you were able to break down how selective each criteria is. For example, I can agree with the Michelin star and the 3 or 4 NYT stars criteria based on my general understanding of what those mean (i.e., any such restaurant would obviously meet the general notability criteria), but I have no idea how hard it is to get three stars from AAA, say. Maybe you could outline that on the talk page of the proposal? Also, the "similarly prominent newspaper" is a bit of a can of worms, isn't it? Darkspots (talk) 05:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Good points, all. I'm a bit wary of the newspaper angle too, I admit. It's just that any criteria I give for newspapers (ie. a greater than 500,000 distribution) seems pretty arbitrary, as does limiting it to a select few newspapers based on their own notability here on WP. The limit placed on the AAA and Mobil entries are from the page here on Restaurant guides, which equate those to the Michelin stars (3-5 being equal to 1-3 Michelin). --Kickstart70TC 06:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Err... Is this going to result in Mzoli's being nominated for a speedy AfD again?--Aspro (talk) 11:44, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I can't see that happening, with all the previous proof of notability, but if you are concerned, please help develop the guideline :) --Kickstart70TC 14:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you already allow for such restaurants with the line A specific restaurant may also be notable for events which occurred at that restaurant, but only if the restaurant itself or staff of the restaurant played a specific role in the notability. Perhaps that opt-out of review criteria needs to be developed a bit furthers.

Basically I deconstruct your criteria as:

• Have a good review from a reputable publisher of restaurant guides
• Be notable for specific occassions in which the specific restaurant plays a unique and essential role (excluding the MCD example).

I think that is a fair approach. Arnoutf (talk) 19:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

This unnecessary tightening of general notability criteria will be contested. "Have a good review..." - how about outfits that get negative reviews, in the same reputable column, year by year? The sources are the same. Another reason to object: setting a clearly defined yet artificial criteria for auto-inclusiion (i.e. Big League appearances in sports) has caused a rush of one-line, unsourced articles that nobody cares to expand and that are insured from deletion by a local notability safeguard. Here's the same danger: a quick copy of the Michelin guide, with most entries a useless one-liner. NVO (talk) 03:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Absolutely agree with some of your statement. I think though that that line of thinking, not formulated into a guideline, is what's getting us in this mess for the item you list above and for topics such as restaurants. The general notability guidelines require that a specific topic have external references without properly judging those references in context. Certainly the New York Times is a Wikipedia:Reliable source when it comes to news, but it's more difficult to claim that everything mentioned in the NYT is a notable topic. Same goes for the Michelin Guide or any other listing of a particular item/person/location (even the noted fallacy WP:GOOGLEHITS). So, what do we do? What I think Wikipedia needs for restaurants is a list of notability criteria that's not dependent on such guides, but when Wikipedia:CORP states that "An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources" it's far too easy for people to assume page A2 in the NYT is equivalent to page F16 in the restaurant section. By the same token it's far to easy to assume that one Michelin star confers just the same amount of notability as 3 stars and that one star from Michelin, 3 stars from AAA, and a couple Google sourced restaurant reviews is enough proof of notability from reliable sources for inclusion here. --Kickstart70TC 23:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Contributions

I think that a user's contributions should be among the items that can only be viewed by an admin. I think this would help prevent people from monitoring each other. Only an admin should be able to see contribs when it is appropriate. Additionaly, I think people should only be allowed access to another user's talk page but not their user page. Libro0 (talk) 20:24, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to be abrupt but I think that's a non-starter -- how else can we non-admins track down and correct vandalism by particular users other than by review of their contributions? By "accessing" a user's page do you mean viewing or editing?  – ukexpat (talk) 20:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

You don't have to track vandalism. Rather, you report it to an admin and they track it. It should not prevent non-admins from correcting any vandalism they come across. Re: user page-Both viewing and editing. Why are there user pages anyway? Why are they not just merged with the talk page? They can save some space. Libro0 (talk) 20:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It is not just admins who remove vandalism, any editor can and should - I do it all the time. If I see a vandal at work, I check their other contributions to see if there is more to fix. User pages and User talk pages have completely different purposes and merging them is nonsensical. – ukexpat (talk) 21:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It is good of you to want to track and correct vandalism as a non-admin but checking contribs has potential for abuse most notably wikistalking. We have a responsibility to edit properly but monitoring people for vadalism should be limited the people that are part of an anti-vandalism taskforce. User pages are also targets for vandalism and their use should be limited to oneself and admins. Libro0 (talk) 21:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Admins are no saints and may sometimes engage in wikistalking; and anyway Wikistalking is not polite, but hardly a crime (and sometimes usefull to warn off other editors from a troll covering a broad range of related talkpages).

Vandalism should be corrected within seconds, leaving that task to a noticeboard/admin organisation/vandalism taskforces only, would overburden admins and do much harm to the project as a whole.

Changing someone's userpage is about the fastest way to get an IP or account blocked for vandalism, as any such changes can be nothing else than blatant vandalism.

All in all I think your proposed cure is much, much worse than the original problem. So as far as I can see, not a good idea. Arnoutf (talk) 22:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Call me selfish, but it seemed the best way to remove my thorns. Libro0 (talk) 22:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I thought so. Based on a quick look at your contributions, I was guessing this was spillover from the dispute over whether or not a certain image was the logo of Topps in the 1950s. --Carnildo (talk) 22:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually I am not that petty. You will have to go back several months to get the full view. I have been monitored by more than one person and have nearly all my edits reverted or comments accompanied by "He lies!" This is definitely not about an image or any content for that matter. How would you feel if a user's entire edit history was devoted to singling you out. I don't expect WP to make a policy just for little old me. But it is a situation that I would like to make people aware of. This type of wikistalking is a crime. Libro0 (talk) 23:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

In that case the solution is to deal with the wikistalkers under edit-warring or disruptive editing or whatever. The "user's contributions" facility is useful for identifying persistent vandals, edit-warriors, bullies - and wikistalkers. There are also many "non-defensive" uses, e.g.: you can check what a friend's been doing, and perhaps offer some help; if someone raises a question on a Talk page it's sometimes handy to have an idea of their interests, knowledge and perspective before phrasing the answer; if you're reviewing an article it's handy to know whether the proposer and other recent editors are currently active or may be taking a vacation or just busy is real-world matters. -- Philcha (talk) 13:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Complete non-starter, the vast majority of vandalism clean-up work is done by ordinary editors, to remove our ability to check the work of others would remove our ability to not only detect vandalism, but spam, copyright vios, MOS errors etc etc. What you are suggesting is a POV-pushers paradise. --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:38, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Terrible idea. The transparency that is gained by anyone being able to delve through another editors edits is one of the most valuable things that we have here, and it far outweighs any negative that it produces; in fact, I can't really think of any negatives that it produces in and of itself; following another editor's contributions, what you describe as "stalking", isn't bad until it becomes disruptive; until that happens, its called "participation", and is something we encourage. It seems like you're trying to take an end-run around dispute resolution, which should probably be your next stop. In any case, removing this would be incredibly, incredibly problematic for vandal-fighters and extremely cumbersome for regular editors. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 19:07, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Have to agree with Celarnor regarding the difficulties this would cause. That and it sure would make a lot of extra work for admins who are already backlogged all too often. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

What is defining the acceptable when mentioning the author of a solution ?

I found an article on a general conceptual subject. Below that general article are mentioned example of real life implementations sorted by countries and cities.

For each implementation are mentionned the speficities of each, some characteristics etc...

I was wondering whether this would be ethical to mention the name of the initial architect, developer, project manager of this solution considering that no link to any entity is made neither to any online networking profile ?

Thanks for your advices on that.

I don't think this question is clear enough to be answerable. Why not point us to the articles you are asking about, and tell us exactly what you propose to add? (And where you are getting the information for these proposed changes?) --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 01:36, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:MICROCON

We are trying to get this 5 year old convention accepted as an official guideline, and would like comments from other editors on this. If you wish, you can comment on the talk page of WP:MICRON. Thank you. - Onecanadasquarebishopsgate 00:27, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages

For anyone here who has been involved in cleaning up pages at Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup (or has an interest in disambig formatting), we are requesting assistance. We are sorting out some subtleties for the WP:MOSDAB guideline, about how to handle disambiguation entries that may or may not require piped links and/or redirects. The guideline has been pretty vague on this, and different people have been handling things in different ways, and it's starting to cause some friction. So, we have listed at the talkpage three specific examples of complex disambig entries, and we're asking everyone to offer input on how they've been handling these, so we can see if we can figure out where the consensus is and update the guideline accordingly. For example, on the Cell (disambiguation) page, should the entry for "cellphone" be "Cell phone, a type of mobile phone" or "Cell phone, a type of mobile phone"? All opinions welcome, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Piping and redirects. --Elonka 17:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding links to Wikipedia namespace pages

The following is copied from
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Wavelength adding internal links to Wikipedia namespace pages.

(beginning of copied text)

This is the beginning of a discussion at User talk:Wavelength#Your recent contributions.

Wavelength, I had to revert one of your See also links, and I came over here to look at your contributions. I'm surprised. I'm really not the expert on these things, but this looks like a case of WP:POINT to me (specifically, point 6). Can we talk this out over at WP:ANI? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Dank55, I am surprised by your message. I have been working through Wikipedia:List of base pages in the Wikipedia namespace, to bring more attention to as many pages as possible (especially, orphaned pages, whether or not they are tagged as such). I actually thought that my efforts would be appreciated.

I checked your contributions, and it seems that you are referring to my editing Wikipedia:Explain jargon by adding a link to Wikipedia:Federal Standard 1037C terms. I was not trying to illustrate a point. According to WP:POINT, point 6 is: "Attempting to force an untoward interpretation of policy, or impose one's own view of 'standards to apply' rather than those of the community". Maybe I have misinterpreted policy. If that is the case, please explain it to me (as clearly as you can) so that I interpret it correctly. In what way was adding that link inappropriate?

(By the way, are you an administrator? Your link to WP:ANI seems to suggest that you are, but I could find no indication of that on your user page.)

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, which is why I'm bringing up WP:ANI. You're making rapid additions to policy and guidelines pages, and as one of the guys who keeps track of these things, it's frustrating when one person creates so much work for everyone else, but I'm really not the guy to be making the call whether it's "too much". All I can tell you is, it's frustrating. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you find it frustrating, I apologize. I am guessing that "so much work for everyone else" refers to reverting my changes (or, at least, examining them). Can you see my perspective in anticipating people thinking, "Oh, I am glad that someone brought that page to my attention. I did not even know that it existed."?

On some (but not all) occasions when I have added links to these pages on article pages, they have been reverted with the explanation that the links were not to other article pages.

One reason for my proceeding rapidly from A to Z is to avoid forgetting related pages which I have already seen, when I see other related pages later in the alphabet.

In summary, I am perplexed as to how best to bring attention to those pages. Maybe I should abandon that plan.

--Wavelength (talk) 21:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(end of copied text)

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength, are you prepared to accept that Dan has an objection about your changes and move into the "D" phase of WP:BRD? It seems like Wavelength was being bold and making changes to project pages and Dan wants to slow him down. Both actions are fine. Might I suggest finding some centralized place to discuss this where other people who watchlist/shepherd lots of policy pages can participate in the discussion as well? Protonk (talk) 01:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, Village Pump (Policy) is a much better place to carry this on rather than ANI. It seems that both parties are interested in reaching a consensus on this, and neither really wants to be blocked over this, so lets all just enjoy a nice, relaxing hot beverage and discuss this matter at VP, and not here, since it does not appear that admins need to be involved with this. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Protonk, I am prepared to do both those things. Thank you, Jayron32, for referring me to Village pump (policy). -- Wavelength (talk) 05:05, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

(end of text copied from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents)

-- Wavelength (talk) 05:19, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I see two types of edits in Wavelength's contributions relating to adding links to Wikipedia-namespace pages:
[1] Adding them to other Wikipedia-namespace pages. I have no issue with this as a general principle. Whether the additions are appropriate in each individual case, I have not checked.
[2] Adding them to article-namespace pages. This is a violation of WP:SELFREF, and Wavelength should volunteer to go back and remove those inappropriate cross-namespace links. Anomie⚔ 17:28, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

This matter concerns some of my editing from 23:39, 20 October 2008 to 17:35, 31 October 2008 inclusive. I have reviewed those changes and identified the non-Wikipedia-namespace pages which I edited by adding one or more links to Wikipedia-namespace pages. Some of the pages edited are in the Help namespace and the Template namespace.

On some pages, the links which I added have been removed by someone else. (r)

On some pages, the pages linked to have been deleted. (d)

On some pages, there might be a special case for keeping my changes (*)

On some pages, I added a subsection for Wikipedia-namespace pages. (n-s)

On some pages, there was already a subsection for Wikipedia-namespace pages, and I added to what was already there (sometimes, with a "srlink" code). (n-s, a)

On some pages, there were already such links with the other links (under "See also"), and I added to them. (, a)

On one page, I added the link under "Examples". (ex)

According to Wikipedia:SELFREF#Self-reference_tools, maybe some of the links which I added can be kept but modified.

(On pages where I alphabetized the list of internal links, generally I found it more efficient to copy and paste the added link first.)

These are the pages which I edited, in chronological order of my first edit (in this matter) to each one.

Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition Nineteen Eighty-Four n-s 2001 r 2002 r 2003 r 2004 r 2005 r Academic Competition Federation ASCII art GNU General Public License Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China Reliability of Wikipedia *, n-s, a History of Wikipedia *, a Criticism of Wikipedia *, a Slash (punctuation) Pedant Weasel word r Help:Starting a new page List of writing systems r d Black's Law Dictionary June 1 List of web browsers

CamelCase Uniform Resource Identifier Cascading Style Sheets Catholic Encyclopedia Diana, Princess of Wales Cemetery Structural formula Chess Chinese Wikipedia Climate change English grammar Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Contradiction Contest Cookbook Country code ISO 3166-1 r List of Wikipedias n-s, a, sr Evolution r d Creationism r d Intelligent design r d Creation-evolution controversy r d

American English British English DVD Link rot Definition Description Recreation ex Posttraumatic stress disorder Domra Easton's Bible Dictionary Consensus decision-making Template:Wikibreak r The Elements of Style Template:Email user Emoticon Encyclopædia Britannica r Theology Facebook r Find A Grave Free On-line Dictionary of Computing Help:Link Libre knowledge Free content , a Open access

Does any of the above information change your decision, even partly?

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:07, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Ugh, I saw Cemetery on the list, and I just had to check it. It was a link to Wikipedia:Cemeteries, which is a guide on how to write wikipedia article about cemeteries. Imagine the Britannica article on Cemeteries linking to the relevant part of their style guide. That sort of self-referential stuff belongs to the talk page, where people interested on writing the article will see it. See, people who want to find encyclopedic information on cemeteries will get absolutely nothing from that sort of link.

Similar for Chess and Wikipedia:Chess, which holds a link to wikiproject chess and another link to a defunct chess championship. There is already a link to wikiproject chess on the talk page, and the defunct championship will be of no interest to 99,9999999999% of people that come to wikipedia to look for encyclopedic information about the chess game.

Links to wikipedia namespace belong on the talk page, for editors, not on the article pages, for readers that want to read about the subject of the articles. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:21, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I checked the ones you marked "a", "*", or "ex". Note that I didn't bother to check which links you added, as anything I would say about your links applies equally to any that were there before you came along.

• Reliability of Wikipedia - I don't know which you added to the See Also section, but in the current version all of the links are external links (e.g. using {{srlink}}); this is good, but they should go in the External Links section or be removed if they don't meet WP:EL. I do see in the prose some cross-namespace links; those should be cleaned up (by someone, not necessarily you).
• Criticism of Wikipedia - ditto (didn't check the prose).
• List of Wikipedias - ditto (no problems in the prose that I could see, though).
• History of Wikipedia - If they're relevant, they should be converted to use {{srlink}}.
• Recreation - Useless, remove it.
• Free content - A link to Wikipedia might be useful, links to Wikipedia-namespace pages are not.

I suspect the rest of the articles would prove non-useful; I know ISO 3166-1 did, I did the removal there ;) What the appropriate ones have in common is that they pass WP:EL, and thus they'd be included in the corresponding article in a non-Wikipedia "Wikipedia". Anomie⚔ 00:24, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your assistance. I have corrected most of them according to your instructions. There are three left that possibly need to be corrected. (I did not check or change the prose in any of the ones mentioned above.)

Is there a special case for keeping my changes to these pages, because they are not in the main namespace (the article namespace)?

• Help:Starting a new page
• Template:Email user
• Help:Link

(The page Wikipedia:Glossary corresponds to pages in the "Help" namespace in the French, Spanish, and Italian Wikipedias. The page Wikipedia:Edit summary legend corresponds to pages in the "Help" namespace in the German, French, and Portuguese Wikipedias.)

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I have no opinion on those, there's nothing a priori wrong with links from those non-article pages to the Wikipedia namespace. Leave them unless someone else starts a discussion, I would say. Anomie⚔ 22:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for all your help. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:48, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Scope adjustment to WP:3RR

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Three-revert_rule#Old_Scope_Creep.3F for a proposed trimming of an old exemption from this policy. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 04:23, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Nationalist nonsense in AfDs, RMs etc

Not sure if this or the proposals page is the best place to start this, but I'll try here.

The requested move of Flag of the Republic of Ireland is currently awaiting closure, and the debate has spilled over onto Republic of Ireland, where an improperly listed RM has just been opened a couple of months after the previous one closed.

Both debates have been seriously hampered by nationalist bias either from Irish or Northern Irish (and no doubt some will claim, British) editors. I have also seen this repeatedly in the Israeli/Palestinian-related articles, which is my main sphere of work. Nationalists use AfDs and RMs as ways of scoring points and forcing their opinions onto the rest of us. Examples of this include keeping articles on non-notable members of the public killed during the Israeli-Palestinian violence (e.g. Tali Hatuel), most likely as a way of highlighting the acts of the other side. The most well-known piece of nonsense was the multiple nominations of Allegations of Israeli apartheid - 8 times so far).

Anyway, I am getting thoroughly sick of how the nationalist elements are damaging such debates. If you look at the Flag debate, there is currently a majority in favour of the move (possibly helped by the fact that the move was advertised on WikiProject:Ireland and WikiProject:Irish Republicanism, but (unsurprisingly) not on WikiProject:Northern Ireland or WikiProject:Unionism in Ireland). However, if you discount the !votes of Irish and British editors (self-identified on userpages), the majority are actually in favour of the current title.

What do other editors think about requesting that editors with strong national ties to a topic do not participate in such debates (possibly using a template like this) and to leave outside (and much less likely to be biased) editors to the process? пﮟოьεԻ 57 09:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

What utter nonsense. And this, coming from the original closing admin of the first non-consensual move. Seems like a desperate attempt to grasp at any mechanism to override the clear 27-14 majority to move the article back where it belongs. And what about using this warped logic and applying it to the non-consensual first move? It would disqualify all the opinions - resulting in no move! The original move should never have taken place and should never have been performed by an admin with a clear COI and strong POV on the outcome. 207.181.210.6 (talk) 00:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

If your view are as such I would suggest you had a WP:COI in closing the first RM at flag of Ireland Gnevin (talk) 10:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

So who would define these "Nationalist" or will everyone from Ireland be banned from discussing Ireland related issue. WP:IE was informed as the parent project, i'm not sure why WP:IR was informed or why WP:NIR would be informed bit in anycase. They projects where informed in a neutral fashion. Should we also ban Unionist and British editiors too ? What about Irish Americans?

Quite frankly this is an outrageous suggestion for a Admin to makeGnevin (talk) 10:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's generally quite clear what is contentious or not - anything related to national identity, the events and people involved in conflicts etc. And yes, if there's something contentious relating to Ireland, then it's probably best that Northern Irish and British editors aren't involved (I know I'm currently involved in such a debate, but I'd be more than happy not to in future if something like this could be agreed upon - it has been a very unpleasant experience trying to deal with the flag issue). пﮟოьεԻ 57 10:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree fully with Gnevin. Everybody with an interest in this or any other subject has a political POV. Contrary to the perception of POV as a negative thing, the representatation of political POV, especially on talk pages, is essential if NPOV is to be attained. It was you who moved "Flag of Ireland" to "Flag of the Republic of Ireland" on a distinctly dodgy 7:4 majority (not consensus). If you believe your political POV did not affect your decision then you are kidding yourself big time! Inevitably, whether conciously or not, those who want "extremists" excluded from debate are only trying to eliminate opposition to their own POV. Scolaire (talk) 11:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, you have no idea of my political POV on Ireland, and I again refer you to Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion#Deletion, moving and featuring "Each of these processes is not decided based on headcount, but on the strength of the arguments presented." Secondly, like I said, I am happy to remove myself from such debates and rely on the input of outsiders. I would say that nationalists cause even more damage to the project than vandals, and there is almost nothing being done about it. пﮟოьεԻ 57 11:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, I made no attempt to discern your political POV, I only said that it affected your decision to move the article, whether you think it did or not. Secondly, I also disagree totally with the notion that outside editors are "much less likely to be biased." They are more likely to be biased because, not being fully acquainted with the facts, they are likely to know only one side of the story and reject as crackpots or zealots anybody who puts forward a contrary POV. That is precisely why the input of editors with a strong bias is necessary. Scolaire (talk) 11:19, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

"the input of editors with a strong bias" is precisely what is wrong with Wikipedia.

I think the implication of the claim that my political POV affected my decision to move the article is quite clearly that I am some kind of Unionist who objects to the largest state on the island of Ireland being referred to as Ireland. However, as I stated in my !vote in the second discussion, I am simply looking for consistency with the title of the main article - if it gets moved to Ireland (state) or just Ireland, then the flag (and all the other articles) should follow. пﮟოьεԻ 57 11:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

If you think that that is the implication then you are still not reading what I'm saying. I know you were not entirely ignorant of Ireland when you came to the RM, yet you concluded that the arguments of those who supported the move were coherent and reasonable while those of its opponents had no value, hence your "Polling is not a substitute for discussion" argument. That conclusion was informed by your political POV, regardless of what that POV is! By coming to the village pump to try to silence those who disagree with you, you are not acting against bias at all, only trying to ensure that the bias of "us reasonable people" (and we know who we are, and who the extremists are) will prevail. I repeat, the input of editors with a strong bias, on both sides of any argument, is what will ultimately make Wikipedia more neutral than any paper encyclopedia; the input of wishy-washy "neutrals" who can't even acknowledge their own POV inevitably leads to systemic bias. Scolaire (talk) 19:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I can't see why you are claiming that I am trying to silence those who disagree with me when I've clearly stated that I would be happy to not be part of such debates where I would be compromised and that fellow British editors would also be unwelcome on such debates. пﮟოьεԻ 57 19:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I've put it wrongly, then, but I don't know how else to put it. As you've described it there, your proposal seems to be aimed at silencing anybody with a point of view, including yourself. But please tell me, what is the value of a debate where none of the participants has a point of view?

BTW, on re-reading this section it has become clear to me that the word "nationalist" in the heading is meant in its widest sense, but I would guess that many, many people, like me, took "nationalist nonsense" to be a reference to Irish nationalists. Scolaire (talk) 20:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The value of silencing them is that debates can be carried out without the hysterics, accusations etc that usually accompany them, and that it doesn't become a recruiting contest, i.e. which side of the debate can notify the most people to come and vote. пﮟოьεԻ 57 20:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

And the arguments are put forward and the decisions are made by the people who know least about the subject! I still don't get it. Scolaire (talk) 21:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

As I said above, I'm happy for involved editors to contribute evidence, but not actually !vote. I am also confident that there are plenty of people out there who have a good knowledge about what goes on outside their own country. пﮟოьεԻ 57 22:27, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

You can take the title however you want. Like I said, the debacle on the flag article pushed me to suggest this, but I've experienced most problems in the Israeli-Palestinian sphere as this is where I tend to work. пﮟოьεԻ 57 20:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not how I take it, I'm just warning you that a lot of people are likely to misinterpret your message and impute certain motives to you. If you're not bothered then neither am I. Scolaire (talk) 21:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it is well worth reading Sarcasticidealist's summary when moving the Flag of Ireland page. While he remarked (quite rightly) that "many of you are coming across as histrionic and a little unreasonable", he nevertheless treated each argument on its merits. It would not have been possible to come up with such a well-presented analysis had he simply disregarded the "nationalists". True consensus, which is the cornerstone of Wikipedia, arises from free and uncensored debate, and not from people with strong views "withdrawing" themselves from the argument. Scolaire (talk) 08:56, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Comment. I don't want to get into the ins and outs of the particular articles discussed here. My question is whether there are collaboration WikiProjects in all the areas discussed here. Such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration. I have been involved in some Israeli and Palestinian article and category editing for a few years. Nothing really helped solve problems as much as Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration. Also very important were the ArbCom-authorized discretionary sanctions. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration#ArbCom authorizes discretionary sanctions. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Has it really helped though? There are still edit wars raging on multiple articles (e.g. Battle of Jenin) with largely the same set of editors... пﮟოьεԻ 57 12:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It is not nearly as bad as it was before. Much more editing actually gets done. Many more articles are created. Before the WikiProject and the sanctions were implemented even the littlest disagreement could take up so much time that there was so much less time left over for productive editing. Nowadays the ratio of productive editing to non-productive arguing is much higher. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration which is inspired by the above project Gnevin (talk) 12:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

That's great! There are a couple current CFD discussions that people from Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration might be interested in. Please see these 2 discussions linked below. One is above the other on the same page. The discussions concern how to categorize religious and nationalist terrorism.

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 November 4#Category:Palestinian terrorism

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 November 4#Category:Nationalist terrorism --Timeshifter (talk) 18:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Featured article

Today's featured articles are a clear violation of the "wikipedia pillar": " Wikipedia has a neutral point of view". Wikipedia is (or suggests to be) deciding it's featured article of the day with relation to a present time event. On doing so, specially since it is without precedent (as far as I can remember) it implicitly recognizes that event as "important". Even the format has changed: we have two featured articles on today's page. Will the Swiss elections have their main candidates pictured in the featured articles present? And the Spanish elections? If not, how come the american elections have? It is very sad and bad for the credibility of the encyclopedia. Is it an american encyclopedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guilhermesfc (talk • contribs) 20:01, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I quite sincerely believe that if the articles on the main candidates in the Swiss and Spanish elections are brought up to Featured Article status by the time of their elections, something similar would be done. Besides that, WP:NPOV doesn't prohibit recognition of events as important - indeed, by having articles on a given subject we are implicitly recognizing it as being important to somebody. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Relevance to a particular day has been a criterion for choosing TFA for quite some time now. In any case, there is already an enormous ongoing discussion at Talk:Main Page. Algebraist 20:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

It's recognition of the fact that the whole world is holding its breath.... Darkspots (talk) 20:09, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a discussion page about many of the FAs that appear on the main page. There was an extensive discussion about today's. The first suggestion for today was Harriet Tubman, but many editors who are involved in the FA process thought it would be better and much more in line with the biggest event of the day (year) to have both candidates' on the main page. There was a related discussion about how to place them: side by side, up or down, democrat or republican first, alphabetic order... Two FAs on the main page is a first for Wikipedia. Should other countries' candidates articles be promoted to FA, this would be a precedent. I'm sure Canadian, British, Australian, South African - any other English-speaking (or not) country to have candidate articles prepared for an election day would be welcome. --Moni3 (talk) 20:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Definitely would be great to have more of this in the future for elections in all countries. The incredibly long lead-in time for American elections makes it easier but it should be possible to repeat elsewhere. Darkspots (talk) 20:26, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

In addition to what Moni3 said above, it is not entirely unusual for FAs to be featured on the main page on a particularily relevant date. Off the top of my head, just last month the USS New Jersey (BB-62) article was the main page on the anniversary of the date the ship became a museum ship. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:41, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, a quick glance at the FA archive shows it is not at all unusual to have a FA on the main page on a date that is especially relevant to the topic. A quick scan of the |October archive found that the following articles were all featured on the main page on dates relevant to the topic: James Robert Baker on his birthday, Akhtar Hameed Khan on the anniversary of his death, 1995 Pacific Grand Prix on the date of that race, Panic of 1907 was 101 years after that October event, and Treehouse of Horror (series) on Halloween. Personally, I rather like having topically relevant FAs. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Sock Puppeting

I have been alerted by one of our students that the problem which several students now face is because of vandalism carried out by a user called Mod_Objective. Evidently, this user happened to disrupt the order and therefore was banned, along with the perceived sock puppets. We have been monitoring the situation and know the student who was involved in this. However, other people -in no way connected to the former student - have also been banned, including users:

• Kiddish.K
• Heretret
• Porpurte
• Safeguarded

A student of a University over 100 miles also had their input removed:

• Stormtrooper

And other people were also accused of being sock puppets:

• Tweedle and Tweedledum

Our students are allowed to use wikipedia, and none of the above - as far as we are aware - was using accounts abusively. Some of our students cannot get on to the site because the computer has disallowed the IP address. But my area of most concern here is how all the changes done by users Kiddish.K and Safeguarded were removed. If the changes that they made were abusive and/or disruptive, then by all mean the user Jayjg, had every right to do so, but this was not the case:

1.

• [18]
• [19]

2. Even to the point of getting rid of the following redirects: *[20]

• [21]

3. Removing other good faith edits:

• [22]
• [23]

4. And then it gets a bit silly:*[24]

• [25]
• [26]

Just because the user User:Jayjg is a admin, good faith edits shouldn't be removed. This is a University, people do use wikipedia and therefore, using one abusive user in the past as a basis to remove all good faith edits by students in the future, is not an intelligent tactic. Someone needs to take charge of the situation. Our students have been using wikipedia for a while. Our University holds up to 110 different nationalities, and is currently involved in inter-faith discussions. We encourage our students to use wikipedia, to add whatever they have learnt or know, to this encyclopedia.

In good faith, I'll ask that someone talk to user Jayjg about his unreasonable actions so far. Some of our teachers are even having problems and reviewing the situation, we see no reason why the above users were blocked and banned. All students have the right to use any computer. If someone is being disruptive, we will root them out. All changes are logged on our systems.

Thank you for your time and I hope you choose to do something about this mishap.

Representative code:12U-1 (talk) 13:10, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

A Checkuser was performed to determine the blocked users relationship to the sock puppeteer. Please consult checkuser for evidence; unfortunately I cannot view your posting as good faith, seeing as it sounds like a highly transparent attempt to cause trouble for a user by use of another sock. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 13:32, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I directed this user to WP:OTRS, in order to first check his identity is legitimate. -- lucasbfr ^talk 14:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

---

05/11/08

“ If admins see fit to ban "the computer" more so than the person, then every computer in this University is not going to have the benefit of using wikipedia. If a user (of the same IP address) is showing particular vandalism then by every right, remove them on the basis of the previous history, however, if the user is behaving themselves appropriately and contributing positively to articles, there is no reason for any admin to rush in, and to delete all the changes made by those users. A institution like this should not have to suffer for one student who does not contribute to this encyclopedia any more. ” — [[(“[ User:Representative of University”

] ").]]

See above: Someone deleted what the Representative had to say ([see history page]).

Many good faith edits have been removed simply because it is believed that the user making these good faith edits, was a previous vandal. Even if this is the case, sometimes admins have to use a little common sense. Religious admins it seems, want it their way or no way. This is wrong in every way, and I believe that the problem here should be relooked at. Kiddish.K, Safegurded and others were congratulated by others for their good faith edits. Now, all their edits have been removed, and not even to a sane level. On the Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition page, you might expect the admin Jayjg, to revert it to the last edit by Editor 2020, but instead this admin decided to revert it to the first edit on the history page! [27]

This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. Surely others can see that the motivation behind these reverts is NOT policy based. This problem has been addressed before: [28] The link will show you that the theory that groups of admins often group together, against those who have different religious beliefs, is a common practice on Wikipedia. It just so happens, that although the users banned:

• Kiddish.K
• Heretret
• Porpurte
• Safeguarded etc

These were NOT vandalizing or disrupting any articles. They do however, have different views to Jews. And as the link shows: nearly all those who have opposed and removed edits by these users have been Jews (see this link to researchers proposal). Jayjg – the admin who happens to be removing all the good faith edits by these users – is also a Jew.

User Jayjg has been warned on his attitude before to these things, but they’re edits are often deleted from his user page:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=249671891&oldid=249652086
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=246192993&oldid=246192878
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=244216599&oldid=244130494
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=240043473&oldid=240043303
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=234188962&oldid=234170172
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=224349890&oldid=223477370
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=230445773&oldid=230403921
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=224719623&oldid=224719395

“ “Please do not delete referenced information and do not delete messages left on portal Poland. This is vandalism and administrators are not supposed to do it. ” — [[(“[ User:Tymek”

] ").]]

As you can see, many many users have understood the one way street – my way or no way – approach admins like Jayjg. This isn’t some isolated incident. Someone needs to monitor the situation, preferably a balance i.e. if we have a religious admin, they should be shared by an unreligious (atheist) admin. We cannot allow admins to be strict on policies or slack, due to their own beliefs. In the short term I’m asking that the reverts Jayjg has done should be reversed, in the long term, I’d like to see admins of complete different beliefs working together. Then, and maybe then we wouldn’t have this “ secret assassin” business going on behind the scenes of wikipedia.

Good faith edits which considerably improve(by consensus) an article should not be reversed - especially by admins - no matter what policy they use to justify their action: see WP:IAR. Using a policy to make articles worse, is making admins like Jay look like the real vandals and I'm asking that someone PLEASE intervene. 143.53.6.219 (talk) 13:29, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

---

10/11/08 Hi User:Jayjg. You deleted the above information.

Lately, several more incidents have occurred involving User:Jayjg. Another user who tried to restore good faith edits on the Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition page has been accused as a sock puppet of Mod objective. Now, this is an outright lie. Would an admin care to check the checkuser of Fcedt, as I very much doubt any tie between mod_objective and fcedt can be given. Fcedt is part of SNM not the AOY. He attempted to restore the edits on the Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition page, but found himself banned on the accusation of being a sock puppet. Also User:Jayjg and Editor 2020 seem to care very little about the vandalism the Assemblies of Yahweh page is now suffering. Notice the following: Jay is more concerned with removing the good faith edits by users, than preventing the vandals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=249556719&oldid=249431662 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=next&oldid=249556719 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=next&oldid=250221336

Please pay close attention as little is done when the page is being vandalized:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=next&oldid=250227442

If you have a look to the page now, to what the page was before [[29]], you will realize that User:Jayjg is not interested in maintaining or improving pages when it comes to the Assemblies of Yahweh. I asked someone to monitor the situation that doesn't have a religious affiliation, instead, since the members were banned, several pages have suffered from vandalism. Those who are trying to prevent this vandalism are then accused of sock-puppetry. I have noticed that users like (talk) have been tryed briefly to restore good faith edits... PLEASE prevent this Jay head from abusing their admin power, preventing all good faith edits and allowing vandals to ruin the pages. PLEASE. Have a look yourself! 143.53.5.80 (talk) 14:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Because use Jay keeps deleting these comments after a few days, the only way to get through is to keep adding to them, so someone does something about the deterioration of the situation since the banning of several good faith editors. 143.53.5.80 (talk) 14:19, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Sock Puppeting

I have been alerted by one of our students that the problem which several students now face is because of vandalism carried out by a user called Mod_Objective. Evidently, this user happened to disrupt the order and therefore was banned, along with the perceived sock puppets. We have been monitoring the situation and know the student who was involved in this. However, other people -in no way connected to the former student - have also been banned, including users:

• Kiddish.K
• Heretret
• Porpurte
• Safeguarded

A student of a University over 100 miles also had their input removed:

• Stormtrooper

And other people were also accused of being sock puppets:

• Tweedle and Tweedledum

Our students are allowed to use wikipedia, and none of the above - as far as we are aware - was using accounts abusively. Some of our students cannot get on to the site because the computer has disallowed the IP address. But my area of most concern here is how all the changes done by users Kiddish.K and Safeguarded were removed. If the changes that they made were abusive and/or disruptive, then by all mean the user Jayjg, had every right to do so, but this was not the case:

1.

• [30]
• [31]

2. Even to the point of getting rid of the following redirects: *[32]

• [33]

3. Removing other good faith edits:

• [34]
• [35]

4. And then it gets a bit silly:*[36]

• [37]
• [38]

Just because the user User:Jayjg is a admin, good faith edits shouldn't be removed. This is a University, people do use wikipedia and therefore, using one abusive user in the past as a basis to remove all good faith edits by students in the future, is not an intelligent tactic. Someone needs to take charge of the situation. Our students have been using wikipedia for a while. Our University holds up to 110 different nationalities, and is currently involved in inter-faith discussions. We encourage our students to use wikipedia, to add whatever they have learnt or know, to this encyclopedia.

In good faith, I'll ask that someone talk to user Jayjg about his unreasonable actions so far. Some of our teachers are even having problems and reviewing the situation, we see no reason why the above users were blocked and banned. All students have the right to use any computer. If someone is being disruptive, we will root them out. All changes are logged on our systems.

Thank you for your time and I hope you choose to do something about this mishap.

Representative code:12U-1 (talk) 13:10, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

A Checkuser was performed to determine the blocked users relationship to the sock puppeteer. Please consult checkuser for evidence; unfortunately I cannot view your posting as good faith, seeing as it sounds like a highly transparent attempt to cause trouble for a user by use of another sock. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 13:32, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I directed this user to WP:OTRS, in order to first check his identity is legitimate. -- lucasbfr ^talk 14:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

---

05/11/08

“ If admins see fit to ban "the computer" more so than the person, then every computer in this University is not going to have the benefit of using wikipedia. If a user (of the same IP address) is showing particular vandalism then by every right, remove them on the basis of the previous history, however, if the user is behaving themselves appropriately and contributing positively to articles, there is no reason for any admin to rush in, and to delete all the changes made by those users. A institution like this should not have to suffer for one student who does not contribute to this encyclopedia any more. ” — [[(“[ User:Representative of University”

] ").]]

See above: Someone deleted what the Representative had to say ([see history page]).

Many good faith edits have been removed simply because it is believed that the user making these good faith edits, was a previous vandal. Even if this is the case, sometimes admins have to use a little common sense. Religious admins it seems, want it their way or no way. This is wrong in every way, and I believe that the problem here should be relooked at. Kiddish.K, Safegurded and others were congratulated by others for their good faith edits. Now, all their edits have been removed, and not even to a sane level. On the Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition page, you might expect the admin Jayjg, to revert it to the last edit by Editor 2020, but instead this admin decided to revert it to the first edit on the history page! [39]

This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. Surely others can see that the motivation behind these reverts is NOT policy based. This problem has been addressed before: [40] The link will show you that the theory that groups of admins often group together, against those who have different religious beliefs, is a common practice on Wikipedia. It just so happens, that although the users banned:

• Kiddish.K
• Heretret
• Porpurte
• Safeguarded etc

These were NOT vandalizing or disrupting any articles. They do however, have different views to Jews. And as the link shows: nearly all those who have opposed and removed edits by these users have been Jews (see this link to researchers proposal). Jayjg – the admin who happens to be removing all the good faith edits by these users – is also a Jew.

User Jayjg has been warned on his attitude before to these things, but they’re edits are often deleted from his user page:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=249671891&oldid=249652086
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=246192993&oldid=246192878
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=244216599&oldid=244130494
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=240043473&oldid=240043303
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=234188962&oldid=234170172
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=224349890&oldid=223477370
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=230445773&oldid=230403921
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJayjg&diff=224719623&oldid=224719395

“ “Please do not delete referenced information and do not delete messages left on portal Poland. This is vandalism and administrators are not supposed to do it. ” — [[(“[ User:Tymek”

] ").]]

As you can see, many many users have understood the one way street – my way or no way – approach admins like Jayjg. This isn’t some isolated incident. Someone needs to monitor the situation, preferably a balance i.e. if we have a religious admin, they should be shared by an unreligious (atheist) admin. We cannot allow admins to be strict on policies or slack, due to their own beliefs. In the short term I’m asking that the reverts Jayjg has done should be reversed, in the long term, I’d like to see admins of complete different beliefs working together. Then, and maybe then we wouldn’t have this “ secret assassin” business going on behind the scenes of wikipedia.

Good faith edits which considerably improve(by consensus) an article should not be reversed - especially by admins - no matter what policy they use to justify their action: see WP:IAR. Using a policy to make articles worse, is making admins like Jay look like the real vandals and I'm asking that someone PLEASE intervene. 143.53.6.219 (talk) 13:29, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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10/11/08 Hi User:Jayjg. You deleted the above information.

Lately, several more incidents have occurred involving User:Jayjg. Another user who tried to restore good faith edits on the Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition page has been accused as a sock puppet of Mod objective. Now, this is an outright lie. Would an admin care to check the checkuser of Fcedt, as I very much doubt any tie between mod_objective and fcedt can be given. Fcedt is part of SNM not the AOY. He attempted to restore the edits on the Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition page, but found himself banned on the accusation of being a sock puppet. Also User:Jayjg and Editor 2020 seem to care very little about the vandalism the Assemblies of Yahweh page is now suffering. Notice the following: Jay is more concerned with removing the good faith edits by users, than preventing the vandals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=249556719&oldid=249431662 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=next&oldid=249556719 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=next&oldid=250221336

Please pay close attention as little is done when the page is being vandalized:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assemblies_of_Yahweh&diff=next&oldid=250227442

If you have a look to the page now, to what the page was before [[41]], you will realize that User:Jayjg is not interested in maintaining or improving pages when it comes to the Assemblies of Yahweh. I asked someone to monitor the situation that doesn't have a religious affiliation, instead, since the members were banned, several pages have suffered from vandalism. Those who are trying to prevent this vandalism are then accused of sock-puppetry. I have noticed that users like (talk) have been tryed briefly to restore good faith edits... PLEASE prevent this Jay head from abusing their admin power, preventing all good faith edits and allowing vandals to ruin the pages. PLEASE. Have a look yourself! 143.53.5.80 (talk) 14:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Blocked

I have soft-blocked the relevant university, since checkuser shows the IP range is being used for a variety of new account creations as well as Mod objective related activity and problematic edits -- the odds seem good the three are not unconnected. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:45, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

And with very high probability, Croiz == Alleichem (== Kiddish.K), as well. (All other activity on checkuser is via IPs, and account creation, hence the above block.) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:03, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion closures

There have been a few recent WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents discussions involving closures: Closures by involved editors, Non-admin closing requested move discussion he participated in, Kinobe.

Archived AN discussion: Closing XfDs that you have voted on. added Flatscan (talk) 23:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I see two main discussions:

1. Do WP:DPR and/or WP:NAC need clarification? Wikipedia talk:Deletion process looks well-subscribed and is probably a better location to discuss this issue.
2. To what extent do AfD norms cover other discussions (e.g. merge/split, move, RfC)?

Flatscan (talk) 04:23, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Closure by uninvolved admin

Closure by an uninvolved admin is not always required for non-AfD discussions. Obvious WP:SNOW, with a complete absence of opposition, may be applied. Since discussions occurring on article Talk pages are poorly subscribed, an uninvolved closer would need to be solicited, either directly or through a noticeboard. My opinion is that the request is excess process for an obvious SNOW close and that an involved closer does not ipso facto invalidate the close.

Requesting an uninvolved closer is an appropriate, optional step if it is reasonable to believe that the closure may be contested. I recently added a suggestion along those lines to Help:Merging and moving pages; there was previously no guidance.

• Discussions resulting from WP:BRD, with the bold and revert editors in apparent opposition
• Lengthy or heated discussions, easy to spot
• Content RfCs are generally started after an existing dispute cannot be resolved. (manual closure may not be necessary, WP:Requests for comment#Ending RfCs)

I've seen a few requests for closures of contested move or merge discussions at WP:Administrators' noticeboard that had prompt response and no opposition following the close. Flatscan (talk) 05:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)