Misplaced Pages

For good reason. The community has a fine understanding of copyright. Transhumanist is confused on this specific issue, a reasonable thing indeed. You've jumped to the worst case scenario and gone crazy over enforcing it, an absolutely unproductive attitude. On a lighter note, make a new section for your proposal, otherwise it won't draw the attention required for consensus to form. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 07:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• Yes they are, but only when a court says so. Hope that helps. Hiding T 14:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo quote

I have seen a quote someplace where Jimbo wrote, or said in a speech, that the name of the NPOV policy is misleading because it is not really neutral, but balanced in accordance with the prominence of the views. Where can I find this quote?--Filll (talk) 02:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Reading the policy is the best way to understand the policy. And Jimbo said arguments are less then stellar. Prodego 02:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo is an objectivist. Most Misplaced Pages users are wishy-washy collectivists, relativists, and subjectivists. See Sophism and anti-intellectualism. He established the NPOV policy, not as a false compromise or appeal to the middle, but because most people are not Objectivists or particularly rational, so arguing arguing "objective truth" would be a nightmare. Instead, people are supposed to argue over "objective verifiability." The objective part, however, has been wiped out of Misplaced Pages by the collectivists, hence the reason things like this and User:Shii/Hoaxes happen and The Community ™ doesn't do anything to stop it.

Frankly, I would like to know who this user, The Community ™, is and why they have not been blocked for harming Misplaced Pages.

The best way to edit Misplaced Pages is to glance across the policy pages, then think critically about what you're doing. If WP:NPOV is unclear, irrational, or downright harmful for Misplaced Pages, because Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy, it should be ignored even if The Community ™ says otherwise. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 03:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• You forgot to mention that some of us are realists. Hiding T 11:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy Proposal regarding admins

Before I create a subpage regarding this propsal, I would like to get a consensus from admins before proposing this to the wider Misplaced Pages community. Also posted at WP:AN.

I was just thinking this morning, and I think we need to have an actual systems for admins, should they make several mistakes while they are admins (some admins I know inthe past in have made mistakes). I am therefore proposing a proposal, named Three Strikes and You're Out (Subpage will be created if admins support the proposal. Should an admin do a wrong action once, they would be given a first strike. Should they commit an offence again, they will receive a second strike. Should they yet again do a wrong action (or it even could be simply edit warring - to something such as using the tools to harrass others); they will recieve a third and final warning. Because of this they will be notified via their third warning that an RFA will open on them. Should they fail the RFA, their admin tools will be taken off them. However only strikes should be given by un-involved administrators or good-faith editors. If any strikes are found to be in bad-faith the strike should be discussed and removed in due course if found to be in bad-faith.

Opinions on the above? D.M.N. (talk) 13:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Who decides that the admin has committed a wrong action? Any user? Another admin? An RfC process? Everyone makes mistakes. What constitutes a mistake serious enough to be considered a "strike"? Darkspots (talk) 14:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we should hire a bunch of Hungarian villagers with torches and pitchforks to do it. Whenever an admin does anything bad, they can chase them around, hurling fruit and other things at them. Admins which are particularly nasty can be tied to a pole and set on fire. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment I've slightly changed the above as a result of comments here and at WP:AN. D.M.N. (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

My concern is that - even under the best of circumstances - mistakes happen. Doctors make mistakes, lawyers make mistakes, construction workers make mistakes, and admins make mistakes. Many admins deal with - literally - THOUSANDS of administrative actions a month. Mistakes are going to happen, particularly with that high volume. Under your proposed system, how would you deal with legitimate mistakes versus actions taken with malice? How do you prove malice? Who judges them? I'm open to admin accountability, but I am not open to a system that runs off some of our very best contributors because they happen to make more edits than others and thus have a higher propensity for a RAW number of mistakes (which may actually be a much lower ratio of mistakes to administrative actions). - Philippe | Talk 17:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if the two discussions 9this one and the WP:AN discussion, shouldn't be merged. What happens if this discussion finds consensus and the other doesn't? It's a bit confusing to read valid arguments in two places about the same topic. Can they be merged and not just linked? Keeper | 76 17:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

If being an admin is "no big deal" (as admins are fond of telling us mere mortals), then stopping being an admin should also be no big deal. But as long as we have "admins=trusted editors", which implies "non-admins=untrusted editors" combined with the current byzantine system for getting rid of crappy admins (and there are plenty of those) nothing will change. If someone makes lots of mistakes with their admin tools - then they shouldn't have them. To tell the truth, I am sick and tired of all the special pleading which crops up every time an admin acts like a bully or foul-mouthed buffoon. Many admins seem to me to be incapable of shewing respect to non-admins, and to regard any complaints about admins as wicked name-calling by untrustworthy plebs. I had an email this week from someone very upset by the behaviour of one admin in particular who is pretty notorious for his inability to remain civil, yet who seems to be a "special case", immune from criticism (even when he uses admin tools to edit protected articles in which he is involved in the content dispute). Attempts to get other admins to speak to him (it being pointless for anyone else to try, as he simply blanks comments from his talk page, often with abusive edit summaries) are largely fruitless - it's always shrugged off as "it's just his manner" or "he's stressed". I've seen non-admins indef-blocked for much less serious misbehaviour. I bet that if all admins were to be forced to restand for their tools, at least 50% wouldn't get them back. DuncanHill (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

This comment:

If being an admin is "no big deal" (as admins are fond of telling us mere mortals), then stopping being an admin should also be no big deal

That's a red herring aka irrelevant conclusion. The claim that increasing oversight of administrators would be a good thing has absolutely nothing to do with the claim that they don't have a lot of authority ("no big deal"). In fact, your premise implies the exact opposite conclusion: It's precisely because being an admin is "no big deal," that it doesn't come with that much greater amount of authority, that increased oversight seems necessary.

Furthermore, I have to ask: Who is going to oversee the overseers? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 18:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure, all we need is gunshy admins. ("Geez, I've got two strikes already; I'm not touching anything even remotely controversial from now on.") </sarcasm>

Actually, what we need is active admins - admins who (without pay) spend their valuable time doing admin stuff rather than editing articles, which many of them probably prefer. Admins who act when things seem to require action without requiring 100% proof that action is need. Let's keep in mind that an admin who is 99.9% right is (by definition) going to make a mistake one time out of a thousand. A quick revert and an apology should really suffice for such exceptions. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

So, D.M.N. has created a policy discussion page, User:D.M.N./Three Strikes and You're Out, and moved over the discussion from WP:AN to the talk page there. He did not move this discussion. A quick read-through of the AN discussion seemed to show that more-or-less similar arguments were made opposing the proposal, mostly by different people. No mention of fruit or pitchforks, so I think we were ahead on local color over here. It does seem like further discussion should take place on D.M.N.'s discussion page. Darkspots (talk) 12:15, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually John we do imho. An admin who has two strikes, that is, the community has said, "It's not that you screwed up a bit here, but you screwed up enough for severe chastisement". I'm not suggesting that I necessarily agree with Three-Strikes-and-You're-Out, personally it seems a bit bureaucratic. However admins with strikes should be probated and made to review policy, and perhaps even be subjected to a monthly policy-exam to ensure they are actually understanding the wikiway. I've been lately writing an article on our form of governance and the more I write the more I see things which need to be clarified. For example, there seems to be a great disconnect between the common view of majoritarian rule, and our form of discursive democracy or consensus decision making. Often I see comments like "most people agree with me", while the commentator deliberately ignores any attempt to ameliorate the minority viewpoint. That is anti-project however proponents of that view don't gork that. Wjhonson (talk) 16:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

We have a great way to handle admins that make even one strike and that is arbcom. It works just fine. The proposed decision sounds prone to abuse. _{(1 == 2)} 17:02, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Deadminship is a perennial proposal. Note that in theory everyone should be able to get admin rights, and all users should be able to balance each other out that way. IMHO RFA is just simply slightly backlogged :-P --Kim Bruning (talk) 07:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC) that's one approach, I reserve the right to flipflop to the other approach as required. :-)

Deletion Policy

Am I the only one who thinks the speedy deletion policy is dominated by a small group of people trying to become admins? It seems the more they try to 'clean up' articles by nominating them, the more they get kudos points from others, helping their eventual run for election to adminship. Iloveamerica2much (talk) 13:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

It's less about trying to become admins and more about improving the encyclopedia. Please assume good faith on the part of others, and presume that their actions are intended for the best of the project. GlassCobra 13:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

How can I assume good faith when all they do is run about and delete others work? How about they assume good faith about others for once? Iloveamerica2much (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

There are strict guidelines and criteria for speedy deletion, and notability must be met for articles to be kept. Malinaccier (talk) 14:17, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Lack of notability is not grounds for speedy deletion. I've seen plenty of evidence for Iloveamerica2much's contentions; additionally, the time lapse between tagging an article for speedy deletion and its deletion is often not enough for an article creator to respond or protest. Argyriou (talk) 20:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Is it not? I see a lot of this: This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable.

And regarding you second point, AGREED! I've seen where the time from tagging to deletion is mere minutes! An author would have to be online and tapping refresh to catch it in time to add a {holdon} before the article is gone. - Operknockity (talk) 07:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

And then you get articles with {{holdon}} being deleted anyway.... DuncanHill (talk) 07:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

True, but on the other hand, you see people putting {{holdon}} on pages that are never, ever going to be anything but speedy candidates, such as bio articles about high school students or their garage band that they started with two friends last night. I agree that the speedy tag is misused though, there are a number of people who confuse something that doesn't have notability from something that doesn't claim notability. BLACKKITE 07:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Above, it is asserted: "There are strict guidelines and criteria for speedy deletion, and notability must be met for articles to be kept."

I'll agree, there are guidelines, which are routinely ignored. In my experience almost every article I started that was nominated for speedy deletion was nominated within minutes of creation -- flagrantly ignoring the policy recommendations that nominators allow a grace period for articles whose author were creating them in stages.

Case in point, Allegations that Tablighi Jamaat has ties to terrorism. The article was going to have a list, with almost three dozen entries. I had references for all of those entries. But I expected it to take me about ten minutes to populate each entry -- call it six hours work. So I was going to create it in stages. My first version had several paragraphs of background, and the bare list, without the references. An overly hasty wikipedian had applied a {{db-group}} -- a notability deletion tag -- within one minute of creation. Twelve minutes later, when I had populated an entry, and saved the article, I notice the speedy. I put a {{hangon}} notice on the article, and was still working on it, when an overly hasty admin came along and deleted the article, even though I had placed a {{hangon}} notice.

It took days to get this article undeleted through DRV.

I then had the very unpleasant experience of having the admin who undeleted the article immediately nominate it for regular deletion. Several more days of delay, and several more hours of my time wasted, because nominator and closing admin did not conform to the "strict guidelines".

As for the second part of the assertion, "that notability must be met" -- whatever that means, I beg to differ. No. It is a guideline -- if there is a good reason to ignore the guideline it should be ignored.

As for the original question in this thread. I too am concerned that an overly small fraction of the wikipedia makes a disproportionately large fraction of the deletions. I am concerned that that a subculture has been spawned within this small group. The wikipedia aims for a culture of collegial discussion and good faith. And, while some regular patrollers of the deletion fora continue to show good faith, and assume good faith, a subculture has grown up where violations of WP:CIV, WP:NPA, WP:AGF and WP:BITE are so routine they pass without notice.

I do not dispute that it is important that the wikipedia clear out cruft. But the mechanism through which we do so is in desperate need of radical reform, or outright replacement.

For any of you who are regular participants in the deletion fora, I urge you to look for those violations of the civility policies I claimed are so routine they pass without notice. I urge you to slow down, and challenge those who violate the civility policies. It is long past the time when we should have taken steps to restore civility to all deletion discussions.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 17:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Notability is often there in articles they nominate for deletion. I'm saying many nominate for alternative reasons, and don't actually care about the policies in question. Iloveamerica2much (talk) 14:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Again, please assume that your fellow editors are working for the best of the project. GlassCobra 14:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

If I had evidence to support that they are, I would. As it stands, no evidence supports that they are 'working in good faith for the project'. Iloveamerica2much (talk) 14:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I wish I got kudo points for deleting articles -- one of the thousands of articles on Misplaced Pages created every day that need to be zapped out of existence. Where do I go to get these kudo points and who is handing them out?

Also, WP:Assume good faith means exactly what it says. You shouldn't require "evidence that they are working in good faith," because you're supposed to assume that until there's evidence that demonstrates the contrary. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 14:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Please WP:Assume good faith as everyone is asking you to. And i think you should concentrate more on developing that article which was proposed to be deleted speedily. --SMS 14:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with editors practising deletion in order to become admins. It's excellent training for when they are admins. (Note: I'm not being satirical, I actually do think it's good training) • Anakin 15:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• This is a meaningless discussion unless someone actually provides concrete examples we can discuss. If you disagree with a deletion there is deletion review which tends to focus quite closely on whether process has been followed correctly. Inappropriate speedies are overturned regularly. Spartaz 00:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, specifics help a great deal. Let's keep in mind that more than a thousand articles per day are speedy deleted. I'm not sure exactly how one would show that (a) that a "small group" of editors is doing most of that nominating (since edits of deleted pages are no longer visible to regular editors once the page has been deleted); you'd really need to take frequent snapshots of all articles currently nominated, and record who had done so; and (b) that there is any significant extent of error in doing such CSDs - even if there are ten CSDs overturned every day at deletion review (doubt it), that would be less than one percent. And I'd guess that most overturned CSDs simply result in successful prods or AfDs, rather than keeps, so the real impact of erroneous CSDs is even less than the overturned number. (And yes, some mistaken CSDs are overlooked, though if an article is at all important, it will be created again by someone, hopefully better written.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:32, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

At least in the nominations, I think we do have a problem. I have been declining almost one-third of speedy requests. They are being made just in ignorance of the standards, not malice. And its not that I'm showing my inclusionist bias--other admins seem to be removing speedy tags at an equal rate before i can get to them. A few months ago it was only one tenth, which seems reasonable. But then looking at the unpatrolled New Pages, it seems we are missing quite a lot of new stuff that really should have been deleted quickly. I think we need some sort of campaign to explain the practices, so the stuff that needs to be nominated gets nominated, but not the disputable ones.

As for what gets deleted, an emphasis on taking the problems to deletion review is the only way to solve it. by the time an admin has some considerable experience at it, it's hard to change their ways by gentle persuasion, but nobody likes being reversed there. DGG (talk) 09:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

• DGG is certainly right that admins don't like getting reversed at DRV but speaking as the recipient of the odd slap or two, I certainly tuned up my deletion decisions as a result. As an aside, DRV is a great place to learn how to do deletion properly and prospective admins would all benefit from looking at deletions from the other side. Spartaz 16:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Although I only review CSD requests periodically, I've also found myself turning down a similar proportion of CSD requests. One commonality I've noticed in the CSD requests I've turned down is that A7, "no assertion of notability" can sometimes be interpreted somewhat bureacratically. An article's subject may well be perfectly notable, but an unsuspecting newbie editor doesn't understand that one has to assert this in clear language when the article is first created upon pain of its immediate deletion. This results in CSD requests on what seem to me to be pure technicalities on subjects that may well be notable. I have found myself thinking that that A7 should be tightened a bit and require patent non-notability, not just a procedural failure to assert notability, to ensure that CSD is only done for failures of substance, not process. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 16:29, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll second that motion. It's the subject of the article, not the current substance, that drives Notability. Dhaluza (talk) 11:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree 100%. Alarmingly, I have encountered administrators who don't seem to understand this. Geo Swan (talk) 18:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Except that we cannot determine notability of a subject without proper sources in the article itself. If the problem is that your article is being deleted before you can finish writing it, then create it in your User space first, then move it to the main article space. -- Kesh (talk) 18:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

A7 is not a difficult criterion to meet. You don't even have to attempt to prove notability, just assert it. If someone can look at an article and say "Yes, that person/group/company" is probably more notable than average" it passes A7. "John Doe is an notable/important/well-known/infamous/etc X, who invented/worked on/founded/brutally murdered/owns/etc Y." - as long as X and Y are sufficiently important, that's enough to pass A1 and A7 ("brutally murdered" would need a source though). Mr.Z-man 18:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:RFC/U - time to get rid of it?

Moving from WT:RFC...

About two months ago, I listed Requests for user comment for deletion under the premise that it did not work, and it's basically a quagmire of personal attacks and a stepping stone to ArbCom. The consensus in the MFD, including the creator of the process and the MfD's closer, is that it doesn't really work 99.9% of the time, and only exists because there is no other process existent. Just get rid of it and reinstate the Community Sanction Noticeboard, as that actually did do some good. Will 17:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I personally prefered CSN better than RFC/U. D.M.N. (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I would support CSN provided there was a minimum time for comments (about 7 days). There should also be a maximum time for banning (1 year, same as ArbCom). R. Baley (talk) 18:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

CSN had teeth, RFC/U hardly any. CSN saw discussion and nuance, RFC/U sees ganging up and party-lines half the time. With the same provisos as R. Baley, except I'd prefer six months, it would be good to have it back. Relata refero (talk) 18:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you could merge the two... CSN to me always seemed to arbitrary. Consensus could be declared in an hour or never... that kind of gives power to people who can generate a mob of "me too"s on demand. RFC is very structured but seldom goes anywhere. Is there any realistic way to have CSN but with a more normalized process, to give the accused a change to reply, slow down the mob mentality, and reasonably assess consensus? --W.marsh 18:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Would it need a new name possibly? Also please note than CSN only closed three and a half months ago and consensus might not of changed much since then. Also, a lot of things that "could" of gone there are instead now sent to WP:AN or WP:ANI, meaning they get a lot more traffic and stress put on them. D.M.N. (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

W.marsh, don't you think a minimum one-week period for each sanction discussion would help with the mob of "me-too"s? (Too much evidence has emerged lately of off-wiki co-ordination for us to discount that as a factor.) Relata refero (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

A week sounds reasonable. If it's truly an emergency WP:BLOCK should apply, and if someone's transgressions don't seem blockworthy a week after the fact, then a ban was a bad idea to begin with. I'd also like to look at a waiting period before people start bolding words (ban, don't ban, etc.) maybe 48 hours of pure discussion without people taking definitive stands like in a vote. I think that would lead to better discussion, people tend to feel psychologically committed to a stance once they're locked in to it. --W.marsh 18:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

At Arbcom they've decided to take the ambitious step of waiting (I believe 48 hours, but I can't remember) before voting on the proposed decision page. We could do something similar, discussion can take place for 2 days, but no proposed "remedies" (ban, topic ban, etc.) could be offered until 48 hours after a new complaint had been certified (maybe not "certified," just following the initial complaint --basically enforce 2 days of discussion before any talk of "banning"). R. Baley (talk) 18:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

RFC works when it's used for asking for comments, it does not work when sanctions are sought, but that is not its purpose. The CSN should be brought back and RFC kept and used for its intended purpose. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The Community Sanction Noticeboard had its own problems, though I'm not sure that it needed to be eliminated. Part of the problem is that dispute resolution mechanisms seem to come and go - Mediation went away, and now it's back under a new name, the CSN came and went, ANI seems to alter its mission every so often. I see three main problems with RFC/U: it is not empowered to sanction, it's intended to keep reduce the burden on ANI, and it's a mandatory step before going to ArbCom, which can sanction. The solution I see is to 1) bounce more stuff, both from RFC/U and ANI, to Mediation (wherever it's living right now), 2) have some level of sanction available at RFC/U, which would probably require administrator patrolling, and 3) allow admins to move complicated cases off ANI to RFC/U. Perhaps a name change would be in order - instead of "Request for Comment/User Conduct", it could become "Administrators' Noticeboard: Ongoing Problems" (to distinguish it from AN:Incidents). Making it part of the Administrators' Noticeboard would mean that sanctions would be available and it would be an appropriate preliminary step to ArbCom. It would also reduce the load at ANI, where probably half the volume of discussion is on complicated, drawn-out issues, even though those are fewer than 10% of the actual incidents reported. Community Sanctions would all get moved to AN/OP, also. As part of the AN cluster, AN/OP would be fairly highly visible. Argyriou (talk) 20:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm Opposed to this. Many of our processes suffer from a lynching mentality and RFC is as bad as some of them but it does serve a purpose. I really do not see a return to the votes for lynching that CSN turned into as a viable alternative. If we are replace this process we need some other way to garner community feedback into problematical or disputed editor behaviour and a noticeboard doesn't seem the way forward. Spartaz 22:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Rlevse's and Spartaz's comments. --Iamunknown 00:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Both W.marsh and Spartaz voice important concerns. The CSN was split off from ANI, and then was merged back into ANI after only 8 months. I think ANI, with its high visibility and traffic, is the proper place for most such discussions. The deletion discussion is very instructive as to the potential problems that must be kept in mind. I oppose any page dedicated exclusively to "sanctions," as well as any form of voting for a ban.

Getting back to RFC/U, I think its purpose and its place within the DR process should be better defined. The list of DR options here is rather bewildering, and does not indicate (what I see as) RFC/U's status as a second-tier DR forum for problems that have proven intractable in the first-tier forums. The third tier, of course, is Arbcom.

There is a grave problem when people see DR as a list of hoops that must be jumped through before you can ban someone. Emphasis should be placed on restoring relationships and on helping problematic editors to become better ones. Note that I am not talking about obvious trolls, who should be dealt with easily enough in the first-tier DR forums. To me, the purpose of the first-tier forums is to have one or two experienced editors tell a problematic editor that he/she is behaving problematically and should change. At this point, the case may be obvious enough that a block or ban would be appropriate. The purpose of RFC/U is then for the larger community to communicate that same message. If the problematic behavior continues, then an admin can enact a community ban, and the tougher cases can go to Arbcom. If I am out in left field on this, then tell me so or ignore me. If not, then the DR guidelines should be a lot more clear that this is the case. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 05:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be good if it worked that way, but the practice is less harmonious. The process seems to escalate conflict rather than diminish it. I don't however know how to substitute it. CSN was seen as a kangaroo court, so that too had problems. DGG (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Practice does not need to be harmonious. I'm not so naive as to think that a large fraction of people are actually focused on "restoring relationships" etc. But I'd settle for orderly. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 01:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem I have seen in the few RFC/U's I've seen (as an outsider) is that there is very little in the way of objective evidence. It usually ends up in IDONTLIKEHIM comments, or sometimes people siding with the nominator they like or the defendant they like, or even lining up with the POV they like.

Any complaint, whether it is in an RFC/U or an AN/I or a proposed AN/OP, should have specific charges based on policy or guidelines and specific diffs to support the charge, and diffs to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem. A user who behaves badly should be warned every time the problem is noticed. Just as we warn against vandalism, we should warn about NPA, incivility, etc. (If we had more warning templates, users might issue warnings more often.) If we warned users more often we might see fewer problems. If problems persist, then the warnings will provide the evidence to justify blocks.

AIV is not contentious because there is a visible history of escalating warnings to demonstrate the problem, to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem, and to justify the length of a block. 3RR is not contentious because diffs provide objective evidence of bad behavior. RFC/U, AN/I, CSN almost always are (were) contentious because there is usually no objective evidence to demonstrate the problem and attempts to resolve the problem. I think that RFC/U would be more effective if it required specific charges of violated guidelines, specific diffs to support the charges, and specific diffs to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem.

I was just about to make these suggestions about specificity over at WT:RFC when I saw the link to this discussion. I might still suggest it over there to try to improve the process while waiting to see if a consensus develops over here to eliminate or replace the process. I'm also thinking of starting a new section over here to suggest that we should issue warnings for bad behavior much more often. I have seen a lot of incivility go unwarned. If we had escalating templates for warnings, editors might use them more often. Sbowers3 (talk) 02:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, RfC on User Conduct should be used to elicit a wider community involvement in the background of the situation instead of the superficial cat-calling that we stumble acrost in article-talk and user-space. I frequently accidently wander into a vicious debate, simply because I visit a lot of pages. The RfC/U posted to the article-talk, and user-talk of both the RfC presenter and the subject would allow for impartial input. Which should continue for a minimum of three days there. Then, as above mentioned, the subject can be given some breathing room inwhich to evaluate improvement or at least detachment. After sufficient time, if an editor feels that anti-project editing still exists, then it would be appropriate to escalate to CSN and allow at least 3 further days for responses to be gathered. So my nutshell, RfC/U as a precursor to CSN and a necessary part of DR.Wjhonson (talk) 02:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with ANY system of open community comment on another editors actions, regardless of which Wiki-acronym you attach to it, is that it is always open to sniping and abuse (once someones name shows up there, everyone they ever have pissed off gangs up on them). The question is whether such abuse is willing to be tolerated in order to have a system whereby the community can comment on user behavior. You can't have a system in place that is immune to this kind of abuse, but neither should you throw out the baby with the bathwater... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 06:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I am strongly in favor of the WP:RFC/U system. It isn't good at seeking punishments for past bad behavior, but that's partly because sanctions are preventive, not punitive -- the point is, sanctions should be applied when bad behavior continues, rather than because it existed. RFCs are good for that -- if a user pushes POV, for instance, and it becomes well-established that this is the case in an RFC, and they continue to do it, sanctions can be safely applied. RFCs sometimes get out of control, but that's actually a good thing -- think of it as water in the mountains, it needs to come downhill somewhere. WP:RFC/U is a good way of handling that release of tensions because of the way its rules keep editors from commenting back and forth, which tends to build tension. Plus, they have a good way of adding lots of uninvolved editors to the mix, which distributes the energy. Mangojuice 15:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Notability guidelines regarding cell phones

Looking around, I can not find any evidence of such but I was wondering if there has ever been a policy proposal regarding notability guidelines for cell phones. Almost daily, at least one AfD late to close is a listing for some model of a cell phone, often a Nokia or a Sony Ericsson. They are late to close because finding consensus about cell phone AfDs is often difficult, it is rare that agreement is found on these AfDs. Keep seems to be the most common result of these, but no consensus is common as well, and even on those which are kept it is often unclear if the references cited are actually reliable sources as defined by WP:RS. So I was wondering if the community feels as though a notability guideline in regards to cell phones is worth drafting or if WP:RS and WP:N suffice. In general, I feel a guideline would be useful, but am not really sure what such would look like. Warm regards, SorryGuy  Talk  00:40, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:N (multiple non-trivial sources, a few magazine or newspaper articles) should be enough, but some people seem to think we literally need to have a book published about a cell phone before it's notable enough for Misplaced Pages. I imagine people look for basic encyclopedic information on their phones (its history, features, controversies, sales, etc.) on Misplaced Pages... to delete those articles even when we have enough sources to write them does a disservice to our readers. --W.marsh 02:15, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

What we really need is a MOS clarification that, where independent sources are lacking, lists are prefered. Most phone entries have little content that can be justified, and so should really be stubs. The existence of stubs, however, then encourages people to add inappropriate depth of information to the article... Is there a wikipedia project group for phones that can be tasked to examine this matter? LinaMishima (talk) 02:47, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I would imagine that most particular cell phone models have relatively little to be said about them and would be best off as list items within the manufacturer's article, with the exception of a handful of types that have significant cultural impact on their own, like the iPhone. Unless you're planning on giving detailed tech specs for each model? Even cars don't have such heavy detail that every different model has a separate page; the Lexus ES article covers the many variations over the years such as the ES300 and the ES350. *Dan T.* (talk) 03:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Grouping by model families is fine, but we shouldn't just cram every cell phone a company makes onto the top level manufacturer page. Also, AFD is not needed to do merges. --W.marsh 03:17, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Mobile phones are covered by Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Telecommunications. Puchiko (Talk-email) 08:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

• Why aren't closing admins reading the debate to find out where the consensus is? Have I missed something? Hiding T 14:17, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Anti-Wikipedian sentiment.

I saw the article Anti-Wiki on Meta and it occurred to me that Anti-Wikipedian sentiment is rampant on Misplaced Pages.

So, I wrote an essay. See WP:Anti-Wikipedianism. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 10:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

And how do we know that you are not part of the Alien conspiracy?Wjhonson (talk) 00:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

There is no Alien conspiracy. That's why it's red linked.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:50, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

That's what they want you to think. Hiding T 14:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Censorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WikiProject Universities Article Guidelines

At WikiProject Universities we have been working on a set of article guidelines to define a solid structure and cases of notability for articles that we cover (mostly university articles). In attempt to build consensus I am posting here to see what the greater Misplaced Pages community thinks about our guidelines. There already seems to be consensus within our project and an RfC was already made on the talk page. Thanks for your comments and suggestions. —Noetic Sage 16:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Group accounts allowed?

Group accounts are permitted as long as they're being used for Anti-vandalism. Correct?--172.131.23.149 (talk) 18:59, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Group accounts are generally not permitted at all. -- zzuuzz 19:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

No. Have a look at Misplaced Pages:User account policy#Sharing accounts. • Anakin 19:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Then why was an admitted group account recently given a rollbacker flag for anti-vandalism efforts?--172.131.23.149 (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Could you link us to the account in question, so that this can be taken further. Thanks, D.M.N. (talk) 19:06, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

If you were to search recent entires on the user rights log it should jump right out at you. Short of that, I'd rather not be accused of "outing" another user as being in violation of policy, even if their own userpage does specify that they are a shared account.--172.131.23.149 (talk) 19:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you are thinking of this? -- zzuuzz 19:12, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Unless I've drastically misinterpreted that thread, the issue was resolved on the basis that the account was non-shared, however the userpage of the individual makes it clear that it is not one person operating the account. Even their own response seems to be basically consist of saying that only 1 IP range is being used, not that only 1 person is operating the account. It seems that this could be solved easily enough were each member of their organization to register separate accounts.--172.131.23.149 (talk) 19:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear to me that the user claims to be the only person using that account. ("I am the only one who has access to the account .. should I leave the account would go with me and not the position"). Granted the wording of the userpage infers something else, but that doesn't seem to really be an issue. People put all sorts on their userpages. -- zzuuzz 19:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

"Staff" is not necessarily plural. MilesAgain (talk) 21:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It appears that User:Gurch was using the alternate account, User:Gurchzilla, as an anti-vandalism bot. There's nothing wrong with this, but it appears he was the only one running it, which according to the policy above, is not allowed. I did some digging and found that a friend of his, User:Bishonen has also had a similar situation, with an alternate account named User:Bishzilla. I'm going to put in a request that Bishzilla be blocked, since she appears to have been using the account just as a basis for speaking like a cavewoman. Literally, read the contribs.

• Special:Contributions/Bishonen
• Special:Contributions/Bishzilla

If anybody knows anybody else with accounts like this, please report them. Users should NOT have multiple accounts unless they have a very specific reason. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 19:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I was always under the impression that disclosed/undisclosed alternate accounts were allowed, unless they're being used abusively. In fact this statement "it appears he was the only one running it" seems quite odd to me, the policy prohibits multiple people from operating a single account, not a single person operating multiple accounts. --172.131.33.29 (talk) 20:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the harm. User:Bishzilla and User:Bishapod are amusing, and they make the wiki expirience more pleasureable. Both accounts have made it clear that they are alternative accounts of Bishonen, therefore fullfilling the transparency criteria. I agree with essays like WP:CARE and WP:Editors matter. Puchiko (Talk-email) 20:52, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

• "I'm going to put in a request that Bishzilla be blocked, since she appears to have been using the account just as a basis for speaking like a cavewoman." Since when was mock prehistoric speech a blockable offense?
• "There's nothing wrong with this, but it appears he was the only one running it, which according to the policy above, is not allowed." When put in context, this comment makes no sense whatsoever.

Any experienced editor here can then conclude that the full comment made above is without merit and disconnected from policy and facts. —Kurykh 21:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Having a group of accounts is not the same as having a group account. MilesAgain (talk) 21:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The policy is simple- each account must belong to only one person, and though multiple accounts are generally discouraged, they are allowed as long as they are not used maliciously or deceptively, but you don't have to say that you have other accounts. I have, at times, considered getting other accounts for editing potentially sensitive topics, (and I wouldn't reveal the link between this username and that one) but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. J Milburn (talk) 22:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

If one user having multiple accounts (for whatever reason) was banned, that would imply that registered users operating anonymously (as many do from time to time, for whatever reason) would be frowned upon. At least, that's how it appears to me. As long as a single operator is using the accounts and they are all being used for legitimate reasons, I don't see a problem with it.Caissa's DeathAngel (talk) 00:12, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Harm does not matter. Users CANNOT violate policy. If the policy is "administrators let their buddies have multiple accounts because of favoritism," then that should be made explicit. I don't think, however, that such a policy EVER got consensus. So, in this case, you have rogue admins -- not rouge -- rogue admins blatantly ignoring policy for no apparent reason other than for the lulz. Actually, I took a closer look at the policy and somehow, lol, I missed something. It does currently say that it "recommends" users not use multiple accounts, not a requirement. Still, it seems rather in poor taste to let this kind of thing go on. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:15, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Anybody here willing to support a requirement rather than a recommendation that must justify and\or get addinitional accounts approved? It really seems just like a pandora's box for trolling since it gives people the possibility of plausible deniability when they engage in sockpuppetry. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:20, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Having multiple accounts is not forbidden. it is only against policy if one or more of the accounts are being used abusively. As long as you don't use them abusively and indicate the owner of the alternate account, you may have as many as you wish. User:Gurchzilla redirects to User:Gurch and User:Bishzilla states "This account alternative account of Bishonen." Mr.Z-man 00:25, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

"Abusively" is not the standard, it's a term that's sometimes applied to people who break the rules. It's banned (and considered abusive) if the purpose is deceptive, to game a vote, to play good cop / bad cop, or enable any misconduct, and it's definitely frowned on by most people to make controversial edits, conduct policy, conduct experiments, etc. The general rule is don't do it unless you have a good reason, and even there be prepared because you may have to defend yourself. I would support a requirement that anyone with an alternate account needs to register or otherwise disclose the alternate account, anonymously, with a trusted group here. I would question whether we should be getting into evaluating or approving the reasons. People sometimes do it because of fear of being outed over their sexuality, dealing with online or offline stalking, and other subjects that we would be uncomfortable to judge each other on. Wikidemo (talk) 00:53, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

No, no, no. You're now proposing solutions to nonexistent problems. We block for disruptive sockpuppetry, not just any sockpuppet. —Kurykh 00:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

conduct experiments - A month or two ago I ran across an editor who has contributed a lot of user scripts to Misplaced Pages, and has at least two other accounts - something like "XXX left sock" and "XXX right sock". I presume that he/she uses the accounts to test out user scripts, so that he/she can just maintain a standard set on user scripts on his/her main account. Perfectly acceptable experimentation, obviously.

You could refine the language of my comment or just apply common sense there. Maybe call that script development. In general experiments are a bad thing. Wikidemo (talk) 02:03, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

People sometimes do it because of fear of being outed over their sexuality, dealing with online or offline stalking, and other subjects that we would be uncomfortable to judge each other on. Precisely. And having experienced editors with such alternate accounts to do so strengthens the encyclopedia. Requiring such editors to "register" or disclose their plans to someone, no matter how trusted the community felt that someone was, would have a chilling effect on the number of such (constructive) alternative accounts. And editors intending to use alternative accounts for unconstructive purposes would either (a) not register or disclose or (b) would simply ignore any rejection of registration or failure to obtain approval, and go ahead and create an account anyway. In short, unless we implement universal checkuser for all new accounts (which we won't), registration/disclosure won't stop alternative accounts for deception, gaming, or misconduct (why would it?), but will stop constructive alternative accounts. And create more bureaucracy - a real lose/lose situation. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:46, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I expect a registration requirement will greatly reduce abusive sockpuppets. For someone who means to do wrong, it forces them to register the account, in which case it is much easier to police, or else to go unregistered, in which case we can be certain the account is improper and delete it upon detection. For people operating in good faith, it will reduce unintentional problems by making them think twice about their reasons for sockpuppetry, and discouraging people from doing it merely to separate their controversial edits from their well-accepted one. The core of the good faith but nevertheless improper use of sock puppets, I think, is people who create an alternate account on which they can be a complete pain in the ass, annoying people without quite stepping over the line of policy violations, and avoid any taint of their primary account from the behavior. I believe some administrators have created sockuppets where they engage in un-administrator-like behavior. That would all be discouraged if there's a registration problem. The chilling effect is a reasonable concern, but sockpuppetry is one of our biggest problems on Misplaced Pages and a perfect solution isn't possible. The main harm if there is a chilling effect is that a very small number of people will have to be exra careful or avoid editing a very small number of articles. We're already bending over backwards to allow people to be anonymous, but whatever the problem is they're running away from we did not create it and there is only so much we can do to help. Overall the incidence of bad, useless, or unnecessary sockpuppets is so much greater than the legitimate ones that I think we ought to do something, and work to minimize unintended consequences rather than avoiding a solution. Wikidemo (talk) 02:03, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not like a sockpuppeteer will register his/her accounts, right? They're just going to create multiple accounts anyway and disrupt the encyclopedia. This proposal does nothing to solve the problem, and only serves to impede what measures may be necessary to protect constructive editors. In short, not only is it a solution looking for a problem, it is a solution that is needlessly bureaucratic and will only backfire. And it is the epitome of the preemptive assumption of bad faith. —Kurykh 03:45, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with User:Kurykh's first sentence here; a sockpuppet abuser will just ignore the registration system. The only people who will pay attention to it are those who care about whether they are using their sockpuppet correctly or not, and these are the people for whom it's no real use! To disclaim, I myself use this account as a sockpuppet (I frequently edit from public computers which aren't terribly secure), a fact which is explained on my userpage (and that of my primary account). --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 09:02, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

As I said, if an abuser fails to register, then we've got them as soon as we discover the alternate account. Obviously no assumption of bad faith, it's just a registration requirement. If there's no approval process, no bureaucracy. Wikidemo (talk) 10:22, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

mostly arbitrary section break

Sockpuppets will do whatever they can to break the rules, which can include deceptively following the rules in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Requiring users to justify having more than one account is pretty rational and I don't see why anyone would oppose it unless they, themselves, are complicit or know somebody that is, in running sockpuppeting.

As an example of how existing policy might pose problematic, User:Bishzilla's account seem to be used to get under people's skin with the "dinospeak" nonsense. While this is perfectly in accordance with policy, it seems absurd to let it continue since it's disruptive.

Other problems that might be posed by letting users have accounts like this is long-term vandalism (that is, long-term edit-warring using both accounts that goes unnoticed, because the edits are so far apart between both accounts) and possible abuse of administrative privileges if one account is for administration while the other account is used for editing. It's true I couldn't find examples of any of these, but I shouldn't need to. One could argue that it's possible to "share accounts," without causing harm to Misplaced Pages and it would be hard to dig up evidence to show what a problem it would be, but obviously, it opens such a pandora's box that it doesn't make any sense to allow people to share accounts. The same applies to the mere "recommendation" that users not have multiple accounts. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 15:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I mean, here's my point:

"contributors using their real name may wish to use a pseudonymous account for contributions they do not want their real name to be associated with"

Why would they want to do that? If you don't want people to have your real name on Misplaced Pages, then don't use your real name when you sign up. If you did that already, then vanish and make a new account. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 15:30, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

And having an extra account to "edit sensitive topics" really seems like trolling. I mean, based on this, you're ALLOWED to have sockpuppets... until you get caught doing it with a checkuser. Seems pretty messed up. Multiple accounts should be fully transparent to avoid sockpuppetry. If there's any info you don't want others to know about on Misplaced Pages, don't upload it. Very simple. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 15:34, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Over time, people may develop a persona based upon their online pseudonyms that becomes well-known (see lonelygirl15, even if she isn't the creator of herself, so to speak). And it's not necessarily to do with Misplaced Pages, people sometimes use the same pseudonym for multiple websites. To me, I should be able to create as many accounts as I want so long as I am not disruptive with any of them, so as to avoid being checkusered; of course, it does have implications regarding voting on various things.

Sensitive topic editing is not trolling. Trolling is the action of provoking someone into flaming - I don't see how these are related. Besides, Checkuser is not for fishing - don't do anything to the extent of a Checkuser request, and all is well. x42bn6 Talk Mess 17:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if BishZilla can be considered disruptive. What concerns me are her mainspace contributions ( ). However, I don't see any harm in her edits to other namespaces, she cheers up a lot of people. While we should make it clear that vandalism is evil, and won't be tolerated, I don't think a ban is in order. Advising her to steer clear of the article namespaces should be alright. Puchiko (Talk-email) 17:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

User:Bishzilla's account seem to be used to get under people's skin with the "dinospeak" nonsense. While this is perfectly in accordance with policy, it seems absurd to let it continue since it's disruptive. - Says who? Where is the disruption? From what I've seen, its mainly used for a bit of comic relief in high-drama situations. possible abuse of administrative privileges if one account is for administration while the other account is used for editing - Administrative tools != editing, how would editing on one account and adminning on the other be an abuse? As long as you only have admin tools on one, its a benefit to the project. Some people like to keep their editing separate so they can work on articles without the extra responsibility/stress of the tools. It's true I couldn't find examples of any of these, but I shouldn't need to. - That's called a solution in search of a problem. You of all people should know Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy, we don't come up with rules that we don't need "just in case we might need them in the future". it doesn't make any sense to allow people to share accounts - True, but its so easy to register accounts, this isn't much of a problem. And having an extra account to "edit sensitive topics" really seems like trolling. - as long as your edits are constructive and you don't edit the same topics with your main account and create the impression of 2 separate people, what's the problem? Mr.Z-man 18:10, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

There have been some significant examples of administrators abusing administrative tools while using a meatpuppet or sockpuppet account . Anyone remember the Alkivar fiasco? I believe we had a number of people banned, quitting Misplaced Pages, or de-sysopped over that, and two or three arb-com cases before the dust settled on that one. Alas, unless one is on troll patrol you only learn about these incidents when they affect you and somebody uncovers the multiple accounts. The problem comes if both accounts work on the same or related articles, enter discussions on related policies and guidelines, deal with the same users, or push the same issues. Even when an administrator's actions are within policy, both as an administrator and as a non-administrative editor, it's troubling to think that a user with whom one is collaborating (and perhaps disagreeing) is secretly also an administrator who is wielding a threat of deleting and protecting articles, and blocking users. I don't think that a desire to avoid the stress of being an administrator is a valid reason for an admin to engage in a practice that's fundamentally unhealthy for the system. If they can't handle the responsibility of being on their best behavior they probably shouldn't be an administrator. If they do have some valid reason, it's absolutely reasonable to ask administrators to state somewhere and to somebody whether they're using alternate accounts, which ones they are, and why. The problem also happens when using separate accounts for seemingly sensitive topics. I use the same account for anal-oral contact as I do for patent claims. It puts me at a disadvantage, and it's actually kind of creepy, to think that someone I'm dealing with there is secretly without telling me someone I have interactions with regularly on other articles. It's a bigger issue when people use the second account to make controversial edits than to edit on controversial subjects. In theory no article here should be controversial. We are an encyclopedia that covers everything and does not censor - to participate in an article about a contentious political or sexual subject is to be a Wikipedian. This cloak-and-dagger paranoid stuff isn't a very mature or orderly way to go about creating an encyclopedia. If someone has a reasonable fear that their off-Misplaced Pages person will suffer, I think we can accommodate an extra level of privacy on a case-by-case basis. But it shouldn't be the norm, and people shouldn't do it just for the advantage of being able to have two different anonymous accounts, one of which is respectable and the other less so. A final note. I don't consider this a proposal - there's no way anybody is going to adopt a registration requirement for alternate accounts after this discussion. The idea has been considered and rejected on WP:SOCK. It's just an ongoing discussion. I think it's helpful to keep that discussion going and make clear that alternate accounts are the exception, not the norm.Wikidemo (talk) 23:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

it's troubling to think that a user with whom one is collaborating (and perhaps disagreeing) is secretly also an administrator who is wielding a threat of deleting and protecting articles, and blocking users - Huh? Since when is blocking for disagreeing part of the blocking policy? If you live in fear of admins like that, you might have a problem. If you are not being disruptive, you'll be fine. The problem comes if both accounts work on the same or related articles... - which is already forbidden. it's absolutely reasonable to ask administrators to state somewhere and to somebody whether they're using alternate accounts - except for privacy reasons, all users are supposed to disclose their alternate accounts. This cloak-and-dagger paranoid stuff - except perhaps privacy socks, what legitimate uses of alternate accounts would be paranoid? have two different anonymous accounts, one of which is respectable and the other less so - Good hand/bad hand accounts are already forbidden. Mr.Z-man.sock (talk) 00:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I do have a problem with the behavior of certain administrators for sure, but I would call it experience, not fear. It has nothing to do with being disruptive. An administrator who has interacted with a user, an issue, a policy, or a subject matter simply cannot avoid the conflict - it's like pouring the cream back out of the coffee, it's there. If they make their role clear, and step aside on any administrative actions where they are likely to be questioned, they can contain it. When they're all over Misplaced Pages on a stealth account, they cannot be neutral and given our experience, we can't count on all to police themselves on it. The good hand/bad hand policy is weak; it is prohibited only t the extreme. There was a disagreement and edit warring over at WP:SOCK when people tried to expand the definition to include simply having one good guy account and a bad guy account. The way it stands now, that's only prohibited when the secondary account is used "for the purpose of artificially stirring up controversy" or "to engage in disruptive behavior." The pro-puppet lobby, some of them socks themselves participating in the dispute, insisted on the "purpose" limitation and the word "artificially." I'm not sure what the difference is between stirring up an artificial controversy versus a legitimate controversy. The word "artificial" begs the question. Also, it's very hard to prove what anybody's purpose is. Whatever your purpose is, you shouldn't be out on an alternate account causing trouble, or simply to do things you couldn't get away with on your main account. The limited exception, as we've both noted, is privacy: where your actions on the alternate account are sterling, and the added layer of anonymity is needed to protect your off-wiki life from any unfair harm from bigots, stalkers, and the like. It's hard to get a handle on it because we don't have any statistics or surveys of sockpuppets, but from the cases that emerge at AN/I and Arbcom, it looks like quite a few sockuppet accounts are being used in ways that get people upset but do not violate current policy in any obvious or easily detectable way. Wikidemo (talk) 00:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:DEGRADE

Reading some AFDs got me thinking, so I wrote Misplaced Pages:Notability does not degrade over time. Might be insane, but tossing it out for consideration. Is this a lunatic essay, or did I just describe practice that is policy? Lawrence § t/e 08:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's policy that could possibly use some more practice--"notability is not temporary" is part of the notability guideline. --jonny-mt 11:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it does. Just think of all the 1950's slang and cultural phenomenon that now belong on Misplaced Pages...

....oh wait.

A more accurate way of putting it is, "Hindsight is 20/20." Something can gain notability, but there is no trend for things to get notable over time and this is just a silly argument put forth by inclusionists in order to justify flooding Misplaced Pages with the type of nonsense that belongs on Digg and Youtube. To demonstrate hindsight: If the "Where's the Beef?" was invented today and broadcast on TV right now, it would probably be pretty absurd for anybody to make an article about it. Since it was made in the 80's, though, and it's now recognized as such a large cultural icon, in hindsight, we know it was notable. Overall, notability isn't "degrading," it's just that certain things become more notable and it's easier to tell, while certain other things aren't notable. 50 years from now, nobody is going to care about Voltron#Changes from the Japanese_version and nobody should care about it now. The same goes for all the bots spamming Misplaced Pages with obscure content. Because of all of this, every wiki except German Misplaced Pages is degrading over time.

Then there's the lists:

• List of brain tumor patients
• List of the most obese humans
• List of nonviolence scholars and leaders
• List of people
• List of lists
  • (List of lists actually. hydnjo talk 23:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC))

What we need to do is make a list of non-notable lists and delete them, en masse. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 15:21, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Hm, would this list be notable? ;-) --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 20:58, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I was joking, Grey Knight. Also, lol, I was some good rouge admin deleted the List of lists. Good job. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 22:15, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

List of the names of 48,000 Beetle species who do not warrant their own individual articlesWjhonson (talk) 06:03, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the essay is wrong because of a couple of things:

• "...increase or remain steady as time goes by." I think you're intending to discuss only the passage of time related to the /subject/. But /subject/ is not an island to itself. As time goes by, if the field becomes flooded with fifty thousand similar versions of /subject/, it probably reduces the notability of /subject/. Let's say someone builds the first duck blind in Cambodia. Is it notable? Let's say, yes, for its historical import. Is the second one notable? Let's say, yes again, because, hey, it's the second, and thus demonstrates the viability (and maybe notability) of the first. Is the third? Fourth? Fifth? As we get toward the fifty thousandth, it's hard to argue that the 99th is still notable. The notability of the 99th did not "...increase or remain steady as time goes by."

• I think you are probably aiming this essay at notability with regards to the existence of an article. I don't think it applies to the existence of facts in an article about a rather current event. Facts that are notable will get drowned out over time by facts that are more notable as we get the wider view of the event. They have indeed become less notable as time passed by - within the scope of the article, that is. Tempshill (talk) 22:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It's always been done that way...

I've recently been in a few discussions in which this argument has cropped up -- i.e., "there are many other WP articles that do X, so we therefore should continue doing X in this article." I know that this is not considered a sound rationale in and of itself, but I couldn't find where in WP's policies and guidelines it's addressed. Could someone point me to the appropriate page/section? Thanks! Huwmanbeing ☀★ 19:14, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

What about consensus can change? Is that what you mean? Perhaps a more specific example? If you are talking about deletion discussions, for example, WP:AADD is a good resource for rebuttals. Keeper | 76 19:21, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Specifically WP:OTHERSTUFF. Bovlb (talk) 19:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I would say OTHERSTUFF only applies to deletion discussions. I can't think of any relevant guideline or essay that addresses the notion of consistency between related articles, for example. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

If a bunch of other articles do something, and doing so is not actually against a rule, its probably best to keep articles consistent, that's why we have the manual of style and some projects have their own format guidelines, but those don't always cover everything. Unless changing an article to be more consistent with others would actually damage it somehow, I see no reason not to do so. Mr.Z-man 20:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Consensus can always change. In practice, however, most people fail to understand this. See WP:Zombies. You have found a problem, Huwmanbeing, right? Attempt to fix it. I will help you if you need help, but most likely we will be stonewalled. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 22:18, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Getting around stonewalls is simply a matter of applying dispute resolution skills, which begin with not calling other people "zombies", or refering to others' good faith editing as "stonewalling". The most effective way to help get a good edit into an article past opposition is to involve other people, by using such resources as WP:3O and WP:RFC. -GTBacchus 22:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

In reply to the original poster, you don't need a page. The fact that your argument is logical is enough. Just explain why the edit you're trying to make is a good idea, and if someone only answers you by pointing out that other articles are different, ask them why it's better to do it that way, and demand a better answer than "inertia" or "tradition". -GTBacchus 22:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions and good guidance! Fortunately the particular issue I'm dealing with is one of relatively minor significance — it concerns the use of certain census terms in geographic nav boxes, as discussed here, here, and a few other places — and I suspect we'll be able to reach agreement. I was just interested to learn more about this aspect of WP since the "it's like this in lots of other places" argument is being leaned on quite a bit. Huwmanbeing ☀★ 01:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

You might take a look at Misplaced Pages:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#What about article x?. It's about article deletion instead of formatting, but it may have some relevant points. -Freekee (talk) 02:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

"The fact that your argument is logical is enough." No it isn't, because the average page doesn't carry about logic. In response to logic, they'll say, "BUT THE POLICY PAGE SAYS X!" That's why it's so important to have policy pages which make sense and if his argument is logical, I see no reason why anyone should object to him fixing the policy page to address the same problem that several users face: people who use WP:CONSENSUS as an appeal to tradition. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 06:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The solution to that problem is to refrain from rolling over when they do it. Logic is enough, and if people throw readings of policy pages at you, then you need to point them to IAR and repeat your logic. Logic wins. Consensus can change, and if anybody appeals to tradition, you point them to WP:CCC. Wikipedians understand IAR better than you assume they do, Zenwhat. -GTBacchus 04:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

His issue seems to be that there isn't a policy on this. Anyway, we don't rewrite policy every time a new situation arises, we use common sense and leave policy to cover the most common situations and ideal situations. Mr.Z-man 04:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea that logic trumps policy, or the use of IAR for this purpose. Proper change here requires discourse, it isn't an anarchy, it's a discursive democracy. We don't necessarily edit to logic, but rather to consensus. Sometimes editing to logic, leads directly to conflict, which should be avoided when we can. The easiest way to avoid conflict is to discuss the situation with your co-editors. Wjhonson (talk) 05:09, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not any kind of democracy, and it's not an anarchy. If you implement a change, and that leads to conflict, then you need to handle that conflict in a productive manner, i.e., via discourse. That's what WP:BRD is about. A bold edit, that might ignore some rule or another, is a great first step in a productive discourse.

We do edit to logic, but not to a blind logic that disregards other people and other decisions that have been made. We make logical edits, and if people disagree, citing some rule, then we use logic to convince those people that our edits improve the encyclopedia, regardless of what some rule might say. Eventually, the rule changes, because we don't want to mislead other people. -GTBacchus 05:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

There is always conflict on Misplaced Pages. What's important is enabling good-faith editors the ability to make constructive edits. Since Misplaced Pages is not a democracy if more than 50% of people complain loudly about wording policy in a particular way that helps Misplaced Pages based on logic not populism, then they should be ignored. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 05:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy on the neutrality of portals?

I was reading up on LDS/Mormon articles and came across Portal:Latter-day Saints. Frankly, I was surprised it didn't have an NPOV tag as I would expect an article that states "Did you know...that the Book of Mormon is another Testament of Jesus Christ?" to have such, since it conflicts with other articles where that particular sentiment has been removed as non-NPOV. I was reading Book of Mormon and there was a backlink to the portal. So my question is: Are portals considered encyclopaedic or are they "utility pages" similar to talk pages etc.? If they are not supposed to be encyclopaedic, but are collection pages collating information and articles about various topics, should they should not be linked from articles per WP:ASR? And they should be clearly marked as such with a template on the top so readers don't get confused into thinking they follow the standard guidelines? Or if they *are* considered part of the proper Misplaced Pages they should be subject to the same NPOV standards as everything else. Meaning they should not contain anything controversial and if they do, be so marked. In either case, I noted that some recent (now reverted) POV edits (see Talk:Book_of_Mormon) on the BoM page were reflecting the POV expressed on the portal page. So I'd like the portals status to be clarified. TH (talk) 22:53, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Like lists, most people don't worry about portals because they mostly contain just compilations of Misplaced Pages articles rather than original content. The result is that they tend to get low visiblity, so they're of low-quality and dominated by mobs.

Flip on some Bob Dylan, get some rice krispies, and then take a look at Portal:Cannabis.

"duuuude, like welcome to portal cannabis!! here's totally a picture of bob marley, rofl!11"

There's plenty of treasures to be found:

• Portal:Pokémon
• Portal:Halo
• Portal:Pipe organ
• Portal:The Vines
• Portal:Portals

The same rules elsewhere also apply portals, but despite this, portals are like black holes for bad content. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Zenwhat, thanks for that very informative answer. Much appreciated! FWIW, all of the examples that you list (and probably a few hundred more) could do with some extensive work (or AfD if nobody bothers to maintain them). I'm sure it'll be an uphill battle against "Save the Portals" activists if somebody actually started such a review process, though.. so I'll pass on that one. Ideally the portals ought to be marked with some template that they are not an "official" part of the encyclopedia, though. For seasoned wikipedians, the "Portal:" prefix might serve to instill that sentiment but I doubt a casual visitor would spot the significance. TH (talk) 23:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Since portals are meant mostly for readers in the same way that articles are, I think we should handle problems with them in the same way as articles. When a portal is non-neutral, put an {{npov}} tag on it. For what it's worth, I just put {{in-universe}} on the "Did you know?" section of Portal:Halo, as it's asking me whether I knew that certain fictional characters do certain fictional things. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 02:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

A proposed bot (SquelchBot) to automatically revert the addition of certain external links

Please see Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/SquelchBot if you have comments. Thank you, Iamunknown 01:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I strongly recommend folks here take a look. The proposal is reeeeeeeeeally strange. They're proposing an "anti-spam" bot that isn't dealing with spam: it's reverting suspicious links, like blogspot. They say that it won't revert more than once and it won't affect new users -- ohh, unless, of course a handful of select users in an off-wiki IRC issue manual commands. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The bot has been in operation since November 2006. Gracenotes §

Correction: Since 2006, a bot with the same basic source-code was performing a similar but completely different function. The previous bot was anti-spam. This one isn't, though that's what they're saying it is. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 04:18, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Zenwhat, check your facts. its doing the same thing. β 08:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

This bot is a replacement of Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/Shadowbot which was approved and running since November 2006. Was later renamed User:AntiSpamBot.--Hu12 (talk) 13:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Why is this So?

I think it is unfair that while Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. among other pages have links to their related wikia's, whenever I put a link to the Jaguars Wiki on the Jaguars wikipedia page, it is deleted? Why is that? If its against the rules, why do other pages have such links? —Preceding unsigned comment added by LordNyax113 (talk • contribs) 17:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a gray area, but generally links to external wikis (like other external sites) are frowned upon unless A) it's generally recognized as the "best" wiki on the subject on the web and B) it has a rather large user-base to verify its information. Small wikis on niche topics pop up all the time and tend to dwindle to a few editors in short time, leading to possible problems with their accuracy. WP:EL is the main policy here. Just like we don't link to random fansites about subject X, we don't link to random wikis about subject X. -- Kesh (talk) 18:04, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. :) LordNyax113 (talk) 02:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Obama article vandalism study

Regarding Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Vandalism studies/Obama article study: Were any conclusions drawn from this? Tempshill (talk) 22:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I would bring it up on Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Vandalism studies. -- Kesh (talk) 23:09, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm left-wing and I have to say: I think Misplaced Pages does have somewhat of a left-leaning bias when I see studies like this, lol.

Why haven't any other candidates or politicians gotten a similar vandalism study? It can't be because they haven't faced the same amount of vandalism. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 05:03, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

We need to encourage users to think critically

Misplaced Pages policy encourages anti-intellectualism, because it avoids the words "truth," "objectivity," "correct," "factual," "in reality," and other similar synonyms in favor of euphemisms like:

One can think of unbiased writing as the fair, analytical description of all relevant sides of a debate...

...a neutral reader to fairly and equally assess...

We should, both individually and collectively, make an effort to present these conflicting views fairly, without advocating any one of them...

Sometimes, the NPOV is neither fair nor equal. This misunderstanding leads to ridiculous false compromises like the proposal in gun politics to have a section for "liberal statistics" and another section for "conservative statistics." More often than not, this is how Misplaced Pages works. When you have two mobs over an article, both factions will splinter off, with the largest faction defending the main article and the smaller faction splintering off to defend a series of POV forks. So you see the creation of totally unnecessary pages entitled, "Criticism of X," created solely because the polarized mobs couldn't come to a reasonable consensus on the main page.

And in practice, the following cliches are used in an abusive manner:

• Misplaced Pages is about verifiability, not truth = Used as apologetics for uploading nonsense in violation of WP:FRINGE
• Misplaced Pages is about NPOV, not objectivity = Used as apologetics for POV-pushing and for uploading nonsense in violation of WP:FRINGE
• That's just an essay = Apologetics for ignoring WP:BRD, WP:SPA, WP:AAAD, WP:AADD, WP:DTTR and a whole string of important pages
• That's just a guideline = Apologetics for ignoring WP:RS, WP:FRINGE, WP:NONSENSE, and other important guidelines.

When one brings this point up, one is often asked, "Nonsense according to WHOM?" and "Trolling according to WHOM?"

My response: Your point is backed by reason, yes? And it is true, right?

Reason and truth, ACCORDING TO WHOM, eh?

Misplaced Pages is not a garbage dump for your subjective opinions, particularly political and religious, and if you are consciously doing that (POV-pushing\trolling), you should either leave immediately or be blocked. Misplaced Pages is a place for reasonable editors to collaborate rationally and successfully towards creating an encyclopedia.

And so, I propose the following:

That we remove the language of "fairness," and "equality," and so on from WP:NPOV and re-word it to read "objective assessment" which is "based on reason" and "reflective of factual reality." Users who don't believe in this, those who are nihilists, factual relativists, and gonzo journalists don't belong here. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 06:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

A lot of the above is accurate. Some is problematic. First of all, I agree that "that's just an essay" and "that's just a guideline" are silly arguments. The argument being advanced is a good argument or it isn't, and the official status of some page doesn't change that.

On the other hand, it is never helpful to call other users "trolls". There is no situation in which that is the best or most useful thing to do. It creates drama, it distracts from the task at hand, and it gives your opponent openings to play a host of cards against you. It's also embarrassing when you turn out to be wrong.

Regarding "objective," "factual assessment," "based on reason,"... who do you propose gets to decide what is or is not factual, objective, reasonable, etc? How, in practice, do we distinguish the person with reason on their side from the other guy? What if some reasonable, intelligent people are convinced one way, and some reasonable, intelligent people are convinced the other way? Then who are the objective ones, and who are the fools? You're arguing for something that sounds good, but I'm not sure what it represents in practice.

What we currently do in practice is trust consensus to make the most reasonable, objective choices in the long run, and to do the best we can in the short run. This state of affairs might not be very accurately conveyed by our written policies, but I'm pretty sure it's how Misplaced Pages's been working. -GTBacchus 06:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any proposals how we could word some of that into policy? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 07:41, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Notability (fiction)

The guidance at Misplaced Pages:Notability (fiction) has been rewritten after extensive discussion on the talk page. Editors not involved or aware are invited to review the rewrite, edit it and (of course) comment on the talk page. The version at represented the broad consensus of participants so far. Hiding T 11:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

New Forms of Notability?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Sockpuppetry
• Systemic bias
• Cabals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spam-Blacklist

We have a page for requesting additions or removals from the spam blacklist. The page has a brief heading regarding itself. But is there a policy page that address, in more full detail, how this process is supposed to work? Thanks. Wjhonson (talk) 21:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

If you're proposing we create an article entitled, "Why was my spam-link blacklisted? ASDFASRASEFASDF" I'd have to oppose that proposal, Wjhonson, for promoting wikilawyering. The brief summary of criteria works well enough. If we create an article more in detail, the community would probably churn out an article which, like many other policy pages, negates itself through ambiguity of language, which spammers could then use to say, "You can't do this, because the detailed explanation on WP:Spamlist policy says, 'X'!"

Could you cite anything, in particular, which isn't covered by the summary or any examples of confused users? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 01:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy page? I don't think so, it's a process just like complaining on WP:AN/I is. Basically, you add a new heading on the talk page for addition or removal, cite why, and then one of the Administrators who monitor that page will reason and then accept or decline the request. It's about as complicated as filing a 3RR report, I think. x42bn6 Talk Mess 01:31, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure, the situation is, an admin with what I see as a possible conflict-of-interest as the creator of a BLP-article, blacklisted a site which was critical of the subject of the BLP. The admin has consistently attacked the site-he-blacklisted with all manners of derogatory remarks, without so-far showing any evidence to back up his assertions. I have requested such evidence several times, without result. I have pointed out that even if a site was once blacklisted, consensus can change, and we are a discursive democracy. However the admin in question appears to believe that the blacklist site is immune from discussion and once-done-always-done in violation imho of the blacklist page itself which states that sites may be removed. I want to open the issue to wider community input, so the community can discuss the removal process. So, I could create an article at RfC/U or suggest mediation, but I was just wondering if there might be another avenue. I have already followed the prior steps in dispute resolution, but the dispute remains.Wjhonson (talk) 04:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The site in question, and the reason for Wjhonson's inquirey is based on this blacklisting of a attack site. Criticism, as claimed by Wjhonson, of the subject of the BLP's was not the reason for the blacklisting. This site contained an entire page devoted to outing various editors ("Misplaced Pages.htm" located at unrealroyal.com/page_1199151805093.html) in an attempt to identify and harass several Misplaced Pages users. Misplaced Pages:No Personal Attacks and Misplaced Pages:Harassment apply to any kind of attack or harassment in any context. see also WP:NPA#Off-wiki_personal_attacks and Misplaced Pages:Harassment#Off-wiki_harassment. Linking to off-site harassment, attacks, or privacy violations against Wikipedians for the purpose of attacking another or multiple Wikipedians has never been acceptable on wikipedia. Websites outside Misplaced Pages that are used to facilitate, promote, or encourage the harassment of individual Misplaced Pages editors and those who choose to edit the encyclopedia is a serious matter, as evidenced by ArbCom rulings.

Consensus was achieved by multiple admins in the first request for removal, yet in pursuit of a certain point, despite that concensus, Wjhonson re-requested within 3 days of the other request being declined. This type of tendentious re-request is normamaly unusual, however it was uncovered there was a larger purpose at play. It was uncovered that Wjhonson was acting in a Meatpuppet capacity for the purpose of influencing the blacklisting, shows of support and for performing reverts and edits related to the interests of the site owner of unrealroyal.com. See here.

"You solicited to the owner of unrealroyal,(MAR), on groups.google.com, in a thead entiltled Misplaced Pages is exceeding its own record of stupidity "By the way MAR, if there is something in particular about that article to which you object, let me know. I'm not adverse to battling it out on Misplaced Pages.", which clearly demonstrates your intent to misuse wikipedia. Of course MAR replies to your offer by linking direcly to the article, my userpage and the blacklist."

This ongoing "forum shopping" is continued evidence he is infact following through with his off wiki threat to "battle it out" by using wikipedia as a battleground and foregoing aims of Misplaced Pages in order to advance outside interests. Reinforcing that Wjhonson states himself that "I don't think the argument of citing your article however will win" ....the site owner himself states..."I actually *agree* that under the policy, my site should not be used as a citation or reference" , conclusively there is no valid reason for its removal, or reason for Wjhonson pursuing this matter except to WP:DISRUPT Misplaced Pages to illustrate a point.--Hu12 (talk) 06:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The entire statement by HU12 above is incorrect. And this board is not the place to have it as you know. Hu12 you have made it quite clear that you will, never consider removing any site from the blacklist that you personally don't approve. That approach is anti-project, it flies in the face of the entire consensus system that we here have. Hu12 continues to repeat this same old story that is without merit or evidence. The blacklist is not the place for sites with which you have a content issue. It is for sites which are spamming the encyclopedia. I have already requested Hu12 is use the dispute resolution procedures and so far have received so satisfactory response. Contary to the above argument it is rather Hu12 who is attempting to disrupt the project to prove a point, the point evidently is that Hu12 controls the blacklist for better or worse and consensus is ignored. Consensus can and has changed, the original blacklist was based on false information, no evidence, and word-of-mouth without verification. Hu12 I asked you again here to proceed with dispute resolution instead of continuing to wage this disruptive war against consensus. Wjhonson (talk) 09:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Hu12 created the article on David Howe the King of Man and so Hu12 has either a real or perceived ownership and perhaps conflict-of-interest in being the admin who refuses to allow the criticism site to be unblacklisted. Repeated requests to Hu12 to show any evidence whatsoever that the site in question falls under any blacklist category we have, have met with the same above stonewalling, and redirection using wikilawyering attacks on me. Although Hu12 continues to thrust out this argument that the site was doing x y and z, he refuses to provide any evidence that an independent editor can review. Hu12 has no evidence, he is blacklisting the site simply because it criticizes an article he wrote. When I've attempted to follow the dispute resolution procedure we have, Hu12 ignores my requests, attacks my ethics and maligns my character. This is disruption and anti-project. In addition, contrary to Mongo, this ArbCom ruling takes precendence. A careful reading shows that websites criticizing articles are not covered. When that article is a BLP, a website critizing the person is the same as one criticizing the article.Wjhonson (talk) 09:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

You see the problem above. Hu12 and I are diametrically-opposed and cannot seem to form any consensus. So... where do we go from here?Wjhonson (talk) 09:39, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

• Call a truce. Leave it alone. Wait a while and see if the situation has changed. Or go to arbitration. Hiding T 10:51, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the link and defered it to User:SquelchBot for monitoring (even with the attack page removed, there is no assurence against its return and is still unsuitable as a link for BLP and reliable source reasons). This, however, does not excuse Wjhonson's behavior in manipulating Misplaced Pages in order to advance outside interests by acting in a capacity for the purpose of influencing, shows of support and for performing reverts and edits for the site owner of unrealroyal.com. Although his behaviour is clear misuse of wikipedia and disruptive, I'll leave it to some other admin to propose sanctions. thanks.--Hu12 (talk) 11:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

No one has ever said that it is suitable as a reliable source, I completely dispute that it fails BLP. Criticism of public figures is perfectly acceptable and if those people happen to also be Wikipedians they are not exempted from the standard of being able to be criticized in their public presentation. As far as manipulating for ulterior reasons, I think we'll invoke pot-calling-the-kettle-black here. I see no high horse in this area. I have never, contrary to your unsupported assertion, made any edits or reverts "for the site owner of unrealroyal.com". I have, in fact, made edits from my own knowledge and position and experience. The fact that I agree with someone else, does not make me a meatpuppet. As anyone can see, I have thousands of edits, your misbehaviour in this constant harrassment of my ethics, doesn't present you in any favourable light my friend. From the beginning of this sorry episode you have been ignoring the assumption of good faith. That is an anti-project attitude, we are a discursive democracy, and we solve problems by consensus, not force. As far as disruptive, any editor can see your clear conflict-of-interest as the original creator of the article that was criticized, then using your admin bit to silence dissenters. There have been many previous ArbCom's on this very issue. As you well know. Wjhonson (talk) 20:18, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Does that draw a line under it now? Hiding T 14:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Enquiring Minds Want to Know

It is bad enough that schoolteachers are banning Misplaced Pages for students to use in research. Is that not enough humiliation? Is that not sufficient indication that standards around here have fallen? After all, the requirements of academic rigor required of a high school student are hardly so demanding. Can this project not clear even that bar? I say nothing of the scorn heaped upon it at the university level.

Now I see TomKat -- and as I dare to search, dozens of similarly insignificant bits of tabloid trash. There is, charmingly, an entire Category:Celebrity duos and indeed a List of supercouples. Has this editing body lost all control?

I see that the latter page attempts to justify itself by stating, Each of these examples has been identified by scholars, critics and press as defining a supercouple. What nonsense is this? If we accredit yellow journalism then we need an article about the night Aliens landed in my back yard and stuck a robot cattle prod up my butt. If we consider a reliable source some mortarboarded fool attempting to fatten his resume with a pointless, inflated regurgitation of the tabloid line, then we must write Conspiracy of all them guys against all of us -- and there's not a moment to lose.

Laurel and Hardy are notable; together they were iconic. Penn & Teller are notable; one has no patter and one has no slight but together they make a fine, entertaining magician. Simon and Garfunkel are notable; they set the tone for a generation and while both have had moderate solo careers, it is the couple that will be remembered. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes together have opened no doors. They have not even worked together, that I know. They have merely gotten a license to have sex. I doubt their closest friends consider it of enduring importance.

Please stop a moment and think. Return to basics. This is purported to be an encyclopedia; community policy states it is NOT a random collection of facts, much less "factoids". For something to be notable, it must be in some way unusual or distinguished. I stubbed my toe today getting out of bed; it is not notable. Perhaps Queen Elizabeth stubbed her toe -- but even if the fact makes it into her article, there is no place here for Queen Elizabeth's toe, stubbed on Guy Fawkes Night.

Cruise and Holmes both may be encyclopedic topics and their marriage and offspring may be worthy of inclusion in their individual articles. Cruise's lack of self-control and his bizarre choice of cult are certainly proper topics for his article. But notability is not inheritable; their marriage itself is insignificant; it has produced nothing of importance bar an utterly ordinary child.

In a month or a year, the spotlight will wane and the couple grow bored and hungry for yet more undeserved attention. They will divorce and then hook up with other B-listers. Those relationships will end and the game of musical beds continue. It will be impossible to find anyone in ten years who is even able to define the term "TomKat" apart from male feline, misspelled. Meantime, the bulb will flash on each new pairing, inventing cute labels and spurious justifications for the glurge lavished. Must this project be cluttered with such trash? I caution that the potential number of "couple" articles for N celebrities equals (N-1)!; they could not be written in polynomial time.

I certainly feel that the vicious cycle of media adulation is an encyclopedic topic. I'd like to know what experts have learned, or merely speculate, that drives otherwise rational human beings at the checkout stand to pay good money for stuff unfit to line a bird cage. I'd welcome a discussion of the social forces that deflect journalism from its divine mission to expose the truth -- onto the absurd toadying exemplified by these empty paparazzi who desire to create from two celebrities, a third. But what they pretend to do, they have not done. There are still only two items of note here, Cruise and Holmes. There is not a third, two-headed glitteratus. There is merely an excuse to write empty prose and publish empty photos, an excuse as thin as the cheap stuff on which it is printed. Nothing exists upon which to write an encyclopedic article. To see Misplaced Pages join the howling idiots is an embarrassment which mocks the good work done elsewhere in the project.

Perhaps I ought not care. I concluded long ago that this community had developed into a behavioral sink, that there was no hope of rescue from the muck. I still use the resource; I dig past the nonsense and cruft to find knowledge or at least amusement. But it gets harder every day to find value here.

I say Misplaced Pages has become a running joke, staple of every comedy writer out of ideas, foolishness for fools. I say it should abandon all serious articles and concentrate on pop and drivel -- its area of expertise.

Prove me wrong. — Xiong熊talk* 13:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Its not like we're deleting articles about math and science to make room on the servers for pop culture. People contribute what they know and enjoy writing about, which unfortunately leads to systemic bias toward some topics. Should we ban them for not being encyclopedic enough or force them to write about other topics? Remember that we're all volunteers and nobody's forcing people to read articles about certain topics. Mr.Z-man 18:56, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:TANK may be appropriate here. superluser_tc 2008 January 31, 19:40 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether you make room for it not, because Misplaced Pages's integrity is determined by the website in full and select pages of high quality can't be isolated if the whole thing is going to be packed under one name and one site. Inclusionism is nonsense. In the extreme, radical inclusionism would support allowing people to upload spam and blatant hoaxes. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 21:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It does. (Robby Todino, IP over Avian Carriers) superluser_tc 2008 February 01, 02:16 (UTC)

Her majesty wouldn't stub her toe, she'd get a servant to do it for her :p --Alf 15:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:METOO

I'm guessing I'm not the first to raise this, but could not find anything related with a search so decided to bug this page.. sorry..

I keep on seeing paragraphs in articles where there has been a steady drip of people adding their favourite widget to the end of the list.. For instance, if there was an article on the 'X key' I bet it would only take a short time before a succession of people add 'The X key is also present on BlackBerries, OSX, Devorak, my forehead' etc...

The general policies should be sufficient for people to realise this is not really the most productive way to contribute to Misplaced Pages, but I understand the temptation, indeed I have probably been guilty of it myself in the past.

What I was wondering about was if there should be a policy statement about this, and a tag that can be easily used to both mark any sections where this is excessive, and to make it easier for anybody reworking such a 'list' to explain why they have not included every possible example. As an example it was seeing the 'list' in the initial section of OpenEXR that got me thinking about this again. EasyTarget (talk) 14:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

For OpenEXR, I've moved the list out of the lead section to the "History" section. But since the list is in sentence format, is only a paragraph or so, and consists mostly of wikilinks to other articles, I think it's fine to keep as is.

More generally, the policies WP:NOT (Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collector of information) and WP:NPOV (don't give undue space and weight to minor/trivial things) cover this well enough, I think.

As for preventing people from adding more information, two thoughts - first, any limit should be based on something more than just keeping initial postings and preventing later examples; so, for example, "Was first present on the BlackBerry" or "became common when it was added to X, Y, and Z"; second, once a criteria has been set, put an invisible comment in the text telling editors what the criteria is and asking them not to add items not meeting the criteria. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Blacklist of digitpress

Being a senior editor, I feel stupid for asking this, but what's the deal with blacklisted URLs? I have a site as a reference for an article that been blacklisted, apparently for being spam. The link is to an interview and doesn't have any ads or other spam material (and the interview doesn't exist anywhere else but the one site). What can I do about it? Looking in the blacklist archives was inconclusive. I couldn't find a justification for banning the site. Thanks! — Frecklefσσt | Talk 15:57, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

If you feel a link should not be blacklisted, list it at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#Proposed removals. Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Might have been blacklisted on the meta level. Whats the site?, I'll track it down.--Hu12 (talk) 16:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The site is digitpress.com. I don't know much about the site, but I was linking to an interview there as a reference (I tried inserting it here, but the blacklist prevented it!). Thanks! — Frecklefσσt | Talk 20:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about the site - you apparently haven't verified it before complaining about it being blacklisted? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 21:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I visited the site, and saw that its a video game review site (the interview in question was with Bob Whitehead, an early video game programmer). I didn't see any ads or pop-ups, so am curious as to why it was blacklisted (but I run Firefox with AdBlock, it might've had ads that were hidden from me). When I said I didn't know much about it, I meant I don't know who runs it, its history, its reputation or why its blacklisted. Golly, I'll be more specific next time! — Frecklefσσt | Talk 21:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

See MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/February 2008#www.digitpress.com_repeated_spam_on_Wikipedia Bluap (talk) 21:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm also concerned that, after visiting the list of links, it would appear these links to Video Game reviews, are being added to articles about... Video Games. I don't see why that would be so inappropriate as to require a blacklisting. Perhaps someone can enlighten me there. If links on Video Games, were being added to articles about Guam or French fries I could see how it would be spam. If spam is now to be considered not appropriate for Wiki, then what is the purpose of the reliable soruces noticeboard?Wjhonson (talk) 22:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course the links are relevant to the topics, it would be pretty crappy spamming if they weren't related at all. We restrict links to those that are "are most meritable, accessible and relevant to the article." There's no need to list every video game site on every video game article. The links were also being added by multiple single purpose sockpuppet accounts over an extended period of time. The site was not being used as a source, it was just being added to the external links section of multiple articles. Spam is links added repeatedly and/or to multiple articles, not explicitly used as a source, and for promotion. Mr.Z-man 23:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Reading over various pages, on Spam and the blacklist, there appears to be a great deal of confusion regarding the situation. I've started an article here to discuss it. When you go to the blacklist Talk and it really has no information which can serve to determine the appropriateness of an addition, then the situation is being left open to individual interpretation instead of community consensus. Hopefully an in-depth discussion of the issues will elicit the community's consensual view. Wjhonson (talk) 23:38, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

But per your above, I'm not quite sure that using the blacklist as a way of preventing article-specific-links is an appropriate use. Whether or not those links are meritable or useful is a decision involving the community of editors, and should be left open to the editors who watch those pages. This is the standard way we deal with links to unreliable sources. Blacklisting these links apparently is serving to create antagonistic editors.Wjhonson (talk) 23:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes a website gets on the blacklist due to past spamming behavior by aggressive editors. This may result in us losing the benefit of a site that might have value under some conditions. Regarding digitpress.com, there is quite a docket of past misbehavior:

• Misplaced Pages:Suspected_sock_puppets/Tube_bar
• MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/February 2008#www.digitpress.com_repeated_spam_on_Wikipedia
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Blacklist.3F

The above SSP page documents a discussion on the digitpress.com forum in which the editor known here as Tube bar seemed to be planning a campaign on Misplaced Pages. Please take a look at the above records of spam activity to see if you would still argue that Digital Press deserves future consideration as a target for good-faith links. EdJohnston (talk)

Conversely, when a specific link is needed as a citation from a blacklisted site, the MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist can be used in cases where the url is demonstrated as a source (in an appropriate context) when there are no reasonable alternatives available.--Hu12 (talk) 04:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I'll look at the whitelist link. Something must've happened between the time users above posted the link to MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#www.digitpress.com_repeated_spam_on_Wikipedia and now. It isn't working anymore. — Frecklefσσt | Talk 15:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It has been archived. The new location is MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/February 2008#www.digitpress.com repeated spam on Misplaced Pages. EdJohnston (talk) 16:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Update Hu12 whitelisted it for me. Thanks for all the help! — Frecklefσσt | Talk 16:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Fiction-related noticeboard

As part of the rewrite of WP:FICT, we have created a Fiction-related noticeboard to assist with helping with content issues regarding fiction topics. (Even if the WP:FICT proposal doesn't stick, I think this noticeboard will remain since it's still a good idea and hopefully will help reduce the stress on AfDs.) --MASEM 16:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Be nice has been marked as a guideline

Misplaced Pages:Be nice (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change. -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)\

It's been changed back to an essay (by another editor), something I personally agree with. This is a page that has all of nine edits as of now. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Some thoughts on categories

Our category system is a mess. What my thoughts for improving it are fairly simple. Apply all categories that apply. If its about a german doctor, the article should be three categories, Germans, Doctors, and German Doctors. Where German Doctors is a subcat of Doctors. it would make working with categories simpler and help avoid categorie loops. (it would also need a bugzilla request so that all sub cats appear on the first listings of a category page.) thoughts? β 16:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• Um. How would you categorise George H. W. Bush? Presidents, The United States, Presidents of the United States, 1924, births, 1924 births, American, anti-communists, American anti-communists, businesspeople, American businesspeople, Episcopalians, American Episcopalians, humanitarians, American humanitarians, military personnel, military personnel of World War II, World War II, American military personnel of World War II, pilots, American World War II pilots, Bonesmen, Bush family, Cold War, leaders, Cold War leaders, Directors, Central Intelligence Agency, Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, George H.W. Bush, Knights, Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, Living people, Members of the United States House of Representatives, Texas, Members of the United States House of Representatives from Texas, Parents, Parents of Presidents of the United States, Connecticut, People from Greenwich, Connecticut, Maine, People from Maine, Midland, Texas, People from Midland, Texas, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, People from Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Phillips Academy, Alumni, Phillips Academy alumni, US Distinguished Flying Cross, Recipients of US Distinguished Flying Cross, Republican National Committee, Chairmen, Republican National Committee chairmen, Republican Party (United States), Republican Party (United States) presidential nominees, Republican Party (United States) vice presidential nominees, Shot-down, Aviators, Shot-down aviators, Texas Republicans, Time magazine, Time magazine Persons of the Year, Ambassadors, ambassadors to the United Nations, United Nations, United States ambassadors to the United Nations, Navy, United States naval aviators, Officers, United States Navy officers, Presidential candidates, 1988, United States presidential candidates, 1988, Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents of the United States? Hiding T 17:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

there would to be a little more care, but Ambassadors, ambassadors to the United Nations is a good example. Some of the extreamly broad categories should be avoided. β 18:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I think we discussed something like this before. Hang on. Hiding T 18:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I never quite understood what got worked up at Misplaced Pages:Category intersection but is that something similar? I remember asking ages ago if we could use the tagging system del.icio.us used and was told we did. Nearly. Hiding T 19:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hiding what I am thinking is have the two types of categories on the same article. (From the page you linked). β 19:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

How would Ambassadors be avoided as too broad but doctors be ok? I know there are problems with the category system, but exactly what problem are you attempting to fix? "It's a mess" isn't exactly specific; it sounds almost like you have a solution in search of a problem. --Kbdank71 19:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Kbdank71, that was a grammer mistake. β 19:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

As for the mess I was talking about, I regularly see loops in the category structure, along with problems navigating the category system. there are a lot of times where your looking for an article but its placed in some random intersection category without being in a primary category also. β 19:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that is a problem, but I'm not sure what the fix is. For example, there is nothing stopping anyone right now from fixing any categories that loop like that, and no changes in category policy will prevent someone from mistakenly categorizing an article improperly. --Kbdank71 19:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

By fully populating Primary categories it elimantes the need to use subcats for bot work, and increases the navigation of categories. if we know John Doe is a doctor, but not a german doctor, we can use the Doctor category. instead of hunting through the nationality sub categories looking for the guy. that way if by chance he is in the wrong sub category, you dont have to hunt for an hour looking through each one. β 20:03, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

And I think a clump of links separated by pipes is aesthetically displeasing; is anything ever going to be done about how that looks? x42bn6 Talk Mess 18:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Guyz tis discussion is not policy related. Pls use the proposals section WP:VPR and read the proposals to avoid duplication of topic. --WonderingAngel-aesc78 (talk) 19:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Verifiable references.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COPYVIOS?! - Copyright clarification needed for fictional timelines - COPYVIOS?!

Please take a look at Back to the future timeline. Is it a derivative work? If so, it's a copyright violation, and needs to be speedy deleted. The timeline appears to be the presentation of background material for the fictional universe. That is, it seems like Back to the Future content itself - is this timeline itself a work of Back to the Future fiction? The right to derive new works from existing ones is reserved for the copyright owner of the original works. I think we may have stepped on some toes here.

The reason I'm posting this here is because this issue will also affect most if not all of the timelines on the List of fictional timelines, and warrants wider input.

The Transhumanist 23:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)