Misplaced Pages

The core issue is conflict of interest. And getting paid to edit something certainly creates a problem in that respect. What are the chances of it being NPOV and including alternate perspectives when it's being done under contract? Just look at the puffery that passes for polical articles when they're edited by partisan supporters and compare it to the hit pieces for figures that aren't popular with the Misplaced Pages set. NPOV is a core policy and it should always be encouraged. Paid editing is not consistent with the values espoused in this policy. ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The same could be said about "editing by fans of the topic", "editing by opponents of the topic", and so on. Just as a fan, opponent, etc can write an NPOV article if they are careful, a paid editor could do the same. Which is why WP:COI doesn't forbid COI edits, it just strongly warns about NPOV and gives advice on how to avoid problems. Anomie⚔ 17:01, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Internal links in footnoted references

Looking through FAs, there doesn't seem to be any common way to handle internal linking in footnotes, the most part are publishers and authors. Most articles are incoherent, with certain publishers linked, others not, and authors most often unlinked; while some at every instance. The general guideline on linking, Misplaced Pages:Linking, doesn't discuss this case, I suppose there aren't any guideline on this ? So how do you feel about this ? My preference would be to link any relevant link (of any type, not only publishers and authors) for the first time they appear in a footnoted reference. As it's a different part of the article, not the main body, the existence of the same link in the body shouldn't have impact, but for similar reasons to the article body, linking repeatedly the same item isn't necessary. Cenarium (talk) 02:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia (talk · contribs) would probably be able to explain that. –Juliancolton |  05:11, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

As a general rule, I only link authors in the references. I haven't yet seen that linking publishers adds much to the understanding of the reader, but if someone links publishers on an article I've got watchlisted, I won't unlink either. As for linking terms in other things, my understanding is that, just like we should avoid linking terms in direct quotations, I avoid linking terms in the titles of books/articles/etc. But this is just my practice, others do differently. --Ealdgyth - Talk 15:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't link terms in a title too, I meant for example locations (Geographical place of publication), they appear from time to time, and when it's part of a larger work, that work. As for publishers, some are often very topical to the subject, and would provide relevant information to the reader. On the other hand, some are very general, but which are relevant or less may be difficult to decide in certain cases, so the easiest way is to link them all at the first instance in footnotes. Cenarium (talk) 16:19, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I usually link journal titles when we have an article for the journal, authors as well (but less often). I think redlinks are a big no-no in reference sections. But I agree with all the above that practice varies. Physchim62 (talk) 16:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I would think that internal linking of publishers would only make it more confusing for the reader to click on the hyperlink to the article or book. If there is no url, I don't think it would do any harm to link it, but then you run into a consistency issue. So, I'd say, don't link publisher names in footnotes. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:36, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I pretty much always link publications in {{cite web}}, mostly because with web sites I think it's best to have a page that allows readers to garner a more informed opinion about the site. Web doesn't have the prestige of print, after all. I do the same in {{cite news}} for plain consistency. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 21:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

As I'm involved with WP:JOURNALS I try to link journals every time I see them. Proc. Roy. Soc. London A vs. Proc. Roy. Soc. London A, or PRL vs Physical Review Letters (possibly piped as PRL or Phys. Rev. Lett.). This way, you don't have to figure out what the abbreviation means, and resolves ambiguities such as Phys. Rev. Lett. meaning Physics Review Letters or Physical Review Letters. It's also a fantastic way to get people to write articles about these journals, and helps to establish if the cited work meets WP:RS. I do the same for publishers. Some discretion is applied when linking truely non-notable organizations or journals. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb, are you saying that if an article has 5 refs to PRSA, you would link it in every individual one of them? My own feeling is that it should be linked only if the journal name is written in the text, not merely the footnote? DGG (talk) 04:31, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It's what I'm currently doing. I don't ever recall meeting resistance on bluelinks (although redlinks made some people twitch). The idea behind it (well at least behind my actions, can't speak for others) is that when I'm reading something, and click on say ref#73, I want the link there. If it's also linked at ref#24, it's of no use to me (or at least its a hassle to check if the link is present in one of the 72 refs that comes before ref#73).Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I strongly support adding links to all journal titles. Where this would introduce redlinks to featured content, we could add a subpage to WP:JOURNALS where FA editors give the name of the Misplaced Pages article and name of the journal, and WP:JOURNALS collaborates to create the stubs and add the blue link.

I think each footnote should stand on its own while the article is being brought up to FA level, but after that point the overlinking should be trimmed. My rationale is that prior to FA, cites are moving around a lot, and it is easier if citations are self-contained. I guess bots could help manage the journal title linkage to reduce overlinking, but we could also update {{cite}} so that links within the citation are linked but don't exhibit the visible properties of a link, such as underscore and blue. That way the link is there for editors, but not distracting for readers. John Vandenberg 04:59, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

There a bot compilation coming up (although it is not centered on FAs, it will allow the identification of the most popular missing journal articles). Also that "solution" is way to complex to be implemented or enforced. Bluelinks/redlinks are not that evil, especially in footnotes. No one reads footnotes for their litterary value. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:29, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I think external links are sufficiently visible over internal links, with the font difference and the arrows, so it's not a problem imo. I'd argue that journals can be very relevant to the topic at hand, when they are speciailized in the subject matter or made substantial contributions to it, it's important to link them. It's also a form of credit, and same goes for authors of course. Many authors are scarcely linked, their articles would probably benefit in being linked in references. And as pointed out, if one reads a reference, it's that you're interested in the source, thus in the authors, journals, and publishers to a lesser extent as well. Cenarium (talk) 15:23, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

For hand-coded references which don't use any template formatting, I don't see the value of linking more than once to any single term in the footnotes/references section. Articles from The New York Times, for instance, need not be linked to that newspaper a dozen times in the same article. It can steal focus from the reference URL, if present. In many cases, clicking on the main URL will take the reader to a page that lists publisher or author.

Unlike Ealdgyth, I'll link terms in a quote if their meaning in context is not entirely clear to a reader unfamiliar with the topic. For instance, I linked the word "exec" in a direct quote, so people with no military knowledge can follow along. Binksternet (talk) 15:35, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Theology

Most of my contributions are in the area of philosophy and medievalism. I wrote all of Medieval_philosophy from scratch. I never finished it and never bothered to submit to GA or FA because it seems an awful destructive process. I get even more depressed when I see Theology. What a mess. How could any work that pretends to be an encyclopedia have such an abomination? Tags everywhere, the footnotes are actually longer than the article. Half the paragraphs are just lists. Peter Damian (talk) 21:02, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

There have been lots of discussions about how some of the top-level articles (and indeed top importance) go neglected while people work on sub articles. The problem is that it's a Herculean effort to work on these major articles and many of them would take weeks of research by a collaboration of editors. It's difficult to wrangle all those people into a concerted effort. When and if they get to the GA or FA processes, they are given extra scrutiny because of how broad the topic is. I'm sorry that your opinion of the FA process is that it's destructive. It's not supposed to be! I'd love to see some philosophy and medievalism articles there. If you want to put together a collaboration to work on Theology, feel free to call on me for editing or whatever I can do. --Laser brain (talk) 21:11, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer. More generally, I would like to see some guidelines developed about approaching 'big' subjects (sample list below). One guide I always use is that the Misplaced Pages introduction to any such subject should not be a million miles different from how any other standard recognised secondary or tertiary source approaches the same subject. I.e. if I were to list the introductions of 10 reference works, including Misplaced Pages, it should not be possible to discern the Misplaced Pages one. Currently this is far from the case, and it is amazing how much resistance you meet when you suggest it. Mostly because the 'characters' that inhabit these pages have some very fixed and idiosyncratic and usually personal views about what these subjects really are, and they feel that Britannica or Columbia or other common reference source has got it wrong, and this is their chance to put it right. If there were a policy page one could point to, that would be a great help.

WP:LEAD is slightly helpful, but more work needs to be done for the 'big' topics. The problem with these topics is that they are, well, generally very large and have a lot of history attached and have to be approached with generality, which is difficult. E.g. Space for example, goes straight in to the Islamic view of space, without even mention the considerable work done by the Greeks. The introductory definition 'Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction.' is also quite strange.

• History
• Geography
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Time
• Life
• Existence
• Space
• Philosophy
• Theology
• Law

Peter Damian (talk) 09:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

To some degree, we might point to Misplaced Pages:Summary style, which specifies that any article should essentially be a summary of its subtopics. One benefit we would have with these broad topics is that if their subtopics are reasonably referenced, we need not duplicate those references in the main article. I can see writing all those above as broad overviews and introductions only, giving enough information so readers can discover which subtopics they wish to explore. I concur that they should be similar in scope to other encyclopedias. --Laser brain (talk) 14:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I think one problem with these articles is that everyone thinks they have an opinion on the definition of each of these topics! I could give you several of my definitions of "chemistry", which are (quite rightly) not included in the article! I can also point you the the FAC for chemistry. Most of the articles you cite have free standing WikiProjects devoted to the subject area, which would indicate that we have editors who know the main arguments. The GA/FA route seems a bad way to improve them, as that would leave the judgment in the hands of editors who (for the most part) don't have a clue what they're talking about, other than their vague memories from high school. Perhaps you should team up with WP:VITAL to see if we can get a general community push to improve these wide-ranging articles (there are many more than you cite). Physchim62 (talk) 15:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

And if you left these articles solely in the hands of subject matter experts, you would end up with a quite interesting article, I'm sure, that no one save experts can read. It's important to get feedback from people with all kinds of backgrounds in order to make sure the article works on multiple levels, rather than risk creating walled gardens. That doesn't mean they have to go through GA/FAC, but at least they are a venue for attracting uninvolved editors on "neutral ground", so to speak. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 15:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Subject matter experts can often write in a way that is difficult to understand. That does not mean that non-SME's are automatically able to write in a way that is crystal clear.

Take e.g. the opening to Space. "Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent ...". But extension is space, so the definition is entirely circular (as someone else has already commented on the talk page). It continues "The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the universe although disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework." This was clearly not written by an SME, who would have been careful not to put this word-salad into an introduction for beginners. Entity? Conceptual framework? What? The rest of the introduction is gobbledygook, plus a few straightforward grammatical errors to boot. And this is not because a non-expert wrote it. Peter Damian (talk) 17:18, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Or another example: We have an atrocious article Boolean logic, full of bullshit, written by a non-SME who believes he is an expert because he has taught the material in a school. Vaughan Pratt has three times rewritten the article as something that makes sense but is not sufficiently accessible. His attempts got better over time, but each time the owner of the atrocious article came back after a while and resurrected it as a POV fork. Vaughan Pratt's articles are at Boolean algebras canonically defined, Boolean algebra (logic) and Boolean algebra (introduction). This is the reason for the absurd disambiguation page Boolean algebra. Hans Adler 17:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

That's interesting. I note immediately that it satisfies Damian's law. This is the principle that people who don't know what they are talking about generally express themselves in unclear and clumsy ways and generally write badly in ways that are detectable to someone who is not an expert in the subject in question. The giveaway is the opening sentences "Boolean logic is a complete system for logical operations. It is used in countless systems.". I don't know anything about Boolean logic but the phrasing alone suggests that something is badly wrong. By contrast, the opening of Boolean algebras canonically defined seems perfectly well-written. The rule is not infallible, but is rarely wrong. Boolean algebra (logic) is quite well done also. Why am I saying this? Well, it is to prove that issues of content can be decided by non-experts. Peter Damian (talk) 18:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

My point wasn't to smack experts or the writing of said experts, I'm just saying that a couple fresh eyes almost always helps improve the article. It's the reason why WikiProject Video Games partners with WikiProject Military History for partnered peer reviews. I've often found MILHIST article leads rather confusing, and the MILHIST chaps are able to pinpoint parts of gameplay in video games that non-players would get mired in. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 18:44, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree. So long as the non-experts don't insist, for instance, that loads of unrelated stuff must absolutely be treated in the article because they feel it's somehow the same thing, their help is vital for improving our more technical articles. In most cases only silly non-experts are a problem. --Hans Adler 19:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I was once involved with the initial effort to write top level articles for a competitive encyclopedia. My experience there was that experts are generally not good people to write articles of this nature & the experience in dealing with their attempts was so unpleasant I have rarely revisited that project. True, experts sometimes "write" good textbooks--but this is because of the extensive work done on them by professional editors in the true sense of the word, generalists with subject literacy who know how to express things clearly. There have been a few people in history who can do both. We would be extraordinarily lucky if there were such a person here, though perhaps one or two such people have sometimes edited inconspicuously. DGG (talk) 04:27, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I had also noted this tendency, that articles on general or broad subjects are often neglected. They have different aspects, so knowledge in various fields is needed, which requires more collaborative efforts, and it's particularly difficult to find the proper balance in the description of those aspects. A high level of summary style is needed, and what is to be included is often difficult to determine. Thus many such articles are small or little-developed, for example Politics, Sport and Country. They have been longer at some points, but were reduced because the content was too specific, for balance reasons and similar. There are also some subjects, that are very close to us, but on which we can't find anything to say, for example forehead and chin. Some other broad topics of low quality are Song and Health, as well as more specific but important subjects like Night or Shadow. We also have difficulties to make articles on very general subjects with variety of meanings. So we have some UFOs like Title, is it an article, a dab, a list ? Some would-like-to-be-an-article dabs like Mission or Growth. As a final example, there is the amazing contrast in quality between Medieval cuisine and Cuisine. Actually, I had planned to bring this matter somewhere for some time, and this place could be the one; I'll try to make some findings on this subject in the coming weeks, and bring this up again to see if we can work something out. It also come under light recently, when Wind has been nominated for FA. Cenarium (talk) 01:43, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Lucy (elephant)

This article is a POV disaster and a battleground. It needs work or deletion. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 07:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Non-notable elephant in my books. Physchim62 (talk) 13:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree with redirect. –Juliancolton |  21:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

American Dream

There's been some work in the last five weeks on American Dream where a couple of versions of a lead section have been put forward, each a synthesis of received wisdom, with slim reliance on sources. There was even a bit of original research with the addition of the phrase "ethos of prosperity" which doesn't appear anywhere in the literature.

I could use some help in whipping together two or three good lead paragraphs using the ten or so sources listed at Talk:American Dream, or other expert materials. I made a small start today, but expansion and adjustment is still needed. Thanks in advance! Binksternet (talk) 18:21, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Might I suggest you write the rest of the article first, the work on the lead? I find it's easier to figure out what should belong above the fold once you've sketched out all the rest of the content. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 20:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Sometimes, when I'm writing a completely new article, the lead section initiates the article, catalyzing the search for content, then the content rebounds on me and demands its own shape, which of course requires changes to the lede. It's iterative; a bootstrapping process. Binksternet (talk) 20:55, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

HH Bhakti Svarupa Damodar Swami

Who is in charge of swamijis? Should I prod? AfD? Leave it for someone else? Suggestions welcome. Cheers. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:16, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I would ask at WP:RELIGION or WP:INDIA. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:09, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

1953 Iranian coup d'état ‎

Major dispute at this article over appropriateness of the lead section. Unfortunately seems likely to turn into an edit war, so we could use some second opinions here. Since Iran is in the news recently, it is important that Misplaced Pages have a good article ready to go- but the article has been massively overhauled in the past two weeks, and at least in the lede section is now much much worse.

I previously posted a request at the Neutrality noticeboard, to which an editor thankfully responded. The lede is now better following that editor's input (no longer a series of long quotes and accusations of Nazism without mentioning the historical context), but now is incredibly small. The lede currently doesn't even mention the Shah or that the coup restored the monarchy, instead inexplicably focusing on oil companies changing their name. I've been reverted several times.

Details are at Talk:1953 Iranian coup d'état#Lede paragraph . Bear in mind that the first posts there are in reference to a much worse lede section than the current (still flawed) one, as noted above. SnowFire (talk) 03:44, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you point out a historic version of the lede that is closest to what you want to see now? Binksternet (talk) 15:17, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's on the talk page. http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat&diff=297419002&oldid=297402739 is an old version that I originally reverted to (not written by me). Talk:1953_Iranian_coup_d'état#Moving_forward:_Proposed_new_lede is where I workshopped a proposed new lede, asked Skywriter for comment, got only a complaint about a single reference, and edited it in at http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat&oldid=297658605 . Which was promptly reverted as "vandalism" and against the "consensus" of, um, Skywriter and one other editor, who'd previously clashed a bunch with others on the talk page anyway.

Thanks for your input; the current problem is that the new lede devotes literally all the attention to the oil company issue. This is a major issue, and arguably the biggest cause of the coup (I'd personally disagree, but it's close), but it'd be like having the lede on the American Civil war article spend all the time talking about slavery and none about state's rights or Lincoln. I'm not an expert on the coup, so I wish others would take the lead here, but I know enough to know a really unbalanced lede when I see one. SnowFire (talk) 20:58, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The coup was also a military operation, and a sentence or two should be devoted to the most important points of how political authority was overtaken by the military. Binksternet (talk) 01:13, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Joseph Campbell

I am involved in a revertwar on the article about Joseph campbell with an anon user who blanks the in my opinion very notable, well sourced and well balanced section on post-humous controversy. At first I thought it was just a case of reverting a trolling vandal so I didn't pay attention to 3RR, but he is persistent and is resorting to different tactics to justify his blanking - among others he called me a "Jehovah's witness fundamentalist" apparently he has checked my edit history and seen I have been engaged in dispute resolution on that page. I need some third party to see what's going on on the page and decide whether to protect, block, or what ever. I won't revert him again.·Maunus·ƛ· 18:20, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

That whole section is a valid part of the study of Campbell's life. You're right; it should stay. Binksternet (talk) 18:45, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Human rights in the United States

This question concerns content that has issues with plagiarism, copyright infringement, and NPOV. It also concerns the placement of said content in the lead section, as it does not currently summarize anything in the article. The full discussion can be found here and anyone is welcome to contribute to it. To recap, in the past few days, the following content was added to the lead section:

Throughout the Cold War and since that time, few nations placed more emphasis in their foreign policy on the promotion of human rights, including tying foreign aid to human rights progress and annually assessing the human rights records of government around the world.

Having been here for just under five years, I am very familiar with spotting plagiarism and copyright infringement. Even though the content above was cited appropriately to a book by Michael Ignatieff, the authors opinion on the value of the U.S. role in human rights and foreign policy was unattributed and copied directly without quotation or paraphrasing.

I believe the above passage can be considered plagiarism and copyright infringement of the original source, of which at least 28 of the 43 words in the passage above were copied and pasted from exact phrases in Ignatieff's book. For example, the exact phrases "Throughout the Cold War", "few nations placed more emphasis in their foreign policy on the promotion of human rights" and "the human rights records of government around the world" are copied from Ignatieff's book verbatim. Here is the original material by the author with a URL to the book page:

Throughout the Cold War and afterward, few nations placed more emphasis in their foreign policy on the promotion of human rights, market freedom, and political democracy. Since the 1970s, U.S. legislation has tied foreign aid to progress in human rights; the State Department annually assesses the human rights records of governments around the world. Outside government, the United States can boast some of the most effective and influential human rights organizations in the world.

Per Turabian 2007, pp.77-80, this meets at least one (or more) of the three indicators of inadvertent plagiarism:

- You cited a source but used its exact words without putting them in quotation marks or in a block quotation
- You paraphrased a source and cited it, but in words so similar to those of your source that they are almost a quotation: anyone could see that you were following the source word-by-word as you paraphrased it.
- You used ideas or methods from a source but failed to cite it

Additionally, this violates the NPOV policy, in that we need to "assert facts, including facts about opinions—but do not assert the opinions themselves...When we discuss an opinion, we attribute the opinion to someone and discuss the fact that they have this opinion." These words and ideas belong to Michael Ignatieff and according to the rules about plagiarism and NPOV, they need to be attributed appropriately. Unfortunately, the original author continues to claim that this is a statement of fact, not opinion, and is paraphrased, not plagiarized. Obviously, any person familiar with Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines and academic style sourcing guidelines like Turabian/Chicago Style, understands that this is not an acceptable form of paraphrasing. Since my original complaint was made, the material continues to get added back into the article, and I have just come off a 48 hour block for removing it as plagiarism/copyvio. Here is its latest incarnation:

During and after the Cold War, few countries emphasized in foreign policy the furtherance of human rights as vigorously as the United States, which also ties foreign aid to human rights progress and annually assesses the human rights records of numerous governments.

This is still considered plagiarism if we observe Turabian's indicators of inadvertent plagiarism. And, according to the NPOV policy, we must attribute opinions: "It is also important to make it clear who holds these opinions. It is often best to cite a prominent representative of the view." The sentence itself is somewhat complex, so it is understandable that a fairly new editor might miss the subtlety of the distinction between the statement of Ignatieff's opinion in the first part ("few countries emphasized in foreign policy the furtherance of human rights as vigorously as the United States") while the second part is a clear statement of fact ("ties foreign aid to human rights progress and annually assesses the human rights records").

Is there any reason why this opinion should not be attributed to Michael Ignatieff as it both represents his opinion on the subject of the history of U.S. human rights and foreign policy as well as closely resembling his exact words and phrasing? And should it appear as a blockquote to avoid the problems of plagiarism and poor paraphrasing? Finally, should it even appear in the lead section when it does not summarize anything in the article? Viriditas (talk) 09:54, 24 June 2009 (UTC)