Misplaced Pages

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Getting rid of fair use

I'm seeing this issue come up over and over again. Most wikipedias prohibit fair use. Although I can see legit reasons to include some truly fair use images on en, I've observed that in practice it just leads to a whole lot of problems. A lot of people are claiming fair use for any image that they want to include, regardless of the legitimacy of the claim. A lot of people are spending time arguing over what is/is not fair use. I'm beginning to think that it's really just not worth it and it's greatly reducing the freeness of the english wikipedia. I know that a lot of people will object to depreciating fair use on wikipedia, but I also know that I've heard a lot of people voicing similar concerns to mine. How can we move towards putting this bad idea behind us? Matt 00:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for it, with one exception: when the image itself is the subject of an article, such as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. --Carnildo 03:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Err, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If we remove all fair use images, we'll leave a great many articles with no illustrations (perhaps permanently):

• Almost all articles dealing with modern art. This includes basically all movies, TV shows, paintings and other graphic arts, etc.
• Almost all articles dealing with fictional subjects.
• Many articles dealing with aspects of modern history not witnessed by US government photographers. Note that this would probably include all situations where the exact copyright status is unclear (e.g. Nazi photographs).
• And various others.

Aggressively pushing for free content is very good, of course; but let's not forget that we also want to be an encyclopedia, and one that can be competitive with commercial ones. Decimating our image libraries isn't really going to help in this regard. —Kirill Lokshin 05:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I am not convinced that the "baby" in this case is all that valuable. We might end up with articles without illustration, so what? It would be interesting to see what percent of EB's articles include illustration (I don't know the answer to this). EB's article on Salvador Dalí (from what I can see from ) has no images. To say that we need "fair use" to compete with non-free publishers seems to me to be an argument for why a 💕 can't be done. But de.wikipedia.org is doing it, and by most measures has been more succesful than en (unless you measure an encyclopedia by the number of pokemon articles). Matt 17:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

EB gets less than 1% of Misplaced Pages's hits so it is really rather insignificant as a competitor. We are competing with the whole (very well illustrated) www. Osomec 16:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

There is so much abuse of the "fair use" that we need a stronger wording that currently exist to discourage uploaders. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:44, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

NO! Getting rid of Fair Use will cripple Misplaced Pages. The IP laws are already restrictive enough, I don't see any reason not to take advantage of the little freedom we are given under law. We should encourage replacing Fair Use images where possible, but there are many instances where it is NOT possible ever (such as articles on video games and movies), where Fair Use is absolutely essential for a good article. Loom91 15:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

It is possible ever -- when the copyrights expire. Misplaced Pages would survive. It would also be more free, and more reproducable outside the US, both of which are healthy aims. Sam Korn 15:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyrights only expire theoretically—no copyright has expired during the lifetime of Misplaced Pages. Passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998 (and its international counterparts), and the failure of legal challenge to it, virtually guarantees that another extension effort will occur before 2019 (the next time that copyrights might expire). Making policy decisions based on the assumption that copyrights will eventually expire seems overly credulous. I think we have to assume that nothing presently copyrighted will ever transfer into the public domain. --TreyHarris 16:31, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I think there's some intermediate choices. We could establish an arbitrary limit, like one-per-article (with some sort of special procedure for granting exceptions). Right now, there's no incentive to make free images, because so many articles are already crammed-full of non-free ones, which are usually "prettier" than the free ones. --Rob 15:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree getting stricter on fair use is a decent idea. i disagree with arbitary limits though. Screenshots and suchlike are essential to proper critical commentry on software products.

As for copyrights expiring yes that will happen eventually but for many things probablly not in our lifetimes. ALSO if we get rid of non-free images now then we still won't have them when thier copyrights expire unless someone else archived them! Plugwash 16:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd propose allowing fair use images only when the following conditions are all satisfied A) it is a genuine fair use claim; no legal problems for Misplaced Pages; B) there is a compelling argument that the image is necessary to illustrate the article, and C) there is a compelling argument that a free alternative is either impossible to obtain, or it is highly unlikely that we could ever obtain one through reasonable means (however you define that!) — Matt Crypto 23:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not use fair use where it is permisible, and there is no more open alternative? Why not take advantage of rights that are given under existing copyright law? Aggressive deletion of useful images for copyright-panic reasons only impoverishes us. For great justice. 20:12, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to keep fair use until technology makes long range digital camera a reality. --Masssiveego 01:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

What is "long range digital camera"??? Arniep 12:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

My main concern regarding this, although I oppose it as per Kirill Lokshin, is what it would do to the books included in Misplaced Pages. Right now, the WikiProject Novels template is to use an infobox on the page of articles relating to novels, and these infoboxes include a picture of the cover of the first edition of the novel. I am concerned regarding the complications the elimination of fair use would cause for this project. While getting stricter is a decent idea, anything that would eliminate illustrations from articles, book covers from articles on books, and other such truly legitimate, fair uses would, indeed, be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Users do not have the right to upload whatever they feel like, but the concept of fair use is an extremely important one. Abhorsen327 03:43, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to restrict Fair Use images beyond what the law will allow. There is no compelling argument in Matt's original post beyond "it's not worth the hassle". If this hassles anyone, I urge you to go do something else. There are tons of articles to write and proof and merge. Concentrate on something out of the modern era and you won't run up against as many image copyright problems.

Matt goes on to say "We might end up with articles without illustration, so what?". Can Matt or anyone else make a case that an encyclopedia should be just words?? Images are not only snazzy, pretty, and make a fine looking article, but are absolutely essential for understanding some subjects (e.g. Modern Art). Period.

It is suicide to drop Fair Use images because "they aren't worth it". Sheesh Madman 20:56, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

What about a preference tab for which class of licenses for images you want? Then someone wanting to browse for material not legal in their jurisdiction could just not see the ones they don't want. For great justice. 04:21, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

keep the fair use. It's a legal issue and the law is on our side. Giving up our rights does not help us--or any one else. Fair use is essential to every reference work. Rjensen 05:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a fair use right. Fair use is only a defense against copyright infringement. Almost no use is 'fair' until it is challenged in court and upheld as such. There is nothing that prevents content owners/distributors from taking away your supposed rights. DRM does precisely this when it restricts you from copying a song onto your iPod (the court-established fair use of 'space shifting'). It is precisely this legal ambiguity which is such a bane to the goal of creating a 💕. Anyone seeking to freely use en content has to weigh the costs of verifying the free status of such content. As Lessig points out in Free Culture, independently produced movies sometimes have to edit out scenes featuring use that would clearly be considered 'fair'. When they sign a distribution deal, the movie's creators are required to enumerate EVERY shot that could conceivably constitute any kind of copyright infringement risk. They are then forced to buy copyright insurance, in case claims were ever brought against the movie. In this case, the very risk that content MIGHT not constitute fair use renders it completely unusable. Audiodude 04:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

we give up fair use and Wiki is dead. Indeed, all reference works are dead. Giving up fair use means outsideres control what we are allowed to say about them. It is the oldest and most prized right regarding reference books and the courts have (nearly) always upheld us. The advantages of forfeiture? close to zero. Rjensen 05:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

While I think we should retain fair use here, if I'm not mistaken, some of the other wikis don't allow fair use and are working just fine. For example (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) the Italian wiki doesn't allow fair use images. There isn't any need for hyperbole. JoshuaZ 05:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Correct. Most foreign language wikis attempt to conform both to the laws of the US (where the servers live), and the laws of the most prominent country or countries speaking that language, so that wiki content can be easily reused there. Most countries outside the US don't have a fair use provision; instead, many European countries rely on the more stringent notion of fair dealing. Also, I think some wikis may, like Commons, allow neither fair use nor fair dealing, so that only truly copyright free content is allowed. Dragons flight 05:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the bottomline of this discussion is that we should exercise tight control over the fair use claims (such as only allowing a fixed set of fair use templates, screenshots, Nazis, etc., with strict patrolling for misplaced templates) and attempt to minimize the fair use images used. Maybe it should be policy that if there is a free/copyleft image and a fair use image both illustrating the same subject, we will discard the unfree image even if it is of superior quality. We should aim at having articles that would still be good if they were stripped of nonfree images (for example for the purpose of a derivative product, future "purist" fork, WP 1.0 on CD, etc.) dab (ᛏ) 13:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I just think there are way too many supposedly 'fair use' images that are used for strictly illustrative (rather than critical, comparative, or instructional) purpose, ESPECIALLY on articles discussing aspects of popular culture or media. I would go so far as to say that a copyrighted album cover is unnecessary (and in fact detrimental for the legal ambiguities it introduces), unless of course there is something notable about the cover art which is discussed in the article Audiodude 19:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Retaining the fair-use limits is non-negotiable as removing that limitation has the potential to disrupt future derivative projects and in contradiction with the GFDL. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 00:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Fair use is an absolute must. Kill it off and you kill off Misplaced Pages. We should be living within the law, not making up our own rules that are more restrictive than the law. That makes no sense whatsoever. FearÉIREANN\ 14:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshen and rjensen are absolutely right. Furthermore, if there is really a great need for a Misplaced Pages compatible with the laws of every country in the world, then maybe an automatic script can be used to generate a Misplaced Pages Censored Version specifically for those applications. Just strip out every image with a Fair Use tag. While you're at it, you can strip out troubling usages of terms like "Tiananmen" and "Jesus", and so on... Doesn't it make more sense to start with a Misplaced Pages that can be dumbed down on command than one which would have to become the object of a brand new US-Wiki-Fairuse project to spruce it back up again? Also, if people lie about whether content is "fair use", they could lie about whether it was "public domain". The industry has gotten everything it's asked for, including a power to send 48-hour DMCA take-down notices whenever they want - so isn't that level of blind obedience from Misplaced Pages sufficient? Mike Serfas 05:18, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

(arriving late to the conversation) Unfortunately, while I enjoy the images on Misplaced Pages, I sometimes think they're more trouble than they are worth. Note, as just one example, the edit war over the lead image at Wonder Woman that occurred recently. A similar case of musical images occurred at Audrey Hepburn. Then you have people using Wiki-webspace as their own personal storage site for images. But on top of it all there is also the fact that there are so many restrictions on Fair Use that it is making it very difficult to find images of anything that fits the criteria. For example, I am presently involved in an edit war (not really - I won't go to 3RR with it) at an article about a minor model. The issue - the fact that the illustration for the article is an example of her work -- a magazine cover. To remove the magazine cover pretty much removes any need for there to be an image on the page. Yet the image tag for magazine covers has been revised at some point recently to say that magazine covers can only be used when discussing the magazine, not the subject matter of the cover (or its photographer, for that matter). And I've already informed the user wanting to delete the magazine cover that he'll need to delete a bunch more in ]. (He subsequently replied that this is indeed his plan - to remove all magazine images from Misplaced Pages that aren't specifically used in articles about said magazines. This upset me enough that I was about to put forward a policy suggestion to remove images in toto from Misplaced Pages. It just slows down things anyway -- think of the bandwidth this place would save if we went to all-text. And everyone in the copyright police would be happy ... sorry for sounding sarcastic, but we editors put in a lot of time and effort to find images that make this place worth using as a resource, with no intention of making monetary gain of any of them, and all we get for our trouble is people saying "sorry, you can't use it." To heck with it. I'm tempted to take down every image I've uploaded to this place. 23skidoo 04:07, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Magazinecover has been in its current version since 02:30, 31 January 2006. There is no need to go all text under any conditions. We have many GFDL and PD images.Geni 04:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

arriving very late - I believe it is aquestion if it is for documentation purpose, or if it is really underminig a commercial service. Pictures of public available objects, in low resolution, are not very protectionworthy. Someone can take a picture of the eiffel tower easily. Nike sneakers (sorry) are in virtually 1000's of shops. Copyright restrictions are most likley there to sharply prohibit defacing usage (this is not scientific/documentary). This is my opinion of fair usage (not to take it literally). I am sourcing lots of things personally, i do not mind about things which are anyway provided for no charge, but might get unavailable at some point of time. However i know this is not allowed officially, even prohibited. I do include a visible tag of news agencies, in a way their representants would never do. In 70 years, these files become PD probably. Some things like egyptology are not meant to be a commercial stream, i believe sourcing from this is fair use in a meaning of sense. PD allows defacing etc., fair use does not. Check latest gas prices (political remark). See fansites/BBS (they source a lot of copyrighted data, this is tolerated, unwritten rules apply) - User:Akidd_dublin 8 may 2006

• I believe it would both help keep the community running well by limiting our interaction with laws that the community has proven to not understand very well and help us produce an encyclopedia with genuinely free content to eliminate our use of fair use, either with a grandfather clause or without. --Improv 17:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

  I agree with Kirill Lokshin. However, the two new CSDs for fair use images do constitute a tightening of the rules. If you take out fair use altogether, people will still keep uploading images, they'll just tag them as {{NoRightsReserved}} or some other tag that'll keep the bots off them; there are so few people on new upload patrol that it's trivially easy to bypass most restrictions anyway.

  Just a couple of other comments: fair use is definitely being unfairly abused at the moment. The most egregiously bad category is Category:Fair use magazine covers, followed closely by Category:Screenshots of web pages. Magazine covers can only be used under fair use in an illustration of or critical commentary on the magazine, not the person on the cover. Web screenshots, similar, except replace "the magazine" with "that website".

  Overall, we don't need tighter fair use policies, we need to enforce the policies we have. Stifle (talk) 08:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

  • It is NOT true that fair use of magazine covers requires a commentary of the magazine. In history articles they are used to demonstrate the importance of the person (as TIME person of the week). That is fair use. Rjensen 10:11, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think we should keep fair use. A lot of movie posters, etc. can't be replaced by non-fair use images (I'm 99.9% sure on that). --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 04:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support use of fair use. Thanks to it en-Misplaced Pages is much better illustrated then the more restrictive Wiki, and I have yet to see any serious problems stemming from it. We are worrying way to much about problems that have not happened yet. Once in every - what? thousand? - images we get a letter requesting that the image is to be removed. We do so, or negotiate a settlement that makes both parties happy. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Compare images on these English Misplaced Pages articles Beatles, Andy Warhol, and Batman to those on the German Misplaced Pages (de:Beatles, de:Andy Warhol, and de:Batman). You'll see what a big difference Fair Use makes. Madman 20:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This is something that isn't widely understood on Misplaced Pages yet, nor is there a policy page yet addressing it, but without fair use, we couldn't substantively describe the story or characters from any work of fiction. Fair use is not just about pictures or verbatim quotes of text. Postdlf 17:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Quite correct. From my understanding, the German Misplaced Pages does permit the German equivalent of fair use, which happens to be much narrower. It bars fair use mainly, as far as I know, because it might be illegal for Germans to upload and view things that are illegal under German law but legal under US law. (The German copyright policy page says something to the effect of "Fair use is an American thing, so we don't use it", not "Fair use is unfree, so we don't use it".) Banning fair use entirely would be impossible if we want to have articles about copyrighted works. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Use of American v. British/Commonwealth English

A vast majority of native English speakers speak American, not British (or Commonwealth) English. For this reason, to the extent that spelling is to be standardized or when a dispute arises, it makes sense to use American English.

I note American English is much more widely used on the Internet. A Google search for color gets 1,370 million hits, colour gets 231M. Standardize gets 26 million, standardise gets 2.3 million. Favorite gets 1.2B, favourite gets 275M. In general the American spelling is at least five times more used than the British spelling. It isn't even close!

I bring this up because in the dispute between using the American and British spellings for aluminum for the title of the entry, the British varient won out. I think this was a mistake.

I general, I think the best guide when it comes to a question of spelling is usage, and the American spelling of a word will virtually always be the most used. So I propose either a policy that explicitly defers to the dominant dialect of English (American English) or a policy based on usage. Kitteneatkitten 23:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Peace and harmony is best maintained, by deliberately avoiding a standard, and going by the "leave it be philosophy". Most articles apply entirely or mainly to one particular country, and that country's usage prevails. Elsewhere, whatever standard was used when the article was created, should be stuck with. --Rob 00:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

The general consensus on this is that either is acceptable so long as the style of writing remains consistent. However, aluminium is listed as the standardized form of the word with the American version as an acceptable variant. Using the first spelling is technically correct. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 00:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, I don't buy the argument about the "vast majority". Did you figure in India? Numbers on the Internet are skewed towards richer countries, of course. --Stephan Schulz 00:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Uh… did you even read what he posted? If it's skewed to the "rich countries" then that should be enough. By the way, if all of the native English speakers in India used the internet, then it would STILL be skewed to American spellings. 67.6% (or so) native English speakers come from America. So, your point is incorrect. R'son-W 07:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

India does not use English as its official language, and its inhabitants are not considered native English speakers. If they were, however, you can take your sorry >300 million Americans and put them up against the billion Indians who'd be using BrE, throw in every other BrE-native country (the ones you've handily included to make up 1\3 of native English users in the world), and start recounting those percentages. Then we could start counting other countries in which English is a secondary language, and check out which form is preferred there. Suddenly, you'll see AmE is at a somewhat less imposing figure, 25% would propably still be a high estimate, but you get the point. --TVPR 17:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

And if I may ask, what exactly did you mean by "If it's skewed to the "rich countries" then that should be enough."?--TVPR 17:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The general consensus is that articles about people/subjects that would be English use the English spelling, and people/subjects that would be American take the American spelling. Other articles stay with what they start as. We explicitly don't favor one over the other as this is an international project and it would be difficult and ethnocentric, to say the least, to enforce American spellings. Also, I don't think that a Google search can validate the greater usage of American English: certainly in Europe, Africa, and Asia, British English is more common. Snoutwood (tóg) 02:09, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Indians do not speak English as their native language, and only a small minority of Indians speak English at all (and they are generally rich enough to afford Internet access.) Yet American spellings still dominate the Internet by better than a five to one ratio. Also, in many countries those who learn ESL learn American English, such as Mexico and Vietnam.

English is "an official" language of India, one of several. It is very important in government and commerce. English is an official language in many former British Empire countries, which at one time accounted for 25% of the world's population, for what it is worth.--Michael Johnson 05:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Regarding aluminum, who exactly decided that the British spelling is the "standard?" IUPAC might be the best group to decide how to spell new elements, but I don't see how they can decide the standard form of an old word like aluminum. Once again, in searching the Internet we find the American spelling is far more common than the British. There is no standard spelling, but there is the more used one, and that is the American spelling. Kitteneatkitten 00:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Read the page. Aluminium was the original spelling. The use of aluminium is technically correct in this instance. I happen to think that spelling and general pronounciation is weird, but this is not my decision. Aluminium is the correct spelling to use. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 01:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Historical usages are irrelevant. The original spelling of color was color, honor honor, and so forth for that kind of word (o/ou); the original spelling of -ize was -ize (or actually -ιζειν -izein); and for that matter, the original spelling of wheat was hwæte. Currently, some people spell the name of the thirteenth element aluminum, some aluminium. And anyway, the actual original name was alumium, followed by aluminum, and only after that aluminium, according to our article, so your facts are off as well.

At any rate, in response to the proposal: pragmatically, we're going to piss a lot of contributors off by snubbing their spelling habits, and the fact that there are more Americans than Brits just means that more American spellings will be put into articles to start with, and due to the policy of not changing them we'll have your one-to-five ratio or whatever. So I don't view this as much of a problem. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Simetrical, you are wrong when you say that the original spelling of the word "color" was without the "u". In fact, it was the (American) Noah Webster who started spelling the word without the "u", in a bid to simplify the language's orthography. As for the debate, as someone who was born using AmEng, but spent a long time in countries that use BrEng, I am used to both, though I have standardized on AmEng. I say that as long as you are consistent in usage throughout the article, either British English ("the Queen's English") or American English is fine. Let's not make this an opportunity for casting aspersions at the colonials or the colonizers (or "colonisers", if you prefer), or of asserting some mistaken form of superiority (regarding whether or not Indians are native English speakers, for instance). -- Jalabi99 15:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

In actual fact, the word was frequently spelt "color" in Britain long before Webster. There was no standard spelling at this time and words were spelt in many different ways. As an archivist, I have seen many British documents dating from the 18th and 19th centuries spelling this and similar words without the u. -- Necrothesp 16:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The word was originally spelled <COLOR> in Latin. It then shifted to colour in early French, with the long O becoming spelled <ou>. English adopted the French spelling, having received the word from the Normans. Then, a few centuries back, some people on both sides of the pond started spelling it without the u again (to the extent that there was standard spelling then at all), hearkening back to the old Latin form. By what amounts to dumb luck, one spelling became standard in America, another in Britain (as well as a number of its other colonies/former colonies and, to a large extent, the rest of the world). Essentially the same happened with -ise/-ize.

This is all from my recollection of the OED entry, by the way. I could look it up again if you really care. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a perpetual battle, but Misplaced Pages uses aluminium because this is the IUPAC spelling, accepted for reference works in the English language. We use the spelling sulfur for the same reason: one apiece to each side of the Atlantic!, although editors should please create the necessary redirects... "redirects are cheap" Physchim62 (talk) 15:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Aluminium is a more consistent spelling; there are many elements ending in -ium, from helium to plutonium. - Runcorn 19:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

And? Using program all the time is more consistent than using program to refer to computer programs and programme to refer to other program(me)s; shall we purge programme from Misplaced Pages? For that matter, thru is more consistent with English spelling than through, so shall we purge the latter? While I sympathize with those promoting greater consistency in language, even to the point of being a cut spelling fan, Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox for linguistic prescriptivism.

Physchim does bring up a good point, though. If we agree, as a policy, to follow IUPAC spellings, I'd be all behind that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:36, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Can't agree there. 'Program' may have derived etymologically from 'programme', but it's a distinct meaning and can be regarded as a different word. Runcorn 19:43, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but they're pronounced the same, so surely better to spell them the same? That's if we want consistency in spelling. It's inconsistent to use different spellings for the same pronunciation. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:39, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

There's an amusing essay by Mark Twain about that... — Saxifrage ✎ 10:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Until those silly brits come to realize the futility of their efforts against the Gorilla US spelling campaign and adopt the clearly superior American english, Misplaced Pages will have to stick by our accepted practice of using both, but being consistent within a given article. Raul654 05:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a policy to delete comments like this and replace them with links to a page that says "this has been fought about forever, and we've already made up our minds about it." — Omegatron 05:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Is calling British people "silly brits" permissible within Misplaced Pages rules? Don't forget that people in many other countries generally use British rather than American "english" (sic) Runcorn 14:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Given that the "silly world" uses International English, which is based on British English, and Misplaced Pages is a worldwide encyclopaedia, not an American one, if any language was to become the dominant one on WP it would have to be IE/BE. But as Americans constantly change spelling and dating all over the place to their minority version, WP has had to allow variants based on two rules; language relevant to the article topic and consistency. I'm afraid Raul's conviction that American English is "clearly superior" is only shared by Americans. Much of the rest of the world, tongue-in-cheek, dismiss AE as "illiterate English" or "lazy English" where people can't be bothered to use all the letters! lol. FearÉIREANN\ 15:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The link that Raul provided was to a humour page on meta, and he's a Misplaced Pages Bureaucrat, who knows policy backwards. I think it'd be a good assumption to make that he was joking. Werdna_Tc@bCmLt 15:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I suspect you'll find that the majority of non-Americans here isn't quite so great as you'd think. While I do expect we are a minority, a) I would guess we're at least around a third of English-Wikipedians and b) I don't think anyone actually can say what the real number is with any useful degree of certainty, particularly if you count readers rather than just editors. And in any case, several prominent dialects of English (such as Canadian English, Australian English, and Philippine English) are somewhere in between American and British, so it's not reasonable to count them as completely on the Brit side. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

OMGSTFU Language. Changes. There are many many variants of the English language and none is superior to or "more correct" than the others. Get over it. We've been through this a million times and people keep bringing it up again. The whole topic is just an incivility magnet and waste of time. Here is our policy. People who suggest various standardizations or forks or complex technical workarounds should just be directed there and the discussion halted. It can certainly be tweaked and cleaned up, but is there any chance that the fundamental idea behind this policy will ever be changed? I don't see any... — Omegatron 16:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Amen. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be difficult for me to agree more with Omegatron. Admittedly, I'm enough of a nitpicker that one some level it kind of bothers me to see "program" in one article and "programme" in another, but honestly, as long as it's spelled consistently one way within the same article, I really don't care. I don't think it's particularly important, especially when compared to the other, more important spelling problems Misplaced Pages faces on a daily basis. Generally, I think the current policy does the job pretty well. I'm sure it can be improved on, just like anything else, but in that case I'd like to see proposals for specific improvements instead of generic and draconian "everyone must spell everything in <one national strain of English>" pronouncements -- they only serve to annoy people and, in some of them, fires up feelings of national pride that make them more than willing to settle the difference between "color" and "colour" with sharp implements in some kind of a Thunderdomian "two spellings enter, one spelling leaves" battle to the death. Frankly, I think we can do without that crap, because it's tiresome and causes bad blood and, perhaps most importantly, doesn't actually improve Misplaced Pages at all. I mean, at least the endless arguing about whether notability should be a part of the criteria for inclusion has a huge potential impact on Misplaced Pages's content... -- Captain Disdain 13:38, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

American spelling is on the internet, because the internet is an American invention, and is still Americentric. Therefore American type spelling wil get more hits. As for articles, contributors should use English spelling for English articles, and American spelling for American articles. If you see incorrect spelling, say harbour, in an American article, then change it. Wallie 22:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The main place that the British spellings seem to turn up in America is when people are trying to be pompous and pretentious; various academics insist on using such spellings to try to sound more "cultured", and real estate developers name their developments things like "Harbour Centre" when they probably are nowhere near any harbo(u)r and are far from the cent(er/re) of anything. *Dan T.* 13:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Wallie's hit it on the head. Quite right.--Runcorn 22:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you meant Captain Disdain and Omegatron hit it. Having said that, I go with whoever first wrote the article. If its in American English I'll write like that, if its English² I'll write like that. - FrancisTyers 22:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

As a side point. I believe aluminium is also the most widely used form in other languages. (at the very least, Dutch, German and even FRENCH, come to mind). - The DJ 15:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Another side point: Punctuation is also different. In the States, commas and periods go inside the quotation marks -- "like this," or "like this." In GB, they go outside. Colons and semicolons go outside the quote marks in both systems. Schnaz 04:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Note though, that Misplaced Pages uses neither British nor American literary punctuation systems. Rather, WP uses a technical or logical system (I forget it's exact name): punctuation is within the quotes if it is part of the quote, otherwise it is outside. Thus, what is inside the quote is exactly what appears in the source. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:28, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Metric versus American/Imperial measurements

See also Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style#SI/Imperial measurements --Philip Baird Shearer 22:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Since this language's version of Misplaced Pages is the only to cover a country which does not use SI measurements (and in fact, a supermajority of native english speakers do not), it should be the policy of Misplaced Pages for all articles to include both metric and American units in all pages where measurements are used. If there is a page lacking in this, it should be noted by a template. R'son-W 07:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to very reluctantly agree. As horrible as the customary units are, Misplaced Pages can't change popular usage. On the other hand, I think that there are large categories of articles that do not need customary units (even if this proposal were implemented), such as those in astronomy. Ardric47 07:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with people adding adding a conversion, but I don't want a new template, as it would just be needless clutter. People wishing to add conversions, can easily do so themselves. I don't want to see hundreds (even thousands) of pages tagged with a new template. --Rob 07:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

To clarify what I said above, I'm agreeing with the policy to include both units, not to have a template. Ardric47 07:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Since when did the US not use metric units? What is habitual and what is actual policy are two different things entirely, and the US government deisgnated the SI system as the preferred one 18 full years ago. Further, go right ahead and tell me the speed of light in feet per second. We all know it moves at 300.000km/s, meaning 300.000.000m/s, meaning 300.000.000.000mm/s. Now, equally swiftly, without a calculator, tell me what this is in miles/sec, yards/sec, feet/sec and finally, let's not forget the smallest (and my, how accurate it is too) unit available; inches/sec. To put some more emphasis on the great accuracy of the CUs, how many inches is an average sinarapan? Over a span of 3 unit denominators, it's 12,5mm, 1,25 cm, and 0,125m. How many inches, feet and yards is this? My points are; 1: If you want to trawl all Misplaced Pages articles for occurances of units not provided in customary units, go right ahead. However, the sheer volume of Misplaced Pages, and the complete lack of logic in finding the lesser unit of what you currently have, means you've got a nice life's work cut out for you. Enjoy. 2: In an encyclopedia, accuracy - not the habits and quirks of one user group (which by the way happens to claim majority (which is equally false, as you clearly know, and that cleverly adjusting your statistics to show native English-speakers won't change the fact that most of the world still uses BrE, having been, as it were, under British rule or influence for longer than the US has been a country.)) - should be priority. --TVPR 08:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually it's 299,792,458m/s. Fagstein 17:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

The term "American units" is a misnomer. Most British people still use them in everyday usage as well, despite Britain being "officially" (and generally reluctantly) metric. And many things in the UK, including our roadsigns, are still officially in imperial units (it's actually illegal to use only metric units on roadsigns), so let's not have any false claims that it's only the United States that uses these units. -- Necrothesp 09:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Does Britan use US customary units? I realize they're similar, if not identical, but still. Starting 3 years from now, any product marked with non-SI units will be banned from import into the EU. That ought to help. --TVPR 09:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The one thing Britain is is confused. I measure distance in mm, cm, m and mile... However, back to the point - Britain is very much a metric country, imperial units have not been taught at school for decades. The mile and pint really are the last remaining official uses...

Imperial units are taught in British schools, including conversions between metric and imperial. I know because I have taught it, and it is still on the National Curriculum. Captainj 21:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

However the Imperial units in Britain are different to "American units". Our pint isn't your pint (20 vs 16 fl oz), our gallon isn't yours, our ton isn't yours... Get the point? If not take a read of Comparison of the Imperial and U.S. customary systems/wangi 09:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Britain, as I said, is officially metric. But in practice it is not, even for those (like myself) who were taught metric units at school, but wouldn't dream of using them unless forced (the only people I've ever heard using metric measurements in day-to-day life have been scientists). Those who claim otherwise are usually evangelical (and rather delusional) metric fans who don't want to accept that their beloved system isn't popular. Also note that Imperial measurements of length, area and basic weight (the ounce and pound) are identical to the American. My main point, however, was not to claim that British and American systems were identical (although some parts of it are), but to counter the arguments that the United States is the only country that retains non-metric measurements. -- Necrothesp 10:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Well I guess It's personal/generation issue. I'd just like to make it known we're not all imperial unit monkeys ;) As for being evangelical or delusional, I personally couldn't care - I'd measure my height in feet and inches; my weigth in kilos; the distance to my house in miles; the size of a room to the nearest unit (e.g. 8ft x 6m); liquids in litres, unless I'm drinking a pint; and when shopping metric... /wangi 10:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm British. I accept that my beloved metric system (?) isn't popular in Britain. I think in the metric system. If I add some figures to an article, I'm not going to bother with non-metric units. If somebody wants to add a non-metric "translation", that won't bother me. If on the other hand somebody wants to give priority to his or her beloved antique metrology, thereby relegating my own beloved metrology to parentheses, I shall get annoyed. But of course I mustn't show my annoyance, must I? -- Hoary 11:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm always amused when people describe the Imperial system as an antique while favouring a system developed in the 18th century! -- Necrothesp 11:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Point taken. Me, I'm amused when the more antique mishmash is referred to as the "Imperial system". But then I reflect that there's some truth to it, as we're all under pax (?) Americana these days. -- Hoary 12:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Blah, common sense should prevail. We don't need Imperial units (or US Standard for that matter) in all articles, anything science related should be in SI, anything else should be in whatever people decide on the page. I'm 22 and from the UK, and I still use feet/inches, pints, stone etc. The decision of what to include should be worked out on article talk pages, but I would strongly object to a blanket policy of having Imperial or US Standard in parentheses. - FrancisTyers 22:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Units should be dealt with on the WikiProject level. A universal policy could never account for all the idiosyncracies you get in specialized fields. Melchoir 10:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think all articles should use metric. The English WP is available to billions of English speakers around the world, often speaking English as a second language. SI is international - that is its point. If people would like to add their own local units too (particularly when referring to local issues), I won't mind that. Stephen B Streater 12:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

How about:

Where the original form of a measurement is known it should be specified first with conversions in brackets. Where the original form is not known and there are no other overriding considerations (e.g. local conventions in local articles) metric should be placed first with the conversions in brackets. Ambiguous units like the ton and the gallon should be avoided where possible and when they are included they should always be clarified.

-- Plugwash 13:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Plugwash 13:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

All articles should use both metric and American units (in the case of ambiguous units such as gallons, clearly designated as being American if you can't use a more commonly-used non-SI unit). This provides maximum information with minimum clutter. Many of our readers are not familiar enough with the metric system to understand units given only in metric, and many (probably most) are not familiar enough with American units to understand units given only in American units. What governments say is completely irrelevant; it's our readers that we're here to serve.

As for specialized fields, Misplaced Pages serves a general audience, not just specialists. Even if American physicists always use the metric system for physics, other Americans/Brits/Canadians/etc. (almost no former British colonies are fully converted to SI) will also want to read and understand the article.

The only exception to this rule is when the units involved are so ridiculously beyond what we use in everyday life that normal units are insufficient or the differences are negligible; our readers don't need to be told that 1.41679 × 10 K equals 2.55022 × 10 °F, or that 130 light years equals 7.6427 × 10 miles—nothing is gained in comprehensibility from that. But the density of mercury, that's something that should be in both metric and American/imperial units. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Two points. I reinforce the plea that if a unit like the pint (which differs between the US and other countries) is used, it should be explained which is meant, ideally with a conversion into the other sort. And there is often more than one metric unit. The density of mercury is about 13.6 grammes (grams?) per cubic centimetre in cgs units and 13,600 kilogrammes per cubic metre in SI units; probably, most people would prefer the former, although scientists usually use SI. The official unit astronomers use to measure distances to stars is the parsec, although common usage prefers the light year; neither is strictly an SI unit. Runcorn 19:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd love to use American or Imperial units but they get so complex once you get beyond basic stuff - working with measurements trying to work out if they are eights or twelths, long or short tons, and how many pints to the quart anyway? Not to mention fathams and furlongs, bushels and chains. But I'm an adult, and most of the time I've got a fair idea what people are talking about. If I want to know what the exact converion is, I'll pull out the calculator. I can cope with whatever anyone writes. One point though. English is the international language with probably more ESL speakers than native speakers. And SI is the international system of measurement. --Michael Johnson 14:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the preceding discussion is well meaning, but short on facts. When people say things like "most of our readers" I wonder where the numbers are to back up these claims. Note that we have guidelines on this topic at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style#Scientific style and Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement which say sometimes SI units are mandatory and that conversions should not be removed. If you want to add conversions to articles, I suggest adding them as you find them or organizing a wikiproject to do so. -- cmh 15:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Just two points to add: all packaged goods in Britain are labelled in metric, although loose goods can be ordered in Imperial. I drink pints of beer but buy milk in litres, I think in Fahrenheit, but everybody else I know thinks in Celsius. Secondly, as Michal Johnson implies, Wiki En probably has a large ESL readership. In fact judging by many of the contributions, Wiki En is frequently written by non-native speakers (look at any article concerning a non-English speaking country). Recipe books can manage multiple measurements, why limit Wiki En to one continent?

The presumption that SI units are not widely used in the USA really applies to the household. Many industries have converted to SI, especially industries engaged in international trade. On the other hand, there is one area of high technology where inches are in common use, computer printers, with terms such as dots per inch and pixels per inch. Gerry Ashton 21:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that in every place it is relevant that we should use both metric and American measurements. Metric may be used in the majority of the world, but a large percentage of people on the English Misplaced Pages are from the United States and have no sense of scale in the metric system, no matter how much they see it in their life. Foreign articles as well as American articles should use it. Finding conversion calculators online is ridiculously easy, so look one up, convert the two measurements, and put it into the article. And the wide availability of these things shouldn't be an excuse not to put them on here, as this is an encyclopedia and should be as NPOV as possible, and should accomodate as many people as possible. I don't want to look up a conversion calculator every time I see "163 kilometers" or "26 degrees Celsius" or whatever. I want to be able to know what the American measurement right there, and if I used metric measurements and it only had Imperial on the page, I would want to see the Metric conversion. bob rulz 23:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that Misplaced Pages should explicitly favor metric measurements, as they are universal and (despite what Bob says) more easily understood and converted. As has been pointed out, there are significant divergences within US/Imperial units, in particular liquid measurement, but also the long/short ton, and not all units are widely understood (stone, furlong). I'd have no objection to customary units being given alongside metric ones.  ProhibitOnions  11:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with favoring any one system of measurements over another is that no single system is appropriate for all possible topics. The dimensions to Noah's Ark are specified in cubits, Hadrian's Wall used roman miles to space its milecastles, the National Maximum Speed Limit is specified in Miles per hour, and there is no Jules Verne book titled 111200 Kilometers Under the Sea. Other articles depend on sources that use acres, fathoms, hands, li, or picas. Trying to shoehorn these dimensions into SI units is not only elitist, but in many cases will violate Misplaced Pages:Verifiability. Instead of forcing everything into a single system, each article needing to list some type of measurement should use a measurement appropriate to the subject's nature, place, and time in history. It is only when this is done that conversions to aid the reader should be added. --Allen3  13:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

No, this is the same anti-metric argument given by people who think we'd have to sing "I'd walk 1,609,300 kilometers for one of your smiles"... Of course, articles should use non-metric units if the article is a) about those units b) about something that frequently uses non-metric units (such as, say, pipe widths, or certain sports, although metric equivalents should be given), or c) uses historic material or direct quotations that refer to such units. But if none of these criteria are met, then metric units should be the primary ones used.  ProhibitOnions  22:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Your statement that metric units are "more easily understood" is quite simply wrong when it comes to a large percentage of our readers. Americans, as well as to a substantially lesser extent Brits/Canadians/Australians, do not understand metric units as well as they understand imperial units. You were born in Britain and currently live in Germany; if you were born and lived in America, you would not think metric units are more easily understood. The only thing that's easily understood by all our readers is metric plus imperial, and that's why we should always use that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm a US citizen, and know well how "confusing" many Americans wrongly assume the metric system to be. However, starting from a position of unfamiliarity, metric units are more easily understood, as they are far more logical, are interrelated, and are based on multiples of ten, and are likely to be understood by a far greater number of the billion or so fluent speakers of English, including a good number of educated Americans. (Thanks for reading my biography, but I never make it clear how long I've lived anywhere. It's a little like the userbox debate.)  ProhibitOnions  08:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

In the UK, we are increasingly using metric units. Food has to be sold in metric units now, except in important cases (eg of beer). Petrol (!) is sold in litres. Energy is measured in kW hours. However, precious metal are still in $/Troy Oz. Are people in the US becoming increasingly metric as they get more internationalised? Stephen B Streater 08:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

There are exactly two metric units in everyday usage in the US: multi-serving bottles of soda are sold in liters, and electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours. Everything else is US Customary. --Carnildo 09:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

A large reason for the shift in the UK is due to European Economic Community's packaging regulations. Although European trade regulations have some influence on American companies (it's easier to make one package that is salable both in the EU and in the US, and the EU's regulations are more strict), the influence is not nearly so strong as in the UK. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:33, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

American packaging regulations mandate metric units alongside non-metric units. See Fair Packaging and Labeling Act and the US government fact sheet. bobblewik 00:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

reservasion in educational admision based on caste

do you beleive in caste sysetm !! this is the basic question and if so , do you not beleive in global community

we as humen being are same

only economic conditions may requoire help and assistance for thre upliftment we can not keep reserved seat only on grouds of caste basis

doing so will hamper the rights of other deserving people -- <anon>

Err, ok? In what context is this? Kim Bruning 20:42, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't see what impact this has on Misplaced Pages policy. Runcorn 18:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I vote yes. --Alphachimp 05:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it has any relation to Misplaced Pages policy at all. Soapbox comment. ~Kylu (u|t) 23:18, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

User boxes episode 12,000 - a better solution

Hi all, I really go crazy of the depressing flood of user boxes this Misplaced Pages has been undergoing last year. I am a strong proponent of deleting all of hem, perhaps except for the language skill templates, the location templates and the WikiProject boxes, that's it. However, I have a more fundamental solution for the user boxes problem: discard the user page namespace. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and it is not intented for vanity. However this rule does not seem to apply for user pages - they are sometimes expended to sheer home pages or web logs. We should put an end to this. What I envision is a non-wiki page, comparable to "my preferences", where you can enter your real name (optional, of course!), your nationality/location, your profession, your expertise, your language skills and your home page (if you have one). Single login should automatically generate interwiki links. That really is enough. This topic borders to being better fitted for the technical village pump, btw.
Are there any people that agree with me? Here an example of what such a page might look like (all names are fictional!):

User:HaikuReader

Real name: George F. Williams

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Profession: Student

Expertise: Canadian history, songbirds

Language skills: en-N, fr-2, de-1

Homepage: http://www.readmyhaikus.net (just a silly example!)

Looks quite trimmed. Personally it would feel like a liberation to me! Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 21:57, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I know a lot of users that use their page for reference (as in, useful wikilinks, to-be-made articles, statements of personal Misplaced Pages philosophy, and so forth), not to mention as a sandbox for works-in-progress. It would seem unfortunate to remove all of them. Ziggurat 22:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

This actually seems like a much worse solution... userpages have a purpose that helps the encyclopedia, restricting them to raw information that's largely irrelevant is not the way to go. Sorry.--Sean Black 22:06, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a terrible idea. The problem is that some users work on the philosophy that biases shouldn't be displayed, fearing division, the idea that people will act out the biases on their user pages, etc. On the other extreme, you have people like me who highly recommends biases are openly declared instead of hidden. This way editors can acknowledge their biases as they edit, and allow everyone to clearly recognize and negotiate their differences. In an ethnography class, I was even instructed to write down biases before conducting an interview, so that I could accomodate for them, rather than pretending they don't exist. No one on Misplaced Pages has a "neutral point of view", and I find it dangerous for users to pretend that they do. Not to say I'd actually suggest forcing all users to list their own biases, but the idea of forcefully censoring this information raises a red flag with me. Sarge Baldy 23:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above users - this idea would not be a satisfactory solution in any way. Looking at my userpage, you will find that I keep it relatively functional and with few frills, as you suggest, yet I treasure the ability to keep things somewhat personalised, and I think community interaction and statement of character on a userpage is a large part of the Misplaced Pages community. Being Misplaced Pages editors does not prevent us from also being humans, and if we remove the human aspect from Misplaced Pages, we might as well just create bots to make articles and abandon Misplaced Pages to the bots altogether. —Cuiviénen, Monday, 15 May 2006 @ 00:38 UTC

Ok, thanks for your comments. Actually, my proposal is a little bit exaggerated - it was a statement rather than something I'd really try to get achieved. I wanted to make clear than user pages are a means of communication, not an end in themselves. Especially the huge flood of user box templates disturbs me. I hope we can agree at least on that (I mean that user pages aren't an end themselves)? Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 12:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it feasible to have pages only visible to the logged-in users, where they can list articles in progress or have a personal sandbox? That's already the case for personal watchlists. Runcorn 18:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

here's an idea. While it is useful to have google etc. crawl article talkpages, there should really be no reason for readers to even see user namespace. We've had all sorts of privacy issues with user pages before, and issues with radical agendas (nationalist, racist, what have you) pushed in user page essays. So I think the idea of making user namespace visible to logged-in users only should be thrown about a little bit more. Also, while there will always be personal sandboxes reflecting the maturity of the respective editors, a solution could be to prohibit template transclusion in user namespace: People are free to have puerile stuff on their userpages, but the problem with userboxes is that the puerility is spilled all over (the non-user) template namespace. This must stop. At the very least, create a User_Template: namespace for the things. dab (ᛏ) 10:11, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

But what about User_talk? Any restriction of the User page will simply result in its content being dumped into User_talk, so the only way to make it work would be to restrict both of them. Considering how vital User_talk is to Misplaced Pages's functioning, that would seem a very serious move. Fagstein 17:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a very funny proposal. Let's say the box you propose is placed at the left side of User_talk and you can also add optional photo above it. Try to imagine that layout. Now go to http://www.myspace.com and open a random user page! The similarity is striking, isn't it ;)  Grue  18:28, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

crime

The Misplaced Pages does not support the action of no criminal, much less protects the same. It's correct. what's this: Misplaced Pages:No legal threats? --Eduardo Corrêa 08:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

What's the punishment will be the people fight will be its rights? I don't know, but it's one big news for any journal or TV. "Its rights are only been valid outside the wikipedia!" --Eduardo Corrêa 08:31, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean by that? – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 08:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Which is the punishment by fight to his rights? Someone spoke me: you would be blocked in the wiki. It's truth? --Eduardo Corrêa 23:13, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the answer you are looking for is:

Not all lawsuits (legal threats) regard criminal law. If you say something I dislike, and I threaten to sue you for libel or other similar charge, it has a chilling effect on the development of the development of Misplaced Pages. Other people might not want to write an article about me, for fear of being sued. While this would be good for me (since I can go on strangling kittens for a hobby), it's not good for the public, since they look to Misplaced Pages for information on my kitten-strangling habits.

The Misplaced Pages:No legal threats speaks for itself, it has nothing to do with legitimizing criminal behaviour, please don't misunderstand and think that it does. ~Kylu (u|t) 23:30, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Format of the word "ebook"

Can we come to consensus on the standard punctuation and capitalization of this? In the Oxford English Dictionary, the only use of the letter "e" as a prefix meaning "electronic" is for "email", all lower case. Knowing the OED, and knowing that we don't capitalize Book (or Tape or Download or any other adjective or noun as a generic format), I am nearly positive that the standard spelling is, or will eventually be, ebook (not e-book, eBook, or Ebook, except as forced by Misplaced Pages title limitations <g>). Can we work this into the naming conventions somewhere? I have posted this at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (books) as well. It came up during a recent CfD discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pegship (talk • contribs)

• I fully support "ebook" (and "email"), and would be happy to see a firm policy in favor of these. However, I doubt very much there's any chance of consensus on this. The wretched "e-mail" appears to have won market share, but this and other conflicting spellings are not any more likely to be finally settled, by the OED or anyone, than "aluminum" vs. "aluminium". I think it's going to be like most other conventions on Misplaced Pages, user's choice. Do you know what the current statistical distribution of "ebook", "e-book", "eBook" and "Ebook" is, across all articles? \ Fnarf999 \ talk \ contribs \ 18:13, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

A simple search turns up 450 articles on the English Misplaced Pages which use "e-book", 867 which use "ebook". I'm unable to break it down by type case; anyone got a tool for this? Her Pegship 04:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

This one also gives a sample: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Whatlinkshere/EBook&limit=500&from=0 (that is: after I cleaned out the wikipedia:double redirects)

Note that Misplaced Pages tries not to be self-referential about such issues, a bot would change all occurences of a term to another variant in a swiff. The criteria is occurences outside wikipedia. When the main "trusted" dictionaries (OED, Webster's,...) contain no information or contradict, all non-marginal occurences are usually accepted. Note that making deductions from *other* dictionary entries would constitute original research, also not used as the basis for what happens in wikipedia's main namespace.

Anyway, I changed the start of the EBook article to "An eBook (also: e-book, ebook) is an " --Francis Schonken 07:55, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I do hope we don't end up with "eBook" - that's a monstrosity.--Runcorn 22:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not normative. --Francis Schonken 06:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Having made something of a something of a (hour+) survey outside wikiP using google links while working in parallel with user:Pegship (See: Talk:Ebook#eBook.2C_ebook.2C_or_e-book.3F) I think English speaking society as a whole is just plain stuck on this minor conumdrum. Trying to cut the gordian knot, I've proposed an elimination vote (in progress) on that link to obviate the 'eBook' form, as a first step here on Misplaced Pages.

FYI: This Move is contrary to guideline (substansive difference of opinion on talk) and if you give the talk a close, scrutiny, has been rolled back once before, iirc. But that's trivia, and trivial. I praise the good bold effort, but 'this gordian knot' is not so simple.

My read of the matter is 'academia' (language constructionist types, normatively oriented, if you will <g>) prefer the 'e-' prefix. Whereas, the commercial interests, like publishers, mainly prefer the 'eBook' or 'ebook' variants.

In the end, our Misplaced Pages ability to redirect to some normative form will be necessary for all three flavors insofar as having article titles visible on the web have importance. Given that such visibility is a desirable state, the current 'chaotic' mish-mash 'within our articles' is actually good for Misplaced Pages's benefit—it simply gives more hits per any given search. (As a cold hearted capitalistic pig at heart, changing nothing, gives free advertising, if you will. Now where can I buy stock?? <g>)

OTOH, what we call base quantities such as a category or our 'main articles' (e.g. ebook device) would be nice to have settled ASAP, as frankly, the fact that those names are unresolved and unsettled is simply and directly cutting into productivity. (e.g. Adding books to category:books available as ebooks came to a screeching halt over said category naming issue, which in turn has devolved to the naming discussion on Talk:Ebook#eBook.2C_ebook.2C_or_e-book.3F, where I hope you'll all drop in, and lend a vote!)

My gut feel is the 'compromise' form 'ebook' will be bearable enough to eventually carry the day, but I can live with any form so long as it stops sucking up man-hours of productivity <g>. Please do lend your assistance and lend your voice, errr... vote! Best regards, // FrankB 02:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I would like to reiterate that either ebook or e-book makes sense, but capitalizing any letter in the generic term does not, as "e-book" is not a trademark or proper noun. "...we don't capitalize Book (or Tape or Download or any other adjective or noun a generic format)..." I don't for a moment believe that what we decide will have a big impact on external use, nor is it carved in stone. I would just like to try to standardize it generally here for now. Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 14:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Deletionism facing (Judaism) articles

Hi, I have just placed the following on the Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Judaism, it touches on a broad range of issues. Thank you. IZAK 09:44, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Shalom to everyone: There is presently a very serious phenomenon on Misplaced Pages that effects all articles. Let's call it "The New Deletionism". There are editors on Misplaced Pages who want to cut back the number of "low quality" articles EVEN IF THEY ARE ABOUT NOTABLE TOPICS AND SUBJECTS by skipping the normal procedures of placing {{cleanup}} or {{cite}} tags on the articles' pages and instead wish to skip that process altogether and nominate the articles for a vote for deletion (VfD). This can be done by any editor, even one not familiar with the subject. The implication/s for all articles related to Jews, Judaism, and Israel are very serious because many of these articles are of a specilaized nature that may or may not be poorly written yet have important connections to the general subjects of Jews, Judaism, and Israel, as any expert in that subject would know.

Two recent examples will illustrate this problem:

1) See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Zichron Kedoshim, Congregation where a notable Orthodox synagogue was deleted from Misplaced Pages. The nominator gave as his reason: "Scarce material available on Google, nor any evidence in those results of notability nor any notable size." Very few people voted and only one person objected correctly that: "I've visited this synagogue, know members, and know that it is a well established institution" which was ignored and the article was deleted. (I was unaware of the vote).

2) See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Berel Wein where the nominator sought to delete the article about Rabbi Berel Wein because: "It looks like a vanity project to me. While he does come up with many Google hits, they are all commercial in nature. The article is poorly written and reads like a commercial to me." In the course of a strong debate the nominator defended his METHOD: "... what better way to do that than put it on an AfD where people who might know more about the subject might actually see it and comment rather than slapping a {{NPOV}} and {{cleanup}} template on and waiting for someone to perhaps come across it." But what if no-one noticed it in time and it would have gone the same way as "Congregation Zichron Kedoshim"? Fortunately, people noticed it, no-one agreed with the nominator and the article was kept.

As we all know Googling for/about a subject can determine its fate as an article, but this too is not always a clear-cut solution. Thus for example, in the first case, the nominator saw almost nothing about "Congregation Zichron Kedoshim" on Google (and assumed it was unimportant) whereas in the second case the nominator admitted that Berel Wein "does come up with many Google hits" but dismissed them as "all commercial in nature". So in one case too few Google hits was the rationale for wanting to delete it and in the other it was too many hits (which were dismissed as "too commercial" and interpreted as insignificant), all depending on the nominators' POV of course.

This problem is compounded because when nominators don't know Hebrew or know nothing about Judaism and its rituals then they are at a loss, they don't know variant transliterated spellings, and compounding the problem even more Google may not have any good material or sources on many subjects important to Jewish, Judaic, and Israeli subjects. Often Judaica stores may be cluttering up the search with their tactics to sell products or non-Jewish sites decide to link up to Biblical topics that appear "Jewish" but are actually missionary sites luring people into misinformation about the Torah and the Tanakh, so while Googling may yield lots of hits they may mostly be Christian-oriented and even be hostile to the Judaic perspective.

Therefore, all editors and contributors are requested to be aware of any such attempts to delete articles that have a genuine connection to any aspect of Jews, Judaism and Israel, and to notify other editors.

Please, most importantly, place alerts here in particular so that other editors can be notified.

Thank you for all your help and awareness. IZAK 08:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

how is this related to Judaism in particular? Pending evidence to the contrarly, these are simply uninformed deletions for lack of proper references in the stubs deleted, without any sort of political agenda. Just recreate with proper references, and your article will be safe. dab (ᛏ) 09:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I think articles for deletion in general is a mess. Sometimes we get (legal) threats over it, I gather. Even the international press occaisionally catches a whiff of it. But as it stands, not even Jimbo Wales dares to delete it. (Ed Poor did try, and lost all his privs. :-/ ) Kim Bruning 10:15, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

IIRC, Ed was de-adminned for deleting the criticism of his deletion of VFD. Deleting VFD itself was audacious enough that he got away with it. --Carnildo 03:26, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Technically, that's why he lost his bureaucrat status. He was de-adminned for his conduct in a mostly unrelated situation involving FuelWagon (talk · contribs).--Sean Black 04:23, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

You make it sound like there's a mass deletion (dozens of articles) which faces only judaism articles. Please don't make Misplaced Pages the scene of conspicarcies. CG 17:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles on individual Christian churches/congregations get deleted regularly, because they aren't considered notable unless they reach a certain size or do something to distinguish themselves from every other church within their denomination. Synagogues (or Judaism-related topics generally) aren't being singled out. From the deleted history, this particular one did not have any information of substance beyond an explanation of its name. You could always try WP:DRV, but I can't see that succeeding here. Postdlf 17:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing improper has been done here. Sending articles straight to articles for deletion is completely legitimate. If it wasn't vast amounts of articles would never get dealt with. Calsicol 18:16, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

If you are concerned that certain AfDs aren't getting the proper attention, can I suggest you create a Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Deletion sorting-type list and have people monitor what's going on in AfD? Many of these lists are inactive, but some (like Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Deletion sorting/New Zealand) are active and really help keep track of what's going on. Regards, Ziggurat 19:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

For the first page, I feel I must argue in favor of deletion. Only 124 Google hits? Of course, I highly doubt that the user's vote was simply ignored. It's just that the deletion "votes" had much better arguments (show, don't tell) than the keep "vote". --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 04:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it is worth to create a guidelines say Misplaced Pages:Notability (rabbies), something like Misplaced Pages:Notability (academics). The criteria for notability of rabbies seem weird for the ignorant people like me. So it might be worth to spell them out abakharev 01:52, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia violating GFDL?

When editing articles, we "agree to license our contributions under the GFDL." Now the GFDL allows free redistribution and modification, as long as the original authors are credited. These credits are done via the page history, where the usernames of contributors are noted, with a link to the users' pages, where they can, if they so wish, identify themselves with their real names. Thus, as long as the entire database is being distributed, there is certainly no violation of the licence.

Now, I noted that you can download stripped versions of the database, containing only the current versions of the articles. This appears to be a violation of the GFDL, since there is no way to link texts to their copyright owners if the full page history is not provided. To the best of my knowledge, contributors do not yield their copyright to Wikimedia, with Wikimedia in turn publishing the material under the GFDL (in which case a single "from Misplaced Pages" credit would suffice); rather, they publish their contribution under the GFDL, allowing Wikimedia and anyone else to host it with proper attribution. All Misplaced Pages mirrors that do not also mirror page histories are of course also in violation of the GFDL if I am correct, but it strikes me as particularly questionable if even Wikimedia itself offers GFDL-violating database dumps for download. dab (ᛏ) 09:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Yikes. I think database dumps should be looked into more closely in general, right now they're not that great. Don't forget that our dev team is chronically overworked though. They won't like this. ^^;; Kim Bruning 10:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hm. I can't look at the dumps right now, but in my understanding providing the full content of all the revisions isn't necessary - providing a list of everyone who contributed is. Whether the "current-only" dump contains such a list for every article I don't know, but if it doesn't that should be added. -- grm_wnr Esc 11:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice to have some sort of "authorship" algorithm that determines the main authors of the current version (discounting minor edits and reverted contributions), the articles could then with an "authors" tab, or even with a small footer, listing the main authors, if possible sorted by the amount of text contributed. I know this is not trivial, and should maybe be tweakable. But we could then request that mirrors provide this list of authors. As it is, most mirrors just have "from Misplaced Pages" (if even that), which clearly isn't sufficient. If you just list everybody who ever touched the article, the actual authors will be indistinguishable from vandals, people who reverted the vandals, and spellchecking or disambiguation edits. Clearly, correcting a typo is not a copyrighteable feat, and consequently the corrected version doesn't qualify as a derivative product. Whatever you distribute, it has to be clear who wrote the actual article; otherwise, you could just as well list the entire 1 million userbase of Misplaced Pages with every article, which would certainly mean that the actual authors are listed somewhere, but that would hardly constitute proper attribution. dab (ᛏ) 15:24, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, this certainly neeeds to be looked into by someone higher up the WikiMedia foodchain. Although everyone probably understands the why of the database downloads, there definetly seems to be a potential legal problem here - The DJ 16:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Does the full authorship need to be mentioned in the distributed copy, or could you just put a disclaimer that says, "For a full list of authors for this article, please see the revision history for the article in question on www.wikipedia.org" ? ~Kylu (u|t) 23:37, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if the GFDL specifies. I'm pretty sure that most people are okay with just a linkback, though. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:41, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Considering that the GPL and GFDL both require the inclusion of the fulltext license with redistributions, out of fear that URLs may become outdated or invalid, I'd be surprised if they'd allow indirect copyright owner lists. But this is a matter for Wikimedia's official legal people to look at. Deco 02:48, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

New Criterion for speedy deletion of ridiculous vanity

At dead-end we get a large number of articles like ZSBoS, which contain adverts, whether added by a well-meaning inclusionist or a conniving exploiter, of such patent inappropriateness that it seems highly roundabout to go through the whole rigmarole of AfD, or even Prod, to get rid of them. For example, the cited example reads:

Zonko's Store Branch of Services.com

Welcome, to Zonko's Store Branch of Services Server Edition! or ZSBoS SE! We work with computers such as Windows XP, Mac OS X and even the Windows 95, 98 and 2000 editions. We work with Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, Laptops, desktops, palm devices, iPods and hardware.

If you have any computer difficulties pelase e-mail erc1995@yahoo.com. You may feel free to leave messages in the "Discussion" tab of this page. (emphasis added)

As far as I can see, this is not covered under any speedy deletion criteria, but i think it should be. This editor is clearly using wikipedia for apparently commercial purposes, in a cynical and blatant way. I propose some kind of Template:Db-vanity rule. Since every speedy deletion has to be taken care of by an admin, any bad faith or questionable speedy nominations would still be sent to AfD or whatever, but a criterion of this nature would help speed up the wikipurging process no end. Jdcooper 02:01, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, this one is covered by the existing #7 under Articles (see WP:CSD). -- Rick Block (talk) 04:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

We've got a perfectly good deletion criteria that covers this: Misplaced Pages:Ignore all rules. --Carnildo 04:38, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

A7 states "An article about a real person, group of people, band, or club that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject", are we allowed to include other types of article in this category? Because if so then there's no problem, but its a slippery slope to bad faith nominations to start twisting CSD ambiguities to include whatever articles we want. Also, re:Ignore all rules, what do you mean? Jdcooper 11:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd sooner support broadening A7 to include "organization or company" as well as "group of people" (although, pedantically, a company IS a group of people, it's not the intent) than to use IAR to delete them. That way lies divisiveness. So I do support changing A7 as suggested. ++Lar: t/c 12:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll support you. A7 does not appear to allow me to delete spam or adverts about a company. Thought it can be streched at times. This means I'm using prod for some of these or leaving the article on speedy for someone else to decide if the article meets speedy criteria. Vegaswikian 22:46, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

A7 shouldn't cover companies. Why not just stub it and prod it, or send it to AfD and be done with it? --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 01:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Because a large number of these are not worth wasting AfD's time and effort on. I'm not talking companies of dubious notability, I'm talking bona fide spam. Jdcooper 02:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Why shouldn't A7 be allowed to cover companies? -Freekee 02:51, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Pages like that are routinely speedied as crap. We probably don't need an extra CSD for them. --Tony Sidaway 02:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thats fine, but which CSD does it "crap" fall under? Jdcooper 12:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The policy change that was approved in December 2005 was: "In short, my proposal is to expand CSD A7 to include non-notable groups of people as well as individuals. This would apply to bands, clubs, organizations, couples, families, and any other collections of individuals that do not assert their importance or significance." (my highlighting) CSD really should apply to organizations, because that was the wording that was voted on and approved. So why doesn't the current wording reflect this? Because of edits like this. GeorgeStepanek\ 05:12, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Maybe because organizations are not considered companies? If they are, and this is put into policy somewhere, it would reduce the load on AfD and Prod. Vegaswikian 20:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

The worst of crap is often deleted by G2 (vandalism). I would estimate that over half of all advertising articles get deleted for being copyvios of the companies' webpages. Otherwise, we always have a chance to improve an advertisement to a reasonably neutral article, so all is not lost if we fail to delete those things speedily. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I've encountered an interesting loophole there. It has already been decided, on Misplaced Pages:Vandalism, that spam is a form of vandalism, but spam is not included in the definition of vandalism on Misplaced Pages:Speedy deletions. That disparity leaves doubt in the minds of some admins as far as whether or not spam can be speedied as vandalism. Some will do it, some won't. Reconciling the CSD definition with the actual vandalism definition should solve the problem. Kafziel 14:48, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I would distinguish between pure spam and an article on a company with a clear pro-bias. Biased pro-corporation articles things can usually be cleaned up to form a neutral article with the information that is there and is probably not a speedy candidate. Spam on the other hand (e.g. "Having trouble with your love life? We offer the market's best deal on the remedy! Get 100 Viagra tablets for just 10 dollars. Click here for a great offer!") is well within the boundaries of vandalism and speediable. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Offensive comments in afd discussions

I find this edit upsetting and offensive , (instead of voting delete, to vote "kill" on an article about a member of the ISM who was shot by the IDF). Is there any policy or guideline that would prevent users making edits such as this as I feel such comments can only add a feeling of hostility to the project which should not be what we want here. Arniep 01:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Get over it. User:Zoe| 03:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

As Zoe said, forget about it; you don't have the right to freedom from offense. Negotiate the objective facts of the situation. Reason is the most effective way to quell emotional responses from others. --Knucmo2 13:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but I'm still not happy. There should be a no tolerance policy to these sort of veiled threats, to whichever or whatever group of people they refer to. Arniep 16:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

If you're looking for a generic "play nice, don't be an asshead" policy, sure, there is one. If you're looking for one that specifically says that people should be nice when voicing their desire to delete articles, I don't think such a policy exists (and I don't think one is required, for that matter).

That said, you may also want to consider assuming good faith, and in any case, no policy prevents anyone from making an edit, though a policy may dictate that certain edits have consequences. Personally, I'd recommend talking about it with the person in question -- if only to ensure that he really was rude on purpose, as opposed to just choosing his words poorly but without malice, for example -- before making a bigger issue out of it. (Then again, in all honesty, I don't find the comment in question particularly offensive. That may just be me.) -- Captain Disdain 03:43, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The comment was perhaps ill-chosen, but I very much doubt there was any malice behind it. Kill is ubiquitously used to mean "get rid of". I wouldn't worry about it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I find it hard to assume good faith when I can find no instance where Humus Sapiens has used that phrase in any other afd discussions. I would ask for all people to please keep their religious/national bigotry out of Misplaced Pages. There is a real problem with people who are on opposing sides of various conflicts either ganging up to vote on "the enemies" in afd or cfd discussions or adding partisan information to articles and claiming it must be added to "balance POV". The main problems lie in these areas: Jewish-Palestinian conflict, Northern Ireland conflict, Turkish-Kurdish conflict, Albanian-Serbian conflict. I'm sure there are others but these are the ones that have caught my attention. Arniep 08:56, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Even if we assume that he was not making a joke or choosing his words poorly or just otherwise shooting off his mouth, and was actually out to offend -- all of which strike me as fairly strong assumptions to make without actually checking with him to see what his actual intentions were -- what would you like to do about it? -- Captain Disdain 09:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I am sure they must have been aware of the possible interpretation of the word "kill" in a discussion about a person who was "almost" killed by the IDF. As I said above it is just another example of someone using bigoted language in discussion of article which is on "the other side" of whatever conflict it happens to be. Arniep 09:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. And as I said, I don't find that interpretation particularly offensive -- not unless I know that there's an intentional effort on his part to offend or to celebrate or wish for the death of another human being for political or other reasons. Have you taken this issue up with him? Do you know what his intentions are? If you do, great, then you have something to go on. If you're just making an assumption, then frankly, I think you're on the wrong track. In any case, I repeat: what would you like to do about it? If you feel he has violated policy, you can of course always take it to mediation, but frankly, if you don't even talk to the guy first and determine his actual intentions or give him the chance to apologize (particularly if it was not his intention to offend), that's not really your best choice. I don't think anyone here can provide you with a solution any better than that. I mean, if you just want to vent about it, that's okay too, but it isn't going to solve your problem. -- Captain Disdain 10:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, what interpretation don't you find offensive? Arniep 16:06, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't find the use of the word "kill" offensive in the context of deleting an article that is about someone getting injured or killed unless I know for sure that the word is being used with malice. But that's me; again, your mileage may vary. In any case, that's neither here nor there; we can argue about whether it's offensive or not, but that's completely irrelevant, because it won't do anything to solve your problem. So I'm just going to ask you again: What would you like to do (or see done) about this incident? If you just want to register your displeasure, consider it registered and noted. It's done. If that's not enough, do something about it -- as far as I know, you haven't even talked to the guy about this. It's entirely possible that he's not even aware that what he said is being talked about (which, to be honest, doesn't really strike me as very cool). I again suggest you either take it up with him (and if that fails, go to mediation or otherwise try and work it out) or let the matter drop.

(And on a somewhat related note, your "veiled threats against people" statement above doesn't really convince me. If you are suggesting that the guy is seriously (if indirectly) proposing that Phil Reiss or other members of the ISM should be killed, I don't see it, and unless you know for a fact that it's what he wants -- y'know, by, say, taking the time to talk to him and making sure you haven't misunderstood him -- I think it's foolish to claim that he does.) -- Captain Disdain 18:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll have to live with the particular instance and others of word-usage. However I'd pick up that the description "minor" "non-lifethreatening" was very inaccurate. (COntemplate for a moment something hitting your head hard enough that you bleed inside, and commonly require a hole being made in your skull to depressurise it - minor? Mortality is not small.). Participants in that afd were invited to consider teh article with a misleading description of the magnitude of the injury. "Rubber" bullets are not supposed to hit people's heads, and if they do they have probably been fired negligently or deliberately to do so. Midgley 16:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll have to blunt. Many articles relating to Palestinians or people or organizations seen to be supporters of the Palestinians are in danger of not being neutral because many of the contributors to these articles hold a very pro Israel POV (the nominator of this article is Jewish and five of the delete votes at least were from Jewish users). Of course it is to be expected when you have one people in conflict with another that this kind of thing will happen with a worldwide audience, a similar thing was seen in the deletion discussion on Category:Kurdistan where many of the votes to delete were clearly from Turkish users. Unfortunately at the moment that there don't seem to be many members of the Misplaced Pages community working to stop these articles straying into favouring an Israeli point of view rather than being neutral which is sad in my opinion. Arniep 19:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

And what does that have to do with this comment at that AFD? Do you have a point?--Sean Black 19:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It is directly related, yes. My point should be clear from the above. Arniep 19:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you have a choice between taking this one-word comment as a good-faith (but perhaps poorly phrased) way of saying "delete." versus a deliberately offensive attempt to fan the flames, and you're choosing the latter course because it fits your account of POV-by-consensus on Misplaced Pages. You may have a point worth debating, but tying it to this particular AfD isn't a persuasive way to do that. · rodii · 01:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The editor chose to use that word when they have never used it in an afd discussion before. It is absolutely impossible that they would just have suddenly started to use that word instead of delete starting with that afd discussion without being aware of the significance of using it on that discussion. And yes the word is not really that important as you say, although I do believe it is a violation of WP:CIVIL. Perhaps also we should consider general veiled threats to a group as a violation of WP:NPA, for example if a person voted kill on an afd discussion on a homosexual person, and there was evidence that they were homophobic, although it would not be a personal attack on anyone in particular I think it should be a blockable offense. Arniep 02:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

"Absolutely impossible"! I think not. I think you overstate the significance, but in any case, if you think this user has committed some serious violation of policy, take it to WP:AN/I; why are you posting on the Village Pump? Other people have told you they think you're overreacting, but you aren't inclined to accept that advice, so what do you want to happen? A mob? · rodii · 03:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

You bring the torches, I'll bring the pitchforks. PARTY!  RasputinAXP  c 03:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Let me make sure I understand you. Are you suggesting that because of this single incident (in which there is no confirmation of the editor's motivations and in which, as far as I know, no one has even informed the editor about this ongoing conversation (and really, allow me to be blunt here, because clearly subtlety isn't working: before you continue making these accusations behind his back, which I find distasteful at best, please find out if he actually meant it the way you insist he did), it would be appropriate to block the editor? -- Captain Disdain 03:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I am not saying it is all about this single incident at all. As I said above it is just an ongoing pattern of behaviour of users on one side of a conflict "ganging up" on articles that are on the "other side". I don't really know how we can deal with that in such an open system, except by maybe informing the wider community that this is going on. If we do nothing, it will mean that Misplaced Pages will not be considered to be a neutral source of information on some very significant issues. Arniep 15:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

This was just brought to my attention. I feel that it would be only fair (per WP:AGF) to ask me first. Let's keep in mind that the vote was about the article, not the person. Of course it was a joke, perhaps tasteless, but I support the editors' right for (perhaps imperfect) sense of humor in talks & votes. Now, taking closer look at this discussion, it seems that this occasion was chosen as a soapbox. ←Humus sapiens 00:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Pointing out that there is a problem with articles related to certain conflicts is nothing to with WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox. Arniep 01:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I thought Humus was making a reference to Kill (Unix). —Viriditas | Talk 01:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Good grief! When I saw it I just thought it was a funky way of saying 'delete'. I certainly didn't assume HS meant the subject of the article should be physically killed, or any other bad faith assumptions mentioned above. Arniep, why didn't you just discuss this with HS? It appears HS had to stumble on this discussion about your concerns with his statement on his own after several days. --MPerel 03:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This complaint is ridiculous, does anybody actually believe that Arneip was actually offended? I found the basis of his "indignancy" either extremely disingenuous or unbelievably silly.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 06:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This discussion should be killed without mercy. Can't belive it has been allowed to grow to almost 14000 KB.-- Heptor _talk 12:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

You know what's far more offensive than the use of the word "Kill"? It's Arniep's statement that "the nominator of this article is Jewish and five of the delete votes at least were from Jewish users". How does Arniep know this, and why on earth would it make a difference, or even be relevant to this particular discussion? Care to explain, Arniep? Jayjg 13:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering the same thing. SlimVirgin 17:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Morale Issue

I put a discussion on the Admin/Incident page. It is probably better here. My problem is that two people get into edit wars over content. This degrades into name calling. If one is an admin, or has a good friend who is an admin, he/she pulls rank, and virtually says, the article is this way, end of story. If the other person debates this, it becomes typically personal, and the admin will start the name calling, eg, troll vandal etc. If the other person responds, and especially breaks a rule, the admin can ban that person. Does anyone else notice this? Does anyone have solution or a way forward? Thank you. Wallie 08:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Obviously all cases are different, but if you feel that there has been a conspicuous misuse of power by an admin, or indeed misconduct by any user, the place to raise the issue would be Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment. However I would suggest that you attempt to resolve to situation amicably between yourselves before jumping straight in with an RfC, although this is unfortunately not always possible. Rje 11:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I would expect an admin who used blocks/bans solely to get his/her own way in an edit dispute to be desysopped, and I believe most admins would concur.

That said, if a user is harming the encyclopaedia then it may well be the duty of an admin to block them, at least for a short time. I'm a strong believer that blocks should be protective rather than punitive (i.e. they should be used to protect Misplaced Pages rather than to punish 'breaking a rule'), but I certainly think most blocks carried out by admins are justified.

In either case, as Rje says above, this is what the dispute resolution process is for -- but we would much prefer it if disagreements were sorted out amicably between users behaving in a friendly and adult fashion. --Nick Boalch 11:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, do you have any actual examples of the behaviour you describe above? I can think of no examples off the top of my head of admins engaging in edit-warring and personal attacks of the kind you describe. --Nick Boalch 11:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

PS: Don't you mean it to be a "moral" issue? --Knucmo2 13:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

nope. Morale, as this can lower it. Thanks. Wallie 17:01, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

No. I do not act in this way. I believe in alerting the community to something that is happening. In this way, people who are doing this sort of thing may change direction. I think it already happening. It is also more effective, if a third party gets involved and says to the admin to stop it. As far as disputes between users is concerned, this is a dispute between a user and his/her admin (ie boss), not one between equals. Naturally if the user mentioned is an admin, the admin would probably not react favorably, as most people do not like criticism, and such an admin is very unlikely to be a humble person. Wallie 17:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Erm. Being an admin is no big deal on Misplaced Pages. An admin is certainly not any user's boss. In a content discussion, both are indeed equal (other considerations aside), and if the admin in question does not recognize that, he or she will be reminded about it rather fast. In particular, admins are forbidden from using admin powers in conflicts they are directly involved with. --Stephan Schulz 17:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a tall tale that is used to lull people into accepting admin power. Admins are a pain in the butt and we shouldn't have them. Honbicot 10:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll ask again, just to be sure: do you have any actual examples of the edit-warring and personal attacks you complain of actually happening? 'I think it's already happening' isn't good enough. If it's happening, show us where, and we'll take action against it. If it's not happening, then this discussion is about solving a non-existent problem and we can all move on. --Nick Boalch 18:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The Use of Scientific Names over Common Names

As an amateur herpetologist and former snake keeper, I recently took an interest in writing articles on the many different species of vipers (see Viperidae). I really only started doing this in earnest back in April this year. The very first problem I recognized, was that there was no common structure to tie all of the existing articles together. For example, sometimes only a subspecies was described, but not the species, the genus or the subfamily to which it belongs. This is not very orderly -- chaotic even -- and a waste if the descriptions in such articles cover characteristics common to an entire family. Misplaced Pages obviously has a lot more growing to do, so I think it would be in the best interest of everyone to prevent this kind of disorder from getting out of hand before the number of articles on biological organisms becomes too great.

The most obvious structure to apply here is systematics: the science of taxonomy and binomial nomenclature. More than a million species of animals and half a million species of plants and microorganisms have been described by science and I'm sure that it is everyone's hope and wish that we will eventually see Misplaced Pages articles dedicated to each and every one of them. However, it is obvious to myself and others that the current policy of using common names over scientific names for page titles whenever possible (the consensus for which I hear has only been more or less agreed upon) is simply not good enough to achieve this end. What we need is a standard for naming articles on biological organisms that is predictable, promotes structure and prevents the propagation of errors. The best way to achieve this is with scientific names: not common names with a needless array of redirects and disambiguation pages.

Except in the case of birds, where the American Ornithologists' Union has established official common names for each species, there are often many different common names. Snakes are a good example. Take Sistrurus catenatus: if this page were to be changed to a common name, should it be massasauga, or eastern massasauga, or ground rattler, or swamp rattler, or even Michigan rattler? Those are all recognized common names for this species, particularly in the United States, but naming Misplaced Pages's page for it should not be reduced to a popularity contest. There is one perfectly valid name for this species, recognized the world over, and that is its scientific name: Sistrurus catenatus. Only then can there be no doubt regarding the subject of the article.

Another thing I've noticed about Misplaced Pages, is that only the article names get indexed, as opposed to redirects and entries in disambiguation pages. This is hardly surprising, but if ten years from now we have 100,000 articles on biological organisms -- most with common names -- this will make the indexes pretty much useless. How can you be sure how many Trimeresurus articles there are if they're scattered all across the index? There are currently 43 different species and subspecies, yet if the standard was to use only scientific names for each page, they would all be found under the T and line up neatly under the entry for Trimeresurus.

Let's take a further look at this with some current indexing examples.

• Birds: I'm sure there are many more bird articles than this, but it seems as if the bird folks just don't care much for indexing.

  Responding to this point in particular: According to Misplaced Pages's categorization guidelines, there should be few if any articles in Category:Birds — articles should be in the narrowest applicable subcategory. Thus, a bird article should be placed directly in Category:Birds only if it didn't fit into any of the existing subcategories (and if so, that might be a good reason to start a new subcategory). Similarly, we don't list sharks in Category:Fish, nor vipers in any of Category:Snakes, Category:Reptiles, Category:Chordates or even Category:Animals. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Eagles: Looks like there are more eagle articles than bird articles. However, the species and genera are mixed up so you can't tell which ones are more closely related. I've only managed to find this information on the Eagle page, where the list of species is grouped according to their generic (scientific) names.
• Sharks: There's more here, but once again, they're all mixed up. Even if you know your sharks, it's hard to see immediately if there are articles present for all the members of any particular genus.
• Vipers: Indexing done properly. All the Sistrurus species are under the S and all the Trimeresurus species are under the T. This way, even if the list is 100 times as long, it's still easy to find all the articles for a certain genus and see which ones are missing.

Looking again at that Eagle page, it reminds me of how common names do not encourage any structure when writing articles on biological organisms. There are many genera of eagles listed there, yet it seems the authors have spent most of their time producing articles only for the individual species. It would have been far more efficient to tackle the families, subfamilies and genera first. Those are the places to describe the defining characteristics of each in order to avoid having to repeat them in each of the species articles. A single eagle article to describe a number of genera is not specific enough. If all of the species are going to be described anyway, the more structured approach is also the best way to show people the differences between the various eagle genera.

Recently, one Wikipedian argued that things should be left as they are, because for a "normal" person to look for "gaboon viper" and end up with Bitis gabonica would be too jarring an experience. I say that if systematics is the best way for Misplaced Pages to self-organize, then why shouldn't we encourage people to follow and learn? We can still use common names as redirects, in disambiguation pages, and even make liberal use of them if necessary in the actual articles; that way, people will still know what they are about. But just as long as we emphasize the importance and use of scientific names for organizing those articles. I also believe that this is a good way to attract more interest from graduate students, professionals and other more knowledgeable individuals who would then be more willing to write articles for us. Which is what we want, right?

It is said that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. As opposed to common names, binomial nomenclature is the best way to illustrate how the different species are related because of the way they evolved. Those names are a reflection of our current understanding of how life evolved on the planet. If Misplaced Pages is still around in some form or another 100 or even 1000 years from now, our generation will not be remembered as much for the articles that we wrote, as for the structure and organization that we imposed upon them at this early stage, which in turn allowed it all to grow properly and thrive.

In case you're interested, I've argued before in favor of scientific names over common names on my user:talk page and on the Tree of Life page. At one point it was suggested to me that this was the proper place for me to state my case. I hope so, as well as that reason will eventually win the day concerning this issue. --Jwinius 19:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages policy is to use titles which are the most commonly known to the average reader, not to the scientific community. Should we call blackbirds turdus? Who's going to know that? Call it by the common name and redirect the scientific name. User:Zoe| 19:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, it should be noted that, as long as the appropriate redirects are in place, one can get a pretty good listing of a genus via, f.ex., Special:Prefixindex/Sorex. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Another way, of course, would be to categorise the redirects. See discussion above. If you categorised all the Sorex redirects in Category:Sorex, you would have your index. Carcharoth 19:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

About the "Special:Prefixindex" comment - I've seen people linking to that kind of things from main article. I agree it is a very useful tool, but have refrained from similar linking from main article namespace, because the "Special" namespace seems to be self-referential. Having said that, there should be a way to make such browsing tools as "Special:Prefixindex" available to the reader. And the results of such discussions should be added to some guidelines document so people don't have to perennially have these discussions. Carcharoth 20:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely that both common names and scientific names should be listed in the category system, but in separate areas. Thus people would be able to choose the option to browse by common name, or by genus name. One way to do this is to categorise redirects, but really any method would be OK as long as people retain the option to browse either way. We should not force people to browse only one way. Can someone please pass these ideas over to the people working on biological articles. Carcharoth 20:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course, it is very important that common names be mentioned in the articles, but except for very well-known ones (for example, dog, potato, or bird; or even black mamba), I think that the titles should be scientific names. How many people know what a northern red anemone is, anyway? In many cases, there are multiple common names, and choosing one of them creates a POV. Sometimes, a common name refers to different species, creating confusion (see my experiences with vendace). Ardric47 20:17, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

(after massive edit conflict) If there's no widely-accepted common name (as seemingly is the case in your Sistrurus catenatus example), the only sensible location is at the scientific name. Something like blackbird, Zoe's counterexample, should probably stay where it is. If you would like it to be possible to browse by taxonomy, I suggest you categorize scientific names, including redirects—add Turdus merula to Category:Genus Turdus, then add that category to Category:Family Turdidae, and that to Category:Order Passiformes, that to Category:Class Aves, that to Category:Phylum Chordata, and that to Category:Kingdom Animalia. Do that for every single taxonomically-named article and redirect, and you're set. Of course, it'll be a big job, but that's what Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Tree of Life is for. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The categories don't normally include the rank: Category:Passeriformes, etc. exist already. Ardric47 20:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• First: Redirects are cheap. To the average reader it doesn't make any difference at all whether they found an article by typing in American robin or Turdus migratorius. Most of these debates over article naming are, therefore, not important at all. And we can use disambiguation to ensure that both British and American readers can find the animal they are looking for under Daddy-long-legs. This is very unlike a print encyclopedia, where it may take a big fraction of a minute to thumb through the index or take down and open a different volume if one's first guess at the entry name is wrong.

• Second: Misplaced Pages's naming convention is, and has always been, to use the most common name. Not the right name, not the best name, not the most technically correct name, but the most common name. This has many advantages. One is that "the most common name" is usually easier to determine and to get consensus on then the most technically correct name.

• Third: Misplaced Pages exists to serve the general reader, not to impress the technical reader with our degree of technical expertise. Maybe taxonomists will have a lower opinion of us for using common names, but that's not the audience Misplaced Pages serves. (Most academics don't like us, anyway). Dpbsmith (talk) 13:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

A comment on your first point: I agree that it doesn't matter whether a reader tries to find something (either by searching, typing in, or browsing the category system) by common name or taxonomic name, BUT, it is important that Misplaced Pages does not let readers fall into the trap of thinking they only need to know the common name. A reader of Misplaced Pages should come to realise that in many cases if they want to know about a certain species or genus, they will need to know the species and/or genus name. In other words, the ease by which common names can be redirected to scientific names shouldn't fool the reader into thinking that the common name is "correct", or that they will be able to do this for all animals/plants/whatever. It is important to remember that people can learn things not just from the content of an encyclopedia, but also its structure. Carcharoth 16:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on the third point. I mainly work on plant articles, and plants often have many common names, and often have common names in common (for a taste of this, see list of plants by common name, a page I haven't had time to work on lately). I've also had the experience of seeing articles linked by one common name on a genus article, but the link was red. Turns out that there was an article on the plant, using another common name, but there was no link from the genus to the scientific name of the species.

I think the use of common names also inevitably entails choosing one POV over another... my neighbor and I had a laugh over what he called a black ash, and what I called a boxelder. However, if you search for boxelder, you get redirected to "manitoba maple", a name absolutely no one would use in Pennsylvania, and makes me think perhaps wikipedia has a Canadian slant.

Now that might seem a bit silly, but I hope it illustrates my point. The linnean system of binomial nomenclature was created so that people from different regions (and of course speaking different languages) could have a "neutral, objective" language to use when discussing the same organism. Doesn't it make sense for wikipedia (with it's neutral point of view) to use this tool when it's already available to us? SB Johnny 20:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This specific topic has received extensive attention at Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions_(fauna). You're probably best off discussing it at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming_conventions_(fauna). Our overarching naming convention in a nutshell is "Names of Misplaced Pages articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists" (from Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions). In my opinion, the only case in which I would prefer the scientific name is the case in which there is no unambiguous common name for the species. How silly would it be if we moved dog to Canis lupus familiaris? Deco 20:52, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that would be silly at all! It's an advantage wikip has over paper 'pedias, really... because there's something rather elegant about searching for dog, and reaching an article that starts with "Canis lupis familiaris, the dog, etc., etc....". Such a beginning to an article is not only (presumably) non-offensive, but perhaps educational. Isn't that what an encyclopedia is for? SB Johnny 21:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Just another thought on Jwinnus's opening: can redirect pages have category tags? That might help take care of the indexing issue. SB Johnny 10:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it would take care of the indexing issue. Maybe you've been reading this discussion further up the page? :-) Carcharoth 09:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Nope, I hadn't :). It's come up on the plants project talk page as well. I guess one problem with this is that the cat indices will soon be enourmous if every plant is listed numerous times (assuming they have numerous common names, and/or different binomials because of taxonomical changes).

Anyway, why would a user (as opposed to an editor) need to look at indices? For plants, for example, there is the category "lists of plants", and these lists might tend to be much more useful to a reader than the category lists, which say very little about the pages on them. In general, when I'm looking for something, I just search for it. (My apologies for not wikifying all the pages I just mentioned... no time). SB Johnny 14:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

The advantage of categories over lists is where a list will expand for the foreseeable future (and new plants and animals are discovered all the time - and for the smaller lists of species, creating a category from a list is not much work). In the case of common names vs scientific names, the category could split at suitable points (depending on the exact taxonomy and status and diversity of common names) into "categories by scientific names" and "categories by common names" - mixing the two would be disastrous. You could then have a category of all animals commonly called lions, robins and caterpillars: "african lion", "american robin" (this example deliberately chosen - I know it is not a robin), "eastern red caterpillar", but these would all be directs to disambiguation pages or pages under the scientific names. But as someone else said, this does need to be thought through carefully. But I for one would much prefer to be able to drill down through categories using the scientific names - currently you can do this by using the taxoboxes to navigate. The question is, would categorising the redirects from scientific names duplicate the work done with taxoboxes? Carcharoth 10:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

As an example, using the taxoboxes, I just navigated from Canis lupus familiaris right up to domain level. It was interesting seeing various minor subrankings appear along the way:

• Canis lupus familiaris
• Canis lupus
• Canis
• Canidae
• Carnivora
• Mammalia
• Mammaliaformes
• Synapsida
• Tetrapoda
• Tetrapodomorpha
• Sarcopterygii
• Vertebrata
• Craniata
• Chordata
• Deuterostomia
• Bilateria
• Eumetazoa
• Animalia
• Eukaryota

So, is it worth replicating this taxobox navigational structure that uses scientific names in the category system that currently uses only common names? (This would be done by categorising the redirects from scientific names in their own categories). Or rather, should all the "common name" categories have a blurb saying "if you want to navigate up or down taxonomic levels by scientific name, please use the taxoboxes, starting from..." Also, there should be a page explaining all that, which I think is at Scientific classification. This would all tie categories and taxoboxes closer together, rather than having them exist in relative isolation. Carcharoth 10:47, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Nobody is suggesting that Misplaced Pages be turned into some kind of a platform for scientific publications; only that there is a better naming convention for the articles. Binomial nomenclature isn't just popular with scientists: it's a common language for normal people all over the world who just want to make sure that they're all talking about the same organisms. The Linnean system has done a great job at this for almost 300 years, which is why not using it is big a mistake. Why reinvent the wheel?

To suggest creating redirects for scientific names instead is to miss the point entirely. That is to trivialize the value and ignore the utility of the binomial system:

• Uniqueness. Where the current policy offers ambiguity and disambiguation pages as a workaround, scientific names are always unique and precise. Binomial nomenclature works as a filing system and information retrieval system, giving immediate access to all known information about a particular species. Naming a Misplaced Pages article on a plant or animal should not be reduced to a popularity contest.
• Universality. Any particular common name may be used a lot in some (English-speaking) countries (or on the Internet), but it may not be in others. In contrast, scientific names are universal and the same in all countries, whether the primary language is English or not. Scientific names are therefore more neutral.

It is ridiculous to say that those in favor of scientific names are out to stop people from using common names or something. Even if the blackbird article was renamed Turdus merula, most of us, including myself, would still think of a blackbird as a blackbird. However, scientific names inspire both authors and readers alike to think about the big picture. Since this particular blackbird (there are many other blackbirds) it is a member of the genus Turdus, we learn that it is a thrush just like Turdus migratorius, the American robin (a misleading common name). They both belong to the subfamily Turdinae (true thrushes), and in turn the family Turdidae (thrushes, robins, chats, and wheatears). Each of these groups has its own defining characteristics. In other words, a blackbird is not just a blackbird and the way we write and organize the articles in Misplaced Pages should reflect this. --Jwinius 12:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone ever suggested combining the common and scientific names in the titles? Then we would have, for example: American robin (Turdus migratorius) and Lion (Panthera leo)? Other examples would be Aardwolf (Proteles cristatus), and so on. Carcharoth 19:08, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, those are just way too long and cumbersome for my taste. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:50, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Ownership of images

If I give my sister my camera to take a picture, then I do the downloading from the camera to my PC, and then upload it to Misplaced Pages, am I the "creator" of the image, or is my sister, who pushed the button? Does my sister have to give permission for release, or is it my prerogative? User:Zoe| 19:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

If you said "can you take this picture for me", and she said "yes", then she has taken the picture for you, not for herself. Hence you have the copyright. Morally, you could, and should credit her. She gets the credit for taking the picture, but you have the copyright and can release the picture. Also, you have the picture, not her. Ownership being 99% of the law and all that. Carcharoth 20:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Your sister is the one who decided exactly when to take the shot, from what angle, of what, etc. In other words, she was the one who was responsible for all the creativity in creating the image, and creativity is what copyright protects. Your role involved no creativity and therefore is not copyrightable. All copyright belongs to your sister, and she would have to give permission (or else, if she's under eighteen, your parents/legal guardians might have to, I think, depending on jurisdiction; but Misplaced Pages has tended to ignore that, since it makes life very complicated).

Copyrights made for hire are owned by the one who does the hiring (17 USC § 201(b)). If the work was not made for hire, the one who created it is the copyright holder, irrespective of motive (17 USC § 201(a)). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

So if I give her a dollar to take the picture, I'm the copyright holder?  :) User:Zoe| 20:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so, unless she "expressly agree in a written instrument signed by that the work shall be considered a work made for hire" (17 USC § 101). She needs to actually be employed by you, not just contracted. You could always buy the copyright off her later, though. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Just lie and say you took it. Arniep 20:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Gaaa. I just think I'll take my pictures myself.  :) User:Zoe| 20:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that a large part of the "creativity" in taking a picture is deciding what to take a picture of. From the sound of it, Zoe asked her sister to specifically take a picture of something. In that scenario, the idea to take a picture of something came from Zoe. I know I'd be annoyed if I thought of a great idea for a picture, asked someone else to take that picture, and then found that they had run off with the picture and idea, claiming it as "theirs". Carcharoth 20:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you can argue that by saying "can you take a picture for me", and her replying "yes", you have a verbal contract that you have hired her to take the picture, though from reading Simetrical's comment, that is contract work, not employment work. Don't think you have to actually give her any money. As for creativity, when I give someone my camera to take a picture, I tell them exactly how to take it. Hell, I even line the camera up for them (and then go and stand in the picture). Though I suspect that you gave your sister the camera to take a picture somewhere when you were not present, so ignore this part of my rant about creativity... :-) (the earlier comment about identifying who had the idea to take the photo is still valid). Carcharoth 20:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we haven't done anything yet, I was thinking about mailing my camera to her to ask her to take some pictures in the San Francisco Bay Area, but we haven't even discussed it yet. User:Zoe| 20:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

In that case, she would clearly be the creator since you would simply be telling her what you wanted her to take a picture of and she would be adding the creative elements (lighting, angle, framing, etc...). And the fact that you "hired" her by paying her a dollar is not enough - the statute requires that the work made for hire agreement be in writing. However, all it takes is for you to be the copyright owner is a few words (in writing) from your sister acknowledging that all photographs taken by her for you will be deemed a "work made for hire" and that you will be the owner of the copyright. (This all assumes we are talking about U.S. copyrights.) -- DS1953 03:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Zoe, defense of copyright is a civil matter. As long as you and your sister reach an understanding regarding what will happen to the picture(s), and you are fairly confident that she isn't going to sue you because of anything you do, it doesn't much matter whether you take steps to legally firm up your position. Sure you could work up a written contract, pay her for the images, and take other steps to cover your ass legally, but I would really hope such actions are unnecessary. Just tell her it is for Misplaced Pages, that pictures need be made public (under the GFDL or similar), and get her to agree to that. You can offer her a byline on the image description page if she wants, as well. I would hope that with your sister you wouldn't need to worry about things more than that. Legally though, she would ordinarilly own the picture, so you could get into trouble if you try to trick her or release the image without her permission provided that she would be inclined to sue you over it. Dragons flight 04:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not really very complex. Basically, all you need to do is e-mail her and say, "hey, sis, these pictures you took, is it okay if we use them for Misplaced Pages?" and when she says "yeah, go ahead, no problem", you have received permission from the copyright holder. (A phone call will do just as well, but this way you have something you can refer to if, for whatever reason, the question of whether she actually gave permission comes up. Provided that you save the e-mail, of course.) If she takes the pictures, she owns the copyright (yeah, I suppose that technically it can be argued that if you tell her exactly what to shoot, it's really your picture and not hers, but for all practical intents and purposes, if you mail her a camera and she takes some pictures, she's the creator and copyright owner), but as long as you have permission to use the pictures, it doesn't really matter who the copyright owner is -- could be Santa Claus or Jacques Chirac or me, a permission's a permission. -- Captain Disdain 05:10, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, images that are by-permission for use on Misplaced Pages are not acceptable. See, e.g. Template:Copyrighted. Christopher Parham (talk) 09:01, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah. I stand corrected, my bad. That said, surely obtaining permission that includes third party use would be just as simple. -- Captain Disdain 19:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately it sometimes isn't...many copyright owners would be willing to release their work for educational/encyclopedic use on Misplaced Pages, but would not want to see their work sold by commercial entities. This is actually a fairly common situation. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:36, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no doubt that this is true, but in an instance where someone is taking pictures for the explicit purpose of use for Misplaced Pages, I kinda doubt that is a problem... -- Captain Disdain 06:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Slight correction: the "permission" needs to include an explicit acceptance of Misplaced Pages's copyright conditions/GFDL - see Misplaced Pages:Boilerplate request for permission for some tips on how to acquire such explicit permission from a third party. Zoe, I take it that you're on excellent terms of understanding with your sister. But such assumption is irrelevant for wikipedia. So, if you're on good terms with her, there wouldn't be a problem to get her permission according to the descriptions of Misplaced Pages:Boilerplate request for permission I suppose, while that's the confirmation needed for uploading the picture in wikipedia. And then, in the image description (that is the "image:" namespace page where the picture is uploaded) you'd make correct attribution to the "author" of the picture, with reference to the wikipedia-compatible license conditions you agreed upon. Best to mention the attribution in the "edit summary" when uploading too, that makes the attribution "undeletable"/"stable" in later versions of the image description page. --Francis Schonken 09:44, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that images do not have to be released under the GFDL or a license compatible with the GFDL to be used on Wikimedia projects, and especially on English Misplaced Pages, where we still permit fair use of copyrighted images. However, just getting permission to use it on Misplaced Pages is not enough - ideally, get them to release it "to the world" under a suitable free license of their choosing. Usually I find once a person has explored a few options and found a free license they like, they have no problem using it after that. Also, if it's language-agnostic, consider uploading to Wikimedia Commons instead. Deco 20:43, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Userbox collectors

This is the 2nd time I run into a case of this. Can't remember the first user. But I would likt to mention User talk:Wootking. It seems this person is adding himself to any type of WikiProject he can find, and collecting userboxes of projects and other UBX. However he has not made ONE single edit to an article. His account was created only 2 weeks ago. Now the fact that he collects userboxes i can care less about, but the fact that he is adding himself to all those WikiProjects is annoying, in that it clutters up the Project. It's not a real problem, but I was wondering if other people have seen similar problems lately. It almost seems like a bot (considering the bad formatting of the page). - The DJ 14:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• • Not to mention that the user also claims to have six batchelor's degrees, five masters', a doctorate and a law degree, and is studying medicine. Completely bogus, all of it. Misplaced Pages is being invaded by the mentally ill, the stupid, and the sociopathic. \ Fnarf999 \ talk \ contribs \ 20:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I've not seen this particular problem. From looking at this user's page and writings, it appears that he may actually think he has to sign up as a participant in a WikiProject to make use of the articles. He mentions his research and doesn't generally seem to be going anything in bad faith. This may just be an opportunity for communication and understanding. Aguerriero (talk) 22:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe he's the Walter Mitty type. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 03:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Signature limitations

Some editing had been occuring at Misplaced Pages:Sign your posts on talk pages as well as a straw poll that would strengthen the limitations on length and content of signatures. This is currently being driven by a few editors, however as this is an issue which effects a very large number of users, wider input would be desirable. - brenneman 08:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Factions of Nationalism: proposal to move Polish Biographical Dictionary → Polski Słownik Biograficzny

See Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary#Requested move. Alas, but:

I get the creepy feeling this is a test case for the Polish Cabal how far they can go in bending wikipedia their way. Note that Piotrus' argument regarding the dictionary resumes to: look how successful we've been thus far in replacing "Polish Biographical Dictionary" by "Polski Słownik Biograficzny" in many wikipedia articles (which is an unacceptable self-reference argument). It has been amply demonstrated by me that the English version "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in *external sources* to refer to this multivolume dictionary, and not to the other, one-volume, one (see talk in archive).

Sorry, don't want to offend people doing hard work in WikiProjects on specific topics (like the Misplaced Pages:Polish Wikipedians' notice board).

Anyway, didn't surprise me a bit that Piotrus (the initiator of the vote above) opposes the new Misplaced Pages:No factions of belief proposal (), as far as I can see entirely for the wrong reasons. --Francis Schonken 08:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Um, I'm Swedish and not part of the Polish Cabal, but I think it is just common sense and sound bibliographical practice to keep books (as well as other publications) at their actual title rather than inventing new titles in English for them.

Despite the claims from Francis Schonken, I would disagree that it has been demonstrated that '"Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in external sources'. There are a couple of examples of loose references to this work in that way, but many more refer to it by its Polish title, and in a bibliography or footnote reference that would be the only correct way. This is really a very flimsy and biased argument. Francis just gives much greater weight to the few examples that correspond to his own view.

This is not one of those literary classics that has been translated numerous times, published in numerous editions and known by an English title for hundreds of years. It is a contemporary Polish reference work, published in Poland, written entirely in Polish, and with only a Polish title. Anyone looking for information on this is more likely to look for it under its Polish title. That is, at least, the only title under which it can be found in the catalogues of the British Library or the Library of Congress. Tupsharru 09:41, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (books)#Title translations is clear on the issue, *especially* for those books that haven't been published in English (even if there would be no "standard translation" of the title, which was the case for some years regarding Ensaio sobre a Lucidez), the wikipedia content page is at an English version of the title. I mean: Alles went behalve een vent is a redirect to something understood by an average English speaker, isn't it? --Francis Schonken 09:57, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can see, you have written that convention yourself. It has not been widely discussed, it is not really in accordance with actual practice when it comes to publications with foreign titles (the cases mentioned by you are your own, just as the "guideline"), and to most people this is probably a non-issue, as it is (as I wrote above) just sound and normal bibliographic practice to refer to a publication by its actual title, not an invented one. Tupsharru 10:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what your point is. Yes, I wrote large parts of wikipedia:naming conventions (books), apart from copying bits and pieces I had found elsewhere... that's what I do, I sometimes write guideline proposals. Then, the proposal was widely advertised, mentioned several times here on this Village pump page, at wikipedia talk:naming conventions, wikipedia:current surveys, etc, etc. And then it was discussed in several places: primarily at wikipedia talk:naming conventions (books), there was a WP:RM vote *specifically* drawn in these discusions, etc, etc.

The section of that guideline regarding translation of book titles, was not only discussed on the talk page of the guideline (proposal), but specifically *also* at wikipedia talk:naming conventions (use English)#Article titles for books in foreign languages, in the "proposal" stage of the books NC.

Don't know where you see a problem? If there's consensus for a different formulation of the books NC, I'd happily oblige. But mind you, I'd rather put a halt to what I, and some other wikipedians, consider to be factionalism, first. --Francis Schonken 10:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

While I appreciate that this thread will bring more needed comments to the move page, and perhaps to the naming guideline itself, I don't appreciate Francis reposting his statements, bordering on personal attacks, about me being a Polish nationalist, member of some Polish Cabal and editing Misplaced Pages articles to swing the vote, especially considering that I could have just moved the page like Francis did in the past instead of listing it on RM to let the community voice its opinion (not for the first time, as I have listed that issue on RfC some time ago, too). I asked Francis to explain his accusations on the article's talk page and await his reply there. That aside, I think Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (books) is a useful tool, and I believe it was advertised widely enough (many of those guidelines don't attract attention no matter what the creator tries...). Nonetheless the policy is not clear what to do when the only sensible English title is the same as the title of an already existing English publication. Given the choice between making creating a disambig and moving the article to a completly fictional title (like Polish Biographical Dictionary (Polish) as one of the discutants have suggested) and using the Polish name which is used by the majority of academic publications (Google Print test), I think the solution is simple.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

There Is No Cabal - I formally deny

• This remark was not offensive: "Please comment at Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło to stop this monstrosity from happening."
• It was never posted on the Polish' Noticeboard talk page
• It was never posted there by Piotrus
• And it was not about a WP:RM vote initiated by Francis

Q.E.D., There Is No Cabal.

Re. "Nonetheless the policy is not clear what to do when the only sensible English title is the same as the title of an already existing English publication." - pardon? I don't see why this should be treated different than Histories (Herodotus)/Histories (Tacitus) if further disambiguation is needed (examples given in Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (books)#Standard disambiguation). And FYI Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (books) is not a policy, but a guideline. But the guideline is not "unclear" about how to disambiguate two books that in English would have the same title. --Francis Schonken 09:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure what is your point in bringing up this old RM, other then to illustrate how your proposal received not a single support vote, despite it being listed on WP:RM, which the last time I checked the Polish Cabal didn't mange to take over just yet :) As for your policy arguments, Tupsharru has just clealy shown that 'Polski Słownik Biograficzny' is indeed the most common English name for this publication, as it is used by almost 90% of academic, English language publications. Therefore according to Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (common names) we should use the name 90% of people who find it in those sources would type in the search engine (i.e. the original Polish title).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Something else: you know where there's a difference between factionalism and a non-factionalist approach?

We have (for example):

• Misplaced Pages:LGBT notice board

And we have (for example):

• Misplaced Pages:Polish Wikipedians' notice board

The difference is that in the first case listing on the page is open to anyone, e.g. a heterosexual without any particular commitment to write LGBT articles, but committing him/herself to keeping the development of LGBT topics on en:wikipedia checked can list him/herself. The only condition/criterion is that you're "interested" and "active" (without any indicated qualification in what domain you're supposed to be "active" as a wikipedian), see Active Wikipedians interested in LGBT issues

In the second case the notice board is (by it's very name) limited to wikipedians that are Polish. There are no names listed of wikipedians interested in Polish topics (no names are listed on the notice board page, see below), but in all clarity, the thing is managed by people with a pro-Polish POV. And if you're not Polish, you need at least to write Poland-related articles (see intro of the page), or you're supposed even not to have business looking at the page.

So I recommend to rename Misplaced Pages:Polish Wikipedians' notice board to Misplaced Pages:Polish topics notice board (which could be done by WP:RM if we don't establish consensus here). I'd prefer not to use Misplaced Pages:Polish notice board while that might create misunderstandings with "Polish", the language. And rewrite the intro, making clear the page is for anyone interested in Polish topics.

Further I'd recommend to allow wikipedians to list their name on the page (like for any usual WikiProject-like page). And leave it up to those users whether they qualify their listing on the page with something like "not Polish, but interested", or just put their name, whatever their provenance or ability to speak a foreign language.

I think that the List of Polish Wikipedians (which on the notice board is a link to Misplaced Pages:Wikipedians/Poland - meaning that nor learning to speak Polish outside Poland, nor living abroad from a Polish descendance, nor being a professor in Polish history at a foreign university, etc, are sufficient to declare membership) should no longer be used as mechanism to list interest. After all, one might live in Poland, and be more interested in the LGBT notice board, than in a notice board on Polish topics... Listing oneself as a "Wikipedian from Poland" or as a "LGBT/Queer wikipedian" is entirely something different than listing on a notice board on a topic one is interested in. It's better to keep them separated IMHO, while I think not separating "interests" from "de facto membership criteria" is fostering factionalism.

So, that are some small steps I recommend towards a less factionalist approach. --Francis Schonken 12:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually I would not be averse to changing the name to Misplaced Pages:Poland-related notice board, as this would more clearly represent the spirit of the noticeboard, but I am not convinced it s really worth the trouble. The original name was chosen without much thought following the unofficial naming scheme of Misplaced Pages:Regional notice boards. As majority of the noticeboards have names constructed on Misplaced Pages:Country's adjective notice board (and therefore we have the Carribean Cabal, Icelandic Cabal, and such) I'd think you may want to propose a general renaming, however I would like to note that the same naming problem seems to apply to your favourite exmaple, i.e. the Misplaced Pages:LGBT notice board, which name can also be overinterpreted and taken that it implies a closed membership.

Of course that noticeboard clearly states that it is an open board for all Wikipedians interested in those issues, just as the Polish Wikipedian's notice board states in the very begining of the page that: "This is a page to function as a notice board for things that are particularly relevant to Polish Wikipedians and those who are writing Poland-related articles". I would think this is clear enough to avoid any confusion, but of course if you think this is not the case, be bold and improve our intro.

Third, please note that a regional noticeboard is not a wikiproject.

Fourth, note that the List of Polish Wikipedians is an obsolete relic of the old dates, and it is being replaced with categories and userboxes by Misplaced Pages:User categorisation project. I have no problem if somebody wants to create categories for Wikipedians 1) living in a given place 2) of certain origin 3) interestd in something, so if there are people who want to create relevant lists/categories/userboxes, go right ahead. You may certainly propose that or changes to it or whatever you feel is appopriate at our noticeboard, here, or wherever you fill it should be done, but I think this is somewhat OT here.

Finally, it is my personal belief that the entire factionalism issue is a moot waste of time. Factionalism has existed, exists, and will exist, no matter how hard one tries to deny it. Forbidding people to express their allegiance to factions, which often cannot be really separated from interests, will only foster more trouble then it is worth, as the recent userbox wars have shown. WP:NPOV is all we need to deal with it, and all good faithed attempts to improve it result in instruction creep and waste of time, as I personally would have much prefered to write another article for Wiki instead of defending myself and the tool we use (noticeboard) from your suspiscions here.

Over and out. This was a sponsored message from the Polish Cabal--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the renaming discussion at Talk:Polish_Biographical_Dictionary#Requested_move. In my experience, native Polish speakers are organized via their noticeboard here on Misplaced Pages, and they do routine "calls to action" to get their members voting on these kinds of issues around the English-language Misplaced Pages, trying to make it appear that there is a general all-community consensus to rename articles to their Polish-language titles, when in reality the consensus is coming from people who are clearly biased: Polish-speakers. As regards the particular renaming, my feeling is this: Misplaced Pages guidelines are to Use English (WP:UE). "Polski Slownik Biograficzny" is not English. "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is English. Even at the English-language page of the Academy that writes the book, they refer to the translated name as "Polish Biographical Dictionary". These all make a clear case to me, that the correct vote is to Oppose a move of the page to a Polish name.

I wouldn't go so far as to call this Polish voting block a "cabal", but I do think it is inappropriate, especially when there is a Polish-speaking admin in their number who is both forcing the issue by starting the polls in the first place, calling his companions to vote on the matter, and then declaring himself as the proper authority to make the decision on the consensus. To me, it seems a clear conflict of interest, and inappropriate behavior for an admin. --Elonka 18:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your official name argument, it has been rebutted at the linked page by User:Matt Crypto, who has no connections to the Polish NB, I'd recommend you reply there to his argument instead of repeating it here.

As for the 'Polish voting block' or whatver new name you give it this time, I think this is the best reply. You may want to voice your opionion at Misplaced Pages:Survey notification; I resent accusations that I have ever done anything unethical with regards to the voting. Issues such as names of Poland-related articles are obviously of interest to editors interested in Poland-related matters, form whom the noticeboard is a natural place to find, well, notices posted about matters they are interested in.

I find it somewhat amusing that I am being accused by you of doing wrong when I am 'starting the polls' (above) and also when I 'makes changes to Poland-related articles without consensus' (here). It does seem that I am in the wrong whether I act alone or whether I ask community for its input.

I would still like to see examples of where I am 'declaring himself as the proper authority to make the decision on the consensus' in a vote evidently rigged by me and 'my companions'. I was not aware I suffered from delusions of grandeur, but please show me where I have erred so. I will admit I am getting somewhat tired by this wave of unbacked accusations about me and other editors from the PWNB acting in bad faith, especially when people prefer to invent some cabal conspiracy theory to explain why they have lost a vote instead of using an Occam's razor and considering for a brief second that maybe, just maybe, the vote was fair, and it was their proposal that simply proved unattractive to the community.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 21:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Tupsharru's alleged search results are unreliable

This is what I found:

• Polski Słownik Biograficzny: zero results at Google Books (note that the proposal is to move to this name and not to "polski slownik biograficzny")
• polski slownik biograficzny yields 187 results at Google Books (), an overwhelming part of which are links to texts in Polish (e.g. ). Since Google books has no functionality to separate "English" search results from search results in the Polish language, such search results should be rejected (unless sorted manually, which didn't happen).

Note however that Tupsharru's search supports that at Google Books in 96% of the cases "Polish Biographical Dictionary" refers to the multi-volume dictionary, and not to Sokol's one-volume dictionary.

Tupsharru's alleged search results are irrelevant

For books not published in English, and for which the title would usually not be understood by English speakers Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (books) is clear that the title should be translated. In other words, if for such books the common names principle and the "Use English" principle would lead to different results (which isn't even proven in this case), Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (books) gives precedence to the translated title.

Piotrus apparently sanctioned something he hadn't checked

"I think that we can safely conclude now that 'Polski Słownik Biograficzny' is the most common English name for the book" ... is a nonsensical allegation, while at this point not supported by solid evidence. --Francis Schonken 07:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

It's nice that you finally address the content issue with some date instead of making unfounded accusations, although I am not sure what do you mean by me 'sanctioning' something. T. results looked good, and I tend to assume good faith and don't double check every statement somebody posts. I'll now wait and see what T. has to say in defense of his arguments.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 00:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyone is welcome to check the Google Books results for themselves. As for the number of hits, I obviously wouldn't claim that I got 203 hits if I didn't actually get 203 hits. When I looked at those 203 hits yesterday, it actually came down to 94 different publications (books or journal issues), of which thirty-something were in English. Thirty-two, I think, but User:Trialsanderrors counts thirty-seven, see discussion on talkpage. Today I get 228 hits in 103 publications. Why the results vary is beyond me.

Focus should obviously be on the English-language publications., and the fact remains that of those English-language publications which do use a translation of the title, an overwhelming majority use it as a translation in brackets or parantheses, together with the Polish name. (Yesterday) I found thirty-two English-language books referring to the PSB under its original title. Nine publications use an English translation of the title, but of those nine, seven use the Polish title, with the English translation added just to explain what kind of a publication this is. One uses the Polish title once together with the translation, then refers to the dictionary in English a number of times. Only one book uses the English translation on its own without mentioning the Polish title.

As for these results being "irrelevant" because of the existing guideline Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (books), Francis Schonken has it backwards. Guidelines not supported by consensus are irrelevant. As I have already pointed out, this guideline is mostly written by Francis Schonken as late as January this year. He wrote it at about the same time we had this discussion last time over exactly the same article (during which Elonka moved it from the original Polish title twice, despite resistence from others and with no attempt to first gain consensus for that move). I think it should have been clear to Francis Schonken when he composed the guideline that there was no consensus on this issue. This very discussion shows that there is no consensus now either. Francis Schonken can dismiss other people's conclusions and views as "irrelevant" as much as he wants, but if the guideline isn't supported by consensus (nor, in this case by common sense or the normal bibliographic practice to refer to publications by their real titles, not loose translations), the guideline needs to be changed. Tupsharru 08:21, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Notability of schools

Can anyone point me to any guidelines concerning the notability requirements for schools? Specifically, I'm wondering if we are to allow articles for every elementary school & high school in the US? That seems to be the precedent, but I would like to know if that is laid out anywhere. --cholmes75 (chit chat) 14:09, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

"Block voting" is the term your looking for, as opposed to a consensus created guideline. The best thing is to quietly merge them into something other than a sub-sub-stub, but expect violent opposition if you're discovered. - brenneman 14:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Right, if it's on a public school in the U.S. at least, and there isn't enough substantive information to justify an independent article, merge it into an article on its parent school district. People can make as much noise as they want about whether schools are notable, but that's irrelevant as to whether merging is justified by the lack of content. Postdlf 14:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I could've sworn we'd at least gotten it to nothing below high schools.  RasputinAXP  c 15:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

That's would I would think (or hope), but was looking for backup. I really don't see why most elementary schools need articles. --cholmes75 (chit chat) 15:29, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Obviously, we do keep almost all verifiable real elementary schools (take a look at AFD precedent for the last year). They have been found notable. As people said, for articles lacking content, where appropriate you may do merges. Of courses, 99% of the people who claim to support merges, never bother to do any, or if they do them, they do it in a haphazard manner. For instance, somebody merges to a talk page, or a state-level-list, and then cries when its undone. You'll find that there are a fair number of people interested in editing individual school articles, but pretty much nobody interested in editing school district articles (the usual merge targets). --Rob 17:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Only as a result of block voting are we keeping many schools. The proposed guideline was not able to gather consensus supporting it. As to merging, yes, that is very acceptable and I have done some. The problem is that many editors no longer care about the school articles. As a result, basically no one is taking the time to do merges when that it the right action. Vegaswikian 20:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Can you give some examples of merges you've done (here or there)? --Rob 04:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I know you weren't asking me, but some examples of merges I've done were to create Dublin City School District, Franklin County, Ohio as a home for the one sentence substub, Dublin High School; and Oak Hills Local School District, Hamilton County, Ohio as a home for Oak Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio). This latter merging was undone, despite the high school's article containing no information not true of the district as a whole aside from the name of its principal (which is of no encyclopedic import). I note that you yourself undid my merge of Cardinal High School, Ohio to Cardinal Local School District, Geauga County, Ohio, despite the fact that the district article after the content was merged was itself a stub and easily incorporated what little independent content the high school article had. I'd be inclined to work on more school district articles if I thought it was worth the bother, which I unfortunately don't at this point. Postdlf 04:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's see. You made the absurd decision to merge a school with multiple alum into a district. You wanted to toss alum from different schools together, not indicating if they went to a particular school. You indicated it was your plan to do this with other schools, essentially losing information of who was an alum of what school. I reverted Cardinal, but later offered to compromise and accept that merge, which you opted to ignore. Since you wish to go back to November 2005, note I helped with a merge in December, listed here. So, please don't paint me as a blocker of all merges. I hoped people could list redirects in merges in a central spot, and work together, but that never panned out. --Rob 07:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a highly misleading statement. The school deletionists were soundly defeated. You have no grounds to regard "keep" votes as somehow less-meaningful "block voting" at the same time as somehow seeing each "delete" vote as superior. The last version of the schools proposal was effectively a "keep all" because it set conditions which any nominated article was certain to be raised to during the debate whatever condition it was in when nominated. Thus it was completely pointless as it was useless to deletionists. But even that version was rejected because the clear majority favour keeping school articles. Pretending otherwise to yourself is self-delusion; implying otherwise to others is a serious misrepresentation. CalJW 15:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Last I checked, high schools were virtually undeletable, elementary rarely deletable, and even infant schools, especially in say the UK where there's lots of verifiable information on them, are often kept at AfD. The talk of "block voting" is, I suspect, a matter of sour grapes from the few who adamantly opposed school articles for a long time. --Tony Sidaway 04:51, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

You could make that claim but the existance of school watch suggests otherwise.Geni 15:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

On the high school issue, a reasonably good article usually brings overwhelming keep results on AFD. There is no consensus on the elementary school issue, and as long as the article is reasonably good, it is unlikely that it will be deleted. Actually, I don't know if an article has to be reasonably good even, take a look at this kept on AFD version of St. Mary's Catholic in Portslade for an example of what I mean. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

You were right btw, the things people will keep.... Garion96 15:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Accessibility for blind users

As a result of an RfC, I stumbled into an edit war at Rotary International, where I found some "click on a name to read an article about..."-type comments, which I removed, partly following WP:SELF, but mostly because I felt at the time that it was a downright unnecessary and silly thing to say on the internet: where a person incapable of realising you click the links is unlikely to have gotten here in the first place.

Anyway, my edit was reverted by user:PierreLarcin2, whose comments on the article's talk page, and my own talk page, indicate that he is blind, and that he finds headers of that kind useful on his browser. Several users have pointed out that there is no great merit in editing a single article for greater accessibility by the blind, and the suggestion was made to bring the matter to the Village Pump, which I am now doing. Here are some preliminary questions I have, although I invite comments on the subject generally:

1. Is there already an accessibility policy on Misplaced Pages/Wikimedia? If so, where is it?
2. Is there a group, a category or a project for blind Wikipedians, and if so, where's their page?
3. Are self-references genuinely useful to blind users, and if so, in what way? If yes, can/should they be used more widely in Misplaced Pages?
4. Is there anything further individual users, or the project, can/should be doing to assist accessibility? AndyJones 20:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

PS There is a substantial (if rather rambling) discussion to be found here: Talk:Rotary International#Membership: Explanation of how to use links. AndyJones 20:18, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I only know of Misplaced Pages:Accessibility and Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Usability. Kusma (討論) 20:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

On a related note, while following the links above (tnx!) I stumbled upon a seemingly forgotten but very important proposal: Misplaced Pages:Table: namespace and editor. I don't think I am the only one who finds current implementation of tables in Wiki to be less then perfect. If you agree with this, plese endorse the proposal and vote here.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

As a blind wikipedia user, I would not find those link explanations useful; I would find them distracting. All modern screen readers clearly alert a user when they have found a link on a webpage, and all blind internet users should know how to activate links. With speech synthesizers (which I use, this is very clear. With a braille display, which is what the user seems to be using, this may not be so clear; from his comments I believe he needs to become more familiar with the technology he is using, or upgrade it. I've given most of my thoughts about accessibility on wikipedia in wikipedia:accessibility and wikipedia talk:accessibility. Basically text and link descriptions should be concise and well-written, and there should be a clear and consistent article structure to give the site a consistent look and feel. There isn't a category or a WikiProject for blind wikipedians, simply because there aren't that many of us. I know of only two other contributors who say they are blind or use a screen reader on their user page. However, I have a couple of blind friends who have edited here anonymously. Graham talk 12:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

One method used by screen reader software to identify links is to change the gender of the voice. For example, plain text might be read in a male voice and links in a female voice. StuRat 13:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

A Cautionary Tale

In Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Christian views of Hanukkah, somebody opined that there was a copyvio. The text in question was extracted from the Hanukkah page. Turns out it was originally added in 2004. That is, the cited page is actually a copy of Misplaced Pages from several months later than the original section!

Remember, folks cite Misplaced Pages without attribution. The fact that Google finds them does not make a good test for copyvio.

--William Allen Simpson 20:18, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

A useful thing to remember, actually. Somebody deleted the history section of the Royal Artillery article, saying it was a copyvio of the history section on the Royal Artillery's own website. In actual fact, I wrote much of the section for the Misplaced Pages article and I therefore know that the RA nicked it from us. Don't always assume that even official sites are the originals. It shows where people turn these days if they want information though! -- Necrothesp 23:09, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

It can sometimes be difficult, however (especially when the dates of writing are not cited properly in the external source) to prove which way the information bleed goes. We don't, after all, want to be sued by a breakfast cereal company for copyright infringement (excuse the oblique reference please!). Ziggurat 23:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Naturally it can. But there is a (wholly natural and understandable) tendency to automatically assume that official sites are the originals, which is not necessarily the truth. It's just useful to keep an open mind. -- Necrothesp 23:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm surprised that Royal Artillery would copy the article, though. Some claim we're unreliable, but we're good enough that people (Royal Artillery, journalists, companies) take our content and try to pass it off as their own. -- Kjkolb 05:54, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Oblique reference excused, 42! Jjinfoothills 06:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

My rule of thumb is to look at the original version that was added to Misplaced Pages. If it's unwikified, or if it's fairly old and an exact match for the other text, the other text was probably the original. --Carnildo 06:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, unwikified and/or written in a very pompous, sycophantic, self-promotional, flowery or old-fashioned style - usually very good indications of a copyvio. -- Necrothesp 12:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Another good way to identify a copyright violation it is if the user who wrote it is not an "established" user and has very few other contributions. Also, reused Misplaced Pages content is often easy to identify by the lead-in, which will in a typical Misplaced Pages style mention the article title prominently and establish a context. Also keep in mind that the short-term consequences of copyvio are not as severe as you think, because OCILLA forces copyright holders to ask websites politely to remove content before they sue. Deco 20:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Another test – that is suggestive, but not definitive – is to check the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org. Drop the URL of the putative source of the copyvio into the Wayback Machine link, and click 'Take Me Back'. You will be able to see versions of the page from various time points in the past; there will be an entry for every time the Archive spidered the page. If a page's content appears in the Archive either before or long after it appeared on Misplaced Pages, one may be able to draw an inference about who copied whom. Please note that this is not infallible—the Archive doesn't spider all pages, it may take a significant amount of time for the Archive to find a page in the first place, it doesn't help you if the external page has been moved or renamed, and it doesn't tell you if both pages were cribbed from a third source (web or paper). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:54, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Mass nominations on AfD / separate discussion page

Recently much fun was had when during stub cleaning someone nominated a bunch of Jewish summer camps together with a bunch of Hasidic rebbes on AfD.

When someone has doubts on the merits of a particular article he can always go to the talk page before the entry ends up on AfD. Besides, AfD isn't a substitute for the {{cleanup}} tag.

But where does one go when a whole class of articles look doubtful? It could be useful to set up a page where groups of articles can be discussed, to find out if they should be merged, improved or maybe thrown out altogether.

Such a page might also reduce the hostility on AfD when a group of articles ends up there; if large amounts of "cruft" are there there are the inevitable calls of "keep all bits of cruft", even if it's really crummy cruft. Dr Zak 22:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Another "fair use" question

Buu, some kind of character from a cartoon, has what I consider a pretty excessive amount of fair use and/or completely unsourced images. Thirty-eight screenshots, to be exact. Does that seem a bit much for the purposes of illustrating a cartoon character? This situation was (accidentally) brought to my attention by Zarbon, who wanted my help putting yet another image in the article (his was a little movie). This editor has had a lot of problems in the past, leading him to several blocks and an RfC from me, so I'm hoping someone else here can weigh in on that article and make the changes that need to be made (if, in fact, I am correct here). It might be better if it doesn't come from me. If anyone here disagrees, and thinks 38 pics is a reasonable amount, please let me know. Thanks! Kafziel 04:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the article overall fails to qualify as fair use, both in its use of fiction and the images. It mostly just gives an abridged version of the character's story without really commenting on it or transforming it by adding a factual, real world context. That's the real danger of fancruft—not simply that it is worthless to an encyclopedia, but that it is a copyright infringement by being merely derivative of fiction rather than informational and analytical. Postdlf 04:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Too many screenshots, I agree. However on the broader point of it's general existence, I'm not sure. Perhaps you have a better understanding of copyright law on this issue than I do, but I've never been sure where to draw the line on transformative uses. The character is apparently based primarily on some 59 episodes of an animated cartoon. At face value I would say that taking a cartoon and producing an encyclopedia style article describing one of its key characters is at least somewhat transformative. I doubt, for example, that the cartoon laid out things in the same way or bothered with such systematic descriptions. I also don't see it doing much harm to the anime market, as the article is probably not much of a replacement for the experience of seeing the show (and 59 episodes is a lot of show). If it were originally written material, I'd probably feel differently, but in my mind there are enough qualitative differences in the change of format and media that I could imagine at least being able to argue the point. Dragons flight 05:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm with Dragons flight. Too many screenshots (although you could make a case for keeping all those directly depicting some kind of "special ability", since those do add to the informative value), but the article itself is quite transformative and is certainly nothing resembling a substitute for dozens of episodes of a cartoon. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

You really said something when you used the phrase "encyclopedia style," because that's all it is for the most part. To retell a story is to make use of its copyrighted expression, even if you use none of the original specific language. So there must be a fair use rationale for that retelling. However, nothing transformative occurs when someone just summarizes fiction by giving a play-by-play history of what happens, even if that summary is in a different medium than the original (e.g., from cartoon to writing). At best, the result is just a condensed or abridged derivative of the original work. Instead, the fiction needs to be placed in a proper factual context and objectively described (i.e., from a real world perspective). The more an article looks like it came from a fan reference guide (of the kind that the original authors of the fiction would themselves market), the less of a claim to fair use there is for retelling the fiction. The more an article looks like the work of a cultural historian, the better our fair use justification for making use of the fiction (and associated images). Postdlf 05:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be appropriate to write an additional section in Misplaced Pages:Notability (fiction), explaining the legal boundries of what's acceptable and what's not. I think most people are pretty well aware of the dangers of "straight copying", but not aware of what you're speaking of. --Rob 05:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Far too many. I'd delete all but one or two. --Carnildo 06:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I've brought this article up before to no avail, and oddly enough was just talking with Angr about it this morning. Angr feels (and I think I agree, in so far as I understand the issue) that there's a serious fair use issue with the images. One think that makes it hard to fix is that one editor in particular (not Zarbon) feels an incredible degree of ownership on that article, as you can see from the talk page, and any change or "meddling" is likely to be followed by a great deal of argument. I haven't taken it on because I thought the task of building a consensus to prune on the article's talk page was just too daunting. But I think just pitching in and pruning isn't a good idea either. Perhaps a note on the talk page that it's being discussed here? · rodii · 14:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Redirects and categories

Currently, if someone wants to find something on Misplaced Pages, they have four main options as I see it:

• Perform an external search (eg. Google)
• Peform an internal search or try typing the article name direct
• Browse for a portal and browse that portal
• Browse the category system

The first two methods work well when you have a well-defined subject with a well-known name or that has well-known search terms associated with it. Those methods are not so good when you are not sure exactly what you are after, but you know the subject area - which is where browsing comes in. Which brings me on to redirects. Currently, while browsing in main article namespace, if you see something that looks like what you are after, you can click on it, even if it is a redirect. Thus technical terms can be phrased differently, in more familiar terms, making it more likely that people will recognise something and click on the link. Sometimes an editor will want to use a different phrase, but still point at a certain article, even if the article name is clumsy (for example, if it has disambiguation parentheses). This can be done by piping (using the "|" trick to hide the article name behind what you want the reader to see).

This makes browsing main article namespace and following links very intuitive and easy. A big problem, and I'm almost certain this has been raised before, is that you cannot do this in categories. There is no control over how an article name displays in category space. At the moment, the only way to get a genuinely alternative name to appear in category space is to categorise the relevant redirects, and, unfortunately, I don't see many people doing that, though I think it should be encouraged.

Finally, is there likely to be "piping" in category space any time soon? Carcharoth 17:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories are but one way to organize information in Misplaced Pages. Lists and navigational boxes are others. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Please see Misplaced Pages:Categories, lists, and series boxes. I don't think there's a policy on this yet (it recently came up at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#Categorising redirects), but IMO categorizing redirects that are spelling or phrasing variants seems like a bad idea. There have been various proposals for extending the category syntax to include presentation information in the category reference. I suspect this is not very high on the developers' list of enhancements. BTW - another powerful way to find things is with "what links here". If you know something reasonably obscure that an article you want to find should link to, go to the obscure thing and see what links to it. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Disadvantages of piping

Is there any way to prevent vandals from hiding an unsuitable article name behind a piped link? Like a link to Encyclopedia Britannica? Is the "hover" tag and the link name being shown at bottom left (in some browsers) the only way to check this sort of thing? Is there a way to turn off piping if you want to check an article for this sort of thing? Carcharoth 17:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The simplest way is to read the wiki source instead of the rendered page. This also makes minor editing more convenient, but isn't so great for reading tables and images. Another way would be to download a recent database dump and load it into a suitably modified copy of Mediawiki. In short, no, not really. Deco 20:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Continued from here and here

"Yet it's not _identical_ (think for example of -ise and -ize. -ize is as rare as hen's teeth in Australia, but is endorsed by many sources in England; British Oxford dictionaries prioritize -ize, but the Australian Oxford Dictionary has -ise as the main form; program is more used in Australia than in Britain; etc.;" I was aware all along that Britsh spelling (I read this on this page) allowed for both the -ise and -ize eidings after haiving read that, however I ommitted to mention it all along for the simple reason that most Australians (I was one of them before I read it in that article) think of -ize as "American" spelling, I appricate JackLumber for mentioning the manual of style after all that time Jack had tried to tell me about "British" and "Australian" "spelling differences" but gave me no evidence until then. I have been wondering about the origens of the -ise spelling, could it somehow have come from German? Could -ise also have become as "rare as hen's teeth" in Australia as a result of Germanisation (although this leaves unexplained why it didn't happen in the USA) too? I have notced a mistake in the table, the word 'fiord' is not used in New Zealand, they call them by the Maori term for them which I can only half-remember. The other one is that spellings of the word 'manoeuvre/maneuver/manoeuver' are given in the UK/US/CA columns but not in others (we do use that word here in Australia, I wonder what the German equivelet term is), and according to that column there 'is' such a thing as "Commonwealth spelling" so Jack was wrong to call it an incorrect term, also according to that column, "British" spelling is also utilised for writing Irish English, so "British spelling" does turn out to be an NNPOV term after all, but it is an NOR term. Myrtone@Doco.com.au:-)

The reason I added this here is because I tried doing this on Doco's talkpage but Doco removed it for no apparant reason. Myrtone@Village pump (policy).com.au:-(

• As far as I know -ise is (for the most part) the result of French influence, not German. Caveat lector 02:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

• -ise derives from Norman influences following William the Conqueror's 1066 invasion of Britain (see Norman invasion). It was a modification of Latin -izāre, according to the AHD. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyways, the British (and later Australian) trend toward ise is way more recent. From the Oxford English Dictionary: ... in modern French the suffix has become -iser, alike in words from Greek, as baptiser, évangéliser, organiser, and those formed after them from Latin, as civiliser, cicatriser, humaniser. Hence, some have used the spelling -ise in English, as in French, for all these words, and some prefer -ise in words formed in French or English from Latin elements, retaining -ize for those of Greek composition. But the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Gr. -izein, L. -izare; and, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic. In this Dictionary the termination is uniformly written -ize. JackLumber, 14:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Myrtone, the MoS is wrong. There's no Commonwealth authority estabilishing a "Commonwealth" spelling; strictly speaking, each Commonwealth nation has its own spelling system. In fact, the "Commonwealth" column is merely a restatement of the British column, and is additionally unsourced. The Philippines and Liberia don't follow British spelling, nor are they Commonwealth countries--yet English is an official language there. JackLumber, 14:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

"the MoS is wrong. There's no Commonwealth authority estabilishing a "Commonwealth" spelling; strictly speaking, each Commonwealth nation has its own spelling system." Then why does it have it in the first place, then again, why hasn't anyone removed it? And the reason I put it on Doco's talkpage is because I wanted a comment from a Non-native English speaker, I have now put it here. In this whole discusssion, I have not had one comment from a non-US wikipedian, let alone a non-UK/US user. Myrtone@Village pump (policy).com.au:-(

Admin function

I find there is a problem. The best and brightest Wikipedians are the admins. However, before this some of them were even ordinary users. My point is that the main function of Misplaced Pages is to write articles, or am I wrong? The best authors are promoted to be admins. At that stage, they change function. They then become like, well, Military Police officers, and the senior ones Judges tracking and punishing small time vandals. After the best authors have changed function, the vandals will all be gone, but the articles will not be as good. Is this really the way forward? Wallie 18:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

That's an interesting point but I don't think you're right. For example, I've been in admin for a few years, but I still spend most my time contributing to articles rather than fighting vandals, resolving conflicts, or patrolling recent changes. To some extent, there is an expectation that admins will perform administrative functions just because they have the ability to do so, and somebody has to do them, but I don't feel obligated personally. Deco 20:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeh thats interesting but many admins are created because they do exceptional vandal fighting and participate in AfD. --Osbus 22:52, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

And some of us simply prefer administrative duties to article creation. Me, for example; I prefer the administrative side to the creative side. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 23:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Due to the way people make descission at RFA most admins come with a background in vandal fighting. The admins that are most active in admin only areas tend to come from the vandal fighter group.Geni 23:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

If admins come from a background of vandal fighting, how can they be neutral when coming up with a ruling to revert an article's content, NPOV, etc. How can they identify vandals? Do they have a register? Can people ever come off this register? Does every admin think a registered vandal always has a POV in future posts? Is a vandal fighting admin answerable to anyone? Wallie 15:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Would you prefer admins not vandal fight? I'm not understanding the point of your entry here. I can be perfectly neutral when dealing with non-vandal edits. --Golbez 15:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

If you want my opinion. Then I would like admins to spend more time doing some productive work, rather than chasing vandals, or perceived vandals. What will the vandal chasing admins do when the vandals have all been banned? Wallie 17:11, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

We will woryy about that if it ever happens. Getting round to properly dealing with all the problems with fair use to start with I supose.Geni 20:48, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Many non-admins work very hard to deal with vandals, and many admins do as well. Both groups are necessary, and Misplaced Pages would in fact go to hell without all the hard work they do; you seem to be under the misaprehension that vandal-fighting is just something people do for their own amusement. -- SCZenz 23:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

But that's not to say it's not fun! Wallie: You asked if there is a register of vandals, and in a way, there is. First, the talk pages of vandals often have many warnings left by both admins and non-admins alike. You can usually identify a someone who has vandalised before by this. Secondly, there is the block log, where you can see if a user has been blocked before, and usually, this will be because of vandalism. I'm not speaking from the POV of an admin (since I'm not one), but if I see an edit made by an editor who has vandalised before, I'm going to check it a little more carefully than I otherwise might.--digital_me 15:01, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

• Hey Wallie -- maybe it would help to look at it this way. I fight vandals so you don't have to. Also, you ask, If admins come from a background of vandal fighting, how can they be neutral when coming up with a ruling to revert an article's content, NPOV, etc? They can't, and they don't have to be. We don't demand neutrality from Misplaced Pages editors or admins; we demand neutrality in Misplaced Pages articles. Certainly, few admins are neutral toward vandals -- and for the most part, we know them when we see them, and we see them a lot. The small handful of editors who may or may not be vandals are handled on a case by case basis (and take up WAY more time than the obvious vandals; anyone can tell that editing PENIS into articles not related to penes is vandalism; but it can take a long time to recognize more subtle patterns of disruptive and destructive behaviour.) When all the vandals have been banned, we will be very happy, and we'll invite you to the big snowball fight we'll be participating in Hades. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 02:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Notability of marketing managers

Here's a cute one. Marketing managers of national brands aren't normally considered notable for Misplaced Pages purposes. If the marketing manager is for a band, does that make them notable? We've been arguing over this at Talk:Bill Ham, who was the manager for ZZ Top back when they were famous.

If you go down the list for notability in WP:BAND or WP:BIO, this guy doesn't really qualify. He didn't contribute musically. He's not listed as having won any awards, and there are awards a rock band manager could win. Nobody ever wrote a book about him. He didn't write a book about himself. There's only a little biographical info about him available on line. He was apparently a good band manager and promoter. He did record a record once himself, early in his career, but that apparently made it clear he had no future as a performer.

For other bands, the band's manager usually seems to have an article only if the manager was a musical contributor. Three Dog Night's manager isn't even mentioned. The Beatles' Brian Epstein does have an article, but that's an unusual case; someone is making a movie about him as "The Fifth Beatle". Britney Spears' original manager Larry Rudolph does not. Kenny Laguna, the manager of Joan Jett, does not.

Am I being too harsh here? Someone really wants him to have an article (why a '70s band manager would have a fanatical fan at this late date is puzzling, but whatever). Comments? --John Nagle 19:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

So he had a seminal role in creating one of the most succesful and lasting rock bands in the last few decades and is still their manager after nearly 40 years? Provided this is all verifiable, I don't see any problems with the article. Tupsharru 20:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

If you don't think it's notable enough to justify inclusion, nominate it for deletion and settle it in AFD discussion. That's the usual context for resolving this kind of thing. Deco 20:24, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to get a sense of the policy before using AfD. It's a close call, and I don't generally start an AfD unless the situation is reasonably clear-cut. Strict enforcement of notability criteria on fancruft really bothers many people. For example, if you take WP:FICT literally, at least 80% of the Pokemon articles could be deleted. Yet no one seriously proposes doing that. There's a definite tendency to cut popular culture a lot of slack here. So I'm looking for opinions on where to draw the line. --John Nagle 20:50, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

You can't strictly enforce notability criteria, because they're just guidelines. Nowhere on WP:BIO does it say, nor has anyone ever seriously claimed, that people not meeting the list of criteria are automatically deletable; in fact, a short while ago I highlighted the lines on the WP:BIO page that say the exact opposite. -- SCZenz 20:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

"If you take WP:FICT literally, at least 80% of the Pokemon articles could be deleted." Well, yes, besides the fact that that's completely and totally untrue.--Sean Black 19:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria are very fuzzy. They constantly shift and set precedents in new topic areas not addressed before. The best VfD residents have thorough knowledge of these precedents and trends and can apply them to specific examples like yours. That's why I think nominating it is a good idea - not necessarily because it should be deleted, but because it creates a useful venue for discussion that is scoped appropriately and will attract the right people. If you're worried about upsetting the authors just try to take the edge off it in your nomination with some kind words. Deco 09:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Criteria for listing events on Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Days of the year

Please look over this proposed policy: Event Proposal. This is a proposal I started along with PFHLai and Rklawton, as we have encountered issues with the lack of policy in guiding the posting of events as frequent editors in this Wikiproject. Feel free to provide comments and constructive criticism. This has already been up for discussion in the project's talk page for almost two weeks. Fabricationary 20:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Offensive comments in Village pump (policy) discussions

In the #Offensive comments in afd discussions section above User:Arniep stated "the nominator of this article is Jewish and five of the delete votes at least were from Jewish users". How does Arniep know this, and why on earth would it make a difference, or even be relevant to this particular discussion? Can Arniep explain how he calculated this, and why he made this outrageously gratuitous and offensive statement? Jayjg 21:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you started a new thread here. Many many articles related to Palestinians or people or organisations who support Palestinians are consistently treated in a negative way by many Jewish users. The same can be said of Kurdish articles and Turkish users, and to a lesser extent articles related to the Northern Ireland and Yugoslavian conflicts (I'm sure there are other conflicts that also have issues). Arniep 21:45, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Arniep, who are the 6 Jewish editors you have mentioned, and how do you know this? Jayjg 21:52, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Many people who voted delete either identify themselves as Jewish or have a strong interest in Jewish articles. I don't think this is a particularly controversial thing to point out given that it consistently happens with any article related to the Palestinians whatsoever. Arniep 22:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Which ones identify themselves as Jewish, and which ones have you simply Yellow badged yourself? Jayjg 22:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I feel that I need to step forward and claim guilty: I belong to Category:Jewish Wikipedians, as well as to a few other categories. Arniep, are you implying that editors who identify themselves as Jews, Hindus, Kurds, Blacks, gays, females, etc. are by nature unable to objectively cover certain topics? If not, please explain why do you repeatedly bring this up. ←Humus sapiens 22:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Jayjg, I'd like to ask you to be careful here. Asking Arinep to explain clearly what he's alleging is quite legitimate; he does seem to be saying that Jews (or those who edit Jewish articles) tend not to be objective on certain subjects, and that's a problem. But comparisons to European antisemitism aren't necessary. -- SCZenz 22:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm a bit concerned about his need to gratuitously try to identify 6 editors as Jews. As far as I know, only a couple of the people on the page in question have actually identified themselves as Jews. Moreoever, his introduction of that topic was bizzarely unrelated to the topic at hand; if he's upset about the way one editor worded his "delete" vote, why would he have to then start talking about which voters on that page were, in his eyes, Jewish, and which weren't? Jayjg 22:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree 100% with all your concerns. However, I do not think the comparison to historical antisemitism is helpful; it is, rather, inflammatory. We can make it clear that generalizations based on religion/ethnicity are unacceptable without such comparisons. -- SCZenz 23:03, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I think his actions were triply offensive; First he "outed" the editors he believes are Jews. Then he made generalizations about them based on his assumption that they are Jews. Finally, when confonted, rather than apologizing he justified his actions. Not to mention the irony of him doing so in a section he started about edits by some other editor which he found offensive. And I don't think my implied analogy was anywhere near as offensive as his statements and subsequent justifications, which prompted it in the first place. Jayjg 23:07, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Arniep has a point here and I don't think he is trying to be anti-semitic or anything. A Jewish editor is more likely to keep a Jewish related article than say, an atheist editor. THat being said, I may be horribly wrong in my logic, but please be civil. --Osbus 22:50, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Disregard the above statement. --Osbus 23:23, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• • What is the purpose in making such generalizations? If you think a specific editor is doing something inappropriate, say so. But saying "Jews have a tendency to do X" has no place on Misplaced Pages. None. None, none, none. -- SCZenz 22:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Arniep stated "the nominator of this article is Jewish" ... As the nominator of the article, I'm not sure why Arniep thinks he knows this since I am careful to not state my ethnicity (or ethnicities), since it is irrelevant. Furthermore, I take offense that he would assume that I (or others) are somehow anti-Palestinian, based solely on alleged ethnicity, or that my proposal to delete a non-notable article that doesn't measure up to Misplaced Pages standards is somehow based on a racist agenda. It's ironic that someone so concerned about another editor being offensive makes comments a hundred times more offensive himself. --MPerel 22:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. And even if you and all the others had self-identified as a Jew, what is Arniep suggesting? That votes by Jews should count for less than votes by non-Jews? Should votes by Jews have little identifying marks beside them, so that the closing admin should know to discount them? Jayjg 23:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, Arniep's statement is one of the most ignorant comments I have ever seen on wikipedia. Its bad enough to simply hold such views, its just downright insane to actually articulate them and expect people to take you seriously.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 23:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but why is it so insane to point out that many Jewish users or users with a strong interest in Jewish articles tend to treat articles related to Palestinians or organizations or people who have shown support for the Palestinians in what I consider to be a negative manner? To say that making an assumption that people who have a strong or sole interest in Jewish articles may be Jewish is somehow anti semitic is ridiculous; if someone made a large proportion of their edits to Serbian articles, English articles or Turkish articles I would make similar assumptions. And yes while it certainly isn't the case that all Serbians dislike Albanians or Turks dislike Kurds I think we would be naive to think in an encyclopedia that is free for anyone to edit that people on opposing sides of conflicts will not try to ensure that "their side" of the story is the one that is most prominent. Arniep 23:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Such generalizations as these aren't useful; they are, rather, detrimental. Again, if an individual editor does something inappropriate, deal with that—don't you dare bring his presumed ethnicity into it! -- SCZenz 23:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

First let me say I am absolutely not anti semitic in any way or form- I think this problem is a problem that affects many conflict related articles but Palestinian articles do seem to be some of the worst affected. SCZenz, you seemed to agree with me above that it is not implausible that some Jewish users may not be totally neutral on articles related to the Palestinians or organizations who are seen to support them. In my experience of watching many articles this is quite a widespread problem where some Jewish users will tend to support each other on article disputes or afds/cfds to ensure a certain wording or links are/are not used, whether this is partially deliberate or not I have no way of knowing but the result is that many articles relating to the Palestinians are not neutral at the moment. Arniep 23:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

If you want to say that users A, B, and C tend to push POV X and seem to inppropriately vote to delete articles on topic Y or vote keep on topic Z, that is one thing. The problem is you are making being Jewish the issue, and not the POV-pushing. I find it perfectly plausible that certain specific users may work together to push POV's on almost any topic, but I do not relate this to their ethnicity no matter what. Does that make sense? -- SCZenz 23:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course many Jewish people are not pro-zionist, it is just my observation that certain users who happen to be jewish or show a strong interest in jewish articles seem to be consistently involved in articles related to Palestinians or people or organizations who are seen to support them in what I consider to be a non neutral manner. Arniep 00:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Arnie, you're assuming that just because you disagree with people, it means they are biased. But you have a horribly strong POV when it comes to Israel, and you make no effort to hide it. I've seen no evidence that you're capable of being neutral in that area, which means you're in no position to judge whether anyone else is. SlimVirgin 12:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

SlimV where exactly have I ever stated my point of view on Israel or Palestine? The answer is exactly nowhere. I am attempting to be neutral whereas other users are not. Arniep 15:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

As you know, I've asked you many times to stop representing your strong POV as the facts or as NPOV, which is what you often do. SlimVirgin 20:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Here's a recent comment of yours saying that much of the Israeli and pro-Israeli media "deliberated distorted" the truth about Rachel Corrie. "Deliberated distorted" is a very strong comment to make about independent journalists, and not just in Israel, but all over the world, all working together to lie outright, in your opinion. That is your understanding of "attemping to be neutral." SlimVirgin 20:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm requesting again, strongly, that this discussion not be continued further. See note on your talk pages. -- SCZenz 20:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Arniep, it's easily provable that there is a full spectrum of opinions among each ethnic group and to bring one's ethnicity into a dispute, especially as a group, is never warranted and is highly uncivil. I feel that this is the worst ad hom offense, whether intentional or not.

Even if we accept the idea that most ethnic X are somehow "that way", what do you propose we do about it: talk behind their back (as you did), introduce quotas, segregate them to their little wiki-stans or maybe ban them?

Finally, your political soapboxing: it's a huge mistake to equate being pro-Israel with anti-Palestinian and vice versa. This goes against the very idea of peace. To your "many articles relating to the Palestinians are not neutral at the moment" - I can respond the same about many articles related to Israel, Zionism and Jews. Let's get to work on fixing that - without alienating anyone because of their ethnicity. BTW, in my recent admin nomination, many users whom I considered pro-Palestinian voted for me and I am very proud of it. Everyone should be judged by what they do, not who they are. ←Humus sapiens 00:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hehe, Humus sapiens, your statement is so clear I feel like making jokes about it, good job in stating the situation clearly. Terryeo 00:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

If I implied that all jewish users contribute to Palestinian articles in a way that overtly puts Israel and it's supporters in a good light and Palestinians and their supporters in a bad light then I apologize for giving the wrong impression. It is just the people who I consider are putting an anti Palestinian bias on articles on Palestinians or people or organizations that are seen to support Palestinians either identify as Jewish or their main interest seems to be in editing Jewish related articles. Arniep 00:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Arniep, it was you who identified "the group of 6 Jews" and selected them for undue criticism. ←Humus sapiens 00:39, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Well users who happen to be Jewish often do seem to be the leading critics of the Palestinians or any person or organization that supports Palestinians. As far as I can see there was no reason why the information in that article should have been deleted as the person was involved in a notable incident while working for a notable organization and the tirade of delete votes seemed to be a whitewash. Arniep 01:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Wait, wait, wait. What does the article being deleted have to do with anything? Or is that the real beef here? -- Captain Disdain 02:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Not at all. I don't think the article should have been kept as he isn't really a notable individual in his own right but I could see no fathomable reason why the information should not be included in the ISM article which would warrant a merge. Arniep 15:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Fine. I have no doubt that there are many people out there whose motives are less than pure. However, perhaps in the future, when picking examples of that kind of behavior, you might actually confirm that what you've picked is an undisputable example of that kind of behavior instead of making unfounded accusations behind someone's back (which is something you might want to consider apologizing for sometime soon, by the way, because I think it's a pretty shitty thing to do). -- Captain Disdain 00:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually Humus said he intended it as a (sick) joke. I would prefer that people keep their sick/bigoted jokes out of Misplaced Pages. Thanks Arniep 01:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Besides the fact that there really wasn't anything bigoted abut it, I really don't think your in any place to accuse others of prejudice.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 01:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

On my talk page, you claim that HS "admitted he intended it as a sick bigoted joke". Considering that his exact words were "of course it was a joke, perhaps tasteless", I would have to say that's a rather revisionist view of very recent history. What, so now he's a bigot? Just out of curiosity, what exactly does that make you?

You know, when most people find that their problem is that they're stuck in a hole, they have the sense to stop digging...

(On an unrelated note, I indented Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg's comment to make the conversation a little easier to follow -- hope nobody minds.) -- Captain Disdain 02:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Well anyone that would find a joke about someone being killed funny in any way would by my and many other peoples definitions be a bigot. Remember people used to make "jokes" about hanging African Americans. Arniep 15:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but as has already been stated, this was not a joke about killing a person. Furthermore, even if it had been one, that doesn't mean that it would have been bigotry any more than making a blonde joke or a fat joke or a white joke or a black joke or a lawyer joke or a Jew joke. It is entirely possible to make and enjoy stupid jokes without being a bigot, and there is such a thing as dark humor. Practicing it may be considered tasteless, sure, but it is most certainly not an automatic indication of bigotry. When you equate HS's joke with "jokes" about hanging black people, you are effectively (and, I believe, quite intentionally) suggesting that he was not, in fact, kidding -- that he really wanted Phil Reiss to die. Your rhetoric is becoming increasingly tiresome, and I find it more and more difficult to assume good faith on your part when you repeatedly refuse to apologize for talking about someone behind his back, baselessly accuse others of bigotry and effectively equate them with Klan members, and still haven't explained why and how you identified five editors as Jews (just like you declined to answer my repeated question, "what would you like to do about it?" earlier in the discussion). All this leads me to believe that your agenda here is not an objective attempt to improve Misplaced Pages or to fix an actual problem, but to stand on a soapbox. -- Captain Disdain 19:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I am very strongly requesting this discussion be ended. See my comment at the bottom of this section, or your talk page. -- SCZenz 19:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't notice your comment at the bottom until well after I'd posted the above -- really wasn't my intention to beat the dead horse after a request to stop. Sorry about that, walkin' away now. -- Captain Disdain 20:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Arniep, let's recall that some of the most outspoken critics of Israel and some of the leading figures in the Palestinian rights movement are ethnic Jews. See Uri Avneri, Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, Adam Shapiro, etc. Like them or hate them, your conspiracy theory (let's call it what it is) doesn't hold true. For the future, please remember that it is wrong to mix ethnicity with political views. Considering that NPOV policy was not killed (pun intended) last time I checked, you are doubly wrong. This is my last post on the subject. ←Humus sapiens 03:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

No where did I state that there weren't Jewish critics of Israel. It is just that I have noticed that many of the people who edit articles on Palestinians or any person or organization that have shown support for the Palestinians are consistently edited in a non neutral manner by users who happen to be Jewish. I point out the same if many Serbs were editing Albanian articles or Turks were editing Kurdish articles in a non NPOV manner, and yes there are Serbs who do not hate Albanians and Turks who do not hate Kurds. Arniep 15:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Damnit Humus, how could you be so tasteless! We don't "kill" NPOV policy! This clearly shows rascism towards Npov's, they are people too. I will not stand for this indignity. Let us forget that the original writer of this section as well as 6 of the editors who supported him are Atlantians, I am tired of the entire Atlantian race attacking the innocent Npov people. I propose that we block all Atlantians and prevent them from ever editing again in the future.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 04:56, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm interested to know which of the six voters Arnie believes are Jews, and why, because it seems to me that Arnie, who has a strong anti-Israel POV, is identifying as Jewish anyone who frequently disagrees with him in that area. Having made that identification, he concludes that Jews are always likely to reason in a certain way, without realizing that his conclusion is based on a tautology of his own making. The only way to avoid getting tied up in knots like this is to take SCZenz's approach, viz. don't be prejudiced; judge people as individuals. SlimVirgin 12:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

SV, Lulu is Jewish but he has expressed opposition to Israeli policies. I have never once expressed "a strong anti-Israel POV" as you stated. I am merely pointing out that many Jewish users or users who have a strong interest in Jewish articles often edit Palestinian related articles in what seems to be a non NPOV manner. It is not "evil" to assume that someone may be Jewish from their edits, if a person heavily edited Turkish articles and continually expressed a negative attitude towards Kurdish articles I don't think it would be unreasonable for me to assume that that user may be Turkish. Arniep 15:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Who are the six? SlimVirgin 20:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

People are individuals, but when they align themselves with a group, Groupthink can come into effect. I think that bias has no place in any article, and if someone thinks the article is biased, whether the group in question is Jewish or not, then that person has rights too, and not only the group. As for being careful when Jewish people are involved, we should be careful with anyone, Jewish or not. In this discussion, we are discussing Jewish groupthink. Jewish people are no better or no worse than anyone else, and should not expect any special treatment, again either good or bad. Nor should any other group, be they Christian, Buddist, Muslim, Shinto, Hindu, or any one else for that matter expect special treatment because of membership of a group. Is would be wise to get an outside opinion (ruling) of what is the real neutral position, if particpants in a discussion are deadlocked, and want a resolution. Wallie 15:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

No one has said Jews are better or worse than other groups. You're introducing a red herring. SlimVirgin 15:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I didn't intend to. I believe my input is relevent. Wallie 16:15, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I think what Wallie may be saying is what I tried to say earlier, that is, as this is an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone in the world we would be naive in thinking that in relation to articles that are connected to conflicts it may not be the case that people on one side of a conflict may attempt to push a particular article version so that it fits what they consider to be neutral, which may not be regarded as neutral by people who have no real opinion on a conflict or are on the opposing side. We saw this with an article on gay rights in relation to Catholic users and Kurdish articles and categories in relation to Turkish users- fortunately many users saw what was going on there and managed to balance out the one sided opinion. Unfortunately this sort of balancing doesn't seem to be occuring at the moment in articles related to Palestinians or those seen to support them. Arniep 16:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Given your strongly anti-Israel POV and edits, it's not surprising you would say that. More importantly, though, your "guilt by stereotyping" argument is, in fact, the very basis for most racist generalizations. It's astonishing you would continue to try to support this bigotry. In addition, you have failed to note the circularity of your argument; you defined 6 editors as "Jews", and then proceeded to say they were biased because they were Jews. Only one is a member of the Jewish Wikipedians category, so how did you sniff out the other 5? What characteristics of the "Jewish race" did you note which led you to that conclusion? Jayjg 18:49, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I just want to be clear how Jayjg is accusing me of being strongly anti Israel so other people can judge for themselves, firstly I rejected a Middle East Forum link on the Palestinians article and secondly I rejected the inclusion of right wing descriptions of Rachel Corrie as a collarator of terrorists. Maybe in America that would be seen as a strong anti Israeli POV, in the U.K. it is most definitely not. Arniep 12:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I do not think this debate should continue; I have warned Arniep on his talk page that these generalizations and assumptions about religion/ethnicity cannot be tolerated (for Jews, Serbs, Catholics or anyone else), whether he believes they are justified or not. I gave this warning in my capacity as an administrator, and further issues are more properly a topic for Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard -- SCZenz 19:13, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I have never ever expressed "strongly anti-Israel POV and edits" as Jayjg and SlimVirgin claimed- I would encourage them to post diffs to back up their assertions (there aren't any to find BTW). This is clearly just a way of encouraging editors to turn away and to portray my claims about Palestinian article neutrality are just the rantings of a bigot. I am not a bigot and this is exactly what I am trying to fight here. Arniep 19:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

You have said things that are clearly inappropriate. This has been explained to you, clearly, on your talk page. I say again that everyone should just walk away from this discussion. Nobody has to be labelled as a "bigot," but ethnic/religions generalizations are beyond the pale and I don't think it is productive to argue about them anymore. -- SCZenz 19:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Arniep. I think it is better to concentrate on writing stuff in articles rather than trying to discuss things with people who probably have a different POV to you anyway. There are millions of people out there who read Misplaced Pages to get information. If you put in something that is true and well researched, it will speak for itself. As the old saying goes, "the truth has a certain ring to it". Also, it is sometimes a good idea to work on some completely unrelated topic. I know. I got into some strife with someone, and quarantined myself from the problem area for a month. But I will be back, stronger than ever and refreshed. Most importantly, ignore incoming name calling. It is always the name caller at fault, not the callee. There is all to much of this in Misplaced Pages. It is almost a culture. However, individuals to improve over time. I suppose they grow out of it. Wallie 20:15, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

If a large number of commentors/voters belong to a small special interest group it is entirely proper to point that out. If these biases are not identified and discounted, Misplaced Pages is just a plaything of special interest groups. It is the consensus among global Wikipedians that matter. A "consensus" created by partisans is not a consensus at all and had no validity, but I don't think this point is observed nearly often enough. Bhoeble 13:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Category usage from user space

I know we do not allow redirects to user space, but some users seem to be getting around this by using categories. For an example see Category:Aviation statistics. Is this an accepted policy? Vegaswikian 23:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

See WP:CG#User namespace: "If you copy an article to your user namespace (for example, as a temporary draft or in response to an edit war) you should decategorize it." I usually suggest a change like the one at User:Ziggurat/Welcome, as often the addition of a category is an inadvertent mistake after moving a draft into the Userspace. Ziggurat 23:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

An alternative is to recategorise it in a "WikiProject" category. This can help other people find it (unless of course you don't want people to read it until it is ready...). If you do want others to comment on things in progress, categorising is one possibility. For example Category:WikiProject Middle-earth has two User subpages linked from it. If no categories have been created for the WikiProject, or there is no suitable WikiProject to leave a link on, it is still possible for people to find these drafts by clicking "What links here" on articles wikilinked from the draft. Currently, I know of no way to prevent these "draft" pages in User space from showing up on the "What links here" pages. Should the delinking of such drafts be encouraged by enclosing them in "<nowiki> DRAFT " </nowiki> tags? Carcharoth 10:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Either the nowiki tags, or simply adding a semicolon right before the "C" in "category" (]) will work to deactivate the categories. I do this as a matter of course to user subpages if I see them in articlespace categories; just make sure you leave an edit summary when you do so, or else someone might be wondering why you're mucking about in someone else's user space. Postdlf 19:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Right. I know that method of linking to a category, but I was talking about putting the nowiki tags around the whole article to prevent the User subpage showing up in "What links here". Let's find an obscure page, such as ], and see if this works. Carcharoth 20:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

It will work, but is it necessary? User pages already show up in "What links here" and changing every one would involve a massive amount of work. Furthermore, that link is designed to show links between all namespaces; if we want it to work otherwise it would be a better idea just to alter the software not to show userspace link-tos. Ziggurat 20:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I for one would find rough draft pages a lot less useful if they couldn't have functioning internal article links. I don't see the "what links here" inclusion as a problem, and certainly not one that would outweigh that functionality. Postdlf 20:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Too many boilerplates

Recently, it seems that every other article I find start with a big ugly boilerplate, usually {{cleanup}}, {{cite}} or in case the topic is even slightly controversial, {{NPOV}}. I see this on really good articles, even featured articles. This is becoming like the "under construction" banners that just about every webpage had in the mid-1990:s. I suggest that biolerplates should only be put at the top of an article if it is in such bad shape that we need to warn the reader right away. For smaller problems how about putting the markers at the bottom of the page, just like stub markers? And for the even smaller issues, put it on the talk page instead of in the article itself. Sure, it would take two clicks to find the article when browsing a cleanup category, but I think that's ok. The current situation makes Misplaced Pages look very unprofessional. --Apoc2400 04:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

• If the article itself looks very unprofessional, as is often the case, then the tag doesn't really hurt anything. While good style is important, we are by our nature not professional, nor are we pretending to be. It's better to be able to suggest to readers that they can help improve the article (or at least let them know that the article is poor and we know about it) than to just have poor content out there as if it's decent. --Improv 17:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that it tends to be the good articles (which are also more popular and more suspect to edit warring and disagreements) that have these tags, when many not so good articles don't have them. Maybe these tags need to be on the talk page rather than the front page? Featured articles shouldn't have these tags, and if they do it may be someone POV-pushing. Captainj

This is because editors are working towards the perfect article. Gdr 20:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

"What links here" and "Special pages" tools

Have there been any proposals to have the self-referential tools "What links here" and "Special pages" used in article namespace for the readers of Misplaced Pages? I have seen people linking to Special pages, especially the index prefix one. I haven't seen people linking within an article to a "what links here" page for an article, but I suspect it has been done somewhere. I agree that these are useful tools for the readers, as well as the editors, but in their current incarnation they are rather self-referential. Are the tools advertised to readers as an alternative to the options of: searching, browsing (categories, portals, navigational boxes)? Carcharoth 11:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

There should be no links in article space to "What links here" or "Special pages", see Misplaced Pages:Avoid self-references. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely. Unfortunately, the policy document you pointed me to does not make this clear. "Special pages" is not mentioned at all, though it is implied in the mention of "What links here": "do not refer to any link in the sidebar or along the top of the screen". But even that is only saying "do not refer to them". It is not saying do not link to them. I think the policy needs rephrasing to make this clear.

But stepping back from that for a moment, you haven't said why readers shouldn't be pointed at these useful browsing tools? I want to look up the pages that help readers navigate Misplaced Pages, as a mention of these tools would be useful there. Does anyone know where those pages are? Carcharoth 17:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I found Misplaced Pages:Basic_navigation which points readers towards these useful tools. However, they are not really held up as useful browsing tools, which I think they are. Would anyone object if I wrote something on how to use these tools to browse Misplaced Pages? Even better, does anyone know of something that exists already, written for readers, not editors? Carcharoth 17:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

PS. rather than "Special Pages", I meant "All Pages" is a useful browsing tool. Carcharoth 17:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Help about browsing, for readers, is at Help:Contents/Browsing Misplaced Pages (the Help link in the navigation frame on the left, then Browsing Misplaced Pages). You (or anyone else) is entirely free to make improvements to the help files (they can be edited, just like any of the articles). So, in a sense, I think readers are already pointed at these helpful tools. The browsing experience is not referred to in the text of articles due to the reasons mentioned at Misplaced Pages:Avoid self-references. Misplaced Pages's content is available under the GFDL, and might be at a different web site (without the same tools) or might be in printed form. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh sure, I understand all that. I believe there is also a "self-reference" tag that can be used to mark things like this, but I suspect it is used sparingly, or in slightly different contexts, or maybe its use is not widespread enough yet to have caught on. But in any case, I think those help files are what I was looking for, and I'll try and add something at some point. Thanks. Carcharoth 09:45, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

PPS. Looking more closely, it was actually Special:Prefixindex (different from All Pages in that it doesn't just display a fixed number of pages after a point in the index, but rather it truncates at both beginning and end of a defined set) that I was finding very handy to browse with. Carcharoth 09:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Policy consideration

Misplaced Pages:Fair_use_criteria

Signed:Travb (talk) 11:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Fair use images in templates: exceptions

Misplaced Pages:Fair use images in templates: exceptions -- I'd appreciate any comments on the associated Talk page. Thnx SteveBaker 14:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Removing dictionary definitions is outside process?

If people are removing dictionary definitions and adding a link to Wiktionary, should the removed content be added to Wiktionary if it is not there? I think so, otherwise you are effectively removing material without going through the transwiking process. I am thinking in particular of disambiguation pages, where it is common to replace dictionary definitions with a link to wikitionary. Unfortunately, the wiktionary entries sometimes lack the definitions that were removed from Misplaced Pages. What should be done in those cases, especially if an editor does not have time to go and add it to Wiktionary themselves? Carcharoth 17:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

In my experience, editors who remove them usually mention that they have already transwikied them. If they don't say that, then there might be an issue. Ardric47 00:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you have any examples where you're sure they weren't actually transwikied first? Ardric47 00:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Not to hand, but if you pick any ramdom "dictionary" (ie. different meanings of a word) disambiguation page starting from Category:Disambiguation, and find ones with Wiktionary links, and then look back through the page history to the point where the Wiktionary link was added, I suspect in some cases some dictionary definitions might have been removed without being transwikied. The example I picked almost at random is Paddock - some of these are dictionary definitions that should be transwikied, though in this case they have been left in Misplaced Pages.

But I really just want to clarify the principle here. I've looked at WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary ("Misplaced Pages articles are not lists of such definitions. There are, however, disambiguation pages consisting of pointers to other pages; these are used to clarify differing meanings of a word."), and WP:Disambiguation#Dictionary_definitions ("Dictionary definitions don't belong here."). These don't seem entirely consistent, with the one implying that dictionary definitions of a sort ("different meanings") exist on disambiguation pages, and the other saying that dictionary definitions don't belong here. I would suggest clarifying the former to read: "Misplaced Pages articles are not lists of such definitions. There are, however, disambiguation pages consisting of pointers to other pages; these disambiguation pages are not intended to be lists of definitions, but are used to distinguish between articles where the words used in a title can refer to several different meanings."

What I really want though, is a clear statement that dictionary definitions should be transwikied, rather than just removed. Where would I find this? Carcharoth 10:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

There've been several times in the past where I've come across editors removing definitions from disambiguation pages citing WP:Disambiguation#Dictionary_definitions -- however they had not added the removed definition to Wiktionary -- sometimes the corresponding entry in Wiktionary didn't even exist. In at least one case, where I objected to this, the editor in effect said the content of Wiktionary was not his concern--he was merely enforcing his interpretation of the "dictionary definitions don't belong here" dictum. This seemed to me a rather unhelpful attitude. IMO, a brief (and I emphasize brief) definition on a disambiguation page is often helpful. I completely support the idea that disambiguation pages should not be dictionary entries, explicating multiple fine gradations of meaning and usage, variations in pronunciation or spelling, different word forms, etymology, etc. However, I think it is counter-intuitive to remove brief definitions from a disambiguation page simply because there is no corresponding article. Many editors will link to a term for the dict-def (whether that is a good practice or not is another matter, but it happens and will more than likely continue to happen)--I don't see why the disambiguation shouldn't page provide a brief definition for those misguided links. Of course there should also be a link to Wiktionary, for those who want more detail, but in many cases a simple short definition is sufficient. older ≠ wiser 12:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. I've started a proposal to change the wordings in policies and guidelines here and here. Carcharoth 13:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Institutions are notable?

I have been thinking about this a while. I can't decide whether an article about a hospital is per se notable. Example is Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital although there are many many more out there. Should these be included? Should these be deleted? I'm new here and I really don't know, and can't seem to find any precedent. Sometimes, what looks like (to me) non-notable stuff has an article, sometimes I see them being prod-ed. Is this the right place to discuss this? If so, what are your opinions? If not, where should I move this to? :) Thanks! JByrd 17:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Notability is probably a good place to crosspost it.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 01:03, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Original research in "Further Reading"

In the article on the 70 steps plan (Belgium) an editor included a section "Further Reading" in which he mentions (as only entry) an earlier work by the author of the described plan. The "70 steps plan" (a plan for the 'solution of the foreigner problem' in Belgium) dates from 1992, the work mentioned in "Further Reading" dates from 1991. The work in question doesn't provide further reading about the "70 steps plan", but is a tract on the same subject as the plan. What is the general feeling about this ? In my view, the "further reading" section should contain textbook about an article's subject. Thanks for your input.--LucVerhelst 20:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

It would certainly be appropriate in an article about the author. I think it's okay to have biased or primary sources listed in references, as long as they're relevant and informative. This case seems fuzzy to me though. Deco 21:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

the item in question seems to be a primary source. Those I think should be listed. Do they help readers? -- yes. Rjensen 21:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

New Idea for Page Protection

Please see User:ShootJar/ProtectionProposal for a new idea on combatting vandalism and protecting pages.

Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (missiles and unguided rockets) proposal

The articles about missiles and unguided rockets badly need a naming convention, especially the Russian ones. So I'm posting it here as requested on WP:NAME. - Dammit 14:51, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Admin power

Background: If an admin just "doesn't like your face", and finds an excuse, and bans you forever. Note there are many many rules, and just by writing any text in an article it could be considered POV, or trolling etc, and these are just the simple rules.

Can you:

1. Appeal this?
2. Get help?
3. Do you have to apply to the person who banned you?
4. If you do seek help publicly, and the admin finds out, can the admin ban you for this?
5. If you are banned, how can you contact anyone anyway?

This is not targeted towards anyone. It is just what I interpret the policy could allow. Wallie 15:48, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy has most of the details, but in summary, yes, you can appeal and get help. Checking with the person who banned you should always be the first option, in case they blocked you by mistake. Contacting another admin first won't change this, as an admin would not unblock you without checking first with the blocking admin. You can contact the blocking admin when banned by email, or by using the {{unblock}} template on your talk page. The important thing to remember, that if blocked, whether by accident, autoblock, unfairly, or justified, is to be civil. Mistakes happen, and a blocked user will get a much better outcome with politeness, unless of course the indefinite block was 100% justified, in which case it's probably a little late to be polite. For other blocks, being polite will help, no one likes being shouted at if a mistake was made, or if the block was unfair being polite will make that clearer, or if it was justified, accepting it calmly will reduce the chance of it happening again. Regards, MartinRe 16:26, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

How to handle commercial co-option of terms

Just curious what the policy is on this... the article on "Baby Carrots" was brought to my attention by a merge proposal, and the article as it stood was about "Baby Carrots", not about baby carrots (hope you get my meaning). The original writer of the article has been quite understanding and no edit war arose (we're working together on a better version), but I'm just curious how such things should be handled in less friendly situations. At least a partial explanation is on the talk page for the article (we were back and forth on user talks for a while earlier), but my more general question is about how to write a good article that points out the differences between traditional and commercial uses without getting soapboxish about the virtues of one meaning or the other. SB Johnny 21:14, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

If the commercial use (say a brandname) is sufficiently notable then it deserves its own page (say "Baby Carrots (brand)"). If it's somewhat notable, redirect to the generic term and add a brief mention there. If it's not notable, it doesn't deserve a mention anywhere. Middenface 21:16, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

In this particular case it's not a brand name, but a marketing term for carrot-shaped carrot pieces, as opposed to the more traditional use of the term referring to young carrots. I wish I could think of some other examples of this. SB Johnny 15:30, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussion of CSD T1 and T2

Since discussion of userboxes and their speedy deletion was overwhelming Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for speedy deletion, some of us decided to try to organize the enormous, sprawling, and often repetitive debate over the criteria T1 and T2, as applied to userboxes. Thus, we have a new page: Misplaced Pages:T1 and T2 debates, and all of the discussion of those criteria that was at CSD talk is now at Misplaced Pages talk:T1 and T2 debates.

At the main page, we're trying to somehow organize and fairly and neutrally present all of the relevant arguments regarding userboxes, their recent deletions, and their eventual fate. Editors are very welcome to help out with this project, which I hope may point the way towards a sensible resolution of the current drama and consternation. -GTBacchus 08:51, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Blanking own talk page

I have heard conflicting statements on whether a user may blank (not archive) their talk page. I am unable to find official policy one way or another. Some admins claim that the user's talk page is an official record of other people's interaction with you while other admins claim that you have as much right to blank the page as others do to place comments there in the first place. WP:OWN comes in to play here and I tend to fall on the side of the no-blanking people. However, I am at a loss as to what the official policy is. Can someone point me in the right direction with an unambiguous determination? While this is most definitely not an academic question, I will never blank my own talk page. --Yamla 16:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to know, too. I've encountered at least one "trouble maker" who blanked his page "just cuz" and once in awhile I'll also encounter a talk page blanking that's been done by someone who has chosen to resign from Misplaced Pages. When I was a "clueless newbie" 2 years ago I remember blanking my talk page because at the time I was unaware of how archives worked. 23skidoo 16:53, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

• Shrug. I blank mine regularly, politely leaving a note to how to see what was blanked so readers don't have to look through the history to see when I blanked it. The issue is with blanking active warning messages. If, for example, you've done something I find warning-worthy, and I leave a warning on your page, it's considered improper to remove the warning until at least a decent period of time has elapsed or the issue has been resolved. I think that's so that if another editor notices you doing the same thing, they won't also bother you, and if another editor notices you doing it a second time, they'll know you've already been warned about it. Blanking isn't any different from archiving, other than the method of retrieving older versions. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:56, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

It's conditional. How to archive a talk page has several examples of this, and blanking the page is archiving to history. This is generally acceptable, providing that the blanking is not removal of recent warning messages, e.g. {{npa}} or {{test3}}. My rule of thumb is that if it is being blanked to hide recent problems it's not ok, otherwise it is fine. In keeping with this I also support WP:USER#How_do_I_delete_my_user_and_user_talk_pages rule of not deleting the page administratively. — xaosflux 16:58, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I should point out that it is indeed blanking of current warnings that I am most concerned about. Removing warnings that are a month or three old is probably a different matter. But what about a user who is removing current warnings? We seem to think this is not acceptable? --Yamla 17:01, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

• Yeah. It's bad form, I think, unless the issue was resolved. So in my example above, if it turns out that my warning was ill-founded -- for example, what I might have thought was a 3RR issue was actually you resisting vandalism -- then you'd be justified in removing the warning. But the general case is they should stay at least for a vaguely defined little while. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

But what constitutes current? That day? That week? In my opinion, removing warnings, even a month or so old makes it more difficult for another user to know if this is a habitual vandal or not. IrishGuy 17:06, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's where the "judgement" thing comes in. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:18, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

And then there's the type of user who blanks out comments in their talk page from people they dislike, sometimes with snarky edit comments like "Deleted unread... I *told* you not to post to my talk page!" This seems akin to the childish practice of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and saying "La La La I Can't Hear You!". *Dan T.* 14:42, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. Nobody's required to converse with people they loathe; were we to prohibit or even discourage this sort of blanking, we'd be giving carte blanche to harassment ("I can say whatever I wan't and you can't stop me, nyah nyah nyah"). --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 14:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Third Person Policy

Is there a policy in which an article must be written in third person? If not, I suggest it should be made. --Domthedude001 20:35, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

• I don't think there's a policy, but it's common sense given our goals. Have you spotted articles written in first or second person? --Improv 22:02, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
• Some "how to" articles are written in second person. But those shouldn't exist in the first place. Sometimes people mistakenly use first person but get corrected. Deco 22:24, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I've certainly spotted some parts of articles written in the second person. Usually instantly deletable, borderline illiterate rubbish. -- Necrothesp 23:08, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

• The how-to articles should be transwiki'd elsewhere quickly, and other instances of 1st/2nd person are generally part of poor edits that can be corrected or expunged. I don't think we really need a policy for this when it's almost always a sign that some content needs attention, to one end or another. --Improv 14:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

User:Conrad Devonshire/Better means of identifying when an article receives or looses featured status

This is a policy I have proposed that will make it easier to distinguish the point in an article's edit history when it receives/looses featured status from the current revision of the article.--Conrad Devonshire 01:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

set minimum age limits

Some users are so young they have not been around long enough to be able to accurately perceive the short or long term consequences of their actions. Therefore I think a minimum age limit needs to be set for users and sysops and bureaucrats, etc. so we do not have to waste so much time having to educate them on our positions that have years and years of experience behind them like the portion of an iceberg below the surface. ...IMHO (Talk) 05:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. "Not been around long enough to be accurately perceieve the short of long term consequences of their actions"? That's a massive and absurd overgeneralisation.--Sean Black 06:48, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Not that massive and not that absurd, I should think. --LucVerhelst 07:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I can think of one user who frankly we would be better off without. He's in elementary school and pretty much incapable of any real contributions (his grammar, spelling, et al are on an elementary level, understandably). He does a lot of goofing off and needs a bit of babysitting ... literally, babysitting. He's not violating any particular policies but an age limit would help to remove kids like him. --Cyde↔Weys 06:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

And I'm sure one can come up with a long list of people of advanced age who have also shown themselves to be unable or unwilling to make productive contributions here. What would be the point? *Dan T.* 14:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The most exceptionally annoying and time-wasting contributors I can think of offhand have been middle-aged... Shimgray | talk | 15:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

How would you verify a person's age? Blaise Joshua 07:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

We've had respected members of the community at least as young as 13, so any bar would seem to need to be lower than that, at which point there is almost no one left to exclude. Which is not to say that I would want to anyway. I welcome any child who can make productive contributions. Dragons flight 07:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I would go so far as to say that it is one of the wonders of the modern Internet that people so young that you'd never trust them face-to-face can be judged on their merits and actions alone. We are enabling these people to take responsibility for something that matters. If a minimum age limit were set for Misplaced Pages, I would quit the project in protest. Besides, it's technically infeasible. Deco 08:02, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Definitely a non-starter for users. Firstly, it's absolutely unenforceable. Secondly, each editor and indeed each contribution can be assessed on his/her/its merits. I've seen rubbish from people who seem to be mature adults. Admins and bureaucrats are different, but it would require careful identity checks to enforce, and again being 18 or 21 is no proof that you are mature and sensible.--Runcorn 08:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Strong agree. We've had very young respected admins (I've actually been surprised when I found out their age), and we've had fully grown and elderly assholesnegatively productive users. Moreover, if we want to collect all the world's knowledge, a kid's perspective can be rather useful, I think. --Stephan Schulz 08:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Not that this should have any weight relevant to our goals on Misplaced Pages, but allowing youth to take responsibility and contribute to projects in society gives them a stake in society and helps build good character and habits to support it. Rather than hiding from the destructive actions of a portion of irresponsible children, we should engage as many as we can in our project, because in the end it will do both our project and those involved a lot of good. If we aim to help society with our project, the more people that have a stake in our project, the better off we are, even if we have to deal with some roughness along the way. --Improv 14:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Dear people from Misplaced Pages,

I wrote an e-book about the War in Yogoslavia and some of the historical facts exposed in the book ( may be visited at www.peev.org ) I wanted to share with you. I started the edition on the Bosnian page, and I gave the historical facts about the Vatican implications at the Balkans (also to see im my e-book), but there is a 16-years old boy who accused me for vandalization ?! Please, I want that my message be re-examend by the people who knows and loves history and not by those who have a hobbis like this 16-years old boy. And I want to hear excuse, because I wrote you with all my respect and love. I just wanted to share the knowledge with you...nothing else..

Dr. med. Jasmina Peev —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Peev (talk • contribs) .

You raise various issues here, but I'll stick to the accusation of vandalism. A 16 year old or a hobbyist is no more or less eligible to accuse you of vandalism (a serious charge, of course) than is a 56 year old or a historian. If you specify the diff (or at least the article) in question, then somebody here will take a look at the accusation and judge it on its merits (if any). -- Hoary 14:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

It appears Peev is peeved that this nonsense/attack/vandalism was reverted, and then a (self identified) 16 year old left a message on the user's talk page properly warning them to stop vandalizing, and gave some constructive advice on how to participate. That probably shows the value of having a 16 year old. --Rob 14:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

A 16-year-old who cleans up vandalism is certainly more useful to this project than an older person who creates it. *Dan T.* 14:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

• There are going to be no age limits on Misplaced Pages. --Osbus 15:01, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I would have been an amazing contributor if Misplaced Pages had existed when I was a kid =). I oppose any general criterion to exclude editors; it should always be done on a case-by-case basis. Ardric47 23:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Semi-protection policy for featured articles

I suggest that Misplaced Pages put all featured articles under the semi-protection policy for their stay on the main page. On May 28th, 2006, anonymous user 209.172.32.70 vandalized the Jarmann M1884 article multiple times, deleting large portions of it and replacing them with nonsense. His or her edits were later reverted; nevertheless, several people saw the article with his or her edits in place, and putting featured articles under the semi-protection policy for their 24-hour exposition on the main page could prevent another similar incident. 69.177.176.154 14:47, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see User:Raul654/protection, a statement about this from the Featured Articles editor. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Scientific point of View

Because wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and strives to be as accurate as possible, shouldn't we have a scientific point of view, rather than a neutral point of view?

It becomes very difficult to edit articles on pseudoscience, such as astrology, when describing the scientific point of view is treated as a form of bias. For example, there is strong disagreement on mentioning the mainstream scientific view in the introduction to astrology, as it is might be considered as bias. I think implementing a scientific point of view, will go a long way in improving the quality of articles on wikipedia. At the least, we could amend the NPOV, so that more emphasis is provided to the mainstream scientific view, when disputes arise. 59.92.62.97 15:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

But astrology isn't a scientific subject! (I wouldn't even call it pseudo-science). Any scientific view inevitably will criticize it, and be irrelevant. Don't pretend that Astrology even merits scientific arguments - it doesn't (personally I think its a load of rubbish, but that's neither here nor there). But it is notable, and it is respected by a large number of people. I think the current intro is balanced and makes it clear tha Astrology is a system of belief, nor does it make unilateral claims. The section "The objective validity of astrology" also deals with criticisms - I can't see a problem, it is a balanced article which seeks to explain a system of belief that is widely known and very popular (even though it is unscientific). I think a WikiScience wouldn't be a bad idea, but that's a separate issue (WikiScience if it existed wouldn't even have articles like astrology on it). Captainj 20:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, the point that it is notable, and is respected by a large number of people, shows the need for a scientific point of view. This is because, there is overwhelming evidenince, via controlled experimental studies, that astrology cannot make consistent accurate prediction. So any such statement, which says astrology fails to make accurate predictions, is essential in an introduction to the subject, as it can be verified by facts. So considering what many people say today, isn't it essential to include the fact that astrology doesn't work in controlled experiments in the introduction, to give a balanced view? siddharth 04:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

What is a scientific point of view? See also Demarcation problem. Intangible 20:18, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The scientific point of view is the view of the mainstream scientific community siddharth 04:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I just had a look at the astrology page. The introduction and the few other sections I looked at were all excellent. I don't think it's a good idea to slant the NPOV toward the consensus of mainstream science. Doing so, after all, wouldn't be NPOV any more as it presumes the superiority of scientific knowledge over other types. Besides, mainstream science has at many times throughout history endorsed utter gibberish. We shouldn't feel immune to this possibility in our era any more than Newton should have in his. Blaise Joshua 20:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

True science, as an ideal, is almost by definition NPOV. Ardric47 23:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

siddharth 04:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC) The point is, IMO, the scientific method is superior because it works. The only way to test a hypotheisis is by experiment, and this will straight away show what is right and what is wrong. So, as far as we are concerned with the accuracy of something, science is what we turn to.

Also, can you please give examples of when mainstream science has supported absolute gibberish? siddharth 04:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Well science is basically consensus building. It really cannot claim a position 'better' than just common knowledge. Intangible 23:58, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Refer above. siddharth 04:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with an SPOV is that "science" really isn't sufficiently well-defined to give us a good guideline. If you think articles should be written from the point of view of the majority of people with PhDs in the subject, well, that's consensus science and is completely unacceptable—consider chiropracty, say, or psychoanalysis, both of which have many doctorate-holders who assert the validity of their subjects, while doctors from related subjects (medicine) believe them to be garbage. Conventional acceptance isn't a criterion for scientific rigor.

Just look at Demarcation problem#Demarcation in contemporary scientific method. Can you really objectively say whether something is parsimonious, pertinent, etc.? I doubt it. It's perfectly sufficient to say "nearly all scientists believe this idea is total garbage"; that gets the point across. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I say articles need not be written by PHDs, but that importance should be given to the views of the mainstream scientific community and importantly, the experiments performed to back the claims of the scientific community. Again I repeat, as an encyclopedia, I think accuracy is vital when dealing with Scientific articles siddharth 04:20, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Mass deletion of all ethnic categories

1. Where is the policy that governs the mass deletion of a category and all its subcategories? This is being proposed in Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 20.
2. The proponents offer no policy reasons for the deletions, they just don't like the idea of such (ethnic) categories.
3. The proponents have not listed all the subcategories to be deleted, so the reader is left guessing what is really involved here.
4. The proponents have only provided notice of the proposed deletion in the pages having the topmost supercategory (a notice that has changed from 'deletion' to 'mass deletion' about 6 days after the original notice); no notice has been added to any or all the sub-categories involved.
5. Even if such notices were to be provided, no notice has been provided to the article editors who made use of the categories--so the primary interested parties, who probably do not monitor the 'categories for deletion' page, are given no notice of the proposed change.
6. While I do (corrected: 'not') agree with the proposal, I am more alarmed by the method or lack of method used in this mass category deletion process.

Thanks Hmains 15:53, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

(numbered) The 7-day debate was completed a couple of days ago.

1. This is an "umbrella" proposal. It will result in new guidelines.
2. Actually, Mayumashu (talk · contribs) had quite a long description, and there have been dozens of individual CfD debates in recent months. These categories have been problematic.
3. Not much in the way of guessing, as the whole point of categories is browsing. The roots of subtrees are listed.
4. It is true that Mayumashu used the wrong template {{cfd}}, but I fixed the {{cfdu}} 4 days (not 6) after the original notice. Adding notices to all the subcategories isn't required. However, I did add pointers to the CfD discussion in about 13 other places. That's actually quite a few by historical standards!
5. Prescience is not our strong point.... Hopefully, such editors are aware of the ongoing edit wars about ethnicity categorization. Those that are not as active are allowing the wisdom of the regular category maintainers to come to a rational decision.
6. This is false. You actually wrote "Keep Categories should remain and not be deleted" (on 20 May), and you were the first person to vote. You voted a second time (on 27 May) "Very much opposed." You commented at least 4 times (more than anybody else). You had more notice than most of the rest of us that only review such things sporadically.

These categories have proven extremely problematic and combative, with various factions adding or deleting people based on speculative surnames, speculative geneology, and unverified history. Lists with verifiable references are much more useful where ethnicity is notable.

--William Allen Simpson 18:48, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response--but you have added info here which I did not find and do not believe a reader should be expected to able to infer from the 'deletion proposal', as written. It is a proposal to delete something, not a proposal to revise a policy. And I see generalities in the reply which would take more long discussion to evaluate.

Sorry, I left out the word 'not': I do not agree with the deletion.

I think that categories are useful only if they are supported by content in the articles. If the article says the person has F00 ethnic/national origin, then an ethnic category is correct; if the article is wrong, then it and its categorization can and should be corrected. If we cannot accept the article content as 'fact', why would other references added to lists be accepted as better?

If there is a plan to delete a category and replace it with a list, I think the proponent should be required to first put all the people then currently in the category into the list and not rely on the 'hope' and 'wish' that this will be taken care of later by editors of the list. Again, the bio article editors may know nothing about such lists.

Thanks Hmains 19:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

what constitutes community consensus to ban?

According to current banning policy, a user remains community banned when they satisfy: "Some editors are so odious that not one of the 915 administrators on Misplaced Pages would ever want to unblock them."

So according to this sentence, if any single admin is willing to unblock a user, then consensus to block does not exist. This sentence has two problems. Firstly, it discounts entirely the opinions of nonadmins. Why should only an admin's willingness to unblock matter? What if a dozen good-faith editors ask for a user to be unblocked, but no admins are willing. This is probably an unrealistic situation; if there are a dozen users willing to stand up for another, then there is an admin also willing to listen. Nevertheless, the wording is bad.

Secondly, does the existence of a single admin willing to unblock really constitute consensus? This sentence has been invoked recently in ArbCom cases and on AN/I to override nearly unanimous consensus that a user should remain blocked. It does make sense that permbans should require a very strict supermajority kind of consensus, but is 100% too high?

Note that recent unilateral unbans of two extremely controversial permbanned users have apparently recently caused 2 admins (1 2) to leave the project. These unbans are perfectly justifiable in the name of this policy. I propose that this policy is too extreme, and should instead rely on more conventional forms of consensus. WIthout requiring a formal vote-like consensus building forum, shouldn't something like an informal discussion with nearly unanimous support like the one linked be strong enough form of consensus? No need to formalize this rule. Just delete the offending sentence (added last July by David Gerard). -lethe 20:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the wording of the banning policy in a while and am frankly appalled that that is what it currently has. If 900 admins think someone should be banned, and 1 thinks otherwise, we should keep the person unbanned? Consensus does not require unanimity. JoshuaZ 20:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with Lethe and JoshuaZ. One admin should not be able to overturn obvious community consensus; And the recent unilateral unban responsible for driving away several highly productive editors/admins from the project is an excellent example of why this is wrong. Once a disruptive editor is perm banned, there should be wide community consensus before they are ever unbanned. --MPerel 20:54, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

In addition to being too strong a form of consensus, it's also objectionable because it implies that admins opinions are the only ones that matter. -lethe 20:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't work well in the UN, and I doubt it'll work well here. I'm fully in support of this being re-worded. --InShaneee 21:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The UN doesn't work well. Misplaced Pages, on the other hand, is not a democracy. -Splash 21:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

This sentence has been used in defense of linuxbeak's controversial unban, as well as in recent ArbComm cases. -lethe 20:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Note that Misplaced Pages:blocking policy says:

• If you disagree with a block placed by another admin, do not unblock without discussing the matter thoroughly in advance with the blocking admin, and with other admins on WP:AN/I if appropriate. .

So an admin wishing to overturn a community ban is currently required to discuss the move before unblocking. Doing so would give the community (or at least the blocking admin) a chance to either convince or be convinced. I think existing policy is adequate, when followed. -Will Beback 21:05, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

No, the unanimity phrasing is both important and functional. It is important because it rules out unequivocally the possibility that some have tried to exploit recently of banning a user by a quick straw poll in a section of AN/I among the admins who happen to spot it on their watchlists before it is 10 sections from the bottom. It is functional because, if the one admin disagrees, they can only continue to unblock for so long as their courage permits. If they persist in the face of overwhelming opposition then the subject will get repeatedly reblocked, adn the dissenting admin will undoubtedly be wheel-warring. If it came to such a situation which, to my knowledge it never has, it is reasonable to suppose an Arb case would result with a rapid injunction. In the case to hand, there is not a single admin prepared to unblock at present: Linuxbeak did it once, was quickly reversed and has not repeated the action. The admins are, for now, unanimous. The opinions of non-admins matter, but do not ultimately have an effect in such situations since none of them are the ones who will take the fall for (un)(re)blocking. -Splash 21:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

You raise some good points, but I think codifying this in an official policy page is dangerous; bad things can be justified in its name. If we simply didn't have the sentence, then people would still reblock and unblock and consensus would develop as you suggest, and the unblocking admins might be more likely to discuss and we would no longer be telling the non-admins that they have no say in community bans. -lethe 21:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is not so much a "codifying" as an explaining. Like most policies, it documents the way that things work, and is especially important so that people understand the sociological nature of a ban of this kind. We may as well provide that explanation: the alternative is to type it out by hand once or twice a week on AN/I. Although we no longer be telling non-admin that they 'have no say', the fact would remain. In fact, they do have a say because they might be able to persuade enough admins to make the community ban fail. Burying the operation of parts of the community in its collective memory is not needed particularly here. -Splash 21:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

When I wrote that sentence, the context was that people were having trouble accepting such bans as being things only Jimbo or the Jimbo-like powers invested in the ArbCom by him could create. It was to point out that if someone is that much of a troublemaking troll/arsehole/crazy person, and not one of the (then) 500+ admins — all of whom could be presumed to have passed a basic sanity check by getting nominated and accepted as admins — could be bothered unblocking, then the block was probably one of substance. As sometimes happens around Misplaced Pages, some have tried using this somewhat casual statement of the obvious as a rule to be bent into weird shapes using the same words. (A good example of why process, although important, is not more important than either product or not being stupid.) I hope the spirit of it remains clear enough for sensible use, if not lacking-in-sense use - David Gerard 21:23, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I think at the time the blocking policy didn't allow for admins making indefinite blocks except in a few very specific circumstances (e.g. legal threats). Applying an indef block for more general problems was reserved to Jimbo/Wikimedia, the ArbCom, or 'community consensus'. This last was re-interpreted to mean that if an admin places an indefinite block and no other admin reverts it that is 'effectively the same' as the full community agreeing the user should be banned. That reinterpretation was an expansion of admin powers, but the 'no other admin' clause was included to make it palatable as only the worst offenders should be unable to find someone to unblock them. Expanding this again to 'a consensus of admins' seems questionable to me... at that point it ought to revert back to the original intent of 'a consensus of all contributors' (hence "community ban") or this whole 'interpretitive method' scrapped and an actual proposal for indef banning by admins in their own name (rather than 'acting as the community') should be devised. That said, the purpose of the ArbCom was to deal with users who could not be handled by normal dispute resolution and/or temporary blocks... as I said they were the court for 'indefinite'. Is that power now to be given into the hands of every admin unless a consensus disagrees with them? Does the ArbCom then just become a body for reviewing the actions of admins themselves? There are wider implications to this. We've been drifting towards greater power of the individual admin to ban for some time now, but we should consider what it means to the overall structure of 'problem handling' if this is to be codified. --CBDunkerson 21:54, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

If we assume a rule like WP:1WW—no admin is allowed to revert a reversion of his own action, call it that for the sake of argument—there's no problem with any single admin being permitted to unblock. If community consensus is against, another admin (i.e., one who hasn't already blocked) can just reblock. This is precisely what happened here: Linuxbeak blocked, others disagreed and so reblocked within hours. I see no problem with the current system; it appears to have worked perfectly.

By the way, I strongly object to the idea that a few admins should be able to essentially strongarm consensus by threatening to leave if they don't get their way. That's not actually what happened here, but using the decisions of certain members to (quite likely temporarily) leave Misplaced Pages as grounds for favoring a policy change is a Very Bad Idea. More cynical and angry people than I, and I neither share their assumptions nor their assumptions' opposites, have suggested that SlimVirgin et al. left precisely in order to effect some kind of backlash against Linuxbeak, or otherwise get their way. Even if they didn't, a question I don't feel I'm competent to judge, it's bad policy to allow anyone the opportunity to do things like that. If someone wants to leave Misplaced Pages, don't bend Misplaced Pages around them to get them to stay. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Writing about fiction

Please consider this guideline proposed as an addition to the Manual of Style: Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (writing about fiction).--ragesoss 22:50, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Userspace pages in mainspace categories

Should user subpages be in categories? I noticed that Category:Websites contains User:Whytee/Spymac rewrite1, User:Oven Fresh/Download.com, and User:Stollery/T-Nation. This seems not ideal. ~ Booya 23:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories should be commented out of the user-space pages if they're rewrites, and then uncommented when the article is added. (Or you could use {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#if: {{#expr: {{NAMESPACE}} == User}} | ]}} and then subst the page when you move it to article space, but that would be fairly ridiculous.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:38, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

NPOV vs "mainstream"

According to Misplaced Pages founder Jimbo Wales, NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable.", but there are still ddiscussions about the interpretation of this policy.

In particular some editors believe that anything is neutral if it is widely used in "mainstream" sources. I disagree with this statement. The netral point of view should be "neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject", whyle any of these two attitudes may prevail in the society and this influences the POVs found in "mainstream" sources.

On the other hand, the very definition of the "mainstream" is unclear to me. How can one decide whether a certain POV belongs to the "mainstream" or not? Another problem: if something is a "mainstream", for instance, in Iran, it is not necessary a "mainstream" in US or Western Europe.

More specifically, this question appeared in the discussion about using the word "liberate" for the restoring of the Soviet control over the territories of the present-day Ukraine, Belarus and Baltic States during the WWII. Using this term was clearly the "mainstream" of Soviet historical science. The modern Russia continues this tradition. Although some western scholars use this term as well, I am not, quite sure whether it belongs to "mainstream" in Western science. Two articles in Britannica that describe the subject "Ukrain in WWII" in details (History of Ukraine, History of WWII) avoid the word "liberate" and use neutral terms, but one still can find this word in othe articles where the WWII is mentioned in passing by.

Wheter it is "mainstream" or not, it is not clear whether the "mainstreamness" has any relevancy in this case, because using the word "liberate" assumes sympathy to Soviets. Many people have the opposite view, because the "liberation" resulted in new repressions, one more artificial famine etc.

I (and a few other editors) propose to use more neutral terms instead of "liberate", like "take control", "advance", "reclaime" etc. But there is a strong group of users who disagree and insist on using the word liberate.

I would be very thankfull if experiencied WP editors could answer my question and help us to apply the NPOV policy properly. Thanks in advance.--AndriyK 10:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

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