Misplaced Pages

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

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

That's false, User:Hiding\T.

That's a scene in Disney's Aladdin that sums up the point:

Aladdin steals a loaf of bread and says, "Stealing is only stealing if you get caught." Then the guard, Razoul, grabs him.

You can't defend yourself in court by saying, "But I didn't EXPECT to be sued! I thought I'd actually get away with this stuff!" ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 00:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

• When you show me where in my point I stated anything that resembles the point you are arguing against, we can continue this. Until then, all I can say is that you have somehow managed to not only misunderstand me, but also misunderstand the nature of the legal system as it applies in the area of copyright. If you'll allow me, I'd also point out that resorting to an animated cartoon aimed at children to illustrate any fact about law is perhaps showing a poor choice in judgement. My statement is not false in any way, since breaches of copyright are in fact only declared through the judicial system, and not by individual editors on Misplaced Pages. Unless perhaps Transhumanist is a practising US judge handing out judgement in a rather unusual manner, to which I think due process would be the appropriate defence, although I must resort to the caveat that IANAL. Hiding T 11:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo quote

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

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

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

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

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

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

Following the implicit suggestion I found in User:Zenwhat's comment, I have created a sock puppet, User:The Community. It is now possible to block The Community, should The Community edit contrary to policy, though this is highly unlikely (see the User and Talk pages for why it's unlikely; indeed, in the immediate situation, The Community won't be editing outside of the User and Talk page at all unless authorized by the actual community, or, more accurately, by those participating, and The Community (currently me logged in as such) won't make contentious edits even on those pages, except as the servant of those participating, as would any legitimate temporary chair of a democratic meeting. Given that the process doesn't exist yet to fairly represent the whole community through those participating, I wouldn't expect any outside edits in the near future. But you never can tell. How long does it take for a crystal to grow? Depends on conditions. Some might prevent any crystal formation at all. Some might want to watch User talk:The Community but a special subpage might be created for authorized announcements, and watching that page would involve much less traffic. Maybe none! (By the way, if someone objects to the name of this user, there is standard process for dealing with that; however, the most *efficient* way to object might be to simply request that some different name be used. I'd not be opposed. However, if you are an administrator, and you see *any* uncivil, contentious, disruptive, or otherwise improper post by The Community, that user is acting contrary to his own guidelines, or the account has been compromised. Please block it immediately. It will do no harm, and can always be undone if there has been some mistake.--Abd (talk) 17:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Notability guidelines regarding cell phones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Censorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Forms of Notability?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Sockpuppetry
• Systemic bias
• Cabals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spam-Blacklist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enquiring Minds Want to Know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the extreme, radical inclusionism would support allowing people to upload spam and blatant hoaxes. And, in the extreme, radical deletionism would support an empty encyclopaedia. So now that we've dispensed with the extremes, perhaps we can stop charging at strawmen, hmm? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:38, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

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

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

Welcome to humanity. Misplaced Pages is a mirror. Zeality (talk) 23:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, that's it. I'm deleting space in articles on chemical elements, while including at least one celebrity baby for each one. Call it the human element, the Dow of Hollywood. Keeps us up on our daily micro-ration of cuteness factor. SBHarris 00:01, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Blacklist of digitpress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some thoughts on categories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• And furthermore, this idea needs far more discussion before it is implemented. See User talk:Betacommand#Over-categorization. Carcharoth (talk) 18:09, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Please centralise discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Categorization#Populating primary categories. Carcharoth (talk) 07:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

White Cats approach

My belief is that some people are trying to write articles using categories. Often very minor detail of a person ends up being a category. I want to point out to my essay at this point -> WP:DNWAUC.

First off, we should focus on citizenship rather than ethnicity/nationality whenever possible. Often ethnicity isn't a very objective criteria for categorization. Of course a persons ethnicity is something very significant and this can be presented in the article in great detail. But it is a poor criteria for categorization.

• If the person changed citizenship or holds multiple citizenships (something rare) he or she can be tagged with multiple categories.
• Granted there are many countryless minorities and "nations" out there which are actually the root of the problem we are facing in categorization. For example how do you even try to categories a living example of a melting pot? Such as a person who has 4 or more parents/grand parents of different ethnicities? Ethnicity is a cultural concept so the definition of who qualifies as a 'White' (Would a 75% or more 'White' count? Or consider the case of a person having a very distant non-white relative), 'Black/African American' (is Bill Clinton an African American? Media seem to say so (jokingly no doubt)), 'African' (Do non-blacks in Africa count?). I can list endless problematic examples without even trying.
• In the case of some historic figures there is a serious disagreement of which "nationality" they are from and citizenship didn't exist back then. People were instead subjects of a King/Queen or whatever. They can be categorized accordingly. It isn't very helpful for us to have a living person in a modern-era country and person that lived several centuries ago in a country that no longer exists today in the same category.

As for the example above (George H. W. Bush). I list the existing categories in the article:

1. Semi-protected
   • (maintenance)
2. Articles needing additional references from December 2007
   • (maintenance)
3. All articles with unsourced statements
   • (maintenance)
4. Articles with unsourced statements since November 2007
   • (maintenance)
5. Articles to be expanded since December 2007
   • (maintenance)
6. All articles to be expanded
   • (maintenance)
7. Articles with sections needing expansion
   • (maintenance)
8. Presidents of the United States
   • Official post, fine if you ask me.
9. 1924 births
   • Date of birth, fine if you ask me.
10. American
    1. American anti-communists
       • Excessive, persons political opinion. Article worthy for sure but this is not an objective category.
    2. American businesspeople
       • Occupation, fine if you ask me.
    3. American Episcopalians
       • Official post, fine if you ask me.
    4. American humanitarians
       • Excessive, persons political opinion. Article worthy for sure but this is not an objective category.
    5. American military personnel of World War II
       • Excessive. Article worthy, not category worthy.
    6. American World War II pilots
       • Excessive. Article worthy, not category worthy.
    • First of 'American' does not JUST mean "from United States" Canadians can fall into this category. Thats the major problem with all of these.
11. Bonesmen
    • Official affiliation, fine if you ask me. This once could be renamed so it makes more sense.
12. Bush family
    • Perfectly fine. However either this or 'George H.W. Bush' category is excessive.
13. Cold War leaders
    • Belongs to the article and is a poor choice as a category.
14. Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency
    • Official post, fine if you ask me.
15. George H.W. Bush
    • Perfectly fine. However either this or 'Bush family' category is excessive.
16. Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
    • An award. Definitely significant in a persons life but not very useful as a category. It should be mentioned in the article in great detail. Just it is a poor category.
17. Living people
    • (maintenance)
18. Members of the United States House of Representatives from Texas
    • Not really sure what this supposed to be. The person in question is no longer a member of the "House of Representatives". And I don't particularly see the point of categorizing him under 'Texas' rather than the term(s) he served.
19. Parents of Presidents of the United States
    • Excessive. Being a parent of a president is no achievement nor is it in any way definitive. Article worthy for sure but not category worthy.
20. Location
    1. People from Greenwich, Connecticut
    2. People from Maine
    3. People from Midland, Texas
    4. People from Norfolk County, Massachusetts
    • Just where exactly is he from? Wouldn't birth place be a more rational way to categorize people. Any Navy serviceman may end up living in unrelated parts of the world for long durations of time.
21. Phillips Academy alumni
    • Official affiliation, fine if you ask me.
22. Recipients of US Distinguished Flying Cross
    • An award. Definitely significant in a persons life but not very useful as a category. It should be mentioned in the article in great detail. Just it is a poor category.
23. Republican National Committee chairmen
    • Official post, fine if you ask me.
24. Republican Party (United States) presidential nominees
    • How useful is this? There are very few candidates in every election hardly enough to fill a category. Wouldn't a list be more useful than a machine generated category?
25. Republican Party (United States) vice presidential nominees
    • How useful is this? There are very few candidates in every election hardly enough to fill a category. Wouldn't a list be more useful than a machine generated category?
26. Shot-down aviators
    1. • Excessive. Article worthy, not category worthy.
27. Texas Republicans
    • How useful is this? Being a republican alone isn't something significant. Now he was succesfuly elected and thats a good category. This one is excessive however.
28. Time magazine Persons of the Year
    • An award. Definitely significant in a persons life but not very useful as a category. It should be mentioned in the article in great detail. Just it is a poor category.
29. United States ambassadors to the United Nations
    • Official post, fine if you ask me.
30. United States naval aviators
    • Occupation, fine if you ask me.
31. United States Navy officers
    • Occupation, fine if you ask me. However this is excessive when user is already categorized under 'United States naval aviators'
32. United States presidential candidates, 1988
    • How useful is this? There are very few candidates in every election hardly enough to fill a category. Wouldn't a list be more useful than a machine generated category?
33. Vice Presidents of the United States
    • Official post, fine if you ask me.

-- Cat 19:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

You lost me after the, somewhere in Albuquerque I believe.Wjhonson (talk) 04:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be a complete reform of the way people categorise things. Some valid points, but would take years to do. I think WP:OVERCAT (via WP:CFD) is already keeping out the worst stuff anyway, and what is left isn't too bad. Carcharoth (talk) 07:10, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

• Please don't discuss detailed category proposals here. It is better to post a notice and centralise discussion on one of the category-related pages. White Cat, I suggest the talk page of WP:OVERCAT. 07:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I merely investigated categories on the given example as an example. I tried what you suggested and it had taken me nowhere. We do need a reform in categorization.

Verifiable references.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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