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if i understand this correctly, you're (someone) suggesting that they start wikipedias in dead tongues... like sanskrit or coptic... now, i dom't mean to sound like a schmuck... but that is one really stupid idea. think about it for a few minutes....
Moved from archive as it's premature to close this - future datestamp applied to make sure it isn't archived again - Will17:51, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Moving from WT:RFC...
About two months ago, I listed Requests for user comment for deletion under the premise that it did not work, and it's basically a quagmire of personal attacks and a stepping stone to ArbCom. The consensus in the MFD, including the creator of the process and the MfD's closer, is that it doesn't really work 99.9% of the time, and only exists because there is no other process existent. Just get rid of it and reinstate the Community Sanction Noticeboard, as that actually did do some good. Will17:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I would support CSN provided there was a minimum time for comments (about 7 days). There should also be a maximum time for banning (1 year, same as ArbCom). R. Baley (talk) 18:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
CSN had teeth, RFC/U hardly any. CSN saw discussion and nuance, RFC/U sees ganging up and party-lines half the time. With the same provisos as R. Baley, except I'd prefer six months, it would be good to have it back. Relata refero (talk) 18:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Maybe you could merge the two... CSN to me always seemed to arbitrary. Consensus could be declared in an hour or never... that kind of gives power to people who can generate a mob of "me too"s on demand. RFC is very structured but seldom goes anywhere. Is there any realistic way to have CSN but with a more normalized process, to give the accused a change to reply, slow down the mob mentality, and reasonably assess consensus? --W.marsh18:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Would it need a new name possibly? Also please note than CSN only closed three and a half months ago and consensus might not of changed much since then. Also, a lot of things that "could" of gone there are instead now sent to WP:AN or WP:ANI, meaning they get a lot more traffic and stress put on them. D.M.N. (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
W.marsh, don't you think a minimum one-week period for each sanction discussion would help with the mob of "me-too"s? (Too much evidence has emerged lately of off-wiki co-ordination for us to discount that as a factor.) Relata refero (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
A week sounds reasonable. If it's truly an emergency WP:BLOCK should apply, and if someone's transgressions don't seem blockworthy a week after the fact, then a ban was a bad idea to begin with. I'd also like to look at a waiting period before people start bolding words (ban, don't ban, etc.) maybe 48 hours of pure discussion without people taking definitive stands like in a vote. I think that would lead to better discussion, people tend to feel psychologically committed to a stance once they're locked in to it. --W.marsh18:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
At Arbcom they've decided to take the ambitious step of waiting (I believe 48 hours, but I can't remember) before voting on the proposed decision page. We could do something similar, discussion can take place for 2 days, but no proposed "remedies" (ban, topic ban, etc.) could be offered until 48 hours after a new complaint had been certified (maybe not "certified," just following the initial complaint --basically enforce 2 days of discussion before any talk of "banning"). R. Baley (talk) 18:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
RFC works when it's used for asking for comments, it does not work when sanctions are sought, but that is not its purpose. The CSN should be brought back and RFC kept and used for its intended purpose. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
The Community Sanction Noticeboard had its own problems, though I'm not sure that it needed to be eliminated. Part of the problem is that dispute resolution mechanisms seem to come and go - Mediation went away, and now it's back under a new name, the CSN came and went, ANI seems to alter its mission every so often. I see three main problems with RFC/U: it is not empowered to sanction, it's intended to keep reduce the burden on ANI, and it's a mandatory step before going to ArbCom, which can sanction. The solution I see is to 1) bounce more stuff, both from RFC/U and ANI, to Mediation (wherever it's living right now), 2) have some level of sanction available at RFC/U, which would probably require administrator patrolling, and 3) allow admins to move complicated cases off ANI to RFC/U. Perhaps a name change would be in order - instead of "Request for Comment/User Conduct", it could become "Administrators' Noticeboard: Ongoing Problems" (to distinguish it from AN:Incidents). Making it part of the Administrators' Noticeboard would mean that sanctions would be available and it would be an appropriate preliminary step to ArbCom. It would also reduce the load at ANI, where probably half the volume of discussion is on complicated, drawn-out issues, even though those are fewer than 10% of the actual incidents reported. Community Sanctions would all get moved to AN/OP, also. As part of the AN cluster, AN/OP would be fairly highly visible. Argyriou(talk)20:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm Opposed to this. Many of our processes suffer from a lynching mentality and RFC is as bad as some of them but it does serve a purpose. I really do not see a return to the votes for lynching that CSN turned into as a viable alternative. If we are replace this process we need some other way to garner community feedback into problematical or disputed editor behaviour and a noticeboard doesn't seem the way forward. Spartaz22:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Both W.marsh and Spartaz voice important concerns. The CSN was split off from ANI, and then was merged back into ANI after only 8 months. I think ANI, with its high visibility and traffic, is the proper place for most such discussions. The deletion discussion is very instructive as to the potential problems that must be kept in mind. I oppose any page dedicated exclusively to "sanctions," as well as any form of voting for a ban.
Getting back to RFC/U, I think its purpose and its place within the DR process should be better defined. The list of DR options here is rather bewildering, and does not indicate (what I see as) RFC/U's status as a second-tier DR forum for problems that have proven intractable in the first-tier forums. The third tier, of course, is Arbcom.
There is a grave problem when people see DR as a list of hoops that must be jumped through before you can ban someone. Emphasis should be placed on restoring relationships and on helping problematic editors to become better ones. Note that I am not talking about obvious trolls, who should be dealt with easily enough in the first-tier DR forums. To me, the purpose of the first-tier forums is to have one or two experienced editors tell a problematic editor that he/she is behaving problematically and should change. At this point, the case may be obvious enough that a block or ban would be appropriate. The purpose of RFC/U is then for the larger community to communicate that same message. If the problematic behavior continues, then an admin can enact a community ban, and the tougher cases can go to Arbcom. If I am out in left field on this, then tell me so or ignore me. If not, then the DR guidelines should be a lot more clear that this is the case. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 05:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
It would be good if it worked that way, but the practice is less harmonious. The process seems to escalate conflict rather than diminish it. I don't however know how to substitute it. CSN was seen as a kangaroo court, so that too had problems. DGG (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Practice does not need to be harmonious. I'm not so naive as to think that a large fraction of people are actually focused on "restoring relationships" etc. But I'd settle for orderly. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 01:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
The problem I have seen in the few RFC/U's I've seen (as an outsider) is that there is very little in the way of objective evidence. It usually ends up in IDONTLIKEHIM comments, or sometimes people siding with the nominator they like or the defendant they like, or even lining up with the POV they like.
Any complaint, whether it is in an RFC/U or an AN/I or a proposed AN/OP, should have specific charges based on policy or guidelines and specific diffs to support the charge, and diffs to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem. A user who behaves badly should be warned every time the problem is noticed. Just as we warn against vandalism, we should warn about NPA, incivility, etc. (If we had more warning templates, users might issue warnings more often.) If we warned users more often we might see fewer problems. If problems persist, then the warnings will provide the evidence to justify blocks.
AIV is not contentious because there is a visible history of escalating warnings to demonstrate the problem, to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem, and to justify the length of a block. 3RR is not contentious because diffs provide objective evidence of bad behavior. RFC/U, AN/I, CSN almost always are (were) contentious because there is usually no objective evidence to demonstrate the problem and attempts to resolve the problem. I think that RFC/U would be more effective if it required specific charges of violated guidelines, specific diffs to support the charges, and specific diffs to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem.
I was just about to make these suggestions about specificity over at WT:RFC when I saw the link to this discussion. I might still suggest it over there to try to improve the process while waiting to see if a consensus develops over here to eliminate or replace the process. I'm also thinking of starting a new section over here to suggest that we should issue warnings for bad behavior much more often. I have seen a lot of incivility go unwarned. If we had escalating templates for warnings, editors might use them more often. Sbowers3 (talk) 02:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
IMHO, RfC on User Conduct should be used to elicit a wider community involvement in the background of the situation instead of the superficial cat-calling that we stumble acrost in article-talk and user-space. I frequently accidentally wander into a vicious debate, simply because I visit a lot of pages. The RfC/U posted to the article-talk, and user-talk of both the RfC presenter and the subject would allow for impartial input. Which should continue for a minimum of three days there. Then, as above mentioned, the subject can be given some breathing room in which to evaluate improvement or at least detachment. After sufficient time, if an editor feels that anti-project editing still exists, then it would be appropriate to escalate to CSN and allow at least 3 further days for responses to be gathered. So my nutshell, RfC/U as a precursor to CSN and a necessary part of DR.Wjhonson (talk) 02:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
The problem with ANY system of open community comment on another editors actions, regardless of which Wiki-acronym you attach to it, is that it is always open to sniping and abuse (once someones name shows up there, everyone they ever have pissed off gangs up on them). The question is whether such abuse is willing to be tolerated in order to have a system whereby the community can comment on user behavior. You can't have a system in place that is immune to this kind of abuse, but neither should you throw out the baby with the bathwater... --Jayron32.talk.contribs06:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I am strongly in favor of the WP:RFC/U system. It isn't good at seeking punishments for past bad behavior, but that's partly because sanctions are preventive, not punitive -- the point is, sanctions should be applied when bad behavior continues, rather than because it existed. RFCs are good for that -- if a user pushes POV, for instance, and it becomes well-established that this is the case in an RFC, and they continue to do it, sanctions can be safely applied. RFCs sometimes get out of control, but that's actually a good thing -- think of it as water in the mountains, it needs to come downhill somewhere. WP:RFC/U is a good way of handling that release of tensions because of the way its rules keep editors from commenting back and forth, which tends to build tension. Plus, they have a good way of adding lots of uninvolved editors to the mix, which distributes the energy. Mangojuice15:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't really know what to think. The Misplaced Pages community hasn't shown itself to be anymore trustworthy than the Misplaced Pages admins. Both increasing and decreasing admin accountability or things like RFC/U seem counterintuitive. Making it more strict allows people to witch-hunt users and admins they don't like. Making it more lax allows trolls and corrupt admins to do whatever they want. The problem is that so many Misplaced Pages editors have zero regard for reason. That needs to be addressed first, I think. ☯Zenwhat (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
RFC works (as stated above) when it's used for asking for comments on behavioral issues of a user or users, it does not work when used for witch-hunts, lynchings, Public floggings, personal attacks, bitterness, and character assassinations. Since this process does seem to escalate some conflicts rather than diminish them, perhaps modifying the guidelines within the process is needed as opposed to removal. Without RfC/U, the only formal steps in dispute resolution that focuses on editors are AN/I and ArbCom. Conversly AN/I could serve as an appropriate venue and does provide wide community involvement on issues (Apropriatly a modified format would be needed on AN/I to replace RfC/U). Processes exist to have a purpose, I belive this does, but some reform may be needed to improve it.--Hu12 (talk) 13:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
If you thought RFC is terrible, CSN was horrendous. I don't ever want to see anything like that back on wikipedia ever again. But if I do, I shall certainly crucify the inventor using their own process. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I like Argyriou's suggestion of making it AN/Ongoing problems. From the very little experience I have with RFC/U, my impression is that it's essentially a temporary repealing of the NPA policy on both sides. There are votes but no conclusions. After lambasting each other for days, both sides claim victory, and use the archived RfC as a method of ongoing bypassing of NPA by simply providing a convenient link to the RfC.
On second thought, don't call it "Ongoing problems". Self-fulfilling prophecy. Call it AN/Problems. A header at the top of the page can specify what types of problems are postable there. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
How to guide
I think RFC is a good way to gather evidence and gauge community sentiments. If an RFC/U convinces an editor to cease causing problems, that is a good result. If they continue, a note can be posted at ANI requesting a community remedy, such as an editing restriction or ban, with a link to the RFC/U. If there is no consensus at ANI, the case can go to ArbCom, and again, a link to the RFC/U provides much of the necessary evidence. The processes work when people use them correctly. Jehochman14:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
To be honest, if we ever want RFCU to ever work, we need more admin intervention - Anittas was indefed a second time in October. The attack he was blocked for was on RFCU for twelve days, but nothing happened until ANI got wind of it. Will00:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages is facing an identity crisis as it is torn between two alternative futures. It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Misplaced Pages between “inclusionists”, who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and “deletionists” who argue that Misplaced Pages should be more cautious and selective about its entries.
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I think it is time we decide which way to go. There have been many failed attempts to address this, but they all failed due to their partisan or limited nature. Generally speaking which way does the community want to go? -- Cat 03:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I just read the article. I value encyclopedias for their educational value, but tend to take a classical view of education. That is, I view it as a process not only of informing, but of intellectual improvement. Encyclopedias are of no value if they do not produce valuable and insightful information. The Economist gave the example of Solidarity leaders and Pokémon characters. I take the view that we should have entries on all Solidarity leaders, but no entries on Pokémon characters (just the show itself). Some works of literature and cinema do have value because they sometimes provide insight through fictional symbolism. They also at times produce social change. Pokémon, on the other hand, is a meaningless children's show with no educational value. I understand that this is a dangerous contradiction, though. I have seen many insightful and notable entries nominated for deletion simply because they were too foreign to the nominator. They appeared not to be notable. So I think we should state clearly that subjects with educational and intellectual value are always notable and shallow subjects are not.--Awareshiftjk (talk) 03:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Passing judgment on what's "shallow" and what's "intellectual" doesn't strike me as very NPOV. At least "notability" is something that one can attempt to objectively define, in terms of it being something that a lot of people are interested in (even if it's shallow), but trying to decide what has intellectual merit... very subjective. *Dan T.* (talk) 04:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Exactly what I was going to say. There is far, far too much subjectivity involved in determining what has educational and intellectual value. And while I would personally agree on the lack of value to me of a Pokemon character, at the same time, an article such as 2003-04 Calgary Flames season might be seen as having no value to a Pokemon fan where it has a great deal to me. In such a case, who is right? Ultimately, to respond to White Cat's question we have places like Conservapedia for the limited "educational scope", and wikia for all things "trivial". Misplaced Pages has sailed down the middle of the two alternatives for some time now, and I don't see the harm in continuing on this course. Resolute04:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
So, User:White Cat, are you actually suggesting that we need to make a general, high level decision about whether we are "inclusionist" or "exclusionist"? What possible purpose would that serve? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 04:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Awareshift's idea strikes me as somewhat unfeasible and unrealistic, largely because what does possess educational and intellectual value to one person does not to another. I personally would say that Dungeons & Dragons possesses such value (because of its reading level and (depending on DM) morals system), but, even assuming good faith towards him, he would likely think otherwise based off of the fact it has movies and video games. Seriously, when was the last video game where you were forced to divide by the cosine of x? Remember, Misplaced Pages is for a layman's audience. It isn't for profs at the University of Washington trying to make foot warmers out of nosehairs. -Jéské04:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Those young people you speak of should visit Misplaced Pages to study math or history instead of kill time. I imagine that reading about Dungeons and Dragons too often will actually hurt your performance in school.--Awareshiftjk (talk) 04:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Awareshift, but if they study them, there's a very good chance those articles are suddenly going to be plastered with the word "WANKER" or "VAGINA" over and over again, thus nullifying their educational value for a short time. A lot of kids don't want to study; they'd rather have fun, and if it means replacing Prisoner's dilemma with a picture of George Carlin masturbating, so be it. -Jéské04:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Furthermore, "educational and intellectual value" are a matter of how a subject is covered, not of what the subject is. Most universities (American ones, at least) have cultural studies courses that explore "shallow" pop culture, because shallow or not it's significant and it's illustrative, and we help ourselves more by understanding it than by ignoring it out of some kind of misguided belief in a separation between high and low culture. Postdlf (talk) 04:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. The distinction I was making was not between high or low culture. It was between meaningless and meaningful as well as between influential and weak subjects. I have no bias against anything new or popular, so long as learning about it is truly educational. So, try as you might, I doubt that you would be able to produce an article about Pokémon that would be worth reading intellectually.--Awareshiftjk (talk) 04:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I think we already have, to an extent. We'd honestly be less likely to have an intellectual article about, say, Neopets because of outside influences. I hate to say this, but in this case at this point in time, Pokémon beats out Neopets for intellectual read.
It is because of these external influences that we can never have intellectual articles of some subjects, say Transnistria or Israel. Should we delete them because nationalists are using Misplaced Pages as a battleground, or should we keep them and invalidate your very point? -Jéské04:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I think just learning the facts about Israel is enough to provide insight and learn lessons from history as well as the present. It would be even more insightful if we allowed analysis like Encyclopaedia Britannica does, but facts are good, too. You claim that the entry "Pokémon" teaches readers important lessons. What lessons did you learn from reading it that help you understand life? In other words, how did reading it make you a more intelligent person?--Awareshiftjk (talk) 05:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, reading it taught me that you seem to like Citizendium more. Seriously, though, your example is a bad one because, as I have stated, that set of articles (Israel/Palestine) is a cultural hotbed and tends to be skewed, and I do not believe a skewed view of a conflict helps anyone. As for the Pokémon article, I seem to have gotten the mistaken impression you were talking about challenging reading, not programming the next set of robots. -Jéské05:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
No, I was talking about educational reading, which may be challenging or not. Intelligence is a function of both knowledge and the ability to understand new things (in my opinion). Learning about Israel teaches people about the fundamental world views of Jews and Muslims. It isn't about a strip of land. It is about their views of tolerance and history as well as the ephemerality of foreign alliances. Alliances are meaningless because they can dissolve into war at any time. It also teaches the reader how Muslims and Jews care much more about history than others. These are all insights one can deduce from reading about Israel, to use your example. Learning about history helps us predict the future and understand the present. I occasionally read Encyclopedia Judaica which has a Jewish bias. I also occasionally listen to Arab commentators. Both are biased, but both commentaries help me understand Israel.--Awareshiftjk (talk) 05:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Learning about history can predict the future? WHY THE FUCK DID I GET INTO TAROT?!
In my opinion, intelligence is not *what* you know. someone could not know y=mx+b and still be intelligent. Someone, likewise, could know the name of a minor character in, say Dexter's Laboratory and still be intelligent. No, intelligence is *how* you use your knowledge. Reading about history is no more intelligent than playing through a game of Magic: The Gathering. Only if you can use the knowledge gained from the activity is it of any use. Calling something "intellectual", as you're currently doing, strikes me as rather anti-intellectual. No layman wants to read an article on history if they have something better to do, such as laundry, bathing their gimp, or waterskiing.
I can guarantee you that, if you delete every article not related to the 3 R's or Nobel Prize categories, you'll be stuck with a bland lump of dry, gray putty that was once an ornate and intricate statue. -Jéské05:42, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
First, I define intelligence as the ability to understand things--both new and familiar. Learning certain types of facts does improve intelligence. For one thing, learning meaningful facts over time makes you reflect on their meaning. This is mental exercise that improves your intelligence. For example, memorizing mathematical formulas will not necessarily improve your ability to understand new formulas, but trying to comprehend what the formulas actually mean will. Mathematical intelligence also improves musical intelligence, and visa-versa. Likewise, learning about history helps you understand current affairs. Memorizing a single date will not do anything. But, as you learn about different events, you begin to see patterns and reflect on them. This is also mental exercise. I fail to see any underlying meaning to Pokémon cartoons, so watching Pokémon will not educate you.--Awareshiftjk (talk) 06:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
To be fair, I was recently grading homework for a computer science course and one of the students explained class based inheritance using examples from Pokémon. I think it's dangerous to exclude information because you don't see the value in it, someone else might. I know I value Misplaced Pages because it's inclusive. --Edalytical (talk) 19:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I believe that it is the balance of inclusionism and deletionism that provides the proper balance that Misplaced Pages needs to have. The problem is that it needs to be balanced. Tilting too far inclusionist, and you become indiscriminate, go look at a Trivia section to see what I mean. Tilting too far Deletionist, and potentially good articles are shot on sight, before they have the opportunity to become viable, WP:The Heymann Standard. As much as we state that AfD is not cleanup, often times the threat of deletion is the catalyst that drives the article beyond a mere stub. And our wide-scale inclusion criteria is exactly what separates Misplaced Pages from the rest.. -- RoninBKTC04:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
My view, and I hope it is widely shared, is that any subject is acceptable for inclusion as long as there are reliable outside sources to keep everybody honest. The "battle" will only be lost if unsourced information proliferates on Misplaced Pages, which at first will seem like the inclusionists won, but will be quickly followed by the loss of Misplaced Pages's "soul" as people's first stop, as a useful, fact-checked clearinghouse of information. AnteaterZot (talk) 04:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Suggest the community read C.S. Lewis' book An Experiment in Criticism, where he argued that the value of literature is as much a reflection of the reader as of what is read, and that efforts to divide literature into "highbrow" and "lowbrow" and assuming that "lowbrow" means "not serious" have been a really, really, really bad idea that prevents real literary appreciation and growth. He suggested a moratorium on trying to judge "literary merit" and using a different approach. What's true for literature is true for other things as well. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Presence of Pokemon related articles are not responsible in the absence of quality on articles on polish solidarity leaders. However there probably are more secondary sources on Pokemon than polish solidarity leaders. We do not delete articles on polish solidarity leaders or prevent their development to make room for pokemon related articles. It is just that nobody has yet written those articles. In addition do we really want a user that is an expert in pokemon write about polish solidarity leaders? No offense but getting indulged in pokemon in the past ten plus years does not make any one an expert in polish solidarity leaders. Pop culture (Pokemon) aside, this problem plagues even important articles just as much as the economist illustrates. -- Cat 11:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The other thing that I don't think that the economist article considers or that is brought up here is that because we are a volunteer project, we cannot force people to write or work on topics they have no interest in. Since WP is an internet culture, it is going to attack a cross-section of the larger internet culture - meaning that we are going to have a lot more people working on articles on anime characters and video games than we are going to have on political figures from non-English speaking countries. This itself is an overall systematic bias that we have to be aware of, but know that we cannot change (otherwise, editors will leave once we tell them they must do something), but by developing policies and guidelines to make such that those topics are treated in an encyclopedic fashion such that when we can "fill in" other topics such as solidarity leaders, we have encyclopedic coverage of those topics as well as more popular culture topics, with an overall increase in the apparent quality of the encyclopedia. This doesn't mean we delete the coverage nor prevent appropriate expansion of pop culture topics to make other topics look better, but it does mean we have to consider how much weight some of those topics are given relative to the goals of creating an encyclopedia. Basically, the Economist article almost is looking at WP now as a finished product and saying that it's bad, but if you keep in mind and consider that we are unfinished, then it is perfectly fine that our coverage is currently unbalanced, as long as we understand that the goal is to get to a good balance and take steps to help get us there now. --MASEM14:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages by very nature will never be a finished project. All articles that are not featured in quality are incomplete and will not be a part of the finished product. In other words they are already edited out before they reach the end of the production line. They can became featured articles in time but they will definitely not if people do not allow work on them. This is why I cannot understand some people, namely so-called deletionists, work they way in removing clearly incomplete articles. The articles on popular culture and solidarity figures in Poland are typically unrelated. Balancing the amount of content on pupular culture and other topics by removing popular culture related articles does not sound very productive to me. -- Cat 17:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
And I'm not saying we delete them, but instead make sure that our pop culture topics are edited in the same encyclopedic manner as our topics on world leaders and history and geography and other more "non-trivial" topics. We may need to trim the depth of coverage these presently have and utilize outside wiki's for overflow, but there's no reason we can't cover these to at least a degree that meets with the Five Pillars. --MASEM18:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
What is happening is self righteous people are mass removing material on topics they dont care much about. This has no consensus behind it. If there is consensus behind it, I can start trimming articles I do not care about. I have a very long list to process I suppose. Of course eventually we would be only left with the main page in such a thing. -- Cat 21:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Assuming good faith, they are trying to help clean up WP, though methods such as TTN has taken have not been constructive to this. However, the concept of merging topics failing notability into other areas should be a point that is taken much more at heart before articles have to hit AfD, and even if AfD is still reached, this should always be an option -outright deletion of a contested article without any considering of retaining that information is bad. --MASEM22:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I wish people creating shitty fancruft would use a spell checker. Also, lots of fancruft is part of some huge business franchise, which produces stuff in various formats that are used as sources -thus entire swathes of wiki are "in universe". Really, I don't care how trivial it is, I just wish they could write betterer. Dan Beale-Cocks22:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The whole content discussion is as old as ... Throughout human cultural history arising trends and opinions of rulers (or the opponents of same) have continuously created, destroyed and recreated. Archeologists make a living digging up what remains and are faced with whether to preserve the Christian mural or chisel it off to reveal the hieroglyphs beneath. French scouts caused uproar and laughter when they removed neolytic "graffiti" from a cave. Just to site a few examples. The list of now famed painters who lived and died without their work being recognized is endless. (Anyone for a Vermeer bonfire?) Knowledge is power, but today's trash may turn into tomorrow's treasure. You'll be hard put to find a book on how to lay a thatched roof in most libraries, since it they are no longer common. Yet university research projects exist trying to preserve and recover this lost art. When I grew up knowing how to use a slide rule was an essential skill. Preserving it would have met the highest standards for "value". My nephew may get to look at one in a museum, since I threw mine out as "junk". The Spanish smelted down "worthless pagan" Inca trinkets to produce items meeting their "high" cultural standards. By declaring a certain knowledge to be "worthless" or "valuable" each preceding generation tries to stamp their own ideas and value systems on the next generation, who are duty bound to resist with all their might in the interest of human progress. What survives or is revived after jumping one or more generations is our "cultural heritage".
Now Misplaced Pages introduces as novel an idea to how knowledge is maintained as democracy was to despotism. I hope the self declared guardians of knowledge are going to die out with one of the following generations. Knowing "Pokemon" characters is as basic a skill to the next generation as knowing "Dr. Seuss" was to mine. There are quotes and proverbs in the literature my generation is leaving behind describing things as "seussian". I hope no one will have deleted the relevant wiki-page when my grandkids stumble over those. So I'd suggest creating a central "graveyard" for deleted pages to save future archeologists and ethnologists some work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 (talk) 09:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The true problem: notability and mainstream media justification policies
The true problem is in the notability and similar policies. That can make any silly detail of Pokemon super-relevant (maybe millions of hits in Google and stuff like that) while much more relevant artists from non-English, and specially third world countries, countries can pass unadverted or even be deleted as non-notable.
These overall criteria bias the contents of Misplaced Pages in favor of mere trivia. We need a more academic and, as much as possible, less mediatic approach.
As for the problem with children vandalism, the best solution is surely to stop censoring certain images, so schools start censoring Misplaced Pages at least in class time. That would save a lot of work to our patrollers.
I am inclusionist for encyclopedic content and for what allows for a more and better of our world. But I am exclusionist for trivia, and the articles on Pokemon, Star Trek, the Simpson... chapters, minor characters, etc. belong to a fanzine or some media not Misplaced Pages.
Maybe the solution is to create "Wikizine" inside Wikimedia, for such more diverse but less encyclopedic activities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sugaar (talk • contribs) 05:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Those images are censored because they are illegal or in the wrong article altogether. Further, I haevily doubt you are familiar with the discussion that took place at WT:POKE some time ago. Pokémon species articles (sans Pikachu) have been lists for a few months now. Further, as I have stated, owing to external influences (i.e. rival factions editing) we'd also have to, if we implemented your reasoning, remove all articles on wars, rogue nations, and cultural conflict so as to present as bland and tasteless a view of the world as possible. Shit, the pixies couldn't come up with a scheme better designed to turn everyone into mindless robots who only know exactly what they have to know and nothing else. -Jéské05:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I will point out that I've been struggling with other editors to fine-tune and polish WP:FICT (and to a lesser extent WP:EPISODE) to reflect a balance that makes both sides happy, in that we can give good coverage when we can provide secondary source (why should the reader care about this work if they've never heard of it), while providing primary sourced information to meet the "WP is not paper" approach of including such. It has taken a while to get here, but the metaphore of balancing a straight pole by pushing at a slant is very apt: initial drafts went too far in one direction, and fine tuning got it to where it is. We do suggest that for more in-depth treatment of fictional topics that a outside wiki is completely appropriate (though people balk at any push on Wikia due to possible conflict-of-interest issues), and I think we're now in the learning stages of figuring out that exact balance for many areas, thanks in some part to the recent ArbCom cases. I know there's inclusists vs deletionists, but I strongly believe we don't need to rush to make a decision, unless we get a mandate from the Foundation to take this in one direction or the other. We need the compromise and figure out steps forward from that. --MASEM05:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Secondary sources have little to do with notability but with popularity. Every armed forces servicemen have a secondary source covering their life. "Unheard of" would not be shows televised internationally on multiple countries. If being "heard of" is notability, then definitely thats not what is happening. -- Cat 10:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Not true: while a popular work may lead to large coverage in secondary sources (a very common case), this is not the only way a topic can gain secondary sourcing and thus sufficient sourcing to be included. "Significant coverage in secondary sources" is a measure of the cumulative effects of a topic's popularity, importance, effect on other people, and other areas, while falling under the goal of the Five Pillars. So notability is not reflecting "being heard of". --MASEM14:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Right polularity and etc, which are not the same as notability. It is a poor metric for notability. -- Cat 17:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Being sourced in multiple independent reliable sources is a bad metric for notability? Seems to meet all our principles to be a verifiable, no-original-research encyclopedia. --MASEM19:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
You should read UK press sometime - very many pages are devoted to c and d list "celebrities", but not much coverage is given to, for example, mathematicians or scientists. Unless they produce a populist "study" showing that 'drinking wine is healthy' (which will get mis-reported.) Thus WP ends up with a gajillion sources for someone who comes third in a TV singing competition, and will have infoboxes giving that person's age, weight, hight, eye colour, blood type, etc etc. Dan Beale-Cocks13:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Seeing as this thread began with a quote from an article in the Economist I thought it worth mentioning that there is another article about wikipedia in the March 20, 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books, titled "The Charms of Misplaced Pages". The author describes himself as an "inclusionist" and tells of how he ended up as a defender against article deletions, with a bit of mocking about the notion of "notability". Looks like the article is currently online here. Just thought it might be of interest. Pfly (talk) 06:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, I liked "When, last year, some computer scientists at the University of Minnesota studied millions of Misplaced Pages edits, they found that most of the good ones—those whose words persisted intact through many later viewings—were made by a tiny percentage of contributors. Enormous numbers of users have added the occasional enriching morsel to Misplaced Pages—and without this bystander's knowledge the encyclopedia would have gone nowhere—but relatively few users know how to frame their contribution in a form that lasts." from the same article. AnteaterZot (talk) 07:44, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
A high level discussion
About a year ago, no one was even trying to mass blank/redirectify articles of trivial topics. Afds on these were also mostly unheard of. This isn't an inclusionist vs. deletionist discussion. This notion is not based on consensus or discussion at all, if so please cite this community-wide discussion. I think because the covered topics are trivial individually no one wants to spend time discussing them individually. Although the practice of reviewing and establishing notability itself should be done on a case by case basis, this is an overall general discussion to reach a general agreement on the topic to hopefully establish what to do and what not to do.
Our criteria in establishing what is notable may need adjustment. As the economist article discusses, important topics with a capital "I" may have very little to no secondary coverage that are readily available to establish notability. Likewise things with overwhelming coverage from secondary sources may be fundamentally trivial which isn't necessarily article worthy then again it may very well be article worthy.
White Cat, this didn't seem to be a problem until recently. I don't know that for certain, but I used Misplaced Pages in the past, stopped using it for a long, long time, then came back to find that the community seemed to have gotten totally thrown out of whack
This is basically a problem of various cabals -- you know who you are -- swarming around certain subjects. See Misplaced Pages:List of cabals. Most of those are jokes, but a fair amount of those are surprisingly legitimate. Several also aren't listed. There are also social clusters around anime, Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, etc.., and probably more stuff that I've missed.
Groups like this swarm around certain subjects (aside from all of the annoying bot owners, generating stuff, too, without an official RFA) and when people come by to enforce the guidelines, they're stifled because of a localized group of little kids defending their articles with democratic, bureaucratic authority, appealing to the fact that they are the "majority" and wikilawyering.
These same groups of people have all formed one giant monstrosity called "inclusionsts." Virtually every POV-pushing troll on Misplaced Pages supports Inclusionism. And why shouldn't he? If you want to promote your business, use Misplaced Pages for political propaganda, dump fan analysis on Misplaced Pages, or upload internet memes for the lulz, why wouldn't you support Inclusionism?
And it's important to point out that so-called "deletionists" aren't even really deletionists, as it seems to me. Perhaps some of them are, but that's silly. I say that because they don't have a blanket policy of wanting to delete articles. They simply want existing guidelines on the notability of fan fiction, pop culture, and copyvio, to be enforced. See m:Precisionism There wasn't this distinction before, because in the past, policies were enforced, I think. Crap like Chris Crocker (Internet celebrity) wouldn't have made the cut.
Clarification would be good, but not likely possible because inclusionists stand in the way of such clarification. But if the rules were simply enforced and these edit gangs were broken up, there wouldn't be a problem. ☯Zenwhat (talk) 15:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm disturbed by your example; Chris Crocker meets WP:BIO; the notion that enforcement of policy would result in deletion of that article demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of Misplaced Pages inclusions policy. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I am an inclusionsist at heart. I am not a troll. I suggest you stop insulting me and people like me. Please post your comment in a civilized manner.
I am also unhappy with the group effort by some deletionists that work together to overwhelm any opposition in the way of the deletion. Basicaly they try to make up in numbers what they lack in logic.
Wrong and wrong and wrong. You have not been insulted, yet you are insulting concerned editors of cabalising and wanting to destroy material. More importantly, you inclusionists are the ones who gang up in AfDs (and recently in RfAs of dissenters!) to suppress any reasonable deletion of unsalvageable in-universe crap. Dorftrottel (complain) 09:19, March 22, 2008
I understand the point about Notability being too low a bar, The problem is however, the only reason that Notability works at all is because it's an objective standard, that keeps out most of the trash, while being as fair to all. It doesn't matter what I think about a subject, as long as it has the required sources, it's in. Other than that, I don't like Notability that much. Perfectly good articles are being deleted simply because the subject predated Google. The problem is, how do you redefine that fence in a way that is objective and fair? -- RoninBKTC21:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not insulting you. I'm saying your philosophy is silly, not you, the person. There's a big difference there. Despite your philosophy, you seem to be a good editor. ☯Zenwhat (talk) 21:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Your offensive tone is unacceptable. What makes your philosophy any better than mine? You are insulting all opinions but your own it appears. Why should anyone care what you have to say given your attitude towards theirs? -- Cat 21:41, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Sanctioned alternate wikis?
Could part of this problem be solved by actively encouraging the opening of alternate Wiki's? Things like Memory Alpha and Wookieepedia seem to have the capability to host the bulk of information regarding their respective topics, with far less worry about relative importance.
Perhaps I'm an optimist, but I think the complaints of most "inclusionists" would be settled if there is a place that the information they want to share can be hosted. Oberiko (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
There are some Wikis, however, that are unusable by a specific group (i.e. the D&D Wiki because of its allowance of homebrew). And the inclusionists still won't be happy even if there is - most of the anons on Pokémon-related subjects complain that Misplaced Pages, by its very nature, should contain all the crufty crap that was the individual species articles. Whenever we tell them to go to Bulbapedia, they wing back a loud "NO!" and keep complaining. -Jéské19:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
If such an outlet exists then I'm going to agree with firmer rules. Perhaps something along the lines of "Would this content be more suited to an alternative wiki or as a Wikibook?" Oberiko (talk) 20:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
My main concern with alternate wikis is that their existence is sometimes abused in discussions, for instance by arguing that an article on a Star Wars-related topic should be removed because a Star Wars wiki already exists... Such arguments ignore the merits of an individual article and article topic, and instead focus on the general subject area (see below). Black Falcon20:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, that's not the arguments I see at D&D or Pokémon articles at all - they tend to focus more on the subject of the article and not the subject area. -Jéské21:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I was referencing mostly various AFD discussions I've run across, which often contain comments to the effect of "Keep - Star Trek characters are obviously notable" or "Delete - there is a Star Trek wiki for this stuff". Neither coment addresses the article or article topic itself, but rather references some other, unrelated factor (the notability of the Star Trek franchise or the existence of a Star Trek wiki). Black Falcon22:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Why do we even need wikipedia for? All articles on history can go to the history wiki because I have hereby officially declared them unnecesary. No one gave me this authority but hell I can mass redirectify articles regardless... -- Cat 21:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree totally. I would keep history, but move all sports off to a sports wiki. Perhaps make an exception for sports that have global appeal (football as in World Cup, tennis, cycling), but certainly only marginally important sports (lacrosse, cyclocross, American football). Mvuijlst (talk) 12:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Focus on the topic, not the subject area
What happened to judging articles (and article topics) on their individual merits, as opposed to making sweeping generalisations about an entire subject area or entire class of topics (and entire groups of editors, for that matter)? Why are subjective personal opinions about the importance/unimportance or intellectual/popular/cultural value of a general subject area a part of discussions regarding something as objective as the presence of coverage in reliable source? And finally, what's the story with the Pokémon articles? (Why is it such a common example in these types of discussions?) Thanks, Black Falcon20:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Pokémon articles are common examples because, up until last year, every single Pokémon species had its own individual article - and every single one of those articles (exc. Pikachu) had more cruft issues than a crack team of chimpanzee hackers trying to fix coding from Daikatana. After a discussion on WT:POKE, it was decided to merge all the species articles (again, sans Pikachu, and, more recently, into lists of 20). While the articles on the actual franchise and its video games are superbly-done articles (I can say this having worked on Pokémon Diamond and Pearl), the character articles are nowhere near as good as the game articles.
Pokémon also tends to get brought up because, until the megamerger, there was a "Pokémon Test" which was used at AfD to determine notability (for example, "Article Foo is less notable than Stunky"), and the entire metaseries tends to be somewhat pervasive. -Jéské20:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying! A number of comments I had previously read now make sense. (By the way, just so there is no confusion, my call to "focus on the topic, not the subject area" was a general call; it was not directed at either the Pokémon issue or your comment specifically.) Cheers, Black Falcon22:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
There are some subject areas that could have very many articles, but don't actually need them. Examples include Bus routes, Pokemon, wrestling articles (an article for every wrestler, for every episode, for every plot line, for every move etc), some tv shows or book series. It'd be great if these subjects had a few main "gateway" articles - editors could concentrate on making these excellent. I hate to sound so negative about these subjects; the dedication and knowledge shown by editors should be commended. I hate the artificial split into "deletionist" or "inclusionist" camps. Dan Beale-Cocks13:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
"The result is that novices can quickly get lost in Misplaced Pages's Kafkaesque bureaucracy."
The rest of the article is just a blind. This is the key item. This is not the first time our deletion system *alone* is presented in an article, and even is mistaken as somehow being the core of wikipedia.
It isn't. It certainly shouldn't be notable or big enough to get articles in prominent magazines, all by itself.
The deletion pages on wikipedia have taken on a life of their own. "Misplaced Pages won't be able to survive without deletion" you say, but I've heard that before: "Misplaced Pages won't be able to survive without Esperanza" and "Misplaced Pages won't be able to survive without the AMA".
I'm skeptical we even need a deletion system. But if we do, perhaps we could make a new one from scratch, that actually follows wiki-principles. (Does anyone still know what those are? ;-) )
Oh I don't know. Misplaced Pages is one of the top ten most visited sites. People tend to care what happens in the sites on the top 10th most visited. -- Cat 21:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I can understand the need to prune articles that fall into Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest, but I do find it somewhat difficult to grasp the need to get rid of articles such as characters from movies / television series' and the like. Can someone (in bullet point notation) lay out the primary reasons? Oberiko (talk) 15:17, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
While I am not convinced of the merits of the arguments, I think the basic idea is that many of these articles do not meet Misplaced Pages's notability guidelines (WP:N), and thus they should be merged into lists or deleted. The controversy arises because there doesn't seem to be broad consensus as to how stringently to interpret the guidelines. Fritter (talk) 16:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
It's all to do with the way that people have difference philosophies of what Misplaced Pages should be, and that people contribute for different reasons. There's two extreme points of view:
Should Misplaced Pages aim to be a h2g2-style all-encompassing Wiki of all human knowledge? (An extreme "inclusionist" philosophy, or a "Wiki" philosophy)
Should Misplaced Pages be an accessible encyclopedia aimed at writing encyclopedia-style topics for a general audience avoiding niche topics and only containing easily verifiable information? (An extreme "deletionist" philosophy, or an encyclopedia philosophy)
And several degrees between the two, where Misplaced Pages currently lands as it tries and come up with the limits between the two philosophies where there are quite blurred lines as articles become increasingly harder to verify as they increasingly contain more specific, niche, information and that's where heated arguments begin about where Misplaced Pages's boundaries should be exactly.
And there's no real answer to what the particular correct philosophy is, just opinions, and both ideas have their own sets of advantages and disadvantages, and you're never going to please both sides completely. It's a difficult problem without a solution and you're never going to please everyone. -Substitution (talk) 23:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
So, as they say, "a good compromise leaves nobody happy".
Unfortunately, anything involving mass satisfaction requires mass brainwashing.
68.101.123.219 (talk) 16:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
IMHO: It is a noble (and perhaps even achievable) goal to have Misplaced Pages eventually contain all human knowledge. But to suddenly remove WP:NOTE and open the floodgates to having every kid in the world write an article about him or herself and to have "memorial" articles written about anyone's dead uncle, would be crazy at this point in the project. So extreme inclusionism is as dangerous as extreme deletionism. Misplaced Pages needs to grow towards "all of human knowledge" slowly. This means that we should consider gradually relaxing our notability standards year by year. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that (for example): "In 2009 we're going to remove the WP:SCHOOL guideline and allow the creation of articles about any school, in 2010, every musician who ever made a recording that was sold commercially and every author who ever published a book is eligable to have an article written about them". This is something we'd want to plan for - a gradual process.
It's already becoming quite difficult to find "notable" subjects about which much is known - yet which do not yet have a Misplaced Pages article. I think we are actually zeroing in on having written at least something about every subject that falls within our notability standards. This is evident from Misplaced Pages:Size of Misplaced Pages - the rate of creation of new articles is falling - presumably because we're finding fewer new things to write about.
The cost of disk space is still declining exponentially - but Misplaced Pages is now only growing linearly - so we should be able to relax the notability rules to allow more stuff at the same dollar cost.
The tricky part is attracting enough editors to maintain that material without declining standards - and I believe that the only way to do that is to make Misplaced Pages less bureaucratic. There really is a horrible maze of rules - some useful - but many are put there by people who've lost sight of the joy of editing articles and who have taken up Wikipolitics as a full time activity. Relaxing notability standards would be one way to attract new blood. The kid who innocently wants to write an article about his or her school (which IS exceedingly notable by the standards of the kids who go there) - but gets it shredded by the deletionists per-WP:SCHOOL is unlikely to become a full time editor in the future - that first experience with Misplaced Pages is the crucial one - and it's rarely as pleasant as it used to be (say) 5 years ago. The one who starts off by writing an article about his/her rather uninteresting highschool - and who gets tons of help and encouragement from the community - may well be the one who expands the stubs of 50 other high-importance articles about mathematics in the future.
Thanks Steve, that seems like a very well thought out comment. I think I could get behind an inclusion standard which is based on the following:
Technical limitations: Since disc space and bandwidth isn't free, this is always our overriding concern, though it grows less significant each year
Verifiability: Each article (and fact therein) has to be verifiable from a reputable source
Privacy: No personal information (SIN, phone number, address etc.) can be posted unless such information is intentionally or well-known public knowledge
Not for advertisement or commercial use
Beyond that, I don't really see much problem with including anything. Having articles on pokemon, television series episodes, little league seasons, geneology and the like doesn't seem like a negative thing to me; after all, you're only going to find them if you look for them. Oberiko (talk) 20:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I have a two word change...delete: "and bandwidth" in point (1). The bandwidth requirements for Misplaced Pages are overwhelmingly driven by the number of readers - not the number of articles. Unless increasing the number of articles (by adding articles about things like obscure high schools) brings us a lot of new readers, the only additional bandwidth caused by a relaxation of notability standards would be the bandwidth it takes to create and index these new articles - which is likely to be utterly negligable. If (as claimed) these articles will not be much read - then they won't attract new readers (or increase the number or size of articles that existing readers read). Hence a gentle and gradual deregulation of the notability criteria would not affect bandwidth significantly UNLESS it brought a lot more readers to the site - which would be "A Good Thing". Since a lot of these articles are going to be short stubs - it's arguable that the bandwidth to deliver an article about a less notable subject would be comparable to delivering an "Article not found" page - which is the logical alternative. As for your other three points - I'm certainly not advocating a change to existing verifiability, privacy or commercial use rules. SteveBaker (talk) 16:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh how wrong wrong wrong:It is a noble (and perhaps even achievable) goal to have Misplaced Pages eventually contain all human knowledge
I can barely express how this statement thrilled me. Perhaps it is achievable for Misplaced Pages to contain all information (a thing that contains all information is commonly called the Universe, so beware), but definately not knowledge! Ask yourself what is knowledge? Knowledge is not a huge amount of information. Not the whole Universe. On the contrary, knowledge can be gained only by deleting 99% of information and choosing only the 1% (just a figure, it's really much-much less). Sometimes you have to actually delete not only useless information in the process, but sadly also the useful one. Just because it's too much for poor homo sapiens to comprehend at the moment. Therefore I find it natural for our culture, and for one's good mental health, to limit overflow of information. That's how it always worked. I believe Misplaced Pages should attempt to contain only the most notable part of human knowledge and constantly merge/redirect/delete. --Kubanczyk (talk) 14:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The vision statement of the Wikimedia Foundation refers to "the sum of all knowledge", not "the sum of all notable knowledge". And notable to whom exactly? You talk about notability as if it's some objective value. If one person finds certain information "worthy" of their attention, another person may not. --Pixelface (talk) 22:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Wiki is not paper. I will never read articles about Pokemon characters, but they cause no harm to the encyclopedia or my reading experience because I won't see them if I don't go looking for them. This is a non-issue. — Omegatron00:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Misplaced Pages is in fact an indiscriminate collection of trivia. The main problem with inclusionists is not the inclusionism at all. It's that they are opposed to any kind of encyclopedic standards as a consequence. Dorftrottel (canvass) 09:24, March 22, 2008
How often does this scenario happen? In the last round of donations, was there a rash of people leaving comments to this effect?--Nydas21:02, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Regardless of how people see us, our goal is to be an encyclopedia, not an indiscriminate source of information. Unless a topic is encyclopedic in nature, then it does not belong in the project. (1 == 2)21:06, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Misplaced Pages is in fact an indiscriminate collection of trivia.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that this has happened? I'm pretty confident that any money lost in this way is counterbalanced by a huge number of small donations from people who use the site for things that you personally consider unencyclopedic. We'll lost their monetary support if we remove these things from the project.
Unless a topic is encyclopedic in nature, then it does not belong in the project.
Define "encyclopedic".
I'd conjecture that most anything that people try to put into the encyclopedia is by definition encyclopedic. The main reason for notability guidelines, as I see it, is to prevent us from having a huge number of small, poorly-maintained, poor-quality articles; not because those articles are inherently unencyclopedic. — Omegatron01:42, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
I can't say for sure that "inclusionism" has caused Misplaced Pages to lose fundraising money, but there's at least one case where "deletionism" has cost us money: .
Indulging in demonizing hyperbole like "Inclusionists are opposed to any kind of encyclopedic standards" is foolish. The inclusionists I know, and there are many of them, are passionately dedicated to upholding encyclopedic standards. This passion causes them to reject any "get this shit out of my encyclopedia"-type arguments because they see that as a personal and prejudicial standard which runs contrary to actual objective "encyclopedic" standards.
We inclusionists want good-quality information, and as much of it as possible. We don't honor prejudiced attitudes toward specific subjects. If an article is verifiable, neutral (which bars self-promotion), and readable, we value it, and we see attempts to remove such information via AfD as process-abusive vandalism.
Unverifiable, unreadable, and non-neutral crap is crap. Why are we so incapable of unifying behind these true encyclopedic standards?--Father Goose (talk) 02:28, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
that wasn't so big. you just put in lots of line breaks. Equazcion•✗/C •02:44, 26 Mar 2008 (UTC)
Good example. Anyone have an example of the project losing donations because of inclusionism?
This is a minor point, anyway, though. We should be talking about how this content fits in with the goals of the project (sum of all human knowledge), and not so much about whether it makes money for the project. — Omegatron23:35, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Why would a more inclusioinist philosophy result in fewer donations? I, for one, would donate more if Misplaced Pages started hosting articles on more topics. Celarnor19:19, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
"Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Misplaced Pages is in fact an indiscriminate collection of trivia." Individual articles for Pokemon characters don't cause any harm to Misplaced Pages — although they may hurt Wikia's bottom line. They certainly don't pose as much harm as biographies for living people. Is Bulbasaur going to sue the Wikimedia Foundation for libel? Was it Charmander that killed JFK? The content disclaimer says "Readers should not judge the importance of topics based on their coverage in Misplaced Pages, nor assume that a topic is important merely because it is the subject of a Misplaced Pages article." I highly doubt that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation waited to make a donation until TTN redirected all the Pokemon character articles. --Pixelface (talk) 22:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Trash Namespace Proposal
There is a proposal to create a namespace that where deleted pages can still be accessed. This proposal represents a solution to the dilemma raised in the above-mentioned economist article that is compatible with the spirit of inclusionism while also addressing some of the concerns of those who wish to be more stringent about the removal of non-notable articles.
But what about the "I can edit this! Yay!" and the "**** **** ****" (in which **** is not censored) type articles? It would not be good to leave those in the trash namespace too. But there is a fine line between a self-bio that is advertising, for example, and a stub, but solid, bio. 68.101.123.219 (talk) 21:24, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Some has already created something of this sort - see Deletionpedia. The existence of this makes AFD pointless. A better process is needed - a filter to identify good articles. But we have this already... Colonel Warden (talk) 11:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
BLP-Lock: A way to deal with contentious BLP articles
After reviewing the Don Murphy DRV, it's obvious that the community has some differences with regards to BLP articles, Notability, and how to handle things. I tried to come up with a compromise that would ease some folks mind with BLP. I actually brought this up with one of the folks whose article would be covered under this policy, and they were pretty positive with it. It alleviated one of his major problems about having a Misplaced Pages article about them.
A) The article can be placed under BLP-LOCK by any uninvolved administrator. When an administrator places an article under this policy, they must either refer to an existing OTRS ticket, or submit one, and detail why such action is necessary in that OTRS ticket.
B) If an OTRS volunteer agrees that the article should be placed under BLP-LOCK, the article will be stubbed down to a bare-bones situation (just bare facts, no controversial information), and fully-protected for a period of a MININUM of six months (this can be permanent).
C) During this BLP-LOCK status, the only edits that should be made are those via {{editprotected}} requests that have full-consensus on the talk page. Any information that not reliably sourced should not be added to the article, even with consensus. While a subject of the article does not get an automatic veto over information being added to the page, administrators who handle BLP-LOCK editprotected requests should be fully aware of the BLP policy and judge accordingly.
This is actually fairly close to the Stable Versions idea we've been promised for eons going forward.. It reduces a major part of the reason that folks (here and elsewhere) are upset about BLP: That any "child with a computer" can vandalize it, and then these vandalizations are available in the history forever.. and for folks that don't have people watching/OWNing the article, these vandalizations can persist for a period of time until caught. Instead, the article grows in a more controlled manner.
The reason for thinking that the OTRS ticket is necessary.. I'm not sure this is necessary or a good idea for ALL BLP articles, but if an article needs BLP-LOCK, then it should have above-normal levels of attention paid to it, and OTRS is one way to do that. I know that the problem is that OTRS can be overwhelmed at times, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is on it, and work OTRS/BLP-LOCK if it goes through.
Also, on a strictly personal level of thought.. if a subject complains to WP via OTRS, this should be a standard option (to BLP-LOCK their article) going forward. It's bad enough if a subject needs to email us once if there's problems with their article. We shouldn't have to make then continually monitor their article. 21:14, 21 March 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by SirFozzie (talk • contribs)
This is something of a proposal rather than policy, but I feel it belongs here more than at the proposals page given its overarching implications. The above image icon displayed by default at the top of every page in our default monobook skin appears to be white and male. This was raised by at Misplaced Pages:Help desk#user.gif. I think this is a a real problem which is self-evident enough that I shouldn't need to go into why it is a problem. This should be remedied sooner rather than later. What to put in its place? Well, that's a good question but it should certainly be generic.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
The globe, better the Misplaced Pages globe, is the easy and obvious. Strain the servers a bit, but a choice would be nice, like male or female or both (for the less well defined) symbols, in addition to the globe default, to ease folks out of the is (editor) I am addressing/talking smack about a he or a she dilemma? I'd like a stick figure: round head, neck and trunk, two arms, two legs. --Blechnic (talk) 23:32, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
How is it neutral when the average skin tone on the planet earth is not beige, and the average hair color is black, not light brown? Wouldn't neutral be closer to an average or a mean rather than an image of a minority? Or is it the Western world average that it neutrally represents? I'm not even sure that's a correct average or median for European hair color, or skin color. Certainly not for the modern Western world, when you add the Americas. --Blechnic (talk) 00:21, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree, it needs to be changed. It could be changed to an "average" (i.e. darker skin, darker hair, not very dark skin though.) I'm not sure if it's possible to have a generic kindof male kindof female figure. How about just a happy-face type of thing? (Would drive the dourer users crazy, though.) Or a stick figure, or just a triangle or something. Or have a number of images, some male, some female, different skin colours, and rotate them -- a different one each month or something as the default, with users able to select one if they prefer. Why have anything at all up there? I never even noticed it. Why not ::just have the links and no icon? No icon would be better than an icon that's seen as biassed. Although the artist of the above icon may have already been trying to portray some sort of average person, even if they didn't succeed adequately. I apologize to the artist (Marsve?) for any hard feelings this comment may cause. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
The image's author is a Swedish man. It is possible he created a small icon that resembles him, which could explain why the figure resembles a northern European--that's what it is meant to be! I'm glad to know the artist is a Swede, this makes it seem likely there was no intention to choose such a non-neutral figure. But Misplaced Pages is international. I like the idea of a stick figure, a smiley face, a globe, no icon, rotating icons. (The last might be hard on the servers.) There are many choices that would give the impression that Misplaced Pages values the contributions of a variety of editors, even if most of the editors actually resemble that icon in more ways than they don't. --Blechnic (talk) 02:55, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
It's only valid when I'm logged in. Every other computer I use to sign in greets only the Northern European white males who will be logging in. I call it an "unwelcome mat." --Blechnic (talk) 08:46, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Honestly, does everything have to turn into a race thing? I don't think it has to be remedied 'sooner rather than later'. It wouldn't hurt to replace it (personally I find it a bit unattractive regardless), but it's not like it's causing some horrible harm to the community right now. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
What does it do to people who are constantly excluded? They're not represented in the example humans sent to outer space, they're not part of the history of music, they're not the default human who edits Misplaced Pages (and they really are not). How dare they think it matters? Is that what your "everything has to turn into a race thing" is meant to address? Anyone who doesn't like things as they are is just making everything about race? That's not really an argument.
But there's not much I can argue. If you're not bothered by being represented by a white male when you're not one, that is your prerogative.
I am, however, bothered that the default value for an editor on Misplaced Pages is a white male. It's a presumptuous and unnecessary assumption. Who even decided that editors should be represented by a logo, that logo should be human, and it should represent a Northern European male?
Terrific, a race and gender thing. I think you missed the point of my post. And again, it's not so enormous a problem that the Misplaced Pages is in immediate, critical, life-threatening danger. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
To echo Random832 - why is the icon even there? It's not clickable; it doesn't lead anywhere. No one ays "the six links at the top of the page, to the right of the icon"; they just say "the six links at the top of the page". Wouldn't less be better in this case? -- John Broughton(♫♫)13:35, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with JB and Random; that icon doesn't do anything, and it doesn't even clarify the interface especially. I don't think anyone would notice if it was removed. If someone wants to keep an icon there, I might suggest a monochromatic one, like a plain light blue silhouette (to match the Monobook colors). Mangojuice14:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't get it. Is someone really saying that people are being excluded because of Image:User.gif this image? Who'd have thought 16*16 pixels could have such power. Perhaps wikipietan could be useful, but I'm not sure how that'd look at 16 pixels. To people suggesting a globe: You'd only have it showing the wrong part of the world, thus demonstrating your systemic bias and desire to crush two thirds of the world under your authoritarian jackbooted racist sexist pixels. Dan Beale-Cocks18:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
One of the most difficult aspects of fighting for civil rights when you are in a minority is the many ways that the majority find to exclude you, including how they make your feeling the exclusion one of the best ways to exclude you. As if anyone should ever feel they are excluded that every page on Misplaced Pages, all the Commons stuff, every user who doesn't opt out, all show the average, the desired, the best, the currently being recruited or whatever user as a blonde white male.
How dare I feel excluded that Misplaced Pages decided to splash a blonde white male over millions of web pages just because I'm not one? How dare I feel excluded to be reminded every time I log in on any computer whatsoever that somehow I've failed to be one of the group? Yes, please show surprise that anyone should be bothered by something so trivial as the decision to stamp all of Misplaced Pages with a blonde white male. Call me a Nazi, too. That's popular lately.
These tactics, the outrage that I should want leave the house on weekdays, intead of staying barefoot and in the kitchen, use a first class facility, to pick my seat at the counter, not be relegated to second best, unrepresented, all belong in another century, in another medium. This is the 21st century. Please don't call me a Nazi. It doesn't tell me or anyone else why Misplaced Pages should splash a blonde white male on millions of web pages. --Blechnic (talk) 01:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
It looks blond to me too. It's a cartoon. Blond hair is often depicted as darker than actual blond colored hair, which would have to be yellow in a cartoon. Remember, cartoons are representative of something else. You want to get technical about how inaccurate this icon is to real life, well, no person actually looks like this thing, so that means it must not even represent a human being, right? Of course not. So let's dispense with the technical problems with comparing this to what some people associate this image with. Cause face it, if the face were black, and I mean even if it were unrealistically-for-any-skin-color complete black, the white people would, I'm fairly certain, be clamoring for a change. Equazcion•✗/C •12:37, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
Allowing yourself to be oppressed by a 16*16 gif is, frankly, a little bit pathetic. Would it make you feel better if you knew that the figure's designer is gay (or a wheelchair user), and wanted a gay(wheelchair using) person to appear on every page of WP?. To try to address your points: There's nothing to show the figure is male. Are you saying that all men have short hair, all women have long hair? It does not have blond hair. So, apart from it being 'white' (which is also doubtful, it could be asian) there's nothing to show the figure's sex, race, religion, sexual preference, age or (dis)ability. Ask for the image to be changed, but don't do so because 'weak' (your implication, not mine) minorities are being oppressed by a gif. Meanwhile, people will continue to work on actual discriminatory WP practices, such as inaccessible pages or systemic bias. Dan Beale-Cocks12:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if Image:User.gif was meant to be biased, but it certainly is meaningless. As stated in earlier comments, it does nothing and is the same regardless of any editor's sex or race. I agree with those who call for it to be deleted. --SMP0328. (talk) 01:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it is meaningless. It surprises me that no one questioned it before for this reason, rather than for my reason. --Blechnic (talk) 01:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
And I assume that if an admin were to tinker with the Monobook skin (CSS?), it would disappear. What would be the appropriate steps to make that happen? -- John Broughton(♫♫)01:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
break 2
Those who don't understand the problem might want to make the assumption that they're biased, if they're white and male themselves. Being white and male myself, I recuse myself from making that call. But I do think that if a significant body of users has a problem with it, and it doesn't do anything anyway, just get rid of it. I don't think I ever even noticed it was there. Equazcion•✗/C •01:56, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
Seriously, it has to be some color, it is no big deal. It certainly does not look like it has a gender, the head is featureless, and it stops before where one might expect mammary organs. It doesn't even look that white, perhaps Filipino, who can tell? It is like 12 pixels. Even if it did imply a race, it does not mean there is a bias towards it. This is not an issue. (1 == 2)02:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Sure it's an issue, because some people feel it is. Just 'cause it doesn't bother you doesn't mean it's not an issue. Equazcion•✗/C •02:03, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
If we made everything an issue just because some people felt it was, we would never get anything done here. (1 == 2)02:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
This is a little different from the average proposal. It's an issue of racial/gender sensitivity. So yes in those cases if a particular group of users feels there's an issue, then yeah there's an issue. Equazcion•✗/C •02:07, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
Nobody claimed it was meant to represent humanity, and it is a stretch to even see it as a white male. It is without detail, and it is much darker than my skin. It looks kind of orange, like no human I have ever heard of, like a muppet. I agree there is an issue here, but it is not with the icon. (1 == 2)02:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I see. It's darker than your skin, therefore no one can think it represents a white person. I don't think anyone's taking you seriously anyway, so I'll just stop right here. Equazcion•✗/C •02:16, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
It was orange, for the record. Here's the color of the pixel at the center of its "face", devoid of context: ___. - looks pretty orange to me. But anyway, it wasn't serving any real purpose anyway; I don't miss it. No-one, though, explained why they think it is male, despite being asked several times. —Random832 (contribs) 04:23, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it would take quite an imagination to assign this figure a gender, and for what it's think this would be a particularly silly reason to change or remove the image. I don't think there's a consensus for this change developed here, and so I've reverted the removal for now. Christopher Parham(talk)04:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Agree, there is no consensus for removal. As a human that lives on earth (and bleeds red like everyone else), its extremely offensive that anyone could be so narrow minded in attributing biggotry in an Icon as some sort of racial or gender bias.--Hu12 (talk) 05:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't find the image remotely offensive, but I do agree with many of the above users that it serves no apparent purpose and should be removed for that reason. —David Levy05:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it should stay, and I don't think there is a consensus to remove it. I also think that attributing bias to a genderless orange icon is just not accurate. (1 == 2)05:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
This is seriously one of silliest debates I've ever encountered. It's a tiny figure with no features to distinguish sex/etc with a skin tone only found in cartoons and puppets. Reading something more into it is equivalent to asserting the "real" meaning of an ink blot. Vassyana (talk) 05:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I can tell you what I don't see: a white male. It's baffling that people interpret it as such. –Pomte05:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Just for those of you who don't know, white peoples' skin isn't actually "white" like the default page color of your web browser content window, unless they've got some disease or rare pigmentation condition. Even the palest white skin is peach-colored, and peach is, yes, light-orange. The color swatch posted by Random832 above is actually pretty close to what white skin color looks like. All the white folks, hold your hand up to it and compare if you don't believe me -- and remember I said "pretty close", not "exact". This is a cartoon picture, after all, and cartoon pictures can still imply a certain skin color without exactly matching the real-life version. Again I'm not sure why any of the white males participating in this conversation expect to be able to unbiasedly judge whether or not the group who is taking offense has any right to take offense. That's what's truly silly and immature, if you ask me. On another note, I love the mugshot posted, and the caption -- that's quite priceless :) Equazcion•✗/C •09:29, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
break four
Let's try to get some consensus.
Does the icon serve any purpose but decoration?
Do some people feel that the icon is discriminatory?
Would another icon serve equally well in that place?
IMO the icon serves no purpose but decoration. I don't think it's discriminatory; there's nothing to show if the icon is gay, disabled, transgendered, Jewish, etc etc. Another icon would be fine in it's place. Don't put a globe in, because that'll be showing America, and giving undue bias. Dan Beale-Cocks12:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
God no. No votes please. Really not necessary for this. Equazcion•✗/C •12:38, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
I've struck my !votes suggestion. I think it's useful to split the talk into "do we want that icon, or another icon" and "why don't we like that icon". Dan Beale-Cocks12:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
K, #1 is already established -- the icon does nothing and no one is arguing about that. #2 is also known -- some people do find it discriminatory. Just how many people have a problem with it is not known, but we wouldn't know that unless we held a watchlist-advertised poll, and we're not doing that. #3 -- i'm not sure that matters. Here's my proposed solution though: eliminate the icon by default, and offer css customizations via preferences->gadgets to implement the user's choice of icon, providing some small range of choices. Say, four choices, dark/light-skinned male/female. Either that or eliminate the icon completely. It does nothing anyway, as almost everyone here has pointed out. Equazcion•✗/C •12:45, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
All joking aside, saying something is racially insensitive because it is white is basically a form a racial discrimination. Seriously, you are upset because you don't like its skin color, well, it is just a skin color we all have one, this one is orange. Being white is not the same as being racially bias thank you. (1 == 2)14:43, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Would you mind if it were changed to a black icon then? Equazcion•✗/C •14:45, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
Sure, why not? But why not purple? It seems to make more sense considering it is orange now. Frankly I think all this concern of the skin color of a cartoon is overemphasizing race entirely. (1 == 2)15:15, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
The color in the icon is the standard color used to represent white skin in cartoon form. And see my comment above on the "specific color used here" issue. Equazcion•✗/C •15:17, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
Can we change the icon to represent a black woman, and leave it that way for about a week? Care to guess how many people will complain then? Equazcion•✗/C •15:20, 27 Mar 2008 (UTC)
I'd be as happy for the icon to be a "black woman" (though how you show it's a woman in 16 pixels is beyond me) as I am for it to be a "white man". Your point that some people would complain it well made, and I accept it. But, I'd say that the people who complain about it being a black woman are probably wingnuts. Dan Beale-Cocks13:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
If you decided to make a real skin color and a gender then you would create the very problem you seek to avoid, we have a genderless image with a skin color only cartoons and muppets have. I like black women as much as the next guy, but I really don't see the point of the suggested change. (1 == 2)15:23, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec) If some people are that deeply concerned about bias, I'd recommend keeping eyes on race and intelligence and other places periodically trolled by racists, instead of arguing about a nondescript icon that's part of the standard MediaWiki install. If the icon is so objectionable that it cannot be ignored, people could always get in contact with the MediaWiki project and work out a solution with the developers. Vassyana (talk) 15:19, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
White skin in cartoon form? It is orange man. And as I said, even if it was white, that does not mean it is racially insensitive. It is not a plaque for a spacecraft meant to represent humanity, it is just a cartoon. I resent the idea that white = racially biased. (1 == 2)15:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it's ugly, so I have removed it from my view. I don't think it is intended to imply any specific human features -- whether that be race, skin colour, hair colour, sex, height or taste in chocolate biscuits. It's just a human figure -- it doesn't have to encompass every human possibility to be a valid icon for humanity. Sam Korn15:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok my 2 cents:
Does the icon serve any purpose but decoration? -- Yes, it shows the odd word "Pengo" that appears at the top of the screen is a username.
Do some people feel that the icon is discriminatory? -- I'd use the terms "gender exclusive" and "race exclusive". Not surprising this would annoy people, or at least make them feel subtly excluded.
Would another icon serve equally well in that place? -- Yes. Why not change it if makes people who do not identify with an icon of a white-skinned-short-haired-human uncomfortable, however outlandish the reasons seem to you, or however well you can justify having the icon. Why not pick something "neutral"? I notice the default user icon in Ubuntu, for instance, is grey and has no hair. Gnome alternative: (this is from a screenshot -- can someone find the original source for this?)
I say no. Up to now, I had never heard a single comment made about the poor thing; why should we change it when it barely bothers anyone? I could be mistaken, but out of the hundreds of thousands who have edited here, it could as well be the first vote of no confidence. I'd say that the relatively few people who mind are the ones who should change it in their personal settings (and it could be deleted for IPs if we really don't want to hurt their feelings). Besides, I don't think the above alternative really matches with the rest of the Misplaced Pages theme, which isn't really that "modern". In my opinion, the accused should either be executed or be left alone, although I do believe that, useless as it may seem, it serves as a nice anchor for the top-of-the-page links, more or less in the way Pengo has noted (although I don't agree with his phrasing, as only Pengo will be seeing "Pengo", so he doesn't need to be told what his strange choice of a username is).
PS: He called it strange; I find Pengo a perfectly normal word and use it all the time. :-D
PPS: There is another solution: replace the whole thing with a ducal coronet. That would show the true extent of my influence in this place—for once. (evil grin)Waltham, The Duke of13:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Ignoring everything else
Let's forget about race, gender, or whatever for a minute. The icon simply doesn't go with the rest of monobook. It's the only thing that is any color other than blue. What does everyone think of this icon? —Random832 (contribs) 18:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
This entire point of contention is truly absurd. A racially biased 12 pixel icon? Oh dear! Call Al Sharpton! I prefer there to be some form of an icon, even if it may not serve a purpose. The one suggested by Random832 is fine, but I prefer the original. - auburnpilottalk20:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
You're kidding right? Please tell me this is early April Fool's and we're not honestly discussing a bias due to the icon shown next to our usernames... ^demon02:03, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
How about a dirty limerick on our talk pages instead? We do need a lesson taught, but not banning! I would miss the orange person! (1 == 2)02:09, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Most people haven't even noticed it, but I bet they will feel the change if it is gone.
Now, while the honourable editors cannot even agree on the icon's colour, I have managed to discover, after long and laborious research, the nationality of the accused. Look at its clothes and you will certainly agree with me: it is clear as day that it comes from Ireland, and therefore this whole story is a result of the machinations of the Irish admin cabal. I suggest that we should all grab our torches and pitchforks and head straight to their secret headquarters. Waltham, The Duke of04:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Is this what we do instead of writing an encyclopedia? No wonder the media is already reporting how the community is increasingly spending more time on petty bickering and less on increasing knowledge. Duh! Aditya11:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think your suggestion is biologically feasible, Jtrainor, although nothing should surprise us with modern science... :-D Waltham, The Duke of11:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Endorse although I'm not a huge fan of the adjective used to describe the thread. It's a little androgynous orange human. At least in IE. Hard to care about this one. Darkspots (talk) 17:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
This is the first time I've ventured into this discussion, and I think that only some sort of straw poll discussion at this point would make it clearer where our consensus lies. So I'm making subsections that we can discuss under. I hope this type of thing is acceptable to do here. — scetoaux (T|C) 03:30, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Support complete removal of the image from the monobook skin
It just makes the user interface more complex. Who needs that? The icon serves no useful purpose whatsoever. (The only argument made to date is that it tells a logged in editor that the username link to its right is a username; but the editor already knows that - it's his/her username, after all). -- John Broughton(♫♫)16:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
It's fine. It actually serves more of a purpose than saying "this is your username to the right"; it also serves as a way of visually locating the user portlet among all the clutter at the top of a screen. I will also contest the idea that it is a white male. It is Muppet-colored and the hair actually looks slightly feminine to me. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 16:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Really, the world has gone mad. Until is correct IMO, it's orange, which doesn't really match any ethnicity, and it doesn't look in any way gender-specific. I really despair... SamBC(talk) 20:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Don't change the image, but please ban 2 week discussions on the racial bias of tiny icons that cannot possibly be identified as one race or another. - auburnpilottalk04:05, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
It is mostly useless, but I have grown quite fond of it for some strange reason. Plus, this is an opportunity to vote contrary to Mr Broughton's preferences. :-p Waltham, The Duke of00:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
If s.o. doesn't like it they should not yap about it unless they can come up with something better. I hadn't even noticed it before. What's next philosophical deliberation on who was first the "chicken and the egg". There are many worthwhile gender and race issues (equal wages, education etc.) Icons ain't one. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 (talk) 11:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Change the image entirely
Change the image to represent a race and gender neutral human icon, or change it to a completely different icon (perhaps Earth, or the Wikimedia logo)
Support this, but it doesn't have to be limited to humans. while we're here, has anyone seen the image on the wp:bio template? Dan Beale-Cocks16:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, it looks like we are supporting certain gang colors, which is biased against the other gangs. (1 == 2)23:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Question about 3RR policy
I was told that all edits made in a consecutively (in a row within a 24 hour period) are counted as one for the purpose of 3RR violations. For example:
Editor One makes 17 edits in a row (within 24 hours). These are counted as one edit.
Editor Two makes one edit.
Editor One 18 more edits in a row (within 24 hours) and these are counted as one edit.
Editor Two makes one edit.
Editor One makes 23 edits in a row (within 24 hours) that are counted as one edit.
Editor Two makes one edit.
Editor One makes 16 edits in a row (with in a 24 hours) that count as one edit.
That would depend on whether the effect of the multiple consecutive edits was to revert the other editor's changes or not. If an editor makes a bunch of changes, is reverted, and then makes a bunch of substantially different changes, that would probably not be counted as a revert.
Restating: all consecutive edits are considered a single edit for the purpose of 3RR. So in the example you listed, above, for the purpose of 3RR blocks, editor One has made (essentially) only 3 edits, and won't be automatically blocked.
I also note that "(within 24 hours)" is irrelevant. If an editor makes 17 consecutive edits over a 36-hour period, for example, that's considered a single edit for 3RR purposes. But of course if there isn't anyone else editing the article during that 36-hour period, then there isn't any edit war going on. (In your example, it's hard to believe that editor One would be able to make so many consecutive edits, if in fact editors One and Two were involved in a revert war. -- John Broughton(♫♫)01:06, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Humm. Well, thank you very much for your answer. The 3RR thing has always an arbitrary mystery and now I see why. So one person can made 74 edits and another can make 3 and get a 3RR block. I can see now why I get so scared when I edit articles! I think I will definately go to a policy of no editing with other editors. Thanks! Mattisse (Talk) 01:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
In theory only, yes. In actual practice, it would be a cold day in hell before that ever happened. Also, I think you're missing that the guy who made the 3 (or rather, 4) edits made exactly the same amount of change to the article text, he just did it all at once rather than in a billion little pieces. --erachimaformerly tjstrf01:31, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Really, if its more than a minor edit (reverting vandalism etc), just add "take it to talk" in the edit summary, then do so. Hash it out there, not in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeadSongDog (talk • contribs) 01:39, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
It does happen, and the block comes as the editor is off on another article and loses everything written because it cannot be saved. (My notepad editor can't same wiki formating). Best not to edit where than danger might arise, I think. Mattisse (Talk) 02:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
<undent> The other thing is, 3RR is, as they say, "an electric fence not an entitlement". In other words, if Editor 2 continues to revert Editor 1 with no discussion, they can be blocked for edit warring and disruptive editing whether they revert 3 edits in a day or 30 edits in a month. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 03:59, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Has no-one else ever found it a bit weird that a vandal who makes 4 (or 40) obviously destructive edits to various articles has to receive a warning and to reoffend before they can even be considered for a block, whereas a careless editor who forgets about 3RR and happens to make four good-faith reverts to an article can be blocked summarily forthwith? --Kotniski (talk) 15:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, better faith than out-and-out vandalism anyway. The vandal gets the softly-softly treatment, whereas the "edit warrior" (who may well not even be the primary aggressor) gets the smack in the face.--Kotniski (talk) 09:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
First off, and this may or may not help answer your question, 3RR does not apply to vandalism reverts. One can make as many of those as necessary. Preventing reverts in less clear cut areas is more controversial, I would assume, and in these cases 3RR is instated not as a punishment but a reminder to users that they need to communicate. — scetoaux (T|C) 05:26, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
So what's wrong with a simple reminder then, perhaps in the form of a warning like vandals get, rather than an immediate block? And to both/all parties in the edit war, not just the one who happens to have chalked up four reverts.--Kotniski (talk) 15:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
That's basically what Template:Uw-3rr is supposed to be. It informs the user of policy and their impending block, while at the same time informs the user that the solution to edit warring is to bring the issue to the article's talk page.
I propose a policy change in which, like blocks for vandalism, a user needs to have received some sort of final warning with regards to 3RR before being blocked for 24 hours. — scetoaux (T|C) 17:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. It already states in the header of WP:AN/3RR that Administrators are unlikely to block a user who has never been warned. The admins who handle that noticeboard don't follow a mechanical rule on whether blocks are appropriate, and they use discretion. In practice it's unlikely that a user who goes over 3RR by sheer inadvertence will get into any trouble there. (That is, a user who is not intending to edit war). Such a person is more likely to receive a warning. Even vandals can't assume they will always get a final warning. Some vandal behavior is so egregious that it gets blocked without further ado, and I believe that's correct. EdJohnston (talk) 13:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree that's how it should be, in both cases, but the current wording of the policies in question fails to make that clear; in fact they imply quite the opposite. So maybe it's a rewording of the policy pages we need rather than actually a change of policy, if current practice among administrators really is as you describe.--Kotniski (talk) 13:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes in vicious edit wars (I have seen mutual 3RR violations with offensive summaries accumulating within 10 minutes). In such cases immediate blocking (of both sides without warning) can be the best thing to calm down the war; and create a bit of stability on mainspace. So no, I would not take away that possibility from the admins. Arnoutf (talk) 11:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
You may be right in practice, but it sounds a bit like breaking up a fist-fight by shooting both parties dead. Why not a warning to all sides first, and if that doesn't work, go ahead with blocks.--Kotniski (talk) 19:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Sprotect all articles!
Unless somebody can explain to me why we tolerate IP edits at all? If a person can't figure out how to generate a username and a password, why would we want them to be editing here? What am I missing? Semi-protection obviously works to stop vandalism, or it wouldn't be used. What possible argument is there, that admits sprotection works in some heavily vandal-targetted places, BUT somehow would not work even better, if used automatically everyplace? If we did this, anybody anyplace could still edit. They'd just need a password and some personal responsibility. SBHarris07:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Tonnes of our best content is written by someone who writes half an article by themselves, submits it from an IP address, and then never edits again. These are people who don't want to be regulars in the project, but are knowledgeable about one topic, so they help us out autonomously. There are other IPs that will make a minor fix now and then and don't want to be bothered making an account. We defiantly don't want to scare away this support by making them set up an account when they don't want to, even if it means putting up with more vandalism. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Look, if I really believed you, then there's be no reason ever to sprotect any article, because we'd be protecting them from the addition of "tonnes of best content" just waiting to be contributed by all those IP editors out there.
Or do these editors only start articles, and never improve articles which are well on the way to featured status? How do you know? I'm trying to keep myself from slapping a tag on your statement. Got examples? Got examples where you can show that some IP user contributed massive amounts of work, but would have been too lazy to pick out a username and password, if they had been required to? I just do not believe it and I'm pretty sure you can't can't prove it, or even support it. If it ever happens, I do not believe it happens enough to be worth noticing.
Look, I'm a scientist. This is a question which is answerable by a simple experiment, since we all have strong opinons, but no data. We simply sprotect all the articles that start with "A" and then the compare the created content and vandalism as compared with a similar number of articles that start with "B", which we leave as is. Now, no doubt somebody's going to come hopping up and say that "We don't even have the monitoring tools to tell if this is working or not." Okay. Then that means YOU DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER, EITHER. But you think you do. You're writing a lot of policy and you're sprotecting some articles and not others, by the seat of your pants. Well, the seat of my pants says something else. The reason this suggestion is "perennial" is that I'm far from alone in that judgement.
Addendum: I went to the perennial proposals page above and looked at the cites, and found exactly what I expected: epidemiology. Epidemiology proves nothing. For example, we have a cite from somebody's blog (It's amazing what becomes WP:V when it supports the conclusions of the Foundation ) that most of the content (by number of letters) of the average article comes from users whose total contribution to the entire encyclopedia is relatively minor. Which is not supprising. And many of them are IP users. Again not surprising. But we don't know the key thing which is being assumed from this data, which is that if we required all these IP editors to register a username, they'd all go away and wouldn't do what they did. WE JUST DON'T KNOW THAT without doing the experiment. We do know that most vandalism is done by IP editors. Do we need to have an experiment to see what would happen if we made them all create usernames? The one class of people (good IP editors) wants to add content to a small area they know a lot about. They are presumably more motivated than the other type of person (bad IP editors) who wants no more than to erase a page and add an obsenity. Anyway, the bottom line is that this entire foundation policy is not really supported by any good data. The people who make it, just think it is. SBHarris22:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I can back up the statement that IPs do a lot of good work, /me digs around for the IP. there was one point where we actually tried make one Annon a admin. (10,000+ contribs on a static IP). β23:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but to be fair this guy is famous for refusing to take a username, and by now it's part of his identity not to. The average IP editor who was told they had to, would do it. Afterall, that's true of most blogs and websites on the web, so we know it happens. The idea that the average motivated contributer to Misplaced Pages is motivated very highly to contribute to the encyclopedia, but would balk have having to create a username if asked or required to, is perverse. And untennable. And, despite what some may think, actually has no data behind it. Because nobody's ever tried it, here. We don't even have any prospective epidemiology to see what happens to content addition to pages after they are sprotected. And we certainly have no data on what happens to them if they are randomly assigned to sprotection or not (or randomly assiged to be un-sprotected or not). What is what we need, to have an answer. SBHarris00:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Wrong; I know of quite a few vandal-only registered accounts, and I also know it takes a while to block them if they don't appear that often. -Jéské01:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I've seen tons of registered vandals. They're just IP vandals in registered clothing, which really just makes them harder to spot.--Father Goose (talk) 02:18, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
In answer to Sbharris's question about why we semi-protect articles at all if IPs are so great: it is because in some cases the rule-of-thumb of helpful IPs does not apply. For a controversial article like George W. Bush, the amount of IP vandalism far outweighs the amount of useful IP edits. Likewise, for any featured article, there is little prose left to write, and few spelling changes to make. Most of the edits that need to be done are edits to make the article keep up with changing times and with changing Misplaced Pages policy, and we don't need IPs for those kind of tasks.
I agree that a scientific view of this would be best, and some people have tried. There is at least evidence for the idea that IPs are writing much of the content (unlike the Foundation's line that a small community is writing most). Somewhere I read a lengthy article in which the author looked through the histories of a large sample of random and featured articles to see who was adding most of the content. His conclusion was that while the vast majority of edits were done by registered users, much of this was either wikignoming or making the encyclopedia uniform in appearance. He wrote that much or most of the prose was from IPs or accounts with only a few edits. I'm sorry that can't remember who published this article, but hopefully another user will read this post and remember. In any case, when I looked through some random articles on my own, I found that his conclusion looked very plausible; there are many places where an IP wrote a paragraph and then never edited again.
You're right that we don't have hard data on how many people would avoid contributing if they had to make an account, but I'm not sure how we could get good data on that. If we were to semiprotect all of the articles that started with A, it almost goes without saying that vandalism would go down, but the key thing that we would have to see is whether useful contributions went down. Until we have a good way to test this, I think we may as well default to our "you can edit this now" policy, as it is one of the projects founding principles.
The other thing that we would have to test is how many new regular users we would loose by IPs not being able to edit. If I had not been able to experiment with some edits as an IP, I don't know if I ever would have found contribution appealing enough to bother making an account. If to make an edit I had to make an account and wait for it to be auto confirmed, I mightn't have bothered. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Commenting generally on this: I would never have become a Misplaced Pages editor if I had had to register first. Having zero barriers to editing is a curse, as SBHarris points out, but also a blessing, as he fails to point out. And just as he points out that there's no data to support the "benefits" of allowing IPs to edit, there's no data to support the benefits of not allowing them to edit. Will we get less vandalism as a result? Probably, though it's not clear how much less. Will we get fewer good contributions (and contributors) as well? Also probably.
A certain amount of messiness is inherent in making Misplaced Pages "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". The messiness is minimally damaging and easy to repair (although if you're a vandal-patroller, it is easy for one's view of this to get distorted). But the benefit of the openness is what made the encyclopedia. Barriers to entry are barriers to entry. We can and do ban serial vandals, after the fact. Toward everybody else, we want to offer no barriers to entry. Go ahead, click that button. . Right there. Welcome.--Father Goose (talk) 02:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
If you want to have a stable of articles for newbies who just cannot wait to edit to experiment with for a few days, that's fine. But I see no reason why we even want to make somebody who can't wait a certain time to edit, an editor at all. They probably have no frontal lobes. It is 6 year-olds who can't wait, not the kinds of people we want here. And finally, the point of the wait is that it works differentially against vandals vs. good-faith editors, which is why Jimbo's own bio is sprotected, even as he says there are reasons to want vandals to be IP-users (obviously he doesn't mean vandals of his own bio-- just the rest of the encyclopedia). The fact of the matter is that the barrier to good-faith entry is just ONE waiting period (however long we decide it should be), whereas the barrier to vandalism is one of these periods after another (a new one for each new account created after an old one is banned for vandalism). This gets old; vandals get tired. I have no doubt, though it will take a decent randomized prospective study to be sure, that vandals will get tired of multiple waits, sooner than good-faith users will get tired in ONE wait. See for more discussion. SBHarris02:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that it is also worth noting that Flagged Revisions has the potential to completely change the way that we use semi-protection and change the way that vandals interact with the site. If Flagged Revisions is a success, it might make almost all protection irrelevant. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Woah! I'd missed the flagged revisions thing completely. A lot of ideas are in here which I've been pushing on my own for a long time, having arrived at them on my own. Looks like others are working on it, too. This is definitely the way to go. I've got to go there and see what I can add. Thanks for the direct! SBHarris23:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Sbharris, as a scientist, I imagine that you wish policies to be based on evidence. Here is the scientific evidence on anonymous editors:
"The researchers were most surprised to find that the reliability of contributions were at least as high as that of the more reputable registered users' contributions."
"Surprisingly, however, we find the highest quality from the vast numbers of anonymous "Good Samaritans" who contribute only once."Unit56 (talk) 03:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. The full text is worth a look, as the meat is in the graph at figure 1: . Turns out that newbie IP editors start out contributing better content than logged-in (named) new users (as judged by simple time-retension of edits, it's about 75% vs. 66%). Then as user edit-count increases, the mean quality of contribs by IP-users goes DOWN, while it goes UP for nameusers, the two curves crossing at about 100 edits, then the trends continuing so that IP users with more than 100 edits are worse than nameusers with the same numbers!
How to explain this? I dunno. It's French and Dutch contributors being looked at, and it's possible that it's not the same in the US. It's also possible that we're merely seeing some kind of selection pressure on both nameusers and IP users over "time". I would expect that vandal-killing makes the surviving nameusers into a better group over time (vandal nameusers being eliminated), and this is seen. While a more lenient policy on blocking IPs allows vandals there to continue vandalizing, while the good IP users leave over time to become productive nameusers. Thus, overall quality for IP users tends to DROP with edit-count, as this group retains its vandals better, and its subgroup of committed good editors leave to register.
The article really doesn't look at any longitudinal patterns, tho, and it's always dangerous to infer them (If you do that with Florida, you infer from cross sections that the average person there learns Spanish in childhood, then later English, and then finally at the end of their lives, Yiddish..).
Now, how can use the data from this? It's hard to know. This study suggests that most new IP users generate as good content as new name users. I don't know how to fit that with my own perception, and that found by other papers, that most vandalism comes from IP accounts with few edits. It's a bit contradictory. By contrast, both this paper and my own experience suggests that IP users with a lot of edits are likely contributing poor quality, and need to be got rid of somehow, either by forcing them to register (the paper says this is actually a policy in the French and Dutch Wikipedias?) or else by stopping the coddling of IP vandal accounts (which now happens due to the possibility of them being shared educational institution IPs).
Lastly, there's the question of what would happen to the good-newbie IP users (what the paper calls Good Samaritans), if we require them to register. To what extent would they simply not participate and never register or contribute? We don't know. This paper doesn't help us find out. Perhaps, given the extremely low edit-counts this paper deals with (mean is about 10), the change in policy might be that newbie IP users are allowed 10 or 20 edits as an IP before they must register. That gets all those supposedly good edits, but at least kills the vandal IPs with the TALK pages that have 100 warnings. I think that would satisfy many objections here. It would also tend to discourage present coddling of vandal IP accounts, due to the knowledge that that users there are supposed to register eventually anyway. You can't both simultaneously hold that our best content comes from IP accounts with few edits, and also hold that we should continue to coddle sharred school IP accounts with many edits, most of which are vandal-edits. Nobody beleives we're talking about the same thing, there. Agree? SBHarris23:39, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
It is a foundation issue that users be allowed to edit without logging in. This is one of the very few firm rules around here. I think the wisdom of that is debatable, but Misplaced Pages is very successful due in part to the fact that we all had the chance to edit Misplaced Pages without even logging in. For better or for worse that's the way all Wikimedia projects work and it isn't going to change. Mangojuice17:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Want to kill the project? Easy, just stop people from editing. This proposal would do that. If people never start editing, they never become Wikipedians. – Luna Santin (talk) 20:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Why would a company give out free samples? If we only consider the cost it's loony. Yet lots of people who get a free sample will end up buying the product. Editing without the hassle of registering is like a free sample. It may be a generation thing, but the myspace generation has apparently not yet grown up enough to contribute the majority of edits. Us older folks, for the most part, don't like to register at every site we visit. But we still have a couple of decades more accumulated nuggets of knowledge. As to why IPS edit at rather high quality. Here's a highly unreferenced theory. You come to a wiki page to find information. If what you find is well written you look at a page in your particular field of interest. Since you know quite a bit about that subject there's the "That's not quite right." and the "That's not even the half of it." effect. Somehow that nags. After a while you look at the edit page and write some text and copy out the "decorations" from another part. (Then someone's going to complain it's not referenced and you'll have to look into it or s.o. else fixes that.) Someone who registers on the other hand does that either because they like editing (and at some point the fountain of their knowledge runneth dry.) Or they are forced to because they want to create a page or do something else that requires registration. Anyway, keep the free samples coming or your "customers" won't buy. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 (talk) 11:40, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Proposal - An Entirely New Concept of Notability
So far we have been trying to define WP:Notability as can be measured by press releases and scholarly research. We say notability is not (among many other things) popularity. Our intent is to prevent trivia and cruft. OK, so why not define notability as follows:
Notability can be established for an article via WP:RS by demonstrating the direct impact the subject has had on people beyond mere awareness.
Each article would include one or more Notability Category ({{NoteCat}}) tags which will include a number representing the minimum number of people impacted (up to 1,000,000). Different NoteCats would have different thresholds. Any article that failed to rise above the relevant NoteCat threshold would become eligible for AfD:Notability nomination. Articles deleted in this way would be archived offline in the event that the threshold numbers were revised or new documenatry support for more impact could be produced.
Now naturally I am not suggesting we just scrap the existing system and go off on a wild experiment. What I am suggesting is that WP create some basic broad templates for NoteCats and editors begin voluntarily adding this new notability dimension to their work.
Below are some made-up examples of how this might look:
As you can see from the last example Aunt Myrtle's food isn't noteworthy as merchandise but the 200 people who died painful deaths (seems the tuna was radioactive) from eating them would allow the article to qualify as a disaster.
We need:
a tag created and some kind of database that identifies the threshold for each type of NoteCat.
a consensus process for creating new NoteCats and determining/adjusting the best threshhold.
a bot to do a daily scan and flag articles that fall below the threshhold for all NoteCats on that page.
Comments? Could we try a system like this in parallel while the debate on the existing WP:N system continues? -- Low Sea (talk) 23:28, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Err... can I just cite WP:BIGNUMBER here and be done with it? Nobody would ever agree on what counted as big enough, and even if they somehow magically did, the demand that all claims be sourced would mean it would have the exact same requirements as the current system, just with a lot of added bias. --erachimatalk23:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Sadly this simply falls down because it's often difficult to measure how many people are effected by something. For example, Land's End is a highly notable place, but no-one lives there. Principia Mathematica is a highly influential book, but never made it to the stop of the best-seller list and few people have ever read it. Very few people ever used Multics but it was highly influential in its time and inspired the much more popular Unix. It's not easy to put a single numerical figure on notability. -Halo (talk) 03:17, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
There are two different possible purposes for notability criteria which can be easy to confuse. One involves whether information about the subject is verifiable; information is verifiable if we have multiple reliable sources. Another involves whether the subject is important or significant. There are many important and significant topics that sources considered "reliable" have not taken up. The problem with a criterion that focuses exclusively on perceived importance is that we may end up violating WP:V and selecting a subject which, while important, lacks verifiable information. Currently, verifiablility is considered hard policy, while concepts of importance are much softer and fuzzier, addressed largely by guideline and tradition. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I fucking hate the whole nonsense about "notability". If $thing has at least one (but preferably more than one) real world reliable source (preferably more for living people) it's notable, and can get an article. Let the people who hate $TrivialThing ignore $TrivialThing and concentrate on $WorthyContent. At a stroke you've got rid of a bunch of noodling about whether $Episode / $Band / $Album is notable or not, you've got rid of a bunch of AfDs, you've freed up a bunch of editors to build an encyclopedia, and some of the $Trivial people might start working on $Worthy. An example for this thread: Some people say that OLYMPIC athletes are not notable, so the answer to vandalism of college athletes is to delete the articles as non-notable. Cured that vandalism problem. Dan Beale-Cocks20:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
If I'm on a non-wikimedia wiki, and I connect an anon. IP with a username there through edit history, etc, and then come back to en-wiki and discover the same connection between that IP and the same user, is it outing to report it if the IP was being used as a bad-hand account on en-wiki? If I can report it, where or to whom should I do so? MBisanz06:32, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
This isn't necessarily a policy question, it is more an ethics question. To start with, under what circumstances would you have access to the username and IP address? Would it be similar to a checkuser or administrative/moderator function at the other wiki, or is it something that any editor there would have access to? Are there confidentiality expectations imposed on you by the other wiki? If so, then it would be unethical for you to reveal here what you learned there. Having said that, if the IP is being used as a bad hand, then it's pretty likely that it is misbehaving in some other way. Find what else it is doing wrong on Misplaced Pages, and *that* can be reported through normal channels. Alternately, speak with someone you feel is observant of good hand/bad hand behaviour but who would not have read this section, and suggest to them that they might want to keep an eye on that IP, you have a feeling it is up to something, and let them take it from there. Does this give you some ideas on how to handle things without crossing any bright lines? Risker (talk) 06:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. On the other wiki, I don't even have an account, it was through matching publically available histories. That wiki was linked from ours in a debate here (its not a BADSITE) and its on a public wiki-hosting service. The whole reason I followed the named account to the other wiki was cause it was acting "strange" here and happened upon the IP connection. Others know its a "strange" account, but eh, I finally have a wiki dilemma worthy of keeping me up at night. MBisanz07:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Television schedules in network articles
I removed a primetime schedule table from Seven Network, upon finding opposition to its presence on the article's talk page. But an examination of other television network articles indicates that their use is quite widespread.
Am I missing something here? How is this week's television schedule encyclopedic? WP:NOT suggests that Misplaced Pages is not an electronic program guide. Whilst it may be useful for people to be able to find the current TV schedule in the article, that is not the point. Five or 10 years down the track, how is what was on TV today going to be important to our treatment of the article's subject, i.e. the television network? - Mark11:24, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
My opinion is they're outside the scope of WP, as per WP:NOT cited above. Secondly, they're not going to be right so their use shouldn't be encouraged. Simply listing the headline shows would avoid this problem completely. --AtD (talk) 07:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Proposed new WP:RS guideline section - suggestions for improvement ?
I have been developing a new section for the WP:RS guideline and I would like some feedback. To date it has been discussed in the RS talk page and seems to have generally positive support but needs work. The text has been revised and now I am asking for feedback to (A) avoid potential pitfalls and (B) refine wording for clarity of appropriate use. I could just be bold but since this new guideline could potentially have very wide impact on many articles I would appreciate all the help I can get before going live. The talk page section is here.
Monthly update of substantive styleguide and policy changes
A page has been established for users to notify substantive changes to styleguides and policy pages here. Monthly update summaries will be stored on a dedicated page here in chronological sequence, as a service to the community. The summaries will not rely on the notifications alone, but will involve a survey of the whole-month diffs for each of the major pages.
Multiplication symbols. Added: Do not use an asterisk to represent multiplication between numbers in non-technical articles. The multiplication sign in exponential notation (2.1 × 10) may now be unspaced, depending on circumstances (2.1×10); previously, spacing was always required in exponential notation.
Images. There were minor changes to the advice concerning the direction of the face or eyes in images, and concerning the size of images.
Punctuation in quotations. "Punctuation" was added to the requirement that "Wherever reasonable, preserve the original style, spelling and punctuation".
Em dashes. "Em dashes are normally unspaced" was strengthened to "should not be spaced".
'"Pull" and block quotes. Removed: Pull quotes are generally not appropriate in Misplaced Pages articles. Added: Block quotes can be enclosed using {{quotation}} or {{quote}} (as well as the existing specification, i.e., between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags).
"See also" sections. Clarification that links should be presented in a bulleted list, and that rather than grouping them by subject area, it is helpful to alphabetize them.
Criterion 8. The second clause was removed: "Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding."
I would like to raise an issue about policy and POV tags prompted by a discussion on the Bahrain page regarding a POV-check-section tag placed on the history section.
As I understand it according to the policy the user who places the tag is then required to give an explanation in the talk section of the article, and then the tag remains until a third party POV check. The impetus for placing the tag only needs to be the subjective judgement of user, and once they’ve placed it there seems to be no onus on them to take further action.
Therefore, its possible to make a series of frivolous or in the case of the Bahrain page what seems in my opinion unfalsifiable objections (eg statements such as "there seems to be a lot of 'half-truths' and fringe theories presented as absolute facts") and this seems sufficient for the tag to remain. There seems to be no onus on the user to involve third parties to actually carry out the POV check, and the tag’s there indefinitely, undermining the credibility of the article.
Is my understanding correct and if so, can the rules be tightened up to stop such frivolous use of the above tag? For instance, should there be some responsibility on the user who places the tag to get the article POV checked? Or could there be some kind of timer on the tag, so that if no action is taken the tag can be removed within a certain time period? Otherwise what's to stop a user adding tags to pages in a way that is tantamount to vandalism?
I went WP:BOLD and removed the tag because no valid reasons or no reasons at all were provided on talk page. Misplaced Pages:POV check says to explain the reasons on talk page, the tagger needs to be more specific instead of just telling reviewers to check all the article for POV. He delivered a rational, like this edit summary says but it's too vague for reviewers to have a starting point. He doesn't either give sources for reviewers to check the POV. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with my rational, the issue of independence in 1700's is disputed, yet presented as a fact, and large portions of pre-Islamic history have been neglected or suppressed, while minor events in post-Islamic history (ie Saudi tribal incursions) have been given undo weight. Please do not remove the tag, I am merely asking third-party users who are not associated with the topic, yet familiar with the topic, to review it for neutrality, as most of the editors who have constructed and revised the history section in its current form such as User:Arabbi, User:Slackerlawstudent and User:Dilmun , appear to be from an Arab background (either from Saudi Arabia or Bahrain) and very much associated with the topic. I am not implying that they're automatically biased by association, but the history section seems heavily skewed towards the Arab periods of Bahrain's history, and a third-party review would restore some balance, and thereby improve the article. --07fan (talk) 17:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Enric, thanks v. much for your intervention and taking the time to review the POV tags on the Bahrain and History of Bahrain pages. I think the interpretation is the right one, given that the justification on the Talk:Bahrain page used for placing the tags provides nothing specific that can be refuted and there's no justification at all on the Talk:History of Bahrain page.
On the Talk:Bahrain page, User:07fan has been invited to amend the page to include the information he wants as per wikipedia's POV policies, but hasn't done so. With 07fan's reverts of the deletion of the tags we're back to the same situation, whereby User:07fan's providing nothing specific with sources that can be responded to yet insists on leaving the tag there.
If this is acceptable under wikipedia policy, then this again raises my original point at the start of this subsection: does the policy need to be tightened up on POV tagging?
As I explained to Erik, his interpretation is not the right one, I have given sufficient rational on Talk:Bahrain, and I am not "POV tagging", if I was actually disputing the page or wanted to "amend the page" in the fashion you're describing, then I would be using "POV" or "accuracy" or "totally disputed" tags, not "POV-cehck". There is a difference between these tags for a reason, and the whole point of POV-check is to raise questions and ask uninvolved editors who are not associated with the topic, to review it for neutrality. A simple "POV-check" on a section of an article does not "undermine the credibility of the article", it actually serves to improve the article by inviting uninvolved editors to review and improve the section in question.--07fan (talk) 18:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
From the {{POV}} page: "Do not use this template unless there is an ongoing dispute. For suspected POV issues which are not disputed, consider the {{POV-check}} template instead."
Now, if we look at what constitutes a NPOV dispute by reading Misplaced Pages:NPOVD#What_is_an_NPOV_dispute.3F, and we notice that we have here two editors saying that the article is neutral, and one saying that it is not, so we can see that there is an actual dispute going on and that the POV tag needs to be used instead of POV-check.
Aditionally, we see that the introduction is not disputed, so {{POV-body}} only one section is disputed, so {{POV-section}} should be used instead of {{POV}}. (I'll change it myself after I post this, since its need seems clear from policy).
Finally, I will not enter on wheter the article is actually neutral or not, since it is the editors of the article that need to reach a consensus about that. Tag should not be removed until consensus between the editors is reached.
I will also compel 07fan to provide more concrete details of how the article is POV. Current detail is not sufficiently concrete. The tag has already been up for 3 days, and more information has been requested, and the extra information provided by 07fan is still insufficient for a reviewer to home in the POV problems.
For this need of more information, I will quote from the introduction of WP:NPOV:
07fan is clearly not abiding by this policy on Bahrain page, since he has engaged on drive-by tagging of other tags has not made any other edits to the article except for tagging (which means that he didn't try to mend the article before or after tagging) he engaged on drive-by tagging by using the POV-check but his usage of the "fact" tag was adequate, he didn't make content changes to the section however, and he has provided no verifiable sources for his claims of POV on the date of Bahrein's independence or for the lack of coverage of pre-arabian history, which makes his claims unverifiable.
However, I have noticed that on History of Bahrain he has engaged on actual improving of the article and, while he didn't provide a rational on the talk page, he hasn't either restored the POV-check tag, so I suggest giving him 3 days more to provide evidence of POV claims before deleting the tag.
If after 3 days he hasn't still provided more concrete information, the tag should be removed since no other editor has expressed concerns about POV with this article. If 07fan decides uni-laterally to restore the tag and still does not provide more information to back his restoration, I suggest reporting him to WP:ANI for misuse of POV tagging so that an admin can take further measures. If some sources are provided but not enough, another 3 days can be given for him to have an opportunity to find more information. I advice the other editors to have patience, since we are all volunteers and we may not have enough time on RL to dedicate to Misplaced Pages.
The editors against having the article on the tag should be aware that having the tag on the section does not make it automatically suspicious for people who read it, and does not automatically make the history of Bahrain look bad, and that usage of those tags happens everyday all accross the wikipedia without the world falling over. There have been discussions about that sort of tags being visible for casual readers of the wikipedia, but, for now, the consensus is to use them in this manner, so saying that they make the article look bad is not a reason for removal.
Finally, notice that I entered this dispute voluntarily after reading of Slacker's solicitation of help here, and not because I was asked to directly by any of the parties involved. And about complains of 07fan that I can't do the review because I am a "random user who may or may not be familiar with the topic or neutral" I have to say that I am not doing the review of the article himself, but a review of the tag, which means that I don't need to be familiar with the article's topic, and that my quoting of policies above makes clear that I am suficiently familiar with POV policies to review his addition of this tag. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:01, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
It seems that the editors have agreed to start a RfC while I was writing the long comment above :P . Well, at least, they decided to resolve it peacefully. In this case, the tag should probably stay until the end of the RfC. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Enric, thank you very much your extensive efforts to find a solution to this dispute. I believe that this is an excellent proposal, and the best way forward. I'd rather opt for your proposal, but as the other parties have agreed to go for RfC, I'll go along with that.
I think there should be a policy on having to much external links, because it may be spam, and this many external links is unacceptable. Nothing44414:26, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I have just come across the article Terminator (character concept), which prompts be to ask the question, is The Terminator notable? In my view, The Teminator is just one of many intersting characters in the notable film The Terminator and its sequels, rather than being a notable character per se. The spinoff article Terminator (character concept) implicitly asserts that this fictional character is notable, but it does not cite real-world content from reliable secondary sources to demonstrate the notability in accordance with WP:FICT. I am not so sure the Terminator is notable on his own, as without the success of the film, it is arguable that he is just a stock character based on Gort or some other bad-ass cyborg. Do you think The Terminator is notable? One way or the other your comments would be welcome at Misplaced Pages talk:Notability (fiction)/RFC1 where non-notable spinouts of fictional elements are being discussed. --Gavin Collins (talk) 14:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually, that article isn't about the character, that would be Terminator (character). In the case of that, there's plenty of scholarly material I found in 2 minutes on Google Scholar, and I'm fairly sure some of them are about concept rather than the specific character. Add to that, I think the concept article is a little misnamed, presumably it grew away from what it was meant to be when it was titled. And finally, it should be better sourced. However, I'm satisfied that notability exists for what the article title implies it's about. SamBC(talk) 18:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
The Terminator is about a notable film. I didn't check for demonstration of notability, because anyone seriously challenging the notability of that film needs to take a walk. The Terminator (character) is about a character, or rather (in a sense) three of them; there are several aspects that I would see as asserting notability, although they don't all fit a guideline because no guideline addresses the issue of characters. For instance, the fact that the Terminator appears in two major media lists (top movie bad guys and top movie good guys, IIRC) would indicate notability to me, and is in line with similar criteria for books and academics. The character concept article is rather more difficult, and doesn't demonstrate notability, but a cursory look of google scholar indicates that there are certainly academic studies of the character as a concept. I'd be tempted, however, to merge the character concept article into the character article; I don't care enough to actually try to get it done, though. At least not at the moment. SamBC(talk) 12:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
In the article The Motorcycle Diaries which came across sorting a categorizing books this morning and the article was unlike any of the other book articles I had been looking at. I tagged the article with {{tense}} and {{POV}} and {{plot}} tags as this is an article on a book and almost the whole article is a description of the plot. Also it is worshipful in tone and there is no analysis of the book nor contrary point of view on controversial subject matter. The editor fixed the tense proplems but removed all tag. I added bad the {{POV}}, {{plot}} and {{OR}} tags as this seems to be an essay on the editors view of the subject matter. The editor immediately reverted them with an edit summary saying I was acting in bad faith. He feels that I am not acting in good faith. However, going by Misplaced Pages:Notability (books) and other guidelines, this is a hagiographic article on a controversial figure. I don't want to get into a revert war, but how should I approach this, since I feel the violations are egregious.
Thanks! –Mattisse (Talk) 19:09, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Here we go again. What he conveniently left out was (the reality) of how we have been edit warring for weeks on another article, and that he has been warned about using a barrage of tags on articles I am working on to annoy. He also forgets to tell you how he has a long history of acting in bad faith, refusing my olive branches, making false accusations against me, false templating me, following me around and tagging what I work on, etc etc. He DID not stumble upon this article ... he decided to reignite a dormant conflict that had been settled for several days as we stayed apart. There is a long history of this sort of behavior by him, and it continues sadly. He also used the edit summary to attack meRedthoreau (talk TR 19:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Please allow me to ask a legitimate question here. You say I have been editing Hawaiian articles for the last few day, implying that I have no right to edit any other. If you doubt I was sorting through autobiographies today and categorizing them, which is how I came across the article, then just look through my edit history. However, in any case, I ask everyone to assume good faith and allow me to ask this question. I normally do not have the problem of people immediately removing tags that I place on articles as would happen before wikipedia became tougher on the issue so I would like an answer, in case this crops up again. –Mattisse (Talk) 20:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Please let's center the debate on wheter you placed the tags correctly. Below I comment that the summary tag plot tag looks justified, and made some suggestions to address the problems on the article. About the "OR" tag, I see that you didn't justify exactly what the original research was on the talk page of the article. The {{OR}} page says:
Note: This template should not be applied without explanation on the talk page, and should be removed if the original research is not readily apparent when no explanation is given.
you should try to go to the talk page and provide an explanation. Please try to cite exact places where this OR happens. It's posible that the other editor gets convinced by your arguments and changes the text himself to remove the OR.
About the NPOV tag on the section above. The NPOV pages says clearly that the tagger must provide an explanation on the talk page "pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies,". Just point to those issues on the talk page before re-adding the tag.
Finally, Matisse, since the book is different from other books (it's famous because it describes the youth experiences of a person that later became famous and not because of its intrinsec value), then of course the article is different. Just compare with articles of books that are famous because of "strange" reasons like Quotations_From_Chairman_Mao_Tse-Tung or Mein_kampf. This sort of books needs a different format for them, with way more attention to the actual contents, in order to understand how it relates to the notable character behind them. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I looked at the "summary" tag "plot" tag (I didn't evaluate the other tags). I have skimmed the article a bit, and the summary of the plot is almost the whole article. However, it's a book about the life of Che Guevara, so the extension is very justified because of him being a very notable person, and this book is helping us to understand how he got those ideas of freedom. The article should be edited to explicitely explain this (and mention it on the lead), and then remove the "summary" tag "plot" tag, since the lenght is justified. If the sources at the bottom explain how the experiences on the book shaped the ideas of Che Guevara, then they should be cited and attributed (p.ex.:"The New York Times thinks that xxxx experience on the book made Che think xxxxx which was later important on the revolution."), maybe a section explaining the importance of the book to understand the Che damn, move the "transformation" section to the top of the article, and put the plot below, dudes, what is the most important part of the article doing at the end, I almost skipped it because it didn't look important :P . Also the paragraph starting with "Witnessing the widespread endemic" should be in the transformation section and right at the top. On that place it looks like a part of the plot that only people that read the whole plot will see. The more important parts are hidden at the end of the plot, so the summary tag plot tag appears to be justified. Just edit it to bring the important part at the start, and then the long plot at the end for people who want to read the whole thing. As the summary tag plot tag says, "focus on discussing the work". --Enric Naval (talk) 20:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Those are good suggesting you have given regarding the article. Improved organization would help and give it less of a POV cast at the beginning. I have looked at Mein_kampf. It has footnotes and references and presents contrasting points of view. It is not so clear how the writers feel. The Quotations_From_Chairman_Mao_Tse-Tung article is certainly far from perfect, but it has at least on {{citations needed}} I have placed an example of a fair book article on the article talk page and also suggested the consultation of Misplaced Pages:Notability (books). Are you saying that I am allowed to edit the article, as I have not been so far? Thanks, –Mattisse (Talk) 21:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, I guess you are saying that the justifications for the OR tag are placed on the talk page first. Perhaps that would prevent the revert seconds later. If I am allowed to edit the article, I would fee less helpless about it. Thanks, –Mattisse (Talk) 21:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
You can always edit the article, of course, it's part of the spirit of wikipedia that anyone can edit the articles, see the third section on WP:PILLARS. It's just that other editors felt that your edits were not correct and they reverted them. Just make those suggestions first on the talk page, and don't get too obsessed on getting your changes into the article. This will help you to reach a consensus with the other editor about the article. Even if the tag gets removed anyways, at least your objections will be on the talk page, and other editors can later read them and edit the changes into the article in ways you didn't think about. This is a collaborative work, so you can't always edit the articles the way you would like to, it's better to accept that other people will always make it different than you. I don't know why you mention the notability policy, since it's obvious that book is notable, so I don't see how that policy can help to improve the article --Enric Naval (talk) 21:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
So notability can be assumed because we are not from Algeria or India and know the subject? I though wikipedia was above that sort of parochialism. If the Motorcycle Diaries are notabile (and I am not saying they are not) should not the proper references still be in place? (By the way, I did not place a notability tag on the article.) My understanding of OR is improper synthesis: because A and B are proven to be true, then I can say C. Or is that now o.k. do do? –Mattisse (Talk) 22:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, when you say "actionable within the content policies" what does that mean? Which particular content policies are you referring to? As far as WP:V the article is quite clearly not following the policies. Is that what you mean? I should quote from that? –Mattisse (Talk) 22:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Hummmm, sounds like you have not read WP:V, WP:RSMisplaced Pages:Notability (books) I fear. Fortunately, doncram took the time to be constructive and listed some of the problems relating to the above stated policies and guidelines on the talk page. Also, that first paragraph was almost a word for word quote from the NYT article so all but a few words should have quotes around it. Otherwise, it is called plagiarizm. Also, I wish you would assume good faith and require others to do the same –Mattisse (Talk)23:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I meant the {{plot}} tag. My bad, I confused it because the tag talks about the plot summary.
OK, now that the issues have been listed, I can see the problem too. You see, the actionable policies depend on what you find, if you find copy/pasted paragraphs, then the actionable policy is WP:V. I'll quote (again) from WP:NPOV_
So it's not enough to say that the article does not comply with a policy, you need to pinpoint the exact . The burden of proof is on the tagger to specify what content justifies putting up the tag, and what policy is the content violating. It's not about good faith, it's about the tagger listing the issues on the talk page instead of expecting others to find them by themselves, specially if no other efforts appear to have been done by the editor on the article before, which goes against policy. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:20, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
To second what Enric is saying - we're not mindreaders here. If an editor doesn't explain, preferably on the article talk/discussion page (because an edit summary is reallly too short), why neutrality and other similarly broad policies are being violated, the tag/template should be removed by other editors. It is, of course, preferable to actually fix NPOV and similar problems, assuming no edit war has been occurring, rather than posting a template, but it's an acceptable alternative to give specific examples of the problem, and (if it's not obvious) explain exactly what part of WP:NPOV or other policies are being violated, on the talk/discussion page. -- John Broughton(♫♫)15:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
What if Misplaced Pages were to only allow web sites to be used as sources?
I'm not sure that I endorse this proposal, but if it were to go into effect it could prevent users from adding false citations to articles without them being detected, as an internet source can be quickly verified, while a book or magazine source can be harder to actually locate. Again, I'm not sure that I endorse this, as it would mean that many citations would have to be removed from articles, and also I doubt that users purposely inserting false sources into articles is very common.--UrbanRose20:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages already has a strong bias towards the sort of information that can be found on websites (i.e. more recent, "popular" information). This would make it much, much worse. Besides that, there are still relatively few reliable sources on the web relative to offline, since self-publication is far easier with websites. In summary: no. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with SarcIdeal...if it came down to choosing (with a gun to my head), I would rather the sourcing was limited to offline, hardcopy sourcing only. Book/mag/print publishers have to pay money to have things put in print. They have fact checkers. Cyberspace is dirt cheap or free, and Easy to Edit. I pick books every time. Good thing we don't hafta choose, as many online sources are fact checked/reliable as well. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer21:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Doing so would mean eliminated the still huge portion of human knowledge that is only available in print as reliable sources. I am concerned that in this stage of the evolution towards a purely digital world, that the end result would be to do more harm than good. - Gwguffey (talk) 21:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Completely agree. Web publication has virtually nothing to do with reliability, and there are still many fields where most of the history of scholarship is still off-line. There's no instant pudding here. --Shirahadasha (talk) 21:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
The majority of the worlds reliable scholarly information is in print form. Textbooks, reference manuals, historical documents, and much more are only available in print. Online sources are convenient, but they are just a small portion of the world's knowledge. (1 == 2)22:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Plus there's the fact that you can, in fact, read citations, brief excerpts, etc. of various books online even when the whole book is not available online. Yet, do we really want our citation to source to the online quotation, or to the offline source that it originally came from? I say the latter (although it wouldn't hurt to also give the former, perhaps commented out or put in an edit summary). Sarah Lynne Nashif (talk) 22:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Another issue with web-references is that if the other site has a re-org the link gets messed up. I've already encountered a quite a few "links to nowhere" and those references have only been in there for a couple of years at the most. This problem is getting worse. I don't have a good solution, but it might help if there were some automatic thingamyjig that would display the name of the page that serves as a reference. Than if the link breaks one could at least go search for it. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 (talk) 12:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Heads up of large discussions
Just a heads up, I seem to have sparked very large discussions on both WT:V and WT:NOR. The former has already led to some language changes, while the latter is slightly more stalled at the moment, but in both cases my concerns are essentially the same - the pages are currently advocating research practices that do not meet basic muster in current pedagogy about research. People interested in either page should probably swing by the (now multi-section) discussions. :) Phil Sandifer (talk) 03:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Kudos on the creative acronym, but I join Carnildo in the "huh?"
Strongly oppose. Not even being dead does not guarantee a concrete edit, no matter what the circumstances. I can see this being abused quite heavily.--WaltCip (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Assume "Editors" is plural: Is it currently feasible to see all of WP as it stood on a previous date with all hyperlinks in place? - Doug Youvan (talk) 14:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
It's feasible in the sense that someone who starts with a complete dump of the English Misplaced Pages (the last was in September 2007?) could write software that would let a person specify a date and time to "view" Misplaced Pages. But the wikilinks would have to work very differently - clicking on a link would require the software to check the history of the page being requested to determine which version to show.
And I'd guess that no one is going to bother - if someone really wants to know what a (few) articles looked like at a certain time and date, they can do that manually. -- John Broughton(♫♫)15:49, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, don't try that with Microsoft WebExpressions' Import Wizard with the pages from home and hyperlinks set to xxx layers deep! A new domain, frozen once a month, en.wikinude.org , might make a good fund-raising project for WP in general. - Doug Youvan (talk) 17:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Hope you're all older than 18 and no one's logging in from the office. There are very few places that aren't your home and wouldn't block that. Remember back when "Starhustler" was changed to "Stargazer" because it kept getting blocked?? Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 (talk) 12:07, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I M new to Misplaced Pages: EXTERNAL links question need help
HI,
I love Wiki a lot but i have less time i today registered an account in Wiki and have placed a link in External link sections for the "Cayman Islands" keyword. As the Category was relevant so i placed a link in External links section.
Do tell me is it proper if not do tell me other ways.
In light of the concerns expressed by the community regarding the current handling of bots and the membership of the Bots Approval Group, members of the BAG are proposing a revised bot policy (with the help of a number of other concerned editors). This proposed wording addresses (a) community selection of BAG members, (b) a process by which the community can arrange for revisiting previous approvals in case of problems and (c) some of the weaker points of current bot policy that have been expressed in the past weeks.
Original Research, Verifiability and Reliable Sources policy: the fuzzy edges
This is my first post here, and admittedly it's more to vent a bit of frustration than with any hope to change anything, lol. The source of frustration lies in the whole Original Research, Verifiability and Reliable Sources policy, and how it sometimes comes in conflict with one of the possible directions WP could(/should?) take ("to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial"). Even if this accomplishes nothing (and yes, I understand very well why these policies exist), it will at least be comforting to read people's thoughts on it.
The situation is this:
Article about a computergame. Person who did the bulk of the work on the article (guess who? :) ) was heavily involved in an international Internet community around this game (thousands of people from all over the world playing it against each other), in the mid-90's.
Issue: in case of a strict interpretation of said policies, the article is basically limited to little more than excerpts from the manual: summing up the features, maybe a couple of quotes from the games press and at best some sales figures. Basically extremely dull and largely obvious information(especially in this case). I would compare it to an "official press release" about some event by a government or company. Not exactly the best way to get to know what was REALLY going on. On the other hand, we have this phenomenon that there was a very active international community around the game (forums, competitions, newsgroups, hackers developing freeware extensions...). This phenomenon might be considered notable in itself (or at least an integral part of the notability of the game itself), and also what you get is that games are completely turned inside-out by such a community. After a couple of years the collective knowledge is orders of magnitude greater than anything provided by "Verifiable Sources". Often reality even turns out to be different from what's claimed (simple example: a feature claimed in the manual is just not there, or an 'intelligent' behaviour is scripted etc.).
As part of this community, it is downright frustrating to notice an article about this game that is limited to the "press release" approach. There is so much more to tell, and stuff that would probably really be appreciated by the people who would want to read the WP article. But: inevitably it falls under the OR, Verifiability and/or RS axes. (which is soon going to happen now. Bye bye hard work :( )
I can't help feeling sad about this, because this is clearly an example of where WP would be the only possible way to reasonably reliably keep this knowledge alive.
I have no problem understanding, and supporting, that for Real World and/or controversial topics said policies are absolutely necessary, no question! But for topics like computergames, which are unmistakably a growing part of human culture, yet nobody's life depends on the content of the article and the bulk of the knowledge is available in online communities, the policies cut on the wrong side IMO.
Now, to not close this little rant without making some sort of proposal: wouldn't there be a possibility to create an information box (similar to "This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.") that states something along the lines of "NOTICE: a lot of information in the following section is based on collective knowledge acquired in online communities and can therefore not be verified as strictly as usual"(I'm sure somebody can formulate this better, but you get the gist). As mentioned, this could be used to "group" that kind of knowledge in a separate section of the article, to find a middle ground between strict verifiability and reliability on the one hand, and "completeness" of archival of available knowledge on the other hand.
There are other wikis, e.g. Wikinfo, with different mandates. You can always write your own web page. Misplaced Pages isn't aiming to include all human knowledge. Selection and strict verifiability is what makes it high-quality. There's still the whole web out there; Misplaced Pages isn't trying to include all the information that's on the web. Sorry for your frustration. I know, you want it included on the website that everybody looks at; but the reason people look at Misplaced Pages is because of that careful selection and verifiability. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
You'll find a host of other options listed at WP:TRY. You're much better off finding a site that is compatible with what you want than trying to change fundamental policies here (which won't happen). Per WP:NOT, for example, Misplaced Pages is not a lot of things, including the complete repository of all human knowledge. -- John Broughton(♫♫)15:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
If the game really was that widely played, there ought to be plenty of surviving information about it on websites, forums, etc. The type of information you want to include quite likely can be verifiably sourced, if you put your mind to it. --Kotniski (talk) 15:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages is not about truth, but about what some other person has said is true, so long as that other person says that in a reliable source. Weirdly, WP seems to think that UK newspapers are reliable sources. (A cultural note: UK papers do NOT have "fact checkers", and there are many examples of UK papers printing complete made up nonsense.) So you'll have lots of true stuff missing, and lots of false stuff included. Frustrating. Dan Beale-Cocks15:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
As a counterpoint, the alternative is to take people's word on it that what they write is The Truth. Seriously, is "believe me, I know" enough of an assurance to hang a supposedly reliable encyclopedia on? --Jayron32.talk.contribs21:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
no, "believe me, I know" isn't enough for a reliable encyclopedia, but it's what we do with UK news papers as reliable sources. Honestly, they do just print stuff, knowing that going to law is expensive, brings a bunch of stuff into the public domain, and of create more sales. What's of concern to me is for example. $Newspaper libels $Fred. An editor sees the reliable publication, isn't aware of the UK system, maybe thinks UK papers have "fact checkers" or such, and adds a small, carefully worded, sentence to an article. $Fred sues the £Newspaper, wins thousands, they print a retraction So, now, is that retraction picked up anywhere, is it edited into the article? Imagine $Fred doesn't sue, just threatens, so $Paper print a tiny retraction. I dunno, for BLP there's a lot of trouble. :-/ Dan Beale-Cocks22:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but there are reliable newspapers, even in the UK. The Times is certainly far more reliable than the average celebrity rag, or obvious bullshit tabloid. Look, in the U.S., Weekly World News is widely read, and yet no one would consider it on par with a real newspaper... --Jayron32.talk.contribs01:46, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps an interesting question here is whether The Times, for example, can be considered a reliable source when discussing or reviewing anything to do with Sky, Fox, the Murdoch family, etc. given the proprietor? Is there any provision for avoiding such systematic bias in a source given our current policies? Fritzpoll (talk) 12:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I think part of the issue here is that strict interpretation of NOR and V is, at the moment, a very bad idea as the policies are, well, very bad in their current phrasings. I would suggest talking to the other editors involved in the article on the talk page and trying to come to a consensus on the wording - it may well be that there is a common ground or a midpoint that can be found if the policies are taken as principles instead of as rigid laws. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikia. It runs (close to) the same code base as Misplaced Pages, but allows you to create a "wiki" for anything you want, hosted on their service. That would let you create the community wiki just as you want, without the conflict of Misplaced Pages's moderately strict guidelines. -- Kesh (talk) 02:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Deleted article
Hello, I am 90% of my wikitime present in the Dutch Misplaced Pages. I recently made an article here for a life coach David Bonham-Carter in my drafts. It was not very long but it had references to a source and I had contact with that man by e-mail. But very soon (after 2 hours) after transfer to the main section, my article was tagged for deletion; main reason: not notable enough. I consented with this opinion and added the tag/template db-author or sth. like this. Now today I come back here and click "my contributions" and I cannot see there any trace of
having written this article
the deletion of this article
a commentary after searching "David Bonham-Carter" like: this article existed, but was removed. Do you reconsider to write it again. Please look first into the deletion log (book)
In our nl.wikipedia.org you will find these signs of past activity without saying.
What the policy here in the mother/father of all wikipedia's ?
Frankly, I am cross by the idea I cannot see under "my contributions" my complete activity, i.e. by means of a red title (= removed/no more existing) David Bonham-Carter on the corresponding correct dates (the making; the editing; the deletion date). And clicking on logs next to my user name I see that the deletion log for Dartelaar is empty. If you answer here, can you put a link in "my talk", please. --Dartelaar21:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
You can see that an article was deleted here . Unfortunately, on the English-language Misplaced Pages, editors aren't allowed to see their deleted contributions. I am unaware of any good reason for this, but that's the way it is. DuncanHill (talk) 22:06, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
You can ask an admin to "userfy" the article. It will get copied into your userspace, with all its history intact, so you can copy it before it gets deleted again after a while. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree here, sorry. Only admins can see "deleted contributions" on English-wikipedia. You can come to my talkpage (I'm an admin) if you'd like the article "userfied" (which means it will go to your userspace instead of the article/mainspace.) Thanks, Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer22:35, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Is there, incidentally, any good reason for this policy? I mean, obviously if something is illegal or potentially corrupting to the morals it might be permanently removed, but in such a way that even administrators can't see it. Administrators are people too, so if they are permitted to see a piece of text, is there any reason why us slightly lesser mortals shouldn't see it also?--Kotniski (talk) 07:37, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Don't you know, admins aren't anything special or superior on Misplaced Pages, they're the same as normal editors but with a few more buttons to push - or as some admins joke they just have a mop and bucket. :) Everyone is equal on Misplaced Pages, but admins are more equal than others, and some are downright above any and all policy :) Rfwoolf (talk) 09:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Admins aren't special or superior, it's just some of them think that they are. Seriously, there is no good reason whatsoever why deleted contributions shouldn't shew up as redlinks in the "my contributions" page, and if they did shew up like that, it would be easier for editors to review their own edits to see where they were going wrong. But it'd reduce the difference between admins and non-admins, so you won't see many admins supporting a change like that. DuncanHill (talk) 12:33, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually, there are technical limitations on why deleted edits don't show up on your page (or the page of any editor who does not have admin tools); that's why they are deleted edits. Most of the deleted edits deal with deleted articles, and there isn't much of a reason to see them, unless you are trying to recreate a deleted article or establish a pattern of behavior for a block, checkuser, or arbcom case. Horologium(talk)15:18, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I think wanting to review one's own contributions with the intent of improving them is an excellent reason to see what has disappeared. I'm not suggesting that the content of the deleted edit be visible, just the fact that something has been deleted. Another good reason for being able to see them is when an admin makes an unjustified and unjustifiable slur on an editor's contributions, based on the admin's inability to understand that editor's deleted contributions (a situation I have been in). It is hard to defend one's contributions when one is not allowed to see them. As for them being needed for block, checkuser and arbcom cases, admins might spend less time complaining about the lack of support they get from non-admins if non-admins were actually able to see what was being talked about. DuncanHill (talk) 15:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
The problem with your proposal is that it would require totally reworking the way that deleted contributions are handled by the MediaWiki software. All deleted contributions (images, text, whatever) are treated as a single batch; what you propose is to seperate this one batch into a bunch of little batches, with a sort function to flag deleted edits by a particular user, and allow non-admins to see a list of deleted edits by user. It may be technically feasible, but it sounds like a lot of effort (and a potentially significant drain on resources) for what is likely to be minimal gain, and while you may use the information for honorable purposes, there is a potential for gaming the system using such a resource by editors who are not out to improve Misplaced Pages. If you wish to see a list of your deleted contributions, it is likely that there is an admin out there somewhere who will provide you with a list. Any takers? Horologium(talk)15:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I wrote the below before I saw the above. I understand that there are software limitations, but I don't see why, if the software allows admins to see something, it can't be quite easily tweaked (or simply configured) to allow non-admins (or at least "established users") to see the same thing.--Kotniski (talk) 16:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
That's confusing software settings and legal issues for WP policy -- it's not "you can't see deleted edits because we HATE you," it's "you can't see deleted edits because they're stored in a completely different database table and some of them are legally or ethically problematic, and there's no reliable way to sort the wheat from the chaff." I've seen proposals which would allow users to see their own deleted edits (or at least a list of deleted pages they've edited), which seems agreeable but still requires software changes -- I believe it's live on bugzilla at the moment. – Luna Santin (talk) 05:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, thanks for finally supplying some real arguments, but I don't see that sorting the wheat from the chaff needs to be all that difficult. Pages which are deleted because of legal/ethical issues get referred to oversight, as I understand it; any others (the vast majority, I suspect) could remain accessible.--Kotniski (talk) 10:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
<unindenting> Agree with Duncan, except that you are suggesting that the content of the deleted edit be visible, aren't you? At least it would seem so from the rest of what you wrote. There actually seem to be a few issues here, and I'm not sure what would be involved in getting each of them changed. Let's try a list:
Non-admins having access to deleted content. No reason has yet been given why we shouldn't have. What would have to happen to effect a change though? Presumably the software allows for this possibility, and it would just require a software configuration change for (en) Misplaced Pages? Who would have to approve that? The Foundation? The developers? JW? Does anyone actually know??
Deleted pages remaining on contributions lists. As above, although I'd be less surprised if this actually required a software tweak.
Delete actions showing up on watchlists. This hasn't been raised here yet, but just to cheer everyone up (I hope not prematurely) I did read on Bugzilla recently that this problem is close to being resolved, and that logged actions (deletes, moves, protects) relating to watched articles will shortly start showing up on watchlists.
You're right (at least, I checked it for moves; hopefully deletes work as well). Hurrah! I'm off to see if the watchlist help page has been updated.--Kotniski (talk) 16:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Non-admins having access to deleted content - Which defeats the purpose of deletion. So then we'd have deletion 2, or else oversight might be used much more often. (copy-vio, attack pages, merely opposing consensus, true vandals, and a myriad of other not-so-nice reasons.) Doesn't sound like a good idea. That said, I think allowing users to have a listing of (only) their own deleted contributions in a non-clickable (non-viewable) list could be a good thing. - jc3716:12, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, I think the purpose of deletion is to get stuff out of the encyclopedia, not off the server completely. Totally inappropriate content should be (and is) removed so that not even admins can see it. You don't explain what makes admins so different as a species that they can be trusted to "see" stuff that the rest of us can't. (I have nothing against admins by the way, they do a great job.) Deleted edits (including some disgustingly offensive vandalism) are already visible to the general public via page histories, so why should deleted articles be any different?--Kotniski (talk) 16:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
(response to Woody)Doesn't help if an admin decides to criticize your contributions because some articles which you (say) mended a dablink on subsequently get deleted and you hadn't watchlisted them, you are still left unable to defend oneself. DuncanHill (talk) 16:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
That was a while ago Duncan, and it was only one admin. If anyone needs to see a list of their deleted contributions, then most admins will be happy to oblige. I agree with Jc37 on this, oversight would be needed an awful lot more if everyone could see everyone elses deleted contributions. Being able to view your own would be a great idea. Woody (talk) 16:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Yep I agree there, and that sounds reasonable, though it might be hard to implement at the software level. Woody (talk) 16:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Not sure that Woody really meant that, but I agree that all members of the community should have the ability to see others' deleted content, both for the reason Duncan gives (it ensures that administrative actions are subject to scrutiny) and, for example, that if someone wants to write an article on a topic where a previous one was deleted, they can see what the previous content was and avoid making the same "mistakes". I don't see why there would be any increased need for oversight - the same criteria for oversight deletion would presumably apply as now (though I admit to being rather ignorant in that area). There also shouldn't be much software reworking involved; you would simply extend certain rights that admins now have to all users (or established users).--Kotniski (talk) 16:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
No I don't think I do either. I must have misread it somehow. What I do think is, the huge amounts of crap that get uploaded and deleted everyday do not need to be seen and the copyrighted stuff etc should not be seen by everyone. Under Duncan's system I think this would be visible. There is no need for it to be. I agree that it would be useful for long-term contributers to see their own material that has been deleted but I don't see what is so bad about asking an admin to have a look at it? I think that you should only be able to see your own deleted contributions if you want to "self-improve." Woody (talk) 18:03, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
So what you're talking about is (only) going to an individual user's "contributions" page, and seeing a link to "Deleted contributions", which you could click on to see the list of deleted contibutions? Maybe. But I can still think of ways that that can be abused. Though I "think" I'd support being able to see the list without being able to click on each individual link (thus, without actually being able to view the actual edits). - jc3717:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
How about when they're attempting to ascertain what you're attempting to convey? (Or did you, in your obvious arrogance in responding, miss the question marks?) Not to digress into too much of a tangent, but really, if you want to see a proposal go past proposal stage, perhaps being willing to further and further clarify might be a skill you may wish to develop? (I'll leave aside the lack of signature, as we all make such mistakes from time to time...) - jc3718:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
How on earth could anyone abuse the ability to see a list of deleted contributions? I mean the sort of list that an admin could supply to an editor already? It's just a list of edits, it doesn't include the actual contents of the edits (or at least it didn't when I was provided with a copy of mine). And to be frank I think it is demeaning to have to beg a favour off an admin when I want to see what I have been doing. DuncanHill (talk) 18:22, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
(Note: I misunderstood your comments at first pass, and so removed my initial response)
Well, currently, the list is clickable, to allow for viewing deleted edits (for admins, anyway). And that was/is my concern. But if it is not clickable, then, as I mentioned above, I, at least, would probably support the ability to view an individual user's deleted edits being an option for non-admins. But I think it should be restricted to its own history page (as it currently is), though without the links to view the edits. As for "demeaning", I don't see such a request as "demeaning" by any means, but perhaps I'm missing something. Would you clarify? - jc3718:38, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
It's demeaning because it reinforces the "non-admins can't be trusted" atmosphere. If I want to review my contributions I don't see why I should have to ask for permission from anyone, especially in the kind of example I gave above from my own experience. I am not sure what you mean by "its own history page". Do you mean only being able to see one's own deleted contributions list and not those of other editors? That would not help if one needed other editors to see it as evidence in the kind of example I gave, where the only way to prove that the admin in question had screwed up was for other editors to see what he had based his comments upon. DuncanHill (talk) 18:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I think this is where I make a joke about how no Wikipedian can fully be trusted (we are human after all : )
But joking aside, I think the point of having content of deletions not viewable by everyone is more about admins having to go through a process ascertaining at least the appearance of community trust (WP:RFA), whereas an editor need only decide on a name and passowrd, and voila, they're a Wikipedian. So (supposedly), we should be able to trust admins to view the text; and while we presume good faith of everyone else, that trust isn't necessarily well-founded in every case, as we've learned repeatedly and daily.
As for the "separate page", what I was trying to say is that I wouldn't want a list of deleted edits to be merged with a page history, nor even viewed from any space but user space. I can see the use for vandal fighters to see an editor's deleted edits, and even the ability to click on the deleted article name in order to see the article log of why the article was deleted. (Though not the ability to click on the version link to see the actual edits. THat, I think, isn't a good idea.) And as well, I can see potential issues with a user being able to see even a list of their deleted edits. (I'm attempting to avoid listing, per WP:BEANS, obviously.) So I'm still at "weak support" stage of that. Does this more clearly clarify? - jc3719:05, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense, and I think it being "user based" rather than "article based" makes sense. As for the issues with a user being able to see a list of their deleted edits, if someone says to me "I've got a good reason for this, but I'm not going to tell you what it is" - that has never worked on me and I doubt it ever shall. Maybe I've got a suspicious mind, or maybe I've been misled by people doing that once too often, or maybe it's because the best teacher I ever had taught me never to accept anything without evidence. DuncanHill (talk) 19:21, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
(smile) I agree with that stance myself. (Doesn't mean that I'm going to leave some beans laying around, but I do agree : ) - jc3719:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree, I do not see why anyone should have their own deleted kept from them. In some cases such as Duncan's, the information can be useful to exonerate. To take it one step further, I do not see why I should have to goto an admin to see the contents of those deletions as well. If they are still on the server where over 1,000 admins can see them, why can't I? Lets take some worst case scenarios, say I create an article attacking someone, the article is deleted, yet still available for thousands to see, admins that is, what purpose does it serve to have that content hidden from me? I already know what I wrote, I could just as easily save it, it does not save space nor traffic. For a lighter example, such as those given, say I write an article and go on vacation, the article is deleted while I am away. I can see why it was deleted, but not what happened after I created. If I do not have a copy of the contents, I further do not know what I wrote and how to improve it if it fails on notability, or lacking verifiable sources.
I do not think demeaning is the best way to explain how someone feels when they have to ask permission, its a way of creating a structure. For some items that structure is needed, and yes I know Misplaced Pages is not a democracy and we do not promote freedom of speech within the encyclopedia, however, if admins are equal to others, then they should not be able to see anymore then others. The idea that admins are equal is fully refuted as we give them more permission to do what no one else can do, this includes the ability to see my own work, work I can not see without asking permission. Consider if you were always allowed to speak, you just had to ask permission to do so first, would you not feel "under" that person?
Just one last point, I am not sure how we can assume the masses would do the absolute worse with access to their own content, however have a policy of assuming good faith. --I Write Stuff (talk) 19:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, comparing 848 to 48,460,312 (1,531 to 6,854,214, as of this posting) - I don't believe that I would agree for those reasons. - jc3719:37, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
My point had nothing to do with the ratio of users to admins. To summarize, even in the worst example the content is still deleted, so it hurts no one to have the creating user be able to see it. In the best example it can help the quality of articles improve, as new users can go right to fixing. No reason has yet to be given on why an admin has to be asked for the information first. --I Write Stuff (talk) 20:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Ah, you see, you have failed to appreciate the power of the beans. "Beans" is the Misplaced Pages bureaucrat's equivalent of the government bureaucrat's "security implications". To quote from memory from Yes Minister:
(Minister, arguing to BBC executive that an embarraassing interview not be broadcast): I also realise that I let slip some remarks which may have had security implications.
(executive) Like what?
(Sir Humphrey) Oh, well he can't tell you what they are. Security, you see.
Beans means that the arguer has thought up some far-fetched ways in which your idea might conceivably be abused by vandals, but obviously he can't say what they are, because there are hundreds of vandals closely following this very discussion just waiting for some new ideas about how to bring Misplaced Pages to its knees.
So rather like the deleted content which this discussion is about, the very reasons for its remaining known only to the priests must themselves remain known only to the priests.--Kotniski (talk) 19:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I had a pretty annoying day, so this was just what I needed to cheer up. I can refute your argument but then I would have to kill you. --I Write Stuff (talk) 19:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Deleted article - D-Space concept
I read the above thread and I am amazed that no one has challenged the false premise argument that preventing access to deleted content somehow prevents deleted articles from being resurected. What a bogus argument! If I am editing something and suspect (or know) my edits might be deleted then all I have to do is open up NotePad and a quick copy/paste of the raw text from the edit screen gives me the full ability to restore the article anytime I feel like starting an edit war!
On the other hand, I have had occassions where I have attempted to add value to an article, been away for a awhile (WP is a hobby, not an occupation or obsession for me), returned and found the article gone. It would have been nice to see what had changed while I was away as I might have been able to improve whatever was the cause for deletion.
Perhaps the solution is to create a new "D"eleted articles namespace called "D-Space:" which would parallel mainspace but with 3 special exceptions.
(1) A new article cannot be started by a non-admin in D-Space, only edited.
(2) Only signed-in/established users can enter D-Space. Invisible to IP users.
(3) Any article in D-Space cannot be returned to Mainspace unless it gets approval as being ready for mainspace.
Related concepts include:
A bot can scan the two spaces and watch new mainspace articles to flag any duplication of articles by name or by large chunks of text in corresponding D-Space.
Articles "deleted" (other than "risk" or cruft articles) would actually be transfered to D-Space by an admin and would not be visible from mainspace except as contribution redlinks.
Authors wishing to restore the article would need to request review for readiness.
Articles in D-Space would not be subject to deletion. Individual edits might be subject to removal (vaporization I call it) for risk content.
This has been suggested before, and dismissed. The thing is: deleted articles shouldn't show up in WP space (any of them) by default. Deleted articles are usually deleted for a good reason. By having a space specifically for deleted articles to live, they're effectively still being hosted by Misplaced Pages, which leads to many problems (some of them involving WP:OTRS). I think the proposal above, making it possible to view a deleted article through Contributions, is probably the best solution available. Still abusable, but not nearly as bad. (As with others above, I'm dancing around WP:BEANS here.) -- Kesh (talk) 02:34, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
You neglect the fact that most deleted articles are still hosted by Misplaced Pages, since administrators apparently have access to them. I understand that the most harmful ones are deleted by overseers so that even admins can't see them (I don't know how many more levels of bureaucracy this goes up). So what kind of content is it that admins should be allowed to see but bog-standard editors oughtn't? And does this category really constitute the bulk of deleted articles, to the extent that it needs to be the default? There are many good reasons for which articles might be deleted from an encyclopedia; only a few of them (e.g. defamatory or illegal material) would seem to give grounds for actually preventing community access to that content. --Kotniski (talk) 07:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, fine, I'll spill the WP:BEANS on this one. I've seen folks use articles that were deleted and then userfied to fool people off-wiki before. They link to the userfied article and claim it as a "referenced article on Misplaced Pages," knowing that most folks have no concept of how Misplaced Pages works. People just see a link to en.wikipedia.org, see the article, and think it's being maintained by a neutral group of individuals. By keeping this Deletion article space, it exacerbates the problem. Spam, self-promotion and original research should not be viewable to the general public once deleted from article space. It's not perfect and there are ways around it, but it shouldn't be made easy for folks to use Misplaced Pages to promote their original ideas/products. -- Kesh (talk) 15:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Kesh, maintaining a visible space for deleted articles would create an incentive for POV forks, and vandalism since the content would still be visible (and linkable). (But I agree that accessing your own deleted contribs would be nice). -- lucasbfr15:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
You really think that it's not already possible to get POV content linkably onto the Misplaced Pages site without it being noticed?? At least if it were done through deleted pages, we could put a big red notice at the top saying that this is not a Misplaced Pages article, this content has been deleted from Misplaced Pages etc. etc.--Kotniski (talk) 10:34, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
As a minimum, I can;t really see any reason not to permit registered users to access their own articles--it gives the ones not savvy enough to have saved copies, a easy way to try to improve them. I'd email the actual author almost anything, but why have them go through the loops? We need to encourage newbies to write articles to keep the project alive. Can this be handled by the permissions system in mediawiki? DGG (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I would go further; I would say that anyone should be able to request deleted content from an admin, whether or not it was their own work. As long as a sensible reason was given, and there was no reason to suspect the requester of ill motives, the request ought to be granted without loops. --Kotniski (talk) 10:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Deletionpedia
I recently posted about Deletionpedia at the admin's notice board. Basically deletionpedia already collects for some time all articles deleted per AfD, Prod and many per CSD (A7 more or less). So the content of above mentioned article is actually available there. Now I haven't gone yet through above lengthy conversation, but as I've argued in the AN thread, this should have an impact on how we look on deletions. There wasn't much response there under this angle, maybe due tot he fact that admins can see deleted content anyways. --Tikiwont (talk) 12:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that info, great site:) It certainly provides a work-around for many of the practical problems being discussed. But I don't think that the (possibly impermanent) existence of such an outside site should affect WP's own policy on deleted content, either one way or the other.--Kotniski (talk) 14:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
An excellent use of our GFDL license, I am glad that the creators of this site have taken effort to preserve the editing history of the articles, and made sure that the user links lead back to the original user pages. (1 == 2)15:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
An editor (above) suggests that the user icon gif is a display of unintentional bias. Many other editors (including me) disagreed. I still disagree about the tiny gif of the user icon, but there are several portals, projects and templates that use similar but larger images. Here are some examples-
(apologies for the huge list of editor names here, I'm using templates so it's not my fault. Obviously this comment is not about them.)
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No matter what color they are, someone isn't going to be happy. I, for one, have black hair and do not own any green shirts. --Kbdank7120:10, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I did see a template that used red, green, blue, people. I can't remember which one it was. I don't know if it is a problem, and if it is a problem how serious it is. Muppet colored icons are spread across various wiki places, but it seems odd that I haven't found a single "black" (acceptable UK use) icon of a person in use. Maybe someone can point it out to me? I dunno, WP has enough problems with people "VIOLATATING THE MOS!!!1!" so I dread to think what a template standardisation project would have to go through. It would be nice to see a bit of variety. Dan Beale-Cocks23:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, dark-colored tones are used on images with negative overtones, like in {{Sockmaster}}. (aw, come on, you know that I have a little of reason, even if I'm mainly joking) --Enric Naval (talk) 20:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Walt - It took me a while to figure out your comment, but yes, Strangelove was a captured Nazi scientist. And Eve is common only to Abrahamic religions. So, I spent two hours on Google searching with permutations of blend, race, morp, image, man, etc. and found nothing but junk. However, I seem to recall that someone actually ran a morph on a weighted-average of human images and produced faces for an "average man" and an "average woman". Someone else should search if they can think of a critical key word to refine the search. - Doug Youvan (talk) 17:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Still has the problem that too many people are not "average", and no matter what we change it to, even if it's a perfect average, we'll still get complaints of "But I'm not black/white/a muppet". There is no good solution to this, unless it's remove all person icons. --Kbdank7118:08, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Here is the composite human face thing. Looks an awful lot like the current icon IMO. How anyone gets male out of that icon is just beyond me. Or white for that matter. I assume all bias has been purged from the articles in the encyclopedia and we're working on this last bastion of white-maledom? Franamax (talk) 18:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I should say again that this isn't about the tiny user.gif on every page. Weirdly, that icon comes from a set that has a "pink" and a "brown" icon, and WP uses the "brown" icon. So, that's cleared that complaint up. I don't want to see all icons replaced by a single "perfect human" icon, but I would like to see a bit of variety in the icons used to represent people. Maybe I should just find someone good at graphics and create some icons. Would people notice or care if a few icons in templates were changed? Probably not. Dan Beale-Cocks19:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Dan - Why don't we pick 12 dead people from the 20th century for the basis of your icons? As one of the twelve, I nominate Martin Luther King. Einstein is fairly obvious, too. - 20:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nukeh (talk • contribs)
I was reading this earlier, and just now stumbled onto the above notice board. Misplaced Pages:Community sanction noticeboard had issues in mission and in naming. RFC/U apparently does as well. Perhaps by uniting these as a single "disputes" (dispute resolution?) noticeboard some of said issues may be lessened.
The main problem with CSN was that it became "Votes for Banning". We already have a series of options available, called Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution. They all have hurdles to them, but that's because most so-called "disputes" aren't disputes - they're mindless bickering or one person seeking the "banning" of another for something or other very minor. People don't want to use them because they want an administrator to swoop down and play god, administering punishments and kicking ass. But we don't do that, something that is the source of unending annoyance for those who wish we did (who are the same people who, if an admin does swoop in, goes running to a noticeboard to shout about abuse and demanding immediate desysopping). The Commons is a much smaller community, with much less for people to do (it is mainly pushing images from one category to another in an endless parade of filing). Misplaced Pages "disputes" are of a different order and Misplaced Pages is of a far larger size, so Commons systems don't scale to our needs. Indeed, we used to do this type of thing, but moved to the current systems because of scaling problems. All in all, I can't see a purpose of this new board other than for the variety of having a new board to spread the drama on to. ➨ REDVEЯS is always ready to dynamically make tea 21:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Redvers beat me to it. I just can't see how centralizing drama would work out well here. Basically what would rapidly happen is that any signal would get lost in the noise. --Bfigura21:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
There are a whole bunch of noticeboards already in existence. Do you have them on your watchlist? I'm sure some of them would welcome extra editor assistance. As others have said, some editors want to just point and ask for a block, some editors are good-faithilly asking for help but can't get diffs together, and some editors are being battered by someone else who's pointing and asking for a block. There's plety of stuff you could do to help editors in distress. Dan Beale-Cocks23:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
WP:CSN was just WP:QKP in a new guise and really wasn't a good idea, given the number of over the top indefblocks that came out of it. I think WP:ANI is sufficient for problems requiring immediate attention, and we have plenty of dispute resolution options for those which don't. Stifle (talk) 09:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I was looking for a solution to the query that AN/I is too "long/active", and that RFC/U is not just "useless", but often worsens the problems. Often the postings at AN/I don't require admin tools. And the "Disputes noticeboard" at commons appeared more like a "community mediation"/discussion than a "quickpoll ban board". So like I said, this would give a venue, without the "tone". More than RfC, less than mediation. Gives a central venue for the disputants and others to attempt to talk it out. Just seems like a good idea to me. (And as it's something that appears to already work at a sister site...) - jc3715:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
If people start writing Featured articles about different topics, there will be fewer video games on the main page. For now, the video game wikiproject is doing a great job getting their articles to FA-status. Karanacs (talk) 02:26, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Wasn't this already discussed when ESRB re-rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was featured on main page? Didn't we agree that the issue was raised by users that had never participated on the reviews to select which featured articles get to the main page? Didn't we agree that 1 of 30 featured article are about videogames and that it's natural that one reaches the main page every 30 days? Didn't we agree that all featured articles have an opportunity to reach the main page independently of their topic? Didn't we agree that if you think an article should not be featured then you should ask for a review of its status? Didn't we agree that the people complaining had not participated on the reviews that decide if an article gets featured on the first place? Quick, someone find the old village pump discussion and link it hereold Village Pump discussion about reforming the process and firing the director and also the discussion on the article's talk page about it. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:16, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
A lot of information is templated. There should be a way to check this information against the guidelines all information needs to be checked against.
Categorisation is a difficult thing, which leads to heated scientific debates in the scientific community. The haphazard categorisation of Misplaced Pages works for many topics, but there are also many topics where categorisations leads to debates (e.g. ethnic, religious etc.). In these debates verifiability is hardly an issue.
If there is no guideline for this, both categories and templates provide a backdoor to add unsourced information to many articles. This of course opens up a possibility for subtle NPOV pushing.
Is there any way to make a guideline to cover for this.
Personally I was thinking that templates and categories need a references section in their own page. That would not burden every article with the need to reference, while it does fit the rules. I have not seen this anywhere though; so I am pretty sure this is not a rule yet.
Do you have any idea/suggestion how to handle this issue?
It seems to me that most categories and templates are uncontroversial aids to navigation, so we shouldn't make things more difficult for ourselves by imposing additional restrictions. Where controversies do arise, they are settled either as content disputes (on the article talk pages), or as proposals to rename or delete categories and templates (WP:CfD, WP:TfD). The main problem as I see it is simply widely inconsistent use of categories (and unwillingness on the part of developers to consider software improvements to help efforts to make them more consistent, if my recent experiences at Bugzilla are anything to go by).--Kotniski (talk) 19:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree this is the case for most templates and categories. However some template, like Template:emotion imply categorisation/inclusion of terms (what is an emotion?) that is contested even between the scientific experts in the field. Some categories such as Category:Anti-Islam sentiment are maintained through several CfD's. I think at least templates should list their sources somewhere under the same restrictions as articles (ie likely to be contested information needs a ref). We should implement this lightly, I agree. Arnoutf (talk) 20:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Should WP:SELFPUB be reorganized?
I have requested comment here regarding whether WP:SELFPUB should be reorganized to make its meaning more clear. I have explained why I feel it is a good idea, and why it is not, in my opinion, a substantive change. I once did make that edit but was quickly reverted by someone who insisted that the existing wording is perfectly clear and that my distinction was "improper", despite my explanations. My basic reason for this is that five of the restrictions seem to apply to the specific material referenced, while the other two are more general, and the way it is stated now could be misleading. PSWG1920 (talk) 17:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
IAR
I think Ignore all rules needs to be amended to include a disclaimer that it should not be cited for admin actions. I've seen this being done a couple times recently, and it just seems totally ridiculous to me. IAR has always been a policy that applied to editing for the most part, in my eyes anyway. Any admin action that goes against policy should have a better explanation than per IAR. Lara❤Love22:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
The meme of "citing" IAR follows from a misunderstanding; adding an "exception" that it can only be cited sometimes only reinforces that. But I would support adding some explanation to IAR in an attempt to reduce these misunderstandings. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Why would admin actions be any different, when the overriding goal is to improve the encyclopedia? IAR = Think freely; Respect others; Observe limits to behaviour. All actions can be reversed. If an admin acts on IAR and is wrong, other admins can step in with good justification and set things right. That shouldn't stifle creative thinking on the part of admins, no policy can set out every rule. Franamax (talk) 22:24, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I can't think of a possible time when applying IAR to an administrative guideline betters the encyclopedia. I've seen it used 2x this month - one violating deletion policy and the other a violation of the blocking policy. Both admins cited IAR, but neither action was so necessary that the application of IAR made this a better place. The actions made it worse. Edits can be reversed, but actions, such as punitive blocking, leave lasting damage and send editors into an early retirement. the_undertow22:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
This suggestion needs to start at WT:IAR. But I will say that if you have a problem with admin actions then take them up with the admins, but this does not indicate IAR is to blame. (1 == 2)22:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
If you mean IAR to delete some "cabal" pages, I would incline towards deletion having been a net improvement, but I wear bathrobes only in private, so I'm not neutral ;)
And agreed that WT:IAR is where it should go, but beware there is an ontological swamp (or something like that) waiting to suck you in :) Franamax (talk) 23:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Mass deleting cabal pages after the MFD was closed as Keep and the discussion on ANI was leaning more toward supporting that result was not a net improvement. It flamed the fire in the debate and set a horrible example for new admins.
Of all arguments against, "loading down" a one-sentence policy with a one-sentence disclaimer just didn't come to mind as a possibility. As for admin actions being reversible, you can't revert a block log. Admin actions are a much bigger deal than article edits, in most cases. If you find it necessary to ignore an administrative policy, most likely you're going to be questioned about it and have a need to explain in greater detail than IAR anyway. So to prevent admins, particularly newer ones, from thinking IAR will save them if they purposefully do something stupid, there should be a little FYI in there to prevent admins from administering punitive blocks that can't be reversed, or mass deleting pages against consensus to fuel flames in a heated debate. Lara❤Love23:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
In my opinion, the issue is less the rule and more the application thereof. It is flat out insanity to invoke IAR unless you've considered every option and the issue is so pressing that there's no time to adapt a rule through our regular processes to meet the circumstance. In a couple of years here, I've seen IAR invoked correctly about twice and incorrectly dozens of times.
See WP:UIAR which is a noble and bogged down effort to provide some clarity. My thrust there was that the person who wishes to invoke IAR has an onus to demonstrate why that is an improvement, however my direction was unsuccessful. Also see Hu12's comment here which I declare to be prescient. Blocks and block logs of course are singular - IAR still should apply but the attendant consequences of wrong decisions should reflect directly on the invoking admin, not on the rule itself (per Phillippe). Franamax (talk) 23:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Philippe, that doesn't address this specific concern though. Something needs to be done about the improper invocation of IAR, specifically for admins actions which are not always reversible. For those that are, it's much more of a hassle in many cases. Admin actions almost always affect other users directly, so you have to deal with the feelings of those editors, as well as the discussion that should take place before reversing another admins actions, etc. Enough time is spent complaining about stuff here, it would be easier to address the problem to prevent occurrences in the future. If that means taking focus away from admin actions and putting more as a general note that IAR is not a policy to be cited, then that would work as well. Lara❤Love23:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps a standard question at WP:RFA should be "What is your understanding of IAR?" and "How does it apply to admin actions?" so that the new admins could be better evaluated. Franamax (talk) 00:12, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
The proposal significantly increases the complexity of the policy not only by doubling its length (on a relative basis, that is a lot of instruction creep), but by opening the door to further "clarifications" that in fact obfuscate the main point. Christopher Parham(talk)01:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
It is "Ignore all rules", not "Ignore all rules accept admin rules" or even "Ignore some rules". We are chosen for discretion and we need to be creative when new circumstances go beyond the established best practices just like anyone else. Rules are not set in stone they are there to describe, not prescribe, best practices. That goes for everyone. (1 == 2)23:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I concur, this is just WP:CREEPy. I have this strange sense that it'll be a slippery slope, and sometimes IAR should be used in regards to admin actions. As for the cabal thing, I've said it before. If anyone has a problem with that cabal deletion, take it up with me, take it to DRV, comment on the RfC, but complaining about it just wastes everyone's time. Otherwise, we should let it go. Keilana| 00:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
No one was complaining, but conversing. And I don't think it will be taken to DRV because you selectively deleted 'cabals' that are not as likely as others to take action. the_undertow00:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
(ec)I think we all realize that. I have always felt the intent of IAR was to encourage article building. The fact that it has spilled over into administrative action is probably not the intention. I believe the 'rules' mentioned are the rules we use to build the encyclopedia, not the policy we use to block users or delete pages. Again, I don't see when IAR can ever be applied to an admin action and have a positive result. the_undertow00:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
No, it applies to all rules, not just article rules. That is why it is ignore all rules. Any time the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Misplaced Pages you are allowed to ignore that rule. All rules. (1 == 2)00:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm well aware of that, although I do adore the constant reiteration of the wording. But I don't agree that IAR should apply to admin actions, which is why we are here at the Policy section of the Village pump where policy is discussed. IAR levels the playing for all those who are editing articles. But it has an unfair advantage for the small percentage of admins who can IAR using tools to which other editors have no access and no recourse. If IAR is all-inclusive then it applies to admins, crats, devs, and arbcom. I don't really think that was the intent. the_undertow01:21, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
(ec) Yes, Until, but not everyone is on the same level. Citing IAR is stupid and inappropriate. If you're going to ignore an admin policy, by all means, ignore it and hope you're not being stupid. But don't guarantee stupidity by citing IAR. That's what I'm saying. In thinking that citing IAR is an acceptable practice that somehow justifies inappropriate actions, it only encourages such actions. It should be made clear that this isn't a policy to be cited. If you're going to ignore all rules, you should be giving your justification at that time, not when someone points out your stupid action and per IAR edit summary. If people don't have a justification for their action, and they don't have IAR to fall back on, perhaps those stupid actions won't be made. Lara❤Love00:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Stupid actions happen both within and without the rules and procedures. There are no limits on stupidity. IAR was never, and is never, a justification to do something dumb. It is an invocation to think and act beyond what someone else has decided is the correct thing to do, it is a pointer to progress. As you note Lara, it should always be justified beyond just an edit summary. IAR should be a well-considered act with a well-considered rationale, if you invoke it, be prepared to defend your action after the fact, at your own peril. Think freely, respect others, observe limits. Franamax (talk) 00:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
My view of this issue is that all admin actions should one way or another reflect consensus. If there's an explicit consensus to ignore rules in a particular instance, an admin should not be a martinet and enforce the rules anyway. If there's a rule which is plainly not producing a constructive result, an admin can ignore it in the anticipation that the community will see the wisdom in ignoring it. What you can't do, as an admin, is force an outcome according to your views. This is the case even in "no consensus" situations. Admins are neither arbiters nor free agents, though I've seen quite a few admins that don't seem to realize this.
It's well-known that IAR doesn't let you act however you like (and citing IAR whenever you want to go off the deep end is no protection from your actions). This applies to admins and regular users equally.--Father Goose (talk) 02:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Lara, I am confused. Are you saying admins should be allowed to ignore rules when they need to, but they should not be able to cite the policy that allows them to do just that? Mentioning the policy one had in mind in no way makes a decision more or less stupid. (1 == 2)04:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to chime in my with my 2 cents. I think anyone who takes the drastic step of ignoring all the rules in our system in Misplaced Pages, should be required when asked, why. Perhaps that is all that is needed. I do not think admins should be exempt in their ability to put IAR to use, however I think we should require that anyone invoking it should be required to state why when asked, even if asked by the person who they may have blocked, banned etc. There should be a level of accountability. Personally I see what the writer attempted to accomplish, however, I have never seen a group put such a policy to good use, the ability to ignore the rules as long as you feel it is for the better will just alienate those who got played by the rule and where IAR was used against them. --I Write Stuff (talk) 20:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Are users not supposed to write about companies where they work?
The problem is, most folks can't. It's extremely difficult to write a neutral article about your workplace. However, it's possible to come close. Basically, it's suggested that you write an article in your user space (something like User:Urban Rose/Myworkplacename ) and then ask folks on the Help desk to look over it. If no one objects, then moving it to the proper article name would be fine. Just leave a note on the new article's Talk page (after it's moved) to explain your COI, and your willingness to work with other editors to make the article neutral and factual. -- Kesh (talk) 02:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Nah, just write in the main namespace, and maybe' put a disclaimer on the talk page like "I might not be entirely neutral here... just FYI, please NPOVize".
Over the last few days, an editor has been adding unreferenced content to several US municipality pages. When I warned him/her about it, s/he said that s/he would get in contact (I'd assume by email, since these municipalities are scattered nationwide) with the locals. Is an email from an official good enough for referencing? I'm inclined to tell the editor that it's not good enough, since an email isn't published and therefore cannot be a reliable source. Help, please? Nyttend (talk) 01:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Email is not a reliable source at all. It's easy to fake, since there's no way to prove who wrote it or where it came from. We also don't take letters sent to someone, as there's no way for anyone else to verify its authenticity. Any info needs to be in a published source, preferably a third-party one (magazine, newspaper, etc.). Referencing primary sources (ie. published by the municipality itself in pamphlets and so forth) should only be used for non-controversial facts. -- Kesh (talk) 02:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
But the thing with the pictures is that, when a person uploads a picture and adds a PD tag, we trust that person's claim to have taken it themselves, unless it's obviously not. Similarly, when an email is sent by the photographer, we trust that person, unless we have reason to do otherwise. This isn't an OCRS question: the other editor apparently is going to email these local people and tell me what they said. I'm not inclined to trust that. Nyttend (talk) 03:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, but don't confuse the question of RS with the form of publication or integrity of attribution. If the various emails go directly to one or more trusted repositories (not via the editor) we should be able to trust they were sent as recorded. This doesn't solve the forged headers problem, but a confirmation bounce can do that. Unfortunately that still only gets you a primary source. You then need a secondary source to publish based on that before you've got something useful as a reference. It could be done, but I doubt it's what the editor had in mind.LeadSongDog (talk) 07:34, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
As of now {{free media}} is only used on some free image templates (168,000 out of ~300,000). I think it should be used on all free images to make it easier to sort free content. Its similar to {{non-free media}} and would standardize the practice to group all media into one of the two possible categories. MBisanz03:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
This follows up on a discussion over proposed rewording of the criterion that was advertised here on March 28, pursuant to a discussion on the policy Talk page that began on March 17. Discussion of the proposal (formally made the day before it was advertised here) was lively, detailed, and mission-minded and a clear, unambiguous consensus was reached in support of the revised wording. The change was enacted on April 1.
On April 10, two editors acting on their own initiative, without ever having participated in the discussion or responded to it over the next nine days, and without making even an attempt to forge a new consensus, preemptively reverted the change. I need to make clear that I reverted them, on the basis that substantive changes should never be made to policy language without our standard process of consensus building, let alone in open defiance of that process. The end result is that the page is locked, with a dispute tag. And our entire non-free content policy is brought into disrepute. All comments are welcome here on the non-free content Talk page.—DCGeist (talk) 05:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to second what Dan Geist says here. It augurs badly for WP's culture of consensus generation that one or two people can stomp in weeks after a widely advertised and lengthy consensus-generation process and reverse it, flying in the face of due process. TONY(talk)06:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
It also augurs badly that seven people voting to change a core Foundation policy can be touted as "consensus". Very few people who actually deal with fair-use on a daily basis saw that conversation going on - it needed, at the least, to be at WP:AN. I have VPP bookmarked and missed it. Incidentally, IMHO, the only thing that brings our non-free content policy into disrepute is when people try to actually water it down to allow more use of non-free content. Black Kite06:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm a relative n00b to this place, I've only been editing for two months, and I seem to be confused about something. Policy states that plot summaries of films do not normally need to be cited (unless you are providing an original interpretation of the plot), and that information about video games can be cited from the manual or the game itself. I take this to mean that all works of fiction such as tv, movies, novels, and games, may serve as primary sources for basic information about the works such as plot elements, game mechanics, and so on. Yet time and time again, I see editors screaming "OR! OR! OR!" whenever they see unsourced information about works of fiction in articles. Time and again, I see articles nominated for deletion becuase they contain unsourced lists of trivia taken from works of fiction because the nominator considers it original research. My question is, when writing about works of fiction, when is it necessary to cite the primary source? Almost every film article I've seen has plot summaries with absolutely no citations, yet trivial articles about video games and television seem to be held to a higher standard simply because they are viewed as cruft. Can someone explain to me why "In episode 42 John trips over a rock" is decried as OR while "In Halloween Horror IV Jason stabs a girl in the neck" is perfectly OK? I know I'm treading into the waters of "inclusionism vs. deletionism" but I'm sick of reading the hypocrisy taking place on AfD discussions. TRIVIA is not the same thing as OR. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 05:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I have written a new proposal which would allow subjects of BLPs to provide an on-wiki response to his or biography and have it linked to from the article. Any comments, improvements, rejections, and advice would be much appreciated. (This is my first attempt at proposing policy, so please go easy on me...) Sjakkalle(Check!)07:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Foreign Language Sources
This is the English Misplaced Pages. It's all well and good saying that it's the encyclopedia that anybody can edit, but if a statement is cited with a foreign language source, the majority of editors simply cannot have anything to do with it. I therefor suggests that, as anybody capable of citing with a foreign languuage is capable of translating it, they post a translation of the source on the talk page of the article, under a title referring precisely to the cited statement.
Otherwise (or perhaps, as well), we need to be able to verify that a foreign language source says what it's claimed to say. Sometimes the precise wording of a source in itself is significant.
In short, there's a problem with foreign language sources - particularly with reference to contraversial articles, and even more so where they are on the subject of curent events. What can be done about it?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Crimsone (talk • contribs) 17:08, April 11, 2008 (UTC)
Posting a translation of foreign language sources on the talk page (or anywhere else) cannot be done since a full translation will probably be a violation of copyright. As for a lack of comprehension of non-English sources... there are many free translation services online that do a fairly good job of translating text (or websites) into English. Another option is to request the assistance of an editor who has expressed that s/he understands the language (see Category:Available translators in Misplaced Pages and Category:Wikipedians by language). Black Falcon18:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
What I've done on Natalee Holloway is include my translation of the quote in the article, and included the Dutch text of the original source as a part of the footnote. Doesn't work well for summarizing large blocks of text, but it's good when you just need to get support for an isolated fact.Kww (talk) 18:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
There is, however, nothing wrong with posting a translation of the relevant part - ie, the part on which the citation is based. The trouble is, many articles simply move too quickly to seek the assistance ofd someone that speaks the relevant language... and actually, my experience of online translators is that when deling with real language, the do a dire job if the outcome is intended for any serious purpose... babelfish, for examp[le, I'm sure almost deliberately mistranslates... Google is often better, but it's still not right. They don't cover all languages either, and it STILL doesn't solve the problem of the unreliability of translation...
An EN-Misplaced Pages "translation helpdesk" might be a solution, as if there are groups of users dedicating themselves to translation, then said translations are easily opemn to the checking of other translators.Crimsone (talk) 19:24, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
For many countries (i.e. related languages), there is now a project. We might recruit volunteers for translations services through the country projects; that would allow us to find people who have at least some control of both english and another language in a focussed way (i.e. you would go to wikiproject Germany for German and wikiproject France for French) Arnoutf (talk) 19:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
A new account is created in the real name of a notable person (Author/Journalist). They edit their own article a little and one on a major historical news story in which they were involved. Judging from the nature of the edits. I would assume good faith and believe it to be the person, but if in fact it isn't the person the user account is an act of extreme bad faith. The eprson needs educating about Misplaced Pages's citation requirements, but that apart, they could potentially be a valuable contributor.
Question: Is there any formal process for querying the identity of a user and their verifying it (and is it sufficiently polite that they won't take umbrage?). dramatic (talk) 09:35, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
(e/c) Please see Misplaced Pages:Username policy#Real names. In short, we need proof of real identity, such users can be blocked, and they can clear up the matter user the OTRS system. From what you've said, there are BLP issues here that scream out for a block coupled with a cautionary revert, and an immediate informative, polite message on the talk page explaining what the problem is, why these seemingly draconian measures are necessary and what the user needs to do.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 09:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
A discussion concerning the use of image placeholders has opened at Misplaced Pages:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders and may be of interest to editors at the village pump. The placeholder images have recently been uploaded to 50,000 articles, and while there has been disagreement about the use of these images in various corners, there has not been a centralized discussion on this issue affecting the community. Please contribute your thoughts and publicize this discussion anywhere you feel would be appropriate. Thank you. Northwesterner1 (talk) 10:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
My 2 cent's worth: I think images are already something of a "master grade" only task. Very few people understand enough to get them to show up where they are supposed to be on the page. If the placeholders could be turned into an easy to use feature it might work. Otherwise you'd just end up with clutter. Easiest would be if you had a button in the icon list above the editing window where contributors could request images. They could then even add a link to a picture they can't use because of policy. Lisa4edit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 (talk) 13:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Dummies in Misplaced Pages
I am new to Misplaced Pages as an editor and want some assistance in understanding how it works. I have been browsing through Misplaced Pages for a long time and have been observing that Misplaced Pages editors use dummy names or pseudonyms in order to hide their identitities. Now it is theoretically possible for one person to register with several dummy names. Similarly, a group of ideolgues bent upon spreading a particluar ideology can joun together, hiding their identities and act in unison to create a false impression. Now I have some questions-
(i) Are multiple dummies by the same person allowed?
(ii) Does Misplaced Pages record the PC ID number of editors who chek in as registered users as they do for anonymous editors?
(iii) Does Misplaced Pages make any effort to identify dummy editors?
Please enlighten me on these points. - Shyamal Gupta (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been editing the anti-Americaism article. I've been looking at some other anti-national sentiment articles, that were mentioned in the (archived) Talk pages of the article. They all tend to push POV on political matters. The anti-Japanese article, for example, has a section on whaling protests, calling the opposition to whaling racism against Japanese . Meanwhile, the anti-Americanism article cites a protest against a US military base, in the wake of Marines raping a child, as an example of anti-Americanism. (The article has a "Discrimination" sidebar that comes and goes, and includes anti-Americanism in the same category as racism, slavery, and genocide.) All of this is interpreting and labeling the views of other people and societies, often negatively, on political matters.
Proposal: anti- articles should only be about people who self-declare as anti-. There are people who describe themselves as anti-American. There can be a neutral article about them and what they believe. Other labeling--anti-Mexican sentiment (the article suggests concern with illegal immigration is prejudice against Mexicans ....), anti-Americanism, etc--is just POV pushing, usually with a negative innuendo, often about living people and other ethnicities.
Here's what I wonder: Is it possible to have a policy about this, or is Misplaced Pages too de-centralized for something like that? Life.temp (talk) 13:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I propose anti- labeling following the same guidlelines, pretty much for the same reasons. From that page:
Where there is doubt, aim for neutrality.
Some terms are considered pejorative, or have negative associations, even if they are quite commonly used. Even though people may use these terms themselves, they may not appreciate being referred to by such terms by others (for example, faggot, nigger, tranny). Note that neutral terminology is not necessarily the most common term — a term that the person or their cultural group does not accept for themselves is not neutral even if it remains the most widely used term among outsiders.Life.temp (talk) 14:08, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I know I'm immediately going to sound like a killjoy (and a hypocrite, since this April 1 I tried to get in on the fun by jokingly noming WP:AIV for deletion myself, something which I promise never to do again), but I've thought about it and I've come to the conclusion that we should be stricter about disruptive behavior that takes place on April 1. The main reason why is that it divides us. Look at a recent Misplaced Pages Signpost article and how many users were blocked, then unblocked for April Fools Day "pranks". Some of us may find this stuff funny, but others apparently don't. There are ways to be funny without dividing us. A humorous featured article is an example of one. Be creative, people. And don't even get me started on how people just visitng Misplaced Pages for the first time view these "pranks".--UrbanRose16:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
We have two choices, we fight these violations all day April 1st, and they stop at midnight, or we only deal with serious issues only and revert at the end of the day and they stop at midnight.
It is just a day, and you can't hold back the tide. We can use common sense, block when it is truly disruptive, and otherwise just wait it out. (1 == 2)16:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps the only thing that should be fooled around with are the tabs that admins can see, or perhaps just logged in users, but there should be no change visible by ip users, they expect more from wikipedia. I like the idea of humourous FAs though--Phoenix-wiki16:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
If Wikipedians decided to treat such acts like they would any other day of the year they would stop. The reason we have to fight them is because nothing is really done about them. No one is ever really blocked or desysoped for them. In fact, just to set an example, I recommend that you give me a twenty-four hour block for what I so foolishly did on April 1st.--UrbanRose16:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Would Misplaced Pages benefit from blocking or desysoping people for an April 1st day joke? Would that be preventative when the day is going to end anyways? Is it to prevent them from doing it next year?
I also will point out that if a joke crosses the line and is truly offensive or harmful then appropriate action is likely to occur despite the day on the calender. (1 == 2)16:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
So basically what you're asking is "What's the point of enforcing policy? They'll just stop anyway." Well most vandals will stop vandalizing eventually so maybe we should just stop blocking them. The reason Misplaced Pages should block and desysop people for vandalism April Fools Day pranks is to show them that are policies aren't something to just toss around and to put an end to this division that these "pranks" cause. I never realized how much they hurt people until I tried one myself. I've regretted it to this day. If you want to joke around, take it to Uncyclopedia.--UrbanRose16:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
No, that is not what I am saying. My point is that Misplaced Pages will have a net loss if be block/desysop people for playing jokes on April 1st. Keep in mind I agree that jokes that cause a serious problem should be actionable. But the fact is regardless of the day people are more likely to get a warning than a block for playing silly buggers with AfD. (1 == 2)16:44, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
If we made it clear that this joking was to stop, we wouldn't have a net loss of users because they would know that we mean business. We don't have a net loss of admins any other day of the week for them trying to post garbage on the main page. And when you mention the harm that the pranks cause, you only refer to the immediate harm. You don't refer to the division that it causes. I agree that a few bogus afds doesn't cause a huge amount of harm in themselves, but the division that these pranks cause by offending more than a few users who don't find them funny at all isn't worth what little humor can be found in the pranks themselves. Just ask User:Daniel if he finds them funny. He won't even speak to me after what I did.--UrbanRose16:52, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Policy regarding Information in Infoboxes
I want to know that is there any specific policy regarding filling in the fields of infoboxes(specially Template:Infobox Officeholder). I am asking it after watching some editors removing the sect written along with religion in the religion field of Template:Infobox Officeholder, with the reasoning that only religion is asked in this field. In my point of view if there isn't any policy then one should be there, at least a guideline. --SMS19:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Self-Published Sources
It seems patently illogical in the internet age to disclude self-published sources under the absurd garbage-can label of "vanity press". It should be obvious to anyone in the information age that self-published sources are increasingly important sources of information, and can represent reliable and rigorous research. To assign validity entirely to what publishers choose to print, given their dependence upon the market, or their dependence upon self-referential institutional guidelines, is also illogical, because truth is dependent neither upon popularity nor particular institutionalized schools of thought. While the market may provide one indication that many people find value in a source, it is not the sole criterion of truth. And when it comes to schools of thought, the people are entitled to access to information generated outside the box. Self-publishing, while it may indeed provide opportunities for "vanity" publishing consisting of flippant, nonserious work, also constitutes competition against attempts to monopolize validity, and represents a healthy source of dissent. Unless wikipedia wishes to confine its information entirely within manufactured consent, a more open policy about the inclusion of self-published sources is in order. CarlaO'Harris (talk) 19:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
The bot policy rewrite mentioned in a section above has gone live. Community input would be appreciated on WT:BOT to ensure that the changes have consensus and to discuss the possibility of further changes.--Dycedargж20:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
looks pretty neutral to me. Regards, Ben Aveling 23:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
(this is from a screenshot -- can someone find the original source for this?)
this icon? —Random832 (contribs) 18:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
—Pengo 13:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Resolved – I figured out an answer MBisanz 08:41, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
#c-Fuhghettaboutit-2008-03-23T23:23:00.000Z-Image:User.gif:_unintended_bias?){kind=link}
