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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies. « Archives, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

WHERE DID MY DISCUSSION GO?

It went to this additional archive so I don't end up actually deleting any discussions. Sorry if I accidentally archived a discussion in progress. My sincere apologies, and feel free to put it back here.

1RR instead of 3RR for not logged users ?

Would replacing 3RR with 1RR for non-logged users be useful for Misplaced Pages ? Hopefully it would reduce the number of revert wars at no extra cost. If someone insists of revert-warring, let him at least register. --Lysy 10:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Many editors choose to contribute without creating an account, and this would penalize them simply because they don't have an account. As the ability to edit by anyone is an important principal in Misplaced Pages, I do't think this restriction on reverts will gain much support. It would be difficult to enforce, in any case, as many anon editors would not be aware of the rule. There would be many violations of a 1RR, with many unproductive blocks, if enforced. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 12:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
The ability to edit by anyone- yes, but revert ? You're right about the diffulty of implementation. How about not encouraging anonymous users to revert by not providing the link to edit past version instead ? --Lysy 12:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see the need to do this, or any major benefit. You'll need to present strong arguments to convince enough editors to get a consensus on this proposal. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 13:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Sure, I'm only looking for opinions. My motivation is that in my (limited) experience the anonymous users are on average much more inclined to ruthless revert-warring instead of discussing. The assumed benefit would be that all the users (both registered and IP) would spend less time on hostilities and more on productive editing instead. --Lysy 13:12, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Oppose Unfair to non-account users. --Masssiveego 23:53, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Something like fully half of our anonymous users are useful to have around, I think. Currently I'm more worried about useless logged in users dragging us down, really. Even so, shouldn't everyone be applying 1RR, or better yet, join the Harmonious editing club ? :) Kim Bruning 13:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree, 1RR for everyone would be even better. Any hopes for this ? (how can anonymous users join the WP:HEC, BTW ? :-P)--Lysy 13:12, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Oooh, good one. Well, they can certainly join in spirit, if not in name, right? :-) Kim Bruning 13:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
That is more a matter of courtesy and cooperation, which are kind of hard to legislate. I'm not convinvced that a 1RR will improve the atmosphere in 'discussions'. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 14:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

3RR is a sort of a rude democracy. If six users have a strong view on a matter, four have a strong opposite view and the rest of the world does not care, then the article will have 30 reversions a day but 90% of the day it will be according to the majority. If both sides are tired of the revert war, the majority will be in a better position to negotiate a compromise. It is a bad scenario, but at least it is fair. If some bully feels like to create a few registered accounts, then it is easy to catch - e.g. new account, with only a few edits, all devoted to a particular revert war, not even a checkuser is needed. But if a user wants to enter in a revert war using shared IP accounts he is uncatchable. I can post from work, I can post from home, I can post from my mobile phone, I can post from my son's mobile phone, I can dial-up to half a dozen of a different dial-up providers, I can telnet to my wife's university account (all six of them with different IPs for each), I can look through open proxies and see if some are not blocked, I can drive a little bit with my laptop searching for unsecured internet connections, I can go to libraries, internet cafes , etc. The sky is the limit. There is absolutely no way to catch multiple IP accounts using characteristic style, grammar, orthography if the edits are straight reverts. Thus, if IPs are in the edit war, then there is no way to find if there is a crowd angry people or just one dishonest puppeteer. This is not a very common but still a real and very frustrating situation. And frustrated users do stupid things.

My suggestion is that reverts against anonymous users should not be counted against the 3RR at all. If you want to revert war do not hide behide a shared IP or a sockpuppeet. abakharev 00:47, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Abakharev: The encyclopedia is not about edit wars, it's about contributing toward common knowledge (=open encyclopedia). You think about 3 levels: IPs, registered users, and admins, with you being recently promoted to (what you think is) the top of the power pyramid. But more power does not make you a better contributor. If you want the encyclopedia to be a closed club then the privilege of 3RR for registered users (vs. 1RR for the rest) is the first step. And step by step it would not be an open encyclopedia anymore, it would not be something to attract contributors, it would eventually be one of many closed clubs.
There are many reasons for users to use IPs instead of registering. Edit wars is not the main reason. 134.84.5.24 05:24, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Registering needs only a minute, so I do not see how limiting some options for the unregistered users makes it a close club. Edit warring is akin to voting and voting is not available for the unregistered users for the good reason.
I am strongly for making easy for the accidental users to start editing. If somebody made a Google search, found a Misplaced Pages article and realized that he can improve it, then it should be very easy for him to make the improvements straight away without hassle of registration. On the other hand I do not see a single valid reason for a user who regularly edits Misplaced Pages not to register. Can you, 134.84.5.24, name one? abakharev 05:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Admin on Duty

Would it be possible to have a list of "Admins on Duty" which could be used to find an Admin quickly? Several times I've wanted to find an admin but not known who was online except for recognising them in Recent Changes. Could there be a list, say on the Community Portal, which admins can sign into when on WP and the sign-out of when they leave for the day. This would be like a "the doctor is IN" sign to channel people to those performing that duty at that time.

It need not be obligatory for Admins to sign into this list whenever they are here, but requested that all take a turn once a week or so. That way there is always someone who is publicly saying "I'm on duty NOW" yet they do not have to be so all the time. This would spread the load as well as increasing speeds of vandal blocking and mini-arbitrations.

What do you think? Witty lama 05:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, immediate attention of admins is required for vandalism alone. WP:AIV should help, no? --Gurubrahma 07:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I just use Special:Log to see who is active. - brenneman 08:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Or, even quicker, click on Special:Recentchanges and look for the first admin-ish edit. In cases like vandalism, designated pages such as WP:AIV should be used rather than approaching an admin. However, if the request is for something that there is already a page for, e.g. WP:RM, and especially if the admin is not familiar with the requested procedure or if there is a question of the motivation for the request, then the admin should feel free to refer the user to the appropriate page. Several users have already done this with me and most of the time I'm happy to oblige. - BanyanTree 15:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Most admins that proactively fight vandalism of Misplaced Pages have Misplaced Pages:Administrator intervention against vandalism in our watchlist. Response time is pretty good, IMO. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:47, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Getting rid of fair use

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

I'm all for it, with one exception: when the image itself is the subject of an article, such as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. --Carnildo 03:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Err, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If we remove all fair use images, we'll leave a great many articles with no illustrations (perhaps permanently):
  • Almost all articles dealing with modern art. This includes basically all movies, TV shows, paintings and other graphic arts, etc.
  • Almost all articles dealing with fictional subjects.
  • Many articles dealing with aspects of modern history not witnessed by US government photographers. Note that this would probably include all situations where the exact copyright status is unclear (i.e. Nazi photographs).
  • And various others.
Aggressively pushing for free content is very good, of course; but let's not forget that we also want to be an encyclopedia, and one that can be competetive with commercial ones. Decimating our image libraries isn't really going to help in this regard. —Kirill Lokshin 05:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I am not convinced that the "baby" in this case is all that valuable. We might end up with articles without illustration, so what? It would be interesting to see what percent of EB's articles include illustration (I don't know the answer to this). EB's article on Salvador Dalí (from what I can see from ) has no images. To say that we need "fair use" to compete with non-free publishers seems to me to be an argument for why a 💕 can't be done. But de.wikipedia.org is doing it, and by most measures has been more succesful than en (unless you measure an encyclopedia by the number of pokemon articles). Matt 17:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
There is so much abuse of the "fair use" that we need a stronger wording that currently exist to discourage uploaders. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:44, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Userbox policy

Other efforts having failed, we still face the need to build a workable UBX policy. With some trepidation I've posted a starting point for further work.

I should very much like users to edit the proposal directly rather than attempt to vote on it. This is a wiki; we can work it out. John Reid 05:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

That's certainly not bad; I like the writing. I think there are still basic philosophical divisions that need to be addressed, but, baring that, it looks good. 134.10.12.23 00:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC) (User:JesseW/not logged in)

Not logging IRC discussions is harmful

Not having a log of IRC discussions is harmful because important decisions, such as whether to block a user or IP address and what should be done with a problematic article are made there. Also, what happens on IRC sometimes spills over onto Misplaced Pages, such as a user being blocked from posting on Misplaced Pages for his or her actions on IRC or a user with a grievance about his or her treatment on IRC. Unlike talk pages, or even the mailing list, there is no way to determine what was said. The only thing we have is hearsay from people who participated in the discussion. Those users who were not present have no way to address the arguments of the other side, even after the fact. I only watch IRC occasionally, and it is frustrating when I find an issue that I have an opinion on was decided on IRC. Also, from what I have seen, consensus on IRC is sometimes all in the mind of the user, as some call it a consensus if there are only a few objections while the majority of users keep engaging in idle conversation. If there was a log, users could see what was said and write a rebuttal rather than starting the conversation all over again, which others are sometimes reluctant to do. Not logging IRC goes against the open nature of Misplaced Pages. If IRC continues to be unlogged, important decisions should not be made there without a full explanation posted on Misplaced Pages. -- Kjkolb 06:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

  • AFAIC, nobody should claim consensus based on IRC conversations. Nor should people be blocked on WP for IRC conversations. There is here, and there is there. Now, it might be useful to quickly discuss some subject matter via IRC, but if a WP decision is made, it needs to be well documented on WP. Logging IRC would never happen, that place is just noise. SchmuckyTheCat 07:08, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
  • If you have seen someone blocked or otherwise sanctioned in Misplaced Pages for something that happened on one of the IRC channels, please give us some details here, along with the applicable hotlinks. I can't think of any tolerable examples of how that could possibly be proper. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 08:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I want to point out that I am not suggesting that anyone has acted improperly, just that this has become common practice. Here are some examples that I have found. I'm not completely happy with the list and I think I could find better examples, but it would take a lot more time. I just skimmed through these and some may actually be irrelevant. Also, in some cases what happened is unclear because part of the conversation took place by email, IRC or on another talk page. Many of them are not that big of a deal, but it becomes a problem when it occurs frequently.

  • Misplaced Pages:Bots (Tawkerbot2)
    • Discussing the appropriateness of a bot on IRC (or whether to run without a flag?)

-- Kjkolb 10:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

This is a good list of evidence. I really appreciate you making it. I would strongly support a seperate channel, i.e. #wikipedia-logged which would be resorted to when live, real-time discussions or decisions were wanted, and which would be logged. I think making #wikipedia logged is not going to fly, because people do greatly value having a place where their converstations are not permanently visible. But in nearly all cases, I can't see a problem with moving discussions about on-wiki matters to a logged channel. 134.10.12.23 00:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC) (User:JesseW/not logged in)
Logging IRC does seem like a good idea, now that you mention it. Of course, it would be 97% worthless garbage, but as reference it could be useful in some cases. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Eggs in the user page

Misplaced Pages's policy states that "You might want to add quotes that you like, or a picture, or some of your favorite Misplaced Pages articles or images (free licensed only), or something like that"

Do eggs fall within that category? I wanted to put some on my page, just for fun, but thought I'd better clear it first. --Eilu 11:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Are they public domain? You can only use things that are freely copyable (public domain, GFDL, etc.) on your user page. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 12:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not really sure. The site doesn't explicitly say it's "public domain" or "released under GFDL" but it does say
"Choose your egg below and paste the code onto your webpage. You may adopt one egg or all five! ... After your egg hatches, you may keep the critter on your homepage to show off to your guests :D You may even adopt more eggs as they are released!"
It then provides the appropriate code to display them; ie. the eggs were created specifically to serve as forum signatures or to be displayed in websites --Eilu 13:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
No you can't use that. First, its (probably) technically not possible (and definately not wanted) to hotlink to external images (e.g. have external images, shown inline). Second, the web site explicitly says the images are copyrighted (in a non-free way). Third, even if it was allowed, it seems like a bad idea, for anybody who likes privacy, and dislikes attempts at free advertising. --Rob 14:27, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I see. okay then. --Eilu 06:42, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Rewriting history

On fr: an admin has recently decided to remove all vandalised revisions from some articles' history. I'm quite sure the idea already appeared on en:, but I can't find any policy or discussion relating to this. Does anyone know where it is? _R_ 17:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I hope there isn't. It is too insanely stupid to consider. Kim Bruning 18:56, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
The thing is, some people on fr: are not only considering it, but actively doing it. That's why I'm searching for previously expressed rebuttals to their arguments, instead of expanding a lot of effort to reinvent the wheel. _R_ 20:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
This is the problem. When we started, a lot of stuff was so obvious that we never bothered to write it down. Kim Bruning 20:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Isn't the basic principle that we want to be able to look in someone's edit history and, if they have a history of vandalism, it be visible, whereas if we deleted vandalism edits, then career vandals are indistinguishable from total newbies? -GTBacchus 20:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
The suggestion's come up a few times. As I recall, the main points came down to:
  1. There's a hell of a lot of it. Deleting it all would take too long.
  2. Deleting vandalism would make serial vandals hard to identify.
  3. A general dislike of re-writing history.
--Carnildo 07:22, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Also the fact that removing all vandalised revisions would probably involve removing attribution for tens upon tens of thousands. It's not unusual on a busy page to discover vandalism that's stuck around over three or four good edits. So obviously deleting every revision that contains vandalism would have a huge amount of collateral damage against good contributors. It's possible, however, that the fr: program is only about deleting the vandal edits themselves. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Also also, the question of "what is vandalism" is somewhat subjective. FreplySpang (talk) 09:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFCA proposal

See WP:VPR#Requests_for_continuing_adminship_.28WP:RFCA.29 - SoM 19:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Livy Book 1

To what extant can Livy book one be used as a source for wikipedia articles? Book one seems to be a mixture and legend and fact.

davidzuccaro 00:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

It is a published and verifiable source and there is no reason in principle why reference should not be made to it in appropriate contexts. But to the extent that it may contain some less-than wholly-accurate historical assertions, caveats to the reliability of those assertions would be beneficial to the lay reader's qualitative understanding of the information. David91 02:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I think I have a better approach, which is to treat the material as mythology and state it as such in the wikipedia articles. davidzuccaro 02:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I am being pedantic, but I think the term legend is more appropriate than the term mythology. As I read the terms, myth has a definite connotation of being untrue, whereas the term legend tends to be agnostic about the truth, i.e. this is what was said, make of it what you will. --BostonMA 15:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
An interesting volte face since I had thought we were in agreement that some of the material was either factual or had a factual subtext. But whatever your decision, I am simply glad to have been of assistance. David91 04:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Similar concerns led me (prior to reading the above) to add the {{fiction}} template to King of the Britons earlier this morning: in this case it's about the fiction/non-fiction statute of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae which is used as a primary source for this list of kings.

Also the Historia Augusta (including the book on the Thirty Tyrants) falls in this fiction/non-fiction crossover category (and there are certainly more). Also fictional books, like the poems by Virgil and Ovid are reliable sources on some historical issues (see e.g. Imperial cult (Ancient Rome): Virgil is quoted as a reference that Augustus sanctioned the cult of Julius Caesar)

Some thoughts:

  • At least the articles on books like Livy's Ab Urbe condita, the Augustan History, the Historia Regum Britanniae, etc should attempt to distinguish the mythical and historical dimensions of such works, preferably based on referenced scholar analysis;
  • Since wikipedia is rather about "verifiability" than about "truth" any such reference can be used to say something about the time in which it was written (but not necessarily about the content of its mythical assertions: see Imperial cult example above: the Virgil reference in used in wikipedia not to "prove" that Julius Caesar descended from Venus, but only to show that in Augustus' time this message was promoted, which is "fact");
  • Finally, this morning, still before reading the above, I expanded the List of borderline fictional characters somewhat: if there's no real chance that the veracity about some historical figures/details will ever be fully proven/disproven this is the ultimate defense: acknowledge that some data are in the fiction/non-fiction borderzone, and work from there. --Francis Schonken 15:10, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

PD-user Disclaimers??

Why does the {{PD-user}} license have "Subject to disclaimers"? Other PD licenses such as {{PD-self}}, {{PD-old}} and {{No rights reserved}} do not have this disclaimer clause. —Pengo 09:45, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Colors, templates, tables

Can anyone refer to some policy of "Keep it simple" that is used here in the wikipedias? I often create new templates on other wikipedias and on the swedish one they are often deleated without discussion referring to some "Keep it smple" rule. In my opinion this is in contradiction to the "Be bold" and "Break the rules if you have new information" -policies. MoRsΞ 11:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know of a policy, per se, but I think that Occam's Razor is always a good principal to apply. My favorite version of what William actually wrote is, to do with more what may be done with less is vanity. So I would say make it no more complicated than is necessary to convey the information. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 12:05, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Not knowing the specifics, I think the problem may be that different people want different things kept simple. A template that makes it easier to do one (like make a taxobox) but makes it harder to do other things (like modifying the template). Make sure your templates are making things easier for everyone, and don't make anything more difficult than it already is. That means writing documentation for how your templates work too. Also perhaps get other people on the Swedish wikipedia to look into the issue. And lastly you can read about KISS too. —Pengo 00:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Disclaimer

Misplaced Pages needs to put its disclaimer at the top of every page. There has been way too much litigation against it recently. It's damaging its reputation, and the solution is so simple. Just make it a general rule that every page has the main disclaimer about taking no responsibility for factual accuracy somewhere very visible, near the top.--expensivehat 21:27, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

There is already a link to Misplaced Pages:General disclaimer on every page, at the bottom rather than the top. -- 67.190.122.80 00:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Too much litigation? Other than the Boris Floricic issue, I do not know of any litigation involving Wikimedia. Do you have any sources, so we can add the information to the Misplaced Pages article? --cesarb 23:13, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
If I recall correctly, they claimed to have sued Wikimedia De:, but we never actually received notice. Superm401 - Talk 01:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

inappropriate username blocks and summaries

Recently, there has been much debate on the subject of blocking inappropriate usernames. Some administrators are regularly blocking such usernames as per policy, but with undescriptive block summaries. When new users see "user..." as the blocking reason, chances are that they will have no idea why they were blocked. I'm pretty sure that we have already lost potential contributors this way.

So I have been unblocking and reblocking such usernames with more better block reasons, and guess what, someone files an RfC against me for doing so.

I have therefore modified MediaWiki:Blockedtext to reflect this issue and added a link to the username policy. However, I'm not sure if that is enough to keep new contributors from being driven away.

Any thoughts? --Ixfd64 06:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

  • I'd agree in the sense that a blocking summary should always give some sort of indication why the block took place. Also, where edits are carried out by a bot this should be indicated in the summary as well. (More or less, the same standards that apply to edit summaries should apply to blocking summaries as well.) Christopher Parham (talk) 20:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
  • The RfC doesn't mention that you've reblocked any of these usernames, or even that the "user..." summary is the big problem. If this is really the issue, why don't you bring it up at the RfC? So far, the RfC seems to be about you unblocking users and not reblocking them. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Suggest we comment in the appropriate place on the RfC page, as I have. John Reid 19:18, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee Elections January 2007/Discussion

The page for discussing the next arbcom elections. Lets see if we can sort this one out before the last 5 mins leading up to midnight.Geni 00:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:AUM rejected

As of clear consensus of the straw poll on WT:AUM, I have now marked the proposal as rejected. →AzaToth 18:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

It's about time. John Reid 18:58, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
As a non-template editor who came to the issue late, I'm glad to see this issue has been resolved. There has been way to many pixels (ink) used endlessly debating this issue. Luckily the positions advocated by both sides of the debate have been transparent to most users and even editors so edit wars have not affected a large number of articles. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 19:08, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

How to react to repeated deletions of comments ?

How to react if some users delete on regular basis posts by others in discussion page ? I don't want to face 3RR but what to do about this act of vandalism ? Is restoring such posts 3RR ? --Molobo 22:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is nothing but a frivolous complaint. The user above has a habit of pasting huge chunks of text (literally kilobytes or text) from external sites directly into Misplaced Pages. He was reminded many times that the link is enough since others know how to click and how to read. Putting aside a copyright issue for unwarranted copying of external material into Misplaced Pages, this simple renders talk pages unreadable making discussions impossible. No matter what editors write at talk pages, it is easy to obscure their entries by diluting them by tons and tons of external text the user pastes all over. The user was repeatedly asked to just provide links and write a brief summary, if necessary. He responds with pasting more, accusing his opponents in deleting his comments and ends up getting himself blocked. His activity on Misplaced Pages mostly comes down to reverting others, removing material he disagrees with and pasting stuff from elsewhere as well as from one article into another. Such a lazy approach is extremely aggravating and counterproductive. --Irpen 22:23, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, Irpen is correct. If User:Molobo would use quotation marks and introduce his quotes properly, it would be less messy and there would be less problem, but he didn't do it, so the quoted person's comments look like Molobo's own, and make reading of the discussion hard. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 22:27, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Here is the quote that was deleted by Calgacus and that Irpen claims is a "huge chunk of external material"

In conclusion we might ask ourselves what influence the Tartar-Mongols had on Russia. (...)

There were also important cultural effects. Mongol domination retarded Russia's cultural development. It delayed for at least two centuries any contact between Russia and Europe, which was at that time the only fountain of progress and enlightenment. The Russian Middle Ages were barren of achievement in any field of creative endeavor, except perhaps that of icon painting, which reached high standards in the fifteenth century.


Professor Gerhard Rempel at Western New England College Molobo 22:12, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The above quote which I entered after responding to Irpen's demands that I shouldn't "obscure webpage" was deleted by Calgacus here. I have seen larger quotes used on discussion pages --Molobo 22:28, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

He responds with pasting more, accusing his opponents in deleting his comments and ends up getting himself blocked. His activity on Misplaced Pages mostly comes down to reverting others, removing material he disagrees with and pasting stuff from elsewhere as well as from one article into another. Such a lazy approach is extremely aggravating and counterproductive. This is untrue and anybody can enter my personal page on Wiki to see my contributions and articles I made. I don't think that kind of comments are needed Irpen. --Molobo 22:28, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, this edit will show you that Molobo inserted nearly a third of the webpage, which then made up more than half the discussion page, didn't comment on the quote and, what's more, didn't put it in quotation marks. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 22:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

But you continued to delete a shortend version of the quote as seen here. --Molobo 22:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Now Molobo is pasting it here. Just add a diff link, OK? Here is the pasting by Molobo which I didn't delete, but replaced with a properly formatted link adding a comment to the user not to do it again.

But upon your request my shortened quote was deleted as well by Calgacus here. --Molobo 22:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

This pasting of material, anyone can see how "short" it is, was repeated perhaps seven or eight times and brought the block on the user. Should this be all moved to WP:ANI? --Irpen 22:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

This is not the issue here as we are discussing another topic. After explanation by user Splash I no longer continued to reinsert information despite the fact the one of the sources allows so. Why are you picking up a done issue here? --Molobo 22:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Policy on Shared IP Addresses

I've been browsing through pages tagged with listed under Category:AOL IP addresses, and I've found quite a trend. Almost all have received warnings for vandalism, the majority have been blocked once or multiple times from editing, and most have a very significant number of contributions--far more than your average IP user. I'm not trying to say AOL users are bad people, but rather suggesting that, as AOL IPs are shared between multiple users and users receive new IPs everytime they log on, a handful of users are causing entire shared IPs to be blocked, although each vandalizes perhaps a couple times or less (clearly acceptable for newbies). This is an obvious problem, and for a solution I'd like to propose that all shared IP accounts be automatically blocked, such that AOL users MUST register before editing. Is that a solution, or does some one have a better one? Is it even a problem? AmiDaniel 06:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Solution have been discussed here Misplaced Pages:Blocking_policy_proposal, not sure if this is beeing worked on and if so when it would be implemented but I hope soon. Stefan 13:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Arguments on talk page: who may delete them?

I am trying to decide what to do on two pages and wanted to see if there is a formal or informal Misplaced Pages policy.

During the last year, I put some work into the articles Papal infallibility and Infallibility of the Church. Beginning on 1 February 2006, a new editor became involved in these pages, and we disagreed about many issues. We had several long arguments on the Talk pages, and each of us felt the other was being unreasonable, or violating NPOV, or not using sources properly. Finally, on 4 February, I decided to give up these pages. I still think I was right in the argument, and I thought that some of the other user's edits made the articles less accurate. But I simply have too much work to do at school and can't afford to spend as much time on Misplaced Pages as I used to spend, and this argument was not going to end.

Since that time I haven't done any editing of these pages.

Today there has been a new development. The other editor wants to delete the argument we had on the Talk page. I objected to him deleting my material, so he responded by deleting his material. Needless to say, an argument with one person's comments deleted is not useful.

I strongly want the argument to remain, because some people who question the content of Misplaced Pages pages look at the Talk page to see if there have been disputes about it. The other editor wants to delete the argument, or at least his own comments in it.

I know that it would be vandalism for someone to alter my signed comments, but this isn't what's happening: my signed comments are remaining but as orphans. Thus a complete dialogue becomes a set of disconnected responses .

Is there any policy covering this? Can I object to this deletion? - Lawrence King 07:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Not sure, but it makes sense not to delete things from a talk page. I can find, Misplaced Pages:Talk_page_guidelines, Misplaced Pages:How_to_archive_a_talk_page and Misplaced Pages:Refactoring_talk_pages that describes how to handle talk pages. None says anything direct about deleting stuff. but the following quotes implies that you should not do that.
Archive rather than delete: When a talk page's content has become extremely large or the discussion of the issue in hand has simply died down and no one has a reasonable chance of adding to it, create a new page. (See Help:Starting a new page and Misplaced Pages:How to archive a talk page for details.) Place the page in a talk or Misplaced Pages talk namespace. Give it an explanatory name. Often people simply add "archive" to the original name. Explain on the archive page where the text you plan to archive will come from and provide a link. Cut the relevant content from the original page and paste it into the new page. Replace the text on the original page with a link to the archive. An alternative is to summarise the discussion and provide a link to the version with the full text.
and
Be aware that not every editor will agree with your refactoring or even of the refactoring concept in general. Provide links to the original, uncut version, so others can check your changes, and if necessary go back to the original to clarify what an author actually said. This combination of refactoring and archiving will often prevent complaints that information was lost. Make it explicit that you have refactored something so no one is misled into thinking this was the original talk page.
If you think people may object to their discussion being refactored, make your summary on a different page. Rather than reducing archives 7 to 10 of talk:New Imperialism, create a new page entitled talk:New Imperialism/Summary of archives 7 to 10. Link this to the top of the appropriate archives, and to the current talk page. This gives newcomers the chance to get a quick understanding without the risk of losing what has gone before. Having a linked archive can help satisfy both those who feel their words must remain intact and those who want a neat summary.
So you should not delete from talk pages but it is not clear if you can revert a deletion especially if you want to revert something the writer deleted. But you can make a new sub-talk page where you keep the old discussion, the deleting user should not be able to object to that or delete what you wrote there. Stefan 09:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
What can you do when there are too many notes in the talk page, or

if there is vandalism, or otherwise rude comments that would be best deleted? --Masssiveego 09:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

If there is too much stuff and it's old, archive it (as explained above). If there's straightforward vandalism (e.g. deleting Hoary's comment with or without the explanation that Hoary is an asshole), revert it. If there's rudeness (e.g. saying that Hoary is an asshole because he did such and such), edit minimally, if at all: after all, the person who comes out worst is the writer, and the last thing you want is for him (or possibly her) to whine on about having been a victim of so-called "political correctness". If somebody posts personal info (e.g. saying that Hoary's cellphone number is such-and-such), call an admin to revert without trace. (Offhand I don't know what this is called, but I believe it's possible.) If somebody posts an immensely long rant that is clearly irrelevant to the subject or clearly ignores what has gone before, delete it as a hindrance. If somebody copies in a great wodge of copyright (and non-copyleft) material, delete that. Otherwise, leave bad alone: trolls love attention (even or especially when it's angry attention), and are likely to go elsewhere if they don't get any. -- Hoary 10:02, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the policy you are suggesting here. So my question then becomes, if the other party violates this policy, can I revert his/her changes? In this case, the other party is deleting his own part in a previous argument; for me to revert his changes will cause his comments to reappear. And archiving seems unnecessary because the Talk page is quite short.

Essentially, my problem is this: The other party not only wants to control the content of this page, but wants the other viewpoints on the talk page to vanish so that visitors to Misplaced Pages cannot discover that the page is controversial. I consider this unfair, but I don't have time to formally dispute the page content. All I am asking for, therefore, is for the two-month-old argument on the Talk page not to be deleted. I'm trying to figure out if this is within my "rights". In other words, who owns old arguments on Talk pages: Misplaced Pages or the commenter? Lawrence King 02:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Some random pointers (might be useful, might be not): WP:OWN and WP:RPA. --cesarb 02:56, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages does. Or anyway, they're licensed under GFDL, and this person you're arguing with is vandalizing comments that just happen to be his own. -- Hoary 06:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

From the tone, I'd suggest that probably the discussion in question was unproductive, indeed most probably pointless bickering (a brief look at removed comments confirms this--two parties putting their fingers in their ears, each accusing the other of not listening). If so, this is probably better off deleted than left hanging around to stink the place up. Misplaced Pages is not Usenet. --Tony Sidaway 06:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not keen on deleting stuff unless it's really terrible. Why not simply archive the old stuff? Jayjg 18:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Future of wiki

If the Board decided to fold, or ran out of money or the servers were seized or destroyed in a fire ... What would happen to wikipedia. What contingency plans are there? Mccready 11:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Good question. I think the short answer is None. The longer answer is that Misplaced Pages is heavily mirrored; if Florida vanished in a pillar of nuclear flame tomorrow, the project could and would be reconstructed very quickly. But it's not clear who would be the main projector and who the mirrors; the event might lead to all sorts of fragmentation and forking.
This leads to the question, Who owns Misplaced Pages? I don't speak of the trademark or logo, but the content itself. Since it's all licensed under GFDL, the content may be edited and published by anyone, even for profit. There are both mirrors and forks, even now.
I don't think there's any immediate danger of disaster; relax. Backups are the least of our worries. John Reid 18:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
We probobly should promote a mirror to "Official Backup Source" or something just in case Deathawk 23:21, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
And if the "Official Backup Source" blows up? ...sorry, I'm just a really big pessimist. --Eilu 20:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics

In the past two months I have seen a large number of WP:AFD debates on whether or not professors are notable. There is a proposed policy on criteria for including academics that, unfortunately, has received very little attention lately. I have been working on this recently, and I'd like to work on building a consensus and collecting comments from the community so that this guideline can eventually become an official guideline. So, I am posting here to appeal to the community: if you are interested in this issue, come, check out the guidelines, enter the discussions, et cetera. The guidelines are at Misplaced Pages:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics, with attached talk page. Also check out Misplaced Pages:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics/Precedents for an (incomplete) gathering of academic-related deletion debates. I'd also appreciate if someone could fill me in on how to go about making this guideline official once it's ready. Thanks! (feel free to contribute here if you want, but it would be more useful to contribute at Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics.) Mangojuice 19:48, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Permanently semiprotected

After a discussion at WP:RFPP about Portal:Box-header, I made a new template {{psprotected}} so it reflects the status of this said page. I know this is against policy, but I was told that we should not be slaves under policies. →AzaToth 20:35, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

How's Template:Psprotected(edit talk links history) supposed to work, are the categories all that's needed? Omniplex 20:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I have nominated it for deletion. Superm401 - Talk 22:32, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Whether to revert

An anonymous user (70.125.20.22) left a particularly disgusting "question" regarding flatulence at Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Miscellaneous. I looked at the user's contributions, and it was clear the user was a vandal who had been vandalizing several pages. I removed the Reference Desk post as vandalism. User:Keenan Pepper restored the "question" as if it was a serious one, despite his doubts about the sincerity of the original post. I removed the question again and alerted the Keenan to the anonymous user's vandalism on other pages. Keenan then restored the question again, saying he prefers to answer the question seriously.

Who's right? While I don't think we necessarily ought to delete a Reference Desk question just because it's gross, I certainly think we should delete a question not left "in good faith." -- Mwalcoff 03:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the same basic idea as what's supposed to be done with edits from banned users could work: they are to be reverted without question, even if they are good edits, but another editor can "take responsability" for them, in which case they aren't to be reverted. In this particular case, I'd say the question should stay (Keenan has "taken the responsability" for it being still there). --cesarb 03:30, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Website articles

AfD gets a significant amount of websites on it. There are obviously people out there who are putting articles on Misplaced Pages about companies for $$$. These companies will get a Google PageRank boast for being linked to by Misplaced Pages. So, what I am proposing should deal to that. In the link, put rel="nofollow" so that Google bots know not to follow them. This can be done for all new links in Misplaced Pages. Then an admin could have the ability to remove the rel="nofollow" tag if they feel that the link is appropiate and not spam. This would reduce the gain from putting adverts on Misplaced Pages and thus, would reduce the number of adverts. This may require a software change, I don't really know. If it does, then it should be something to be thought about whenever the software is next updated. --Midnighttonight 03:49, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd never heard of 'rel="nofollow"' so I googled around to educate myself. It's explained here for example. (Actually, rather misexplained, as the article almost consistently uses the word "attribute" to mean not "attribute" but "value". The attribute is "rel"; what's proposed is a new understanding of the value "nofollow".) Putting aside software issues and the extra work it would mean for admins, this seems a superb idea. What I worry about, though, is the scope it would give for actual spammers, fanboy near-spammers, innocent apparent spammers and jes' plain good folks for banging on about how this or that link should be "de-nofollowed", and how this or that admin has behaved capriciously or unfairly in "de-nofollowing" link X and not link Y. -- Hoary 06:15, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the attribute is rel="nofollow". The attribute name is rel. </pedant> · rodii ·
I can see where you're coming from, but how much of a boost to a site's google ranking will one link from wikipedia actually give it? Before proceeding with this idea we need to decide if the problem is great enough to merit the extra work for Wikipedians that would result. Are there any particulary bad examples of abuse you can point to.Quarkstorm 14:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
A highly ranked site like Misplaced Pages can add a lot to a site's pagerank. The nofollow idea seems like a good one to me, but be warned, it's been discussed before: see , and see especially Jimbo's position on it . Based on that discussion, it just seems like it's not going to happen, though perhaps the case could be made that the situation has changed since the last time this was seriously considered. · rodii · 16:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

External Links

What are the rules for linking to discussion boards related to to the subject of an article. I have been told that this is not allowed, but having searched the guidelines I haven't been able to find anything refering to this. If anyone knows or can point me to the relevant policy guideline I'd be most grateful. Thanks.

Quarkstorm 13:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Unless the article is about the discussion board, I can't think of a single reason why it could be worth linking to. Martin 16:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I guess it's not allowed for one or more of a few reasons, all included in WP:EL: people often add links to discussion boards as a form of advertising; if the discussion board deals with personal experiences, then it potentially "contains factually inaccurate material or unverified original research"; anything that doesn't add unique and useful content, basically, is unhelpful. Ziggurat 18:27, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Material published elsewhere is not original research. However, random discussion board posts rarely present notworthy POV and may not be factually reliable. Superm401 - Talk 01:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Spacing of Disambig messages

I wanted clarification on how to space disambig messages on top of articles. It's been my preference to move them to the very top; so that articles like Benedict Arnold have their image moved down so it is in line with the text of the article, and the Disambig text is across the top. But I have come across this style so much; I'm wondering what the consensus was/is on this minor issue. - RoyBoy 20:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

RfC: Deletion review review?

An editor created "Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/John Bambenek" with the apparent belief that it can be used to overturn a consensus by the Misplaced Pages:Deletion review process. I've never heard of an RfC being used for that purpose. The editor does not suggest any change in policy, merely insists that existing notability guidelines were not followed. Regardless of the particulars of the matter, is an RfC the proper way to review deletion review? -Will Beback 01:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

RfCs, by long standing agreement, have no power to mandate anything. Thus they cannot overturn anything, either, imo. Personally, I'd prefer that RfC stayed away from the top of that slippery slope since things get bad enough there as it is. RfC is really intended as part of dispute resolution, and it's entirely unclear with whom the dispute is; the policies/guidelines themselves can't very well reply, being inanimate as they are. -Splash 01:41, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
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