Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new other than a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.

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Tor nodes

An ongoing discussion is in progress regarding adjusting the blocking policy in reference to TOR nodes. The discussion is here. Regards, M-ercury at 13:18, January 8, 2008

WP:RFC/U - time to get rid of it?

Moved from archive as it's premature to close this - future datestamp applied to make sure it isn't archived again - Will ^(talk) 17:51, 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. Will ^(talk) 17:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I personally preferred CSN better than RFC/U. D.M.N. (talk) 18:10, 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.marsh 18:28, 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.marsh 18:36, 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. Spartaz ^Humbug! 22:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Rlevse's and Spartaz's comments. --Iamunknown 00:39, 27 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.contribs 06:54, 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. Mangojuice^talk 15:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't really know what to think. The Wikipedia community hasn't shown itself to be anymore trustworthy than the Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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)

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. Jehochman ^Talk 14:05, 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. Will ^(talk) 00:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

SPCA, International

Eep! Forgot this was policy. Moving to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). superluser_tc 2008 February 20, 20:01 (UTC)

WP:NOT#MYSPACE

• Template:The First Signer of Guestbook Barnstar
• Template:AlcheMister barnstar

I would like to start a centralised discussion about this issue. I know that people often comment to the effect of "harmless", "builds community spirit" etcpp. I personally think that it's crap and should be deleted, with the positive side effect of possibly alienating one or two idiots who are only here to play the hidden page/link game or maintain their guestbooks. And I do think this is really one big issue. And awarding barnstars for such stuff is just outrageous. Imo. Comments? Dorftrottel (warn) 17:35, March 5, 2008

Agreed, both look like good candidates for speedy deletes. Oberiko (talk) 17:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I've been mildly disgusted by these for a while. Wikipedia isn't a game. Karanacs (talk) 18:20, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the second template to User:AlcheMister/AlcheMister barnstar, but neither are even remotely close to meeting a speedy deletion criteria. Mr.Z-man 18:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The first one should also be userfied. --SMS ^Talk 18:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

If the social material promotes a sense of well-being and community spirit which fosters article writing, then I am all for it. Not sure, are any folks who've given these ones been those who do article writing? [[::User:Casliber|Casliber]] ([[::User talk:Casliber|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Casliber|contribs]]) 06:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed solution: Create class of users that can have social networking content

Here is my proposed solution to this issue. Establish two classes of users:

• Class 1: Your userpage is restricted to Wikipedia-related content; no social networking MYSPACEy or blogging-type stuff allowed. But you get no advertisements.
• Class 2: You get a quota (e.g. 10 MB of space) to have all your images, subpages, etc. and you can do pretty much whatever you want (except copyvios, personal attacks, etc.) but any non-Wikipedia-related subpages will need to have Google-style text-based advertising on them. This will provide revenue to support traffic to these pages. We might even have a separate namespace for this type of content.

Everyone would start out in Class 1. You can upgrade to Class 2 at any time. To go back to Class 1, you need to get rid of your social networking stuff first. Actually, now that I think about it, we probably don't even need to have classes – just have a rule that any social networking-type subpages need to have the ads.

I'm sure we can find a compromise that accommodates everyone. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 21:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Why would we do that? The single largest cost to the Wikipedia Foundation is the technical costs - server resources and bandwidth. The community rejected advertising ages ago. If you want a MySpace profile, then why not try MySpace? Guy (Help!) 14:25, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• Hell no, for the exact same reasoning is Guy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a social networking site. Go register on Facebook if you want to network socially. Resolute 14:28, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• "Social networking" of a sort is inevitable, but it should ultimately be about wikipedia. In short, it should be the same rules as now. There's already a fair amount of latitude in personalizing user pages. Status quo seems to work fine. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 14:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• I see no need for encyclopedia users to downgrade to a Class 2 user. There are other sites for that. If WF wants to create a separate site as a fund raising tool, that's fine and good luck. -- SEWilco (talk) 14:37, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• Completely undermines WP:NOT - It would need to be fundamentally re-written. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 19:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

oppose - this is an encyclopaedia, anyone who fails to understand this after a couple of polite warning should be asked to leave. Why on earth would we voluntary want to fill up our servers with that type of crap? --Fredrick day (talk) 19:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply I agree that WP:NOT would need to be fundamentally rewritten, and I advocate that it be. And I'll use an example to illustrate why community-building content is important. Some people might say also that playing chess is a waste of server resources. But guess what, while I'm watching my watchlist to see if my opponent has moved, I'm also checking everything else, and if someone vandalizes one of my pages, I'll spot it. Or if someone responds to a discussion, I can reply to them, and we make progress faster. And rapport is built with other users, which in many cases leads to collaboration on encyclopedic subjects. So indirectly, the chess improves the quality of the encyclopedia. If I were over at Yahoo Chess doing that, then Wikipedia would not be getting those benefits. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Absolutely not. This is an encyclopedia. GlassCobra 20:13, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia has enough participation and man-hours already, and our priority is no longer to increase those numbers. But even disregarding that, the goal is to get and keep the right kind of people. If people come here so that they can play chess, there's a big question mark as to whether or not they'll ever be interested in writing an encyclopedia -- they could just as well play chess all day and waste resources. Whereas if we're purely just a big ol' boring encyclopedia, and people still come here nevertheless, the chances that our participants are interested in contributing increase significantly. Equazcion •✗/C • 22:23, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not at all clear on what problem this is intended to solve. Frankly, I think there's already a consensus that active, productive editors are allowed some leeway on the NOTMYSPACE thing, so I don't see a problem there. I don't think we want unproductive editors using Wikipedia as MySpace, whether or not there are associated ad revenues. Where's the problem? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

What about what happened to Vintei's shop? That guy was active and productive. Some people might specialize in the fun stuff and be a positive community-building influence. Kinda like how in our society, we have circus performers. Some people might say, Hey, these guys are not doing something productive. Oh, but they are. People who are employed doing other stuff can enjoy the carnival, and in fact the ability to spend money on fun stuff is part of the incentive to work.

But obviously people will say, "Well, if a user wants to only specialize in fun (community-building) stuff here, then take it off wiki." That's kinda like state governments that say, "We know we can't stop our citizens from gambling, but nonetheless, we don't want the casinos within our state lines." As long as they're going to do it anyway, wouldn't you want to be the ones to collect the tax revenues? If Vintei's stuff is going to make people happier here, and want to hang out more on Wikipedia, checking their watchlists and whatnot, then awesome. It doesn't matter whether he himself gets involved in building articles, etc.; he helps that happen indirectly.

We thrashed the community-building issues out on the MfD for Vintei's shop and many other places. But I think at this point, I've run out of arguments because it's just a battle of WP:EM vs. WP:NOT (as it currently stands) and we know which one is the trump card. By the way, I think the whole concept of "Wikipedia is an ENCYCLOPEDIA, NOT... (long string of things)" is somewhat fallacious because one could also argue, "Wikipedia is an ENCYCLOPEDIA, NOT a place for discussing encyclopedia policy," and vote to delete Village Pump. One might argue, "But the Village Pump, while it itself is not part of the encyclopedia, and attracts editor-hours that might otherwise be spent creating articles, it also indirectly helps the community and thus the article-creation process." Exactly – and that same argument could be used for keeping a lot of the MySpace-type stuff. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You're mistaking Wikipedia for the real world, or a society unto itself, in need of representation from all facets of an actual society, which we're not. We have a focused concern that is itself a part of the world. If a bunch of encyclopedia writers showed up at the circus tent demanding equal time, they'd likewise be told to get lost, 'cause that's not what circuses are for. We have our role and they have theirs. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:17, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

You may be missing my point. Here's an example that might be more apropos. I had a teacher who said that when she was in the corporate world, they appointed her the Vice President of Fun. Her job, apparently, was to figure out community-building stuff for the company to do. One might argue, that type of position is worthless; why not dispense with it? Apparently, they found it useful enough to keep. Similarly, we might have some users whose role is just to work on community-building stuff. If it helps bring in/retain editors, then it can be just as useful as someone who does stub-sorting, FA reviews, etc. We need all these specialists, including those who specialize in fun stuff. 1 Corinthians 12:17: "If the whole body [were] an eye, where [were] the hearing? If the whole [were] hearing, where [were] the smelling?" Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 01:50, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not missing your point. I'm disagreeing with you, like everyone else here. You need to re-read my reply from earlier above, that starts with "I think Wikipedia has enough participation and man-hours already, and our priority is no longer to increase those numbers..." as that paragraph answer these points you're making again for the second or third time. I completely understand your reasoning. I'm just saying you're wrong. This would not help us. Equazcion •✗/C • 02:08, 14 Mar 2008 (UTC)

OK, just making sure. The idea that Wikipedia has "enough" participation and man-hours is laughable. If there were, there wouldn't be gaping voids in the encylopedia's coverage. It's like saying that a company makes "enough" money or a charity feeds "enough" hungry people. That's only true if you reduce the scope of what you want to accomplish and arbitrarily set the bar at something less than its full potential. We haven't even covered the vital articles sufficiently. And guess what, it's the community's fault for driving people way with its wrongheaded, counterproductive philosophies that are often the antithesis of Wikipedia:Editors matter and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community. It's rather telling that both of those are essays at this point, rather than guidelines. They represent a minority view, unfortunately. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The idea that Wikipedia has enough man-hours is entirely justified and not contradicted by gaps in coverage. The gaps are generally the more uninteresting topics. The popular ones are always covered, and more people does not equal coverage of the uninteresting or unpopular -- because these are still people, and if you tell people they're free to work on whatever they want to, they most assuredly won't pick the boring stuff. So your logic is pretty laughable there. And guess what, it's not anyone's "fault" but Jimbo's for creating an encyclopedia written freely by people. And that's if it indeed is a "fault", which it isn't. Your conclusions are contrived according to the point you're trying to make, which masks any actual merit your point might have. Which is a shame, because it may have some. You're just not making any sense. Equazcion •✗/C • 10:07, 15 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Could it be that certain subjects that people are interested in aren't necessary ones that attract people to write on them for no remuneration? To take another real world example, there are some people who like to both play computer games and write the code; in fact, a lot of people will do it for free, as evidenced by all the freeware out there. And then you have fields like fast food, which a lot of people want to eat; but few people will volunteer to serve behind the counter at Burger World for no pay. Some of those vital articles are like that. The need for them has been recognized and they've been on the list for awhile (much like Top-Importance articles in certain WikiProjects that have made little progress), but most people don't feel like working on them. Now, if you throw a little compensation in there, maybe. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:37, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a little far-fetched to think people will consider themselves compensated. The scenario would have to be one where according your model, people are attracted to the site possibly for the social aspect, and then see articles (on boring things) that need attention -- and they, what, start working on them because they figure Wikipedia does so much for them already, allowing myspace content and all, so they feel compelled to write about those topics? Like, compensation before the fact? It's not very likely that would be much of a motivator. Except where a legal obligation exists, people generally work to get compensation, they don't work because they've already been compensated. Not that the allowance of myspace content would even be considered any kind of reward to anyone, no matter when in this scheme they would receive it. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:56, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

This is sort of already done. See: Wikia. They use adverts to cover the costs. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

no they use ads to generate revenue and make a profit - the intention in no way, shape or or form is to 'cover costs'. --Fredrick day (talk) 22:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I admit I'm very green. I've only been running a company for approximately a year now. Making a profit doesn't cover your costs imply your costs are already covered? --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:17, 14 March 2008 (UTC) I may need to call my accountant again...

Profit is what's left after you've covered your costs. So you're both wrong. Ads cover the costs and make them a profit. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:23, 14 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Oops. A bit too fast with the humorous reply there... --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:54, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Got to watch out for that "sense of humor," Kim. How are others to know you aren't mocking them? Making fun of their serious comments. Sarcastically demeaning their lack of real business experience. Etc. Of course, you wouldn't do that. Sophisticated incivility: hold up a mirror. "Trolling," it will be called.--Abd (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Mmmm I didn't find Kim's comment trolly... I think most people knew it was humor... lighten up dude... Equazcion •✗/C • 02:37, 14 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Kinda backfired, didn't it? :-P Oh well, live and learn -- Brown Paper Bag 02:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

sorry I've only run for-profit business for over 40 years, so I'm afraid I miss gags from people who've only done it for less than five years (or bankrupts as we call them in the business) ;-) --Fredrick day 02:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah everyone who's only been running a business for less than 5 years must be bankrupt. That makes sense. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:27, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

It was a joke - most SMEs go bust with 5 years (according to the stats in my country). --Fredrick day 11:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

<snicker> I think we've both now made total fools of ourselves :-P --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, this is supposed to be a solution, but... what's the problem that its trying to solve? Also, ads on a handful of userpages wouldn't make much money, especially since they'd probably be fairly random. And 10MB of space is fairly pointless, even if the final total is 10MB, there might be 1000MB in old revisions to get to the final pages. Mr.Z-man 02:49, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The web hosting costs for myspace-type content on people's userpages is also negligible, but I think people object to hosting it because the principle of the thing. The advertising is more symbolic than anything. I'm just throwing out ideas in an attempt to reconcile the two concerns of not wanting to be people's free web host, and people wanting to have that content. Do you have any ideas, or is it going to be that old standby, "What we have now works fine"? That seems to be the "rough consensus" of those who haven't already left in disgust over how things work here. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia. Aside from the resource consumption issue, the reason for not allowing myspace-type content is that we don't want to encourage a change in focus. People serious about writing an encyclopedia may not want to deal with people who come here to chat with their friends and play games -- and it's the serious people who will be the most valuable toward our goal. Again, if we know everyone who comes here is coming as a result of seeing purely an encyclopedia, then we know to some degree certain things about what they'll be doing here. Your "manager of fun" example doesn't apply to Wikipedia -- Corporate employees are stuck at the workplace all day and benefit from having fun things specifically made available to them through the company. Wikipedia is a website you access from wherever you happen to be for as long as you want. You're not "stuck" within the Wikipedia website for an 8-hour day, and if nothing fun happens on Wikipedia, you simply have no fun for 8 hours. If Wikipedians want to participate in mysapce-type acticities while at Wikipedia, guess what? They can. Simply open two browsers. You seem think there are only two types of users, those who "left in disgust" and those who believe in keeping things as archaic as possible. That's pure conjecture. You're inventing a "problem" that needs to be "solved" based on the disgruntled people who left. For any given institution, especially one as large as Wikipedia, there will be plenty of ex-members who feel that their departure was caused by something being "wrong". Why would you base your attitude on them? They're not more objective just because they're now outside the system. In fact they're less so, because they were members, and only the ones who've had bad experiences. You're basically coming at this from an entirely unbalanced perspective. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:58, 15 Mar 2008 (UTC)

The community is opposed to myspace-y content and ads, so the solution to a problem invented by people who are no longer here is to combine them? Ads on a few userpages would still have a negative effect on the part of the community that is opposed to ads, with minimal benefit (revenue). Mr.Z-man 22:54, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Why do we prohibit making friends again?

In the course of being so vehemently against "the myspaceification of Wikipedia", it seems as though we're continuing to depersonalize editors and perpetuating the bitter disputes and arguments that plague the project. I don't see how it's harmful for users to publish information about themselves and their likes/dislikes, or have conversations with each other that (god forbid) don't relate directly to the project. Can someone explain this one to me?

Feel free to block me or report me to the Arbitration Committee for even suggesting it, but I think it might actually be beneficial to the project if it were set up as a social network. Someone gets pissed off at you while working on an article together, visits your talk page to chew you out, and then realizes you actually have some things in common. You're not such a bad guy after all, and they end up leaving a relatively friendly message instead of a "civil" one. I don't know. I just think it would help to defuse the constant tension that surrounds editing if Wikipedia were more... friendly.

(Also, I highly doubt this has anything to do with server load, and everything to do with comments like Dorftrottel's. As I understand, 99% of the server load is serving cached pages to unregistered users. Generating pages from scratch for logged-in users takes a lot more server resources per page, but we do it anyway because the amount of "registered user content" is much smaller than the amount of data being sent to unregistered users. Some graphs would be helpful here.) — Omegatron 04:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you're mistaking "Don't spend all your time editing your user space" with "Don't edit your user space". Lots of editors choose to have some information about themselves on their user pages, but if an editor is spending the majority of the time on social interests as opposed to project building, that's a concern. Shell ^babelfish 04:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a volunteer effort. It doesn't have to be MySpace, but if Wikipedia editing and other encyclopedia-maintaining activities become a grind, with no rewards or human interaction to be found, then it isn't WP:FUN. If we lose the human aspect, we will lose (as we have lost) editors. See also WP:EM. I nearly quit after a couple of weeks because I was witnessing a lot of acrimony. There didn't seem to be enough positive reinforcement and pleasant interaction with other human beings to mitigate the animosity and petty bickering I was seeing between other editors. Jonneroo (talk) 05:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Once again, see Shell's response. You're allowed to interact and have fun. You just can't spend all your time in userspace. Equazcion •✗/C • 12:17, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I have nominated the template for deletion, since the conversation here seems to have wandered somewhere elseWikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:The_Guestbook_Barnstar --Enric Naval (talk) 12:45, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

“The battle for Wikipedia's soul”

• http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789354

“ Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia between “inclusionists”, who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and “deletionists” who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries. ”

Edit point

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 ^chi? 03:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

We want to evaluate each case separately. Nokmar (talk) 03:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the community should read false dilemma. Postdlf (talk) 03:48, 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". Wikipedia 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. Resolute 04:07, 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, Wikipedia is for a layman's audience. It isn't for profs at the University of Washington trying to make foot warmers out of nosehairs. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 04:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Those young people you speak of should visit Wikipedia 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. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 04:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I know they study them. I don't think that they should, but they do.--Awareshiftjk (talk) 05:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Are we talking about the same articles? -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 05:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Footwarmers out of nosehairs? What class do they teach that in? -- RoninBK _{T C} 04:17, 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 Wikipedia as a battleground, or should we keep them and invalidate your very point? -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 04:50, 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. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 05:23, 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. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 05:42, 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)

And playing it? Pokémon is, believe it or not, a video game first and animé second. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 07:23, 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia from the rest.. -- RoninBK _{T C} 04:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

In other words, we need both inclusionists and deletionists so we end up with a straight pole. Gwinva (talk) 04:26, 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 Wikipedia, which at first will seem like the inclusionists won, but will be quickly followed by the loss of Wikipedia'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 ^chi? 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. --MASEM 14:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 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 ^chi? 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. --MASEM 18:46, 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 ^chi? 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. --MASEM 22:14, 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-Cocks 22:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

betterer? or more better? :) Sbowers3 (talk) 00:10, 10 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia.

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. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 05:14, 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. --MASEM 05:43, 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 ^chi? 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". --MASEM 14:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Right polularity and etc, which are not the same as notability. It is a poor metric for notability. -- Cat ^chi? 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. --MASEM 19:20, 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-Cocks 13:43, 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 Wikipedia". 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)

I particularly liked the part about "the biggest leaf pile anyone had ever seen." --Pixelface (talk) 07:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I liked "When, last year, some computer scientists at the University of Minnesota studied millions of Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia—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.

It is important to note that different sections on WP:NOT (WP:NOT#PAPER, WP:NOT#OR, WP:NOT#MANUAL, WP:NOT#INFO (often linked to as WP:NOT#NEWS or WP:NOT#PLOT)) are not in conflict with each other.

-- Cat ^chi? 10:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

White Cat, this didn't seem to be a problem until recently. I don't know that for certain, but I used Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia supports Inclusionism. And why shouldn't he? If you want to promote your business, use Wikipedia for political propaganda, dump fan analysis on Wikipedia, 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 Wikipedia 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.

-- Cat ^chi? 17:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

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? -- RoninBK _{T C} 21:53, 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 ^chi? 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 Wikipedia, 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. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 19:27, 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 Falcon ^(Talk) 20:36, 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. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 21:01, 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 Falcon ^(Talk) 22:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, Oberiko. Also, what you just said is now a part of WP:FICT: Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Relocating non-notable fictional material

It might be good to add a "move it elsewhere" section to WP:NOTABILITY, period. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 21:54, 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 ^chi? 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 Falcon ^(Talk) 20:36, 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. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v :L13 ½-Raichu Soulknife)} 20:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

You came this close to owing me a new keyboard for the Daikatana line... -- RoninBK _{T C} 22:15, 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 Falcon ^(Talk) 22:37, 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-Cocks 13:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

"The result is that novices can quickly get lost in Wikipedia'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. "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without deletion" you say, but I've heard that before: "Wikipedia won't be able to survive without Esperanza" and "Wikipedia 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? ;-) )

--Kim Bruning (talk) 22:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC) "bureaucracy, what bureaucracy? he said... while ripping it out and stuffing it under the carpet.

Oh I don't know. Wikipedia 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 ^chi? 21:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that what you want may be a change in attitudes, rather than just a change in structure... Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

What are the main arguments for deletion?

I can understand the need to prune articles that fall into Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia'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 Wikipedia should be, and that people contribute for different reasons. There's two extreme points of view:

• Should Wikipedia aim to be a h2g2-style all-encompassing Wiki of all human knowledge? (An extreme "inclusionist" philosophy, or a "Wiki" philosophy)
• Should Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia'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)

IMHO: It is a noble (and perhaps even achievable) goal to have Wikipedia 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. Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia - 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

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:

1. Technical limitations: Since disc space and bandwidth isn't free, this is always our overriding concern, though it grows less significant each year
2. Verifiability: Each article (and fact therein) has to be verifiable from a reputable source
3. Privacy: No personal information (SIN, phone number, address etc.) can be posted unless such information is intentionally or well-known public knowledge
4. 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 Wikipedia 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)

Wiki is not paper

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. — Omegatron 00:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Wikipedia 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?--Nydas^(Talk) 21:02, 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)^Until 21:06, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

That argument is tautological, since we're actively redefining what encyclopedic means.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they do cause harm, the very instant anyone out there decides not to donate because of legitimate concerns that Wikipedia 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. — Omegatron 01:42, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't say for sure that "inclusionism" has caused Wikipedia to lose fundraising money, but there's at least one case where "deletionism" has cost us money: [1] [2].

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)

It was big in spirit.--Father Goose (talk) 04:00, 26 March 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. — Omegatron 23:35, 26 March 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.

Wikipedia:Requests for remedies - possible solution to dispute resolution scaling problems

Please review and tweak: Wikipedia:Requests for remedies. A very simple three-step system that can make trusted, final decisions on very tricky or complex matters, based on evaluations from trusted, uninvolved users on a given case in the dispute resolution process. It does add new process, but not many layers, or particularly complex layers by any stretch of the imagination. It's built entirely around consensus and the idea of certification, and is the opposite of Votes For Banning. Please weigh in at Wikipedia talk:Requests for remedies. The community needs a way to move forward in a trusted, fair manner on high-end, complex problems that are either unworkable for normal WP:AN, WP:ANI, or WP:RFC to handle, or that the Arbitration Committee can't take on, or that the Arbitration Committee relegates back to the Community. Lawrence § t/e 22:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure what problems exactly cannot be covered by WP:AN, WP:ANI, WP:RFC, WP:MC, and WP:ARBCOM (feel free to edit my comment and add more). I don't know about you, but I think the number of problems those 5 proccesses cannot handle seems pretty small to me. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 01:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

None of those scale. That's why.

Examples of scaling systems are Mediation Cabal (originated as an emergency measure when Mediation Committee stalled, and the Arbitration Committee almost followed), third opinion (similar to MEDCAB... actually predates it slightly IIRC), and Editor Assistence (created when the non-scaling Association of Members Advocates finally failed)

A scaling supplement/replacement/backup for Arbcom would be kind of nice. I've bookmarked the page. --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay then: I am not sure what problems exactly cannot be covered by WP:MEDCAB, WP:MC, WP:ARBCOM, WP:3O, and WP:EA (feel free to edit my comment and add more). I don't know about you, but I think the number of problems those 5 proccesses cannot handle seems pretty small to me. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 02:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is specifically the Arbitration Committee, which is not designed to scale. Lawrence Cohen is trying to think of a drop-in-replacement/backup/supplement to precisely the arbitration committee; and his objective is to come up with something that does scale. His proposal may or may not be it, but it's interesting nevertheless. --Kim Bruning (talk) 03:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC) the reason why scalability is the holy grail is a topic too large to fit in this margin. ;-)

(outdent) And anything, at all, that will do any kind of role AND scale as we require like this will require new process. I'm keeping it deliberately simple on the proposal as much as possible. Everyone please read the talk page there. It's really a very, very simple process: you ask for Remedies to be generated--a Request for Remedies. A consensus of uninvolved users has to certify your request as valid. The team of the elected/trusted Remedy Committee then--but only the uninvolved Committee members, recusal is compulsory!--drafts up a set of "suggested" remedies based on the certified request (all this by the way needs no "clerks" or anything like that--its not like anyone here is above hitting "copy/paste" once a week). They post the suggested remedies then go to the RfR, and the wider community, *all* users, weigh in and certify any valid suggestions. Certified/supported consensus remedies go into effect. It's basically an attempt to leash and focus mob rule into something that works, is scalable, is fair (the limitations on involved users), and will have the benefit of simple, rigorous consensus checks to go into effect so no one can complain about getting railroaded. Lawrence § t/e 05:12, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

A committee is a central point of failure, and will not scale well. Can you eliminate? --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Good summary posted

This was added to the WP:REMEDY proposal today:

Request for remedies as a part of dispute resolution

The RfR process comes after venues such as mediation (formal, or informal), third opinion, administrator noticeboards (any), and requests for comment, but before the Arbitration Committee. It is a framework for generating an unbiased, neutral, and fair solution to a dispute. The committee will take a complaint certified by the community. It will provide a suggested solutions, based on policy, precedent and good practice.

Request for remedies is intended to complement the existing dispute resolution process by addressing three basic points:

1. Are the issues portrayed valid and accurately portrayed?
2. What are the best solutions and remedies to these problems, if they are valid?
3. Does the community support these suggested remedies?

Lawrence § t/e 16:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Deleting perfectly good articles is a bad idea

I'm sure this kind of opinion has been expressed to the death already, but I'm going to write it anyways.

While wikipedia is one of the greatest resources in the internet, I strongly oppose its braindead policy of attempting to be a "serious encyclopedia". Wikipedia is excellent exactly because it's possible to find information which you can't find in a normal encyclopedia. In my opinion wikipedia should be a collection of facts and articles, not an "encyclopedia".

I strongly oppose most of the article deletion policies at wikipedia. Perfectly good articles which do not t offend anyone and have nothing questionable in them are being deleted. Why? Who does it hurt to have such articles at wikipedia? Nobody is going to get offended, and it bothers nobody if such articles exist. In a physical book it would be understandable because you have very limited space. However, who does it hurt at wikipedia?

For example, recently the article "Silent protagonist" was removed. Why? It's a perfectly good article which doesn't hurt anyone, so why remove it? It may be interesting for someone to read, so why not have it? In the past the article "toki pona" was removed (later restored, for whatever reason). Why it was removed? Who does it hurt to have such an article? There are certainly tons of existing articles which are not removed and which are way worse and way less interesting and contain way less facts than these.

Wopr (talk) 12:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Silent protagonist was deleted as a result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Silent protagonist (2nd nomination). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so many things that do not belong in an encyclopedia (such as Silent protagonist) are excluded or removed. While it may be interesting to some, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and as such does not publish original research (OR) or original thought. . Wikipedia:No original research (NOR) is one of three content policies. The others are Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (NPOV) and Wikipedia:Verifiability (V). Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable for inclusion.--Hu12 (talk) 14:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Wopr is already aware that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (hence "I strongly oppose its braindead policy of attempting to be a serious encyclopedia"). Wopr, if you oppose Wikipedia's attempt at being an encyclopedia, I'd say that's a perfectly reasonable suggestion that many have made before. Perhaps someday it will be something different. For now it doesn't really seem like most of the people who currently participate would agree with you. I'd suggest working from the inside-out, trying to make small changes gradually. A suggestion that everything needs to change completely probably won't have any effect. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:56, 17 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Without having seen the article, it sounds like it might better have been interwikied to Uncyclopedia or Wikibooks. WP:NOR doesn't mean don't do it, just don't do it on WP.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

If it was deleted after an AFD, then there was a consensus that it was not "perfectly good." Mr.Z-man 17:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced original research fails the core policy at WP:V. Corvus cornix_talk 19:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a perfectly good article which doesn't hurt anyone, so why remove it? - If you're not happy with what Wikipedia does and doesn't allow, your alternatives are (a) to try to change the relevant policies or (b) be a contributor at an alternative website. Complaining (here) about a specific article isn't going to get policy changed. And keep in mind that per WP:NOT, Wikipedia doesn't try to be all things for all people. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like an article that was killed because of arbitary time limits and google-centric thinking. If there was a morass of video game related trivia, the correct response would be to stubify it.--Nydas^(Talk) 21:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The damning problem appears to be that no one could show that the organizing concept—"silent protagonist"—was documented as a term of art or distinct concept rather than just a pairing of two words in their ordinary meaning. The deleted history of the article is retrievable by any admin, if anyone can show cause to resurrect it through actual sources and a valid WP:DRV argument. An AFD is always good occasion for article supporters to "put up or shut up." If the authors can't do so, they clearly didn't base it upon anything reliable, so we might as well start over rather than keep up something clearly invalid and unsupported. Postdlf (talk) 22:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Gazimoff's submission near the end has two reliable sources.--Nydas^(Talk) 22:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

This seems to fall squarely into the realm of a neologism, or even a protologism. Out of those sources, only one looked even remotely like satisfying WP:RS. -- Kesh (talk) 21:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What makes those reliable sources? Corvus cornix_talk 22:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

One is an article on Gamasutra, an award-winning games development site, the other is an article on Gamernode, which looks like a respectable games site. What makes these unreliable sources?--Nydas^(Talk) 09:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Are they peer reviewed? Corvus cornix_talk 18:23, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I dunno. Are IGN and Gamespot peer-reviewed? Is the BBC peer-reviewed? They have editors, if that helps.--Nydas^(Talk) 11:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if Gamespot is peer-reviewed, I don't know if it's a reliable source, either. Of course the BBC is peer reviewed. If we can't get answers to the question, then we can't assume the sources are reliable. Corvus cornix_talk 16:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Sources don't have to be peer-reviewed. If you think they should be, take it to the relevant policy pages. Otherwise, it's just special pleading.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:When to cite has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:When to cite (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It's back to an essay - see Wikipedia:When to cite#essay or guideline? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:21, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Locking Featured Articles

Is there any material / prior discussions available concerning potentially locking articles after they've been approved for FA? If not, I'd like to propose it.

I've found (in my limited experience) that articles tend to go downhill after reaching FA. The process to get them to that point tends to weed out NPOV, bloat, cruft and unsourced claims; after that though, further additions are not as vigorously scrutinized.

My proposal would be basically as such:

• FAs should get an additional tab, "Featured", which is permanently protected.
  • The "Featured" tab, in addition to having the star on the top-right corner, would also have the last date at which it became featured / re-featured.
• The "Article" tab would be replaced with a "Draft" tab, which would behave exactly the same as the existing "Article" tab, with the exception of a small notification that the page contains changes since the article became featured.
• Users who are not logged-in are by default taken to the "Featured" page when viewing the article in question.
• Logged-in users are by default taken to the "Draft" tab, though they can change this in their preferences.
• Administrators are advised not to make changes to FAs without consensous on the talk page / associated WikiProject
• In the case of a large re-rewrite, the "Draft" article would have to go through the FA process again in order to replace the existing FA.
• The "Featured" tab would have its own history, much the same as our articles and discussions do today.

Any thoughts? Oberiko (talk) 19:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This sounds a little bit like what stable versions is supposed to be, but with a new process added for Featured Articles. The Placebo Effect (talk) 19:49, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I would be absolutely and strongly opposed; FA doesn't necessarily equal perfect or completely finished (consider Barack Obama), and consensus changes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I realize that situations change, and that nothing's perfect; that's the reason why I'd include a "Draft" tab for continuing development. My line of thinking is that right now, being featured doesn't mean much; the first edit taken after an article has been made so is one that wasn't reviewed by the same standard.

To me, featured means "This page, as it stands at the moment, meets the criteria we've set out to determine excellence." Is it still applicable a month later? A year later?

But, you do bring up a valid point. There are featured articles which are in fluctuation. In that case, I'd think we'd need "Featured-stable" (FS) and "Featured-unstable" (FN). FN articles would be the exact same as our current FAs. FS articles would have to meet all the criteria of FA articles and have to be about a topic which is relatively unlikely to change in the immediate future: i.e. a historical place / event, mathmatical formula etc.. Oberiko (talk) 20:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This page, as it stands at the moment, meets the criteria we've set out to determine excellence is far stronger than most FAs deserve; it's closer to This page now has no glaring embarassments which are obvious to a handful of editors who know little or nothing about the subject. Please do not assume that they warrant any special treatment. (And do remember that it is always possible to revert back to the passed version if, as is possible, that is the best thing to do.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:52, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't like protecting FAs at their point of promotion - take, for example, this, which has undergone some prose tightening, structural changes, category addition all since its promotion. Will ^(talk) 21:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Bad idea. This ought to be in Wikipedia:Perennial proposals 'cause versions of it come up quite often. Both the GA and FA process record - for all to see - the version of the article when it became GA or FA. But Wikipedia is a work in progress. There is no perfect article. Wikipedia editors can always work to improve the article. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 21:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I oppose. Consensus of what an FA is can change and Wikipedia is meant to be dynamic, not showing something depending on an admin's whim. An FA on a living person will have to drastically change when they pass away. Alientraveller (talk) 21:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Alright, if the locking-idea is to inhibiting, how about a tab on the top called "promoted" that links to the promoted-version of the article in the articles history? I think that'd still accomplish the main goals without interfering at all with our regular process and make it easy for editors to quickly see what the article was like at the time of promotion. Oberiko (talk) 22:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

On the talk page of the article, in the article history banner, there is a link to the promoted version. Something like an obvious 'promoted version' tab has been suggested before. It is a good idea. Another good idea is to make the permanent link button to the left far more obvious: see Help:Page history#Linking to a specific version of a page. This would help greatly in allowing people to cite Wikipedia properly. Both ideas requite a developer / programmer and consensus. For whatever reason, it isn't happening; just like the user friendly editing environment that has been vaporware for a year now. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 22:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Because even the promoted version, which is already available as a link in the articlehistory template, isn't necessarily the best version of the article. Also, if we were to implement this proposal (which will never happen, but for the sake of discussion), then what are you going to do, go back to FAC each time you want to update the protected version? Completely impractical proposal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:38, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

• I never knew about the link, so I'm willing to bet many others don't either.
• As pointed out, we already have the link, all we'd be doing is making it faster and easier to access
• Should there be multiple promotions, then we can have a history on the promoted tab to show them.

What's so impractical about any of that? Oberiko (talk) 23:50, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I plan to be doing a writeup explaining {{Articlehistory}} in the WP:SIGNPOST soon. Multiple promotions? FAC reviewers are bustin' their buns already; they don't need more work. If an article deteriorates, it goes to WP:FAR, and yes, that is also a tab in articlehistory. Yes, this is a very old, recycled discussion, and most FAC reviewers and FA writers know it's just not workable. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Multiple promotions as in FA, FAR then FA again. I'm still not sure why a link to the promoted version is "unworkable". It's just saving me the effort of going to the talk page, expanding the history template, and then clicking the link. Cutting from several clicks to one and making it readily available to editors. Oberiko (talk) 01:25, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no reason for the featured link to be available from the main article to our general readership; it's not necessarily the best version. Wiki editors can find it on the talk page; our general readership doesn't need it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

So, you're saying that the article we promoted is basically irrelevant? Oberiko (talk) 02:14, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

No, that it may have improved after promotion, so the promoted version is not the best. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:23, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• This old proposal is being recycled? Surely not. It's unworkable and will lead to the atrophy of FAs. The whole idea of WP is that all articles be constantly upgradable and improvable. Tony (talk) 00:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Can you expand on how a quick link to the historically promoted FA atrophies articles? Oberiko (talk) 01:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

About "featured article rot": I don't deny there's such a thing, but it's not as much of a problem as some people make it out to be. Out of the 2462 articles that have ever had featured status, 1953 still do. 538 pages have been de-featured, and if we subtract the 29 re-featured pages that makes 509. In other words, just 21% of historically featured articles are no longer featured. While it would be wonderful if those 509 articles were still featured, 509 fewer FAs don't pose a grave danger to the encyclopedia.

Regardless, locking featured articles wouldn't prevent "featured article rot". What we call "rot" is often caused by rising standards, not by a decline in quality. For example, many articles lose featured status because they lack inline citations, which were rare in Wikipedia's early days. Standards could change even more in the future, and locking the articles would prevent needed improvements in such cases. szyslak (t) 05:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've got that having articles locked is considering stagnating. What I'm proposing now is a quick, readily available link to the historical article. Something we already have access to, just more prominent. Oberiko (talk) 10:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

You say the link on the talk page isn't prominent enough. Is seeing the "original featured version" so important to our general readership that an extra tab on the article page is necessary? As SandyGeorgia pointed out above, the "original featured version" isn't always the best. We have featured articles about people, such as Gerald Ford, who died after the article's promotion. The "original featured version" was written when he was still alive. And as I pointed out above, most featured articles don't deteriorate in quality as time goes on. In fact, many of them improve, especially when they're featured on the Main Page. szyslak (t) 11:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

"Feature Article rot" is a problem, but is even less of a problem than Szyslak's statistics imply. Many of the de-featured articles lost FA status because the criteria were raised, not because they deteriorated. For example, if an article was featured before in-line citations became the norm, then it may lack them. Unless someone is willing to go back and insert citations, the article will eventually loose FA status, without having deteriorated in quality. Dsmdgold (talk) 00:38, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Since 99.9% of anonymous IP users are vandals, why not just protect all FAs from being edited by anonymous, or new users? This would keep the vandalism down, and hopefully keep the damage down by the POV pushers to a minimum.

Of course, a better idea would be to just block anonymous IPs from editing in the first place, but unfortunately, that idea is unlikely to get past the cabal,... Dr. Cash (talk) 14:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

You grossly overestimate the figure - it's actually 21%,[3] which is why this is such a bad idea. Hut 8.5 16:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• Locking down FAs is a really bad idea. Articles are improved after promotion; in fact, there are several users who go around and improve articles after promotion (MisfitToys comes immediately to mind), so locking articles would prevent them from improving the pages. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 16:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

True, articles are improved after becoming FA, so I agree that locking them down completely isn't the best solution. But I still think that something needs to be done about the Anon Vandal problem; I see such pussies that try to hide behind their so-called IP address as never legitimately adding anything constructive to the article, and they should not have any rights whatsoever in this encyclopedia. Dr. Cash (talk) 17:03, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Featured Articles are amongst Wikipedia's most watched ones, especially by the WikiProjects that have done the most work to get them to FA status in the first place. Vandalism is more likely to be reverted immediately or almost immediately there than in most other articles. True, it takes up some resources that could be better used elsewhere, but that's the situation all around the encyclopaedia anyway. Bottom line, vandalism is not a major issue as far as the quality of FAs is concerned. Waltham, The Duke of 17:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

In light of recent events, what about indefinite move-protection the default for featured articles? Gimmetrow 06:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This is proposed so often as to be a perennial proposal (someone ought to add it to that page). Usual arguments against: featured articles are improved and expanded during and after their time being featured (there's no such thing as a "finished" article), they need to be updated in response to changes to the topic itself, and semiprotection is easily circumvented by people seeking high-profile vandalism. I'd also argue that deterioration is, in general, not a big deal, because when constructing a static version for publication we can go back in time to the peak of quality and grab that version. Dcoetzee 17:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:PEREN

At the risk of keeping this silly discussion going, how about if we add something like this to WP:PEREN? This would also cover the related proposal to protect the Main Page featured article while it's live.

• Proposal: To maintain their high quality and/or prevent vandalism, featured articles should be protected or semi-protected, either permanently or when featured on the Main Page.
• Reason for previous rejection: Featured articles often improve in quality rather than deteriorating, especially when displayed on the Main Page. On a related note, a featured article is not a "finished" article. Not only do they need further editing in response to changes in the topic itself, our standards for featured articles change over time. For example, in Wikipedia's early days most featured articles did not use in-text citations; today, such an article would have no chance at gaining featured (or good article) status. While some featured articles deteriorate in quality, this is not a widespread problem; only about one-fifth of historically featured articles have been de-featured. In regards to vandalism, our featured articles are among the most-watched pages on Wikipedia. Semi-protection and blocks are more than adequate to deal with featured article vandalism.
• See also: Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection

szyslak (t) 04:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Featured articles often improve in quality rather than deteriorating, especially when displayed on the Main Page. - That is, as best as I can tell, both misleading and possibly untrue. First, there is a huge difference between semi-protection and full protection of Main Page articles - while there is some support for the former, there is virtually none for the latter. So combining the two types of protection into one, and making a generalization about the pair, is essentially a straw man argument. In addition, I know of no study that shows any substantial increase in quality of Main Page articles during their 24 hours, but several editors (myself included) did a study of IP edits (in December 2006, for a week) that clearly showed that the vast majority of IP edits to MPAs were vandalism; only a small percentage were in good faith, and most of those were either reverting vandalism or were themselves reverted as not being all that helpful. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:29, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Advertising

Sorry if this has ended up the wrong slot. I couldn't find one specific to the subject and thought this was close.

A recent news story mentioned that the Wikipedia community was debating the issue of raising funding through advertising. I think this could be done in an innocuous and user-helpful way.

You could have a "Related Advertising" link in the left frame that opens a page with links to ads that pertain to the subject.

I'd like to be able to see ads that relate to articles. For instance, when reading up on Romania, I may want to see tourism information and what tour packages are available. If researching solar heating systems, I'd likely want to see ads pertaining to those products.

Advertising could be a useful adjunct to Wikipedia.

--Jm1248 (talk) 13:03, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Never going to happen. Dsmdgold (talk) 15:41, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

'Nuff said. Waltham, The Duke of 21:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

No opinion on the issue but there's a page on advertisements on Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Advertisements. x42bn6 Talk Mess 03:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

For more information, see Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Advertising. If you want to see ads about Romanian tour packages, you can go to Google and type "romanian tourism" or something of that nature. szyslak (t) 12:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Apparently, Facebook users have been polled by someone if Wikipedia should carry advertising see Page at Meta. DuncanHill (talk) 02:38, 29 March 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 Wikipedia article about them.

So, without further ado..

User:SirFozzie/BLP-Lock

The basics:

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)

Discussion and proposals on protecting biographies.

SirFozzie has written a few proposals here that involve protecting biographies of living people upon request. I've also written a different set of criteria for article protection here. It'd be great if we could get some more input about this from a wider range of people... please take a look if you have time. Please comment there to keep things centralised. Thanks! -- Naerii 04:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I am ambivalent about this proposal. To put things in perspective, you may want to read this post] by Robert Spencer on his blog Jihad Watch, about his WP biography. On the one hand, celebrities with strong opinions have a lot of enemies and need help for the sake of freedom of speech. On the other hand, he should just get himself a username and watch the few pages about him and his work. Emmanuelm (talk) 15:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Outside opinions requested

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I have received a satisfactory answer on a different page, and am content to shelve this thread. If anyone wants to reopen it, go ahead.--Father Goose (talk) 11:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I'm in the midst of a dumb little dispute and would like some outside opinions.

1. Should new Wikipedia essays not be put in the Wikipedia: namespace?
2. Is not personally notifying another user of a revert (in this case a pagemove) an "issue"?

This is in reference to this conversation, if you're curious.--Father Goose (talk) 07:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If you think the dispute is dumb, just ignore it. Dorftrottel (troll) 09:26, March 22, 2008

I think he meant insignificant, obvious, something whose answer has already been established. Not derogatorily "dumb" per se. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:37, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I think I do understand what he meant, thanks. Anyway, what is the "established answer"? That aggressive behaviour prevails. Different day, same shit. In other words: Heil! Dorftrottel (canvass) 09:44, March 22, 2008

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Gallery Policy?

I'm a bit confused on when it is alright to use a gallery on an article page. Some pages have them, some don't. Personally, I find no need for them now that you can easily link to a Wikimedia Commons page that basically is a gallery of images for that specific article. Also, some pages have a gallery AND a link to a Wikimedia Commons page which seems rather redundant. What is the policy here? Can I move the images from the article gallery to the Commons page in order to streamline everything? Thanks Torsodog (talk) 08:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Do what you want, others will tell you if they like it or not. When I created the indoor bonsai article, I decided that a combination of plain images and image gallery was the best, so that's what I did. And no, we do not need more policies. Emmanuelm (talk) 15:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Current interpetation of policy is that, as a rule galleries cannot be stand alone articles. Otherwise, galleries should be used when they will help readers better understand the subject of the article. When they don't add anything, then don't use them. The existence of a gallery on Commons, is in my opinion, irrelevent. Dsmdgold (talk) 18:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Mirroring wikipedia with lots of ads?

Hi,

from googling, I found a strange mirror site [4], which mirrors all articles in wikipedia (in all languages). It also contains lots of google's adaware ads. Does it comply with GFDL (of course it contains non-free use of many things also)? Ugha (talk) 09:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Inherent Notability

OK, this is my first posting to the Village Pump so I hope I am doing this right. As requested before posting here I've been reading (lots of) WP policies and guidelines, searching WP essays and FAQs, and asking questions on various talk pages. I still need the community's help. I think the following is correct and would really appreciate constructive feedback to confirm or correct my understanding.

As I understand things...

• Main (stand alone) articles must be both verifiable and notable (WP:V & WP:N), but individual sections inside main articles do not need to have self-notability of their specific subject matter:

  "Verifiable facts and content not supported by multiple independent sources may be appropriate for inclusion within another article." [5]

• According to WP:Article size (WP:SIZE) and the WP:BETTER and WP:SPLIT guidelines an article that becomes too long should be broken into smaller pieces (called "subarticles" or "spinouts") for inmproved readability and navigation.

• A problem then arises when one of these subarticles was fine as a section using only primary sources for citation but now does not meet the criteria of notability as a stand alone article.

• WP:V policy section 2.4 (aka WP:SELFPUB) states:

  Material from self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources in articles about themselves, so long as:

1. 1. it is relevant to their notability;
   2. it is not contentious;
   3. it is not unduly self-serving;
   4. it does not involve claims about third parties;
   5. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;
   6. there is no reasonable doubt as to who authored it;
   7. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

The way I read all of this stuff is that:

• A specific section within a main article which uses only reliable primary sources is OK.
• A section may become a spinout or subarticle (and should include the {{SubArticle}} tag).
• If the spinout is about itself only then WP:SELFPUB applies and WP:V and WP:N can both be established using only reliable primary sources.
• Due to WP:SELFPUB item 7 however the article is now improperly sourced. This is a problem.

So sections which are under a valid main article have "inherent notability" because the main article has notability. When these sections become subarticles under WP:SPLIT they should be recognized as still having inherent notability and WP:SELFPUB item 7 needs to be rewritten when such subarticles are entirely self-describing to allow for use of only primary sources for WP:V. Low Sea (talk) 17:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:N has indeed been at odds with WP:SPLIT for a long time. People working on Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) have attempted to address that oversight, and the sense they've displayed needs to be imparted to the entire Notability family as soon as possible.--Father Goose (talk) 18:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Right, the way is to regard the subarticles as merely convenient divisions, because with the large number of users with low speed connections we cannot have very long articles. (And, I would argue, that for a ready reference of a non-authoritative nature, that long complicated articles are the wrong tone altogether. They work very well for for such places as Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.) DGG (talk) 18:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The main issue is that sometimes an article may be split off inappropriately... For example, a character which has no real outside notability has an overbloated section in an article on the main work of fiction... By rights, the character section in THAT article should have been pared down, but instead is split off per WP:SUMMARY, and then the independnet article becomes MORE bloated... If a subject does not have enough independent notability for a stand-alone article, it should not take up enough of the original article to need to be split in the first place! --Jayron32.talk.contribs 23:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

There are plenty of cases where appropriate subarticles run into WP:N with destructive results. The clearest case of that is "List of (TV show) episodes" articles. Such lists are considered quite fundamental to our coverage of TV show topics, yet information specific to individual TV episodes is often only available from primary, not secondary sources. Such lists are also far too long to include in the main article about the TV show. (It should also be noted that we have a few dozen featured lists of this type, not all of which include as many secondary sources as WP:N would normally require.)

For cases like those (and there are plenty of them -- not just episode lists), we need to amend WP:N so that it doesn't have a huge blind spot that conflicts with providing information that the encyclopedia, by all rights, should have.--Father Goose (talk) 05:08, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

This issue came up recently at WP:FICT, and a suggestion I made to be considered is that the general notability guideline is part of WP's "inclusion policy", and though applies to 99+% of the pages, it is not a complete description of what we include at WP. However, we lack a true "inclusion policy"; we have its inverse at WP:NOT, and through WP:IINFO, we describe more that is not included, but I've been thinking, just to make the issue of spinout articles clear, is that all articles need to meet the yet-to-be-written inclusion policy, which includes the notability guideline, the use of spinouts, disambig pages, and the like.

Alternatively, again, it needs to be emphasized that notability is a topic-level concept, not an article level. As long as the main article for a topic establishes notability, spinouts are "free" to do their job; mind you, what is a spinout with lack of notability should be doing is very limited, so there's careful ways that spinouts should be defined. Again, this is not inherited notability (the notability of one topic gaining the notability from another topic), and the case for spinouts is already listed out here, but maybe it does need to be more explicit. --MASEM 05:15, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

FatherGoose, it is (to be exceedingly mild) a horrid misconception that secondary sources do not exist for such topics. The "theory" that secondary sources don't exist for such articles is utterly false. There are a ridiculous number of periodicals that cover television episodes and events that provide episode summaries, production information, critical reviews, and so on. That does not even cover all available references, but rather just the common easily available bulk of references. Even short-lived programs that fail to catch on receive this coverage. Any series that manages to survive for even a couple of seasons tends to receive further in-depth coverage and materials of its own. Any popular series has a mountain of additional references getting into fine details and exacting analysis. The misconception you present is one of the most noxiously dogged falsehoods in the whole notability discussion. Do plentiful secondary sources exist? Absolutely. The main bulk of pop-culture editors may not be willing to go digging through periodical stacks to appropriately reference the information, but that's a whole issue separate from the simple availability of sources. Vassyana (talk) 17:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

To clarify - "inherent" versus "inherit": This is not about inheritance, subarticles never take possession of their "parent's" notability. The term I proposed was inherent meaning "belonging by nature or habit"[6]. Sections have inherent notability only as long as the main article they are under is notable. Discussion is to determine how to rewrite guidelines and policy in order to find a way to maintain inherent notability even when an article is split out. I think part of the solution might be to create a required {SUBNOTABILITY | main article name} tag that takes the main article name as a parameter. Sub-sub-articles would also need to reference the original main article as the ultimate source of their notability. This would allow bots to identify any dependent subarticles relying on a main article should that main article become deleted or in doubt. Such a tag should only be removed if the subarticle eventually evolves to establish its own credible notability. I also would like to suggest that this (yet to be written) guideline or policy be known as WP:INHERENT. Low Sea (talk) 06:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

You should be aware that in wiki-culture the concept you are referring to is "inherited" notability (a subtopic is notable because of the main topic). "Inherent" notability is usually used to refer to places that are said to be inherently notable, such as geographical features or elected federal politicians. Both are perennial suggestions that have been not been adopted by the community. Consensus may change, but you should be aware that there is significant resistance to both concepts. An properly crafted "inherent" notability guideline would likely work, based on common practice and deletion precedent. However, "inherited" notability (such as you propose) is very controversial and would have to navigate with exceptional skill between the inclusionist and deletionist extremes to create a workable consensus. Cheers and good luck! Vassyana (talk) 17:59, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Vassyana for the education -- good to know. If that is how the wiki-culture has evolved its understanding of the term I will not try to change it but I do feel that "inherited notability" suggest that the "child" articles have notability in their "blood" and will retain it even if a "parent" article dies. What if we were to re-designate this concept as "umbilical notability" indicating a permanent connection to the parent is required to keep the child article notable? Occasionally a child might actually gain its own notability and then "cut the cord". Low Sea (talk) 16:13, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Like any community, certain concepts and ideas are defined and named in an idiosyncratic fashion here. Please be sure to give the concept a thorough think-through, look over past notability and deletion discussions, and pose questions to editors who seem familiar with the overall debate. Inherited or umbilical notability, under any name, will need to navigate a minefield of strong opinions to gain consensus as a working model. Vassyana (talk) 04:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an intriguing thought about how to formalize the solution to this problem and the term "umbilical" seems like a good way to avoid the perceptions attached to words "inherent" and "inherited". It is unfortunate when content that would be allowed to exist within its parent page in the encyclopedia is punished for being spun out into a child article. Gwguffey (talk) 17:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's a matter of "punishment", so much as a matter of a different sort of attention. For articles, people expect to see independent reliable sources. For sections, a single solid reference is usually sufficient. Generally, if a section is so large as to reach a point where splitting is considered, it should have multiple independent reputable sources supporting it. Take an instance where the only supporting reference for such a large section is the subject itself, a reference from the subject itself or a single source. It is by far most likely that the section should be mercilessly trimmed and/or rounded out with additional sources. In almost all cases (lists are a whole other animal and we're permitted to use common sense), if a section has grown large enough to justify an article split, there should be enough independent sources to support it's existance as separate article (if basic content policy like verifiability and appropriate presentation is being followed). Vassyana (talk) 04:38, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Umbilical notability is a Bad Idea. Editors will claim descent for any article from a notable one, and as such all articles will be notable. I realise it's offered in good faith to fix a percieved problem - that notability concerns seem to be limiting content when it reaches a certain size - but in fact there is no problem. Content is required by WP:IINFO to show real-world coverage, just as articles are required to by WP:N and WP:DEL; so articles should be required to show real-world coverage, even if they are considered to be part of another, notable article. In other words, while notability guidelines don't limit content, content guidelines do limit non-notability. Applying WP:N to spinout articles is just a simple way to enforce WP:IINFO without having to change existing guidelines. Percy Snoodle (talk) 10:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the real problem is that people need advice as to the proper way to create spinoff articles. Say you have an article on the famous (and nonexistent) politician John Charles Spencer Smith. It has 12K of info about his party affiliations (he likes to change them frequently), a 16K description of his political positions/voting record, a 6K timeline, and an 8K section on his pet cat. That's 42K, so the article needs to be split. It seems most people want to move the info on his cat to a separate article, and leave the other material in place; the result, of course, is that the cat's article gets deleted for lack of independent notability, and the information is either lost or restored to Smith's own page.

Instead, the proper course of action here is to split off the material about his party affiliations, his voting record, and the timeline into separate articles (Party affiliations of John Charles Spencer Smith, Timeline of John Charles Spencer Smith, etc) and leave the details about his cat in the main article, which is where people would most likely expect to find such information. So I think what we need is some advice on how to properly split articles into subarticles, rather than a guideline saying that we shouldn't delete articles on notable peoples' pets.Ben Standeven (talk) 04:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed modification of CSD A7

A modification to the CSD A7 criteria has been proposed at the CSD talk page. NonvocalScream (talk) 20:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject AfD closing participants

Category:WikiProject AfD closing participants was nominated for deletion at WP:CFD. But it got moved to WP:UCFD and then to WP:MFD, where I see no mention of it. Someone with knowledge of this matter should update all the affected pages to show the current status. Ma^t_chups 18:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

The UCFD was closed and no one seems to have started an MFD for the project page. I have removed the deletion template from the category and left a note on the nominator's talk page to inform him of the UCFD closure. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:42, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

What do I do if an RFC gets no outside comment?

I listed Talk:List of road-related terminology on requests for comment five days ago, but nobody that was not already arguing came in to help. What should I do? --NE2 20:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm assuming the relevant Wikiprojects are all involved, hence they can't provide new users. WP:3O will draw some (not much) new blood. Template:Cent is also a good place to list it to get discussion. Besides that, I'd have to do some digging. MBisanz ^talk 22:07, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Image:User.gif: unintended bias?

The accused.

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 Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia 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)

The icon looks pretty neutral to me. Regards, Ben Aveling 23:34, 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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)

The user can change their own icon if they wish. See Wikipedia:Help_desk#user.gif. Regards, Ben Aveling 06:35, 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 Wikipedia (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 Wikipedia 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?

Thanks for assuming what bothered me is just the race, not the race and gender, or the gender, by the way. --Blechnic (talk) 08:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

break 1

Incidentally, why do you interpret this icon as male? There don't appear to be any identifiable gender features. —Random832 (contribs) 13:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Do we really need an icon here? None of the other skins have it. It would be trivial to remove it. What is it good for? —Random832 (contribs) 13:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

To echo Random832 - why is the icon even there? It's not clickable; it doesn't lead anywhere. No one says "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). Mangojuice^talk 14:12, 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-Cocks 18:09, 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 Wikipedia, 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia should splash a blonde white male on millions of web pages. --Blechnic (talk) 01:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

blonde white male Whoa, hold the phone. Regardless of anything else, the figure QUITE CLEARLY has _brown_ hair. —Random832 (contribs) 04:25, 27 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-Cocks 12:31, 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)^Until 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)^Until 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)^Until 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 is orange and genderless. _(1 == 2)^Until 02:36, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't orange. It is gone. --SMP0328. (talk) 02:43, 27 March 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)

That poor little icon got deleted, all because of the color of his/her skin... _(1 == 2)^Until 04:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

break 3

YAY! I got him/her back[7]! _(1 == 2)^Until 04:48, 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 Levy 05:26, 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)^Until 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)

Look into the icon and tell me the first thing you see... _(1 == 2)^Until 05:55, 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. –Pomte 05:59, 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.

1. Does the icon serve any purpose but decoration?
2. Do some people feel that the icon is discriminatory?
3. Would another icon serve equally well in that place?

Dan Beale-Cocks 12:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

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-Cocks 12:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I guess !votes go here, because everyone loves !voting. Dan Beale-Cocks 12:37, 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-Cocks 12:41, 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)

Hey, I found a picture of the person that I think was the model: right here. _(1 == 2)^Until 14:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Nah, I'm fairly certain that it was the fellow with the rubber duck. —David Levy 18:35, 27 March 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)^Until 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)^Until 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-Cocks 13:36, 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)^Until 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)^Until 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 Korn ^(smoddy) 15:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok my 2 cents:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?)

—Pengo 12:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

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 Wikipedia 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 of 13:26, 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)

It's clearly a white, balding male! You're discriminating against non-albinos, Rogaine-users, and the differently-gendered! --Carnildo (talk) 19:21, 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. - auburnpilot talk 20:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

If you think it should be removed for stylistic purposes, then perhaps MediaWiki_talk:Monobook.css would be the place to seek consensus. _(1 == 2)^Until 20:54, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice try, but it's very ugly. :) how about this instead? —Pengo 13:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I've found the original image of the above and uploaded it: File:Stock person.svg File:Stock person.svg File:Stock person.svg I think it fits well. —Pengo 13:56, 28 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... ^demon^{[omg plz]} 02:03, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

You should all be banned for over-discussion of pointless minutiae. John Reaves 02:07, 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)^Until 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 of 04:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think the Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz are the culprates behind the Icon design. hmmm..--Hu12 (talk) 04:52, 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! Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 11:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Ya, can we just let this go. _(1 == 2)^Until 14:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

If anyone cares

Tracing it back, it was added by Gabriel Wicke in rev:2814. However, it was in use before that (see diff) from his website at http://www.aulinx.de/user.gif (dated January 2004) ... going back further, it seems to have come from (been purloined from) plone: http://plone.org/user.gif (but the archive.org results are inconclusive: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://plone.org/user.gif ). --Splarka (rant) 12:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Followup: The oldest plone version can be seen here in their trac, dated 09/15/03 03:22:09. --Splarka (rant) 12:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

This entire thread is retarded

What the hell is wrong with you guys? It's a tiny little gif! Who cares what it's skin color is!?

If you find yourself horribly offended by such a thing, you really need to grow some thicker skin. Jtrainor (talk) 03:55, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Newbie Question

I hope this is the right place to ask this question...I'm a novice. I discovered today that there is a section in Wikipedia about "Medical Writers" and that individual writers are listed there. I've read that people are not supposed to post articles about themselves--which seems like a perfectly sensible rule.

In this case, however, I AM a medical writer...with 7 published books and more than 20 years of experience. My background and oeuvre are comparable to, or more extensive than, some of the other folks listed. So what is a guy or gal to do in this case? I would like, obviously, to write up a relatively brief, neutral, and factual "article" about myself as a medical writer. And I don't think that having a friend post it for me would be honest.

I'd be quite happy to vet my submission by an editor if you want--or by the community at large.

By the way, I'm also a medical editor and I would very much like to lend a hand in the ongoing effort to raise the quality standards of articles.

Thanks for any guidance anybody can offer. Hmmm...should I leave my email address here? Don't know. Guess I won't. I just became a member a few minutes ago, so I'm not at all sure how communications work. Thanks for your patience!

--Steve Braun --Srbraun (talk) 01:24, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! Thanks for being willing to help edit! I hope you find it rewarding. Thank you for your conscientiousness about writing about yourself. You might find answers to your questions on the guideline page WP:COI.

Re email: If you click "preferences" at the top of the page you can enter your email address and enable email. Then, when you go to someone's user page or user talk page (for example, my user page is User:Coppertwig and my user talk page is User talk:Coppertwig) in the links at the lower left it will say "email this user". Your email address won't be publicly posted, but if you email someone they will see your email address, so that they can reply directly. Similarly, people will be able to email you from your user page. However, most of the communication around here is done on the user talk pages and other talk pages, not by email. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Braun! Welcome. Please also see Wikipedia:Autobiography#Creating an article about yourself. As you can see from reading that section, while you are strongly discouraged, we don't prohibit this. I do have a suggestion: if you are going to go ahead, write the article in a subpage of your user or user talk page and when you feel you are ready to "go live", drop a note at the help desk and ask for editors to review the article, disclosing that you are the subject of the article written by you and you want some outside eyes to look for problems. Please be sure to cite sources using inline citations. Note that there should not be one single sentence in the article that comes out of your own personal knowledge that isn't also verifiable through the citations you actually cite in the article. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Image name

Why can't images be moved? If this were allowed, it would save a lot of deltetions i think, although it might have the unfotunate side-effect of image redirects. Simply south (talk) 02:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:709. This is more of a long-standing technical issue. :) – Luna Santin (talk) 22:19, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:NLT regarding "on Wikipedia"

There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:No legal threats#"On wikipedia" about whether legal threats must be made physically "on Wikipedia", as part of the policy has stated, in order to be actionable. I'm brining it up here for broader participation. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 02:55, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: I suggest the rule is not changed, because Wikipedia a) does not have authority beyond the scope of Wikipedia, b) evidence of said "legal threat" is not the same as if it was published on Wikipedia, and c) the ruling is placed to keep Wikipedia from being a center of attacks, or, in dealing with copyright matters, from having things changed while the issue is yet to be resolved. For these reasons the usage of "on Wikipedia" and only such must be stated and used. Anything else goes beyond the scope and intent of the original. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:01, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Legal action is legal action, and threats are the first step. The chilling effect that legal threats have on free and open editing is just as damaging no matter where they are. The summary title "no legal threats" of course has no enforceability outside of Wikipedia but this has been noted for a long time -- we cannot prevent anyone from taking legal action, but we can require that such things be dealt with exclusively through official channels, and any threats of legal action be totally withdrawn before the complaining person is allowed to edit Wikipedia again. This as I understand it is the policy: this is not a policy change, just a clarification. Mangojuice^talk 03:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

" Legal action is legal action, and threats are the first step. " Actually, thats untrue. Legal action is only action that pertains to Wikipedia when it deals with the content on Wikipedia. Furthermore, there is a difference between legal action and legal threats, and you seem to have blurred that distinction in your zeal. Please go back, refresh yourself on the difference. Furthermore, your tone is completely incorrect. Instead of arguing for what should be, you have dramatically reinterpreted what is and claimed it as what is, thus suggesting that there is no change. However, the basics of English grammar say that there is a huge difference from the blatant "on Wikipedia" to "Wikipedian". Ottava Rima (talk) 04:27, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Legal threats and legal action are different but WP:NLT does not distinguish the two, and clearly lays out that the point at which you stop editing is when threats are issued. What I was trying to say is that the wording was changed to "on Wikipedia" probably because the policy is written like "don't do X" which is the kind of thing you can't really say about behavior off the website. However, "no legal threats" is an inaccurate description of the rule, from both its common usage and reading it. The policy is better described as "Editing Wikipedia is not allowed when you have made legal threats or initiated legal action against Wikipedia or one of its users over a Wikipedia-related matter." That is enforceable, because it's about editing here, and it can be enforced by blocking, banning, and so on. Obviously for off-wiki threats the quality of the evidence can change but it can be very solid and actionable. And the change of those phrases to "on Wikipedia" was as far as I can tell, never really discussed. You'll note that the change doesn't specifically say that off-Wiki threats are prohibited, it just restores the wording so as not to imply that they aren't. Mangojuice^talk 11:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I must respectfully disagree. The fact that they are linked on the same page and described there does not make them the same. The editing does not stop when threats are issued. The editing is stopped when legal proceedings are put in place. One does not necessitate the other. Furthermore, a legal threat is different than a polite legal notice or a polite copyright notice, which may or may not have a legal proceeding to follow it, and if it lacks a legal proceeding, there cannot be a block in such situations. Now, by your own admission, you state that the change doesn't specifically state one thing, but is loose enough to allow it, which means that the ruling has become more vague. I see such as problematic. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

That's just plain wrong, there is no difference as far as the policy is concerned between a threat and actual legal action. That would just be stupid. A copyright notice is not a legal threat, as there is only a notice, no threat of action unless it were to say "remove it or we'll sue." Mr.Z-man 15:53, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Except that one is a breach of WP:CIVIL and the other is for completely different reasons, which is enough to prove that the two are not one and the same and that there is a clear difference. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this is not a policy change, just a clarification since Ottava has pointed out how people might misunderstand the current wording. Shell ^babelfish 03:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm pulling this out of the above archive box; at least this much clearly is relevant to the discussion. Mangojuice^talk 11:32, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the recent change which clarifies the existing policy as it always has been. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:08, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Rather than maintaining two parallel conversations, I would recommend that all new comments on this topic now be made at Wikipedia talk:No legal threats#"On wikipedia" TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 15:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

What to do with GameBrix?

Came across this peculiar specimen on new pages patrol. Is this speedyable? "GameBrix" seems to be some kind of toolkit for creating Flash games, of perhaps borderline notability. Not quite sure what the relevant policy is, so taking it here for a second look. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:40, 25 March 2008 (UTC).

I guess that answers that, speedied as an A3. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 14:14, 25 March 2008 (UTC).

Translations in non-standard English?

I have seen numerous Wikipedia articles where quotes from foreign languages are translated into an archaic form of English, as opposed to modern English — despite there being numerous modern translations available.

The instances I refer to are Bible quotes (although my question does not refer exclusively to religious material). I know that a lot of people use Bibles that were written in archaic English, and may find it convenient to quote directly from them; and that may be considered acceptable communication in certain religious contexts. But shouldn't the English version of Wikipedia be in English? And surely archaic forms of English do not constitute standard English?

I ask that a policy is introduced that all translations in English Wikipedia are translated into standard English (unless the specific translation itself is of some relevance to the article).

I should add that I am not trying to suggest here that any particular translation of the Bible is better than any other, since even old translations can be (and often are) re-written in modern Englsh. Also I should say that I have no anti-religious agenda; I am a Christian myself, which makes me even more keen to see the words of the Bible written here in plain English so that people can clearly understand them. I don't recognise certain Bible passages that are included here in archaic English, and I find them very difficult to read.

Finally, if it is decided that non-standard English IS allowed in Wikipedia: is there some LIMIT to the extent of its usage, or to the age of the English that can be used here? For example, could "English" Wikipedia articles be written entirely in latin?

Also, are other non-standard forms of English allowed in Wikipedia articles. For example, could I include an English Bible quote translated into ebonics, or cockney? And if not, what makes archaic English more acceptable than these other non-standard types of English, when far fewer people understand it?

Grand Dizzy (talk) 16:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Instead of quoting the Bible, a link can be provided to the scripture using the Bible reference template: {{bibleref}}. If a translation is not specified, the user will receive a wide variety of choices in choosing a translation. For example: A "plain" link -- {{bibleref|John|1:1-5}} appears as John 1:1–5. A link to the NASB translation -- {{bibleref|John|1:1-5|NASB}} appears as John 1:1–5. Just another option. Cheers! Vassyana (talk) 17:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Days of the year guideline

Public comment is requested for the ongoing consensus discussion for the proposed guideline at WP:DOY. The proposed guideline lays out what are considered suitable entries for the 366 days of the year articles. Discussion is taking place here. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:47, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/Article guidelines has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/Article guidelines (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

SUL and renames

Wikipedia:SUL/Consultation on renames

The implementation of Unified Login may mean that bureaucrats should agree to perform renames in circumstances where our practice is currently to decline them. I have created the above page in an attempt to get a feel for community consensus on SUL and how far bureaucrats should go to accommodate SUL-based rename requests. Input from all welcome and appreciated. WjBscribe 01:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Consensus sought for spinout articles

Contributions are sought at WT:FICT#Guidelines and consensus, to try to determine whether the inclusion of spinout articles without real-world coverage has consensus support. Percy Snoodle (talk) 10:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

International USA/GBR/IN/BD "Copyright of image" question

When is a photograph considered "published"? I'm asking because a user has raised the argument that, taking the photograph and providing copies to the subject by a photographic studio is not considered publishing, hence photograph of a person taken before 1884 may still be under copyright if the photo studio taking the photo has not printed it in sufficiently large quantities. The photo in question was taken in India where all photos published 60 years ago are in the public domain (which means all pre-1948 published photos are in PD).

The argument by the user in Talk:Brahmo Samaj is that, the image may have been taken at a photo studio, and only the subject may have received a few copies of the photo, and hence that does not constitute publishing. And therefore the image is unpublished.

Can anyone knowledeable about copyright of photographs clarify this? Thanks. --Ragib (talk) 23:54, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to add the following facts here:

• The subject of the photo in question died in 1884 (i.e. 124 years ago)
• The photo was definitely taken in 1884, and possibly much earlier
• The photographer is anonymous

Thanks. --Ragib (talk) 23:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

US law allows publishers to assume that images created at least 120 years ago (i.e. created before 1888) are in the public domain provided that either a) the author is unknown and never registered with the US copyright office, or b) the author is known and the US copyright office is unable to identify any record suggesting he died less than 70 years ago (the longest copyright term normally being life + 70 years). This applies to both published and unpublished images. Dragons flight (talk) 00:28, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The "author" is very likely (considering the time period, geographic location -India-Bangladesh- and technology status etc.) to be a commercial corporate photographic studio still in existence and business, who will commercially develop and run off additional prints (for a stiff charge) if the original photographic plate (always retained by them as policy) is traced in their vast and often miscatalogued libraries. If the reverse of the original photographic work is produced (we suspect it is deliberately suppressed) it will bear the author's details. There is also reasonable doubt arising from comparison of the impugned image with a recent (1980) Government of India document as to whether the impugned image uploaded to Wiki Commons is a faithful reproduction of the visage of the bio-subject concerned, With independent additional studio photographic evidence cited confirming the discrepancies. I and another have stated that there is reasonable evidence prima facie showing that the impugned image uploaded is a "new non-photographic creation" of unknown provenance,which evidence oughtto be sufficient to stay circulation of the image. We have suggested using the alternate images of better provenance instead, one of which is freely licenceable for publication with some restrictions (on size and monochrome). It is noteworthy that the image tag recently altered to by uploader User:Ragib (Friendly) used for the image "PD-India" REQUIRES "The creator and year of publication are essential information and must be provided." which also has not been complied with by the uploader. Bikash. 69.50.160.154 (talk) 05:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't speak to Indian copyright law, and I going to avoid delving into the apparently complex questions of authenticity. However I will address a couple of your points. In the US, a company is entitled to copyright for the shorter of 120 years from creation or 95 years from publishing that work to the public. If the image was originally created in or before 1884, then it is in the public domain in the US, except possibly if it was created by an identifiable private individual who died less than 70 years ago. In the US, it is legally acceptable to assume a work is in the public domain on the basis of age alone provided it was created prior to 1888, even though the creator may be unknown. So, in the US, the question turns entirely on addressing the question of age. Whether different rules apply in India, Bangladesh, etc., I don't know. Dragons flight (talk) 06:18, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear All.If the image is photographic, the likeliest place of creation is Calcutta India now falling within India - the bio-subject would now be considered an Indian citizen - I dont deny (but am happy) that it was Bengal. If photographic the image is likely to be created between 1870-1882. The uploader admits (?) to "faithfully" copying (scanning/DP) the image from a Bangladeshi print encyclopedia recently in 2005 (?) (which was further routinely processed (?) on Adobe Photoshop 7.0] prior to uploading-probably for filesizing or cropping or .JPG creation etc). The original photo studio is likely to have been then owned by Britishers, and the alleged photograph image in question "composed" and "authored" by a British citizen and part owner of a corporate photo studio established in India but which is now under Indian ownership. The bio-subject had access to his own printing press in Calcutta from 1866 and was a pioneer in mass publication - pioneering the equivalent of "1 cent newspaper". The first time we hear of any US CPR being triggered is when Uploader publishes to Wiki Commons. For US CPR, the Uploader or anyone else must demonstrate that the photographic work was "publicly" in the US prior to 1888. As per present ICA the first owner of the work is the person at whose instance the photograph was commissioned, but with provisions protecting the "author" too. But this law was in not force then, and via the ICA "repeals and savings" any pre-existing agreements ("boiler-plate) are valid and enforceable. IMO US CPR is not attracted at all. It seems to be a fit case for prevailing law of British Empire accommodated within ICA (IN-CPR). Yvantanguy (talk) 08:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

A note: the previous tags on the image were: PD-India, PD-Bangladesh (because these countries share the Bengal province of British India, where the subject lived, and presumably, where the image was taken), and also, mistakenly, PD-Art. On noticing that PD-Art does not apply to photos, I changed the tag to PD-old, as the image is pre-1884 (subject died at that year), and presumably much older. It is my understanding that for such old images with unknown author but definite upper bound on date, it is not required to provide author name or publishing date (if unpublished). --Ragib (talk) 05:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Rageeb, Can you cite the appropriate policy, because my understanding is that the burden of proof under WP lies on the Uploader who is to carefully consider all aspects and satisfy himself before uploading? Wiki Image Copyright Policy also states that dubious images will be deleted by WP - kind of : shoot first ask questions later- which we dont want either. Also are we in a position to satisfy PD-India disclosure requirements which Bikash has spotted? Are there any other experts we can approach since the last thing on our minds is vandalism? Yvantanguy (talk) 08:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Dragons flight's anlysis is correct and we don't even have to worry about Indian/ Bangladesh copyright status since as per US copyright law, "Unpublished anonymous and pseudonymous works, and works made for hire (corporate authorship)" more than 120 years old (i.e., created before 1888) are public domain. See Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States. If there is no apropriate copyright template on wikipedia that covers this, we can create a new one. Abecedare (talk) 18:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The source cited from - cornell.edu - is not a scholarly / reliable work. The footnote 9 in that work carries the disclaimer for this asssertion "The following section on foreign publications draws extensively on Stephen Fishman, The Public Domain: How to Find Copyright-free Writings, Music, Art & More. (Berkeley: Nolo.com, 2004). It applies to works first published abroad and not subsequently published in the US within 30 days of the original foreign publication. Works that were simultaneously published abroad and in the US are treated as if they are American publications.". Which book is not available to us to analyse. If there is a specific clause(s) in the US law we can examine it - as you know many such foreign laws justifying piracy (such as neem and basmati rice) are under challenge in various fora such as the WTO. We also need clarification of the date of publication aspect which is also central to the US CPR argument. PD-IN has to be complied with for this work irrespective of US CPR. Also WHY is US CP jurisdiction applicable - surely not the "WP servers are based in US of A" argument like the Pirate Bay is based in Sweden? Indian Cyber Law jurisdiction is applicable to USA also and vice-versa. Yvantanguy (talk) 12:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The manner in which the US applies international copyright law may surprise you. The US grants foreign nationals from Berne Convention and associated countries only those rights that a US citizen publishing the same work internally would have (with a few caveats, that don't appear relevant to this case). In other words, from the point of view of US courts, the current copyright status in India is irrelevant. The work will be public domain in the US if and only if an equivalent work published in the US would be public domain. The relevance is that all works published by Wikimedia have to comply with US copyright and other applicable US laws. If we can assert that the image is legal in the US, the question arising is whether one also cares about the Indian copyright considerations. Legally, an American publishing on a US website would be within their rights to ignore Indian Cyber Law because those laws are unenforcable here. However, because Wikimedia wants to create truly free content (and not just the whatever content we can get away with), we usually desire our works to also be consistent with the laws in the country of origin. For that reason, it would be nice to see a clearer discussion of copyright in India. Dragons flight (talk) 15:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I am reasonably aware of what US CPR is generally. (At the outset, our disc. is going round in circles). I am not concerned with what US CPR is within the USA. The Cornell.edu document cited is titled "Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States". This to my mind means that if USA law permits "expired" (by it's definition) IP to be used "in" the US it's OK. The problems starts when Wikimedia "exports" IP which is (say) still protected within (say) India to India and which IP infringes Indian CPR and does not THEN comply with Indian CPR perhaps triggering Indian Cyber Law jurisdiction. (BTW: This is emphatically NOT a legal threat). The issues which I find being "evaded" / "bypassed" in discussion here are 1) If the image is of probable Indian origin (first claim because the image is assumed to be created at the instance of the bio-subject who is tbe first owner of CPR - as per the Indian CPR law) and WP has a "PD-IN" tag which was cited by the Uploader but it's "requirements" were NOT complied with - is the PD-IN obligatory or mandatory for Wikimedia? 2) Even the US CPR it seems needs a "publication" date for the 1923 rule - I presume that the USA dfn. of "publication" shall correspond to the "Berne Convention" principles as Indian CPR Law does. In that case also the Uploader (or any US citizen) has still to establish the factum of original image publication such as by its date of publication, author of the image, mode of original publication as in book, newspaper, calendar etc. etc. A mere statement by the uploader that it is a photograph of a bio-subject who died in 1884 ad hence MUST have been published before 1884 is not sufficient to establish publication and is a "circular argument" -like "I did not steal it because I am not a thief". For example it fails to consider some possibilities - (Say) that even assuming (without admitting) that the photographic image was taken in 1884, is it not necessary to establish that at least one print was taken off prior to 1923? In other words I am requiring that evidence must be produced for "publication" of this image somewhere / anywhere prior to 1923. From that we can move on to how many prints must be distributed to satisfy "publication" , especially when there is a specific requirement in Indian CPR Law that "publication" means "significant publication" ie. making known to the "public" - aka. the "body public" or "public at large" etc. and not to 1 or 2 private interests. Finally India Cyber Laws may be unenforceable in US but they are enforceable in India - within 60 days tops without going to court. (NOT a legal threat). It might be useful to remember that the USA joined the Berne Convention late - only in 1988(?) and does not accept / respect many parts of the Convention which is quite wishy washy on new technolgies like internet etc. being addressed somewhat by WIPO CT. BTW the DMCA is not recognised by India, thus not only is the export of the image illegal - the import of the image INTO the USA may be illegal in the first instance - being in violation of a specific WM policy which was flouted. In India (I'm sure there is a US equivalent) whenever someone complains to the "service provider" in such matters they take it off soon. WP/WM uses http and TCPIP, it is not P2P or BT which is "unblockable" by Governments. Yvantanguy (talk) 18:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

BTW - This thread seems to run on a "Shroud of Turin"-like argument on the lines of - 1) This photo/cloth is of Jesus. 2) Jesus died in 34 AD 3) Hence this photograph must have been taken not later than 34 AD. BTW if Ragib is still watching this page, what is the publication year of the BP print edn. you scanned the image from? Yvantanguy (talk) 19:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

As DF has repeatedly pointed out, the image is in the public domain in the US. For that purpose its copyright status in India or anywhere is irrelevant. How the image was published in the US is irrelevant as well. Yes, we prefer media that are free everywhere, but we require free (or fair) use in the US only - this is because the Wikimedia servers are in the US. If someone downloads it to a location where it is under copyright, that's the downloaders problem This is no different than me making 500 copies of De la Terre à la Lune in Germany in 2003 (legal) vs. you taking my legal copies to Mexico, where the book still might have been under copyright (illegal). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:16, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Stephan. DF is unable to cite a reliable source for his assertion. It is my counter-assertion that even for US CPR (sec 302-304) and "public domain" requirements proof of publication is essential. Most countries have a 60/70 yr expiry after date of first publication. This is not inconsistent with the US position either. All we are asking for is a reliable citation demonstrating that the image in question was "published" at least 70 yars back - which the Uploader (Friendly) is unable to provide since he merely scanned it from a print encyclopedia. Concerning the Wikimedia servers are located in US argument, this has been discussed previously (inconclusively) on Talk:Brahmo Samaj which I copy here for ready reference - "Actually on scrutiny of your remarks we find "Wikipedia currently runs on dedicated clusters of GNU/Linux servers, 300 in Florida, 26 in Amsterdam and 23 in Yahoo!'s Korean hosting facility in Seoul." Our Reliable Source Citation is "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_servers#Software_and_hardware". Does anyone read Dutch or Korean? Rono (I'm back from Goa beach) Ronosen (talk) 16:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)". Concerning the "Terre de Lune" argument, in that case you have a well established date of first publication which is prior to Berne Convention and when nations were not obliged to respect each other's copyright. In India (as in most civilised countries which observe the UN mandated model Cyber Laws) the onus is not on "downloaders" but on the Network service providers to ensure that CPR violating works are not transmitted over their computer resources - and they respond reasonably fast too - since all bandwidth in India is the (Licenced property of the State - as per "Cricket Association of Bengal v. Union of India) and non-compliance of conditions is punishable. Yvantanguy (talk) 23:57, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Just a citation for the above post. The Indian Govt has on previous ocassions and recently banned sites like "blogspot.com", "geocities.com" etc. The struggle against this "mindless blocking" is summarised "Indian ISPs don't have the technology to block individual name servers -- say a particular blog hosted on Blogspot. So they had no choice but to block the root servers of major blogging networks -- blogspot, geocities and typepad," said a senior official in the IT Ministry. A senior official from an ISP confirmed this. Sarbajit Roy, a cyber-law expert, said: "This block is a mindless exercise and shows that our bureaucrats don't understand technology at all." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yvantanguy (talk • contribs) 00:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Absent an actual challenge by an actual copyright holder, I am perfectly happy to accept the presumption that a photographic image of a person who died 124 years ago is in the public domain. All of your thinly veiled suggestions of government actions against Wikipedia are also moot in the absense of an actual copyright holder complaint. While you are free to argue your cause, I don't think appeal to the sort of threatening rhetoric shown above is going to win anyone over. Dragons flight (talk) 00:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Dear Everyone. This is not only a copyright issue. There are at least 50 images of the man in this controversy available for anyone to see. His artworks are hanging in museums all over India and perhaps Bangladesh too. The Government of India has issued document (a postage stamp in his memory along with a booklet on his life and work) which rebut this photograph absolutely. For unknown reasons this particular image (which hardly resembles the man - who is a notable individual worthy of being included in encyclopedia) is the one which repeatedly shows up in internet search - a classic case of Gresham's Law where a bad image drives out all the good ones. We (Brahmos) are deeply concerned with not only the true representation of the man but also Wikipedia's encyclopedic reputation. We have oft stated that we are not vandals, and what we post here is NOT a legal threat or a thinly veiled or disguised "threat" - you misunderstand us. Accordingly the Uploader of the image (who started this thread) is as concerned as us. We do not attribute any motives to him for uploading this image, at the time he did his best in good faith. He has properly cited *all* the appropriate tags to be complied with for Uploading an image to W/M - namely i) The general Berne Convention Public domain tag - PD-OLD, ii) The specific Public Domain Tag for India PD-IN iii) The specific Public domain tag for Bangladesh PD-BD. These tags were cited by him prior to this controversy. He is unable to fulfill / comply the requirements of PD-IN. As to your other point about "in absence of copyright holder" the family / descendant of the man is also in this debate and as concerned about getting to the bottom of the matter. I summarise the issues (for us) below:-

• A) Is the impugned image a faithful mechanical reproduction of the original fixation?

• B) The first publication of this image cited is in the Banglapedia a print encyclopedia of Bangladesh which encyclopedia was first published in 2003 by the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh (as per Wikipedia). Incidentally the Banglapedia project started as a "History of Bangladesh" after BD's Liberation in 1971. It is in it's first edition and there are already calls for corrections / bias and a second edn. is promised soon .

So we need to see where they obtained this image from (The Asiatic Society after all is an old Institution - the first ever Indians admitted in 1829 to it were also Brahmos - Dwarkanath Tagore and Prassano Coomar Tagore). With so many images of Keshub Sen available to the Asiatic Society why was this particular one (which differs from all others) selected by BP for publication? Is it coincidence or something else (like Internet mechanics) whereby only this image is being circulated and Gresham's law is being proved. Thanks everyone for participating here, can we trouble you to guide us again? 122.163.151.152 (talk) 03:24, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Copyright status of public-interest newspaper articles etc. hosted without license – to link or not to link?

Please see discussion here. Jayen466 00:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Non-free content: proposed change in Criterion 8

Please go to Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Criterion_8 to see a proposal to remove the second clause, which many people regard as unworkably restrictive. Tony (talk) 00:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Statistics / historical data: How far do we go?

Hi,

I have a question regarding the use of statistics or other detail data (typically is tabular or list form). To what extent is it in the scope of Wikipedia to include such data?

Let me first give an example, which may seem arbitrary. I recently found List of number-one hits (Germany) on the New Pages list. Here a user created about 30 articles (with another ~30 to come) with historical listings of number-1 hits in Germany. I understand that this information is easily added, and that it "does no harm" in a technical sense (storage space etc.). But is it really in the scope of an encyclopedia? How does that relate to WP:NOT#IINFO? Policy-wise, Top100 Singles is certainly a legit article, and WP:SUMMARY would cover the sub-articles; but 60 articles just seems a bit like over-stressing the principle.

I'm aware that a number of similar listings exists. My question is actually a bit more general. There are many articles where detail information, usually in tabular style, can easily be added in vast amounts. Given such data in electronic form, and barring any copyright issues, even a bot could add it to Wikipedia. But in terms of scope, where's the "reasonable limit" for Wikipedia, and where does WP:NOT#STATS apply? Is there a general rule?

Just to pick another example: Say for a soccer team, would we list every game they ever played? Every goal they ever scored? Every movement they ever made in a game? Sources do certainly exist, since games of professional teams are all broadcast on TV. But where does our scope end?

I'm not sure whether this question is sufficiently covered in current policy; perhaps someone can provide me with a link. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Basically, these questions are answered on a case-by-case basis by consensus. You identify the relevant policies above, and everything else is just somewhat subjective interpretation of those questions. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for drama has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Requests for drama (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

And unmarked. I've left the redirect in place because it amuses me, but I certainly won't fuss if somebody else deletes it. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 18:57, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Looking at Special:Contributions/RFDR, I'm quite tempted to delete all those redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:16, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I've requested the account be blocked; this clearly is a troll. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:17, 29 March 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.

Etc.

Is this the way it works? I have read the 3RR policy but I am not clear. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 21:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

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.

Really though, the important part isn't the technicalities. If you follow the basic principle of not edit warring, you should be fine. --erachima formerly tjstrf 00:13, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

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. --erachima formerly tjstrf 01:31, 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)

WP:No legal threats

Community input is requested regarding a discussion at Wikipedia talk:No legal threats regarding modifying the opening sentence to read "Do not make legal threats against Wikipedia or members of the Wikipedia community over Wikipedia disputes." Input is requested both on the substance of the above formulation and on whether or not a consensus in favor of this formulation already exists. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 01:08, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

online gangs

I've noticed that on many forums and here in the Wikipedia article, talk and reference desk pages there are users and administrators alike who form what I can only describe as gangs, no different than gangs that form on the streets in neighborhoods and at schools in the real world.

Gang mentality can be one sided, ruthless and even vicious and exist only for the fulfillment and benefit of its own agenda. Who polices such gangs that form on the Wikipedia and who keeps them from taking charge and running the Wikipedia like the gangs that run the streets in the real world? Adaptron (talk) 09:08, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oh, there's no cabal here. (Or is there?) --B. Wolterding (talk) 10:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Odd. Reminds me a bit of the unencyclopedia. At least now I have a label by which to refer to the online variety by. Adaptron (talk) 12:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

• They're already in charge and do whatever they want without following their public rules. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute 2 -- SEWilco (talk) 13:54, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Just to be clear - you're pointing to an ArbComm case that's over two years old, decided by only four committee members (of whom none are still on ArbComm), involving a debate over footnote formatting, as evidence that a cabal runs Wikipedia? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:59, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
    • A gang of four who were supported by others as they failed to disclose the reason for their votes, refused to inform others who were involved, ignored evidence, and made decisions on issues for which there was no evidence. Adaptron didn't say there was a single monolithic gang. -- SEWilco (talk) 15:14, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
      • Interesting case, though. Has lots of present applications, actually, but one problem is that normally to bring an ArbComm case takes a huge effort. Where I see possible present applications is where a user is sanctioned by ArbComm, and then other users examine every aspect of this sanctioned user's actions, complaining wherever some construction can be made that the behavior is problematic. One recent situation I've seen, a user is put on civility parole. The user makes some edits that might be considered edit warring, through really it is one or two reverts, not maintained with insistence, the "offense" being that they were not discussed. Explicitly, it was asserted that failure to discuss a change was "not nice," and therefore was "incivility." Turning simple edit disputes, without uncivil language, into an incivility violation, with, then, blocks being sought. In the case mentioned above by SEWilco, the sanctioned user was SEWilco himself, for having "pursued" another user previously sanctioned. The issue is not "footnote formatting," but rather social behavior. And the case does address the issue of "public rules." Was this "gang" behavior? No. This was ArbComm, the least gang-vulnerable function on Wikipedia. Not perfect, but probably the best. What could be called gang behavior happens at lower levels, in "hot" forums where there is no patient gathering and examination of evidence; rather there are snap judgments made by "police." The problem is a serious one, and it isn't going to be solved through AN/I, nor the Village Pump (which is also fairly "hot"), nor RfC, probably, though I have less experience with RfC. And try to do anything on the policy pages and you may well see some gang behavior. (And policy is already quite good, the problem is that policy, including fundamental policy such as WP:NPA and WP:AGF -- most notably the latter -- isn't followed, or, more accurately, is selectively enforced, and there is no structure to make enforcement both efficient and fair. When a "mob" is stoning a scapegoat, violations of these policies by mob members -- and even anonymous IP editors who instigate the riot or who chime in -- somehow escape notice, usually, if the target is unpopular enough (which is a state sometimes not difficult to attain). I've seen admins warn some, but it is a relatively rare exception. --Abd (talk) 17:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

• There are local gangs in different areas of wikipedia, perhaps in every local area. These are not entirely under the radar, but operate out of the control of any central cabal, as long as they do not overtly go too far against the central wikipedia laws and practices. In gray areas, in their own area, they rule. In their open gathering places, and perhaps also by hidden channels, they quickly share information about any threat to their local operations. They all may be alerted simultaneously by the same early warning system that detects an intrusion to one of their articles. Sometimes they go to support one of their members in another area where that member has strayed. They respond together, as if in unison, but it is usually not controlled by any one local leader. They can operate like a wolf pack, with some directly confronting a temporary enemy, arguing directly about some point of importance. Others, according to their abilities, will nip around the edges, digging up material from elsewhere to use selectively in discrediting the intruder, fairly or unfairly. Distraction, threats, bluffs, any indirect tactic can be employed, but it can easily be done in ways that don't quite rise to the level of felony offenses that would attract the interest of central authorities. Also, their use of unfair tactics would be hard for the intruder to prove in a court case elsewhere, for the usual reasons. Local witnesses would not likely testify for the intruder who is wronged. The gang members are bound together by shared beliefs, shared interests, and personal loyalty that may grow with time, and that are strengthened by successful hunts and successful defenses of their local area. If one member's actions seem overtly inappropriate as to be actionable offenses under general wikipedia laws, they can jump in to mitigate those actions. They can quickly form a local majority in any dispute over an article of turf, so the perceived outsider's view becomes an apparent minority view. Their shared beliefs may seem odd or counter to general wikipedia principles to an outsider, perhaps because their beliefs are more specialized, customized to local sources of information, influenced by practices in the external communities they may be describing. There is a process of sorting, of self-selection, so that individuals who are somewhat dissenting from local beliefs may stay involved, but less so. Others whose views dissent from the majority more severely are minimized, and may choose to go elsewhere instead. P.S. Disclaimer: I am not talking from personal experience of being on either the inside or outside of any gangs. Gangs do not exist in wikipedia. No animals have been harmed. doncram (talk) 16:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this assessment. I have seen it occur in regional ethic situations when one specific POV of a country attains many admins and makes organized efforts to to push a certain POV on topices of regional interest at the expense of a less sophisticated, unorganized but equally valid alternative view. They do this by voting en masse at FAR and GA for their POV and against articles including some views of the alternative side, controlling DYK's, using Admin's to block editors with the unwanted views (who are usually in the minority on Wikipedia, if not in real life) etc. These differences go unnoticed by most editors. It is rather like the factitious example that if American articles were uniformly controlled by German immigrants, say, editors from Bangladesh might not be aware of the POV slant in evaluating an article on the evolution American musical styles. Mattisse (Talk) 17:10, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is one of the better analyses of the situation that I've seen. Wikipedia does have a structure, an operating culture with rules both written and unwritten. That structure is vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse; there is nothing new about this. The structure works, it has brought the encyclopedia to its present state, for better and for worse. Ultimately, if this social organism does not develop better collective intelligence, it will fail. It's actually reasonably well-known, by some, how to do this; but it would involve, through no coercion at all, a shift of power from the "virtual cabal" to a broader community that is better organized. Bureaucracy is not necessary, nor is it appropriate. But communication, and, in particular, organized communication between editors, on or off-wiki, is essential. Try to set this up on-wiki, and you will quickly encounter the cabal. It is not a specific set of editors, but it might as well be. Esperanza and AMA are salient examples, shut down for reasons other than the stated ones. They were indeed suffering from organizational problems, but those problems would have been solved with time. Or, perhaps I should say, are being solved with time. --Abd (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Toys, games, and video game notability

After dealing with several AfD's concerning children's board games and unlicensed video games, I've come to realize that there are no notability guidelines whatsoever that concern these items (beyond the broad general criteria covered in WP:N). A lot of arguments in the AfD discussions were for keeping simply on the basis of an advertising campaign, or based on sources that were simply passing mentions in articles and books, and I think something official would really help in those situations. I've brainstormed a few ideas at Wikipedia:Notability (Toys, games, and video games) and would love to get some input, ideas, or insight on what past consensus (if any) has been in situations concerning toys and games. Mister Senseless™ (Speak - Contributions) 22:01, 29 March 2008 (UTC)