User talk:Centrx/Meta-writing

Non-negotiable principles/policies

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. This is not a mere guideline; this is the fundamental, essential property of Wikipedia. Encyclopedias in general, and this encyclopedia particularly, are not written from various biased points of view, nor do they premiere research, and they are based on authoritative sources.

This is the theory, this is the practice, this is the enforced policy. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia editors follow these principles, though they may not necessarily agree on their exact practical implications. If an article is not written according to these policies, it is revised to be in accord with these policies. If a topic is a theory out of someone's head, or if it is impossible to verify, its article is deleted. If a tract cannot be rewritten to be neutral, it is deleted. This is done by editors, this is done by administrators, this is done by the owners of the servers. See also [1] and [2].

If you mean that it is "negotiable" insofar as a few people do try to flout or negotiate it on articles, the end result is still that these policies are followed; on a wiki the article may for a time not follow the policy, but this does not mean that the policy is overridden. If you mean that it is "negotiable" insofar as editors refine the policy pages, this does not mean that the principle itself is not followed. "Discussion" of the policy or principle does not mean that is not the policy and principle.

This page must convey to article editors that they are obliged to follow this policy; it must convey to policy editors that they are obliged to follow the principle. Any revision of these principles would not be the same process by which this policy page is revised, and it would need to actually convince those thousands upon thousands of editors who agree with it, among them those well-respected, long-standing members of the community who administer and take part in administering the site and the encyclopedia. 21:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

No policy can be repealed for a particular article by consensus in that article's discussion, but especially with these policies and even moreso for their principles, there is no wiggle room.
Insofar as the vast majority of editors approve of these principles and they are furthermore mandated by the Foundation as essential properties of the encyclopedia, these principles cannot be altered or repealed by even by the relatively broad consensus that could be reached on the policy discussion page. It would require much broader and more long-lasting discussion, and even then would be subject to decision by the Foundation. —Centrx→talk •

It must be unequivocally conveyed that these policies are not open to debate for specific articles or on article discussion pages. The Policy is non-negotiable in regard to articles; the Principle is non-negotiable in regard to the policy page. —Centrx→talk • 01:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Verifiability

This principle and policy requires only that it must be possible to check a fact. It is one step detached from Reliable Sources, permitting even in principle the free wiki contributions that do not specifically cite the source. This policy does not and should not discourage reasonable contributions by passers-by that do not specifically cite sources, even beyond the de facto situation we have with other policies like NPOV, where a POV section may be added and then later transformed to be NPOV.

Notability

In all circumstances, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, with a minimum threshhold of significance below which articles are not included. You may disagree about where that threshhold is or whether a certain article meets it, but nevertheless others have given that threshhold the name "notability", and it is a valid criterion for deletion. 06:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

"Notability" is a practical formulation of Wikipedia being an encyclopedia and WP:What Wikipedia is not. It does serve as a heuristic for verifiability and original research, but it also serves as a heuristic for ensuring that articles will actually be edited by a neutral editor. That is, it helps to ensure not only that it is possible for the article to be verifiable and free of original research, but also that someone will actually take the time to cite the sources and get rid of NPOV. It means that there will not be a second class of articles that nothing links to or that no one edits or that the only people who edit it are family and friends or the persons #1 fan. Now, this does not necessarily discount the criteria in your proposal, but it is one of the broader reasons for notability.

I note, however, that one of your criteria is "Anyone who has played or coached in the modern eras of the NFL, NBA or NHL or Major League Baseball". If the reason for "modern era" requirement is to have a level of temporal notability, this indicates one of the problems with lowering notability. If a random player in the 1970s does not warrant inclusion now, why does a player from the 1980s? And why would a random player from the 1990s warrant inclusion 5 years from now? Here is the best-case scenario for these articles: They will remain one-liners forever, that no article ever links to and no one ever reads. More likely, they will degrade and be a maintenance hassle. Strange but plausible comments will make them inaccurate. Someone else with the same name will become notable, and someone will have to bother to create a disambiguation page. Finally, in five years, the espn.com article will be removed from the website, there will be no other webpages or books about the person as no one has ever heard of him, and the article becomes indistinguishable from the many hoaxes on Wikipedia, and it is deleted anyway. —Centrx→talk • 02:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Nexus

It would be kept, depending on the quality of the sources. Well-sourced, high-quality articles are never or almost never deleted. Also, if there are several independent high-reliability sources on a topic, then it would just naturally satisfy other notability criteria. Neutrality and encyclopedic relevance are part of evaluating whether a source is reliable. The same thing happens when looking it from other angles. Naturally, if a topic is a traditional encyclopedia topic there will be many reliable sources about it and neutral editors. Naturally, if a topic has many neutral interested editors, there will be reliable sources about it which they will work to find and the topic must be non-trivial. They are complementary and intrinsically related to each other. —Centrx→talk • 06:02, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A7

Also, note that CSD is specifically for unremarkable people or vanity pages, and the "assertion" requirement is a further restriction beyond that. It is not designed to delete articles about notable people which happen to not make a strong assertion of notability. While the CSD is prone to this error, if there is some indication that the person is in fact notable (and the person tagging or deleting should check), then it does not qualify.

Empty stubs and redlinks

I don't know how Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics was generated, but it contains many items that are not "encyclopedia topics", such as its many dictionary words. If, in a proper article, I find a redlink: If it is a common merely functional word, rather than an encyclopedic subject, then I would unlink it. If it is an encyclopedic subject, the redlink actually serves to indicate to editors that there is some gap. Example: If I, the reader, know about "foo" and I read an article that has the blue link "foo", I may not click on it because I already know about foo. If I see a redlink, however, I may click on it to create an article with that information. If I, the reader, do not know about foo, then seeing a redlink I know I will not find information about it there. With a blue link, I click on it and find that there is actually no encyclopedic information about. Readers mostly expect to find encyclopedic information in links. Another thing, for example with respect to Vamoose: The only real article that links to that page actually is referring to a band with that name. Aside from a reader thinking there is already at least a minimal article on the band, a naive user may click on it and be confronted with a message that mainly tells them not to create an article there, when they may otherwise have created an article about the band.

It may be a good idea to do what Britannica, for example, does: the reader can double-click on any word in an article there and up comes the dictionary definition. This is a major change though that affects all of Wikipedia. Likewise, something could be added to the no-article-found message, informing the user that they could try looking at Wiktionary. This, again, could be a more effective, more uniform solution. The logical result of adding this template or creating redirects for every dictionary word and capitalization variants of various terms is hundreds of thousands of mostly unused pages. What is done instead is that redirects and the dictionary template are used only where it has come up with a problem. Some pages get new articles created with dictionary definitions all the time and then are deleted all the time. Some spelling variations and errors are very common and warrant a redirect. This is not the case for every conceivable word and every conceivable spelling or capitalization variation. 09:23, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Notable natives

Simply being born in Worcester is so trivially and tangentially connected that it does not belong in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. There are others in that section that should be removed as well, and the section renamed. Alisan Porter, specifically, moved away from Worcester at the age of 13. —Centrx→talk • 06:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Putting a bunch of people in a list in a separate article is another matter entirely, but there too, the more people you have and the less related they are, the less useful the list becomes for finding people who are more important and more related. Note also that, while it is common practice, such as in the Hartford, Connecticut section, to have a Notable natives section that list people like Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who first lived there substantially and have historic houses there reserved about them, the other less notable and tangentially related people are mostly added by anonymous passers-by (for Hartford, more than half were added by a single anonymous user, [3]). See also Concord, MA, where it is not appropriate to have baseball player Tom Glavine, who was merely born there and grew up somewhere else, alongside Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, etc., who are truly historical notable persons and who actually lived there most of their lives and did famous things there. —Centrx→talk • 06:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Talk pages

Removing User talk comments

Removing recent vandalism warnings and similar posts to your Talk page from administrators and users in good standing is not acceptable.
Removing recent comments from other users is impolite and impairs communication about editing articles, etc. This may be viewed as uncivil.
If your talk page becomes too long or has old conversations, it is standard practice—but not required policy—to archive them in a subpage within your own user namespace, and place a link to that archive on your talk page. See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. Leave recent vandalism warnings and recent, open conversations on your talk page; do not archive them for a while.
Note that if you want to make draft articles, have a separate to-do list, etc., you can make a subpage in your user namespace.
See also Help:Talk page#User talk pages.

—Centrx→talk • 05:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article chatroom discussion

Comments that are irrelevant to the discussion of the article can and often should be removed. Obviously this should not be done by someone who is involved in a dispute about those comments, but the fact is that Wikipedia discussion pages are exclusively for the discussion of that article and related Wikipedia topics, with some leeway. In this particular case, the comments were a blatant example of an inappropriate use of Wikipedia talk pages. They were several anonymous IPs chatting with each other about "cool" things that progressed into absolute, unmitigated nonsense. It was proper to delete it, there was no point in undeleting it and it is well supported by Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not: Wikipedia is not a discussion forum and Wikipedia is not a social networking site, as well as Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. There is no reason whatsoever to allow random conversations totally unrelated to Wikipedia by anonymous IPs who were probably sitting in the same computer lab at school. —Centrx→talk • 06:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Recalling adminstrators

If six editors in good standing propose recall and a strong majority of interested parties agree, then that administrator should not remain, but if that were to happen after 70+ percent support in RfA, it might mean the administrator had already undertaken actions so severe as to warrant de-adminning by ArbCom anyway.

While sound in principle, procedural matters like what constitutes an editor in good standing, how strong a majority there must be, and how soon after the successful RfA, would need to be ironed out. With 10,000 or more users that qualify to nominate under the listed criteria of 1 month and 500 mainspace edits, it may not be unlikely that there would exist 6 zealous ones after a couple of rather normal content disagreements or, worse, after rightful administrative actions in accordance with policy. The administrator most likely to be nominated might be the administrator who most enforces policy. As such, the qualifications must be higher or different, and perhaps a nomination should need to include some administrators, overall including users who have broader interest in Wikipedia and who are more likely to know about and have experience with policy, which the currently listed qualifying statistics do not ensure.

Another effective procedure might be to require that some of the nominating editors be users who supported the nominee in their RfA, who afterward find the administrator to be an outrageous disappointment. Similarly, a procedure might require that the nominations specifically cite evidence that the nominee was misrepresented in the RfA, that a more thorough examination of his contributions would have shown that he should never have been made administrator, or that he acted contrary to statements and indications in the RfA. That is, to have the administrator recalled because the reasons for which he was sysop'ed in the first place were ultimately invalid. —Centrx→talk • 19:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Trivia

This is an application of Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, "not a collection of trivia", and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Generally, cultural references can be appropriate for indicating the impact someone or something has had on a culture. See, for example, Julia Child, which does this by stating that she was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, and parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch, etc. But it is not to be a list; if others are added, they may be combined or deleted or replace others to integrate them all into a cohesive whole, not added as a disconnected line in another bullet point at the end of a growing section. This is also a person and with that specific purpose. Paracetamol is a drug that is sold. The importance of it might be indicated by sales figures or examples of historical uses of it, but certainly not by mentions in the lyrics of random unrelated songs. —Centrx→talk • 00:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have already pointed you to the relevant pages, WP:5P and WP:NOT; the purpose here is to determine their application to this article and that section of this article. Formal policies do not often have a long list of every particular thing that is contraindicated, but that does not mean that every biography should have a list of the person's favorite foods, or that we should fill up the section in this article with twenty descriptions of uses in literature. There is no explicit policy that forbids "John Doe has said that he favors chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream", but that does not mean it belongs in an encyclopedia article about a senator, though perhaps in an article about Ben or Jerry (creators of ice cream company and recipe, Ben & Jerry's). These distinctions, of which there are particular millions, are not to be added to reams of Wikipedia policies. Instead, the editors of the individual articles decide whether perhaps the ice cream mention is relevant to a biography of a businessman who, among his many executive positions from automobiles to printing, made an ice-cream-related statement while CEO of an ice cream company. - Some date

Generation two

Should the Trivia in Vanessa Amorosi be removed as all of it is has not been verified and is not be reliable?

It possible none of its correct. Its certainly not verifiable. Ansett 02:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I would do. Unverified trivia is a double problem: Aside from having unverified or unverifiable "facts", trivia sections themselves are not encyclopedic. Even if the trivia section were entirely verified, it would need to be integrated properly into the text of the article as part of the history, and some of it like "Car company Mitsubishi used the song Absolutely Everybody in their television commercials" would probably warrant being deleted even if there were sources for it. See also WP:AVTRIV and WP:TRIVIA and the part of the Wikipedia:Verifiability that says unsourced material may be removed. —Centrx→talk • 02:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can find relevant things at Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles and Wikipedia:Trivia (which there was consensus to merge appropriate parts of, but no one ever bothered to do it). Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Wikipedia:No original research are relevant as well. If there are no reliable sources that discuss the cultural reference in regard to the topic, there is not sufficient evidence that it is important to that topic or why it is notable. A lot of times most or all of these references should simply be deleted, as they are often unsourced, unverifiable, and totally irrelevant. Sometimes, they can warrant keeping for future inclusion in the article, but that does not mean a trivia section is warranted, rather the it is folded into the main text appropriate. For example, the Julia Child article includes culture references, such as a parody on Saturday Night Live and being featured on the cover of Time magazine, but these are integrated directly into the prose of the article and are specifically to indicate the person's importance and involvement in the culture and are cultural references that were included in obituaries and biographies of her as being important. Unverified trivia is a double problem: Aside from having unverified or unverifiable "facts", trivia sections themselves are not encyclopedic. For unsourced trivia specifically, see also the part of the Wikipedia:Verifiability that says unsourced material may be removed. —Centrx→talk • 23:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal procedures

The {{helpme}} tag is more for questions about how to use Wikipedia (like "How do I sign", or "where can I find out about linking", etc.). This is an article proposal. In general, for a proposal like this you explain what you think should happen on the discussion page, like you have done, and wait a little while for a response. If a page seems inactive like this one, you can post the question/proposal in other places like, in this case Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing and there could be other appropriate places. Usually, someone will respond. If no one happens to be interested in it or doesn't have any good ideas they want to add, then use your best judgement to do what you think is right for an encyclopedia. If, after receiving no comments, you are not sure what exactly would be good to merge (or anything else), consider filing an article "request for comment" at WP:RFC. If you have any other questions, I would be happy to help. —Centrx→talk • 06:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pseudo-policy actions/AfD restoring

If an action is done by mistake or due to a different interpretation, when undoing it is moot (it's going to be deleted no matter what), then I don't see why you don't let it be. If there are so many of these early closures, then you should instead contest some that you actually think should be kept. If there aren't any, that indicates that the written policies don't reflect reasonable, actual practice, and need revision. That is, you could instead spend time getting things undeleted that actually should be undeleted or to correct the policies. About recreated AfD material, the question to ask is, "Would this new version have been deleted had it been the version at the original AfD?", "Is the speedy criterion really intended to allow unlimited recreation of articles on the same subject so long as they delete or add or rewrite a paragraph here or there?". —Centrx→talk • 09:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Voting/Polling

A vote doesn't solve [edit warring]. It is quite valid that a majority vote would not be binding, regardless of whether it was ensured to be purely a vote of established users. It would still be claimed, validly, that a bad policy is still a bad policy; a vote wouldn't solve an edit war over that, only an agreement, which can only be produced by discussion. Your theory of sockpuppets is likewise novel, but the fact remains that while it is trivially simple to discount obvious sockpuppets, there are numerous supposedly established users that are in fact sockpuppets; similarly, any host of tendentious article editors or others with an agenda on this openly accessible and quite popular encyclopedia can easily game the vote. Even if you were to somehow magically ensure that all voters had the fundamental principles of Wikipedia at heart, you cannot ensure that they know an issue well enough or have read the discussion about it to make an informed vote. I won't continue now with the several other problems with voting. The only way to make valid decisions is through reasons with reference to the principles of Wikipedia. Voting is a romantic but increasingly unworkable notion. —Centrx→talk • 20:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Decisions on Wikipedia are not made by simply casting ballots. They are made based on reasons, with reference to the principles of a free, neutral encyclopedia and from policies derived therefrom. This is even more of a problem if, as in this case, someone uses voting as a first resort. You could have a reasonable vote if it was widely advertised, if it was ensured that the users voting had the principles of Wikipedia at heart and were in fact independent persons rather than sockpuppets or meatpuppets, and if a long discussion period preceded the vote, but that is far from the case here. There are several problems with polling in general or setting up a poll, but in this case I wasn't even making some formal proposal and the comment was presented in the most tentative, self-questioning manner; I was simply asking a question with possible ideas about what to do about it and immediately find that someone responds with a "No. Bye." That is bizarre is not helpful at all; that does not tell me why the ideas are wrong, or possible alternatives that correct the problem I see. That does not even tell me that the person who did it actually considered what I was proposing or the reasons behind it. The alternative possibility which I came up with after reading your objections with reasons would never have been conceived if everyone simply responded with "Yes" and "No", and you can see that in his further explanation the same alternative addresses the concern. I don't think Template:Unreferenced should be replaced with Template:Primarysources; that was the solution I came up with before but it is not good. That's what consensus is here: Reasonable people with similar goals discussing issues, coming up with solutions, and deliberating over what would be best. I say "There's a problem, here's a possible solution", someone else says "Here's a problem with that solution", I say "Oh yes, you are right, here is an alternative", or maybe someone says "There's no problem, here's why". See also Wikipedia:Consensus, m:Polling is evil, and Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion for general issues. —Centrx→talk • 15:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

RFA/ArbCom as a vote

While there is of necessity a resulting, binding decision that is a vote and is functionally similar, nevertheless discussion precedes that conclusion, and "votes" can be changed and are supported by reasoning. RfA is not simply placing a "Yay" or "Nay" in an unchangeable ballot box. In the case of RfA, a better analogy would be an entire political campaign, including the conversations and considerations that lead up to the election; regardless of the "vote", the non-citizen is not elected and the incompetent is vetted out. In the case of ArbCom, a better analogy would be an entire legal trial, including the courtroom evidence and procedures that lead up to the jury decision; the jury is carefully selected and the result of the decision is based on sufficient evidence and reasoning that proceeds from policy.

Neither of these processes are anything like a CNN online poll or whatever else you may think of as an example of bad voting. These processes admit the specific expression of an opinion, but that opinion is informed by reasonable consideration. It may be erroneous, it may not meet the ideal, but that does not mean labelling it a "vote" is a meaningful explanation of flaws.

Note also that nearly all ArbCom decisions are unanimous: they are applying a clear standard to specific actions in full agreement; in such cases, naming it a "vote" is absolutely meaningless. Similarly, RfAs require a strong supermajority—for every 1 person who opposes, there must be at least 3 who support—and most are nearly unanimous, above 95%. The greater the majority, the less like a typical vote it is; one person has less and less power as a supporting voter whereas an opposing voter has 3 times more power in preventing the conferment. —Centrx→talk • 21:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfA supermajority/consensus

RfA is not like many other consensus-based decisions on Wikipedia. There aren't many sources that can reliably confirm a user is admin material. No one steps through every one of the user's contributions. The decision is not easily revertible. If a significant number of established users oppose the promotion of a user, that is good reason enough not to promote, when those supporting likewise do not possibly have full access to information and when the decision is relatively non-reversible. It is a negative process; a super-majority vote is important to that and a successful RfA should mean that there was little significant opposition relative to overwhelming support, in addition to the reasons and evidence why a user would make a good admin. —Centrx→talk • 19:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this assumes the current way RfA works: That, in general, the people "voting" aren't just dropping something in a ballot box, they are looking into the user, looking into the comments and answers and reasons. If a significant number of them oppose, then the user should not be administrator. It is unfortunate that it shows up as a vote listing, and some people give empty votes, but generally, or at least ideally, each of these votes represents a reasonable Wikipedia giving some level of examination and thought. —Centrx→talk • 19:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

American/British spelling

This has been hashed and re-hashed, and the current standard is that styles are not changed from one to the other without substantially good reason, that each individual article be internally consistent, and that articles about certain subjects belong with a certain style, such as using American style in United States and British style in United Kingdom. The American style is used by hundreds of millions of people, perhaps more people than the British style. Note also that there are different styles for Australia and Canada too, which combine some American style, and that English style in non-English speaking countries such as Japan is affected by American style as well. "International community" is a vague sentiment, and there is no agreement for any of these styles being better or predominant. —Centrx→talk • 16:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Examining copyvios

For this particular article, note that it is not written like an encyclopedia article; it is written like a story and somewhat presumes that the reader already knows who Marty Rimm is (i.e., probably because he was already mentioned in the book). Also, look at the page history. This version was added in [4], with an edit summary "...as cited in Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear"". Before the revision, there is what appears to be a fairly clean version of the page. So, I would delete it, and then restore all the revisions up to 00:08, 28 April 2005 TheBlunderbuss.

In general, Google Books can be useful, though not in this particular case. Another really useful site is Copyscape. You can copy the URL of any revision in the (not-deleted) page history and Copyscape will give you likely websites where it is copied from, with highlighted tracts of where it is copied from. It still needs to be somewhat compared, as it comes up with false positives, and some of them are from sites that actually copy Wikipedia, not vice-versa, but it is really useful.

Two heuristics that make checking copyvios more efficient are whether the article belongs in an encyclopedia anyway, and whether it is wikified or written wierdly (e.g., is just a list or timeline of factoids; or "The ST-50 is the phenomenal invention of the future"; or "When Bill Shibble began his music business, there were three factors inhibiting his progress"). The way it is written is a clear indicator that it is at least copied, which almost always means it is an infringement. Both "belonging in an encyclopedia" together with "wierdly written" means think: Even assuming it were not a copyvio (2% chance or something if there is no claim of permission), would this article be deleted anyway? So, if you have to go through any hoops, and it is clearly some badly formatted copy about the Vice President in Charge of Washing Windows, then might as well delete. The page history is also important; if there is a long page history, several people have passed through it and there may be a salvageable article (sometimes, someone has come along last month and over-written everything with a copyvio, when there used to be a legitimate article). If a new user two weeks ago just copied the biography of the local weatherman, just delete. —Centrx→talk • 22:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Administrator candidate requirements

A

There is a risk with no benefit in giving someone admin tools who doesn't need them. For the same reason admin tools are no big deal, it is no big deal if someone doesn't have them because they have no use for them. Also, if they have no use for it, that means they haven't worked in these areas and we can't evaluate their knowledge there; someone who would be roundly opposed for administrator because of their hasty decisions and strange interpretation of policy would easily get by, when they don't need them anyway. So, at best, they aren't going to use them, at worst they might make bad or disruptive decisions everyone disagrees with, and for candidates here only briefly, at very worst they may be a scheming vandal.

I don't see a problem. This criteria is often relaxed for long-standing contributors who are clearly reasonable and committed to Wikipedia as encyclopedia, recently Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MisfitToys and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Arthur Rubin, where "at worst" turns into "may make inaccurate decisions in their infrequent usage, but is without doubt friendly, intelligent, and open to discussion". —Centrx→talk • 19:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

B

Response to 'Requiring an administrator candidate to have been involved in a dispute would be like requiring a police officer candidate to have been involved in a fight'

It would be like requiring that a police officer has experience in dispute resolution or fending off an assault (which can be as an innocent defender, and is not analogous to 'vandal-fighting'). These skills are taught and tested over the course of months in the police academy; on Wikipedia you can learn them and others can evaluate them by merely participating in different areas. In order to be a police officer, also, there is a background check and tests of intelligent and common judgement; on Wikipedia, this can only be accomplished by longer experience with other users. Further, an administrator is more than a police officer; an administrator has qualities of a janitor/technician and of a judge. In the first, there must be experience with some of the many administrative processes on Wikipedia; this does not necessitate knowing all the minutiae of WP:PDP or WP:RFD, but it must be more than just reporting on WP:AIV; mistakes not involving admin tools in at least some of these areas can and should be made before becoming an administrator. Not having experience in any of these areas would be fine if there were enough to make an evaluation in other areas. Having no experience whatsoever in policy-related areas would be okay, if you clearly had experience in communicating with other editors on articles. Having little experience communicating on articles would be okay if people had enough information to see that you were reasonable and understood basic policy based on your comments on AFD and other processes. Having little experience in administrative or policy areas, with only having contributed to articles and discussing them on the talk page, would be okay, if a user has been active for longer than 2 months. 00:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Moderation changes?

( http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060823-7569.html )

The changes referred to in that article are apparently taking place at the German Wikipedia which, second to the English Wikipedia, is the largest and most active Wikipedia, with a lot of development in terms of the Wikipedia community and functioning. There have been proposals on the English Wikipedia for the sorts of things talked about in that article, but they are not close to being implemented. You can see some of these ideas at Wikipedia:Trust network and Wikipedia:Stable versions (which are separate proposals that seem to be put together in the article), but there are many other pages and proposals that refer to that sort of thing, see the "See also" section at the bottom of Wikipedia:Stable versions. Separately, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team is a project, underway, to improve and prepare good, important articles for a Wikipedia release on CD or DVD or in print. Note that there are, at least now, no moderation changes that are planned to soon be implemented on the English Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 01:00, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus on Requested moves

This may not apply to most relistings, but requested moves can be reasonable and uncontested and in such cases should be done even if only one user proposed and there has been no other discussion. Moving is, after all, a function that any user can perform if there weren't a page blocking the move.

Sea God/Emperor of the Sea may be a good example where it should be moved rather than relisted. In this particular case, the user provides several examples and the external links and a Google search seems to confirm his reason. If a user in good standing is making a request with good reason and there has been no objection, then it probably should be moved. Of course, if the person reviewing the request objects, then they can add the reason for their objection and relist it here; or if the request is confusing or nonsensical too, but in that case it might be better to ask for clarification on the article's Talk page, or to decline the move request. —Centrx→talk • 02:09, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation

The people at the Wikimedia Foundation are in general lead or former contributors and administrators; it does not consist of external shareholders or something. Their goals are aligned with the purpose of a free encyclopedia. If this were ever to change or there were some other failure of the Wikimedia Foundation, the license of Wikipedia content is such that anyone can start up another such project with a duplicate. Policies are generated and revised every day by regular contributors, you can see this on their discussion pages, while there is in some areas a level of a rather passive benevolent dictatorship. —Centrx→talk • 18:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where we are is doing what is necessary to create an encyclopedia. The Wikimedia Foundation does not govern Wikipedia in the way you may be thinking, but it wouldn't make sense to think of it that way anyway, it is all individuals in the end. The persons involved with Wikimedia and Meta are, in general, highly respected people, long-time contributors, who are also part of the Wikipedia community. Their ideas command respect because of this, but they are not demanding things, people agree with them. Some things that someone might point to that are influenced by "Wikimedia" are the tightening of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons after the Siegenthaler controversy or the central position of NPOV, and there are discussions about it on the mailing lists too in addition the Wikipedia talk pages, but the fact remains that they are good ideas, people agree with it, and everyone who wants to be is involved with making the policy. —Centrx→talk • 20:38, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another example could be from Jimbo's recent speech at Wikimania, saying that the English Wikipedia should focus more on quality rather than quantity, as we already have so many pages, but many are mediocre. A lot of people agree with that because it is a reasonable idea, they think Jimbo is an intelligent person, and if there is a leader of Wikipedia, he would be it. So, some people will focus more on quality than quantity, but of course anyone can still do what they want. —Centrx→talk • 20:44, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the fact remains that they can legally do whatever they want, but currently they haven't done anything that is against the spirit of Wikipedia, and a significant portion of major contributors support the actions they have made. If they were to take any seriously bad action, they would find that "Wikipedia" is nothing but its content and contributors. That content, which is free, can and would be hosted elsewhere and encyclopedia contributors can and would migrate to a new host. Welcome to the future; this is what technology enables. —Centrx→talk • 23:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Common new user questions

To split ("fork") a page, you should bring it up on any relevant Talk pages first with the reasons why you think it should be split. Keep in mind that in an encyclopedia it is generally best to have similar topics that fall under the same subject in the same article, not to have all individual particulars separated out. The most common articles that are forked are of a subject is so vast and an article so long that it warrants it. Usually someone will respond to your proposal. If no on responds and you are tentative about it, you might post it on WP:RFC. If it still seems like an unequivocally good idea after several days, you can do the split yourself.

Anyone is allowed to welcome newcomers. There are templates for this purpose you can find at Wikipedia:Welcome templates, or you can craft your own or make comments based on what an individual user seems to be interested in, etc. The only real restriction would be: don't make advice about something you don't really know about; refer the user to the relevant page if you can find it, or leave it for someone else. It might be best to explore the encyclopedia first rather than welcoming when you yourself are a new user. I have left such a welcome template below, which has useful links, advice, etc. —Centrx→talk • 18:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Manual of Style

Intro to, and purpose of

The Manual of Style has been under way for a while now (for this dates one, since 2003 :). Basically, keep an eye on the Talk pages for discussions, make proposals here for major changes; if a change would be controversial or large (or if anyone reverts it), bring it up here first rather than implementing it immediately. One thing to keep in mind about the styleguide on Wikipedia is that it is a lot more of a non-binding recommendation than you might find, for example, at the newsdesk where the editors have mandated a uniform style largely without exception. The Wikipedia Manual of Style is a lot more of a reflection of current standard practice on the wiki than styleguides at other places (the wiki being both a bottom-up writing system, and also a new technology for writing). In many cases the styleguide allows for two or three acceptable styles, so long as style is consistent within a single article. In such cases, there are general prohibitions for changing articles between different, both acceptable, styles without good reason (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Disputes over style issues). There is also Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. The purpose is still to clarify and standardize presentation, and this is a frequently visited page the styles of which are widely implemented, but the recommendations are just less strict than elsewhere.

You can see the current recommendation for spelling out numbers at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Numbers in words. Above 10, both spelling out and using numerals are allowed: on the one hand, using numerals is more common in contemporary newspapers and magazines; but spelling out in words is the dominant form for non-technical books, encyclopedias, and any professional work where print space is not an issue. Both are found on Wikipedia. Any proposals you have are welcome, and I think we would be happy to have you here; you may find this particular styleguide especially to be very active. —Centrx→talk • 17:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wisdom of article editors

In many cases the manual of style can be open to the judgement of editors at a particular article. Many intelligent people knowledgeable in the language and such matters have devised this styleguide over the course of years, and there are good reasons for each recommendation, but nevertheless it is general to all Wikipedia articles; if editors at a particular article consider a variation or a relaxation of a particular recommendation to be warranted in order to make the article clearer and easier to read, then that should be done—keeping in mind that the styleguide recommendations have good reason behind them and should usually be followed. —Centrx→talk • 03:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mandating mass MOS changes

His changes were reverting back to the status quo. They were not an introduction of something new but a preservation of something old that was changed against Arbcom rulings, longstanding practice, and reasonable current disagreement. You reverting back again, that is, edit warring, is an example of exactly the sort of reason why these sorts of style changes are not permitted.

This policy does not leave articles in the style chosen by the first major contributor, it leaves articles in the style chosen by any contributor at all. In the case of Joseph Earl Sheffield, he wrote the whole article, then you come along and change it amongst a spree of changes. On Wikipedia, where there is more than one acceptable style, the consensus at the article is supreme, and to some extent this is true even when there is only one MoS acceptable style. So, if you were writing, rewriting, or revamping an article, you could use the date format you think appropriate. If you happen to come across a lonely article that no one cares for, while doing other things, you might change the date format if appropriate. But that does not mean making mass changes, and if anyone objects, the same rules apply as for any disagreement over articles: bring it up on the Talk page or just forget about it because it is so minor.

Yes, this means that in certain very minor respects, articles on Wikipedia will not be uniform, but that is a small price to pay if the policy diminishes the amount of time people spend on these very minor aspects, which often also cause significant disruption—and also means that the "wrong" mandate e.g. of using all American dates, will also not be implemented. Perhaps at some time in the future, Wikipedia articles will be cleanly divided in terms of British articles having British dates, etc., but that time is not now, the Manual of Style is to be the very weakest of nudges and is primarily a manual, a help, a guide, not a mandate. —Centrx→talk • 02:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For helping new users

Article areas for users interested in writing

Just go clicking around. For example, go to the calculus article, there are tons of links there to all manner of different subtopics which may be improved. This can be done for any subject area. Also:

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics has a list of core articles that are essential to any encyclopedia and are going to be included in the released CD version. Some of them need work, and they are important articles. There are also several other pages associated with the "Version 1.0" project, like biographies, look around there, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. It might be be best to ask the people there what would be best to work on.
Wikipedia:Cleanup has a list of articles that need substantial improvement.
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates has generally high-quality articles that can be perfected.
Wikipedia:WikiProject groups are oriented around a specific subject area. They also often keep lists of articles that may need improvement, have a lot of discussion about improving articles in the subject area, etc.

After you have edited more, you might check out User:SuggestBot. This suggests articles you might be interested in editing based on your previous contributions, but it works better if you have edited more articles in a variety of areas that interest you. —Centrx→talk • 23:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is Wikipedia?

Short

For information, see Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Introduction, Wikipedia:Five pillars; Wikipedia:Press coverage lists articles about Wikipedia written in newspapers, magazines, etc. which are geared toward a general audience. The New Yorker one and The Atlantic Monthly one are both recent, general, good articles about Wikipedia. There are some other links in the welcome message above. Also, just browse around on the site and see what is going on to get a sense and to stumble on various interesting things. —Centrx→talk • 01:28, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Long, more general

Wikipedia has won awards, but this is minor in comparison to its popularity and importance. Wikipedia is the 12th most popular website on the Internet--the 9th most popular in the United States. It is the source of information for millions of people every day and it has been the subject of hundred of news articles.

Most importantly, the comprehensive success of Wikipedia is a result of how it is written. Wikipedia is a "wiki", which means that everyone can edit. The 1.5 million articles on Wikipedia are a result of the collaboration, small or large, of millions of people. These articles are not the result of an organized editorial and publication process, and this is part of a broader historical trend in the world that is a consequence of the rise of computers, the Internet, and other technologies. You, can contribute to the store of human knowledge by going to an article right now and improving it. If you make a mistake, others will correct it, but if you make a good contribution it will be a part of that article, in some form, forever and benefit the thousands or millions of people who will read the article. Wikipedia articles are written by people of all backgrounds, including both students like you and casual aficionados, as well as university professors, medical doctors, and other experts.

As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view and be verifiable in reliable sources. Sometimes these sources are not explicitly cited within an article, but explicit citation is increasingly common and encouraged, and unsourced statements are increasingly simply removed.

You can find more information by looking at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About> and the several pages linked therefrom. I also recommend you explore the site; click around. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction> for an introduction to editing. For some good articles about Wikipedia in newspapers and magazines, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_in_the_media>. Two good ones are from The Atlantic Monthly (<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia>), and The New Yorker (<http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact>). 00:03, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Preventing vandalism?

Changes are implemented instantly. All changes since late 2001 are viewable in the page history, so any vandalism can be replaced by an older version; page histories are also useful for normal writing and editing. There are automated bots that reverse obvious vandalism, and there are hundreds of people who spend a little time each day watching Recent changes, so most vandalism is reversed within minutes if not seconds. Users can also add pages to watchlists, which display recent edits on their selected articles. Furthermore, any reader who passes by can correct vandalism or any other erroneous information. IPs and users can be blocked temporarily or permanently, and if a particular article is a target of some concerted attack or is a frequent target of common tomfoolery, like Pie or George W. Bush, it can be temporarily semi-protected from editing by IPs or new users, or fully protected from editing by all but administrators. More problematic is non-obvious attempts to subtly deceive readers with false information. This is actually rather similar to someone adding false information unknowingly, and is diminished by emphasizing citing sources, and because non-minor articles have dozens of people watching them. See Help:Contents for more information about Wikipedia in general. If you have any other questions, you are welcome to ask me on my talk page. —Centrx→talk • 05:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, edits can also be viewed by user or IP, so if someone tries to rampage across several articles, all their madness can be reversed. —Centrx→talk • 05:21, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Refined

First, all changes to a page are registered in a 'page history', so any defacement can be replaced by an older version of the page, and all recent changes to Wikipedia in general are automatically listed on a special page for that purpose.

There are software robots that automatically reverse obvious defacement immediately, and hundreds of people who peruse the list of recent changes on Wikipedia. Any user interested in a particular page can add it to a personal 'watchlist' which shows when a page is updated, whether that update is a joke or a substantial contribution.

Furthermore, any of the many readers who pass by can correct vandalism or any other erroneous information. So, the popular pages that people might be most likely to deface are also the ones which have the most editors watching and the most readers, all of whom can revert vandalism (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Reverting>).

If there is a recurrent problem, an article can be temporarily protected from editing, or user accounts and IP addresses can be blocked from editing. 00:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Edit warring

Just because there is a conflict doesn't mean you should add and remove text at will. Just don't make changes that are controversial to the article. If someone reverts an edit, don't revert back, bring it up on the Talk page. If you revert an edit, explain why in the edit summary and/or bring it up on the Talk page. Just don't edit war. It is up to you. Also note that while WP:3RR has a technical limit on reverts, any edit warring is disruption that can warrant blocking. If a change is controversial, discuss it on the Talk page. That is all.

You did violate WP:3RR and regardless you were edit warring which is disruptive and blockable.

Simply, do not revert at all. If there is a dispute, discuss it on the talk page. You should never be doing a complete revert more than once, and only then if it is a new, previously undiscussed change, and the revert should be with a full edit summary that would reasonably convince the other user that his edit was incorrect. Except in such special case, do not make any reverts in a content dispute. You have been edit warring before, and you should realize that aside from being blocked, it is simply not productive. The revision you want is not going to be implemented by reverting. You must convince other editors.

To clarify, in general reverts should only be done if they are going to tend toward a solution because reverting doesn't actually accomplish anything. So, one should only do a wholesale revert if he thinks the other editor misunderstood and that misunderstanding would be resolved by a descriptive edit summary. Beyond that, there is compromise/collaborative editing that may have partial reverting, there is discussing the issue on the talk page, or for cases of vandalism, libel, etc. there are administrative routes.

Polls

Summoning a bunch of visitors to various "polls" under the pretext of voting on what is properly instead the subject of discussion is misleading and not conducive to accurate articles. A poll can be useful for a long, complex debate in finding out where the discussants stand, currently or "in the end", after they have considered the discussion, without trying to adduce consensus from sifting through endless comments. Bringing people to a Talk page for the express purpose of simply voting, not participating in the discussion or even encouraging reading the discussion, is not consensus; consensus requires agreement, which is impossible without knowing the points at issue. Thus, any vote that is actually productive or relevant requires that the voter have read or participated in the discussion, and it makes sense to bring non-partisans with a fresh view to that discussion from this page here, but not directly to some "poll". Ultimately, the "Polls" section is either useless, in that a person comes to the discussion and, being interested, will in the end participate in such a consensus-guaging (not consensus-making) poll, or its use is wrong, in that it brings people who don't engage the issue but would simply register an ill-informed yay or nay. So, I propose that the "Polls" section be removed. See also WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy and "Voting is Evil". - Centrx 02:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CSD CP 48 hr

The 48-hour rule is to ensure the site did not in fact copy it from Wikipedia, and apparently also overwrites copyright infringements on mirrors when they update, where otherwise they would not update/delete the now-deleted article. It also helps in making sure the article is not in fact salvageable or that there was a non-infringing article in the page history, but that could be accomplished with a longer time period like a week. —Centrx→talk • 22:54, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Userboxes

Is this userbox appropriate for Wikipedia? It was restored along with several others created by some sockpuppet and a couple about political parties of the more normal type, on the basis that the "Divisive and inflammatory" CSD does not apply to pages which happen to be in user-space despite their use only as templates in transclusion[5]. I don't see anyone changing opinions that Wikipedia is the place for political partisanship, despite neither "This user identifies as a Stalinist" nor "This user believes that the death penalty should be imposed and used more frequently!" being conducive to developing an encyclopedia. They did see fit to keep "Jews did WTC" deleted under section 14 paragraph 7 line 8 of the rule book, but we immediately run into the logical inconsistency of the whole matter: The user who created that userbox responds to ask whether "This user believes in Jewish involvement in the 9/11 attacks" would be acceptable, a natural conclusion; "This user considers Jews an inferior race" must be an attack, but "This user supports the Nazi party" would merely be an expression of personal opinion in the sacrosanct user-space. We are dealing only with matters of degree or viewpoint, which we can extend to less stereotypically fringe views that are interpretable as "This user supports the killing of children" or "This user supports the domination of women". I do not know the history of the userbox wars, but as new users join Wikipedia they should not be seeing these as standard—I frequently see users whose fifth edit is to post a {{helpme}} about how to make a userbox—this issue should be firmly and unequivocally resolved before 2008 (the nostalgiac days of 2004 had no such problem), but if the last year is an indication the problem is only increasing. —Centrx→talk • 18:46, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A Saskatchewan New Democratic Party box is divisive. It is a badge declaring a political allegiance that is inimical to producing a neutral encyclopedia. I don't happen to find it inflammatory, but as with all cases like this it is a matter of whether the box espouses a dominant political perspective. The Nazis are well-known and classically hated by most, but I would not be surprised if someone who had come to your user page to discuss some encyclopedic collaboration became angry at seeing you support the proponents of the public health agenda and its labyrinthine inefficiencies and mediocrities to which they lost a relative. Regardless, you did not nominate a Saskatchewan New Democratic Party userbox for undeletion; you nominated a National Democratic Party of Germany userbox, and a Nazi one and a Stalinist one, and the reasoning that would allow a Saskatchewan New Democratic Party userbox would also allow those. You cannot decide to delete certain political userboxes but not others without making a political decision as to whether a certain party is "mainstream" or whether their political positions are acceptable to you or not. That means making Wikipedia a political battleground. —Centrx→talk • 06:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Undue weight/BLP

First, fan forums are not reliable sources; and cannot be added to the article as sources in themselves. This article must conform to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Balance for its own sake is not appropriate, but it is quite doubtful that 100% of critical commentary was negative—and that itself would require its own sources. The article must accurately reflect the levels of critical response to the person's tenure on the show, and the amount of space in the article devoted to criticism positive and negative must be commensurate to the size of the article. Sections on criticism are to add to and inform the fullness of the article. Having a sentence about being producer on the Simpsons and a sentence about being involved with other shows, and then a paragraph three times that size about criticism does not accurately reflect the person or his encyclopedic importance. WP:NPOV#Undue weight is informative here. —Centrx→talk • 21:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is Wikipedia reliable?

A

Most Wikipedia articles are accurate. This is true for any major topic that you would expect to find in a more traditional encyclopedia, as well as popular topics; fringe topics, such as marginally notable persons, may be less reliable, and highly controversial topics, such as George W. Bush or Anarchism may have biased things added, but it is typically clear if there is a problem with a particular article.

I noticed some of the advantages of Wikipedia recently when looking up information about the Industrial Revolution in both Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. You can see the Wikipedia article at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution>. If you can compare the Britannica article on the same subject you will find that the Wikipedia is much longer and, more importantly, links to the articles on the many particular topics related to the Industrial Revolution. The Wikipedia article on this topic is simply much better, and there are no major errors in it. There are of course other topics in which Britannica or some other encyclopedia has a better article than Wikipedia. You can see some of the best and worst of Wikipedia by

Because of the open nature of Wikipedia, some jokester could come by and add some nonsense about bubblegum or whatnot, but there are many systems in place that correct this sort of thing very quickly (aside from the fact that it is typically easy to spot such things). There are dozens or hundreds of people watching and reading this article, as it is on a major subject. There are many reliable sources for this subject, and it generally cites its references. Some of the people watching the article may very well not have expert knowledge on this topic, but there are university professors, scientists, computer programmers, mathematicians, etc. editing in their field of expertise, alongside the student or the casual intellectual.

In general, if you are doing any sort of serious research, or writing an essay on a subject, no encyclopedia is sufficient or appropriate for that. Your research begins at the encyclopedia to get a general understanding and to be connected to further reference works.

For further information, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools%27_FAQ> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia>.

For a sample of the best and worst of Wikipedia, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles> and click on the "Random article" link on the sidebar a few times. You will find in random articles a lot of random things that will not interest most people, like articles on small towns in India or various musical albums; there is nothing especially wrong with them but they are not classical encyclopedic subjects, and they are not like the full articles you can find on a more substantial subject.

You may also find that current events, technology, and popular culture, etc. are some of the topics where there are simply no other general reference works on the topics other than Wikipedia.

To be sure, there are problems with the open model of Wikipedia--see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy> for a famous example of how a hoax went unchanged and caused problems on a biography of a living person--but these are relatively rare and they are not problems of having made-up facts or dimwits adding mis-interpretations and unintelligent things. For an article on a major subject, there are thousands of people reading the article or parts of the article in a day. Their collective wisdom prevents inane things from remaining. 06:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

B

Most information is accurate, but there are problems with agenda-driven enthusiasts in specialized articles. This is currently a problem, for example, on articles about Waldorf education or Juan Cole. These articles are still fairly accurate, however, and the problem is usually temporary. In an election, for example, partisan adherents like to add inappropriate things to articles, but these are often countered by partisan adherents on the other side who rightfully complain and make countervailing changes; such an article is, if not properly neutral, rather balanced with pros and cons. Most of the people who write the encyclopedia, however, are neutral and interested in adding reliable information; after the election, for example, the partisan adherents lose interest but the editors who remain fix up the article and reverse bogus changes. Neutrality is generally not a problem with traditional academic, historical, mathematical, etc. subjects.

For the article in question, there were likely many more references used for the article, but they are not cited. In the past, there was little source citation on Wikipedia at all. The information was still from reliable sources--all information on Wikipedia must be /verifiable/ in reliable sources--but more recently greater and greater emphasis has been placed on specifically citing these sources, and doing so in-line; aside from confirming the authority of a statement to readers, it is helpful for other editors in the future making improvements to the article.

All articles on Wikipedia must meet our content policies on being written from a neutral point of view and being verifiable in reliable published sources. These policies are well-met on articles on major subjects; there are hundreds of people watching or reading these articles daily. These policies are also well-met for subjects that people have no fanatic or partisan interest. There can be problems with low importance articles with little interest. There is not a general or pervasive problem with inaccurate information.

For examples of high-quality articles, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles>. For Wikipedia content policies, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability>. To learn more about editing, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction>. 17:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

C (better)

The articles are as good as the sources. Many articles, especially on important topics, are well-sourced and have knowledgeable editors maintaining them against any erroneous information. Less popular or less important articles may not be well-sourced or may not be monitored by people knowledgeable in the subject, though most articles are in my experience accurate and an important article will never be inaccurate for long because the hundreds of people who read it in a day will correct anything they know to be false.

For example, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution> is substantially written and maintained by, among others, a professor of mathematics at a university. It is also a topic of importance in the subject that has been read by tens of thousands of people who are generally academically inclined, intelligent, and knowledgeable, who are able to correct errors. It is not a subject of controversy or of joke edits, though on any given day the latest revision (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Page_history>) could possibly have errors. This article is much more comprehensive than the Britannica article on the same subject and is no less accurate, and it may be similar to or better than a text book chapter on the subject. Compare <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education>: This is a topic of much less importance with an article in which certain biased people have attempted to push their personal point of view. The article is tagged as having a problem and it is unlikely to contain downright lies, but it is likely to contain rather false or misleading information. Along similar lines, compare <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine>, which is a controversial topic that attracts biased editors but which is also a major subject of academic interest. Compare <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crichtonsaurus> and look at its history: Almost no one is interested in maintaining this article (or reading it) and it has no reliable sources; for all I know, it could be a complete hoax. There are several other different kinds of situations, but I think you can get the idea.

Articles may contain inaccuracies that would not be found in a book authored by an expert and published after being reviewed for errors. With regard to editors' knowledge, information in articles needs to be supported by reliable sources, which increasingly are explicitly cited. Wikipedia is useful and educational, but for serious scholarly research it is a gateway not a substitute for more reliable sources, which is true for any encyclopedia. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools%27_FAQ> for more information.

Combined A & C in response to general "How credible is Wikipedia?"

The articles are as good as the sources. Many articles, especially on important topics, are well-sourced and have knowledgeable editors maintaining them against any erroneous information. Less popular or less important articles may not be well-sourced or may not be monitored by people knowledgeable in the subject, though most articles are in my experience accurate and an important article will never be inaccurate for long because the hundreds of people who read it in a day will correct anything they know to be false. Most Wikipedia articles are accurate. This is true for any major topic that you would expect to find in a more traditional encyclopedia, as well as popular topics; fringe topics, such as marginally notable persons, may be less reliable, and highly controversial topics, such as George W. Bush or Anarchism may have biased things added, but it is typically clear if there is a problem with a particular article.

For example, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution> is substantially written and maintained by, among others, a professor of mathematics at a university. It is also a topic of importance in the subject that has been read by tens of thousands of people who are generally academically inclined, intelligent, and knowledgeable, who are able to correct errors. It is not a subject of controversy or of joke edits, though on any given day the latest revision (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Page_history>) could possibly have errors. This article is much more comprehensive than the Britannica article on the same subject and is no less accurate, and it may be similar to or better than a text book chapter on the subject. Compare <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education>: This is a topic of much less importance with an article in which certain biased people have attempted to push their personal point of view. The article is tagged as having a problem and it is unlikely to contain downright lies, but it is likely to contain rather false or misleading information. Along similar lines, compare <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine>, which is a controversial topic that attracts biased editors but which is also a major subject of academic interest. Compare <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crichtonsaurus> and look at its history: Almost no one is interested in maintaining this article (or reading it) and it has no reliable sources; for all I know, it could be a complete hoax. There are several other different kinds of situations, but I think you can get the idea.

I noticed some of the advantages of Wikipedia recently when looking up information about the Industrial Revolution in both Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. You can see the Wikipedia article at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution>. If you can compare the Britannica article on the same subject you will find that the Wikipedia is much longer and, more importantly, links to the articles on the many particular topics related to the Industrial Revolution. The Wikipedia article on this topic is simply much better, and there are no major errors in it. There are of course other topics in which Britannica or some other encyclopedia has a better article than Wikipedia. You can see some of the best and worst of Wikipedia by

Because of the open nature of Wikipedia, some jokester could come by and add some nonsense about bubblegum or whatnot, but there are many systems in place that correct this sort of thing very quickly (aside from the fact that it is typically easy to spot such things). There are dozens or hundreds of people watching and reading this article, as it is on a major subject. There are many reliable sources for this subject, and it generally cites its references. Some of the people watching the article may very well not have expert knowledge on this topic, but there are university professors, scientists, computer programmers, mathematicians, etc. editing in their field of expertise, alongside the student or the casual intellectual.

In general, if you are doing any sort of serious research, or writing an essay on a subject, no encyclopedia is sufficient or appropriate for that. Your research begins at the encyclopedia to get a general understanding and to be connected to further reference works.

For further information, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools%27_FAQ> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia>.

For a sample of the best and worst of Wikipedia, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles> and click on the "Random article" link on the sidebar a few times. You will find in random articles a lot of random things that will not interest most people, like articles on small towns in India or various musical albums; there is nothing especially wrong with them but they are not classical encyclopedic subjects, and they are not like the full articles you can find on a more substantial subject.

You may also find that current events, technology, and popular culture, etc. are some of the topics where there are simply no other general reference works on the topics other than Wikipedia.

To be sure, there are problems with the open model of Wikipedia--see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy> for a famous example of how a hoax went unchanged and caused problems on a biography of a living person--but these are relatively rare and they are not problems of having made-up facts or dimwits adding mis-interpretations and unintelligent things. For an article on a major subject, there are thousands of people reading the article or parts of the article in a day. Their collective wisdom prevents inane things from remaining.

Articles may contain inaccuracies that would not be found in a book authored by an expert and published after being reviewed for errors. With regard to editors' knowledge, information in articles needs to be supported by reliable sources, which increasingly are explicitly cited. Wikipedia is useful and educational, but for serious scholarly research it is a gateway not a substitute for more reliable sources, which is true for any encyclopedia. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools%27_FAQ> for more information.

References system

Ideas for better system

There is a problem with the current Cite.php references system, as it thoroughly clutters the text in the edit window. Template:Ref is a solution to this. Over-all, the references system ultimately needs to be split into references that contain all the publishing information and other bibliographic information, and citations that have any particular information and that are linked to the bibliographic references. Also, footnotes should be changed so that you could have any number of sources (and ideally, we do want as many references as possible), while having there be only superscript number that refers to the whole collection for any one fact. Another possibility is a "side-by-side" system so that references would not be in the text of the content at all, but rather in a special associated page that corresponds directly with each part of the main article. This would also be useful for making notes about specific areas and collaborative editing, whereas currently all we have is a usually chronological talk page where old comments pile up in archives by the hundreds.

In-line citations rather than at end of paragraph or otherwise consolidated

The problem with having citations at the end of the paragraph is that there is no way to determine which statement came from which source. Someone reading or editing the article who wants to ascertain the reliability of some information or who wants to go directly to the original source for further research (whether for personal reasons or to add to or otherwise improve the article) must, if sources are combined at the end of a paragraph, search through every one of them, when the specific information sought was only in one of them (and would ideally be referenced by page number). Also, while an article may now be closely watched and each edit checked for sources and accuracy, this is not sustainable. It is impossible for a human to watch an article in perpetuity, and once anyone is able to make an edit without it being individually verified by someone watching, the added information is suddenly in the middle of a "referenced" paragraph; no longer, then, is every statement referenced and, even worse, it is difficult to see that there are unreferenced statements. —Centrx→talk • 22:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Infoboxes

Originally about fitting bibliographic information into Cite templates It is impossible for all the possibilities of human knowledge to fit in a template. This is a serious problem with people stuffing "facts" into infoboxes that are thereby contorted into falsehood or something misleading, when they can be accurately and plainly stated in the article. 22:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Portmanteau

The word "portmanteau" has been inserted throughout Wikipedia and seems to be some sort of novelty. It is often used instead of well-known, correct words like "combination" or "blend". In many cases not only is the usage gratuitous and confusing, but it is downright inaccurate: properly, a portmanteau word is a word with a special kind of packed meaning, in the manner of the Lewis Carroll quote. It is not a simple combination of letters, or simply a combination of the meanings of two different words. In linguistics "blend" is the word for most of the usages on Wikipedia, and in general "combination" is most common and understandable, and is descriptive.

Because this word is so unusual, it is usually found linked despite its irrelevance to the topic of the article; otherwise few people would have any idea what the word means. If a word is so bizarre that a wikilink is necessary to explain it, yet it represents so common a concept that it is included in all manner of articles, it shouldn't be used: instead there are common words that represent the common concept.

What is a proper word?

"combination" or "blend". "Blend" is often the right linguistic term, and has a clear meaning, but "combination" still has the right meaning and is also understandable. (Some portmanteau-fan merged blend into portmanteau, which was wrong; if anything the merge would be in reverse.) Also, in some cases no replacement word is necessary; oftentimes, I find that a sentence has become a mutated, redundant cludge just to fit in the favorite word, like "it is a portmanteau word derived from a combination of the words...". This is ridiculous.

These formations can sometimes even be replaced with a straightforward sentence like "this word is derived from the words" rather than "this word is a combination derived from". Also, Wikipedia not being a dictionary of etymology, it would be quite fine to state simply that "Televangelism is television evangelism", and few readers would not see the connection.

Fiction

Fundamentally re-orient or merge into the appropriate separate articles. The problem with having separate articles about fictional things is that it presents them as existing independently of the shows, in some "fictional universe". This is a problem for a few reasons on Wikipedia, but a major one is: when the show's writers change, the properties of the thing changes; the "history" of Starfleet Security might be changed by a 1990's show when there was some contradictory statement about it in a 1960's show. In comparison, the properties of chemical elements, for example, do not change and they are in themselves self-consistent. Our knowledge of them or theories about them might change, but when they do that is included as a historical element, with reference to the surrounding framework of people and places. Similarly, articles on fictional things must be made with reference to the surrounding framework of the books, television shows, etc. from which they come, which do exist in the real world. Articles ridden with statements like "The predecessor to the current branch of Starfleet Security were the weapons and security personnel of the Earth Starfleet" are not appropriate for an encyclopedia, while "They are frequently depicted in episodes as laying suppressing fire while one of the main characters, for example Captain Archer, runs for a certain objective." and "In the first episode of Season 3, "The Xindi", the MACOs participated in a mission on a mining planet to rescue Captain Archer and Commander Tucker." (MACO) are properly connected with the real world. This is to some extent separate from the sourcing issue. On that matter, if the several descriptions in books, official guides, and plot summaries are not acceptable then the featured article on Bulbasaur is not (all its sources are like this), nor are the many thousands of other articles on fictional characters and television episodes (24, Friends, CSI, That 70's Show) it goes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Categories_named_after_television_series on and on). These are vast categories of articles with no reliable sources (and invariably no sources cited whatsoever). This issue needs to be resolved, but these thousands upon thousands of articles are not going to be fixed piece-meal an AfD here and there. Whether reliable sources on a subject exist cannot be evaluated by a mass AfD, and some of these topics do have reliable sources and warrant independent articles. Also, these articles do have work and information put into them and should be transferred to other wikis; that is not going to happen en masse. Perhaps we need a template with a longer term deleting system; these thousands of articles should not be deleted in successions of sudden 5-day AfDs, but there does need to be some enforcement of Wikipedia content policies. (Separate note, if this is to be morphed in a mass nomination: based on a search of academic journals, newspapers, and magazines, "Starfleet Academy" is far more noteworthy, with many more mentions (though I did not look very hard for reliable sources). I did find, however, happen to find an article in the Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology which has an apparently thorough review of Star Trek medicine by episodes. These sorts of things exist in abundance for the famous Star Trek, and for other famous fictions. While we should not allow these articles to continue unaltered (or even unmolested), or permit new badly sourced ones to be created, a 5-day AfD is not going to suss out all the books (and Star Trek is the subject of third-party academic, analytical books) or all the magazine articles and this remains a wiki with some articles that are works in progress; these are not living persons.) —Centrx→talk • 01:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Assume good faith/high intelligence

No, we should not treat other editors as anything in particular, but if someone asks a question or does something that could only have been the result of non-high intelligence, we cannot both assume high intelligence and assume good faith. If someone asks a question that cannot be the result of an intelligent person being curious or understanding plain words, the question must be answered directly on what it is asking, not on assuming that the person asking it must already know the answer. I used to assume high intelligence in my everyday life—I did not know I was doing this, it was a fundamental assumption of my understanding of humans—and every time someone did something stupid I thought they were joking or that they were being malicious. —Centrx→talk • 00:54, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The more significant reason for AGF is that when communicating with others who may be from various cultures around the world with varying competence in English over a cold medium that does not convey emotions, a seemingly malicious comment may simply be a misunderstanding or the person just happens to be distressed for other reasons and did not intend malice. There is also the possibility that a person is mistaken or whatever—there are after all children or technically inept or autistic people editing Wikipedia. There is no need to assume someone is intelligent or stupid, one must simply deal with an issue on its merits, and with text on its wording ("comment on the content, not the editor"). With good-faith, at least, it is much more likely that someone spending their time contributing to Wikipedia is doing so in good faith (though with advertisers or others manipulating Wikipedia for their own interests, this is not true) and anyone who is contributing goodly to Wikipedia can apply AGF to themselves; some persons do not think they themselves have high intelligence, and whereas contributors of non-high intelligence are welcome, bad-faith users are absolutely not. —Centrx→talk • 03:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Binding decisions/No binding decisions

Supposing that a policy was arrived at through perfect, flawless consensus: if there is a problem with a current policy then the best avenue to correct it is to propose it at the policy page or talk page. That the policy was decided to be policy in the past does not mean we are necessarily bound to have it as policy in the future; of course, because it was decided to be policy in the past, there must have been substantial reasons for that which would need to be addressed before changing it. Separate from that, there are also issues with whether something found in a policy page was in fact added through consensus, or whether there would be substantial disagreement over the idea but no one has happened to notice it. There are issues about whether something in a policy is vague or too categorical or how it applies; "neutral point of view" is nice to say and agreed by any encyclopedia writer, but fewer people have reviewed what is actually currently stated in the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view page, and it is not necessarily simple to apply it to a particular situation in a particular article (that is, there has not even been any sort of "decision" about applying it to that particular situation in that particular article, let alone a binding one). Also, Wikipedia:Ignore all rules covers a lot of these problems, and is itself "official policy". Also, certain things like freeness, more or less open editing, and "encyclopedia" are intrinsic, essential to what Wikipedia is; in that sense there could be said to be a binding decision about what the whole thing is for and about, but that is very general and that too is still based on solid "binding" reasons, reasons which inform us when allowing or disallowing fair use images, having semi-protection and more or less of it, currently protecting any high-visibility templates, possibly changing "Verifiability" and "No original research" to something else, or conceivably changing "neutral point of view" to something related. —Centrx→talk • 01:29, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wonders of the new world

Google has incorporated links to Wikipedia into their Google Earth software simply as a resource for their users. However, this is part and parcel with the general trend of connected and open knowledge made possible by the Internet and other technology. I have been told that Google wants to organize all human knowledge, and the purpose of Wikipedia is to produce a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of human knowledge, and that is what is happening right now with Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is free as in speech, free as in liberty: anyone can copy, alter, and re-distribute Wikipedia and use it for their own purposes. For just one example of the possibilities of this, the $100 Laptop Project at the MIT Media Lab (<http://laptop.media.mit.edu/>) seeks to create and distribute this inexpensive computer to distribute to the poor and developing world. Wealth, wealth in its broadest sense as prosperity and the general welfare and an abundance from the necessities of food to the wonders of space exploration, is increased by learning, by human intelligence knowing more, and Wikipedia is part of that.

Wikipedia--and other Wikimedia projects like Wikibooks and Wikiversity--are open wikis: You can contribute by writing and editing articles that will be read by thousands or millions of people wanting to know more. To learn more about editing Wikipedia, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction>.

Projects for children

There is the Simple English Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia that describes things using simpler language and is suitable/designed for children and foreign-language speakers. You can visit the Simple English Wikipedia at <http://simple.wikipedia.org>. This project is significantly smaller than the main English Wikipedia or the other main language projects, but it is active.

There is also Wikibooks (<http://en.wikibooks.org>) and Wikiversity (<http://en.wikiversity.org).

Wikibooks is a project to create text-books, i.e. non-fiction descriptive works on a subject, and in building from basic concepts can be useful for children depending on their age. There is also a subproject there, Wikijunior (<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior>) which is less active but has produced some apparently fine books for children.

Wikiversity is a project (newly divided out from Wikibooks) to create a curriculum, materials, activities, etc. for teaching and learning and as such can be suitable for children for various ages.

I am not personally cognizant of everything that is going on on Wikimedia, so there are may be other relevant projects and there are in-depth features of all of the projects mentioned here.

I would like to mention that _you_ can participate in these projects and help create learning tools for children. This is all "user-generated content", but you personally are someone who can help generate it. These encyclopedia articles, books, and cirricula are all open-content: they can be used freely without restriction in poorly funded schools that need text-books, they can be used around the world for helping students learn English or about nature or history. This is free as in speech, free as in liberty, and everyone including you can participate. All of these projects have introductions to help you get started. You can find the introduction to the main English Wikipedia at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction>, Wikibooks <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Welcome%2C_newcomers>, <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Welcome%2C_newcomers>. There are also several other projects and things you can do to contribute to "a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of human knowledge".

IAR/Ignore all rules

Mostly what IAR means is that the purpose here is to create an encyclopedia: you do not need to spend time poring over rule minutiae in order to justify an action, and if some "policy" page happens to say something at the moment that is in fact contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia, then it is not binding. Nevertheless, the policy pages do generally contain the collective wisdom of other editors gained from experience in various circumstances and if there is a dispute over some issue then it should be reasonably discussed. 02:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Flags

The flag does not add any information, the name of the country is already included and that name is usually much better recognized by a reader than a flag; flags are appropriate in situations where there is not enough space to display the country name or where it used as a sort of abbreviation in listings, so that the full name is not listed each time, such as in sports tables. The flag unbalances the infobox, shouting to the reader that the country in which the school is located is somehow more important than every other element in the infobox. If we were to follow the same principle by which the country flag is added, a flag would be added for the nationality of the originator? Why not a flag for the affiliation (e.g. Catholic crosses), why not list the state flag and the flag of the municipality, and a flag for the athletic conference? This quickly becomes ridiculous (see, e.g. [6]). In addition, the flag is not appropriate for navigation. The convention with images like this on the Web in general is that clicking on the image will bring the reader to the linked article, i.e. the article about country, but instead they are sent to the image page. This is because images are not navigational tools. Wikipedia:Images, WP:MOS#Images, and Wikipedia:Image use policy has some relevant mentions about the use of images. —Centrx→talk • 21:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Binary prefixes

The metric system was invented more than two hundred years ago and is in overwhelmingly common use today. If this were 1800, then no we should not have used the metric system. Even today, Wikipedia does not exclusively require the "standard" metric system in articles. Regarding ISO 8601, it looks to me like the default dating everywhere on Wikipedia is Time, Day Month Year not Year-Month-Day-Time and in fact the use of ISO 8601 is specifically discouraged in articles in the Manual of Style because it disrupts the prose for the vast majority of readers, who being anonymous do not have date preferences set. Regarding standards in general, Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promulgating new standards, especially ones that are not even accepted by specialists in the field for which they were created. It is not the business of Wikipedia to be the sole publisher to require these terms; it is not the business of Wikipedia to be the vanguard of a standard long before others, even industry magazines and academic journals in the field. —Centrx→talk • 03:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Open proxies

What next? Should we block all muslim users because they may vandalise certain pages? Should we block American IP addresses because they may vandalise and misspell words? Or how about blocking all Nigerian addresses as they could be used in scams and user page spam? This policy is stupid. The vast majority of vandalism I've detected on Wikibooks and Wikipedia comes from closed IP addresses and usernames. How much time is being wasted on this policy? As an administrator on Wikibooks I refuse to take any part in this joke policy. Xanucia 11:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This policy affects no one who is not otherwise able to access the Internet. If you block these ethnic IP address that you have peculiarly chosen, you have blocked the person's primary and only IP address; if you block an open proxy, the person is free to use their primary Internet access. On the other hand, if you do not uniformly block these ethnic IP addresses, and a person using one vandalizes, the vandalism can be effectively stopped by blocking the ethnic IP address; but if you do not uniformly block open proxies, and a person using one vandalizes, they are perfectly capable of moving on to another open proxy, and another and another if you block them, leaving you to play Whac-A-Mole until all the open proxies are blocked anyway, thus resulting in the same result you tried to avoid by not blocking open proxies, but with a battle-field of vandalism in your wake. How much time would be wasted on reverting untraceable, unpreventable vandal bots if open proxies were not blocked? You consider it a joke because you do not understand it and have chosen a very poor analogy to try to make sense of it. —Centrx→talk • 21:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]