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Jimmy Wales shouldn't be playing politics with wikipedia. Shutting it down for 24 hours is the worst thing that can happen. It's petulant, and it's Wales own politics. Seriously considering walking away from the project if this keeps happening. Totally unnecessary. Small minded politicking. Un-Democratic. No idea where to post this - no obvious place for complaint. 86.145.1.143 (talk) 21:38, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
You saw something where? When? Are you talking about the one-time SOPA blackout from nearly a year ago? If you're going to 'not' complain, you're going to need to have some specifics for anyone to be able to respond. --Onorem♠Dil22:26, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
To counterpoint every one of your claims - the 24 hour shutdown got media attention; it was necessary to halt legislation that would have resulted in draconic regulations on Internet within Wikipedia's home country; it was suggested by multiple people in the Wikimedia Foundation; and the opinions of hundreds of Wikipedians were solicited making it a democratic action (the vast majority advocated the SOPA blackout). If you feel that you have to walk away from the project because of your own personal beef with Wales, feel free to do so, but make sure you have your facts in order first. As it is, your argument is quite the petito principii.--WaltCip (talk) 00:02, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Jimbo supported partial blackout not shutdown: To be fair, Jimmy Wales supported a partial blackout of the English Wikipedia not shutdown, instead favoring the original consensus, to show a temporary full-page banner then allow entry on that day. However, the implemented blackout became a JavaScript-based, notice banner which blocked all access, but users with default no-JavaScript setting (such as in non-altered Firefox browsers) could read any article (or view source), but NOT edit the contents during the 24-hour period. Prior to the blackout, some users posted workarounds in various areas, such as on User_talk:Jimbo_Wales, that JavaScript could likely be disabled to allow reading of articles, and that was indeed a correct prediction. The new-article count drastically dropped during the 24-hour blackout (near zero), and rare-article pageviews dropped to about 50%, during 18 January 2012, as evidence where many users (half?) could neither view articles (or navbox links) nor create new articles on enwiki except by admins (who made a few justified edits). I, personally, had to activate JavaScript to see the blackout banner which was being shown in some U.S. television news reports; otherwise, I saw each article but got view-source everywhere upon edit. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:10, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
How much notability is garnered from time on The Ultimate Fighter?
This might be a daft question but I seem to remember that if a photo is older than a certain age then it's copyright has lapsed and it can be uploaded to Wikipedia. Is this right and what is the age? Ta. Cls14 (talk) 17:52, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:Closed - There is no chance of reaching a consensus for a policy change here. This page is for discussing changes to policy and as no change is likely, there is no point in continuing it here. Jeepday (talk) 13:06, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Please see the essay WP:Hyphens and dashes. It is forward looking as currently Wikipedia extends the use of endashes to places that hyphens are normally used - in proper nouns.
Support with browser/keyboard wp:Accessibility: Many keyboards do not have dashes, but hyphens are everywhere, which also contributes to the wp:COMMONNAME of many topics to still contain hyphens, even though trendy concepts might consider new partnerships should use dashes, while some marriages have used hyphenated compound surnames since prior centuries. Wikipedia should aim toward common punctuation, found on many computer keyboards, rather than relatively exotic symbols. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Bizarre comment, that. Nobody has suggested messing with the hyphens in married names. And most keyboards do have en dashes, in one form or another. My Mac keybaords have had it at option-hyphen since 1984, and Macs are not altogether rare. On Windows, it's harder, but since nobody has asked anyone to enter an en dash, and they're not necessary to access articles, even Windows users don't have any accessibility issues because of them. They're certainly not "exotic". Dicklyon (talk) 23:57, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Nothing bizarre in noting a hyphen key is much easier for wp:Accessibility than special key-codes, and some browser fonts show the en dash as an hyphen, although a text search fails to match both. A marriage can be considered a type of partnership, and a compound surname as "Smith-Jones" does not mean Jones has been any more "Smith-ified" than in "Smith–Jones" (as compound surnames do not mean "surgically joined at the hip"). For the Michelson-Morley Experiment (light in aether), those twoscientists were collaborating with close teamwork. In fact, for the Seattle-Tacoma area, that region could be considered a "marriage" of two cities, and hence the airport is named "Sea-Tac" as a hyphenated compound word, rather than uberseparated, endashed "Sea–Tac" as if the two were tugging to stretch a rope apart. Using dashes to somehow emphasize two words are a specific form of partnership, does not stop children of a Smith-Jones marriage from taking last name "Smith-Jones", even though they might dislike one parent more than the other and would prefer "Smith——less-so-Jones". In any given situation, it is more productive to use extra words to clarify relationships, rather than force dashes to mean specific combinations, contrary to the common use of hyphens in city-to-city or scientist-to-scientist teamwork. Many Wikipedia editors do not see the need to force en dashes, especially where hyphens have been used for decades or centuries in the most-common form of names. Plus, some writers prefer dashes as mainly punctuation of parenthetical phrases, noting a (formerly) clear separation, as with Seattle–Tacoma being a separate town in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Now there seems to be a need to use double-hyphen "--" to separate just Seattle--Tacoma then being named on the other side of the double-hyphen, which is clearly different than a teamwork hyphen or endash. Any imagined clarity from endashes is an illusion or systemic bias, requiring spaced-dash as the next step. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:34, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose hyphens in titles
It's illogical that we should use the correct punctuation in articles' bodies but not in their titles. Yes, it is hard to type dashes, but redirects from titles with hyphens fixes that. David1217What I've done02:07, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
There are several. One is because it is impossible to have a URL that includes the endash - it is not a valid URL character and needs to be escaped. Another is that it is not on the keyboard, and so if I type in a hyphen there is nothing there. Apteva (talk) 06:50, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Maybe it's a limitation of your browser, or a feature of mine, but I actually see it, actually click it, actually load it, and actually end up with it as I pasted it there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Both of our browsers do the same thing. They silently correct it before sending it over the Internet to the above escaped form. There are only a few characters that can occur in URLs, the rest need to be escaped. The characters that can be used are in URL, but they are a-z, A-Z, 0-9, -, _, and ~. There are other characters that are used for special purposes, #, %, &, ?, and others, for example, and need to be escaped if they are used in a file name. Apteva (talk) 00:41, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Unnecessary and inconsistent. Redirects correct the issue, and more modern browsers should be able to display en dashes in URLs, anyway. CtP (t • c) 22:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Totally unnecessary. On a Mac keyboard the en dash can be produced by ⌥Opt+-. On Microsoft Windows, with a numeric keypad, an en dash may be entered as Alt together with 0150 on the keypad. On a Windows laptop, with no keypad, enter "–" in the editing area or (if creating an article) in the search box—I am now using a laptop but have no problem entering Indonesia 1945–1968 or the em dash (using —) in this sentence. See Dash#Common dashes for more details. Peter Brown (talk) 23:24, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
No purpose is served in having different style in the title and in the text. We even have provisions for displaying italics in titles. — kwami (talk) 02:43, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Per above. Illogical to have a different standard for the body and title. Attempts to solve a problem that does not exist. Resolute22:46, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
I neither support nor oppose hyphens in titles. If the title of an article should use a dash if it was not the title of an title then it should use one in the title as well. If it should use a hyphen in other places, then it should likewise for the title. If an en dash or em dash is used in a title than a redirect should be created to point to the title so that readers do not have to worry about typing an unusual character to find the article. Because of the conflicts over the use of a dash or hyphen if there is a common name that does not use either, it should be preferred. For example if a space or a slash would work as well, I would prefer the use of those characters. If either hyphens or dashes may be used for a title then the similar to other naming conventions the approach should follow the approach used by other articles of the same class or context, similar to what is done for making choices on disambiguation.
It is not a particularly good strategy to avoid a correct name by choosing an incorrect one just because it avoids controversy. In the lamest edit wars it proposed using Mexican War, without realizing that that is actually the most common name... Apteva (talk) 11:44, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Discussion of hyphens in titles
As can be seen there is already always a redirect from one to the other. Using the title at a hyphen improves usability as it allows typing in the actual title. This is less important in getting to the article than it is in other uses for the article. Obviously wikilinks to articles so named can either use an endash or a hyphen, for example, within another article, the link can be [[War in Afghanistan (2001-present)|War in Afghanistan (2001–present)]], or simply go through the redirect, at War in Afghanistan (2001–present). Apteva (talk) 01:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Hyphens are correctly used in hyphenated names, such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the comet Hale-Bopp. Endashes should not be extended to use in proper nouns. Instead common use is the standard to use, as stipulated in WP:TITLE.
Support hyphens in nouns to match mainstream usage: Frankly, all the retro-fitting of endashes into long-term hyphenated names is really bizarre, peculiar, and I would not be surprised to hear a comedian quip, "Wikidashia" because the forcing of the awkward dashes into age-old terms is so unusual, off-beat, freaky and fringe, that it seems like some cult has envisioned Dashotopia with Wikipedia as its breeding ground for "Der Dashter–Race". For years, I have avoided the dash/hyphen discussions because I imagined that, surely, common sense would conclude how the en-dashed words were relatively rare exceptions, and hyphens should be favored as they have been in the world at large, for hundreds of years. Long before I first edited Wikipedia in mid-2001, I had heard the term "hyphenated Americans" and instantly understood the basic meaning, but it is another example of hyphen usage dating back centuries, as in "Mexican-American" (hence "Mexican-American War"). -Wikid77 (talk) 07:54, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Bizarre comment, that. Nobody has suggested using en dashes in hyphenated-American constructs. And I'm pretty sure the Mexican–American War was not about Mexican-Americans. This is a place where understanding what the text means is actually facilitated by the punctuation. Similarly, nobody has suggested using an en dash in the hyphenated names of persons, as you seem to think. If you see an en dash between two surnames, you can be sure it refers to two persons, not to a person with a hyphenated name. Dicklyon (talk) 23:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
There are almost always exceptions. In this case if you see a hyphen in a comet you can be 100% certain it is two people, because that is how comets are named - a space indicates one person with a hyphenated name.[2]Apteva (talk) 11:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
This isn't true, though. It's just very basic logic that even a small child could understand: If people often have hyphenated names, and there is no barrier to entry by hyphenated-name people into the field of astronomy, then you obviously cannot count on a hyphen in a comet that is named after one or more people to consistently be a divider between the names of people rather than a hyphen in a hyphenated name of a single person. Such an assumption is absurd on its face. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.00:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Partial Support Though I disagree with Apteva on current reading of how TITLE and MOS interact on this and do not consider the hyphen to really be part of the spelling, I do think that hyphens can be used in proper nouns. Especially with regard to birds and name of people. Not quite sure where I stand with wars, airports and the like. PaleAqua (talk) 02:50, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
All I am saying is if a google search shows no one or even less than half using a dash, wp should not go against the grain and use a dash. With comets it is ludicrous to use a dash, with airports it is unusual. But we do need some standard, and common use is what we have been using, why change that - it certainly keeps us out of trouble. Apteva (talk) 04:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Common use is not necessarily what the MOS uses. If we are going to sit around and decide which punctuation is used by 51% of reliable sources and match every single article to the reliable sources in whichever narrow field the article happens to relate to, we may as well just change wikipedia to be the encyclopedia of punctuation, because nobody would have time to actually write articles. AgnosticAphidtalk23:57, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
And what exactly is wrong with having an encyclopedia that uses correct punctuation? What it would do is change wikipedia to using correct names for things instead of either using typewriter style hyphens or goofy dashes where dashes do not belong. I see no problem whatsoever in determining the most common usage - we do it all the time in deciding title names - and almost all of them are really cut and dry and no where close to even 60 or 70%. For example, is it Hugo Chávez or Hugo Chavez? 9/10 news stories use Chavez, but we have decided to use instead the correct name Chávez. We always have a choice between correct and most common. There are no other choices - MOS preferred spelling is not one of the options. No one ever needs to be slowed down in creating an article by wondering whether to use a hyphen, space, dash, or slash - just create the article, and someone, sometime will do the research to find out the correct title, and will move it appropriately, based on those two criteria, correct name or common use, either by just moving it if it is non-controversial, or with an WP:RM if it is - but we need to stop using MOS as a reason for changing article titles - the MOS rarely proposes either the correct title or the most common title, and we end up with a lame edit war. Apteva (talk) 10:45, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
You're confusing your personal view of "correct" punctuation (which hardly anyone else here agrees with) for what AgnosticAphid actually describes, which is marginal majority punctuation. One of the many flaws in your argument are that we know for a fact that punctuation, spelling, grammar and style have been eroded in popular publishing and mainstream culture over the last 20 years by the advent of the Internet, and a million bloggers which poor writing skills self-publishing without editors, and an entire generation of journalists growing up with a much weaker than heretofore grasp of punctuation, spelling, grammar and style, compounded with increasingly tight deadlines as news outlets try to compete with less formal online news sources (meaning even the editors don't have time to properly clean up the bad prose that makes it into print). Going by what you can turn up on Google is even more of a WP:GOOGLE reliability, verifiability and undue weight problem when it comes to these style matters than probably any other possible topic, simply due to the nature of the beast medium. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.00:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
No one has been able to find an example of this. I have checked common use for many proper nouns and have yet to find one. Bridges came close but failed. I am not suggesting we say "proper nouns do not use endashes" I am suggesting we say "proper nouns defer to common usage, see WP:TITLE", which says the same thing - use common usage. Normally exceptions are trivial to find, but while no one has been able to suggest any exception it is better to err on the side of caution. But if anyone has an example of a proper noun, that in common usage, uses an endash, I would love to see it. Apteva (talk) 20:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Again, not opposing hyphens in proper nouns, just opposing Apteva's nonsense. He thinks that if a style like ours that uses en dashes is in a minority, then it is an error. That's crazy talk. Dicklyon (talk) 00:01, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. It is simply wrong to say categorically that proper names do not use hyphens. What about, for instance, the Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme? You would change it to all hyphens, even though that would destroy the ability to distinguish between the one name that's hyphenated and the other that isn't? Even with everyone's most disagreeable example, Comet Hale–Bopp, this problem arises. Unlike people who would be reading IAU publications, not everyone here would know that "Hale-Bopp" isn't just a named for a single person if we were to change it to a hyphen. I'll concede that not all Wikipedia users are aware of the dash-vs-hyphen distinction that's being made, but is is a valuable distinction. The MOS is not required to follow guidelines and policies like COMMONNAME that are applicable to encyclopedic content.
On the other hand, perhaps we could propose abolishing the Manual of Style. Then we wouldn't have to worry about a dictatorship of the MOS and everyone could just choose whichever punctuation or capitalization struck their fancy, google's fancy, or the IAU's fancy.AgnosticAphidtalk23:54, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
If the MOS had no guidance on spelling it would still be spelled with a hyphen. It is not names of birds or people that are a problem, it is the names of other things. It is really not the providence of the MOS to teach spelling, punctuation, grammar, or good writing. All of that belongs in essays and wiktionary. Apteva (talk) 11:37, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
An extensive check has been performed on common use of hyphens and endashes in proper nouns. There are a several types of proper nouns that are commonly hyphenated.
Names, such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus. These exclusively use hyphens.
The biggest problem is the conflict that extending endashes to proper nouns creates between WP:TITLE and WP:MOS, which is not addressed by adding a sentence to the MOS to not use WP:TITLE for titles. Following common usage does address that conflict, and removes the conflict. Apteva (talk) 01:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
This is a combination of hyphenation which the MOS already supports, with false claims that have been repeatedly debunked. At least be honest enough to state the actual changes that you want. — kwami (talk) 03:51, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
3) Using hyphens as a substitute for dashes
Hyphens are conveniently entered from the keyboard, and are a suitable substitute, other than for FA's and FAC's.
Support hyphens for endashes
(To retain '#' auto-numbers, indent comments with '#::' not just colons).
Support hyphens to represent endashes: Again, for browser/keyboard wp:Accessibility issues, I support the treatment of hyphens as endashes, such as having a hyphenated redirect title for an endash title: "The Hyphen-/–Endash Battle" matching with 2 hyphens "-/-". Also, when page-number ranges contain hyphens, then they could be left in text as equivalent to ranges with dashes. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
But hyphen redirects are already standard practice, which is why we don't have any relevant accessibility problem at issue here. Dicklyon (talk) 00:06, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
This is not about titles. This is about writing 1312-27, and it being acceptable to leave as close enough. From below it seems that almost no one cares. Apteva (talk) 00:48, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
There is a substantial difference between stopping people from fixing them, and saying that hyphens are acceptable – and here we are talking more about 1846-48 being acceptable, than from changing comet Hale-Bopp to the inappropriate Hale–Bopp (with a dash instead of a hyphen). Being acceptable means there is no reason to change it - like rewording a sentence so it says "like a sentence rewording". So it would not prohibit the change but it would point out that the change is unnecessary. Changing Hale-Bopp to Hale–Bopp is a totally different ball game than changing 1846-48 to 1846–48, as changing a hyphen in a date range is changing to correct punctuation. Hale-Bopp already is correct punctuation, which can be confirmed from any dictionary that includes the name. Apteva (talk) 23:09, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
It is an acceptable substitute, but according to New Hart's Rules, the correct punctuation to use is an endash, which they call an en rule. See p. 79, which uses 1939–45 as an example.[3] It does not say that a hyphen can be used, although clearly it both can be and often is used. But advice on punctuation and good writing belong in essays, not in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 00:41, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Support editorial discretion, oppose MOS-based bullying and drive-by vandalism by obsessive-compulsive perfectionists. Carrite (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
support It's the simplest and most natural way. I can type a en-dash easily enough, but the standard should be what everyone knows how to do, without having to think about it or know our rules. It seems absurd to me to worry about typographic presentation given the current state of browser rendering and display technology. WP is not print, and clarity is sufficient. The only standardization I would support for typography is not mixing styles in the same article. DGG ( talk ) 22:30, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
This proposal is based on the wise advice that consistency within an article is more important than consistency between articles. For example, New Hart's Rules advises to consider leaving alone a consistent style that differs from your own. Apteva (talk) 20:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Any hyphen substitutions that can be improved by replacement with endashes, emdashes, or minus signs should be, even outside of FA's and FAC's. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Although it is perfectly acceptable for any editor to use a hyphen instead of an en dash, it's not OK to undo the work of editors that then make improvements by correcting those to en dash where the en dash usage is in accord with MOS:DASH. This has always been the way the MOS works; nobody needs to know it, follow it, or care about it, but they should not fight those who do. Dicklyon (talk) 00:03, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Accessibility is not a problem. On a Mac keyboard the en dash can be produced by ⌥Opt+-. On Microsoft Windows, with a numeric keypad, an en dash may be entered as Alt together with 0150 on the keypad. On a Windows laptop, with no keypad, enter "–" in the editing area or (if creating an article) in the search box—I am now using a laptop but have no problem entering Indonesia 1945–1968 or the em dash (using —) in this sentence. See Dash#Common dashes for more details. Peter Brown (talk) 23:34, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
No one's forcing any editor to do anything. But gnomes can come along and change typography so it complies with MOS (not to mention the major styleguides in North America, the UK, and Australia). Windows users: number lock off; press alt key, type in 0150. Or use the button just below the edit box. Tony(talk) 09:07, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
More nonsense. Since this has been spelled out to Apteva over and over, I can only conclude that he is making this proposal in bad faith. — kwami (talk) 03:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Allowing people to use incorrect punctuation is one thing, but forcing everyone to use incorrect punctuation? I cannot support such a proposal. --Cgtdk (talk) 19:32, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
The very fact that this proposal finds it necessary to differentiate FAs from the rest makes it dead on arrival. Promoting laziness on the part of editors because they aren't going for the bronze star is not a good thing. Resolute22:44, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
I find that oppose and support above incorrectly frame the question. Hyphens are much easier to type in compared to dashes for most editors and thus they should be allowed to use them when creating, and editing articles. Even if they accidentally replace correct dashes with hyphens or correct hyphens with dashes. Though should be restricted from just bulk converting to a form that disagrees from current consensus. Also, we should not make typography gnomes wait until an article is a FAC before applying polish, but instead allow them to fix them whenever.
This is actually the same view being advocated in the "Oppose hyphens for endashes" section above. No one in this debate has ever proposed forcing users to enter en-dashes and somehow punishing them if they don't. We all expect non-geeky editors to typically enter hyphens, because keyboards have hyphen keys, and expect that gnomes will fix it later. This is already what happens, and no one ever has a cow about it but Apteva and maybe two other editors (Wikid, and I forget who the other was). — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib.10:10, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
The disagreement is related to which hyphens are actually supposed to be hyphens and "fixing" them instead "breaks" them. The question is how does anyone determine what is correct? The MOS certainly does not offer correct advice - and offers incorrect examples. Apteva (talk) 22:35, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
As is pointed out, consistency within articles and subject groups is more important than consistency across Wikipedia. If there is one hyphen that should be an endash, it is proposed that it simply be left until the article reaches FA or FAC status, as edits are expensive, and there are far more important things to fix in GA articles than adding three pixels to the length of a hyphen. If a page has 19 hyphens that should be endashes and one that is an endash, or one that is a hyphen that should be an endash and 19 that should endashes and are endashes, it is better to make them all the same than which choice is made - either all twenty hyphens and all twenty endashes are acceptable, whichever the editor fixing the page chooses. Apteva (talk) 01:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Also change dashes to commas or parentheses: I would also note that endashes or emdashes could be changed, depending on context, into sets of parentheses or commas—except in direct quotations—provided the change in punctuation does not alter the meaning of the phrase. Especially, the format style to precede an endash with a non-breaking space, as " –" could be substituted as a comma, to reduce confusion in the formatting of the text. In many cases, an endash has been written into a text phrase, without the appropriate non-breaking space connecting the endash to the preceding text, and so replacement with a comma might be simpler or clearer than the logistics needed to maintain the use of endashes, preceded by non-breaking spaces, in that text. In general, dashes are very tedious to edit, maintain, and verify, due to a lack of keyboard dash characters, and some browsers which display endashes as hyphens on the browser screen. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:52, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Seriously. I asked, this was the answer. So here it is. I would like to see the opinions on at least 50-60 editors on this issue. Not just the half dozen who I know are going to oppose it and try to stifle any discussion on the issue too. Apteva (talk) 06:54, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
FWIW, JHunterJ pointed Apteva here to get broader discussion; however there is beating a dead horse issue going on here as well (give what appears to be a number of times the editor has been told that consensus favors the house style instead of what Apteva proposes here). --MASEM (t) 06:59, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
But you won't tell us who asked you to post here, with a link maybe, to dispel the impression that you hallucinated it? Dicklyon (talk) 07:13, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
See above. AGF, though, applies. Here is what I would like to see - out of 50 to 60 editors, how many agree or disagree with the above. Is that an unreasonable request? Apteva (talk) 07:18, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
You've just about exhausted any reasonable assumption of good faith. JHunterJ, in addition to pointing you here, also explicitly said "Let the RFC/U and AN/I finish." You did neither, instead rushing to yet another forum to shop your wares. PowersT13:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Had that been the intent, it would have been far better to use English that made that clear. I do not see that was the intent. I was not asking what should I do after the RFC and ANI close, I was asking what should I do now? To put it into context. JH had closed an RM that I had opened. SOP if someone closes an RM, there are two recourses, one open an MRV, but MRV specifically asks to ask the closing admin first. Hence the dialog at JH's talk page. I need to remind everyone that I have a content question. RFC/U and ANI are only about conduct, not about content. If I am wrong about the content, a simple no will suffice. As I see it there is only name calling, which is never the way to resolve content disputes. See WP:FOC. Apteva (talk) 20:11, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Too late to stop this thread even if harrassed by other editors: Because the dash/hyphen issue affects multiple guidelines (wp:MOS) and policies (wp:TITLE), then here is the proper venue to discuss system-wide policy implications. Trying to censor discussion now, would be like inviting reporters to a major exposé and advising them all to leave now, because someone was accused of revealing too much truth. There's no stopping this discussion, at this point, since many editors have dealt with copy-editing to force dashes everywhere, and assess the burden of extra labor that it entails. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I think I can speak for the majority of editors who neither know nor care about the distinction between hyphens and dashes... the only "rule" should be:
"If you are not sure whether to use a hyphen or a dash when writing an article, don't worry about it; Another editor will come along later and fix any punctuation mistakes you make."
Very true. But how many would like to see airports spelled the way airports are spelled, comets the way comets are spelled, and Mexican-American War spelled the way most people spell it - with a hyphen? Mexican-American War has been moved back and forth from a hyphen to an endash about a half a dozen times each way. [Actually 94% of books use Mexican War, though.] The correct procedure to follow, if there is likely to be a dispute, is to open an RM. It does not help to make side remarks about being disruptive. It is never disruptive to suggest an improvement. If it is in fact not an improvement, there will likely be less support than if it is. Find out. Edison would never have invented the light bulb if after 100, 200, or 800 times said, well, this has been tried, there is no use in trying again.[4]Apteva (talk) 20:11, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that most people "spell" those as "two words with a short horizontal line between them" and don't really think about it much beyond that point. — Hex(❝?!❞)00:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
It is disruptive however to try to open discussion for a possible improvement when previous recent attempts have failed, which is what the issue is here (that's pretty much WP:DEADHORSE). The reason there is an RFC/U and a ANI against you is because you don't seem to have gotten the message that this has been discussed and consensus shows that change is not likely going to happen any time soon, particularly if you are using the same set of arguments for proposing the change. --MASEM (t) 20:16, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
False or invalid consensus to use dashes: The point which some seem to miss is that a "wp:local consensus" to force use of dashes cannot override a broad consensus which favors policy wp:COMMONNAME to name hyphenated words with hyphens, not some other dash character (nor replace commas with semicolons to add 3-4 pixels more). The so-called "consensus" to put dashes into hyphenated common names is invalid, per wp:CONSENSUS. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
See the analogy of Edison and the light bulb. I do not care how many times someone proposes that Kiev be moved to Kyiv or any other dispute, and no one else should either. But to ask someone to not ask the question is inappropriate. The fact is that out of 3,000 active editors probably less than a dozen have expressed an opinion on hyphens and endashes, yet everyone uses them, and is affected. A wider discussion is clearly warranted. I am asking for 50 or 60 responses here. That to me would be more representative. We get 100 votes on RfA's, surely we can get half that. Apteva (talk) 20:35, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Given the fact that most Wikipedians probably don't know (or care about) the difference between a dash and a hyphen (and have never even heard the terms en-dash and an em-dash)... expecting that many people to comment on the issue is unrealistic. Blueboar (talk) 22:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
That said... here is my take on the issue: I simply ignore the MOS. I know there is (apparently) a distinction between dashes and hyphens, but I don't know or care what it is. As far as I am concerned they are interchangeable. I do know that one of them is right there at the top of my keyboard... so I use that key interchangeably for both. I leave it to anal Style Nazis other editors to correct me. Since I they both look essentially the same to me, I usually don't even notice the correction. All I ask is this: if we are talking about an article title, include a redirect so people like me can still search for and find the article by using the key that is at the top of my keyboard. Blueboar (talk) 23:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
That's a great approach except for the ignorant personal attack that was at least struck through, thanks for that. It the other approach of disruptively undoing the corrections and ignoring the consensus that's at issue. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:57, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Don't care about that either. Since most of us can't tell the difference between dashes and hyphens, we are not particularly concerned by a slow edit war over such petty punctuation marks. We don't really find it all that disruptive for it to flip back and forth occasionally.
Then you should also be in favor of ending Apteva's disruptions. -- JHunterJ (talk)
That depends on what you think the disruption is... I think his going on and on trying to correct the MOS is disruptive (and I urge him to stop). However, I do not think it is disruptive for him to quietlyignore the MOS (and change a hyphen to a dash or a dash to a hyphen, as he thinks best). Blueboar (talk) 02:37, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
To give people useful advice on their style questions... (not to lay out firm and fast rules that must be followed). Blueboar (talk) 03:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I have no interest in ignoring the MOS. I think the MOS should give advice on how we can have consistent articles, but I do not think the MOS should be a guide to good writing. I would prefer that it stick to things like telling us how articles are laid out and and using sentence case instead of title case, for example. And not putting quotes around blockquotes. But when it comes to giving bad advice, like spelling airports and comets with an endash, now that is just absurd. It turns out that simply assuming that proper nouns are going to use a hyphen instead of an endash will keep everyone out of trouble 100% of the time. Who knew it was that simple? Apteva (talk) 06:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
There may be occasional exceptions to the MOS, but someone "quietly ignoring the MOS and changing a hyphen to a dash or a dash to a hyphen, as he thinks best" can indeed be disruptive. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Only if you think of the MOS as "a set of rules" to be followed... if you think of it as advice it isn't disruptive to ignore that advice.
As for consensus... I strongly suspect that if you asked the broader wikipedia community beyond those who regularly edit the MOS page, you would find that the actual consensus on the use of hyphens vs dashes is... "it doesn't really matter". Blueboar (talk) 12:59, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Only if you think of the MOS as a manual of style guidelines, actually. Treating them as, well, what?, meaningless strings of words that every individual editor can ignore makes them meaningless. Strong suspicions don't make new consensuses. New consensus makes new consensus. Otherwise, I shall strongly suspect is that everyone always agrees with me. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:05, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
<---It is probably correct that most think that hyphens and dashes do not matter, and with only a three pixel difference it is pretty hard to see why anyone would want to make a correctly used hyphen an extra three pixels longer, turning it into an incorrectly used dash. IAR is a fundamental principle we apply to make the encyclopedia better. If someone thinks it improves the encyclopedia to spell things correctly, and the MOS says to spell it wrong, well then what does that suggest? Is it better to ignore the MOS or to change the MOS? IAR suggests the former, but commonsense suggests the latter. We use hyphens for most minus signs and no one complains, yet newspapers use endashes for minus signs, to distinguish them from hyphenation. Should someone from that walk of life use endashes where they think endashes go, and uses them consistently in an article, in my view it is better to leave them. Consistency within an article is far more important than consistency between articles. Apteva (talk) 20:02, 4 December 2012 (UTC)ctua
Most of the advice in the MOS about hyphens and dashes is more like should sentences end in a preposition? And most of it is technically correct, but some involves splitting hairs where they need not be split, for example, it is common in British publications to use a spaced endash – like this – but in American publications to use an emdash—like this—instead. Such distinctions do not need to be discussed. The only advice in the MOS that is really bad about hyphens and dashes is to use any dashes in proper nouns. The correct advice would be, in my opinion, to defer to common use, thus bringing the WP:MOS in line with WP:TITLE. Hyphens in titles, is of course a subject for TITLE, not MOS, but using hyphens everywhere instead of dashes is a subject for the MOS. Apteva (talk) 20:28, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Over 60 editors have already discussed, voted, and converged
Per this archive of the new dash guideline drafting process summary, which notes that "The voting page attracted contributions from 60 editors..." That's why there's not much appetite to put up with more months of discussion and disruption driven by one editor with a novel theory that nobody and no source supports. Dicklyon (talk) 00:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Almost all of that discussion was about other issues. [and over a year ago] There is nothing wrong with either overturning or confirming decisions. My issue is very focused - using hyphens and endashes correctly, meaning that endashes are not used in proper nouns. And if it was such a novel theory, why would 98% of books use a hyphen? For example, a history book uses Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Clearly they are choosing which to use and where to use a hyphen, as they used a hyphen in Mexican-American War, and an endash for the dates.[5]Apteva (talk) 01:09, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
The idea that "endashes are not used in proper nouns" did not come up because it is not in any of the dozens of guides to English usage that were consulted. It is your own novel idiosyncratic theory, contradicted by many sources that use en dashes in places and organizations and such named after pairs of people (for example, Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, to name one that you've noted appears with en dash in nearly half of book sources). Dicklyon (talk) 03:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Most style guides, including ours (until it was changed recently), simply say things like hyphenation is also used in proper nouns. We went over Richmond-San Rafael Bridge extensively. If you look at the first ten there are almost half and half, but when you look at the first hundred or so, endash fails miserably. See Talk:Richmond–San Rafael Bridge#Requested move. Apteva (talk) 06:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
So you're saying that 25.7% of sources and WP are in error, because they're in a minority. That's really just a rejection of the idea that WP can have a style like many of these other sources have, not proof that proper names must use hyphens. That pigheaded approach of yours has received zero support from other editors. Why can't you stop pushing it so disruptively? Dicklyon (talk) 18:20, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
This is silly. Wikipedia chooses the spelling used most often for article titles. Saying nearly half when the actual number is not even 25.7% (that is a number that is rounded up) is inaccurate and not helpful in deciding which is the majority, and therefore which we should be using. Wikipedia is not like other sources, because it has a higher standard than other sources. Wikipedia would like to be the standard that everyone else goes to for correct and accurate information - that is in a nutshell the definition of an encyclopedia. Picking a style that is used 2% of the time, as in Mexican-American War, and even calling it that, when 94% of books use "Mexican War" instead, is not appropriate. So what is 2% of 6%? That is how many books spell Mexican War the way we do. Disruptively? No. The word disruptive does apply, though, to editors who insist on using dashes where hyphens are more appropriate, and who attempt to stifle conversation to correct this issue, and who use words like disruptive to do so. Apteva (talk) 19:33, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Apteva, I'm going to strongly suggest that 1) you read through WP:LAME to understand that you're talking about a trivial issue that is detracting from the actual editing of articles that we should be doing, and 2) recognizing that most of our readership is not going to recognize the different between a title using an endash and a title using a hyphen or consider that using one or the other is "wrong", and that it is only for internal consistent and house style that we picked one and stuck with it across titles and prose. Continuing to push the issue without any change of argument is likely going to get you restricted or blocked for a period of time since it is clear consensus has been recently established on the issue. --MASEM (t) 19:54, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, but obviously there is a right and a wrong way to suggest change. To not suggest change is worse. I see that the essay ends with the advice "people that care about the distinction between the different flavors of short horizontal lines should feel free to argue about it and generate WP:MOS pages about the topic, so long as they only involve other people that also care about the different flavors of short horizontal lines." The problem is that they had a huddle about dashes, got some of it right and some of it wrong, and then went out into article space thinking that it was up to them to fix every hyphen and dash themself, instead of trusting others to use their own common sense in applying or not applying what they had written. Apteva (talk) 20:57, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
You can suggest change - just not the 3, 4, or whatever number of times that I'm guessing from the past history that you've made in relatively rapid-fire suggestion, particularly when the consensus seems to be immovable towards that change. That's called tenacious editing, and that appears to be why there's the RFC/U and ANI threads open on you. It is suggested you let the point rest for some time (months? I don't know exactly how long) as well as to find other arguments that may be more convincing to that change, and then propose it. Otherwise, your proposal is going to fall on deaf ears no matter how loud you try to make the point. You may be annoyed about the endash/hyphen issue, but, again, most readers care less as long as they type what they want in the search bar and get to an article that talks about what they searched for. It's likely worrying about a 10 cent overcharge on a $1000 bill. There's the principle of the thing, yes, but in the long run does it matter? --MASEM (t) 21:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Even pickier. I was tenacious, others thought I was tendentious. Tendentious only applies if "it does not conform to the neutral point of view" or "tends to frustrate proper editorial processes and discussions". None of which apply.[disputed] (others may disagree) Apteva (talk) 00:55, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
@Apteva: Wikipedia requires a good community to build the encyclopedia. Vandals and incompetent editors are easily handled—what destroys a community is endless bickering. Let's say the previous discussions were all wrong, and the conclusions are invalid. It is still the case that the horse has been sufficiently beaten, and the matter must be dropped. I do care about typography, but obviously the appropriate length of a horizontal line boils down to a matter of opinion—further arguing the point would be disruptive. Try again in 12 months. Johnuniq (talk) 00:34, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
NP. Or since this is year end, in 2014. But if it goes through this go around I will not have to bring it up again. Right now the issue that matters is 1/1, with the oppose vote of questioned validity. Apteva (talk) 00:55, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Apteva, have you considered what will happen if one of the people who oppose your viewpoint is as passionate as you are? Are we as a community supposed to suffer literally endless debates over the size of a dash because one or more editors can't shut up? Far worse than getting stuck with the "wrong" version of MOS is an editor with the attitude that he should keep arguing until he gets his way, no matter what. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:31, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
That's a great theory, but in practice it is worse to "not raise your hand" when someone has a question, or to "sit on your hands" when someone sees an error. I would guess that 99% of wikipedia readers either trust what they see or feel powerless to correct errors they see, even if they know they are looking at an error. It is obvious from the below that 99% of wikipedians think this is one of the lamest issues ever. If there is anyone that is passionate about anything, they do not make a very good wikipedia editor for that subject, and are advised to stick to subjects that they are less passionate about. Endashes and hyphens are not a subject that I am passionate about. They are a subject that I am knowledgeable about. Apteva (talk) 03:24, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Restoring edit that was censored from the above discussion:I'm pretty sure the horse is just resting. It'll get back up in a minute and start arguing about small horizontal lines again...
I can't believe there are actually 60 people who give a flying fuck about this non-issue.... Wait, should I have used a different small horizontal line in "non-issue"? Am I in trouble now? Beeblebrox (talk) 03:51, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Self appointed civility police, please do not remove this again. You may not like hearing from those of us who think such discussions are an epic waste of time, but trust me, there are more of us than there are of you and it is not appropriate to summarily remove comments from a discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:09, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
'tis astonishing, isn't it? I really can't believe the amount of discussion squandered over a difference that I usually can't even detect unless someone points it out.—Kww(talk) 02:35, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Emerging consensus about hyphens versus endashes
Within just a few days of discussing this hyphen/endash topic, by 5 December 2012 it became obvious there are some clear issues which have emerged to show rough consensus:
The endash is considered definitely different than a hyphen character, especially in distinction with computer devices which key-in or match one or the other but not both characters.
The hyphen is widely supported on keyboards, while the endash character is a very rare key on computer devices, confirming wp:Accessibility problems for endashes.
Many users do not think the choice between a hyphen and an endash is a significant issue for Wikipedia to debate, nor to stipulate.
Consequently, there is no consensus to favor the use of endash over the historical use of hyphens, or vice versa, and so I would conclude that Wikipedia should neutrally allow using either an endash or hyphen except where other policies favor a choice, such as in wp:TITLE (wp:COMMONNAME) to use the most-common spelling of a name, and in wp:ACCESS to allow access to Wikipedia functionality in typing or searching for data.
Implications from emerging consensus: There are several issues which directly relate to the decisions from the emerging consensus noted above. The related issues include:
Wikipedia should not establish a house style (in wp:MOS) that recommends endashes over hyphens (nor vice versa) because too many editors do not support the distinction as being significant for Wikipedia.
With no house style to favor endashes, then page-number ranges could use either hyphens or endashes, with no need to edit an article to force either character.
With no house style to favor endashes, then day/date ranges could use either hyphens or endashes, with no need to edit an article to force either character.
With no clear consensus to favor endashes, then no policy statement should specify a specific choice of hyphen/dash to override other policy reasons for choosing which to use.
As a consequence of those related issues (listed immediately above), then editing of pages would be simplified by not changing hyphens/endashes unless directed by policy statements, not as a style issue. There would be no need to put "–" where a prior editor had written hyphen "-" or double-hyphen "--" in the text of an article. Note well that the above implications directly follow from the fact of numerous editors stating that the choice between hyphen/endash is insignificant for Wikipedia as a style-related issue. However, if the emerging consensus were to change greatly, and a supramajority of editors recant their opinions to instead, later, strongly favor the use of endashes rather than hyphens, then the above implications or conclusions would no longer be valid, and style guides could favor endashes as the widely preferred style of short horizontal lines, which is clearly not the case, at this time in December 2012. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:41, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
It has become clear that there is no consensus to change the current guidelines, and that all responses to the things that you find "clear" will be ignored in favor of your conclusion. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:50, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I think you could gain consensus for an even simpler proposal: forbid the use of en-dashes within Wikipedia at all, and commissioning a bot to remove all existing occurences. I can't remember a pettier or more insignificant squabble than this. The difference is essentially invisible, and using both does nothing more than force the existence of redirects to compensate for the simple fact that people can't type en-dashes.—Kww(talk) 17:57, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Just because you claim an inability to detect the difference doesn't mean there isn't one, or that the difference is insignificant. The difference between a comma and a period, or a minus sign and a division sign, is equally small but I'm sure you can agree the meanings are quite different. Using the correct punctuation enhances understanding and reduces confusion for readers -- even those readers who are not consciously aware of the difference. It's good typographical practice and has been for centuries. PowersT18:09, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
That comparison would indicate to me that you have no appreciation for the truly infinitesimal difference we are discussing. Nobody has continuous edit wars and discussions about the difference between a minus sign and a division sign because their purpose, usage, and appearance is clearly different. We've muddled along for years with keyboards that couldn't distinguish these different short horizontal lines because the vast majority of population doesn't find the distinction interesting. To load the encyclopedia down with a redirect structure to jump back and forth between two different punctuation marks that aren't appreciably different in order to satisfy a desire to be typologically correct is creating a problem that doesn't exist. Far easier to simply forbid the use of the en-dash. We could probably even get Wikimedia software modified to treat and render the two characters identically to prevent anyone from trying to cheat.—Kww(talk) 18:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I agree, it would be easier to pretend that the endash doesn't exist. It would be wrong, but it would be easier. It would also be easier to pretend Unikode doesn't eksist. I'm pretty sure we kan get by without q, x, j, and c as well. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:39, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Aw come on, he has a point, although I disagree with it. The word "wrong" implies grammar books are something like scripture. A more utilitarian answer is that using "k" for "c" would slow down comprehension by about a percent. Using a hyphen for a dash would slow down comprehension by a much smaller fraction, and only for the fraction of a percent of our readers who know the difference. Once we write several paragraphs on the subject, it would have been more efficient to do whatever gets us back to something real again. Art LaPella (talk) 18:52, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
When he can demonstrate that the vast majority of keyboards manufactured for decades have been missing the q, x, j, and c keys, he'll have a point. Until then, he's simply conflating two completely different issues for comedic effect.—Kww(talk) 19:06, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
You can't re-engineer grammar, and to argue a ban on a punctuation mark is crass. Just because a number of people don't appreciate the difference, does not mean we should just pretend it's "truly infinitesimal". There are small differences between other points of grammar, and spelling as well – we're not dumbing down to suit those who don't care enough to learn those differences. If a grammar point causes a big fuss like this, deal with the fuss, don't warp the grammar. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:01, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not pretending it's truly infinitesimal, it is truly infinitesimal. Hence the discrepancies all over reliable sources as to which ones to use in which cases and the lack of distinction in keyboards.—Kww(talk) 19:06, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
It isn't. It doesn't matter how many times you say it, there is a significant difference between a hyphen and an endash. Keyboards don't do a lot of things – that's no indicator of grammatical importance, merely frequency. What is truly infinitesimal though is the merit in your argument to ban endashes. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:13, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Keyboards don't have °, ¢, or ∞ either. Keyboards don't even have italics. But we keep using them in Wikipedia because it's supposed to be laid out like a "real" encyclopedia, not a typewritten galley proof of an encyclopedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:51, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Frankly I find it sad that anyone would devote so much energy to arguing on and on and on about such a point, failing to realize that the people involved in the dispute at literally the only ones that care or will even notice the difference. Once you have decided how many en dashes can dance on the head of a pin be sure and let us know... Beeblebrox (talk) 19:14, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
When an utterly insignificant issue is making a sprawling mess at on of our major forums for discussing policy you can expect people to point out that this is a silly, pointless dispute that you all are taking way too seriously. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:24, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Speaking generally. why should some people's ruling of what is insignificant, silly and pointless have any bearing on what others want to do on the encyclopedia that anyone can edit? Maybe I missed the diktat. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:30, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Those 60 editors agreed to styles which contradicted worldwide usage
Just in case anyone thinks the dash-style decisions among the above-cited 60-editor voting (June 2011) was, somehow, reflecting the world-at-large use of dashes, I will note the following strong objection to one aspect of pro-dash usage in ratios:
Proposal: use en dash in ratios ("Male–Female ratio")
Reaction:Very strongly oppose. No actual usage outside some obscure style guide has been given; most style guides do not recommend this. Looking at a random sample of actual English suggests strongly that this is also the wrong example; the old-fashioned (male:female) and modern (male/female) symbols for a ratio are both more common than dashes; hyphens are more common than all three put together. If those who support this want permission to do this, I am still willing to accord it. (posted in mid-2011 by Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:22, 5 June 2011)
The stipulation to use dashes in ratios was favored, even though directly in conflict with the world-at-large (and many style guides), which use hyphens ("male-female") more than the less-common colon ("male:female"), or slash ("male/female"), or endashed forms combined. The result was a style-guide rule which pushes the least-common ratio format (endash), as being preferred, and definitely a pro-dash stance above all other forms. That was the result of the 60-editor voting process, which pushed the use of endashes in ratios, above 3 other more-common formats. I am reminded of the adage, "If the only tool avaliable is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail". Perhaps if a style-guide document had been focused on "Hyphen/dash usage" (rather than "wp:DASH"), then worldwide use of hyphens, far more than dashes, would have been advised. Consider the outcome of an election which has only one candidate on the ballot, as an analogy when making choices. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Note: Septentrionalis was later topic-banned from editing the MOS, I believe due to his intransigence over hyphens and dashes.
It seems like this discussion is sort of like a disagreement over the wisdom of having a Manual of Style at all. A major point of having a manual of style is to establish rules for (grammatically) ambiguous questions to achieve consistency. Does it really matter if in certain situations 60% of sources disagree with our decision to use an en dash rather than a hyphen? No! We're choosing a rule for consistency and the MOS isn't required to follow rules like commonname that are applicable to actual encyclopedic content. Are we really going to sit around interminably debating whether it makes sense to change the manual of style just because 85% rather than 60% of sources in a particular circumstance use a dash? I certainly hope not! Basically I just think that to add "use an en dash in this situation -- except when dealing with comets because the IAU disagrees, and except when dealing with airports because the FAA disagrees" is just the start of an avalanche of essentially unhelpful discussions to be had and needlessly time-consuming decisions to be made. AgnosticAphidtalk23:27, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it's odd to be hearing this voice from a user who was first topic banned then permanently blocked. It was not for his opinions in opposition to dashes, but yes for "intransigence" as you call it. An inability to live with the consensus worked out by so many others. We were all tired of arguing, and he wanted to keep it up, so much that he resorted to a sock puppet to do more of it after he was topic banned. It's amazing how much disruption one person can serve up. Things were pretty quiet, Feb. through Aug, then another popped up. Dicklyon (talk) 23:49, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Re: Agnostic's comment: "We're choosing a rule for consistency and the MOS isn't required to follow rules like commonname that are applicable to actual encyclopedic content." I am confused... if the MOS is not applicable to actual encyclopedic content what is the MOS applicable to? If there is a conflict between the MOS and a very consensus policy provision like WP:COMMONNAME, I would say the MOS needs revision. Blueboar (talk) 23:59, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I took AA to say "rules like commonname that are applicable to actual encyclopedic content". That is, COMMONNAME is about content, the stuff that needs to be verifiable in reliable sources, as regulated by policy. The MOS is not about that, but about how to style our presentation of it to make a consistent and professional look. Dicklyon (talk) 00:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I meant that the MOS isn't subject to commonname, not that content isn't subject to the MOS.
The MOS is a guideline. WP:Policy says, "The policies, guidelines, and process pages themselves are not part of the encyclopedia proper. Consequently, they do not generally need to conform with the content standards. It is therefore not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Wikipedia's administrative pages, or to phrase Wikipedia procedures or principles in a neutral manner, or to cite an outside authority in determining Wikipedia's editorial practices. Instead, the content of these pages is controlled by community-wide consensus, and the style should emphasize clarity, directness, and usefulness to other editors." Because the MOS is a guideline, it's not subject to policies (guidelines?) like COMMONNAME, TITLE, and so forth. Its purpose is not to reflect the accumulated wisdom of all other style guides in an encyclopedic fashion, it's to aid Wikipedia in creating a manageable, consistent, and useful in-house style. AgnosticAphidtalk00:17, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I would like to focus on four words "it's to aid Wikipedia". The MOS can either help or hurt Wikipedia. It helps Wikipedia if it gives good advice, and it hurts Wikipedia if it gives bad advice. To not use common use for names is clearly bad advice and clearly hurts Wikipedia because it leads to misspelling comets and airports and not spelling bridges and wars the same way that most reliable sources spell them. So where the MOS went wrong is in applying rules of punctuation to proper nouns - proper nouns use hyphens and not endashes, and that can be tested by simply checking any. The suggestion to revise the MOS is a good one. Apteva (talk) 06:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Helpfulness or aid is in the eye of the beholder, and I personally don't think that your suggestion of deferring to the majority of reliable sources for every single article title separately is particularly helpful. That would spawn an endless number of individual revisions to the MOS and would lead to the MOS having a rule for every single article. If we were talking about some MOS rule that was, "always use semicolons instead of periods," then perhaps we could all agree that the MOS is unhelpful. But really we are talking about a stylistic choice and your arguments seem to ignore the prior discussion that led to the current MOS guideline and also either overlook or are hostile to the whole purpose of having a manual of style. It's regrettable that the idea of having mandated usage seems to be so troublesome to some editors, but really that is a fundamental disagreement with the MOS and not a basis to change individual suggestions within the MOS. AgnosticAphidtalk21:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
RE: "That would spawn an endless number of individual revisions to the MOS and would lead to the MOS having a rule for every single article." Not if the "rule" stated at the MOS was: "Follow the usage of the sources, per WP:COMMONNAME" (ie one "rule" that allows for multiple end results)... I will note that this would have the advantage of bringing the MOS into sync with what is already stated in our WP:Article Titles policy. Blueboar (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Proposal for a moratorium
Since the few people who actually have a strong opinion on this are clearly unable to resolve it themselves and the rest of the community doesn't really care, I propose a one-year moratorium on debates regarding en dashes, hyphens, and any other small horizontal lines. This would also cover editing in article titles or content to make them have the users preferred small horizontal line or editing the MOS or any other page related to the use of small horizontal lines, construed as broadly as possible. Any user found to be in violation of the moratorium will first be warned about it, just once, and then be subject to blocking, with repeat offenses leading to severely increased block lengths, up to and including blocking for the entire remainder of said moratorium.
Support as proposer. Looking at the massive discussion above it is clear that this minor issue is a major time sink and a distraction from actual useful work. The vast majority of our readers do not know or care what the difference is between these small horizontal lines so the benefit to using one or the other is obscure at best. The involved parties are clearly never going to stop unless they are made to. So let's just agree that the sane thing to do is to put a stop to these endless, pointless arguments about small horizontal lines. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I've just changed my vote from Support to Oppose for you in the ArbCom election, on the basis of your disregard for professional standards of writing, and what the major style guides in the language say. Just weird to be proposing blocks for people who introduce consensus-based improvements. Appalling that you think you'd make a good arb. Tony(talk) 09:15, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Is the voting still open? There is no professional standard of writing in the world that suggests that comets, airports, etc. should be misspelled. There is little doubt that Beeblebrox, one of the most respected editors will be selected handily, but... 01:07, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
What a pity that an editor who dismisses professional standards of typography ("small horizontal lines") should be regarded as a "respected editor", and that an editor who suggests people shouldn't be allowed to discuss it, should be considered suitable as an arb. It would be pretty outrageous. Tony(talk) 11:58, 10 December 2012 (UTC) Oh, and for the record, Oppose, of course. And I guess it needs to be pointed out that arbcom already supervised a large RfC last year in which all of this was resolved by consensus. Care to look, Beeblebrox? Tony(talk) 12:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't tend to bash people for grammar errors, I just correct them. I had never even seen an argument about hyphens and endashes until I saw this one. Does this proposal constitute a ban on correcting grammar where there is no debate? For example correcting Coca_Cola to Coca-Cola? Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:44, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
So just ban hyphen and endashes changes in that article and any similar ones, why use a sledgehammer to crack what is apparently a very small nut? Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:54, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Per common use, we would just punt and call it Mexican War, the same as roughly 90% of books and other references. But that does not solve the more important question, of miss using dashes where hyphens are more commonly used, such as Mexican-American War and any similarly named war, bridge, airport, or comet. The argument, which of course is completely specious, is that the dash in Mexican American would let everyone know that it was a war between Mexicans and Americans instead of Mexican-Americans, but that is specious for two reasons - that is not how English works, our idioms just need to be memorized, they often do not mean what the words would indicate, and anyone who actually knows how dashes are used would already know what the Mexican War/Mexican American War was and would never be in the least confused no matter what punctuation was used. Apteva (talk) 06:42, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Comment Absent an Arbcom case, and then only at point, there appears to be no mechanism to get people to mediate these things that most people do not care about. As seems often the case, they just go on talking past each other ('it's a style issue, no it's a content issue, no it's a style issue, no, it's a content issue, etc.') (here's some thoughts to consider, maybe sometimes its both, or one or the other depending on context). Perhaps, the rest of us should let them go on and then make them go to Arbitration at the next available moment. - Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:49, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose Too vague and ill-thought out. Potentially blocking people for correcting grammar errors is not sustainable. Banning debate because some people don't care about the topic is dictatorial and censorious. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:52, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose; we do not go imposing moratoria because one person insists on continuing to find ways around consensus. PowersT20:07, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Comment I don't know about the moratorium and strict block escalations, though I would like to see someone put an end to this. What about sending it to the Arbitration Committee to punish the committee give it one last chance at a resolution? Monty84520:12, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
"shouldn't" would be more accurate. In this case, it really isn't a content dispute, it's a behavioural issue. Arbcom couldn't reasonably state a preference for one over the other, but it could demand that people stop arguing about it, changing articles in response to perceived incorrectness of one over the other, or renaming articles from one variant to another.—Kww(talk) 20:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Right, Arbcom shouldn't decide the underlying content dispute, but may put an end, however temporary, to the endless fighting about it. Monty84520:55, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
There is nothing earth shaking to decide - should wikipedia use the official names for things and/or the common use name for things instead of making up our own spelling? It is nothing more or less than answering yes or no to that question. Our naming policy says yes, why would anyone say no? I have to say that it would be incredibly helpful to everyone to resolve this issue this year instead of putting it off for a year. Apteva (talk) 06:42, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
We've decided by a strong consensus that we do not use official names (Prince), nor do we always use common names. This is not an argument for or against the current guidelines, but just noting that this argument is irrelevant. — Arthur Rubin(talk)21:00, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
There is no disagreement that we sometimes choose common name over official name, but other than a choice between the two, I am at a loss to know of any third choice that we should be using. Most of our discussion is on trying to determine which name is the most common name to use. Discussion on which punctuation to use in a name should in my view be a part of the answer determined by which is the most commonly used, and definitely not predetermined, with disastrous consequences. Apteva (talk) 21:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Support with a Modest Proposal for an amendment: anyone who is blocked for violating the moratorium should remain blocked until they are able to determine, to the satisfaction of qualified independent reviewers, the precise number of molecules per pixel in their computer's display. Completion of that exercise undoubtedly would be more valuable to society than continued discussion of small horizontal lines. And, yes, this is dictatorial and censorious. We are a voluntary community and are entitled to be as dictatorial and censorious as we wish, if we form a consensus to do so. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:01, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
It would be helpful if people could at least differentiate between cases where there is debate over which punctuation mark to use (like the Mexican-American War issue), and cases where there is no debate. There is a potential for advocating blocks for editors who regularly make simple, uncontested grammar corrections, and I am assuming nobody wants to see that. Bretonbanquet (talk) 21:15, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
I fully support a moratorium on argument... but I would not support a moratorium on editing. Instead, I would suggest a strict one-revert rule (this would allow editors may change hyphens to dashes, or dashes to hyphens as they think correct in a given situation... but if reverted, he/she would not be allowed to undo the revert). Blueboar (talk) 22:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Oppose If editors are being disruptive in the hyphen/dash debate, then block them, topic ban them, or give them a 1RR sanction. Put in discretionary sanctions for all discussions on hyphens and dashes, if you must. But don't do a blanket ban on all hyphen and dash discussion. David1217What I've done23:16, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Proposal. There is a current RfC at Wikipedia Talk:MOS#Three corrections. That will per this proposal, terminate at the end of 2012, and there will be no discussion of small horizontal lines during 2013, no deliberate changing of any to another, and no proposed article name changes from one short horizontal line to another during 2013. A subpage for registering requests, without discussion, will be made available. They will not without arbcom permission be acted upon until 2014. Apteva (talk) 23:26, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose moratorium on hyphen/dash discussions: I think the continued discussion of the long-term, worldwide use of hyphens, versus the relatively limited use of endashes, will continue to reveal a broader consensus where many editors do not see the need to force endashes, nor hyphens, into article text. Likewise, usage of hyphens/dashes, such as in titles, should reflect mainstream use (hence, wp:COMMONNAME whenever hyphens or endashes are most-used in the preponderance of wp:RS reliable sources). For example, there is no significant advantage to change a ratio phrase "male/female" to use endash "male–female". Further discussion should proceed to investigate how an arbitrated discussion, of endash usage (re wp:DASH), led to a local consensus which advocated the use of endashes in titles contrary to the common-usage (contrary to policy wp:COMMONNAME). Also, discussion should proceed to quantify, where practical, the extra overhead, during the prior 2 years, needed to rename page titles, or force endashes into article text, rather than let hyphens be used as an equivalent format (with no need to re-edit to insert endashes). There is also the option to allow the most-common use, of either hyphens or endashes, in an article's list sections to determine the changing of less-common into the more-common format. I think the push to use endashes, to replace hyphens, is an extreme case of instruction creep, which has led to counter-productive rules of text formatting. However, by continuing to discuss all of those issues, during the coming months, then the discussions can demonstrate that Wikipedia is willing to question prior cases of assumed consensus, to better reflect the broader consensus of the community. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:20, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Support First and only suggestion I have seen in relation to this risible topic that makes sense. My only caveat is that the sanctions are not draconian enough. : D BenMacDui20:17, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Support: I don't care what flavor of short horizontal line people use. I do care that the endless arguments over it are disruptive. -–—Carnildo (talk) 21:24, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose—There is and has been resolution about this. The style guide's comments on this matter are the result of overwhelming consensus after a long discussion on this matter, overseen by Casliber, over a year ago, as a result of this arbcom motion. The recent disruption is the result of one user carrying on a months-long crusade over many forums, talk pages, and re-opened RMs to try to almost singlehandedly undo this. We don't deal with one disruptive user this way. I'm a little disappointed, Beeblebrox. You, too, KWW. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
And of course, that proposed resolution included three errors which need to be corrected. Plus the entire MOS is way too overbearing now "you must do this, you must not do that". Lighten up on the Nazism and correct the errors, and everyone will be happy. Apteva (talk) 20:31, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Do you still believe "everyone will be happy" doing it your way? This whole section is about those who would silence you as an individual, versus those who would silence you and everyone like you. Art LaPella (talk) 20:50, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
My recommendation is that we make choices the way we make other choices - find out what most people do. If most people use a dash in a proper name, use a dash. If most people use a hyphen in a proper name, use a hyphen. As to some of the more obscure uses of a hyphen or a dash, there is no point in picking a style because both are valid, and sometimes one is preferred in Britspeak and the other in Amspeak. But I certainly do not expect someone to ce an article to make sure that hyphen/endash use corresponds with the flavor/flavour of English used, nor do I expect us to enforce the opposite either - forcing an article written in Brit to use Am hyphen/dashes, or one written in Am to use Brit hyphen/dashes. Apteva (talk) 04:32, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Support. Interminable stupid arguments about things our readers probably can't see, and if they do, don't care about don't belong on Wikipedia. If you want to carry on arguing over this nonsense, go start up Horizontallinepedantsopaedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:17, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Support this entire issue is a colossal waste of time, and virtually any other activity on Wikipedia is more productive. Hut 8.519:37, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose – There will be much less disruption if people who don't care about this area, like Beeblebrox, simply ignore it, and if the community can bring itself to throttle the individual who keeps making unsupported proposals to change the working consensus based on an idiosyncratic theory. At this point, I will say no more, and go into ignore-Apteva mode in hopes that that will help matters settle down. Dicklyon (talk) 20:39, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, actually, User:Apteva should be commended for broadening the discussion to alert busy editors, such as myself, for how the forced dashes are over-the-top, excessive style which conflicts with common hyphenated names of airports, comets or partnerships, plus Apteva has offered a quick, simple solution: "Use wp:COMMONNAME". End of debate. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:04, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose This issue has been decided by consensus in the past, just because some users have been a little to vocal on the issue and most don't care doesn't mean we should abandon the previous consensus which is in effect what this moratorium would do. I'd rather see Apteva's RFC proposal above run to completion and then place a moratorium freezing it to that outcome for at least a year. PaleAqua (talk) 02:10, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Question - Many years ago (in the early days of Wikipedia) we were faced with constant edit wars between American and British spelling. To end the edit wars we came up with a logical compromise solution: WP:ENGVAR. (Which allowed for both forms of spelling in Wikipedia - determining which to use on an article by article basis). Since that compromise was instituted, such edit wars are, if not eliminated completely, quickly resolved. Now, I do understand that the debate over horizontal lines is not quite so clear cut ... but have people tried to find a similar "topic based" compromise when it comes to hyphens and dashes? Not necessarily a compromise based on "National Variation" (which probably does not apply)... but something that accounts for the fact that hyphen/dash usage is not uniform in the real world? Does this have to be a "always do this/always do that" debate... is there a way to shift it to "sometimes do this/at other times do that"? Blueboar (talk) 14:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
I think banning any editing that can be shown to be part of a pattern of changing from one to the other pretty much accomplishes that. The intent is certainly the same, to just put a stop to the bickering and edit warring. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:55, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Support When the percentage of articles with statements that are unverifiable, verifiably false, or biased and misleading drops below 1%, I will publish my treatise on the proper usage of short horizontal lines. Until then, my opinion is that whoever edit wars about it or brings it to ANI is wrong. Kilopi (talk) 23:34, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
True - consider it changed to Moral Support. Would fully support Blueboar's amendment. Would have said so at the time, but couldn't be arsed to read another long thread about this non-issue. Kilopi (talk) 00:17, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose Trying to shut down discussion is just a bad idea. It will simply crop up elsewhere in a different form. (Like in a proposal to end the one year moratorium.) If you don't care, just ignore the discussions. NE Ent22:21, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Impractical, but applaud the spirit. I do not think that trying to prevent discussion is going to be productive (and it'll cause yet more pointless drama, rather circularly), but I support entirely the sentiment and the principle. Vast amounts of time and energy are being swept up, enormous vendettas built, on something that most of the community neither knows nor cares about until it spills over near them. If you are involved in this discussion: please, take this sort of request as a gentle hint from the 95% of horizontal-line-uninvolved editors. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:00, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Support. What a waste of time and typing such proposals and discussions are. I agree that it's somewhat impractical, but at any rate there should be a discouraging frown shown toward continuing these types of debates, which detract from our more encyclopedic goals. dci | TALK 02:45, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. Was this proposal a joke? As annoying as the proponents on both sides are, it's even more stupid to try to just shut down discussion. If Wikipedia can survive discussion on Arab/Israeli conflict, abortion and any number of other hot topics, it can survive an argument about punctuation. If you don't want to see it, don't look. It's understandable to feel annoyance and exasperation, but it's a huge over-reaction to seriously (?) propose blocking editors for discussing it. Barsoomian (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, blocking's probably a bit harsh when conflicts of a much greater breadth don't cause tremendous disruption. However, this is a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things, so I think we should agree on a firm "request" not to engage in further debate over this topic, then ignore it. The only reason I supported the moratorium is because I'm a bit baffled as to how a dispute over dashes can lead to such drama. dci | TALK 03:53, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
When this and other issues like it, e.g., diacritics, occupy WP:RM, WP:ANI, and WP:EWN, it's hard to "not look." When constructive and non-warring editors are pushed away from the encyclopedia by battling over trivia, it's hard to "not look." Somehow we're more comfortable blocking editors for edit-warring political controversies than typographic ones. At very least the standards should be the same, I might even argue that it should be the other way around. At least with the political controversies we often get a pretty good result out of the sausage-making, the article converges. With single-option style issues, the '"fun" never ends. --j⚛e deckertalk16:51, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, this argument is annoying. That doesn't mean that blocking editors for arguing about it is appropriate. That's what was called "Politicians' Logic" in Yes, Prime Minister: "Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it." There is no doubt there is a problem. Just ignoring it may not be satisfactory, but is the least worst option. Barsoomian (talk) 06:21, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
You are conflating "annoying" with "disruptive." Were we talking about "annoying", I'd agree. With regard to your more substantive argument, I see it a matter of weighing the correct sort of horizontal line vs. pushing editors out of the encyclopedia and disrupting the improvement of hundreds of articles. I have absolutely no qualms in saying that of the two, "doing nothing" at the cost of that disruption is in fact the worse of the two options. I don't *like* this option. But nobody has demonstrated anything better. --j⚛e deckertalk23:17, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Of course not all such discussion is disruptive. But the quantity of it which is exceeds in magnitude the benefit of getting the typography right over a twelve month interregnum. To pick an example from the last five minutes, I don't even consider the third of the discussion at Template_talk:Infobox_SCOTUS_case, which involves continual whining about the non-functionality of en-dashes as template parameters, to be actually disruptive. But enough of the dash/hyphen wars are. --j⚛e deckertalk02:04, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Strong support it would be nice if the moratorium was on all MoS discussion issues completely. We have hundreds of thousands of articles that don't even meet basic encyclopedic standards. Come down from the MoS ivory tower sometime guys. Gigs (talk) 18:15, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
My preference would be to eliminate 95% of the MOS, and add "Follow the usage of reliable sources, per WP:COMMONNAME". Adding that would eliminate all of the problems. Most of the MOS tries to teach good writing and punctuation, both of which are beyond its scope. All of the arguments about the MOS are from discrepancies between the MOS and common usage, and all of them would therefore go away, by adopting the same standard that we use everywhere else. Apteva (talk) 02:38, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Support - Time to DENY the obsessive-compulsive Manual of Style warriors their hobby... A major disruption. Here are the dashes that can easily be typed with a keyboard -, —. You wanna require something else, you're tilting at windmills. Carrite (talk) 04:10, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately their disruption has caused as many as several hundred articles that do not normally use an endash to be spelled with an endash, instead of the more commonly used hyphen. These include comets, airports, bridges, and wars. Apteva (talk) 05:57, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Support from exasperation. The problem isn't that the discussions or annoying, the problem is that they create a battleground which is disruptive to the editing community and pushes editors away. I have opinions on typography, too, but fixing a few of these "wrongs" just isn't worth the damage to the editing community. I consider this "having a sense of proportion." Previous methods of dealing with this community disruption have not proven successful, it's time to try something new. I would also support extending this to diacritics. --j⚛e deckertalk14:20, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Partial oppose - If the use of a hyphen/en dash/em dash is blatantly wrong, then there shouldn't be a problem with someone changing it. I agree with the moratorium on banning debates on the subject for a year, but not on disallowing editing of small horizontal lines. ❤ YutsiTalk/Contributions ( 偉特 ) 12:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Not everyone agrees on what is blatantly wrong. Telling people they can make changes but not discuss them will just lead to edit wars... Hardly an improvement on the status quo. David1217What I've done01:24, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. The point of bringing this issue up before the village pump (and I may have been the one or one of the ones who suggested that Apteva do this several months ago) would be to see if there is general agreement that the MOS should be abolished, or should not apply to article titles, etc. I agree with many of the supporters that a debate over dashes here is a wast of time: The minutiae of what the MOS should or should not cover should be left to the MOS discussion page, though of course it might be beneficial to give the editors at the pump a heads-up if a user thinks broader input is needed.
If people feel that repeating the debate on multiple pages is a waste of time (and I agree that it is), then the simple solution would be to limit the discussion to a central page, such as at the MOS talk page. For most people, BlueBoar summed it up well: Just use hyphens, and let the wikignomes take care of it. — kwami (talk) 05:07, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. I don't care about the existence or nonexistence of global discussions of this issue but by banning uncontroversial grammar corrections in article space this proposal goes too far, and elevates policy wonkery over building a better encyclopedia. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
No. Per "until the resolution of the debate below" ("Interested parties are instructed to spend the next 14 days from the passing of this motion determining the structure of a discussion on En dashes in article titles to obtain consensus. Note that this can be the continuation of a current discussion or commencement anew. From that date, a period of six weeks is granted for the gathering of consensus on the issue. (If this motion passes, then dates can be clarified)." Dates were never clarified, and the discussion was closed as resolved with the adoption of the "final draft" on 24 July 2011.[6] It should be noted that the approach used was not to arrive at consensus, but to bully those opposed. Apteva (talk) 04:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
I likewise concluded that bullying (or "peer pressure") was used for the July 2011 draft, as when someone strongly opposed the use of dashes in ratios, but was willing to agree for consistency or such. That explains the balderdash that falsely claims a wiki-consensus to use dashes everywhere. A true consensus would likely have been, "We mostly agree to use wp:COMMONNAME, where hyphens are more common, except when a topic is cleared named with dashes" such as a notable political party named "Dash–It–All" or such. In seeking a true consensus, I suspect vast numbers of editors would consent to use wp:COMMONNAME to spell article titles, although some pro-dash advocates would likely still oppose reduction of the forced dashes. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:04, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Partial support, with changes: While I have fairly strong opinions on short horizontal lines of all types, I don't think that heated debate and edit warring on the topic accomplishes anything. I would propose that we institute a one-year moratorium on debate on the topic and a 'constructive edit' policy: if a constructive edit is being made to a page, a user MAY correct the dashes as they see fit. If any edit wars ensue they will improve the quality of Wikipedia anyway, since the warring users will be forced to make other constructive changes to the article while warring over the dashes. — Wolfgang42 (talk) 00:06, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose discussion ban. Ugncreative Usergname has a point. Stopping discussion is probably a bad idea. However, I still think that requiring a constructive edit to be made alongside any dash change will help to mitigate the problem. — Wolfgang42 (talk) 03:25, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. Stopping discussion is a bad idea. It's not like the discussion is making Wikipedia worse, and to say that the editors should be "doing something better with their time" implies that Wikipedia is compulsory. Also, banning uncontroversial grammar corrections is deliberately preventing Wikipedia from getting better. The end goal is to build the encyclopedia, not keep people from yelling at each other. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 02:49, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. It's frustrating and usually unhelpful to be obstructed on the grounds of arcane rules posted in the basement. Grammar is situational and people can discuss and determine the best horizontal lines to use on a case-by-case basis. As far as the central discussion goes, there's no reason to abruptly censor a discussion. If the fear is that only fanatics will hang on long enough to determine Encyclopedia-wide policy—well, this is in my view a problem with much such policy and might should cause us to reconsider how we do business. groupuscule (talk) 03:05, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose: In spirit, I sympathize with this idea, because the debate is so f'ing tiresome, but as Powers put it, "we do not go imposing moratoria because one person insists on continuing to find ways around consensus". There's already a RFC/U about this one user's constant disruption over this issue, and more than one party has made it clear that if it continues after the RFC/U, which is a WP:SNOWBALL in favor of the idea that said user has in fact been blatantly disruptive, they'll take the matter to WP:ARBCOM. More than one way to skin a cat, and this proposal is not the best way. I'd rather see a disruptive editor topic-banned, than censor everyone else, not disruptive, who may want to discuss tweaks to MOS:DASH. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib.09:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. This is a "plague on both your houses" or "it takes two to tango" (or whatever your favourite cliché is) proposal that doesn't recognise that the problem that we have now is with one editor who refuses to accept consensus. We shouldn't prevent edits to bring articles into conformity with our consensus-agreed house style, or prevent other reasonable editors from proposing changes, because of a single editor's disruption. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:52, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
There is no secret that I brought up the topic - and I apologize for bringing it up only a year and a half after it was discussed before by editors who failed to recognize that there was no consensus for extending the use of dashes where dashes are not normally used, but seriously something needs to be done sometime. Just how many years does it take to fix an issue like this that never should have even been an issue? Five years? A decade? I thoroughly agree with the above comment that discussing rules of hyphens on wikipedia is a waste of time. Just say that titles are determined by WP:Article titles policy and be done with it. Apteva (talk) 01:59, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
A year and a half? Didn't you bring it up and have it rejected over the last 4 months in various places including these?:
It certainly does not matter but technically it has been 16 months 1 week and 2 days between the MOS update and this thread being created. Normally a year is more than enough time to wait. So if all of the time I have been bringing up a spelling correction for dashes to hyphens is included it is still likely to be over a year. All of the above are certainly valid, as clearly they adhere to established policy. I believe my first edit on the subject was in September of this year, actually, in response to a wp:canvas notice at the WP:MOS talk page. While I opened neither the RFC nor the RM, I was able to research the subject and do not believe that any of the 9,000 airports in the world or who knows how many bridges, comets or any other proper nouns are spelled with a dash, either in common usage or in their official name. So if we were to do so in any of them it would both be misleading to our readers and a violation of WP policy. However, I do look forward to seeing this problem being rectified at some point, by removing the section on titles at MOS and replacing it with the simple sentence "Article titles are determined by Wikipedia:Article titles policy." No fuss, no muss, and no problems. Apteva (talk) 06:33, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
No fuss, no muss, no problems; except for the fact that your proposals and theories have been rejected by consensus at every venue where you have brought them up; and your behavior has been found disruptive at the RFC/U about it; and you've got about half the responders in this thread wanting to throttle your discussion. It's not on. Live with it. Dicklyon (talk) 07:56, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Over half want a one year moratorium on all systematic edits based on horizontal lines and no discussion. By anyone. It should however be obvious where this is headed - fix the MOS, and quit causing problems by creating unusual names for articles that take a magnifying glass or very good eyesight to see that they are wrong. As I recall, Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) was spelled with a minus sign for about a year and a half (it gets roughly a 170 visitors per day, so that is about 90,000 not noticing or not saying anything). Apteva (talk) 09:38, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose - instead tell this bunch of delusional loons that we don't give a flying fuck which particular horizontal line is used in articles, and then ban anyone who argues that it actually matters which ones we use for life - or preferably longer. Why the hell should we provide free webspace for this nonsense to continue? AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:28, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Grow up, Grump. You are not helping at all. Abuse begets abuse, and only adds to the mindless noise. Just walk away, if maintaining and defending standards is not your thing.
Almost everyone wants this futile and benighted questioning of the 2011 consensus to stop. Don't assume that the defenders of a well-founded consensual manual of style are as irresponsible as the heedless detractors – those who will not accept ArbCom's verdict, the voice of 60 concerned editors in the biggest and most productive style consultation Wikipedia has ever witnessed, or any argument beyond a blinkered and inept application of the notion of "reliable sources". It is not the sensible majority's fault if a vociferous and intransigent minority cannot grasp the distinction between style and content. Better that they go back to work on content, if they flounder so painfully over style.
While I think he could have been more diplomatic with his choice of words, I think his basic sentiment is spot on. BTW, please note WP:NPA.... that you have flat out violated by directly attacking him. I'd suggest re-reading that policy again. Calm down, take a chill pill, and relax when you can attack arguments and not those making them.
The nice thing about having this discussion here on the village pump is that it is getting wider viewing and letting those uninvolved at least see what is going on. Hiding this discussion doesn't help anybody but those who want to be a bunch of cyber bullies forcing their viewpoint upon others. If the point was to move the discussion to some place that might have even wider attention, perhaps moving the discussion to Main Page? (Please note that was a joke, if that wasn't obvious.)
As for people questioning consensus.... that is Wikipedia and how it operates. Questioning consensus and re-raising the issue in a wider forum is how things happen. Based upon what I've seen in this discussion so far, there is no consensus on any of the points being raised, nor any strong rationale for any particular viewpoint other than "I don't give a damn" should prevail. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:21, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
So, Noetica telling AndyTheGrump to "grow up" if "maintaining and defending standards is not your thing" is a personal attack? But AndyTheGrump's labeling of a group of editors as "delusional loons" is what? -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:45, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
"tell this bunch" is not a personal attack as it is not directed personally, and instead obliquely condemns, as is, we are all f'd up (a six letter word not three). "Grow up, Grump. You are not helping at all." is totally a personal attack, as it both names and is directed at one and one editor only. Apteva (talk) 01:53, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it names and is directed at one editor, but is not an attack. I didn't say anything about "tell this bunch", but about "delusional loons", which is an attack. Do you mean to claim that attacks at more than one editor at a time do not violate NPA? So if some hypothetical editor were to say "Apteva and AndyTheGrump are delusional loons", there's no problem? I disagree. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:39, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
An unnamed group is not a personal attack. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, if individually named, is a personal attack. That is what the word "personal" means. The problem, though, in reaching consensus, is not that the feedback is either positive or negative, but that it is personal. For example, three people are trying to decide X or Y. A says, B you are good at this. B says we should use X. C is left out of the discussion and whatever they say is discredited because it was premised by A saying that B was the expert. This is just as bad as A says, B, you are blankety blank, and blank. So now no matter what B says, C is going to discredit it only because of the premise that was posited by A. So while a negative personal attack is obviously not acceptable, a positive remark is no less bad than the negative attack. Address the issue, instead of discussing the participants. Apteva (talk) 00:48, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
A group can be identified without being named. I do agree with you, though, that AndyTheGrump should have addressed the issue instead of discussing the participants. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
How does naming someone add anything, other than making them a target? How does saying "agree with you" add anything other than exclude everyone else who had the same view? "I agree that addressing the issue instead of discussing the participants" works better. By obliquely referencing a group it avoids making them a target, and is better than specifically identifying a group. If someone wants to complain about someone discussing the participants instead of the issue, the place to do that is on their talk page. This comment included. I would recommend re-hatting this section. Apteva (talk) 23:30, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
The only way this set of proposals is going anywhere is if an uninvolved admin puts it in a box and nails it shut. No need to shoot it first. Please. Let the next cycle of the calendar start fresh. Dicklyon (talk) 01:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
It is a long way before the new year, but the 30 days will not be up until the first week of next year. It is premature to move to close now. Apteva (talk) 05:52, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Since it seems unlikely for consensus to be reached, I see little point in closing this discussion other than to let it simply be archived. As long as comments keep being made, it is an active discussion and worth keeping here on the Village Pump. If you want it to be closed, just let it die a natural death and move on to other issues. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:51, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Works for me, sorta. Since there are a lot of opposes, and a censorious moratorium that amounts to a topic-ban on a large number of innocent editors would require a really strong showing of site-wide consensus, a de facto consensus has actually been reached already that there won't be a moratorium. I really don't care if this pointless discussion is left to wither, is closed now as "no moratorium", or closed now as "no consensus"; they all amount to the same thing, though the latter two options will get this pseudo-issue to STFU faster. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib.09:55, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
But now there's a flurry of new activity today – which you started! It's very hard for such a big attractive nuisance to settle down, and it can't possibly go anywhere useful, which is why it should be closed. I was hoping it would be gone for the new cycle of Mayan calendar last week, but now even the 2013 change is out of sight. Dicklyon (talk) 23:54, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
There is a reason that is only an essay, the community is heavily divided between the 3 main options. I for one advocate the use of the singular "they" as the appropriate pronoun to describe a singular person of unknown gender. That is because in my opinion the move away from "he" as the acceptable singular pronoun in such cases is a linguistic fait accompli, and I find the "he or she" construction to be obnoxious when there is a need for repeated use. There are many who vehemently disagree with me, but they will be split between the two options. The only sane thing to do is to treat this in the same way we do WP:ENGVAR disputes and respect which ever use is first established in an article. Monty84516:02, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
The 3 options as I see them are "he" "he or she" and "they". I guess you could say there is a fourth option of avoiding the need for a pronoun, but that is not really taking a position on the issue. Monty84516:25, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
I also think the 'singular they' is the best option. Is "he" being suggested as a pronoun for chess players because of gender imbalance within the game? Maybe this is not something we should editorially enshrine in language. groupuscule (talk) 16:09, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
It's nearly always possible to change sentence structure to avoid using any of a gender-specific pronoun, the singular "they" or the clumsy "he or she". It just needs the kind of facility with language that I would expect anyone writing an encyclopedia to have. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:05, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Switching to plural terminology is generally the easiest way, but is it sometimes impossible?? Example: instead of Every student must turn in his work we can say All students must turn in their work". Any time when it's impossible?? Georgia guy (talk) 22:17, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
You mean like "Someone shot Mr. Jones, but detectives don't know who he is"? Of course that could be rewritten in several ways, but simply changing to "who they are" doesn't work unless you're counting on readers understanding the singular they. Art LaPella (talk) 22:51, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Even more simply: "Someone shot Mr. Jones, but detectives don't know who". There's no simple algorithm for converting gender-specific language to gender-neutral language, but it can almost always be done with a little thought. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:01, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Certainly its possible, but can be a pain if you need to refer to the person more then one time as you write the article. It can also result in some awkward phrasing to contort away out of using one. Possessives are often harder as well. Monty84500:37, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
What licence is the user feedback under? Do users get informed of that when they leave feedback? Has non-free information been included in meta-project through use of feedback? I ask because I wish to copy and paste a page of user feedback to a blog, and then discuss individual posts. How do I do that and comply with licences? thank you! --87.113.161.104 (talk) 08:22, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
The feedback form has a notice saying "By posting, you agree to transparency under these terms", which in turn links to this page: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Feedback_privacy_statement. That page says "you agree to make your contribution public and to license under either CC0 or CC BY SA 3.0". If you are going to post a copy of a feedback page like this, it clearly says which (IP) contributors made which comment, so you'd have fulfilled the attribution condition automatically. Fut.Perf.☼08:32, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Use of gun names in shooting and massacre articles
I hope I'm posting this in the right place, and if I'm not, maybe an admin can direct me where to post it.
The issue: Wikipedia has many articles about crimes and shootings, and whenever an attempt is made to mention the type of gun used in a crime or shooting, the edit is deleted. For example, it appears that a Bushmaster M4 Type Carbine was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Editors have attempted to insert a mention of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting article in the Bushmaster M4 Type Carbine article, but these edits are soon removed. Another example: In the Virginia Tech massacre, the murderer used a Walther P22. However, the Walther P22 article does not mention the Virginia Tech massacre.
Current policy: It appears that the current policy regarding when to mention gun types in crime and shooting articles has been established by Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms. Under "Criminal Use" on that page, the policy article says, "In order for a criminal use to be notable enough for inclusion in the article on the gun used, it must meet some criteria. For instance, legislation being passed as a result of the gun's usage (ex. ban on mail-order of firearms after use of the Carcano in JFK's assassination would qualify). Similarly, if its notoriety greatly increased (ex. the Intratec TEC-DC9 became infamous as a direct result of Columbine)."
The problem with this "policy," as I see it, is that WikiProject Firearms is dominated by gun enthusiasts. They believe strongly that the type of gun used in a crime doesn't matter, that a gun is solely a tool to be used for good or bad by the person who fires it.
Should gun enthusiasts set the Wikipedia policy for when a gun type can be mentioned in an article about a crime or shooting? Respectfully, I would like to see a debate about this policy. I would also like to respectfully suggest that the policy for when to mention gun types in articles should be set by the broader Wikipedia community, not solely by WikiProject Firearms. Chisme (talk) 19:43, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Using "policy" in a loose sense (I firmly believe this does not require a WP:POLICY), I would support the WikiProject outline. A viewer going from the shooting article to the gun article makes sense; someone who has gone straight to the is unlikely to care except in the cases mentioned. Else we risk gun articles becoming lists of usage cases, right down to individual murders. For something like the AK-47 it would be too long and I don't think it would survive AfD if split into a separate article. So generally I'm happy with how things are. I don't think it needs promoting to another page, so long as we think it's correct as it stands, and I do. Grandiose(me, talk, contribs) 19:49, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) When there is focus on the type of gun in the reliable third party sources that are otherwise used in the article, then yes, we should mention the gun in the body text paragraph that details the event as it unfolded. If the type of gun isn't in the reliable third party sources, then it isn't worth including. My memory is that more often than not, "a semi-automatic pistol" is the language that is used, but there are cases where the model is given. As for the Wikiproject Firearms issue, Wikiprojects are allowed to create whatever standards they agree on, however the moment those standards meet disagreement, they can't be forced, a discussion like this has to happen. The consensus here, whatever it turns out to be, will trump a project's local standards. Sven ManguardWha?19:50, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Too broad. I think the wpp guidelines are fine - if it is significant in a wider sense, include it, but if it was just a detail of the crime, it is clearly not relevant. While the shooter could have gotten the same results with a BB gun, it was easier with hollow point bullets. Apteva (talk) 20:38, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
I think that of there are reliable sources for what guns were used it is perfectly acceptable to mention them in the article on the incident, the same way we would mention what kind of car was used in a notable car accident or something like that. However, I don't see any reason to add such material to the articles on the guns themselves, and I could see how POV pushers might try and use such a tactic to make a particular manufacturers look bad even though the company itself has no relation to the nuts who use their product to go on shooting rampages. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:48, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Sevn, arn't you talking about articles on the events mentioning the weapon? The question here appears to be about articles on the weapon mentioning the event. Grandiose(me, talk, contribs) 21:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Comment - I think the statement "Wikipedia has many articles about crimes and shootings, and whenever an attempt is made to mention the type of gun used in a crime or shooting, the edit is deleted" is incorrect since it appears that the articles about crimes and shootings often contain information about the weapons used and no one is deleting it. I think the intended meaning is that "Wikipedia has many articles about firearms, and whenever an attempt is made to mention a crime or shooting that involves the page's firearm, the edit is deleted". Jojalozzo20:56, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
You're right. My bad. The topic is whether articles about specific types of guns can make mention of notorious shootings or massacres in which the type of gun was used. Sorry for the confusion. Chisme (talk) 21:55, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Comment - there was a similar discussion on the Suicide of Amanda Todd in WP:VPP that discussed whether methods of death should be discussed in detail. This should be relevant to the current discussion, and perhaps required reading for WikiProject Firearms gun enthusiasts. Wer900 • talk21:51, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly agree that this should be the case. In practical reality however, some WikiProjects do indeed create and enforce their own rules, and even refuse to engage in meaningful discussion about it. Consider Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms#Criminal use (which defies WP:DUE, which that WikiProject "guideline" sanctimoniously points to in a ridiculous pre-emptive gesture), or Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One's advice to use flagicons in infoboxes which entirely ignores WP:INFOBOXFLAG. Pointing out to the regulars of these projects that their "guidelines" are meaningless in the face of Wikipedia-wide consensus to the contrary has proved to be useless. They shout down any opposition and continue to enforce their own arbitrary rules. --195.14.198.57 (talk) 15:55, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
The gun manufacturer is now an important part of this story as NPR is reporting [7] that the investment group that owned the manufacturer of the bushmaster rifle is selling it off to avoid losing clients. It is seeming increasingly likely that this incident is going to be a catalyst for serious changes in US gun laws, it was widely reported yesterday that even some replicants with "A ratings" from the National Rifle Association are now calling for stricter gun control laws, renewing the ban on assault weapons, and banning high-capacity magazines. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
There aren't many cases where I would consider it appropriate to list incidents on the article of a weapon where it was used. It doesn't add anything to those articles, so I agree with the removals in general. Even in Beeblebrox's NPR story above, the link would be to the investment firm and manufacturer and the shooting, but still not the gun itself. If such a sale comes to pass, we would mention in the former two articles that the company was sold as a direct result of the shooting. But none of that would be relevant to the article on the gun itself, unless something remarkable related to it happened - such as this model being banned for public sale. Resolute17:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
This is a consensus issue. It is not appropriate to assert project syle guides as a policy. They are not policy but suggestions from the project for involved editors with that project. Some projects guidlines have become excepted, best practice by the general community over a long period, such as an infobox with a "fair use" poster displayed for film articles. A local consensus cannot override a broader consensus of the general community.--Amadscientist (talk) 03:21, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Comment. I've tried to raise this issue before. The problem rests firmly with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Firearms "guideline" on Criminal use, which directly defies all of our core content policies and introduces an arbitrary threshold for mention of a crime in a gun article, based on nothing but the local consensus within the WikiProject. The problematic section currently reads:
"In order for a criminal use to be notable enough for inclusion in the article on the gun used, it must meet some criteria. For instance, legislation being passed as a result of the gun's usage (ex. ban on mail-order of firearms after use of the Carcano in JFK's assassination would qualify). Similarly, if its notoriety greatly increased (ex. the Intratec TEC-DC9 became infamous as a direct result of Columbine). As per WP:UNDUE, editors "should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject".
This is part of the larger problem of some WikiProjects just making up their own guidelines, sometimes (as in this case) in complete and utter disregard and even contempt for Wikipedia-wide consensus. Any attempt to even discuss this unacceptable aspect of the WP:GUNS guideline is being aggressively shut down by the WikiProject's regulars. Nothing short of a full arbitration case will change this. --195.14.198.57 (talk) 15:49, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
That's a rather aggressive stance. The guideline makes sense, otherwise certain gun articles would spend more space listing the crimes they were involved in than discussing the gun itself. Also, that kind of guideline is the norm for most Wikiprojects: see Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports, as an example. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite14:18, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Comment What's wrong with the current situation? It's entirely appropriate for articles on acts of violence to mention the kind of weapon used (whether a Bowie knife, a specific kind of chemical poison, or a certain model of firearm), but it would be bigtime undue weight to mention acts of violence in an article about a typical kind of weapon. It's vaguely like Stephen Colbert on elephants — we mention the incident on Wikipedia in culture because it's an important component of popular images of Wikipedia, but we don't mention it at elephant because it's not particularly relevant to elephants. If we start listing incidents, we'll end up with massive trivia sections. Find me a case in which the incident was relevant to the weapon, like the incidents mentioned in your quote, and I'll agree with including that, but I can't agree with listing incidents in which the weapon isn't particulary affected.
Extra guidance about reliability of news sources after an unexpected and catastrophic event
Given that news sources have a lower reputation for fact checking and accuracy in the time after an unexpected and catastrophic event (supported by On the Media, the CBC, and Talk of the Nation), I believe we should add some extra guidance in WP:NEWSORG.
Specifically, I propose to add this to WP:NEWSORG:
After an unexpected and catastrophic event, reports from normally reliable news organizations are more likely to contain errors regarding the fine details of an event such as the numbers of deaths, names of suspects, the timeline of events, and the detailed description of circumstances. Avoid relying on reports from normally reliable news organizations to support such statements in Wikipedia until [they are based on information obtained from named public officials].
User:WhatamIdoing has provided a couple of points opposing this proposal that I will try to summarize. First, the error-rate in the context I describe is not high enough to warrant treating these sources as less reliable. News organizations are reliable enough, even in this context. Second, editors will create articles for these events regardless of this guidance, and attempting to hold them to the standard I'm proposing would in effect mean prohibiting the articles' creation: a futile effort. Sancho00:43, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Why should "named public officials" be defined as the only reliable sources? In many countries they are pretty much guaranteed to be the least reliable sources of factual information, and are often motivated to play down the severity of any "catastrophe" either to avert panic or blame. Whereas "normally reliable news organisations" are not flustered by catastrophes. I don't see any point in this proposal at all. We have the {{current event}} template to advise readers "Information may change rapidly as the event progresses". We can't require articles on recent events to be immediately of archival standard. Barsoomian (talk) 10:57, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
You don't understand the motivation behind my proposal? Sorry. I tried to be clear. Maybe it's a bad proposal, but I thought I made the point of it clear. It's because news organizations are not reliable during the short time after an unexpected and catastrophic event. Did you read the supporting sources I linked to that talk about that? The point is to get feedback about consensus about this change. I take it you're against it. Sancho16:10, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Regarding "named public officials", I bracketed out that section now, so we can replace it with some other appropriate signal that the news organizations have become reliable enough again. Also, it says "avoid", and this would just be a guideline, so if this is happening in a place where news organizations are in fact the most reliable thing we'll ever get information from, we can use common sense and use them as a source. Sancho16:16, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
I understand your concerns, but it's obvious that early reports can be incomplete or even wrong. That's what the "current event" tag is for. If a fact is reported and not contradicted by another equally or more reliable source, then there is no reason not to include it, and then update it if and when superseded. Anyway, it's impossible to define a "signal that the news organizations have become reliable enough again"; that can only be a matter of opinion. I said why I oppose the idea that government spokesmen are a gold standard. Governments lie, frequently. So, for the above reasons, put me down as opposed. Barsoomian (talk) 18:49, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
And even well-meaning government officials often don't have enough facts at the outset to get the story right; just look at the kerfuffle in the U.S. over how the Benghazi embassy attack was addressed. I agree with Barsoomian; the "current event" template highlights all of the relevant concerns by emphasizing that facts are still developing. And so we correct and update our articles as news media--or any official source--correct and update theirs. There's no reason to ignore the news and no workable or meaningful line beyond which it suddenly gets more accurate. postdlf (talk) 19:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
The fact that "governments lie, frequently" does not mean that everything stated by a government is a falsehood. Such a view is not unlike that that there is a New World Order to which the UN and all world leaders answer. We should look at who is making the report and where. If the government of the DPRK is making a report, we can safely assume it is false unless that is otherwise clearly not the case. If it is a liberal democracy reporting on something that is not as political (ie the Sandy Hook shooting that this discussion was presumably inspired by), then we can assume that the truth is being stated. In any case, we should wait for investigations to be performed before we put in fine details, so I therefore support this proposition. Wer900 • talk02:38, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
I have no idea why you felt the need to make these idiotic remarks implying that I'm some right wing loonie who thinks the UN white helicopters are coming for him. I said that governments lie frequently, (but of course, not "always") and you clearly agree. The original proposal was to use government statements as a hallmark of reliability, which anyone who reads a newspaper knows would be pretty naive. Barsoomian (talk)
Now that you frame it in this fashion, it makes more sense. When and what we put as fine details in articles should be determined by the nature of the government, whether or not there has been an investigation, and what the reception by the press has been. This is all in line with existing policy, merely clarifying it rather than replacing it. Wer900 • talk20:05, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
The problem is that named government sources may be reluctant to release information for a variety of reasons including excessive caution about the information accuracy, political correctness or because the release of the information would be politically inconvenient. Even weeks after the event, there can still be controversial information that official government sources still choose neither to confirm nor deny. Sometimes its even a case where the official statement is wrong, and the correction is long in coming. We should not leave the Wikipedia article on something wrong or misleading and at the mercy of what official sources choose to release. Ultimately we must follow what the reliable sources say, and when they are wrong, so will we be. Monty84515:53, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
My premise is that normally reliable sources are not reliable after unexpected and catastrophic events, so we should be less ready to follow what they say during that time. I don't want this proposal to get hung up on the "named government sources" part of this, because I've bracketed that out. I could remove it completely if that's still the contentious part. Sancho00:05, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
"Burden" RFC
A dispute has arisen in regards to the wording in burden regarding the tagging or removing of content. This request for comment is to establish the specific wording for just that part of the "Burden of evidence" section of our "Verifiability" policy. Found here.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Template:Location map and similar context-free mappings should be depreciated for general use
How location map usually works out in practice.Just in case you thought I was being facetious. A white square with some red dots in it.
{{Location map}} has its uses. With a bit of work and creativity, it can provide an excellent way to set out complicated spatial information.
...Or it can be abused, as it generally is on Wikipedia, to produce maps that actively remove all context that would make them serve any useful purpose.
The point of a map is to show where something is. However, what Wikipedia does is the uniquely useless practice of taking a blank map, without any landmarks put on it, shoving a pinpoint down on it, not including nearby major cities, nor most other identifying features - and then pretending this is somehow an encyclopedic map.
This is a disservice to our readers. Amongst other things, it's impossible to use Wikipedia's maps for such basic encyclopedic information as learning what major cities are nearby a small town.
A single example does not show that that this is how this usually works out in practice. My only attempt at creating such a map can be seen at Eleanor Cross and, although I'm sure it could be improved with a bit more context, it does provide some encyclopedic value. Most other examples that I have seen are similar in that they are are a net positive to the encyclopedia, but not ideal. I don't see what is so wrong with these maps that it needs a policy change to improve things. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:40, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
That's an example of exactly what I was talking about: a map that is a net positive, in that the article is better with it than without it, but has plenty of scope for improvement. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
While true, this is too widespread, and there seems to be a tendency to do this, then think that's all you have to do.
I believe there's recently been some movement on the issue of WP-OSM integration, which has been kicked around for many years. One of the use cases originally suggested for this was dynamically generating maps in the infoboxes - rather than using static images - and so if this happens, it may mean some major changes to the behavior of our default maps will be coming down the road in a year or two. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:57, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
A user creates an account. (Not picked up by the software.) They make a small but useful, good faith, edit that benefits the encyclopedia. This is exactly the kind of user we need. Here's the diff. (I think - this is baffling). DIFF - 'ciil' changed to 'civil'. What's the first thing on their user page? "Hey, welcome to wikipedia! Thanks for helping us fix things! Here's a few useful links, let me know if you need help!"? That would have been a nice way to welcome a new user. NO. What they got was a fucking stupid notice about their username. First, and only, edit of that user was mid november. I posted a grumpy note on the warning editor's talk page on 22nd December, and since then a couple of other people have made nice welcomes to the new user. But it's likely that they've gone, never to return.
When you see a username that you don't like stop and think. Think "So what, who cares" first. Then, if you decide that you do still care READ THE FUCKING USERNAME POLICY CAREFULLY. Find a reason that the username violates the policy. Then WELCOME THE USER TO THE PROJECT PROPERLY. Thank them for their work. Point them to the EXACT PART OF POLICY that their username is violating, and offer to help them change their name. But, really, unless it's a blatant offence, just don't bother biting people over usernames.--82.3.143.88 (talk) 10:50, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Existing username policy is being used to block (effectively, to ban) users who may be problematic. This leads to weird disparities between brand new users (who may be good faith but semi competent) and new users who have shown disregard for policy and culture. Some editors who have demonstrated bad faith get repeated chances at reform and have people offering to mentor them. That effort might be better shown to people who have not shown bad faith, and who have made an effort to improve Wikipedia. 82.3.143.88 (talk) 23:18, 25 December 2012 (UTC) (Holiday season, thus a variety of IPs used. Sorry.)
This piece does seem quite angry in nature, but I do think that this IP has a relevant point. There should be some sort of guideline (not a policy) detailing how new users should be welcomed into our encyclopedia. Wikipedia may value neutrality, but it is in the best interests of our encyclopedia (and in the interest of free and unbiased knowledge) that we gain new editors. Wer900 • talk02:26, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
A relevant article I've always enjoyed is this one on MeatBall. I tend to agree that we are not careful enough when dealing with newcomers. People often say childhood is a formidable time, and in a similar way I think it is also for people starting here. When we need to be discriminate with what we say to these folks we often shoot from the hip. While I don't agree that this particular case was an egregious problem, like most things there could have been a more sensitive touch. Templates are always tricky. I deal a lot with username issues and can say that that also is very tricky territory. A name like this? Personally, I would have left it alone unless the "duck" was clearly referring to something or someone specific. But the good news is that the user was not blocked or reported to UAA, and our most sensitive username warning template was used. But we can always benefit from trying to warmer. NTox · talk03:01, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the considered answer. I apologise for ranting earlier. I agree that it's a tricky area. But this user had made a single good faith useful edit to WP. All I'd really want is a tiny bit more welcome - "Hey! Thanks for fixing that error!" and then talking about the username. (Personally, I wouldn't have mentioned the username until behaviour showed it to be a problem.) 82.3.143.88 (talk) 23:30, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Some users will always be too quick with the trigger - and I believe that handling meatpuppets is a much worse problem here. There is a very good reason the account was noticed only after it edited - we have a bot which reports suspicious user names; the configuration of what strings are considered "suspicious" can be found at User:DeltaQuad/UAA/Blacklist. And the "hate" is set to only be reported once the user edits. Hopefully this will slow down blocks for the "hate" - if not, any admin can always add a LOW_CONFIDENCE there, too. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu18:17, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
I would also like to point out that some of these users may, in fact, take our advice to create a new account. It's quite possible that the person who created the "IHateTheDuck" account is now editing under some other user name. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu18:38, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
It is quite possible that I hate the duck registered a new account and is happily editing. I really hope so. I wonder if there's any decent research about people's first experiences with Wikipedia? 82.3.143.88 (talk) 23:18, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Life isn't always warm and fuzzy. Some of our best editors got BITTEN when they first showed up, and learned from that experience. So, in addition to friendly welcome messages, new editors should be told... "EXPECT TO BE BITTEN occasionally ... it's normal. Get used to it." Then they would be prepared for the sometimes harsh reality of editing Wikipedia. Blueboar (talk) 01:11, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
"Expect to be bitten" would send a wrong message to every editor. It makes it free for all to bite. My guess is that many would leave, and that Wikipedia would be a project for those who don't care how they treat or are treated. Lova Falktalk07:17, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Actually there's a good idea in that advice, if only we invert it. I'd warn them that they should expect NOT to be bitten, as editors should treat them with extra care; and that if it happens, they can report the incident, and the biter may be reprimanded. A pointer to WP:BITE would reinforce the idea that, even if they have a bad first impression, this is not supposed to be how they should be received, and there are places where they can get some care. Diego (talk) 09:23, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
(ec) Absolutely. You can tell people to be prepared for unpleasantness, but it would be warped in the extreme to use that as an excuse for encouraging our regulars to be unpleasant themselves. Overall we want to reduce unpleasantness, and those who assume the role of welcoming people should be trying to set a good example. (But I think we know that a significant number of them actually enjoy being bitey and generally unpleasant - that may even be their main motivation for spending time here - so there may not be a lot we can do to stop them.) Victor Yus (talk) 09:26, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Also I might try repeating here what I've already said many times on the username policy page - some of the actions taken supposedly under that policy are unbelievably illogical. We fuss about the often irrelevant detail of people's usernames as if someone's choice of name is more important than their editing behavior. Particularly in the case of people who name themselves after their organization and then edit in a promotional way - we imply to them (and it seems that some admins actually believe it to be the case) that their promotional editing would be a lot less bad if only they changed their username to something more anonymous... Makes no sense at all. Victor Yus (talk) 09:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
So true! We should prefer that editors are honest about their involvement, to alert us that the content of their edits needs to be checked. Lova Falktalk10:17, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Possible hatred towards our feathered friends seems to touch a raw nerve sometimes. I found User:Jayhater had been blocked[8] and, although my comment to the person blocking that this might be an individual called "Jay Hater"[9] met with a sympathetic reply both to me[10] and the blocked user[11], that seemed to be the end of the matter. Thincat (talk) 17:31, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
A recurrent problem at WP:UAA is some users inability to recognize that the bot is a very simple program that reports possible problems, a human is expected to look at the name in context and be more thoughtful. So, a name like "Ihate<some ethnic group>" would be a "block on sight" case while "I hate the duck" seems completely harmless. I am somewhat alarmed that an actual administrator warned the user about this name. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:25, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
I Please note this edit, where I explicitly add a comment about "I hate". Users who are repeatedly too quick with blocking reported user names should be asked to stay away from UAA, and if they refuse - we may need them desysoped (and currently ArbCom is the only way to do this). עוד מישהוOd Mishehu20:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Blocking admin here. Reading the report above, I think you're right that I got this one wrong; please accept my apologies. However, I think this should be understood in its context: Overall, the name-blocking process is highly effective at knocking out many troll/vandals before they even get started, and this process holds back a tidal wave of odious vandalism which would otherwise fill Wikipedia with dreck, making it a less pleasant place for everyone, including newbies. Some are frequent flyer vandals, who use the variants on the same name over and over; others are newbie vandals who helpfully do us a favour by choosing an abusive username. The bot catches lots of names -- about half the time real problems, about half the time not -- and the blocking admins manually review the submissions, and remove non-violations from the list without any further action, warn borderline cases, and block the obvious problem cases, with a variety of block strengths and warning messages.
Sometimes we get it wrong: human beings are fallible. Those who think they can do better at this than the current participants in this process are invited to pick up their mops and do so. -- The Anome (talk) 22:58, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
I have done plenty of time at UAA, but I grew tired of dealing with stuff like this. It seemed no matter how hard I tried to calm things down there were still hasty blocks in addition to overly enthusiastic reporting and warning from non-admins. However I actually have been considering coming back and doing it again, I just needed a break after two years or so of dealing with it on an almost daily basis. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:24, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you The Anome for writing this. I had no clue the name-blocking process was so effective in blocking vandals. Very good to see the other side of the story. Thank you! Lova Falktalk19:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, 'Prepare to be bitten' would certainly send the wrong message to everyone. What many wannabe Wiki policemen don't realise is that not all newbies are children or potential vandals; however, usernames can, and do, very often reflect the user's level of maturity. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:57, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
It is actually not easy to word one's exchanges to be suitable for children, yet not patronising to the more mature, to be gentle with newbies and firm with trolls. This is largely why we use templates, which, while often not that great, are better than most of us would be on a bad day. It certainly would be useful to have some proper measured feedback on the effect these templates and other interactions have on new editors (apart from the A-B tests). RichFarmbrough, 17:47, 5 January 2013 (UTC).
Hi, I found the deletion of File:Montreuil - Salon du livre jeunesse 2011 - Lilidoll - 001.jpg. An administrator who deleted the image said, "Although we have no way of knowing whether this IP user is in fact the subject of the image, it is certainly true that in France permission is required for any photogrpah of any person (does 'any person' include public figures?). Therefore we must delete this." But I fear the deletion may effectively damage the first statement of WP:NFC#UUI and the licensing resolution of WMF ("An EDP may not allow material where we can reasonably expect someone to upload a freely licensed file for the same purpose, such as is the case for almost all portraits of living notable individuals.") because if we fail to obtain the permission (not copyright-related permission) from the subject of the image that means there is no way to create, find, and/or use free image of the subject. if the subject never allows we take/publish free potrait of him or her, It is allowed to use fair use portrait of the subject? Puramyun31 (talk) 13:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
As mentioned at the commons discussion, NFCC only applies to files uploaded locally to Wikipedia, not to files at commons. Short of someone asking for a copy to upload locally, there is nothing we can do about it here. Monty84515:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
In my browsing, I've noticed brief pop-up notices at certain articles stating how the visible version is the current/latest "accepted" revision. This seems very reminiscent of Flagged Revisions. Can anyone explain what's up? Has the corpse risen from the grave? And if so, it seems I may have missed out on shaping the community consensus. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke09:25, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Sigh. Despite the last series of discussions lasting about two years and widely publicized on-wiki, there still persists a perception that we at some point decided not to use pending changes. That never happened. In 2010 there was a trial run. In 2011 it was temporarily de activated while we decided what to do next. In 2012 there was a big RFC which ended in a decision to turn it back on this month. In between then and now there were a further three RFCs aimed at fine-tuning the policy before redeployment. So, no, there was no corpse to re-animate as it was never dead and yes, this was discussed at some length over a very long period and somehow you missed it. Here is more information:
Current status - Pending changes (level 1) was re-enabled on December 1st, 2012 by community consensus according to the 2012 RFC.
Logged in users – Logged in users (or users choosing to view pending changes) will see all edits as usual (unless the relevant setting has been changed in their preferences). All edits will still be added to the wiki and inappropriate edits must still be reverted or fixed as usual.
Logged out users – Until checked for obvious vandalism or superseded by appropriate editing, edits by new and unregistered users to "pending changes protected" pages will not be seen by users who are not logged in until approved. Edits by autoconfirmed users are approved automatically at level 1 when the prior revision is approved.
Provide feedback and suggestion – Feedback page: Wikipedia talk:Pending changes. Your feedback and suggestions are appreciated.
Each one of the RFCs referenced were listed at WP:CENT for the entire time they were open, and the "big" RFCs of 2011 and 2012 were further advertised by watchlist notices. This was done in the most transparent manner possible by the community, the WMF and Jimbo have been very "hands off" since the end of the trial. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:34, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't know to what extent it's related, but it's now really quite deterrent for an IP to edit English Wikipedia. In addition to the ringfence mentioned above, there's the insertion of urls and reference sections: I simply tried adding {{reflist}} and a reference section to an article that was without, and up popped several completely illegible captchas before I came across one that I could parse. That's bad enough for most people familiar with the way WP works, but it's really no welcome for anyone unfamiliar with WP. The frog is now well and truly boiled, meaning the concept of Anyone can edit is now thoroughly eroded. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke04:09, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
You could create a new account in the same time it takes to solve a captcha. Considering the amount of time I waste dealing with malicious and/or just clueless IP edits, I don't feel any concern at having a bit more friction in the process. But I guess specifically the captchas are to reduce automated link spamming. If you look at other wikis, those that "anyone can edit" without hassle have been completely swamped by spam. Hundreds of articles created every day with links to porn, sport shoes, fake watches, viagra until the original content is completely lost. Barsoomian (talk) 05:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I've always been a supporter of requiring all editors to have an account, so I don't have a problem with this. Requiring them to take less than a minute to make a user account doesn't change the fact that anyone can edit. SilverserenC20:21, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I've lost count of the number of sites where I haven't left a message, or used their facilities because I have to sign up. We coped without all this stuff for years, if we now have driven away so many editors that we can't deal with the vandalism, driving away yet more hardly solves the problem. RichFarmbrough, 06:08, 7 January 2013 (UTC).
Behavioral guideline for minor edits
I've never really understood why instructions on when to mark edits as minor are at Help:Minor edit, instead of there being a behavioral guideline on when to mark edits as minor. I would expect a help page to just explain how to do something in terms of using the interface, but not when to use that feature. It seems to me that the instructions at Help:Minor edit are basically a behavioral guideline, though since they aren't labeled as a guideline, it is unclear whether they have consensus. I know I've seen people complain about things like people marking all edits as minor, but at the same time I'm not sure if the instructions on the help page are actually something people are expected to follow, or just one suggested way of using the minor edit feature that people are free to follow or not follow. I think that if those instructions represent a community consensus on how the minor edit feature should be used, then they should be marked as a behavioral guideline (or edited to match community consensus, then marked as a guideline). I was wondering what other people think of the idea of marking Help:Minor edit as a guideline. Calathan (talk) 20:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Meh. The name of a thing doesn't change what it is. If it is useful, use it, and other should as well. If it isn't, people won't use it. --Jayron3202:32, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I think those replies are kind of missing the point. Right now, Help:Minor edit reads like a behavioral guideline, but isn't labeled as one. I know people have complained before about how others use the minor edit feature (searching the WP:AN/I archives for "minor edit" reveals lots of past threads specifically about "misuse" of the minor edit feature). If it is just something anyone can choose to use or not, then Help:Minor edit should make that more clear so everyone knows not to complain about how others are using it. Right now it seems to sort of be a behavioral guideline and sort of not, and I think it needs to be changed one way or the other to either clearly be a guideline or clearly not. Calathan (talk) 04:10, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
The reason it matters whether an edit is tagged minor or not is that in reviewing a long watchlist and deciding which edits to review, an editor might decide to focus on the more substantive edits and let the minor ones go. Thus, a habit of tagging substantive edits as minor ones can be misleading to one's editor colleagues and should be avoided. This is not the most significant behavioral problem we have in the project, by a long shot, but it still makes sense to suggest that it be avoided. The language of the relevant principle I drafted in this arbitration case might be relevant if someone wants to draft something. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:38, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I understand your concern. I sometimes curse myself for ticking "minor" when in hindsight it probably wasn't, but as you imply, there's no strict measure. If I add two lines and a source, is that minor? If I delete a source is that minor? If I add a type-2 or type-3 heading? A citation? Calathan makes a good post about this and yet I have to say, my personal preference is not to creep towards making another policy document on the foundations of (fairly) sound guidelines.
To NYB's remarks I would add that there is a very strong correlation between consistently marking substantial changes as minor and bad content generation. Mangoe (talk) 17:28, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I recently got myself in hot water because I was under the mistaken impression that this was a guideline. I concur with NYB and Mangoe, and would strongly support an upgrade. — Hex(❝?!❞)11:15, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Voluntary restrictions
I've found an impetus for developing this idea further after discussions at WP:AN and at various user talk pages; I have started a userspace page regarding it. Anyone interested in it is welcome to comment or contribute. dci | TALK 03:40, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
New CAPTCHA for unregistered users are too frequent and too hard
I've been happily editing as an "IP" for a few years and I think since last month or so I started to get asked to fill in a CAPTCHA for all many of my edits, not just the ones that contain a URL. Also, the CAPTCHAs were made much more distorted, and it now takes me 3 attempts on average to get them right. I think this is too much of a burden on unregistered users and I suspect it's unjustified and overall a loss for the project. Could you please point me to the relevant discussion? Thanks. 219.78.114.223 (talk) 14:16, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree. Something happened about three weeks ago to make the CAPTCHAs almost unsolvable, which has resulted in hundreds of requests for accounts coming into the toolserver for processing via the request an account process. It's taking an inordinate amount of volunteer time. Reaper Eternal (talk) 14:23, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I suspect it depends on which space you are editing, this is just a Project page. So OK, I'm not 100% sure when we are asked for a CAPTCHA, but it definitely has become much more frequent, definitely despite not introducing any new URLs, and the new puzzles are bordering undecipherable. 219.78.114.223 (talk) 14:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
There are no namespace-specific checks in the current configuration for enwiki. The main trigger for captchas when editing is whether the edit is seen as adding any new external links. Anomie⚔17:36, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. This must be happening a lot more than before for some other reason though, because I definitely saw loads more of these "no actual URLs added by user" cases starting a few weeks ago. Can someone confirm? Also, can anything be done about the difficulty of the tests? If state-of-the-art CAPTCHAs are more readily solved by machines than humans, this needs to be recognized and the problem faced and hopefully resolved. Current state is a loss for the project. 219.79.90.26 (talk) 23:24, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
The readability issue is being worked on, see T45546. As background: the captcha images are pre-generated, and they were regenerated a few weeks ago as part of an attempt to move the file storage to a more scalable solution. The actual code for generating them hasn't changed since January 2006, but it's possible that a different base font was used or that updated imaging libraries since 2006 are giving different results.
I'm sorry, but tough. Hard cheese. Oh well, never mind. You're an unregistered editor, so you have to expect double and triple checks. If you're unable to register, then that's your fault. Wikipedia has suffered at the hands of malicious IP editors, many of whom claimed innocence whilst acting in a disruptive way, so if you want special treatment for whatever spurious reasons, here's a tip - get registered. I've grown tired by IP editors squarking like pampered children. Grow up. doktorbwordsdeeds23:28, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
(To Doktorbuk) Unnecessary difficulties in allowing IP edits don't deter only edits from IPs, but in the long run they deter new users from registering. The rationale for continuing to allow IP edits, despite the problems they cause, is that a certain percentage of those who first edit as IPs (I was one of them) enjoy the editing experience and decide to register. If a new editor's first experience is an inability to edit, or an edit going through only after a frustrating process, that person is less likely to enjoy the overall experience and decide to become a registered editor. For this reason, among others, problems with the CAPTCHAs are worthy of attention and resolution.
(To 219...) I'm not sure whether there has been a policy change or just a technical one. If no one here can answer your question, you might try the "technical" section of the Village pump with this question. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:47, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Doktorb, try reading WP:BITE (and WP:AGF while you're at it) and drop the antagonistic attitude. It's unproductive, and to be blunt, you're coming across as a major jerk. EVula// talk // ☯ //00:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree. IP's do have to accept that it won't be the same experience, but the question is reasonable. For most of us who are registered, we will not realize something has changed, and it is quite reasonable to ask whether it was a policy change predicated on good reasons, or perhaps something else. --SPhilbrick(Talk)00:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
It should be much harder to edit without registering. I understand and appreciate the constructive edits by anonymous users, but there is just too much nonsense from IPs, too many vandals and spam-bots for us to cater to them. There are many more effective ways to address these problems than just stopping anonymous editing altogether, but the WMF seems to want to hear nothing of it. Evanh2008(talk|contribs)01:38, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Entering a captcha, regardless of what it is, is "much harder" than editing with a username. As far as I know, the captcha is not needed for editing and is only needed for adding URLs. It would be a horrible burden to editing to make captchas required for all editing by IP users. 24.62.156.219 (talk) 03:15, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Uhm, that was probably my mistake to claim that actually (now fixed above). It's not for all edits, but I did have the definite impression that all of a sudden I started getting challenged much much more frequently than before. 218.188.93.140 (talk) 03:47, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Constructive edits are not the only good thing that welcoming newcomers with a low bar brings about. Recruitment potential for other volunteers that will help keep the much-hated "nonsense from IPs" at bay is another major one. I believe a reasonable equilibrium can be reached, and so far the Wikipedia "experiment" seems to support that theory. 218.188.93.140 (talk) 02:11, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I went to bed last night, apologies for the delay in responding. Of course I appreciate the need to have IP editors here, especially as first-tleimers or during matters of (inter)national importance, when registering might be seen as secondary to providing information or an update. But this issue gets to the very core of Wikipedia's founding principles and the more I think about it, the less understanding I am towards persistent anonymous editing by the same people. Evanh2008 makes a very good point in his post - the floodgates have been left open for so long people have forgotten how to close them. I think in Wikipedia circles those who could close the gates have long since resigned/been hounded out/stopped caring, but that's by-the-by. If a CAPTCHA is the only thing between an IP address and the Edit button, then that's no great biggie, but I want to go further. I'd suggest we look in great detail properly (maybe after the New Year's haze has lifted) into something like the French Wikipedia experience, which puts a preview between editing and publishing, thus slowing down the process as much as a CAPTCHA. Were we to put this into use (WITH the CAPTCHA), I dare say we'd push those who want to edit into registering, and those who want to vandalise to Reddit where they belong. doktorbwordsdeeds03:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I rarely do so, but I can't help but think quoting User:Carrite is appropriate here:
Allow me to rephrase -- Most of the IPs I have dealt with in my three-plus years at Wikipedia, have been either vandals or incompetent. My point is that creating an account only takes a few seconds, and I have no desire to cater to those who have chosen not to do that, when not catering to them would improve the project greatly. Two studies that were conducted seven and nine years ago don't even begin to disprove that point.
Let me just say that I do find it hilarious that the majority of those stating that allowing anonymous editing encourages account creating are anonymous editors themselves. Beyond that, though, anyone who says that imposing restrictions on IP editing is going to drive down the number of new contributors isn't thinking clearly. Facebook requires account registration and that doesn't seem to stop one-sixth of the world's population from using it on a regular basis; MySpace is considered a no-man's land by internet standards yet it still has 100 million active users. Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the internet, but there's a reason we're the butt of a good portion of all internet-related jokes. The sooner people come to the realization that it's because of anonymous editing, the sooner we'll be able to stop the bleeding and make Wikipedia both reliable and credible.
Anonymous editing on Wikipedia made good sense nine or ten years ago, but it has now run its course. We have vast amounts of valuable time and effort by good-faith contributors, registered and un-, being spent fighting off persistent vandalism that could be spent improving the project. The fact that the majority of IPs aren't vandals means nothing when you understand that 80% of all vandalism comes from IPs. Even enforcing some small restriction (a trial amount of posts before registering, as has been suggested before) would help this enormously, but the WMF is afraid that it would hurt their donations (I think this is nonsense, by the way). More anonymous editors means more vandalism, more BLP violations, and more contentious editing (this has been proven); it's not that hard to work out what fewer anonymous editors would mean. Evanh2008(talk|contribs)23:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
"[most IPs I met were] incompetent" - I hope you did not miss the opportunity to welcome them and educate them about this site's policies, as part of your duties as an editor here.
"I have no desire to cater to those who have chosen not to [register]" - Well then I think you should consider leaving the project and perhaps start/fork an online encyclopedia that only registered people can edit.
"Two studies that were conducted seven and nine years ago don't even begin to disprove that point" - They arguably do. Can you offer more recent data?
"the majority of those stating that allowing anonymous editing encourages account creating are anonymous editors themselves" - Not in my (~10 year) experience, nor in this very section.
"Anonymous editing on Wikipedia made good sense nine or ten years ago, but it has now run its course." - I hear this "plateau" argument often, but I disagree. Wikipedia's mission is to collect all human knowledge. We are only getting started.
"80% of all vandalism comes from IPs" - Does this figure from the same seven-and-nine-years-old studies that you have chosen to discount just a paragraph ago?
"More anonymous editors means more vandalism, more BLP violations, and more contentious editing (this has been proven)" - No proof required, it's a tautology. What you forgot to add however, is that it would also mean more good edits.
Well, before you want to throw out accusations regarding my behavior towards unregistered users, I think it beehoves you to maybe do some research on the subject; look through my contribs and come back when you have a tally of how many anonymous editors I've welcomed to the site and given friendly advice to; hell, just check my talk page archives and see if you detect a difference in the way I treat anonymous and registered users. Just in case you're interested in, you know, actually knowing what you're talking about.
"[I] should consider leaving the project". Ah, the old "If you don't like it, move to Canada" argument. Very nice. :)
"They arguably do." Well, no, they don't, assuming you actually know what "point" I was referring to (since you didn't bother to read my first post, I guess I should point out that it was "There are many more effective ways to address these problems than just stopping anonymous editing altogether, but the WMF seems to want to hear nothing of it", with the added caveat that the simple fact is that registered users are taken more seriously than anonymous ones. But if you'd rather believe it was actually "All anonymous editors are vandals and should be burnt at the stake for having numbers next to their posts," then I'm not going to stop you.
"Does this figure from the same seven-and-nine-years-old studies that you have chosen to discount just a paragraph ago?" I didn't discount anything; I merely made the observation that restating the fact that most IP edits are not vandalism is not a valid argument against some kind of reasonable restriction on IP edits.
You will excuse me for not going through 3 years of editing history and base my comments on what you wrote in this section instead, "I have no desire to cater to those who have chosen not to [register]" - My mistake for assuming that you don't always do that, in which case the Canada comment would have applied. The reasoning being, if you don't like a rule, it's OK to try and change it, but until you achieve that you have to follow it - or move to Canada. 218.188.93.140 (talk) 03:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
"I merely made the observation that restating the fact that most IP edits are not vandalism is not a valid argument against some kind of reasonable restriction on IP edits." - In that case sorry for misinterpreting your comments, I agree with you here and I'm not asking for any reasonable restrictions to be lifted. We may need to agree on the meaning of "reasonable" though. 218.188.93.140 (talk) 03:50, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Ohmygosh, I strongly disagree with the idea that we should make life harder for IP editors just to pressure them into registering. It's not a mystery why we have trouble recruiting and retaining editors. I have personally spoken to over a dozen people in my city who tried to edit Wikipedia and were discouraged by an unfriendly and elitist culture. Here we have some long-term contributors telling us about a problem that seriously affects them... and some users want to blow off their concerns because they disagree with the choice to edit unregistered? That response really disappoints me. Now more than ever we need to welcoming, open, and flexible. peace groupuscule (talk) 14:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, it's true that IP editors are treated like scum. Making it easier for them to edit as IPs will just mean more IP editors, who will still be treated like scum. If they want respect, they can start by signing up for an account so they can stand behind their words. It's less hassle to sign for a WP account than most forums. I've signed up for about 150 forums at last count, many of them only to visit once or twice. The "unfriendly and elitist culture" is an unrelated issue. WP is full of pompous jerks, humorless would-be bureaucrats, playground bullies. Always has been and always will be. Whether you have to do a captcha or sign in or not won't change that. Barsoomian (talk) 16:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
In my experience, "IP editors are treated like scum" is a gross generalisation. A better description of the situation is, "Some editors treat IPs as if they were one single editor, and by default assume that they are up to no good (despite statistics not supporting such assumption), and therefore treat them like scum." - which I find quite sad, but I'm hopeful this can improve.
"If they want respect, they can start by signing up for an account so they can stand behind their words." In my view respect is due to anyone regardless, which is ironically something that Wikipedia has taught me. 219.79.90.26 (talk) 16:38, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Comment. I noticed they were rather difficult as well trying to log to rev-del IRC. If anyone wants to see how ugly they are should I take a screen shot of one? I have a 24inch LCD monitor. Would hate to think what iPhone users are going through with them.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:28, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Update. I looked at the screenshots in the bugzilla report and they differ from the IRC ones I saw. Someone may wish to look at those as being difficult as well.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:45, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
That's because quite frankly most of the higher ups and admins don't really like IP's editing, most would rather see the ability to edit from an IP eliminated completely and force them to create accounts. Likewise, they make editing as an IP so much of a pain (not unlike but in different ways from having a named account) that the hope is they won't want to put up with it for long and will eithe create an account or stop editing in frustration. Personally, I see things like this as why we have so many vandals and feel it encourages vandalism more than it helps prevent it. For all of its rhetoric of being the Encyclopedia anyone can edit, we really do not do a very good job of making it so. Kumioko (talk) 20:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
About the advice to create accounts, I would like to point out that this, too, requires a CCAPTCHA. The user creation log shows 5476 new accounts from December 15th (aparently before the issue started), and 4122 for December 22nd (same day of the week, after the issue started, before Christmas). I do know that a single day isn't necessarily a good indicater, but there are limits on what we can check - especially given the fact that for many people, this period is mostly time off of work due to Christmas and holiday season, which would clearly mess up the results. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu22:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Whether it would be "better" to allow IP editing, or not allow IP editing, is one question. It's not black and white, there are reasonable people on each side, it's a matter of priorities, etc, etc. But once we've decided to allow it (and we have, and that is evidently not going to change), it is unacceptable to make it nearly impossible to actually do it, or to treat people like scum because they're doing what we say they're allowed to do. That makes us dishonest. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:05, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with that, but I don't see anyone making the claim that anything has become impossible or nearly impossible for unregistered users (see the comment by 216.93 below, for example). Evanh2008(talk|contribs)02:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Why register?) If you read through the list, and there is nothing you want, there really is no point in registering is there? 99.99(how many nines) of the stuff the happens on Wikipedia does not need an account. Maybe we need a summary of the benefits of not registering an account?
No email from Wikipedians, with a message to important for a talk page
No risk of loosing your password
No stupid name, that you outgrow
Work on other projects without being linked
No online personality to maintain
Never be nominated for admin
With a dynamic IP, no one will be checking your edit history, work on what ever you want
Personal sense of giving without, any chance of recognition (probably never get a barnstar)
In my case it's mostly #8 (a very subtle point, thanks Jeepday), plus a hint of #7/#9, plus:
Keeping in check WP's "anyone can edit" and NPOV pillars, by reporting/escalating technical issues (as done above) and unwarranted abuses on unregistered editors (mostly myself) or on WP articles' protection levels. Most "IPs" wouldn't know (and/or wouldn't be bothered to learn) how to escalate, so as someone mentioned above, some form of bullying is unfortunately not rare. I've seen countless cases where an experienced user was technically correct, but failed to engage the other party. This invariably leads to the noob getting alienated as a troll/vandal, which likely turns them into real trolls/vandals, or at the very least into a lost editor. I've even seen, in quite a few cases actually, involved admins single-handedly semiprotecting (even indefinitely!) a page that had no prior history of disruption, simply in order to leave out an undesired alternative POV (balancing the admin's POV) coming from an IP that wasn't even dynamic. Whenever I see a semiprotection I check the logs, and if I believe that the case was thin in light of WP:PP, I raise that at WP:RUP (and inevitably get told that if I want to edit I can just use the editsemiprotected template - that's not my point!)
I firmly believe that Wikipedia would benefit from more people doing this.
I invite experienced users to try detoxing and log off every so often, if only to see things from a different perspective. Hell, let's have a "Logout Day"! :-)
Good point. Feel free to add an RfC tag and/or list at centralized discussions if you think that will be useful. Dicklyon (talk) 00:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I for one gave up trying to fight the cabal. I was in discussions about contentious material and found they stalked my edits, AfD'd articles I created, filed a failed SPI and failed ANIs on me, etc, etc. They will probably never give up. It is just in their nature to bully and power trip on other editors. I left wp for a while because of this. If it starts happening again I may just leave for good.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
That's unfortunate. I tried to propose a better system for Wikipedia governance in order to make it run more effectively and increase editor retention, similar to the one here but with more emphasis and detail on the governance structure itself. As expected, the cabal defeated it with their usual WP:NOTBURO barrage. Here, I'm trying to make the existence of the Cabal known so that we can finally move on and give Wikipedia a clear sense of direction and order, and get back to working on an encyclopedia with the community built on those foundations. The era of self-proclaimed elites on Wikipedia needs to end. Wer900 • talk21:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm really sorry for all of the bullsh*t that you have had to go through in your time on the encyclopedia. I had been threatened with a topic ban for discussing Wikipedia governance in the past (Thank God that didn't come to pass) but the way that you were blocked and mistreated by Caballist editors who see no need to add value in any way but merely participate in disputes for the fun of being able to make a new policy and control thousands of loyal contributors. Wer900 • talk00:15, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
There are many valid thoughts there. The self-inflicted straw-man title will unfortunately prevent the ideas from being heard. North8000 (talk) 23:58, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Any suggestions on how references to the "cabal" could be changed? I actually find it quite accurate to refer to the group of editors who spend nearly all of their time in endless discussions, policymaking, and acronymed overlong discussions rather than contributing anything of value to the encyclopedia, yet still being entitled to make the rules, as a self-selected cabal. (Actually, it would be better to describe this group as a coalition of cabals, as they do occasionally disagree.) Wer900 • talk00:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
You placed the page in project space but say "I" several times and write very personal opinions. You should either place it in user space or remove "I" and accept that others can edit it. Some of the current content seems too personal for a project space essay. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
So no actual evidence that this "self-proclaimed elite" actually exists - just a lot of whining about dodgy-looking proposals for to impose some sort of one-party-pseudo-state system to run Wikipedia being rejected for the bureaucratic nonsense they clearly are? [13]AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
It's not a "one-party pseudo-state." You just added the one-party part as a strawman, when in fact that would be at least somewhat more accurate in describing the angry users of the Cabal, united by their desire to do nothing good for content and drag out disputes unnecessarily for their own good. If you actually read my "There is a cabal" essay, you will find out why the "bureaucratic" and "collective anarchy" arguments are bullshit. The real "bureaucracy" is the endless fumbling in the dark and repetitious discussion that creates twisted policies hampering our ability to build the encyclopedia, the system that fails to effectively coordinate the workings of the encyclopedia so that we can more efficiently produce articles at a prolific rate. There is no such thing as anarchy or a society without governance; the Cabal wants you to think that, while they themselves are providing (very poor, self-proclaimed, and self-serving) governance.
Every time a proposal for effective governance is rejected, not on the grounds of whether the proposal is bad but because of the old Cabal lie of it being too "bureaucratic" or "far away from the community," the proclamation of a self-selected elite is made, as this self-selected elite tries to maintain its power by stifling opposition (in the form of sound governance). Wer900 • talk01:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
That looks like a very good imitation of delusional bullshit to me. 'The cabal wants you to think that' - so anyone who disagrees with you is a victim of mind-control? Nope. I notice you don't name names, either - who exactly are this cabal? And what are their objectives? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:20, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Congratulations on calling me, in veiled language, a conspiracy theorist. I'm not saying that everyone who disagrees with me is a victim of mind control, but honestly I see no reason why some sort of governance and coordination on this project is harmful; anyone who thinks so somehow still believes the lies about collective anarchy actually working. As for naming names, I certainly would if Wikidashboard allowed me to access the names of all the editors of WP:AN/I and other dispute/policy pages and their percent contribution to the page, but I keep getting a "server busy" error. (Note, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I don't ascribe this to the Cabal as well.)
Perhaps if you reviewed the essay that I just wrote, you would have a better understanding of the bullshit arguments they put out to oppose their dominance. Wer900 • talk01:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
To add to this, many of the larger and more successful WikiProjects do possess internal structures of coordination and direction, which is proof that the editing community would like to see more of that. On a Wikipedia-wide scale, we would see dramatic improvement should such coordination come about. Wer900 • talk01:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
O.k. Put this in your pipe and smoke it: if I had to sum up the apparent ideology behind your latest essay in one word, I'd have little hesitation in describing it as 'Fascist'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:30, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Tell me how exactly my essay describes authoritarian nationalism in any way. All I'm proposing is a body elected by editors to coordinate the implementation of policy and community projects. Wer900 • talk02:01, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Presumably because you're using scare tactics (wooooooo evil scary cabal wooowooo) to push for an authoritarian governance system. ReykYO!02:14, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Again, tell me how democratically electing a group of editors to coordinate the effective implementation of policy and of initiatives in the interest of the community is "authoritarian." That is my proposal. Is it authoritarian to suggest effective governance that is not self-serving and self-selected? Wer900 • talk02:33, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Create an imaginary enemy - a "self-selected shadow elite" - insist that the "ignorant hordes" are battering at the doors. Throw in a few potshots at Marx and anarchism (WTF?). Insist that the imaginary Cabal is feeding us lies (how exactly?) Demand that the 'common people' unite behind you to defeat them, and insist that only a strong government can keep the imaginary enemies at bay. Throw in a vacuous slogan or two: "Change is necessary, and now!". Not authoritarian? Well no - I've already found a more precise description. Of course, that is just my opinion. But no doubt my opinion is the result of Cabal mind-control - or an I part of the Cabal myself? I'll never know... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Wer900, have you considered discussing your ideas at Wikipediocracy? They're so much more friendly than us, and I'm sure they'd love to have you. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 04:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I was in the cabal once, but I forgot to renew my membership. They're such sticklers for that, I swear. I wish they'd quit leaving dead cats on my talk page.
In all seriousness, though, while I think the idea of what you're saying makes some sense, and is something I've said myself (Wikipedia's governance model may need to change in some ways, in order to accommodate its far larger size), the way in which you plan to do it makes no sense. For example, you plan to reduce the number of admins. Have a look at the admin backlogs sometime, with our current number, and then imagine cutting the number of people clearing them by 2/3. Yet you call that "more manageable". I'm unsure how. (As a side note to that, RfA is actually one of the closest things we have to democracy currently.)
The way you present your ideas also makes little sense. You make nebulous assertions that "good things will happen", but never really show us the mechanism by which they actually will. Rather, you simply rail against the current system. Well, we know it's flawed, but we also know it's built something pretty amazing. Demonstrate to us that yours would be a significant improvement. And lay off the conspiracy theorism, while you're at it. Even if, let us say, you are exactly right, and there are a bunch of people making a coordinated effort to control things here, going on about it just makes you look silly. And if you somehow think the admin corps is a monolithic, unmovable block of unified opinion, I don't know what group of admins you've been watching, but it's not the ones here!
In short, if that's too long: Presenting ideas for change good; actually bothering to support them with details of why you think they would work, not just how, better; leaving out the spooky conspiracy stuff; probably also wise if you want to be taken seriously by anyone. SeraphimbladeTalk to me05:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
As a personal opinion, the page is ok (although unhelpful in its current form as it consists mainly of suggestions without precise information). However, if anyone wanted to make a serious proposal that "there is a cabal" they would need to identify a few precise examples of what they mean. For example, we read "This is the group that only types messages like 'Delete per WP:N'", however, I doubt if there really is an editor who only does that (with a few exceptions that may or may not be misguided, and which would not be causing undue trouble). Further, actual examples would be needed to evaluate if the "Delete per WP:N" messages were wildly inappropriate, or just not as detailed as we would like. I would agree with anyone saying there is too much tolerance for nonsense and POV pushing, and perhaps those editors who frequent WP:ANI and similar are too fond of "second chances", and too prepared to endlessly debate whether a POV pusher might one day do something useful, so should continue editing. The problem is that without an active dictator, the only way to move forward is to get a "consensus" from those prepared to battle it out. IMHO some cases would be better resolved by tossing a coin—the wrong outcome may occur, but at least it would be an outcome that (under my imagined regime) everyone would have to follow for a few months. Johnuniq (talk) 10:36, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
To me the majority of this conversation appears to be an attempt to create a group to modify the way the current process operates. Jeepday (talk) 14:46, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Indeed. The only difference that would exist between the so-called cabal and the OP's 'government' would be that the OP presumes the 'govermnent' would operate according to their wishes. Resolute15:56, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
This idea is like a bad penny that keeps coming back with a new paranoid twist. I've been an admin for three and a half years and an oversighter for more than two years, but I still don't get invited to the secret cabal meetings. Who do I have to blow to get in the door here? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:43, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Glad to see all you strawman-creators back again, thinking I'm a conspiracy theorist. You especially, Beeblebrox. Few have ever seriously considered proposals for governance, and merely go off attacking superficial aspects of presentation or blindly cite WP:NOTBURO, rather than trying to credibly contribute to governance discussions. My point is that the existing model has failed except for a few individuals who spend all their time yelling in WP space rather than contributing to articles.
When I use Cabal, I do not use it to denote a specific group with central organization but an assortment of editors with similar motivations and behaviors - much like Islamic extremists may have similar ideological motivations but are not necessarily bound by any universal central authority. So please, lay off on the conspiracy theories. They're an inaccurate strawman whose purpose is to avoid real discussion on Wikipedia governance. Wer900 • talk05:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
So I'm part of this mind-control Cabal, am I? Whooooooooooooo hooooooooooo! (Can anyone tell me where the Cabal meet-ups occur? I don't seem to have been invited yet - obviously an oversight. And what is the dress code? Suit and tie? Jeans and Tee-shirt? Or do we drop our human guise entirely, and come in our natural reptilian form?) AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I have a couple points, but I'll start with one—I don't understand the personal affront at the implication you are a conspiracy theorist. You are alleging a conspiracy. You should be embracing the label, not denying it.--SPhilbrick(Talk)18:32, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Just change the workd 'cabal' to mindset. It will create less rejection and will more accurately describe the problem. I recognize the behaviors described in the essay (and have committed some of them at times), but they don't originate on a centralized, coordinated effort to maintain a privilege; they rather come with an overall agreement with the goals of the main guidelines. The current corpus of policy has its benefits, and it's hard to combat the troubles coming from them the inertia they also generate, and assess to what extent they're problematic. Diego (talk) 01:09, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
My second point—which I will preface by mentioning that I have read the essay—I'll guess that you accept that there are disputes on Wikipedia, and disputes should not be ignored, but addressed. Let me know if I'm assuming incorrectly. Imagine that someone, skilled in dispute resolution, decides to contribute to Wikipedia. That person is good at dispute resolution, has no trouble finding enough to keep him or her busy, and spends the majority of Wikipedia editing time on DR issues. If I understand User:Wer900/There is a cabal/members, then that editor is a member of the Cabal, and if I understand the hierarchy in your essay, this editor is valued less than a vandal. Has I missed something?--SPhilbrick(Talk)18:38, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
[note that this is not a response to Sphilbrick] Wikipedia is doing well right now in many respects; there is a significant number of high-quality articles, and a multitude of valuable contributors. But, like any community, we here face our own challenges. Dipping numbers of non-user participation, dipping numbers of created articles, and dipping numbers of high-quality new articles ought to cause some concern. According to numerous recently-published articles in the mainstream media, Wikipedia has entered a slow, gradual phase of "decline". Communities facing problems like the ones outlined in the articles ought to be open, not suddenly closed and irritable, to editors suggesting changes. However drastic the impact of Wer900's proposed community alterations, his goal is something that we ought to consider carefully. We need not spurn it instantaneously, or just because it attacks the status quo. Perhaps such changes would not be detrimental, but instead immensely helpful to tomorrow's enduring Wikipedia. dci | TALK 00:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I think I should clarify my points. The use of "cabal" was merely my poor word choice - I am not alleging any overarching conspiracy that threatens to take down the encyclopedia and gain lulz in the process, but rather the collective action of many editors who contribute little to content, become unnecessarily embroiled in particularly inflammatory disputes, and quickly brush away close considerations for reforms to Wikipedia governance that will ensure greater coordination of project initiatives and more effective implementation of policy (with, in rare cases, the ability to make policies on a limited basis and for a limited time). This is brushed off as unnecessary bureaucracy, fascism, authoritarianism, even [insert subject of Godwin's Law here]. Again, the harm that I ascribed to the "Cabal" is not originating from one central authority but rather from individual editors and small groups thereof whose independent action combines to cause said harm. Therefore, I cannot be called a conspiracy theorist as I was referred to in the present discussion. Wer900 • talk01:59, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
How about we call you full of it instead? You have offered precisely no evidence whatsoever that your 'reforms' would do anything other than add more bureaucracy - and in the process you have insulted pretty well everyone. You have no support for your authoritarian proposals, and you sure as hell aren't going to gain any by making wild accusations about people who disagree with you, even if you try to worm your way out of it afterwards by describing it as 'poor word choice'. Frankly, if your choice of words are usually that poor, I have to wonder whether you should be editing Wikipedia at all... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:38, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I wish there WAS a cabal - Now I am not an admin (or probably ever will be after this) but I have always found the idea of a cabal to be a bit paranoid. It's fun to joke around with, ie. "Rouge Admins", but seriously, what? Is there a secret handshake? Are there special robes with hoods? Blood ceremonies? The idea is ridiculous. There is a big difference between a "gang-up" (which has happened to me on occasion) and a cabal. Just my (very humble and respectful) opinion, but this kind of thinking is a waste of time. Rather than worry about powerful entities pulling the strings, it would be better to just try to create really good content. Be well. --Sue Rangell✍ ✉03:29, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Support - I would support this. I don't have any desire to be an admin, but I would love to be able to, say, protect pages that are in the middle of a whirlwind edit war. Or be able to close discussions without the taint of it being a non-admin close. There seems to be some sort of serious stigma about that. I would think that with my experience and responsibilities that I could be trusted to do some of the simpler admin duties, so yes, access to a truncated version of the tools would be nice I think. --Sue Rangell✍ ✉03:36, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Support in principle But we need to understand what this really is. A person who is really good at tough decisions and handling tough situations (e.g. closes) actually has that capability at a higher level than an average admin. The person that you are describing should have all of the tools and would be wise enough to not get into technical tool work that they are not good at. North8000 (talk) 04:31, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability (video games) has been marked as a guideline
This is not correct, it was tagged into the notability guideline category, but the page is still an essay, and I've corrected that. (It certainly hasn't gone through a review yet for being a guideline.) --MASEM (t) 02:07, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I have also made this edit - Change to a "Wikiproject banner" for notability (explains more) and reworded to make clear its an essay - with a link to WP:Advice pages that has an explanation of what the page really is and that links to WP:PROPOSAL if they wish to go that route.Moxy (talk) 03:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Actresses categorization
Although it could be insignificant at first sight, the distinction between Category:Actors and Category:Actresses (the latter being a soft redirect currently) could be very useful and handy in Wikipedia, particularly in terms of navigation and accessibility (browsing the entire Category:Actors could be particularly inconvenient, when one needs a narrow subject for research purposes, for example Category:Norwegian actresses). The WP:Cat gender statement "separate categories for actors and actresses are not needed" does not give any reason for that. It's a case where the gender-neutral language seems to be unneccessary, if not troublesome in terms of WP:PRECISION. Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Gender-neutral language suggests gender-neutral language only "where this can be done with clarity and precision", which is not the case. Linguistically, this is especially so when the person bears a unisex name, like Robin Tunney when it's unclear whether it's he or she. The articles about actresses consistently refer to each as "actress", not "actor" and we already have long-standing categories of women by occupation, that have male counterparts: Category:Priestesses, Category:Abbesses, Category:Nuns. Considering all that, I propose this motion to drop the restriction on actresses in WP:CATGRS so that we could restore Category:Actresses and foster all relevant subcats, like Category:Actresses by country. Brandmeistertalk01:29, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
It is a gender issue. Traditionally people who are actors who are women have been called actresses, but they have pointed out that no, they are just as much an actor as any male actor. Apteva (talk) 02:18, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Yet the word "actress" is not an anachronism in English and is obviously neutral as it's neither an offensive word nor a word to avoid. As far as I know it's simply grammatically incorrect to call for instance Jessica Biel an "actor" instead of "actress". Brandmeistertalk09:42, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
It's not grammatically incorrect (at least not in standard UK English); the distinction was common in the past, but has now become a lot less clear-cut.
Women did not appear on stage in public in England until after the Restoration of 1660, following which the terms actor and actress were both used to describe female performers. Later, actor was often restricted to men, with actress as the usual term for women. Although actress remains in general use, actor is increasingly preferred for performers of both sexes as a gender-neutral term. [OED 3rd ed., 2010; note to "actress, n", sense 2a] Andrew Gray (talk) 10:25, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I think we should not prefer some unclear trends over encyclopedic purposes and having double standards (like Category:Priestesses but not Category:Actresses) is odd. There is still Academy Award for Best Actress, as well as a dedicated Category:Film awards for lead actress (not actor). Many dictionaries themselves still have the entry "actress". Brandmeistertalk
Brandmeister, none of your four points holds any logical water. On priestesses, that's a bogus WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS position, one of the main arguments to avoid XfDs; the fact that other categories may need similar clean-up is no reason not to start with this one. On Oscars, half the point of this entire debate is that Hollywood and its institutions are deeply, shamelessly sexist; blindly doing exactly as they do is not an option per WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:BIAS. Of course a subcateory of our former actresses category also uses the word "actress"; that proves nothing other than that WP:CFD tends to prefer consistency over sense sometimes (and it's also named after sexist awards that all or almost all have "Actress" in their names). Finally, of course dictionaries still have the word "actress"; just because the term is loaded and declining in usage doesn't mean it never existed. I don't think I could make an argument as confused and illogical as the ones you've presented unless I drank about 3/4 gal of Scotch. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.05:30, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I wouldn't categorize female actors separately from male ones, just as we don't categorize female singers separately from male ones. The fact that a different word happens to exist doesn't mean we have to use it in our categorization system. I would only categorize by sex in professions where being of one sex rather than the other is somehow exceptional for that profession. Victor Yus (talk) 11:22, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Victor, and add that Cat:Priestess is a good example of this, because no matter what the religion, the priesthood is almost always dominated by, if not exclusively restricted to, one gender. Diana was served by women, and Jupiter by men. Exceptions to this approach have historically been rare. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
We have enough problems fighting over what sexuality or religion someone is for categorization purposes. I don't think the benefits will outweigh the inevitable conflicts that will arise when it comes time to decide on an article about an actor of ambiguous gender. Gigs (talk) 00:26, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
To all but the older editors like myself, "actress" is a quaint anachronism like "aviatrix", still maintained by certain fogies like the folks who broadcast the awards shows! --Orange Mike | Talk02:44, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Terms like poetess, authoress and comedienne were used when I was young and they have all fallen by the wayside and things did not fall apart when this happened. As others have mentioned above those in the profession have moved to gender neutral language. As to dictionaries these, especially the Merriam-Webster definition here [15] whose 1st example of usage in a sentence is "my sister went to drama school to become an actor". Other dictionaries here [16], here [17] and here [18] all of which use gender neutral definitions. This writing style guide [19] gives us another reliable source for us of the word actor for both genders. Documentaries like The Celluloid Closet and programs on The Biography Channel and TruTV identify men and women as actors. Although many acting awards retain the term actress the associations that present them have moved away from it as can be seen in the In Memorium segment of this last February's Academy Awards [20]. Our MoS has long had this section Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language and it applies to this discussion as it always has. MarnetteD | Talk22:08, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
That guideline sets out a series of general principles for deciding when gendered categories should be created. The first principle is "Do not create categories that are a cross-section of a topic with an ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, unless these characteristics are relevant to the topic". In the case of gender, it says "A gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic". The specific guidance against categorising actors by gender contradicts those general principles, and should be removed. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Most of those terms have, indeed, fallen by the wayside and I'm not averse to combining both categories into one. Still, a distinguishment between the two is still noted (the Academy Awards are a prime example), and a separate actresses category wouldn't be bad. Perhaps there could be "actor" and "actress" subcategories of one larger one, though I'm not sure what you'd name that larger cat. dci | TALK 02:24, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
Did you not look at the link I provided that showed that the Academy Awards listed men and women as Actors, including Jane Russell and Elizabeth Taylor, in the years In Memorium section? They may not have changed the name of the acting award - yet - but they have certainly acknowledged the gender neutral use of the term "Actor". MarnetteD | Talk15:18, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
Marnette continues to confuse or conflate two separate issues: a) the terminology used to describe women in the acting profession; b) the question of whether acting is a gendered profession.
The Academy Awards may or may not choose at some point to follow the example other awards and label their gendered awards as "male actors" and "female actors", but I see no evidence that any of the major acting awards have considered abandoning the gendered split in their awards ceremonies. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 05:06, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
It seems to me that there are two different issues raised here. The more important issue is whether we should categorize actors by gender. Victor Yus, WhatamIdoing, and Apteva address this issue above, and while they give cogent arguments against gender categorization, I think that gender categorization would be useful and appropriate for the reasons noted by Brandmeister, Brian the Editor, and DCI2026. The less important question is whether we should revive usage of the word "actress": since "female actor" accomplishes the same goal without the perceived baggage of the traditional term, we should just go with "female actor" and "male actor" as subcats of "actor". Any "actors of ambiguous gender" can be handled by recourse to the sources (see, e.g. Jaye Davidson, Divine (performer), RuPaul, etc.) or in the unsolvable case left in the parent category.--Arxiloxos (talk) 06:16, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
"Female actors" sounds fine to me, if there's going to be categories by gender (I'm not that big a believer in categories in the first place, so I'm also good with not having any distinction). I've heard elsewhere that the term "actress" is older usage in mainstream film and theater, and "actor" (for either gender) is preferred. "Actress" these days may be associated mostly with porn, not that I would know. 67.119.3.105 (talk) 04:01, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Quite. When there is a reason for someone to need to find actors that happen to be female, there should be linked data tool-oriented methods to do so (e.g. DBpedia) - using categories for this kind of extremely basic metadata is not only crude in terms of sophistication but has the many unwanted side-effects of the kind discussed above. — Hex(❝?!❞)13:10, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
This is not DBpedia, and we don't have those tools, because Wikipedia:Category intersection has never been implemented. So we still have static intersections categories, include many other categories for the intersection of gender and occupation ... and we have a set of long-term stable criteria for deciding when we create categories for such intersections. It is not, and never has been policy or guideline to follow SMcCandlish's desire to "avoid genderization of categories except where absolutely necessary". The guidance is that "a gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic", and the case of acting it is a central aspect of the topic. This is illustrated by long-standing existence of dozens of categories of industry awards restricted only to women, some of which I have grouped together under Category:Actresses by award. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:22, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
And how many of those have no male counterpart? Probably zero or close to it. You're missing the fact that Hollywood's obsession with divvying up everyone by sex and compartmentalizing them for evaluation and review purposes is as arbitrary as Negro baseball leagues were. It simply does not follow that one industry's latent (and often very overt, actually) sexism means we need to have a categorization system that follows suit. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.00:30, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Like it or not actor/actress are not unisex roles, an actress plays women, an actor plays men. The cat is as specific/inflexible as category:Spanish male tennis players. As for English, try "the actress Marilyn Monroe" in Google Books, then try "the actor Marilyn Monroe". The current category labelling is not massively helpful, particularly with non-West-European names where looking at category:Thai actors won't be remotely clear to most readers, though List of Thai actors + List of Thai actresses fills the task. (Though I don't think this actor Marilyn Monroe issue is as silly as category:German conductors (music), to distinguish from German conductors (electrical), while we're mentioning unhelpful cat names..) In ictu oculi (talk) 10:24, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
There are at multiple productions which focus on males playing female roles and females playing male roles, for example Tootsie and Victor Victoria/Victor/Victoria (musical). In Shakespearean times there were no female actors and males played the female roles. It is certainly plausible that someone somewhere has put on a wig and played Marilyn Monroe, and that someone has cut their hair and played Cary Grant. Why does anyone care what someone's gender is? We have categories of golfers and female golfers and male and female tennis players, because there is a specific golf tour that prohibits males from participation and tennis tournaments prohibit females from playing in the mens tournament and males from playing in the females tournament (though Billie Jean King trounced an aging Bobbie Riggs). Wimbledon now pays identical purses for male and female winners. Anyone can play in the PGA, it just so happens that only one or two females have tried, and none have "made the cut" (Ms 59, Annika Sorenstam, came close). Apteva (talk) 17:26, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
Even aside from historical cases, there are innumerable modern examples of women straightforwardly playing male roles and vice versa (i.e. not productions about this, but productions that just happen to have this), from Peter Pan to The Year of Living Dangerously to Orlando to whatever Bond film it was with the male-to-female transsexual in the "babes by the pool" scene. The assumption that "men play men and women play women" is demonstrably false, and the "thus we have to separately categorize them" so-called logic that follows on this incorrect assumption is necessarily fallacious on its face. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.00:30, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I oppose reinstating the actress categories. I don't care much one way or another about whether the word actress is maintained in the relevant articles, but I see no real argument for why the two genders have to be sorted into two different categories. (If you want to maintain the word "actress", why not Category:Actors and actresses?) Victor Yus sums up my views. Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Exactly. A large percentage of the respondents on this issue are fixating on the fact that "the word actress is not obsolete in English", as someone put it, when this really doesn't have much to do with anything. No one's telling anyone they have to use the phrase "female actor" in an article; there's simply no real reason to fork the category by gender. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.00:33, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
First off, I think the a lot of people are missing the real issue. I would say that actress is still used, but would be willing to go with "female actor". We have the article Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress among others which shows people still use the term and I was able to find lots of hits, including some from British newspapers in the last two-years with the google search "Actress picked for Lois Lane". However, it is also clear that actor will be used in gender neutral ways as well, so I am fine with either term. In general the roles people are given (although there are exceptions) corespond with their gender. I think it would work to divide out the actors by nationality categories into male and female sub-sections. There is such a high overlap between singers and actors, I really do not see how we justify dividing singers by gender and not dividing actors by gender, so I think we should divide actors by gender.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:52, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Split We split categories in fields where it is noteworthy to split. In the case of other celebrity fields like modeling or sports, it is so routine to segregate or talk about men separately from women that it would be absurd to not categorize them apart. Since female and male actors are so commonly spoken of separately (e.g. in awards ceremonies), it makes sense to follow that convention while categorizing them. And, as pointed out in the original proposal, this would be a convenient and reasonable scheme for navigation. I can easily imagine the value of sorting through female vocalists just like I could see the value in sorting through females who are actors/actresses. For my money, "actress" is in no way an anachronism and I find "actor" when applied to women jarring. This is purely anecdotal and I don't have any data on how common "actor" as a generic term is versus "actors" for males and "actresses" for females. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯07:09, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Oppose - I don't think a split by gender is justified in this case. Splitting singers is justified because there are distinct differences between male and female voices, and songs are often written for either a male or female singer. But there's no inherent distinction between male and female actors; yes, some awards differentiate by gender, but others don't. The distinguishing features for actors are what they perform in (stage, film, television, etc) and their nationality, but not their gender. Robofish (talk) 13:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Support - I always favor precision in language (as explained by Brandmeister). Dropping actress would be an instance of gender neutrality causing obfuscation, rather than clarity. Another editor comments that "aviatrix" is a quaint anachronism. Well, "aviator" is not frequently used any longer, either, but, in cases where it were used, aviatrix would also be appropriate. To retain actor and actress serves a useful linguistic purpose. Dropping the word actress would be an inappropriate application of gender neutrality. It would apply gender neutrality simply for the sake of gender neutrality, and not because it provides any benefit. Hackercraft (talk) 23:36, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Split. Acting is a rigidly gendered profession, in which men and women work in the same settings but have roles defined by their gender. Unless a casting director is trying to make a counterfactual point, women don't get to play Hamlet and men don't get to play Ophelia. This gendered split is acknowledged at all the major awards in the profession, which have separate awards for men and women. The relevant guidance at WP:CATGRS stresses the principle that "A gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic", and that is clearly the case here. We have gendered categories for singers Category:Female singers and Category:Male singers) for similar reasons, and in both cases there are specific exemptions in the UK's Sex Discrimination laws to permit differentiation by gender. (I presume that the same applies in other jurisdictions such as the USA, or women would be suing Hollywood for not being cast in the lucrative and more plentiful male roles). Note that the guidance also says that "separate categories for actors and actresses are not needed", but offers no reason for this breach of the general principle. The general principle that we make a decision on whether "gender has a specific relation to the topic" works fine in every other area of human endeavour, and we should apply it here too. The overwhelming majority of contemporary dramatic performances (whether for stage or screen) are cast according so that characters are portrayed by actors of the same gender. By far the largest exception to that is in some art forms or cultures where there is a convention that some or all of the parts are played by actors of the opposite gender (as in pantomime, with its tradition of cross-dressing, or when women were excluded from medieval theatre). In those cases, the gender of the actor is still a defining factor in casting: women don't get cast as pantomime dames, because that is a male role. There are some rare and notable exceptions to this, but they are notable precisely because of their rarity. The overwhelming convention of theatre is rigidly gendered, either by actors playing characters of their own gender, or by them playing opposite-gender chraacters who are customarily portrayed in that way. Look at the careers of some leading contemporary actresses. Of the top of my head, I took Judy Dench, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, Julia Roberts ... and in those 5 articles have found not one single example of these women playing a male part. These care not porn stars; these are women who act with their clothes except for a few sex scenes, so what's between their legs is irrelevant. The clear fact is that being female overwhelmingly restricts them to female roles. Note that the question of terminology should be separated from the decision on whether to categorise by gender. Concerns expressed by some editors that the word" "actress" is outdated do need to be considered; it seems that "actress" is falling out favour, but is still widely used. However, there are several other ways to title gendered categories for actors, so a rejection of the term "actress" does not prevent us from having gendered categories under a different title. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:48, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Oppose Some women who act prefer to be called actors, some directors would not think of casting a woman as Hamlet or a man as Juliet, yet in an all girls school only women play both roles and in an all boys school only men play both roles. Historically, originally only men were allowed to be actors, and the word actor came to mean a male actor, just as postman, fireman, chief came to mean a man, even though other than chief women have broken through to many male dominated occupations, and we create categories of women by occupation to chronicle not just nuns and concubines, but every occupation that has had a recent influx of women. An actress category would have been appropriate in the 17th century, but not in the 21st century. If a second category is to be created, it should be "male actors", not actresses, and leave actresses in the actor category, or if that seems too bizarre, two categories, male actors and female actors, but I categorically oppose relegating women to being second class citizens. It is women who are important in the world, not men. Apteva (talk) 00:02, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Are you /seriously/ saying you think having it be split into "male actors" and "actors"? Because that's how I read what you said. Are you insane, or just trolling? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:51, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I am saying that it would be better to split actors into male and female than to create actresses. If that sounds absurd, then that makes creating actresses as a category even more absurd. Apteva (talk) 03:13, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
No, I oppose splitting and think that if anyone inadvertently or on purpose creates a subcategory of actress, such as List of actresses of Kuwait, that it be made a category of actor, not a category of actresses. Apteva (talk) 04:38, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Apteva, what do you mean? Why should a subcategory of actress not be a sub-category of Category:Actresses? An actress is "a female actor" (source=Shorter Oxford English Dictionary), so if we have categories of female actors, why treat them any differently to the other occupations under Category:Women by occupation?
It appears to me that like many other participants in this discussion, you are confusing the decision of whether to have gendered categories for actors with the question of what titles to use.
If we create gendered categories for women actors, then we can decide whether to call them "actresses", "female actors", or "women in acting" (like Category:Women in politics), or something else ... but the titling decision is secondary to the decision on whether to have categories.
Separately from deciding whether to create categories for "female actors"/"actresses", we can also decide whether to create Category:Male actors etc. But whether we have gendered categories for male and/or female actors, Category:Actors remains a common category for actors of whatever gender, just as we do with all other occupation categories.
Your comment above at 00:02 13 November suggests most of your concerns relate to the word "actress". I have no particular view either way on that term, but I respect that it arises strong feelings in some editors, so I would not oppose using something "female actor". So, if we used "Female actor", would you object to the existence of Category:Female actors and subcats? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 11:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Comment I have yet to see anyone offer any explanation of why we should not seperate actors by gender when we seperate singers by gender. Until someone presents some sort of argument for this I will find it very hard to believe we should have one system for actors and a different one for singers.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:16, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia's job is to report the world as it is reported in reliable sources. As editors, our job is neither to oppose discrimination nor to support, but to report the facts and interpretations in reliable sources. If men and women shared roles in the theatre, there would be no point in categorising them separately, but the careers of actors are entirely gendered. Look at the roles played by the 5 women I listed above: Judy Dench, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, Julia Roberts. I can't find a single male role played by any one of them. Why does NaBUru38 describe this as "pointing differences where there aren't"??? What on earth is going on here? Why do editors such as NaBUru38 appear determined to deny that acting is a gendered profession? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:39, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Yet another editor who conflates the question of whether to categorise actors by gender with the subsidiary issue of what name we use for any such category.
Oppose using "actress" to refer to female actors. Using this kind of diminutive suffix contributes to the sexist and non-neutral impression that female actors shouldn't be taken as seriously as the male ones, and the acting industry itself has moved away from this sort of language in the names of its awards. I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not to break the acting categories into subcategories by gender, but if they are split in this way it should be done in an equal manner ("male actors" and "female actors", not "actors" and "female actors"). —David Eppstein (talk) 01:05, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Split this is a very common way to categorise people, so there is no reason to not do it for actors also. The roles are very clearly split by gender. I am not oppose to the use of the term actress, but female actors would be satisfactory alongside the male actors. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:14, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Split into separate categories. There is a very significant difference between genders in acting. (No opinion on the naming.) — Wolfgang42 (talk) 20:25, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Split. Sheesh. The fact that you can come up with specific examples of situations where women play male roles and vice versa doesn't mean that acting isn't predominantly gendered. Those are unusual cases; most people in the acting profession play roles specifically meant for their gender. And has been pointed out, awards are even given based on gender. I feel that this discussion has been dominated by people trying to argue something that is manifestly not true in the hopes of driving everyone else to exhaustion trying to prove something that would be common sense outside of Wikipedia. I really hope we don't end up with someone counting the !votes and saying that since X percent think acting is gendered and Y percent think it's not, Wikipedia can't take a position on that so we must do nothing.
And I also agree with using the word "actress". Wikipedia is not for remaking society (which is not a WP:ISNOT but perhaps should be). The term is used and the fact that you would rather it wasn't isn't a reason to treat it like it's not. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, but in the actual business of entertainment it is actor period. This is an attempt to simply place Wikipedia in a position of deciding such when it should be going by the most common use and that is indeed actor not actress.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:24, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Someone put into the guideline that "actresses" was not needed six years ago.[21] Why would it be more useful today than it was in 2006? Anyone who gets out onto a stage is an actor. Why call some of them actors and some of them actresses in a category? As a category, why not just leave them all as actors? They all put on a costume and recite lines in front of an audience. Why is gender important? It is not like female heads of state where there are only a few, and making a category is useful, it is more like tall actors and short actors, with half in each category. Not a useful distinction. I just do not see the point of putting Robin Wright into one category and Robin Williams into another. Apteva (talk) 03:14, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Simply put, because with rare exceptions men play men and women play women. Gender is very defining in acting, I'd say more so than any other profession. There plainly is a distinction. To disacknolwedge that is foolish.oknazevad (talk) 14:31, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
So you admit this is about defining what gender role you wish to assign to women in theatre, film and television. Your opinion is far superior to the people in those positions, who hire and produce. I suggest doing some research and forgetting ones own opinion on this. I have said my piece and cast my vote. But if this changes more than just a category changes.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:30, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
@Amadscientist, how about you try a little basic research yourself?
Oknazevad's point is not about wikipedia editors trying to assign roles. It is about the reality of how those responsible for assigning roles in this occupation do their job, and the evidence is that gender is a defining factor. Surely even a mad scientist can pay some attention to the evidence? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:27, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Split. When was the last time that males had equal chances at female roles or females had equal chances at male roles? Shakespeare, when males had 100% chance of both and females had 0% chance of both? Unlike height, which can change over time and which has no clear boundaries, whether you have XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes is permanent and just almost always unambiguous. Nyttend (talk) 22:51, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Split. Of all professions acting is more than any other defined by the performer's gender. To act otherwise (pardon the pun) is stupid. Whether or not to use the term "actress" is far less important; I'd be fine with "fenale actor" as its perfectly descriptive. Actress is still used commonly, though, and it's persistence is likely a result of the defining nature of gender in acting. But that just re-emphasizes the fact that not having separate categories is a bit of foolishness that doesn't reflect reality. Wikipedia shouldn't advocate changes. oknazevad (talk) 14:31, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Split per BrownHairedGirl (I was actually leaning the other way before I read her response). With the general grumble that Wikipedia should have been paying its developers to overhaul the antiquated category system to have a decent, usable display comparable to a well-designed template and allow seamless integration of subcategories, to the point where this vote would have no real effect because you could view things either way anyway. Wnt (talk) 15:15, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Strong oppose The use of the term actress is not just offensive it is meant to seperate by gender in a way meant to descriminate. Historicly the reason the term is just actor is because for many years women were not allowed on the stage and when they finally were the distinction was meant to notify the audience at a time when some would still not want to watch a woman perform. Yes, men have and still do perform female roles and women play male roles. Parts that were written for a male have been altered to allow a female performer to step into the role. There are a number of exapmles. Sigorney Weaver in Alien portrays a character that was written as a male lead. In theatre there have been a number of male roles going to females, like the character of Dr. Scott in The Rocky Horror Show. This is less about gender and more about professionalism. The term is "actor" not actress. As a male seamstress I can tell you there is no such thing as Seamster. Should we have a category for male seamstress (probably don't have either category but that is still a good point I believe) There are other examples but to me this is stepping back Wikipedia and not improving it.--Amadscientist (talk) 21:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Part of this argument conflates the question of whether to categorise actors by gender with the question of what terminology to use for the gendered categories. We can call it Category:Actresses, Category:Women in acting, Category:Women actors, Category:Female actors or whatever ... but the first question is whether to have such a category. Amadscientist's reference to Sigourney Weaver is yet another example of cherry-picking, or the or the fallacy of incomplete evidence, a practice repeatedly used by those opposed to categorising actors by gender. A brief scrutiny of Sigourney Weaver's career shows that Wikipedia lists ~56 film roles which she has played: AFAICS, every one those roles is female, apart from the male role she played in the four Alien films. All of her 10 television roles are female characters. As I noted above, the 5 most recent winners of the Academy Award for Best Actress have between them played hundreds of roles, and I see not one male part in those long lists. The roles played by those actors are not limited by their nationality, yet we do categorise them by nationality ... but even though they are determined by gender, some editors go extraordinary lengths to deny this easily demonstrable fact. What is going on here? Why are some editors so adamantly opposed to categorisation by gender that they repeatedly deny reality? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:47, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Those male roles amount to less than 8% of her career, and Weaver is exceptional in having played that many male roles. Most leading actresses play no male roles at all.
My point is that you appear to think that Ellen Ripley was a "male role". I didn't know that we had a representative from the 1950s. — Hex(❝?!❞)19:07, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
What you call cherry picking is what I call a simple example of only one reason. I gave others and there is more. However I concede that, while the profession itself referres to actors without gender, the Acadamy Awards themselves do refer to "actress". What is going on here Hairgirl is that we are at a period of change on this particular subject and while you may feel you have tyhe correct usage, others feel there is no real reason for an encyclopedia to use, what many feel is an outdated termonology. Most of what you and others give as example is the role itself, but as I have said it isn't about gender. This is about a profession. I strongly urge editors to remember that we set the rules here and if we decide to use the term actress then that is what consensus determines. However, if we decide to use the term male or female actor, that as well is acceptable. Reality? Huh....is that anything like "truth"? Just who's reality or truth are we to go by?--Amadscientist (talk) 09:09, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Cherry-picking is taking one outlier example to bolster a point, rather than looking at the broader patterns. That's what you did, and it's just one example of the denial-of-reality which I was commenting on. I don't know what to make of your statement that "it isn't about gender. This is about a profession". Of course it's about a profession (nobody disputes that); but the issue under discussion here is whether gender is a defining attribute of those in that profession. If it is defining, then we should categorise by it; if not, we shouldn't. You say that "it isn't about gender" ... so how do you explain that 5 most recent winners of the Academy Award for Best Actress have only played roles in their own gender? I look fwd to your answer on that. And no, I do not "feel that I have the correct usage". I explicitly said that there are several possible alternatives for naming such a category, and I would welcome a separate discussion on which terminology to use. So far as I can see, the situation is that "actress" is the historical term for women in acting and has some degree of continuing usage, but is being replaced in some usages (maybe many/most usages) by terms such as "female actor". It would be interesting to discuss how to handle this, and see how the balance of evidence shapes up, but at this point I have no preference either way. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:03, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
PS Amadascientist says: "the profession itself referres to actors without gender, the Acadamy Awards themselves do refer to actress". This statement portrays the Academy awards as some sort of exception in using a gender divide in its awards system, whereas the reality is that a gender divide in acting awards is routine in this profession. See for example the 199 awards listed in Category:Awards for actresses ... and note that the Screen Actors Guild (a trade union composed of actors) issues separate awards to "male actors" and "female actors". The gender divide in awards is not something imposed from outside the profession; it is how the profession views itself. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:16, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
LOL! I stand corrected. Gotta stop using that analogy now. Dang. Anyway, I have no objection to a female actor category. Yes...there are female actors. But the term actress is no longer the most common usage. I took a quick poll at a number of places to see what the current thought is. Actor was was waht every single person in the profession that answered came up with. Several acknowledged that actress is an older term and is no longer in mainstream use. As I said, the Acadamy Awards began in 1929 and yet the award itself is male and oddly enough the staue given for the SAG awards is called "The Actor" also a male figure. Again the use of the term actress was used to differentiate the male from the female performer in a manner that was a put down and a lower status. My main objection is policy based. Actor is the true common usage. If you want to have a category for "female" actor.....that goes right along with what I am saying.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:59, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Actually a google search shows that actress is still by far the most common usage. However your position does show this is a very difficult discussion to disect. The majority is for splitting the category, and even among those who say they are opposed, some such as Amadscientist are willing to allow the category to split, and only have an issue with the terminology used.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:56, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Johnpacklamber, We don't care if it's the most common. WP:COMMONNAME is moderated by WP:COMMONSENSE and many other considerations, and doesn't directly apply to categories anyway. BrownHairedGirl, Pointing out that various females play male roles sometimes and vice versa is not a fallacy, it's a simple deflation of the puffed up argument that there's something especially different about female vs. male actors, which there is not and has not been since the end of the Elizabethan era. No one has suggested, BrownHairedGirl, that women don't usually play female roles and vice-versa for men; you're arguing against a position that does not exist in the debate, and thus the fallacy is yours on this issue. What several of us have been doing is pointing out that the argument which several here (not you, I think) have put forth is that "because" women "always" play female roles, and men male roles, actors and actresses are "ergo" different and "must" be separately categorized. Aside from the fact everything in scare quotes is a false assumption on its face, pointing out women playing male roles, or the other way around, proves the second of the four to be counterfactual. You appear to be defending arguments you are not even making, and doing so by incorrectly calling a very basic logic tool – use of example to disprove an overgeneralization – "fallacious". — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.05:26, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh dear. Please read up on the difference between the generic concept of a fallacy and the more specific concept of cherry-picking, or the or the fallacy of incomplete evidence. The latter is what I was referring to. Your argument seems to be that because there is not a 100% correlation between the gender of the role and the gender of the actor, then we can ignore gender entirely. A little basic research would show that percentage of correlation is in the high 90s, and that for many actors and actresses it is 100%. That make gender a WP:DEFINING characteristic of a male or female actor. That does not, of course, mean that they must be categorised separately (which is a straw man of your invention); what it means is that per our basic principles of categorisation, gender is an attribute by which they can be categorised. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 12:31, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
If this issue is the need or desire to have female actors be searchable separate from male actors, then why don't you take the simple route with this? Make one category be titled Male actors and the other Female actors, problem solved. Then you don't have to worry about possibly offensive terminology like actress and it also keeps the whole thing neutral, as you're referring to both groups by gender, rather than just one. SilverserenC10:53, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Um, you're all missing the point that to the majority of people participating in this debate, the gender-fork is what is objectionable, not the specific terminology. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib.05:52, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
There is now an attempt to speedy delete that category, which seems to me totally unjustified in light of what is going on here. I have contested the speedy deletion, but I am not sure my actions will be enough.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:36, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Strongly Oppose - Categories have not been created for the purpose of extracting information from Wikipedia but for the purpose of organizing it. Categories have not been created for the purpose of research but for content management (on Wikipedia). The Category Actor is used in Infoboxes and Wikiprojects and tells us generally what an article about a person engaged in acting should have. What is the point of creating a new category then? Is there something about female actors that makes them require a seperate category? Do they have different notability requirements? Is there a systemic bias against creation of articles about them? For the purpose of content extraction or presentation we have Lists and lets stick to them. Let's say we create a new category, then who will do all the work for updating all templates and Wikiprojects? And all for what? I am sure after all the excitement the category would get deleted? And BTW? Why do we have to include gender debates in everything? -Wikishagnik (talk) 06:07, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Support proposal by Brandmeister. There is absolutely nothing offensive or sexist in word "actresses", this sounds more like a word of appreciation to me. We must use "actresses" rather than "female actors" per WP:Common name. Yes, males and females are different, and their art is different, especially in historical and ethnic context. Hence the different sub-cats. Yes, this maybe helpful for research and content management. Who will do the work is irrelevant; this is open-end project. There is nothing wrong with debating gender-based categories. My very best wishes (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Deletion of articles written by banned or blocked users
Is there a sound rationale for deleting articles written by sockpuppets who have later been blocked or banned? - see G5 If the content of an article is unrelated to the reason for blocking the user, then surely the article itself may be of value and should be acceptable provided it conforms with all the usual requirements. Paul venter (talk) 09:30, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Deleting such articles is not mandatory, so if they are really useful it is a judgment call to keep them. Also, in that case, other editors are likely to join in working on them sooner or later, which will make them immune to G5. But in most cases, articles created by banned users are at least to some extent problematic (tendentious, "walled garden" areas of borderline notability, etc.) The idea is that the banned user should not be enabled to dictate his agenda on the community. Other editors should not be obliged to go through all the normal channels of dispute resolution, deletion processes and so on to get potentially problematic content removed, and nobody should be forced to spend his time trying to improve such an article to clean it up. If and when the usefulness of the content is in doubt, removal should be quick and unbureaucratic. Fut.Perf.☼09:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Should the article, created by a sock, be deleted even if it meets the notability criteria and would stand a AfD if ever done? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:17, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
It might meet the notability criteria but still have serious problems in other areas (tendentiousness, poor sourcing, poor overall quality, etc.) In such cases it may still be appropriate to delete, unless somebody volunteers to adopt the article and clean it up. Fut.Perf.☼12:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I think the approach we use for edits can easily be applied. That is, articles by banned users can be deleted without much process, but if the deletion is reversed (or contended), the editor who restores or champions the article adopts it, and hence the responsibility for it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
That sounds a lot like WP:OWN. Articles aren't the property of a single person - whether they're a banned user, or whether they're an editor who champions a particular article. Articles are entities in their own right, and deserve their own place in the relevant deletion process, irrespective of who created them. Bluap (talk) 12:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Bluap. All of this discussion is quite nonsense: what matters for an article's existence is notability and appropriateness of the topic. Who does the article is irrelevant, except perhaps for very serious WP:DENY issues (ask ArbCom about them, I've been bitten once by such stuff). --Cyclopiatalk13:55, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I have to agree as well... no one OWNs an article... if there are problems with an article FIX them. We should only delete an article if the topic of the article is not notable. Blueboar (talk) 15:52, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
There are two independent reasons why we delete articles created in violation of a ban. First, and most importantly, many banned editors create articles with serous problems. A lack of notability will be obvious, but a pov article that carefully selects biased sources may not be. Likewise, copyright violations aren't always easy to find if a the source material isn't on google. Depending on why the banned editor was banned, it may be necessary to assume the worst and delete. Second, by allowing a banned editor's contributions to remain, we are encouraging them to continue to sock. If we keep blocking socks, but keep the contributions, then a ban is a joke. To be clear though, G5 only applies to content created in violation of a block or ban. G5 does not apply retroactively to past contributions, which if problematic, should usually be dealt with through normal deletion process. Monty84502:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I've 'rescued' articles that have been speedied because they were created by banned users. Simply by requesting the contents from an admin. It's possible that they'll want to slap a autoconfirmed protect on the page just in case, but that's no big deal. §FreeRangeFrogcroak01:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Deleting banned users' useful contribs is silly; there is no excuse whatsoever for eliminating articles created by someone just because their actions elsewhere on the site were inappropriate. From what I've observed, most "incidents" of this nature are instigated by users who themselves are disruptive; serious, well-intentioned editors rarely try to expunge banned users' work. dci | TALK 01:56, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I understand speedy deletion if the article itself has some fault (i.e copyvio or unbiased or horribly written like maybe non-English or way too bad to clean). But if that is not the reason, i see no reason for speedy deletion and treating the article as any different than the ones PRODed or AfDed.
We have some admins present in this discussion. Could any one take a look at the articles Shivshakti Sachdev (version that was deleted on 24 July 2012) and Pooja Joshi (version that was deleted on 23 July 2012) and point out if any of these faults were present in it? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 04:03, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Both articles were created by the sock as totally uncited BLPs. You certainly improved them with your edits. At the time they were deleted, they were not eligible for deletion under any other CSD criteria, nor would they have been subject to deletion by BLPPROD. Probably would have survived AfD due to notability of the subjects, but the references in the articles would have been insufficient. Certainly not a model BLPs, definately needed better citation. Honestly I'm not sure if there is much precedent as to what substantial edits by others in the G5 criteria really means or whether you added enough to qualify. If you want to pursue the matter, and have not already done so, you should first ask the deleting admins to reconsider the deletions in light of your contributions. Monty84504:30, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for seeing through. I had asked the deleting admins to look into the matter. But as they were inactive then i had also requested review from another admin where another page-stalker admin had also commented. Discussion is here. It concluded to "no substantial edits" and some technicalities of "no clean version", attribution to sock, etc. The substantiality issue really needs to be address. Its not fair to expect from someone to report the sock, (which is huge task) delete the content added by the sock on numerous articles that isnt worth staying and also expand the articles that otherwise meet notability within the short timespan before some admin gets to brooming. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 05:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
The question over G5 comes from time to time, see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_91#WP:G5_Discussion for one of the VPP discussions about a year ago. That time I said "There are two reasons why I think G5 is a reasonable criterion. The immediate and pragmatic reason is that we no longer can assume good faith with banned editors. In most cases, they have violated the community's trust so many times or so egregiously that their edits (made in violation of their ban) can no longer be trusted. Reviewing an edit or new article to determine whether it is good or bad is not as easy as it may first seem. The article may contain subtle misinformation or POV pushing (e.g. deceptively cited to an obscure or advanced source). Given that the editor was banned for misconduct, this is actually rather likely. Requiring other editors to review such articles before deleting is a waste of time. Also, a ban is a ban, and they are meant for cases of serious misconduct. A banned editor should not be able to wedge himself back in by first making a good article, then making a slightly controversial article, then a clearly unbalanced article, and so on.". In continue to stand by that. Sjakkalle(Check!)05:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I have always disagreed with the automatic deletion of articles created by banned users. We're here to write an encyclopedia, not to punish people. If the articles have POV problems or copyvio issues, that's one thing. But if you are deleting a notable, properly written article, then I consider that to be outright vandalism and I think such actions should be treated as that. SilverserenC10:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
How do you know whether an article is notable and properly written? Some users are notorious for writing non-obvious hoax articles, and then when they are banned for this returning with legions of sockpuppets to create more. Painstakingly checking all their contributions is time-consuming, during which time potentially false or misleading information remains published. It may be better to proactively delete these contributions; they can always be restored after checking by an administrator, or at the request of a regular editor who wishes to do the checking. —Psychonaut (talk) 14:57, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
In those cases the correct response is to put together a review project, such as I have participated in several times. There can of course be specific cases where someone has cranked out too much bad stuff to make review reasonable, but I think those cases should be handled by a public discussion first which establish consensus for the mass deletion. The default response should be review. Mangoe (talk) 15:15, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
If such a workflow is to be adopted as a replacement for CSD G5, then I hope it will be as easy to launch one as it currently is to CSD-tag an article with automated tools such as Twinkle. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
It would not be a replacement, as G5 only covers articles created in violation of their ban or block (bolding in original). This discussion is about pre-bad/block articles, which should require explicit community authorization to apply mass deletion techniques. The argument here, in essence, is that we have people who want to remove this text. I'm not adverse to saying, "OK, a lot of the time we should just nuke everything," but I think we shouldn't give blanket authorization to do so. It would only be a matter of time before ad editor, probably an admin, took up Twinkle against someone who was banned after a long career of annoying him and put up for deletion everything the banned user every wrote, even though a lot of it may have seen extensive editing after the fact. The drama creation would be off the scale. It's not the end of the world to force this stuff through AFD, and if we came up with a procedure to short-circuit that where there was no substantial opposition to deleting a user's contributions en masse, I don't think that would be a great burden either. But I can guarantee that a blanket invitation to delete everything a banned user wrote is going to be abused. Mangoe (talk) 16:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Like all CSD, G5 is permission, not a mandate. We don't have to go purging all the contribs of banned users just because of G5, and I don't think most reasonable admins would do that. But as has been argued successfully many times at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion, to ban someone and still allow them to continue to waste the precious time and resources of our contributors in sifting the wheat from the chaff amounts to rendering their ban meaningless. If they create thousands of articles, who is going to go through and see which ones are keepable and which are problematic? We should at least have the option to delete with very little discretion in such a case. Dcoetzee01:10, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't come often to en.wp, so sorry to intrude with a question maybe already answered a thousand times over. But I was wondering about your policy on fair use. I understand that en.wp allows the use of non-free images, provided no free image can be used to illustrate a particular article. Okay. But I was wondering if every effort is really made each time to found a free image. I read Wikipedia:Non-free content, it says "Film and television screenshots: For critical commentary and discussion of the work in question.", but several screenshots are used to illustrate characters in a show (for example File:ArthurMitchellDexter.jpg), where a photo of the actor could be considered sufficient to provide adequate illustration for the character they portray (for example File:John Lithgow 8 by David Shankbone.jpg could be used instead).
It's been argued by those wanting to keep live actor character images that an actor-in-character shot is irreplacable by a photo of the actor themselves as the character is not just only the visual look of the actor but their costume, poise, expression, and several other hard-to-describe details that the actor photo will not capture. This is generally accepted if we are talking about a notable character with their own page, but doesn't extend to a character in a list or using the character photo elsewhere (like the actor's page) barring unique situations. --MASEM (t) 14:50, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, there is the case of a actor being a strange outfit and/or makeup to make him hard to recognize as the actor (a picture of Michael Dorn would do the article on Worf injustice if the only way to show what the character looks like). But the situation (it is not one I agree with but know is consensus) is that for the case above, of John Lithgow as Arthut from 3rd Rock, it is clearly the same person but the "show" picture has implicit details about the character due to expression and poise that can't be explains by the free picture of Lithgow and text. That's the case that I have questioned in the past but found that consensus favors that inclusion. --MASEM (t) 15:25, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Then, let's try File:Dexter Morgan.jpg as an illustration for Dexter Morgan. Does he represent accurately the character described by Jeff Lindsay in his books ? For characters belonging to a franchise, I find the argument not very compelling. The Jake Sparrow case isn't convincing, as the costume is so significant cosplayers could be used as illustration (along with a photo of the actor, I should find it enough illustration). In some cases, I think the argument a bit disingenuous. Esprit Fugace (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
In regards to cosplay - photos taken of such are questionable if they are free or technically derivative works of the copyrighted characters and the answer is not straight forward. And further, I can already see arguments "But this is not an accurate representation of the character because X is not playing the character!". I know I disagree with this use of non-free images, but consensus is generally acceptable for this use.
In the case of a book-cum-TV series, where there was no previous illustration of the character in the book, the use of the TV series character is fine. The counter example is something like Sherlock Holmes or Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) - we aren't using the actors that played these in movies and TV, but the original illustrations tied with the work. --MASEM (t) 15:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
I thought I understood, but you got me confused again. If cosplayers are a gray area and barely acceptable (which I perfectly understand), how is a screenshot, which is clearly copyrighted material, any better ? Esprit Fugace (talk) 16:23, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
We are allowed to use non-free, but its use is meant to be exceptional as outlined at WP:NFCC. So there's no problem using a non-free screenshot to illustrate the character if there is no equivalent free replacement. The argument here is that while some characters look exactly like the actors playing them that we could use a free image of the actor instead, that is not an equivalent replacement since the photo of the actor out of character doesn't capture implicit details about the character that can only be shown via a character screenshot. --MASEM (t) 16:28, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
And to be clear, since cosplay photos are questionable, they would be non-free as well. In terms of "value" to WP, a screenshot and a cosplay photo are equal weight in terms of non-free, so we might as well use the more accurate screenshot over that of a cosplayer. --MASEM (t) 16:35, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
I would say yes. 10/18 of the contributing artists are blue links. You may wish to add it to the discography in their articles.--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't mention it on the talk page because I wanted a seccond opinion and i doubt it would have been found by anyone any tim soon if I put it there. This was the most appropriate place I could find, therefore, to get one. Oddbodz (talk) 00:17, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
As someone who participates in the article deletion process and is familiar with the notability guidelines, at first glance that's a keeper. §FreeRangeFrogcroak00:26, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
That makes 3 of us then - I just wanted to get a second opinion rather than telling the author it was fine, only for him to have it deleted at a later date. Oddbodz (talk) 13:57, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I see. In future cases, I recommend linking from the article talk page to the discussion elsewhere, so people watching the article don't miss it. I've done that here. Superm401 - Talk21:11, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Talk Block
Someone who continually violate WP:Bite should be blocked from editing talk pages for a period of time. Of course, all the blocks would have to conform to WP:Blocking Policy. People would be blocked to prevent imminent or continuing damage and disruption to Wikipedia, and to deter the continuation of present, disruptive behaviour. Biting new users on their talk page is not necessary for Wikipedia to continue, and thus should be subject to blocking. — RosscoolguyCVU | My Talk15:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
The question that needs to be answered is under what circumstances would somebody be permitted to continue editing articles and doing other activities on Wikipedia, but not be permitted to communicate on talk pages? Communication is utterly necessary when doing collaborative writing projects, so it would seem to me that a user who is being disruptive on talk pages and being a bit too rough with new users should be warned.... and for repeated misbehavior simply blocked from Wikipedia altogether if even only for a brief period of time to cool off. A valid probationary action on the part of ArbCom might be to socially prohibit such behavior (warn that such actions will result in a permanent block on a case by case basis and not through technical means).
Note that in this case stern warnings to such misbehaving users is likely going to be more effective, and blocking is one of several actions that can be taken in this situation. I agree that consistent violations of WP:BITE do warrant a block after warnings and other measures are ineffective. Then again, that isn't really a change in policy either and something which should currently be happening. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:00, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Is labelling individuals by caste a violation of privacy, per WP:BLP, and if so should we make this explicit?
Having got into yet another of the interminable arguments over caste at Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#Caste identification, where the discussion got bogged down as usual in repetitive stonewalling and an abject refusal by those advocating labelling living individuals by caste to discuss the matter with regard to WP:BLP policy, I have come to the conclusion that in may well be necessary to clarify what is clearly the general intent of such policy, and to make it explicit. Though the exact wording will clearly need further consideration, I intend to argue that since caste membership of individuals is frequently appallingly badly sourced, is of little or no encyclopaedic interest in almost all cases, has potential for serious negative repercussions if wrongly reported, and is something that a significant proportion of those so labelled reject as invalid, it is a gross violation of the privacy of living individuals to label them by caste membership unless (a) they explicitly self-identify as a member of the caste, and (b) it is of direct relevance to their notability in regard to Wikipedia. To put it in simpler terms, it is none of our ******* business as an encyclopaedia which caste someone supposedly 'belongs' to, and it is a gross violation of WP:NPOV to give this relic of colonial/pre-colonial times more credence than it deserves, by conferring 'legitimacy' on as contentious and disputed a concept. Compiling 'lists of caste X', and telling the world that 'person Y is a member of caste Z' is simply unacceptable - it violates individual privacy, violates the neutrality of Wikipedia, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the objectives of the encyclopaedia - it is time that we made the intent of BLP policy explicit, and put an end to such inappropriate labelling. I would obviously like to see input from others at this time - and would ask that we try to keep this discussion as much as possible directly on the above topic: the question of how caste should be treated with regard to BLP policy, and the extent that such policy needs clarification or amendment. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:57, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Very well said Andy. Yes, this is the worst sort of thing I have seen on Wikipedia. Social caste systems as a policy, guideline or rule is outrageously unencyclopedic and leads to insults, bigoty and worse. I have been watching this so called community consensus and am amazed at the treatment people undergo by some editors to keep this crap as if it is encyclopedic. This is aimed a specific set of people and it disgusts me. Why don't we just tell everyone that if they can't prove their background they are worthless. Or Better yet, if you can prove your caste you are special. I know...lets stick to the American caste sytem...the UK caste system or hey.....lets dig up everyone dead ancestor and belittle them. Better yet...if you have a BLP article, lets call you a f****** peasant and step all over your name and family. This is a dead subject and only creates bigotry and resentment. If we don't try to honor the caste system we don't have to worry about attempt to "raise one's caste level beyond what is accurate".....what ever the heck that even means.--Amadscientist (talk) 07:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
The Indian caste system is solely of historic interest, and due to the fact that it is illegal today I would go back at least 50 years and not identify the caste of anyone alive in the last 50 years or in the future. But going back a hundred years it is fine to identify that so and so was of such and such caste, because the caste system did exist then. Apteva (talk) 07:53, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
@Amadscientist, actually, the current consensus is broadly per Andy's opening statement. See, for example, User:Sitush/Common#Castelists (I am probably the single most active cleaner in this area). However, the fact that this is a project-based consensus tends to bog me down in numerous fights and I would welcome an explicit mention in WP:BLP. As Andy points out, there will have to be some exceptional situations.
@Apteva, that the caste system is illegal today is not terribly useful. For example, the 2011 census of India specifically asked people for their caste details. There is a legal contradiction: the constitution of India says one thing and every government has done something different from that. - Sitush (talk) 08:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
(ec) I think we should take the same nuanced approach as we normally use with religion and the like with WP:BLPCAT. There may well be times when mentioning an individual's caste is appropriate, such as if, for example, they are notable for being the first person in a high caste to call for reform/abolition of the caste system. In that case, since reliable sources would frequently discuss it, we would follow their lead, just like the article about Richard Dawkins would be remiss in failing to mention his atheism, and the one about Jimmy Swaggart his evangelical beliefs. However, in most cases, where the caste really has nothing to do with the person's notability, it's just random crap slapped in there, and I see no reason whatsoever to retain it. So if the article is about an actor, politician, artist, what have you, whose caste is not really a part of their notability, leave it out. SeraphimbladeTalk to me08:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
The problem with WP:BLPCAT is that (a) it only applies to categories, lists infoboxes etc - allowing for violations of privacy, POV-pushing etc etc in article body text, and (b) it isn't consistent - it treats religion (which requires self-identification) differently from ethnicity (which doesn't). 'Caste' is as much a religious/political/economic concept as an 'ethnic' one (arguably more so - as far as I'm aware, 'caste' is never treated as an analog of 'ethnicity' in the relevant academic fields), and it is entirely unclear which parts of WP:BLPCAT, if any, are directly applicable, though the consensus seems to be that it is 'somehow'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:01, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
(EC reply to Andy, please leave indented here) Sorry if I was unclear. I was using BLPCAT as an analogy, not saying it really covers it today. The general principle we use there, especially on potentially contentious matters like religion, is that unless the individual's religious beliefs (or, in the Dawkins example, lack thereof) are very well known and publicized, and have significant relevance to their notability, we leave them out of the article as essentially irrelevant. I see no reason not to apply that same standard to caste. SeraphimbladeTalk to me09:09, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that isn't what BLPCAT says - it doesn't actually explicitly cover material in the body of an article, only applying to infoboxes, lists, categories etc - though more general policies certainly do. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
BLPCAT explains its rationale: categories don't carry disclaimers or modifiers. In other words. we require self-identification before putting someone in a category of Jews, because it is impossible for a category to explain that someone has one Jewish ancestor or that he is culturally but not religiously Jewish or whatever. The category just says they are Jewish or they're not. I don't think this rationale readily extends to article text where we can explain as much as we want.
It is true that BLPCAT only lists religious beliefs and sexual orientation. and we should probably modify it to add caste (and maybe ethnicity--why isn't ethnicity in there already?) Ken Arromdee (talk) 18:35, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Sitush: Oh....a project based consensus. Cool. Then it cannot overide the consensus of the general community and means absolutely nothing more than a project guide. So....why are we leveling community sanctions over a project guide? Castes are simply the social stigma placed on a lower class by those that have a superior caste within that system. Antiquated does not begin to describe it and religion is not how I would base such worthless ifo. Being the first to what....rise above a social stigma? The first to cross a line that has no legality in the US as is the basis for BLP policy and guidelines? Yeah.....Andy has hit the nail on the head here.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:07, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
You don't like me, I know, but we both agree with Andy and I have no idea why (it seems) you are having a go at me in this context. You do seem to misunderstand the origins of the modern caste problems but that does not affect any outcome. - Sitush (talk) 09:30, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
(EC) I would be highly suspicious of us taking a far far stricter stance than reliable sources do in forbidding mention of any person's caste unless it's connected to notability. Newspapers often mention it, scientific studies are conducted on it, and it certainly shows up in all manner of WP:SPS. Yes, I understand that WP:BLP puts us stricter than many other source-types...but I don't think that a move to completely remove all mentions of caste for living people is correct either. The notion that caste is strictly historical is laughable; that's the official Indian government position, but a 30 second search of any major caste name will show you hundreds of references in reliable sources and hundreds of thousands in unreliable ones. And to respond to AndyTheGrump, the reason I believe it is more closely related to ethnicity is that it is strongly determined by descent and marriage. Yes, castes shift all of the time (and particularly the relationships between castes shift even more), but one cannot simply "decide" to be of a different caste, as one can of a religion or political persuasion. One can "opt out", as many have--that is, taking the stance that caste has no more legitimacy and denying it as being part of one's identity. But one can't "opt in". Qwyrxian (talk) 09:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
(post EC) Seraphimblade, you're wrong. We don't omit religion when it isn't related to notability; we only omit it from the explicitly listed places. There is no requirement in BLP to specifically include information only related to people's notability--by that logic, we would almost never include family info, schooling, etc. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
One can "opt out", as many have--that is, taking the stance that caste has no more legitimacy and denying it as being part of one's identity. Can one, if Wikipedia doesn't recognise this, and applies the label anyway? I think that you need to rethink what you are saying. In any case, you are taking the 'legitimacy' of caste as the 'default' here - which might be taken as being at odds with WP:NPOV. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Caste system is of no historical context unless it refers to nobility of THAT time and has no such context today in US law...which is the issue here. Not about a king of 200 hundred years ago, but of the family today, that, as I said is being constantly bashed for "attempting to raise their caste". Really? OK.....in a historical context that is one thing, in a BLP context...that boarders on shoving a person back into that "caste" with which they are attempting to rise above. Wikipedia should not be in a position to make assumptions on the life of an entire family name based on the caste system of another country that I don't even know if it even exists today. This is just wrong on many levels.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:28, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Sitush, you would be surprised what I understand. Andy, while you may not be discussing US law in particular my point is that US law in context to BLP policy is exactly what the policy states:
Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page.<ref>People are presumed to be living unless there is reason to believe otherwise. This policy does not apply to people declared dead in absentia.</ref> Such material requires a high degree of sensitivity, and must adhere strictly to all applicable laws in the United States, to this policy, and to Wikipedia's three core content policies..
To Sitush, This is the English Wikipedia so, in that manner and per BLP policy...if you wanna throw around "US-centric" go for it. But please explain how the caste system is applicable to BLP articles per our BLP policy.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I would be surprised ;) The entire point of this thread is because caste is not explicitly covered by WP:BLP and is continually claimed not to be within scope. I disagree with those claims but, hey, they are there. FWIW, the significance of the caste issue in India is widely accepted to be little more than a century old: it was the Brits wot did it. - Sitush (talk) 10:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Can we please stay on topic. This isn't about who knows most about caste, it isn't about US law, it is about the relevance of WP:BLP policy to assigning caste to living individuals. If people wan't to argue about other things, please do it somewhere else. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:27, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Regardless of the Brit wot did it, we still do not actually recognise the system within US law. But I still would like a demonstration of how the caste system is covered by our policy.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Qwryxian, people have sort-of "opted-in" to castes, usually by "making one up". Think of the numerous claims to Rajput status, the Mali's legal relationship to Saini, the hypergamy of Nairs etc. Think of the sanskritisation process and the preceding chaos of British classifications. Not to forget the growth in the number of officially-recognised communities, jostling for social position (1100-ish in the early 1900s, > 4600 now). - Sitush (talk) 10:09, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
At this point, given Amadscientist's disruptive behaviour, I am going to withdraw from the discussion - though I may well raise the issue of disruption at WP:ANI. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I am attempting to discuss this. While clearly you are not wishing this to be in regards to US law you want it to be in regards to BLP policy. That is a part of the policy. Now I have been speaking in rather broad terms but I have as yet to see any specifics given yet. You need no bow out of the discussion Andy. But labeling my contributions as disruptive is not accurate. Just exactly what topic are your asking to stay on? Why is my involvement disruptive?--Amadscientist (talk) 10:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Very interesting stuff. what aboutWP:WELLKNOWN " even if it is negative and the subject dislikes all mention of it. If you cannot find multiple reliable third-party sources documenting the allegation or incident, leave it out.". So does the Indian census of this exist in online format? Of course I'm only assuming that this would/could relate to public officials in India. PortlandOregon97217 (talk) 10:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
The link you give is about events/allegations/incidents; not identity. We're here talking about something similar to "X is gay", not "X laundered money". A person's identity is not an event, it's not an incident. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556> haneʼ11:00, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
What if an Indian publication made a persons caste ,presumably against their wishes, public? This is an incident that would describe someones identity. "outing" them if you will. For arguements sake, what if an american newspaper printed an article saying George Bush was a gay money launderer? Which is similair to your "x" argument PortlandOregon97217 (talk) 11:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Plenty of academic sources for specific people and, of course, self-identification. I'm less happy about using newspaper comments but, again, they do exist. Finally, there are numerous caste associations and state-level caste political parties, membership of which almost certainly amounts to self-identification. - Sitush (talk) 13:23, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Really? You people wanted to bring it here where everything is compared to something in America and then inferred upon? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 14:04, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Not in America, in the Anglosphere. Because this is the English wikipedia and there's a BLP policy. That's why we need to find parallels and see how the cases at hand compare. That's the proper way of handling this. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556> haneʼ14:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Dharmadhyaksha, this is the Village Pump, the most central discussion forum of the entire project. It's a outright falsehood to state that its purpose is the comparing of things to America. Seb az86556, India has the second-largest number of English speakers of any country in the world. Uncle G (talk) 16:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
As with other classifications of individuals, I'm of the opinion that we should create a presumption against inclusion, but with the understanding that when multiple reliable sources have devoted substantive coverage to the classification that it may be included. Passing references in reliable sources would not be enough, it would need to actually discuss the classification and make it clear why it matters to the person's bio. Monty84515:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh yes! The central forum thing, where majority of non-Indian editors would take decisions related to Indian articles without informing relevant editors. Please note that your central forum's centre is somewhere in Atlantic with a radius that hardly goes beyond Europe. WP:India wasn't made aware of this discussion. And so was WP:Pakistan, WP:Srilanka, WP:Bangladesh and WP:Nepal. (Wait a minute, that's not new at all. Its a usual practice.) But it was surely thought to be important enough to inform the Foundation about it so that they open their mouths on topics they don't know about. (Wait a minute, that's also not new at all.) §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 18:46, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
If blood types are OK, is it also fine to add astrological signs to articles about Western celebrities, since many people in these cultures believe that they are predictive of personalities? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:27, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
If I delete a statement that 'living person X is a member of caste Y' (not sourced to self-identification) from a Wikipedia article that gives no indication that this caste membership is of relevance to their notability, and cite existing WP:BLP policy re the right to privacy and 'do no harm', and WP:NPOV policy regarding neutrality over a contentious issue, am I likely to be sanctioned, and on what grounds? As yet nobody has provided any arguments here as to why we should infringe individual privacy, and why we should violate WP:NPOV just to label individuals with an arbitrary category that has no encyclopaedic significance. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:08, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It has several components. The body of an article is one of those components. The English language is deployed fully in the body of an article. This is a different situation from the situation we encounter in other components of this encyclopedia. It can be argued that categorization by certain attributes of identity is objectionable or untenable in for instance an Infobox or a Category or a Navigation template. But I don't think we have to exercise the same degree of caution and restraint when writing in full prose in the body of an article. WP:BLP policy requires especially good quality sources. But I think information in the body of an article should not be constrained beyond normal sensibilities. I do not think this would extend to blocking from inclusion an area of information such as that related to caste, based on the outcome of a discussion such as this. Bus stop (talk) 17:45, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Bus stop, I am well aware of your refusal to exercise "caution and restraint" in BLPs when it suits your purposes. This discussion however relates to what policy permits, not what Wikilawyering tendentious ethnotagging POV-pushing obsessives like you get away with through relentless bullshitting. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
'Getting personal' is exactly what this discussion is about - the the endless violations of privacy that Wikipedia imposes on the subjects of our articles, for no better reason than the obsessions of the taggers. As long as this unencyclopaedic and NPOV-breaching behaviour continues, the so-called 'civility' guidelines of Wikipedia will remain the gross hypocrisy they clearly are: fill articles with poorly sourced and irrelevant personal 'details' (i.e. unverifiable opinions found at best by Google-mining - almost invariably taken out of context) about people we consider 'notable', but don't be rude to each other... A double standard of the worst possible kind. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:31, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
That does get to the heart of the matter. Traits like caste—and also religion when the subject doesn't practice the religion—are usually not important or notable to the subject of the article. They are endlessly important to some Wikipedia editors, though, which does make it personal. I'm willing to bet that real encyclopedias don't list the caste of the subject unless it's directly related to the reason for their notability. First Light (talk) 21:24, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
It might be more useful to ask when including caste is a good idea. I think it fair to say that to the majority of readers it would only be when the caste is significant to the subject in it's own right. I,E, the same rules we might use for hair colour or polydactyly. RichFarmbrough, 03:40, 7 January 2013 (UTC).
Why is caste being considered anything different from say place of birth/residence? Mentioning place of birth/residence also "violates individual privacy, violates the neutrality of Wikipedia, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the objectives of the encyclopaedia". §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 11:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
1. Birthplace is nearly always neutral and rarely controversial, unlike caste 2. Birthplace is standard information in nearly all encyclopedia bios (look up a bio in Encyclopedia Britannica or Encarta), unlike caste 3. Nearly all public figures acknowledge or even embrace their birthplace in interviews and talks, unlike caste. Conclusion: birthplace ≠ caste. First Light (talk) 16:08, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Welcome to India! Birthplaces can be controversial. And we don't necessarily have to do what other encyclopedias do. (Isn't that the basic reason for having Wikipedia?) Also, if you say people might object to inclusion of caste on their articles, could be very sure that people living in Mumbai do not object to a "Category:People from Bihar" on their articles? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 04:09, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
First Light—you state "Traits like caste…are usually not important...to the subject of the article."[22] How do you know that? Couldn't a reader find something to be "important" that one or a few editors may not find important? I can of course understand omitting poorly sourced material. But what about the case in which several good quality sources mention the applicability of an attribute of identity such as caste to an individual who is the subject of a biography? Should we just make a decision that such material is "not important"? Can we know what will be important to a reader? Don't readers use encyclopedias for reasons that we can't anticipate? Bus stop (talk) 16:58, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, but didn't we just have a huge discussion on this subject here? Wasn't that discussion going on for a week before this one was started? Why weren't people who were discussing it there informed that the discussion has been forked? Sreejiraj (talk) 18:23, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
(Thats how Wikipedia mostly works Sreejiraj. Its mostly Western and other editors are not considered worth notice. I won't be surprised be there is another forking going on at WP:ANI or someone's talk page too.) §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 04:09, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
(ec) Bus stop: if you refuse to make any judgments about what is or is not important, it leads you down a very slippery slope. Take an individual like Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nicholas II of Russia or Winston Churchill, just to pick a few notable individuals who are the subject of multiple, well-researched and well-sourced biographies. The biographies of any one of these individuals would describe literally thousands of the subject's attributes and experiences, and describe numerous incidents in which they were involved. Your argument would suggest that the Wikipedia article about each of these individuals needs to include every fact, no matter how minor or incidental, that appears in any one of their reliable biographies, with the result that the Wikipedia article would be as long as, or longer than, any of the books used as source material. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:34, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
R'n'B—Seemingly similar material should be included at one article and excluded at another article. Anything, or at least many things, should be open to consideration for inclusion but as a practical matter much material as might be found in a full length biography will not appear in any one Wikipedia article. Editorial decision-making determines what actually gets included in any one article. Should editorial decision-making be made at individual articles or should editorial decision-making be made at the level of policy? Bus stop (talk) 18:48, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Anyway here are my some of my inputs on this discussion.. Andy, I think I see where you are coming from (probably why many Westerners have problems understanding the 'caste' issue.) In India, there are two words, both of which are translated into 'caste' in English, but mean very different things. The first word is 'jati'. Jati is from the Sanskrit word 'Jat', means birth or origin. Jati, therefore, simply means your origin, or as used commonly, it can be translated into 'tribe'. For example, Ezhava is a Jati. It denotes the people of the Ezham (country) - probably referring to the old Tamil kingdom (Ezham) of Cheras. Then there are Nair, Nambudiri etc., which are all Jatis. A jati, in other words, is very similar to the concept of 'Jewish'. Except in the big cities, Indians tend to be largely (95%?) endogamous, preferring to marry within the tribe (due to various factors including compatibility of social customs, morals etc.) Jati is not a modern concept, anymore than 'tribe' is. It is reminiscent of people's history. In case of Ezhavas, for example, it reminds them that they were part of the Ezham in the old days. However, there is no shame attached to belonging to any particular tribe by most people in it. There is yet another concept, which is also converted into 'caste', which in India is called Varna (literally, colour). This is a five-fold division of the society (actually the Jatis) into Brahman (self-appointed intellectuals), Kshatriya (protectors or warriors), Vaishya (economically productive people - tradesmen, cultivators), Shudra (slaves) and Avarna (literally 'those without a Varna.) Different Jatis (tribes) are put into one or the other Varna by Brahmins, who probably created the Varna system. So, in the above example, the Ezhavas are avarna (without varna), the Nambudiris are Brahmins and the Nairs are Shudras. Not surprisingly, except for the Brahmin Jatis (and to some extent the Kshatriya and Vaishya), most other Jatis don't like this classification system. And 95% of people whose Jatis have been tagged 'shudra' may not like to call themselves shoodra. In this sense, Sitush's concern is not misplaced. As far as this concept of varna is concerned, AndyTheGrump opinion that "it is a contested religious and political concept" is valid. It is indeed contested. And so is his contention that "it is an individual's choice as to whether to recognise the validity of the caste system at all." As such, perhaps, it may not be appropriate to call someone a 'slave' (shudra) varna (caste) in his biography without being prejudicial. However, we can still include his Jati, which is actually just the name of his or her tribe -- like Maratha, Rajput, Ezhava, VokkaligaRajput etc.. These are all tribe-names, Jatis, and not Varna, and are not to be confused with the 'caste system', by which, most Westerners mean the 'Varna' system. These can be left out, if you insist. However, it may be noted that even here, there is a political movement Reappropriation that is going on to reclaim these words as non-pejorative, and make them a rallying and unifying identity. See Shudra:_The_Rising, for example. In short, I suggest that Jati or tribe, which is an ethnic identity, may be ascribed without self-identification and Varna or caste need not be.
I'll agree that they are retrograde and the result of mutual suspicion and possibly hatred that prevented people from marrying others who looked/spoke/acted/lived differently from themselves. But it's also a fact that the such tribal affiliations are extremely important in today's India -- most political parties are based on them (even if overtly they are based on ideologies etc..) Or to put it more mildly, most political parties cater to such identities. If you apply for any government job or admission into any government-owned educational institution, you have to specify which tribe you belong to.. and based on that, you get special treatments, or you fail to get special treatment. And it's seriously not got anything to do with any colonial power. What happened was that people simply distrusted each other, and as newer and newer groups of people immigrated into each other's territories, they just wouldn't mingle genetically (marry each other.) Some did mingle - for example, the Ezhava identity is more of a shared past identity (from having been the subjects in a Kingdom) rather than a genetic one, but they too now don't marry much outside the group. And over time, from a cultural identity, it's morphed into a genetic one. No one is trying to legitimize these things - but the fact is, they are there whether we like it or not. People think in those tribal ways, they look at which candidate in the election belongs to their tribe and sometimes vote for him.. They want to know which of the big film stars belong to their community, and sometimes quietly feel proud about it. In other words, it's as important as race is in the US.. In fact, India has rules that give special benefits to offsprings of mixed marriages, but still these communal groupings have survived. They do get dissolved in the big cities, but even now, on a guesstimate, I'd say 90-93% of the total marriages happening in India would be endogamic with respect to these tribal identities. Now, the question is, does Wikipedia have a policy against such identities and does it actively try to dissuade people from searching or identifying with them? I don't think so. I think Wikipedia just needs to reflect the ground realities, instead of patching over stuff. I mean, I know that the government of India frequently rubs out portions of Indian history that it deems inimical to "communal harmony" and school kids are taught a very sanitized version of history. Many kids grow up and read real history books and go 'oh, shuck, no one told me that was what happened.' The question is, does Wikipedia have a stand on this? Is Wikipedia a missionary? Does Wikipedia Judge? If it does, what is the pedestal from which it judges? Does it judge from the pedestal of Western, Christian values? Is that the right attitude for a collaborative website to take? What will happen if Indian editors of the Wikipedia delete all mention of homosexuality, and say "Oh, it's not something that should be encouraged.. it's the decadence of a civilization in decline?" How would you feel if your culture was judged according to our cultural norms?
I request people outside India, such as AndyTheGrump, Sitush and Dougweller to read the following widely-quoted and exhaustively documented (to the point of being often quoted on hundreds of websites) judgements of the Indian Supreme Court and High Courts and hopefully accept that caste is hereditary and membership in caste is involuntary (the Court says so) and that the Courts find it difficult to accept that someone can change his or her caste. Therefore, if caste is hereditary and membership involuntary, it is an objective fact and not a subjective fact like religion (which can be changed and membership of which is not involuntary.) If it is an objective fact, why should there be a requirement of self-declaration? In case of religion, self-declaration is insisted on because the individual is free to change his religion. However, when the individual has no choice ("membership is involuntary", what is the point of saying he has not said that he belongs to the caste?
The First quote the Supreme Court upholding a Kerala High Court judgment saying that a wife cannot opt to change her caste of her birth to match that of her husband. --
Valsamma was a Syrian Catholic woman (forward caste) who married a Latin Catholic man (backward class) and the question arose whether by virtue of her marriage she was entitled to appointment to a post of lecturer that was reserved for Latin Catholics (Backward Class Fishermen). The full bench of the Kerala High Court held that though Valsamma was � married according to the Canon law, being a Syrian Christian by birth, she could not by marriage with a Latin Catholic become a member of that class nor could she claim the status of backward class by marriage.
It is not necessary for our present purpose to trace the origin and growth of the caste system amongst the Hindus. It would be enough to state that whatever may have been the origin of Hindu castes and tribes in ancient times, gradually status came to be based on birth alone... The history of social reform for the last century and more has shown how difficult it is to break or even to relax the rigour of the inflexible and exclusive character of the caste system.
Thus, membership of a caste is involuntary. Historically persons carrying on one particular occupation may belong to one particular social class forming a particular caste. A person born in a family belonging to a particular caste which is associated with a particular occupation may not continue the occupation. But still he remains and continues to be a member of a social class forming the said caste. The reason is that the label remains. For the purposes of marriage and all other social functions up to his or her death, the caste continues to be relevant. When a woman born in a scheduled caste or a scheduled tribe marries to a person belonging to a forward caste, her caste by birth does not change by virtue of the marriage.
A woman who is born into a scheduled caste or a scheduled tribe, on marriage with a person belonging to a forward caste, is not automatically transplanted into the caste of husband by virtue of her marriage and, therefore, she cannot be said to belong to her husband’s caste.
Further, another Supreme Court Judgment, part of which was quoted in the above judgment by the Bombay High Court states --
"The above material makes it amply clear that a caste is nothing but a social class - a socially homogeneous class. It is also an occupational grouping, with this difference that its membership is hereditary. One is born into it. Its membership is involuntary. Even if one ceases to follow that occupation, still he remains and continues a member of that group. To repeat, it is a socially and occupation-ally homogenous class. Endogamy is its main characteristic.... This is the stark reality notwithstanding all our protestations and abhorrence and all attempts at weeding out this phenomenon. We are not saying it ought to be encouraged. It should not be. It must be eradicated. That is the ideal - the goal. But any programme towards betterment of these sections-classes of society and any programme designed to eradicate this evil must recognise this ground reality and attune its programme accordingly. Merely burying our heads in the sand -Ostrich-like - wouldn't help. One cannot fight his enemy without recognizing him. The U.S. Supreme Court has said repeatedly, if race be the basis of discrimination - past and present - race must also form the basis of redressal programmes though in our constitutional scheme,."
If someone dissociates himself or herself from his or her ethnic background, we should mention that, and say that although this person was born in a Jewish family or Ezhava family, he dissociated himself or herself etc.. A good example is Mark_Zuckerberg. The fact that he was born into a Jewish family is mentioned in his biography, along with the words "although he has since described himself as an atheist." If you leave out Jewish from the article, it is a less complete article. If you mention that he was born into a Jewish family, his atheism is not going to lose its lustre, nor is he going to sue you for it. Here, we are talking about people who have not even dissociated themselves from their ethnic groups, and we should mention their ethnic background just like we do for Larry_Page and countless others.
Sreejiraj (talk) 18:32, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
'Caste' isn't 'ethnicity' - that is pure fiction. And once again, you refuse to address the core issue: the violation of privacy of individuals, based on what is frequently poor sourcing, imposed by 'contributors' with no better objective than to shove people into the very arbitrary and 'abhorrent' categories that the Indian courts have made their opposition to so evident. There is no justification whatsoever in Wikipedia labelling individuals in this way, except in the few cases where it is of direct significance to their notability. Wikipedia isn't here to preserve the relics of the Raj. If you wish to do that, find another platform. Or explain here why you think that such labelling with 'abhorrent' categories is of such overwhelming significance that Wikipedia must violate individual's privacy in order to tell the world which arbitrary historical relic they are lumbered with. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:39, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
The caste that a person associated themselves, like religion, political party, sexual orientation, and so on, can only be reliably sourced by one person - that person themselves. And in nearly all these cases, even if the person has said they are a member of X, unless that has a significant impact on understanding other content in the article, its probably best to leave it out. --MASEM (t) 19:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
First, I'll reply to -MASEM, and then refute or respond to the rather patronizing (oh, poor Indians, they don't know what's good for them, so let's teach them a thing or two about Western values) opening statement by AndyTheGrump.
MASEM's doesn't require much refutation, because the person simply doesn't seem to have read the comment that lies on top of his own -- there is no subjectivity involved in determining caste. The Supreme Court of India, as evidenced by the excerpts given above, has upheld the following principles--
1)Caste is hereditary
2)Membership in caste is involuntary and You continue to be a member of the caste whether or not you do a particular occupation or not
3)A person cannot change his caste
As already explained, most Westerners have a very basic (and very textbook oriented) understanding of caste. It is a bit like Indians trying to tell Americans that race is not important, and should not be mentioned in an article on someone like, Will Smith, since he's a musician/actor and that's what he's known for. So your point that caste "can only be reliably sourced by one person" has absolutely no basis in law at all. Such a statement is explicitly nullified in the above judgment by the Supreme Court.
Now, I'll take up the individual points in Andy's opening remark and refute them (or at least address them) one by one. Please note that this effort is a bit of a double work for me since Andy had more or less lost his audience with his rather crude interventions in the previous, and ongoing debate, on the subject among India-oriented editors here. As such, he seems to have started this new thread to try to win the battle again.
Now, to the specifics --
"since caste membership of individuals is frequently appallingly badly sourced," -- questionable assumption. But even assuming it's true - how is that a justification for deleting the mention of this topic here? Just because some people (or even a majority) source their information improperly, does it mean that it should affect the entries of those who source it fairly? Doesn't sound like a scientific (not to say fair) argument to me.
"is of little or no encyclopaedic interest in almost all cases" - as already explained, it is of extreme importance to people a substantial chunk of the (Indian) people who are curious about the person. Possibly, not everyone of them, or even the majority of them, but certainly a lot of them, as evidenced by the fact that many people take pains to maintain lists of people belonging to their caste. In my own town, for example, (and I know this to be true for most towns in Kerala) at least half the population are members of caste associations, and contribute a fixed amount of money every month to such. So, caste is of importance to a substantial chunk of people from India, and given that a large chunk of people who read about most Indian 'notables' are likely to be from India, caste is relevant and of interest to the readers of the article. You should not try to impose your value system and tastes and interests on them.
"has potential for serious negative repercussions if wrongly reported," I am yet to hear of a single law suit being filed for wrongly reporting a person's caste.
"is something that a significant proportion of those so labelled reject as invalid" -- this would seem to imply that only some people are "so labelled". If you read the Supreme Court judgments quoted above, you will see that everyone, including Christians and Muslims, in India has a caste, and is labeled with it in government documents based on their birth alone. This legally ascribed community identity (caste) cannot be negated or disowned under the Indian law, or for that matter, under popular perception in India.
"is a gross violation of the privacy of living individuals to label them by caste membership" -- As explained above, the 'Jati' component of caste is non-pejorative. Jati only means 'origin' in sanskrit. It denotes your tribe. Now, the British did create long tables of Jatis and ascribe 'varnas' (Caste proper) to each Jati (not directly to individuals, mind you). The varnas may be construed as pejorative and insulting, after all the system was mostly maintained, if not devised, by the Brahmins, and unsurprisingly, is frequently faulted for favoring their interests. But Jati is different from Varna. Jati is no more an invasion of privacy than disclosing someone's birthday or place of birth is. It's an objective reality.
"unless (a) they explicitly self-identify as a member of the caste, and (b) it is of direct relevance to their notability in regard to Wikipedia." -- as mentioned earlier, 1) Jati is hereditary and depends only on the Jati of the parents 2) Jati cannot be changed by the individual and therefore, Jati is an objective fact. This is unlike religion and sexuality, which 1)is not hereditary 2)is a matter of individual choice and can be changed by him/her. As regards the question of notability, I think the matter has been adequately address by other members above.
"caste someone supposedly 'belongs' to," -- there is nothing supposedly about which Jati someone belongs to, as you can see even by a cursory reading of the above Supreme Court judgments. In fact, you'd not have had to go through the judgment if you'd been living in India. Since you are not, and don't seem to be familiar with the intricacies of social life here, I've quoted the judgment.
"by conferring 'legitimacy' on as contentious and disputed a concept" - it has already been conferred "legitimacy", if that means legal recognition and enforcement (see points above) and only the varna portion is disputed. The varna portion is not identified in individual biographies, only the non-pejorative jati portion is.
"Compiling 'lists of caste X', and telling the world that 'person Y is a member of caste Z' is simply unacceptable - it violates individual privacy, violates the neutrality of Wikipedia, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the objectives of the encyclopaedia" - this is merely a repetition of the points above and has suitably been dealt with higher up.
Sreejiraj (talk) 02:42, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
You sir, are a liar. You have grossly misrepresented what the source you cite actually says. I invite everyone here to read Indra Sawhney And Ors. vs Union Of India (Uoi) And Ors. on 8 August, 1991[23]. The court ruling makes quite clear that (a) it is dealing with an issue of social class, (b) that 'caste' is a concept from Hinduism, and is explicitly rejected by many followers of other faiths, and (c) that the social classes (not castes) it refers to are defined by their economic, educational, and political position within society - and that the ruling was made in relation to measures taken with the objective of negating some of the worst socially-constructed inequalities in Indian society - to claim that this document 'confers legitimacy' on the caste system is beneath contempt. And cut out the crap about Westerners not understanding the caste system - I understand it quite well enough to recognise you as one who promotes it - no doubt for your own political, economic, religious or social ends. Find some other forum for your lies... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
OK -- Andy may be intemperate - but the official legal position of India, per its constitution and statutes, is to deprecate use of "caste" in all matters. To aver otherwise is errant. To ask Wikipedia to confer legitimacy on the customs of the past and inflict them on living people is abhorrent to an extreme extent. You may add any expletives necessary to drive this point home. Collect (talk) 03:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry, but I don't see your point.
My point is this -- that the Supreme Court of India recognizes that
* 1) membership in caste is hereditary, and* 2) membership in case is involuntary
To prove the above two things, the ruling is sufficient.
You have again mis-represented my argument by saying that I said that the ruling 'confers legitimacy' on the caste system. Whether or not the ruling confers legitimacy, the fact is
When you apply to a government job, you have to specify your caste and if it was illegitimate, would the government require you to declare your caste? Based on which particular caste you belong to, you are put in one of three categories of applicants. When you apply to contest polls in India, you need to declare your caste. Based on which caste you belong to, you may be prevented from contesting in certain constituencies. In other words, caste is fully built into the legal system in India. If it was illegitimate, it would not be.
In addition, the Supreme Court ruling does very well what I sought it to do, which is to disprove your contention that caste is a matter of belief, people can change their caste etc.. I hope you agree that you were mistaken. Thank You. Sreejiraj (talk) 13:24, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The court case row, which is largely WP:TLDR and repetitive, is a classic example of why we generally try to avoid primary sources of legal origin. In the context of this discussion, it makes no odds what some court in India says anyway because there are thousands of secondary sources available for the purposes of definition and, of course, it is Wikipedia's rules that count, not India's. We had this generalised Indian law vs WP policy argument a little over a year ago with regard to maps of India. Nothing has changed. - Sitush (talk) 05:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I think I am starting to enjoy this. First, let's take your first argument -- "it makes no odds what some court in India says anyway because there are thousands of secondary sources available for the purposes of definition." Two issues here - it's not "some court in India." It's the Supreme Court of India. Second, you will always find people who say that Caste is not hereditary, people can change caste etc.. But the Supreme Court of a country is unlikely to say something without deliberating on it for months, and hearing arguments from very learned, sophisticated, intelligent (and possibly very well-paid) advocates. So, when the Supreme Court of India says "caste is hereditary" and "membership in caste is not voluntary", you can assume that it has applied its mind to the matter thoroughly, and the matter has been discussed threadbare in a courtroom filled with legal luminaries. Such a statement, therefore, carries more weight that some claim in some quaint book or website. Anyway, if it pleases you, here's the definition from Encyclopedia Brittanica - "The term is derived from the Sanskrit jāta, “born” or “brought into existence,” and indicates a form of existence determined by birth ... a sharp distinction should be made between jati as a limited regional endogamous group of families and varna as a universal all-Indian model of social class." I hope that makes it clear that Jati is by birth and not by choice. If you were to ask any Indian what is your latest caste, they would laugh in your face.
Now let's take your second claim -- " it is Wikipedia's rules that count, not India's." I couldn't agree more. The question here is 'which rules'? But as you would also agree, different things have different rules that apply to them. For example, something like religion -- which an individual is free to change as he pleases -- will have a different yardstick for attribution compared to something like ethnic origin, which, unfortunately, an individual may distance himself from, but can never really get rid off. If a Jewish person says he doesn't believe in the Jewish ethnic identity, that would not make him non-Jewish in the eyes of most people. Wikipedia will continue to term him as Jewish. So you see that different rules apply to different categories. Now the important question is -- is Jati more like religion or more like ethnic origin? In other words, if you describe someone as belonging to X jati or tribe, is there a chance that by the time the article is published, he might have changed his jati? Does the individual have a freedom to change his Jati? He has, only to the extent that a Jewish person has to disown his ethnic roots. He can say he would like to dissociate himself from his Jati, but to everyone who knows about his origins, his identity will forever be linked to that of his Jati or tribe. Legally, there is no provision in India to change your Jati, while the law in India allows you to change your religion, or have no religion at all. See the case of that 'forward caste' Christian woman who wanted to change her Jati to 'lower caste' Christian. So we come to the main question that underlies this whole controversy -- is Jati closer to ethnic origin or to religion. If it is closer to ethnic origin, then the Wikipedia rules concerning ethnic origin will apply, and if to religion, that those that apply to religion will apply. This whole controversy has arisen because people like you have a muddled notion about what Jati indicates. You think it's like religion, while it actually is closer to ethnic origin. If you truly want to understand the difference between Jati and Varna, imagine that Jatis are like the individual stars in the constellation of Orion (the hunter). What you have a problem with (caste system or varna) is the claim that there actually is a hunter. And you are right too, there is no hunter, it's just an illusion. But does that mean that the individual stars (Jatis) in the constellation don't exist? Their existence is not dependent on whether or not Varna system (caste system proper) is valid or not. They exist. They (Jatis) have an independent existence, and they possibly predate the Varna system and possibly trace their origins to tribes and clans of the old. They are not pejorative in themselves. It is only when you try to impose Varna system on Jatis, as the British did, that trouble arises. Sreejiraj (talk) 13:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The difference between the stars in the constellation of Orion and "Jatis" is that the former are real and the latter are made up. — Hex(❝?!❞)13:28, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Excuse me Sitush, i wasnt here when the map issue happend and it really is scattered and too long to read now. But i was under impression that the map was not changed because this map is the one that other countries' governments recognize, regardless of what GOI says. In the matter of caste, there is no such conflict between other countries' laws. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 07:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
No, the primary point was that the law of India does not apply to Wikipedia. Which is one of my points here. WP:BLP applies, but not the GoI. - Sitush (talk) 08:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Agreed that privacy should be respected but is caste a private thing? It is decided at birth and cannot be changed.--sarvajna (talk) 09:09, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
No, caste is not 'decided at birth' - it is imposed by those factions within the relevant society that wish to perpetuate it. Wikipedia is not here to assist them with their objectives. Find another forum to push your politics. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Are we seriously having an argument about putting arguably perjorative terms into BLPs for no encyclopedic reason? That's like claiming that because identifying then-current or former American slaves as such during the time of slavery was important to their biography that every articl on an American black person should detail not only whether they're descended from former slaves, but use the old mulatto/octaroon/etc. terminology. This is a stupid and rather offensive fight. Adam Cuerden(talk)15:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Does saying a person is "African American" or saying that someone belongs to the Serbian ethnic group amount to saying he or she is "descended from slaves"?? If they do, then it's already too late, isn't it? Our pages are full of such references? If they don't, how does saying a person belongs to the Maurya caste (which ruled nearly all of South Asia for at least two generations, but is now a "low caste") become offensive? Or for that matter, Valmiki caste. The caste is now considered untouchable, but was so well enlightened that the most popular Hindu epic, the Ramayana, was compiled by one of their members. Or the Pulaya caste, which was considered untouchable by brahmins, but had their own Kingdoms a few hundred years ago? Or the Shakya caste, to which the Buddha belonged, and is now a "low caste" according to the Brahmins. Just because Brahmins considered them untouchble doesn't mean that the Pulayas, the Mauryas, the Shakyas and the Valmikis should feel ashamed of their heritage.. Why are you making them feel so? Ups and downs happen in all communities' histories. That hardly means that Wikipedia editors can presume that the members of the caste feel ashamed of identifying with their tribe. By that logic then, we have to stop mentioning that a rich or famous person's parents were poor or not so well off, and presume that he or she would feel ashamed of identifying himself or herself with his or her parents? Sreejiraj (talk) 16:12, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
What Wikipedia presumes is that individuals have a right to privacy. On what grounds do you suggest that it is legitimate to violate this right to privacy? So far you have provided none whatsoever. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:37, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
(ec)It's not that stating the caste is necessarily offensive, it is that Wikipedian editors love to categorize and classify all topics into nice neat boxes, and thus will find any trivial - and likely unreliable - reference to say "Person X is Y" where Y is a quality like religious faith or sexual preference that only the person can accurately say. We've had problems in the past with editors trying to find any straw to classify people as LBGT, or as Jewish, or so-on, and this can lead to massive BLP problems even if the statement is not meant as a slur against said person. Hence why these points are typically only included if the person themselves (or in the case of dead persons, reliable historical records) have stated this. Though the caste system is not entirely a self-determined quality for a person (eg they are borne into a caste), some people choose to ignore and/or even hide this, and based on what I'm reading here, it's a historical aspect that has little relevance to understand a person of Indian descent, unless their membership in the caste is critical to their notability. Ergo, we should treat caste member like religion (even though its not 100% the same), in that it's not worth mentioning for the average person even if that information can be discovered. It just leads to a lot of BLP problems in the future. (Andy's privacy issue is also a strong point) --MASEM (t) 16:39, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you MASEM for what seems to be the most cerebral reaction coming from the "other side" :-) Anyway, let me try to pen down my thoughts about your points -- "some people choose to ignore and/or even hide this" -- I cannot deny that some people try to dissociate themselves from their caste identity. But there have been only a handful of such people (at least known cases). There are thousands of 'notable' Indians who are or who potentially are BLP material for Wikipedia. Out of these thousands of people, the only ones who have renounced their caste are Amitabh Bachchan and Sree Narayana Guru. It would amuse you to know that the association that the Guru started is the largest caste association in Kerala today, belonging to the Ezhava community, to which Guru was born to. About 75% of the houses owned by Ezhavas, who were considered untouchable by the Brahmins, religiously flourish the yellow caste-association flag in front of their house for a week around the Guru's birthday, which is observed as a state holiday in Kerala. (How would you explain this if Ezhavas were actually ashamed of being known as descendants of untouchables?) Anyway, back to the point -- out of thousands of people, only two notables have dissociated from their castes. Most people don't talk about it because it appears petty or immodest to say "Yeah, I come from such and such community.. We did all this in the old days, we were rulers etc.." They certainly would NOT speak on the record about this, because it's considered immodest. But that doesn't mean that they are trying to hide the fact, or would resent being identified as a member of a particular tribe. For example, how many Jewish people can you quote as saying, on the record, "Oh, yeah, I'm as Jewish as they come"? Does that mean that those who don't say that are trying to hide their Jewish origins? In addition, the extremely few number of cases where people would like to break out of the caste identity (like Guru, when he became enlightened), do not justify a blanket ban on identifying in all cases. There would always be people who try to disown or hide or live down their ethnic origins. Such people would be found in all communities. That is because they feel that ethnic groups are a thing of past and divide the society. If Wikipedia takes a stand that that is indeed so, then I would have no such problems. But there cannot be two sets of rules -- one for ethnic groups inside India and one for those outside. I mean, we've had it with white man's burden and the British talking down to us and telling us what is good for us. If Wikipedia is a fair place, then the same rules should apply to all communities, whether they are in India or outside. If you can amend the policy so that in case of all ethnicity, self-identification is required, I'd have no problems at all. But there should not be discrimination against Indian ethnic groups simply because they are Indian. You've also mentioned that fact that it may not be relevant -- it is as relevant as any ethnic identity outside India is. Each Jati has its own quirks, culture, politics, inheritance formats and even ideology. A person growing up in an Ezhava household will grow up in a very different family situation compared to one growing up in a Tamil Brahmin family even if both are situation in the same town. It is, therefore, as relevant as any other ethnic identity. The fact that we are talking about Indians and your knowledge about day to day Indian life is limited should not be reason enough to deny the same privileges extended to Western ethnic groups to Indian ethnic groups. Sreejiraj (talk) 17:47, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
That is plain wrong, and you know it because we've already dealt with it. For example, in southern India people tend not to talk about their caste at all, while Bachchan and Nayarana Guru did not "hide" their caste - they disassociated themselves from caste, just as Ambedkar turned to Buddhism. There are numerous notable examples but, of course, you'll struggle to find them on Wikipedia because we respect their position and do not record the caste in the first place. - Sitush (talk) 17:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I cannot say that you are right or wrong unless you tell me something more than "there are lots of cases, but I won't tell you which all".. Secondly, Ambedkar turned away from Brahmanical Hinduism to Buddhism. It doesn't mean that he disowned his Mahar caste. Jatis are not dependent on Religion. A good example is Nadar_(caste). They have Nadar caste associations and all.. and Hindu Nadars, Christian Nadars and every other faith comes to them. In fact, less than half of them are, to my memory, Hindu. Even after adopting a religion, the ethnic grouping and affinity remains. The same is true for Jat_people. A big chunk, nearly half, broke away from Hinduism about 400 years or so ago, and formed the Sikh religion. Even today, they describe themselves as Jat Sikhs. In other words, these are ethnic identities, not religious identities. What you are saying is like Mohammad Ali became a Moslem, therefore he is no longer African American. Sreejiraj (talk) 18:03, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I think anything is potentially material for inclusion in the body of an article. We demand good quality sourcing and of course we require consensus. Disputes can reach resolution through Requests for comment and Requests for Third opinion. By the way, I don't think that being "descended from former slaves" is necessarily "perjorative" and I don't believe anyone argued that caste be included in "every" article in which it could be included. Bus stop (talk) 15:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
That appears to be precisely what Sreejiraj is arguing, given his utter refusal to acknowledge that either the right to privacy nor encyclopaedic relevance are factors here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:39, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The genesis of this argument was when I tried to add certain celebrities to a list of members born into a caste. I was told that WIKIPEDIA'S POLICY ON Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality required self-identification for castes. However, when I looked at it, it said self identification is required only for religion and not for ethnic origins and groups. Sitush, whose work at maintaining caste-related pages is admirable, said caste is covered by the religion clause, but I argued that caste is more similar to ethnic origin. This was followed by a post by Qwyrxian in which he rightly said, "after looking at policy more carefully, I realize that I and others have made fundamental mistakes regarding policy and that I think we need to seriously consider relaxing our current rules. .. people generally looked to WP:BLPCAT to draw a parallel, and argued that caste is equivalent to ethnicity, and thus require for living people evidence that the caste is connected to the person's notability along with evidence that the person self-identifies as being in that caste. Unfortunately, this parallel is fundamentally flawed, because WP:BLPCAT only places restrictions on religion and sexual preference, not on ethnicity." I still think Qwyrxian was bang on. And I want the Wikipedia policy on Ethnicity to apply to Jatis and not its policy on religion. Sreejiraj (talk) 17:24, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I didn't say it was policy, IIRC. I'd like to see that diff because my memory is that I referred you to the consensus obtained via a listed RfC and summarised at User:Sitush/Common#Castelists. Sure, some people in the linked discussions did refer to BLPCAT but many others mentioned other things, all of which have been repeated in this present discussion. We're just going round in circles here. - Sitush (talk) 17:38, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
In any case,Qwyrxian is clearly incorrect - caste is not 'ethnicity': It is a concept deeply rooted in religion (largely, but not exclusively confined to Hinduism), and is an issue of social class - with all the economic and political baggage that entails. And yet again, Sreejiraj, you have failed to address the issues regarding the rights of individuals to privacy regarding what is clearly a contentious and potentially negative characterisation. And once again you have refused to address the issues of encyclopaedic relevance. If you refuse to address these issues directly, and instead continue with your repetitive stonewalling, I suspect that others will reach the same conclusion that I already have - that your relentless POV-pushing makes you unsuited to edit any article where 'caste' is an issue. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Caste is not dependent on religion. Let me repeat for you some examples -- A good example is Nadar_(caste). They have Nadar caste associations and all.. and Hindu Nadars, Christian Nadars and every other faith comes to them. In fact, less than half of them are, to my memory, Hindu. Even after adopting a religion, the ethnic grouping and affinity remains. The same is true for Jat_people. A big chunk, nearly half, broke away from Hinduism about 400 years or so ago, and formed the Sikh religion. Even today, they describe themselves as Jat Sikhs. In other words, these are ethnic identities, not religious identities. What you are saying is like Mohammad Ali became a Moslem, therefore he is no longer African American. Sreejiraj (talk) 18:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
You can't just classify caste as an ethnic division (but more on this in a second). It is an amalgam of religion, ethnicity, social and economic status, and more. Because that identity includes facets that only the person themselves can categorize themselves in, that person (or if deceased, reliable historical records) is the only one that can state what caste they are in.
And in consideration of ethnicity, while it can be a "matter of fact" in some cases (eg, if both your parents were Irish, you would be Irish), there again are cases where a person will either hide or chose not to reveal it, or stress it a different way. Imagine a person born to a parents that are, oh, African and Caucasian, and resides in the US. Is that person an African-American? We can't say for sure; the person may want to spin it (a politician may want to be quiet about his Africian background, a political activist may emphasize that). Given what's been said about the caste system here, this is even more a factor for Indian people. So while one could argue the caste is just an ethnic classification and can be stated matter-of-factly, it is still a living person's choice of how much they want to let that be known, and thus we're back at only letting self-asserted member even be considered. --MASEM (t) 19:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
These are questions best brought up at individual articles when disputes arise. We don't need to write policy to cover specific differences of opinion that we can't even anticipate. We have Talk pages. We have various other ways of resolving disputes. "Religion" is often thought of as one of several components of "ethnicity". "Social status" and "economic status" often correlate to some degree with any other attribute of identity that you can think of. In my opinion it is futile to try to find exact correspondences between one attribute of identity and another. All that you can do is find approximations. What we need to look at are sources. What are sources saying about a person? And in what context are sources associating an identity with a person? And finally—do editors agree on the applicability of a particular attribute of identity to the subject of a biography? Actually there is one more consideration—if it is accepted, in what words will it be presented to the reader? These are questions that can and should be worked out on article Talk pages with recourse to WP:RFCs, WP:3s, and other dispute resolution processes. Overarching policy is not the way to address questions that are going to come up in permutations that we can't anticipate. Bus stop (talk) 20:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Except, that if we had 100s of sources about a living person that claim X is a member of a certain religion, or a certain ethnicity, or sexual preference or whatever, and none of the sources make it explicit that this detail came from X personally (eg no evidence of self-classification), then we would not include that despite the sources. That's a fundamental BLP issue. The person may never have said that and others assumed (which gets repeated, poorly, around articles), the person may have wanted to hide/dissociate themselves with that information and someone got too snoopy and found out, or it could be a small piece of slander that gets blown up due to repetition. (we released deleted a list of apparently sentenced pedophiles on the basis that still provoked a bad image for the people on there and could suffer from misinformation). Given that caste membership is on the same level of personalable information like religion and the like, we need to take the same approach, and only include it on BLPs if it is clearly some self-stated by the person, and if it is really pertinent to the article. --MASEM (t) 21:44, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
An Infobox, Category, List, or Navigation template can be thought of an a "on-off" switch. A person is included in such a component of an article or a person excluded from such a component of an article. The body of an article is not so clear. We can say whatever is appropriately reflective of a consensus reading of reliable sources. This can be tailored to each article. WP:BLP does not say that we can't describe attributes of identity that might be applicable to given individuals. It doesn't dictate language to us. Responsible editors can and always do find language that most are amenable to. This is possible because language allows for all shades of expression. What are sources saying? We are weighing in with our sources and arriving at language. This is what we are doing all the time. Collaborative writing on WP:BLPs is all about bringing sources and presenting persuasive arguments to your fellow editors. We do this with "religion", "ethnicity", "sexual preference", and we should do this with "caste". It is all about finding the right language, or no language at all if that is what is decided upon. A certain amount of weight should be given to "self-identification" as concerns questions relating to material for possible inclusion in the body of an article but this does not have to be absolute. Unlike "Infoboxes, Categories, Lists, or Navigation templates" there is room for expressing shades of association with the attribute in question when writing in full sentences. Some of the compromises in language that editors come up with is ridiculous looking but that is preferable to a stark question of inclusion or exclusion based on whether the person said they were a member of whatever group in question. Furthermore people often don't always enunciate statements of membership. Writing an article and approaching these sorts of questions should be heavily source dependent. And that is always going to vary from article to article. Bus stop (talk) 23:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Bus stop, please stop inventing bogus concepts like 'attributes of identity' - there is no such thing as an 'attribute of identity' that doesn't include self-identification - anything else isn't 'identity' it as a characterisation imposed by others. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
If a person doesn't bother to self-identify their religion, sexual preference, or whatever, that likely means that in the context of a WP, that information if it could be determined will be trivial and unimportant to understanding the rest of the article on that person (much less the BLP issues with putting that non-self-identified information anywhere in the BLP Article). Ergo, we should absolutely avoid any such classification of a person (religion, ethenic group, caste, whatever) if that living person does not specifically self-identify with that, even if a million other sources all agree that that person is identified that way. That is the essence of BLP - the privacy of the person comes before the completeness of Wikipedia (and hence why its a mandate from the Foundation). --MASEM (t) 00:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Aside from those engaged in vandalism, I don't think the average well-meaning editor is going to go around recklessly placing people in cubbyholes of identity that are utterly unsupported by sources. Bus stop (talk) 01:32, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
[24] - par for the course for many India-related articles, I'm sad to say. Not to mention Jewish-related, and almost every other 'cubbyhole' you can think of. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. It's not true for all Wikipedians, but the majority love to categorize and sort and the like , which is a good thing in general, but the example above from Andy, the above discussion on blood types of Japanese people, etc. are examples of what trend to do by instict (perhaps). It can be difficult to ween ppl off that approach, and particularly true when we are talking BLP. --MASEM (t) 02:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Judging from this discussion, it is clear that India is struggling to eliminate the caste system, and the Supreme Court is not helping. Their rulings are correct, but make the false assumption that there is a caste system, as it was effectively eliminated in 1950. Due to the extreme prejudice implied in labeling someone by a lower class and the inappropriate glorification implied in labeling someone by an upper class (by all BLP standards), I would reiterate, that caste is simply of historical interest and has no place in an article about anyone living after 1950. Do we allow anyone to be called the N word? Why would we allow anyone to be identified by their caste? It simply is not something that meets WP guidelines. Let India do whatever it does. Our job is to report it impartially, but ascribing derogatives/superlatives in this manner is not appropriate. Apteva (talk) 06:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
And I repeat, Apteva, that your comments primarily demonstrate a lack of clue. I hope that you were not relying on the articles that you linked because they are due a fairly big overhaul in the next few months- plans are afoot. There is a caste system in India today, it is alive, well and reported on daily; it exists in official reservation schemes and therefore in education and employment; it exists as a very real mindset and it causes physical violence and discrimination etc. You cannot just brush all of this under the carpet because western sensitivities object to the thing. We are not censored. - Sitush (talk) 08:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Sitush on the fact that 'caste', as in Jati, did not die in 1950.
I also agree with MASEM's following statement -- "And in consideration of ethnicity, while it can be a "matter of fact" in some cases (eg, if both your parents were Irish, you would be Irish), there again are cases where a person will either hide or chose not to reveal it, or stress it a different way." My question to MASEM and to you guys is -- does this mean that we require a person to self-identify as Irish before we say that he was born in that community? If we don't, why would we need this for Indian groups? Do you think Indian groups are something to be ashamed of? Does Wikipedia have a list of "groups that don't make their members self-ashamed & groups that make their members self-ashamed (and thereby require self-identification) ? Sreejiraj (talk) 12:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Sreejiraj, please read WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. If you continue to refuse to answer the repeated questions I have asked you regarding the topic of this thread - the relationship between the right to privacy as laid down in core WP:BLP policy, and the adding of non-self-identified and non-relevant 'caste' assertions to articles relating to living individuals - I shall be asking that you be blocked from editing any caste-related material on Wikipedia, on the grounds laid out in Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I am arguing that identifying someone's ethnicity does not violate his privacy. At least, Wikipedia policy doesn't seem to think so. Please see my question about whether their ethnicity is something that Indians should be ashamed about, when all over the globe, people seem to have no issues with it.
I am in no position to ban you. I shall however be reporting your continued stonewalling, misrepresentation of sources, intentional off-topic waffle and abject refusal to address the topic of this thread at WP:ANI. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I know next to nothing about caste. What I do know is that our article about Dalits says, "discrimination and prejudice against Dalits in South Asia remains." I also know that that article says that non-Hindu Dalits are ineligible for concessions otherwise available to scheduled castes. Those two things being the case, I find comments about how caste is mostly unrelated to religion and not something to be ashamed of to be disingenuous at best. I cannot see how a famous Indian person's caste is ordinarily something that warrants mention, particularly since for a not-insignificant number of people it apparently is something to be ashamed of. Perhaps this is simply me revealing my Western ignorance, but it also seems to me that the sorts of people who are disadvantaged by (the remnants of?) the caste system are not very likely to contribute to this discussion. AgnosticAphidtalk13:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'd like to pre-emptively say that my use of the word "ashamed" was a poor choice of words. I would hope, generally, that the disadvantaged can be proud and not ashamed of their heritage, and like I said I am ignorant on this topic. It wouldve been preferable to say, "for a not-insignificant number of people it may be something they are not proud of." But I stand by the substance of my comment. AgnosticAphidtalk13:56, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
If that is what the article says then it is wrong. Non-Hindu communities in India do come under the various reservation schemes and some, such as the St Thomas Christians, are often considered to be a caste. This list for Goa shows plenty of non-Hindu groups, and there are a further 34 states & also other classifications in the reservation system. One reason for your confusion may well be the term "Scheduled Castes" which, in fact, is does not necessarily comprise castes at all. There are also, by the way, instances of dalit millionaires and brahmin paupers etc: the situation is very complex. . - Sitush (talk) 13:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
AgnosticAphid You are right in the sense that caste in the sense of Varna (higher, middle, lower, slave system) is not followed in non-Hindu religions. But caste in the sense of ethnic origin, is followed. Ambedkar's own group, Mahar has largely converted to Buddhism. But they still haven't given up their Mahar name and identity. Buddhism is extremely anti-caste. You can understand this apparent contradiction only if you learn to distinguish between the ethnic part of caste (jati) and the hierarchical part of caste (Varna -- Brahmin, Kshatirya, Vaishya and Shoodra). If you scroll up, there's a Supreme Court ruling which I shall quote for your benefit (to prove that castes are not related to, or exclusive to, Hindu religion, but are more of an ethnic identity. Varna is certainly related to Hindu religion.) Here it is --
"Valsamma was a Syrian Catholic woman (forward caste) who married a Latin Catholic man (backward class) and the question arose whether by virtue of her marriage she was entitled to appointment to a post of lecturer that was reserved for Latin Catholics (Backward Class Fishermen). The full bench of the Kerala High Court held that though Valsamma was � married according to the Canon law, being a Syrian Christian by birth, she could not by marriage with a Latin Catholic become a member of that class nor could she claim the status of backward class by marriage.
Sreejiraj, I've been wrapping the text you're quoting with {{quote}} to make it more distinct from your comments. You've posted a huge amount of text to this page; if you're going to do that, please make every attempt to make it easier for people to read, otherwise you're going to get people thinking you're making walls of text. — Hex(❝?!❞)15:20, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
While India is a modern democracy, India may not embrace and celebrate some of the favorite philosophies popularized, promoted, and cheered over in the so-called West, or at least in large swaths of the West. (There are as well pockets of disregard for notions of social stratification in large urban centers in India.) From a US-centric point of view it is easy to argue that "self-identification" is all that should matter when considering notions of identity. But even in the US (and Britain) it can be difficult to be "classless and free". My suggestion is that we simply focus on and abide by our sources in each individual case, at each individual biography. Caste may not correspond exactly to Western notions of for instance religion. It may be the wrong approach to require "self-identification" as a prerequisite for allusions to caste in the body of a biographical article. Sreejiraj looks like he is writing a novel, but his posts suggest the pervasiveness of notions of unshakable rootedness that may exist in ways that many Americans and British people may not be able to easily relate to. Our aim is not to replicate fashionable American philosophies. When multiple good quality sources speak about caste in relation to an individual I don't think it becomes Wikipedia's responsibility to weed out philosophies that clash with our own popular philosophies, of self determination, etc. Bus stop (talk) 20:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
So you are advocating the abandonment of Wikipedia policies in regard to the right to individual privacy on the basis that they shouldn't apply to India? O.k. I suggest you contact the lawyers at the Wikimedia foundation and ask them whether this grossly discriminatory proposal is compatible with (a) the law, and (b) the charitable aims of the foundation. And by the way, your claim that "the pervasiveness of notions of unshakable rootedness" are any way relevant to this discussion are based on an entirely false understanding of the topic. Even a cursory study of the subject will show that 'caste' has been a contested, fluid and evolving subject within Indian society, and that far from being 'unshakable' it is shaken daily - not that it would make any difference if it weren't. Wikipedia cannot have one rule for Indians and another for 'Westerners'... AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
P.S. Read this [25]. Then ask yourself if it had read 'Jewish community' instead of 'minority community' you would considered it to have been legitimate to use phrases like 'unshakable rootedness' to explain what was occurring? 'Caste' still exists in India - and because of it, so does caste-related violence, and much else besides. That is no reason for Wikipedia to take sides in the debate over its legitimacy - which is precisely what you are advocating. Have you no sense of shame? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:44, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
AndyTheGrump, Wikipedia policy only respects individual privacy on a very narrow list of things: birth date, locational/identificational marks (I made that term up; I mean things like address, government ID numbers, etc.), and information about non-public people (like the names of non-notable children of notable people). BLP further restricts the use of certain means of conveying information when those means are not sufficient to explain controversial subjects in sufficient detail; this is the restriction embedded in WP:BLPCAT. But Wikipedia does not restrict mention of a person's ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, sexual preference, or any of these other things, in well-written, well-sourced prose in the body of the article. You are proposing to add some new "right to privacy", which would exist only for caste. I find the notion of us sitting here and declaring discussion one particular system of (admittedly abusively discriminatory) social stratification to be forbidden to be a very colonialist attitude. You are literally proposing a rule that does not exist for any other identifying characteristic on Wikipedia biographical articles. And just to respond to your last point: removing caste in cases where reliable sources refer to is is absolutely taking a side. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:55, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
What? Are you seriously suggesting that Wikipedia allows a characterisation of living people by religion or sexual preferences without reliable sources which actually indicate that the person self-identifies with them? And you are an admin? I suggest you think about what you have just written... AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I am an admin, and after checking WP:BLP to make sure I haven't gone mad, I will stand by what wrote. There is no policy, nor common agreement, nor regular preference, to require self-identification of religion or sexual preference. We would, of course, require a BLP-compliant source (i.e., high quality, not a gossip rag)--but we do not require explicit self-identification. If I had a source that said "Person X regularly attends Church Y" and I trusted that source, I would consider that acceptable for inclusion--neither I nor policy would require a "Person X said 'I attend Church X'". Furthermore, don't forget you're trying to make caste even more strict: requiring a tie to notability. So, if I am going to play the game like you, I should say, "Are you ready to withdraw your position, given it's not supported in policy or practice"? Qwyrxian (talk) 01:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
No I am not going to withdraw anything. I wrote that "it is a gross violation of the privacy of living individuals to label them by caste membership unless (a) they explicitly self-identify as a member of the caste, and (b) it is of direct relevance to their notability in regard to Wikipedia". I stand by that, for the reasons I have already given. As for your assertions regarding religion (which is of direct relevance here) and sexual preference/orientation (which isn't), you are simply wrong - we regularly reject material relating to these subjects on WP:BLP grounds if they aren't self-asserted, and aren't relevant to notability. It is worth noting here that we are dealing with a topic where the very meaningfulness of the categories is contested - it isn't just an issue of potentially assigning individuals to the 'wrong caste', it is an issue of assigning them to a place within a hierarchical structure which they may not recognise as legitimate. This is the core issue here. By accepting the right of third parties to 'assign' caste we are taking sides in the dispute. This is a violation of WP:NPOV, and regardless of how we deal with other categorisations, in this case, which needs to be looked at on its own merits, there are strong grounds for respecting the rights of individuals to privacy as set out in core WP:BLP policy, and for rejecting the arbitrary third-party assignment of caste as a violation of the very principles of neutrality by which Wikipeda operates. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:20, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
"it is an issue of assigning them to a place within a hierarchical structure which they may not recognise as legitimate." - If this is the issue, then the issue is bad nonsense. What the subjects recognise or not as legitimate is entirely irrelevant. What sources state is relevant. As always, there should be very strong and very reliable sourcing, and perhaps a good reason, to include contentious BLP statements in biographies, but what the subjects themselves think is entirely irrelevant. Notice that we take sides in the dispute also by rejecting the right of third parties to assign caste, so if this is a violation of NPOV, it is in both cases. There is only one way out of POV, and it is: being compliant with what sources say, regardless of the subject self-identification. --Cyclopiatalk12:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I think this is probably the clearest thing you have said in a long time -- {{it is an issue of assigning them to a place within a hierarchical structure which they may not recognise as legitimate}} and I must congratulate Qwyrxian for getting you to articulate what you seemed to have been stumbling on for so long. The statement is very significant, because that is the crux of the "pro-choice" argument. Let's examine it in greater detail. There are two points here -- one is that people may not recognize their caste as legitimate and the second is that their caste is part of a hierarchical structure. In fact, the first part of this sentence is dependent on the second part. In other words, the alleged fact that caste is a hierarchical structure is the reason why individuals allegedly do not recognize it as legitimate. (If this understanding is wrong, please do correct.) Now, therefore, the whole controversy can be solved if it is proved that caste is not a hierarchical structure. It seems almost impossible a notion to prove that. I mean, caste is almost a synonym for hierarchy, at least to someone who's only read books about the phenomenon. The 'theory' of caste says it's all about hierarchy and social organization. But often theory may not correspond to practice. And the same can be said for caste as well. In theory, there are only four castes, plus an 'outcaste' division. The four castes are called Varna and the 'outcaste' is called 'avarna' (without a varna. 'a' in Indian languages and sanskrit denotes the absence of something. For exampe, ashareeri means without shareer or body, asukh means without sukh or wellness.) These four castes (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) and the outcaste (avarna) are all that should be there in the hierarchical system. But look around Wikipedia caste articles.. do you see only these five groups? Do the lists talk of these groups? No. I repeat, no theoretical text on caste, including the Manusmriti and the Bhramasutras, talk of any other castes except these four (plus the outcaste or avarna). So what are the other groups that also pass for 'castes' -- Nair, Ezhava, Rajput, Jat_people, Iyer, Iyengar, Maratha etc? They are not mentioned in any text as belonging to any part of the hierarchy. The theory of caste system does not have any place for these groups. Theoretically, the caste system only has place for individuals, not groups. But, as always, practice does not follow theory all the time. In practice, it was very difficult to recruit people to be a 'trader class', a 'slave caste' or an 'outcaste'. No one would want to join something like this. In practice too, no one did. What happened was that the pre-existing ethnic groups, which trace their origin from tribes as well as from occupational classifications, were forced into the above five-fold system. Who forced ethnic groups into the caste system? This was done by dominant ethnic groups. How did these become dominant? Most probably by inter-tribal war, invasions and also through sheer hardwork and intelligence. Anyway, some ethnic groups became more powerful than the others. The powerful groups ascribed to themselves the top classes (Brahmin & Kshatriya) and depending on how the other ethnic groups were doing, they were placed into the 'lower castes' (varnas such as Shudra and 'Avarna'). Just like History is always written by the winners, the caste-books were always written by the winners. At various times, when and where an ethnic group became more powerful, they raised themselves in the caste hierarchy. A good example is Maurya (mostly called Mori in modern days), the ethnic group of Ashoka. They are considered Shudra (slave) in the Bihar state, where they are most numerous, but in Rajasthan some of they are also found among the powerful Rajputs and are known as Mori Rajputs. Rajputs are rulers -- a tribe of kings. Or take the case of Scindia. Scindias were the ruling family of Gwalior, a fairly largish state in the 19th century. Technically, they are Maratha - a non thread-wearing people. If you don't wear the sacred thread, then your Jati belongs to either Shudra or Avarna caste. Yet, would anyone tell the ruler the country that he was not a Kshatriya (ruling caste)? Another example is Nair of Kerala, who were shudra to start off with, but became so powerful that they started calling themselves Kshatriya. This led to ideological tussle with Brahmins who considered themselves the final arbiter when it came to deciding which tribe belonged to which caste. This whole "put ethnic groups (jatis) into castes (varnas)" effort got a lot of support from the British, who were probably fascinated by these things, and soon charts started getting published identifying which ethnic group (jati) belonged to which caste (varna). Someone whose Jati was put in the slave (shudra) caste or 'outcaste' division could react in three ways -- first was to accept the classification and be ashamed of saying or identifying that they belonged to that ethnic group (jati) that has been classified as a low caste. The second way was to dispute the classification (but without questioning the need for and legitimacy of such a classificatory system) and the third option was to entirely reject such as classificatory system (caste system) altogether.
In the above example, Nairs took the second option -- of not challenging the legitimacy of the caste system, but only their place in it. The Ezhavas, who were largely Buddhists and Jains, most probably rejected the entire hierarchical or (Varna) caste system. Not surprisingly, they were classified as avarna (outcastes) by Brahmins and are still called avarnas in popular language, newspapers etc.. The word Avarna is used in newspapers and though it must have carried a certain stigma with it when it was coined, in the present day, it carries no such prejudice (at least, if it did, it has escaped the newspaper editors.) Btw, when I say, Ezhavas did this or Nairs did this, it doesn't mean that each individual did this, without exception. It is only an indicator of the dominant ideology (as expressed by the leaders of their ethnic groups and organizations working for their upliftment - such as the SNDP organization, and Sree Narayana Guru in case of Ezhavas. Most of you here (perhaps most people who only have a literary knowledge of the subject) fail to appreciate this two-step nature of what is commonly known as India's caste system. The first step is the individual's allegiance or identification to his ethnic group (Jati) (like Nair, Ezhava, Jat etc.) and the second element is the placement of that ethnic group (Jati) in the caste system proper (Varna-Sampradaya). I personally belong to a group (Jati) that is considered "outcaste". But I, like nearly everyone in my ethnic group, don't accept the hierarchical caste system (Varna system). As such, I don't feel ashamed of my ethnic identity (Ezhava). Most Ezhavas don't feel ashamed that they are Ezhava. Like I said earlier, 70-75% of all Ezhava households proudly display their caste association flag for about a week every year. The only other community that does anything like that are the Saint_Thomas_Christians, considered a 'forward caste' by the law. In other words, what you are asking me to do -- by saying that Ezhavas are more likely than not to feel ashamed of saying they are Ezhavas -- is giving legitimacy to the placement of Ezhava into the list of "outcastes". This is what I object to. You cannot say that because people who were in power ascribed the status of "outcastes" to my ethnic group, I should, in effect, leave my ethnic group, or feel ashamed of it. I feel nothing of the sort. And 99% of Ezhavas feel no shame in saying they are Ezhava. They simply don't accept the hierarchical system. Organizationally, the Ezhavas are the most powerful group among the Hindus in Kerala today, and it is possible that they are so on economic grounds as well (though arguably, there could be subjective bias in these statements.) In short, don't make me feel ashamed of my ethnic identity when I don't have to. I don't give a damn what caste my Jati has been put in to. In fact, I don't care if you call me avarna either. These terms -- shoodra and avarna -- have been used as identities to unify the 'lower castes' across India. See Shudra:_The_Rising. But I would still say that most people have not reached that level of maturity that they would unflinchingly call themselves slaves (Shudras) and take pride in it. As for Jati, for most Jatis, most members don't feel any shame in acknowledging that they are from that ethnic group. There may be some Jatis where they still do -- especially if the Jati's 'downtroddenness' is not just historical, but continues to be even today. In such Jatis, there may be individuals who feel hesitant to identify with even their ethnic identity (forget Varna or caste identity) (Btw, this is true of all ethnic divisions, including Jewish, African American, Irish, Welsh, Scots etc..). But even the poorest and most backward castes in India are finding a new voice, a new assertiveness in identifying themselves by their Jati, and as I said, even by their Varna or caste. See Mayawati. My final advice -- don't presume that people feel ashamed of their ethnic identities. Criticize the caste system (varna system) for all you want, but don't assume that people take these varna statuses seriously. If Wikipedia says we don't want to promote ethnic divisions and identities - that is a different matter. I can understand that, and be ok with that. But all that I hear you guys say is "Unlike Westerners, Indians have reason to be ashamed of their ethnic identities, because the ethnic identities have been placed in a hierarchical system by the Brahmins and the British.." At best, that's just plain wrong, and at worst, that's racist and smacks of a white man's superiority complex. Sreejiraj (talk) 12:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Can we see examples of Wikipedia articles which contain this so-called issue? I'd like to see the relationship between sources and that which is supported by sources. This request is addressed to everyone participating in this thread. Bus stop (talk) 13:51, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
A Wikipedia article-space search for 'India caste' gets 7,144 hits - take your pick. [26] Tell us what you think of the sourcing when you're done. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
You are arguing to remedy a problem. Can you point to an article that at present contains the "problem" that you are trying to remedy? Bus stop (talk) 14:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
To pick one at random, see Chettiar - and see how many of the individuals that are claimed to be members of the named castes actually have a source cited which states this. Incidentally, you'll note a recurring theme as you look into this - assignment to caste on the base of family name. Curiously though this particular article both notes that "Chettiar title is used mainly by Vaishya sub-castes of South India. But it is also used by the non-vaishya communities such as the Kummara (shudra)" - which seems to me to be a statement (unsourced, needless to say) that some people named 'Chettiar' aren't members of the caste anyway. And then there is the (policy violating) disclaimer further down: "The information is taken from reference web sites and material, this website doesn't take responsibility for any individual to use this info. The individual needs to verify the authenticity of information before using". AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:48, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
AndyTheGrump So your problem is improper sourcing, and you no longer believe that Indians are, or are bound to be, or are liable to be, or are more likely than not to be, ashamed of their ethnic groups? I'd call that progress. Sreejiraj (talk) 14:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Let me rephrase that - so your issue is with sourcing, not that assigning a person to a Jati violates their privacy because it amounts to "assigning them to a place within a hierarchical structure which they may not recognise as legitimate." So we are no longer worried about whether Indians consider their Jati as legitimate, but we are only worried about whether the sourcing is sound or not?Sreejiraj (talk) 14:28, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
The header only mentions that it violates the privacy. Be that as it may, can you show some examples where people have claimed that their privacy has been violated because Wikipedia mentioned their Jati? If not, apart from the case of Amitabh Bachchan who wanted to be dissociated from the Kayastha caste, can you show a case where someone living now claimed that his or her privacy was violated because any publication published his or her caste?Sreejiraj (talk) 15:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Another factor for consideration: The WMF's position regarding biographies of living people
I see that the WMF resolution on Biographies of Living Persons of April 2009 has recently been posted below, in relation to another topic. It is clearly of equal relevance to the debate here:
On April 9, 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees passed a resolution regarding Wikimedia's handling of material about living persons. It noted that there are problems with some BLPs being overly promotional in tone, being vandalized, and containing errors and smears. The Foundation urges that special attention be paid to neutrality and verifiability regarding living persons; that human dignity and personal privacy be taken into account, especially in articles of ephemeral or marginal interest; that new technical mechanisms be investigated for assessing edits that affect living people; and that anyone who has a complaint about how they are described on the project's websites be treated with patience, kindness, and respect.
The other factor - the triviality of the information
I appreciate what Qwyrxian noted above - that no policy or guideline explicitly requires self-identification to include information, though I would argue that per the privacy issues of the Foundation's edict that we shouldn't be going to great lengths to try to source something that the person in question has not readily made available. But lets assume that reliable sourcing exists to discuss a person's religion, ethnicity, etc.
The other part of the question that's been here is: why does inclusion of that information matter? The fact that person X is of a certain religion when no other part of their notability or background is affected by that, is effectively trivia. As Uncle G pointed out, at one point we had blood type in infoboxes on Japanese people, but that has absolutely no bearing for the bulk of articles on living persons. I get back to the fact that WPians love to categorize, and if we have a infobox that has fields that are otherwise left empty, there is a natural trend to fill in the spaces with any sources that can confirm that - not necessarily a bad thing to have but something that should be used carefully in light of BLP. I would rather see us leave information out that normally requires self-identification when that information has otherwise no use besides filling an infobox. --MASEM (t) 14:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Let me give an example. V._S._Achuthanandan is the former chief minister and the current opposition leader of Kerala assembly. According to a feature in the well-respected Mathrubhumi daily, when 'VS' was a student, 'upper caste' children used to taunt him as to why a low caste Ezhava like him wants to study, and whether he intended to become a minister by studying. He, according to the biographical article, went and told his father, and his father bought him a whip-belt that he could wear. Next day, he lashed the upper caste boys who dared make fun of him. He soon joined the Communist Party of India, whose support base was overwhelmingly drawn from the Ezhava and other backward castes like Pulaya and Paraya. He led a great uprising against the high-caste Hindu royal government that ruled southern Kerala at the time, called Punnapra Vayalar. The Communist Party won power in the first election held in Kerala after independence, largely due to Ezhava and backward caste votes. The party promptly went about abolishing the feudal system, seizing excess land from typically upper caste hindu landlords and redistributed it to lower caste people, mostly to Pulayas and Parayas, who were essentially subsisting on that land after paying a share to the land lords. So, the question is -- did the fact that he was an Ezhava have anything to do with VS's political life and philosophy? You bet it did. Should that have been the case in a fair and just society? Absolutely not. That doesn't take away from the fact that caste matters in almost everything, including, often, though not always, whether one becomes a businessman, or a employee of a private company, or a door-to-door salesman. Most Pulayas and Parayas are still poor, and their children grow up poor, and are still stigmatized. Does caste matter? It does to them. They usually find defensive/offensive ideologies in their teens to get over the allegations of inferiority thrown on them as they grow up. It's not a trivial matter. It matters a great deal, except in cities like Bombay, Delhi and Chennai, where people don't even know which caste you belong to. But these cities probably have about 5% of the total population of India.Sreejiraj (talk) 15:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
And that's a fine example of where that information is not trivial and would be included; that's not the issue. Yes, there is the subtle issue that the person's caste does have some influence on their life - same with religion, sexual orientation, etc. But unless that aspect is actually documented on how caste (etc) influenced their life, its otherwise trivial. --MASEM (t) 15:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
@Sreejiraj - Sure V._S._Achuthanandan's caste may be relevant to his notability, but there are lots of cases where caste isn't clearly relevant a subject's notability. I'm not sure anyone here is arguing against caste categorization when there is a clear, direct and obvious link to someone's notability. That said, the onus should really be on the categorizer to demonstrate the "relevance to notability". NickCT (talk) 15:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
It's an aside - but the fact is that if searched the internet for a self-declaration from VS that he considers himself an Ezhava, you'd find none..
It's slippery territory here, trying to determine whether one's ethnic origin was notable with regard to one's achievements. Does the fact that Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Rupert Murdoch, Sergei Brin, Larry Ellison (on one side) are all Jewish have anything to do with their business acumen? Most people on this page would shudder at such a suggestion, but there would be many people, outside of this page, who would say that Jewish people tend to be more successful at business than others in the US. The same thing can be said of India's entrepreneurs -- a lot of the top guys come from a group called Agarwals (in the larger sense including castes and groups like Mittal, Bansal etc.). Do we have the right to decide this matter for ourselves? Or should we just supply the information and leave people to put two and two together (or decide there is no two and two to be put together here.) I think we should simply give the information, and if someone wants to interpret it, or consider it trivial, I am sure our inclusion of the information is not going to change their opinion.Sreejiraj (talk) 15:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
No it's not a slippery slope. We go with what sources say. In your first example, it appears clear that sources document VS's problems with his caste as a youth that influenced his future life. But it is original research for use to say that, for example, Zuckerberg's Jewish background is the reason why he's wealthy without a source. Yes, traditionally, those of the Jewish faith tend to have good business senses, but on WP we can't make that connection without a source; assuming no source directly ties Zuckerberg's Jewish background with his business success, there would be no need for us to mention if he is Jewish. --MASEM (t) 15:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
You've misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that Zuckerberg is known as a successful businessman. In a bio of his, would we ever mention that he is from a Jewish background? Or would we consider it trivial with regard to his notablity? (I am talking about the mere mention that he hails from such a background, and certainly not to an overt statement that this contributed to his success, which would be taking a stance on this issue.)Sreejiraj (talk) 15:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
We would consider it trivial in regards to his notability - the implication that because he's Jewish makes him a good businessperson is clearly OR. --MASEM (t) 15:44, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
re "the implication that because he's Jewish makes him a good businessperson is clearly OR" - Clearly. Sreejiraj seems to be missing an obvious point here. NickCT (talk) 15:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Given Sreejiraj's cavalier attitude to 'information', I think we can assume that the answer has to be that whatever we do, and whether it is 'trivia or not, we shouldn't let Sreejiraj within a mile of it - Rupert Murdoch isn't Jewish... AndyTheGrump (talk)
I want you to think about this more clearly. Because what you are saying is this -- each and every piece of information in a biography must be demonstrably relevant to the achievement that made that person notable. I mean, is the fact that Zuckerberg was born on May 14 (and not 15 May) directly relevant to his notability? Or the fact that he was born in "White Plains" ? Would he not have become so great if he was born in the neighboring town? Or this statement "He was a fencing star and captain of the fencing team" -- is that really relevant to his notability as an internet entrepreneur? What about this line -- "In college, he was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad." The fact is, a lot of stuff is put in there even though they may not have an established relevance to his achievement, because either they are interesting (even if trivial), or someone may be interested to know about these peripheral aspects of the person's existence. That's how we write biographies. Otherwise it will look like a CV -- only those things that are strictly relevant to the person's achievements are mentioned. Sreejiraj (talk) 16:02, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Facts like birth date, achievements in life, etc. are not things that a living person change. They've happened and are matter of public record. Some of it may be trivial but that's not use attempt to understand the person's psyche. Things like religion, sexual orientation, caste, etc, are things that can be implied from knowing the person's actions (a person that weekly attends a Catholic mass is likely Catholic, for example), but only that person themselves is the authority on it, and we should not be second guessing on those. Thus those elements would normally be trivial and avoided for sake of the person's privacy. --MASEM (t) 16:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Let's stick to the topic at hand. You said mention only stuff that's relevant to the person's notability. Relevance is the question here, not sourcing. My question, again, is if that is so, why is Zuckerberg being born on May 14 (and not on May 15) considered relevant to his achievement as an Internet entrepreneur? Sourcing was not your objection, your objection was relevance.Sreejiraj (talk) 16:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
"why does inclusion of that information matter?" - This is reader-dependent. What is trivial useless cruft for one can be the exact information someone else wants or needs. Of course in some instances it will be clear that it is overall relevant for the biography, but in general we should follow what sources think is important to mention or not, instead of putting our POV into the judgement. --Cyclopiatalk15:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
And this is where remembering that the BLP is to protect the person's privacy - if the information is not self-offered, and otherwise doesn't impact the article at all, we should opt to avoid inclusion. --MASEM (t) 15:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
These sorts of identity are not generally trivial. A biography is concerned with the psychic makeup of a person. In the body of an article this sort of information can be welcome. Sourcing should be our primary concern—adhering only to that which is eminently supported by the source. The reader is coming to the article for reasons that we cannot anticipate. We have to be responsible and only report that which can be traced to a source that provides full support for what we claim in our article. We should not be making judgements that fundamental attributes of identity are deemed by us to be "trivial". Religion is hardly trivial. Sexual orientation, especially if an alternative to the usual, is unlikely to be trivial. Bus stop (talk) 15:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
"A biography is concerned with the psychic makeup of a person"? And where, other than from the person him/herself can you get information about their "psychic makeup"? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
re "Sexual orientation, especially if an alternative to the usual, is unlikely to be trivial" - Really? Bradley Manning is gay. Seems obvious that his "gayness" isn't related to the fact that he was the source of a famous leak. His sexual orientation is thus trivial. NickCT (talk) 15:56, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Who will decide whether this is so? I can argue that his sexual orientation may have had something to do with his feeling of alienation in the army and this alienation led him to leak the transcripts? I mean, who are you to decide what is relevant or not? New research may prove that something that was considered irrelevant turned out to be relevant. Unfortunately, researchers do also depend on the Wikipedia to get their information. The might not be aware that people like you have already made their decisions for them.. Sreejiraj (talk) 16:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Re: Bus stop's statement that: "Religion is hardly trivial"... The problem is that for some people, their religion actually is trivial. We can not assume that a person's religion actually is a "fundamental attribute of identity" in all cases (in many cases, sure... but not in all cases). Blueboar (talk) 16:04, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
If you don't have a source for that, it is OR. That's the problem that's happening, is that we are implicitly creating implications when when include these personal facets when they have no other relevance on the article. --MASEM (t) 16:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that if we include any piece of information in a bio, the reader is going to assume that the person became notable because of that fact? In other words, if someone reads that Mark "was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad," that person will automatically assume that reciting the poems made Mark a successful entrepreneur? I mean, seriously, you are the only one around who has a brain? Our readers are dumb?Sreejiraj (talk) 16:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
"the reader is going to assume that the person became notable because of that fact" - No. THat's not what were' saying at all. We're not say that mentioning Mark is Jewish will make readers link his notability to his being Jewish. We're saying his being Jewish is trivial and potentially debatable, and should not be included in his Bio.
"Who will decide whether this is so? " - It's subjective. Sometimes it's obvious. Harvey Milk was a famous gay American politician. The fact that he was openly gay is notable, because it was widely noted, and he was pretty much the first major council person to be openly gay. Definately relevant to his notability. Stephen Breyer is a jewish supreme court judge. If he weren't Jewish, he'd still more or less be equally notable as a supreme court judge. Definately not relevant to notability.
Relevance and triviality depends on the reader. If I am a gay person in the U.S., and I read that a sitting judge of the Supreme Court is gay, it might not seem trivial to me. It may see trivial to you, because you don't probably have the reading/anticipation/framework of mind as the gay person. As far we know, that single piece of information may be what strikes the gay person as most memorable out of the entire article. He might think "Wow, an openly gay Judge of the Supreme Court, I love my country. It's so fair and open." It's the same for VS Achuthanandan and he being an Ezhava.Sreejiraj (talk) 16:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
"New research may prove that something that was considered irrelevant turned out to be relevant." - Of course. But that's true of so much on WP. Stuff which isn't notable, becomes notable after research.
"The might not be aware that people like you have already made their decisions for them." - That's sorta a silly argument. We make decisions about what to mention and what not to mention all the time. NickCT (talk) 16:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
So you're saying we should not have statements like "He was a fencing star and captain of the fencing team" in Zuckerberg's bio? It will look rather sparse if we actually apply what you are saying, won't it? I mean, Zuckerberg's CV will have more color on it. Sreejiraj (talk) 16:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
{ec}"Implicitly creating implications"? That's nonsense. We're not responsible for what our readers can deduce from the information. About the privacy etc. implications of BLP, see Qwryxian comments above. --Cyclopiatalk16:18, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Actually, yes we are - that's the point of the BLP edict from the Foundation. If information that we put into an article creates a misleading picture, even if all the information individually can be sourced, we are doing a disservice to the Foundation and that person. --MASEM (t) 16:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
To some degree, this is a WEIGHT issue... Not every factoid about a person's life needs to be in an article... On the other hand, including a few factoids helps to make the article interesting to our readers. Whether factoid X should be mentioned (or not) is something of a judgment call... the first thing we have to assess in making that judgement is whether mentioning factoid X would give the factoid UNDUE weight. With factoids that "label" people and put them in categories, this is more likely. Blueboar (talk) 17:05, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
There are a limited number of types of "identities" being discussed here. They are generally not considered "factoids". "Self-identification" is just one possible means by which we might determine that an "identity" might be applicable to the person being written about. We are unable to anticipate what will be of interest to a reader. Potential "identities" should generally be considered worthy of inclusion; religion, sexual orientation, and ethnicity should not be dismissed as "trivial". The concerns of a reader will assign a level of importance to these factors, but we do not know what a future reader's concerns will be. Our concern should be the quality of the sourcing. Bus stop (talk) 18:56, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Why should potential "identities" generally be considered worthy of inclusion? Why can't attributes such as religion, sexual orientation and ethnicity be dismissed as "trivial"? Blueboar (talk) 19:54, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
BLP info must be connected to notability
Anyone who wants to push the line that says that we must only include information in a BLP which is directly linked to their notability is welcome to start a WP:CENT-level WP:RFC on the matter. Since that isn't policy and has never been policy, it's a non-starter here. I'm willing to accept that consensus may eventually find against the inclusion of specific contentious BLP topics without self-identification. I accept that I'm not always on the side of consensus (though when I'm not, I'll still support that consensus in my editing behavior as best as I can). I'm not, however, going to let Masem or AndytheGrump invent a new policy based on their own interpretation of a WMF suggestion. That suggestion would probably indicate that every "Early Life" or "Personal Life" section should be removed from every BLP. For almost all BLPs, we should remove any indication of marital status, since being married to person X is usually only relevant for "celebrities"; for Professor Jane Doe, whether or not she's married clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with her research on particle physics. The same goes (usually) for whether and where they attended school (elementary through university), where the live or have lived, any job not directly tied to the career that made them notable, etc. And I think we can all predict how the community would react to suggestion to cut so much out of all BLPs. So let's please drop this "must be connected to notability" line--that applies only to religion and sexual preference, and only to infoboxes, categories, and inclusion on lists. Qwyrxian (talk) 17:16, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
re "Since that isn't policy and has never been policy" - See WP:BLPCAT - "are relevant to their public life or notability". I think it is in policy, the problem is that the scope and meaning is just ambiguous, and hence, subject to these protracted discussions.
I agree with you though, in the sense that what really needs to be concentrated on here is a potential revision/rewrite of policy to make the "must be connected to notability" line more concrete. An RfC is probably the right way to go. NickCT (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Qwyrxian, to the extent that it must be remebered that when we do write a biography, we actually have to write a biography, both fully and fairly, and not bowlderized swiss cheese of "facts we do not mention" or "list of things we do not discuss." Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Biographies should not merely be c.v.s, and I think that's all we'd be left with if we tried to limit information in this manner. Qwyrxian is right in the kinds of information that would be excluded, information that is mainly mundane and found in any standard biography, yet has nothing to do with a person's achievements.
Then there's the issue of just what it means to ask "why" someone is notable. Subjects are notable if they've received significant coverage in reliable sources; this may or may not because they've actually achieved something concrete or done something objectively worthwhile.
I've long thought that one of the most harmful elements of present Wikipedia culture is wiki-legislating: the pushing of such high-level abstract rules, which naturally bring with them far-reaching consequences, as an attempt at precluding the need to discuss difficult individual issues that sometimes arise. Well-meaning editors can go hogwild with this mindset, jumping around to look for what other content they can strike just to some lauded rule that may have one constructive application for every twenty destructive applications. I'm always reminded of Emerson's quote about "foolish consistency." postdlf (talk) 18:53, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
re "difficult individual issues that sometimes arise" - In this case though, we're discussing a general issue that always arises and causes these endless debates and consternation. NickCT (talk) 19:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
If the differences of opinion that we are discussing here should arise at individual articles we should be discussing and resolving them at individual Talk pages, and we should be initiating WP:RFCs, and WP:3s. We should not be attempting to write overarching policy to answer questions that in fact vary from article to article. Each biography is different and the sources that have bearing are different. Bus stop (talk) 19:16, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Qwyrxian, please read the WMF resolution above again - that is the standard which Wikipedia must abide by, regardless of policies (or of your interpretation of policies). If you wish to argue otherwise, I suggest you take it up with the foundation. Unless and until they change their position, "taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account" is non-optional. Caste is a contentious and divisive issue, and treating it as just another biographical 'fact' is a misjudgement on multiple levels. And incidentally, since 'religion' and 'caste' are clearly interlinked concepts, your assertion that the "infoboxes, categories", etc restrictions don't apply to caste is at least questionable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
@Bus stop"Each biography is different and the sources that have bearing are different." - Sure. But the idea we're discussing is a general one that potentially applies to many different biographies. General principles that have broad consequences are usually discussed in the context of policy changes. Not on individual talk pages. You'd obviously prefer if we didn't have a clear centralized policy because you're actively engaged in the kind of bad behavior this policy would discourage. NickCT (talk) 20:39, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't see a problem in including a person's religion, etc. if that fact is noted in several different reliable sources that discuss the person - if the various authors of those sources include it, then its reasonable for us. The problem becomes when people are stretching and looking for sources because they absolutely must id the religious or political party or whatever a person is. If it not immediately obvious by the best sources on the person (from which we are deriving their notability from), it probably isn't a fact we should be including. A case in point: You can find the true ID of the "Star Wars Kid" with some deep internet searching (That person has an article on WP because he's become notable in another way), but that person has clearly stated they've put that part of their past behind them. Because most top level sources about the adult person don't discuss that fact, we should (and we don't) do it either. --MASEM (t) 00:03, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
@User:Masem - re "If it not immediately obvious by the best sources on the person (from which we are deriving their notability from), it probably isn't a fact we should be including." - Yes! Yes! Yes! And this is exactly the point. If it's not obvious. Don't add.
NickCT—you say "In this case though, we're discussing a general issue that always arises and causes these endless debates and consternation." Big, overarching policy, in this instance, cannot determine if we should allude to religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and caste in our articles. In some cases we should allude to these identity factors, and in others we should not. These are questions best resolved on article Talk pages, and with recourse to Requests for comment, Requests for third opinions, and other dispute resolution processes. Policy is not an unalloyed good. These are disputes that depend for their proper outcome on the specifics of the debate. I don't think big overarching "policy" is the solution to all problems/disputes. Bus stop (talk) 00:49, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
re "These are questions best resolved on article Talk pages, and with recourse to Requests for comment" - Well listen bus. I'm pretty convinced of two things. 1) Caste/ethnicity/religion debates occur on talk pages all over WP, and the debates are always lengthy, silly, and distractions from other work that could be done on WP. 2) There is a very common theme to all these debates, which is a confusion over how to act when these categorizations are not obvious.
No I entirely take your point re "In some cases we should allude to these identity factors". In some cases we should. But the point that gets made over, and over, and over, and over in these debates by a huge number of editors is, "If it's not obvious, and possibly not relevant, don't talk about it". We really should embed this idea in policy. NickCT (talk) 13:04, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
AndytheGrump, we don't have to follow the WMF suggestion...or, rather, we can interpret the suggestion by local consensus. For example, I believe that the WMF statement on images says that we should have a mandatory image filter, and that we should be a lot more strict about inclusion of sexual images in our articles; I especially think that said statement should require that about 90% of the sexually explicit images on Commons should be removed. But both here on en.wiki and on Commons, those notions were rejected by community consensus. Similarly, when Jimbo Wales acted as Founder and WMF member a few years ago to remove a large number of images that concerned him, the revolt was swift, decisive, and his decision was overruled. We don't have to follow what the WMF says, at least not the way you're claiming. Now, if the WMF wants to start coming in and saying, "No, really, you do have to follow this more explicitly, or we're going to start bringing down the banhammer", then maybe we'll have to change. For example, the WMF mandated the creation of WP:BLP, and wrote it into policy. The WMF statement has not been written into en.WP policy. Again, if and when it is, then we'll start abiding by it. But, of course, even if it was, we'd still have the same argument, because I think you're wrong in saying mentioning well-sourced caste claims is a violation of policy. For example, back on the earlier WT:INB discussion, I pointed out how when a journalist interviews someone, unless they do an explicit "quoted interview format", much of what the subject says will not be put in quotation marks. That is, the journalist interviews Person X, who says, "I am a Yadav, descendant of kings, whose ancestors were the Moon herself". Now, the journalist might put that in as a quotation, in which case your policy would say we could put it in...or they might just put "Person X is a Yadav" or "from a Yadav family", which, suddenly, since it's not quoted, we now can't include. That's pretty poor reading comprehension skills on our part. So, again, as an editor and an admin, my "job" here is to follow policy as best as I can. Policy does not require that we remove all information from BLPs that is not directly linked to the person's notability. In each individual case, of course, editors could argue WP:NPOV/WP:DUE; I do it myself, when I argue that BLPs should not contain, for instance, lists of the person's hobbies. But if you're so certain you're right, well, then, I strongly recommend you start removing schooling, residence, and all other personal info from BLPs...and see how short that WP:ROPE is. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
@Qwyrxian - re "removing schooling, residence, and all other personal info" - I think we may be missing an important point here. Things like "schooling" and "residence" are fundamentally different from things like "caste" and "religion". Schooling is sorta an objective thing. Someone either did or did not attend classes at Yale. There is rarely much ambiguity there, and if there's an RS saying "Such and such a person went to Yale", there's seldom debate about whether that person went to Yale. Things like caste/religion/ethnicity are inherently subjective and often open to debate. There's no exact definition for what an "African-American" or a "Catholic" is, and there's no ultimate authority for determining who belongs in these categories. Often times these categorizations are obvious, but on occasion they're not (as evidenced by silly debates like the one above). My point, and I think the one AndyTheGrump is trying to make, is that when caste/religion/ethnicity attributions aren't obvious, we shouldn't talk about them. Who are we to decide which "caste" people belong in? NickCT (talk) 13:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
The WMF resolutions are not suggestions - they are requirements that every wikiproject on their servers are expected to follow. In in the case of NFC (the only other major resolution), it requires we create an exemption doctrine policy for non-free media that requires providing rationales for use and means of removing such media when it fails basic tenents (eg replacable by free media for one); for en.wiki we have our NFC policy, while other wikis have taken this as "no non-free media whatsoever". Similarly, the BLP resolution is not a suggestion, it is a requirement that in covering articles on living persons, we put their privacy and dignity first and foremost above all other policies , even if this means we are removing information that is otherwise well sourced. Again, I point to the somewhat recent example of a "List of convicted pedophiles" which, while well sourced and passed WP:V, was determined as a major BLP violation simply because being listed like that can be damaging to a person. In this specific case in dealing with religion, caste, etc, we need to consider if the information has been readily offered by the person or otherwise readily available. Assuming the person is truly notable, I would not be surprised that if these facets of a person are important, they will be found in sources that are used to justify the person's notability. It is when we find one or two facets about a person that never have been mentioned in the mainstream sources and may be buried in less-reliable or local sources; just because we could use this source to say the person is of a certain religion, thus "filling out" a biography about the person, the BLP resolution directs us to consider if this really is something the person wants known or has chosen to move beyond that. It's difficult to write any hard rule towards this but we need to use common sense - when we come to aspects of a person that is based on how only they could classify themselves (such as religion), we should avoid adding such when this detail is not readily sourced. --MASEM (t) 15:03, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Qwyrxian, can you clarify please whether you are suggesting that my position regarding WMF resolution - e.g. regarding caste, "that human dignity and personal privacy be taken into account" within BLPs may be a legitimate reason to exclude such material when not directly relevant - may be a valid interpretation of the resolution, but you are advocating that in this case we should disregard the WMF? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:44, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
NickCT—you say "Things like caste/religion/ethnicity are inherently subjective and often open to debate". Are you referring to sources contradicting one another on these points? Or are you referring to Wikipedia editors debating among themselves? Bus stop (talk) 19:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Both cases I've seen exist. I've seen conflicting sources, and I've seen editors based on weak reliable sources try to debate these issues. Not common but sufficiently often enough that caution must be taken. --MASEM (t) 19:39, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Is labelling individuals by caste a violation of privacy?
If so, should we add this?
If not, should it be added to policy?
In answer to the two questions in the subject heading, and the obvious third, yes to 1, no to 2. It is in the opinion of many already covered, and as such there is no need to add anything about caste. 2 and 3 are mutually exclusive, and only one exists based on the answer to 1. Apteva (talk) 20:12, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
As with so many things on Wikipedia, the answer to #1 is... sometimes, sometimes not. Labeling individuals by caste can be a violation of privacy, but it isn't always a violation of privacy. The hard thing is to determine whether doing so will be a violation of privacy in a specific case. Blueboar (talk) 22:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
I've given my answers to most of these issues in the section before the last. So neither I, nor many others here (I guess), are interested in going round in circles. But I suggest that more weightage be given to commenters from India -- the culture to which this relates -- and to indologists or to people who've lived there (outside of the cities.) Because, by Blueboar's argument, to say that B._K._S._Iyengar is an Iyengar would be to violate his privacy.. I mean, for God's sake, you are talking about a country in which people attach the name of their Jati to their name and use it as their surname... however crazy it may sound to you.. Sreejiraj (talk) 16:09, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Is there any "racism"[27] in the sentence: "B.K.S. Iyengar was born into a poor Iyengar family [6] (a priestly Brahmin caste)[7] at Bellur, Kolar District,[8] Karnataka, India,"[28] found in the B. K. S. Iyengar article, which is the example provided by Sreejiraj? Bus stop (talk) 03:25, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure I see anything wrong with that particular passage. Saying someone was "born into a Iyengar family" is different from saying someone is Iyengar. Someone born into a catholic family isn't necessarily catholic. NickCT (talk) 15:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
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