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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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The best term to wrap up cities, towns, villages, etc.

I won't get into what's been happening with top-level U.S. state categories lately (as I don't want to treat this like a dispute), but I'd like to know what fellow Wikipedians think. Should we wrap up subcategories for cities, towns, villages, etc. into a top-level category for "settlements" or should we use something like "political subdivisions" or "administrative divisions". All of these connote certain things, but I just wanted to get others' opinions on this. Thanks! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Settlements seems to be the best word to wrap up cities, towns, villages, etc. into one category, in my opinion. Political subdivisions and administrative divisions would seem to include only those locations that are politically recognized and would include things like counties, states, provinces, etc. On the other hand, Settlements limits the subcategories to concentrations of people and excludes counties, states, provinces, etc.--Bobblehead 18:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
How about "populated areas"? User:Zoe|(talk) 23:58, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll go ahead and say what I think is optimal, although I don't want to stop others' ideas from flowing. I'm thinking "community" or perhaps even "polity" (although, that's kind of a flighty word). A city and a county can both be communities. What sounds less absurd, the Louisville community, or the Louisville settlement? With counties: the Jefferson County community, or the Jefferson County settlement? I'm going by connotations here, and community has a more authentic ring to it. Even "populated area" sounds more authentic than settlement when looking at it this way. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 00:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Counties are effectively communities, like cities are communities. Not all space in any of these entities are full of residential space ("human habitations"), but also include commercial and industrial zoning, as well as farmland and even much unused land in many cases. "Community" would apply to everything beneath a region level. I think that normally in the Wikipedia we go with more inclusive categories. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, not according to Community, which specifically excludes cities, let along anything higher from the definition of community. WP reflects the commonly understood meaning and use of the term. Also see Category:Community and Category:Communities Hmains 21:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, we need to find a better word than 'settlement'. That's the bottom line. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
How about "localities"? Admittedly, that could include other local administrative units such as counties, or unpopulated areas, but it might be better than "settlements" (which does have a whiff of the frontier about it, to my ears at least). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I like "localities." It's also used by DMOZ, where categories are the be-all and end-all of the project and therefore category naming issues get a great deal more attention. -- Visviva 04:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
"[T]he term 'locality' is used by the United States Board on Geographic Names to refer to the name of a place that is neither a legally incorporated or defined entity (like a township or city), nor a specific geographical feature such as a river or mountain." So there's that to contend with. Postdlf 05:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Postdlf, can you point me to where the U.S. Board on Geographic Names uses the term "locality"? I haven't been able to find it used anywhere on their site. They do use the term "locale", although I haven't come across a definition for it either. older ≠ wiser 13:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
That doesn't seem like a problem to me: I assume that the USBGN uses "locality" for that because there isn't any other, more specific name for such places. All places are localities, so if you have a place that isn't a town, city, river, mountain or whatever, you can just call it a "locality". Merriam-Webster defines "locality" as:
  1. the fact or condition of having a location in space or time
  2. a particular place, situation, or location
and the Compact OED gives:
  1. an area or neighbourhood
  2. the position or site of something
Does that satisfy our purposes? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:23, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I like 'localities' a lot. It's much more contemporary in usage than 'settlements' and it can include cities, towns, counties, neighborhoods, etc. Also, while the USBGN point is well-taken, I also accept the broader definition, and we shouldn't be US-centric anyway. As far as 'settlements' is concerned, that should apply to settlements in the vain of non-permanent locations where humans settled; in other words, it would largely have a historical bent. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 01:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Two thoughts. One, I'm not sure what the problem with "settlements" is. It does have connotations of smallness or non-modernness or colonialism, but the United Nations Human Settlements Programme [1] seems to subsume all sizes of human habitats within its scope. Second, the term "locality" does not very well cover large areas. It strikes me as decidely odd to consider places like New York City or London as a "locality". This applies to non-urban areas as well, where some levels of local government encompass large swaths of sparsely populated areas that often include widely separated and distinct communities within them. I don't think either term works well with such entities. older ≠ wiser 04:14, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
That's true, but I think that "locality" fits New York or London somewhat better than "settlement" does. I agree that neither word is perfect, but I think "locality" has less baggage than "settlement". —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I'm slightly inclined towards "settlements" as the more inclusive term for populated places and thus less poor-fitting for large urban areas like NYC or London. I think it fits less well for those rather arbitrarily defined geographic subdivisions that do not correspond to human population centers. OTOH, "locality", to me, fits both types of areas poorly for two reasons, 1) locality has the connotation of a human-scale point in space, larger-scale places seem rather out of place described as "localities"; 2) there is nothing inherent in the term "locality" that implies a populated place -- a locality could be a rock or a crossroads. older ≠ wiser 13:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not married to the term 'locality'. I just would like to see a term that's inclusive and doesn't carry the connotative baggage that 'settlement' does. Also, we don't have to necessarily combine populated localities (cities, villages, etc.) with geographic subdivisions (counties, metro areas, etc.) -- it's not a bad thing to have these separated. I look to the moment when Wikipedia decided on the somewhat sterile, but baggage-free category naming "People of...". I think we need to do this again with "Settlements of...", renaming to something like "Populated localities of...". Sure, there will be some huge populated localities, such as New York, but I don't think we should let a few exceptions constrain the guideline we come up with. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, both terms, settlement and locality, have aspects that make them problematic as catch-all terms. Perhaps what you're going for is "populated places" (which I think is somewhat more generic and less narrow than "populated locality"). Regarding your comment about not needing to combine populated locatities from geographic subdivisions -- the problem is that the distinction is not always very clear. In many states, Towns and Townships were created as geographic subdivisions of the County. These entities often cover large geographic areas and can encompass multiple distinct communities. However, at the other extreme, these entities can become indistinguishable from cities. There is no clear line distinguishing them. If some townships are categorized as populated places (or localities or whatever), they logically would all have to be classified as such, even though some townships cover hundreds of square miles and have an extremely low population density. older ≠ wiser 17:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
"Populated place" sounds workable. I don't know if it should matter whether a populated place has a particular density, as long as it's generally regarded as a populated place. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes baggage must be discarded for forward movement to happen. A quick google search of 'human settlement' seems to show that this 'is' a collective term for 'cities, towns, and the like'. Please check and also remember English dictionaries are not 'prescriptive', they are 'descriptive' and sometimes take time to catch up to actual usage. Thanks Hmains 02:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Check the archives for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities, as I think this topic has been discussed and decided there. (SEWilco 04:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC))
I don't believe that wikiprojects have the authority to make decisions for the entirety of Wikipedia. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
My mistake. Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) has been discussing names of populated locations. (SEWilco 05:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC))
I place a much higher weight on connotation, obviously, and I think others are seeing this argument too. I would hope that nobody would marry themselves to a specific term, as changing over to a new one can be simply accomplished by a bot. Just because a word is defined a certain way doesn't make it the best word for our use. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

For references, the United Nations Stastical Division uses "locality", which they define here and [2]. More details can be found in the actual Methodology documentation. --Polaron | Talk 06:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the Canadian practice has generally been to use "communities" as the general parent, and then to group specific types of communities in the appropriate subcategories ("cities", "towns", "townships", "villages", etc.) A "community" that isn't incorporated as a municipality in and of itself, but is instead nested within a larger "community", would be either left directly in "communities", or subcategorized as "communities in (appropriate census division)". Again, not that the US has to use the same categorization scheme, but I offer it as food for thought nonetheless. Bearcat 22:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think there is enough disagreement on the subject where it would be beneficial at some point in the near future to submit the entire range of "Settlements" categories for renaming consideration. I will offer "Populated places" as a suggestion, but the CfR participants will certainly be free (as always) to come up with their own ideas. Thanks everyone for your contribution to this discussion! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 20:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, I feel the term "communities" fits best. A "locality" is a place and need not even be populated. "Settlement" has a connotation of newness, possible impermanency, and typically refers to very tiny communities (smaller than a village or hamlet). Askari Mark (Talk) 23:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Attribution

Comments are requested on whether this page is still viable. Steve block Talk 15:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what kind of comments you're looking for. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Quality

Is there a guideline on quality? If not, shouldn't there be one saying that in a nutshell, edits should focus on quality, not churn out numerous edits? Simply south 22:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

You are welcome to write an essay on the subject and ask for opinions. --Ideogram 22:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Edits should focus on improving the encyclopaedia. An edit that does that is good; an edit that doesn't is not so good. Trebor 22:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Now, of course, all we have to agree on is the definition of improve... LessHeard vanU 00:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Definitely should be quality not quantity, but reverting vandalism should be both (for me, anyway). Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 00:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
This topic is somewhat discussed at Wikipedia:Editcountitis, but could be elaborated on significantly. As LessHeard vanU pointed out though, how do we define what is 'quality' and what isn't? Probably the biggest annoyance for me is editors who make twenty edits to a page within five minutes, because they either seem to feel that every single change deserves its own edit, or they refuse to look at the preview before saving their pages. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 00:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I sometimes make "twenty edits to a page within five minutes" but usually only when I feel that, for one reason or another, I need to explain every single change, no matter how minor, with an edit summary. Situations when I feel this is necessary include when the page is getting hot and dangerously close to an edit war and I want people to understand what I'm doing and why without cluttering up the talk page and want people to be able to revert the controversial changes I make without reverting the uncontroversial copyediting. Also, people often ask me to copyedit articles they've worked on. I like to make lots of minor edits then so that I can explain what I'm doing with each change and they can look at the edit summaries and not make the same grammatical errors again. Basically - I do that when I want people to understand what I'm doing and why. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Google hits as an arguing tool?

Is there any official or quasi-offical policy pertaining to this? It.. kind of annoys me when people use the equivalent of Googlefight to argue what name an article should take, or if an article passes notability. Similarly people like to talk about "Alexa rank", which I'm not familiar with. It might not be such a bad thing, but people seem to like using this as their sole argument as to why an article should change, stay the same, be deleted, or whatever. Errick 22:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. It is a very bad practice. Google hits may at best be used to gauge notability prima facie but never to make a comparison of two things and see which is more 'notable'. It probably can also be used in some cases to call a hoax or someone's bluff. But using it to establish notability is a strict no-no. Sarvagnya 22:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Recent discussion here. Essentially they're an indicator but in themselves meaningless. Alexa is an imperfect measure of the number of hits a site gets; it can indicate popularity but not notability. Trebor 22:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with the statement "It is a very bad practice". Sure Google hits have to be used parsimoniously, with care and certainly never as a sole judge. But there's no reason not to use them when you take the time to explain what you think they mean and why you think that data enlightens the debate. Pascal.Tesson 23:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Alexa is more than imperfect. It's terrible. First, if a site appeals to Mac users, you don't see it there. No Alexa toolbar for the mac that I am aware of. And the Alexa toolbar is basically what is now termed "spyware" and most people who know what they are doing with online security don't install it. So sites that appeal to more savvy and experienced Internet users simply don't get counted there, either! And there are some well known strategies for pumping your Alexa numbers that some people use very effectively for their sites. --BenBurch 23:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Google hits can be useful. They can be a very rough quantitative measure, but not qualitative. Google scholars, if used correctly and only for certain things, can also be used in a similar fashion.Atom 00:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Google search: "Kevin Federline" = 1,740,000 results
Google search: "Ralph Nader" = 1,170,000 results
Interesting. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Google test. Dragons flight 04:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Google Books, Google News (archives) and Google Scholar are useful, but you have to actually analyze the contents of what it returns. JChap2007 18:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Question about creating a corporate page.

Is is ok to create a history/corporate page on our company? The name is Clutterbusters!! it is a registered trademark--and the name itself has become synonymous with the service itself (professional organizing)--thus, people may be searching the words "Clutter buster" or "clutterbuster" in an effort to locate a page on professional organizing. I would put a link to the main "professional organizing" page, but the main purpose is to let people know that the term Clutterbuster is a trademarked name. Is that allowable? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rfein1 (talk • contribs) 18:30, February 1, 2007 (UTC).

Creating articles about your own company is generally frowned upon. See WP:CORP, WP:AUTO and WP:COI. If you want to note the trademark, you could just redirect it to the main page on professional organizing, with a note on that page about the name being trademarked. The talk page for that article is also a good place to discuss this. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
If your company actually meets WP:N, send me some information on it and I'll see if I can put together a small article stub on it. I see nothing wrong with most significant companies having a page. --BenBurch 22:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this page still useful?

I'd almost forgotten that this page existed, frankly. I've been working on tidying up the project namespace, and there's practically no help, and I only recently got linked here, to find people here busily chatting away about all kinds of trivial subjects, blithely unaware that -for instance-- Wikipedia:Consensus has been broken since almost forever, or that the whole policy/guideline/essay/howto/twiddlethumbs/other division is entirely unenlightening, and also broken besides (since pages get mis-marked all the time, and sometimes multiple times, when someone gets the urge to do another Great Re-Tagging).

So my questions are these. Is this page still useful for any real work? (Note that the real work takes digging in old pages, and using your nose to sniff out consensus from the dark little corners of the wiki.). And if so, who's up for it? :-) --Kim Bruning 08:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Sshhhh you're giving away all the secrets! Beam me up the link Kim ! This is the village pump we just come here to chat, you're expecting us to... work? Ugh. Wjhonson 08:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Make a personal list of useful and not-useful Wikipedia pages somewhere (not sure if this would be suitable for Wikipedia namespace instantly), and add your comments to them, or set up a collaborative area for people to winnow out the most useful pages. I've thought of doing this for a while, so I could have a set of notes to refer to to help me decide the best place to go to for help. Sometimes the categories organising the Wikipedia namespace are helpful. See Category:Wikipedia categories, or as that doesn't exist, try Category:Wikipedia administration (CategoryTree view) and Category:Wikipedia history (CategoryTree view), plus 'what links here' for {{Wikipedia category}} (less than 100 whatlinkshere hits at the moment. Carcharoth 08:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

One way in which this page is useful is as a pointer towards the places where actual discussion is going on. As an admin with a fairly peripheral involvement in policy discussions, I find it useful to drop in here from time to time for updates on possible policy changes. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I was wondering if it is against any Wikipedia policy, or more importantly, if it is illegal to mention, in a References in popular culture section some artistic works inspired by another (copyrighted) artistic work. In particular, this Mediation Cabal case on East of Eden has been brewing for nearly a month with only sporadic discussion (and no closure) occurring. East of Eden has been assessed as "Top Importance" by WikiProject Novels, which means it is "a 'core' topic for literature, or is highly notable to people other than students of literature" (from Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Assessment#Importance scale)

Even more specifically, there are certain songs, inspired by this book, that were included in the References in popular culture section that User:Catbird222 removes. Eventually someone else adds them back—I was the one to first do these reverts, providing references to back up that these songs were inspired by the book. However, Catbird222 believes these songs to be copyright infringements, and even further, he claims to actually own the copyrights (see User talk:Catbird222). Regardless, I believe mentioning these songs is acceptable under fair use (both the WP policy and the legal doctrine).

Catbird222 even uses the name of admin User:BradPatrick, though Brad claims in this (archived) Administrators' noticeboard discussion that the invocation of his name is unwarranted in this situation.

The three bold links above are areas where this has been discussed quite a bit. I am refraining from reverting Catbird222's edits until this matter is settled.

− Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

It is not illegal to mention any item whatsoever, in fact it's imperative. I command you to mention them! No but seriously, mentioning items is not in any way, shape or form copyright infringement. You are not copying an item, just because you name it. A name is not copyrightable unless of cource the name is the entirety of the work *and* is so extraordinarly unique that it represents a work of art (highly unlikely by the way). In other words, you're right, he's wrong, nah na nah na. Mentioning a song is not the *song*, its the song that is copyright, not its mention. Wjhonson 08:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Wjhonson has it almost exactly. Who on earth is this *** above, he clearly has no idea of copyright law or common practice. If what he implies "was" true, then the legal profession have been missing it for yearxs!. Just silly. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 09:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, if Catbird claims to own the rights to East of Eden, then by editing that article he is definitely in violation of WP:COI. If the mediation doesn't go anywhere, just move up the Dispute Resolution ladder. If he keeps up the way he's going, he's going to end up blocked by the ArbCom eventually.--Aervanath 09:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I own the rights to the word "the". I refuse to allow anyone to mention the word "the" ever again. Its' illegal! I mean it. *Puts on spider man pajamas* Wjhonson 09:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi. I was invited to weigh in on this. First of all, I would really like to encourage people to steer the conversation away from sarcasm and unkindness. We don't need to mock anybody, even if we disagree strongly with them, and nastiness is just going to inflame, not resolve, any real basis for the dispute. That said, we are absolutely not in the business of determining whether or not a song based on a character in a novel infringes on the copyright of that novel. Further, even if we knew that it did, for instance after a widely-discussed successful suit, it would remain a matter of editorial judgement on our part whether or not to mention the song in the article about the novel. Don't get me wrong -- I think that these "In popular culture" sections are usually trivial, badly written and that we should be sort of vaguely embarassed by our tendency to turn our "what links here" function into bullet-formatted text in the actual article. But it's an editorial decision, not one based on copyright issues. Jkelly 17:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Just my 2 cents: this reminds me of a similar situation where an editor tried to get all references and links to websites offerin "old time radio" recordings removed from Wikipedia, and in the process started removing links and information that were being used for the specific purposes of fulfilling WP:V. As I understand it, just because something based upon another work is alleged to violate a copyright, that does not disqualify it from inclusion in Wikipedia. It can be mentioned, and if notable enough an article can be created about it, nd if it is the subject of a copyright suit, etc., then that can also be mentioned in the appropriate place -- with proper attribution. Someone coming along and making the claim that such-and-such is a copyvio and must be removed -- when that item is simply being mentioned as factual information, in this case to illustrate cultural references to East of Eden -- is IMO in violation of WP:NPOV and probably other Wikipedia rules and unless, of course, the information being added can be proven as being false, WP:SNOW is also a factor. 23skidoo 21:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Goodbye.

Hi. This is probably going to be my last edit to wikipedia in a long while. Prior to now I've attempted to better the wiki in various ways, and I won't blow my own trumpet about all of them, just check my main-space contributions.

However, I'm now going to go on indefinite leave from the wiki, with no plans to return while it remains in the current state it is.

Over the past couple of months, I've experienced bullying from a couple of admins who appear genuinely well intentioned, but don't get that what they are doing is bad. They see things through the coloured lenses where disagreement is trolling, warning to remain civil is a personal attack, and everyone except them is edit warring and being disruptive. It's their way, or the highway. I came to their attention for disagreeing with their positions a few times, and thus earning accusations of ill intent and threat of blocks.

The problem, I think, is rooted in Editcountitis. Despite claims to the otherwise, Edit Count is still the primary decision maker in who gets to be an Admin. And what kind of editor has a large edit count? The kind of editor who edit wars over things to get their way. And of course, once appointed admin, they believe their behaviour has been vetted, so their way of doing things is 'the wikipedia way'.

Tag on the continuing belief of some admins that they are 'the best and brightest' of Wikipedia, and need special privileges such as private official IRC channels and a 'get out of jail free' card for personal attacks... And Wikipedia is going to end up turning into an isolationist and exclusionary club, and otherwise long term editors are going to drop out because of it.

I hope that this trend is reversed, that bullying is no longer accepted on wikipedia, that admin accept they are taking on responsibility not being awarded power. Till then, bye. The vast majority of you have all been fantastic and do a good job. But there's no longer a climate for me that I can edit without being bullied. --Barberio 23:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

If you've been having a problem with admin misbehavior, you'd be better off going through dispute resolution than making unactionably vague statements like that. Directly addressing a problem is the only way to correct it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Despite claims to the otherwise, Edit Count is still the primary decision maker in who gets to be an Admin. Wrong. The actual, hard data shows that above an edit count of around 3,000, additional edits make absolutely no difference in whether an RfA succeeds or fails (some argue that edit counts above 5,000 actually hurt a candidate; that too is not supported by the data). At 9 edits per day, it takes about 12 months to exceed 3,000 edits, so that figure hardly requires someone to obsess about racking up edits.
And what kind of editor has a large edit count? The kind of editor who edit wars over things to get their way. Absolutely wrong. The fastest way to rack up edits to post welcome notices on new user pages - and at least one candidate who specialized in that got rejected because the community felt that this was not a demonstration of admin qualities. The second fastest way is vandal patrol using a semi-automated tool.
Edit warring is a fast way to increase one's edits. That was his point and it's true. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.240.184.133 (talk) 04:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC).
Technically, yes, but only because any amount of editing, by its very nature, increases one's edit count. That's... just kind of how that works. Shocking, I know... EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
But posting welcome messages to rack up an edit count racks up a non-mainspace article edit counts; I always thought most people really only count edits in article space. On a side note, the "worst" way to rack up edits is to do newpage patrol; it's surprising the proportion of newly minted articles that violate speedy deletion policies. Finally, the only semi-automation tool that doesn't require an editcount is the popup feature; both AWB and VP require a few thousand mainspace edits before they let you sign up. ColourBurst 05:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
And of course, once appointed admin, they believe their behaviour has been vetted . Wrong again. Editors who have been involved in edit wars in the past six months rarely even bother to run for admin, knowing that admin candidates with such experiences are virtually always rejected by the community.
Please don't let the door hit you on your way out. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 04:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Well John, after the work you put in at WP:WQA that last comment is not exactly choking on its own civility... Barberio's bitter and feels that he was treated unjustly by some admins. Let's just take that information in, no need add to the fire. Pascal.Tesson 06:37, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, my request for adminship was rejected precisely because I have plenty of edits in article space - but not enough of my edits were in WP: space! I couldn't believe it! SteveBaker 12:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, article space edits are an indication of what your contributions are to the encyclopedia - WP: edits are an indication of how much you know about policy (but both are only really a rough guide). ColourBurst 14:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Barberio, if you choose to leave, that's your call...but I'd recommend taking the personal attacks off your user and user talk pages. --Milo H Minderbinder 13:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Requiring usernames

I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but why doesn't Wikipedia require people to register? I bet 90% of the vandalism on here comes from IP users, and if they were required to register before they edit it would stop a lot of that, and make many, many peoples' work a lot easier. Why don't they do this? It would still be an encyclopedia anybody could edit. --AW 23:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right, it's been mentioned so much before it's found its way onto our list of perennial proposals. Trebor 23:06, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. It's frustrating that the people there poo-poo it by saying "oh, this a perennial proposal." There's probably a good reason why it's a perennial proposal --AW 23:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but it's also a proposal that has been rejected on several occasions by the community. While consensus can change, on the proposals listed there it is pretty unlikely. Trebor 23:22, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
That sucks. It's extremely frustrating to always be reverting vandalism by anons and warning them. It makes me want to quit sometimes, it's sisyphean. --AW 23:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
90% of the vandalisms come from IP editors, but about 90% of IP edits are valid, so... catch 22. --Golbez 23:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Although I'm not a big fan of the idea of limiting editing to registered users, I'd like to point out that the above statistics are pretty much made up and that the debate will not really make sense until we get hard facts. What's a good estimate about the percentage of IP edits that are significantly helpful, helpful, not helpful but made in good faith and clearly unhelpful? A rough estimate would be quite easy to do using a random sample of this. What's a rough estimate of the percentage of vandalism due to IPs? I'm not sure we have an easy way of knowing and I encourage everybody to view numbers being thrown around in that regard with circumspection. What percentage of good edits from anons are actually edits by users that have an account but are simply not logged in? Again, it's pretty much impossible to compile the data. And what is the percentage of anonymous editors who would not bother create an account to make a positive edit? The fact is we don't know and until we do, the debate will just be an abstract one. Pascal.Tesson 01:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Yhere is Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies. Except that it's pretty inactive, though recently started; more editors are welcome to join and perhaps put it on a track that has more consensus. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 03:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I, too, was interested in the statistics a while back, so I did a short experiment. The results are here. Feel free to continue my work there if you wish. Obviously, placing an edit in one of the categories is subjective. However, I found that about half of IP edits were unhelpful and half were helpful. The majority of unhelpful edits were vandalism. The overwhelming majority of helpful edits by IPs were small and Wikignome-like. I find the oft-cited argument that IPs write the majority of our content hard to believe, especially now that IPs cannot create new articles. Thus, if we're to take a strictly utilitarian approach, requiring registration would seem to benefit Wikipedia, especially considering the heavy opportunity cost of devoting so much of our resources to reverting IP vandalism and spam, semi-protecting articles, blocking and unblocking IP addresses, dealing with open proxies, etc. Of course, there are those who believe registration is unwiki. ::shrug:: Gzkn 05:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Another thing that it is impossible to track are how many of those anonymous IP edits are just the first edits of a future registered user. If it weren't so easy to edit, how many of them would actually sign up to be editors? We don't actually know. Maybe it's none. Maybe it's quite a few. Meh. "Vandals, you can't live with 'em...pass the beer nuts."--Aervanath 09:05, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Opinions wanted at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest

There recently has been some reverting over Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, specifically changes from the previous wording "If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid editing articles related to you..." to "...you are strongly discouraged from avoid editing articles related to you..." and similar variations on that wording (most with grammar that isn't so bad). Personally I feel the proposed wordings have been more lenient and an unnecessary weakening of the guideline (particularly in light of recent events). New opinions would be welcome. --Milo H Minderbinder 17:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Sources

Hi, just a little question: can we use the English Wikipedia as a source for articles in other languages? I thought I had seen a page listing all the possible sources that could be used for Wikipedia, and the English Wikipedia was listed in the category wiki. Thanks in advance, Zouavman Le Zouave (Talk to me! • O)))) 10:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It really depends on the policy on the foreign-language Wikipedia. On the English Wikipedia, we don't like to use tertiary sources (see WP:SOURCE) for our articles. Since encyclopedias are tertiary sources, we do not generally use foreign-language Wikipedias as sources. Your Wikipedia may have a different policy, though. --Aervanath 08:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I have an image I'd like to scan and include in an article. The image appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1900, but the book where I found it reprinted was published in 1977. The image, being over 100 years old, should be out of copyright, but the book is clearly still in copyright. If I scan the picture from the book, which copyright status is applicable, that of the image, or that of the book? Acdixon 00:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

what country are you in?Geni 02:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Does what country Acdixon is in matter? This is the English language Wikipedia, which is physically located on American soil. Shouldn't only American copyright law be applicable? (Not to sound like an American imperialist or anything. :-) --Aervanath 05:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
generaly it is best to follow your local law as well as US law if the two differ.Geni 12:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
The image's original 1900 publication date will control. Once it's been published, the clock starts irrevocably ticking, and the book's author couldn't gain any new rights over the photo or extend its copyright duration by republishing it. The book's 1977 publication date will only be relevant to what was first published in that book. Postdlf 05:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
AFAIK (etc), the clock resets if the republishing contains any "creative element" but not if it is a static reproduction. So if the book changed the picture in some way a scan of the picture from the book would still be copyrighted by the publisher. SchmuckyTheCat 10:06, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
A scan of the picture from the 1977 edition would be copyrighted; a scan from the 1900 edition would not. IANAL. --Golbez 11:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
This is from Wikipedia:Public_domain#Derived_works_and_restorations_of_works_in_the_public_domain: "A work that is merely a "slavish copy", or even a restoration of an original public domain work is not subject to copyright protection." In this case, Acdixon, it sounds like your image is a "slavish copy", and therefore still in the public domain, regardless of the 1977 date, since I presume they haven't altered the image in any way. Just be careful to ONLY scan the picture from Harper's, and not include anything that the 1977 book may have added, i.e. captions, surrounding text, etc. --Aervanath 12:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, in my entry, there was a silent "if the 1977 edition changed it". --Golbez 12:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, if the 1977 printing of the photograph differed in some manner from the 1900 printing, and that difference was sufficiently creative to constitute a derivative copyright, then the copyright in that difference would date to 1977. For example, let's assume that the 1977 printing colorized the 1900 photograph, and that the coloration was independently copyrighted. The original black and white 1900 photograph would be public domain, but the color 1977 version would not be. One could then of course still scan the 1977 printing and remove the change by desaturating it. Postdlf 01:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to all for this great advice! It was extremely helpful. Acdixon 15:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Partially owned images on user pages

I am a contributor to and an editor of The Technique. In developing its wiki entry, I uploaded Image:The Technique 12-01-2006.jpg, and placed that image in a "gallery" on my userpage. Given that I therefore own partial copyright of the picture, do I have rights to use it on my userpage? Does it make any difference that the "use" in question is a thumbnail? See additional discussion on my talk page: User talk:Disavian#Fair use images aren't allowed in user pages. Thank you. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 01:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to understand that anything you contribute to Wikipedia should be under the GFDL. Your user page is GFDL. If you won't give permission for others to use the image freely, then don't add it to your user page, as your user page may well be moved to another Wiki, or other source. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
That's a weird one. Frankly, assuming you're one of the owners, it isn't a fair use at all-- it's the copyright holder using the image as he sees fit. We're picky about fair use, because we a) care at least somewhat about what happens downstream of our creations, and b) we don't want to get sued (for a use to be fair it has to be for a "fair use" purpose, and decoration of one's web page isn't ordinarily one). You're licensing it to yourself for your use here, so that solves problem b) and problem a) is weird, because user pages aren't part of the encyclopedia. So the policy issue is one of first impression.
When I say we care at least somewhat about what happens downstream, I mean that we do allow some content that isn't free, permanently. We like to have as much free as possible, because creating an unrestricted free source of information is one of our policy goals. We do allow restricted content-- e.g. fair use-- when necessary, because we sometimes need it to make this particular wiki useful, even if downstream users who have a different purpose might have to cull out some fair use images if their usage of the image wouldn't be "fair." There's currently a vigorous and occasionally bitter debate about whether we should go ahead and delete fair use content that could be replaced, or if we should wait until the replacement has been made or found before replacing it.
Personally, I'm in the "leave fair use content on the wiki until free replacements can be found" camp, because I see creation of Wikipedia as a useful entity as our primary goal, and the other issue as an important secondary goal. (I realize that not everyone holds that opinion, but that's where I stand.)
Your use may raise policy problems above and beyond the copyright law. Your use of the image on the newspaper's entry is fine-- perfect example of fair use. You as the owner of the image would be exempt from fair use requirements, so you can decorate whatever you want with the image. However, Wikipedia is hosting the image, and it's odd that only one Wikipedia editor is authorized to use it the way you're using it.
Are you sure you're the owner, though? Isn't the Technique itself the owner of its content and representations thereof? I don't think the managing editor of the Post owns the front page. If you're not the owner of the content, I don't think it matters that you actually made the image, any more than taking a screenshot from Heroes (TV series) conveys rights over the image to the photographer. I think we need to be sure of the answer to that before we even address the hard question. DCB4W 02:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
As an aside, I'm with you in the "wait until a replacement can be found" camp. Legally, the Editor in Chief holds the full copyright to the issue (and therefore, any derivatives). Therefore, I was planning to ask her to release rights to that image the next time I saw her. I consider my copyright over the picture to be somewhat limited, given that I'm only a contributing editor. Let me ask the hard questions, now that you know who technically owns the copyright:
  • If I was the Editor in Chief, would I be able to use the image on my userpage?
  • If I authored one of the articles on that image, would I be able to use the image on my userpage?
Given that information, we might be able to conclude on the final question:
  • If I helped create that image, even though I do not hold the primary copyright, would I be able to use the image on my userpage?
Hope that helps. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 05:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

FYI: My concern is how does Disavian prove he is a copyright owner? Without, isn't the entire discussion mute? Will (Talk - contribs) 06:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure. I was under the impression that the permissions account only handles GFDL releases, and I don't think that they'd want to release under GFDL. One could prove that one was the EiC for a newspaper by using the editor email account from their newspaper. ColourBurst 01:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
My concerns about this are that we Wikipedia users do not own their user space, it is a community resource. Use of copyrighted images on those pages would only be within fair use, even though it is not technically part of the encylopedia. The problem is there is not really any legitimate usage that would qualify as free use on user pages. (criticism of the artwork, artist style used in the image, review, parody) You, the copyright owner, could give rights for use of the image on Wikipedia, but Wikipedia requires you give unlimited usage rights (well on encyclopedic pages, but I am not sure about user pages). Use on your own user page is no different that use on any one elses user page, as it is a community resource, and not yours.
What do you mean when you ask "If I helped create that image, even though I do not hold the primary copyright"? If you created the image, then you are copyrighted at the time of creation (without formal filing). When you say "helped" does that mean you are co-copyright owner? Or does it mean you held the lights while someone else took the picture? Probably in either case, it can't be used on your user page, as it is copyrighted. And the copyright owner (whomever that is) has not given unlimited use rights to Wikipedia. If it is your creation, you could consider licensing the images under creative commons version 2. Atom 02:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The image has been removed, by the way. I think I've seen some pretty convincing arguments that I can't do it. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 02:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Does that mean you gave up trying to relicense the image? Everyone else, I think we need to continue this until the end so we know what to do with future images in this situations. When I saw that image, I was in a bind. I don't like binds. Clear? If there are some lawyers with experience in copyrights and related law in Wikipedia, we need to get them involved in this conversation. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Removing the thumbnail is easier than proving I have legal rights to the image, and I doubt that it will be licensed under a more free license as it would include the masthead, which AFAIK/have been told recently, is something newspapers (even smaller ones such as The Technique) are hesitant to share. However, I would still like to know the answer to the dilemma I proposed, you are correct. Rephrasing the underlying question: "If a user owns a copyright to an image, and the image is used under a fair use license on WP, does that user have rights to use it on their userpage?" And while we're on the subject, can they use it on their talk page? —Disavian (talk/contribs) 06:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

My understanding of the rule is that fair use images can't be used outside the main namespace at all. Durin told me this we can't even allow fair use images on the talk pages of articles and any templates out there -- even ones that will never be used outside articles. So I would expect User talk pages to be a no-no. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Q: "If a user owns a copyright to an image, and the image is used under a fair use license on WP, does that user have rights to use it on their userpage?"
A: No. a) Wikipedia does not allow Fair use outside of main namespace. b) Fair use is for criticism, review, or parody(short version) and using on your user page is probably not any of these. Atom 20:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Disavian, if you were able to get the Editor in Chief, or whoever owns the copyright (I think it would normally be the Publisher, not the Editor in Chief, although your Editor in Chief may be both) to agree to release the image under the GFDL, then there would be no problem with using it anywhere on Wikipedia.--Aervanath 21:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

explaining copyrights and WP:CV

What is the best article to link on when trying to explain about WP:CV to new editors? Soemthing nice, simple and concise (or at least, something they'll read so I don't have to summarize it all on their talk page). RJFJR 23:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think WP:Copyrights is your best bet.--Aervanath 19:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I have written a new essay

The essay I have written is called: Wikipedia:Essays are not policy. I have written in as an attempt to explain what essays are and are not, and how to respond to those who use them and you don't agree with the essay. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this one of a large number of essays that belong in a category I'd name Category:Wikipedia essays that automutilate because of circular reasoning. I'm serious about that category, we do have a large number of verbose essays, whose only reason for verbosity is hiding self-contradiction. Then I'd treat the essays in that category in the same way as trivia sections per the description at Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections#Guidance: the not self-contradictory contentions of such essays should probably be merged with existing guidance (if that isn't already the case...), the rest should be removed.
Applying that to Wikipedia:Essays are not policy: this essay shoots at its own argument: if essays are not policy, then this essay certainly isn't and its content can be neglected, a truism, a triviality that doesn't need a separate page. FYI, relations between policies, guidelines and essays are explained at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc. - if you want to change the approach explained there, there's always Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines to explain your arguments, which would be largely preferred over authoring a self-contradictory essay. --Francis Schonken 12:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh? How is it self contradictory? This isn't a guideline, nor is it a policy. It looks like an essay, it reads like an essay (opinionated, full of reasoning, etc) and... it is an essay! It makes suggestions, and never directs the reader to actually do something. It doesn't have broad community support, but is still needed by others. The link that you direct me to says a few words on the matter, but doesn't give an opinion on what to do if someone tries to browbeat you with an essay. You say the essay can be neglected, yet I don't in particularly intend to keep it neglected. Some people might find it useful. You call it a truism, yet it's not that obvious and I've seen more than a few people try to use essays as if they were policy. You may count the essay as a triviality, however I don't see it that way. If you watch people spouting essays at the drop of a hat on AFD to win their argument, you'd see why I thought it was important. So I don't think it's self-contradictory, and as you believe it to be opinionated, then it's perfectly fine to be in an essay, as that is what they are there for. As for explaining on a talk page - they get archived and are largely off the radar. I hardly think that talking there is going to get much action, or explain what I think in quite the way I'd like to. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm with Francis on this one. This essay duplicates the content of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc.. By the way, that's one of the problems with the multiple essays floating all around: many of them are re-hashing things which are already part of established policies and guidelines and as such they create confusion when they're trying to eliminate it. Pascal.Tesson 16:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
While I don't agree with Francis's characterization of the essay as self-contradictory, Pascal is correct that it is redundant. I'm guessing Ta bu shi da yu feels that people aren't paying attention to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc.?--Aervanath 19:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, for what it's worth, I thought the essay was well written and useful - when someone quotes an essay at you as justification for doing or not doing something, you can just respond WP:EANP. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 04:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
In that case, why not just make WP:EANP a re-direct to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc.? --Aervanath 06:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I was going to do this, until I realised that half my points weren't reflected in the policies and guidelines page. Nor should they be. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
P.S. Aervanath is correct. People aren't reading Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc., though that wasn't my sole motivation for writing it. What can I say? I'm a complex person. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

When an article is finished...

Can an article ever be considered complete, and if so, would restriction in editing be considered to ensure that an article doesn't reach a peak and then decline due to sneaky vandalism/sabotage etc? Of course if someone has something to add to a "completed" article, a suitabley ranked Wikipedian could be trusted to implement the addition. I just think it would be nice, once an article is decidedly finished, to not have to spend resources keeping it in good shape and to concentrate on something else. --Seans Potato Business 04:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Such a thing has been proposed by Jimbo, but the discussion on it is still ongoing, and it's certainly not implemented. --Golbez 05:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I would support the idea that, at some point, an article could have a "DONE" stamp placed on it (with a permanent lock, which would be removed by request: for example, if new information becomes available on the subject and the article needed updating). However, that is not the policy at the moment. It is sad that excellent articles, once they achieve a level of perfection where we can say they are "done", need constant monitoring to prevent vandalism, but that is the way things work right now. Blueboar 15:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Golbez, do you know where the discussion is taking place? --Seans Potato Business 20:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Even excellent articles can still be improved, and there would need to be some mechanism that was not overly burdensome for an editor to propose further improvements to a "done" article. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:25, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Reviewed article version and Article validation feature give some overview, although there isn't a lot of ongoing discussion at the moment. It's a MediaWiki feature currently in development, and the plan last I heard was to test it out on the German Wikipedia once it was ready to go live. If you're interested in this and other "behind-the-scenes" things, a good thing to do would be to join the mailing lists, where a lot of such discussion takes place. You'll probably also find more discussion if you dredge through the archives of some of the major lists, such as foundation-l, wikipedia-l, and wikiEN-l. --Slowking Man 20:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Also, Wikiproject on Article Verification was working on this, but I don't know how active they are anymore. --Aervanath 19:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

When can I call an idiot an idiot?

I understand the intent behind our policies NPA and CIVIL; we need to be able to discuss matters politely in order to work together. Unfortunately some people interpret those policies to mean that we must respect each other. Now, I am not the kind of person to give respect lightly; I believe respect has to be earned. It is also easy for me to be nice to someone who clearly respects me.

The problem is when I run into a user who is both arrogant and an idiot. There is no way to work with, or even communicate with, such a person; they are too dumb to know what they are talking about and too full of themselves to learn from their mistakes. Generally I give up all hope of interacting productively with such a person and take pleasure in pointing out their stupidity.

I can't simply pretend such people don't exist. And if I wanted to grit my teeth and play politics with them I could get paid a whole lot of money in a real job. Is there any hope for me in Wikipedia? --Ideogram 07:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, but not if you tell people that they're "idiots" (no matter how much pleasure you derive from belittling others). Instead, simply inform them that you've been unable to adequately communicate with them and don't care to continue trying. —David Levy 07:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Typically how I encounter such people is in the middle of a controversial argument that has already dragged on too long. I may be overestimating my abilities, but I sometimes feel that I can help focus the debate on important things by dismissing obviously stupid arguments before other participants get distracted by them.
I suppose I could simply shrug my shoulders and let those silly enough to get dragged into such arguments suffer. But for some reason I am irrationally attracted to conflict. --Ideogram 07:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Ideogram, you are falling into their most basic trap. Have you ever thought that the .......... (insert word of choice here) might enjoy making you angry? Silly people like silly arguments. Please don't let them drag you in. Have fun. andreasegde 10:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
take pleasure in pointing out their stupidity.' - ummm, not good. Reasoning with someone who is either not very smart or is very passionate about something to the point of extreme POV is generally unproductive; it's best just to say "I find that argument unpersuasive" and see if other editors agree. If it's just you and the other editor, then Wikipedia:Third opinion is useful; if it's an editor and his/her buddy(s), then an RfC is probably needed.
You might also take such situations as a challenge to try to pull something constructive from the other person's arguments. My sense is that editors feel agrieved when some argument or point of view is totally ignored in an article, and a sentence that says "claimed" or "critics have said" can appease them, without ruining the article.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, don't get caught in the trap of arguing over wording in an article like ("A and B mean that C often occurs"). That appears to be a logical statement that could be debated and resolved on a talk page; in fact, it's a statement that should be sourced like other controversial assertions and facts, and should not be defended on talk pages as "simply logical". Just keep saying "that needs to be sourced or it needs to be removed"; at some point they'll realize that you're not going to engage in a debate over the matter, and that they either have to put up or shut up. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:11, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Simple, never. Calling someone an idiot isn't civil, no matter how you spin it. Don't do it; you're still free to ignore him, though. Superm401 - Talk 20:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


With one's superior skills it is often easier to shrink a fool to the size of a cockroach and make him dance in a teaspoon. A neutral description of the other's rhetorical techniques is effective. Addressing other readers of your post rather than the fool directly may be more effective. And always coat your venom with honey. --Wetman 21:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Never, never, never call someone an idiot. It's about the most jabbing insult you can make on Wikipedia, and chances are high you'll have an extremely heated edit war on your hands. Don't do it. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 21:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for your replies. You have given me much to think about. --Ideogram 22:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I find the approach recommended in Romans 12:20 quite effective (even if one is not religious); one of Napoleon's dicta also is helpful. Raymond Arritt 20:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, Ideogram, you might want to think about this: Treating someone like they are an idiot is almost as bad as just calling them an idiot. While you may not respect someone, treating other people with respect, even if you don't feel that way, is more likely to earn the respect and cooperation of your fellow Wikipedia editors, which means we are more likely to take your opinion seriously in any discussion. Treating another editor with disrespect is the fastest way I know of lose a debate.--Aervanath 18:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:FAR and WP:GAR are the enemies of WP:The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit

Seriously. At the time of writing two articles that are having their GA status reviewed are The Beatles and Shakespeare; two of the most searched subjects on the internet! Two subjects that may well be the avenue by which a surfer will come into contact with this site... Well done, folks!! Anyone searching for these subjects will find that Wikipedia aren't sure that the article is actually any good. For those that look a little deeper, it appears that the efforts of new editors are detrimental to the standards that Wikipedia promotes. This may have the effect that new editors are discouraged, that the perception of Wikipedia is tarnished, and that the efforts of regular contributors are hindered by those editors who feel that style is everything and that content and context is irrelevant.

I agree that standards are good, and that the vast majority of articles are (or would be) improved by the strict application of same. It is just that a few are not, or perhaps more correctly are beyond the practice of academic due process. I like to call these articles "flagships", those topics that are likely to attract readers, excite interest in interacting within Wikipedia, encourage editing (no matter how clumsy) and generally bring people into the concept.

These few (very few!) should be exempt from the the usual visible checks and measures. Do not place templates on the talk page, recording the decline from FA class to GA to B grade, make WP:Peer review a condition before putting the article to review (to enable flaws to be addressed). Make it understood that a page that attracts possibly scores of edits, some from new editors or IP addresses, in a day is unlikely to ever be devoid of mistakes in both content or style.

It is in the nature of the beast, the popular article, the majority of it will be mostly right most of the time. An energetic article will constantly be updated, reviewed, corrected, tagged, cited, vandalised, reverted, rewritten, polished, split, added to, subtracted from and generally interacted with. Sometimes on a daily basis. To take an arbitary example of an article and say, "this is not to the standard by which it was once judged, and should have its status revoked" is stupid, pointless and insulting. It is made by editors who are (despite their commendable enthusiasm and diligence) stupid, rather pointless and liable to insult those contributors to major topics with their nitpicking and arrogant, superior attitudes. Perhaps my original premise was wrong; it is the editors who inhabit the FAR and GAR that are the enemy of the ethos of Wikipedia, in attempting to raise the standard they disavow the achievements and struggles of those who have spent time and effort in creating and expanding Wikipedia articles.


I suggest that the 20 (or perhaps 50) articles that aggregate the most edits (including vandalism, which suggest topicality and/or general familiarity if nothing else) over a year should be declared Flagship Articles, and not be subject to the petty referrals and overzealous Wiki policy police edits some other articles are subject. They should have an extra layer of protection from the misguided fools who prefer to concentrate on the placement of blank spaces before or after specific type of text, who will reduce a 10,000 character article into a question of consistency in the spelling of a couple of words. As in law, sometimes the argument that there is a case to answer needs to be made before the case is allowed to proceed.

If the flagship articles are not protected from the WikiZealots, then every FA or GA article will be arcane excercises in subjects that few will be engaged by and the very concept of The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit will be in trouble. LessHeard vanU 00:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

If anyone complains about the language I have used; this is the point I am making! You are avoiding the debate by concentrating about the style. Prove me wrong; show me that by removing marks of approval for an article is a good way of motivating editors and encouraging newcomers to contribute. Then make the argument that those articles which attract readers and ultimately new editors should be subject to that same process. Ignore the style and concentrate on the context! LessHeard vanU 01:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I strongly agree with every single point that LessHeard vanU has made, at this precise moment in time, I feel like making no further contributions. Vera, Chuck & Dave GM 03:40, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
LessHeard vanU's comments are to be applauded. So many editors (WikiZealots) look at a page, leave a comment about what is wrong (usually something they could have easily corrected in the time it took to write their comment) and then move on. Their grievances take up more time than vandals, whose destructive edits can be reverted. Style is to be commended, but actual content is something that these editors do not take part in. andreasegde 04:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Generally, when I personally suggest on a talk page that something is wrong instead of fixing it myself, it's because I'm seeking the opinion (or lack of it) of other editors working on a page before changing it. On a high traffic page this is a significant step in avoiding horribe edit wars and the likes where the current "residents" at an article may be defensive of the status quo. By discussing the problem, people can see why a change is needed and a consensus can be reached.

The article review and grading process is the only form of "quality control" that wikipedia has. It's also the only outward looking indication of the quality of an article, or for that matter, an inward looking indication to editors of what kind of work an article needs. The peer review process is merely a way of getting input from uninvolved and usually experienced editors as to what an articles faults are. The GAR and FAR are much the same, but also look at whether an article continues to meet the criteria for those levels of grading. Quite imply, if the criteria for FA or GA aren't met, then the article isn't FA or GA, and needs work to bring it back to that standard. The reviews offer advice on how to go about doing just that. Crimsone 09:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't take this badly, Crimsone, but you have just explained something to us that we already know. Changing something that is blatantly wrong, like spelling mistakes, hyphens, gaps in the text etc., are not for discussion. Just repair them. Editors spend a lot of time going back and forth on talk pages about the most minimal of stylistic things, when they could be putting in content. andreasegde 10:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I personally cannot see why the most-viewed articles should be devoid of quality control, and be awarded GA or FA status "for life". These are the test cf credibility through whitch most people will judge the seriousness of Wikipedia; they should all strive for excellency, even more than average. Not to have a mechanism ensuring that is not really the best way to go in my opinion.
However, there seems to be growing consensus about one thing: Prose quality. It seems to me that prose is definitely the very last of our problems. We want good, informative, reliable content, in huge quantities. The "professional standards" that are required to pass criterion 1a of FAC are just way too subjective, and, for reason's sake, we are not professionnals! I feel like many people who put a lot of energy in an article in order to get it to FAC are a bit disheartened when they meet the copyediting gang there, whose word is law. Maybe we could have another classification, like PP for Professional Prose, that would be distinct from FAC?--SidiLemine 11:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Some of the people commenting are professionals, actually. Featured articles are supposed to represent our best work, and prose is a factor in determining what is "best". Yes, prose is often the thing most overlooked, or left until everything else has been added, and that is why it is often raised at FAC. That's not to say that articles with worse prose are no good; it's just a reflection that FAs are meant to be the best of the best. Trebor 12:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

LessHeard vanU, could you please assume good faith? To call editors who are attempting to improve the encyclopaedia "stupid" and "rather pointless", and accuse them of having "nitpicking and arrogant, superior attitudes" is hardly being civil. Most articles which go through FAR and GAR are improved by the process, even if they are eventually demoted. Isn't that the most important thing, that the quality has been improved? Classifying articles into quality groups is useful and encouraging to editors who work hard on articles, but it is hardly the most important aspect of Wikipedia. And yes, when new editors come to FAs, most changes they make are not an improvement. While we shouldn't bite, we shouldn't allow them to degrade the quality either. Trebor 12:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Trebor (and others), the assumption of good faith is a possible archilles heel of Wikipedia. It limits discussion to a level of politeness where other people may not realise the passion that prompted a comment. I deliberately went against that in my comments, but only to demonstrate the strength of my feelings in the matter. I apologise to any person who feels personally targetted by my words. I do not apologise for using them to provoke a reaction.
In truth I think that those people who take the time and effort to review articles in both FAR and GAR are doing the best job that they are able, and their efforts should be applauded. I still maintain that the discipline rightfully demonstrated at those places sometimes works to the detriment of Wikipedia, in that articles may be too easily referred there; there could have been some notes on a talkpage, and that content and context are ignored for pretty minor infringements of style. I have seen articles passed with a cavaet, which is something I would encourage. Pass it (provisionally?) for content with comments about how it could be bettered in presentation.
The idea behind flagship article is that FA and GA status can be made irrelevant within days of passing. Major interest articles attract a great many edits, some malicious, some inept, some good but not to Wiki standards, and some fantastic. Those editors who adopt an article can be hard pressed just removing vandalism and poor contributions, rewriting and requesting citations, and may sometimes be overwhelmed. A flagship article is one where this is recognised, and the processes used for quality control are only applied after a good deal of consideration. It does not stop an article being reviewed, or make it easier to pass a nomination, it just perhaps does not allow a reflex fail/referall over matters that may make up a tiny fraction of the content.
In short, I believe that WP:TETACE has precedence over WP:FAR and WP:GAR and those who do (great) work over there should bear it in mind. Perhaps there is also an argument that a very small number of articles which attract a great many searches and edits should have an extra layer of protection of over zealous application of Wiki standards.LessHeard vanU 12:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Assume good faith doesn't limit conversation to politeness; WP:CIVIL does that. Good faith is acknowledging that even if you disagree with their actions, they are trying to improve the encyclopaedia. Insulting people, and generalising about their attitudes and motivation, doesn't make you point stronger; it's just more likely to get people's backs up. I'm still not sure what you want to change (or what WP:TETACE is); are you saying we should relax the quality requirements for articles that are more popular? Trebor 13:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
While WP:Civil certainly does moderate the language, assuming Good Faith possibly disallows a caustic appraisal of anothers efforts. This exchange, however, does illustrate my point that the discussion of the technicalities of the presentation can obscure the point that is being debated. Anyway, I apologised for the terms and tone used and explained that I was only shouting to elicit a greater response. FYI WP:TETACE is a conceit, just me not wishing to type out "The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit" every time. ;)
I would refer you to my last two paragraphs in my previous comment; not easier to pass but an acknowledgement that those processes may not always be appropriate for a very few articles in Wikipedia, and that another level of referral/review may be necessary before going to FAR/GAR. LessHeard vanU 13:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I totally didn't get the WP:TETACE bit. I'm not sure how another level of review would help really, apart from introducing more bureaucracy. Yes, the level of editing should be considered when making the review, but I don't think a whole new process is required. It would also bring new problems, when you try to consider which articles can be considered "flagship". Trebor 13:33, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
*Dan T.* below makes a very good criteria for Flagship status; the entry-point page which might be determined simply by hits. Mine was edits (which may more reflect zeal amongst fewer). If hits and edits can be counted try listing the top 100 of each, take all those which are in both listings and have the top 20 (or other arbitary quantity) made into Flagships. Amending policy for those so qualified would be the difficult task.
None of the above assumes you agree, of course; it is just how I see how it may be arrived at. LessHeard vanU 14:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, if you wanted to do it on page views, here is the list of the top 100 (a both amusing and depressing read). I still don't think there's a need to amend policy, just to bear it in mind when reviewing articles. Trebor 16:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, at least the lads are in there! This would be the passive list, I suppose. It may well be that the sex related articles, and the political ones perhaps, are semi protected anyway as they are obvious targets for vandalism. I wonder how many have even tried for GA/FA? Perhaps mixing that list with the most active in respect of edits may be interesting? As WP does not censor content, there is no reason why sex related articles cannot be classed as Flagship's . As I commented, maybe only a couple dozen articles might qualify under the discussed criteria. LessHeard vanU 17:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC) (I'm now going to the Sealand article to see why it is so popular!)
There isn't any WP:TETACE page when I just checked now. Some might argue that the most popular pages that people arrive at by search are the ones where it's most important that high standards be maintained, since they're the face we present to the world. Others might argue that consistency is a virtue, so we should strive to, as best we can, maintain the same standards throughout the site, in articles both popular and unpopular. So there is plenty of room for good faith disagreement with your assertion that standards should be made and enforced in a more "relaxed" manner on popular entry-point pages. *Dan T.* 13:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I would refer you to my reply to Trebor above re TETACE, and also

not easier to pass but an acknowledgement that those processes may not always be appropriate for a very few articles in Wikipedia, and that another level of referral/review may be necessary before going to FAR/GAR.

i.e. "semi protection" from reflex referral. Also the (provisional) passing of an article with cavaets, allowing an article which is otherwise FA/GA to get/keep the accolade while determining what needs to be done to ensure it is retained. "Entry-point page" is as valid a description of "Flagship Article" as is one which relies on edit count. LessHeard vanU 14:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The GA review of William Shakespeare is a mistake--it is a very good article and with a little work could be a featured article. The person who nominated the article for GA review was mistaken in his/her concerns, as evidenced by the fact that no one else has supported the removal. The article is also extremely stable and well referenced. While there is still room for improvement, any one whose first exposure to Wikipedia is the Shakespeare article is not getting a bum rush. I also agree with the previous comment about how too many editors pop onto a page, leave comments about what is wrong with the article, then don't stick around and actually help improve it. Shakespeare was on the Wikipedia:Article Creation and Improvement Drive a half year ago and even that wasn't enough to get other editors to pitch in and help. Anyway, this is a very good article which a core group of editors has worked on for a good while. Instead of bellyaching about how some high-profile articles should be better, how about actually helping to improve them?--Alabamaboy 15:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The above is an example of what could be avoided; if there had been an intermediate stage where it was discussed whether a Flagship article (which the above might qualify as) did indeed qualify for review, and what may needed to keep it from listing, then the above editors concerns may have been addressed and the article not sent to GAR. LessHeard vanU 16:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Uhm, the review is that intermediate stage where its status is questioned. Why should things have to go through another hoop just to see if it needs to be reviewed? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Alabamaboy is not of the opinion that it need have got to this stage (however, he may be a little peeved that no notice of the referral to GAR was given at the article talkpage; a matter of procedure for the folk at WP:GAR perhaps). In respect of the above article, the comments made at GAR make it clear that the matters raised in the referral are to do with vandal reversions and one contentious inclusion that was from a Wikipedia source. An intermediate review may have discovered this before listing. LessHeard vanU 19:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Wow. Setting a double standard like this will only deterioate the quality of the encyclopedia; this will encourage people to vandalize and do other crap to the article so it can hit the "top 100" most edited/viewed article and thus be "exempt" from having to mantain a certain standard of quality. The fact that all articles are subject to the same policies is what keeps the quality of the encyclopedia from going down. There are no exceptions. Many Featured articles promoted in 2003 and 2004 do not have any in-line citations and are generally of poor quality. It hurts Wikipedia more to say that Ridge Route is of the same quality that V for Vendetta (film) is when the former is clearly worse than the latter. Besides that, most readers do not visit the talk page, and the only indication of an FA is a little icon on the upper-right hand side of the screen. The GA logo was obliterated awhile back due to a lack of strong, formal procedure for GAs (anybody can promote GAs; FAs have to go through WP:FAC). My trust of the article comes if it has an accurate in-line citation or not, not whether it has been promoted to FA status or the rather arbitrary GA status. Hbdragon88 00:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Here we go again... At most I am suggesting that a very, very few articles should be reviewed in the knowledge that a great deal of the deficiencies found at any one time are the result of many recent edits, and that the core of editors who have adopted the article will remove or improve them shortly. The same logic would be applied to the same articles that should they pass that they are likely to be edited from that standard (and back again) within a few days. It happens. Popular articles attract the good, the bad and the ugly every single day. In these instances only long standing problems need be addressed. This is not, however, how FAR/GAR works presently.
My proposed solution would to be to quantify the very few (less than 100, more than 19 is my thinking) articles as Flagship Articles which can be dealt with in one and/or two ways; firstly, a 'preview' of whether the problems are of sufficient seriousness to put to full review (after speaking to editors involved in the article), semi protecting them from kneejerk referral. Flagship Articles which are still considered to qualify for review should be treated the same as any other. Secondly, I have also suggested that any article (not just Flagship) can be passed (possibly provisionally) with a caveat that requires identified weaknesses (not sufficient of themselves individually for failure) to be addressed. This would mean less articles fail review, but the standards are maintained.
I have not pursued my suggestions that templates detailing the failure to obtain/keep accolades for such articles should be hidden or not promoted. It would create unnecessary work. I adhere to my original comment that the fine work by those in FAR and GAR does seem to work against the ethos of The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit. Nobody has even hinted that there is a decent counter argument. LessHeard vanU 00:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I think this list is pretty interesting. It shows what our readers are really looking for. --Ideogram 02:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, I had already peeked at the list provided by Ideogram... It doesn't really matter which subjects fell within the criteria as I am not looking to "protect" any one individual article, but how Wikipedia is perceived by readers, anonymous and new editors.
The predominance of articles of a sexual nature in the list perhaps illustrates my case quite well. How many of them are included as core topics? Of more interest is if Breasts and Sexual Positions are in the 1182 vital articles? As Wikipedia is not censored they should appear there, as they are obviously a major Entry Level Topic for a great many readers (unless number of hits does not count toward the criteria!). I would also suggest that they are also frequently the target of vandalism; some of it juvenile but also some of it malicious/POV orientated. Perhaps these would then qualify for Flagship Status, with an expectation that they should be part of a promotion drive to get them to GA status? I suspect that currently they are subject to repeated vandalism (if not semi-protected), have a small (dedicated, I also suspect) team of editors who try to maintain a minimal degree of encyclopedic standard and really could do with not having other members of the Wikicommunity reminding them of the required presentation of citations and the use of the em-dash rather than the en-dash.
If the sex orientated subjects do not appear in the Core Topics then the criteria needs looking at. That the Beatles aren't included also indicates that the Core topics criteria is not based around relevance to the Wiki reader, and I would then question the point of them (I simply don't what they are or how they made the grade; I may well be persuaded if I knew the facts). Since we are discussing the awarding and removing of grades which directly impinges of the readers experience of Wikipedia then it may even be irrelevant. The other manner of attempting to find relevance would be the quantity of edits, again over an extended period. Some articles must have cycles of edits, as the subject matter gains and loses exposure in the media, and some may have a brief spell as a hot topic before reverting to the usual number of edits. Some subjects like The Beatles and Shakespeare have either a regular level of frequency of edits or (as the Shakespeare editor commented) a regular cycle. In these cases the level of edits may not decline simply because the article reaches a Wiki defined standard, or falls from that standing. They are going to be frequentley edited consistently because that is the nature of the subject, many people think that there is information that needs including (or removing) or could be said better.
If an aggregate of most viewed and most edited articles ultimately does not include either the Beatles and Shakespeare then so be it. It simply means that there another 20 or 99 articles that might require a further level of referral and debate before taking to FAR/GAR. I think this would be of benefit to Wikipedia. LessHeard vanU 17:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the most viewed articles should be the ones that are held to the highest standards. What would tarnish the image of Wikipedia is if these frequently-viewed articles were reviewed less stringently than others. Having more people viewing an article does mean more checks and balances, but it also means more vandalism, more well-meaning but ultimately harmful edits, and more small edits adding pieces of useful information that are nonetheless not well cited or well integrated into the article. You only have to look at articles that have had their day on the front page to see that scrutiny by the masses is a double-edged sword. There is a reason why featured articles tend to arrive at that state because of the devoted hard work of a small number of contributors. "Flagship" articles need extra vigilance, not less. MLilburne 21:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry but it just seems silly to suggest that GAR or FAR are "petty referrals". Also, I fail to understand what sort of catastrophic repercussions you think GAR can have on new editors. Let's see: new editor looks up the Beatles entry. New editor is so fascinated that he reads the talk page, finds the article is under Good article review and thinks "that's odd, I thought the article was really good." And if we're to believe your concerns new editor now thinks "jeez, I'm not going to participate in this project because the standards of quality are way too high". Come on... If anything, ensuring quality articles is going to bring us more quality editors. Wikipedia had the early reputation of a great place to find unreferenced, poorly organized and poorly written piles of info. Thanks in part to the GA and FA processes, it's emerging as a real alternative to paper and other commercial encyclopedias. I don't see how anything is to be gained by hiding these. Pascal.Tesson 22:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that FAR and GAR should not be conflated. GA has mimiced, in weaker form, every FA process, but they have little to do with each other. I personally think GA is a rubberstamp process with serious problems in terms of throughput structure. FAR is a month-long content improvement process. It's greatly aided a number of articles. Marskell 14:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I am unable to determine users MLilburne and Pascal.Tesson stance in this matter. Both appear to be arguing for both sides of the debate at various points. I would also mention that I am not interested in the precedence of the review processes of FA or GA, both of whom provide a hugely useful function within Wikipedia (IMO).LessHeard vanU 22:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

My point was, and remains, that the application of both GA and FA and their (different) processes run contrary to the ethos of The Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit, in that the good faith contributions by editors are liable for removal and amendment against standards of which the new and/or careless editor is not aware. My suggestion is that Wikipedia may be better served by having a very few of the most popular and thus edited articles have a further level of debate where editors expressing a view that a review may be necessary can discuss this on the article talkpage which would include said naive editors (who may become dismayed and demoralised should they believe that their contributions were the reason for referral - at the very least they can be reassured) before beginning such processes if then deemed necessary. These articles may be termed Flagships. As an aside, I also supported the option of deeming articles a pass with a caveat regarding some easily corrected matter which would have otherwise failed.

I realise now by the opinions expressed here that my viewpoint and proposals are not going to gain sufficient backing to take any further, and that the status quo remains regarded as the best or least worst option. I would like to thank everybody who took part in this, and the civil manner in which it was conducted (as opposed to the intemperate manner in which it was introduced!) I now withdraw this policy discussion point, although I will attempt to answer any queries arising. Thank you. LessHeard vanU 22:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Eh, so does WP:OWN, WP:VAND, WP:NPOV, and a host of other policies that are designed to ensure a high quality encyclopedia (all those policies do limit the types of edits you make to the encyclopedia as well). Are you saying we abolish those too? Those seem to run counter to the phrase "The Encyclopedia that everyone can edit" as well. I mean, we should be welcoming (that's why we have guidelines like WP:BITE), but we can't be so welcoming that we sacrifice encyclopedia quality as a result. What we should do is encourage people to come to consensus, that's why we discuss changes to articles. ColourBurst 23:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
By the way, just to make it perfectly clear and since LessHeard seems to have some doubts: I think that the proposal was a bad idea and I think ColourBurst is right on the money: Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia that anyone who can make an article better can edit. Pascal.Tesson 00:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, this seems to me to be much ado about nothing. It is basically a proposal to exempt the most popular articles from any editing standards whatsoever for fear it might hurt the feelings of potential editors who might be challenged in their self-esteem. Perhaps vandalism shouldn’t be reverted on these “Flagship” articles, and deletion of anything from the article should be banned? In any case, as proposed, it appears that for “Flagship” articles, “most popular” is defined in terms of general internet searches instead of the articles that are actually most checked out on Wikipedia itself.
Anybody can edit Wikipedia. That doesn’t mean everyone should — or should even want to. As one of Wikipedia’s Five Pillars states, “Wikipedia is free content that anyone may edit…. Recognize that articles can be changed by anyone and no individual controls any specific article; therefore, any writing you contribute can be mercilessly edited and redistributed at will by the community.”
ColourBurst and Pascal.Tesson have the right of it: Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia that anyone who wants to make an article better can edit. Wikipedia does have standards. The most fundamental of them is laid out in Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset: “The primary objective of Wikipedia is to produce a high-quality encyclopedia, and most pages are encyclopedia articles.” Wikipedia:Introduction elaborates, “Find something that can be improved, whether content, grammar or formatting, and make it better. You can't break Wikipedia. Anything can be fixed or improved later. So go ahead, edit an article and help make Wikipedia the best information source on the Internet!”
WP:FAR and WP:GAR aren’t the enemies of this goal; they are recognitions of the accomplishments of many Wikipedia editors working together and who cared enough to make the grade with a given article. However, unlike printed encyclopedias, no article in Wikipedia is ever “finished.” Piecemeal editing will eventually degrade the quality over time ... unless editors remain willing to and interested in maintaining that standard.
If you really want to alleviate a lot of frustration for editors of all degrees of experience, there are two more practical things we can do. First, when you revert or change someone else’s work (as opposed to obvious vandalism), take the time to add a decent edit summary. It’s part of being civil and it’s also a good way to educate newcomers. As for GARs and FARs and peer reviews and so forth, if you can’t be bothered to make useful and constructive criticisms, don’t bother to critique the article in the first place. And if you’re so thin-skinned that you can’t handle constructive criticism, then you really shouldn’t be a Wikipedia editor in the first place. -- Askari Mark (Talk) 04:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I am getting bored with pointing out that I do not a) wish to abolish FAR or GAR, b)change or dilute the work that goes on there, and/or c) make any article exempt. If you want to know what I do propose then read my comments above.
re

Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia that anyone who can make an article better can edit...

That isn't what is said on the front page.
I assume, in good faith that the comments in the preceeding comment were not specifically refering to me, since my edit comments have often been a source of wisdom and amusement... LessHeard vanU 13:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Personal? No way! I only chew on my old friends, not my new ones. :P Rather, I was (facetiously) addressing your "deeper issue", to wit:

Anyone searching for these subjects will find that Wikipedia aren't sure that the article is actually any good. For those that look a little deeper, it appears that the efforts of new editors are detrimental to the standards that Wikipedia promotes. This may have the effect that new editors are discouraged, that the perception of Wikipedia is tarnished, and that the efforts of regular contributors are hindered by those editors who feel that style is everything and that content and context is irrelevant.

The fact that front page doesn't say precisely "Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia that anyone who can make an article better can edit" doesn't mean that it isn't a truer rendering of Wikipedia's "pillar" statement; maybe the main page should be corrected. Wikipedia is, by design, darwinistic. For every new editor who gets discouraged about changes to their work, there's an older editor who gets discouraged of doing cleanup and vandalism reversion. In the end it balances out. It's not about our individual editing skills or specific contributions, but rather about what comes of all this collaboration over time ... and to measure that, one needs standards, not sandboxes. IMHO. Askari Mark (Talk) 00:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, WP:TETACE is a truer rendering, since it is literally true. Although, actually, it's more like: "Wikipedia: The Encyclopedia That Anyone Who Has Not Already Been Blocked For Being A Dick Can Edit". Thank you.--Aervanath 18:17, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Bless WP:GAR, bless WP:FAR, bless Wikipedia, and bless WP:IAR. Goodnight! LessHeard vanU 23:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC) (bless)

replacementdocs has tons of game documentation for all kinds of computers and consoles from the past 30 years. So I thought it would be worth sharing that site with Wikipedia visitors by adding an External Link under various classic computer and console articles to the associated file section at replacementdocs.

My thought was that this fit in line with many of the other External Links on the pages of these articles. For example, there is a External Link to the appropriate section of AtariAge on virtually all of the Atari articles (Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari Jaguar, etc).

As I was posting these links, User:Luna Santin blocked my IP and reverted my edits claiming it was spam. I make the argument that there is a lot of useful information on that site, and that some people wouldn't even know that an archive like that existed if it weren't linked from these general computer/console articles.

Any other opinions on the matter? Casimps1 21:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The companies still own the copyright on the manuals, so it's probably a violation of WP:EL. Sorry, but there's no way WP can link to that kind of site. ColourBurst 01:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Casimps - you neglected to mention (as you were told on your talk page) that User:Luna Santin posted several times to User talk:66.192.94.185, the IP you were using, about the problem - and that anonymous account never responded. At minimum you should have mentioned that here, and acknowledged your mistake, or you should not have mentioned Luna Santin at all. When you omit information, actions by other editors may appear to be unjustified when in fact they are not.
As for replacementdocs.com, the matter of legality may be a bit more nuanced than ColourBurst indicates, per this FAQ item; the site asserts that it does have permission from some publishers to have their manuals downloaded. Perhaps a note to the site owners saying that it would be helpful if such manuals were specifically identified? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Regarding the notes from Luna, I didn't mention them because the 3 times I was "contacted" were 3 User talk messages in the time frame of 6 minutes while I was in the process of editing documents. They weren't being ignored, I simply didn't see them. Add to that I had never so much as heard of a "User talk" page or how it worked. I admit my ignorance in Wikipedia's policy and workflow in general, but I only had good intentions when I added the single targeted link to each of a dozen or so articles, so I felt it absurd to apologize for attempting to enhance an encyclopedia based on user contributions.
Regarding the links, I feel that the copyright issue is even more of a gray area than either of you mention. First of all, replacementdocs only hosts game documentation, not the games themselves. This could fall under fair-use because the manual is a relatively insubstantial part of the total product (the game itself). Of course, this hasn't been proven in court yet, but the argument could definitely be made. Additionally, copyright law dictates that instructions cannot be copyrighted. Although the manuals encompass the instructions as well as the layout thereof and artwork, this still seems to be another argument for the site's validity.
But if everyone agrees that the copyright issue still makes replacementdocs a no-deal, then I believe that probably all links to AtariAge would have to be removed as well. There are links to AtariAge from virtually every article for an Atari console. They likewise host scans of copyrighted manuals.Casimps1 13:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like something that should be taken up over at WP:COPYVIO.--Aervanath 18:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Sysops doing username changes?

This is something I've been wondering for a little while, which was brought to the forefront of my mind by a recent RfB, and I haven't been able to find an answer to it yet: Why are username changes a bureaucrat function, and not a sysop function? I know admins already have too much to do, but bureaucrats are sysops too, and it seems to me that if sysops are trusted with everything they are already at this point, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do username changes as well without an additional level of access. (Admin promotions and bot flagging are different matters in my mind.) I don't believe there's any harm to doing this unless there's a good technical reason why it's bureaucrat-only. I could see it being a small help. (Admin blocks user for username, blocked user requests different name, admin handles it on the spot.) There's probably a good reason why it's a bureaucrat function, but can someone tell me what that is? Grandmasterka 08:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Probably to avoid people changing their own names, or changing names for any sockpuppets they might have (legal or otherwise). Also, changing usernames to usurp another username is tricky - lots needs to be thought about carefully. I'd prefer this sort of things to remain at a level above admin level. Carcharoth 08:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough, but we can already do things with a great potential for abuse (blocking and unblocking) and things that are tricky and hard to reverse (merging page histories is the best example I can come up with.) Plus we have renaming logs so if someone wanted to rename their sockpuppet it would become obvious I think... Grandmasterka 08:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:Citations missing

I've expressed my concerns about a recent expansion to this template on the talk page. I went over to WP:RFC, but it looks like those are for articles. I'm posting here in hopes that some others can comment on the expansion. BuddingJournalist 04:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I will comment on the template's talk page to keep the discussion together. CMummert · talk 05:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, sorry. I should have been clearer in that I was hoping other editors would visit the talk page to comment, not here. BuddingJournalist 05:15, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

So, can a photoshop of a copyrighted picture really be released into public domain? It doesn't seem like that's right. Milto LOL pia 02:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

No it can't be however we don't know if the person made it from scratch.Geni 03:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, the image page says it is. Milto LOL pia 03:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
What makes you think that image wasn't actually created from scratch? You must have some reason beyond what is written on the image page, right? CMummert · talk 03:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
You're kidding, right? The image uploader uploaded it with that description, saying he photoshopped it himself. Milto LOL pia 03:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
It is posibel to draw from scratch in photoshop and it would be a fairly good way to make than glow effect athough there are others.Geni 03:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
If the person doing the uploading actually created the image then they are free to release it to the public domain. I thought the original comment was implying the uploader did not create the image. CMummert · talk 03:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
you are assumeing the word photoshop is being used in a certian way. we have no reason to make that assumption at the present time. WP:AGF and all that. Geni 03:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed - photoshop can be used as a drawing tool, and zooming in on this picture (in Opera) shows that it is too regular to have come from a photograph. As far as I can tell the claim of original creation is legit and there is not a copyright issue. CMummert · talk 03:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Not that I'm up on copyright law, but isn't a picture that is substantially similar to a copyrighted image, in violation? It doesn't matter how the image is created, only what it looks like. -Freekee 04:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Unless there is a particular copyrighted blue lightsaber image that this lightsaber image is supposed to be a copy of, we have no reason to think the image in question here violates copyright. The simplicity of the image makes this quite unlikely. CMummert · talk 13:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
The image in question is a public domain creation of a copyrighted concept. There's no intersection between the two, especially since it is impossible to claim damages from its use (as opposed to, say, me creating an image of a Coca-Cola can, where an argument could be made that the brand was being diluted by the image). EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Hall of Fame

Hall of Fame

I request everyone's input regarding this idea, to create a hall of fame to celebrate the editors who've made lasting, non-revertable contribution to the Wikipedia project and deserve some permanent form of recognition, which may serve as an inspiration to the growing community of newer editors. Rama's arrow 18:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the divisiveness of an editor popularity contest would outweigh any benefit of recognition. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I can promise my feelings would be hurt if I were not inducted, or I'd just dismiss everyone who didn't appreciate my contributions as idiots (maybe both at once). If I were inducted, I'd expect everyone to take me more seriously, by giving more weight to my opinions and editorial decisions. I'll leave it to my adoring public to decide how much I am only being facetious...
But I think the worst result of this would be inevitable abuse by the obsessive agenda pushers we see on here across a variety of subjects and issues...or that people who are interested in certain controversial subjects would be seen as such even if their contributions were good faith attempts at NPOV.
I nevertheless commend Rama's arrow for having his heart in the right place; in a perfect world (i.e., a Wikipedia sans assholes), it would be a great idea. I'd encourage him (or anyone else) to personally tell contributors that he admires them and appreciates what they've accomplished. That can do more than institutional, procedural recognition. Postdlf 18:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Not only the divisiveness, but also the disparity between this and building an encyclopaedia. Could time spent deciding who our best editors are not be better spent working on articles? I think it's great to recognise editors' work and commend them for it, but there's no need to create a formal process; a personal message is just as effective. Trebor 18:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Concur with everyone: great idea in theory but probably too problematic to set up. It's not too hard to imagine the whole thing turning into one big mess with debates like "that achievement, while very nice is nowhere near as important as that other achievement". Pascal.Tesson 22:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. We really don't want to further distract editors from the process of creating an encyclopaedia - particularly in a way that could lead to a maliciously competitive environment. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 07:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

We already have this mechanism, actually. If you think an editor is doing a good job, just give them a Barn Star. It's that simple.--Aervanath 07:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Food and drinks guidelines proposed

Can anyone chime in at the discussion over at User:ShakespeareFan00/Food_and_Drink_Notability_Guidelines, especially on the talk page there? Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 16:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorization of pilgrimmage routes

Category:Pilgrim route was for all pilgrimmage routes, but recently someone took the Way of St. James out of this category because they claimed it only applied to pilgrimmage routes in Norway. This sounds a bit strange to me. Comments?--Filll 04:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I think they meant it only applies to a specific route in Norway named the "Pilgrim's Route" although that isn't specified on the category page at Category:Pilgrim route. - Foxhill 04:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

What group is responsible for these decisions?--Filll 05:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It should be discussed on the article talk page, as well as possibly the Category talk page. --Aervanath 04:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

problems with WP:COI

I believe there are many problems with the current COI page, the most salient one being ambiguity (the page states both that editors with a COI should and should not edit), and a second being that the description as consensus seems rather debatable (I and may other editors have allowed, even encouraged, editors affiliated with their corporations, to engage in constructive editing.) Can we begin a discussion on this at the COI page? I have attempted to begin one, but three editors have refused to engage in substantive discussion (their essential point being that the consensus is settled and the matter's final.)

I encourage editors with opinions on the matter to begin a discussion on the WP:COI talk page. Sdedeo (tips) 05:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Article size

I understand that there is a policy on WP to keep article sizes under 40kb. I request that this limit be increased in special cases like articles about countries. I say this because, articles about countries need to cover a wide gamut of issues (geography,history, politics, ethnicities, cuisine, architecture etc etc etc). Long list actually. And each of these subtopics is worth its own dedicated fork.

So following 'summary style' becomes very difficult especially when new content and information keeps getting added. It is also leading to futile edit wars with reams and reams of futile discussion on talk pages. India for example, is facing this issue at the moment with a relatively new user, reverting content at sight and then hiding behind spurious 'article size' compulsions when others demand an explanation for his reverts.

So my suggestion is that article size be wedded to say, the number of forks that an article has. I would rather an article run into hundreds of kilobytes than the discussion page.

If this is not possible, I feel we should simply lock an article forever once it reaches its size limit or gets featured status. That way, new editors to wp will be spared the pain of adding content in good faith to an article only for it to get blanked out because the article has gone 1 KB over the limit. Sarvagnya 17:46, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it is a policy... just an ideal. Obviously, some topics will take more space to properly discuss than other. However, we do want to keep articles to a resonable size if we can. If the article is getting overly long, information should be split off into logical sub-pages and simply summarized in the main article (with a clear and obvious link to the sub-page). But the key word in that is logical... the split has to make sense. It is not an invitation to POV fork or hide information you don't like. Blueboar 19:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
There is no fixed size limit; but obscure or specialized information should go to subarticles, not just be reverted. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
As Blueboar says, this is not a policy. Country pages typically have separate articles for those topics you mentioned. For example,
India, Geography of India, History of India, Politics of India, Economy of India, Culture of India
Within the main article (in the case of my example, India), the important issues should be covered (in India's geography section, there should be mention of major features such as the Himalayas), but then less obvious details (such as the Vindhya range) should be left to the separate articles. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 05:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

User Talk Page

What is policy regarding deletion of comments in a persons userpage talk space. I was under the impression that you should only ever archive old comments, and deletion was, if not disallowed, heavily frowned on. An anonymous user User talk:203.87.64.214, repeatidly deletes all the comments on his page. Including comments made by me in a current dispute. Several editors have told him that you shouldn't delete comments on a talk page (though only one was regarding his own talk page) and I believe the intention is to make it appear on first glances that he's just a newbie even though by his edit history he's been here since February. Or make it appear that he's never been involved in a conflict of interests. Jacobshaven3 11:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that deletion is frowned upon, but on a user page is not quite a blocking-level offense. You can, of course, revert his deletions.--Anthony.bradbury 12:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if it is acceptable to retrospectively, from the talk page history, construct a chronological listing of the posts made to a talk page, then post that to an archive subpage. Even if that is later blanked, the actual chronology will be more easily visible in the page history of that archive subpage, rather than someone having to wade through lots of blankings and disconnects between comments. You would still record each blanking of the talk page with a little note, like "this section blanked on 2 January 2007 at 02:45 UTC by...". Then the pattern of behaviour is far more obvious, and people can judge - oh, that blanking was of a vandal's comments, and this blanking was of an over-zealous admin, and this appear to be a bad-faith blanking of a reasonable comment that seems to have been ignored, and so on. Not a scarlet letter, but more making it easier to actually see what has been happening in cases like this. Of course, you'd have to trust the person reconstructing this 'single-view' history of the talk page. Carcharoth 12:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
If a user wishes to blank his or her talk page, that is his or her choice. There are lots of legitimate reasons to blank. For example, I regularly blank old discussions so that I don't have to scroll down the page to locate new messages. If you need to see a deleted post, you can always go to the edit history. it isn't like the messages are completely gone. That said, it is considered a no-no to blank various warning templates. Admins frown on doing that. Blueboar 15:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no clear policy on that. The policy on vandalism is poorly written and implies that you can do whatever you want with your talk page, but does not say that clearly. Because of that, some admins give warnings and blocks for removing comments from your talk page, and other admins tell you that you can do whatever you want. The policy that is applied, or misapplied, depending on your interpretation is in Wikipedia:Vandalism

Removing the comments of other users from talk pages other than your own, aside from removing internal spam, vandalism, etc. is generally considered vandalism. Removing personal attacks is often considered legitimate, and it is considered acceptable to archive an overly long talk page by creating an archive page and moving the text from the main talk page there. The above rules do not apply to a user's own talk page, where this policy does not itself prohibit the removal and archival of comments at the user's discretion. Please note, though, that removing warnings from one's own talk page is often frowned upon.

Generally people read the first sentence, stop, and interpret that as an okay to blank your talk page. Others read the whole paragraph, and read it differently. It would be nice if someone would rewrite this clearly.

How about:

Your user and talk pages are a community resource. HOwever, removing comments from your talk page is always fine. Removing warnings from your own talk page indicates that you have read the warnings, and is allowed. Removing comments from other users talk pages is generally considered vandalism. Removing personal attacks is considered legitimate. It is considered acceptable to archive an overly long talk page by creating an archive page and moving the text from the main talk page there. On a user's own talk page archival of comments is at the user's discretion.

OR

Your user and talk pages are a community resource. Removing comments or warnings from your your own talk page is considered to be vandalism, as a record of warnings can be used by administrators in making decisions, or in showing that Wikipedia has done due diligence in trying to prevent certain activities. Removing comments from other talk pages is generally considered vandalism. Removing personal attacks is considered legitimate. It is considered acceptable to archive an overly long talk page by creating an archive page and moving the text from the main talk page there.

Atom 02:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

First, I have seen users that delete messages ASAP after reading them. This is a real pet peeve for me as I need the older posts to track what I have already told so and so. I tend to repeat myself too often without the older record. Searching history is a real pain in neck. You have to check each edit one by one. I never bother except in unusual cases.
Second, if nothing else, I think it should be a crime to remove warnings from any talk page unless you are an admin and that user is permanently blocked with no hope of becoming unblocked. Otherwise, I have no way to bump the warning up without laboriously searching history. If vandals can delete warnings, it would be a dream for them and a nightmare for everyone else. Once you institute a rule, you can't selectively apply it. You either apply it to everyone -- or you drop it. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

AfD: second nomination rules?

Funday PawPet Show survived Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Funday pawpet show. Now there's a second AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Funday PawPet Show, but shouldn't it have "(second nomination)" in the URL? --EarthFurst 07:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That's only a disambig concern as far as I know, for cases when an article retains its original title in between noms. The nominator notes the previous debate. In this case, the altered title allows for a unique identifier for both debates. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 08:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Modifying when dates of birth should be listed for biographies of living people

I have opened up a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Proposal_to_alter_the_criteria_for_listing_dates_of_birth concerning altering and clarifying when dates of birth for biographies of living people should be used. New voices to the discussion would be helpful. Thanks. Cowman109Talk 16:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed policy on removing alleged trolling on talk pages

I would like to propose that "trolling" not be allowed as a justification for removing other people's comments from talk pages.

Different people differ about what constitutes trolling. An editor who takes action to revert "trolling" is implicitly asserting that his opinion speaks for the group. Often the original poster does not agree that his words are trolling. Often the editor who removes the "trolling" is already opposed to the original poster.

Thoughts? --Ideogram 01:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I can go along with this to some degree. Removing comments by any established wikipedian is often counterproductive. however, the bulk of trolling comments removed are comments by IPs or highly disruptive single purpose accounts, who are adding 'Fuck your mama' to userpages. That obviously should be reverted on sight. But drawing up any policy that differentiates between a wikipedian removing comments from a userpage that he doesn't agree with as 'trolling', and outright vandalism from a real troll will impossible. We all know that there's a clear difference - but the boundary will be undefinable without hideous detail. This will inevitably end up in instruction creep and ruleslawyering. Best perhaps with a simple principle "assume good faith - particularly from normally good contributors - only deem something to be trolling if no other explanation is possible"--Docg 02:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the term "trolling" itself should not be used. I believe comments which are clearly vandalism or spam can be identified as such without regard for whether they are "trolling".
The most effective response to a genuine troll is to ignore him. I propose that anyone who believes someone else is trolling should simply comment, "I believe this is trolling and recommend everyone ignore it." Then others could signal their agreement or disagreement by actually ignoring or responding to the comment in question. --Ideogram 02:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem there: Many of the real and unmistakable trolls we get here (*coughconspiracytheoristidiotscough*) do need to be removed, and there is no justification other than that they are trolling. Leaving their comments risks them actually convincing someone of their lunacy. --tjstrf talk 02:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think removing comments to "protect the naive" is productive. (1) The comments are present in the history and reverting them actually gives them more prominence. (2) I don't believe in protecting the naive; I believe everyone is free to make their own judgements. (3) Real and persistent trolls need to be identified by community action (e.g. community blocks discussed on the admininstrators' noticeboards), not vigilanteism. --Ideogram 02:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it gives a 6000 character text dump any more prominence to revert it than it did when the guy posted it with an ALL CAPS HEADING and his latest YouAreTheAntiChrist username in the first place. Leaving vitriolic rants is far more harmful than removing them. You may have more of a point on article talk pages, but even then those are often used for things like unrelated campaigning, vaguely linked attack rants on other users, etc. Case in point: Talk:William Connolley, which gets assaulted quite regularly by people who are annoyed at User:William M. Connolley, the article's subject. --tjstrf talk 09:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I am talking only of posts on talk pages. Mainspace pages exist to communicate verifiable facts; rants can always be removed on that basis. Talk pages exist for people to express their opinions and discuss them; removing someone else's post doesn't change the fact that it is their opinion. See the concrete example I post below. --Ideogram 22:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Many troll postings are extremely verbose, if we are not allowed to remove them then the talk page would soon become unreadable. Some trolling is extremely inflammatory and makes people's participation on the uncomfortable. I agree that in the most cases DFTT is the best defence. Alex Bakharev 03:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Some articles that get a lot of trolling, like Talk:Gödel's incompleteness theorem, set up an "arguments" subpage of the talk page to move these comments to. Then the comments are not deleted, just moved to the "arguments" page. CMummert · talk 04:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
(to Alex) You still have not offered a definition of "trolling" other than "I know it when I see it". This definition has been abused many times by hotheaded editors who feel their personal judgement justifies removal of comments they deem trolling. Many postings are extremely verbose, but we do not remove them. What is the "magic" trolling ingredient that justifies removal? There are many tactics that make participation uncomfortable, not least having your well-intentioned comments attacked as "trolling" and being removed.
"Trolling" has no defensible definition because it requires reading someone's mind. If you accuse someone of trolling you are de facto failing to assume good faith. By removing someone's comments you are saying those comments are worthless. These judgements need to be made by the community not a biased editor already involved in arguing with the person who is being called a troll. Frankly, "trolling" has become a one-size-fits-all club that hotheads use to beat up people they disagree with.
These editors equate "trolling" with "it makes me mad". I would think any rational observer would understand how this definition leads to abuse.
The onus of defining "trolling" should not be on me; I am advocating abandonment of the term altogether. People who defend the idea of individual editors being allowed to delete comments deemed "trolling" shouild be required to offer an objective definition of trolliing so that we can be sure these vigilantes are not just squelching opinions that they don't like. --Ideogram 04:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
You are identifying a real problem - people removing good-faith posts which they deem 'trolling'. However, you are hitting it with a sledge hammer. Sure, we can't define trolling in any watertight way that won't have grey areas and subjectivity. Actually, exactly the same is true of vandalism. We can't read minds. Thus, we assume good faith. However, there is always a point where it is reasonable not to do so. 'Fuck your mama' is one 'You are gay' is probably another - but at that point, and beyond it we are into grey areas, where there is potential for disagreement, and even abuse. We need common sense here. But we do need to leave the option to remove obvious trolling. And no, we can't read minds, but there comes a point where we are entitled to judge intent by action, otherwise we disappear into some post-modern sludge of non-communicatability. This is not to protect the naive (that's a silly argument), but the best way to discourage a troll is to remove his voice. Vandals and trolls need to know that their posts have almost zero impact on wikipedia - we don't want to leave a stream of abuse or some aggressive rant lying around. If the recipient really want to see it, then it is in the edit history.--Docg 09:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I just say in my edit summary something like "Removing text - violation of Wikipedia:Talk page and WP:TPG". I can't remember the last time that someone objected to such a removal (but, admittedly, I rarely do this for talk pages of really contentious articles). If the editor reverts, adding the improper text back, then a second revert (removing the text again) with "See your user talk page" and a note to them about using talk pages only for discussing changes to articles should be the next steps.
I too very much dislike the term "trolling", even if there is an essay that tries to define it. Why not just keep the discussion to whether the posting complies with policy, as opposed to giving the troll user a label that he/she can argue about? -- John Broughton | (♫♫) 19:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's talk about a concrete example. in Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2006/Candidate statements/Questions for Paul August#Questions from Cyde Weys you will see mention of an edit war over whether a question constituted trolling or not. You can check the edit history for the details. This one went so far as wheel-warring. Ultimately Jimbo himself stepped in and asked everyone to calm down. How do you think this situation could have been avoided? --Ideogram 22:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The "troll" terminology frustrates me for several reasons. Firstly, it's all-too-often used as a blanket response, designed to circumvent actual discussion in favor of what is basically a personal attack. Legitimizing a form of personal attack is really bad form. Secondly, it defeats the purpose of discussion; why even have discussion if it can be silenced so quickly by troll accusations? I believe strongly that the discussion should hinge only on whether the post conforms to policy or not, as John said above.
Trolling is an unnecessary term as well. Obvious trolling is quite clearly prohibited; insults, personal attacks, etc. But those are all covered under WP:NPA. .V. -- (TalkEmail) 06:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone interested in this issue I would ask you to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:What is a troll. I have tried to edit this essay to discourage usage of the term and am being opposed by an editor who (not surprisingly) thinks I am a troll. --Ideogram 19:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Public domain images

If i upload an image, if its published before 1923 or something related do i need a source present? Nareklm 03:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

You should explain where the image came from, so it can be verified that it is genuinely in the public domain. See Wikipedia:Public domain for more information. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 03:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Indefinite blocks and comunity bans.

There's currently discussion on the relationship between use of indefinite blocks and community bans at Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy#Indefinite_Blocks. --Barberio 21:11, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Since the relation between those two categories is more or less hierarchical, wouldn't it be an applicable idea if articles defeatured for some reason would automatically acquire the status of a Good Article? That is, though they wouldn't satisfy the higher criteria of a FA, they would certainly satisfy those of a GA. This would leave more space in the GA nominations page for other articles to be considered, while at the same time the defeatured articles wouldn't suddenly find themselves outside, or too low in, the grading structure. —The Duke of Waltham 16:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I would be wary of doing this: there are still some featured articles lurking about from the "brilliant prose" days, with huge citation deficiencies (see Tank, for instance). Given the GA assessment doesn't take too long to perform, then it's probably worth not making it automatic. Trebor 20:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be easier for the process to give defeatured articles priority in some way, though? —The Duke of Waltham 07:56, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure. Patrol the FAR pages, and when one gets de-featured, nominate it for GA, with the comment "recently lost FA status here". Patrol the GA pages, and when you see a recent FA, review it for GA status. You can't be both the nominator and reviewer, but being one will still speed the process along mightily. This is known as {{sofixit}}:
Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top.
The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to).. AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:10, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Notice on username transliterations

Just a note to say that I've made a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Username#Latin character transliterations to require transliterations on non-latin usernames for various reasons, spelled out in the post. Please discuss on that talk page. pschemp | talk 18:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change to settlement naming convention

WikiProject Current Local City Time is proposing at their talk page that articles for prominent cities be moved to include subnational units.For example, Toronto would be moved to Toronto, Ontario.This would result in a de facto change to naming conventions for settlements, which provides (at least for Canada) that:

Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Quebec City or Toronto, can have undisambiguated titles.

Your contribution to this discussion would be most welcome. -Joshuapaquin 05:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I was bold: I closed the poll. That was clearly the wrong place and wrong method to discuss major changes to naming conventions as many editors noted. Angus McLellan(Talk) 20:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use question

I will admit that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the image policies.I write/de-stub a lot of articles about living composers.As everyone knows, it can be tough to find free images of living people who are not super famous and in every tabloid.If there is a publicity headshot of a composer on the website of s/his publisher, and that same publicity shot is reproduced across the net whenever you do an image search for him/her, is it within the fair use criteria to use that piture in and only in the article about the composer?Always yes, always no? Please advise! Thanks-Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 20:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe.Fair use is about as grey a grey area as you can find in copyright law, which is one reason we try to stay away from it.--Carnildo 20:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I think fair use has gone too far. If you can produce an image of a person, then it shouldn't qualify a picture of the person as fair use. I would not doubt that emailing the publisher for a GDFL (CC or whatever) license on a image would get promptly declined. Then why should this "fair-use" be put into effect if it's essentially illegal and not wanted, especially on an encyclopedia that advocates being "free"? Now, eliminating all "fair-use" images may be ridiculous, not being able to include a needed historical picture impossible to be reproduced, but one can still make the argument that Wikipedia is still free and has no grounds to use the picture. There's a huge problem with this in actors and sports-people.
This is an area on Wikipedia I am displeased at. Not that Wikipedia would get sued, it's just that I don't think Wikipedia has correct permission to use many of these "fair use" images. And ignoring it or not reaching a consensus makes the problem even worse.++aviper2k7++ 21:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like a cumulative "no" to me.Here is a small dilemma: I am working on an article which I would sure love to improve to FA status (who wouldn't).However, no matter how well-written and comprehensive the article is, it seems nearly impossible, practically speaking, to get it to FA status if it is devoid of images, particularly an image of the subject.You may say "there's no rule saying FAs have to have images", but really, how many of them don't? I'm not really sure what to do.-Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 04:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Try to solicit permission for one of the few pictures that do exist.You probably won't get permission for the really nice headshots, but perhaps someone has a passable snapshot posted somewhere on the web (maybe on a photo sharing site like flickr).When you find one you like send an email to author asking them to release the picture under the GFDL or CC-by-sa.Explain it will be used in wikipedia, and that without their help wikipedia won't have an illustrated article.I have done this a few times, and I've found many photographers are excited to help out wikipedia without doing any real work.In fact, I've had a few jump at the chance to get their picture on wikipedia.--best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 08:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
This is an incorrect interpretation of fair use.First of all, valid fair use is never illegal, and doesn't require permission.Second, fair use does not require that it be impossible for you to produce the content on your own.Fair use content is unfree (and invalid fair use claims are illegal), so fair use should be avoided, but not to the extent you advocate. Superm401 - Talk 21:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Fair use under United States copyright law doesn't require that it be impossible for a freely licensed alternative to be created, but the Wikipedia fair-use policy, which is intentionally stricter than U.S. copyright law, does require this. —Bkell (talk) 04:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Ideally, however it's hard to say whether it's impossible to get a free version, or just difficult. Superm401 - Talk 06:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


but the Wikipedia fair-use policy, which is intentionally stricter than U.S. copyright law, does require this.

There is a lot of discussion going on about the status of this policy on the talk page, by the way. — Omegatron 02:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:SMOKERS discussion.

A discussion on Laura Bush's/Barack Obama's smoking/attempts to quit smoking led me to begin an essay/potential guideline on the topic of including smoking within biographical articles.The participation of the editors here would be appreciated. Italiavivi 01:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Non-standard capitalization for personal or stage names

There is an ongoing discussion, whether or not individual capitalizaion for personal names or stage names (like all-lowercase or other variations) should be carried over to Wikipedia, given that an explicit exception from Wikipedia:Proper names#Personal names does not exist, while on the other hand there is a related policy (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks)) which in most cases suggest a conversion to standard English formatting.

The discussion sparked at Talk:Hide (musician), has since been carried over to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters) but also somewhat stagnated, so I decided to post here, in order to attract more input. - Cyrus XIII 21:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

See also Talk:Bell_hooks#Casing_and_her_Possessive for a lengthy discussion on author and feminist bell hooks. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
There was an old discussion on the WP:JAPAN talk page about song titles and names that pointed to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)/misc9#Capitalization of roman-letter names, etc., generated in Japan which intimates that as Japanese script does not have capital letters then any use or non-use is purely stylistic. As 'hide' is an English language stage-name I would imagine that the capitalisation differs with a variety of sources, unless it has been trademarked as 'hide' -Foxhill 00:53, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Quoting the Bible

I'm having trouble finding a policy on quoting text from the Bible.In particular, I'm trying to clean up the articles about individual Psalms in the Bible.These are in category "Psalms", eg Psalm 51.Most of these articles include the full text of the Psalm in at least one version of the Bible, mostly English, with a few Hebrew ones too.Should the text of the Psalm appear as a big lump in the article -- isn't the article about the Psalm, rather than the Psalm itself.This would be the case for poetry, wouldn't it?If there's a policy I've missed, please point me to it.Once I start editing, rather than stand on toes, I would like to be able to point to a policy that says, "this is how we do it".Thanks in advance.Bernard S. Jansen 11:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

There isn't a policy as such. There was a lot arguments here. But generally the consensus was that large chunks of Bible passages belong on Wikisource, not Wikipedia. However, if short quotations help to make the article readable then fine (with a very short psalm, quoting the whole thing may make sense - but not Psalm 119). But we need to watch that the translation chosen doesn't prejudice a point of view - so if the translation is contentious then that needs flagged up, or more than one alternative used. Any top-down policy will not really work here, we need a pragmatic approach to what gives us the best, neutral, and readable article in each case.--Docg 11:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Re. "There isn't a policy as such", true, but there is a guideline: Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources (which also applies to non-copyrighted material);
Maybe also have a glance at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV, which treated a related topic, and gives some indications w.r.t. how to organise articles on consecutive bible passages (follow community consensus), and which translations to use (don't always use the same source for translations), etc. --Francis Schonken 11:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, my point is pragmatism is best, and article quality is paramount. We don't want people uploading large chunks of primary texts - or running around chucking them on articles for their own sake, on the other hand if an article is discussing a short Bible passage and would be enhanced by quoting a bit, we don't want to preclude that with a top-down policy. Work out what's best on an article - if they is a debate go with the consensus. Don't batter people with rules either way.--Docg 12:29, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree... we do not need finite rules for this.I am not sure if every psalm needs to have the entire text quoted, but some might.For example, if there is disagreement among biblical scholars as to how to translate it, I would definitely like to see side by side charts showing the different translations.Blueboar 16:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Texts should be included in two cases. 1) Where the translation is contentious and differences significant - here we need to use sufficient translations to bring out the different views fairly. 2) Where the text being discussed is short and including in would be proportionate to the article. Some psalms are little more than 3 sentences - it would be silly not to quote them - we would do it with a non-Bible short poem or song. Other passages would be so long as to swamp the article - don't include them. Where we are including and the translation isn't contentions, it may be sufficient to just to choose one mainstream translation, and indicate any significant differences in a footnote. There's no point in including several translations which all basically say the same thing. Just be sensible. We don't want people using articles as a pretext for needlessly putting whole long chapters of the Bible onto Wikipedia - that's for Wikisource. But equally, we don't want people crusading to remove bible passages that clearly make a particular article more comprehensible. If everyone is sensible, then the silliness that took this matter to arbcom in the past can be avoided. The primary question is: what makes this particular article better?--Docg 17:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Just a slight quote must be appreciated, like "Yeah though I walk through..... The Valley of Hell I shall fear no evil for thy Nikon and tripod they comfort me" ;=-- DLL .. T 20:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

My ideas on WP:NOTE, AfDs, speedy deletes

I'd like to propose a radical change, which I know will be ignored/dismissed by the majority of editors, as it would involve a fundamental restructuring of Wikipedia. However, hear me out. I think WP:NOTE should be abolished. I participate regularly in AfDs and newpage patrolling, and don't agree with the policy administered there. My plan is this:

  • Everything that verifiably exists in the world is notable enough to be covered, as long as it is adequately sourced.
  • The only articles that should be deleted are those that are incoherent, obvious hoaxes, spam, attack pages, or completely inaccurate - i.e. those already covered under WP:SPEEDY - as well as things patently made up in school one day, including books that have not been published and bands that have released no songs. (This links back to the concept of verifiable existence.)
  • Everything else, including every webcomic, every town councillor, every episode of every series, should be included. After all, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and takes great pride in having over 1.5 million articles.
  • I'd like to see Wikipedia become an organised, referenced, searchable resource providing coverage of all human knowledge. (That is, all accurate and verifiable human knowledge.) The idea of 'notability', no matter how we try to formalise it, is inherently subjective. Walton monarchist89 21:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure it's WP:N you disagree with here; indeed, the first point is pretty similar to the notability definition at present. But your guidelines make no allowances for WP:NOT (except paper) - should we include dictionary definitions, for instance? Trebor 21:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, this proposal contradicts WP:NOT, which is policy, unless "adequately sourced" is interpreted to mean essentially what WP:NOTE says now. GRBerry 21:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
What about random individuals, currently considered vanity articles? I can verify my own name and existence, would I be able to keep an article about myself? —Ashley Y 21:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Whenever this concept gets brought up, in one form or another, I always come back to the second point raised at WP:N#Rationale for requiring a level of notability: "* In order to have a neutral article, a topic must be notable enough that the information about it will be from unbiased and unaffiliated sources; and that those interested in the article will not be exclusively partisan or fanatic editors." In other words, notable subjects attract multiple editors; non-notable subjects tend to have only one. It is easy to delete an article on a non-notable subject. It is very difficult to review such an article and ensure that its content is genuinely sourced, verifiable and unbiased. The number of vanity conflict-of-interest articles under such a scheme would be so high that there is no way they could be monitored or reviewed. We do not have to worry that Bill Gates' employees will make Microsoft a fluff piece on the company, or that Roger Daltrey will fill The Who with unchallenged self-serving claims, because so many people watch and contribute to those articles. However, if the article is on Fred's Webhosting Service or Nick Norman and the N00bs, let's face it, the primary (only?) contributors will be Fred and Nick, and there are not enough reviewers to keep them honest. Fan-1967 22:00, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Based on your suggestion, someone could write an article on me.Unfortunately, it would be both inaccurate (the local newspaper blurb on my NMSQT performance has me down as going to the local high school, when in fact I was homeschooled) and incomplete (verifiable third-party sources on my activities end with my junior year of college, when I got an article published in a minor journal). --Carnildo 22:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Don't think you'll get much support for that, Ashley. For all reasons mentioned. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I am an ardent supporter of WP:NOT, but at the same time I am fearful of the "Myspacing" of Wikipedia, where every grouping of talentless bands has a pseudo-advertisement on Wikipedia. --Thisisbossi 23:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Celebrity endorsements

I'm in an edit war at Shilpa Shetty, with an editor who insists on restoring a para about her being hired to do advertising for a vodka company, which he names. He thinks that it's newsworthy, and a great honor for her, that she's been selected as a "brand ambassador" for this brand of vodka. I don't think it's notable at all; celebrities have been endorsing this and that, for pay, since the 19th century and perhaps earlier. I keep removing the booze ad, or cutting it down to one sentence with no mention of the brand (but with a link to a press release that does mention it), and he keeps restoring the para on vodka, with a long quote from the press release. He says that WP doesn't have any policy that prohibits mention of celebrity endorsements. I think it's covered by our "no commercial advertising" stance. If we allow celebrity endorsements to justify in-article ads for named companies, the camel has its nose under the tent.

The problem is that I know we don't accept advertising, or allow linkspam, but I can't find a policy on mentioning celebrity endorsements in an article. Do we need to make a policy? I'd suggest something like "we don't mention celebrity endorsements unless they become controversial enough to rate extensive coverage in the regular news media".For instance, if Prince Charles were to endorse a brand of tampon and a brouhaha ensued :) Zora 06:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I submit that Zora is misrepresenting the issue, and I have summed it up at the talk page. I have made no claims about its being "newsworthy" or a "great honour", please stop projecting false assumptions on my words. Zora has been engaging in wholesale content removal of the section in question, and I even rewrote it to satisfy her expectations of "what Wikipedia should be like", but to no avail as she keep removing content. For crying out loud it is not commercial advertising, it is just a section that describes Shetty's being selected as the "face" of a vodka company in a section that describes her associations with commercial and non-profit organisations. Like I say, I have discussed the matter in full at the talk page, that represents my stance on the matter. Ekantik talk 07:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
"Brand ambassador" means she's being paid to appear in ads and it's not noteworthy in the least. I've been removing these "brand ambassador" bits from Bollywood actor/actress articles for years. Zora 08:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
The fact that she's being paid to appear in ads doesn't make something non-notable; she also presumably gets paid to appear in movies.Furthermore, the fact that you've been deleting this type of information for years does not mean that this type of info is not noteworthy.--The Way 22:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Hello, everyone, I reviewed the article and the paragraph that mentions the brand in question. IMHO mentioning that she is a brand ambassador for several products is completely enough, because a) I think adding names and writing an entire paragraph about it is indirect advertisment and b) it's simply not noteworthy: Bollywood stars are brand ambassadors for many products, so why note them all? Mentioning that they are advertising products is completely enough. If we add this kind of information to all articles, Shahrukh Khan would have at least a dozen entries about beverages, soap, watches, cars etc. It's just too much. Best regards, --Plumcouch Talk2Me 21:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think there ought to be any flat, inflexible rule one way or the other about including or deleting such mentions... it all depends on the context of a particular endorsement, and whether it's a notable fact given all the circumstances.Most common celebrity endorsements probably aren't sufficiently notable to mention, but there may be particular cases where they become notable due to some controversy surrounding them, or if the endorsement involves a record amount of money or involves a type of product or type of celebrity that hasn't previously been known for such endorsements; if it's big news for some reason, or an important stage in the history of a notable celebrity and/or product, then it may be suitable for mention -- like, if few had heard of the person or the product prior to the endorsement, but one or both became household names due to the commercials involved, then it might be notable. *Dan T.* 21:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd sorta agree with Dan but ... the problem is that advertisers are pushing as hard as they can to get their products mentioned in the regular news (free advertising!) and sometimes "notability" for an advertisement can be briefly manufactured. Also, media like newspapers have been known to slant the news to please big advertisers, and things become "news" that are mere press-release hype. That's why I'd want notability to be defined conservatively. I don't want us to push whatever company can buy the most news. Zora 22:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Whether we like that endorsements come only to those who pay the most, those endorsements are notable facts for the endorsers.What products that people are paid to endorse says something about what demographics they are believed to appeal to, and what those endorsers are willing to endorse.Participating in advertising campaigns also contributes to those endorsers' notability; many people might know certain celebrities only from those ads.
On the other hand, sometimes those products or services are purely local and non-notable.I regularly saw Robert Vaughn in TV ads for a local law partnership when I lived in Columbus, OH, and I recently saw him in a very similar NYC ad; nothing would be added by specifying the names of those law offices, so "local personal injury lawyers" would be sufficiently descriptive.Postdlf 22:28, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a reason why listing endorsements made by a given celebrity on that celebrity's article is a problem.It doesn't constitute advertising since it's only stating facts.If it said something to the effect of "Celebrity X endorsed product Y because product Y is a great product" then that would need to go, but simply stating that "Celebrity X endorsed product Y in an advertising campaign" is fine as it's a relevant peice of information about that person's career.Of course, this should only get a passing mention; there shouldn't be a whole paragraph or section on it.A simple list of products endorsed is sufficient. --The Way 22:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, advertising campaigns themselves can be notable and deserve articles.The fact that a celebrity endorses a product is noteworthy enough for a passing mention in the article.Many celebrities make a substantial portion of their income this way.It's not advertising to state the fact that celebrity X endorses product Y as long as the language remains objective.We actually have an article on celebrity endorsement.Also, note that other celebrities do have sections on their endorsements, see Tiger Woods for an example. --The Way 22:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

With a million and half articles, of course there's lots of stuff that is bad. I'm arguing that mentioning endorsements, and in particular naming the company, is letting WP be used for advertising. I'd apply this across the board, to all the celebrity articles. The only exception should be for advertising that does become controversial or extremely notable. Zora 23:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

While not supporting a blanket deletion of endorsement mentions, I do object to the term "brand ambassador", a PR-spin term.It's one thing to say that "X was paid an estimated $10 million during 2001-2005 to appear in advertisements for product/service Y"; it's quite another thing to use a term that many readers may easily misunderstand.Let's call a spade a spade.-- John Broughton |(♫♫) 03:04, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with John here, perhaps the term 'brand ambassador' isn't the most appropriate.However, simply listing products endorsed by a celebrity (and perhaps how much that celebrity was paid for the endorsement) is not advertising as it's not saying anything good (or bad) about the product itself, rather it is simply stating the fact that the celebrity is getting paid to be a part of some marketing campaign.Indeed, if anything it actually reflects poorly on the product.Not allowing this type of information in neutral language would amount to censorship and would serve to make it quite hard to have articles about advertising. --The Way 04:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have been away from Wikipedia because of connection problems at home. For me this is a complete non-issue because of the ridiculous arguments presented about "advertising". For the record, the term "brand ambassador" means nothing at all and is the term used in the source articles. It only means that the celebrity in question has been employed to be the "face" of Romanov Vodka, it is nothing at all about advertisement pushing or whatever the problem is about. It's like saying that Kate Moss is the face of Rimmel or Burberry (which is why they dropped her during that cocaine fiasco). If the term "brand ambassador" is quoted in the source to denote Shilpa Shetty's position, what's the problem with quoting the source on Wikipedia. If other editors (such as Zora, etc.) have a problem with this use of language then they are better advised to take their protests to the publications which used that term. In my view this is not a problem for Wikipedia. Ekantik talk 16:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I generally agree with The Way's views here; a celebrity's advertising campaigns do not have to be controversial to gain a mention in Wikipedia, but it is perfectly OK to mention their campaigns/endorsements as part of their career. For example, everyone knows that Michael Jackson's hair caught fire when he was filming for a Pepsi commercial. According to the No-Adverts Group, this should be rewritten in some vague way like: "Michael Jackson's hair caught fire when he was filming a commercial for a famous soft-drinks company." As you can see, it doesn't have quite the same effect as being succint. I can only shudder to think how many pages people have slaughtered in this way. The other issue is that, without trying to blow my own trumpet, I have been responsible for around 90% of the content of the article as it was in an extremely poor state before I started working on it. Just a couple of facts and an incomplete filmography. Thus, I was the one who ran around trying to find out reliable sources about the celebrity and rewrite the article so it is far improved now, including about this Romanov Vodka issue. I find that this whole issue of repeatedly deleting content (without even bothering to discuss it adequately on the talk page) shows disrespect to the contributions of other editors to Wikipedia, not to mention that non-existent policies have been quoted to justify such removal. Ekantik talk 17:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Ekantik, you are trying to "own" the article and it IS in an extremely poor state because you do not allow anything to be subtracted, only added. WP is not a big heap 'o stuff. It would be possible to convey that she's been paid to work for a vodka company without devoting a whole gushing para to it. I proposed a version that covered the whole thing in one sentence, with a link to the press release. You restored the para with chunks of press release quote. We wouldn't be having this problem if you were willing to let the article be edited down. Instead, you're screaming "vandalism" and refusing to allow anything to be removed or summarized. Indeed, you posted a notice on my talk page warning me that I'd be blocked if I removed anything from the article. What's that but refusing to be edited?
I would be more willing to allow mentions of celebrity endorsements if they were brief and spare. Adding press release material IS advertising. Zora 02:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
And yet it sounds just like someone else. Not to mention the crusade to remove advertising. Brand ambassador is an extremely common term in India, and it is notable when an actress is a brand ambassador.Bakaman 03:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Zora, please keep your claims of ownership to yourself. The fact that I have contributed that information for the article shows the fact that I worked hard to find and insert that information, and there is no reason why it cannot be included as per WP policies and this Village Pump discussion. Please, you were warned about content removal because you continually violate WP policy without providing an adequate rationale for your content removal, thus blanking content can be regarded as vandalism.
And please stop misrepresenting your actions. You unabashedly removed the entire content and only very recently tried to edit it "down" so that you could show something for this VP discussion. The fact is that when you're wrong, you're wrong. Accept it and move on, and please stop vandalising the page. I find it extremely amusing that you consider the article to be in a poor state considering how it looked before I started working on it. If you want to improve on it, why not add content instead of removiong content? Ekantik talk 16:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we should remove all unsourced claims of endorsement from biographies of living people; see discussion here.Postdlf 16:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Except for the fact that it is sourced to a newspaper. I think that a newspaper report of a business event (the press conference announcing her being made the "face" of the campaign is as per WP:RS. Ekantik talk 16:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

You need an unbiased source for both the fact itself and the importance (noteability or encyclopedic-ness) of the fact. A press release is pert of the advertizing campaign and is not a NPOV source for establishing the importance although it can usually be used to help establish the fact. But with only a press release we have no neutral wording available and get stuff like "endorsement" instead of "agreed to be paid to lie about this product" (sometimes a more accurate assessment). WAS 4.250 17:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It's from a newspaper report, not a press release. I was under the impression that reports from prominent newspapers are relatively reliable? Isn't it notable when a celebrity becomes the "face" of a particular product? In my view this whole discussion is about how one editor is using WP as a crusade to remove "advertising" without any thought to what advertising actually is WP:NOT#Soap. There is nothing in WP policy about why a celebrity's endorsements cannot be mentioned, but I'm sure Zora will beg to differ. Ekantik talk 16:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Policy re: using "year in literature" linking.

I was planning on working through our articles on writers. I was going to use those 'year in literature links', eg 1939 in literature, but with a pipe, so that just the year appears, eg 1939.

I felt that this would be an especially useful thing to do for the year of publication of a writer's works, since clicking then brings up other works released that year. And if you use such links for dates of birth and death, clicking brings up other writers born/deceased in those years.

However, I figured I'd better check I was doing the right thing. I started out by looking at two literature featured articles; Samuel Beckett and Robert A. Heinlein. Neither of those articles seem to favour linking the years at all, let alone specifically.

I checked out the relevant bit of the style guide: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), but that doesn't seem to help on this point.

Any advice? I'm rather keen on my approach, but I'm made uncertain by looking at the Featured Articles. --bodnotbod 20:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I would try to formulate it in such a way that the link does not look like a bare year link. For example, "published in 1939." that way, it at least reduce the number of users trying to edit for MoS. I would still try to reduce them as much as possible, since most often, they are not needed in context. Circeus 17:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh dear. Because I feel it would be quite unwieldly to include "published in" every time, instead of the normal form of having the year in brackets (eg, after a book title). And a guy over at the literature portal says he too is adding 'in literature' to lots of author-related dates (birth, death, years of books). Anyone else have a view? Cos at the moment it's a split vote. --bodnotbod 23:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
This sort of thing probably should be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) (and, just a quick glance, may in fact be, right now).If that doesn't resolve matters, you might try third opinion and RfC (see Wikipedia:Resolving disputes).-- John Broughton |(♫♫) 19:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

Proposal to keep the new user warning templates semi-protected only

I have submitted a proposal that the new user warning templates at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace should remain semi-protected and not become permanently fully protected at some point.For those interested, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:High-risk templates#Proposal to keep new user messages semi-protected only. Thank you, Satori Son 03:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

anonymous users an new articles

Could someone tell me why anonymous users are not allowed to create new articles? Doesn't this strongly hinder the accessibility of the projecy? /Lokal_Profil 02:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Simple.Without that feature, anon vandals would create spam pages faster you could blink.I figure at least 99% of all new pages would be spam or otherwise unneeded pages.As is, that number is probably still 40%. Will (Talk - contribs) 02:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, for the reasoning, you will be interested in John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy, specifically John_Seigenthaler_Sr._Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Foundation_reaction. It was a black eye on the foundation, and anonymous editing still can only be done on some Wikipedia's (I can do it on es:, BTW.
As for accessibility, I personally think not at all. It is incredibly easy to register a username (one doesn't even have to give an email address; it takes like 20 seconds). Anonymous users can go to WP:AFC (incidentally, there you will see that most submissions by anons aren't good ones anyway; and this page has removed a lot of the vandalous submissions - at least, that's IMO).
Hope this explains everything. Patstuarttalk|edits 02:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:CSD:A7 as PROD

A discussion has started up at the talk page at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion about the possibility of a test run of switching CSD A7 to Prod.Please check the talk page for further discussion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

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