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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy).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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Wikipedia needs to be tough on vandals

recently I came across the article for the civil rights activist Alice Walker and it had been vandalized by some idiot who ridiculously called her a "racist, sexist, and totalitarian" and he/she/it also called Fidel Castro a "dictator" something that is completely false. I just can't believe how many people think they can insert their own bigoted, racist, sexist, idiotic remarks into articles, it delegitimatizes Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia needs to extend the banning period from 24-hours to 78-hours or require users to register before editing. - Stancel

No, he/she wrote "Her books and political activities have led many to brand her as a sexist and a racist, as well as a totalitarianist based on her support for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro". Fidel Castro is indeed a dictator. If she supports him, she is probably a totalitarian. I don't know whether she is a racist or not. Anyways, this phrase does not constitute vandalism IMHO. --62.219.175.34 14:07, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
Regarding your first comment: in many cases, blocking isn't even feasible because the edits come from a dynamic IP, and a block is trivial to circumvent then. Even when it isn't, making the period three times as long would not really decrease the amount of vandalism overall. Regarding your second comment: this has been suggested many times before, but consensus is that this is not a good idea. See m:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles. JRM · Talk 20:50, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)
AFAIRC, the situation is rather that there is no consensus. Still means, in reality, that it's not enactable.--TVPR 19:56, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, you're right. Reformulating: in the last vote on restricting anonymous users from editing, the majority of users disagreed with it—which, of course, does not establish consensus, and Wikipedia is not a democracy. Maybe one day there will be some idea on restrictions that gets more support. Maybe not. JRM · Talk 20:42, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
Maybe there's another solution. What if all unsigned in users had to first click through a Wikipedia policy page (maybe a concise summary of all policies that may be relevant to new users, or maybe have it randomize between such things as Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Vandalism) every time they tried to edit something, kind of like the clickthrough ads on many commercial websites. This would effectively force all such users to continually go through a tutorial of sorts, and obviously work to encourage, without mandating, that all users log in by slowing them down (obviously a good thing for would-be vandals too). Technical questions of implementation aside, what does everyone think? Postdlf 20:35, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Personally, I'd sooner support outright banning of anons than harrassing them (sorry, I mean "treating them like the unwashed hordes they are" :-)—and I wouldn't support banning in a million years. But keep those ideas coming nonetheless. :-) JRM · Talk 20:42, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
I wouldn't see it as harrassing them—it's about educating them. And impeding them.  ; ) Postdlf 23:05, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Another possibility is to have a button, kind of "Semi-protect this page", in addtion to the "Protect" one. admins could then semiporotect pages that are being vandalized most often, like pope, gay, vagina, etc.

For starters, I would suggest two basic criteria for semiprotection:

  • the article is in a reasonable shape (the loverst bar: not a stub)
  • the article is being vandalized daily.

Anons may be directed to the talk page. (Of course they will happily vandalize talk pages as well, but this ewill be not that visible.)

Also, as of today I don't see any particular reason why would we be overly meek with anons. In the early days of wikipedia every single contributor was dear. Isn't it time to be just a bit more selective? Mikkalai 20:24, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has a large collection of images from medieval illuminated manuscripts online at http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/accueil.htm (English version). Their copyright statement (French, English) says:

"The terms of paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article L 122-5 of the law on intellectual property, authorise, on the one hand, only the making of "copies or reproductions exclusively for the private use of the copier and not to be used for any collective purpose", and on the other hand, and subject to the indication of the name of the author and the source, only "analyses and brief quotations which shall be justified by their critical, polemic, educational, scientific or informative nature". Any representation or reproduction made in full or in part without the consent of the author or his rightsholders therefore constitutes an unlawful act (art. L 122-4).
Any representation or reproduction carried out by means of any process whatever, particularly by means of computer downloading or computer printouts, therefore constitutes an infringement of copyright which is punishable under the terms of article L 335-2 and subsequent articles of the law on intellectual property."

and the images (e.g. [1], which I would like to use in Seraph) contain "©Bibliothèque nationale de France"—but as accurate reproductions of public domain artworks, are these nonetheless in the public domain under U.S. law, per Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.? Does the fact that Wikimedia has servers and a chapter in France make it in any way subject to French law? —Charles P. (Mirv) 19:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is, in part, why the U.S. State Dept. is trying to avoid allowing Boeing vs. Airbus to go before the World Court. The case threatens to upset the treaties mentioned above covering international law, by possibly establishing the World Court's jurisdiction as supreme. For now, the best the French government could do is shut down the French branch, assuming there wasn't an exception for not-for-profit use. In the case of Yahoo and e-Bay, this was enough to force these for-profit companies to change their policies. With Wikipedia being such a different beast...*shrugs*...
BTW, under U.S. law, you should be good to go (provided you properly reference). A U.S. museum would probably have a copyright guide somewhere on their site. Keep in mind that the digital images of the art may be considered seperate works, and may have slightly different rules.--ghost 04:28, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Museums typically claim copyrights when they don't have them, to try to earn money. Most of them do this. That doesn't make them right. Digital images of the art are not capable of having new copyrights. These images are 100% free and clear and in the public domain by a long, long ways. DreamGuy 05:26, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

There is only one relevant question—do copyrights have a limited term of protection in France? If copyrights don't expire, then under French law they could claim copyright in the manuscripts and all reproductions. If that's the case, just stay out of France. ; ) Never underestimate the IP ignorance of museum staff, btw. I was visiting the Gilbert Stuart exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in DC last week and noticed a sign saying no photography was allowed in the exhibit. So I asked the guard if he knew why, first word out of his mouth was "copyright", which I unsuccessfully tried to dissuade him from as even the youngest of Stuart's paintings are approaching 200 years old. Ok, not surprising that a security guard wouldn't know better, but I encountered the same misinformation at the information desk. Both of them seemed to confuse physical ownership of the object with ownership over the image. I'm sure that a couple of the private collectors who lended their Stuart paintings to the NGA for the exhibit restricted photography by contract, but telling people that it's due to copyright rather than the owners imposing access restrictions on the public at a federally owned and funded museum is shady. Postdlf 07:05, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

200 years old? Just yesterday someone on another forum told about how staff at Salisbury Musuem were trying to claim copyright on mesolithic stone tools! Thryduulf 16:19, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In France, copyrights expire 70 years after the death of the author, I believe. I still don't know how French law treats accurate digital copies of public domain artworks, but I suppose that's not important. I'm going to upload the images, but I'll check with user:Aurevilly too, just to make sure I'm not getting Wikimedia France in legal trouble. :) —Charles P. (Mirv) 14:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've heard that not all countries have the same emphasis on originality that American copyright law does, though I still can't fathom how, in practice, it could extend to exact digital copies unless it degenerates into literally protecting effort and expenditure of resources. That would effectively swallow up the public domain though, because obviously any access most people would have would be through copies other people made, and so every third-party distribution would be by means of copying the copy. There would also be the problem of proving that someone had in fact copied your exact digital copy, and not someone else's, though I guess that could be done with such means as digital watermarks. Postdlf 05:40, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In countries such as Republic of China, there's an obscure right called platemaker's right. The printing plate or the like of a public domain material, such as a brush script calligraphy, can be copyrighted by a publisher for 10 years if he/she register it. (Section 79 of the Copyright Law, ROC)
The right does not exclude an unlicensed party from making another plate if that guy can access the original art work. The right only lasts 10 years. It also has to be registered. It only protect an art publisher's right to publish a piece of art in a very limited fashion. -- Toytoy 15:53, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
But does this "platemaker's right" apply to digital copies? There actually is case law precedent in the U.S. for individual copyrights being applied to less-than-perfect copies of public domain works, as long as there was some kind of creative element that crept into the process, even if accidental; this came up first, I believe, involving handmade lithographs of renaissance paintings. Is there any restriction on how the plates must be made in order to be protectable? If nothing else, a plate that is in no way unique obviously does not produce a unique print, and so you'd have a serious enforcement problem of trying to prove who copied from what (absent eyewitness "I saw him do it" testimony). The platemaker's right sounds like a good topic for an article, btw.  : ) Postdlf 05:32, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
http://db.lawbank.com.tw/eng/FLAW/FLAWDAT10.asp?lsid=FL011264
See article 79. I guess platemaking shall include digitization. The law was created decades ago. There's no reason to exclude digital media from legal protection.
As you know many Chinese people are practicing brush calligraphy at home. They learn calligraphy from copying great historical works. When I was a child, I used Image:Meng fa shi bei.jpg as my starting point. My calligraphy book was published by Japan's Nigensha, the top art publisher in Asia. Most Chinese calligraphy works were not preserved in the form of paper. They were made into stone inscriptions. The inscriptions are sometimes opened to public. If you bring a sheet of paper and ink, you can make yourself a reversal copy of it. And then you're allowed to publish your ownn calligraphy book.
Most of the calligraphy books, in my opinion, shall be copyrighted. As you can see, the stone inscription was badly damaged (it is about 1500 years old!). A book for beginner must be retouched or it will be too confusing to them. The retouching job takes some sense of art. That means creativity. But Nigensha books are not retouched. They obtained the best copy available, and publish it with minimal retouch (darken the background). I don't think their job shall be copyrighted if by the standard of today's average copyright laws. But their people are art experts, they studied many copies of the same work before picking the best one to publish. In my opinion, their right shall be secured.
I don't know if this law is good or bad. Let's say you go to copy an inscription. After you've done your job, you hit the inscription with a hammer. Now you have a better copy of the work and you are allowed to market it for 10 years. Some inscriptions were actually damaged this way. Ever seen the lower half of Trajan's Column?
Besides the text of the law, I don't know anything about its real world application. The article 79 is seldom used. Even if you're not an art expert, if you put your daddy's Rembrandt on a $50 computer scanner and you register the scan, you have the right to market that scan for up to 10 years. Go to check your attic! There must be a Rembrandt somewhere! -- Toytoy 12:48, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)
For what it's worth, we already have some copies of images from the manuscripts in this exhibit. Compare this image from the BN, with this image which I uploaded a few days ago. I got it from a book published in the United States. I got this image from the same source (compare with this image) and my source didn't even provide a reference for the source of the image! In short, I suspect you would be legal to use these images as needed. Dsmdgold 04:04, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

Self-reference in infobox

Sample
 
About these coordinates     Color coordinates
Hex triplet#000000
sRGBB (r, g, b)(0, 0, 0)
HSV (h, s, v)(0°, 0%, 0%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)(0, 0, 0°)
Source[Unsourced]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

A question has arisen in connection with {{infobox color}} (seen to the right): is it permissible to have a link from a sectional caption in the Infobox to an explanatory article in the Wikipedia: namespace? In particular, is it permissible to link the Color Coordinates caption to a page describing how the various color systems are represented in Wikipedia (early draft currently living here)? --Phil | Talk 11:17, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

I think the color values you provide here can be misinformation. Has any of you consulted a real color expert before doing this? You cannot send a set of RGB or CMYK values to a printer (I mean a person, not a computer peripheral) and expect him/her to give you your expected color. These color spaces are device-dependant!
You cannot just create a color in Adobe Photoshop and get its color values from that program. Photoshop does it because it has a color profile created specifically for your own computer (usually people do not calibrate). Please do not provide information that could mislead others. (see also: absolute color space) -- Toytoy 01:54, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
I think you're missing the point: where do you think people will find this information? Rather than throwing your hands in the air and saying "it's all wrong, you can't say that", why not update the relevant articles. If you're an expert, put your skills to use for the good of the project.
I don't have access to Adobe Photoshop: if you examine the examples, you will see that the raw colours are used in every case. The point is to show people what a given RGB triplet looks like on their computer, or what a given web color looks like on their computer. If HTML and CSS allowed the specification of a colour in CMYK format, we should use that to demonstrate what a given CMYK vector looks like on the user's computer. Talking about what does not happen, is all very well, but only after you've shown what does happen.
HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 07:02, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Proposed change to wikipedia:disambiguation

I've proposed a change to wikipedia:disambiguation (an official policy page). Please add your comments to the talk page. Thank you. -- Rick Block 04:26, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

When does a quote reach the limit of being copyright? Does wikipedia have a policy of a certain length tops, or no copyrighted quotes etc?

Basically, I can understand that someone might want to say

Soandso described the situation as "frightfully tense".

but at the same time there must be a limit - I can't quote whole books in wikipedia (ignoring the fact that it might be a bad article). Is there a rought limit to a couple of sentences, a paragraph? a page? Or should we just paraphrase everything?

Sorry if this is a repeat -- Tomhab 20:33, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), the Supreme Court ruled that quoting at length from the manuscript of Gerald Ford's then-unpublished memoirs was not fair use, because the published quotes took what was essentially the heart of the book and acted to supplant the commercial value of the manuscript. By "heart", the quotes weren't quantitatively the bulk of the book, but rather represented to the Court, in a somewhat subjective judgment of course, the core of why the manuscript was written and why people would want to read it. As long as quotes don't do this, we should be fine—a couple sentences should pass easily, and possibly up to a paragraph depending on the use and how substantial a portion it represents of the original work. There isn't any firm line beyond that, but consider whether the selection you are copying could act as a substitute for the original. If the original is unpublished (by that I don't mean unwritten, but undistributed to the general public), then that should weigh heavily against any verbatim use. Postdlf 20:45, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Damn you're good. -- Tomhab 23:18, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Would you further argue that as the CPUs and disks are in the States, other country's copyright laws don't apply? Philip Baird Shearer 00:51, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Effectively. Treaties have roughly standardized a lot of international copyright law, so there isn't likely to be much of a disparity. To the extent that there is a difference, U.S. courts are not going to apply foreign copyright law instead of our own (which would give foreign copyright holders potentially more rights in this country than domestic), and I would think this public policy in favor of our own copyright laws, as well as our First Amendment, would also prevent American courts from enforcing any foreign court judgments that were contrary to U.S. copyright law. Postdlf 00:57, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure that if a resident in a foreign country uploads data onto Wikipedia which is then downloaded by another resident of the same country is so protected. There was a court case in England a few years ago, (R v. Thompson [1984] 3 All ER 565 ->English Court of Appeal in Thompson (1984) 79 Cr App R 191 at 196), where a person working as a computer contractor in Kuwait, set up a program to move money from two little used accounts into his own within the bank. When left unsupervised he ran it. He then flew back the the UK and asked the Kuwaiti bank to transfer the money from his account in Kuwait to another account owned by him in another country. When the yearly audit was done his theft was spotted. The English Judge ruled that the theft did not take place until the money left the bank as before that it was mealy the equivalent of moving figures in a ledger. At the time there was no extradition to Kuwait, so the contractor would have gone free if the theft had taken place in Kuwait, as it was, he committed the theft in the UK and got sent down for it. So under UK law the physical site of the computer was not relevant it was the place where the criminal was when the crime is committed. I am not sure if this precedent would be used in such a case as copyright infringement but it could be. [2]. Also searching for the case on the net I came across an article where the UK case was quoted for guidance in an Australian court case Claire Frances Capewell (1994) ACrimR 228 Court of Appeal Queensland -- Philip Baird Shearer 01:42, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Betamax Case

Postdlf's eariler reference to fair use is based on Universal vs. Sony (1984), aka the Betamax case. Under U.S. copyright law, the point of infraction would be irrelevant, provided that the use fell within the guidelines of fair use. This is a major underpinning of the Creative Commons, which the Beastie Boys got heavily involved in following their sampling suit. It also explains why the RIAA can't just get a warrant to seize the hardware that hosts/hosted file-sharing networks. (They've tried) Further, since Wikipedia's content is, at this time, not-for-profit it should be doubly protected under this U.S. law.--ghost 04:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Pardon me if this isn't what you said, but Sony v. Universal isn't actually the source of American fair use doctrine—just one application of it to VCR "time-shifting" of television broadcasts (which is irrelevant to text copying). Fair use is actually statutory, as part of the Copyright Act of 1976. Postdlf 06:56, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
(*Bows before the Master*) It's so common to see this case (mis)quoted in the media, it's easy to forget. However, am I correct in thinking that the sampling cases, such as Newton v. Diamond, et. al., are relevent to digital text copying? If I'm not mistaken, Newton v. Diamond refers back to Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises for precedent.--ghost 13:21, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, the analysis in Harper & Row regarding copying that takes the qualitative "heart" of the work has been applied in sampling cases (i.e., did the sample copy the catchy "hook" that is the main attraction of the song?), though I'm unaware of anything originating from sampling case law that could in turn relate back to the analysis of text copying. Postdlf 05:25, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Biography Naming Conventions: Journalistic vs. Formal Style

This topic is causing much confusion and hard feelings (including mine) on the Talk: Terri Schiavo page. It appears that Wikipedia adopted what is refered to as American Journalistic Style, as opposed to Formal Style. The NYT, WSJ, Times and Organization of American Historians use Formal style. All endorse the use of "Ms." where the marital status or preference of the lady in question cannot be determined.

I personally find Journalistic Style to be offensive in the extreme, in regards to the Terri Schiavo case. Less so, in general. Ms. Schiavo was a person, not an object, and use of Formal Style would recognize her as such. I also believe that adoption of Formal Style would present a more professional face for Wikipedia. Finally, the non-American English-speaker will expect Formal Style. Please guide me in the best way to help Wikipedia adopt Formal Style.--ghost 18:52, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

NO! "Formal style" sounds more appropriate for news, while so-called "journalistic style" sounds much more suited for an encyclopedia. Compare
Mr. Mozart was born in Salzburg, which is now in modern-day Austria... ("formal")
with
Mozart was born in Salzburg, which is now in modern-day Austria... ("journalistic")
If, in the case of Schiavo, the "journalistic" style sounds awkward, it may be a sign that you think of the article as a "news article", instead of as an encyclopedia article. That means that the article in its current form may not be entirely suitable for wikipedia, and should be rewritten to be more "encyclopedic". The Journalistic Style would then not be at all out of place. Eugene van der Pijll 19:15, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Feelings about the Terri Schiavo article are hardly a good starting point for implementing a wiki-wide policy. I don't see how the lack of a title dehumanizes anyone, and concern over whether Terri Schiavo is viewed as an object or a person are obviously irrelevant to a convention that has been applied the same to her as to any other person. While use of titles would avoid confusion between, for example, Terri and Michael in her article, so would the use of their first names, and titles would do nothing to distinguish subjects that have common surnames and common genders. Postdlf 19:17, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. Some of my arguments are based on the following Style guides:

  • Organization of American Historians - 4. The first time any person is mentioned in text, the individual must be fully identified by first and last names. Women are not identified as Mrs. or Miss. The use of titles such as Dr., Rev., Gen., etc., is discouraged.
  • USC Style Guide - 2) After referring to an individual by full name, journalistic style indicates that the second reference should be to surname only, e.g., Smith. More formal style calls for repetition of a title with all subsequent references. It is also acceptable to refer to the subject by first name or nickname if the tone of the piece is more informal.
  • The Times Online Style Guide - appellations on news pages, though not on features and sport, almost every surname should be granted the courtesy of a title.

My interest in considering a switch to Formal Style is based on a designation in Formal Style for the recently deceased.[3] This means to Mozart would not receive an appellation because he was a public figure and is not recently deceased. Terri Schiavo was a public figure, but not of her choosing.--ghost 21:33, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand how the sources you mention support your argument:
  • The OAH style guide says to leave out titles at the first mention, and says nothing about second mentions.
  • The USC style guide mentions both options.
  • The Times Online style guide mentions both options, one being used on news pages, and one on "features". If I would have to compare an encyclopedia with either of those, I would say it is closer to the "features".
I'd argue for consistency: no titles for anyone, except if needed for clarity. Wikipedia is not a newspaper; whether someone has died recently or long ago is not relevant for the style of the article. Eugene van der Pijll 22:17, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If I accept that Wikipedia is not a newpaper, why are we using a newspaper style? Almost no one refers to Ms. Schiavo as "Schiavo" in casual speech. It would be rude. And non-American readers view it as rude here. I argue for compassion.--ghost 14:12, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Casual speech should not be used as a basis for how to write but even in casual speech people often will use just last names. There is nothing rude about "Schiavo" in the same way that athletes, celebrities, politicians or anyone else living or deceased is referred to by their last name in journalistic (not just newspapers but also academic) writing including Schiavo. In academic journals you will never find “Mr” or “Mrs” or “Ms.” The first time their name is mentioned in an article use the first and last names, but after that use only the last. There is no reason to take offence to this. Paradiso 17:26, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Eugene, my reasoning for those sources is that all three support the MoS's statement, "After the initial mention of any name, the person may be referred to by surname only." Unfortunately, this is vague. That has led to some people, enforcing what is meant to be a flexible policy, to treat and defend it as Dogma.

Paradiso, I understand the reasoning behind not normally using Casual Speech as a guide. In cases like this, it is non-sequitor. Why on Earth would we use a less formal standard in writing than we do in speech? This cultural taboo alone indicates the need for Formal Style, and explains why people create style guides. As too athletes, etc., these people are (in)famous by choice. The recently deceased are not.

Finally, I've contemplated long and hard on the idea that I am the only person that takes offence to this. ("If a tree falls in a forest...") It's irrelevant. I do. If it's one person, or a thousand, it doesn't matter. The MoS, albiet vague, allows for situations like this. Therefore, I simply seek support in envoking the flexability of the MoS to avoid a revert war.--ghost 03:33, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I edit according to journalistic style, but I would not get into a revert war over this kind of thing, because it is only a matter of style and does not influence the facts of the article's content. Paradiso 04:07, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I do not agree with ghost's statement that non-American readers view refering to Ms Schiavo as "Schiavo" as rude. I am not American and I view it as normal. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica does not use titles, and neither does Winkler Prins, the main Dutch encyclopaedia. -- Jitse Niesen 19:16, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hard rules and extra strict standards of notability for commercial services?

This entry caught my eye from the newly created pool, Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner & Kluth, P.A. Barely notable entities creating their own Wikipedia pages. The page might be factually accurate but promotional in tone. There will be no third party source to verify the info. As wiki grows, the likelyhood of these advertisement entries dressing themselves in the brand credibility and prestige our hard work made will grow. The only defense I suppose is a policy that explicitly blocks these articles. Lotsofissues 11:31, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Typing the name into Google comes up with 1600+ results. It seems notable enough to me, but by all means place it on WP:VFD for the vote. Any obvious adverts are speedied, others are voted on – that is the best way, I reckon. violet/riga (t) 11:39, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You're right - it's notable. I misread - I thought the firm consisted of 6 attorneys but it has since grown to a large botique of 60+ attorneys. This was a very poor example of my point. Lotsofissues 11:44, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"Any obvious adverts are speedied"... oh really? The reason that that is against policy is that some of us like to re-write articles in a neutral fashion so that at least something positive comes out of the process. Creation and then deletion creates nothing. Putting on VfD gives us a chance to do the rewrite. Pcb21| Pete 11:49, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
OK, so I'll create an advert for my local laundrette, giving its opening times and list of services. Should that not be speedied? violet/riga (t) 11:58, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Somehow when you went to school you missed the definition of any. --SPUI (talk) 13:57, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Somehow when you went to school you missed the definition of obvious. I don't even know what you mean by what you just said. If it is a blatant advert for something that doesn't appear once on Google then I think we can use some common sense. violet/riga (t) 13:50, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"Any obvious adverts are speedied" seems to be a statement about POVness not notability, so you are changing the subject. I've noted (too many times) before that one of the directions Wikipedia is currently systematically biased is to be anti-commercial and pro-technology. Having rules like speedy deleting "obvious adverts" and using Google as the chief (final?) arbiter of notability reinforces both of these biases, which is why many people really dislike it. Pcb21| Pete 06:44, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

defintion of encyclopedia??

Britannica defines an encyclopedia as a reference work, which how I have always understood the word yet wikipedia only defines encyclopedia as a compendium. Wikipedia is not a reference work due to its open nature and lack of certainty about any article at any perticular time.

It would seem wikipedia is redefining the word encyclopedia to include itself. whats with that??

--Deus777 05:11, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why should Britannica's definition of "encyclopedia" be more accurate than Wikipedia's? Merriam-Webster defines it as follows: "a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject". You are correct that Wikipedia's "open nature and lack of certainty" make it less reliable than sources backed by an authority; however, the fine newspapers and magazines (and books, court cases, and so on) at Wikipedia as a press source would disagree with Wikipedia not being a reference work, as they all have used it as such. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:19, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Openness and lack of certainty about articles might conceivably make Wikipedia a poor reference work (note that many people would disagree with you on that!), but it would still be a reference work. What's with the current trend of claiming Wikipedia isn't an encyclopedia? — Matt Crypto 09:50, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a "compendium of human knowledge which represents "short but comprehensive compilations of a body of knowledge." To me, that's an encylopedia. Tobycat 01:26, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

NPOV suggestion

Sorry everybody, this may be a stupid suggestion, but I think the NPOV tag may be too vague. The most obvious of all, I think there should be a tag like "Political" for some articles (e.g. Taiwan Independence, etc.) since there may still be arguments about if something is written with a natural point of view. If there is a tag as described, viewers will be reminded that a specific document is political and the point of view may not be accurate. And therefore they can decide if they agree with the author or not.

Sorry if the suggestion is rude.

--Wen 13:11, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • The NPOV tag is supposed to be used in concert witn an explanation on the Talk page. I generally delete NPOV headers if the person who slaps it on the page doesn't bother to explain just what is POV about the article. RickK 23:24, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

There are a number of existing policies relating to linking to external sites, for example

and there is probably more. The general intension appears to be to discourage all external links because we would rather have material added to Wikipedia, discourage links to commercial sites which might be seen as advertising and to discourage links which simply serve to boost the ranking of the 3rd party site. Whilst at the same time not banning links to commercial sites, because the article on Yahoo! should link to the official yahoo site.

But the other day I came across a new issue;

Should Wikipedia allow links to 3rd party Wikis?

In particular I noticed a number of links being added for www.armeniapedia.org, which is a semi-commercial copyrighted wiki. For example to Mint along with some other herbs. There is also tourist information on some Armenia related pages, such as Shirak.

My impression is this is a little like spam linking to blog sites. On the other hand we actively encourage interlinking between Wikimedia Foundation projects. You could also argue this is just like linking any other external web site, but it feels like there is something qualitatively different about it. -- Solipsist 07:56, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There is a thin line between spam and useful links, especially for travel related things. But in case of wikis, I am all for interlinking and cooperation. I think highly of Wikitravel - and besides, they even treat us as an interwiki (i.e. link wikipedia along other language versions). We are not here to fight wars, and Wiki is big enough so that it will absorb any external competition anyway - if they want to link to us, we will take their information and attract more visitors. We are Wikipedia. Your webpage will be assimilated. Link to us and surrender your copyright. Resistance is futile. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:12, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Braille

Would there be any possible way to branch W out to make some sort of Braille version? You know, for the blind and deaf people of the world. The blind but not deaf have the spoken project, and Braille is a natural progression. However, my mind thinks: How can one put Braille on the Internet? Dammit. --Wonderfool t(c)e) 12:31, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are Braille display devices - see refreshable Braille display - but a common solution is to use a speech synthesizer. Both render standard written text. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:54, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Many people that have accessibility issues can manage without special versions of Wikipedia pages. They simply need pages to follow W3C accessibility guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/). Unfortunately many Wikipedia pages fail to comply with the guidelines yet could quite easily. Try running a page or two through http://valet.webthing.com/access/url.html Bobblewik  (talk) 17:31, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wiki is very confusing for newbies.

I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to participate -meaningfully- in Wikipedia. I suggest that the W. staff show their site to some test volunteers and watch them to see all the places they get frustrated. Then the introductory material should be massively revamped. One place that could and should be immediately modified is the section called something like "editing a page" - writing a new page is HIDDEN there.

Maybe it's not a bad thing if the procedure for creating new pages is a bit hidden: arguably people should get some experience with editing existing pages before creating new ones — quite a lot of inappropriate new pages are created that then have to be deleted again, which is a bit more troublesome than just reverting an inappropriate edit to an existing page. By the way, when posting here (but not when editing articles) please sign your contribution with four tildes ~~~~ rossb 10:39, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I do agree that the Wikipedia namespace is needlessly cluttered and obtuse at times. I don't really see a viable solution though, other than adding some summary pages here and there. Radiant_* 15:18, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
What's wrong with Help:Contents? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 16:28, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Nothing, except that some more advanced topics aren't really there. Try getting a comprehensive summary of deletion precedents, for instance. Radiant_* 07:54, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Well, judging from recent activity on VfD, I don't think "new" users are having any problem figuring out how to make vanity/cruft pages, so there's not much point trying to keep "how-to-create-new-pages" hidden at all. However, speaking of VfD, we might be able to reduce the load if the practice and principles of merging were a little more clearly defined and easier to find. They are currently at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles which is sort of a misleading title, and they spend a lot of time talking about tagging and requesting moves without clearly pointing out that any editor can merge and redirect. Plus the instructions say "cut and paste" but I've also seen around that "cut and paste" can destroy the edit history. Undoubtedly referring to two diffent uses, but some clarification would be nice. Soundguy99 05:28, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Here's a start wrt KISS principle for rules: Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset. Is there a similar project for Wikipedia:Simplified editing instructions? Kim Bruning 16:49, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Very good! Can we link that from the 'Welcome new user' template? Radiant_* 07:54, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
    • IMHO it wouldn't hurt, because it's designed to be compatible with the current wikipedia policy. Even so, note that currently the page still has proposed policy status, so you might want to be careful, to propose a poll to have it accepted first, or wait 'till someone else does so. Kim Bruning 01:01, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Disputed move

What is the process / template that should be used in a disputed move of an article that still lacks concensus on the talk? There is no disputed move template so I don't know what to do. A disputed name would also work. The current {{TitleNPOV}} however doesn't fit as the name is not really NPOV, but incorrect. --metta, The Sunborn 21:25, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Well most page moves are expected to be uncontroversial and are trivially available to registered users. If a page move is disputed, it is best to raise the question on the talk page and escalate to Wikipedia:Requested moves and follow the instructions there. When there is a conflict due to a previous edit history at the prefered page name, the assistance of an admin is required and WP:RM is the way to go. -- Solipsist 21:54, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Disambig styles

Ever been to one of those disambiguation page which only confuses you more? Something like:

Foo can have a million meanings, some of them more useful than others.

In anthropology, the ancient Balinese art of Foo dancing influenced Balinese and Sumatran styles as well.

See also:

If so, you probably want to weigh in on the proposed manual of style page for disambiguation pages, Wikipedia:Disambiguation/Style. Only 24 hours left to register your opinion! —Wahoofive (talk) 22:00, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

WP:RPA

  • Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks - the status of RPA is under debate; some people swear by it, others intensely dislike it. Please give your opinion on whether this should be policy, guideline, discouraged or forbidden.

Vote on contents of Government of Australia

I am now proposing a formal vote at this article on the following proposition:

  • That in Government of Australia, and in all other articles dealing with Australia's system of government, it should be stated that:
1. Australia is a constitutional monarchy and a federal parliamentary democracy
2. Australia's head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia
3. Under the Constitution, almost all of the Queen's functions are delegated to and exercised by the Governor-General, as the Queen's representative.
  • That any edit which states that (a) Australia is a republic, (b) the Governor-General is Australia's head of state, or (c) Australia has more than one head of state, will be reverted, and that such reversions should not be subject to the three-reversions rule.
  • Edits which say that named and relevant persons (eg politicians, constitutional lawyers, judges) disagree with the above position, and which quote those persons at reasonable length, are acceptable, provided proper citation is provided and the three factual statements are not removed.

User:Skyring, who has argued for a contrary position, was given an opportunity to present an alternative position but declined to do so.

I propose that the vote remain open for 48 hours from now (2.30pm AEST 25 May), and that ten votes be required to produce a valid outcome, but I am open to other suggestions on this. Adam 04:46, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Vote on Australia's head of state

A massive organized attack by tireless vandals

How would Wikipedia handle such a scenario?

My imagination didn't prompt me - rather I stumbled across this thread [4] The thread is located on a forum of a coarse humor website populated with large numbers of young males with a lot of time. Members had a grievance with Wikipedia, which they felt was insensitive to so they declared an open season on the controversial entry. If you browse through the pages and pages of "reports", you can appreciate the headache for some admins that day. At one point a forum member caught on to more sophisticated tactics and suggested creating edits that appeared in summary boxes as anti-vandal work. Fortunately for Wikipedia, the little war stopped owing in part to previous positive experiences some vandals had using the site. In this case, only obvious vandalism was unleashed upon the site. What about in the future? What if don't have the benefit of self restrained vandals? Or even worse imaginative vandals? There are plenty of online associations of young males that would gleefully relish working together to cause a gigantic shit storm. A LA Times commentary discussed one such incident, although that fizzled out more quickly. The iniator was merely prompted by a perceived left bias at Wikipedia. If such a tireless group prompted by whatever were to go on a subtle false edit campaign (e.g. date alterations, plausible expansion, etc.) what could Wikipedia do?

I don't have an idea - although I have a minor suggestion. If you browse through the pages, you will find some Wikipedians joining the forum and entering the fray. I think editors who engage in self-indulgent troll feeding should themselves be punished for prolonging a miserable task upon other editors.

lots of issues | leave me a message 16:43, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I think this sort of thing will become more and more common. The best we can do is keep reverting and blocking. As a few forum posters have noted, blocking a dynamic IP does diddly-squat. And taking screenshots of what they do("Oh look what I did on Wikipedia! hee hee hee!") is also getting very common. --Deathphoenix 17:00, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
I remember this very clearly because I was up until 05:00 am negotiating with the co-owner of the site, who had initiated the attack. In that case there was a single point of contact and I found that I was able to understand the group's motives and contribute to the cessation of the attack. The belligerent contributions of some wikipedians were not helpful to this process. In cases where we do not have access to a ringleader I think that calm repeated reversions with neutral edit summaries are the key. Threats to block and declarations of the power of Wikipedia are counter-productive in such circumstances. --Theo (Talk) 17:41, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
Ah, so you were the one who "isn't such a prick" (or words to that effect) who was negotiating with John. Reading those two threads in that forum was quite informative (not to mention somewhat entertaining-I guess my sense of humour's pretty crude), especially when one thread started with talking about actually writing the article, and the other thread was talking about bringing it down. I agree, talking about any sort of war between Wikipedia and $WEBSITENAME is counterproductive, but it's a real pity there's not much else we can do. I can see why people were sorely tempted to vote Keep out of spite (I would have had to fight that urge myself), but that only added fuel to the f/ire. --Deathphoenix 18:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
Yep, just like Theo, I remember this incident quite well. I was so busy blocking and reverting that day, I wasn't very effective in my other projects. I'm afraid we can't do much else besides blocking, negotiating and reverting. (User:MacGyverMagic) 82.172.23.66 20:11, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
The good news is that WP as a whole is larger than almost any other online community, esp. those that would commit mass vandalism, so it's not as big a problem as it was in the past. Meelar (talk) 21:43, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
I consider it an interesting point that had some one with a deletionist/notability agenda not proposed it for deletion the whole issue would never have occured. The irony of course, is that the organized defense of the sites wikipedia entry is an argument FOR it's notability. So not only does bickering about notability become a pointless waste of time for wikipedia editors, in this instance it brought in a bunch of fools from some other site to vandalize. Wikipedia surely should not modify policies because of the actions of vandals, but maybe the actions of vandals point out wikipedian behavior that needs to be checked.
This raises something that might be interesting. Maybe because of the constant bickering about notability that occurs on VfD, a nice guideline might be that "Lack of notability, by itself, is not a reason to delete." SchmuckyTheCat 00:01, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Except that this group wanted to the article to be deleted. If the article had not been nominated the issue could have gone on longer. As to the wider issue of the "attack". A couple of admins were able to deal with it without trying. In the end we know more about vandalism of wikipedia than they do and the softwear favors us (mediawiki 1.5 will increase this advantage). Dynamic IPs can be blocked if needed. In a test of who can keep going the longest we are going to win.Geni 00:24, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
My 1500-page Watchlist may be larger than average, for I add to it any pages of interest that I notice are being vandalized. I doublecheck any vandal's User contributions, working backwards and ensure that vandalism has been reverted. And in my Edit summary I suggest blocking. An axiomatic "Wikipedia surely should not modify policies because of the actions of vandals" doesn't make sense to me, you may imagine: 99% of vandalism is from IP numbers not logged in. --Wetman 00:14, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Can we make it semi-policy to disallow editors from retorting against attackers indirectly through messages on this site? (e.g. votes) That if you do try to negotiate a resolution on the attacker's site that you do so only in a professional manner and if you fail don't stick around making scatalogical insults? (e.g. "Ben", "zazzy") lots of issues | leave me a message 02:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Eh, sometimes the quickest way to deal with such goblins is to cripple them. The problem here is that this takes an experienced and aggressive jacker, and encouraging such retaliation isn't likely to make good politics for Wiki. There'll always be a population of goblins out there, and probably the only long-term fix is to keep up with business as usual and hope it doesn't get worse at a faster rate than the local script-captains consolidate security. Also, the more articles up here, the more work they'll find it to cause lasting havoc. In other words, don't become discouraged, and keep the project growing.

Often with persistent vandals they have some pretty specific reason why they are angry, fx an article they like which was deleted. In my experience, if you catch the problem at the root and really explain why the article was deleted with references to politics etc. then they may still don't like it, but they usually understand it and don't go out on a vandalism spree. I have seen many angry questions which have gone unanswered; it is very important that angry questions are answered (even if the answer seem too obvious to you to be worth answering), otherwise the person making the comments will feel that he was in the right and was wronged, and perhaps be angry enough to go out on a vandalism spree!

For the same reason it is a good idea to use vfd instead of speedy deletion when the contributor contributed the article in good faith. Even when article should obviously (to you) be deleted. Vfd is a way to legitimize the deletion, show that community consensus is behind the deletion, and give the contributor a chance to ask questions and understand why his article is being deleted. Thue | talk 19:17, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Name and shame vandals?

I've read Wiki's procedure on dealing with vandalism, but I was just wondering, are we able to add the wherabouts of anonymous users on their talk pages. I realise that this isn't quite 'naming and shaming' and it's a little harsh, but is it ok to do so for persistent vandals? File:UK Royal Coat of Arms.png Craigy File:Uk flag large.png (talk) 21:48, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

What would the point be? "PS this guy lives at 402 Main Street in Joliet IL, if you want to go rough him up a bit"? And if that's not the point, then what is? --Golbez 22:17, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Yes I see your point (although IP searches match-up to towns and not as far as streets). I just thought saying "We know where you are [though we're not going to come and see you]" might deter them a little. Anyhoo, just an idea. Thanks File:UK Royal Coat of Arms.png Craigy File:Uk flag large.png (talk) 22:28, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

And anyway - this would only work if it's a single IP, right? ... And if a single IP is being a persistent vandal... THEN WHY NOT BLOCK THE VANDAL? Permanently, even? I swear, there's way too much coddling of the lower elements of society here. Some people can't be rehabilitated. --Golbez 22:53, May 23, 2005 (UTC)
If vandals were shameable, then they wouldn't bother with their idiocy in the first place. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:12, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Can we name and shame people who soak up bandwidth by putting images in their sigs? *cough* Craigy *cough* ? :) TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 00:40, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
LOL, looks like you already have. I was thinking about dropping the royal arms anyhoo, but pwease can I keep my fwag? :-) Craigy File:Uk flag large.png (talk) 01:50, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Don't bold foreign scripts

In my travels in wikipedia, I see some articles about foreign subjects with the English name in bold, of course - but then people make the foreign script bold too. This can make it very difficult to read, especially with Japanese or Arabic articles which have very busy characters or scripts which bold can muddy together. An example: Compare 東條 英機 with 東條 英機 (courtesy General Tojo), or أسامة بن محمد بن عود بن لاد with أسامة بن محمد بن عود بن لاد (courtesy Osama bin Laden). The Arabic makes a valiant attempt to remain legible but at the standard font size, it looks like a difficult battle, but I don't read Arabic so I don't know. However, I do read Japanese, and the bold kanji are more difficult to read than the regular kanji. Some of them are just too busy to handle the extra pixels required by bold. Can we make it a policy never to bold stuff in a non-Latin script unless absolutely necessary, and this includes not enbolding it in the lead? (Having the English be bold is sufficient, isn't it?) I'd like to hear the opinions of people who know Arabic on this. --Golbez 08:19, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I agree non bold foreign characters are better rendered. Since this is the English wikipedia, and a huge majority cannot read foreign scripts, I don't see why it has to be displayed in bold, which are clearly less legible.  =Nichalp (Talk)= 09:07, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
I thought only the title of the article should be bold (plus some of the redirects when they are alternate titles). Since these are neither, they shouldn't be bold. --cesarb 17:01, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
The justification being, I guess, that we bold the name of General Tojo so why not bold his name in Japanese as well? --Golbez 18:19, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
I completely agree, as does Wikipedia:Manual of Style (China-related articles). Physchim62 03:23, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Minor football players

I have listed Ross Flitney for deletion in the hope that this result in some form of policy decision regarding reserve team footballers. At this time of year football teams will be releasing players, many of whom are youngsters who have not quite made the grade. However, we seem to have articles on some of these players, who have no premier league experience, simply because they have been assigned a squad number.

I can live with these articles while the players concerned are still attached to a top team, although I far from consider them to be encyclopedic. But I would like to encourage some form of policy debate regarding articles about players who have been on the books of Premier League sides but never actually appeared in the league for them. If we could come to some form of catch-all decision it would save a lot of repetitious discussion on VfD about these sub-stubs. Rje 21:10, May 23, 2005 (UTC)


Categories for deletion policy begs for revamping

Shit happened finally. I have no time to write much right now. Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion#Moved from main page (Fooish battles --> Battles in Fooland). I am not good at writing policies, so please someone do it. Otherwise ardent democrats may do much harm, because unlike deleted articles, deleted categories are very difficult (and sometimes almost impossible) to undelete. Mikkalai 16:45, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Calendar format convention

Given the substantial divisions thrown up by Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate, which with 80 opposers is most unlikely to reach the necessary level of consensus, I would like to see a policy proposal that can find some consensus in this area. I do not, however, wish to spark divisive argument; I seek constructive discussion with a view to consensus. Is it feasible to start a policy debate with a set of proposed tenets before developing a proposal. In other words, would posting a page that postulated a number of points about which there might be no argument be a viable starting point? I would expect the process to be: propose the tenets; modify these until agreement is reached that they are tenets; propose a policy draft that conforms to the tenets; modify this until it is stable; vote on the agreed version; hoop la! --Theo (Talk) 11:16, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

The current approach on the MoS is not to change an article that consistently uses BC/AD to BCE/CE or one that consistently uses BCE/CE to BC/AD. I reckon that's as good as we're going to get. Kind regards, jguk 16:33, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for that tenet and that opinion. Is it feasible to start a policy debate with a set of proposed tenets before developing a proposal? --Theo (Talk) 15:12, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki Bot Policy Proposal

Recently, there has been several requests from various people to run interwiki bots. While such use is praised and accepted without comment, apparently one bot has caused disasterous results... removing several pages' interwiki links when it should not have. My proposal does not change the fact that anyone who wishs to run such a bot must request permission to do so at Wikipedia talk:Bots, but that a person who runs an interwiki bot should have a grasp of the language in which they are linking to and from. The reason behind this is that a person who runs an interwiki bot should be responsible enough to understand whether or not the interwiki linking that is being performed is done correctly and that if they are running it automatically (without user intervention) that the person who is running it should review the edits of the bot periodically. For example, if I wanted to run an interwiki linking bot between the Chinese (zh) Wikipedia and the English (en) Wikipedia, I should be able to read and understand Chinese to a reasonable degree. Likewise for English.

I'm sorry, but if you don't understand English enough to understand that your bot is breaking pages and people are complaining about it on your user talk page, then you shouldn't be running a bot. Same goes for the other languages you're running the bot on. The only exception that I'd give this rule is if your bot is merely going to all the other Wikipedias using the interwiki links and making certain that the interwiki linking is the same on all the pages. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:12, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

To be specific in what I mean, I will explain by an example:

Your bot visits en:Star Trek. It looks at the interwiki links, then visits:

Then on each one of those pages, makes certain that they have all the interwiki links found on en:Star Trek. Furthermore, your bot attempts to find interwiki links on these pages not found on en:Star Trek. It then creates a "master list" and makes certain that all the interwiki links are the same on all the language Wikipedias it has visited.

Basically, an interwiki linking bot shouldn't be removing interwiki links period. Modifying yes, but perferably under manual control by a person who understands both languages from which he or she is modifying. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:12, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. -- Beland 19:59, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree completely. Thryduulf 00:48, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree too. Surely we can have a rogue bot blocked until things have been straigthened out with the user who runs it? 131.211.210.13 08:07, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Certainly. However, I am attempting to slow down the number of interwiki bot requests and making sure that the only people requesting to do so are the people who understand what the heck they are doing. Not the people who think they are helping by doing something useful by guessing. (Although the help is appreciated, it seems to do more harm than good sometimes.) -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:24, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppets

Wikipedia:Sock puppet/Proposal is a proposed guideline to hold people responsible if they create a secondary account with the sole purpose of disruption or harrassment. Wording is agreed upon, are there any objections? If so please join the discussion.

Radiant_* 12:19, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia: namespace policy proposal/question (no games) and VfD listing

User:Beland has listed Wikipedia:Chess championship, Wikipedia:Mornington Crescent Championship and Wikipedia:WikiHangman Tournament for deletion: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Chess championship, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Mornington Crescent Championship and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/WikiHangman Tournament. It appears the user attempted to generate discussion on the subject of appropriateness of games in the Wikipedia: namespace on the village pump, but didn't get a response, and so has listed the pages on VfD in an attempt to gather other people's opinions. Demi T/C 04:07, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Survey: style of disambiguation pages

Wikipedia:Disambiguation/Style is a proposed supplement to the Manual of Style. Please register your votes and comments on the article's talk page. Survey closes May 25, 2005. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:19, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Dict-defs, orig research, and Gunning down

Do we intend the dict-def and orig-research policies to preclude an article Gunning down? "To gun down" is ambiguous (between resulting in death vs. at least temporarily disabling injury) and IMO a discussion of the ambiguity of this belovedly "punchy" broadcast-news second-string cliche would be both valuable and encyclopedic, in the same way that our discussions of the words f***, ye, and thou are.

The question is not merely academic, bcz there is an information gap here:

  • The expression "to gun down" is not acknowledged at all in the three standard (Collegiate and larger) dicts i have at hand.
  • On line, the first ten Google hits on
"gun down" dictionary
produce a range from the inconclusive "shoot: to shoot and kill or severely injure somebody ( informal )" to a ridiculous, pseudo-AI, result. (And note that trying to fix the ridiculous one with quotes destroys everything but the ads!)

Restating the good (but accurately inconclusive) one in WP would be merely a dict-def. Supplementing that with some examples of ambiguous use, is an unjustified non-sequitur, without a statement involving the word "ambiguity" or "ambiguous". Thus:

  • Do we need to come up with evidence that such a needed statement (and the ambiguity's problematic nature) constitutes "established knowledge", or
  • is making that uncontroversial, common sense observation outside the intended range of our original-research prohibition?

--Jerzy~t 17:13, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Why would any of this be Wikipedia rather than Wiktionary? -- Jmabel | Talk 07:08, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Fidel Castro

His supporters clear mentions about human rights violations in Cuba, with links to Amnesty International report. They also call Batista a dictator, but when I call Castro a dictator, they erase this without any reason. One of them called me a sockpuppet. What to do against an agressive POV bashing in this and other political pages? Frankly, my opinion about political articles in english wikipedia is law, most of them are far away from NPOV.

(perhaps the anonymous editor meant to say "opinion about political articles in english wikipedia is low" ?) FreplySpang (talk)
Yes, of course. Sorry for the typo. --62.219.175.34 16:21, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Guideline for editing guidelines

A discussion is taking place at Template talk:Guideline about whether the {{guideline}} template should explicitly permit/encourage users to edit the guideline page on which it is placed. Kappa 08:09, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Policy on hard to verify information and tibbits

Take for example this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grunwald#Opposing_forces

The line regarding the Soviet era joke is very difficult to verify. If it is true, then it adds to the depth of the article. However, it is nearly impossible to verify. I can easily think of many instances where little tibbits like this are found in articles. Should they be removed? It is quite easy to introduce minor misinformation using these tibbits. To err on the side of safety, I propose that we remove any such little tibbits because: 1. They're not essential to the article. 2. They're impossible or very difficult to verify.

Please advise. Comatose51 04:57, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Merging policy?

These three article appear to be very related Morpholino, Antisense mRNA and Antisense therapy. They could easily be merged into the same article. Is there a policy for merging such articles with redirects or is it encouraged to keep them as separte articles with links? David D. 18:48, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes, there is a policy for merging, it's called being bold! Basically, if you find a number of (usually short) articles and believe they are better organized if combined to a single article, you can go ahead and do so - we trust you! Radiant_* 21:48, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

Deletion of Semi-policy

User:Radiant! has taken it upon himself to delete the content of Wikipedia:Semi-policy and redirect it to Category:Wikipedia guidelines based, as far as I can tell, on the contents of four CFD votes against Category:Wikipedia semi-policy, and his dislike for the recent vote at Wikipedia talk:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

This strikes me as grossly out of process, since it appears no general discussion of the virtues of semi-policy has occurred and there has not been any general notice of this proposed change or a VfD posted for the page Wikipedia:Semi-policy.

Perhaps consensus will support Radiant!'s position, but I believe it at least needs to be discussed before such actions are taken. Dragons flight 14:40, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

Ammendment: There is also some discussion of this change at Wikipedia talk:Semi-policy. Dragons flight 14:45, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

  • Fair enough, but this has been extensively discussed in such places as WP:POINT (talk page) and WP:AN/I. Nobody has been able to give a sensible definition of the word 'semi-policy', nor has the existence of semi-policy ever been policy (and yes, I realize the paradox therein). Thus, I have been WP:BOLD in clearing up the confusion, and I stand by my action. Radiant_* 14:58, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

This shouldn't be too big of a deal; this is just substituting the word "guideline" for the term "semi-policy". They mean, as far as anyone can tell, the same thing, and the former is older. The renaming process shouldn't promote anything to official policy or demote anything to rejected or thinktank status, unless it's been labelled improperly. Has that been happening? Other than that minor concern, I say hurray for streamlining. -- Beland 02:02, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I think that it is a big deal because I believe that there have been some Wikipedia namespace articles that have been "upgrade" when they have been labeled at "Guidlines" although I don't think that they have the consensus support for that label. Wikipedia:Google test is one example that I don't think should be labeled as a Guideline. BlankVerse ∅ 15:03, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Although I agree with Radiant's agenda, even I'll admit that his aggressiveness is unwelcome. There is such a thing as going to fast. -- Netoholic @ 14:52, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

This was a major change in the labeling of many of the Wikipedia namespace articles. Because many of these articles were previously unlabeled, it is a task that needed to be done, but not in the manner that it has been done. There are a number of the articles that I don't agree with how they have been labeled, and I doubt would receive consensus support for their current labels from Wikipedia editors. This should have been announced at Wikipedia:Current Surveys and Wikipedia:Requests for comment at a minimum before any of these major changes were made. BlankVerse ∅ 14:57, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Sofixit. You are mixing up two issues - what I've boldly done is renaming 'semipol' to 'guideline'. That's all. Reclassifying rules has been going on for a while, ever since the Template:policy and such were created. It's just that it hasn't been quite obvious until now.
  • I find it interesting that you consider 'semi-policy' to 'guideline' an upgrade - personally I thought it were a downgrade. Anyway, I have asked on WP:AN if some experienced users would look over the categories and see if anything is misplaced. Feel free to join in. And note that if they are, it is quite possible that they already were misplaced before this matter was brought to everyone's attention. For instance, see recent debate on WP:CSD on whether or not that is policy. Radiant_* 15:22, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Seems that failed proposals, formerly known as semi-policy, have been renamed ambiguous. I suggest we stop the charade. They should be

  • Rewritten as guidelines, if they're gudieline material, or
  • Moved to meta, if they're meta-encyclopaedic, or
  • Archived in the userspace of the proposer, if they're not useful.

Zocky 16:42, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree, this "ambiguous" template doesn't seem very helpful at all. Let's only tag pages which have some real status in the "policy life cycle". -- Netoholic @ 16:58, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

I agree that the "ambiguous" template is a bad idea. If there's a dispute, punt the page back to the policy thinktank, call for votes, and give an explanation at the top of the page until the dispute is resolved. I will list it on WP:TFD. Since Wikipedia:Google test is disputed by BlankVerse on Wikipedia talk:Semi-policy, I will follow this procedure for that page. I agree that if any other pages are misclassified, they can and should be handled on an individual basis. But they need to be classified into other existing categories, such as "proposed", "guideline", "offical", "rejected", or "historical", not returned to "semi-policy". -- Beland 02:05, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Agreed except for the vote. m:don't vote on everything. Also, I think the description of Cat:Guideline may need rewording; the cat is supposed to be pretty broad, and per WP:NOT a democracy I don't think we need any other 'levels' of policy. Radiant_* 07:28, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Basically {{guideline}} should say "many wikipedians" not "most". Kappa 07:41, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I disagree. Guidelines should be open to rewriting (as they are) and rewritten so that they reflect how we normally do things on wikipedia. If there are issues where we disagree, the guidelines should say so. We should be able to agree on their contents then. Zocky 07:50, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I posted a longish chunk of text about these things at the Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines, which looked like an appropriate place. Zocky 12:27, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

What you've written is interesting, but should be moved to is own Wikipedia namespace page, tagged with {{proposed}}, and then advertized at WP:RFC, and Wikipedia:Current Surveys (and probably on some of the effected policy pages as well). BlankVerse ∅ 14:26, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
  • No, because WP:NOT a bureaucracy. This is not a proposal; it is an explanation of what already happens. And what already was happening even before my renaming actions. Radiant_* 14:43, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

It's neither a proposal nor accurate description of the current state of affairs, it's more of an attempt to define terms through discussion so that we're at least fairly sure what we're talking about. I hope nobody's changing any pages based on it - hardly half a dozen people have commented on it yet. That said, I'm rather puzzled by the implied statement that there's something wrong with talking about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines. Zocky 20:32, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Are universities inherently encyclopedic – or not?

I naïvely thought there was a consensus that institutions of tertiary education were considered "inherently notable" or "encyclopedic" or whatever term you want to use. This would be useful, as it would keep a lot of potentially contentious articles away from VfD and thus waste less contributor time on deletion discussions.

In the last few weeks there have however been two cases of institutions of higher education being nominated for deletion, first the Claremont School of Theology, and currently the Avans Hogescholen (Avans University) in the Netherlands. Although they were both listed partly because the state of the stubs, my suspicion is that a contributing factor was the presence of the word "school" in the names of both articles. In both cases I have seen voters vote "Delete. Non-notable" or similar even after the article has been cleaned up and it has been explained that this is in fact not a secondary school, but an institution of tertiary education.

Although I am tempted, I would prefer not to believe that some people are so dense that they vote "delete" without as much as looking at the previous discussion. The conclusion must be that there a significant number of people who think that we should weigh notability in the case of universities and colleges as well. Am I right? I have asked for explanations at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Avans Hogescholen, but have so far not received any reply.

If there is a consensus for keeping all articles on universities and colleges and comparable institutions, I think that ought to be made clear. Then these discussions can be avoided, or closed and the articles sent to cleanup as soon as the character of an institution has been made clear. If there is not such a consensus, there are a lot of articles on U.S. community colleges, many of which are two-line stubs, which could be purged. I don't think anybody could claim that a community college is notable. Generally speaking, I think most tertiary-level institutions with only undergraduate studies and no or very little research are to be regarded as of dubious notability, unless they are particularly prestigious or important in some way. But do we really want to go down that road? Tupsharru 08:50, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think that a glance at the majority of VfD votes will confirm that yes, many people are so dense (or bigoted) that they'll vote without reading the discussion. The trouble is, though, that decideing policy (or general consensus) is useless here, because even when there is one, people will still vote the way that they do anyway. If policy overrode VfD votes, that would be another matter. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:17, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
The behaviour that really gets on my wick - person A) will say "I think X". B) will say "No X is incorrect, because of W,Y and Z" and then person C comes along and says "Oh yes A I agree with you!", and completely ignore the cogent argument of B that is staring them in the face. Pcb21| Pete 12:32, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
In these situations the best thing to do is rewrite/expand the article so that the point becomes moot. Pcb21| Pete 12:32, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
This is frequently near impossible. I know that I am incapable of writing >20 articles a day. This is the volume that a single user is feeding into VfD. Further, it appears that many users will vote delete, simply because it is a school that they have no first hand knowledge of, even after the articles are cleaned.--Unfocused 13:24, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
It's hard for me to imagine an accredited institution of higher learning that is not encyclopedia-worthy. A given article might be lousy, but the topic would still be legitimate. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:08, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Jmabel, but the mention of accreditation rings a warning bell. I believe that in some nations there's accreditation and accreditation: some of the degree mills that The Economist persists in allowing to advertise boast of accreditation (in ways that are clearly meaningless) while of course keeping mum about lack of meaningful accreditation. I vaguely remember that one username that's active at WP was insisting on the inclusion of degree mills, the last time I looked, avoiding or even deleting any mention of "degree mill" or similar (terms that he claimed were PoV). The "university" should, for starters, have a physical location that's more than a mere mailing address (which would not exclude genuine "universities of the air") and should identify its teachers. -- Hoary 06:21, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
There are so many Bible colleges that do correspondance course degrees often only needing a letter describing the clients 'life experience' to buy a degree even Ph.D. I note Patriot Bible University is in wikipedia. No doubt they will use the fact they are in the wikipedia to bolster their credibility despite their lack of real accreditation. I don't mind there being articles about the existance of these diploma mill universities but it seems a bit silly that they have their own page. Wikipedia will end up like the yellow pages at that rate. David D. 07:04, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I would say that a school with no physical location and "odd" accreditation would typically not be notable. BTW, I notice the remark above about community colleges: I'm not sure I'd want to assert that all community colleges are notable, but in my experience, most of the ones I know anything about are. There's usually at least an interesting story as to how each one came to be. Many of them have been quite catalytic to the communities in which they are located. Many have had very interesting evolutions of their mission. Quite a few are first-rate teaching institutions. No small number have been interesting in terms of political organizing. If the articles are currently stubs, that doesn't mean that there is no story to be told. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:12, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

I would say that any university or college is absolutely encyclopedic, given the fact that it exists, and it is important. Given the low rate of matriculation world-wide I would have serious criticisms of people who desire to exclude schools from the ongoing discussion here in the encyclopedia. How else are people supposed to find a school to go to? And, a lot of people from religious families have no choice whatsoever in their choice of school. Don't leave them hanging. --McDogm 16:58, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I would agree that in general, universities and most community colleges are Wikipedia-worthy. The exception would be the degree mills described by Hoary and Daycd above. They are legitimate candidates for deletion, or they can be redirected to degree mill. As to people who don't read the articles before voting; give them a Wikislap with a wet noodle. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 17:26, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

The state of play seems to be that nobody seriously challenges tertiary institutions (and the unfortunate resemblance of Hogescholen to "High School" did play a big part in that listing). There is an ongoing argument about primary, secondary and intermediate instititions but even now it is rare for all but the most stubby of those to be deleted.
Remember that anybody can list any article for deletion and it has been established that they need not give a reason listed in the deletion policy. We don't have any policies saying "articles of type X must never be deleted". I think this is a good thing. We should use our common sense. Opinions do change greatly over time, and what is now considered inappropriate for Wikipedia may one day be considered just right, and vice versa. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:31, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
I think a degree mill could well merit an article. The article could set out the lack of physical institution, lack of accreditation, and any other facts that support the conclusion that the subject is indeed a degree mill. This could be useful information. Someone in the news might claim to have a degree from Patriot Bible University, and a Wikipedia reader might want to know more about this institution. (That particular article has some POV problems, but in general, I'd say it's appropriate.)
On the subject of post-secondary education, there are some institutions that might reasonably be called vocational schools. I don't know if they'd be considered "tertiary". Is "tertiary" education anything that requires a high school diploma (in the U.S.) or the equivalent? For example, there's an ongoing VfD debate about Toronto Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology. I voted "Keep" but most votes are going for deletion. JamesMLane 17:51, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

WP-worthiness of professors

Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper appears to have turned into an argument over whether (or which) professors are automatically worthy of their own entries. That strikes me as an odd place for such a discussion. I think a much better place would be the talk page of whichever page it is that talks about the "average professor test" (or similar) -- but unfortunately I forget where that was. Perhaps somebody who remembers can post a link below, and encourage the participants in the relevant (lower) chunk of Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper to discuss it there. But if I'm wrong and Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper is a good place for this discussion, well, this is a heads-up for interested parties to head over there and discuss.

(If anybody's interested, my own opinions on this matter are confused; and as I can't be bothered to sort them out, I'm keeping mum for the most part.) -- Hoary 08:40, 2005 May 17 (UTC)

I think the discussion should be moved to a page ot its own. The issue comes up often enough and needs to be sorted out. Tupsharru 08:50, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Recently I have been adding links to my site [Law-Ref.org] where I am gradually indexing and crosslinking important international documents (UN conventions and other treaties, EU and US constitutions, ...). Today I have received a talk message naming this a link spam: [[5]] While I have also a private motivation as links from Wikipedia are obviously very useful, I do not consider my links to be a spam as I am convinced they are useful because:

  • I am always asking a question before adding the link: would I consider the link useful in case I was not the author?
  • while official documents are available on the Web I am not aware of any resource which would offer indexes to these documents and crosslink them together

Examples of my links in Wikipedia:

and just at this moment, when I was writting this message and was looking for a second example I discovered that the author of the talk message started to remove my links without ending the disscussion with me


I am planning to add other links to my crosslinked documents when available and remove the last edits by User:Rhobite which removed my links, but I will do it only if I am confirmed that my contributions so far are not to be considered as spam. --nicmila 07:36, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

User:Rhobite even removed my link to:
    *TREATY ESTABLISHING A CONSTITUTION FOR EUROPE

According to my opinion indexes to 100+ pages of text are of some value. 

             --nicmila 09:07, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Nicmila, on my talk page you said "Marketing is a necessary part of any serious webmaster or programmer work (especially open source one) and there is nothing to be shameful about this as long as your work is of a high quality." You're right, and I hope your web site succeeds - but you need to market it somewhere else. Please don't continue using Wikipedia for marketing purposes. If your site becomes popular, there is a chance Wikipedia users will add links to the proper articles. Unfortunately you added several links to a wide range of articles, and many of them had little to do with the actual text of the laws you host. Rhobite 14:40, May 17, 2005 (UTC)
can you please corroborate your claim
  • """ you added several links to a wide range of articles, and many of them had little to do with the actual text of the laws you host"""

with an example of such a case?

You have removed some links from pages where relevance must be obvious to everyone, and from others where relevance is obvious to me. In some cases I can see opposite points in some not. I have asked you to point to other resources which are better suitable for addition - your single criterion "it must be spam because it points to your site" is rather strange. I have an expertize in some fields and have produced quite a lot of usable public source materials, some of them in the field of XML were translated to many languages and they are widely used around the world, see Zvon.org - Miloslav Nic. Being rather busy I would not even argue about these deletions although I consider them senseless and based on a very strange criteria. But as I am trying to understand how the wikipedia process works it is a useful exercise. External links are the things I am using from Wikipedia most often and consider them extremely useful as they are quite often of high quality. At this moment I am convinced that if you want to find hidden connections in international treaties, you should use Law-Ref.org. Because I am the author of the engine it is not a modest claim, but I still argue it is true. I would like to know if Rhobite really tried the links before deleting them and btw. also if this discussion is of interest to anyone than me. As I am thinking about Wikipedia quite a lot in recent weeks, I may be reached at address nicmila@zvon.org if somebody is interested in informal disscussion. I consider preparation of a very short research paper about pros and cons of wikipedia and opinion of people who are not anonymous would be valuable. --nicmila 05:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Death Penalty

Please overview this new policy proposal and give your opinions on it. LevelCheck 01:32, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Massive lists

I went a head and broke up a massive List of biomedical terms into smaller sections. Some are still long but it is better than the ultra massive page we had before. Lists of biomedical topics: | # | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

My real question is do massive lists such as this one serve a sensible role?

Many of the topics are not linking since they are not articles or stubs and never will be. Unless someone is willing to manually fix the links to the appropriate pages these lists will never be a useful indexing aid. For example, the topic antisense nucleic acid in the biomedical list should be linked to Morpholino or Antisense mRNA or Antisense therapy. The fact it does not link to any of these highlights the problems with unedited lists. We certainly do not want another antisense page yet these lists are almost invitations to start a new article. In contrast, I think we need to be consolidating pages such as the three antisense articles since they could easily be merged together.

Also note that despite this list being huge it is not up to date since none of Morpholino or Antisense mRNA or Antisense therapy are in the list. Yet 75% of the lists content does not link to an article. This seems like a terrible way to index material.

Another point that others have mentioned is that some of the categories in this list are completely off topic. i realise that this list was compiled by NIH, nevertheless it is clear that many categories in these lists do not belong. David D. 21:55, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Since it is relevant to the topic, I would like to add, what about massive list dumps to Requested articles? (e.g. pharmacology terms, AIDS terms, biology terms, anatomy terms, legal terms) Dragons flight 23:40, May 16, 2005 (UTC)
Yes these list dumps seem to be a similar problem. One of the first biology terms I saw was for Drooling plants??? The main problem with these lists is that many of these terms are already covered extensively in other pages. Many of those red links should be redirects in my opinion, not new articles. David D. 23:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm running into the same problem with legal terms lating legal terms.... I propose moving these to the Legal area of Wikibooks. Perhaps the same can be done with the medical terms. It appears Interwiki redirects are turned off however.

Anonymous Contributers editing vandalism in progress

I notice that vandals sometimes remove their IPs from Vandalism in progress. Although many anonymous contributers help the project greatly before deciding that WikiPedia is for real and creating a login, most people reporting vandalism in V.i.p have accounts (by the time people discover V.i.p., they already have accounts). Most anonymous IPs editing V.i.p. are vandals. They remove their IPs and steal themselves a few more hours before being blocked. We should require an account for editing V.i.p.

--

— Ŭalabio 07:15, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

  • That's an impossible proscription. It would require a change in the Wikipedia code, as of now there are no limitations as to who can or cannot edit any articles, except for non-admins editing protected pages. We could protect the Vip page, but that would mean only admins would be able to edit it, and that's not tenable. RickK 19:31, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Fun and games

Category:Wikipedia games has grown to include not only a Wikipedia-based trivia contest, but also story writing pages, and now, an international chess championship. Is this OK? -- Beland 06:06, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Now we have a hangman tournament, too. I've added a few of these pages to WP:VFD; I guess we'll see what people think there. -- Beland 03:25, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

NPOV requires us to use BCE/CE rather than BC/AD

I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view. In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:34, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

  • What I don't get is, if someone (as I guess I do) accepts the inherent POV in BC/AD, isn't using the Common Era naming only only slightly less POV at best? I mean, why would someone say that the Common Era happens to begin with Jesus? The implication of calling it "Common era" is that you're trying to say it's everyone's Common era, and not just Christians. But if we were to hypothetically assume that Jesus had never existed, would we have the same Gregorian (from Pope Gregory) concept of "common"? Would Jews, and Hindus, and Chinese, and atheists, and whoever else? Probably not. It strikes me as a lot like substituting "intelligent design" for creationism. So the choices seem to be these: turn the entire Wikipedia upside down coming up with some sort of new dating system that is inherently NPOV (even non-religious), if that's even possible, or go with the overwhelmingly common convention of BC/AD. And I don't think the "common era" is even a really valid option, being neither NPOV or a common convention. --Dmcdevit 23:09, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
The English wikipedia will use that convention which is most common to English speakers. Welcome to anno domini. And really, if you use "CE/BCE", that doesn't make it any less POV at all - the numbers are still based on Christ. If we renamed Showa 41 to, say, Bozo 41, does that mean the numbering system still isn't based on the reign of Hirohito? They are two letters. Get over it. --Golbez 23:33, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
Well, I don't know that I necessarily agree -- it doesn't make a huge different but the truth of the matter is that the BCE/CE vs BC/AD thing is a dispute based on the fact that our calendar has a religious origin. That said, I prefer BCE/CE and consider BC/AD to be a bit of an archaism at this point, but it's only just becoming so in the last twenty years or so. I would suggest that it's a nonissue, and let individual editors do as they wish. Both conventions are well understood in the English language. Haikupoet 23:40, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Golbez—it should be based entirely on established convention, rather than whether that convention may further a sectarian agenda. If AD and BC are still the most commonly used date references in academia, media, etc., then they still should be used. Maybe it should be context specific; say, if anthropologists are shown to chiefly use BCE/CE, then articles on anthropological subjects should use those too. Or maybe we should just leave it in a state of nature and all promise never to edit war over this? Postdlf 23:40, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Nice try, but of course where this comes up is in articles like Jesus, where the terms have an additional connotation. Jesus skeptics (such as the Jesus Seminar, Karen Armstrong, etc.) almost uniformly use the CE/BCE notation, whereas Christians universally use the AD/BC system, so whichever one is chosen itself colors the content of the article. —Wahoofive (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I kind of like Postdlf's idea. Maybe it should be like our American vs. British spellings: totally up to the discretion of the editor as long as it's internally consistent. PS, has there ever been a debate about this in the WP community at large? I can tell Slrubenstein put a lot of work into this, but did anyone else besides him ever express serious concern for making a policy for this? --Dmcdevit 03:59, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
You kidding us right? This is at least the fifth debate on this issue in the last two years, and the current policy, which looks set to be retained in view of the current vote, is the result of those debates. Pcb21| Pete 07:05, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Considering that I've always read BCE/CE as "Before Christian Era"/"Christian Era", I don't think it makes any difference whether we use BC/AD or BCE/CE. --Carnildo 04:02, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

GFDL on Talk pages

There is an editor who wishes to contribute to Wikipedia, but who does not wish to license his Talk page contributions under the GFDL. (He has no problem with the normal licensing of his contributions throughout the remainder of Wikipedia.) I am not an intellectual property lawyer and not qualified to address the correctness of his legal claims, nor am I familiar with any Wikipedia policy which allows individual editors to exempt specific contributions from the GFDL.

Extensive discussion on his user talk page has failed to reach a conclusion, so I would invite discussion and commment from a wider audience. Are there are any historical cases/discussions on Wikipedia of editors who wished to restrict the distribution and licensing of their contributions? Since this is a general question, it might make sense to move the discussion here: out of user space. Assistance appreciated. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 16:26, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Having read the whole discussion, I think I can find these two points:
  1. Pioneer-12 is allowed to copyright and license his writing in any way he wants.
  2. Wikimedia is not bound to accept any contribution. As it is WikiMedia policy to only accept GFDL contributions, there is no reason that WikiMedia should allow contributions under any other license.
Thus, I would say, Pioneer-12 should either accept the GFDL, which he has already done by submitting his writing, or not use the Talk: namespace. He cannot pick and choose the GFDL: it is obligatory, even if other licences are appended. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 16:49, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
Agree with Smoddy, and point out that it is impossible to do what Pioneer-12 describes, as:
  1. The edit page always specifies that "All contributions to Wikipedia are released under the GNU Free Documentation License"
  2. All contributions are immediately served over a banner releasing them under the GFDL.
Demi T/C 17:26, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
Pioneer-12 added his copyright statement to his user page on 23:06, 11 May 2005. The license of the contributions to talk pages and singned contributions anywhere, that were added after that point in time, is uncertain. If Pioneer-12 really thought he was allowed to submit non-GFDL'ed texts, the license may indeed not be GFDL, now that wikipedia has been notified of that fact. It's for the judges to decide, if it would ever come that far, but his intent is now known, and could be decisive. His later contributions should probably be removed, if nothing changes.
His contributions before that date are probably still GFDL'ed, as the GFDL cannot be revoked, I believe. And his unsigned contribution to pages other than talk pages are still OK. (Note: IANAL) Eugene van der Pijll 17:46, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Even though laws on the Internet are still relatively new, I have heard that any form on a web page is treated just like a normal contract, and that hitting the submit button is essentially signing your name on that contract. Thus, everytime this user submits a new edit, he agrees to the disclaimers on the edit page: "All contributions to Wikipedia are released under the GNU Free Documentation License". 10qwerty 23:17, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree with 10qwerty and have posted my reasoning more fully on Pioneer-12's talk page. I'll add, in response to Eugene van der Pijll's comment, that Pioneer-12 is free to make a counteroffer to Wikipedia, in which he offers to make his posts to talk pages available without charge but doesn't agree to license them under the GFDL. Wikipedia hasn't accepted that counteroffer, though. The failure to go around after him and remove each of his posts couldn't reasonably be construed as acceptance. JamesMLane 11:13, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I reluctantly suggest that this editor should be blocked from editing as he disputes the terms of use of Wikipedia. I will do so and raise the matter on the mailing list Wikien-L. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:12, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I was rather hoping noone would say that... Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 15:35, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
I find the idea of blocking someone over this to be downright offensive. Pioneer-12 has done nothing harmful to Wikipedia - he has merely asserted a legal right of uncertain application. -- BDAbramson talk 20:22, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
Actually, what Pioneer-12 has done is possibly the single most damaging thing an ordinary user can. Simple vandalism can be undone with the revert button, and incorrect facts will be found sooner or later, but adding material with an un-free license can only be undone by either getting the license changed, or by deleting his edits and every newer edit. It doesn't matter that it's on talk pages rather than article pages: the law treats them all the same. --Carnildo 22:10, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Why is it offensive to block a user who has stated a firm intention not to comply with Wikipedia's clearly stated terms of use, while politely offering to continue further discussion in another forum? --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 22:37, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Pioneer-12 explicitly stated that he accepts the GDFL for his edits to articles. His effort to maintain the copyright on his talk page comments is only an issue if someone either a) alters his words to make it appear that he has said something that he didn't, or b) copies them without attribution in a degree that exceeds fair use. Either of these actions would be against Wikipedia policy anyway, and Pioneer-12 would only have a cause of action against the individual responsible, not against Wikipedia. I doubt very much that Pioneer-12 is actually going to file a lawsuit in federal court to recover nominal damages for such a violation. Even if he is correct in asserting his copyright, you can still delete his posts, or quote from them, or parody them. In any event, the GFDL may not even be enforceable, we do not know. Any one of us could turn around and claim a copyright in work that we've contributed anywhere, so there is no prophylactic value in blocking the one person who has only attempted to clearly delineate ownership of certain contributions, which none of us has any business infringing anyway. -- BDAbramson talk 14:56, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

So much cross-pollination occurs between talk pages and the articles themselves that I don't see any other options. Tracking just one user's submission under non-compliant licensing would be an administrative nightmare; if everyone were permitted to choose different licenses for their talk pages, we'd have to completely separate the talk from the rest of the project, destroying the community nature of the project. I support an immediate block, only because it is necessary to protect the project. --Unfocused 15:38, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I've blocked him indefinitely (which is of course reversible) and, assuring him that he has not done anything wrong, politely invited him to subscribe to Wikien-L. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:33, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

blocked or not, he accepts to publish his edits under GFDL whenever he clicks submit. In this case, he just seems to have GFDL'd the exclamation "my contributions to talk pages are my own!". I agree with the block though. dab (ᛏ) 15:47, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
On the other hand, from one point of view, whether he wants to or not, by virtue of his making his comments, he is submitting them using the GFDL (phew, a main verb...). I do, however, agree with the block, as it avoids unnecessary legal wrangling. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 15:49, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Thing is, this is a legal dispute. Whatever you or I say, it's just an opinion, and he has his opinions which differ. That's why I blocked him, because while we're in dispute on licensing any part of his contributions he shouldn't be allowed to contribute to Wikipedia. We all submit to the terms and conditions, it's something we do so that Wikipedia can work. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 21:12, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
I've just read the most interesting article on a related topic - Jason B. Wacha , Taking the Case: Is the GPL Enforceable?, 21 SANTA CLARA COMPUTER & HIGH TECH. L.J. 451 (2005) if anyone is interested. The author debunks many arguments against the enforceability of GNU General Public License, and some (but not all) of his arguments would apply to the GFDL. However, I still maintain the opinion that the GFDL would not be enforceable in the face of an explicit placement of a copyright notice. Copyright is a very strong presumption in the U.S., and I doubt a court would give any credence to a the GFDL unless there was a fairly unequivocal acceptance of the terms. Furthermore, there is such a thing as "termination rights" which cause copyrights to "snap back" to the original author after a set period (I believe 28 years) even if they originally licensed them away. Wikipedians ought to be lobbying Congress to make the enforceability fo the GFDL (or the equivalent) the law of the land - that is the only way to achieve a sure resolution of this problem absent a legal battle that ends in the Supreme Court. -- BDAbramson thimkact 04:39, 2005 May 17 (UTC)

Street addresses

It has been brought to my attention that street addresses are not encylopedic. When is it acceptable to include an address? Apparently it is not OK for a building but is OK for Amtrak stations based on changes being made. Vegaswikian 02:36, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

A recent edit to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not addressed the subject, so I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Street addresses. I agree with the edit to the policy, to the effect that an article on a city wouldn't normally include street addresses of particular establishments. A more specific article can, however, appropriately include its subject's street address. JamesMLane 15:29, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm sure context is everything. SchmuckyTheCat 15:59, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
I generally take a dim view of including street addresses in articles, as that's what the external link to the subject's site is for. In most cases, it's TMI in terms of explaining the entity. Exceptions would include entities that reside on famous streets, such as Rodeo Drive. This, of course, is wholly my opinion. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 03:10, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
You've made the assumptions that there is an external site for every subject, and that external sites will maintain content according to your desire. I don't think we can count on either.
Street addresses are a locational reference that enhances the reliability of the articles that include them. Some see them as trivia, but I consider them vital data. The obvious hypothetical example (only because I don't know any real ones off hand) would be an article about a historic building in a neighborhood of similar brownstones. (This would typically occur if a famous person or event was associated with a particular building.) An article like that should never be without the street address, even if it exists on an external "official" site. I'm not sure there is such thing as "TMI", if the information is organized, indexed and presented properly. --Unfocused 03:46, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
It's not the role of an encyclopedia to give exact addresses for places. It's about describing the place and its general vicinity. That should be enough. Most places have websites for them where specific location and directions are provided. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 04:24, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
Web sites and the map sites don't always have the address. I ran into this a few days ago. I spent the better part of an hour trying to find an address for a place. The offical site did not include the address nor did the map sites. Also in some cities, the address will tell you where in town the building is located. So far, no one has stated that this is in fact a policy so, while some may not like it, apparently there is nothing that prevents it from being done. Right? Vegaswikian 05:05, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Frequently the most accurate way to describe a place is to give an exact address. I believe the limit you set for Wikipedia is arbitrary ("should be enough") and not relevant when terabytes of data storage space can be bought for a few thousand dollars. An address is a clear and verifiable fact. I see no reason to ever exclude it.--Unfocused 06:16, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

10 Downing Street seems to be alive and well as an article ;) Physchim62 02:29, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

New poll on whether or not Wikipedia talk:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point should become policy

Please vote. Intrigue 21:59, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Talk pages should never be policy. RickK 19:26, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Designating a representative...

I am an alumnus of Alpha Phi Omega, National Service Fraternity. After publicizing the previously existing Wikipedia page for the fraternity, various members of our National Board have expressed concern over the contents of the Wikipedia entry not being under their control. I'm trying to balance the desires of our National Board (specifically the Marketing Director) with the standards of Wikipedia. I'm *not* including the disclaimer that the Fraternity wants on all chapter and region websites, but have provided a great deal of contact information for those wishing further (and thus official) information. (its not on the current page, it was modified, go back to the page prior to 1500 on 15May (two revisions ago at this point)).

The marketing director would like for proposed changes to at least be checked with a representative of the National Office (likely to be me, unless I violently flee from it.)

Suggestions on balancing here? I *know* there will be a Wikipedia page for my Fraternity no matter what happens because even if I erase it all, someone will add to the information on the page. Would it be proper to place a note stating that I would prefer to be checked with before changes are made?

Thank You Randolph Finder (Naraht)

Member (because I didn't run fast enough) Alpha Phi Omega National Marketing Committee.

Naraht 20:22, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Members of Alpha Phi Omega are welcome to contribute to the article—just like everybody else. If you add the article to your watchlist, then you will be notified when changes are made. (Click the "watch" button at the top of the article page.) If you are concerned about the factual accuracy of any contributions, feel free to edit them. I would recommend describing your reasoning on the article's talk page if you make any really major revisions. You can also include a note on the article Talk page indicating that you're available as a resource for article editors. Although you can certainly encourage people to consult with you, Wikipedia policy discourages article ownership or control by individual editors. You will likely meet signficant resistance if you try to compel editors to permit you to review all article updates prior to posting, and there is no mechanism in Wikipedia for instituting such a system. Hope that helps. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 21:17, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
I am watching the page already. I do try to keep track of all changes. I'll implement the other suggestions here. All information about being a resource will be moved there, with a note (as I've seen on some other pages) to check out the discussion page.
Keep in mind that no organization can totally control what is written about them here. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 03:07, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
Agreed, but the organization discussed can in some cases be the most useful source of information about it. And some of that information is not necessarily POV, it may simply be that they have the most complete archives.

Temp pages

The Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mr Tan includes complaints that he has created Temp pages for articles (such as Wee Kim Wee/temp), produced new versions of articles, and then simply replaced the existing articles with his own versions, that he has placed notices with links to the Temp pages on the articles, and that he has placed notices on his temp pages telling other editors not to edit them. Part of his defence is that another User – indeed, an admin – has done the same, and that user has confirmed that he does it. It seems to me that this is contrary to the Wikipedia in a number of ways.

  1. Details of Temp pages are for editors, not readers, so should be placed on Talk pages.
  2. Temp pages that involve developing new versions of articles, should be like ordinary articles in that they're edited collaboratively, not treated as one editor's property.
  3. Articles that are being actively edited by a number of editors should not be replaced wholesale with one editor's preferred new version.

What is the general feeling about this? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:34, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree that temp pages are only really acceptable with the copyvio stuff. Who is this rogue admin? Surely the user can create their own subpage to edit from? And I really don't see that a user can ever take ownership of an article. Articles belong to the wikipedia community, not individuals. I agree completely with your points. We should certainly not create /temp pages in the main namespace – apart from anything, that gives an article name, not a subpage. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 22:22, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree that temp pages can be useful in various situations (though I feel in general that there are better ways of doing things), but my points are:

  1. A notice about them should appear on the Talk page, not the article.
  2. They should not contain a warning to other editors not to touch them.
  3. When an article is being actively edited by a number of editors, a temp page shouldn't be used to impose a new version wholesale.

1. and 2. have been done on Maharashtra, Wee Kim Wee, and Zanskar; 3. has been done on Zanskar. I've removed the offending notices, and I'll keep an eye on the relevant articles to make sure that they're not misused. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:05, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I disagree on point 2. If the goal fo creating a temp page is to work on reorganizing / rewriting a page to get beyond a POV or content dispute, then having an editor claim limited ownership over that rewrite can be a useful thing. Creating a well-written, balanced article is hard work, and that can be made a whole lot harder if each time one makes a change that someone disagrees with it gets trashed before one has a chance to finish presenting all sides. So I can respect someone that wants to be left alone while preparing a new version. Of course, once they are satisfied with what they have written, then it needs to be editted by other parties and consensus developed for whether the new version (or parts thereof) should replace the old one. Dragons flight 13:44, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
If you want to work on an article alone, I'd suggest the following procedure:
  1. Put the temp page in your user space: User:Joe/Foo instead of Foo/temp
  2. Announce that page on the talk page of the article, and pay attention to the reception of that announcement
  3. Put a notice at the top of your temp page, that asks people (nicely) not to edit the page, and to put any comments or criticism at the talk page of the temp page
  4. When you're satisfied, say so at the article talk page, and invite people to start editing the temp page
  5. Don't replace the article until there is a rough consensus that your version is better.
I think that following those rules would greatly enhance your chance of having the new version accepted. Eugene van der Pijll 15:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
  1. I do not understand how you define offending messages. If you think that's it, I think your behaviour depicts three times worse than what mine is.

Tan 22:46, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Since my name has been brought here over my methodology, I would like to add my inputs.

  1. I 'only use temp pages to create Featured Articles. I have not used a temp page for any other purpose. I know that my temp version may be a POV. Hence I use the Peer Review and FAC, thus ensuring that the edited matter is far from a POV as it has undergone the rigours of the community review. An admin wishing to verify may see the following deleted temp pages: Mumbai/temp, Cricket/temp, Kalimpong/temp and Sikkim/temp. Tan's temp pages on the other hand does not aim to achieve the FA status so may be open to bias.
  2. I disagree with Mel that the temp page should be open to other editors. (I'll expand on this and more points later.... I'm currently pretty ill... and may not log on to 'pedia for sometime)  =Nichalp (talk · contribs)= 18:19, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
I should stress that, though I don't really like the use of temp pages in article space (I agree with the approach described by Eugene van der Pijll), I'm not suggesting that Nichalp is guilty of anything beyond adding editorial notices and links to the tops of articles,and asking other editors not to interfere (though I certainly don't accept the former, and I don't think that the latter is good practice). My concern was primarily with Mr Tan's use of temp pages to circumvent normal collaborative editing.
I'm sorry to hear that Nichalp is unwell; I hope that he recovers soon, and is able to present his arguments for his position. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:00, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Resuming after where I left off...

  1. Wikipedia provides some sort of limited singular editing viz. the {{inuse}} template.
  2. As for the notice on top of the page... I had seen it on another article long before I used this method. If its bad practice or un-wiki-like, I won't use it again.
  3. Many editors use a dialup connection or access the net during fixed hours. By using a temp page they can edit offline and dump the day's work on the temp page, previewing and self-copyediting. If the temp page is open to edits, its very difficult to keep track of the changes and modify the offline document. In this regard I support the use of the "Please don't edit sign; User Talk instead" to allow the user the freedom to edit, as well as receive feedback on the ongoing work on the temp article. I also feel that work on the temp page should be advertised somewhere, so that other wikipedians are kept in cognizance of the work in progress. No, it does not circumvent collaborative editing, it compliments it; provided the temp page is not a gross POV or contains worse English.
  4. If policy on the temp page says that it should be kept in my namespace not the article namespace, I'm more than willing to comply.

 =Nichalp (talk · contribs)= 20:04, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

I was involved in the process that User:Nichalp describes for Cricket / Cricket/temp and it worked extremely well. The page had become an unintegrated mess of individual comments. Rather than rewrite in situ, there was agreement to take the rewrite offline to a /temp page, and for User:Nichalp to take primary authorship of the rewrite. Once User:Nichalp was finished, the interested parties amended, copyedited, etc, until all were happy with the result, and the /temp page was copied to main article space. While the rewrite was in progress, a message was added at the top of Cricket pointing to Cricket/temp, so new readers would be aware that a new version was under way (intended to prevent new information being added that would inevitably be deleted when the /temp version went live), and asking for editors to refrain from editing Cricket/temp until User:Nichalp. Throughout, there was substantial on-going discussion on Talk:Cricket (see the first couple of archives) and Talk:Cricket/temp, and the result was a well-polished, NPOV, featured-standard article that sailed through WP:FAC.
I'm not aware of the issues in this case, but I think this kind of process does need all of the interested parties to be content. I've used a similar method (although without quite the same excellence of result) to clean up Pharaoh / Pharaoh/Temp. Perhaps the /temp articles should be in user-space not article-space, but does it really matter? For example, {{copyvio}} asks you to rewrite the article in a /temp temporary subpage. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:58, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Manual of Style changed with small amount of discussion

A long-standing part of the Manual of Style was recently neutered after less than a week's unpublicized discussion between less than a half-dozen Wikipedians. I strongly feel that any such changes should only be made after trying to solicit input from as many editors as possible. I don't like instruction creep, so I am reluctant to suggest a new policy, but I would think it should be common sense that any change to Wikipedia-wide policy should have the support of at least 20-30 editors, not 4 or 5. The specific instance I am referring to is here. Niteowlneils 00:08, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Naming convention?

Okay, so recently I suggested on British cuisine that we move the article to Cuisine of Great Britain. Now, aside from the political disagreement (what is GB vs. UK, other names for it) which was not what I was getting at, there was actually a lot of debate, so I thought I would put the question to you all here. It seems to me that the proper naming convention for all country subarticles is "X of Country". This is holds true for "economy of X", "religion of X", "demographics of X", "history of X", "military history of X", "culture of X", etc. So I thought that cuisine should be no different. The reason we always put the noun form first, I think, is to avoid irregular consructions. So, let's say I want Cote d'Ivoire's cuisine, would I know how to construct Ivorian? Or Congo --> Congolese, or Equatorial Guinea --> Equatoguineans, or Kiribati --> Gilbertese, or Myanmar --> Burmese, you get the idea. Putting "Cuisine of X" allows someone with minimal knowledge to search and find the article. While British is a common construction, it should be moved for consistency's sake. Can we have some discussion on the matter, what is proper? (btw, Jooler subsequently began to move two "Cuisine of X" to "Xian cuisine" in the middle of our debate, offering no discussion as I did. It strikes me as bad faith.) --Dmcdevit 02:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Regularity is a concern, but overriding even that is the convention that we should use the most common unambiguous term for something (Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use common names of persons and things). The number of Google hits on "British food" alone (>200K) shows that this is a very commonly used term, one I've used myself. I doubt someone would come up with your title in 10 guesses. On the other hand, you could argue that "British food" is a somewhat vaguer, more general term describing any dish associated with British culture. Deco 03:14, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
Oh, and I agree that Jooler would've done better to wait until there was consensus on the matter. Moves can only be undone by admins, after all. Deco 03:18, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
Moves can be undone by non-admins; just move the page back (as long as the redirect automatically created when moving wasn't edited, it will work). --cesarb 03:26, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
Well the problem is, if someone is looking for Great Britain's food, then British food might not be their first guess. Let's assume they don't know the construction for British, then maybe they look for "Britanish" (like Spanish), or Great British, or Britainian or whatever. But they must already know how to search for "Great Britian". This may seem far-fetched, but it certainly isn't for Kiribati. After all, how many of you knew it was Gilbertese? --Dmcdevit 03:37, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
Redirects can be used for that. If you think a first guess might be "great britain food", just create a redirect from Great britain food to British food. --cesarb 03:43, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Right, I guess what I really wanted was to see if we could reach a consensus as to the proper naming convention for this type of article, not just a quick fix. What do you all think the correct titles should be. This is the right place to post this, right? --Dmcdevit 03:52, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

There's a distinction to be made between things that can only be characteristics of countries, such as Economy of X, and cultural things which might transcend country borders: Kurdish cuisine couldn't possibly be ported to Cuisine of Kurdistan without a major war. What about Appalachian cuisine? (Cuisine of Appalachia?) —Wahoofive (talk) 05:22, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
And I almost forgot, Klingon cuisine—Wahoofive (talk) 05:44, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
I didn't expect to see my name pop up here. Excuse me, there was no "debate". Cuisine of the United Kingdom was just plain wrong, and as I pointed out on that page, if I can get an Indian take-away consisting of a meal that was invented in Scotland (Chicken Tikka Masala) in Brick Lane in East London, prepared by a Bangladeshi chef - then putting 'Indian cuisine' at 'Cusine of India' is similarly plain wrong. The same hold true for the articles that I moved. Food is not-geo-political, it is cultural. Jooler 00:11, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Go tell the Germans. A few years ago I had a chat with the German owner of an Indian restaurant in Frankfurt. He told me that the German authorities would give Indians short term work visas to cook in his restaurant, but not Pakistanis because "The are not Indians". Philip Baird Shearer 09:36, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

I think Jooler could perhaps understand that the more we use neutral (eg. geographic) rather than political (eg. culture) criteria as designators for article naming and categorization, the less time wikipedia contributors may eventually waste on moronic debates about whether baked aubergines are Turkish, Bulgarian, Syrian, Ottoman or Byzantine cuisine. Also Jooler glues geographical to political and proposes culture as the alternative. This is wrong. Culture is political and these two are bedmates, while geography is the more neutral, at least for now. If you have any doubts consult any of the articles on nations, nationalism or ethnicities. Very complicated stuff and bound to spoil the meal! --Modi 11:51, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Heh. I had forgotten about this listing. I agree with both of you. And the offending articles include: Austrian cuisine, Dutch cuisine, Eastern European cuisine, Filipino cuisine, Irish cuisine, Korean vegetarian cuisine, Latin American cuisine, Lithuanian cuisine, Maltese cuisine, North African cuisine, North American cuisine, Persian cuisine, and Western cuisine, which can all be moved to Cuisne of X articles. There's actually fewer of those than "Cuisine of X" articles, so this is the easier move. There's also Anglo-Indian cuisine, Bengali cuisine, and Jewish cuisine that I am less sure about. Where does this go from here? Should someone list it on RM? --Dmcdevit 16:28, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Articles on compilations from other sources

The article FHM-US's 100 Sexiest Women 2005 has been stuck in a debate at Wikipedia:Copyright problems over whether or not it's a copyright violation. The article lists, in order, the 100 names that had been reported in FHM magazine as the results of an annual poll it conducts (here is the 2004 list to show what it looked like). Some people are arguing that FHM has the copyright on this list. Others (including myself) think that the list itself is not copyrightable because the magazine editors did not select and rank the results; they reported the results of a poll. The magazine also added editorial content by selecting pictures and text to accompany the list, but none of this was included in the Wikipedia article so it wasn't an issue.

The issue is still unresolved. Some people say it is a copyright violation and others disagree. Unfortunately the original discussion has died down with no agreement reached. So in order to seek a wider range of information and hopefully reach a consensus, I'd like to open a discussion here. MK2 15:21, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The list is certainly copyrightable, regardless of whether it is a poll or not. Since FHM conducted and compiled the poll, they own the copyright to the list. Reproducing the list on Wikipedia without permission would constitute a violation of FHM's copyright. Kaldari 01:44, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A counterexample that others have given are lists of Academy Award winning actors, Pulitzer Prize winners, or Nobel laureates. These are all lists of people that are basically copying the work of the organizations that gave out the awards. From a legal standpoint, what is the difference between FHM-US's 100 Sexiest Women 2004 and Academy Award for Best Actor? MK2 03:42, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
None of those other examples are analogous because none of those compiled a ranked list that was arranged in a particular order. That an individual has been given an award or honorific constitutes an isolated fact that cannot be copyrighted, and a list of such awards organized chronologically is no more creative than the alphabetical phone book in Feist v. Rural. What is copyrightable is the compilation of an ordered list of selected individuals. If FHM did the selecting and arranging in some meaningful way that was creative rather than purely functional, then it may be copyrightable as a whole, though not in isolated references to specific parts. How was this poll conducted and compiled? If it was conducted according to standard industry phone sampling, and the list was merely compiled from a numerical tally of those results, then it would likely fail the originality test. Postdlf 04:04, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Interesting point, but do you think the Oscars, Pulitzers, or Nobel Prizes are awarded based on phone sampling? FHM conducting a self-selected poll of its readers and awarding the highest vote getter the title "Sexiest Woman of 2005" is no different, from a copyright standpoint, than the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences conducting a self-selecting poll of its members and awarding the highest vote getter the title "Best Actor". MK2 06:27, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you're continuing to labor this point, because I had just said mere reporting of any standard phone survey results would not be copyrightable, without some creative editing or intervention in the process. But regardless, you need selection and arrangement to have a copyrightable compilation. Determining a winner just gets you a selection of one fact—who your winner is—but no arrangement, and independent facts can't be copyrighted, only original arrangements or expressions of facts. Conducting a poll to get a ranked list gets you selection and arrangement, so the question is then only whether there is some creative editing control over the end result, or some creative step added to the process that isn't merely functional. Postdlf 06:54, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think you and I are actually in agreement on this issue. In this particular case, FHM conducted a poll and printed the results - the 100 women who got the most votes ranked in order from the one who got the most votes to the one who got the 100th highest total. So there was essentially no editorial input at this point other than the decision to conduct the poll. Then the magazine added editorial content by selecting pictures and writing short text articles to accompany the results - I think everyone is in agreement that the picture selections and text are copyrightable. So as long as the Wikipedia article only list the names and their ranking it's okay. MK2 02:33, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, we are in agreement on that, if the poll was conducted in that manner. Postdlf 05:16, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Simply compiling the information is not enough. There has to be some element of originality in the selection and arrangement (see Feist v. Rural). I'd have to know more about how the poll was conducted to really state a conclusion, but it's at best an issue on the outer edge of copyrightability. I have been unable to find a single court case that has involved an infringement claim based on survey results, btw. Postdlf 02:16, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It would be great if instead of having just the lists (which don't really add much; a user interested in this list may as well go to the FHM website and get the pictures too) we have some analysis of the FHM-US lists as they have existed for the past 5 years. Who has appeared every year? Who has highest average position? Some commentary on how the lists were created. Not sure if this would make the copyright problem go away, but it would be more interesting content. Pcb21| Pete 08:21, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You may want to read below. Providing factual comparisions might skate the line with original research, but may very well meet the needs of Feist v. Rural.--ghost 04:09, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Re original research: The "no original research" policy always used to be about preventing crackpot physics theories turning up as fact on Wikipedia and the recent extension of its intent is harmful. In practice we have to be able to do a modicum of synthesis else everything will be copied from elsewhere. Pcb21| Pete 08:34, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We appear to have reached another deadlock. Based on the comments posted here and at the original discussion, this is what we have (with my paraphrasing of people's opinions)

Believe the list is protected by copyright:

  • RickK
  • Korath - FHM selected the people on the list and made the order
  • Physchim62 - FHM had creative input into the list
  • Kaldari - copyrightable because FHM conducted the poll

Believe the list is not protected by copyright:

  • MK2
  • Quadell - is not certain
  • Burgundavia - doesn't think a simple list can be copyrighted
  • Postdlf - not copyrightable unless FHM added creative input to the results of the poll

Other

  • Pcb21|Pete - suggesting adding new editorial content
  • ghost - commented on original research policy

MK2 18:09, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

You can't vote on what the law is! It's like voting on whether gravity keeps us on the planet - a majority vote against it won't make us all float away. Leave it to the experts (in this case, Postdlf). See also Kregos v. Associated Press, 937 F.2d 700 (2d Cir. 1991), holding that a particular selection of factors to gauge the performance of pitchers could not be copyrighted, nor could a mere arrangement of such factors, but a particular arrangement of those specific factors could (e.g. not "A" alone, nor "B" alone, but "A+B" together). Here, we are not copying the arrangement, just the results of applying the particular selection of factors. -- BDAbramson talk 23:17, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

It seems to me it's hard to argue it either way. See U.S. Copyright Office - Copyright Basics: What Is Not Protected by Copyright? -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:05, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Having read the comments here so far, it seems to me the list alone is not copyrightable. Here is another way to think about it: Some organizers had a sort of a contest. The results were made known, along with a a lot of interesting detail concerning the contestants and the contest itself. Later, a second party posted the rankings of the contestants. Did the second party violate the first party's rights in any way?
  1. MLB Baseball season rankings Newspaper
  2. FHM Sexiest women rankings Wikipedia
ExampleOrganizersContestMethod2nd Party
1Major League BaseballBaseball team standingsPlayed a bunch of gamesNewspaper Sports page
2FHMSexiest women rankingsAsked a bunch of peopleWikipedia
Why is example 2 any different than example 1?
However, that the New York Times disagrees with me. They have pursued action against other publications that have re-published their best-seller list. For example, they went after www.amazon.com [6] for using the New York Times bestseller list as a basis for providing purchase incentives (books on the lsit were to be discounted). This was quickly settled [7] with Amazon agreeing to certain terms, including; listing the books alphabetically instead of in-order, and sharing sales information with the New York Times. Since this didn't make it to a legal ruling, it does not set a legal precedent. Maybe someone can find an example that did go to court? Johntex 02:11, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Here's one that might be related. The Court Service-Chancery Division-judgment But I'm no lawyer and it's a UK issue. It's William Hill bookmakers against the jockey club and the British Horseracing Board over the use of fixtures, racecards and other data held in the form of a database. I think it's relevant because FHM's information is quite possibly held in a database. However, I don't know whether the publication of the material in FHM negates database extraction. Do newspapers print the whole list, or do they just mention who's top? Steve block 19:52, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
OK, I'll bite. Example 1 contains facts which can be verified independent of any newspaper or press service publication (I do not believe MLB can claim ownership of such rankings as they are simply objective facts that can be obtained through a variety of sources). Such rankings are simply a compilation of publicly accessible information. The information in example 2 was collected by a proprietary method. There is no way to independently determine what the contents of that list is except as that information is released by the publication. older≠wiser 02:22, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
But don't forget example 3 - Feist v. Rural. Company A goes out and collects all the information (name, phone #, address) of everyone in the town, then publishes it in a phone book; company B skips the expense and copies company A's list of names and numbers, arranging them alphabetically (of course, because it's a phone book). The organizer here is company A; the "contest" was getting all the info from the town residents; the method was going door to door and checking who lived where and had what number; and the secondary user was company B. If FHM is just sampling opinions (like Company A gathering info from residents), is that info "authored" by FHM? -- BDAbramson talk 06:51, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)
For what it's worth, here's how the poll is conducted. FHM announces the existence of the poll in its magazine and on its website. Anyone who wishs to vote can submit up to ten women for inclusion on the list by mail or email. There is no pre-generated list of nominees. FHM does not specifically solicit opinions and does not contact any individuals for their opinions. There is no prohibition against submitting multiple votes. At a certain point, FHM stops the voting and counts up how many votes each woman got. The women are ranked from 1 to 100 based on how many votes they received. FHM publishs the results along with pictures and text. The results (but not the pictures or text) are also released by FHM to the media for promotional purposes. MK2 04:59, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki to Meta

The article [[Wikipedia:Finding network abuse contacts]] in the Wikipedia namespace has been marked for transwiki to Meta for two months now. Besides the fact that I'm not at all sure how one would go about doing that, I'd like to know where we make the distinction between WP namespace and Meta. Also, what is the criteria for transwiki to Meta (never heard of it happening before)? And how is it done (really I'd appreciate if someone else just took care of it, :P ) Thanks. --Dmcdevit 09:02, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done. Meta is the place for material that applies to all WikiMedia projects. —Theo (Talk) 13:48, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Chapter listings

I quote from the article on The Myth of Islamic Tolerance:

Chapter 44 Apostasy, human rights, religion, and belief - new threats to the freedom of opinion and expression : a general view of apostasy
Chapter 45 Apostasy, human rights, religion, and belief - new threats to the freedom of opinion and expression : a concrete proposal
Chapter 46 Apostasy, human rights, religion, and belief - new threats to the freedom of opinion and expression : Pakistani blasphemy law
Chapter 47 Apostasy, human rights, religion, and belief - new threats to the freedom of opinion and expression : the problem of apostasy in an Islamic-Christian context

Et cetera. Uninterested by books written by "popular counter-terrorism authors" from the US about the alleged awfulness of Islam, I have no intention of getting hold of this book and checking these and the other chapter titles, of which there are 58. I'd guess that this listing above is correct. Anyway, it's factual and verifiable (or refutable) information.

But why give a chapter title unless you expect that somebody is later going to say something about it? Yet this would necessitate an article on this book of at least 58 sections. That's hugely more than the number of paragraphs in the article The Origin of Species, which I venture to suggest is a more important work than The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. The listing is less like an article, more like a text dump (or advertising).

Should articles on books have long lists of chapter titles? -- Hoary 03:36, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

My thoughts from User_talk:CltFn

One problem with just listing a TOC is that it really amounts to a copyright violation. You can't call it "derivative work" or "fair use" if you are doing nothing more than just presenting a list taken right out of the book. Applicable policies include those which address copyright issues, ad-spam, and the idea of a "data dump". Unless you add content, it's a problem. In addition, it is not sufficient, with regards to NPOV simply to report one side. These books are controvertial - only to present the author's view (even if you do so accurately) is not NPOV because it ignores the opposing view. In addition, you can always set up "temp" pages to work on these articles - that way you can take your time and create balanced NPOV article about these books. Guettarda 03:44, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • The "data dump" idea is a common interpretation of a section of the "What Wikipedia is not" article.
  • The idea that NPOV should provide both sides of controvertial topics is found in a section of the NPOV policy
  • As for what constitutes "fair use", I am not a lawyer, but there is a lot of material and discussion regarding the use of copyright material. As I understand it, in order to use copyright material you need to somehow add to it. You can quote from other works, but you can't simply reproduce a quote and call it "fair use" or a "derivative work". You need to add substantial "value". When you lift the TOC of a book you are reproducing copyright material. If it were incorporated into a broader article which was new material, then it would constitue "fair use" of this material. It's something of a "signal to noise" issue. The TOC of the book would be fine if each chapter listing were followed by an analysis of the chapter (an NPOV analysis, from referenced, reputable sources, including both pro- and con, since it's a highly controvertial topic) - then it would be fine. But without some further use of the material it runs the risk of being a copyvio.

Hope this helps to clarify things. Guettarda 04:12, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Guettarda 04:36, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't make the blanket statement that reproducing a table of contents is a violation of copyright, or that it isn't covered by fair use. In reviews of books on technical topics, I've sometimes seen the chapter headings listed in the review so that a reader might get a better sense of how the book is organized and what material is covered.
That said, I would say that unless the chapter headings are somehow a key part of a work's significance, we don't need them. They are primary source material, and they don't–or shouldn't–add anything substantial to a well-written encyclopedia article on a book. In this particular case, listing all fifty-eight chapter titles is gross overkill. A section in the article for each of the book's major sections (there are six) might be one way to approach creating a useful article. --TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:58, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As I see it. it's not the chapter listing per se, it's the signal-to-noise. An article that is 90% copyright material is a copyvio. An article that is 5% copyright material, and that material is used in some way in the article, is fair use. Since these articles consist of little more than a short blurb and the TOC, there is too much quote for it to be somehow "used". Guettarda 05:17, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'd say that, besides the obvious copyvioness of it, a list of chapters isn't the WP ideal, it's a list of useless info, and What Wikipedia is not warns against such things. While in theory a paragraph was written about each chapter would make a fascinating article, who would write it? I mean, The Lord of the Rings' page doesn't have a chapter-by-chapter dissection, and it's a far more lauded book than this ever will be. I'd say this page is so pithy that it could be Vfd'd (I'd Vfd it right now if it wasn't protected), as I'm afraid I see nothing here to tell me how this book rises above the 100+ other "Muslims hate YOU!" scaremongering books out there. Do we need an article about how Muslims are believed to hate everyone else? Yes, if it can be written in a strongly NPOV way like Islamophobia and such are. But do we need articles for each and every book on said topic? No. Well, not until we launch Wikibrary that is! :) Master Thief GarrettTalk 05:40, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The problem isn't page, it's pages, all by User:CltFn. A whole lot of them. Guettarda 05:52, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Holy Hyrule, Batman! When he says "fan of books" he ain't kiddin'! Oh dear, lots of {{cleanup}} and {{vfd}} tags required there. Maybe we need to start a books Wiki after all... hmmm... Master Thief GarrettTalk 08:12, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, a fan of a certain genre of books, anyway.
Do you think that zapping these chapter lists would come under the heading of "cleanup"? My gut tells me that yes it would -- and this merely as a second choice, after turning these pages into redirects to the articles on the [rather unremarkable) authors -- but I fear that this could lead to tiresome revert wars: "It's just a text dump!" | "It's NPOV information!" | "It's just a text dump!" | "It's NPOV information!" | "It's just a text dump!" | "It's NPOV information!" etc etc. -- Hoary 14:31, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)
They are locked redirects to the author right now. SlimVirgin and I have suggested to the person that they re-write them as balanced, NPOV articles in their user space (she has also offered to unlock them one at a time to allow rewrites). There's no harm in redirects, and we should give the contributor the opportunity to do the re-writes. As is, locked redirects probably do more good - they prevent re-creation. Guettarda 14:56, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
My thanks to both of you. -- Hoary 01:34, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

Wikipedia and publication dates

I encountered a problem with some Wikipedia content: your Web pages need publication dates. Many Wikipedia writers seem to be using a present-tense style, and often use terms such as "now" and "currently," among other similar references to time. Without an initial publication date and perhaps even a "last update" date displayed on each page, readers have no way of knowing whther information is current. As time progresses, this problem increases.

For instance, this Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35mm_film) uses the following phrase:

"Most films today are shot and projected using..."

When was this content written? Will the information in this entry still be true if read in 2010, 2020 or 2030? In the future, will I have any way of knowing if a page actually has been recently updated, and thus is accurate? I realize Wikipedia is constantly being updated, but readers still have no real way of knowing the technological accuracy of information presented.

Don't you need to add a publication date to all Wikipedia pages?

George Wedding Elk Grove, CA gmwedding1@comcast.net

There is a date and time at the bottom of the page, showing when the page was updated. smoddy 17:01, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
So you're prefer it to say "Most films in 2005 are [were?] shot and projected using..."? Won't that be just as confusing to readers in 2006? For major topics like film technology, of course such pages will be updated promptly whenever there's a significant change in the industry, but even for minor topics I wouldn't call this a big problem. If WP is still around in 2010 and you read an article which says "now the President of the United States is George Bush" will that really bug you? Of all the misinformation in WP this seems like pretty small potatoes. Anyway, if you find something in an article that could be phrased better, fix it. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:07, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Or use As of links, e.g. "[[As of 2005]], most films are ...". Bovlb 17:14, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)
I think there's a policy discussing this somewhere. The best thing to do is try to make the article not require frequent updating. For example, instead of saying "Boston has 1262 tailors", say "Boston has over a thousand tailors", and instead of saying "Grimageville's has a population of 1270" say the more accurate and more time-insensitive "Grimageville's population was 1270 in the 2000 census". If you must make a time-sensitive statement, use "as of" ("as of 2005, the chicken is the coolest known bird in North America") or make it prominent in the article, such as in the intro ("Harvey Dude is a vocalist and is currently the primary vocalist of The Godzillas"). Nothing official, just all my opinion. Deco 07:11, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Not official, but you are quite right. Also to the questioner, please note that each page has a history in which you can check all previous versions, and find out when the page was started and how often it has been edited as well as when it was edited last (which is also displayed at the bottom of an article). - Mgm|(talk) 09:56, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, see the style guide at Wikipedia:Avoid_statements_that_will_date_quickly and Wikipedia:Time-resistant grammatical forms. — Catherine\talk 06:01, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Voting Templates

Several users have imported the voting templates {{Support}} and {{Oppose}} from Commons (e.g. Commons:Featured picture candidates) and have begun using them on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates and other places. These templates have been nominated for deletion, however, I do not believe that TFD is an appropriate venue for discussing this issue since it centers on the user behavior and whether the potentially pervasive insertion of little tags such as:

  • Support
  • Oppose
  • Object

poses a significant threat to server resources and/or is too obnoxious to tolerate.

I would encourage a general discussion of this behavior to occur here, and ask that voting on the TFD be suspended pending a consensus on the more general issue of whether users should be allowed to use templates / images when voting. Dragons flight 22:57, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

(The templates are {{support}}, {{oppose}} and {{object}} and have been "subst:"ed above - for them in use, see WP:FPC and WP:FAC.)
Some very cogent reasons for deletion are already listed on WP:TFD - why we shouldn't have the debate there? (But thank you for publicising the vote in a wider arena ;) Given that I nominated them for deletion, I'd rather not see them spread further than that have already before they are deleted. -- ALoan (Talk) 23:06, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
A very important point that nobody seems to have raised at TfD: These templates can be edited to turn votes into opposite votes, or nonsense. If we do keep these, it's imperative that they be protected as soon as they pass TfD. But I think they should be deleted for all the reasons on TfD. Nickptar 23:46, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • I should point out that, while looking a bit fancy, they do not actually save the user any work in typing. Also, people are supposed to give reasons for voting - in most places on this Wiki, the discussion is more important than the actual votes. Radiant_>|< 07:55, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
Oppose their use! I've looked at their use at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates and elsewhere and find them thoroughly annoying. Furthermore, they distract from any comments that editors have made, which should be the more important point. They should all be deleted. BlankVerse ∅ 12:26, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea to draw more attention to the issue at hand, but at the same time I think we should keep the real discussion over at WP:TFD to avoid repeating arguments over and over. I oppose this template, by the way. — mark ✎ 18:13, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

One for and one against would be enough. I voted keep, as I find that colorful, distincive ideograms help take in info faster then normal words. When I browse through a long vote, I can count colors faster then words. And in the era computer power is growing so fast, I would be suprised if it put any significant strain on the resources. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:39, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Then let's just make a policy to convert supportive votes to green font and opposing to red. - Omegatron 20:25, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
A solution in search of a problem. -- Netoholic @ 20:50, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)
And more damn instruction creep as well. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:52, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not everyone will use this method, thus defeating the argument of votes being easier to scan through. violet/riga (t) 20:34, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone have any thoughts about the maximum number of External links that an article should have? I just had a peek as Ethiopia, & was a bit surprised to find about 35 external links at the bottom of the page! Seeing this many links at the bottom, I can't help but think that there's something wrong with the article -- e.g., it's not complete enough, it's very controversial (& needs the proper warning added), or someone needs to audit all of these links & prune the less useful ones.

So can someone justify having more than a dozen external links at the bottom of any article? Two dozen? 35? Wikipedia:External links does not address this issue. -- llywrch 18:54, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There is mention of this at Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not. Quote:
Wikipedia articles are not [...] Mere collections of external links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding to an article a list of content-relevant links; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia.
I personally have high standards for external links, believing that they should be authoritative, well-established, comprehensive, and (ideally) present unique information or perspective that the other external links do not. If there are many such links, I think it's alright to have a long list, but if the list of links dwarfs the article, then someone needs to visit those links and use them to add information to the article. Deco 19:03, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'd say that it's usually a judgement call. Blindly applying some sort of hard-and-fast number will lead to two problems:
  1. People will fight over which links should be kept to keep an article inside its link quota,
  2. People will insist that any ridiculous link be allowed to remain, since the article hasn't filled its link quota.
I get concerned when an article is dwarfed by its list of links, or when there's more than half a screen or so. On the other hand, if they're all useful, non-repetitive, non-advertising, reasonable links, then they can stay. I'm sure that every editor will have preferred criteria for link retention. --TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:10, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Also, I think you can easily delete links that are subpages of other links already mentioned. I seem to come across those a lot. - Mgm|(talk) 09:21, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Image copyrights

Hi. Jombo Jimbo recently announced a change in the Image use policy [8]. I.e. as I understand it, only images that allow derivatives and commercial use are OK. Is there a central page to discuss this? Most image policy pages are not yet updated. A link to a relevant (talk) page would be appreciated. thanks -- Chris 73 Talk 15:26, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Presuming you mean Jimbo... I don't think there is a central forum, but Wikipedia talk:Images for deletion might be a good place to drop a note to start. Cheers, smoddy 15:29, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Uh, yes, Jimbo. Thanks for the link -- Chris 73 Talk 15:30, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
How does this affect fair use images? Steve block 16:01, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
There will be more of them. smoddy 16:14, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
? I mean images that are placed on wiki under fair use laws, such as book covers. Does this removal of non-commercial and permission only not affect them in any way? And if it doesn't, why does it afect non commercial and permission only images? Steve block 16:21, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Basically, the mailing list message outlawed with-permission images. Due to WP's mirrors, sites that mirror these images are breaking copyright, because the images are only allowed to be used on Wikipedia. Fair use allows them to be used, if there is a valid fair-use claim to be made. In short, a lot of with-permission images will have to go, but some can be re-tagged as fair-use. smoddy 16:25, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Aha, thanks. Steve block 17:38, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm. It is a bit ironic that this will apparently affect images like Image:Tampa meetup Jimbo2.jpg, featuring Jimbo himself :> --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:41, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, the mailing list also outlawed non-commercial only images. In my understanding, this would exclude fair use images, which can be fair-used only for non-commercial cases. With the example above, some of the mirrors are (sort of) commercial sites. Am i understanding something wrong? Maybe we should ask Jimbo for clarification. -- Chris 73 Talk 07:57, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
Quote from User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Non-commercial_only_and_By_Permission_Only_Images_to_be_deleted : There are a great many complexities and borderline cases associated with this. "Fair use" presents a challenging example, and I think that we rely far too heavily on fair use and that virtually all (yes, virtually all!) of the images which are currently tagged as 'fair use' should be deleted. But this is a grey area and so at this time, I only urge people to be cautious about those. No I am not sure. Delete or not? -- Chris 73 Talk 08:04, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Copy-paste but not {{copyvio}} policy?

I was overzealous and {{copyvio}}'d these two pages: Second Treatise of the Great Seth and The Devil's Walk. The first is some kind of ancient text so is out of copyright. However, it is effectively a personal essy, POV etc etc of whoever originally wrote it and, more importantly to my question, was a straight copy-paste into Wikipedia. The second is a copy-paste of a poem, along with a copyvio bit at the top that I removed. What's the policy for these things? Always leave lone? VfD and see what people think? -Splash 16:34, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Hard to say. If it looks like a nonfiction/informational article of any sort, leave it alone (or help wikify it). If it looks more like an editorial or work of fiction, see what the VfDers think about it. Not sure which way to go with ones on the boundary. Deco 22:37, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If it's a notable ancient text in it should be moved to wikisource... the article here should not just be a copy of the text, it should be commentary about how the text is relevant. gren 00:39, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
IANAL, but I believe you have to consider the age of the translation in a case like this. That may still be copyrighted. Tupsharru 04:56, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, people. Well, maybe I'll take them to VfD and see what happens. Regarding the translation, I did do some digging before removing my copyvio tag and, (IANAL) it seems that, if the translation is entirely derivative, with no original work of the translator(s) then copyright remains with the original author.Splash 00:14, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is that translation is an inherently creative act, and thus always covered by copyright. --Carnildo 02:59, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Your understanding is correct, translations have their own copyright as creative derivative works. They cannot be published, however, without the consent of the original copyright holder (if the original work is still under copyright): hence when we come across copyvio at WP:PNT we do not translate it (at very best, we make some sort of stub out of it, which is permitted). Physchim62 08:02, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

US centric pieces and NPOV

I've been using Wikipedia a lot more than usual recently, because I've been researching things for a gigantic fiction project I'm taking part in and this means I've been accessing a wide variety of articles on Wikipedia and one very significant thing I have noticed is that certain articles seem significantly culture-influenced without something being done about it.

Take for instance the Privateer and Letter of Marque and Reprisal, the latter being an especially good example, since Letters of Marque and Reprisal are a European phenomenon from around the 17th century (a bit earlier and a bit later) and yet somehow more than half of the article consists of a statement about the US Constitution's view on LoM&R and how a dean from a US Law school interprets that. All in all the article offers no information on the LoM&R other than: a dictionary definition and the US Constitution's view on it.

The articles above and certain others I've noticed here (the fact that it would take up too much time and space to search for all of the ones I've noticed) contain information that does not contribute in any significant way to the article (for the US constitution's opinion on something, a person would look at the US Constitution article, not the article for that specific thing) and it seems to have no other purpose than the person 'contributing' waving a flag saying 'hey look, I'm proud to be an American'.

Well I know that the NPOV section tells us to just remove cultural bias, but would it be a good idea to warn contributers that posting things that do not have any significance to the article and that only show a cultural viewpoint unrelated to the subject is not permissable.

Don't think I'm being anti-amerian because of the examples I chose, there are also articles, especially certain military articles, that only mention British or Australian or Dutch or German flagwaving. Robrecht

we know this is a prblem see Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias.Geni 00:41, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
We're aware of the issue, but it's a difficult one to solve quickly. Since all of our articles are written by volunteers who add what they know, we're sometimes left with huge gaps where things they don't know are left out. I suspect the Letter of Marque article was begun by someone who encountered the concept in researching that section of the Constitution, discovered we didn't have an article, and began one with what s/he knew, from the Constitutional perspective. Ideally they would have done a little more research and contributed more on LoM worldwide, but we can't force anyone to do so. Over time, we trust this sort of article will be fleshed out by others (like you) with more information and interest in the subject; if you can't improve it yourself, you've at least drawn attention to the article so perhaps you will see some improvement soon. — Catherine\talk 01:06, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The Privateer article includes the U.S. information that you mention, but it also reports: "European powers renounced privateering in the 1856 Declaration of Paris." I think both these passages about the legal status of privateering are relevant to the article. More generally, as an example of Catherine's point, I'm a lawyer admitted to practice in New York. Some of the things I know about law are general, some are specific to the U.S., some are specific to New York, and I don't always know which is which. If I have knowledge that's relevant to an article, certainly I should add it. I'm not familiar with researching the law of other countries. For me to try to produce a comprehensive trans-national survey of a particular legal point would take me weeks of full-time effort. Thus, I usually can't live up to the ideal Catherine mentions. One principle of editing, though, is that you don't have to make the article perfect; you just have to make it better than it was. That's why we rely on the procedure she describes, of having different people flesh out an article. JamesMLane 01:24, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I personally would have to say that I totally agree that a comment on the legal status of a LoM&R is definately relevant. However the comment on whether or not Congress can offer the President a Letter of Marque and Reprisal belongs in (a subsection of) United States Constitution not Letter of Marque and Reprisal Robrecht 01:40, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. The U.S. Constitution covers a huge number of important topics. To include this kind of detail about each one would make that article far too long. The same would be true of comparable articles about other legal systems. Someone who wanted to know any particular nation's law concerning letters of marque should go to the Letter of marque article. The more important consideration, though, is that most readers won't come to Wikipedia with such a specific question. Someone who opens an encyclopedia article is probably looking for a general overview of the important information about a subject. A survey of the legal status of letters of marque in different countries is a reasonable component of that summary. The problem isn't that there's too much information about U.S. law in this article; it's that there's not enough about the law of other countries. This problem is a reflection of the systemic bias mentioned above. JamesMLane 21:37, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to point you to the United States Constitution article on Wikipedia... it really IS very large. Any way, if you want to know what the US Constitution has to say about a Letter of Marque, you don't look at Wikipedia (or any other encyclopedia). Instead you look at (literature about) the US Constitution. People who look at an encyclopedia want a general summary of important points about the subject they're looking into and with all due respect, the US constitution's opinion of that subject is NOT an important point. At the very most the article should state that the US Constitution has an opinion on the subject and where it can be found in the Constitution. Robrecht 00:02, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Standardizing Table Formats

Not totally sure this is the right forum for this but...

In my additions to Wikipedia it has been my intent to produce tables (particularly chronoligical lists of incumbents) to a certain standard, incorporating such amendments as made by fellow Wikipedians into the standard where they further the format. However, and no derogation is intended against those who in all good faith have updated the tables, there have been amendments i.e. to Bishop of Birmingham and Bishop of Coventry whereby different standards are being applied, to no overall benefit.

I don't want to start appearing to be dictating as to which format is correct or risk causing offence in broaching the subject directly on the Wikipedians' own talk pages, but I would like to elicit general opinion on this, if there is an opinion.

Now I may be wrong, but I feel that the recent updates in the format don't add to or enhance the tables. Indeed, in particular, the use of text formatting (now removed) were specifically employed either as a method of best making use of the page-space, or as part of accepted use (i.e. it is accepted that dignities etc, are placed in smaller font) or for purpose of clarity, employing the use of font-weight to emphasise the commonly used names where the full name is known and should, IMO, be shown

I would say that:-

1991 to 2001 James Lawton Thomson, MA, DLitt, FCA Resigned

and

2001 to present John William Hind, BA Bishop of the Diocese in Europe

are clearer, more informative, and make better use of page-space (especially when larger text can make the left (where full dates are known) and right columns extend over more lines than necessary) than either:-

1991–2001 James Lawton Thomson Resigned

or

2001 to present John William Hind, BA Bishop of the Diocese in Europe

What does everyone else think?? --JohnArmagh 19:03, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any point in using small fonts. If the bolding served an important purpose, it should be re-added. What purpose does it serve? - Omegatron 19:27, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)


The bolding is to show the usual names by which the individual is known, as in Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie and John Hubert Richard Lewis.
The small text saves space when the text is "Dean of Rochester; sequestrated 1640; died in communion with Rome, 1655" as opposed to "Dean of Rochester; sequestrated 1640; died in communion with Rome, 1655". Smaller font means more lines per page and means that annotations don't make the columns wider than necessary or rows higher than necessary. Same with the dates, especially on lower resolution displays: when restricted to a table column 22 December 1922 to 13 September 1936 is more likely to be on the same line (making the detail clearer and neater than 22 December 1922 to 13 September 1936).
It is a generally accepted format in reference works that dignities etc. are indicated in smaller font: Wilfred Marcus Askwith, KCMG, DD
--JohnArmagh 19:52, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The latter presentation with the use of toccolours and use of font adjustments only for footnotes and the like is what you will find used very widely in Wikipedia, so I prefer it over your style. I didn't know that small tags were automatically closed at the end of the cell: you learn something every day. Noisy | Talk 19:41, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

It was a deliberate choice to use a different colour from toccolours - After using white background for a while, after consideration I felt that a background colour should be used, and that the main table of the subject should have a different colour from table of contents and any templates set to toccolors. --JohnArmagh 20:00, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I "fixed" your examples, as they were probably meant to be formatted. Change back if your concern was over the actual markup used. - Omegatron 20:17, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)


Cheers, that pretty much tells it like it is - I think it is the overall effect I am looking at rather than the markups employed. --JohnArmagh 20:23, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
So the bold is to indicate that, for instance, James Lawton Thomson is usually just referred to as James Thomson. I think that's certainly pertinent and should be re-added to the names. The rest is just cosmetic, though, right? Not functional? So I would say go by what most people think looks better. I personally like the prettytable formatting better, and don't like small fonts. Also:
"Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases. If you absolutely must specify a font size, use a relative size i.e. "font-size:80%"; not an absolute size i.e. "font-size:4pt"." - Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Formatting_issues - Omegatron 02:16, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
The only reason small tags are "automatically" closed is that the Wikipedia servers are set up to run their output html through Tidy, which attempts to fix people's awful broken syntax. Relying on this is a mistake, as Tidy has occasionally been disabled for various reasons. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:24, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your input thus far. At the end of the day what I like is irrelevant, it is what is most beneficial to the Wiki and its readers & users which is important - and to this end I would like to incorporate a standard which a) meets Wiki convention and b) enhances the look of the information contained in the table at the outset to avoid people spending unnecessary time changing what I put and putting their energy instead into adding to the compendium. Certainly I will take on the point of the proper closing of tags. I thought that the small tag created a relative font-size, but if "font-size=" is preferable then fair enough. Certainly my use of font-size is intended to be a structured and meaningful one - conserving visual space and not crowding the main information (as in the small text for KCMG, MA, DD, etc.) --JohnArmagh 07:23, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I can't see having a policy on boldfacing as in your examples: it would be too difficult to enforce, and possibly lead to disagreements among editors. There's no point in setting a policy that 99% of current editors don't follow, regardless of whether it's a good idea. I'm fine with allowing small fonts in tables, although I'm uncertain whether instruction creep is necessary in this case. —Wahoofive (talk) 20:36, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Warez groups: do we need a policy?

I am uncertain what to do about List of warez groups and the individual groups listed there, such as Again (warez). Clearly some of these groups are interesting enough to deserve articles, but I am very reluctant to have Wikipedia advertising the existence of active warez groups. Kelly Martin 05:08, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

As far as notability, the same criteria applies with any other group. Razor 1911 is certainly notable, Again is probably not, and that article needs to be deleted. As for villainy, why should we be more concerned about having articles for active warez groups than we are for active terrorist groups? Are you saying we could be helping their nefarious deeds? I doubt it. I'm very confused as to why there's all the hubbub over Again. It's not like they're pirating over Wikipedia. --Golbez 06:04, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
I think the idea was that some individuals who might not otherwise have known about these groups might utilize the list to commit illegal acts. At least, that was my understanding. For the record, I have no opinion on the subject, I'm just clarifying what I understood the comment to state. Is my understanding correct, Kelly? -- Essjay · talk 08:36, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
I just noticed her original objection was to List of warez groups; many of these are notable. Looking at the list, I see SHOCK (notable only because of CiA/The Corporation), CORE, Phrozen Crew, and of course the venerable Razor 1911 - I know these names not because I'm a pirate, but because I ran a BBS ten years ago and I simply saw these names bandied about. However, I would say most of these groups fail a notability test, regardless of their illegality. This list needs pruning. --Golbez 13:51, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
The conflict is the same that arises over whether people should be allowed to distribute instructions for constructing a bomb on the Internet. My personal opinion is that criminals will get their information wherever they have to, and unfettered access will primarily benefit those who use the information legitimately. In any case there's no existing policy or law against this sort of article. Deco 22:44, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fixing giant loopholes in Wikipedia:Survey guidelines

Wikipedia:Survey guidelines, a guideline for all manners of surveys and votes on Wikipedia, is deeply flawed in its existing rules and fails to adress several important issues. A prime example is that in Gdansk/Vote it allows both sides of the dispute to claim they are immune from 3RR rule, as well as disputing the very vote results. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:31, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The bulk of this conversation has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Survey guidelines where it belongs. I've left Piotrus's intro text here. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:31, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Complaint

Wikipedia is incredibly naive OR deceitful and fraudulent. The so-called POV issues are always resolved from a Politically Correct atheistic view point. I tested the system and introduced powerful factual arguments which were deleted...Congratulations but no cigar! Another honest Wikipedia needs to be built!

Jean-Francois Orsini, Ph.D. jorsini1@earthlink.net June 16 2005

There's six hundred thousand articles in the database. If you want any kind of meaningful response, you're going to have to be less vague. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:26, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As a PhD you claim to be you should know that being more specific usually helps, and generalisations do not. You could use an interlink to give us examples of your tests of the system, deletion of your arguments and those alleged "Politically Correct atheistic view point" (and I won't even ask about the research you made to prove that all ~600,000 Wiki articles share the same POV). Besides, if you seriously want to comment on this project, you should register and post in the appopriate section, like Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) - I hardly see what part of your post is a policy-related proposal (except your suggestion that a new Wiki needs to be created :>). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:10, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
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