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Endless, & perhaps incoherent questions at the science desk

I am tempted to collapse the middle section of the very long Einstein Sanity question, but that's based on the assumption there's any sense to be made of it. I'll support collapsing it at the minimum, assuming someone thinks it's coherent. μηδείς (talk) 03:58, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Meanwhile, a different user, User:Ram nareshji, is copy/pasting questions from other websites, and otherwise posting generally silly questions that are not requests for encyclopedic questions.
I don't really care whether these users are bots, bored kids, or repeat-offending regular vandals. They are not contributing to the encyclopedia. Let's wait this out a little while, and if the situation does not improve, we can pursue a block.
Nimur (talk) 04:39, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

LOL, I have changed the name of the thread to include Ram's enthousiasm. I'd still like comment on the first question--it does look like a randomly generated postmodernist work. μηδείς (talk) 04:48, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

The Einstein question looks to me like another of a long series we've had from someone who doesn't understand relativity, and thinks that their inability to understand it is proof that it is wrong. I suspect that the best deterrent to such questions is to find an external website that provides a basic guide to the subject, answer with a link to that, and simply refuse to engage further.
As for Ram nareshji, copy-pasting questions from elsewhere (another example here [1] copied from here [2] and also asked at Yahoo Answers here [3]) is obvious time-wasting. I can't see any obvious reason why we shouldn't block immediately. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:58, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
And Ram nareshji has just copy-pasted yet another question to the Science ref desk. [4]I've asked for an explanation,and if none is forthcoming before the next question, I'm going to raise this at ANI. AndyTheGrump (talk)


Copy-pasted questions from another site are a blatant copyvio, and he's certainly not crediting them. They should just be deleted. μηδείς (talk) 06:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Good point - I'd not thought of that. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:20, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Do as you see fit, getting him blocked first for copyvio then deleting his stuff might be the easier order. It is way past my bedtime so I will check as I normally do at lunch to see what befall. μηδείς (talk) 06:27, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Medeis User:AndyTheGrump please do-not block me from wikipedia i am not doing any vandalism on wiki articles, i will cite the source to my questions. Ram nareshji (talk) 06:41, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

No you won't - you will stop copying questions from other websites. We are volunteers here, and we aren't interested in wasting our time answering questions you clearly have no interest in having answered - I don't believe for one minute that you even understand many of the technical questions you have copied here. Reference desks are for genuine encyclopaedic questions, and not a forum for time-wasters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:36, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

User:AndyTheGrump sorry, i didn't understand your reply "No you won't". & also i am not doing any vandalism on wiki articles, i will cite the source to my questions in reference desk. but please don't block my wiki account. Ram nareshji (talk) 07:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

If you copy-paste any more questions, I am going to request that you be blocked from editing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:57, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

User:AndyTheGrump even by cite the source, then can i copy-paste question, Is that allowed in reference desk? Ram nareshji (talk) 08:24, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

No. You should ask questions in your own words. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:36, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
(ec)Legally, it depends. For some purposes you can copy some small pieces of text under copyright (which is most modern text not explicitly released into the public domain) if you properly attribute them. But on Wikipedia, we don't only operate by legal rules, but also by community rules, including WP:DICK. Maybe if you explain why you copy the questions, and why you are interested in the answers, and what else you did to find the answers, people would be more willing to accommodate you. Indeed, if you did some of your own reading first, you could probably also formulate your questions yourself and sidestep the copyright issue. The reference desk is rightly averse to what seems to be make-work. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:38, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Psychonaut what happens if my question on wiki copied to some other site, then what will happen, everybody will think i copied from that site. Ram nareshji (talk) 08:43, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

This does not appear to be an issue of concern to the hundreds (thousands?) of other people who ask questions here on the Reference Desk, so why should it bother you? —Psychonaut (talk) 08:56, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Do you see Wikipedia Reference Desk questions copied to other sites all over the place? Are you trying to justify your continuing to copy questions here with nonsense like this? Why not try to make people believe that it was actually your Wikipedia Reference Desk question that was copied to other sites? Not only are you littering the whole place with other people's questions but you've got the nerve to try and make fools of people who object. If you continue littering the Reference Desk with such questions I am also going to request that you be blocked. If not from Wikipedia, at least from the Reference Desk. Contact Basemetal here 09:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I removed "Why no one is answering my questions?" from the EntDesk, it is not a legit question, obviously. As for the entire issue, and as someone who wasted time on answering one of these - my time, like everyone else's here, is valuable, and this is a volunteer operation, so while I like to help out when I can, I have zero interest in answering questions for the Hell of it; it's a tremendous waste of effort. In short, ask your own questions if you have them, else: stop.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 09:18, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Ram's questions are starting to remind me of the user that was posting a few years ago. They posted prolifically because they thought that if we didn't have anything to respond to, we wouldn't be paid. Ram, we don't get paid to answer questions. So, if that's what you thought, please stop. Dismas|(talk) 10:06, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Despite the error of that, that someone may have genuinely been concerned we weren't going to get a paycheck is sweet (in it's own odd little way) - and I can't help smiling that that happened. (supposing sincerity)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 11:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Weirdly enough I spotted this about the same time as Nimur and in the same question. (I was always a bit suspicious of that question because my searches suggested Ram nareshji was not the maintainer of the package in question. For some reason I didn't search the question itself until I was reminded by another question that Ram nareshji was the same person who was supposedly scolded by their father for low marks recently.)
I've deleted the majority of Ram Nareshji's questions as copyvios while keeping the answers. While I'm sure this isn't the first time (the "physics magazine" aka homework question fellow springs to mind although I can't recall if these questions were reworded but many homework questions probably have similar issues), in a case like this where it's apparent the questions were copied without any mention of them being copied, even a generous reading of our policies calls in to question allowing it to stand. Many of these appeared long enough (i.e. enough creativity) to merit copyright protection. I couldn't find the Stackexchange copyright policy, but I have strong doubts they allow questions to be copied without attribution elsewhere by third aprties. I'm a bit confused whether Ram nareshji is admitting they copied other people's questions above but these questions were posted by a variety of people and often weeks or months before they were asked here, and often with a level of English which appears different from that shown here and elsewhere. Therefore there's little real reason to allow these. If Ram nareshji wants to ask questions asked by others elsewhere, they should link to the questions and rewording them (that would at least ensure they actually understand what they're asking).
I've left a few of Ram nareshji's question intact. These are cases when I couldn't find any evidence of the question being copied from elsewhere (primarily the baseball ones). I've also left a few where the the copy I could find was at physicsforum.com. I noticed that most of these were asked very recently (although still there before here I think), and was also asked by the same person (different name from Ram nareshji). I noticed this name also reasked one of the Stackexchange questions (this one Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 December 10#Documenting on code revisions in a Tex forum. Therefore I am assuming for now that these were written by Ram nareshji pending reassurance from them that this is the case.
I did delete some of the Stackexchange questions which may have been written by Ram naresji primarily because I couldn't be bothered working out what's going on. They were asked by a user on stackexchange with a similar weird history. This user has asked a lot of questions recently [5], yet some of these questions appear to be showing the same trend of being copied from elsewhere e.g. [6] was asked here [7]. Similarly [8] was asked [9]. So may be these questions were really written by Ram nareshji, but I can't but bothered working that out. Frankly I get the feeling I'll get no good reassurance and will probably end up deleting the other ones from physicsforum too.
BTW, the possibility of a breaching experiment occured to me as it did to others, but Ram nareshji does seem to have a longish history here.
Nil Einne (talk) 15:53, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Some comments here, especially about blocking, seem much too aggressive. The relativity question seems genuine and gets into some usual confusions; if the OP seems hard to follow, well, that's not a crime. The copied questions are strange, sure, but they're not actually against policy. Our policy doesn't say you "really have to want" to know the answer; we're not mind readers. We had discussion earlier about having a quota on the number of questions by one person, and if you wanted we could revisit that, but trying to get into his/her head and assume bad faith is not my cup of tea. The first explanation that came to my mind was that the person might simply be comparing the relative quality of answers on various forums, which could be the consequence of conversation we had above regarding how our desk stacks up against other sites. The second would be that maybe he wanted to see if asking more questions got better answers, since I'm afraid I myself suggested that if we had more questions people might tend to stick more in their own field on average. I could go on. You can't tell which way the train went by looking at the track. It is possible that copyright could become an issue if enough questions are copied from one source; the total borrowings ought to be kept under 300 words to show the purity of one's devotion to the copyright gods. And someone might make a strained WP:Plagiarism complaint about uncredited text. Neither is true if this is an experiment and one person posted the same questions to all the forums. But even if these lines were crossed, it should end in nothing more than a warning to knock it off. I sympathize with sociological experiments, and also approve of frustrating and confusing them by failing to act as directed or expected, because the pursuit of understanding human beings is interesting but I think not really meant to succeed. :) Wnt (talk) 16:08, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Actually we have clear cut policies against copyright violations. We also have WP:BLP and policies against impersonation. If the editor is going to copy other people's questions, they could at least not copy ones where they falsely claim to be the easily identifiable maintainer of a software package when they are not. Nil Einne (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Okay something more weird. I just came across [10] by the editor mentioned above. Except this question was also asked on the RD, not by Ram Nareshji but by an IP that looks up to Ohio State University [11]. The OSU has had some slightly weird stuff before (like joining different churches and other religious stuff which seems to show a real lack of understanding) but IIRC they've never done anything like this before. I'm also not seeing any connection between Ram nareshji and the OSU's history so have no idea what's gives. Nil Einne (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Nevermind figured it out. The time frame and edit history of the question suggests it was asked on the RD first. The question was therefore one likely of those copied by the editor on Stackexchange, this time from the RD. I suspect the OSU is the genuine author and unconnected to Ram nareshji. (This does further add to the view that the editor on Stackexchange is Ram nareshji. However it doesn't explain the large number of other questions apparently asked by other people on Stackexchange which were copied.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:24, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
I'd already pointed out above that a question asked here also appeared on both Stackexchange and Yahoo Answers (the latter has no date, so I can't tell which is the original). Given that Ram Nareshji admits to copying questions here, I think it is safe to assume he's doing it at other websites too. That of course isn't our problem - and frankly I can't see why we should bother ourselves unduly with trying to figure out why he is doing it. Whatever the motivation, asking random questions when you clearly won't understand the answers is nothing but a waste of everyone's time, and given that Ram Nareshji seems incapable of either explaining why he is doing it, nor understanding why he shouldn't, I have to suggest that the appropriate course of action is a block, at least until we can get an unequivocal assurance that he will stop doing it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:38, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
The main point is that if the question was written by someone else, then there is ample justification and good reason to delete the question under out copyright policy. If it was written by Ram Nareshji and simply posted elsewhere, then this justification goes away. (Perhaps people may feel there's justification for other reasons, but that's a distict point and I'm not sure you'll get much consensus to deleted the old archive questions for that reason.) Since it's apparent Ram Nareshji did copy some questions written by others, there may be justification to just delete everything rather than trying to sort out what's keepable and what isn't but that's likely to be more contentious so I've been as generous as possible. Don't quite understand the point about Stackexchange and Yahoo Answers, Nimur seems to have been the first to note it in this discussion although I think several people may have noticed independently (me and Dismas and I guess you as well). In terms of the wider issue, it is helpful to understand whether the editor is a one time thing who's likely to disappear if blocked, or a more long term problem, hence why I was concerned when I saw the OSU link (as the OSU asks slightly weird questions but IIRC has never done anything close to meriting a block), but I quickly realised that was the wrong direction. Nil Einne (talk) 17:01, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
To me, the 'main point' is that Ram nareshji is asking questions to which he clearly won't understand the answer - a complete waste of everyone's time. I see no reason whatsoever to be 'generous' about time-wasters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:03, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm fully willing to spend 10 hours to help someone understand a difficult concept (if I know the answer), but I get seething mad thinking about wasting 10 minutes to answer a question that the user has no interest in, doesn't understand, and, probably, won't even look at the answer. I'm, usually, one of the last people to push for reacting harshly towards people asking questions, but, in this case, if it continues, even once more, I'd advocate for a block (at least from the RD) - nonsense rambling and random screeds are better than this, at least the other person cares and is genuine, in that case.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 17:44, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
How can we know if he has interest in the answer? I've said before, the RD is not merely a courtesy service for the person who asks a question, but is an enduring resource of questions and answers. Of course this does depend on the quality of the question, and so far, probably mistakenly, it hasn't been our interest to improve the phrasing of the question but only the answer. That said, I still bet there is a real chance that when a child prays, "Google, why is the sky blue?", the answer might actually be coming from us. Wnt (talk) 18:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Now it looks like he's trolling us, because on WP:RDE he asked for a translation into British English from American English because he claimed to not understand the numerals "2" and "3". He's just dicking with us. --Jayron32 03:36, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
There is no mechanism for blocking users from specific pages. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Ok. I didn't know that. Let's hope he gets the message. Contact Basemetal here 22:25, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
On the one hand, whether intentionally or not, the guy was clearly trolling us, and pretty annoyingly so, so some kind of sanction was probably appropriate.
On the other hand, though, it always bugs me when we end up punishing someone else for what is actually, in large part, our problem. We (as a group) are simply not capable of ignoring such people; we are not capable of not allowing them to waste large amounts of our time, whether we're engaging them on the desks or debating their antics here on the talk page. But who's wasting our time really, them or... us? —Steve Summit (talk) 05:23, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Whoa, you just Zenned me out there. That, or it was the wine. μηδείς (talk) 05:30, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
From an ongoing discussion on [[User:Ram nareshji, I don't think this is trolling - instead it is a competence issue, with Ram simply not understanding what reference desks are for, and unable to understand why posting random questions from elsewhere (including at least one which had already been answered) isn't acceptable. Given this lack of competence, I can see no reason why we should let Ram post any further questions at all. As for ignoring him, the point is that the questions were genuine, and people had no way of knowing that he had no interest in the answer (or if he did, was highly unlikely to understand it). Trolling is often easy to spot, spamming the ref desks with pointless 'legitimate' questions isn't. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:35, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Even forgetting about the copyright violations - in his own broken-English way (or possibly pseudo-broken-English), on his talk page he owns up to conducting an experiment between this ref desk and that other one that's been talked about here (I forget what it's called), so the question arises: Is that appropriate? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:07, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
As long as the user makes a request for encyclopedic references, writes in English, abides by civility guidelines, and complies with our license terms, it doesn't matter how they use our responses.
Editors would do well to review the GFDL, which applies equally to articles and to our reference desk contributions. Every time a reference desk editor answers a question, links to a source, or makes a foolish joke, that contribution is irrevocably released under a free license that, with some caveats, generally permits other people to use our comment or edit for nearly any purpose. Any purpose includes, for example, conducting academic research; but it also includes using our text to build a corpus of English-language chatter to input into Markov models of speech to improve spambot engines. Freely-licensing our content carries many benefits, and at least a few undesireable side-effects. Anybody who is uncomfortable with this arrangement ought to avoid making editorial contributions at Wikipedia and its reference desk.
Nimur (talk) 10:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
The GFDL is an irrelevance (not least because the questions were being copied to Wikipedia) - Ram nareshji was wasting our time by asking questions when he wasn't interested in the answers, as he has made quite clear. We are under no obligation to cater to time-wasters, any more than we are to trolls and vandals. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
I would note that even when they were copying our content elsewhere, which I'm fairly sure they were, they were not generally complying with the licence terms, perhaps unsurprising considering the way they were copying here. Both the CC BY-SA and GFDL are copyleft. They therefore require you give some indication that the content is usable under such a licence. I saw no such indication in the places where they copied the content, nor did it appear to be the general terms of the site that the content was available under such a licence. Both also require attribution in some form. There was no link or other form of attribution in the places I saw content apparently copied from here, so this wasn't met either. While individuals editors here are free to licence their material under less restrictive licences, I don't think it's resonable that editors should be expected to do this. Or in other words, we should support them if they want to demand that the terms of one of the required minimum licences is met. I'm fairly sure many spambots do not comply with our licence terms either, so I'm not sure if they are a good example. Of course if you're making content available on the internet, you should resonably expect it will be reused in violation of any terms you may have imposed (or if you didn't allow any reuse), and probably in violation of any copyright exemptions under law too. And yes, sometimes, like with spambots, there's probably little you can do about this. However, this doesn't mean we should encourage it. And if any editor does care enough to complain, I suspect sites like physicsforums and stackexchange will take down any copyright violating content. Nil Einne (talk) 16:01, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Fair Use still applies to Wikipedia text. Unless you can show lengthy copying, it won't be an issue, and even if you do, such issues of copying outside Wikipedia are issues for the target site, not for the Refdesk. Wnt (talk) 17:51, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Fair Use still requires attribution. Nowhere in our guidelines does it say our purpose is to be subjects of social engineering or someone's experiment. Andy has hit it on the head. The user has admitted he is not interested in the answers he might receive. μηδείς (talk) 18:02, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

A lot of people around here say that. But the only "attribution" mentioned in Fair Use is in the fine print at the end of the page. Wnt (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
It's US law. Whether our article mentions that is of no relevance. Our Policy states:
Shortcut
"There is no automatic entitlement to use non-free content in an article or elsewhere on Wikipedia. Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline, use brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media, properly attributed or cited to its original source or author..."
μηδείς (talk) 21:42, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
Please, if you're going to keep citing law, do look it up:
"Note that attribution has little to do with fair use; unlike plagiarism, copyright infringement (or non-infringement) doesn't depend on whether you give credit to the source from which you copied. Fair use is decided by courts on a case-by-case basis after balancing the four factors listed in section 107 of the Copyright Act. Those factors are... [four things other than attribution]" [12]
"Can I avoid infringement by crediting the source? --> No. Copyright infringement and plagiarism are two different things. Plagiarism is the misappropriation of another's work, passing it off as your own without indicating the source. It is possible to plagiarize a work without infringing the copyright—for example if you take another’s ideas without proper attribution, even though you do not copy the language, or you borrow from a work whose copyright has expired. Conversely, it is possible to infringe without plagiarizing. Properly citing the work you are copying does not avoid liability for infringement." [13]
Now, Wikipedia policy is free to demand attribution for Fair Use quotes used on Wikipedia. That's smart, because with a hundred different editors, how else can we tell if we've borrowed too much text from one single source? But Wikipedia policy cannot restrict Fair Use quotes of Wikipedia material on other sites, since not even "all rights reserved" can do that. And because the Fair Use quotation of questions from Wikipedia that are reposted elsewhere is done from different authors - each of whom holds the rights to his own edits, and has only CC-licensed the text to Wikipedia - I imagine that you could actually copy quite a large archive of questions from Wikipedia without infringing Fair Use. But I say this only to counter your claim rather than to encourage this; we're not supposed to give legal advice here and I admit I'm not qualified to do so. Wnt (talk) 03:46, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
But fair use is basically irrelevant to my point.

Nimur seemed to imply that because our content was freely licenced, that somehow made it okay for our content to be copied elsewhere. I suggested it was not ok, if the licence was not complied with. I did hint at exemptions (such as fair use) when it came to spam bots, because I do not believe many of these would come under fair use. I didn't really address fair use when it came to copying our content elsewhere because as said it was largely irrelevant to the point being made and I recognised it was complicated.

However since you want to get in to it.... I would first point out theres's no reason why fair use has to come in to play. The truth is we have no idea where Ram nareshji lives. However there is a fair possibility this is not the US. I myself do not live in the US. If say Ram nareshji copies my content elsewhere, I would suggest it's entirely resonable for me to expect them to comply with either NZ law or the laws of where he lives (say the laws of India). These laws may have their own copyright exemptions, but they may be more restrictive than US laws. I would say the same even if he copied the content to a US website.

(This is actually a recognised issue here on wikipedia. It can be controversial, although this is generally when say an American copies content from a British website where it's suggested that the American should have complied with British copyright law. And it gets even more controversial if the law of a third country where neither is strongly affiliated with comes in to play i.e. what's perceived as forum shopping. There is in my opinion far less controversy when a person copying content is expected to either comply with local law or the law where the copyright holder lives, rather than the law of the country hosting the website the content is being copied to. In fact, generally speaking, it's a bad idea to do anything whih may get you in to legal trouble where you live, but I'm being generous here.)

The website itself may wish to only follow US law, and I'm not suggesting the website should be asked to comply with Indian or NZ law. However, and this illustrates another reason why it's irrelevant, I think you'll find many websites like Stackexchange and Physicsforums will not take kindly to people copying freely licence content while violating the licence terms by not attributing or giving any indication the content is freely licence, or heck any indication the content was copied at all for many reasons including copyright ones, regardless of whether it may or may not be allowed under fair use.

BTW, I disagree this is something that only the target website should be concerned with. Editors are entitled to be miffed if a fellow contributing is using their content in a manner which violates the licence terms they released the content under. And therefore entitled to ask whether this is someone we want to be dealing with or at least discuss the issue to make people aware of it and consider whether to respond. Now this didn't actually come up here (as stated the reason this came up is because Nimur suggested it was okay not because anyone expressed annoyance at their content being used in violation of the licence). But that doesn't mean it isn't is something which is surely on topic on wikipedia and definitely has been discussed before in various places (generally I mean, not related to the RD in particular).

I would add that I myself have often thought permissive BSD/MIT style licences are better (but am not sure how willing I am to put that in to practice). Yet I am keenly aware their does seem to be this weird belief by some that it's okay to violate the licence terms of copyleft licences in a way that no one would think of for proprietary licences. Various court cases primarily on the software side happened because of this. So yet another reason why it can be a concern.

P.S. The funny thing about this is it sounds like I was one of the ones most generous to the OP. When I first became aware of the issue, I thought that may be the OP was genuinely interested in the questions and was hoping to get better answers here. Or in some cases, was cross posting just to try and see. (In fact I'm still not totally sure if the OP has said this isn't the case, my reading of their reply on their talk page is less clear.) I was perhaps influenced by the fact that even the older ones often seemed to be considered unanswered at StackExchange. This is the reason I concentrated on the on wikipedia copyvio issue, as while we generally agree people should not be cross posting to multiple desks, we didn't AFAIK have a clear agreement on multiple sites. Yet it was clear at least some of the stuff they were posting here weren't written by them so regardless of anything else it didn't seem what they were doing was okay be wikipedia policy (and as said one of them also implied they were someone they weren't which raised BLP concerns). I'd actually planned to delete a bunch of the questions before I came across this discussion (the main reason why I mentioned I discovered this independently). I actually didn't quite expect such a strong response against the OP, although this does seem to be mostly because of the belief they are trolling. Perhaps I was influenced by my history as in the past, mostly on computing things, I have cross posted some questions to 2 or 3 sites (but these were always written by me). Also I didn't/don't really understand what they're trying to say in the basketball thing so didn't notice the point above. There is also the question over whether they understand the answers but there's at least one other current contributor who this may apply to and 2 others I can remember off hand, only one of these was blocked and that was only for mildly related reasons.

Nil Einne (talk) 20:40, 21 December 2014 (UTC

Countries without "Fair Use" still have de minimis or something. I've never heard of a country seizing American textbooks at the border, or mandating that the publishers get out the blackout marker and cross out the quotations. Wnt (talk) 01:21, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Don't really get your point. As I already mentioned many countries have copyright exemptions. Both India and New Zealand in the form of their respective fair dealing. These exemptions have there own unique nature, but are generally taken to be more restrictive than US fair use law. The do allow quotations in some instances, I don't know if anyone here ever suggested they didn't, even μηδείς. However the fact that a law allows quotations (and of course quoting someone implies that you actually make it clear your quoting someone not randomly copy what they wrote and presenting it as your own work), doesn't mean they necessarily allow what the OP was doing. Now I'm not saying that what the OP was doing broke either NZ or India law, and I have no idea even if Indian law is relevant here instead of somethign else. Simply that I consider fair use irrelevant to the question of whether what the OP was or is apparently doing in not following the licence terms of the freely licenced content and in presenting it as their own work in external sites acceptable. Particularly given that it's possible or even likely that some of the content copied was written by people who don't live in the US and the OP themselves may not live in the US. Which therefore means even if you want to consider the law (which as I indicated I don't think is a particular good idea anyway), you should be considering the relevant laws. Not the laws which happened to apply to you when it's clear that you yourself don't care if the OP is not following your licence terms so there's no particular reason for us to worry about any of your content the OP copied which as I said early on is fine. But there's no reason why other contributors shouldn't expect the OP to follow either the licence terms, or at least relevant local laws (which may not be US laws). Nil Einne (talk) 11:33, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Fifth Amendment and Miranda Rights.

Three people provided answers to the OP's question about how a confession could be used against a defendant in face of the Fifth Ammendment. I provided links to fifth amendment and miranda rights directly in the title of the question: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities&diff=prev&oldid=639143318, advised the OP to read the text, and told him what to look for without spoonfeeding him the answer. That's called providing references. J.A. Spadaro gave two long answers in his own words at the same time, with no links or refs. BBB provided a link to a separate article, Miranda v. Arizona.

User APL seems to have missed the point that I provided the first actual references, and is apparently angry that I didn't give the answer in my own words, rather than providing the reference. Given I did actually provide the first direct link to the relevant text, I am removing his mistaken closure. μηδείς (talk) 20:08, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure linking to articles in titles written by querents who aren't you is a good idea, mainly for two reasons: a) It makes it look like the OP themselves had made the link (which implies they have perhaps already read the article. Just recently someone had the exact title of an article in his question, and when I linked to the article in a separate post, he responded that it hadn't even occurred to him that Wikipedia might have this article. Yes, I saw you pointed out you had added the links, even in bold, but that's not fail-safe, still not your sig under the titled question). and b) Bracketing within titles messes up directly clicking on the little arrow function which magically takes us to the subsection we desire (on watchlists or in the page's history, for example). I suggest adding the article (and perhaps pointing out the relevant subsection) in a separate post. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:16, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
The link was fine. I hatted the part where you're giving the person needlessly obscure clues, and also the part where people take you to task for giving the person needlessly obscure clues.
If you just want to post a link, just do that.
If you want to explain it, do that.
Don't post clues and riddles. That should be obvious. APL (talk) 20:22, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Answering a question isn't a choice between providing references and providing answers in one's own words. It is possible to do both. Providing a long, unreferenced answer isn't a good practice. But I don't consider replying with "Here's a link to the article, find it yourself," (or "Google it.") to be much better. Why not provide the link or reference and a brief explanation? - EronTalk 20:26, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Right, but needlessly obscure clues like "you've left out a word starting with 'c'" is just toying with people. If you're going to tell them what they've done wrong, then just tell them. Or don't. APL (talk) 20:34, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
I agree. - EronTalk 20:40, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
The OP's question was based on a flawed premise. If he really wants to understand, he needs to read the article on the 5th amendment. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:05, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes, he should read the article. But what exactly is so hard about answering, "The Fifth Amendment protects against forced or compelled self-incrimination, not all self-incrimination. Details can be found in..." followed by some references? Just saying "Read the article" is only one step removed from "Piss off." - EronTalk 23:09, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
What's the proper way to deal with an editor who asks a bogus question? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:15, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
What does that have to do with this question? Is there any evidence this was a bogus question? - EronTalk 23:43, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
It was a question with a false premise - the notion that no one can confess to a crime. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
The best way to respond would be to point out the false premise, explain why it is false, and back that all up with sources. We deal with such questions all the time - it's not surprising that someone who doesn't fully understand might be working under a bad assumption or confusing matters, or such. Unless you're in a logic textbook, the correct answer to "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is "I never started"...Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:50, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
User:Baseball Bugs - Characterizing a question based on a false premise as a bogus question, while possibly literally correct, is harsh and uncivil. In this case, the question was based on a legitimate misunderstanding. Such a question should be answering by providing accurate information, not by blowing off the questioner. We have enough trouble with questions that are incomprehensible (often due to language problems), tendentious (such as attempts to disprove relativity), or troll questions that we shouldn't expand the universe of truly bogus questions by adding those based on reasonable mistakes. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:06, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Well, hopefully the OP now has enough information to answer what he "thought" he was asking. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:37, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

could bb's 'contribution' ending "Shut your trap" be hatted?

I think it would be OK to please hat baseball bug's 'contributions' to my question, ending in him telling another editor (not me) to "Shut your trap". it's not civil and certainly detracts. thanks. 212.96.61.236 (talk) 04:44, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Hatted everything but the question; the question itself is fine as stands.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:58, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
thank you! I hope it is clear enough :). 212.96.61.236 (talk) 05:00, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
I still don't understand the question, but maybe someone else will. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:36, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
One thing that's been confusing is two different IP's talking with one voice: 212.96.61.236 (talk · contribs) and 91.120.14.30 (talk · contribs). Both emanate from around Budapest, Hungary, so probably not an open proxy. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Sigh. The last two threads are what you get when you start trying to enforce "quality". Is the questioner legitimate, is the question legitimate, is the answer legitimate, is the information legitimate to talk about... enough! We ought to judge not lest we be judged, let him without sin cast the first stone and so forth. Apart from the no-fault hatting or moving here of the long off topic diversions generated by too much meta. Wnt (talk) 18:22, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Just plain hatting it would have been fine. Bringing it here stirs things up further. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
And by the way, it didn't "end" the way the OP claims. It ended with my advising the busybody to do some research and help answer the OP's question. The misleading title here is further evidence of bad-faith on the part of the OP. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:54, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Right or wrong, we should just end it - I'm not seeing what the end result is from this, everything is as it should be on the main page at the moment; how did what wrong, or if it was just a misunderstanding, isn't overly relevant.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 20:30, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
The OP's complaint here is in bad faith, and this section should be hatted. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:34, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
No, it really isn't. While I don't think the op's reasons for not answering you are sound - it is true that the clarification has nothing to do with the question, nor would it be useful to finding an answer. I really do think that you were out of line in that thread, you should have had your replies there hatted, and the complaint is a valid one. I'm not saying that judgmentally, I've responded poorly too (everyone has, some people just rub each other wrong), nonetheless, you weren't answering the question, you were arguing about a tangent (one that wouldn't have given the answer anyway). This section can be hatted if you want, but I disagree that the op acted in bad faith, acting in bad faith would have been for them to hat it - that I, independently, agreed with them entails it wasn't in bad faith (or that I'm acting in it too).Phoenixia1177 (talk) 02:16, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I asked a totally good-faith and reasonable question as to where the OP had seen such usage. After that, all I got from him was "attitude". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:38, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm not disputing that, but the question wasn't relevant and the attitude not too far overblown. I'm not saying that the op was wonderful and you were horrible - but I just don't see bad faith, I see something else - and, I think, that given the nature of the RD, you shouldn't have pursued it. If it were a normal conversation, I'd be far more inclined to say they should have answered it and you were treated shoddily, but we're not talking a normal conversation.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 16:06, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
The question most certainly was relevant. The OP's question was based on a particular premise, for which no supporting information was given. I was asking for that supporting information. This is hardly unprecedented. Many OP's ask flawed questions, and various editors will speak up and challenge the premise (as with the 5th amendment discussion). Instead of providing supporting evidence, the OP effectively said "F.U." How is that good faith? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:19, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I guess I could have been a little more specific. I could have said, "How do you know that ANY demographic uses this term?" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:22, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
It's not an uncommon term, that you don't know it doesn't justify asking - a two second google search [14] answers that someone uses it, the first link (it's even in the summary, you don't even need to click it). If you see a flawed premise, then ask and explain, but ignorance doesn't mean the op needs to prove to you that it is something real. If I ask a mathematics question with terms you've never seen, should I be obligated to back up where I saw the terms to you (especially if it is only because you have never seen them)? Our ignorance doesn't obligate people to justify to us, they're the ones asking. The question was perfectly intelligible, you didn't need clarification, and the clarification you requested wouldn't lead you to an answer. (for another example: I don't know anything about simplified Chinese, nor have I ever heard of it, would it be reasonable to ask "Where did you see these characters?" in [15]?)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 19:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
How many seconds of Google searching would it have taken the OP to find the answer? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:06, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
About twenty minutes, and I had to follow a few links to other links. So, by that criterion, hat up the whole desk, right? The worst part is, you're not even providing reasons you aren't wrong at this point, you're now just saying, essentially, "Well, yeah, but if the op doesn't want to answer my tangents - on this question I could've ignored because I didn't know the terms involved anyway - then they should've just used Google!"...by that criterion, we might as well just close up shop. Or, possibly, could it be the two of you clashed and you're not happy about it? (By the way, a much better answer could be given, yet I can't find it - so, at any rate, the question can't be fully answered by a simple Google search; and, I actually answered it, partially, by hunting with Google, and I don't see that it was any different than any other time I've done it. Perhaps, we can just drop it at this point).Phoenixia1177 (talk) 20:15, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
If you're accusing me of asking a "stupid" question, I won't argue. But I object to the notion that it was not asked in good faith. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:29, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
It's not stupid and it's not in bad faith - it isn't necessary to the solution (which is obvious from the nature of demographics) and it was one you could easily have answered (Google). In other words: you asked something that wasn't really germane, argued when it wasn't answered. It's not bad faith, it just doesn't belong, and the argument needn't have been the follow up - that should all be hatted. -- If someone asked for an approximation to sine of x^2 and I said, "Where did you first see sine used?", they said it didn't matter, and then I argued the point -- I wasn't acting in bad faith, but, surely, the op would have reason to ask that argument be hatted, and others would have reason to oblige. Do you disagree? If so, why? If not, what are we discussing?Phoenixia1177 (talk) 21:02, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, the section discussed here is WP:RDL#what demographic uses LMK for let me know?. -- ToE 02:32, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Now I'm a troll

I asked a question on the math ref desk and was referred here. I'm very sorry the public education system is so broken to only teach the mechanics and no practicality of maths, but I'm genuinely curious. I was seriously offended about being called "trollish;" perhaps it was musing, but it seemed serious enough for me to come here and ask it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.122.245.95 (talk) 00:15, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

This is the question being discussed. - EronTalk 00:18, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Is he trying to figure out the probability of being hit by a terrorist attack while attending that movie? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:23, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Trying to see how to measure the publicity tied to the terroristic threats, or lack thereof. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.122.245.95 (talk) 00:25, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps I am being overly gullible here, but I don't see the harm in assuming good faith in this instance. Mathematical notation is often used informally, and RDMA seems an appropriate forum to ask about such usage.
To the questioner, I have responded (inside the hatted section). -- ToE 02:07, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
It didn't look legit to me, and the OP's subsequent actions haven't disposed me to assume good faith. But I've been wrong before. - EronTalk 03:07, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello. I'm still here. Maybe I did not assume the assumption of good faith. Sorry for that. I would suggest to not use words like troll. It's name calling. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.122.245.95 (talk) 11:15, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

If I see something that looks like trolling, that is what I will call it. I may be wrong, but that was my impression. I used the appropriate word to describe it. - EronTalk 17:44, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

As additional answers have been provided, I've moved the hat in order to expose the question and collapse the minor argument over whether or not it is a question. -- ToE 11:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

  • Given the OP speaks British English but geolocates to the middle of Texas one has to wonder if he's a proxy or if he actually did attend a US public school. I am with Aristotle. When someone asks you to explain the obvious based on the obscure it's plain he's using words without reference to their meanings. μηδείς (talk) 17:43, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Deleted question: Quality of mouth

I just deleted another question https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities&diff=639711014&oldid=639708465 from tel aviv asking for a bibliography or ancient greek works comparing speech and oral sex. μηδείς (talk) 17:53, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I moved Medeis's note down from #insulin Hormones and Steroids, where it was placed due the geographic connection (both from Israel) of the IP editors. I believe this warrants its own section. -- ToE 18:05, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Regarding this question, I don't see the inappropriateness of asking if the Greeks used different terms to describe the mouth depending on context based on its functions for speaking, sexual stimulation, or (as BB pointed out) eating, thought the language desk seems more relevant. -- ToE 18:11, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Looks to me like a trolling question. "Quality of mouth"? What, pray tell, is that supposed to mean? One's mouth pretty much either works or it doesn't. And if you're unable to attain nourishment, the other purposes don't mean much. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:20, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
The English is awkward (likely ESL), but it sounds to me as if they are asking if the ancient Greek had a term equivalent to the Roman os impurum. What's wrong with that? -- ToE 18:29, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
The question immediately before was about the pronunciation of ancient Greek. This seems a heck of a lot mor like a random concatenation of a current topic and oral sex. Had the OP said, the Romans had the term OS IMPVRVM, is there a Greek equivalent, it would be a lot less suspicious. If there's an actual answer I don't mind this being restored at all (that's why I even commented), but at this point it sounds like a duck to me. μηδείς (talk) 19:17, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting that the questioner was necessarily aware of the Roman term, but that lack of knowledge should not invalidate the question. It is possible that they are half remembering the idea of os impurum but have misremembered it as Greek. More likely, they recently read some philosophical work on the theory of meaning which mentioned the Greeks, were inspired by the Greek pronunciation question, and titillated by concept of oral sex. So what? Do we really need to know their motivation?
I'll just drop this if no other editor here can see it as valid question. -- ToE 20:34, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
I see this as a valid question and, as such, fail to see why we should remove/hat/etc.. I'm not seeing how asking about a Greek pronunciation somehow invalidates asking this, I asked two questions about Set Theory last week (back to back), no one thought my question on V = L "sounded like a duck". What exactly is the supposed problem with this question?Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:50, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
I've restored the question.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:53, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
What does "quality of mouth" mean? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:03, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
We shouldn't be restoring such stuff unless we've got a valid answer for it. The hints this is trolling are strong, mash up oral sex with the prior post (why doesn't he want to know about oral sex terms among the maori or the prussians?) and the previous behavior of repeating the same questions over and over speak for itself. I'll be hatting this again in the morrow if there's no referenced answer. μηδείς (talk) 05:22, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Why not? I don't see a valid reason for removal - there's plenty of questions without answers, should we remove them all till there is an answer? I restored it because I don't think your cause for removal was sufficient, just because you cry "Troll!" doesn't make it so, and that isn't grounds to remove questions. As for why they asked about the Greeks, why do we get to ask that? Why can't they? Why did I ask about V = L and not V = something from the inner model program that isn't L? Since I didn't clarify why I didn't ask about other things, guess you should have hatted that too. -- And, you know, reading questions sometimes causes new ones; even if the prior question inspired asking about the Greeks that does not justify removing it. I will unhat/restore the question till you provide reason it ought be removed - and TOE has a partial answer, they were thinking of something involving Romans, perhaps, let them respond with that.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 05:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
I've provided an answer of sorts. We'll see what comes from this; the questioner has probably wandered on by now.
If this questioner is related to the insulin questioner, then that is all the more reason not to remove this question, as that series of questions was very reasonable. Yes, it might have been better to have included follow-up questions in the same section, but that is not even suggested in our questioning guidelines. The questions were no worse than our answers, which eventually got to the point, but included a fair bit of noise, from editing the questions' section title to link an article (which can be interpreted as attempting to ridicule the questioner by appearance of asking a question which contains its own linked answer), to long discussions on renaming articles (article improvement suggestion is one benefit of the RD, but it does add to the noise from the questioner's point of view), to even tagging on butt jokes. -- ToE 12:43, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Protection

Someone's semi-protected the science desk. Is this really necessary? The RDs are not usually protected.--65.94.50.4 (talk) 20:00, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

We had a problem earlier today with a known vandal persistently posting a (purported) question about unnatural sexual practices. The protection is due to expire in less than an hour (although it may be reinstated if the vandal returns). Tevildo (talk) 20:06, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
The vandal posted under at least three different IP's and appeared to be using proxies. Not protecting the page would have meant needing an admin to block each proxy separately. μηδείς (talk) 21:05, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
I think many of the IPs (which I'm pretty sure numbered more than 10) were blocked, the however they seemed to have an endless supply and these didn't seem to be in any consistent range. Nil Einne (talk) 21:26, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
If we'd just let the person put up his question and get it answered, we'd not have cut off access for ordinary IP users. Of course, properly we can't provide "advice", but we could rephrase it to something interesting (how much does frequent ejaculation increase the total daily volume of ejaculate?) that could be answered. Well, at least nominally it could be ... I have a pessimistic feeling about my chances in a search. Wnt (talk) 05:16, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
I didn't see the question, but the general subject sounds like LC's MO. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:29, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Forgot to mention before but OTOH, it seems this is a question even 4chan decided was unwanted. Nil Einne (talk) 16:43, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I didn't realize the expiration was so short. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 06:12, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

insulin Hormones and Steroids

We're getting repeated questions from IP5 and IP194 in southern Israel asking medical questions one week and then coming back and asking the same exact question another. We're also getting questions that would be answered by a simple look at the relevant article. I see after answering the question on steroids that it was a follow-up to the question on hormones, where the IP was told he should be asking follow-up questions in the same thread. If someone feels like combining these questions I have no objection. μηδείς (talk) 02:09, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

At least from the examples I saw it looks like either the OP doesn't understand the answer (e.g. the losing water one), or the the OP didn't receive a complete answer (like the halflife one). Generally followups should be part of the original question but if the followup is coming 7 days later or so like with [16], the question has probably been answeredarchived and asking there may mean few will see it so if the followup is a question, it's IMO okay for the OP to ask in a new question but they should make clear what the historic question is so people are confused. In the case where the question didn't receive an answer like the half-life one, it's normally suggested the OP shouldn't ask again (since there's no reason to think anyone will be able to answer this time), particularly so close to the previous question. Exceptions may be if the original question was lost in a lengthy diversion, but in this case the only diversion by BB wasn't very long. (In this particular case, it's likely difficult to answer since "longest halflife" is not the sort of thing people keep track of AFAIK.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:57, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
I don't think the guidelines give any opinion on whether follow-up questions should be asked in a new section or not. Fundamentally different questions like "Why insulin is not taken oral but in injection?", why insulin is reduced to fragments when steroid hormones are not, and "Is steroid considered as protein?" - these are perfectly reasonable to keep separate. Now I am all for it if people work up the resolve to start a project where they copy questions out of our archives and dress them up for some database of properly asked and answered questions with none of the confusion and sidetrack that attended the original discussion. But trying to do so piecemeal by demanding the OP link questions here and there, or unlink them, that seems like a pointless waste of effort. Wnt (talk) 20:56, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Well a fundamentally different question wouldn't really be a followup. It would be a related question. (Yes I know people sometimes call them such, and perhaps I even have on occassion, but I thought in the context of this discussion, it would be clear what I was referring to.) In the case of a true followup, like in the example I linked to, where lack of knowledge of the original question is likely to significantly impair someone's ability to understand the question and answer, it is resonable to expect someone to link, or at least make it clear what they are referring to. IMO if the question is still on the main page for a few days, it's better to simply include the (true) followup as part of the original question, but I wouldn't personally take any action if a person doesn't and instead simply links to the original question. (In fact on the odd occasion, like the diversion issue for reasks, I may say it's better.)

I do believe it's fairly impolite to ask a question, yet to expect people to have to themselves know the history behind the question without giving them a clue. The pointless waste of effort comes when people have to waste their time trying to do so, because a questioner makes people to do so (although I suspect this often may be more inability, confusion or cluelessness than intentional impoliteness). It also means the person is less likely to receive an answer. While that may primarily be a disadvantage to the question asker, it's a good reason to encourage them to follow sensible etiquette. In fact, since this particular question asker seems to ask the question again on occasion if they don't get a complete answer and also often has a big gap between followups (so it's not like people could simply ask "what on earth are you referring to"), it seems even more reason to encourage them to follow such sensible etiquette.

In the case of re-asking questions, while this is normally discouraged in the case where it's okay, the reason it should be make clear, or preferably linked to the original question in cases where the OP received some answer even if incomplete, is because it's also similarly a pointless waste of time for people to give an answer which has already been given to the OP. If the question was lost in a diversion, it will also hopefully discourage such diversions again. (In a small number of cases it may reinvigorate that diversion but hopefully someone will quickly shut that down, or at least redirect it to the original diversion.) Note, a lot of what I said earlier about a disadvantage to the question asker obviously applies here.

In other words, this has nothing to do with trying to "dress them up for some database of properly asked and answered questions". In fact, it's not to do with people trying to understand the archives or whatever at all. It's all to do with politeness and resonableness to both the question asker and respondents who are not mindreaders in general, and also can't be expected to be automatically aware of stuff which has happened before.

P.S. Don't know where unlink came in to this from.

P.P.S. Note that I purposely avoided using the word link in my initial response because I recognised that it's something many question askers don't know how to do. Still there are various ways a question asker can make it clear they are referring to an earlier question, without having to link. In such cases, someone else could link for them as needed.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:18, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

BTW, in case it wasn't clear, in the specific case of [17], which was closed by μηδείς, as I tried to make clear in my first post I don't think the IP really did that much wrong there besides not linking to the earlier discussion so it was fairly confusing what they were referring to. Once μηδείς has helpfully made the link, this problem went away, even if it would have been ideal if it never occured in the first place.

It seems a person could have give a decent answer to the followup. IIRC there may have been other cases like that as well. If anyone had wanted to reopen that discussion and provide an answer, they were welcome to do so, as I also tried to make clear in my first post. (I don't think reversing a μηδείς hat is a big deal.) I didn't do so because frankly while the IP has my sympathies, I don't care enough to try and help so I felt simply offering some limited support for the IP was enough.

In the case of the re-ask of the halflife question, I wouldn't have cared if someone reopened the re-ask, although there was nothing IMO wrong with simply answering in the original question, perhaps noting in the reask it was updated. To be fair, in this case I'm not that surprised the OP received no answer as I mentioned above I suspect it's something likely very difficult to answer.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:23, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Depression and Tiredness

The first part of this question at the science desk is okay, but the second part "Is it better to fight off the feeling of tiredness and sleepiness or to go along with it (eg. to sleep much more than usual) ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.139.102.6 (talk) 11:19 am, Today (UTC−5)" is a pure request for advice, yet Aspro has seen fit to answer it, ironically with what seems to be advice not to seek professional help. μηδείς (talk) 17:36, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Μηδείς Read my words: Quote:than those who have read something, somewhere, by an expert That is a common sense warning that just because and expert has committed something to writing somewhere, does not mean he is legally responsible to anyone who may take his advice nor responsible for those on the receiving end of it. If you wanted to add that 'Aspro forgot to point out that one should always consult a professional' then well -just add it. Just stop your incessant habit of Wikipedia:Wikilawyering that consumes other editors time, in the support of your self-commissioned role of Wiki-police-man where you can avoid the effort of balanced consideration of what was said, and forces others editors to waist their time on explaining to 'you' what 'you' have failed to grasp and deflect other editors from the main points. Merry Christmas.--Aspro (talk) 18:36, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
No. Enforcement of the no-medical-advice rule trumps nearly everything. It's not "wikilawyering". It's a real and important restriction. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:43, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
Wasn't there a similar question recently? Or at least one which said, "Is it better...?" And consensus at the time was that we can't possibly advise anyone of what is "better" for them personally. Like if they ask us which appliance is "better", we can send them to a source that rates appliances. But what is "better" for a person's psyche is a lot slipperier, and has to be explored with a doctor. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:19, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
Yup. Entirely inappropriate advice. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:25, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
I agree. The second half of the question is essentially a request for treatment advice, which is something the Ref Desk does not give. Even though it isn't explicitly stated that the original poster is aiming to treat himself (or someone else), the implication is strong enough that we really shouldn't be responding to that. In that context, I agree that Aspro's response was inappropriate. Dragons flight (talk) 19:00, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Folks. You had the opportunity to expand on what I offered, for the benefit of the OP's question. Instead, you're examining whether I doted all the I's and crossed the all the T's of WP policy. So lets run with that. So, say (for augments sake) the OP is asking for a personal reason. Look at it from the OP's point of view. He asks a question and gets a replying “ You need to see a doctor. ←Baseball Bugs” That can be one the worst thing one an say to someone that has realised that there is something wrong. It goes towards confirming his worst fear that he is going mad -and will be locked up. So it can actually scare him or her from away from seeking advice that s/he may need. Let me ask you: who amongst you has had to have an identity card with photo to enter though the syphon doors in to a medium secure psychiatrist ward? I have. Who amongst you has found themselves reassuring a patent that their hallucinations will pass and they will be released -whilst they hold a 'sharp object' in their hands ( a managerial euphemism for a shattered ash tray, etc.. and those things have capacity to flood the area with ones own claret) I have. Who amongst you has been on the same floor where a patent used lighter fuel for the purposes of self-immolation? I've been there and can never get that smell out on my memory. And could go on. I wasn't expecting to included you (in the above) in the satatment :The road to hell is paved with good intentions - but you have wondered in to that gray area with two lead feet.If your right in your presumptions (and that is all they are) then place yourself in the OP position! Just leave it OK.--Aspro (talk) 20:25, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
Aspro, you have no right whatsoever to use the reference desks to promote your personal beliefs concerning the medical profession. If I see you doing this again, I will consider reporting the matter, and requesting that you be topic banned. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:48, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
He's also being hyperbolic. You don't normally get sent to the looney bin for simple depression. The OP can start with his general practitioner or family doctor, who can take a measure of the extremity of the depression, by asking a few key questions. If it's not so bad, the GP might just recommend some appropriate medication. If it looks severe, the doctor might refer the OP to a specialist. Again, we're not talking about schizophrenia here, just simple depression - assuming the OP is telling us the whole truth, but there's no way to know that - he needs to see a doctor for proper diagnosis and treatment. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:08, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
I have hatted Aspro's unsourced opinionating. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:10, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
As you normally speak so much sense Andy, I can only think that the brandy must be flowing freely where you are tonight. Let me know in a few days time what my "personal concerning" means. Oh I see you have now changed it to 'beliefs'. It is a fact of life Andy. A broken glass-ash tray held two inches away from you nose, is not an medical abstract – or belief - it is a broken glass ash-tray only two inches away from your (or in this case my) nose - so OK report me! Your pontificating is beyond your last. Isn't it the OP's question we are supposed to be answering to the best of our knowledge ? Look, some of us editors lead normal lives and right now the dog has got his plastic antlers tangled up in something and I have to go to sort it out. Silly mutt! If on reflection you still feel the same way tomorrow, continue this in a few days time but do sleep on it . Uh Ah.. Don't accuse me of giving you any medical advice in that suggestion.--Aspro (talk) 23:26, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
The only valid answer to that question is "See a doctor." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:32, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
The entire thing should be hatted, with the normal "we don't give medical advice" blurb. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:10, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
  • I can forgive my dog for being a big slilly mutt but at this time of year when psychiatric crisis are more common and I agree that the OP 'may' be asking from a personal point of view - why bugger it up for him just so you can say : Ah well, we did the right thing according to WP policy? Oh yes, and some one said "you don't get locked up for being depressed". Look at it from the readers point of view. The subjective view before diagnosis is often "Oh whats going wrong - It must be Me- I must going mad" If any of you disagree with me, then spend a few days in a psychiatric ward. Perhaps you might find you then have to take yourself to a quiet corner and have a little talk with yourself about (and your blind support for) what has been written above.--Aspro (talk) 23:54, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
Your personal opinion that it is unwise to seek medical advice for depression is neither appropriate on reference desks nor here, per WP:NOTFORUM. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:06, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
Where did I say (and these are your words that you are attempting to put in my mouth) :that it is unwise to seek medical advice for depression ?--Aspro (talk) 01:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
  • I suggest we wrap this up. Aspro obviously feels strongly and has certainly acted in good faith but I think we can also say the consensus is clear and in good faith as well. Personally directed comments here and elsewhere don't need to escalate. If anyone agrees, I am for archiving the discussion. μηδείς (talk) 01:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Depression and tiredness: reclosed

Is copying the OP's question and reposting one of the answers in slightly modified form really the best solution? It seems to me some of the other answers are hardly worse so it would be better to either reopen the question or keep it closed. Nil Einne (talk) 17:40, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Aspro reopened this by copying the OP's question and repeating most of his original reply except for changing the last sentence [18]. I have now reclosed it [19]. For the record, I don't think the only problem with Aspro's comments on this question were the final sentence. The earlier sentences are also potentially problematic. For some hypothetical individuals those comments might be fine or even helpful, but for other potential sufferers they could lead to a delay in necessary treatment. Even if we were qualified to judge the difference (we're not), it would be impossible to know what is appropriate in any particular case based on the limited context provided in question. Erring on the side of caution requires us to be quite limited in cases that potentially implicate medical needs, and mostly limit our responses to encouraging people to seek help elsewhere if they think they may need it. Dragons flight (talk) 00:38, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Wnt has added some referenced material, but then he closes with an editorial giving his personal doubt as to the efficacy of treatment with a certain prescribed drug. I have asked him on his talk page to remove the comment on the treatment. μηδείς (talk) 02:03, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
The 'editorial' was only that a study with 40-odd people under two treatment conditions doesn't mean much, which should be obvious, and wasn't aimed at the drug itself. Wnt (talk) 03:07, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Again, we don't do editorials, especially on the efficacy of medical treatments. This is getting the the point of going to ANI and requesting an RfC that all answers that violate our disclaimer be summarily removed, with penalties for violators. μηδείς (talk) 05:24, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Do you have some link, or something, that entails our disclaimer is supposed to be read as a set of rules? That is not what a disclaimer is - and I'm not the first to point this out to you, nor is this the first time I mentioned it, yet you keep bringing it up. You cannot violate a disclaimer - when it says we don't give professional advice it is meant to deny that anything said here is professional advice, it is not a rule against statements of a certain type (we have those too, in certain contexts, but you're reading something as something it isn't to say something it doesn't - then wanting to enforce that...)Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:08, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks to DF for the explaination. Yes that's what I was referring to etc, I saw what happened but was lazy to explain further. I have no particular opinion on how this should have been handled, but did consider it wrong for Aspro to copy the OPs question and a slightly modified form of their answer. Firstly, since they didn't make clear they had done so, it's unfair to the OP. It seems to me that BB and in any case people could easily falsely assume the OP was the one who copied the question which may reflect negatively on them, which is unfair even if they are an IP. Also, as I said some of the other asnswers seemed at least as resonable if not more so. Copying your own answer is unfair to these other respondents. So really the proper solution would have been to reopen the question if it was really felt proper. Frankly, it's best if someone who's involved leaves it up to others (e.g. as [[User:Jayron32 did a few weeks ago when asking for their response to be unhatted), but I would have far less objection if the question and other responses had just been unhatted rather than part copied. If there was need to modify a response, this could have been done to the older response, while making it clear part was removed. Nil Einne (talk) 17:42, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Hemorrhoids

An IP poster asked questions about the article on hemorrhoids and pointed out inconsistencies. After some discussion, I said that the place to discuss improvement to an article was the article talk page, Talk: Hemorrhoids. At this point the IP became snarky. I have taken the less drastic action of boxing the discussion rather than of hatting it, to preserve a valid question and what I think were valid comments and a valid answer. Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:50, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It is appropriate for a reader to ask on RDS a science (in this case anatomy / medical) question to clarify an unclear statement in an article. Once the question has been answered, any extensive discussion related solely to article improvement should be shifted over the that article's talk page. In this case, the two short follow-on edits after the primary question was answered (one asking for verification that the article's usage was indeed incorrect, and the other confirming the problem and indicating that they would edit the article for clarity) hardly seem excessive.
The OP's response to your note was harsh and escalated the conflict, but the desk would have been better served had you instead first written:
Further discussion concerning the improvement of this article should be held on its talk page.
Your note could be (and likely was) interpreted as stating that the original question itself was not appropriate for RDS.
The boxing itself is somewhat disruptive to the desk as it emphasizes the conflict. I will now remove the box and will hat the short argument with a title suggesting that further article improvement discussions should be done on the article's talk page, and with a link here inside the hat's body. -- ToE 02:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Okay. Also, I see that a constructive editor, unlike the OP, has edited the article. There is something to be said for asking questions about articles at the Reference Desk or Help Desk, but not much to be said about blowing off constructive suggestions. A standard response at the Help Desk is to state that the first place for comments about an article is the article talk page, and this comment is also appropriate at the Reference Desk when it is an actual article question. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:44, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
You're not wrong, but there's a valid point that talk pages, though ostensibly the first place to go, are in fact often not very useful. The talk page has had almost no traffic until the question was raised here. The only thread on there was from 2005 - and the conversation lasted seven years. I'm in no way saying that the suggestion to ask on the talk page was incorrect... technically. But in this specific instance, it's the equivalent of telling someone to go ask an empty room for advice. Matt Deres (talk) 17:56, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with most of what you said, but although the RM may have linked to it, as the talk page itself says, that's the wrong talk page. The right one is [20]. This was only clearly noted recently [21] albeit nearly 2 months before this discussion. (If the IP had visited the talk page directly from the article, it's fairly unlikely they would have ended up at the wrong place.) The only other thing I will add to this discussion is traffic or activity not necessarily a good measure of the usefulness of raising an issue somewhere. If a page is watched, it may get responses despite low traffic. And even if other posts don't receive much, it may be they were seen but ignored if the person felt they didn't matter. Unfortunately often the only way to know if you'll get a response is so actually try. Nil Einne (talk) 16:26, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
No disagreement with any of that. I wonder if there's a way to make that more explicit for newcomers, though? When a newbie sees something that needs correction or clarification, what have we done to tell them that the talk page is the place to go? As far as I can tell, nothing at all. Matt Deres (talk) 19:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Travel and other desks

The main RD page WP:RD links to 7 desks hosted on Wikipedia and one, called Travel, hosted on Wikivoyage (where it is actually called the "Tourist office").

Now, WP:RD asks people to "choose a category" when posting a question, and if the same question is posted to multiple Wikipedia desks, people will ask the poster not to do that, and perhaps plant links so that discussion takes place in one place. But today there was a question posted both to the Travel desk and the Miscellaneous desk. Should this be treated the same way, or is it different because Travel is not really a Wikipedia page, just linked from Wikipedia? I don't follow Wikivoyage and have no idea of what their guidelines, if any, might be. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 19:06, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

It's little more than a spam link, and its use should be discouraged. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Tell that to whoever set up the link from WP:RD alongside the Wikipedia RD links. Now, does someone have an answer about this policy question? --65.94.50.4 (talk) 01:30, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
I have told them. More than once. They don't care. But you raise an important point. I don't think this is a "policy" issue, but we try to encourage posting at just one desk. But because that Wikivoyage thing is elsewhere, it's entirely possibly for someone to post both places and for very few observers to take note of it. On the other hand, there's no real harm - it's just redundancy. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:08, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
Redundancy is the greatest evil of our times. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 05:03, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
You can say that again. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:43, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed this, but it seems like a useful resource. We might want to more tightly integrate Wikiversity this way also. As for policies about duplicated questions and such, it's not a big deal to me. If it turns out to be a problem you can write something up about it, somewhere, but meanwhile it's a small detail. Wnt (talk) 21:56, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Links to other projects were discussed and quashed. This deal is strictly about spamming that one item to the ref desk. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:52, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
  • i am almost certain this has been discussed within the last year or so. I'd search the archives. I had no personal opinion, although I could contribute some advice on places to visit in NYC and travel from Boston to Washingto DC. In any case, those who have proposals should probably research what was discussed last time. μηδείς (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Brain_damage

I hatted this question because it explicitly asks for medical diagnosis and advice on the OP's own reported symptoms. Not only did we then get a response suggestion that the OP sounds totally crazy, and suggestion from another that PTSD, voodoo, or a demonic curse might be relevant, while actual damage by a non-blinding image is unheard of. The latter is of course false, given it is known certain flashing images can induce epilepsy, serious and potentially fatal disease. It seems bad enough when people give reasonable advice which might mislead the OP into a false sense of security, but when we get insulting, ridiculous and false answers it shows a very good rationale for the prhibition. Hence I have extended the hat, and suggest that we simply delete the question entirely, with a polite note on the OP's talk page explaining why. μηδείς (talk) 20:46, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I see this as a question of the "is a boa constrictor poisonous?" variety that does not require individualized diagnosis. Wnt (talk) 21:52, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
This snake didn't have a rattle either: Missouri man dies after being bitten by copperhead snake. μηδείς (talk) 22:59, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Deletion is the prescribed response, true. If the OP were to re-ask the question without describing his reaction to the picture, I assume it would be OK? Tevildo (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
If the OP had asked the question in general, we'd be okay. At this point, I'd look at it as, "What would the wikifoundation say in court if this page were to advise the OP he had nothing to worry about, and he then died of a seizure?" And how would they explain a talk page discussion that discussed ways we could get around the policy, in order to answer his question? This question was rather clear cut, and I think my mistake was putting up a yellow flag to attract answers that are worse than saying, yes, it is serious, see your doctor. I should have deleted it outright.
I can say merely from personal experience that I knew an epileptic who found taking his medicine impared his thoughts. He suffocated during a seizure while off his meds against medical advice. And my inlaws just lost an uncle in his early 60's who was hit in the head coaching a football game in December. He felt fine, then lapsed into a coma two days later, and died right after Christmas. Even if the OP's pulling our leg the only thing we should tell him about his neurological symptoms is to consult with a specialist. μηδείς (talk) 22:59, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Legally, we have WP:MEDICAL, although I agree it would be bad publicity, and that we shouldn't give medical advice such as, "flashing images can induce epilepsy" on general humanitarian grounds. I would also agree that answering the second part of the OP's question ("[W]hat might possible methods of healing be?") would count as "suggesting treatment", in violation of WP:RD/G/M, even though it would be treatment for a condition that isn't recognized by medical science. However, the first part of the question ("Is it possible to cause brain damage by looking at an image?") is (IMO) legitimate. Tevildo (talk) 23:21, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Let's say my hypothetical case went forward. If I were sitting on a jury, I'd find for the defendant. But If I were the defendant's lawyer, I'd have the wikifoundation project-ban anyone involved and have anything like the ref desks taken down permanently. I think our caution is a small price to pay, even if, frankly, I may sympathize with the troll and boa theories. μηδείς (talk) 23:52, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
If the OP had simply asked whether any type of picture can cause "brain damage", it might have been answerable. The rest of it goes on to ask for a personal medical diagnosis, which no one here is qualified to provide. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:51, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
This has come up many times before. At the very least, if people are keen to help, and regardless of whether they hat the question or not, please start by posting a link to WP:MEDICAL and asking other responders to please only provide information and articles. Emphasise if you like that we are not doctors, and are not qualified to give advice. Please don't tell us about the legal situation in threads like the current one (this applies especially to @Medeis: above) - we don't need to know what you would say to a defendant; Wikimedia has its own lawyers, and they are perfectly capable of intervening if they see the need. You can also add a boilerplate warning after the question, such as the two on my user page. Please also read Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice - I know that article contains my own edits, but this was after much discussion, and was an attempt to find a middle ground. @Tevildo:: deletion is not the prescribed response, and to the best of my knowledge never has been - it has always been that we may remove the question. Here I see no need to hat, and very few people have shown by their actions that they have a particular desire to hat/ remove questions. It is certainly not a mainstream concern. IBE (talk) 08:29, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Specifically on the RD guidelines, (unconditional) deletion was prescribed until IBE's edit of 30 April 2014 (diff). Perhaps we should consider going back to this earlier longstanding policy. Tevildo (talk) 08:52, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
We also have several templates in the {{HD}} series, including medical, veterinary, legal and financial. --  Gadget850 talk 11:40, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
My apologies to you @Tevildo: for my mistake, which was certainly careless of me. As for the change itself, it was the result of a protracted discussion, and I announced it on the talk page here ([22]) and there (see Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice specifically "suggested changes #1 and #2"). That was all based largely on this discussion, which, although appearing later than my announcement in the archives, took place earlier (according to my memory and the time stamp). I don't know why it's earlier in the archives, but it was a response to the thread below it. When I searched the archives, I could find no real debate around the longstanding policy (as I noted on the talk page, [23]), which was causing friction. If people want to start up the discussion again, that's your decision. At any rate, when hatting, at least please put the disclaimer there, since that appears to come from higher up (eg. I can't edit it, although I don't know who can). So if you want to indemnify Wikimedia, please folks at least start remembering this step, the disclaimer. But once again, my apologies for my carelessness. IBE (talk) 11:41, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm fine with the hatting/whatever. I probably should edit:not have replied or at least extended the hat but I just thought it a little pointless people were asking the OP to provide the image when a link had already been provided. While I understood people may not be willing or able to use Tor for whatever reason, I suspect and a quick check confirmed that Tor proxies did work. I didn't think providing the links was in itself a problem although I did suspect and was proven correct that people may comment on them. The image did establish one thing (and this was the main reason I initially looked on Tor), it was apparently more or less what the OP described (well the sort of image, not the alleged effects), as I was also wondering whether the OP was trolling and the image was some sort of shock image. Nil Einne (talk) 13:03, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
  • I'll just say that if a person asked whether it was possible for looking at a picture to cause brain damage, with no further details, I would have no problem answering. But when a person gives a link to a particular picture and says that they think looking at it damaged their brain, I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. Looie496 (talk) 14:19, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


BLP and WP:DOB violations by supercentenarian group

We have ongoing disruption by a user or user asking for information on private people. Even if we had some resource better than google, which these question posers can access themselves, WP:BLP says there is a presumption of privacy in regard to non-notable private people, and WP:DOB specifically prohibits us giving the full names and birthdates of private individuals. Hence I have hatted and redacted this edit giving name and DOB and asking if the private subject is still alive.

I suggest we adopt a policy of immediately deleting such questions, with a warning left on the user's talk page. We might also should add a line to the page header guidelines along the lines that We do not provide information about private individuals per WP:BLP policy, and such questions will be removed. μηδείς (talk) 17:48, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I googled the guy's name and it's true there are newspaper articles about him, the last one being about a year ago. It seems the OP could take a less-public approach to finding out this info. For what it's worth, I looked in Findagrave.com and he's not there. That doesn't prove he's still alive. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
I suggest you chill out. OP is asking about someone who is notable for being old, and has many, many news blurbs written. These contain DOB and full name, and I see nothing wrong with allowing referenced answers to this question. This question is not disruptive, I see your hatting of this question as being the disruptive action. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:30, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
We don't have an article on the guy, and he's not mentioned in secondary sources. WP:DOB is quite explicit about this. μηδείς (talk) 19:30, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
I can find only one source that mentions the redacted material, a local news broadcast with transcript. Policy says: "With identity theft a serious ongoing concern, people increasingly regard their full names and dates of birth as private. Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object." ..."Many Wikipedia articles contain material on people who are not well known, even if they are notable enough for their own article. In such cases, exercise restraint and include only material relevant to the person's notability, focusing on high-quality secondary sources." ..."BLP applies to all material about living persons anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages, edit summaries, user pages, images, categories, lists, persondata, article titles and drafts." μηδείς (talk) 20:02, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
How are you searching? I get dozens of news stories by searching the guy's name. His feel-good story was picked up by Huffington Post, USA today, several radio stations, telegraph post, and many other reputable news outlets. He gave a few video interviews, and his DOB is mentioned in a few places. He gave his name to news sources, so that they could write about how he walks at the mall at age 103/4. It is perfectly reasonable for us to post links to these news sources or anything that might confirm he was alive this week. I do hope you'll let this issue drop. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:29, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
How many of these are stories picked up from one outlet? HuffPo and USAToday are aggregators. Publish the diffs then, and create an article, SM. You won't hear a peep from me then. μηδείς (talk) 23:46, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
Completely agree - restored year of birth and name.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 11:19, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
The phrase "identity theft" is a way for bankers to convert something stupid they do (falling victim to fraud) into someone else's error, crime, responsibility (failing to keep when you held your birthday party a secret). Now some may say that, however stupid this PR campaign may be, that the individual is still wisest to try to hold back information and avoid being made a victim of by the bankers and credit report racketeers (who would say they it isn't really them making a victim of the person, but the fraudster who defrauded them, even though they are the ones responsible for any effect their victim notices!) Presumably in 1909 the man's mother didn't know to keep his birth or the name she gave him a secret, and perhaps things will be that way again; I'd guess that between 4 and 6 shootings/bombings/abnormal plane landings by people irate with the financial industry, and "identity theft" would be mentioned about as often as the idea of basing some U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. It's up to the voters.
But as Wikipedians we have neither a self interest reason to keep the information private 'just in case', nor any moral obligation to participate in the bankers' charade, which ought to leave us free to discuss as we wish. Now you can say that some people have enacted the policy anyway, but on the basis of the above I would suggest that it can only be followed in letter, not in spirit, since its spirit is defective. The letter is that it talks about excluding this information from articles. It does not say that you can't discuss a birthday, or that it has to be redacted from a talk page. People should feel free to find and cite their sources. Wnt (talk) 14:01, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
The thing is that if these people are notable enough to be talked about in the encyclopedia, and if their notability is solely because of their ages, then it's ridiculous not to mention their ages in our article (and by extension, here). To the contrary, it would be quite wrong to say "John Doe is the oldest man in Transylvania" - and not provide verification of that fact with a WP:RS - which gives the year of his birth. Now, the slightly trickier thing is whether the entire date of birth is needed. It would be nice to be able to say that we don't need to mention the month and day (which is where the concerns over identity-theft exposure comes from)...but it's often the case that someone claims to be the oldest by a matter of months compared to their nearest rival for that title - so I could see where the entire birth date is needed for the article to make sense. At any rate, our guidelines are really clear on this - "Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object. " - so there you go. The only remaining debate is whether the source we reference for their DoB is "widely published in reliable sources" - that might be a high bar to meet in this case, but when you consider the get out clause "sources linked to the subject..." and "reasonably inferred" - then any local newspaper article where the DoB is mentioned and the person is interviewed or photographed carries the strong implication that they're OK with their DOB being mentioned. And lets face it, anyone who seriously intends to perpetrate identity-theft is going to be able to use a Google search on the person's name to find out more about their victim. It's not like we're publishing an otherwise unobtainable piece of information. SteveBaker (talk) 14:26, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
What article are you talking about? We have no such article. μηδείς (talk) 22:38, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
List of supercentenarians from the United States comes to mind, but it has a cutoff at 110 years. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:25, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks @SteveBaker: for restoring some sanity to this. I couldn't agree more. IBE (talk) 02:23, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

a judgmental and not on topic answer

here: [[24]]

My question was perfectly reasonable, and had concrete answers, that could be and were provided with references. I don't see the point of judging me and a supposed tendency of mine to cheat people. That was not my intention.--Noopolo (talk) 18:53, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

That often seems like User μηδείς's primary mode of participation, as has been discussed here often. He or she is apparently immune to all criticism. 74.113.53.42 (talk) 19:15, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Thus spake the drive-by. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:51, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
The date of that IP's appearance is an extremely suspicious coincidence (see his edit history), and the focus of his edits since then as well. Given he doesn't actually contribute here, the fact that he follows my edits in order to comment on them is very interesting indeed. μηδείς (talk) 22:20, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
The "date of that IP's appearance" is completely innocent. That is when my employer changed offices. (As indicated in the first edit by that IP.)
Sometimes I forget to log in. :shrug:
With enough effort, you could find another occasionally used IP, critical of Medeis's refdesk behavior, that stopped being used on that same date. APL (talk) 21:47, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
If you're discussing her, don't you think it might be a good idea to inform @Medeis: even if the conversation in that topic became less than agreeable? It could also be taken to User_talk:Medeis before making it more public. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 14 Tevet 5775 19:24, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Given the user's edit history, a newbie who comes immediately to the ref desk to ask a personal question, I suspect he's a troll or a blocked user. When someone asks "If I claim something has a 90% chance of happening the next day can I be proven wrong?" I suspect he's asking about deception or covering his behind, not about probability in the abstract. Since most objective probability claims in everyday real life deal with the weather, I did give some information on that. But I also pointed out the obvious, that the OP's asking whether he can be proven wrong is not exactly a request for references, and that he should ask the people who know him best. μηδείς (talk) 19:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
On the one hand, in general, one should assume good faith of a new editor. I will comment that only in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries do most objective probability claims have to do with the weather. Historically most objective probability claims have been much more objective. With weather forecats, there isn't really an a priori probability, only a probability that has been computed a posteriori from previous weather. The history of probability theory is that it was originally developed by Pascal and Fermat and had to do with gambling, where there really is an a priori probaility based on the assumption that the dice or coin or shuffle is honest. On the other hand, User:Noopolo, you did ask a strange question, and nearly all of your edits are at the Reference Desk. Both Noopolo and Medeis would be well advised to calm down. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:35, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
I can't see any lack of calmness from Noopolo, and neither does it matter if someone only edits the ref desk. I do the same, because I've tried mainspace, and it's lonely and intellectually dead for me (it would improve if I had the time to focus my energies, I know, but I don't). The question, I feel, was quirky more than strange. But I should add certain people have tried dealing with various issues concerning @Medeis: in the past, and it must be said that this is the calmer version of someone who appears frequently on these pages, and is named or involved far too often in controversial discussions. IBE (talk) 03:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
The OP should feel free to hat my comment. I chose my words carefully and stand behind them. But if an analysis of gambling odds is what he wanted (that's not what he asked) thine I am fine with it. μηδείς (talk) 04:37, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
The question as stated really has no valid answer, because it lacks sufficient information or context. It's kind of like writing, "This statement is false" or saying, "Everything I say is a lie." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:42, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
That doesn't even make sense, the latter are examples of antinomies, the question certainly isn't such. Moreover, I've thought about this exact question before, idly, while driving to work. If someone makes a probability claim about a single event, does it mean anything? It depends a lot on what exactly "single" and "event" mean - if we are in a bar and I say, "There is a 90% chance someone will walk in the door and order a Bud Light.", is that meaningful? On the one hand, we can talk about what has happened in the past - on the other hand, whatever the outcome, I can equally claim that I was accurate, you have nothing to dispute that. That's intriguing to think about, I don't see why it is a bad question to ponder, or to ask. Granted, the op didn't phrase it the best - but, I don't think it's nebulous.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 11:29, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
The Bud Light question is not meaningful, as you say. There has to be a context. 90 percent probability of what? The actual question part was "Can I proven right or wrong?" The answer, without context, is a simple "No." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:48, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
So by this side discussion you've both just proven that the question was a reasonable one! Just because a question has no reasonable answer does not necessarily prove that the question was not meaningful: the OP, or anyone else reading, can learn a lot here. (I'm tempted to reverse normal practice and copy this part of the discussion from the talk page back to the Science desk, since it's not metadiscussion, it's perfectly on topic.) —Steve Summit (talk) 13:51, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, that is what I was hoping this would demonstrate - please feel free to copy this back out to the main page, you may edit things around however is best for the sake of flow (as pertains to what I said, I can't speak for BBB). I'd do it myself, but, given that it is, somewhat, a disagreement involving me, I'd feel awkward to take mine and BBB's over on my own (but, if you'd like to, I'd fully endorse it, and think it would be a useful addition).Phoenixia1177 (talk) 18:02, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
How did the question part simultaenously haven no valid answer, and also have a simple no as the answer? Nil Einne (talk) 20:19, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
The answer to "Can I be proven wrong?" is "No." The answer to "Can I be proven right?" is "No." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:46, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
So again, "How did the question part simultaenously haven no valid answer, and also have a simple no as the answer?" If you're now saying the answer to the question is a simple, or not so simple, no, that's fine, but that wasn't what you original said. Nil Einne (talk) 11:20, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
That's awfully glib, you haven't provided any reason that the assertion "There is a 90% chance a man will walk in the door in the next five minutes" is meaningless, you are asserting that it is, that's not really convincing. Especially since the whole point is that if it isn't meaningful, then why not? The op appears to be asking a question along these lines -- and since people make statements like these all the time, it is interesting to consider them; especially since they are not talking in the strict sense of mathematical probability. Moreover, if I said, "Tonight at work will probably be busy", this would communicate something, so does the someone walking in the door - if that something is factual, if it means something, if it can be established, etc. are all interesting questions. --By the way, your objection isn't even one of the salient ones, or even much of one, the 90% is firmly attached to something - "There is a 90% chance a man walks in the door" appears, prima facie, just as sane as "There is a 90% chance of rain", surely you wouldn't say the latter doesn't specify "90% of what", why the former? tl;dr: you're repeating yourself sans argument or reasonable objection - and, at any rate, there's obviously, at least, a little meat to this topic, so the question isn't just shallow meaningless fluff.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 04:34, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
If you say there's a 90 percent chance of rain, what you're actually saying (assuming you know what you're talking about) is that the current weather conditions produce rain 9 out of 10 times, historically. The doorway idea is a bit weird. Unless the establishment is permanently out of business, there is a 100 percent chance someone will walk through the door eventually. The statement "It will probably be busy", as with a weather forecast, is likewise based on experience. The question, "Can I be proven wrong?" is meaningless without a similar type of context. As to what the OP "appears" to be asking, that's assuming facts not in evidence. All we know for sure is what he asked - and without context it's not possible to prove right or wrong. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:50, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
If I say "I wish someone would walk in the door", or something to that effect, I'm not meaning at any point in the eternity of the future, that's not the common use of time in language - if I said "I wish I could find a job", you wouldn't assure me that I have forty years left alive, so I'm sure to find one, would you? (and the response, above, says "five minutes" the second time) You're also making something of a category mistake with your reasoning, or your very much a verificationist: if I say "Me and George Washington would have made good friends.", I have no way to evidence it, nonetheless, it is a meaningful statement -- and the question of evidencing and its relation to meaningfulness is exactly what is in question. In short, you are assuming the answer, then repeating that answer back as evidence of its correctness - you can't do that (and, that we can have this debate, despite your glibness, indicates it is something worth asking). Finally, you're, what, insisting we can't reasonably interpret questions, we have to go with what is written, and only that? Let's just close up shop, then, because 85% of what is asked here is just gibberish, by that standard. --Also, it is not obviously so that you need to know what you're talking about to state there is a 90% chance of rain, you're, again, assuming your conclusion, then using it to prove it...stop that.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:52, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Science desk

The IP who posed the "dumb questions" item has been put on ice for a while. However, his "dumb questions" have received a number of possibly useful answers. What should be done, if anything? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:45, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Is there anything dangerous or wrong with the answers? If not, why even ask? It isn't required that all posts by blocked or banned users be deleted, and posts by blocked or banned users before they were blocked or banned are not candidates for deletion. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Agreed, it's fine. There is nothing inappropriate with the answers there, and they can potentially inform many people aside from OP, both now and in the future. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
And that's why I asked. :) Thanks, all. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
It appears that the IP/OP made three posts. The first was in several parts, one of which, about sixty, was actually a reasonable inquiry, and the other parts were not stupid. Then it appears that they posted two more questions that may have been trolling, which were deleted. Maybe the IP/OP only discovered that being a troll was fun after making the first plausible post, and then discovered that we do not allow trolls. I think that we are in agreement that reasonable answers should be left on the desk and can be archived in the usual time by the usual robot, even if the OP shifted shape from being an IP to being an IP/troll. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Collapsed non-question

I collapsed this [25], because even after reading the whole thing I could see no question being asked- It's just a long weird anecdote about an Irish tramp/hobo. If anyone can understand a question or provide a reference/answer, feel free to undo my collapse. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:27, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to delete it. It's junk. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:25, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Anecdote, Lisa? Or anagram? InedibleHulk (talk) 12:32, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

How to Encourage a Regular Reference Desk Contributor to Stop Contributing?

Hi. Last year I made a few contributions to Reference Desk answers, but grew discouraged by the poor quality of some editors' contributions. I've tried to make a few contributions this year, but have again been struck by the poor quality of some people's answers to legitimate questions. This is not a criticism aimed at people who have answered questions to the best of their ability but have later been corrected by other editors with greater expertise in the relevant subject. Rather, I am concerned about editors who have impugned the motives of, or been needlessly judgmental of, legitimate questioners, and those editors who use Reference Desk answers as opportunities to push particular points of view (often those of a tiny minority of professionals in a particular subject), give deliberately false answers, provide arguments from religion or other unhelpful sources, or engage in fatuous banter or misguided attempts at humour. I have the impression that the great majority of contributors to the Reference Desk do their best to provide a useful and timely service to our readers, but I am unhappy that there are a small number of less helpful contributors.

My question is simple: is there any way of reducing the participation of unhelpful editors in the activities of the Reference Desk?

RomanSpa (talk) 12:17, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Many people have made similar observations in the past about certain unhelpful editors. To take this further, though, you would need to start a thread on this page stating which particular editor(s) you have in mind, and – this is very important – give diffs of edits they have made which you think were unhelpful. The community might then take some action regarding those editors' editing privileges (although I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you). --Viennese Waltz 15:37, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
There's no way to force someone to back down short of banning or topic banning. The official channels of banning someone take a lot of effort and documentation, enough to easily convince a disinterested party. Often, problem editing stops just short of bannable offense, and the charges just breed ill will. We can ask a user to change his tune, but that is not usually effective unless it is done with great tact and compassion.
Of course specific bad behavior (e.g. WP:SOAP, WP:BITE, etc.) can be chastised, as long as it is WP:CIVIL. Some people here think that chastisement should always happen on a user's talk page, but I for one see the value in an occasional public upbraiding in this space: it lets everyone know that the offender has done something that is not appreciated, and gives others a chance to agree with the chastisement or defend the user in question.
I believe the best way to counteract unhelpful users is to recruit more good respondents. Cream rises, chaff blows away, etc. So please stick around, and don't let a few annoyances drive you away. Also, we should all encourage a few of our knowledgeable friends and associates to help out here as well :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:00, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Part of the problem is that that isn't true. The people with the most time and energy to dedicate to RD stick around, whether or not their responses are helpful. The real problem is that the requirement to be 'civil' means that people with less time and energy are required to jump through many hoops while remaining calm in the face of provocation, while the original offender need only say 'I reject these charges' and go back to wasting everyone's time on RD. A moderation system where discussions were more actively policed would improve matters, but it would be more labour-intensive and more of a shift from WP's current setup. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:22, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
I meant more on an individual thread basis - the OP, readers, and responders will all get to assess what's good on their own. You're right about the way it can go in general, and bad responders can hang around while good ones leave. You're also right about there being potential technical solutions, but IMO slashdot/reddit style moderation is't the WP way. I disagree that being civil takes any more time than being a jerk, though it is often less satisfying :) Interestingly enough, Medeis also wants more policing (see below) but I think we need less wikicops around here, not more. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:48, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
  • First, strongly enforce our question criteria and immediately delete requests for opinion, prediction, loaded questions, and questions beginning with "Why do the Jews...?" or "I'm trying to convince my idiot friend.. But he's dumb" that invite unserious responses. Allow only specific requests for references and articles, or educated identifications/translations that can be backed up with sources.
Second, pay contributors. What you get for free is worth what you pay for it.
Third, don't assume minority opinions are inherently wrong. I could quote Ayn Rand's

Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth.

but it's a minority opinion.
Fourth, contribute your own time to answering questions, rather than complaining here about answers you don't like, or only showing up to complain, complaining you don't have enough time to do more than that.
μηδείς (talk) 21:27, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
  1. It's not the questions - it's the answers that matter here.
  2. Your (well known) deletionist approach fails because nobody agrees on the criteria for deletion...I disagree with almost everything you hat or delete.
  3. Paying people to reply would bring in yet more people wanting to earn a buck by posting "Me too!" answers and other crap. It wouldn't in any way help us to decide who is allowed to answer and who isn't. The good respondents are already happy to work for $0...that's not the problem we're trying to address here. But in any case, Wikipedia wouldn't remotely consider money changing hands. So this is a totally crap suggestion.
  4. Eeek! Quoting Ayn Rand?!? Really? Wow. How the heck could she possibly know how the first man to create fire was treated? I can come up which HUNDREDS of cases where someone came up with something great and was immediately lauded for their invention. Bullshit!
  5. I agree - spend more time providing good answers would be a good thing. However, weeding out the crap also helps. Our OP in this case wishes to help out with good answers, but is put off by the poor ones - and I have to agree. I'd far prefer to contribute to a prestigious, well respected reference desk than to try to squeeze in a good answer amongst junk. That's why I started contributing here rather than any of the other places where such activities are performed - and it's why I come here now to support the idea of trying to weed out the junk.
SteveBaker (talk) 21:52, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
A moderation system would be awesome...but hard to implement within the structure of MediaWiki...I can't see it happening, for purely technical reasons, if not for any other. Absent that kind of control, we can eliminate people who frequently break Wikipedia guidelines - but simply posting poor quality answers hardly extends to that. Sometimes these people will slip up badly enough to actually break some rules - and then we can possibly nail them - but it's tough, and the WIkipedia justice league tends to err on the side of leniency and forgiveness...which is probably a good thing.
The problem is when someone posts an almost unending torrent of poor answers, weak jokes, off-topic asides and who-knows-what. These people richly deserve to be kicked out of here because they are truly a waste of electrons...but there is no mechanism for that.
That said, we are empowered to write guidelines of our own - and I suppose we could craft some sort of guideline that would promote the status of these kinds of useless WP:RD posts to "disruption"...and having so defined it, cause persistently useless people to be booted off under the "disruptive editing" rules. That might actually stick because that Wikipedia guideline is intended to be applied only to persistently annoying people.
I suppose we might write: "Posting jokes, asides and off-topic comments before a full answer to the question has been provided is considered disruptive to the reference desks. Denigrating the original poster is always considered disruptive."....now you can line up all of the cases where these 'certain users' have violated this principle, point out that this represents a pattern of disruption to the smooth operation of the reference desks - and if they persist, you'd have a strong case for a violation of WP:DISRUPT and now an Admin can topic-ban them.
This kind of special rule is generally considered acceptable for WikiProjects - and I think of the WP:RD as something akin to those.
Merely posting very poor answers is harder to deal with.
But it's essential that we work this such that a pattern of poor responses is the key here - we shouldn't try to boot someone out for a single poor answer or misplaced joke. We all have bad days!
SteveBaker (talk) 21:42, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
I wish there was a technical solution like up/down votes. Since the RefDesk was created, other question/answer sites have risen up and proven much more useful and with a much better signal to noise ratio. They've proven that we could do better. A lot better.
Without exception, the secret of those sites seems to be allowing readers to curate the content. Not only does it help the best stuff "float to the top", it allows people to express that an answer is wrong without having to argue.
Human nature being what it is, I don't think we can achieve the good results other sites have achieved in the free-for-all environment we have here, but I don't think that adding more human-enforced rules is the answer either. The rules we have now are applied differently by different people, and even then only when it suits them. And that's pretty much to be expected in any group of people. Especially volunteers.
All that said, I agree with Steve that I don't think a technical solution is easily possible with a MediaWiki page. :( APL (talk) 22:05, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
If we were to adopt the tools of reddit/slashdot/stackexchange, then we would have left the Wiki way, in my opinion. For better or worse these desks are an outgrowth of the encyclopedia, and so we must use the same minimal technology and rely more on human discussion than other answer sites do. And if anyone thinks that community voting will certainly lead to better content, I suggest she has not spent enough time in the various dark corners of Reddit :) SemanticMantis (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough. A stackexchange-like system would absolutely be a departure from the Wiki Way. Although the ref-desk is kind of an oddity, it's always been at least a half-step away from the Wiki way.
I would argue that discussion and debate is useful for continual refinement of permanent content, but less optimal for providing timely and accurate answers and references. APL (talk) 23:38, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't think you are using the same definition of "personal attack" as the rest of us. He didn't say anything about you as a person, he expressed his opinion that your example was inapt. I suggest you grow some thicker skin, at least strong enough to withstand the barbs that you yourself give out with regularity :) SemanticMantis (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Medeis has a history of seeing personal attacks when there were none. Personal opinion seems to be synonymous with personal attack to them. I agree that Steve's response was A) not an attack and B) a calm reply to the arguments that Medeis put forth. Dismas|(talk) 22:36, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
(ec) No. What is wrong with this board is the way contributors use it to bring their own personal obsessions into every thread. If you want to discuss Ayn Rand, start a Facebook page or something. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:32, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
There's no personal attack there. Steve didn't agree with you, but that's allowed. APL (talk) 23:33, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
Regarding the original question, as others pointed out and hinted at: I don't think there is much more you can do other than lead by example (as corny as that sounds). Keep adding informed/researched/referenced replies, ignore the noise. If stuff gets removed or hatted, you are free to undo or unhat when you feel the censorship was overly ambitious (or just plain wrong). If you really want to get those banned who unfortunately do contribute a great deal to a continuous drone of unfriendliness, inanity, and unsolicited soapboxing, then you have to go to one of those dreadful boards (WP:AN, WP:ANI ... WP:RFC/U is marked as historical), and I don't think you will be successful. For example, though I really do empathize with your sentiment, there's no way I'm going to participate in any kind of discussion of that sort because I don't feel it deserves that kind of attention. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:38, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
If this is about me, feel free to complain to my talk page. I'm a bit of a chaotic neutral sort, and sometimes speak in riddles, but most of what seems unhelpful, offensive or inaccurate can be explained, if need be. Sometimes I say truly wrong things. I've no problem with apologizing for and correcting those, either. Can't do much without a direct complaint, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:12, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
You've hit upon an important point. Sometimes users will take direct shots at other users, in front of the OP, and that tends to inspire defensiveness. Taking a polite complaint to the user's talk page stands a better chance of resulting in improvement - certainly better than vulgar insults will. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Everyone's free to be as vulgar and insulting as they want on my talk page. But no, innocent people asking about hickory sticks or elephants don't need the drama. Even polite drama. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:01, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I meant in front of the OP. You can call me anything you want to on my talk page. Though I will be the judge as to whether the nature of the comment warrants a response. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:06, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Assumptions of good faith can lead to more cordial and less brutal exchanges, although it can be difficult enough to self-censor much less censor others that are peddling anything, but since I stick pretty much to the science and math boards I suppose I'm avoiding some of the annoying opinion laden-ed responses (if I'm not adding it myself that is ;)). Naturally, much of the swill is not limited to just one or two respondents and usually appears within a contributor's good-faith effort to present relevant information (whether it be grounded in facts or not) and since so much of what is found and/or presented is often open to different interpretations regarding appropriateness its imperative that the tyranny of the majority is avoided per Medeis above and that the unhelpful digressions such as extremely poor sourcing or rudeness doesn't stifle the otherwise helpful contributions that I usually see by the regulars here. -Modocc (talk) 08:26, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I think many of us would agree that the tyranny of the majority is not welcome here - that's part of why I'm not so quick to think that voting systems would be a unilaterally beneficial change. In science and math, the minority can definitely be right while the majority is wrong - this ideally shouldn't happen if we polled e.g. professors, but our sample of respondents here is sometimes very small and can suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect (I'm sometimes guilty of this too I'm sure - we should have an awareness day!). Ideally good sources and reasoning can carry the claims in these cases. In the humanities, it's less about right/wrong, so again minority viewpoints are usually fine. I followed OP's complaints rather clearly until "particular points of view (often those of a tiny minority of professionals in a particular subject)" - I must confess I can't think of an example of this being a problem. Of course we shouldn't argue from authority, but in my experience, if a responder's profession is known to me, they usually do speak with knowledge and expertise in their subjects. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:08, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
As with everything in the human realm, the problem isn't with contributions that tick all or most of the boxes (and that's most of what we get here), it's with those that don't. The daily TV news isn't full of stories about people quietly going about their business and doing the right thing. They are very much the majority, but it's always the tiny minority of wrong-doers who get the disproportionate amount of attention. That's the human way, apparently. Certain names crop up in these discussions with regularity, and one is tempted to believe that this sort of attention is exactly what they are seeking. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:17, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
This is all wrong. If you have a problem with what someone says, say so. Preferably on their talk page to start, if need be here. Correct them at the main question if and only if what they said is actually incorrect and you can provide correct information. Often people know when they're skating on the edge - seldom do they have a good sense for when others think they are over it, but they might put up a good defense if they did. I see nothing that can be accomplished by a "downvote" or "moderation" that can't be accomplished by a sourced answer to the question. But downvotes and moderations can be done by anybody, no source required, which is why they are beloved by so many in social media who like to enforce their preconceptions, or perhaps those of the companies that pay them. I know one thing - I hate the system used by other sites of downvoting and suppressing views, which is always a matter of prejudice, never a matter of knowledge. Wnt (talk) 00:07, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

How many admins does it take to change a light bulb?

Revert my deletion if needed...but please at least explain how this could be considered a legitimate question if you do. --Onorem (talk) 04:16, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

It clearly wasn't, but given the propensity for some contributors to respond to deletion of improper questions with drama-mongering and personal attacks, I'm not surprised it got ignored. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
And I've been reverted, and I expect no actual response. This is the kind of shit that makes people think that the ref desk is a joke. Congrats. --Onorem (talk) 04:22, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Those people need to look at the bigger picture, rather than only the pieces that confirm their ideas. The vast majority of shit is the serious kind. These are the same sort of people who won't shut up about how CM Punk makes UFC look like a joke, rather than praising any of its 400+ "legitimate" athletes.
You may want to also delete WP:LIGHTBULB. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:36, 20 January 2015 (UTC)


User:Kiel457

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#A request to ban User:Kiel457 from the reference desks - I suggest that all responses are posted there. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:43, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

That thread is now closed, with the comment "Refdesk regulars are advised to ignore the usual generic sorts of requests made by Kiel457". —Steve Summit (talk) 19:05, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Deleting Questions

Earlier today I provided an answer to this question. I notice that the original questioner has now deleted both the question and my answer. Is this accepted practice, or should questions be left in place even if the original questioner changes their mind? (I wouldn't ask, except that my answer gave me an opportunity to toot my own trumpet in a small way, and I was vaguely interesting in finding out if other Reference Deskers had ever done anything similar! :-) ) RomanSpa (talk) 19:04, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@RomanSpa: The OP didn't just up and delete the thread; he moved it from the Miscellaneous page to the Entertainment page. The thread (including your response and several later responses) can now be found there. Deor (talk) 21:22, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Cool, thanks. RomanSpa (talk) 21:30, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Standard practice is to explain that the section was moved, and I have done so. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:16, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

my stuff keeps getting deleted

Archive as moot, without opposition. μηδείς (talk) 20:54, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

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

What happens, why does it get deleted. Even when I ask why that gets deleted as well. Its as if asking a question isn't allowed lol — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.100.51 (talk) 22:36, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Your question asked for a medical opinion. We don't supply those. Ask a doctor. Dbfirs 22:38, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Just think about it.--Aspro (talk) 22:40, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Ignoring the ethics trolls a moment, note that ileocaecal valve, pylorus and esophageal sphincter all have purposes related to making sure traffic runs the normal way, plus there's peristalsis which usually but not invariably gets its direction right, and last but by no means least the colon itself has a function of absorbing fluid, while small intestine usually adds fluid but maybe if you disrupted that balance it would add less (I don't know about that part) Wnt (talk) 00:03, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
  • *sighs* Folks, these things only work if we _delete_ the offending content and _don't_ have these endless post-mortems about it. It's what they want. I know I'm adding to the problem by posting this, but I thought we might have got it right for once - apparently not. So, the OP should see Klismaphilia and water cure, and we might as well invite WickWack (who I'm sure is reading this) to contribute to RD/S again. Tevildo (talk) 01:17, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Double standards question from WP:RDM

Moved the question here because it is about the operation of the Reference Desk, and not a question to be answered by references. Carry on please. --Jayron32 23:04, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay, but with all things being supposedly equal, how come some one else gets to ask about ejaculating with his partner and drinking it, and the one about swallowing string. That's allowed andy q wasn't. Where do the double standards originate from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.100.51 (talk) 22:46, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

They don't. Notice that such questions are not on this page. If they were asked before, it would have been a mistake to answer them. Now, quit disrupting the board. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:48, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
The OP was advised of the above thread fifteen minutes before this one was created, there's no need for this to be in three places, and I have deleted the ref desk question. μηδείς (talk) 00:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Does our prohibition on medical advise extend to veterinary questions?

I've responded to two requests from pet owners seeking advice in the last two days; one was purely a general request about diseases a given bread of cat may be predisposed to from a por-active new owner (to whom there was little to be said which he hadn't figured out himself already), while the other was a request for a diagnosis of an active and ongoing issue with a group of hamsters, to which I advised sanitation, isolation of the animals and a trip to the vet. But it did put me in a mind to discuss with everyone where the lines are with regard to this kind of advice. One the one hand, it is not, strictly speaking, medical advice, but on the other it seems to me that many of the same principles that are the cause for our moratorium on medical advice (the potential for doing much more harm than good and potential liability to the project) apply here and, furthermore, that veterinary issues within a given household can readily become medical issues and that (conceivably) bad advise here could bridge one to the other.

In the past I have been inclined to largely follow the same principles we use for medical advice for any inquiry about a serious health problem in an animal, though I have no problem giving general practical insight and advice when the question does not seem to reflect a specific case, as we do with medical subjects in many cases. I made an exception in going further in this most recent case because it seems those animals are in a bad way and I wanted to underscore that the OP should get them to a vet post-haste. Anyway, can I get some thoughts on where y'all think we stand on this? Snow talk 02:18, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

No one here is qualified to provide medical advice about humans or animals. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:20, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
It's never been a matter of qualification; we've had (and have) a number contributors here with medical and physiological credentials. It's an issue of limitations of the format, showing the necessary extreme caution as we are talking about the health of others, and taking into account liability for the project. I'm not disagreeing with you that we should probably avoid these topics as well -- I'm leaning in that direction myself -- but you seem to have misinterpreted why we don't provide medical advice in the first place, which is an important factor in analyzing whether the veterinary scenarios are consistent with the same concerns. We have people who could speak to both medical and veterinary inquiries (though unfortunately, we have a handful of othe editors who can't really speak to these issues as an expert but would certainly still be trying to, if not for the prohibition), so the question is not whether or not we could, but whether we should. Even if half of Ref Deskers were M.D.s, I'd argue the prohibition should stay simply as a matter of our context here. I'm inclined to extend that same principle to animals, except, I've never seen it explicitly come up here before. Snow talk 09:08, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Apparently enough that we have {{HD/Vet}}. --  Gadget850 talk 10:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Hmm, good sleuthing, G. Can only find one incident in which it was invoked, four years back, but that's precedent enough to me. It just seems like best practice to follow the same principle with regard to animals. Within most contexts anyway; if someone comes on with a question about an orphaned bird, for example, I see no problem in giving them basic advice and pointing them in the direction of wildlife rehabilitation resources. But for larger domestic animals that are clearly pets or livestock, I think it's best just to assume the standard procedure. WP:Medical does not address the issue explicitly, I find, but surely the spirit of the position is still relevant in the area of many veterinary contexts. Snow talk 11:09, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
It should extend to veterinary questions etc ... to me it's always about not doing harm, even potentially (but, yes, to be interpreted within realistic but imaginitive reason), guidelines or no guidelines. See also a discussion from four and a half years ago: "Fungus on leaf, pimple on ass". ---Sluzzelin talk 11:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
As there is no specific prohibition on veterinary advice I have no desire to see one enacted routinely because it's 'kind of similar' because by that method of metastasis eventually everything will be banned. Feel free to answer questions without the usual hand-wringing. However, do remember that the Refdesk isn't about giving advice period, otherwise one might tell him to set a couple of heavy duty rat-traps in the cages with his biohazardous hamsters and quit asking us how to treat an abscess. :) We can only provide some information, the OP has to make the decisions. Wnt (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2015 (UTC)


The problem here is how far do you take "doing no harm"? "Are dried peas edible? (Image at right)"..."Sure, those are pigeon peas and they are commonly dried and eaten in Malawi"...then you have a dead OP on your hands. (Cytisine poisoning...the 'peas' in the photo are Laburnum pods, not pigeon peas!). OK, so definitely we should have a rule about food idenitification. How about car repair? ("I have surface rust on some metal parts of my car, what should I do?" "Go ahead and put a thin layer of oil on the affected parts to exclude air and water"....fiery wreck as the OP's oily brake disks fail to stop his/her car.)
It's truly impossible to think of any question that we might answer that truly has no potential to do harm...and that's true whether a specific piece of information is in error - or even if it's dangerous if answered correctly ("How would someone go about hiring a hit-man? It's for a novel I'm writing!"...well, maybe it is!) If the rule was that we couldn't answer questions where an incorrect answer would have the potential to do harm, it would be tough to work with - and if we widen the net to include correct answers that could potentially do harm, we'd be unable to answer any questions whatever because we never know to what use that information might be put...so that absolutely cannot be the principle behind setting rules like "no medical advice" and "no legal advice".
So why have the medical and legal guidelines in the first place?
Simple - it's illegal to operate as a doctor or as a lawyer without a license in many (most?) parts of the world. When we set ourselves up as experts and start handing out medical advice, we're actually breaking the law in many cases. Ditto with legal advice. It's not illegal to incorrectly identify a plant - but that can be just as dangerous as advising someone to take an antacid for chest pain....the difference is that the latter is illegal but the former is not. That might also be true of veterinary advice - but I'm less sure of that. Kainaw's criterion is based on what doctors do...diagnosis, prognosis, treatment.
IMHO, the legal imperative is the only reasonable criterion upon which we can base these 'hard' restrictive rules...and I'm not sure whether veterinary advice comes under that banner or not - but I'd be very concerned about WP:CREEP here. Sure we can discuss whether telling someone how to find a hit man is really a good idea or not...but we do that on a case-by-case basis. But to give our OP's the impression that the advice we give has no potential for harm would be just asking for a law suite the first time it actually does cause harm...so we shouldn't make that guarantee by enshrining it as a principle into our rule making.
SteveBaker (talk) 16:04, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
I was simply sharing how I approach answering or not answering. No one said anything about guarantees, and I did point out that potential harm might be imagined "within reason". I certainly don't wish to add to our guidelines and then have our police and hall monitors go berserk with enforcement. I recommend thinking before you hit save, that's all. ---Sluzzelin talk 16:31, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Well, I'm mostly all in agreement with you, Steve. In most legal jurisdictions in the English-speaking world it's actually not illegal (in the criminal sense) to give medical or legal advice; you just have to be licensed to do it professionally, but clearly people give both kinds of advice to eachother all the time (and it's often incorrect or poor advice), But while it's not an issue with criminality, there are is certainly many issues with liability. That's the element that often gets left out when we talk about medical advice here, but I guarantee it's not something the WMF ever loses sight of, and why our options here are limited. That's the one major factor that I see as reasonable cause to prohibit certainly classes of question. The other is the issue Sluzzelin raised; the basic ethical obligation to be certain we are not risking doing considerable harm. Snow talk 17:03, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
THIS is fairly illuminating. It says that "In general, a person practices medicine when he or she tries to diagnose or cure an illness or injury, prescribes drugs, performs surgery, or claims he or she is a doctor.'"...so diagnosis is clearly a bad thing for us to be doing. Then, also: "...advice may be the practice of medicine when the advice is specific to a particular person's illness or injury. Magazines and websites that offer general tips for getting over the common cold, therefore, are not engaging in the practice of medicine." - so we clearly need to avoid doing at least those two things. In the state of Florida (where Wikipedia is housed, and the offense might be deemed to have occurred) "The penalty shall be a fine of not less than $500 nor more than $5,000"...per incident. So my thinking is that we shouldn't be doing this! SteveBaker (talk) 18:37, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Obviously, that applies to practicing medicine as it applies to persons not animals. One is allowed to administer medical care to their animals, for instance under Florida law, [26]. Thus, it's OK to seek advice and act upon it, yet a random guy giving such advice about a particular animal might not be exempt. -Modocc (talk) 19:38, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Most people here don't seem to understand WP:MEDICAL - it doesn't say that we should not give medical advice. It says that we can not - as in, it is literally impossible. Nothing we say can be legally construed as medical advice. So if I write "Sure, take 1000 aspirin to cure your headache" - that is not medical advice. The disclaimer is indemnifying. The reason we don't give medical advice here is for ethical reasons, not legal reasons. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:41, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Our guidelines prohibit professional advice and interpreted broadly that would have to include licensed professions such as veterinary advice, but it is just a guideline. I think on the whole though we are searching for a solution to a "problem" that doesn't appear to exist. --Modocc (talk) 22:05, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Our Wikipedia:General disclaimer, which trumps ref desk policy, says we don't give professional advice. In the US, veterinarians are licensed professionals. No, we should not be giving veterinary advice. (Consider also that many diseases pets suffer are communicable to humans, and that in the US, pharmacies fill prescriptions written by veterinarians for pets.) μηδείς (talk) 22:36, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
That is a red-herring, as SematicMantic already pointed out Wikipedia:General disclaimer is a disclaimer, in that nothing we write is professional advice and furthermore the page is not a wp:policy page. So our guideline is actually prohibiting that which we are not even able to offer. Which is why there isn't a problem because it is a guideline. --Modocc (talk) 22:55, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
It says "If you need specific advice (for example, medical, legal, financial or risk management) please seek a professional who is licensed or knowledgeable in that area." That is, in fact, the only acceptable response to someone seeking medical advice, be it for humans or animals. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
I support the guideline, but it doesn't extend to slugs. --Modocc (talk) 23:04, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't know... If you pour salt on a slug, have you violated laws against cruelty to animals? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Unless you eat it afterward, you've violated the Hulk Code. Legislation was introduced in 2004 Britain to treat them fairly, but I don't think it stuck. Gardeners are among the most well-equipped to form Frankenstein mobs. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:12, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
(e/c) See also our Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice, which says, inter alia:
  • At the very least, responses should link to Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer
  • Therefore medical advice must not be given by question-answerers,
  • ...and should not be requested
  • Any question that solicits a diagnosis, a prognosis, or a suggested treatment, or any answer that provides them, is considered inappropriate for the reference desk.
Contrary to Semantic's interpretation of the General Disclaimer, this is saying that it is possible to at least purport to give what sounds like medical advice. But that we MUST NOT do this. However, given that the Disclaimer protects us from legal repercussions of whatever advice may be (however inappropriately) given, these two things don't sit well together. It's like having a law that says "Thou must not murder anyone", but there's another legal mechanism that says "If you do murder anyone, you will be deemed not to have murdered anyone". We need to get this cleared up. Either it is possible to give medical advice (and whatever the consequences of that may be), or it is not possible. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:13, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
The disclaimer says, clearly, Not professional advice and goes on to say if you need it please go elsewhere. There is thus an important distinction to be made between professional advice and any advice which appears on this site. The guideline says we should must not give advice, but it is not policy. --Modocc (talk) 23:25, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
If it's not policy, what's the phrase "must not" doing there? There's a clear distinction between questioners, who should not request medical advice, and respondents, who must not provide any. Are you saying this is only a guideline and we're free to interpret it as we see fit, and in fact provide medical advice in some cases, in the confidence that if the OP takes the advice and dies, we're safe because of the General Disclaimer? Is that how this all works? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries]
The template at the top of the page says the page is a guideline. It's a good guideline too, but we have to use some commonsense about it. -Modocc (talk) 00:06, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
My point is that guidelines, by their nature, never require actions and never prohibit actions. That's what laws and rules and instructions do. Guidelines merely suggest ways of operating. If this is a guideline, why are we told we "must not" provide medical advice? At most, this should be a "should not". No? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 02:46, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Either way, we don't give medical advice. -Modocc (talk) 03:29, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
See, what I like to strive towards is getting the picture in people's heads be the same as the picture described in the words we're supposed to be taking heed of. Currently, the two things are obviously quite different. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 03:39, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Your point has not escaped me, so with respect to it being obvious: must it be? Or should it be? maybe it's just obvious either way, but perhaps not, especially if the context suggests otherwise. Which is why we have an essay that demands that we DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS. --Modocc (talk) 04:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Despite amateur legal advice such as SM's, posting a disclaimer while you continually violate the same disclaimer in no way "indemnifies" anyone. See, for example the tobacco settlement where tobacconists routinely posted government mandated disclaimers, yet were found negligible nevertheless. Saying that we cannot give medical advice allows us to post medical advice because our disclaimer makes professional advice not professional advice is as twisted as a python consuming a triceratops. 23:59, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
We self-censor, but if someone's python chokes, it certainly wouldn't be because of professional advice. Wikipedia doesn't meet nor cannot meet its own standards of what constitutes a reliable source, which means we answer to whatever the Wikimedia Foundation requires of us. Our guidelines and policies can only help in this regard. -Modocc (talk) 00:24, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
If someone's python is choking, turning to Wikipedia for advice does not seem to be a very expedient approach. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:31, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
I've already said this, but it is worth repeating: I think our guideline prohibiting medical and professional advice extends to veterinary advice (even if it does not do so explicitly). This would include applying Kainaw's criterion to most domestic pets and many wild animals too, but obviously not all, and even for borderline cases like the one Snow Rise addressed information that might be applicable is fine along with informing them to seek professional advice elsewhere because it's not the thing we do. -Modocc (talk) 02:49, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, precisely. The distinction I intend to work along is whether or not there is any (and I mean any) potential for harm in the recommendation made. So, for example, even though I know how to gently restrain many animals for examination or treatment, I'm not going to share that information, because if I flub the description or the OP misinterprets my instructions and they or the animal are harmed as a result, that's on me. On the other hand, if someone comes on talking about how their cat's foreleg is severely inflamed and asking if they should give the animal a Tylenol, I'm not going to hesitate to say "don't do that, it could easily kill them". Followed immediately by "Please consult with a vet immediately; your cat may have a puncture wound from fighting or a fracture from a fall, but there is no way of knowing with any reasonable certainty other than taking them in for a direct examination from a professional vet" -- they can then call a vet and decide between them whether a visit is warranted without any assessment taking place on our part.
Or maybe even something as neutral as "Do not give the cat tylenol, it is toxic to cats and may well kill yours. Please take your cat to a licensed veterinary professional or contact one and describe the symptoms if you are uncertain the situation requires that level of attention. My suspicion from your current description here is that they will heavily recommend a visit, but it is for you to decide with them; unfortunately, we are disallowed by policy to recommend advice in these matters -- nor could we offer the level of advice you require, nor should you rely too strongly on any diagnosis at a distance. I've made an exception here because I felt you should be immediately aware that Tylenol is to be avoided -- as indeed should be any kind of unguided medication. Time to bring in the pro." A little long-winded, but this is one situation in which explicit clarity is warranted, I daresay. Snow talk 07:41, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
On the same note, I also don't have a problem with preventative recommendations -- again, provided they are not going to do any harm. So with the recent hamster example, I'd no problem recommending that the OP isolate the fighters when she notices them going at it, nor the suggestion that she redouble effort to make sure the environs were as hygienic as possible, since there are no negative medical repercussions of this (just some sexually frustrated hamsters, which, on the scale of possible harm-done...is pretty far down there). But on the other hand, I wouldn't as a general rule say "Give them X or Y: it helps prevent against Z!" since even when it seems like innocuous nutritional advice, can be very problematic. And it's that line I think we need to guard against. Because unfortunately I am fairly certain that, without the firm mandate we have from the community and WMF on this, there are contributors here (not many, but a few) who would certainly cross that line all too often. Snow talk 08:25, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Others have said this, but it's important to remember that our RD rules against giving professional advice are indeed a voluntary form of self-censorship. We decline to give such advice because we do not want to risk harming someone by giving them bad advice. But the rules have very little (I would say nothing) to do with liability, or with laws against practicing medicine without a license. Giving medical advice to random strangers on the Internet does not constitute practicing medicine without a license, because you are not sitting in an office, wearing a white coat and a stethoscope, letting patients believe you're actually a doctor. Similarly, giving medical advice on one of the Reference Desks would not, in general, expose Wikipedia to any liability, precisely because of the Wikipedia General Disclaimer that people keep mentioning. (That disclaimer does not tell you, the poster, that you may not give professional advice. It tells the reader that anything you wrote and they read on Wikipedia is not professional advice. Huge difference.)
So, as it stands now, the Wikipedia General Disclaimer does not tell you that you may not post veterinary advice on the Reference Desks, and the laws against practicing Veterinary Medicine without a license do not tell you that you may not post veterinary advice on the Reference Desks, and the Reference Desk Guidelines do not tell you that you may not post veterinary advice on the Reference Desks. If -- as it's sounding like -- the consensus is that we should do not do so, we should mention it explicitly to the Guidelines. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes I see the Wikipedia rules as stopping people on the Reference desk giving advice with Wikipedia's weight that may cause real material harm or suffering, and they are prohibitions because people are just too eager to give such advice based on nothing more than their own experience or intuition. Dmcq (talk) 14:31, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't see the liability issue in quite the same light as you, Steve; people do get sued all of the time for providing medical advice that leads to harm, and they needn't necessarily be presenting themselves as a healthcare professional in order to open themselves up to such a suit. And as even a single case could represent a substantial drain, I imagine the WMF would advise us to avoid these manner of contributions. All of that being said, in my opinion either argument (liability or commitment to seeing our contributions do not lead to harm) is sufficient in it's own right to mandate that we tread with extreme caution here. Actually, I feel a little guilty for wasting everyone's time here; the answer to my query seems obvious in retrospect, now that there's been feedback and I've had some time to think on the matter. Still, good to spell these things out explicitly, I suppose. Snow talk 23:59, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
We ought to come up with a mantra for those disturbed unreasonably by fears of malicious lawsuits because they gave some innocent bit of information. I suppose the following might be offensive to Muslims, who use the term more specifically, but others might try a phrase like I shall fear no terrorist theory of liability. Because I have insurance. Jihad is my insurance. Wnt (talk) 01:50, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
See that's rather the kind of comment and laissez-faire attitude that has me worried. I can see wiggle room to assist people in some contexts (I should hope so anyway, as physiology is a big part of my contributions here), but these are not non-issues and while you may view my stance as excessive hand-wringing, I view yours as overly dismissive and lacking in caution in a way that puts concern for the project's best interests as secondary to your personal own personal impulse and perspectives on this. Anyway, if you really want to follow this line of discussion to it's ultimate conclusion, it's entirely possible (and perhaps wise) to inquire about this matter with the WMF. Or indeed, this seems like just the type of issue that people are always taking to Jimbo's talk page for an opinion. Point being, I'm pretty sure that official position on this form of liability is not that it's non-existent and not to be treated dismissively. And I'm kind of concerned hearing this from you in particular Wnt because -- and meaning no offense to you broadly here, because you've made a great, great many useful contributions in this space and consider you an asset -- but lately, when it comes to people who go off half-cocked into speculation here, you might be second amongst the regulars only to StuRat. If editors here were allowed to answer requests for medical advice, and some of them treated that subject the way they do other empirical topics here )which some undoubtedly would), that absolutely would be dangerous. I don't mean disrespect, but I think your perspective is considerably way too far towards the permissive end of the spectrum on a situation which requires a more nuanced approach to stay on the right side of this important issue. Snow talk 03:23, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that, some years back, we did open a conversation with then WMF general counsel Mike Godwin on this very question. I'll try to find it in the archives. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Now that would be super handy! Snow talk 09:57, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it's wrong to speculate when you label speculation as such, and I do believe I do that. The hope is that I or someone else will reflect on the speculative point and decide one way or the other. This is after all a place first and foremost for questions. Wnt (talk) 04:04, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, I suppose in part, but given that we're a part of Wikipedia, I've always felt it's best to answer questions in a similar way to how we add content; with abundant sourcing on established principles and little-to-no synthesis/original research. I do appreciate that this is more applicable and feasible with regard to some inquiries than it is to others, and that we sometimes need to make common-sense exceptions, but there are responses here sometimes from parties who answer questions here that they are clearly out-of-their-depth on and they just get so, so very wrong. I'm not talking about you so much in this context; from what I've observed, your speculation is usually within the premise of the questions you ask for input on here from time to time; and that's certainly much more appropriate than speculating on answers to questions which others can answer without speculation.
Let me be clear; we all take liberties in this regard sometimes to discuss some fascinating splinter aspect of a topic that has come up, or because the OP's question raised an intriguing scenario that begs for speculation. But sometimes people lose all sight of WP:NOTAFORUM and that principle, and the notion of verification, need to be a part of our responses here, even if our role is slightly different than that of any other area of the project. I don't care whether people source each post to the nines (I try to get multiple quality references or at least Wikilinks for most all responses I give here, even if the subject is old-hat or in some sense self-evident to me, but I don't jump on the case of those who adhere to lower self-imposed standards). I just want the answers to be sourceable as often as possible; that is, even if you don't provide the link, only provide information which you know is supported by references out there somewhere. If one cannot guarantee at least that, they probably should not be answering that particular question. I think our responses here deserve to benefit from the same strategies we to help establish dependable and practically useful content in mainspace. But as you say, perhaps the most important thing is that speculation be clearly identified as such, and I appreciate any editor who takes great care with this. Snow talk 04:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Once again, I suggest that a few of you read what a disclaimer is. Whether it's the WP general disclaimer or the medical disclaimer disclaimers are not rules, regulations, or guidelines -- they are "intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised." So anyone who cites WP disclaimers to support what we should or shouldn't do here is rather confused. So let's please not confuse the issue citing disclaimers as rules, when they are not. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:47, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I mostly agree, but there is also a difference between citing the disclaimer as a rule or guideline and simply referring to it as Bugs did [27] when deciding what policies or guidelines we may want to have in place. What Bugs said was fine, and in case I wasn't clear above in what I wrote I've added links above to the guideline. -Modocc (talk) 19:01, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Once again, SemanticMantis thinks a disclaimer is a magic formula that indemnifies one for doing exactly what one is in fact doing, contrary to the claims of the disclaimer. Perhaps we should advise drug dealers they are immune from arrest if they have a sign saying "I do not deal in illegal drugs" on their door? Disclaimers that are routinely willfully and consciously violated have no indemnificatory powers whatsoever. This thread would certainly be relevant in discovery at any civil suit against the WMF. μηδείς (talk) 20:53, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm not necessarily disputing that, but I'd like to see an actual legal opinion to that effect. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:32, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Certainly disclaimers can be held to be invalid in accord with your concerns (for a drug dealer it would take only one instance of a violation). But since we don't give medical, legal, or professional advice this whole argument is somewhat pointless and moot, but I'll add my two-cents FWIW anyway. If inappropriate medical-related opinions are given anywhere on this site, the fact that anyone (even if IP-blocked or banned since they tend to come back like bad pennies) can contribute here means that no reasonable person can or should expect the standard of care required of professionals as well as the duty of care of a doctor-patient relationship under contract (actual or implied). Neither of these can be breached because they don't exist as such as our disclaimers simply make clear. -Modocc (talk) 23:58, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I think the notion that we or WMF can be held legally accountable in some court for what is said here, goes hand in hand with the equally spurious notion that we are here to provide advice to all comers. We are not. We are here to provide references, which necessarily contain the words and in some cases opinions of external parties. We are simply the agents through which these references are transmitted to those in search of them. If people could just drop their ego-based self-importance about the role they play here, it would make life so much more simpler for all of us. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 00:17, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
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