Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 118

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Archive 115

Archive 116

Archive 117

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Easy Questions that I an NOT going to ask on the reference desks

Note to the humor-impaired. Just skip to the next section. There is nothing for you here.

Easy Questions that I an NOT going to ask on the reference desks:

[01] How long did the Hundred Years War last?

[02] What was New Mexico named after?

[03] Which country makes most Panama Hats?

[04] In the story "1001 Arabian nights" what nationality was Aladdin?

[05] What nationality were the original Pennsylvania Dutch?

[06] From which animal do we get Catgut?

[07] Which U.S. State is the farthest north? South? East? West?

[08] In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?

[09] What material was used to clad the sides of the US warship "Old Ironsides"?.

[10] What is a Camel hair brush made of?

[11] The Canary Islands are named after what animal?

[12] What was King George VI's first name?

[13] What color is a Purple Finch?

[14] Where do the Cuban Lily and Confederate Rose come from?

[15] Upon what hill was the Battle of Bunker Hill fought?

[16] Who is buried in Grant's tomb?

[17] What bird has the scientific name Puffinus puffinus puffinus?

[18] What is another word for Thesaurus? Hint: One word, four syllables, eight letters, one letter is used three times, another letter is used twice, and I found it in Roget's Thesaurus.

[19] What color are White Rhinos?

[20] How long did the Thirty Years War last?

[21] A man travels due south for one kilometer. He turns left 90 degrees and travels due east for one kilometer, at which point he shoots a bear. He then turns left 90 degrees and travels due north for one kilometer, returning to the exact spot he left from.

[21a] What color is the bear?

[21b] What direction is the wind blowing from at the starting/ending point?

--Guy Macon (talk) 03:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. However, please note that catgut is not made from cats' intestines (or any other part of a cat). General Ization ^Talk 03:11, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Correct! "Catgut is a type of cord[1] that is prepared from the natural fibre found in the walls of animal intestines.[2] Usually sheep or goat intestines are used, but it is occasionally made from the intestines of cattle,[3] hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys.[citation needed] Despite its name, no cat intestines are used in catgut." --Catgut. I would like to see that citation needed replaced with a reference, though. I suspect that some of the other questions won't be quite so easy to answer by looking it up on Wikipedia... --Guy Macon (talk) 03:19, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes. But George wasn't the first name of George VI. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:39, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Precisely. The point is that the obvious answers are wrong for most of these (all, depending on what the meaning of obvious is :) - Nunh-huh 04:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Not exactly all. The obvious answer to #20 is the correct answer. I am predicting that #18 will stump everybody unless they find a place on the web where I previously revealed the answer. I really did find the answer in Roget's Thesaurus, but I doubt that anyone else can find it there. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:15, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

"Synonymy". I found (your?) entry by googling "synonym of thesaurus". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Correct. From the preface to Roget's International Thesaurus, 1922 edition: "Apart from the scientific and logical arrangement the distinguishing feature of Roget is the inclusion of phrases. No other synonymy gives anything but individual words." --Guy Macon (talk) 06:50, 24 July 2015 (UTC) But please don't answer all the hard ones by Googling and finding places where I give the answers without giving the other editors a chance. Finding them on Wikipedia, on the other hand, could result in Wikipedia doubling what they pay you. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 06:50, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I knew quite a few of the correct answers to the list of questions, but I'll leave it to others to work out. The list looks like it would be a good basis for an article. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:17, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs, Wikipedia has the article "List of common misconceptions".

—Wavelength (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

In the midnight ride of April the 18th of '75, who warned the citizens of Concord that the British were coming? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a compete analysis of this question at Paul Revere#"Midnight Ride". --Guy Macon (talk) 06:50, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I ran across an item which asserted that the White House is not literally white, but more of an off-white. That might or might not be a true fact, though. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:17, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

What were the names of the two ironclad warships that clashed off the Virginia coast during the American Civil War? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:22, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

What did Commander Jim Lovell report to Mission Control when an oxygen tank exploded during a moon mission? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Which movie character said, "Play it again, Sam"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Pretty sure it was the same character that said "Luke, I am your father." We have an article on misquotation with a few examples, but maybe we could start a List of common misquotations for fun (and improving WP:)? SemanticMantis (talk) 17:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

What animal was Buffalo Bill famous for hunting? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Ernie Kovacs had a radio show which included a feature called "The Question Man":

Audience member: If the world is round, why don't people fall off?

Kovacs (chuckling): What you have stated is a common misconception. People are falling off all the time!

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The Cuban (mariposa) lily comes from Africa, and the Canary islands are named for their dogs. Not all the above questions are as obvious as they appear, though most bring a chuckle. μηδείς (talk) 16:57, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

You could add in "How many legs do centipedes and millipedes have ?". As for the polar bear Q, there's also a location near the S pole where that could be the case, but of course, there are no bears there. But, for that matter, are polar bears found that close the the N pole ? They tend to keep close to water, as that's where their prey (seals) live, so I don't imagine them walking hundreds of miles in from the water, but if the pack ice melts clear to the N pole, due to global warming, then maybe they would, although there's also the issue of how far they can manage to swim to get there. StuRat (talk) 17:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? LarryMac | Talk 18:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Was what over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? The neutrality of the United States, or World War Two? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe you've never seen this. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

There was a program called Quiz in a Commodore 64 bundle I had as a kid, asked a lot of these questions. Of course, it's a hard thing to Google, but if you happen to run across it, you're all well prepared to pass, now. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:26, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Racist troll on Humanities

Whats the procedure for dealing with questions like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#big_jewry_and_white_Christian_europeans ? Iapetus (talk) 10:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:RBI or hatting it as has been done is fine. For this sort of obvious trolling even a simple WP:ANV would probably result in a block and since it's an account even if a throwaway one it can be worth pursuing. Nil Einne (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

So we apparently have two trolls, a religious-racist troll and an anti-LGBT troll, one of whom is nearly unblockable because they hop around. Semi-protection is effective against trolling from IPs or from throw-away accounts; we just don't want to overuse it. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:21, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Just keep reverting, keep it boring, they'll get tired. Generally, anyway. There are insane trolls, of course. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:57, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

The "revert" part of RBI requires constant vigilance, and the "block" part requires constant vigilance by an admin. The right answer is semi-protection for a long enough stretch that the troll will go away. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:05, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Not necessarilly. It really depends on how dedicated the troll is. Some trolls give up quickly. So far, it looks like this one did. And as I already mentioned, it's likely an editor like this will be blocked by a report at AIV so you don't require constant admin monitoring. Heck probably even without a warning despite it normally being a requirement. Considering the page was not semi protected after this [1], and they only made one reversion of the closure of their thread [2], before being blocked [3] and so far have not reappeared, all of which happened before I posted, I'm not sure why you're claiming it's always necessary. Sure sometimes trolls are more persistent. In fact the earlier holocaust revisionism troll is probably the same editor (perhaps from Toronto) and they did lead to the RD being protected. But there's no point assuming that semi protection will be needed not least because if it's only been a single account with no recent persistent disruption, a request for semi protection may very well be denied. Or to put it a different way, escalate as and when necessary to semi protection. Nil Einne (talk) 15:59, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Blocking an IP-hopper is pointless. Semi-protection (for a few days, not 3 hours) is the better solution. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:44, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Again we're talking an account (albeit a throw away one) not an IP. And semi protected was not needed yet since the editor so far disappeared after that throw away account was blocked. I'm not sure what you mean by a few days, but that editor has not reappeared so far nor other editors bothering the RDh and it's been over 2, so protecting the page for those 2 days would have actually achieved nothing more than blocking the account. Nil Einne (talk) 13:31, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Someone removed the hat, so I've deleted it completely. Iapetus (talk) 10:21, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Strong apologies for allowing that crap to show again. Fairly sure that was my mistake. I only saw the hat when editing the previous section and thought the section had been deleted but someone had left the hat. However I realise now since the hat was part of the previous section and the comment was a new section, only the hat would shown when I was editing the previous section. (Also since I only saw a hat, it would have hidden the entire rest of the RD if that was all that was left.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:31, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Some of this sounds overwrought. If you can step over a coyote turd when you're out on a hike without calling in the cops, you can handle stuff like this without calling in admins. The first thought is "is there something to answer here?" and the next is "well then don't answer it". Wnt (talk) 14:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but when the coyote keeps coming into your house to take a shit on your living room carpet, and THEN when you politely remove the shit, the coyote insists on picking the same piece of shit back up, putting it back in your living room and saying "NO! MY SHIT WILL STAY IN YOUR LIVING ROOM!" and he comes back every few days to take a new shit in your living room, and exhibits the same "MY SHIT WILL STAY IN YOUR PARLOR!" behavior, and has for years, eventually, you're going to lock your front door, even if it keeps the good coyotes from stopping by for a nice cup of tea and a pleasant chat once in a while. --Jayron 32 22:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Does a bear shit in the woods? So does a coyote. Natural order, no harm, no foul. At the craps table, though, that's another story. I hope they don't destroy the poor thing, but we all know how hairy things get in Buffalo. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:48, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Back as Bravo2150 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). General Ization ^Talk 15:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

User_talk:82.28.140.226#Misc_Ref_Desk

This user, 82.28.140.226 has been repeatedly blocked at for disruption and lack of contributions to the project. Now they appear to be involved in an edit war to preserve a request for prediction/speculation/dbate about whther use of chemical weapons against ISI will defeat them. I have warned the user. μηδείς (talk) 21:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The ISI is less to the Middle, more to the East. America sort of hates them, too, but the average American troll doesn't know they exist. But yeah, typos happen. Just saying. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:21, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. As my hero, Victor Meldrew, says, "That's about as helpful as a glass buttock." :) μηδείς (talk) 02:52, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

82.28.140.226

Maybe one of youse guys could do something about 82.28.140.226 (talk · contribs), who is engaged in edit-warring on the ref desk. I reported him to AIV almost 3 hours ago, but they seem to be asleep at the switch. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:30, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

He gone bye-bye. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

BTW, I have been accused of restoring the Q. I did nothing of the sort. I saw the Q, and attempted to answer it. That's the limit of my actions here. Looking through the edit history, I believe the OP restored it. StuRat (talk) 21:47, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the OP restored it. You should have followed the lead of other editors and re-deleted it or at least hatted it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The problem here is not the regulars.

Come on people now

Smile on your brother

Everybody get together

Try to love one another

Right now

The Youngbloods

μηδείς (talk) 02:57, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

For the complete set of glass buttocks, I'll correct you again. That's a Nirvana song these days. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:02, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

And the video format is, too. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:08, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Having lived through the Summer of Love, I have no problem whatsoever should you wish to windex me, Inedible. I lost my virginity long before bleach. μηδείς (talk) 03:28, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

As tempting as that sounds, things ain't what they used to be. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:23, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that was actually pretty cool, like a John Waters clip. μηδείς (talk) 21:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Now, how many of us were expecting this instead? Tevildo (talk) 22:11, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I was expecting not to like that, so didn't click it till now. Glad I did! Catchy stuff, harkens back to Ren & Stimpy and Untalkative Bunny. Or the other way around, I guess. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:27, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Date bot out of order?

I noticed that the last date stamp to appear on the Ref Desk's pages was July 25, even though a number of new questions had been asked on July 26 and 27. I manually inserted date stamps for those dates on the three pages I (occasionally) monitor: Language, Humanities, and Miscellaneous. I didn't do this for the other pages. Isn't this normally done by a bot? Is it broken and in need of repair? Marco polo (talk) 18:39, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Pretty sure that's (often) handled by User:Scsbot. Perhaps the bot wrangler (User:scs) has been otherwise busy; it is run by a person, not automatically run by chron scheduling. If you look at Steve's talk page you see people bug him occasionally about this. So let me just take this opportunity to say: Thanks Steve for making this bot and running it so often! SemanticMantis (talk) 21:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, MP and SM. I was traveling on Saturday (and sharp-eyed readers might even know where :-) ), and I plum forgot last night, but the bot is catching up now. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:53, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

A request for guidance. (Caution: contains obvious sarcasm)

Hi all,
We now have someone asking Why are so many of the big international corporations controlled by Jews?
Should I:

point the OP to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
question why WP:RD folks are so easily trolled as to actually responding to obvious trolls?
block the OP as an obvious troll?

I'll do option #3 on my own initiative very soon. I'll leave option #2 up for debate.
--Shirt58 (talk) 10:34, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Block the troll and zap the question and any responses. While you're at it, revert the IP-hopper 193.233.72.50 in the previous section, and semi-protect this page for a while. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:39, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Askedonty (who is obviously Made Of Awesome) did reply and elegantly refuted the troll's troll.

I've blocked Bravo2150 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) as Obvious Troll is Obviously You Know What.

@Bugs, can you let me know which specific IP hoppers they wuz? I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand-saw and I can block the specific IP. But I wouldn't have a clue how to do a WP:RANGEBLOCK without blocking the IPs for a whole state or country or whatever.

--Shirt58 (talk) 12:18, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

The one reverted by Deo here.[4] Rangeblock would be futile, as the guy is using open proxies and is literally all over the map. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:35, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Shirt58, only made of the usual stuff, - just reenacting my preferred episodes in Doom the game. In the end I end unarmed outside for some fresh air and the computer in my room off for cooling too. --Askedonty (talk) 14:36, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that similar action may be required for Jubilujj 2015 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). The name and style are very similar. Tevildo (talk) 22:18, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:NOTFORUM

All instances of WP:NOTFORUM on talk pages should be automatically moved to the reference desk. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Is that supposed to be a statement of policy, or a proposal? If it is the former, it is wrong. If it is the latter, it is still wrong, since reference desks are for questions, and aren't forums either. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:44, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Say what? --Jayron 32 16:05, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I think you want the Forum Desk. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:09, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Protection

The current remedy seems to be moderately effective, no need to keep the discussion going now we have all learnt that it's best not to keep discussing such disruption. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:52, 7 August 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.

Every time that yo-yo posts his BLP-violating attack on various users here, someone sets a very short-term protection which the vandal can merely wait out. How about some longer-term protection, with some teeth in it - say, a week or two? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

It's pretty evident to me that the pathetic IP attack is designed to do get someone to place a longer-term protection on the talk page. Considering a large portion of comments come from IPs, long-term protection should be a very last resort. Right now we just need to revert on sight, and for those of us with admin flags (at the moment), we should block, ignore and move on. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

It requires that the admins remain vigilant. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:17, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I see that the anti-LGBT troll has been blocked this time. That has not been done in the past. We can either revert and block, or revert and semi-protect, or revert, block, and semi-protect. Blocking has less collateral damage, because semi-protection affects large numbers of unregistered editors, and blocking only affects other editors using the same shared address. In the past, we have not blocked the IP address. We should block the IP address each time in the future. I have another question. Is it sufficient to revert and block, or should the revert be accompanied by redaction? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Correction, the vandal has been blocked, in fact numerous times in the past few days. The editor switches IP addresses as quickly as possible to maximise disruption. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:28, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for blocking the troll. One can argue whether the hostile posts are vandalism, but they are clearly trolling, and both are blockable. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Can we tell from the IP addresses where the troll is located, or is the troll using open proxies? (If the IP addresses are in one location, the troll may be going to multiple coffee shops and to libraries in adjoining counties.) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Open proxies. Just geolocate some of the IP addresses, this is no coffee-shopper. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:35, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Are the open proxies being blocked for long periods of time? IP addresses used by common vandals are normally blocked for no more than a week. Open proxies, according to policy, may be blocked for any length of time including indefinitely. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm blocking them for a longish time, but it makes little difference when they can simply get a new one within seconds that isn't anywhere near the range of the previous one. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:52, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I'm not condoning the posting of that content, but if your goal is to eliminate -- absolutely eliminate -- the posting of it again, you have lost. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:06, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Noted, although making this page permanently editable by only auto-confirmed accounts would help. That would require some consensus. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Every time I've seen this particular drivel, someone has removed it within minutes. Small price to pay IMO, and at least this is one case that everybody seems to agree is misconduct. Actually I wonder what would happen if we let it stand. Maybe if we could collectively ignore it, the poster would lose interest. Heck, maybe some users are willing to WP:AGF, and might not even mind disclosing or discussing their sexual orientation. The problem there is that it's still off-topic and inappropriate to our project. If OP is reading along, I wonder if they know that this kind of interest is often seen as a sign of Closeted behavior or Homophobia#Internalized_homophobia... even a bad-faith vandal/troll might be enlightened by some references :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:22, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

At this point, constantly reverting the IP-hopping troll is becoming a burden. I suggest semi-protection. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:03, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I will comment, taking exception to User:Baseball Bugs, that I don't see the BLP violations. The editors about whom unacceptable comments have been made are pseudonymous. The comments only become BLP violations if the editors have disclosed their true names or are doxxed. I agree that the troll must be stopped, but not because of BLP violations, which only involve named real people, as opposed to pseudonymous real people. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:33, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

At least a couple of the targeted users appear to be using real names or portions thereof. Maybe a broader term would be "personal attacks", i.e. making unwarranted assertions about selected editors' personal lives. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:40, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the comments are personal attacks. I agree that the editor is a troll. Should the comments be redacted after they are reverted? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:42, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I would think that would be appropriate, but let's see what consensus here says. Maybe the targets should be asked for their opinions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:46, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

My own thought is that they probably should be redacted. Whoever blocks the IP address of the troll also has the ability to redact the post. If an editor who is not an admin sees it, would they please revert it (and, in particular, don't reply to it, even to say it's a terrible idea). (Feeding the troll is a bad idea also.) Robert McClenon (talk) 20:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Do we have a bot that identifies open proxies, maybe by pulling a list from an Internet open proxy list? (In the past, there was such a list, and a service that compiled the list, because spam was commonly sent through open proxies. The service probably still exists even though most rogue spam is now sent by zombies.) If not, should we request that someone write such a bot? Robert McClenon (talk) 20:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Just a quick one, the more this is discussed, the more the repressed troll gets a kick out of it. Better, as with most of these situations, is to ignore it entirely and stop creating thread after thread after thread discussing trolls, IPs etc, when the whole of Wikipedia is blighted by them. Note that the rest of Wikipedia doesn't immediately resort to a talk page to discuss, endlessly, individual IP vandals. Use the centralised threads, AIV, SOCK etc, and move on, because if you don't, you are all encouraging this. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:53, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, I agree with you about the appropriate course of action with regard to ignoring this kind of nonsense, but frankly I know of few projectspace pages which receive as much disruptive behaviour as the desks, so it's not all hand-wringing and histrionics that drive the threads about it here. Some discussion is necessary to validate that we are not mistaking some well-intentioned OP who simply doesn't know the rules for one of the persistent vandals and trolls--and some further discussion is necessitated when we have to inform those who have been absent about the current trolling activity, so reverts are not taken to be arbitrary and overzealous actions. That being said, yeah, discussion should be kept to a bare minimum until someone raises an objection to a revert. Snow ^{let's rap} 12:27, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

It's very difficult to determine causality here. Yes, these desks do endure a disproportionate amount of disruptive behavior, but I fear that this is in part because of the histrionics that inevitably ensue. We do not, as a whole, do a good job of the I in RBI here. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:01, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I can think of a handful of regular articles that have had to be semi-protected permanently because of persistent vandalism that went on for years with no end in sight. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:50, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

That's just clearly not an option here; it would be the most monumental case of putting the cart before the horse that I've ever seen on the project. On any given day, a third to two-thirds of our questions come from good-faith IP's, some of whom would not register just to ask their question, with the answers to some of those questions being useful to their good-faith editing in articlespace. Meanwhile, an dedicated troll is just going to start creating throw-away socks to continue their disruption, and blocking those socks will create additional workload for admins, only for another to pop up as soon as the block is in place. In other words, that's a "solution" that doesn't in any way prevent the disruptive behaviour but does A) severely hamper the basic mechanics and operation of the desks to the point that they may grind to a virtual halt, B) creates unnecessary work and drama for admins and the community at large, and might draw undesired oversight, and C) empowers the trolls in exactly the manner we ought to be denying to them, by necessitating even more discussion to chase down the socks than we currently spend on reverting the IPs and demonstrating to the troll that they can manipulate or users and procedures to that heightened degree. That approach is counter-intuitive in every possible way. Just ignore them and revert. We all know the relevant policies here and generally know eachother well enough to gauge when the reverts are warranted and when they are excessive. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Snow ^{let's rap} 00:49, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Certainly, long-term semi for the ref desks is not a practical option, but as we've seen recently, short-term semi can help. As to R-B-I, the R part is futile when a small list of editors insists on un-reverting obvious trolling; the B part is limited to admins, who may or may not be watching, and it won't faze IP-hoppers anyway; and the I part fails if the R part is compromised. TRM's approach of short-term semi is probably the optimal solution. Named accounts can be blocked, of course; and as I understand it, it's faster to issue a block than for a troll to create a new account, so that can work (eventually). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:52, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I wish it weren't so, but short-term protection does seem like the only option at times. Snow ^{let's rap} 09:08, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I must agree with TRM on this occasion; the best solution here (and perhaps the only one that doesn't involve us cutting off our nose to spite our face) is to ignore the troll and revert him with the minimal amount of commentary necessary to make sure we are not confusing somebody else for him. Snow ^{let's rap} 12:27, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

For those that aren't aware, Special:AbuseFilter/714 should hopefully stop these posts. Sam Walton (talk) 09:19, 1 August 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.

Semi-Protection

NAC: Already done by User:Favonian. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:05, 25 July 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.

Support to reduce the need for constant reverts. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:03, 25 July 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.

Complaint about joke

So, User:Medeis, when you write here [5] that chimps don't have teeth - that's a good faith edit? Because it sure looks like trolling to me. If you're going to complain about "troll toll" and continue to hunt for trolls, make sure you first check the log in your own eye. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:47, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I've added a header, given you aren't talking about the indeffed user above. μηδείς (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

No, I was directly replying to your comment. And you still haven't answered my question. I think willfully presenting incorrect information on the ref desks constitutes trolling, even if you think it's a "joke". Again, if you insist on policing the actions of others, check yourself first. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Go jump in a lake, SM, this has got to be the silliest thread ever on this page. Here's the thread on whether humans eat their own cud/shit you've linked to:

Double Digestion in humans

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Does double digestion ever occur in humans? It seems odd that most of our primate relatives practise it and we do not. In fact, a lot of food seems to quite literally go down the toilet merely because it never had a chance to get absorbed the first time round. (Onions, sweet corn, seeds) Or, did humans naturally engage in behaviour and it simply being a case of modern culture deeming it inappropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.106.33.151 (talk) 16:55, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Humans don't do this because their digestive system is extremely efficient (although yours seems a bit sub-standard). Animals that do this generally have poor digestive systems and/or have a primary food source that is difficult to digest, such as rabbits and grass. Which primates do you think eat their own faeces?--Ykraps (talk) 17:42, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

It just says gorillas and chimps here Coprophagia--Ykraps (talk) 17:47, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Okay, but given that those are our two closest relatives, it's reasonable to ask about why humans generally don't do it. I suspect that our guts aren't particularly more efficient than a chimp's (though, if so, that would serve as at least a provisional explanation). 64.235.97.146 (talk) 18:30, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Humans tend to cook their food. Cooking food makes it easier to digest. It is very rare for animals to cook their food. 209.149.113.45 (talk) 19:15, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Probably not on purpose, anyway. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:17, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

First of all, rabbits are not at all hard to digest, so I am not sure why they were mentioned above. Second, unlike chimps and gorillas, humans have teeth, hence we can chew stuff like corn thoroughly, rather than just randomly tossing it at our colon to see the outcome. Finally, as mentioned, most people have cooking degrees, while Spain has only recently begun admitting orangutans to its culinary institutes.

There are also traditional methods of preparing fermented drinks like chicha which involved chewing up and spitting out the starch to be fermented. This is also how baby food is prepared in primitive societies. μηδείς (talk) 20:01, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

You even had to go digging in the archives! I suspect you must have answered the recently removed material by the indeffed user Neptunekh, otherwise your eight day old complaint makes no sense. But, go ahead, take it to ANI, cause you ain't getting no pology heah. μηδείς (talk) 22:26, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

It was certainly a very strange "contribution", and your response here is worse. If you don't want to apologize, it would be better to remain silent than to make a provocatively belligerent non-apology like this. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:41, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

You're right, that thread is stale. I've been busy and traveling. I recall reading the joke/misinformation comment when it happened, and feeling that it was rather trollish. When I checked the talk page today and saw you talking about trolls (again, still), I thought I'd mention the comment. I think of this like Poe's_law - even if your intent was benign, you likely confused and annoyed many readers. At the very least, would you consider marking such comments with smiley faces, small print, eye rolls, emoji, </sarcasm> tags or any other vaguely understood textual indicator of humor? SemanticMantis (talk) 00:25, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Desk descriptions

The description of what each desk covers is at Wikipedia:Reference desk. That's fine, but shouldn't the Language desk header also show what the Language desk covers, and so on for the other desks? This could be easily achieved by changing:

Welcome to the language reference desk.

to

Welcome to the Language reference desk. This deals with:

* spelling, grammar, word etymology, linguistics, language usage, and requesting translations

or similar. And so on.

(Note the deliberate capitalisation of 'Language', and the decapping of 'spelling'). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:53, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Take out the colon and serial comma, put it on one line, you've got my vote. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:12, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Check this if it helps; I think this is why its not written where you are wishing for it to be written... However, I agree, therefore I vote. -- Space Ghost (talk) 18:42, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I linked that page in my opening sentence. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:55, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not notice as it was dark blue in colour. -- Space Ghost (talk) 18:06, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Keep it off the desks

If we must add comments such as: [6] and [7] and [8], maybe we could add them here instead of cluttering up the desks?—eric 17:58, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I mostly agree. Responding to trolls, especially to say that we are responding to trolls, is undesirable, but, if it must be done, do it here, not on the Reference Desks proper. If the post must be deleted, don't say why, please. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:00, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good in theory, but when you delete a troll's entry without explanation, someone will inevitably restore it and say "no reason given for deletion." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

When people who are well trusted to carry out such actions responsibly do so, there is usually little if any second-guessing. —Steve Summit (talk) 11:00, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

That's not true. There are editors here who will restore nearly anything, no matter who deleted it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:53, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, accusing users of bad behavior can itself be disruptive. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:27, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

It is less disruptive to delete a troll post with a comment such as "delete post by banned user" than to say that one is deleting a post by a banned user. Also, edit summaries cannot themselves be deleted (unless they meet the criteria for redaction, which requires that they be hateful or insulting). Robert McClenon (talk) 14:44, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

You've said it's better to do A than to do A. Further explanation needed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:53, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I think Robert is talking about using edit summaries vs. posting here. The problem with his first approach is that it depends on consensus. OPs and respondents get rightfully annoyed when someone removes a post (usually about sexuality, sensitive political issues, or medical information) that has no reason to be removed. Most removers get it right. A few don't, and that causes disruption, no matter what the removal method. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:14, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Once again, you're all doing what the trolls want, i.e. to fill up your time and Wikipedia's servers with endless and pointless debate about how to best ignore the trolls you're endlessly discussing. Report to AIV or SPI and move on. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:00, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

You're right, in general. I usually delete obvious trolling without comment, as has been discussed here before. But then someone restores it on the grounds that no reason for deletion was given - and then the debate cycle starts again. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I'd start an RFC if I were you (and if I had the time) to discuss the behaviour of both the trolls and the regulars, it would be helpful to have a "no revert" rule for example if a thread is deleted with justification. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:07, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem is one user's "justification" is another user's "needless policing and censorship of valid questions." It's the encyclopedia anyone can edit. That means we need to be able to discuss things, not just take one person's opinion as the best course of action. WP:BRD works just fine. If you don't like that kind of discussion, you don't have to read or participate ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:14, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

You can give a reason in the edit summary, and better yet link to a reason given on this page. Unfortunately, these "blatantly obvious trolls" (to some) can be anyone asking a question about human sexuality, etc., which are valid Q's. Discussion of editors is fine here, but bad on the Ref Desk proper. StuRat (talk) 15:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Any reason is better than "obvious troll is obvious." Even if it's just "This troll is obvious." That's still a terrible explanation, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:21, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

It's actually worse than just a meme, it's a Wiggumism. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:27, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Posts by indeffed User:Neptunekh, User:Venustar84

I have removed a post that was previously closed re transgender medical advice. See the recent histories of the indeffed User:Neptunekh and User:Venustar84 who have been found to be block evading sock puppets. The poster here geolocates the Vancouver, BC< the user's home ground, and follows all the same habits, regarding medical advice, mental health, and trans issues. The user has dozens of socks as well as IP addresses, and has been repeatedly been blocked and had her edits deleted for such things as threats of self harm. These edits should be removed on sight. μηδείς (talk) 01:26, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Has a sock-puppet investigation been requested into the use of the block-evading IPs? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:02, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, Robert McClenon, one was. You can see the results in the block archive for Neptunekh. Unfortunately, once Jayron32 took the helpful step of blocking the most recent active socks, as they were being disruptive during the SPI, the checkuser closed the case as moot, leaving any dormant socks remain fallow. μηδείς (talk) 17:09, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

If the socks have been reported, at least the socks have been reported. If they are IPs, then they will change anyway, and IPs are not long-term blocked unless they are open proxies. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:33, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but this user has a very long history of multiple registered accounts. Next time, rather than be stupid and ask Jayron32 to actually do something helpful, we'll have to pay the troll toll, and wait for the SPI to finish before stanching any disruption. I am not expecting any action right now; his thread is only here as a heads-up and so that if there are any other deletions needed soon I can simply say "see talk". μηδείς (talk) 18:07, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Didn't bother to read this well until the discussion below but now that I did I'm really confused here. If you believe there to be sleepers, why didn't you just say so in the SPI? A CU would surely still run a check if there was any real reason to think there might be sleepers. Personally, I can't actually recall any reason to think that the editor concerned would have any real sleepers. They did seem to use multiple accounts, but mostly they seemed to use the accounts soon after registration. Sometimes they use an account then abandoned it and they may have come back to it, but these aren't really sleepers, and often this often happened many months later so the logs would surely be gone. I also can't recall there being good evidence they were trolling, and the SPI and what lead to their block also doesn't provide much evidence for trolling. Of course, if there was no evidence for sleepers, but already sufficient evidence that the accounts were all socks, then no CU would have been run any way, regardless of who actually did the blocking of the socks. Ultimately admins should be commended for blocking socks, not castigated. Nil Einne (talk) 19:59, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Even more confused now. Looking more carefully at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Neptunekh/Archive suggests CUs were run in both cases.

A completely different editor at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bowei Huang 2/Archive was blocked without a CU. Bowei Huang 2 also seems to have lots of accounts and since they also mess around in articles, it's possible there were accounts that hadn't yet been identified and Jayron32 did recommend a check for sleepers or other accounts, so it's possible some were missed there which would be unfortunate, but you still can't fault Jayron32 for doing what any admin should do namely blocking any socks where the behaviour evidence was clear.

I'm not even sure whether I'd criticise the CU. It was likely a fair judgement call as it looks like in most recent cases no sleepers were found when a CU was run, not that a CU was done in many cases anyway.

I think there are are more socks then listed there, often we didn't bother a SPI but I'm not particularly aware of any recent cases where an account could have been identified but wasn't, not that I look much in to that sort of thing.

The good/bad thing is that despite BWH bothering the encyclopaedia proper, they usually seem to make it to the RD with their accounts soon and recognisable enough to be blocked. And despite being persistent enough to be annoying, they don't tend to have an army of socks, instead just a small number which we usually identify.

Nil Einne (talk) 20:30, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

In fact it's now looking like User:Desklin is a sock of Bowei Huang 2. But the account was created on July 30th [9]. Running a checkuser on the circa 24 July would not have detected this account. Nil Einne (talk) 13:14, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Return of User:Bowei Huang 2 sock

Once again, this is serving no purpose at all other than to feed those who dwell below bridges. Time we all learnt, once again, a lesson about internet trolling. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:20, 20 August 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.

There are currently several questions by the new account Desklin including the question "Was Australia in 1900 a rich country? If so, then why was life expectancy only 55 years?"

This focus on Australia, round numbered years, GDP and life expectancy exactly follows the modus operandi of user Bowei Huang 2 whose last sock Nineguy was indeffed in July by Jayron32. See the sock investiagtions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Bowei_Huang_2/Archive

For Nineguys' question on Australian mortality in 1900, see 22 these July posts.

Note, of course the blocking and the creation of Desklin overlap, and Desklin's first edits were repeatedly to create and blank his own userpage, two other odd coincidences. I suggest at the very least we not feed this further. μηδείς (talk) 01:46, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree this is almost definitely a Bowei Huang 2 sock, I've been treating them as such since I noticed their EU question and then checked their history. However it isn't true there's an overlap between the blocking and the creation. The creation happened a few days after the blocking (i.e. proceeded the block), as is common with socks. In particular, as I said above, the creation happened on 30th July. The blocking happened on 22nd July. This distinction is important because the CU request was also unsurprisingly around then, so any CU would likely have happened perhaps 24 or 25th at the latest, unless CUs got very busy. So any assumption a CU would have prevented this would most likely be incorrect. Nil Einne (talk) 01:56, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Are any of our regulars checkusers? μηδείς (talk) 02:00, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Well spotted, Medeis. I concur that this is Bowei back. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:46, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I have removed two IP posts by the same user. μηδείς (talk) 05:58, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Those questions are both completely valid, and IMO very interesting. Yet you remove them, because you are convinced that the person was banned on another account? Good job disrupting the desks. And before you quibble, you have prevented me, the user, and perhaps many others from sharing references on an important issue. That is disruptive. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:42, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

There's no harm preventing the editor from sharing references since they're forbidden from editing wikipedia, as a result of their own actions over I think about 7+ years now. They've been given multiple chances, including one in 2012 after being indef, but failed to change their behaviour sufficiently to keep the privilige of editing anywhere on wikipedia, which includes the its RD. Nil Einne (talk) 15:04, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, longstanding Wikipedia policy is that a banned person must apply to have their ban revoked before we allow them back. Sliding back in the back door and "being good" is not sufficient. WP:SO has been offered, and Bowei is well aware of it. He chooses not to follow it. --Jayron 32 16:03, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

So you all agree that the questions linked above (and here [10]) are disruptive? Or are you just all so sure that this question:

"Why do America, Australia and Canada have larger environmental impact, higher carbon dioxide emissions per capita and higher energy use per capita than Europe and Japan?"

-- can only have been asked by one specific banned user? Will I be deleted if I ask a question about CO2 emissions in USA vs. Europe if I fail to sign in? Can no IP ever ask about AU and environment, for fear of being seen as a 7-year old banned user? SemanticMantis (talk) 16:30, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with the question. The person known by the alias "Bowei Huang 2" is not allowed to edit Wikipedia full stop. That means they are not allowed to enter keystrokes and have those keystrokes recorded anywhere within the en.wikipedia domain for any reason. We don't assess the quality of a banned person's edits before deciding if their ban is still active. That puts the cart before the horse. They must be unbanned before we'll consider the quality of their edits. Until they are unbanned, they are not allowed to edit. This is true even if the person doesn't create an account, and instead edits just with their IP address.--Jayron 32 17:53, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for clarifying: this is literally personal - you and the others are taking an action against a person, or at least a perceived person, for their past wrong doings. But I still have no idea how you seem so sure this post is from that person. Talk about carts and horses! You act as though the IP user signed "Bowei Huang 2" to the post. Again, many people might want to know more about CO2 emissions around the world. Count me as one of them. Is that so uncommon that it can be used as unique ID? Do you not care about false positives in your banned-user heuristic? I won't make WP:POINTY edits, but I do fear that I could get deleted if I posted questions when not signed in, merely because they reminded somebody of someone else. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:13, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

It isn't as simple as "Anyone who posts about CO2 emissions." The user in question has tells in terms of editing patterns, styles of communication, etc. There's a plethora of data points we use. By your logic, all bans are unenforcable, as all anyone has to do to avoid a ban is create a new account, and then you can just say "We can't prove it's them, it could all be a coincidence". Why even bother banning anyone, for any reason, since under your logic, there is no way anyone could ever be proven to be the banned user. --Jayron 32 18:25, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I can understand removal based on subjective ID criteria when the the edits in question are disruptive. But you seem to agree that the content of the posts is fine. I don't see how removal in this case is helping WP in general or the Ref desk in particular. Whatever, you gotta do what you gotta do, and I will continue to question actions that I see as unnecessary and disruptive, including removals like these. If you want to remove harmless questions because you think they were posted by some guy who did us wrong, I guess I can't stop you. Maybe you all are highly trained in prosody, concordance, stylistics, and other forensic linguistics techniques that can be used for author identification, but I'm still skeptical of the general certainty that surrounds these claims of putative identity. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:19, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Two things 1) Bowei can start editing again as soon as he is unbanned. He knows how to do that. If he chooses not to be unbanned, he can go away. The ban was placed for a reason, and the ban needs to be unplaced. Users, for very good reasons, are not allowed to simply ignore a ban or a block and simply go about their business. 2) This is not the venue to discuss Wikipedia's banning policy. You are not going to get the community to overturn it here. Your argument amounts to "There is no means to enforce bans against people who change their initial accounts or edit anonymously". If that is your argument, and for that reason YOU believe that no ban should ever be enforced against such accounts or IPs, then YOU need to get the community to agree to that. WT:BAN would be the appropriate venue to argue for it, and WP:VPP is where you would advertise such a discussion. Unless and until Wikipedia policy says "Bans are only in effect unless the person banned does something good." or "Bans cannot be enforced against new accounts or IP addresses", your arguments mean nothing here, and less in this specific instance. Currently, the policy at WP:BAN reads, and I quote: "An editor who is site-banned is forbidden from making any edit, anywhere on Wikipedia, via any account or as an unregistered user, under any and all circumstances." Also the section titled "Bans apply to all editing, good or bad" from that policy page elaborates more. Also from the same policy page, regarding the enforcement of the ban "If the banned editor creates sock puppet accounts to evade the ban, these usually will be blocked as well. When evasion is a problem, the IP address of a banned editor who edits from a static IP address may also be blocked for the duration of the ban. If a banned editor evades the ban from a range of addresses, short-term IP blocks may be used. " Please understand, SemanticMantis, that my explaining this to you is merely a courtesy to educate you where you appear to be mistaken. This is not an invitation to debate the merits of the banning policy in this forum. I do not have the power to unilaterally change the policy, solely on YOUR singular dislike of it. If you want Wikipedia's banning policy to be overturned, I informed you above of how to do so. If you believe that the banning policy has been incorrectly applied here, WP:AN exists for the purpose of such discussions. Demanding, on this particular page, that we stop following Wikipedia policy or change it is counterproductive. --Jayron 32 19:44, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I know I can't change any WP policy by myself, and certainly not here. I'm just discussing ref desk actions on the ref desk talk page, which I thought was what it was here for. You still seem to be working under the assumption that the ID as banned user is 100% correct, but I don't know if I can change that either. Thanks for the info and links, though I don't think I can be mistaken on my own opinion. I made no claims about any policy, I only said what I thought, and certainly made no demands of anyone. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:03, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The alleged quality of a given edit is irrelevant. Anything posted by a banned user is subject to removal. "Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:46, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, my contention is primarily the grounds on which and the apparent certainty with which the identification is claimed. Do you want to explain in detail why you are so certain that the two posts I am discussing are from a specific banned user? Because I don't think the given reasons ("This focus on Australia, round numbered years, GDP and life expectancy") stands up under any scrutiny, and doesn't even really apply to the questions I'm discussing. Otherwise I think I'm done registering my dissent. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:03, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

You need to extend more good faith to your fellow well-seasoned editors, especially admins who've had to deal with Bowei over and over again. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:05, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I do extend good faith to Jayron and Medeis, and all the others participating in the thread. I don't think they are trying to deceive or misrepresent anything, I think they are acting in good faith, as am I- I'm merely having a civil discussion. What you seem be asking is not about AGF, but rather that I trust their judgment, even though very little supporting evidence has been presented. That sort of trust must be earned. I do generally trust Jayron's judgment, and I do acknowledge that several people have now agreed that the IP is likely a banned user, but nobody has yet explained why they are so sure, and moreover seem to be getting defensive, prickly and put words in my mouth when I ask them to explain. Sorry, I should probably take a 48 hour wikibreak :) SemanticMantis (talk) 20:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

They've already said too much, running the risk not only of feeding the troll, but also of tipping him off as to how he can be recognized. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:16, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Once again we descend to the "not helpful" standards here. Just take each question on its merits. If you believe a sock is involved, take it to AIV, SPI or ANI, but don't dwell on it here forever, you're doing, once again, what the trolls want you to do. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:16, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I heartily agree with your second sentence, that is why I am discussing the issue with others. Would it be custom to note the suspected edits at SPI before removal, or after? SemanticMantis (talk) 18:19, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

If it passes the WP:DUCK test then just go for it. Banned or indef blocked editors cannot and should not be allowed to post anything, even if it's deemed by some as "helpful" I'm afraid. That's why God invented WP:RBI. Or at least some of his Minions did. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:24, 20 August 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.

Bowei Huang 2 again

Ok, enough again, WP:RBI, WP:DNFTT apply. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:20, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I have removed one question and hatted another by the same user asking "why" per capita geopolitical questions with implied political and religious POV's from IP's geolocating to NSW. See above if you are not familiar with the case. μηδείς (talk) 17:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Concur based on strong correlation of evidence. --Jayron 32 19:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I suspect this kind of notification can be handled via decent edit summaries, otherwise we'll get a new section here every day now that this troll is back and using new and different IPs etc. The less we feed, the less we hear. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:03, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Aye. This guy's been famous for a while here, and the only reason I don't fully understand why is that these chronicles of him look too long and winding to read. Maybe we should summarize his epic troll journey for human contact in a desolate wilderness into easily digestible bullet points and frame it in gold like a FAQ at the top of this page, for future, less-patient generations. That'd teach him not to rock the damn boat! InedibleHulk (talk) 03:16, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Message to the poster who is being putatively identified as Bowei - if you are indeed Bowei, and if you are reading this - just say you're sorry and beg forgiveness or whatever it is you have to do to get unbanned. If you are not Bowei, then you can skip the other nonsense and just get an account. Once you have a valid account, then we can provide references on your questions about environmental impacts of various countries, causes, consequences, etc. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:09, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

It's definitely the Bowei Huang M.O. and he's apologized before but it was a lie. He's purely a troll. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:07, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Also, three years ago, he promised never to evade blocks again. One question: Is he actually banned, or only indef'd? Because if he's banned, that section should be deleted, not hatted. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:11, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I entirely agree with TRM's sentiment above, but I hatted the question with the lengthy responses and posted my explanation here because I know from experience this action by me will draw howls of protest from some. There's no way to link to a specific discussion in an edit summary, or I'd do just that. I urge The Rambling Man (or anyone else) to close this thread now just as he did above. μηδείς (talk) 02:32, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

In the event an indefinitely blocked editor has continued to be disruptive and no administrator is willing to unblock, they are considered de facto banned. In other words, an indefblocked user is not banned so long as they obey their block and stop being disruptive. All indef blocks become automatic bans once the user who is so blocked ignores it repeatedly to continue the same problems that got them blocked. So, he's banned. --Jayron 32 02:44, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Tip: Ask new users here to contribute to articles

Guy Macon just answered my question and added "We could really use your help in rewriting our page at [the topic you were asking about]. It needs some help from someone familiar with [the topic].". That is a great idea to rope in new users. As for myself, I'm already an active editor and only created this account for some anonymity, so I'm not planning on using it much for editing. But I hope that more people will keep that idea in mind when answering a new user's question. Maybe some do it already on the user's talk page, which may be a better place, but posting it here has the advantage that it's visible to other regulars, and can thus inspire them. AnonymousUserAugust2015 (talk) 18:57, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm all for it. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject_Reference_Desk_Article_Collaboration, and feel free to use the included templates. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:09, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Naturism and perceptions

I've just closed this question off. It was very close to trolling and unanswerable in that form. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:10, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Good move. The OP was trying to foment a debate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:08, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Section in question is WP:RDM#Naturism and perceptions (now archived here), and it certainly wasn't heading anywhere useful. -- ToE 12:52, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Games

Friends, view the following i.e http://59.152.107.146/

This time I also got this i.e. http://www.taltola.com/Games/

I hope both works for you guys, or can find a workaround to it; it doesn't work on mine btw. Teach us/me if you guys can how to get all the games from it...

Space Ghost (talk) 18:45, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

They're dead, Mister Mo.

Also, all seemingly pirated games. Wikipedia frowns on linking to those, and what does it have to do with the Ref Desk? Slap on the wrist! InedibleHulk (talk) 21:06, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Dammit...

Well, I'm trying to contribute

more than just 'questions'

for WP Community members... I tried 'advising', did not go well

So I thought, since you guys are always here, always helping, since I don't have no friends, since I'm always here too, since you guys always help me, since so many other reasons (that I can't think of right now, I thought I would get/do/contribute for you all...

Anyway, I won't anymore... Thanks for notifying... Cheers.

Space Ghost (talk) 19:44, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't say you had to stop, just that Wikipedia frowns on it.

Personally, I only play games I'm confident I'll like, and don't mind paying for something I'd like. On the other hand, much of the stuff I read, watch and listen to is overpriced crap, so I have to thoroughly sample it before buying. I've always wanted a tunnel into a department store so I could live there at night, but I don't want people downloading the security footage for free on YouTube. You can't dig tunnels through the Internet (this doesn't count), but one day, you may come in handy with those cameras.

Potential handiness is the deepest foundation of all friendships and communities worldwide, online or off. An honest bargain of a TV show told me so. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:44, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

And if $19.99 US seems too steep a price, just listen to Convincing John and all your troubles will be gone! InedibleHulk (talk) 05:49, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay!

-- Space Ghost (talk) 18:13, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

And if anyone wants to watch a derivative work of the computer player in the NES adaptation of a traditionally long board game get annihilated by a human who befriended a much smarter computer, it's legal and only costs thirty seconds. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:09, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Can't waste my 'kbs', its pay bite as you go. Only WP and Porn.

-- Space Ghost (talk) 20:44, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Now that should be illegal. Stupid monopolies. At least porn and Wikipedia give choices. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:54, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Its not the monopoly, its the people of the country. 'Rich people are getting richer, poor people are getting poorer'. Apparently David Cameron been creating the enquoted issue in UK for several years now, a woman from 'The Guardian' in 'BBC News' stated today. -- Space Ghost (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

The middle class sure isn't getting any middler, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:07, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I topped up my net today thought might as well give you the following so that you know that the pain is thunder.

-- Space Ghost (talk) 21:47, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd heard just about enough Michael Jackson to last a lifetime before either of us could grow a moustache. Part of me knows that he must have another song somewhere with a riff on the "Smooth Criminal" or "Black and White" level of catchiness, but enduring his voice and the other bells and whistles makes the searching difficult. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:16, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Or wait, nevermind. Forgot about "Beat It". No lyrics or bandwidth pressure in the MIDI class. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:22, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

-- Space Ghost (talk) 20:14, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Removed thread about Hillary Clinton email controversy

Diff. There's nothing wrong in principle with a thread on this subject, but here the question and the only significant reply were apparent WP:BLP violations, so I thought it would be better to kill the whole thing. -- BenRG (talk) 02:05, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Better to be safe. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:08, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree, I was tempted to remove it myself, we don't need speculation on motives. 02:40, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm tempted to remove that entire article. Astounding what election cycles do to things. But if the secondary coverage says it's a mountain, I guess it can't be a total molehill. It'll be naturally half that size or less in two years, though. No rush. The question was more urgent, despite my partially unfounded speculation that Clinton is only a "living person" in the RoboCop sense. That's not to say she wasn't born human, or that cyborgs can't understand sorrow or that any of this means she can't be a great President.

May the best whoever win, and may Wikipedia then return to a simpler time! InedibleHulk (talk) 22:53, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

And if we can't find "the best", we can settle for Clinton or Trump. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:12, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Trump's just running for the publicity, he's not actually going to the White House. That'd be career suicide. And it wouldn't just be bad for his business. Since the last donkey and elephant show, the US editorials have gone full steam ahead building fat cats as the enemy of the common man, and women as the last great minority on the verge of the American Dream (discounting Hispanics, if you will). Clear hero, clearer villain.

A great leader knows that if you want people to buy your crap, you need to send them home happy. I don't presume to know who runs the election, but if they've gotten that far, they certainly understand how badly a President Trump would bomb, after the initial pop. Like Abe Simpson said, "Quit your daydreaming, melonhead!" InedibleHulk (talk) 00:30, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The controversy is put into context when you understand that Joe McCarthy was the founding father of the modern Republican Party of the United States. Oh, there was a "Party of Lincoln" before that, but traditionally it was more liberal than the Democrats. I think of investigations like the "Whitewater controversy", Monica Lewinsky, United States House Select Committee on Benghazi as a continuation of this proud tradition. Liberals have the issues to fall back on, 'conservatives' have ad hominem attacks. Wnt (talk) 11:21, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

To put it another way, modern Republicans are consistently on the wrong side of history, but they keep trying. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:27, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I've deleted another two questions [11] [12]. I initially thought the OP would be happy with the answer about what the actual policy is (you can't use email to send classified information so the likelihood should theoretically be 100% that you never send or receive classified info via email), rather than how likely it was the policy was followed. But they apparently weren't so the only way this could be answered would be via discussions of how likely people are to actually follow the clear cut policy, which has strong BLP implications. Nil Einne (talk) 01:23, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

The generic thread has nothing to do with Clinton. How is the generic thread a BLP violation? Don't be so gung-ho and overly broad in your definition of what constitutes a BLP violation. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:44, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It's an attack on Clinton masquerading as a "generic" thread. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

So generic questions are not allowed if a Wikipedia editor "thinks" they are a masquerade? What's the standard and how do we decide that? I cannot ask generic questions about the Presdent? Or about Senators? Or Supreme Court justices? Please advise. Just wanna be clear. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

And, by the way, how is a question an "attack" exactly? That shows where your mindset and your POV is. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:09, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

You already rejected the generic answer, i.e. that since a person should never send or receive classified info via email, theoretically the probability should be 100% that they won't (whether they're using government email or private email). Whether this will happen in practice is ultimately impossible to answer without referring to a specific person. Since the sample size is so tiny, we realisticly couldn't even come up with averages. (For example, with the question "how likely is it that a drive has never broken the speed limit in their life" we could at least try and come up with averages although how you're going to monitor a drive for their whole life I'm not sure. You'll probably have to rely on unreliable surveys.) So either you're looking for something we can't answer on the RD since it's impossible to come up with a meaningful variable, or something we shouldn't answer because it's a BLP violation. Nil Einne (talk) 03:00, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

BTW, I'm fully entitled to decide something is a BLP violation. You're entitled to disagree but since this is a BLP issue, the question should stay out until the issue is resolved. There's no particular reason the question has to be answered right now, or it will not be answered if you ask it later. If we can't come to a consensus, I would welcome outside input via WP:BLP/N. Nil Einne (talk) 03:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Incidently, as I mentioned on Joseph's talk page, if he's referring to the Defense Message System, SIPRNet mail or other separate systems rather than normal email, he should make this clear. I don't see harm with a question about whether Secretaries of State normally use the DMS/SIPRNet mail/whatever, although I doubt there's any real answer. (The source I linked to did suggest most people find it annoying and it's not used much at the State Department.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:ANI thread of interest to the reference desks.

There's a thread at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Proposal_to_topic_ban_from_reference_desks which may be of interest to regulars here. --Jayron 32 01:40, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 September 2015

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please can someone post this enquiry to the refdesk; Title: Books set in British India

I'm interested in finding comedy books set in the British Raj: light comedies about the life of British people in Raj India, sort of P G Wodehouse set in India. ANy thoughts? 87.113.251.217 (talk) 18:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Done. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:37, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Creation of talk page section patrol

So many suggestions for article improvements go unnoticed. It would be really great if those suggestions got noticed by experts just like reference desk questions. One solution to that problem would be to something similar to what Wiktionary did of having a notice to people about to add a new section that theire suggestion will be more likely to get attention if it's posted in the Tea Room, and have a similar notice for people who click "New section" that their suggestion is more likely to get attention if it's posted at Wikipedia:Reference desk with the Reference desk section title being the same as title of the article that needs improvement. It might be better for people who answer questions at the Reference desk to have a way to patrol creation of talk page sections. Blackbombchu (talk) 00:09, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

The reference desks are for asking questions - they aren't 'suggestions for articles' boards. And I doubt that the level of expertise amongst ref desk regulars is wide enough to justify encouraging such use - article talk pages will be watchlisted by those responsible for the article, who presumably are the people most likely to know the subject. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:41, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

But these two purposes overlap. We've had several questions along the lines of "I asked this at the article talk page, and had no response for the past month, so I came here for help." I don't agree with OP's suggestion that every talk page should include directions to come here - that would probably end up with lots of spam/bacn on the ref desks. But at the same time, I think that we can probably handle many more questions than we currently do, we have far more eyeballs on these desks than most talk pages, and it couldn't hurt to promote our desks a little more at other WP venues. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:29, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

No comment on OP's suggestion at this point, but thanks for introducing me to the concept of "bacn". 64.235.97.146 (talk) 16:31, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Although some ref desk answers naturally lead to improvements in articles, I concur with AtG that that asking for article improvements is not the purpose of the ref desks. If someone says at the ref desk that an article needs improving, there's nothing to stop them from doing the work themselves. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:36, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

The problem is sometimes somebody sees a problem with an article but doesn't know how to fix the problem themself, like when it's lacking a full explanation of something. Also, some people might want to suggest a change but not feel free to make that change themself because they're not expert enough to know that what they want to change the article to saying is true and not original research, so it would be great if such a suggestion could get attention from other people who are expert enough to feel free to make that change or a modification of it. I'm not sure sandboxes are getting enough attention either. Blackbombchu (talk) 16:23, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

When it's a request, that's one thing. When it's a demand, that's another. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:37, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I see your point, a reader who doesn't know how to do anything beyond post on an article talk page is pretty much out of luck if none of the page's active watchers, if any exist, are interested in addressing the problem/question. But such questions, about how to edit Wikipedia, are outside the scope and mission of the Reference Desks. One might argue for a link to Wikipedia:Teahouse at the top of every article talk page, but the standard talk page header, Template:Talk header, already includes this:

New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.

I think if I were in the reader's place, I might feel that some of that stuff at the top of the page might be worth reading first. Maybe it says something I need to know about this page. But if the reader sees all that as just noise not worth reading, and fails to read even that much of the header, or reads that much and is too lazy to follow either of those links, a new link to the Teahouse would very likely be a waste of space. Human nature being what it is, there is only so much we can practically do and some problems are just unsolvable. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:01, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Since you don't think that idea will work, maybe we should discuss whether the other idea I originally posted here is doable, that there should be a way to patrol the creation of a talk page section, and only those people who want to patrol it will and those who don't won't. Maybe there should even be a way to do an advanced patrol of patrolling only the creation of talk page sections of articles in a certain category. Blackbombchu (talk) 18:33, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Ok, the first point is that your opening post referred to "people who answer questions at the Reference desk". Again, this kind of thing has nothing to do with the Reference Desks, which are not primarily about Wikipedia editing assistance. Probably 99% of the questions here have nothing to do with Wikipedia at all. Actually, this whole discussion would have been better started at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab). But let's continue here and say that this patrolling would be provided by any user who cares to do it. You're essentially proposing taking the Teahouse to these readers, instead of expecting them to find the Teahouse using the links we are already providing. First, we already have more patrolling needed than editors willing to do it. Second, how would the patroller know the difference between a new talk section that needs their assistance and one that does not? As I see it, if the reader doesn't care enough about the issue to do just a little reading to find out how to get some assistance, Wikipedia editors needn't spend their time trying to help them out. They need to do a little of the work and meet us halfway. There are too many other important things that are being neglected for lack of enough volunteers. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:56, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

There used to be a Wikipedia:WikiProject Reference Desk Article Collaboration, but it seems to be defunct. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Reference Desk exists to answer answerable questions. Reference Desk Archives establish a stable URI for our attempts to answer these questions. That's our end and the end of the Reference Desk function. It is not the end of questions and answers potential to add to our collective stock of knowledge in Wikipedia. Article Talk pages could be updated with a link to pertinent Reference Desk Archive page sections. This would be a (new) project - an improved, doable, version of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Reference Desk Article Collaboration. Not asking Reference Desk contributors to improve articles, but only their Talk pages, one link. This would allow OP questioner a few days time to edit article themselves before RD page gets archived, providing a stable link, while enabling those self-appointed subject matter experts who watchlist articles of interest to evaluate if RD archived question and response provide valuable feedback that may need to be incorporated in article. As newly-designated Wikipedia Library Research Coordinator, I plan to incorporate the next crop of library science student interns - and anyone else interested in recycling Reference Desk contributions in such a fashion - into this work cycle. Working in my offline Wikimedia instance on a template and project page, but interested in any feedback here. Thanks - Paul -- Paulscrawl (talk) 10:23, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

What we really need is an easy way to get to specific items in the archive, e.g. to look for previous instances of a given question. What we currently have is well nigh useless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 05:13, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Round tripping between Reference Desk Archive search and pertinent Article search will be enabled by several interlocking templates under active development, offering affordances for both 1) hierarchial category search (of special interest to library science students / Wikipedia Library interns) and 2) free text search. Experimenting with alternative approaches offline. Thanks for your valuable feedback. More later. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 07:37, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

What's the difference between

An emoji and an emoticon )))))))))))))) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.195.27.47 (talk) 13:48, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Read Emoji and Emoticon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:17, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

What's the difference between an emoji and a graphical emoticon? InedibleHulk (talk) 04:32, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

No medical advice rule

I would like to discuss the above mentioned rule. I believe that the rule presumes that Wp editors are inexperienced and not qualified to answer health questions. However, has it not occurred to anyone here that there may be wikipedia editors who do work in the medical profession for a living? These people would of course be qualified to deal with medical enquiries. Please explain what the problem is here? Pablothepenguin (talk) 21:07, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

The rule presumes nothing about the education or skills of any WP editor. An online reference desk is simply an inappropriate place to receive medical advice. Think of it like this: You have some symptom, so you look in the Yellow Pages and find a doctor you've never heard of before, who obviously does not know you either. You phone him and tell him 2 or 3 short sentences about what the problem is. Do you seriously expect he would give out medical advice on the phone, based on that exceedingly brief information? Other than "Get yourself to a hospital immediately", maybe. He's never seen you, knows nothing about your medical background, has no opportunity to observe things for himself, has no idea whether you're serious or just some prankster, would be foregoing a professional fee, and for practising medicine in this shoddy way he would be breaking all sorts of ethical strictures and may well find himself on the wrong side of the registration authorities or even the law of the land. So, that's part of the reason why even a real doctor would never do this in RL.

Transfer that scenario to this ref desk. I could claim all manner of medical qualifications to be able to answer questions here, but so what? I could be lying, and you'd never know. But even if I really were highly qualified, I'd never do it. There's also an obvious legal concern, of the Wikimedia Foundation being sued for being party to providing advice which led to the death of the questioner or some member of their family. They shouldn't have listened to any such advice, but we shouldn't have provided it in the first place. Same arguments apply to legal advice. There are ways these things are done, and an online reference desk manned by a shifting cast of anonymous people of different nationalities, unknown and uncheckable backgrounds and education, and dubious levels of maturity, is not one of those ways. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:09, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

We don't give out medical or legal advice because that was the consensus every time the question has come up, but there is no legal concern stopping us from doing so. The Wikimedia Foundation had the choice of forbidding the practice and chose not to, instead giving us a standard disclaimer that we should add if we ever decide to start allowing medical or legal advice on the help desk. We are free to change our minds tomorrow.

If anyone believes that we are not allowed to post medical advice on Wikipedia, feel free to attempt to force me to remove the medical advice I just posted at User talk:Guy Macon#Medical advice. No such rule exists. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:56, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

μηδείς/Medeis just attempted to collapse my comment,[13][14] citing a page that does not contain the rule she claims that it contains. Any further attempts by μηδείς/Medeis to use deletions or collapsing to push her incorrect views of Wikipedia policy will result in yet another trip to ANI, and in all likelihood yet another block. If you disagree with someone about Wikipedia policy, the correct behavior is to respond to them with evidence, not to attempt to shut them up. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:55, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I would also point out that singling out medical and legal advice really doesn't make any sense. At worst, such advice could kill someone dumb enough to listen to medical advice from strangers on the internet. Bad engineering advice, on the other hand, has the potential to kill thousands. ("Now pump the Uranium hexafluoride gas into your gas centrifuge...") --Guy Macon (talk) 05:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Hence the general principle of not giving any kind of "professional" advice. And as a practical matter, the average citizen is much more likely to have an illness than to possess uranium. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:11, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, the average citizen is much less likely to have the specific illness in a help desk question than to possess uranium. Attempting to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor that results in the Environmental Protection Agency declaring your backyard shed to be a Superfund cleanup site isn't that difficult. See David Hahn. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

All the more reason to not give medical advice. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:34, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I am not arguing in favor of giving medical advice. If there is an RfC tomorrow on that question, I will !vote for not giving medical advice on the help desks -- with enforcement by reporting violations at ANI, not by power-hungry editors violating the spirit of WP:TPOC. That being said, I have yet to see a good argument against also not giving engineering advice. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:09, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Nothing but [15] needs saying, if pablo and guy want blocking they should start threads at ANI saying "this don't apply to me, do it" or maybe threaten to sue the wikimedia foundation. Otherwise his is trolling. μηδείς (talk) 00:47, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I restored the comment above. While I don't agree with a word of it, I believe that removing on-topic comments is generally a bad thing. Sjö (talk) 09:15, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I was on the fence as to whether to just remove the hat or whether to revert the edit. I choose reverting because μηδείς/Medeis had inserted her opinion in the title of the hat, and i didn't want to remove part of what she wrote and risk the remaining being out of context. I am fine with your decision to restore the comment, though - I could have gone either way on that decision. As for the restored comment itself, it spectacularly misses the point; I just posted medical advice on Wikipedia. Medeis/μηδείς threatening to have me blocked for posting medical advice on Wikipedia is ridiculous, because no Wikipedia policy or guideline says that I cannot post medical advice on Wikipedia. We have a local consensus not to allow medical advice on the help desks, and of course I support following the consensus until it changes, but consensus can change, and we are 100% free to change our rule if we want to. Medeis/μηδείς really really likes to control what other people post, and making up nonexistent policies is just part of that. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:58, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

There is less than a snowball's chance in hell that the ref desk will start allowing giving medical advice. This subject gets regurgitated every few months, and the result is always the same: No medical advice on the ref desk. If you want to post medical advice on your user page, it's your funeral (and/or the funeral of anyone foolish enough to take it.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:34, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

You are the one who consistently cites and fails to understand both what our general disclaimer says, and what disclaimers are in general. Also remember not to accidentally give legal advice while shutting down a thread for no good reason [16]. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:00, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Fine, SM, I really don't expect this discussion to go anywhere, the notion that some of us are medical professionals and should be given the right to post medical advice is patently Essjay controversy nuts. Why chat here amongst ourselves? Let's have a sitewide RfC on the matter with a banner at the top of every page and see where the idea goes. In the meantime, we have the wikimedia disclaimer. μηδείς (talk) 16:13, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Look at indent, I was not addressing the OP, I was addressing you (of course you didn't even WP:INDENT correctly, but that's a much less bothersome issue). I'm chatting here amongst ourselves merely to point out that, in your seeming zeal to shut down valid questions, you yourself have given what can be construed as professional advice. I find it hilarious and literally ironic that as one of our harshest defenders against professional advice you STILL refuse to polices responses rather than questions, as suggested by our guidelines [17], and in your giddiness make worse transgressions than those you imagine. Something about glass houses [18] and logs in eyes ;) In case it's not totally clear, I agree 100% that we should not give medical advice. I don't do anything even remotely like that, and never have. What really bugs me is when you take it upon yourself to close/remove threads, and prevent people from sharing references. If you must police advice, please police responses, and I promise I will stop hounding you about bad behavior. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:13, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

For the record, I also agree 100% that we should not give medical advice on the help desks. There are those who disagree with that, but I am not one of them. My objection is to [A] Medeis/μηδείς's disruptive behavior using that rule as a stalking horse for controlling other editors, and [B] Medeis/μηδείς making up fictional Wikipedia policies like claiming that not giving medical advice is an encyclopedia-wide rule instead of a decision made by local consensus on the help desks. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, any doctor with an ounce of ethics would be less inclined to give medical advice here than would some well-meaning random editor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:46, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Please respect WP:INDENT as best you can. I understand it is confusing because medeis used no indent, but you don't appear to be replying to my comment either. Anyway, I think your point is good. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:13, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I was commenting to you. Whether 3 indents or 5, it's still you. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Ok, if you say so. When I'm talking about medeis' behavior and you're talking about doctors, forgive me if I don't see the connection, and thought maybe you meant to be posting in reply to something else. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:08, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

There is no professional advice in the statement "We can't comment on your sister's supposed learning disability or mental illness nor on your mother's coercion. Seek legal and medical counsel." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:14, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

On that I agree. I was referring, however to medeis' comment: "[this is] an accusation of mental illness and criminal neglect, both of which amount to defamation per se in Great Britain." -- claiming that something is defamation, and linking to the legal principle, and giving the jurisdiction, is basically legal advice. If I said "That is Battery_(crime) in the USA", that would also be very close to legal advice, and I would support its removal. It doesn't really matter if the claim is right or wrong. I don't even thin an IP can be defamed, but that's not the point -- medeis is not a lawyer, judge, does not live in UK, and even if she was a judge in the UK, she shouldn't give advice on WP, as has been clarified by others above. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:52, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

If you prefer, Medeis could have called it a BLP violation. And then ask yourself why we have rules against BLP violations. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

As we are emulating a reference library, I will point out as a librarian that we do not give medical or legal advice either, and make a point of letting people know exactly that when they ask. We can offer information only. We can point ot resources. But we always refer them to an appropriate professional as is relevant. Even if our library is a law library or a medical library this remains true. Mingmingla (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The actual guideline is that we shouldn't give advice, period - the most dangerous thing around here actually is people playing electrician without a license, but they don't have as powerful a lobby. Actually the lawyers don't seem to lobby much either; they seem to be invoked only as a courtesy, and people rarely if ever go around looking for impermissible legal questions. To understand this, it's important to go back to what ethics is: the enlightened self-interest of an industry, which is to say, the long-term maximization of the profit its practitioners make. There is no other component to ethics, however small, and so barriers to entry and competition are always a part of it, regardless on their negative impact on society at large. Tricking customers and harming the industry's reputation, making people afraid to go to a practitioner is always unethical, but the ethics of telling them a thing or two about the field depend on whether they can do something on their own that avoids the need for payment or not, which is why the doctors are so incredibly pushy on this. Wnt (talk) 09:52, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Medical and other professional advice, and meta-discussion of rules on advice

It is sometimes necessary to hat or delete requests for medical, legal, financial, or other professional advice. I have disagreed with some regular posters here about exactly when hatting or deleting were appropriate, as opposed to saying that we don't answer the question, but I agree that we have to non-answer such questions. (While Guy Macon is correct in principle that bad engineering advice can be even worse, it is unlikely that a fool who asks for and receives unqualified engineering advice is likely to be able to act on it. However, his point is well-taken.) However, the question whose hatting provoked the current controversy was not a request for medical advice. It was a meta-discussion of the rule against medical advice, and there is no harm to be done in addressing the incorrect comment above, and we apparently do need meta-discussion to restate or reinforce the rules against giving inappropriate professional advice. We should decline to answer, and may if necessary suppress, requests for advice. Suppressing meta-discussion of the rule is very much the wrong answer. The rule needs discussing, because it continues to need restating and maybe reinforcing. If we need to ask the WMF to restate the rule, we should ask the WMF to restate the rule, not suppress meta-discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:25, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

A few important points here:

Many people say "But I am a medical professional, so I should be allowed to give medical advice" - why not let them? -- The problem here is that neither editors nor question posters can tell whether someone really is a medical professional or not. So there is no way to know whether advice given from someone who claims to be a medical professional is real or not.
Kainaws' criterion (which is the rule by which we judge when advice goes too far) says that advice on diagnosis, prognosis and treatments are not allowed. -- A true medical professional knows that a paragraph of text from a patient does not tell them enough to offer useful diagnostic advice. We've heard this time and again - and I believe it. To give an adequate diagnosis, a doctor looks at many other aspects than just the words that the patient uses. A good doctor would certainly not give advice purely on the basis of what is said here - which leads me to suspect people who claim to be doctors and do indeed want to give diagnostic advice based on an OP's statements.
Many people ask: "Why do we apply this rule only to doctors and lawyers? Why not engineers, etc?" -- The reason is that the laws in the USA don't allow one to practice medicine or the law without a license. There is no similar restriction for other occupations. Wikipedia takes that to mean that we may discuss medical situations in general (eg, we may write the article about the common cold) but we may not provide individualised advice. We cannot tell someone that they have the common cold because they are sneezing a lot (DIAGNOSIS) - we cannot tell them not to worry because they'll get better in a few days (PROGNOSIS) and we cannot tell them to take large doses of Vitamin C (TREATMENT).
The tricky part comes when someone tries to game the system by asking a seemingly general question ("Should people who have the common cold take large doses of Vitamin C?") when we can reasonably assume that they are asking about themselves, personally. The exact same question might be ruled as acceptable in some cases, and unacceptable in others. It's very difficult.

Anyway, that's why the rules are the way they are - and they're unlikely ever to change. SteveBaker (talk) 00:22, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the policy is also the way it is largely because of the questions we are asked. People come here asking us to diagnose them or provide advice on medication on a regular basis. We don't get engineers asking us how to refine uranium safely. Though I'd like to think that if someone does come here asking for advice, the wrong version of which could cause death, we'd have the common sense to hat the question and ask them to seek professional advice. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:09, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, people do come asking for medical advice, and we shouldn't give it to them. But we should be allowed to give references, as in the recent example here [19]. OP clearly stated they were asking for references, and I tried to help, but medeis still felt the need to hat the thread, and actually made things worse by giving legal advice in the process. Once again I will point to our guideline [20], which says "Generally speaking, answers are more likely to be sanctioned than questions. " - If we could agree to actually follow this guideline to sanction answers and not questions, I for one would be much happier. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:58, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

The OP was coming from a flawed premise based on a personal opinion, and then asking for references to support that opinion. Not good. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:12, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

As to engineering, there are laws in the United States and elsewhere licensing the practice of civil engineering, specifically with regard to the design of buildings and bridges. The difference is that random individuals are more likely to ask for medical or legal advice than to ask for engineering advice. A general contractor, building a house or a bridge, isn't likely to ask about what size of steel beams to use, and probably already knows a professional engineer. Therefore the need to avoid giving medical and legal advice is more likely to be tested than the need to avoid giving engineering advice. The principle is the same: Don't give the advice. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Keeping in mind that I agree with the consensus against giving medical or legal advice on the help desks and that I believe that giving medical or legal advice most other places on Wikipedia is a bad thing, usually off-topic, and sometimes disruptive, can we all agree that there is no policy or guideline that prohibits giving medical or legal advice anywhere on wikipedia? And that giving medical or legal advice accompanied by a disclaimer and a link to Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer or Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer would be allowed on the reference desks if there was a local consensus (not likely anytime soon) to allow that? If anyone disagrees, please cite the policy or guideline. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:44, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
The top of the disclaimer itself does not give much room for discussion. And it's in giant, all-caps letters. I think the WMF is pretty clear there. --Jayron 32 16:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

My reading is that WMF are not underwriting anything written on Wikipedia, not that they prohibit anything being written on Wikipedia. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

If anyone thinks that the WMF disclaimer is a policy instead of being a disclaimer, feel free to propose a real policy that contains whatever "policy" you imaging that the disclaimer contains. Until then, a disclaimer is a disclaimer, not something other than a disclaimer. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:48, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Guy, I get what you're saying, and I basically agree: a disclaimer is a statement of a legal position that delimits the scope of obligations and rights of the legal parties, and I think WMF is essentially saying "nothing written here can possibly be construed as being legal/medical advice, that is expressly not our scope, so don't even bother trying to sue us for anything said here, because you will certainly fail, and we even warned you here in bold print." That is a very different thing than a policy that says "we do [this] as best practice and in accordance with our community-consensus principles." And let's go ahead and link underwriting as something WMF is clearly not doing.

But I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were, interpreting the effects of this disclaimer in a certain scenario is something that would be generally agreed as constituting legal advice!

There are a few other issues:

1)I think it was medeis who pointed out that saying on the ref desk "Do [this] and it will solve your [medical condition]" while citing the disclaimer is very problematic. And I agree - in my opinion that is bad form, probably unethical, and may well erode the value of said disclaimer if it ever came to any court.

2) Along those lines, I encourage anyone with an honest an open interest in these issues to read [21], and many link/refs therein, via metafilter. It seems that there have been exceedingly few (if any) cases where such a disclaimer has failed to defend against such suit and generally indemnify the hosting site, but it seems there is at least generally relevant precedent that acting against such a disclaimer can erode its effectiveness (i.e. don't cite the disclaimer while patently engaging in said behavior).

3) I recall a while back someone posted on this talk page a link to a long-ago response from WMF legal council of some sort, and I think it came down about how I described. Further consensus for this desk is that we should not give medical advice for ethical reasons, in addition to, and distinct from, being legally incapable from giving medical advice.

a) Can anyone find that thread?

b) Perhaps if there's enough interest we could try to get a Q&A or any response from WMF legal that could further clarify?

4) Finally, like a broken record, I repeat my plea for all of us to exercise sanctioning over responses rather than questions [22] - that link is also the closest thing to a "policy" against providing medical advice that we have a the ref desks, though it's not explicitly stated quite that way.

I think you and I few others see the see the general disclaimer in the same way, but I don't hope to convince those who don't. I do hope that some of these debates might go away if all of us start hatting/deleting answers that we think cross the line, not turning away askers that may or may not have suitably phrased the question to another user's satisfaction. SemanticMantis (talk) 23:49, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

The disclaimer states "Wikipedia does not give medical advice". When we post to Wikipedia on the reference desk to answer a question, we speak with Wikipedia's voice. If you believe the disclaimer should be changed to say something different, feel free to start that discussion somewhere. Unless and until it changes, we should obey that sentence. --Jayron 32 02:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

The point is that the disclaimer is not a policy nor an instruction to editors, it's guidance for readers to understand that anything written in Wikipedia could be bollocks and not to use it to make important decisions. The Rambling Man (talk) 04:57, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

There is absolutely no reason not to talk about whether vitamin C is effective against colds, any more than we should be afraid to talk about whether sugar is hazardous to diabetics or whether water snakes are poisonous. These are general attributes of published knowledge, and there can never be an excuse for trying to "out" or do detective work against the person who happens to ask the question, to say it's wrong to answer the question because one person posed it and not another. We should not care who asked! Wnt (talk) 09:58, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

There is no substitute for "If you're concerned, see a doctor." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:29, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, there's no substitute for knowing whether something has real health harms or benefits. No, people don't go to the doctor every time they need to know whether trans fats are bad for you or if blueberries have health benefits. Just try asking a doctor more than three or four questions in a session, and you'll soon find out how much he values his social responsibility as the oracle of all knowledge. Wnt (talk) 04:13, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

My doctors have always answered my questions, and without putting on airs. Maybe I've just been lucky. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 13:41, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

unsigned gibberish and unreferenced soapboxing

This unsigned post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Regarding_the_Placebo_Effect_and_Nocebo_Effect asks whether we can levitate apples by convincing ourselves we can levitate apples, then draws the response that the nuclear power industry invented the term nocebo to explain the unsupported nonsense that cancer rates are thousands of percent higher around nuclear plants. I suggest we either remove this or put in bold italic all caps. μηδείς (talk) 02:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't really see the need for that. Hop on Bananas appears to be a serious editor and even though part of the question is outlandish the Ref Desk is intended to clear up people's misconceptions. Removal or hatting because a newcomer misunderstands something is kind of bitey, I think. Sjö (talk) 07:07, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

First, we don't have any rules or guidelines about questions containing references. Second, the OP did include some WP articles in the question. Third, there is at least one well-referenced response from User:Ssscienccce. If you don't like the question, please ignore it. At the same time, please don't try to prevent OP from learning something and other contributors from providing references, even to questions that may look like gibberish to you. Removing this thread would be literally disruptive to our goal of providing references to questions that people ask us. (Oh, maybe you're referring to the IP's response about nuclear power? That is not especially good or helpful but I don't think that IP is the OP, and Jayron has already hatted the IP response.) SemanticMantis (talk) 18:19, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Just in case it's unclear from the responses I have gotten, I viewed this as a borderline case, which is why I brought it here. If I simply wanted abuse, I'd have gone here. μηδείς (talk) 00:28, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

You seem to have a unique grasp of what constitutes abuse. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:53, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

μηδείς: Accept

as 'my way of argueing with you!'

-- Space Ghost (talk) 19:17, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Please unprotect Wikipedia:Reference desk/humanities page !

I can’t reply to answers on my question… 2A02:8420:508D:CC00:56E6:FCFF:FEDB:2BBA (talk) 14:26, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In the Humanities desk item "Eleanor Roosevelt's preference in the 1948 election", in response to jpgordon's response to the original question, please add:

The question referred not to Republican candidate Thomas Dewey but to a third-party candidate, Henry Wallace of the Progressive Party, who it was thought might draw votes away from the Democrats. However, on the same page of letters cited by jpgordon, there is an earlier one where Eleanor Roosevelt writes: "The great trouble is that Mr. Wallace will cut in on us". In other words, she stood with the Democratic Party and did not support Wallace either. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 19:42, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Done. Tevildo (talk) 20:27, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 00:04, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request

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Please add this answer to Kavebear's Oct 7 question on the Humanities desk, "Araminta Ross". Thanks. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 20:47, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Answer to second question: An archivist at the Maryland State Archives says: "Benjamin Ross was born the property of Anthony Thompson of Dorchester county around 1787. In 1803, Anthony Thompson married Mary Pattison, of the same county, becoming Pattison's second husband. At this time, Ben met Harriet "Rit" Green, one of Pattison's slaves." Apparently no other person named Ross except Benjamin himself. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 20:47, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Done. Deor (talk) 22:25, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much.184.147.131.85 (talk) 23:04, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 October 2015

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WESTMINSTER HALL DEBATES In the House of Commons, there are regular debates held in Westminster Hall. Does anyone know where I can find sources on their format? In terms of: length and number of speeches, minister's right of reply etc. Thanks. 188.29.165.112 (talk) 08:56, 9 October 2015 (UTC) 188.29.165.112 (talk) 08:56, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Done. Deor (talk) 09:55, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 October 2015

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Please post this answer to @Clarityfiend: for the question Racking my mac Brain. Thank you.

Perhaps you could borrow a format used for other royals - for example, if someone types "King Henry" in the search box they get List of rulers named Henry. "Queen Maria", on the other hand, just goes to Queen Mary. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 15:17, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Done Tevildo (talk) 16:57, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you @Tevildo:. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 17:52, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 October 2015

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Personal liability for company actions - This is not a request for legal advice but to help understand the legal principle. Say a person (in the UK specifically but I think the principle would be the same) incorporates a company limited by guarantee, just one member, whose liability is limited to £1. If they then do lots of irresponsible things through the company - shoddy building work, libellous website, whatever - and get sued, is it the case that the individual gets off with just paying £1 and those who have won damages against the company get next to nothing? 146.90.82.176 (talk) 19:17, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Done - I presume this was intended to be a new section since there is no current section titled such. Nil Einne (talk) 20:23, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

What guesses? And why no clarification

This is related to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Electronic cigarettes / vaporizers (permanent link [23]) which I'm taking here since I realised my reply was too long, and all the necessary clarification relating to answer the question had already taken place.

Firstly, as I said on the RD proper, you're making a big deal over a statement of fact, when the statement of concern was somewhat ambigious without context, and even though you're correct that within context it was likely misleading, it could easily be reworded with some minor clarification, to make it accurate.

There's no evidence there's any uneducated guess. There's a good chance there was no guess. The statements were based entirely what was said, not on guesses. Unless you're saying assuming an OP knows what they're talking about is a guess. But for starters, it's better to call that at worst an unwise assumption. And in any case, while it's wise to be cautions over certain statements and to ask for citations or check it out yourself if you think an OP is wrong, we also have to sometimes assume an OP does know what they're talking about. Particularly if their statements correlate with our understanding, even if our understanding is wrong.

It's unfortunate when people are wrong on the RD, particularly when people are repeatedly wrong because they often provide no references and in those cases, those people probably should take more care; but at the same time checking out every single detail of your reply, and providing references for it can lead to very long replies and long times in composing those replies.

So it's entirely resonable sometimes people will make such unfortunate mistakes based on their own limited understanding (which may often be based on stuff they've read or heard before, and not guesses). In such cases, it's good if people who do understand better, are able to provide clarity in some meaningful fashion without being excessively aggressive, particularly when it was a simple perhaps rare mistake based on what was said and an unfortunate assumption that what was said is correct.

Looking at the timestamps, it's further clear that your statement was made over an hour before the 209's reply below. This means not only were you making an unresonable criticism of comments made probably not on guesses (but instead what was said on the RD), but you provided almost zero clarity to the situation which remained unclear after your comment. It was only when 209 commented below that any clarity was provided to those who may have been unfamiliar with the situation. So the one who is at far more fault is you, who apparently understood the situation, but did not attempt to meaningfully clarify it.

To ensure there's no further confusion, your statement was "You should learn to read a complete sentence; Then come back and try again." As already said, anyone who read and understood the all the relevant sentences in their entire in this discussion and the only linked article (until I linked to the e-cig article) would still be under the impression based on what was said here, that e-cigs do generate smoke. 209's comment did sort of imply they did not generate smoke, but as said, it only came a while after your comment.

So until 209's comment came providing the crucial bit of information, there was a very good chance anyone reading your comment who didn't already know that e-cigs don't use combustion or pyrolysis (in which case they would need no clarification), would have no idea what you were referring to, since reading all relevant sentences in their entirety or even the entire linked article, would not have told them that e-cigs don't generate smoke.

You could have clarified this, either by simply saying that, explaining how e-cigs work, or even linking to the article. But you did none of that, instead offering criticism which likely left people as confused as they were before. It's no wonder people don't understand how e-cigs work, when people who do understand and are apparently interested in them (your talk page seems to suggest you work on the article), are unwilling or unable to clarify when it's highly relevant and topical and you were on the RD (and not say the e-cig article talk page).

Now if you are unwilling or unable to provide such clarity, that's up to you, but perhaps the RD isn't the best place for you since it's sort of expected people will do so.

At the very least, if you know something is wrong and or unable or unwilling to simply explain why it's wrong even if it's very easy to do, you're free to do something like "{{fact}} for the claim e-cigs use combustion or pyrolysis" which will at least provide some clarity as to what you're expressing doubt on. Rather then leaving the discussion nearly as confused as it was before your comments when all you basically say is "you're wrong, you should read this stuff which you probably already read even though it probably isn't actually going to tell you why you're wrong and I know why you're wrong and it's simple, but I'm not going to say".

Nil Einne (talk) 04:28, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

The mistaken assumption that e-cigs always create harmful smoke did need to be corrected, but I agree that there was no need to do so in such an insulting manner. A better choice would have been something like "Note that e-cigs usually don't create any smoke at all, as no combustion occurs" (I added the "usually" in case there is some form of e-cig that does add smoke). StuRat (talk) 05:27, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Deleting Trolling

Sometimes metadiscussion of trolling needs to be brought to an end also. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:01, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Is it acceptable to summarily delete obvious trolling questions such as this? I've deleted it once, and General Ization twice, but User:Tropical express (now blocked) keeps restoring it. Rojomoke (talk) 17:04, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes. We revert, block, and ignore trolls. HighInBC 17:29, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes. It's the same Jew-baiting troll that's popped up here under many different throwaway ID's and IP's. Always zap such junk on sight, and report the poster(s) if he or another sock tries to restore it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:26, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Note that you must state in the deletion that it was deleted as trolling. Otherwise somebody looking at the history will wonder why you deleted something. StuRat (talk) 19:14, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the general WP:DFTT concept. But my problem with this is:

Who decides what is a "Troll" post?
Upon what criteria do they decide?
Aside from very careful checking of page history records, which probably doesn't happen, how do we have oversight that this isn't being abused?

I understand that we're generally talking about respected ref desk people deleting "obvious" trolling (because the message style/subject is trollish) or any/all messages from "recognized" trolls. But any kind of policy has to include the situation where a respectable person asks a perfectly cromulant question and some random person comes along and deletes it.

Giving carte blanche to random people to delete any question they don't like is really *REALLY* unacceptable...but without guidelines about what constitutes a "troll", you're opening the gate to anyone to legitimately delete anything without any kind of oversight.

SteveBaker (talk) 19:27, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

In this particular case, the troll frequently asks anti-Jew questions. There's no question about it being a troll. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:47, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't answer the question. Steve Baker is asking you what our policy is on deleting troll messages. --Viennese Waltz 22:14, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, if anyone other than the suspected troll reverts the deletion, that should then mean it's not a clear-cut case, and the person who did the deletion needs to bring their case here, and not just delete it again. And then there are people like Medeis, whose record of being able to recognize trolls is so bad, that they should never delete without consensus. StuRat (talk) 22:45, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

To answer the question "what our policy is on deleting troll messages", our policy (which applies to the reference desks alone) is whatever the consensus of the editors here decide it is, and what they have decided so far is documented at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines. I am one of those who disagrees with that consensus (but of course I follow the consensus even when I disagree with it) and have never gotten a good answer to the question of why it is that the help desk gets by just fine without anyone deleting other editor's contributions except as allowed in WP:TPOC. What we do here has been and will continue to be a source of endless strife and never-ending battles, while the help desk just keeps humming along smoothly without any of the problems that plague us. But, as I said, I am in the minority and the consensus here so far is clearly against me. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:16, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that user Rojomoke made the good-faith but ill-advised start of this thread, which is doing nothing but feeding the recurring Jew-baiting troll. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:24, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Same song, verse 841. The purpose of this page is to discuss the others. If doing so feeds some "trolls", too bad. The best answer is to establish clear, complete, concise, and well-organized policies and procedures and codify them at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines. Many users would see the link to that page at the top of every RD page and never have to come here. Those who did come here would be directed to that page and the thread would end. Absent any traction for that solution, and there has been precious little that I've seen, we can't tell people not to come here for guidance, as it's the only useful and up-to-date guidance we currently provide. (By the way, this is a misuse of the word "troll", since that word presumes that the poster's only goal is to cause disruption and get a reaction. It's equally possible they wish to bait Jews. But the word is grossly overused as a general-purpose self-gratifying insult, for example when removing constructive criticism from one's user talk page.) ―Mandruss ☎ 03:01, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

There has been a rash of this Jew-baiting stuff, clearly all from the same guy via different IP's and throwaway accounts. If you're unaware of this situation, then you need to eddycate yourself a bit. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:40, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm aware of it, and I was aware of it when I wrote the above. I don't see how your comment is in any way a counter to mine. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:45, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

If you're talking in general terms, you might have a point in general. If you're talking about this particular troll, you're off the mark. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:41, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I take it you're referring to my parenthetical. Ok. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:52, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

It's as plain as the nose on your face that this troll has found an issue which he knows will get reverted, so he's playing electronic ping-pong with wikipedians. And sections such as this one give trolls some bonus attenion. It's not just feeding trolls; it's gorging them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:02, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Nevertheless. If we shut down this page for the purposes of discussing these issues and providing guidance on them, we surrender control of our environment to the trolls, and they win. So our choices are (1) feed them, (2) concede defeat by them, or (3) what I described above. I vote for (3) or (1), in that order. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:18, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Mandruss' solution appears to be at least somewhat compatible with my preferred solution, which is to do what has been shown to work on the help desk and simply follow WP:TPOC. There is a reason why "Jew baiting" is a problem here and not on the help desk. It is because any such comment on the help desk gets ignored, and if the editor becomes too disruptive, someone takes it to ANI and the editor gets blocked. We are trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. This entire construct we have built -- editors deleting other editor's comments, repeated and lengthy discussions about what should and should not be deleted -- is making the problem worse. It gives disruptive editors ("trolls" if you will) the attention they seek, and encourages more bad behavior. Why can't we at least try doing things they way the help desk does them as a limited-time experiment? --Guy Macon (talk) 13:29, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Because not all of us are capable of ignoring things. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:48, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I generally support trying pretty much anything when the status quo is clearly not working. I really, really hate the WP:CRYSTAL that infuses so many debates in this place. In something as complex as this, the only way to reliably know whether a change will work is to fucking try it and see, and I would expect any skeptics to try it in good faith and help make it work. I support Guy if there is no traction for my first preference. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:33, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Deleting such junk, with minimal fuss, is the usual conclusion here. But there's always someone with blinders on who wants to revert it and/or contest it - thus feeding the troll yet again. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

How has that argument been working so far? Can you see that we've been circular on this for at least a couple of years, with no end in sight? ―Mandruss ☎ 21:38, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

It works fine until the enablers subvert it. Try banning the enablers from the ref desks. That might help. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:41, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I retract my previous comment. It's true that no solution has been given a fair chance to work, including yours. At one point we discussed a trial of each proposed solution, and that failed as well. Still, you have to have some way of informing the many casual, part-time or one-time responders what the policy is. Even if we successfuly got everyone on board with a solution today, there will always be new arrivals. And word-of-mouth communication won't work because the word of mouth is so often incorrect, and people know that and give it little weight. Things have to be written down somewhere to be respected by most editors. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:44, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

The problem isn't the casual responders. The problem is the long-term ref desk users who refuse to recognize characters, such as the Jew-baiting troll, when they see them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:50, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

They are refusing to conform to a policy that has no documented consensus, basically nothing more than a few people's personal opinions. I do not fault anyone for doing that, I fault the people who are unable to collaborate enough to reach the consensus and document it. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:53, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

They are not refusing to conform - they are refusing to take their blinders off. And your solution is to keep feeding the troll. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:51, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Now you're just flat wrong, sorry. At Wikipedia, consensus is king and you've been around long enough to know that. Nothing is consensus unless it is written down in a way that is widely recognized as consensus, such as policy, guideline, or RfC. So you don't shouldn't state that people are "refusing to take their blinders off" and expect to be taken seriously. That is your opinion, nothing more, even if others happen to share it. You are only damaging your own credibility in this. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:52, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

likely archiving hiatus

My semiautomated bot and I will be traveling for the next week or so with uncertain internet access, so the rest of you will likely have to add date headers manually and, if the desks get too large, do some manual archiving. "We apologize for the inconvenience." —Steve Summit (talk) 11:12, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Define "too large". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:44, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Such a definition is up to you and the other regulars.

I've just added the October 14 date headers, and would be happy to keep on top of them (while at the same time taking no offense if someone beats me to them). If Steve isn't able to poke a head in here at some point and any desk grows too large, I can manually archive them and write a quick script or macro to help generate the archive index. Is there some tool other than Scsbot which automatically generates this index? -- ToE 01:44, 14 October 2015 (UTC) (Good travels, Steve, and thanks for the header and archive work you do regularly.)

Thank you for volunteering. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:40, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Related to your question, while it is not up to Steve to decide at what point a page is large enough to prompt one of us into action during his hiatus, I did look through the recent history and saw that he has been using the following archiving thresholds:

WP:RDC 6 days

WP:RDE 7 days

WP:RDH 6 days

WP:RDL 7 days

WP:RDMA 7 days

WP:RDS 5 days

WP:RDM 6 days

Where "6 days" means that when he runs the archiving script on the 7^th, it will archive the section from the 1^st. I believe that these settings have been arrived at by consensus on this talk page in order to balance time to answer with size of desk given the traffic patterns on each individual desk, and that Steve is happy to adjust them to match any subsequent change in consensus. --- ToE 12:32, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure consensus in this case means "tacit consensus" of the "he just did it, and no one has ever complained" type. I'm quite alright with that, though, as there's no need to have a discussion for everything. SCSbot and Steve just takes care of it, it works, and no one complains. So when he gets back from his break, I'm quite fine to let him keep on doing whatever he's doing, including setting the archiving schedule as he sees fit. --Jayron 32 12:44, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Some past discussions are at WT:Reference desk/Archive 105#archiving changes imminent (January 2014), WT:Reference desk/Archive 68#Page length (February 2010), and WT:Reference desk/Archive 65#Page length (October 2009). Note that Steve's "days to keep" numbers each differ from those I reported above by 1, because he defines it as the number of completed days to keep, not counting the newly created and typically empty section for the new day. -- ToE 02:03, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

normal archiving resumes

Thanks very much to ToE for taking care of the archiving in my absence. It looks like you didn't just do some of it as needed, but all of it, meticulously! That's a lot of work (unless you've got your own scripts for semiautomating the task).

The current archiving thresholds derive from a time when the desks were busier than they are now. To answer someone's question, the desks are "too large" when the page load time (before one can read or edit) becomes onerous. So it's a pretty subjective criterion, varying as a function of how fast a desk grows and how fast your internet connection is. For a low-volume desk like Mathematics, I could probably disappear for a week and not archive it at all and pretty much no one would notice. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:28, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Essays by IP's

I've just removed two very long essays by IP's with no apparent relevance to the ref desk, Viennese Waltz had already removed the one about the politician. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReference_desk%2FMiscellaneous&type=revision&diff=686530829&oldid=686530195 Perhaps a short semiprotection is warranted if this continues? μηδείς (talk) 18:11, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

A possibly faster way would be to take it to WP:RFPP. It depends, of course, on who's watching that page, if anyone. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:22, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, we'll see if it's a one-off, or an extended siege, hehe. μηδείς (talk) 19:23, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

request to make seperate desk for biology

SUPPORT science subjects are large in that one desk is not enough to cover all. all participants to this thread put your vote in bold caps followed by argument.Mahfuzur rahman shourov (talk) 11:30, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

What's so special about biology that it deserves its own desk? You might as well create separate desks for physics and chemistry as well. This is a ridiculous proposal. --Viennese Waltz 11:37, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

No. The science desk does not have so many questions per day that it needs to be split into subdisciplines. We're doing fine right now, NONE of the desks gets so much traffic that a new desk needs to be created. Ask any biology-related questions you need to at WP:RDS. --Jayron 32 12:12, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Hell, if anything I'd prefer to squish some desks back together - eliminate the Ent and Hum desks and make a 'new' "Arts and Humanities" desk. Then maybe stick Sci with "Arts and Humanities". Fewer desks makes the place easier to navigate, provides more eyes on each question, and reduces confusion about where to ask a question. Not sure if archaeology is a science or a humanity? Who cares? Ask the "Arts and Sciences" desk! Heck, I'd be okay if we went back to just the one desk. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 17:54, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

What about the Math and Computer desks? It would be interesting to see how many questions turned up in 2015 for each of the different desks, and see if combining would make sense. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:30, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Or for a more radical approach, unwittingly suggested by McClenon in the previous section: Move all of this back to the Help Desk, which is where it started originally. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:32, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Did the Reference Desk originate at the Help Desk before being spun off? I would oppose moving the Reference Desk to the Help Desk, whether or not that is where it started. It would combine two entirely different sorts of questions, including two entirely different sorts of misguided questions. The Reference Desk gets various sorts of troll-like questions (which may not really be troll questions, because sometimes a racist question is just a racist question, not trolling). The Help Desk, like the Teahouse, gets questions about how to use Wikipedia for self-promotion. (If we want to combine two desks, I would merge the Teahouse into the Help Desk, but that is my opinion.) Robert McClenon (talk) 21:39, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the Help Desk and Reference Desk are too different in terms of what's being asked, respectively (and in terms of what should be asked, regardless of disruptive questions). As for 99.235's last suggestion: Wikipedia:Reference desk/all gives you an idea how long the page would be if all Reference Desks were merged back into one (while archiving at the same pace we do now). I don't know whether that'd be too long for navigability and load time, but it might. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:43, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

If it's not broke don't fix it. μηδείς (talk) 21:07, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
- In the words of Red Green, "If it ain't broke, you're not trying." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I've previously favored some merges like math and computing, but really, it depends on the capacity we expect users to be able to download. The archiving already seems a little fast on occasion, and if merging means that the period is reduced, it's not a good thing. On the other hand, separating desks often means subdividing the pool of people answering questions! I think that on balance we should be looking at merging, not splitting, because volume on the desks feels like it is down, and users' browser really should be getting more powerful on average. But it's easier to propose to merge someone else's favorite desk than your own, which is a warning bell. We might want to explore more possibilities for custom views, also. For example, you could make a Lua script that processes a long page of answers and returns only the sections tagged "biology". OTOH my whole-page processing in Lua was never all that popular a notion, and tends to come up against limits set on the software. So it's a slow path in any direction here. Wnt (talk) 00:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

When we have "questions" such as this one on "Primative People" [sic] adding a biology desk is the least of our worries. μηδείς (talk) 00:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Was that question posed by a primative people? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:59, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Adding a biology desk wouldn't provide any clarity as to where that question should have been posed, especially since it should have been redirected to a null device or to a bit bucket. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:59, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Dealing with Trolling

I was asked how issues can be resolved if editors keep unilaterally suppressing them. Does anyone have a specific proposal about the deletion of trolling? If so, can a Request for Comments be formulated? In any case, as a dispute resolution volunteer, I know a discussion that has gone on and on without getting anywhere. On the one hand, that is exactly when moderated dispute resolution is useful in article space, but just continuing it in project talk space accomplishes nothing. Does anyone have any specific suggestions, either for consensus or for RFC, or are we just arguing about where the dead horse is? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:38, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

If the most recent exchange is to be continued, it is permitted to continue an exchange invisibly inside a collapse template. (That is how it differs from a hat or an archive.) Robert McClenon (talk) 00:38, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

I have seriously been considering we just add a trivia or bedlam page and move such questions there. You'll notice that the last two users' whose edits I have deleted, User:Jandown and User:Desklin see today's discussion at ANI have been indeffed, one of them in part for editting the archives to remove comments they apparently didn't want on record. But at this point it has repeatedly been argued that we simply remove the acts of banned users without discussion, and that goes along with my understanding of policy. The only problem I see is that there seems to be some disconnect between SPI and the rest of the adminship, such that rather than follow up any report they (SPI) close it as moot as soon as someone takes action. But the diffs still exist, so that's not a reason not to remove trolling by banned users. μηδείς (talk) 01:03, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, the issue is that SPI's main purpose is to have a centralized location to decide if two accounts are related. If the connection has already been established in another venue, or even through a simple WP:DUCK test, SPI isn't needed. If you got to SPI and say "We've already blocked X as a sock of Y." then there's nothing further for them to do. If you go and say "I think X may be a sock of Y, but I'm not sure, we need more evidence and/or I need someone uninvolved to look it over and see what they think", THEN the SPI case is worthwhile. If the case has already resulted in a block, there's nothing else to be said. Many of our problematic ref desk trolls already have WP:LTA reports (I recently created one for the antisemitic troll we've had a problem with recently), so if we already have a clear behavioral pattern for disruption, WP:RBI. The problem is that too many people here have a problem with I... --Jayron 32 15:58, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

The problem as I see it is that what constitutes "obvious trolling" has no consensus, and likely never will. I see many removals that seem just to me, but I also revert closures that offend my sense of WP:AGF. This is especially likely when questions involve contentious politics, bodily functions, or sexual issues, and my personal approach is to invoke WP:NOTCENSORED for these kinds of things, even though I'm happy to see e.g. race baiting and hate speech quietly removed without comment. I suspect clinging to WP:BRD for trolling removal is our best bet for the short term. E.g. user A feels free to remove, user B feels free to revert/restore, and then user A (or anyone else) has to bring the specific issue up here for discussion before re-removing the post. For those who want to re-remove posts and also feel that discussing removal here constitutes troll feeding, I suggest they practice ignoring trolling. I'd also like to give a shout out to our respondent User:Bestfaith, who seems to be engaged in a campaign to give short, sensible, and referenced replies to recent questions that may seem borderline or trollish to other users - I think they're doing it right. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:28, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Part of the other issue is WP:AGF on the remover of trolling as well. There are several well-known, easily identifiable people who have been banned from the reference desk. When they show up, and we can identify them by their well-known tells, we remove their work from the reference desk. If you've been around long enough, you know the "tells" of most of these trolls, their idiosyncracies give them away every time. Some, like our recent antisemitic troll, are obvious to anyone. Others, (C3 and LC for example) have behavior which can be mistaken for good-faith easily (indeed, I and many other will respond to their initial questions or comments). When their behavioral patterns come up, you'll often see three of four of the regulars jump on them right away. To people that don't know, it looks like we're losing our minds. But suddenly, you'll see myself, or Medeis or Bugs or any of a number of other regulars start clearing out all of the contributions of someone who was here for a few days. That's because one of our regular trolls just showed us their ass. Per WP:DNFT and WP:BEANS, we may not always want to make public what these tells are, but they're usually as obvious as the nose on one's face, once you see it. Now, that being said, if a banned troll just showed up as an anonymous user, did nothing that would lead us to know who they were, and behaved well forever, we'd never bother to block them, or remove their contributions. That is if they wanted to be positive contributors, they'd just be positive contributors. Since their goal is to tweak our noses and prove to us they can get away with as much disruption as possible, those of us that have been around long enough know what that disruption looks like as soon as it shows itself, and we shut it down. It only ever gets to be a problem when someone unfamiliar is like "what the fuck just happened?" I get it, I really do. But AGF also rubs both ways; sometimes you have to trust people with more experience to know what we're doing. After all, look through the history. You'll see someone who recently got the damnatio memoriae treatment had been participating in some threads, asking some questions which all of us (myself included) answered in good faith, and things were going well. Then it became too much, and he had to let us all know who he was, in an insulting and disruptive manner. If he hadn't have done that, we'd all be still responding to those threads. --Jayron 32 19:00, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

What you say is reasonable, but it should be pointed out that AGF also rubs a third way, and also applies to people who question the removals. A semi-frequent occurrence is that someone sees a removal that may fall under the "looks like we're losing our minds" category and they raise the issue on the talk page. Regulars then jump down their throat for doing so, accusing them of feeding the trolls - or even being a troll themselves. They get castigated for starting "another one of these threads", and invective flies back and forth. In the face of such hostility from the remover-aligned, it may be hard to AGF toward the removers. If such threads were greeted with less hostility and annoyance and more of a "I understand what it looks like to you, but we're confident it's a troll - we hope (note: not demand) that you trust us on this" attitude, things would likely be less sullen and prickly here. - Heck, a lightly edited version of your comment above would make a suitable stock response. -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 15:39, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

And what you say is reasonable as well. We could all do with a bit less hostility all around. --Jayron 32 15:47, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with User:Jayron32. In my opinion, there are two problems at the Reference Desks that non-admin Reference Desk editors can do something about. First, I think that some editors are too quick to hat or delete troll posts, but that is only my opinion. Second, there is too much hostility as to how to handle trolling. As much as anything, the hostile exchanges about dealing with trolling are the real feeding of the trolls. Notice that I didn't say that the third problem is the trolls. I didn't say that because there is nothing that non-admin users at the Reference Desk can usefully do about the trolls most of the time. (If they are sock-puppets, they can be reported at SPI. Reporting them at ANI is normally just a form of troll-feeding.) I will also suggest, as has User:Guy Macon, that some of us could observe and follow the behavior at the Help Desk. Trolls there are usually just ignored. It is true that there are fewer trolls at the Help Desk, but there may be two reasons for that, both that the subject matter here attracts trolls, and that the attitude of the Help Desk regulars to ignore trolls makes the trolls come here. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:21, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Can you point us to a few examples of trolling questions which were successfully ignored? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:19, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 October 2015

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Belgian Congo

In the Belgian Congo, did the concept of 'civilised persons card' exist? If so, what information is available about it? --Lærskroos (talk) 20:14, 21 October 2015 (UTC) Lærskroos (talk) 20:14, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Done. Tevildo (talk) 23:19, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi - protected edit request on 23 October 2015

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

WP:DENY

At the end of the section "List of Germanic roots in English" please add the comment We should distinguish between "living suffixes" and others. -ness is a living suffix (one which can be added without limitation) that turns an adjective into a noun (e.g. "nice", "niceness"). -ly turns an adjective into an adverb (e.g. "polite", "politely". -ing turns a verb into a noun (e.g. the "makings" of a scandal). -er, -or or -our is the suffix of agency (e.g. "save", "saviour"). Are there any more? 92.31.95.81 (talk) 11:52, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Done --Jayron 32 11:57, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi - protected edit request on 23 October 2015

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WP:DENY
At the end of the section "Patent trolling for benefit of the public domain" please add the comment The classic example of this is Tim Berners - Lee's failure to patent the Internet. 92.31.95.81 (talk) 10:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Done--Jayron 32 12:00, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 October 2015

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Hello, could this question please be added to the Language Desk. Heading can be something like "Arabic translation" - I'm honestly not sure how to title this question. (a) What is the difference, in Wikipedia markup, between lang=aeb and lang=ar? (b) What is the difference between these two strings of Arabic? What does each one say? الرباعي الراعي للحوار الوطني and الرباعي التونسي للحوار الوطني (c) The first one had a romanization: er-rubāɛi er-raɛi lil-ḥiwār el-waṭanī. If the second one is more accurate, what would be its romanization? Many thanks, 184.147.131.85 (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

184.147.131.85 (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Done. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:33, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much, and thank you to Lüboslóv Yęzýkin and HOOTmag for answering the question. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 16:09, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Humanities edit request

Sorry, I don't know how to make one of those official-looking request thingies. In the section on US presidents here, I would like to reply: After Ronald Reagan announced he was suffering from Alzheimer's, there was conjecture that he was affected by it while still in office. Nothing conclusive, but our article explains some of the complexities of the diagnosis. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 15:52, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

This point appears in the present version of the page for Ronald Reagan: see the paragraph in Ronald Reagan#Announcement and reaction beginning "But there was also speculation over how long Reagan had demonstrated symptoms of mental degeneration." with a reference cited. You can add this content as a reply to an ongoing discussion, just precede your remarks with one or more colon signs for indentation, using N+1 colons where N=the number of colons used by the remark above yours. If it's a direct reply to the OP ("Original Poster"), use one colon. -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:22, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

The Humanities desk is locked at the moment - I've posted the OP's response. Could someone who knows how to do it put the padlock symbol on the locked desks? Tevildo (talk) 19:55, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

There was a recent report, possibly in connection with O'Reilly's book on the subject, that after his near-fatal shooting, Reagan started showing signs that it had left him messed up to some extent. Whether that was cause or effect of the later dementia is anybody's guess. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:36, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

It would be inconsistent with everything known about Alzheimer's dementia to suggest that such a trauma "caused" it to occur. If anything it would be a case of multiple concurrent issues. Though of course this really isn't the place for that discussion. Snow ^{let's rap} 09:34, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

They didn't say it did. Just that his staffers observed a change in Reagan after the shooting and in subsequent years. May I copy your comments to the Humanities page? (Minus the part that refers to this page, of course.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:56, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, by all means you may, provided it follows a copy of your own post to which it was a response, verbatim. Snow ^{let's rap} 00:28, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Maybe you should do it. Then it will meet your exacting standards. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:26, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

And then I can add this review of the O'Reilly book, and this quote from the reviewer: "He was much weakened by his injuries physically, and probably also mentally, though he did recover well enough to hide this weakness in public (except for a few lapses, such as the first presidential debate in 1984)." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:35, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 October 2015

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Why west supported Iraq during Iran-Iraq war?

Subject matter discussion on talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:25, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Saddam Hossein was a dictator and Iraq was the country that started the war and had illegitimate claim on Iranian's territory, so why most of the countries in the west supported Iraq? I'm an Iranian and it was always a question for me. 46.225.84.115 (talk) 20:58, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Please someone move the above question to the Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities, it is semi-protected and I can't move it myself. 46.225.84.115 (talk) 21:00, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

The answer is that Iran had made itself an enemy of the West. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:01, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

But how? As I know, the relation between Iran and most of the western countries (Austria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and a few other countries) was always peaceful and there was no tension between them, but all of these countries had supported Iraq. 46.225.84.115 (talk) 21:24, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Iran was once an ally, but when the Shah was deposed, relations went downhill rapidly. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:26, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Check 02, @Baseball Bugs:. The OP should read Iran-Iraq War and ask for clarification or register an account if he is not blocked from doing so. μηδείς (talk) 21:36, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. From what I can tell, the protection on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has expired. -- ferret (talk) 02:56, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Page protection is being turned on periodically because of the recurring troll, and they are reluctant to make the protection long enough to make the troll lose interest. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:50, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Edit request

I don't think the page is technically protected, but I'm for some reason not allowed to post this response to the question on Canadian_citizenship_oath_and_niqab. I'm not sure what the deal is, but would appreciate some kind soul transferring this there.

A quick bit of perspective on the word "covered": While it might strike you as mundane to say it, people are allowed to wear eyeglasses, yarmulkes, make-up, facial jewelry, and so on during that oath. You're free to do likewise in court as well. I bring up those examples because those are all things you're not allowed to wear, for example, when posing for Canadian governmental ID (passport, driver's license, health card (in places that use a photo)). You literally can't even wear a smile. In some cases, the mandate to have a 'naked face' during those photos has gradually become more and more hardline over the years. For example, I used to have my glasses on during the driver's license photo, but not anymore. Hopefully someone will be by soon with more comprehensive answers, but I wanted to chime in on a word you used that may be more nuanced (or loaded) than you might think. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 18:48, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

The page is not protected. Try it again. If it still doesn't work, let us know. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:53, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Still no luck. I get a warning above the window saying that "An automated filter has identified this edit as potentially unconstructive, and it has been disallowed. If this edit is constructive, please report this error." I guess 'constructive' is a subjective thing, but I'm not sure what was in my responsive that made the WP filters think that. Maybe I shouldn't have said the word "naked"? 64.235.97.146 (talk) 19:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Try the same exact edit here and see what happens. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:27, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, obviously it works here - the text is right there - though I did get to see an extra screen that warned me that my edit appeared to be automated. I suppose it's possible that the system "knew" that the same text had just been attempted on another page, but that seems a little sophisticated for WP-script. I didn't have to do a CAPTCHA or anything (like you do if you try to put in an external link); it just asked me to press "save" an extra time. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 19:38, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Done I posted your comment there. You might try at WP:HELP to further look in to your posting issues. You could also just register for an account, in many ways that gives you more privacy than using a naked IP: Wikipedia:Tutorial/Registration. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:21, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Appreciated. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 20:28, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally, WP:EF/FP is the place to report this sort of error. Tevildo (talk) 23:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

And, equally incidentally, you tripped Filter 731 with "jewelry". Tevildo (talk) 23:31, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

old query

Is it right to move this discussion ahead to continue it --Aryan^fromहि है (talk) 09:41, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

The question has already been archived at WP:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2015 October 24#hindi fimls set in 1857 ?. I've added a suggestion there, and you are encouraged to record your final conclusions there for posterity.

And no, you should not move an archived question back to an active desk. It is possible to reask a question, though that is seldom useful unless you are able to bring forth more information to work with. If you do reask the question in the future, you should link the archived question and explain the results of your research to date. -- ToE 15:32, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 October 2015

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

I just want to know why there isn't any supposed Medicinal uses for Geraniums; on the Geranium page?

From; Sherine Campagna 71.198.252.230 (talk) 19:39, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Look for some valid sources and post that info on the Geranium page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

There's also the issue that what are called geraniums as garden plants (in the US at least) are actually pelargoniums. Be forewarned! μηδείς (talk) 19:05, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Easy Questions that I an NOT going to ask on the reference desks

Racist troll on Humanities

User_talk:82.28.140.226#Misc_Ref_Desk

82.28.140.226

Date bot out of order?

A request for guidance. (Caution: contains obvious sarcasm)

WP:NOTFORUM

Protection

Semi-Protection

Complaint about joke

Desk descriptions

Keep it off the desks

Posts by indeffed User:Neptunekh, User:Venustar84

Return of User:Bowei Huang 2 sock

Bowei Huang 2 again

Tip: Ask new users here to contribute to articles

Naturism and perceptions

Games

Removed thread about Hillary Clinton email controversy

WP:ANI thread of interest to the reference desks.

Semi-protected edit request on 20 September 2015

Creation of talk page section patrol

What's the difference between

No medical advice rule

Medical and other professional advice, and meta-discussion of rules on advice

unsigned gibberish and unreferenced soapboxing

Please unprotect Wikipedia:Reference desk/humanities page !

Semi-protected edit request

Semi-protected edit request

Semi-protected edit request on 9 October 2015

Semi-protected edit request on 9 October 2015

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What guesses? And why no clarification

Deleting Trolling

likely archiving hiatus

normal archiving resumes

Essays by IP's

request to make seperate desk for biology

Dealing with Trolling

Semi-protected edit request on 21 October 2015

Belgian Congo

Semi - protected edit request on 23 October 2015

Semi - protected edit request on 23 October 2015

Semi-protected edit request on 21 October 2015

Humanities edit request

Semi-protected edit request on 25 October 2015

Why west supported Iraq during Iran-Iraq war?

Edit request

old query

Semi-protected edit request on 29 October 2015

Please unprotect Wikipedia:Reference desk/humanities page !