Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/guidelines/Archive 1

Comment

What is going on here: A lot of work was done (in large part by StuRat) in developing two pages; /rules and /guideline. There was accusation of POV-forking. Then TenOfAllTrades developed a draft based in the previous work and discussions. There was consensus that that draft would be an appropriate continuation. To that end, and to prevent discussion of the same topic, proposed RD policy, taking place in multiple locations, I am bringing it all here. The /rule and /guideline are archived here for reference only. Please do not edit those. The Ten draft can and should be edited.

Please discuss edits only on the associated talk page, Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/guidelines. --Justanother 15:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

This page is divided up as follows.

• Major sections (second-level '=='-enclosed headings) describe guiding principles for the Desk.
  • Subsections (third-level '==='-enclosed headings) represent guidelines that I think follow from those principles.
    • A description, any clarification, and rationale for each guideline is provided as body text.

Obviously in its current format it's unsuitable for direct placement on the Ref Desk. Further discussion is needed and welcomed about how these guidelines should be incorporated into our existing framework, and what changes or additions are needed.

I'm keeping this in my userspace for now because I'm trying to keep a lid on any potential edit warring over this content. By all means direct brickbats, kudos, and suggestions to the talk page, and we'll see if we can synthesize something useful.

The purpose of this page is to present what I think is a reasonable (and close-to-consensus) view of the purpose and philosophy of the Reference Desk, as well as some guidelines for users and contributors that I think fall naturally from that philosophy. Note that I am not addressing enforcement mechanisms at the moment.

Notice

Just wanted to urgently request that everyone do their best to stay on topic here. This page is for talking about Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines and has no other purpose. Complaints about users can be directed to their talk pages. Discussion of the reference desks in general belongs on WT:RD. Thank you all for your consideration in this matter. Friday (talk) 21:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

• Okay. This page is too long, since the three sections copy/pasted in where somewhat redundant. Someone'll have to clear out the redundancy. The content is fine, even if some of it may be stating the obvious. The only part that really doesn't belong is the byzantine process suggested for deletion of items, as it's unwiki, overly bureaucratic and instruction creep. (Radiant) 12:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Community?

We need to be clearer about what kind of "sense of community" we're trying to promote. Enhancing the Wikipedia community mostly means being good to newbies and showing them how we do things here, and of course that's great. However, conversation and chatting mostly just promotes camraderie for a subset of the ref desk regulars—and I'm not sure the ref desk should be for that purpose. Consider the recent issues with Wikipedia:Esperanza, which was strongly requested by outside users to modify their structure, because they were developing their own community to the exclusion of the Wikipedia community. -- SCZenz 17:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this addition of language talking about the goal of developing a sense of community is relevant here. I think there is or was something called Wikipedia:Esperanza that had a goal relating to that. In the interest of harmonious editing, I won't remove it myself, but I don't see that promoting a sense of community is a core goal of the reference desk. Individual editors who want to promote community can do so as they see fit, of course, but I don't see how this is related to the reference desk specifically. Friday (talk) 17:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point about showing newbies how things work here. To some extent, the reference desk has been actively harmful to that goal, by giving new editors the idea that Wikipedia (or, one part of it) is for general chatting, free speech, or giving our personal opinions. I think we can mostly agree that there've been some unfortunately big conflicts due in large part to different expectations and culture at the reference desk. Anyone who wants to start a wiki-based "anything and everything" question-and-answers website is welcome to do so of course, but as long as the reference desk is part of Wikipedia, it should be part of Wikipedia. It follows logically that the goals of the reference desk can't be outside the goals of the project as a whole. Friday (talk) 18:08, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't only apply to the Ref Desk, it also applies to other talk pages, as well. However, it needs to be said here, because there are those who think that any efforts to build a sense of community at the Ref desk should be suppressed. StuRat 18:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

We got into all kinds of misunderstanding before by jumping to conclusions about what people want to do. Nobody's talking supressing it. At least, no more than it's "suppressed" anywhere else. But, it is not one of the core goals of the reference desk, and thus should not be mentioned in the guideline. There's plenty of middle ground for things that are neither encouraged, nor suppressed. Friday (talk) 18:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The "sense of community" is facilitated by allowing conversations, not just curt, factual answers. This includes conversation not only with the question asker, but between responders and others who want to join the conversation. This may also lead to some drift from the original topic, which is OK, so long as the question itself is addressed. Here is a good example: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Parasitic_Worm. StuRat 18:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

But again... why should Wikipedians in general endorse the page as having a purpose of creating a "sense of community" among a small group of ref desk regulars? -- SCZenz 18:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

You're misrepresenting me again, SCZenz, I never said it was only to develop a sense of community "among a small group of ref desk regulars", it's to develop that sense of community among all Wikipedians, new and experienced. StuRat 18:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm not misrepresenting you. I'm describing the actual effect of the kind of "community"-promoting conversations that you want to be enshrined in reference desk policy. Not everyone on the ref desk feels more part of any community because of them—some feel excluded and irritated—and it certainly doesn't include newbies or help them feel more involved in Wikipedia. -- SCZenz 18:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not endorse this at all, and neither, I suspect, do most others. Individual editors who want to do so can, provided they're not getting in anyone's way, of course. As suggested above, I suggest that everyone who thinks "community" is of key importance here should probably review the history of Esperanza. Friday (talk) 18:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we need anything special about sense of community. Sense of community is a natural development in an, eerrr, community. --Justanother 18:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I think if you seek to legitimize a degree of chat then that is best done by noting that the atmosphere is informal. --Justanother 18:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem with "Wikipedia community" is that its so nebulous, there's little agreement on it. I (and, from what I can see, others) have purposely gone out of my way to avoid being part of a "community", because I strongly feel that a shared goal is enough, and no other sense of "community" is needed. Indeed, in many cases, the "community" gets in the way of the shared goal. Now, I'm not going to run around trying to prevent people from feeling like they're part of a community, but I sure won't encourage this, either. So, in short- we're introducing needless complication by introducing this concept here. If people want to debate the merits of community, let them do it at Esperanza or Wikipedia:Community or elsewhere. There's no need to tack the notion of community onto the reference desk, any moreso than any other project page. We have enough work to do on this guideline without expanding its scope needlessly. Friday (talk) 18:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not "expanding its scope needlessly", building a sense of community is a Wikipedia goal which is directly relevant to the types of questions and answers which are allowed on the Ref Desk. As such, it should be mentioned here. StuRat 18:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Is there some precedent for the notion that building a sense of community is one of the goals of Wikipedia? The policies and guidelines I can think of either don't mention "community" at all, or they say things like "Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of people interested in building a high-quality encyclopedia..." I can't think of any established tradition (or a guideline) that says that building a sense of community is itself, a goal of the project. Friday (talk) 18:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

This is the first time I've heard that building a sense of community should not be a goal of Wikipedia. I would expect that it's accepted so universally as a goal, that it doesn't often need to be stated, except for when somebody suggests it's unimportant. StuRat 19:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't know what to tell you, other than what I said above: check around. The places that mention community at all mention it specifically to say that it takes a back seat to the encyclopedia. If you want to encourage a sense of community, that's fine- but this isn't the place for it. See Esperanza- that's what they're about. Friday (talk) 19:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Opinions

This is going to be a big point of contention, but we might as well start. I disagree with this addition. Personal opinions should certainly be avoided on clearly factual questions, and it is better to turn opinion questions into factual questions whenever possible. I'm not interested in focusing on what's "permitted," but this guideline should not say anywhere that giving opinions is "encouraged." -- SCZenz 18:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and I tweaked the guideline a bit to better reflect the notion that opinions should be discouraged. Friday (talk) 18:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Bit of tweaking the first para - how does that look? No need to mention community-building or beat the horse too much about opinion. --Justanother 19:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I like that wording very much, although we may yet quibble down the road about the implications of the last sentence. -- SCZenz 19:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC) -- SCZenz 19:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Outstanding. Love it. Whoops, it's gone now. I really think it was tons better as you put it. Friday (talk) 19:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Stu, what do you object to in my edit. I am sure we can accomodate your concerns. --Justanother 19:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I only meant to change what Friday did, I didn't even see your changes. Perhaps this is more of that weirdness that's been happening over the last few days. If you want to put your changes back in, I'll only take out the parts I disagree with, not the whole thing. StuRat 19:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Tell you what; I will revert to mine and you bring up any issues you have here so we do not edit-war. --Justanother 19:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

How about if we leave my version there, and you bring up any issues here, so we do not edit-war ? StuRat 19:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone NOT think that the primary purpose of the RD is to serve the Wikipedia project? That seems to me a no-brainer but perhaps I am missing something.--Justanother 19:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

(Agree that this is a no-brainer) Friday (talk) 19:29, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, no, I think the primary purpose should be to answer questions, whether doing so serves Wikipedia or not. For example, if there is a better source outside of Wikipedia, we should refer people there, not to a poorly written Wikipedia article. StuRat 19:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The two are not mutually exclusive. We should direct to the poor article, mention it is poor, and then send them off-site for the answer. That way we encourage improvement of the article. That is how it serves both the project and the public. --Justanother 19:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely, and I'm not disputing that "serving Wikipedia" is a purpose of the Ref Desk, only that it's the primary purpose. To me, at least, the primary purpose is to answer questions. StuRat 19:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Until we see some agreement that it belongs, I'm against the re-addition of language saying that personal opinions are encouraged. So far the talk page discussion leans that way too, so I'm not sure why we'd think this removed was caused by an accident of software. Friday (talk) 19:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Friday, please try to follow WP:AGF. StuRat 19:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, obviously. You think your content was removed accidentally, then? From reading the talk page, I came to a different conclusion. Friday (talk) 20:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm confused, has someone claimed my content was removed accidentally ? StuRat 21:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I thought you did, with this edit. Misunderstanding is, of course, a possibility. Friday (talk) 21:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

opinions in general

Here's my take on opinions. (This is a continuation of some thoughts begun here and here.)

In general, I think we should discourage matters of opinion, both in questions and in answers. Wikipedia tends to favor objective scientific fact, and it definitely disfavors P's OV, and opinions are obviously P's OV. If nothing else, discussions about matters of opinion tend to degenerate into long debates, not the succinct, fact-based question-answering that the RD is supposed to be.

Now, with that said, and before someone takes my head off, I hasten to add that I do not think we should disallow all opinions. I do not think that our discouragement to questioners should be as harshly worded as the "While we have opinions, we're not going to tell you what they are, so don't ask for them", which once appeared on Wikipedia:Reference_desk/guideline. And I think that, under some circumstances, answers which merely supply opinions, or which speculate in a sort of armchairey way (i.e. by doing something other than coldly citing elsewhere-published factual answers) are perfectly appropriate. And I think it's useful to explore when opinions aren't and are useful (which I will now do, in an opinionated, armchair-speculationey sort of way).

First, some questions just clearly aren't worth trying to answer.

• What is your favorite color?
• Which is better, PS2 or Xbox? Mac or Windows? Red Hat or Debian?
• In a fight between Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, who would win?

The Reference Desk, I think it's safe to say, is not an opinion poll. Reference Desk contributors are valued (and queried) for their knowledge and expertise, not for their random opinions. There may be places on the net to debate these imponderable questions, but the Wikipedia Reference Desk is not it. (Although with that said, it turns out that my third hypothetical question does have a definitive answer, which you can read about on slashdot.)

One reason pure-opinion questions aren't appropriate for the Reference Desk is that there's nothing special about Reference Desk answerers which qualifies them to answer such questions. You could walk down the street asking random strangers what their favorite color was, and you'd get the same selection of answers with precisely the same authority.

Contrariwise, I think it's acceptable for Reference Desk answerers to offer opinion when doing so definitely adds something of value to the discussion, when the opinion has some value beyond "I'm a person and I have it". If the question being asked doesn't have a definitive answer, and you know that it doesn't, your informed opinion may be valuable. If the question being asked involves some particular aspect or nuance of an otherwise objective fact, such as "how do I explain X to someone who believes Y", speculation on the Reference Desk may be appropriate.

Two examples, one con, one pro:

• There was a question on the Humanities desk about "Holocaust guilt", which sparked a big talk page debate about the propriety of posting opinions on such a question. In a case like that, I personally would not post my opinion. I do have an opinion, but since I am (a) not German and (b) not a WWII historian and (c) under 60 years of age, I really don't think that out of the 6 billion people in the world, or even out of the smaller set of people who ever post to Wikipedia's Reference Desk, that my opinion is worth posting, especially since there are plenty of people who are (a), (b), or (c) and whose opinions on this sort of question are much more valuable than mine.

• On the other hand, whenever there's a question about the scientific method, or about evolution versus creationism or (lately) "intelligent design", you can almost always get a rise out of me. (The latest example is here.) And while I've been criticized for contributing to these threads (e.g. here), I'll defend myself on the grounds that (d) the question is topical, and (e) I am reasonably knowledgeable about it, and (f) I'm always looking for better ways to explain it, and (g) it's an important enough issue that I think we owe people individualized answers, especially if their question is along the lines of "how do I explain X to someone who believes Y", and as long as they're not trolls.

You may disagree with the specific criteria or examples I've suggested here, but the broader issues I've raised are, I think, relevant. Even so, though, the "guidelines" I've suggested here are quite loose, and require quite a bit of thinking and (possibly opinionated) interpretation themselves. (Which is why they're not even guidelines.) But I don't see any way around this. If opinions are going to be tolerated at all, and if their use is not going to regularly trigger long, rambling, speculative, opinionated debates, people have to be circumspect about posting them, have to really think about their particular opinion and its relation to the particular issue. People can't just say, "Oh, I'm an intelligent person and this is an interesting question and I'm in a posting mood today so I'll just spout whatever's on my mind." You have to know enough about the issue to know whether or not there are people who know more about it than you do.

In the end, the guidelines for posting opinion may end up being quite similar to the guidelines for posting humor: "in moderation, and only when it contributes to the discussion".

—Steve Summit (talk) 05:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's be more conservative

If someone adds something, and someone else disagrees strongly enough to remove it, it's generally bad form to just re-add it. So I ask everyone to edit conservatively in this regard. Friday (talk) 19:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

If you're suggesting we should only make changes based on consensus or supermajority, I thought there was great objection to that and that "the wiki process" allows anyone to edit the guidelines as they think is best. StuRat 19:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm suggesting nothing other than what I said. It's poor form to use "brute force" editing- disagreements should be resolved on the talk page. Friday (talk) 19:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if we are premature in removing the "sense of community". I think 3 of 4 of us here now don't want it there perhaps for different reasons. I see the statement as unnecessary and potentially divisive. But we are only a small part of the interested parties, --Justanother 20:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

You both seem to be talking about using supermajorities and consensus to determine the content of the proposal. Friday, didn't you explicitly reject this approach when the supermajority was the other way-around ? StuRat 20:11, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Consensus is the ONLY way things get done here if they are at all controversial. The trick, Stu, is knowing what the consensus is and also being willing to negotiate your position to get what you essentially want from the consensus. --Justanother 20:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

(This is off-topic for this page, but I'll reply here this once) I do not, and likely will not, condone using votes of any kind for determining content. The notion of "supermajority" is thus largely irrelevant. Friday (talk) 20:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The 3 out of 4 discussion above looks very much like a supermajority discussion, to me. StuRat 21:40, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Deletionism on the Reference Desk

Do the schmucks who go around deleting good-faith questions and answers not realize what major pricks they are? --Nelson Ricardo 19:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Probably not but if you give us an example we can then agree or disagree with you. --Justanother 19:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

(ec) The talk page is for discussing things in an adult manner while assuming that others are here to improve the project. If you wish to contribute appropriately, please do so. Friday (talk) 19:59, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that unwarranted deletions performed in an inappropriate manner have been a problem. You might want to review the proposed rules for deletion here: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/guidelines#Deletion and tell us if you agree with them. StuRat 20:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I can understand being upset but this was a glitch, see Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Disappearing stuff --Justanother 20:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Glitches there may be, but there are also intentional deletions of material which oughtn't be deleted. Some people just get a big head and think they can quash others' questions or ideas. If a questions is stupid, have the balls to tell the questioner, rather than just making the question disappear. Disagree with a response or comment? Don't erase it; tell why you feel it is wrong. Blanket deletion of whatever you disagree with is censorship or just plain childish. --Nelson Ricardo 21:04, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

We've been bringing contested deletions to Wikipedia talk:Reference desk for discussion. Such discussions go better when we refrain from jumping to conclusions about why material was deleted. Friday (talk) 21:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

From a policy-writing standpoint, I agree with Nelson. Deleting questions unless they are totally inappropriate and/or from a known troll is rude. So this is a valid discussion for this talk page. --Justanother 21:20, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. StuRat 22:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion on draft guidelines

Right, this is the correct place to discuss general deletion policy, and the Ref Desk talk page is the right place to discuss any particular deletion (preferably after it has first been discussed between the author and would-be deletor). StuRat 21:34, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines.

I just browsed through it, reading all the interesting bits. As close as I can figure, it's perfect. Absolutely not a trace of 'uptightness' or 'ruleslawyerness', which is good. :)

And reading it a second time -- it's actually good for a laugh as well. Vranak 21:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Purpose section needs tightening up I feel (I mean its a little wordy for its purpose). I may have a go at that if Im allowed to/. I mean I so lost now with all this stuff going on that I dont know what I can edit and what I cant/shouldnt 8-|--Light current 22:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Give it a go; we might like it. We can also merge your thoughts with others. Or put your proposed language on the talk page for some input first if you prefer or if you think you will be stepping on toes. --Justanother 22:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Its not the spirit of the section I wish to alter, just its wording to make it less...wordy I mean I would like to do to it what I would do to any article that was to wordy for its own good 8-)--Light current 22:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Go right ahead and edit it, there's no process of building consensus here, just make any change you want, that's the "wiki process". StuRat 22:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, it is a process. Please add input based on the extensive polling that you did of RD regulars. --Justanother 23:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

OK I done it! Turned into quite a big rewrite actually. Hope no one is too upset by it. But I think its clearer now--Light current 23:34, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

This needs to be sorted out here; we don't need to have a confusion on the page itself.

While all editors agree that the reference desk's primary purpose is to be informative, there are differences of opinion regarding whether the reference desk should focus solely on encyclopedic information, or whether any and all information is fair game. One could argue that WP:V and WP:NOR are less important here, since the reference desk is not in 'article space'.

--Justanother 23:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah! Stands out a bit more now doesnt it! My aim was to make the whole thing clearer.--Light current 23:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Im sorry but Ive had to have another go at it to try to make it clearer. It will need more work and Im sorry if Im upsetting anybody. But pls feel free to take issue with any changes I make on this page, then we can discuss them. I repeat: Im not trying to upset anybody, but I just want to make this guide line as clear as it possibly can be! KISS--Light current 01:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

My point is that we here need to come up with our definitive statement and not put "we disagree" in the policy as part of the policy. That question is one of the few reasons we need RD-specific policy so let's not shirk on doing our job. If we cannot negotiate something ourselves then that question needs to go to WP:RfC and we poll the community. --Justanother 02:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yup I agree that statement is far too wishy washy. Needs discussion! We can sort it. no need for RfC I think! 8-)

--Light current 03:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

As I argued on the Ref Desk talk page, a demand that all answers be encyclopedic is a demand that all questions be predicated on laziness -- an unwillingness to do the legwork oneself by searching Wikipedia. The exception is if there's information missing from Wikipedia -- which can be better addressed by a Request for Article.

Whenever a question is posed by a lazy Wikipedian non-searcher (e.g. Where does chocolate come from?), a curt reply is given, with little more than a link.

So, to demand encyclopedic answers is tantamount to demanding that the RD be completely neutered. And from there, it's just a quick hop to being removed outright. At least, that's how I see it. Vranak 04:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I would argue that if the pattern of disruptive and innacurate answers continued, the RD is going to be removed outright, but if answers are encyclopedic, the RD will stay. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely.

However, if all answers are strictly encyclopedic, then I daresay most answers will be dry and boring. So, readership would diminish. As would 'staff membership'. Then all it takes is one eccentric admin to suggest removal of the RD, and no one would care enough to argue.

As in all things, it's a balancing act. Vranak

Just so. And part of the balance will be for both sides of many of these tussles to back down from some of their extreme, overly-polarized positions and agree in good faith on some reasonable compromises.

The people who have gotten tired of the chat and the OR and the speculation say they want to disallow anything that isn't strictly factual and referenceable. But Vranak's right, if such a policy were enacted and (somehow!) followed, we'd have an utterly sterile and uninteresting Reference Desk.

The people who have gotten their backs up about any attempt to disallow anything sometimes make it sound like they want to retain a supposed right to post just about everything. But that's an extreme position, too; the chatter and the humor for its own sake can get out of hand, so some reasonable guidelines on what we consider reasonable are... just that, reasonable.

I don't think we need strict rules and bans on things; we just need some guidelines and some good-faith attempts to follow them, coupled with promises to respond graciously to polite, good-faith reminders in case things start getting out of hand again in the future.

—Steve Summit (talk) 00:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Very well said. I agree, and I think that my previous approach to the desk was, at times, needlessly polarizing and divisive. At this point, what we need is general agreement about what we're here to do and good-faith efforts to follow those ideas. -- SCZenz 00:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Split "Rules for deletion"

Realised that we should split these as it is responses by RD "staff" that are deserving of full user talk page process, not inappropriate questions. Questions would only go to the RD talk page if there is a dispute about inclusion in which case it stays in until settled. --Justanother 04:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

• It's way too complex, anyway. I've done some work simplifying it. No need for bureaucratic procedures. (Radiant) 10:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Latest Draft

I've got a problem with the latest draft of this page... the line "Something like half of people in the United States still go online using a dial-up modem. This fraction is lower in Western Europe and Canada, and higher in many other places." is completely unsourced. This is Wikipedia, we have to cite sources for everything. And "Something like" is a weasel word too, I think. This is horrible writing for Wikipedia and has no place here! [The preceeding comment is meant to be taken entirely tongue in cheek... I think the current draft is great, and hopefully we can get enough people to agree to it to put all this debating behind us] --Maelwys 13:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Purpose of these guidelines

The guidelines as I write these words are very, very lengthy. The result of much wikilawyering, I guess. I absolutely cannot be bothered to read them... and I'm actually interested. Which leads me to ask what is the purpose of them. Is it to help newbies understand the Ref Desks (in which case, IMHO they currently fail utterly and completely) or is it so that regulars have a stick with which to bash people should they contravene the guidelines (in which case, they're probably succeeding beautifully)? --Dweller 13:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it, the first section ("Summary") is to help newbies understand the Ref Desks (and as such is a very short and easy read), and the second sectioned ("Detailed explanation") is a stick for regulars to bash people over the head. ;-) (or to put it in better terms, it's just a long exposition on the first section, so that we can stop nitpicking over different interpretations of the first section, and to cover the small and rare issues that the newbies don't need to worry about, but the regulars apparently do worry/fight about) --Maelwys 13:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Can I suggest that the contents box (or whatever it's called) is hidden or moved to below the Janet and John bit for newbies, as currently it's the first and only thing one sees on accessing the page. --Dweller 14:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Please be aware that this first section (purpose and detailed explanation etc) is just my rewite of the long prose paragragh that was in the version by Ten (I think). It is possible that there may still be some duplication here. Whether we need duplication in the explanation section , Im not sure. I would prefer a minimisation of duplication personally.--Light current 00:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The first point of the guideline

Is the most important. And here it is:

The primary purpose of the desks is to promote the Wikipedia project.

This strikes me as perhaps a touch zealous and cult-ish. Thoughts? Vranak

If it's not a component of Wikipedia, why are we hosting it here? -- SCZenz 16:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I'm a bit naive, but I think of Wikipedia as being very much existing for the good of humanity, and that simply building up WP into an unstoppable juggernaut of knowledge and power for the sake of building WP into an unstoppable juggernaut of knowledge of power is well -- not the idea. Vranak 16:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know that "promote" is the best word. But, yes, obviously the RD is part of Wikipedia and thus must support Wikipedia's goals. A number of editors have already identified specific ways that the ref desk can improve the project. I can't see how the ref desk is any more "zealous" or "cultish" than the rest of the project. Friday (talk) 16:34, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well -- I view Wikipedia and the Ref Desk as existing for the same goals: to better humanity through easy access to useful (or interesting, or enlightening, or thought-provoking, or sublime) knowledge. One you search on, one you ask questions on -- the goal is the same though: wisdom through knowledge. Just my 2 cents though. Vranak 16:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Fortunately, we don't have to guess. Wikipedia has one core goal: to produce a high quality, free content encyclopedia. So, many categories of "sublime knowledge" are specifically not what we're aiming at here. The wisest guru in the universe could write an essay that would save the world, and Wikipedia would not be the place to publish it. Since we're an encyclopedia, we use only what's verifiable by reputable sources. Friday (talk) 16:47, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that the 'guru' assertion is patently false. Everyone has to come by their own wisdom, by piling experience upon experience, bit by bit. Vranak 17:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about, or what it has to do with Wikipedia. Friday (talk) 22:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Just saying that

The wisest guru in the universe could write an essay that would save the world, and Wikipedia would not be the place to publish it.

is a red herring. Vranak 23:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well said, Vranak. We're here to answer questions as best as we can. If that also helps Wikipedia, all the better. If not, that's OK, too. StuRat 17:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

And when the manner in which questions are answered harms Wikipedia, what then?EricR 17:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

What is the primary purpose of the desks than? If it has NO purpose, then it shouldnt be here at all!--Light current 23:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, like I said before, I think both WP and the WP ref desk serve the same purpose: wisdom through knowledge. However, you can't get away with putting anything like that into official policy: it would appear mawkish.

Mawkish: excessively or foolishly sentimental.

Vranak 03:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

New first point

Is now

The primary purpose of the desks is to provide improvement of, and access to, the encyclopedia.

How about something like,

To provide information not readily found in, or not neccessarily befitting, the Wikipedian encyclopedia

Though this sort of negativistic definition probably won't sit well, it's probably more accurate to what the RD is used for currently.

At any rate I'd suggest trimming down Desks to Desk; it sounds better. Vranak 03:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a very specific purpose that I think most of us would agree isn't going to be very accurate. We hope that over time, most of the RD questions will be answerable using information in the encyclopedia. Friday (talk) 03:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think most of them are answerable now. Its just that people dont know how to search! 8-(--Light current 04:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

If its not befitting the encyclopedia, we shouldn't be dealing with it , should we?--Light current 04:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, its for lazy people who cant be bothered to use the search facility, or go googlw, like we do! 8-)--Light current 04:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

How about:

Its purpose is to provide guidance in using the encyclopedia and to help improve its quality and keep it updated by reader/user feeback.

OR

Its purpose is also to attempt to make available to readers information that has been omitted from the encyclopedia for some reason.

--Light current 09:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I give up. Say that it's for developing clown skills. Whatevah. :) Vranak 15:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Light current, did you mean to say that the RD is specifically for information not in the encyclopedia? That's a rather novel idea, isn't it? I think we can safely eliminate such a statement from the list of possible first points. Friday (talk) 16:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, what happens when someone asks a question that is quickly and easily found by a 'staff member'? A curt reply, usually: "Did you check our article on blah blah blah?"

On the other hand, there's also plenty of questions that are simply a product of not knowing the correct terms to search for. This is clearly in the domain of the Ref. Desk.

Then, there's questions that need to be answered on-the-fly and from personal experience, because the information required is simply not suited to the Wikipedian encyclopedia. There seems to be contention here as to whether these questions are to be allowed. I think the good ones are -- the imbecilic ones are speedily removed, as well they should be. Vranak 16:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I dont know the purpose of the RDS: Im just offering some choices. One things for sure: If we cant find a purpose, we should scrap the whole thing. What good is anything if it has no purpose?--Light current 17:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

New first four points

I am just going to come out and say it: the first four points don't say much at all. I mean, the spirit of what is being said is quite correct, but the way that it's said leaves me a bit confused... and the word gobbledegook comes to mind.

And yes, after complaining three times, I should really have a go myself. But I consider myself a bit of a Wikipedian radical, so I shouldn't be messing around with official policy. Vranak 16:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

If you're not inclined to edit it, try making suggestions here. I don't really see what you're getting at, but if you gave suggestions for improvement, I might. Friday (talk) 17:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is interesting to see what you get when you distil a load of prose. Those 4 points are what I found in the original prose. 8-)--Light current 17:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that the first four points could be improved. Vranak 17:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

What is it all about (Alfie?). Anyone got any ideas?--Light current 17:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

1. To help locate information on Wikipedia, or failing that, the internet in general
2. To answer general queries — good sense and good taste dictates which queries are acceptable
3. To provide a forum for general discussion that is at least tangentially-related to a query

You might want to scratch point three, but honestly, it is a de-facto feature of the RD. Vranak 18:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It is a de facto feature of the RD, but not a good one, and not one that should be enshrined in policy. There is a grey-area, of things that are not part of the purpose of the ref desk, but which don't really warrant specific prohibition either... I'd rather see "tangentially-related" discussion left there, and hope that it's at least educational. -- SCZenz 20:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed! Vranak

Yep, sometimes the tangentially-related discussion is pretty interesting, to tell the truth. It's just when things descend into jokes – mostly of the in- or mean-spirited varieties – that we would want to crimp things. I don't know...maybe it's the wine I've been drinking, but sometimes I just wish we could make all of our policy pages a redirect to WP:DICK and accept that that would be sufficient. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Please dont be a WP:DICK you mean? --Light current 01:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Dealing with inappropriate questions and responses

Someone emasculated this section since yesterday (specifically, since this revision). I don't have time to fix or discuss it and won't for several days, but I wanted to register my disapproval. In particular, saying "Inappropriate questions and responses on the desk should be removed through the normal wiki editing process" is not adequate. It was an assmption that the "normal wiki editing process" could be used, without further interpretation, to address content disputes on the Reference Desk that caused all the infighting that led to the attempt to craft these guidelines to clarify things. But this guideline's current wording doesn't clarify anything. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• The current version is much better than the bureaucratically byzantine process that was suggested earlier. (Radiant) 13:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Radiant, IMNSHO, the current version is useless. (What "bureaucratically byzantine process" are you referring to?) —Steve Summit (talk) 15:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The multi-step process that involved the user talk page, lengthy discussion on the refdesk talk page, and waiting until the inserter breaks 3RR. That's too complex, you can't expect people to do all that. (Radiant) 15:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
• I thought my change was giving the guideline some balls rather than cutting 'em off. Anyways, it was meant as a starting point and not the final word on the matter (did you see the intermediate versions?). I don't think it's an assumption that the normal wiki-process applies to the desk—instead it goes against a great weight of policy and convention to say that it does not. This guideline can describe what is or is not appropriate for the desk, it can suggest some ways to make the process run more smoothly, but it cannot forbid edits made to improve the encyclopedia.EricR 14:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I didn't say the normal wiki editing process couldn't be used. But if the previous several weeks of heated debate here and on various other talk pages proves anything, it is that there is no good consensus on how that process actually applies to the Reference Desk, in practice. This guideline must provide some useful interpretation of the default process in the particular context of the Reference Desk. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • It must? Why should the reference desk be the only page with a special interpretation of the wiki process? (I admit, the talk pages have a slightly different set of guidelines than article and project pages, but it's not anywhere near as detailed and draconian.) -- SCZenz 16:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
      • • Why not? The rules for article space are significantly (not just "slightly") different from project space. The rules and interpretations for talk pages are (as you say) different, too. Why shouldn't the Reference Desk (which is clearly a different sort of beast) have some unique interpretations, if not a few new rules? —Steve Summit (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Agree with SCZenz that we don't run around making "special case" rules unless we have very good reason to. Steve, you're right that the conflict in recent weeks should tell us something. However, I think maybe it tells us something other than that we need a set of specific reference desk rules. The disagreement stemmed in large part I think, from some editors either being unfamilar with, or outright rejecting, several "standard" Wikipedia ideas and ways of doing things. As the discussions have shown, attempts to interpret the reference desk in the light of existing practices and guidelines have been rejected by a few very vocal objectors. Friday (talk) 16:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
        • I am not talking about any new or special-case rules. I agree that Reference Desk participants need guidelines on how to appropriately apply Wikipedia's (multiple!) editing and dispute-resolution procedures to the Reference Desk. What better place to supply that instruction than this guidelines page? —Steve Summit (talk) 16:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
          • The guidelines as they stand are a reasonable attempt at that, I think. I think where we've seen resistance is where people want to make a list of specific things that aren't allowed. I find that such rules help the troublemakers and offer no benefit. As long as we're explaining how Wikipedia standards apply to the reference desk, I'm with you. It's when we depart into trying to explain why Wikipedia standards don't apply to the reference desk that I think we've gone off track. Friday (talk) 16:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Saying "Inappropriate questions and responses on the desk should be removed through the normal wiki editing process" is not a reasonable attempt, for two reasons. For one thing, deletion is only one of several possibile actions which could be taken when confronted with inappropriate content in Wikipedia. For another thing, saying "through the normal wiki editing process" says nothing. If all we do on the Reference Desk is follow the normal wiki editing process, we don't need RD-specific guidelines at all.

You speak of "helping the troublemakers and offering no benefit", but please remember that summary deletion of Reference Desk content has been viewed as equally troublemaking. It is not sufficient to cite the "normal wiki editing process" as the sole justfication for deleting allegedly-inappropriate Reference Desk Content. The "normal wiki editing process" does not say, "if you find anything anywhere on Wikipedia which you personally find inappropriate, you may and must immediately delete it". Immediate deletion is but one of a plethora of wikiprocess-sanctioned responses. We need to come to some consensus on, and document, the way we use those processes on the Reference Desk, otherwise all of this discussion and attempted guideline-writing will have been for nought. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Alright. I changed "removed" to "dealt with". Whether this helps much, I don't know. Here's the rub, as I see it- standards for this will emerge through practice. We don't make them up ahead of time. When we see a repeated pattern, we write it down and it comes a guideline. I don't think there's much chance we can agree on anything more specific than "dealt with through normal wiki process" at this time. Those who think they can, are of course free to try. Friday (talk) 17:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Your point is well taken, but: it's not as if we invented the Reference Desk yesterday. Various people believe they have a good notion of how it does or should work (including dealing with inappropriate conduct), and these notions are indeed based on long, actual practice.

Now, it's true, not all of those notions have the same level of consensus around them, so there are plenty of things still to be worked out going forward. And here's another rub: I think it has been shown (based on actual, practical experiments by SCZenz, you, and Hipocrite) that systematic deletion of "inappropriate" content doesn't work very well.

(That's all from me on this for a while; there are some other things I have got to be doing.) —Steve Summit (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I will not be a party to making policy that's based on the persistent refusal of specific users to accept the wiki process. It is non-negotiable, even if I were willing to negotiate it. -- SCZenz 18:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think there are two responses possible for inappropriate comments, and it is a matter of judgement which to use when:

1. wildly inappropriate comments should be deleted, and a (polite) note left on the commenter's talk page
2. less than wildly inappropriate comments should be (politely) questioned on the commenter's talk page

Any disagreement about a specific comment should be resolved on the commenter's talk page, and if either party is unsatisfied with the resolution the issue should be brought to the RD talk page. If someone deletes a comment of yours and you disagree, don't re-add it without discussing it first. If someone asks you about a comment you made, think about modifying or deleting it. I would call this the "wiki" way. BE BOLD, but not reckless. I suggested a while ago we replace inappropriate comments with a template indicating a comment was deleted, but haven't gotten around to creating it yet. If folks are polite to each other, I don't see a particular need for such a template but if the notion of someone using their judgement to delete comments (and notifying the commenter) is simply abhorrent to the folks who frequent this page I'd be happy to create such a template. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

This sounds good. The guidelines are mostly just good for a laugh, but I think the point of it all is to decide what is done when they (or the spirit of them) is flagrantly violated. And the suggestions above basically cover it. →Vranak←

Length of guidelines

I am aware that they are too long. At the moment I am still trying to itemise and clarfiy all the points that were inclued in Tens version. Once we have completed clarifiction, it will be easy to see redundancies and eliminate them, but I dont want to start chopping things out just yet in case I throw out the baby.

I suspect the last section is where some major savings can be made, but I have not really started to clarify that bit yet! Bear with me, and of course please leave any comments on my edits here. 8-)--Light current 14:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Am I the only one?

Am I the only one? The only one that thinks that this entire process is pretty much about whether or not the below exchange (from here) is appropriate?

I think it's simply a matter of choosing the most healthy option available. As Doritos are non-perishable, cheap as borscht, and available everywhere, it's a reasonable choice, despite the fact that they are not as healthful as say, fresh sushi. Vranak 02:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Is borscht cheap ? I've never checked out the price (because the thought of it just leaves me cold). StuRat 12:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Is borscht cheap? Heck, its price can't be beet! Atlant 13:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you red too much into my reply. :-) StuRat 01:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I am overstating the case a bit. But again, I do not think that any policy re the desks can move forward until this issue is handled for once and for all, at least among ourselves. Above you see a harmless bit of banter. It does not insult women, gays, or Scientologists. It started with an on-topic reply, then continued with off-topic free-association and "harmless" plays on words and puns.

Stu, if you want to make any lists I think you would safe to put that threadlette on your page and classify us as thinking it appropriate (or OK), inappropriate, or undecided/neutral.

Personally, I have to come down on weak inappropriate. Not because I dislike banter. I LOVE banter. But so does just about everyone else here. The regulars. The lurkers. The n00bs. The saints. The dicks. We are all witty SOBs (and DOBs). So unless we want to open up every single question to multiple off-topic free-association and "harmless" plays on words and puns; if we do not want that (and I, for one, certainly don't) then we must deny it to all. That is only fair isn't it? That thread did not continue because, for one reason, lots of people here do not think adding to such is appropriate and we refrain from doing so.

Stu, what we really need is a "chat channel", or a back room, or some mechanism to have a sidebar chat while the question answering continues in the foreground. I don't think we are going to get that (laff). The next best thing we already have - our talk page. Here is my idea. If you want a side bar discussion then put a link in the main question like this

I think it's simply a matter of choosing the most healthy option available. As Doritos are non-perishable, cheap as borscht, and available everywhere, it's a reasonable choice, despite the fact that they are not as healthful as say, fresh sushi. Vranak 02:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Sidebar at User_talk:Justanother#Chips --Justanother 02:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

So, can I get agreement that there is a better way to handle our desire to have friends and make jokes than 1) inserting them willy-nilly in the answer stream, or 2) deleting them on sight? Can I get agreement that we need to fix this issue first? Because many of the people most invested in this process are also those most invested in their opinion on this question. I think I have a good compromise here. What do you think? Group hug!! --Justanother 02:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

My take on this is that simply being unhelpful and off-topic puts an edit somewhere in that "uncertain" range. Call it 50%. There's no particular reason to keep it or remove it. If the comment could also plausibly cause harm, this tilts the scales by some amount, depending on circumstances. This is where we use individual judgment. If people joke around elsewhere, I'll think they're silly but I really won't care. When people joke around on the reference desk, I'll want to keep a close eye on it to be sure it's a "sensible sense of humor". The reference desk needs to be an accessible, newbie-friendly place. Notice the amount of irrelevant chattiness that goes un-commented on. When someone goes to the trouble to remove something, it's usually been because there was a plausible case for it being harmful. Friday (talk) 02:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

On the one hand, Justanother is right, this is pretty much the fundamental issue, and the borscht exchange is a very nice example. But on the other hand, I don't think we can decide these cases once and for all in isolation, and I think it sets up a false dichotomy to even try.

We are never going to have a guideline that says "no humor is allowed" or "all humor is allowed". It is always going to be something like "some humor is allowed, in moderation". But what does "in moderation" mean? It depends. For one thing, it depends on how many painful puns had already been posted on the Reference Desk that day in other threads... —Steve Summit (talk) 03:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It also depends on whether any jokes are potentially offensive. I wouldn't have worried much about the exchange above. So I don't think the fundamental issue is quite what you describe. -- SCZenz 05:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The standard we decided on quite some time ago was that jokes and banter are OK, so long as they don't interfere with getting the correct answer. Thus, any jokes or banter inserted after a good answer is given, can't possibly interfere. Those inserted before, could, however, if the discussion moves on to a new topic, leaving the original question unanswered, with readers assuming it was answered, due to the length and number of "replies". I suggested adding a template like this when this happens:

Humor and side discussions are fine, but this question also deserves a serious answer, does anybody have one ?

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

StuRat 15:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

a vision

I think the fundamental issue we need to resolve is actually just how to reach a good-faith consensus. I hate polarizing the issue with boxes like this, but if for notational convenience we speak of the "banterers" and the "critics", we need to find a way for the banterers to say, "we agree that the banter can get out of hand, and we're going to try -- really try -- to keep it to an acceptable minimum", and have the critics believe it. We need to find a way for the critics to say, "we're not trying to take over the reference desk or put straitjackets on everyone or delete everything we don't like, we're just concerned about off-topic content which doesn't help the project, and may hurt", and have the banterers believe it. We need to make sure that the banterers won't take criticism of a borderline joke, or the occasional deletion of the occasional truly objectionable off-topic comment, as a personal attack or a call to arms. We need to make sure that the critics are seeing the big picture, are not out to "fix" every borderline case that happens to catch their eye. Most importantly, I think we need to have both sides (a) come to a pretty solid, shared, good-faith understanding (based on whatever guidelines we can come up with here) of what is and isn't appropriate, and (b) agree that polite critiques of borderline cases will be listened to and acted on, such that those polite critiques will be effective in affecting future Reference Desk content, such that polite critiques can be used instead of outright deletion. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC) [edited 05:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)]

May I just say that the term "deletionists" here is was rather bothersome, although I don't think you meant any offense. "Deletionist" refers to m:Deletionism, which is a position regarding quality and notability standards of articles; thus it doesn't really describe anyone's position in this debate. It also implies that people who are interested in maintaining the standards of the ref desk are focused on removing content—which isn't true as far as I'm aware. Rather, we're focused on maintaining content of good quality. Can you please use a different term, or even better, refrain from labelling people at all? -- SCZenz 05:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. (For those just joining us, my "vision" above originally spoke of "banterers" and "deletionists", where it now speaks of banterers and critics.)

I don't like labeling people, either. As I said, I used the terms for notational convenience only, to avoid having to repeat cumbersome locutions like "the people who have been defending any and all questionably-topical material" and "the people who are concerned about the tone and the image of the Reference Desks". —Steve Summit (talk) 05:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

As for your proposal, I would love to have people listen to and act on polite critiques of their comments, and it would certainly remove any need to take them off the desk myself. However... I think the basic disagreement is more fundamental than you think. Some users seem simply to not see a problem with off-topic, offensive comments. I've received multiple comments on how the sperm joke from yesterday/today wasn't really potentially offensive at all (although notably not from the original poster), and the situation does not give me hope. -- SCZenz 05:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

So, not getting a note from the OP saying they didn't find a comment offensive means that you automatically assume that they did find it offensive, and so you remove it ? That's quite a logic process you've got going there. Also note that many of us use the standard of something being "actually" offensive, not merely "potentially" offensive, as that would require the deletion of any discussion of sex, politics, or religion. StuRat 15:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

What are you hoping for? That all off-color jokes will disappear yesterday? That everyone who makes one will, when confronted, immediately fall all over themselves apologizing, and delete it? Or just that we'll see fewer of them in future?

In the present climate, of course people are going to be defensive and claim that something wasn't as bad as a critic though it was. But that's not so bad, if it lets them save face, and if they're also quietly thinking to themselves, "but you know, he's probably right, that was kinda borderline, maybe I/we/they don't need to make that joke next time." —Steve Summit (talk) 14:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

That is a good point; sometimes letting people save face helps make progress. But I worry that there is a divergence in values here, particularly regarding "Free Speech" on Wikipedia, that will continue to raise its head indefinitely. -- SCZenz 19:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think factionalizing the issue isn't helpful. There's a wide gray area in what people think and do. (Radiant) 12:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks, but I wasn't trying to factionalize. (It would have been factionalizing if I'd asserted that everyone was either a "banterer" or a "critic".) —Steve Summit (talk) 14:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The sperm joke had to do with the common (and wrong, like most) stereotype that women seek excuses to fend off their mate's amorous advances. Many people find stereotyping offensive, even if only on principle. It is a pretty good bet that any quip that plays off a stereotype will be considered inappropriate by some editor even if they, apparently, hold a more lenient view on "harmless" banter than I thought they did. So the more general rule seems to be "while a bit of banter is allowable, but not encouraged, any off-topic comment that might be offensive to the original poster or to a particular gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., e.g. jokes based on stereotypes, may be deleted if egregious or moved to the poster's talk page if not. Responses that fall under the above categories of potential offense must be in direct response to the question asked and must be sourced and not presented as the poster's opinion. Such sourced views are not to be presented for debate but so that the asker can see the various positions and come to his own conclusion." Is that closer? --Justanother 15:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't be offended by many stereotypical jokes aimed at me, like that men refuse to ask for directions. StuRat 15:09, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Saying things like "I wouldn't be offended by..." perhaps isn't the best test to be using. I imagine that most people who post off-colour or stereotypical jokes aren't offended by their own remarks, and can usually convince themselves that they're not offensive to a general population. I don't think that people are trying to be mean or offensive; I just think that they sometimes show poor judgement.

A better test might be, "Is this a joke I would walk up to a random stranger and deliver?" or perhaps, "Is this a joke I would walk up to a random stranger who is a member of the stereotyped group and deliver?" or even – and I think this is the formulation that is most on point – "Is this a joke I would expect to hear from a real-life Reference Desk staffer or librarian thirty seconds after I walked up to the desk?" People who know the commenter well and who are familiar with the highly collegial aspects of some Wikipedia work are more likely to accept and appreciate some off-colour humour. People who just 'walked in the door', as it were, don't have anything to go on besides the fact that someone just made a weak joke based on a weak stereotype. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

One sexist joke aimed at men is:

Grow your own dope: Plant a man!

Now I find the wordplay in this one very good. I have italicised the double entendre words for those from different countries. Im not offended by it at all. I (think) I know what women see as the male stereotype. Its not a problem to me.--Light current 16:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

LC, is that a joke you saw in the RD or just a funny you wanted to relate here so's we can all stop what we are doing and enjoy a good laugh together? --Justanother 16:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

No its one of mine posted to illustrate a point without making a WP:POINT. Do you like it?--Light current 16:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The point being that there is such a thing as a male stereotype joke and that you are not offended by it? OK. I think most men are not offended by some male stereotype jokes. I think that some woman might be offended by your strong inference that they hold stereotypes of men. Do I like it? Sure, why not. Let me give you one I made up; probably equally as offensive/non-offensive:

If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman within one hundred miles to hear it.

Long pause

Is he still wrong?

I wikified the joke just in case anyone missed it. --Justanother 17:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Logical fallacy: all women have super sensitive hearing (except those who are deaf)--Light current 19:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Google

I don't quite agree with this:

Is "just Google it" a good response ? No, you should do the search yourself, verify that it provides useful results, and provide a link to those search results, instead.

While I agree with the principle, I don't agree with the suggestion. Usually, when something is particularly easy to find, I don't provide a direct link to Google. I only offer a or several search term I used, which found the results. I do this because I feel when IMHO people are either being lazy or would gain something from learning that it's easier doing things themselves, it's better to provide an extra barrier so that they are more likely to read what's been said, and find out it's easier to do it themselves rather then waiting for people to provide them links so they can just happily click and get what they want. I know everyone is not going to agree but IMHO, there's nothing wrong with making it harder then it would be if they searched themselves.

To a greater extreme and this is going to be controversial, I have once or twice not provided any search terms. Instead, I just mentioned I searched and found the result (with perhaps some commentry of how easy it was). I only do this when the contributor claims to have spent a while searching, but the search term is so simple and obvious that the contributor is either lying or really, really doesn't know how to search. An example would be if the contributor asks, what's ABC and I search ABC and the result is the first or second result. (Actually I can only remember one specific example and in this case, the person claimed to be a college student as well so I felt there was no reason why they would have such greater difficulty searching and it was a homework question.). Some people would suggest it's better to ignore such people, IMHO it's better to basically tell them we read what you have to say, but we're not going to help you when you apparently can't be bothered helping yourself. Obviously this should be done with care keeping a decent level of civility but IMHO it's otherwise ok

Nil Einne 12:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

An answer that says "You could have found this yourself, here's how" is good as long as it's polite. The bit you quoted about just googling is it in the old, "rules"y part of the guideline. The newer part addresses the google issue somewhat better, I think. Friday (talk) 16:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I wrote the original guideline above. Now, I think that your idea of giving them search terms is good, with one possible problem: Different people apparently get different search results when using the same search criteria in Google. We weren't able to determine why this is true, but have verified that it is. Thus, saying "search for 'idiot Bush' and click on the second result", may give different sites for you and others. This is why I suggest linking to the search results list. Although, maybe this varies, as well; here is my search results for that search: [1]. I found 2,050,000 matches when not using any restrictions on language, filtering, etc. Does everyone else find the same number of results when doing the search on "idiot Bush" (no quotation marks) or when picking on my link ? Are your results presented in the same order as mine ? I've noticed that one's preference settings are applied to the search, even when picking a link, so maybe we still have a problem, even that way. It looks like we may have to give the actual site, if we can't rely on Google to always give the same list of sites. StuRat 14:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

What about Google Books, is there any way to link to a specific page with a URL which works for everyone?EricR 19:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If it's really easy, what I do is give them the result link and drily comment "it was the first result for x on google" --froth^{T C} 19:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

"We need guidelines"

I keep hearing that "we need guidelines" to tell us specifically what's OK or not, because there's been such disagreement. Well, if we're miles apart on specific, actual cases, how the hell are we going to generalize this to a guideline that we agree on? I don't see how it can work, except by leaving the guideline vague. We already have the "have a sensible sense of humor" part of the guideline, which is good as far as it goes, in my opinion. So, I have a suggestion: for those that say it's not specific enough, I invite you to read that part of the guideline and think about it. And, whenever you're tempted to post a joke, read it and think about it again. I'm sure we're all reasonably smart people, and I'm confident that with only a little bit of effort, a reasonable adult can indeed display a "sensible sense of humor", if only they just try. Friday (talk) 15:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

If I'm reading the comments by SCZenz and TenOfAllTrades at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#an idea correctly, we're not "miles apart". If "the desk is mostly on-topic, unquestionably", and "by far the bulk of responses are polite, helpful, and useful", it seems to me we're probably all in good agreement on most of the issues already. (This is not to say that there are no other issues, but perhaps they're not so crucial as the volume of discussion about them would suggest.) —Steve Summit (talk) 17:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Right, I agree with you there- I meant "miles apart" with respect to a few disagreements about removals. If one editor removes something, and another disagrees so strongly as to put it back, I call this "miles apart". But, as you said, maybe the appearance of disagreement is greater than the actual disagreement. Friday (talk) 18:02, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, some users believe that the very small number of inappropriate comments have a potentially large effect on reference desk usefulness, while others believe that any removal of comments (except death threats and similar) without the permission of the author requires an extended period of consensus-building and that any removal short of this effort is offensive. There's a lot at stake for everyone in what are done with the small number of comments, and we are indeed "miles apart" on how to handle them. -- SCZenz 03:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

UNfortunately there is little or no evidence for your view. You could be right, but you could also be wrong. If we had some evidence that even one or two words in the wrong place could cause people to stay away in droves, I might have some sympathy with your view.(But we dont - do we?)--Light current 04:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I urge you to review the discussion linked above by Steve Summit. It's a misunderstanding of my argument to state that people believe offensive remarks will drive readers away in 'droves'. The question is one of whether an unfettered ability to post risque remarks (that don't answer any questions) is more or less harmful than offending (and possibly losing) at least some of our readers. I personally find it very easy to decide which side of that balance we should come down on, but different strokes for different folks, I guess. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Mathifying others' questions

A lot of people come to the Maths RD to ask for help, but they're not familiar with the TeX formula system we use so they put their maths into normal HTML. This is, however, horribly difficult to read. Are we allowed to edit the posts of others to convert complicated formulas to TeX so everyone can read them easier? Maelin (Talk | Contribs) 03:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

A major reason that editing question-askers' comments is of concern, in general, is that it may give other answerers the wrong idea about how much the user knows. For example, wikilinking words in the question may lead others to believe the user has already read the relevant article. I don't see offhand any equally severe problems with reformatting math, but I'd personally feel better about leaving the comments as they are; it would probably be better to repeat the formula beneath their question. -- SCZenz 03:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll register a 'me too' to SCZenz's remark. We don't want to run the risk of inadvertently replacing an ugly but correct formula with a pretty formula containing a small typo. By putting the pretty formula right below the original HTML, it allows other readers to verify the copy is accurate. It also saves the original poster from a bunch of undeserved responses along the lines of 'well, of course you're not getting the right answer; there's an error in your formula'. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:24, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, don't change the original, just add a new, prettified version, below. StuRat 14:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Experimental template for marking a deleted comment

I really hope no one freaks out about this, but I've created a template that could be used when deleting an inappropriate comment. The idea is that a deletion would be indicated in the visible page, rather than a comment just vanishing. I'll add a comment below and delete it, just so folks can see the effect. The template is template:delcomment (usage indicated there) but I recommend no one use it before there's some discussion about it. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Example comment deleted. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes I like it.--Light current 04:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks good, but it should say something about why it was deleted, shouldn't it ? StuRat 14:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There's an optional argument for the reason, so that

{{subst:delcomment|url=HTMLdifflink|Personal attack}}

expands to

Personal attack comment deleted. -- TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I would expect that someone using this template might also notify the original poster of the comment; in some cases it might be better to expand on the reason semi-privately rather than start an argument on the Ref Desk. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree this is important. Part of this whole process should be a learning/mentoring experience too. David D. (Talk) 17:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I've now made the URL optional (I think, but it may not be working quite right yet) - it defaults to the diff of the edit that is removing the comment. The "reason" parameter defaults to "Inappropriate", so

{{subst:delcomment}}

expands to

Inappropriate comment deleted. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

(the link immediately above will be to the edit adding this comment).

I'm not exactly sure what Light Current's and StuRat's comments above mean. To clarify, I'm guessing the comments mean "sure, use this in cases where comments are being deleted but we still categorically oppose any unilateral deletion of comments except in the most extreme circumstances" as opposed to "use of this increases the transparency of deleting comments sufficiently to address our concerns about comment deletion". Per TenOfAllTrades's comment, any use of this template definitely should be accompanied by a notice on the poster's talk page. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the template idea. It shows everyone what has been removed and why. The template should hopefully rarely be used.--Light current 19:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Use this template in cases where comments are being deleted but I still categorically oppose any unilateral deletion of comments except in the most extreme circumstances. But use of this template should decrease the transparency of deleting comments enough to make it a non-problem. --froth^{T C} 19:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, the revision id getting put in as default is very slick, good job --froth^{T C} 19:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Defaulting the revision id does not work, and as far as I can tell cannot be made to work (sorry, see bugzilla:6181). And I assume you mean increase (not decrease) the transparency. I'd like to see more comments on how much using this template might help the current troubles regarding deleting comments. For example, if the most recent contentious removal (which I think is the sperm one) had been done with this template rather than simply deleting the comment would folks still object as strenuously? I'm not looking to provoke anyone, just trying to see if replacing comments with a marker rather than outright deleting them might be more acceptable. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I like this template. Perhaps, if 1) everyone avoids deleting comments except when they're of great concern and (when necessary) uses this template for greater transparency, and 2) everyone does their best to keep posts mostly on-topic and avoids being offensive to no purpose, and 3) we all avoid making a big issue about occasional disagreements... then we have a solution that avoids edit wars and removes the need for giant arguments about the philosophy of the wiki. -- SCZenz 22:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm that seems to make great senz SCZ. Have you been drinking? 8-) If so, keep it up!--Light current 22:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Rick, I think I'm being a bit dense here. Do we have to put the URL or diff in manually of does it do it automatically? If the latter i can't get it to work any suggestions? David D. (Talk) 22:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You have to put the URL in manually, with a parameter of the form "url=...". It turns out there is simply no way to automatically generate a diff link for the current diff (which seems kind of a shame). Minimum usage is

{{subst:delcomment|url=http://...}}

which defaults the reason to "Inappropriate". -- Rick Block (talk) 00:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

To clarify my position: I like the template, but this in no way justifies unilateral deletions. With the exception of extremely disruptive posts (which prevent Wikipedia from functioning), all deletions must be based on consensus. Also, the author must be notified of every deletion, including extremely disruptive posts. StuRat 17:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed text

What do you'all think of the below for inclusion in our draft?

While some degree of off-topic banter is permissable, but not encouraged, in the responses to a question on the Reference Desk, any off-topic comment that might be offensive to the original poster or to a particular gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., e.g. jokes based on stereotypes, may be deleted if egregious or moved to the poster's talk page if not. Legitimate on-topic responses that fall under the above categories of potential offense must be in direct response to the question asked and must be sourced and not presented as the poster's opinion. Such sourced views are not to be presented for debate but so that the asker can see the various positions and come to his own conclusion.

I continue to try to fine-tune and find middle ground to what I consider the core debate. --Justanother 17:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Needs simplifying .I cant understand it! 8-|--Light current 00:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Bit good joke good; joke stay. Bit bad joke bad; joke go. --Justanother 01:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This looks good to me. -- SCZenz 06:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Nominate "TenOfAllTrades" for draft co-ordinator WITHDRAWN

I hereby nominate "TenOfAllTrades" for draft co-ordinator. He would be responsible for making all changes to the draft based on the consensus(es?) that we reach here. I do this for a number of reasons:

1) It is disruptive to engage in edit-warring on the draft. We will never finish it that way.

2) Ten came up with the text that we are using as our rallying point.

3) StuRat was previously our draft co-ordinator but he seems to be involved in various disputes and, with due respect, seems to have a POV that there is a battle going on, and that POV is not conducive to developing consensus. I believe that Ten is a neutral party (or neutral enough) and sufficiently interested.

This is, of course, contingent on Ten's acceptance. If he accepts, he should probably work out the mechanics. --Justanother 18:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean the Draft version that I have been trying to translate into simple unequivocal English for the last few days single handed? 8-(--Light current 18:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Unwiki. Editing is allowed by all. Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

:If you are replying to me, please indent properly. The above is not a reply to my question.--Light current 19:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If we respect his ideas (as I do, for one) this will be apparent as we edit. No need for nominating someone for some made-up position. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Friday (talk) 18:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If it was back on his user page then he could have this position with little dispute. I should have left it there. --Justanother 18:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with friday. And Just, there should be no such position, here or at his user page --froth^{T C} 19:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well since WP:WINC I do not think my apparently subversive idea should not have been mentioned but I can easily see which way the wind blows so I withdraw it. --Justanother 20:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

V>Wise Justa! 8-))--Light current 22:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's your loss, LC, cause I was gonna nominate you for "Jokemaster of the Reference Desks" next. So now you will have to continue to content yourself with "Spacemaster". --Justanother 01:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

V kind. But Im sure I dont deserve it (blush) 8-)--Light current 01:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Archives

Here's a perminant link to what were entitled the "archives" [2]. Please don't clutter up the guidelines with bits that have a 0% chance of ever being guidelines. Thanks! Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that those archives don't really add anything to the guideline. Friday (talk) 18:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I added it to the talk page boilerplate --froth^{T C} 19:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. They were put there for a reason, they should not be hidden away. StuRat 16:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• They aren't hidden away, they're easily accessible where anyone can read them. Generally, we don't store old versions of a proposal on the proposal itself; that's what the page history tab is for. >Radiant< 17:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I notice StuRat is repeatedly re-inserting the archives. But, I see that nobody has given a reason here why they're helpful. What's the deal? Friday (talk) 16:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The entire justification for removing the /rules page was that it's contents would be moved here. If there is a broad consensus (not just among the few deletionists who hang out here) to remove them, then I will agree. StuRat 18:04, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The point of merging those "archives" into the proposal page was that they were drafted by StuRat and others out of agreed-upon points. Ten created his draft on his talk page and I believe that he drew from those agreed-upon points. The reason I mashed the archives on the proposal page was so that people could easily see if Ten's proposal adequately covered those points. I figured that once those points were fully integrated into the working draft that the archives would go away. Stu, what you might want to do now, is delete the parts of the archived /rules, etc. that are well integrated into the draft or no longer applicable and move any disputed bits to the talk page here. --Justanother 06:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Edit wars

The following sentence was added to the "don't edit war" caution in the "Dealing with inappropriate questions and responses" section:

Deleting a post, without the consent of the author and without consensus to do so, is how edit wars are started.

Not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but this could just as easily say:

Posting inappropriate content and refusing to change or delete it when politely asked, is how edit wars are started.

I'd suggest we simply don't take sides here and either leave it the way it was, or say something a little more neutral like:

Always assume good faith and bring any disagreements to the talk page rather than revert any changes (even once).

By "one revert" I mean don't re-add (without discussion) anything anyone deletes and don't re-delete (without discussion) anything anyone re-adds. I'll admit this rule superficially favors deletes over adds, but I'm assuming everyone understands deletes are never to be done without a good reason. IMO, if you add something that anyone feels strongly enough about to delete and you disagree, a discussion needs to happen. I notice there's nothing in this section about using template:delcomment. Do we want to suggest using this template here as well? -- Rick Block (talk) 23:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Does no comment mean agree or disagree? If no one comments in a few days, I'll assume agree and change it how I'd like. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• I don't think we need to explain here how edit wars are started. Indeed, if enumerating those ways tends to encourage gaming the system. We all know what an edit war is, we all know we shouldn't be doing that. >Radiant< 16:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the idea that anyone can delete anything unilaterally "if they think it's a good idea", but that restoring the material requires a consensus. The deletion is the first revert of the original material, and it therefore needs a consensus. Restoring the deleted material is merely undoing the damage of the non-consensus deletion. One can assume that the original poster wouldn't have posted their contribution with the idea that it would be deleted. Therefore, there is one person in favor of keeping it and one against, hardly a consensus that justifies deletion. StuRat 16:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• I did not say that anyone could delete anything unilaterally. I said that there are a wide variety of ways in which edit wars get started, and focusing on only one of them isn't particularly useful. >Radiant< 17:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• It is important, as non-consensus deletions are how most edit wars seem to start. StuRat 16:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• • It takes two sides to edit war. You can't blame an edit war on only one of them. >Radiant< 16:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• It only takes one side to start an edit war. StuRat 18:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • That is a fundamental misunderstanding. It takes two sides to edit war, and both are to blame. Any kind of language that allows one side to avoid the blame is therefore inappropriate. >Radiant< 09:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we can get by with a small, generic statement. People can argue about what constitutes an edit war elsewhere. If people want to push their own POV about edit wars, they should probably do this in a user space essay, rather than here. Friday (talk) 16:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability

StuRat and I got into a discussion of how comments whose correctness is challanged should be handled. I argue that if a question-answerer cannot provide a source for something they said upon request, they should either fix their comment or withdraw it. He argues that, to the contrary, the onus is on others to claim a statement is false.

Well, I double-checked what we do for articles, and Wikipedia:Verifiability says that (for articles) the onus is on someone adding information to source it—ideally when added, but in any case upon request. Is there any reason, given that we aspire to provide answers that are as accurate as the encyclopedia's articles, that Wikipedia:Verifiability should not apply to the reference desk as well? -- SCZenz 00:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

That standard doesn't apply to talk pages, like the Ref Desk, where all views are presented and respected. We've already decided against requiring refs for all statements. StuRat 16:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I would say it applies to the ref desk about like it applies to talk pages. In other words, yes, we should pay attention to verifiability. Saying "all views are presented" is not very accurate- I could have any number of bizarre, unsupported views, but if I start running around answering questions based on this made-up nonsense, this would be disruptive to the proper functioning of the ref desk. So, while I think there's room for some leniency here, verifiability is a standard we should all respect and keep in mind. Friday (talk) 16:46, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability does not imply everything needs a source immediately. It does mean that people shouldn't be posting wild guesses if they don't know the answer to a question. >Radiant< 16:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

And that if something looks like a wild guess, a reference should be provided for it upon request. -- SCZenz 11:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

And if a source is requested but not provided, what then?EricR 17:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Then the poster should remove or modify it. You could ask, "if they don't, what then?", but I propose we work on that after it's clear we're in agreement on how things work ideally. -- SCZenz 18:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

If you are sure the information is incorrect, then you should be able to provide a source that proves this to be the case. Otherwise, if you delete anything without sources, you can get into petty little wars: "I don't like so-and-so, and to get even with him I will challenge everything he says and make him spend hours looking up everything. And if he doesn't, I get to delete everything he says !". Also note that many responders may be occasional users of Wikipedia, and may very well have been able to provide sources for their statements, but won't be back on for another week to do so. StuRat 01:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The priority here is not making sure we can't "challenge" each other; there's no reason for disagreements to be so personal. In fact, disagreements over content on Wikipedia usually aren't. It's fair on the rest of Wikipedia—and it should be fair on the reference desk—to ask for sources for things that don't look correct. The argument that a source must exist if something is false is simply bogus; I can think of plenty of potential speculation that would be so preposterous that no one would bother writing literature to contradict it. -- SCZenz 08:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure where this idea that the Ref Desk is a "talk page" comes from, but if we're supposed to be providing reliable, intelligent answers to questions, then a sourced reply is essential. However I will concede that linking to a WP article that provides its own sources would suffice, but that may be difficult to police. Anything that approaches an opinion on RefDesk should have something backing it up besides the poster's personal experience. -- nae'blis 18:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Edits by Light current

I just reverted a bunch of edits to the guideline page by Light current. They generally took the form of changing or adding headings, re-ordering things, and consolidating text. I didn't think these changes added very much (if anything, it seemed a bit more confusing), and there was one very large concern: LC removed several nuanced passages and changed them to much shorter passages whose sense fits with how he thinks the ref desk ought to operate. At this stage, I think it's clear that if these guidelines are to work, they need a certain amount of nuance and compromise language... but of course I'm happy to discuss. -- SCZenz 00:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

We DONT need nuances. We need plain language. Thats what im attempting to provide--Light current 00:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Is that why you called a section BS and removed it with no explanation...? Sometimes we need ideas for people to keep in mind, not just hard and fast rules. What you seem to want isn't possible, and you're just rewriting the guidelines in your own image. Try discussing a little more first? -- SCZenz 00:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah its meaningless BS--Light current 00:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a discussion if that's all you're going to say. -- SCZenz 00:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I dont discuss with you any more. Its pointless. I thought I made that plain after your last treachery. 8-(--Light current 00:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I concur, WTF is that supposed to mean o_O Definately BS --froth^{T C} 05:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Since the discussion above has apparently become personal, can I ask other users to look at Lc's edits (he restored all of them)... I think he has removed a significant amount of hard work and good phrasing. -- SCZenz 01:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is not going to be the answer you are looking for, SCZenz, but I have compared the current version with your last revert, and I am struggling to find any substantive differences. LC has moved things around and changed a few words here and there. But the "remember you're an ambassador" section that you gave as an exmaple is still in there - LC has just changed "ambassador" to "representative". Do you have any other examples of content changes that you disagree with ? Or or are your issues with LC's edits more around style rather than content ? Gandalf61 09:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The style changes are frustrating in that I don't think the re-ordering and massive numbers of headings improves the page (quite the opposite), but there are also important content changes. He removed a helpful explanation of the environment of the reference desk, and in this edit he removed the phrase "and will endeavour to remove gratuitously offensive material as quickly as possible" without the edit summary giving any indication of this. -- SCZenz 09:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that you didn't look far enough back in the edit history. Lc has made over 50 edits today. Note also that, contrary to your claim, he did remove the "ambassador" section (and it was later restored by TenOfAllTrades after I made my comment at 01:55). You can see the diff I gave earlier in this section. -- SCZenz 09:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

No, the problem is that you didn't read what I wrote. I didn't step through every diff - I just compared the current version to your last revert, the one you labelled "revert to 19:26 version - please see talk page". And I didn't claim that LC hadn't removed the "ambassador" section - I just said it was back in the current version that I looked at, with slightly different wording. I see no point in participating further in any discussion on this page if you are going to be so hostile and combative and misinterpret everything I say. Gandalf61 10:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for intervening Gandalf. But SCZ now says that he was a trifle premature in his comments on my changes and has agreed to wait a bit until I get the page into a managable form before commenting on it along with others.

I have made some deletions and there have been some reinsertions. So SCZ is not completely wrong about that. Where reinsertions have occurred, I have tried to incorporate them in a better stylistic and logical manner and trying to convey the essence without using rhetoric or exhortations that sound pompous. (Sometimes changing their position withing the document).

The main (valid) criticism Im trying to address here is that made by someone who said it was far too long and rambling. I agreed and was trying to fix the page before I was diverted by arguments on the RD pages themselves.Im merely trying to condense the page to its essence whilst striving for clarity of the actual guidelines. In this process I may take out things that I think are either obvious, do not apply, or are stated elesewhere on the page.

Once I have he page in a logical, mangable understandable form, everyone can then comment on it.

It would be helpful, if editors are very disturbed by what I do to the page, that they express their concerns here. Im really only acting as a scribe in a way (but using some of my own sense as well-- which may not be the same as others sense)--Light current 11:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Um... Gandalf, I was just asking you to read my comments in the context in which I wrote them. At the time I wrote it, he had removed the section, and it was still gone... so you can't very well tell me I was wrong to complain about that. There also weren't so many diffs when I wrote it, so I thought the other concerns would be easier to find... I was kind of frustrated by your post, because you seemed to be assuming the concerns I was stating didn't exist because you couldn't find them. As I indicated, there are some specific clauses that are important and were removed. -- SCZenz 12:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, let me try to be concilliatory. I think we've had a misunderstanding. My post was 8 hours old when you replied to it, which kept you from seeing the concerns I had easily because of all the edits made afterward. You asked for clarification, and I snapped at you when I should have explained more politely. So, now I have explained... if you would be so kind as to ignore my frustration above, hopefully we can continue on better fotting. :) -- SCZenz 12:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

My edits

I am in the process of boiling down the guidelines to the essentials so that they can be discussed. There was a lot of repetition which I am removing. I am also attempting to condense the page as it was to long.

The process is nearly complete. Please bear with me. When Im satisfied with its length etc. I will invite other RD editors to discuss the whole thing to death and come to agreements on any necessary modification. Until then I would ask people just to let me get it into a a state where we can discuss it ,.Thanks. Remember, this is not the final version and any thing I have removed can be discussed for reinclusion (in the right paragraph of course) 8-)--Light current 09:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I've been a little premature in being confrontational about this, and I apologize. Once you're done, I'll look at restoring some important wording and removed sections, but the overall order we can discuss. -- SCZenz 09:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The addition of StuRat's old bureaucratic procedure for comment removal is absolutely a no-go if these guidelines are to succeed. We need ideas we can agree on, not restrictive rules. -- SCZenz 12:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Indeed. Additionally, the page is way too verbose now. The longer and more complex a page is, the smaller the chance that people will actually red it. As a side point, LC, please use the preview button. >Radiant< 12:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

How can it be MORE verbose? I have reomoved a lot of xs wording?--Light current 12:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I wont be too much longer. THen everyone can argue about it to their hearts content. In fact I probably wont participate much in the discussion as I ve basically said what I want to say in the guidelines themselves.. --Light current 12:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunatley my work is now being hamperd by User:Hipocrite who is reversing my work without any discussion after stating the the policy had been rejected. Can someone have a look at this? I dont want to get into a fruitless argument with him.--Light current 13:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Nobody's hampering anyone. If you can do a major rewording, then so can he. Why would that be different or problematic? >Radiant< 13:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The fact that he at first put a 'rejected' tag at the top of the proposal [3] and then started to edit it, shows he is not serious about it.--Light current 13:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• No, it shows that he believes one version does not have consensus, and he's improving it to a version that might. WP:FAITH. >Radiant< 13:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Completion!

OK I have now basically completed the rewording etc that I thought was necessary. I was intending to have the deletion procedure incorporated as well but it has been removed twice by different editors, so I ll leave it out for now. I do think discussion is in order asto whether to have this procedure in or not. Any way, apart from the deletion procedure, it seems to contain all the points that were initially mentioned. (unless someone knows differrent) and so it is ready for the main discussion IMO. Over to you lot! 8-)--Light current 13:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Here; I dropped in a deletion 'procedure' that seems to more accurately reflect the way things are actually done here. I think it's obvious that deleting others' comments is something that will happen quite infrequently, and that the problems with each comment will vary widely in type and severity.

Consequently, some sort of one-size-fits-all, time-consuming, multi-step process isn't appropriate for all cases. We already know that vandalism and spam get shot on sight, as do threats (legal and personal). Medical and legal advice shouldn't be happening, but there are sometimes some gray areas around the edges of those types of questions and answers.

Where a comment isn't egregiously bad but probably inadvisable or in poor taste, immediate deletion may be an overreaction, and talk page discussion – with the author and/or through the RD talk page – may be a route which steps on fewer toes.

In all cases, we expect people to use good judgement and work in good faith; those are unstated assumptions without which Wikipedia would not be able to function, and it's not possible to codify that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Your wording sits quite easily with me at the moment.--Light current 14:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Purpose

The purpose section really needs defining properly so that we can all work to achieving the stated aims. One thing i found was :

(REf librarians) primary duty when they are at the desk is to help library users find what they are looking for.

Would that be our prime purpose also?--Light current 14:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thts a bit inaccurate really. Im looking for a woman, but I dont think my library or even WP can help there 8-)--Light current 16:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Things a real ref desk does

List of things a real ref desk does (from our page)

Services that are often available at a library reference desk may include:

• A sign up sheet for reserving time to use computers that have Internet access, or word processing software.

• If a desired book has been checked out, one can place the book 'on hold', which prevents the person who has checked it out from renewing it, and the person who placed the 'hold' is notified when the book has been returned. (Some libraries provide this service at the circulation desk)

• Interlibrary loan of books and other material from other branch libraries in the same library system, or from a cooperating library anywhere in the world. (Some libraries provide this service at the circulation desk)

• The opportunity to recommend that the library purchase something for its collection that it doesn't have, which may be needed or of interest to other library users.

The librarian who sits at the reference desk can usually do the following by virtue of their professional training and experience:

• The librarian can look up a brief, factual answer to a specific question.

• The librarian can use the catalogue to find out whether the library owns an item with a particular title or author, or that contains a short story, chapter, song, or poem with a particular title, or to compile a list of books by a particular author or on a particular subject.

• The librarian can briefly teach the user how to use the catalogue and how to use its advanced features, or recommend the proper subject words or terms that are used in the catalogue for the topic the user has in mind.

• The librarian can often take the library user directly to the shelves with books on a certain topic without using the catalogue.

• The librarian is familiar with the contents of hundreds of reference books, and can recommend books that might contain the answer to a particular question.

• The librarian can teach the library user to use online databases such as magazine and newspaper articles, and recommend words and search strategies for the topic the user has in mind.

• The librarian can recommend reliable web sites, give advice on searching the Internet for information, and evaluate the reliability of the information on web sites.

• If the library doesn't have information on a given topic, or if the library user wants more information, the librarian can refer the library user to another library or to an organization that can be contacted by phone or mail.

I have struck out what we cant or dont need to do. So maybe we should be doing all the rest? --Light current 14:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Translating into Wikipediaspeak

OK now translating the above into Wikipedia language we have:

1. Instead of purchasing this would mean commisioning new articles
2. We give direct answers to the question without referral.
3. We look ourselves for the info and then refer the OP to the correct article.
4. We tell the OP how to find the answer himself.
5. We give a direct link to our page with no explanatory info.
6. We recommend the OP searches in a number of places by providing links or categories.
7. We recommend ext links to look at or say go Google
8. Hmm! I dont think we're going to refer to another encyclopedia are we?

Anyway those are my translations of the Ref Librarian tasks. Now which ones should we be doing or not doing? Im not fussy- I just want to know what the purpose of the Rds is.--Light current 16:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Which part did you paraphrase to get number two? Your list of librarian tasks does not appear to have them answering questions without referral, however, I agree that is what often happens here. David D. (Talk) 16:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I paraphrased this:

The librarian can look up a brief, factual answer to a specific question. 8-)--Light current 16:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

OK that makes sense, but is that without referral? David D. (Talk) 16:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well i use the term 'referral' to mean that the librarian refers you to the book rather than gives you the answer herself! She may look it up for you but I dont call that referral. Do you? I use the usual meaning of the term refer.--Light current 16:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess I was thinking that if the librarians "look up" the info it would be strange for them not to show you the source. Without referral implies they give the answer off the top of their head, or head off into the stacks and come back with an answer while you wait at the desk. I have never seen a librarian do either. David D. (Talk) 16:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well they may know things off the top of their head, but I presume they check before giving you an answer. The usual answer at my library is ; I dont know about that! 8-(--Light current 17:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. That would probably true for anyone doing such a job. David D. (Talk) 19:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Appeal

Can I make an appeal to ALL interested parties to consider carefully and comment on both the desired purpose of the RDs (options above) and the draft guidelines which I have basically finished messing with (for now).

I think the former is more important as, without knowing our purpose, it will be rather difficult stating how we are going to achieve it. So over to you again! --Light current 16:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by not knowing our purpose? I think it is very clear that the purpose is to help people find information. How that is achieved will differ depending on the type of question. You seem to be trying to define the latter not the former. David D. (Talk) 16:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well no 'its not as simple as that' I think many would say. Some people want it to help WP in some way. Just answering Qs aint gonna do that!--Light current 16:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Answering questions does not help wikipedia? That's not how I see it at all. You point people to appropriate pages in wikipedia. If those users are happy there will be less bad press. If they are happy they might contribute to the encyclopedia too. In short, if all the ref desk did was to answer questions it would still be a very effective recruiting and marketing tool.

Layered onto this is that in the process of answering questions some of the lower quality wikipedia content is identified. I am sure we have all improved articles based on our experience of researching an answer. So on top of marketing and recruiting you can add development. That is already an impressive list with out changing a thing. David D. (Talk) 16:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

OK More comments needed please--Light current 16:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Why is no one interested in talking about the guidelines when Im not editing them? 8-?--Light current 08:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe people think they are OK? Or they think they think the puposes are obvious? If that was the case there would be little point discussing these things. David D. (Talk) 19:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I really doubt that everyone thinks they are perfect. Anyway we'll wait...--Light current 21:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but if you want this to keep reappearing on peoples watchlist then you have to write something. I suppose adding or deleting a space would work too. David D. (Talk) 22:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes you are of course correct! 8-)--Light current 22:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Australia

Why is Australia named Australia . What does the word mean. Where did it come from.

I have reposted this question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Australia where you are more likely to get a good answer. David D. (Talk) 19:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

By the way, wikipedians, don't remove this so the OP can find the redirect if they bookmarked this page. --froth^{T C} 05:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Rejected

The goal of this guideline is to provide a brightline test such that troll-enabling refdeks chatters can try to drive off people who believe in WP:ENC. It will never pass muster. Unless someone can demonstrate that the guideline will not be used to enable bad behavior, it is clearly rejected. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I notice that lightcurrent is trying to play revert games with me. This proposal is rejected regardless of my unwillingness to engage in revert wars with a disruptive user. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It is still a proposal. No consensus has yet been reached. But there will be some sort of consensus.--Light current 03:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

There is strong consensus that this guideline is unnecessary and disruptive. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Where is this consensus expressed?--Light current 03:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I have substantial experience in areas other than the reference desk and believe I have accurately evaluated the communities' likely reaction to this abortive and wasteful process. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:55, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

OK we'll see. But till then please dont pre-empt the outcome. Thanks 8-)--Light current 03:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• Without evaluating the communities' likely reaction, I must nevertheless point out that there doesn't appear to be consensus over the wording of this page. If agreement cannot be reached on that, it follows that the page is rejected. Note that it's not "consensus opposed to a proposal" that makes it rejected, it's "lack of consensus in support" (WP:POL) >Radiant< 10:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Also without evaluating the communities' reaction, I'll note that some of the most historically-contentious sections – stuff relating to removal of comments – is actually starting to show signs of buy-in. If you want to remove the {proposed} tag because you think the guideline is still in flux, that's fine—but I don't think it's appropriate to slap a {rejected} on while things are still under active construction. Not to be flip, but if we're getting towards something that Light current, Gandalf61, and I can all agree on, then we're in not bad shape. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You appear to be unaware of this use of the guidelines. Your fears about the purpose of the creation of the guideline is not only founded, but proven. Codification of minimum standards of behavior will be used to justify behavior that is no more than the minimum. As such, agreeing to these guidelines, in any form is harmful to the encyclopedia. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that people misunderstanding/misusing guidelines means that the guidelines aren't good- I see it rather as a sign of a problem editor. Heck, there's long-standing and widely-accepted consensus about a lot of things that editors often ignore. In other words, if editors refuse to do things the "wiki way", this doesn't mean the wiki way is what's broken. Friday (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly right, Friday. While in an ideal world, we'd just be able to run the encyclopedia solely on the five pillars and WP:DICK and good behaviour would logically and reasonably follow, it sometimes helps to have more specific guidelines for specific situations. Some people need a bit more structure and guidance, and nobody wants to have to rebuild and derive all the rules from first principles every time a question of behaviour comes up. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Some people need it, but I must admit I'm just about done with the hand-holding here. Friday (talk) 18:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Is that Goodbye--Light current 21:29, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Friday, you have gone too far. "Hand-holding" indeed ! I will put up with many things, but I have to say I find it grossly offensive when you refer to me as if I were a naughty child. For the record, I have contributed actively to Wikipedia for over three years; in real life I am an adult with a responsible job, house and family; and I believe I have conducted myself throughout this debate with politeness and civility. So please do not use such arrogant and condescending language. I do not need to have my hand held by you or anyone else. Gandalf61 10:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Whoa—Friday didn't specifically address his remark to you, and I'm certain that he didn't mean for it to be offensive. In any case, I don't think you'd disagree that some of the behaviour around this issue has been rather childish at times. I think we can all understand that some people might be frustrated by the pettiness and petulance that has sometimes erupted, and Friday was just expressing some of that frustration.

Can we go back to talking about guidelines, now? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Ten, Friday hid behind the weasel words "some people", but we all know who he was talking about. I don't see him saying he didn't include me in "some people". It doesn't matter whether Friday meant to be offensive - the fact is I am offended by his patronising words, in the same way you are offended when people refer to you as a deletionist. Now that I have pointed this out, an appropiate and mature response from Friday would be to apologise and agree to choose his words more carefully in future. Gandalf61 20:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Meanwhile, back in the jungle...

Unsurprisingly, the debate over Reference Desk guidelines is also raging on talk pages other than this one. In particular, here are two "position statements" from elsewhere which probably belong here. When I have time, I'll see how compatible they are with the evolving guidelines, and perhaps try to integrate them with the evolving guidelines (unless someone beats me to it...). —Steve Summit (talk) 17:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

ideas from elsewhere by User:Ummit

[This is from Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#"on Holy Wars, and a plea for peace", and it's possible that further discussion on these ideas has occurred there.]

I think we all have to agree on five things going forward.

1. What the Reference Desks are for, what the expected norms for participation are. These have been extensively discussed, and I think there's pretty good consensus on them. In particular, excessive speculation, Original Research, and humor are all discouraged, although limited amounts of all three of these are appropriate under certain circumstances.
2. That the guidelines are not perfect, received on stone tablets, or all-encompassing. None of the Reference Desks is ever going to be a paragon of what any one observer might wish it to absolutely be. The guidelines are loose and subject to interpretation. From time to time people are going to make mistakes.
3. That when people do make mistakes, gentle reminders are appropriate.
4. That good faith is the norm: gentle reminders will, in fact, be applied gently, and only when they're needed.
5. That good faith is the norm: a recipient of a gentle reminder will receive it graciously, will not assume he's being ganged up on. The appropriate response to a gentle reminder is almost always along the lines of "I'm sorry, I'll try to be more careful next time." [Footnote: there's a delicate little diplomatic balance here. The recipient should say this, without argument, even if he doesn't agree 100% with the reminder. The issuer should accept the apology in good faith, should not insist that the recipient grovel contritely, should not evince fears that the recipient is only going to make the same "mistake" again next time. We'll worry about that next time.]

If everybody can unreservedly agree to all five of these, I think we have a decent chance of putting all the acrimony behind us, and moving forward with Reference Desks we can all enjoy and be proud of. The various policies and agreements do not absolutely guarantee perfectly harmonious success -- nothing on this vale of tears can ever guarantee that -- but they should be workable, and we should be able to understand and deal with any exceptions as they arise.

In particular, here are two exceptions that might arise, and how we might deal with them.

• If person A, holding some kind of grudge against person B, systematically issues "gentle reminders" about every one of person B's posts, that is probably a bad-faith action, and subject to RfC or other dispute resolution. (The exception would be if all observers agree that person B's contributions are all inappropriate.)
• If the recipient of a gentle reminder treats it as a personal attack, and begins attacking the issuer of the reminder or otherwise raising an argumentative ruckus, that is probably a bad-faith action, and subject to RfC or other dispute resolution.

I've got some more to say on this, but that's enough from me for now. —Steve Summit (talk) 05:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• I strongly endorse this sensible proposal and am very willing to be first to step up and pledge to adhere to its spirit in future. Rockpocket 07:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• I absolutely Endorse it and wholeheartedly agree to do my utmost to abide by it. Anchoress 07:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• With hope. Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• Excellent. --Dweller 12:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• Sounds like a great plan to me. Friday (talk) 19:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• I oppose this, at least the part about having to apologize when you haven't actually done anything wrong, only husbands have to do that. :-) StuRat 13:49, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

ideas from elsewhere by User:TenOfAllTrades

[This is from Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/StuRat 2#TenOfAllTrades' response, and it's possible that further discussion on these ideas has occurred there.]

Here's a quick-and-dirty sketch of where I stand.

1. 'Censorship' is a loaded word rife with connotations, and is best avoided in good-faith discussions. Once people start throwing 'censorship!' cries about, the discussion is only one or two steps from getting Godwinned.
2. Nobody believes that they can or should remove every comment that they dislike; by the same token, nobody believes that every edit to the Ref Desk should remain there. At Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#On_removal_of_answers.2C_or_even_questions, there is a short list of comment types that we can and should remove without question. Other types of comments may be removed, in my opinion, after discussion.
3. Edit warring is bad, whether to add or remove something, and particularly when one is standing on a stubborn point of principle rather than trying to improve the Desk or encyclopedia.
4. Admins aren't infallible, but they have been vetted by the community. Admins generally have a greater breadth and depth of experience with Wikipedia policy and practice than a randomly selected editor. Dismissing an admin's good-faith opinion on policy out-of-hand does both parties a disservice.
5. Straw polls are one method of many to attempt to assess community opinion on a subject. When used appropriately – allowing adequate time for discussion and alternate opinions, and accurately representing the issue at hand – they can be a useful tool.
6. Reference Desk answers with links to sources and background information are always preferred to answers without. Editors who present their own opinions as assertions of fact without providing references or any indication of their own qualifications should do so with extreme care, and should be unsurprised if other editors request clarification or references for unsupported statements. Editors should refrain from offering unsupported opinion after referenced answers have been provided. Like everything else on Wikipedia, Ref Desk responses should be treated as suspect until supported by citation.
7. The goal of any edit to the Ref Desk – or anywhere else on Wikipedia – should be to provide a net benefit, be it the addition of useful material or the removal of harmful stuff. This may sometimes be a complex judgement, which requires weighing the value to questioners on the Ref Desk, the sensibilities of readers and answerers on the RD, editors' histories, etc.
8. The purpose of the Ref Desk is to answer questions. Providing a positive experience to new editors (many people have their first Wikipedia experience on the Ref Desk) is a key part of that. We can best accomplish these goals by keeping the Ref Desk a friendly, civil environment chock full of detailed, descriptive, and well-referenced answers (with a bit of a sense of humour). Both Wikipedia and the Ref Desk serve the common goal of providing info to users.

TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with these statements, but I still see a problem: The people giving these well-reasoned statements don't really need a guideline- they already understand what to do here. The folks that maybe do need a guideline probably won't benefit from one, because they really need a set of exact, strict rules. Maybe I'm saying nothing more than "interpret all rules" and "use common sense", but some editors here seem unwilling to accept those longstanding traditions. Friday (talk) 17:20, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

These statements are good. Certainly my hobby horse is fully addressed by number 6. With respect to humour, i agree a bit is great. But when it descends into crudity that is where i draw the line. It's not that I'm a prude, but that type of humour has no place on a ref desk, or wikipedia for that matter. There are much better forums for such humour. With such guidelines in place and with the regulars leading the way by example, there is a good chance that answers never have to be deleted. Then the only issue is the blatantly disruptive questions. Best case scenario is, if in doubt, ignore it. If trollish questions get no answers then they'll give up and move on to more fertile hunting grounds. David D. (Talk) 20:02, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Purpose(s) ... what do we want the RDs to do?

This para in the guidelines is very weak ATM IMO. If we can get a consensus on the purpose of the RDs , then I feel everything else will fall into place. So... what do we want the RDs to do?--Light current 01:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm! everones too busy arguing to actually think what the purpose is of the thing the guidelines of which they are arguing about is. I think the prime purpose of the RDs is so it gives everyone a good place to argue with each other, and give Admins some practice in blocking skills. Am I right, or am I dead right? 8-)--Light current 04:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The purpose is what we want it to do. If we talked about what too frequently ends up happening, we'd say it was a place for hungry trolls to get handouts. Friday (talk) 04:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you following me round again?--Light current 04:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The two items currently listed are good, but the order should be reversed. Our primary goal should be to provide answers. StuRat 04:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen anyone object, so I'll go ahead and swap the order. StuRat 04:02, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. I also added that we can answer questions with info from outside of Wikipedia. StuRat 04:08, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

What do people think?

Seems like editing has slowed down a bit on this proposal. I know I was one who expressed initial skepticism that a guideline was needed or helpful, but what we've got here is pretty sensible in my opinion. Thanks to everyone who has worked on this. Friday (talk) 06:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Not surprising since the only worker was blocked for 48 hrs recently 8-(--Light current 06:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe you will have to present evidence that this proscriptive, rather than descriptive guideline will be helpful to the encyclopedia rather than harmful. Hipocrite - «Talk» 11:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

We need a proscriptive guideline because the page wasn't evolving in a sensible way on its own, so there isn't (and probably won't be anytime soon) a fully sensible system to describe. What I see on the guideline page now I rather like. -- SCZenz 11:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• It could stand a bit of pruning and copyediting, but I don't see anything particularly objectionable. What are the prescriptive parts again? >Radiant< 12:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

All mention of NPOV and OR outside of the nutshell have been excised. Prohibitations on unverifiable answers have been weakened. The draft has been used to support bad behavior -> [4]. Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Hm, that's pretty bad, and should be fixed. People shouldn't make up answers, that's really not helpful to the questioner, and hurts our credibility. >Radiant< 12:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• I agree. Where is the best place to discuss Verifiability, NPOV, and NOR in the guidelines? I think verifiability is the critial one—it insures that people who state facts know they need to be able to support them upon request. -- SCZenz 15:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• It's in the nutshell, which is a good start. I also took a stab at adding a sentence about this under "What the reference desk is not". I"m not saying this is the best place for it or anything, but it's one place that seemed appropriate to me. Friday (talk) 15:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• Also, maybe a stronger statement towards NPOV? Something along the lines of: contributors should direct readers to the notable opinions of others, not use the desk as a place to express their own opinions?—eric 16:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• It was this issue that got me interested in this debate. Answering with hunches and guesses should be actively discouraged. People who love to answer all the questions on ref desk should be mentored to stick to areas in which they are knowledgable or do some research (and cite it) if they wish to answer in areas where they have little or no knowledge. David D. (Talk) 19:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

• What the heck is a "structured reference interview"? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 15:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It was just linked- but I'd never heard of this. I don't see that mentioning it adds to the guideline, but maybe that's just because I didn't know what it was. Friday (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it adds much either, because nobody knows the full range of real reference desk services. I think the important point is that you cannot get the opinions of your reference librarian, and (s)he will not tell you penis jokes, and those services are not available on Wikipedia either. -- SCZenz 16:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

See Reference desk to see what a real library does.--Light current 18:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Latitude?

I think there's a generally-accepted idea that good-faith contributors using reasonable judgment are given pretty wide latitude on the ref desk. What I mean is, while we say "don't ignore WP:NOR", we also aren't really hurt by questions like "How much do cheeseburgers cost in your town?" or "How common is this slang usage?" Such questions are generally asking for people to answer based on their own experiences. These questions aren't really what a reference desk is meant for, but I doubt most people would want to remove them, either. To me, these kinds of questions are more acceptable than "Will gay people get into heaven?" which should be answered with great care to not let it turn into a big, potentially ugly, debate.

So, my question is.. should the guideline try to talk about this sort of latitude? Or, is this sort of thing better left unsaid, since it's taken as "understood" by responsible contributors? Friday (talk) 15:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

If we're trying to write a guideline for both responsible contributors and those who are not, i think "don't ignore WP:X" is already too much latitude; "thou shalt not violate WP:X" is nearer the mark. That's not how i think the desk should work, but what i think needs to go into the guideline in order to see any improvement. Am i taking too dim a view on the current state of things?—eric 18:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

One factor to consider in answering your question- if a few editors are being difficult, they're already not paying attention to what's written in the guideline, right? That's why I hesitated to support the idea of a ref desk guideline- where we've have problems, it's been with editors who are disregarding already accepted, existing guidelines and policies. Friday (talk) 19:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's a theory out there that somehow the Reference Desk is not subject to articlespace requirements like NOR, not horsing around, etc. Some users honestly believe it is a talk space, despite its "public face" nature (and namespace, of course). -- nae'blis 22:55, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is somewhat different than other project space pages. It is a lot more like a talk page than most other project-space pages -- though not completely a talk page. And NOR does not apply as strongly, either. The difficulty here is striking an appropriate balance between those who are (sometimes seen as) "horsing around", and those who are (sometimes seen as) trying to stifle the Reference Desk by turning it into a dry collection of well- but unimaginatively-sourced facts.

When we can cite well-sourced facts, we should. And we shouldn't engage in rampant speculation or debate. But as Cecil Adams once famously said, we "routinely receive questions that not one sane person has asked in 6,000 years of recorded history. As a result, the usual sources of information are useless." Plenty of the (decent) questions we routinely receive can only be answered with liberal applications of speculation and OR, and I don't think anyone is claiming that those questions should all be discouraged or not answered. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

But there are also posters that answer because they can rather than because they know.

You're absolutely right. This is a key part of the problem. I do wish there were a way to get those posters to realize and admit this point, realize and admit that it's a problem, realize and understand that they could easily correct it without prostituting their art or sacrificing their souls, realize and agree that correcting the problem would therefore be a fine thing all around, and then do so. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:04, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Since these points have been made frequently shall we jut try and back off and see what develops? Escalation will just turn ugly. From the beginning i was hoping a more encyclopedic culture could just develop such that deletions, warnings not to take the bait to trollish questions and citation requests would not be necessary. Having said that I am not sure I see a way forward without a deletion policy of some sort in place. But possibly even that will not be required now that everything has been dicussed mutliple times. With the guidelines in place is it possible for the ref desk to gain this culture without being steared? David D. (Talk) 14:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

In such instances it is not unreasonable to expect some kind of research (prior to answering) and citation so we know where their information is coming from. We really don't want to get to a point where the answers are reliably unreliable since it would then have to be called the speculation desk. David D. (Talk) 13:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

In answer to Friday's original question: it's a tough call. On the one hand, I agree that a certain amount of "nudge nudge, wink, wink" is appropriate in a guideline like this. But on the other hand, I'd really like it if whatever guidelines we came up with could be well and truly agreed to and accepted in genuinely good faith by both (all?) sides of the recent debates. Given the tenor of the debate, however, it's clear that if our guidelines seem (as written) to too-strictly disallow things like speculation, research, or even the occasional opinion, some of our regular contributors are going to reject the guidelines out of hand, and the consequences then (if the guidelines were otherwise adopted) could be even uglier than they are now.

With that said, though, I don't know how to achieve the right balance between de jure guidelines and de facto accepted practice, and although I've been reluctant to admit this, it's quite possible that (given the willful truculence of some participants) a perfect balance may not be possible. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

A proposal for medical advice guidlines

The following is a proposed addition to the RD guidlines. Most of the proposed guidlines were originally compiled by TenOfAllTrades. I want to see if we have consensus on these issues before I post the guidlines on the policy page. The guidlines assume that we (at least most of us) agree that medical advice should not be allowed on the RD. —LestatdeLioncourt 17:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I like it- I see no reason this shouldn't go into the guideline. Friday (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks good, let's put it in. Once it's there, I might think about generalizing to cover other kinds of advice in some places—for example, bad legal advice or bad advice on handling fireworks is just as dangerous to the questioner, and the procedures for dealing with it should be the same. Also, I'm a little concerned that the definition of "medical advice" is too rigid here, but that's for later—for now, this is a good start. -- SCZenz 18:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you like it. Generalizing to cover more forms of unacceptable advice should indeed be a goal, but right now I'm just aiming at setting up some much-needed guidlines for medical advice. We have plenty of time to improve any aspects of the guidlines to which you object :). —LestatdeLioncourt 18:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Realistically, though, we do need to draw some pretty bright lines to help people understand what constitutes 'medical advice'. There have been recent problems with people interpreting the idea of medical advice both too broadly and too narrowly. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I've struck the bit about there being other venues for this advice; nobody has provided me with such a location, and we probably don't even want to be in the business of referring people to unqualified laypeople on other sites anyway. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

True. Yahoo Answers tolerates questions of this type, but directing people there for medical advice is highly unethical. The only appropriate referral is a medical expert. —LestatdeLioncourt 18:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

On the question of location, this might also make sense as a separate, ancillary document rather than as something incorporated whole into the guidelines. The flavour of this section is a lot more prescriptive and specific than the rest of the guidelines. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with TenOfAllTrades on two things: 1) the specificity of the definition is necessary to prevent misinterpretation. Having an overly general definition is just as detrimental as having none at all, and 2) This set of guidlines do seem to deserve their seperate document. I don't feel very strongly about this, but I think it would be more appropriate. By the way, thanks for all the effort you put in, TenOfAllTrades. —LestatdeLioncourt 18:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I prefer they go on this page. I suspect that, over time, this guideline will aquire other specific sections, as new forest fires crop up; better to set a precedent of having it on the same page than to eventually end up with a bunch of subpages. -- SCZenz 23:45, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It depends on where this guideline is going to go, I suppose. If it's going at the top of every Ref Desk to replace the current 'How to ask and answer', then we need be very conscious of length. If it's going to be a separate document included only by reference, then we don't need to be as concerned about size. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:14, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we should retain the header as a summary of the guideline, and link to the guideline for more information. -- SCZenz 00:22, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Where do we stop?

Are we also going to have guidelines for:

• legal advice
• electrical safety advice
• rewiring your own home advice
• gas advice
• nuclear warning advice
• cold weather advice
• warm weather advice
• anything that uses chemicals in the home advice
• walking down the street advice
• driving advice
• accountancy advice
• tax advice
• personal relations advice
• using stairs advice

etc, etc, etc, etc, etc ?--Light current 00:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree we should generalize guidelines for dangerous advice, but I do think medical advice is a special case with special (and frequent) problems. -- SCZenz 00:22, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Medical advice issues are the most frequent and problematic. We need to have a policy concerning it. Other forms of advice should be discouraged and dealth with too, but that's no reason for us to not have a medical advice policy. —LestatdeLioncourt 13:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

---

---

What constitutes medical advice?

Any posted comment containing a diagnosis, a prognosis based on that diagnosis, or a suggested form of treatment or cure, in response to symptoms presented in a question, is considered medical advice.

• A diagnosis is the process of identifying a medical condition or disease by its symptoms [adapted from the diagnosis article]. An example of a diagnosis: X says "I'm having memory problems". Y responds "You have Alzheimer's disease".
• A prognosis is the prediction of how a patient's disease will progress, and whether there is chance of recovery [from the prognosis article]. For example, Y says "by age 50, you will lose your memory".
• A treatment is any type form of medication (homeopathic or allopathic) intended to alleviate the presented symptoms or cure the disease as diagnosed. For example, Y says "try chocolate cake; it works like magic with Alzheimer's".

Dealing with questioners asking for medical advice

1. Verify that the question asks for medical advice as detailed above. Typically a poster will ask about one or more symptoms, and solicit an opinion about diagnosis (What is this?), prognosis (Should I be worried about this?), or courses of action (What should I do about this?). The symptoms will be those of the poster, or ascribed to a friend or relative. Note that questions may be on a medical topic ('What is sleep apnea?', for example) without necessarily seeking medical advice.
2. Politely explain to the poster that we cannot offer medical advice. This may be accomplished using a suitable template, or a personalized message. Encourage the poster to direct their medical questions to their physician, pharmacist, parents, or guardian.
3. Where appropriate, offer links to suitable resources. This may include internal wikilinks and external websites. Be extremely careful not to offer a diagnosis in this way. If the poster has identified their place of residence, contact information for local health professionals or hotlines may be provided.

Dealing with reponders giving medical advice

1. Verify carefully in each and every instance that medical advice was delivered. There's no need to give the impression of hassling someone. (Responders, meanwhile, are encouraged to be very careful in handling medical questions if they've been cautioned about giving medical advice more than once.)
2. Politely remind the responder that we cannot offer medical advice on Wikipedia, and remind the responder that there are appropriate venues elsewhere on the web.
3. Remove the medical advice.
4. Provide on the reference desk's talk page page (or in another appropriate venue) the specific medical advice which was offered.
5. Seek the intervention of an administrator if the problem persists.

When in doubt

• If a question arises as to whether or not medical advice was sought or given, any party (poster or responder) may post the material in question on the talk page for review and discussion.
• Responses will be replaced if a consensus that they do not constitute advice is arrived at. Responders are strongly encouraged during this process to suggest ways to rephrase answers (their own or others') which can be restated to present useful information without offering a diagnosis or other medical advice.

No original research

The "page in a nutshell" box states that the NOR rule generally applies to the RD like the rest of the project. But the only discussion I've seen on that on this page is it being nice under certain circumstances.. definately not the absolute rule it is in the mainspace. Original research is extremely important to the RD, I don't like how that's mentioned as one of the big three in the page in a nutshell. And as for verifiability.. heh. I'd encourage you to check out the computing RD. In computing, "common knowledge" is basically the most authoritative answer possible since things tend to be.. extensively memorized by everyone :) --froth^T 08:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I encourage you to change the language on original research so it's more realistic, although I strongly oppose giving it up entirely. Regarding verifiability, just as with the article space we are not going to demand a reference for everything anyone says—but these should be provided upon request if a statement of fact seems dubious. Without that requirement, this would be an opinion desk rather than a reference desk. -- SCZenz 11:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Yuck. We should be mindful of V and NOR for all responses on the desk, even more so than in article space. There seems to be this idea floating around that since it's at times difficult or not quite appropriate to apply the core policies and guidelines that we should have an anything goes attitude on the reference desk. The first attempt at a guideline here was in the form: "is original research allowed: (yes/no)", and i think some editors are still looking for that kind of answer. We need to recognize that for the majority of questions the core policies are very important, more important than in article space, but there are occasional exceptions. Trying to cover both the majority and the exceptions w/ a single watered down statement of how a policy applies to the desk is the wrong approach.

Part of the problem is i think a misunderstanding of the core policies and guidelines. As SCZenz says above, V does not mean every statement on the desk requires a citation up front. Answering from memory in most cases is fine, as long as you could back it up w/ a reference if needed. Working an example problem on the math desk is not original research, usually there's a text somewhere which describes the general method and could be used as reference.

I think we do need a kind of "absolute rule" here in the guidelines. Absolutely think about how the core policies and guidelines should apply before answering. For the majority of questions we should do our best to provide verifiable, neutral point of view answers w/o original research. The exceptions should be taken care of in the fine print, in the same way ignore all rules works as fine print for the encyclopedia. Think about the policies and guidelines first, but if they get in the way of improving the encyclopedia then go ahead and ignore them.—eric 17:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Medical advice added to guideline

I have added the medical advice section into the guideline page, with an intro of my own divising. What do you think? -- SCZenz 13:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks good :). —LestatdeLioncourt 13:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes I agree looks good.

Minor points re Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines/Medical advice's "A treatment is any type form of medication (homeopathic or allopathic)"

• "allopathy" is a derogatory term used by some homeopaths, conventional western medicine does not use the term to so describe itself.
• It is not just homeopathy or conventional that offer medication - there are herbal medicine, chinese traditional medicine etc. Better distinctiuon is therefore conventional vs alternative.
• Needs an "or" inserted between "type form". David Ruben ^Talk 00:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

RD talk page cross-reference

The RD talk page has a link to these guidelines, with the line "We are currently drafting a proposal". Is this still correct? Are these guidelines still in draft form? If not, someone should remove the line. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

No-consensus

I've changed the header template from guideline to No-consensus. For the most part, contributors to the desks are simply ignoring this document.—eric 16:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

They're ignoring other guidelines and policies too. This means they're behaving badly, it doesn't mean the guideline is flawed. Friday (talk) 16:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't take me wrong, the last thing I'd want to do is stand in the way of these guidelines being implemented on the desk, but i don't know that having consensus on the document itself is enough. There are certainly editors who are behaving badly, but in my opinion we can't really say that about all who are ignoring this page.

Calling this a guideline now seems a bit like the cart leading the horse, i'm not much in to policy debates, but aren't guidelines to be descriptions of the way things work, not written in the hope of bringing about change? Maybe i'm to gun-shy after the last go 'round, but the last thing i'd want to see is these guidelines viewed as an enforcement tool for admins or too many contributors to feel they did not have any input in the process. My view is that we are still using the wiki process to change things, a few edits along with a lot of tedious talk page discussion in the hope common sense will eventually prevail, or as Steve Summit said: "gradual improvement to an imperfect but acceptable reference desk".

If, on the other hand, it's really just a few problem users standing in the way of acceptance here, the—yes please!—tag this as a guideline and i'll post a link in forty-point blinking neon letters on the reference desk header.—eric 18:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings on this. Maybe it's just an illustration of the near-impossibility these days of getting people to call anything a guideline. My take on this guideline is that it already has as much consensus as it can get- there's nothing new here, it's just a restatement of other guidelines in ref desk-specific terms. Then again, the label applied to a particular page is no real reflection of anything, so maybe I don't care much how this is tagged. Friday (talk) 18:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The tab was changed by Radiant! into {{historical}}. It is not clear that the change from "proposed" to "guideline" reflected consensus, but the discussion has not died out, so "historical page" is not the right label. I've gone back to {{proposed}}. —Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

• There was no active discussion then, so at that point, "historical" was appropriate. There is active discussion now, so at this point, "proposed" is better. If at any point discussion dies out again without reaching consensus, it may become historical again. >Radiant< 11:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Notified on user talk

I made a change to reflect what people do in real life, and what was being said on the talk page. It was reverted. IMO the requirement of notifying people on user talk page is 1) never going to be followed in real life and 2) not a reasonable demand to make anyway. Now, hopefully people will get the idea what the ref desk is for, and removing people's comments will not be common, but we should do it like it's done on the entire rest of Wikipedia. This means people may explain in the edit summary, on the ref desk talk page, or in user talk. I see user talk as mainly for people who do this regularly and therefore it's a user conduct issue. Thoughts? Friday (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what's best here, the last thing i want to do is start edit wars on the desk, but editors are restoring content simply because not everyone in the thread was notified of the removal, and refusing to be drawn in to any kind of discussion on the quality or appropriateness of the content. I created a user warning template for notification, but am not to sure whether to use it or not.—eric 18:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I (partially) reverted that change, also to reflect what was being said on the talk page. Looking at this contribution from one of the more reasonable and considerate RD regulars, I think we're not going to get a consensus for anything less. The situation can't be compared to an article; the edit rate at most of the desks is much higher, and finding out what happened to your disappeared pearl of wisdom accordingly more difficult and time-consuming. But removal of another user's contribution should be an exceptional thing, and leaving a note on their talk page is not a heavy burden.  --Lambiam^Talk 03:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

People who feel strongly that authors should be notified are free to do so. Do we need something more than this? Friday (talk) 17:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we do. Key point here is "deletion upsets people and makes them feel they have wasted their time" (see WP:EQ), and so it is a matter of simple courtesy to explain to your fellow editor why you have deleted their contribution. The edit summary is not sufficient space for a polite explanation, and is easily misssed on high traffic pages such as the RDs. In article space you can reasonably assume that an interested editor is watching the article, and so they will see a note on the article's talk page, but an RD contributor is not necessarily watching the RD talk page. So leaving a note on a user's talk page is the simplest and clearest way to ensure that they see the explanation of an RD deletion. Gandalf61 09:38, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

We don't do this in article space or (sometimes) talk space. Why should we do it on the ref desk? I agree that a signed comment is a bit different than an article edit. What if answers were unsigned? Then, surely they'd be considered fair game for normal wiki-style editing. To me, someone who gets too upset that their edit was edited is in the wrong place- this is Wikipedia. Surely our interest in providing good answers outweighs our interest in not upsetting people? Friday (talk) 14:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Lazy answering

I've noticed a lot of ill-informed or outright wrong answers being given on the RDs when the correct answer is a simple Google search away.

Should we address this somehow in the guidelines? -- Mwalcoff 01:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

At present the wording that attempts to address this is as follows (at How to reply to questions:

"Answering questions by referring to articles or even reliable original sources is consistent with these key content policies. Make sure that statement of facts in answers can be supported by an article or reference.

Personal opinions in answers should be limited to what is absolutely necessary, and avoided entirely when it gets in the way of factual answers. In particular, when a question asks about a controversial topic, we should attempt to provide purely factual answers. This discourages the thread from becoming a debate."

It seems quite explicit to me but I guess some people are parsing this as it is not required or just don't even see it. Is there a way we can change it so it stands out more clearly? I assume you missed it, which is a sign that it could be a lot clearer/obvious. David D. (Talk) 01:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the respondents should first see if they can refer the questioner to Wikipedia articles containing the information sought. Outside sources is only the second option. If you can't find the information, do not present a guess as if it is an informed response. That is not an option. It is better then to wait and see if another respondent can find the information. Yes, this should be spelled out in the guidelines. However, note that respondents who are native speakers can usually be considered reliable sources in regard to certain types of questions about language use. Also, for maths and physics questions it is often the case that an answer requires a certain amount of "original" work, which however can be readily verified by others. So always requiring reliable sources in the sense we do for articles is too stringent, and therefore the reference to the key policies does not give a good setting. By the way, I think the guidelines should aim at the respondents, not the questioners, and focus more on how to respond the right way than on what not to do. They can simply contain a few sentences on how to respond to various types of inappropriate questions.  --Lambiam^Talk 02:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry -- I should have seen that sentence. I do recommend making it more prominant, perhaps with Lambiam's corollary of do not present a guess as if it is an informed response. I also agree that some questions do not require a source. -- Mwalcoff 02:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Focus on respondents

I propose that we simplify the (draft) guidelines by considering them to be guidelines for the volunteers who are answering the questions. Rationale:

1. Most of the issues where guidelines might and – one should hope – would have been helpful appear to have been issues with the responses.
2. In whatever form, guidelines cannot prevent trolling questions.
3. New questioners will not (and should not need to have to) familiarize themselves with a long set of guidelines. Half of them appear not to read or to disregard the instructions on "How to ask a question" already.

What do people think?  --Lambiam^Talk 18:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It makes sense to me. A.Z. 19:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

That's what we've been aiming at all along, as I recall. It was pointed out that we shouldn't assume the questioners will read a guideline. Friday (talk) 19:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC)