User talk:JzG/Archive 145

Removal of sources as not complying with RS

In the future could you please include specific reasons for why X source is does not comply with RS in your edit summary or on the talk page? It would be very helpful for other users. Thank you. --Endercase (talk) 15:45, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I would if it weren't for the fact that there are hundreds of the bloody things. Guy (Help!) 15:48, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

The removal of cited information without explicit reasoning appears to harm the Encyclopedia IMO. If you don't have time to leave a slightly larger explanation on why you removed something maybe you don't really have time to be accurately removing cited information. Love your work, don't mean to knock it. While your actions may be sometimes problematic IMO you also are super helpful and a wonderful contributor the vast majority of the time. I just want it semi-permanently logged that still firmly disagree with this small portion of your methods. My opinion may change in the future though and I will attempt to note when that happens, if you don't mind. Thank you for your contributions. --Endercase (talk) 16:31, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreement with @Endercase: As I mentioned above, re Tullock paradox, you are removing useful information from articles and basically punting them back to stub status where they were useful before, and the claim that the source doesn't meet your standard doesn't really hold up. You're not doing the article-by-article review that is merited, and the result is bad for the encyclopedia. I'm honestly not sure if I should go reverting the edits that I'm familiar with where I'm have confidence you made articles worse (I feel intimidated already and I don't want to appear to be edit warring), and I don't have the time to review all the changes you have made. But it seems like you don't have that time either. In which case you shouldn't be doing edits like this, maybe? :( jhawkinson (talk) 17:09, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)This was already hashed over at RSN. Our mission is to provide the public with articles that summarize accepted knowledge. We find "accepted knowledge" in reliable sources --everything in WP starts with sources. Content sourced to an unreliable source is not "information" nor it is "valuable" or "useful".... it is noise that may or may not contain information but could just as well contain things that are dead wrong. It is harmful because it is unreliably sourced. If somebody watching an article that undergoes clean up like this, wants to go find a reliable source that is relevant and provide sourced content from it, to replace what was removed, that would be amazing. But there is nothing to criticize in the cleanup. Jytdog (talk) 18:07, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog: in this case, the source is not unreliable. It is a teaching video produced by economics professors who make a practice of explaining complicated economics issues in a way that is accessible to the public. Certainly the same information could be found in scholarly articles and books, but it would appear in way that, even when quoted, would come out much less accessible to the readers of the encyclopedia. And it would also be a lot of work to go replicate the work of domain experts who are in the business of teaching and writing lay explanations (and videos!) so that the general public can understand. My concern is not with the removal of unreliable sources -- it is with the categorization of "Marginal Revolution" and "Marginal University" as unreliable. (I see above I erred and wrote "Marginal University" as the blog when actually the blog is "Marginal Revolution." Oops. I guess I can go back and fix it with strikeout, I hope that is more clear than confusing.) jhawkinson (talk) 19:41, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry i started ranting before reading - these were deleted as REFSPAM. This is a lot like the paid enterprise thing generally. Just as Vipul would have been far, far wiser to have sought community buy-in before launching the paid enterprise -- just like that -- if you are going to start introducing one or two sources extensively it is really wise to get community buy-in first. otherwise it looks exactly like REFSPAM and what is worse in the case of Vipul's specific enterprise, it ~looks like~ SEO REFSPAMming. So even in this framework, I fully support removal. Before anybody starts to restore en masse, folks who work on econ topics should discuss and get consensus that a heavy reliance on MRUniversity will provide NPOV content and not lead to skewed content favoring some specific POV. (I wrote that carefully - it is not just the source but the WEIGHT given to content based on it, across many articles) That is your next best move. Jytdog (talk) 21:47, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog: I'm not at all familiar with Vipul, though looking at the user by that name I'm starting to understand the concern. What's the right place to figure this out? Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics? I'm also not an economist, though I've kept an eye on Tullock paradox because I'd done a small bit of reading on it. Should I feel comfortable restoring the MRUniversity content to that single article where I think it is merited and not supplanted? I certainly know I would have felt a lot more comfortable with the en masse removal if there had been some sort of discussion prior it. jhawkinson (talk) 04:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Why? Is the Tullock paradox so obscure that only an economic blog associated with a marginal school of economic thought talks about it? If it's notable/important/widely discussed in the world of economics, then reliable sources discussing/critiquing/praising it should be easy enough to find. --Calton | Talk 08:23, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

ANI about Carliertwo

There is a new ANI here about my edits that may interest you. thanks for reading. Carliertwo (talk) 05:39, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Capital gains tax in the United States

I disagree that the Stephen Moore reference under "Further reading" here is spam. It is biased toward lower tax rates but is a comprehensive review of the tax from that point of view. The reference was not added by a 'bot but by Srich32977 on 1-Sep-13 and does not seem to be in the article for the sake of selling anything, least of all the Trump agenda that Moore is selling now. It is indeed useful "Further reading". Spike-from-NH (talk) 22:43, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

This site has been extensively spammed by its associates. It is also a highly partisan source, so not suitable for "further reading". Guy (Help!) 22:49, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is partisan. It is not possible to provide citations for an article on a tax without including partisans. It is fine provided all points of view are provided, and the article now does a better job of this than when I started with it a year ago. Don't know what the original contributor is, but I am not an associate of Moore. Please put it back. Spike-from-NH (talk) 00:40, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

If you get three economists together you'll get four opinions, but we don't need think tanks as sources. There are sufficient mainstream economic journals to present all significant views. Guy (Help!) 08:31, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Since Steven Moore isn't even an economist, it's a lousy source to begin with. --Calton | Talk 06:08, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

And since the article is about Capital gains tax in the United States, this article seems way to general, and maybe more suitable for Capital gains tax. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:50, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Removing blacklisted references

When removing <ref>s using blacklisted links, as you did in this edit, please be sure not to leave orphaned refs behind (e.g. this one). An easy way to check is to see if the page ends up in the hidden category Category:Pages with broken reference names after your edit. Thanks! Anomie⚔ 11:34, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

complaint to ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.

Administrators' newsletter – April 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2017).

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

V. S. Sangwan

Hi mate, I have created an article on V. S. Sangwan and thought I should let you know as you had deleted a page on him sometime back. --jojo@nthony (talk) 14:42, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Looks OK to me, thanks for the notice. Guy (Help!) 12:13, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Question

Will you please look at Paul Hellyer? I'm just trying to sort things out in my mind regarding what you taught me about BLPs, fringe and conspiracy theories, and how such information is supposed to be presented in the lead and body of a BLP. I hope it's ok if we use G. Edward Griffin as a reference point for comparison because that was the model used for my initial lesson. Are UFOs, NWO, elitist cabals, and WTC theories not considered conspiratorial or fringy, or do they only apply when it involves alt med? I also noticed how the lead in the Hellyer BLP says nothing about any of the aforementioned. ^{Atsme📞📧} 16:30, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Atsme I removed the fringey bit taken from UFO Digest (ask at WP:FTN if you want to know more about that kind of source, the editors there are more crank-aware than those at RSN). The RT interview is an interesting one: RT is unreliable to the max, but this is reported by a third party and we can fix the self-sourcing issue inherent in interviews with sympathetic unreliable sources by adding the context of the Yahoo author's summary: "Such an uninhibited declaration of belief in alien life is hard to ignore. It is also sadly hard to take seriously. It will leave most of us snorting in derision or guffawing out of incredulity." I added a snippet form that to clarify the mainstream perspective on this belief, and I think the result is fine now.

Omitting it fomr the lede is fine as it's a small part of who he is. Griffin is a notable crank, Hellyer is a notable engineer with some crank ideas. Guy (Help!) 12:21, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Dr Morton's

Hi Guy, you may remember bringing an article I created to AfD (here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dr Morton's - the medical helpline). You contended the references cited were based on churnalism. The article was subsequently deleted. Since then, several other news organisations have carried stories about the company, most notably the BBC (from “Now, do you struggle to get in to see your GP?...” about 2/3 down) and Irish News. Do you consider these sources are strong enough to establish notability and for the article to be re-created? I would welcome your opinion. Many thanks, Daicaregos (talk) 10:55, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

The first is a namecheck and the second is exactly the same churnalism. So: no. Guy (Help!) 12:12, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. The BBC link carries on from that paragraph into an interview, which is far more than a namecheck, and deals with the article subject, and is followed by a discussion on the subject and similar companies. Do you know of a Wikipedia page where the community can voice their opinion in the same way they could on AfD, but for new or re-created articles? Daicaregos (talk) 15:38, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Do I know of a Wikipedia page where you can keep asking until you get the answer you want? Several. But I don't think I will point you to them. Guy (Help!) 15:49, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Haha. Thanks anyway. Daicaregos (talk) 11:01, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

A pound of Fluorine for you

	Fluorine crystal calcite
	You were right about that sock. L3X1 (distant write) 17:33, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! But to be fair, Jytdog spotted it first. Guy (Help!) 21:59, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

ah put i nothing on the line. you did. and that btw is why you are a great admin. you use that mop. Jytdog (talk) 23:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Just popping in to say that I immediately pictured this video when I read that last comment... ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:54, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

go mop! bring on the hockey sticks! Jytdog (talk) 23:57, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

The reference to hockey sticks reminds me of Casey Jones. Which, in turn leads me to this image. Now that I've seen that, I have to say... JzG, if you comment "GOONGALA! GOONGALA!" at ANI the next time you have to block someone, you will be my hero for life. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:20, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

Hi. I notice that you CSD'ed this article, citing G11. From what I can see of the article before deletion, it consisted of a short synopsis, followed by reviews in various venues. I don't see how G11 applies. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 17:44, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Bumping thread. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 04:43, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

It was spammer Vipul promting his friend. That's spam. By a spammer. Who spammed. And paid other people to spam. Guy (Help!) 06:45, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

That's not relevant to G11. Do you think that the book is not notable, and doesn't deserve an article? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 08:38, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Actually thats not relevant to G11, we dont hold off on the delete button because we personally feel something 'deserves' an article. The subject of an article *may* be notable, but if it was created as spam its potentially subject to G11. If you think there is a worthwhile article there, go create one. Having just read the article on wikiwand, looks completely promotional to me. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:43, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

From WP:CSD#G11 If a subject is notable and the content could plausibly be replaced with text that complies with neutral point of view, this is preferable to deletion. The article is simply the synopsis of the book, followed by its reviews in various publications, including the WSJ, The Guardian, NYT "Economix" blog and the NYT parenting blog. The article doesn't say so, but there was a long article on the book in the National Post as well. There are 25 citations to the book on Google Scholar, to take a typical one, this article in Psychological Bulletin.

Leaving aside notability, CSD is only in the case of unambiguous promotion, with little chance of dissent. You are free to believe that the article is completely promotional, but I don't think so; and I doubt I'm alone in this opinion. If it goes through AfD, I won't object. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 09:55, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

So to be clear here, you think the spam article written by the spammer to spam his friend, should not be considered as obvious spam? Fine, a philosophical difference but not one I propose to discuss further. Feel free to write a non-spam article if you like. Guy (Help!) 10:11, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I have sent you an email. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 10:24, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Talk page edits

Please don't remove other users comments (esp. relating to you) from my talk page as you did. Thank you. jhawkinson (talk) 19:59, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

See WP:CANVASS. This is normal. Guy (Help!) 05:53, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I see... WP:CANVASS suggests a remedy (warning or discussion on the alleged canvasser's talk page), and does not mention changing history by removing notices from others' talk pages. It's not "normal" in the parts of Wikipedia that I inhabit, so I'm unfamiliar with this, but reading the definition, this case does not seem clear cut to me. Since the debate is all about your own actions, you should not be the one to evaluate and take action in response to alleged canvassing. You have a serious conflict of interest. Initially I assumed your edit to my talk page was just an error, but I thought I should leave you a note regardless; I'm especially glad I did. Also, your edit had no useful edit summary, and that's really important for something like this. Being mysterious about it does not help. As I said earlier, you seem to be editing in a very cavalier fashion. I wish you would be more polite and restrained and take more time on contentious topics. Thank you. jhawkinson (talk) 06:36, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Or, you could notice the user's block log, nod sagely, and carry on with your day. Guy (Help!) 20:36, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

chapman central

Is spewing PHP warnings. I would use the contact form there but it appears broken. Feel free to delete this message. MrArt (talk) 23:54, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

oh,thanks. Borked plugin I think. Guy (Help!) 08:23, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Nolo.com

Aside from the refspam issue, could Nolo.com ever be suitable for citations or external links, e.g. as a source of general overviews on legal topics? N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 05:21, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Ask at WP:RSN. Guy (Help!) 08:27, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I did as you suggested, but you reverted. Restored. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 18:55, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Deletion review for Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:52, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:TANTRUM listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:TANTRUM. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:TANTRUM redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Mr. Guye (talk) 15:23, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Sciencey

Hello, JzG. It has been over six months since you last edited your Articles for Creation draft article submission, "Sciencey".

In accordance with our policy that Articles for Creation is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}} or {{db-g13}} code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Exemplo347 (talk) 22:07, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Another Earflaps sock

Just letting you know that I blocked the latest sock of Earflaps -- Bobby159753. I've only deleted the article I'm familiar with (Kobi Arad) but I guess there's more paid promo stuff needing G5 deletion. —SpacemanSpiff 12:25, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

REFSPAM vs. ELSPAM

Is it really refspam if they're external links rather than citations? That seems more like external link spam, if anything.

But either way, I was wondering, on the free market environmentalism page, what was the basis for concluding that these links provide no value other than driving traffic to Cato, etc.? Sometimes people put a link in "External links" sections because they find the linked content presents a good overview of a topic, but they're not using it support of a particular assertion. Is this not an appropriate use of the External links section? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Free-market_environmentalism&type=revision&diff=772886319&oldid=771334817

It seems like your removals of links have been challenged in various places (ANI, spam blacklist talk page, etc.); have you considered summing up your thoughts on these matters in an essay somewhere, for the benefit of those who may be alarmed by the removals?

I know that when I want to cite a source, my usual approach is to google a phrase that I remember being in that work, and then use whatever link to that work is first in the Google listing. It could be Marxists.org; it could be to Mises.org; I don't really care, because the point is mostly to satisfy the verifiability policy. If Marxists.org has put their content out there in a way that Google has deemed worthy of being ranked higher than Wikisource (maybe because they organized it better), then that's a service to mankind that they have provided, and maybe they SHOULD be getting incoming traffic.

If they're so spammy, why isn't Google punishing them by pushing them down in the pagerank, and bringing Wikisource up in the pagerank? It suggests to me that there's something wrong with Wikisource that needs to be addressed, because normally, Google ranks wikis pretty highly. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 00:32, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I really, really hope you are not selecting ELs or refs based on whatever turns up first in Google. William Shatner (yes him) just made an ass of himself on twitter by doing that - see this Slate article. Jytdog (talk) 01:31, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Isn't that how research is done? How do you select ELs and refs?

I'm wondering, by the way — the whole point of blacklisting some of these sites is that when people go there for the content, they also run into a lot of propaganda, right? But couldn't that be said for a lot of mainstream media outlets, like the Washington Post? You may go there for news, but you're also going to run into a lot of left-leaning editorializing. So is the relevant different between Marxists.org and the Washington Post, that the latter has copyrighted content that we can't put on Wikisource? N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 02:05, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

There is such a thing as high quality refs. And I almost never go find a source to add something to WP that I already know. I read high quality sources to see what they say and summarize them in WP. That is how you guard against writing your own ideas & priorities into WP. Discussed on my user page at NPOV part 1: Secondary sources. Jytdog (talk) 02:45, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, yeah, I try that approach, too. Actually, I probably spend more time documenting other/opposing points of view than I do my own, and people sometimes think I'm pushing those agendas when really I'm just trying to expand coverage to be more comprehensive in every way.

I do think the Koch brothers erred by not donating a similar amount to Wikimedia as what Google threw in. Wikimedia's desire to expand is insatiable, and the Kochs could have rendered the organization as least partially dependent upon them and used that as leverage to get them to be more neutral. I am sure if that happened, econlib.org would not be on the spam blacklist. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 03:58, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

As I understand it, econlib.org got on the blacklist because it was actually spammed into by paid libertarian advocates. Jytdog (talk) 04:07, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

So was that a case of closing the barn door after the horse had already left, or was it ongoing, I wonder. In the past, usually the way people would deal with that kind of situation, was to just revert the users in question. Development of some better tools might be helpful in catching that sort of activity in the early stages. Maybe a tag, for instance, could say that the user has added a link to a questionable site. (Or does that already exist?) N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 04:36, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia can really only ever react to spamming and other abuse, we can never be proactive. Guy (Help!) 07:11, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

On a meta level, I admire your dynamism and initiative in trying to tackle this issue. I wonder if we can find common ground. We agree that linking to Wikisource is preferable. Can we use a maintenance template like Template:Don't use econlib.org, use Wikisource?

Yeah, the whole idea behind "the wiki way" is to be reactive rather than proactive. Britannica and Nupedia were proactive by limiting editing to a select group of contributors. FlaggedRevs was proactive too. It doesn't tend to work too well, which is why we mostly take the reactive approach.

The line between improving the wiki by adding to 50 different articles, "Libertarians [or communists, or greens, or conservatives, or the alt-right, etc.] argue," and spamming, can be subjective sometimes. These philosophies often have a manifesto or platform that presents a comprehensive worldview addressing 50 different topics, so that's where those activists (paid or unpaid) end up trying to "crowbar" it into Wikipedia's articles on those topics. We could have a separate article, e.g., "Minority viewpoints on natural resources," or "Fringe viewpoints on natural resources," as a honeypot for radical views, but that would be a target for deletion, as we've seen. N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 14:04, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Not really, no. It's abuse. It's a partisan primary source. Guy (Help!) 21:54, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

It depends on what it's being used for, though. For example, it would be impermissible to state as a fact, in the class struggle article, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" and then cite the Communist Manifesto. But it might be permissible to state, "Marx and Engels wrote that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" and then quote that partisan work. (Of course, with that kind of work, there's probably also a secondary source that could be quoted.) N I H I L I S T I C (talk) 02:25, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Not really, no. As I said, it's a think tank promoting an ideology. Such sources are only really acceptable only for uncontroversial content about the organisation in its own article. Guy (Help!) 08:26, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

• It's a difference without a distinction in most cases. Guy (Help!) 07:11, 8 April 2017 (UTC)