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Can another editor censor my talkpage?

Please see the final two entries from the following section "Contentious/BLP" for the background circumstances involved in this - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJossi&diff=128722960&oldid=128534922#Contentious.2FBLP Is there a Wiki policy on the policing of one's own talkpage by another editor? Would appreciate advice. Revera 20:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

  • BLP applies to every namespace, including user talk pages. How you referred to the man was negative and unsourced. It might have been appropriate for Jossi to leave you a message accompanying the removal, but the removal was not summarily wrong. --Iamunknown 20:37, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Could you please cite your source for claiming that it applies to talk pages? To quote BLP: "This policy applies equally to biographies of living persons and to biographical material about living persons in other articles." Talkpages are not articles, are they? And for the record, it was not myself, but another editor who described the subject as obese (factually correct), and a cult leader (and there are plenty of sources that describe him as that). Revera 16:33, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

PS: "obese" can be a subjective description of someone's appearance, but I think in this case, there are few who would disagree with its appropriateness: http://i10.tinypic.com/6frenap.jpg Revera 21:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

We shouldn't be posting unsourced defamatory information about living people in any part of Wikipedia. WP:BLP specifically applies to talk pages as well as articles:
  • Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just highly questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space.
Talk pages aren't exempt from the rules of the rest of Wikipedia. - ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
That applies to "unsourced defamatory information about living people" - but in this instance it IS sourced and it IS factual. And as such it cannot be defamatory, not least because, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamatory, :::defamation is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation".
Revera 21:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Revera, your distinction between the definition of and spirit of defamation and unflammatory unsourced material is daft; it would not hold water by any administrators' standards. If you do not believe either Will or I, please go to WP:ANI and ask administrators as opposed to going to this ill-trafficked noticeboard. That you insensitively referred to this man as "obese" is wholly inappropriate and, more, wholly unencyclopedic. Something that is (a) inappropriate and (b) unencyclopedic and (c) defamatory is not necessary nor wanted on Wikipedia. --Iamunknown 21:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
How d'you like dem apples? 'Cos that's exactly what Jossi did to my talkpage - delete the bits he disagreed with. Revera 22:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Please don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. A photograph isn't a sufficient source for calling someone "obese", which is a medical diagnosis. I don't see any reason why you are making a major fight for the opportunity to include negative material on a tlak page. Doing so doesn't further our effort to build an encyclopedia. - ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

"a major fight for the opportunity to include negative material on a tlak page" you say, Will Beback? Negative? Why is an accurate factual description, albeit unflattering, to be taken as "negative"? Objective, in this case, surely? And even if subjective, must all our talk pages refrain from expressing opinion? This is a major issue, by the way. Or should be. Revera 23:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The WP:BLP policy says that any comments about a living person must be verifiable by a Wikipedia:Reliable source. You have not provided one. Sancho 23:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Sancho, is it now wiki policy that even talk-pages must carry sources for every description? I'd be surprised if that's going to stick. But anyway, you want a source, and here's one for you:
Melton, Gordon J. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America, (1986), pp.141-2 entry Divine Light Mission Garland Publishing, ISBN 0-8240-9036-5
The title alone clearly states that the organisation can be considered a cult. Do you really need me to find a source that says Rawat/Maharaji was its leader? I will if you insist. Revera 18:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
The policy is "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material — whether negative, positive, or just highly questionable — about living persons should be removed immediately and without discussion from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space." So, no, talk-pages don't need sources for every description, but they do need sources for every description of a living person that causes contention. If no source is provided, or if a poor source is provided, the material must be removed. Sancho 20:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, I understand the distinction you're making between descriptions in general, and descriptions of living persons. Thanks for clarifying that.
Clearly the organisation referred to has been described, by a reliable source, as being a cult. And Maharaji/Rawat was the leader of that organisation (is that in contention? Not to my knowledge). Therefore to refer to him as a 'cult leader' is quite valid, and should not have been censored. "Obese" I won't try to defend, not because it wasn't true, but it was somewhat insensitive of the editor I was corresponding with to make mention of what may have been a physical condition over which Maharaji/Rawat had little control over at the time the photos were taken.
However, the question of whether it's not permissable to link to satirical sites (for example "the Onion", "Private Eye" etc) from one's talkpage - well, I haven't seen any guideline/policy on such a thing. If you know of one, I'd appreciate a link to it. Thanks. Revera 20:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
As regards the feelings of the community on this requirement, it has a very strong consensus. The WP:BLP page is marked as protected pending results of a dispute, but the dispute is regarding the procedures for nomination of an article for deletion; this point about requiring sources is not disputed (unless you're disputing it... but you can start a discussion at the WP:BLP page if you feel you have an argument for not requiring sources). Sancho 20:15, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure about whether one can or can't link to satirical sites about living people on one's Talk Page. It seems to me that the site Revera linked to was blatantly satirical. Is all satire defamatory? Rawat's has been called 'fat' in the press many times and this is just another insult. Anyone can see he is not exactly thin. In defense of Revera, there may be some leeway within Wikipedia to show that a public figure is having fun poked at them as long as it is not illegal. Jossi may have Wiki-law on his side but he can be a little over officious in my opinion. He deleted a link on my talk page to excerpts from a scholarly book about Rawat (which in my opinion was reproduced within the legal requirements for fair use). My impression was that his actual objection was that the material was hosted by a website that opposes Rawat. I didn't bother to argue, I just emailed the link to the people I was talking with. He routinely admonishes us critics for 'Lack of good faith' but seems to turn a blind eye to Rawat followers obvious rudery. I don't think I'm dreaming this either.PatW 01:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I have avoided commenting here, as I did not think I could add more to what has already been said here and at the BLP noticeboard where this issue was discussed and abundant advise was given to Revera (talk · contribs) on this subject. Forum shopping is not going to help you, Revera. If you care about this project, your insistence on this subject as if you have a right to use your talk pages inappropriately, is disruptive. And if you care about your opinions more than you care about this project, then take your opinions to other fora where you can exercise your right to free speech unencumbered by the policies and guidelines of this project that have been set up specifically to enable the creation of an encyclopedia, and not to provide a soap box or a forum for expression of opinion on public figures, engage in polemics and the like. To PatW, I would say this: "wiki-law" is not on "my" side. It is on the side of this project. If you do not like to work within the constrains of WP's policies and guidelines (that btw, have been created and evolved to protect editors in providing a safe environment that is conducive to collaboration) you can always edit other wikis, such as Wikiinfo that have less of a burden. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
"Abundant advice" given to me, you say? You've a strange way of advising, Jossi. My username isn't even mentioned on that noticeboard page! If it's advice that was intended for me, how on earth was I to know?
And you continue to accuse me - first of trolling, and now of "forum shopping". Why not just plainly state once and for all why you censored my talkpage and neglected to give any explanation whatsoever for doing so, and also why you have continued to delete my responses to your (and another editor's) accusations towards me. And may I suggest you refrain from deleting this response like you've done to several others? When you do so it really serves no purpose other than to impede communication, and does your position no favours whatsoever. Revera 18:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
The explanation for the deletion was given in the edit summary, and I responded in my talk page giving you the link to the BLP noticeboard, here, as well as copying there some of the responses given. You may consider reading these comments and the comments given here as well. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Your 'explanation' Jossi, consisted of three words "Please do not" with a link to WP:BLP. Not exactly much of an explanation. And when I eventually discovered the BLP noticeboard and read the comments that apparently were meant for me (though they were addressed to Andries) I responded to your accusations there and then. You deleted my response.
Please stop confusing things, Jossi, And may I request that, in future, you let my communications with other editors - including yourself - remain undeleted? If I do unwittingly breach one of the multitude of ever-changing policies that apply to Wikipedia, then kindly alert me to the problem, and give me a chance to address it myself, as I have done in this instance with the request for a source (see my response to Sancho, above).
Revera 20:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
And my thanks to Wil Beback for pointing out that disruption by example isn't an appropriate way of bringing to light another user's lack of editorial respect. This helped in understanding why - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GAME#State_your_point.3B_don.27t_prove_it_experimentally
Revera 23:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Above, User:Iamunknown states the following - "BLP applies to every namespace, including user talk pages". However, the following from Jimbo Wales does not support this. He says (of another issue, but his meaning is clear): "Without making any comment on the current issue, I just wanted to say that I did not mean to imply that "BLP applies to userpages" -- at least not in full, not just stated flatly like that. At the same time, libelling people on userpages is a bad iea, and in fact, using userpages to attack people or campaign for or against anything or anyone is a bad idea.--Jimbo Wales 08:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC) The fact that admin Jossi continues to delete my replies is another matter of concern, but I am not familiar enough with the systems and procedures within WP to know how, or to whom, to report his infringement of my responses. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Revera#Please_stop for examples of how my replies have been deleted. Any constructive advice/assistance on this would be appreciated. Revera 16:21, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

How to determine a shared IP address

copied unanswerd from Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2007_May_15#How_to_determine_a_shared_IP_address

Shared IPs are an important consideration when interacting with anonymous editors. I've not found good instructions on how to research the shared status of a given IP address. This information should be available from wikipedia documentation, as well as linked from templates such as {{SharedIP}}. Have I missed a nice description of this somewhere? Existing requests for explanation at Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_IP_addresses#How_to_determine_if_an_IP_address_is_shared_and_by_whom. here 05:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Twisted Ear

The "Twisted Ear" article was removed per this AfD archive. However the topic is listed near the top of the Wikipedia:Most wanted articles main listing with 55 cross-links, primarily because of "Twisted Ear" album review ratings. Should those "Twisted Ear" album review rating entries also be removed from the albums listed under here? Or should all the "Twisted Ear" red links on the album pages be replaced by an external link to the Twisted Ear web site?

I hope I made this understandable. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 15:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest that you simply remove all the Twisted Ear wikilinks from all the articles in that list. If mentioning the review is that important, consider linking to that site through a reference. --Kylohk 17:25, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Don't put external links in body text, though. Reserve them for refs and relevant external links. Adrian M. H. 22:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. — RJH (talk) 17:18, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Paraphrasing bio articles

Trying to write some bio articles but sometimes it is difficult to reword the sources and avoid borderline copyvio.

Does anyone have any advice? Articles like Bitis arietans seem to be good at paraphrasing Archduke Snips 17:27, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

It is something that will often come with practice. Adrian M. H. 13:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
You can try reversing the order of sentences, using synonyms and cutting out unnecessary details. Usually though I just try to write the information in my own words, then double-check that the two are sufficiently different so avoid copyright violation. — RJH (talk) 17:24, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

AIC Requests

AIC is meant for users to go to to post a new article so other wikipedian's can help in the making of the article. I have some requests for the article.

1- A protective covering for the articles posted on the AIC. the articles are supposed to be incomplete or have nothing more then just a structure for others to follow, or else it doesn't really need other's help, but this can cause delection tags to appear. So a protective cover against delection might be needed.

2- multiple links so people can find out about AIC. AIC needs people to post new articles on it, and AIC MUST have wikipedians to help the new articles.

3- AIC can be found only by typing it's name in {Article in Construction} but other names for people to find it by would be very helpful, names including AIC, AC, what ever comes to mind.

4- This one, not as important, would be very respected. AIC be placed in the main Page's Other areas of Wikipedia. This would be helpful in many ways.

These requests are very important to the future of this article.

Using some information wikipedia in a for-profit product

Is this possible if wikipedia is referenced?

Eg, I have a product that gives information about sharemarkets, but for the key terms, I use some information from wikipedia (with some direct copy-pastes - but referenced) while adding my own information.

How would I go about this? Would I just quote the wikipedia reference in a quote box? Is this even allowed? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.253.112.3 (talk)

Yes it is possible to use content from Wikipedia commercially. However, this must be done within the terms of the GFDL license, under which contributions to Wikipedia are licensed. This means a number of things. Firstly, you must credit the Wikipedia article that you have copy/pasted information from. Secondly, you must also license your derivative work under the GFDL. Important features of the license are that you must "add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License" and if you are modifying a document here you must "release the Modified Version under precisely this License". I would encourage you to carefully read the entirety of the license before using information from Wikipedia. Will (aka Wimt) 11:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Bristol Harbour Railway and Industrial Museum

A recent edit to Bristol Harbour Railway and Industrial Museum has forced the page content to appear below the (now large) infobox, rather than alongside. The change was the enabling of a map in the infobox. There's nothing obvious wrong with that page, so maybe the template is at fault? Help? Please! -- EdJogg 12:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The matter has now been resolved. The image at the "Overview" has been moved to the left and there aren't any more white spaces.--Kylohk 13:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I must admit I didn't try that, as I didn't expect it to be the problem! I still suspect that there's some bizarre problem hiding underneath that caused this effect, but that'll wait for someone else some other day! -- EdJogg 15:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
No problem. Please remember that whenever a right leaning image clashes with an infobox, the infobox will always take priority, forcing the image all the way down. Therefore, in those situations, it is best to have the image aligned to the left.--Kylohk 16:33, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Cheers! I'll remember that for the future... EdJogg 18:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

EARTH article is and need of large changes, that i hope changes WIKIPEDIA

This is a Conversation/debate i request help for. Sorce of conversation is here

This article is based only on scientific believes, and has nothing in it involving any other belief. the article should be rewriten to follow the right of religion, the public isn't just into scientific believes, in fact, 80% of the public is christian, or pronounced christian. the article should be rewriten in this format:

-Earth

{Basic infomation without religious or scientific believes}

-The Planet

{Deeper infomation without religious or scientific believes}

-Religion

christianity

{christian belief}

Scientific believes

{Scientific belief}

{ Keep adding to the list }

{add on more religion and believes}

{ Finish article without religious or scintific believes }

this format or related formats could be useful for many other articles in the Solar System series.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.130.172.193 (talk • contribs) 01:14, 14 May 2007. Your proposed format would violate neutrality principles by portraying only the philosophical viewpoint of a single religion. The topic of religious beliefs about the Earth is covered adequately elsewhere. I'm satisfied with the scientific focus of this article. — RJH (talk) 14:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC) -Wikipedia should be for all people, not just the scientific believers. keeping this article the way it is is completing wrong. Wikipedia's is to provide "everyone" with the infomation they want, not just the scientific believers, it's defying wiki's goal! "Earth" should be open to the religious viewpoints and not just science. Religion hasn't be proven false let!


Neutral point of view: -None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. As said here, all significant points of view is to be presented, including Christianity, ect... not just the most popular one, AKA science! It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Science is the only beleaf, and is not beshown as the only truth, or the truth, by being the only one shown at all! Readers are left to form their own opinions. Thus give them all opinions, showing only one opinion is just the same as saying it's the only one! As the name suggests, the neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints. So don't elimate the other points of views! It is a point of view that is neutral – that is neither sympathetic nor in opposition to its subject.

And if Earth can't have something to do with other religion, then it shouldn't have anything to do with Scienticif beleaf, but mearly a Neutral Point Of View. no religion or anything, just basics without a belief like "The big bang." or "Evolution," If you want that, then go somewhere esle

-Evolution

-Big Bang

-The Missing Link

-and other related links, ect...ect...

Please help, Scientific belief should not be the only point of view in Earth.

Yeah, they're really slighting the Flying Spaghetti Monster by not including His Noodly Viewpoint. *Dan T.* 12:41, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention the Xenu. — RJH (talk) 16:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Science is not a belief. ssepp(talk)`

Stub

Hi, I was researching ARTICLES, ad i come across something about tasks, it listed taskes i could do, one of them was WIKIFYING, i saw a short article called Gold Coast City Art Gallery, so i edited it, an added 2 new headlines, but all through i times the size by four or five, the stub thing is still at the bottom of the screen, how do i git rid of it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nikro (talkcontribs).

Since you expanded the article I removed the Stub tags for you. It's good to have the extra material, but it could use some further copyediting. Also, a verifiable source for the statement and figures you quote in "Popularity" would be a good idea; possibly the city or the shopping center have a website that would help? Good luck and happy editiing. PS - remember to sign your posts with 4 tildes (~). Doc Tropics 04:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

numbers in my watchlist

What do the parenthesized numbers mean next to entries in my watchlist? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rosenbluh (talkcontribs).

If the number is green, it means that there were that many bytes added to the page for that edit. If it is red, it means that there were that many bytes removed from the page for that edit. It helps find vandalism slightly easier. x42bn6 Talk Mess 00:31, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Any AWB ninja's out there?

Hi hi. After doing some recent lyrics links removals, every once in a while I run into the lyrics section that has actual lyrics plastered on the article itself. Could some AWB pro out there (you'd be my hero...) pull a list of articles that have ==Lyrics==, ===Lyrics===, or ====Lyrics==== in it remove copyvios? It shouldn't be hard to weed out the legits from the Linkin Park's, etc. Fun little undertaking eh?! :-) JoeSmack Talk 22:26, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Too much cruft

Take a look at this article. Notice the "Homeworld Universe" infobox near the bottom of the page. Is it just me, or does it seem that this article has way too many spin-off articles providing way too much information for an encyclopedia? I'm tempted to mark all of those articles up for deletion. Comments? SharkD 03:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

A merger of some of those articles might be better but I am not sure how notable they are (having never played the game). But the Homeworld 2 article definitely has too much cruft in it. Lots of hit points? +204 damage? x42bn6 Talk Mess 11:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The article is undergoing GA review at WP:GA/R and I was hoping people here might be able to assist in giving their opinion on it. All welcome. I'm trying to draw a crowd of people so we get a fair discussion. Previously it's been somewhat limited. Thanks!--Manboobies 23:26, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Interested users should be aware that the above GA review is meaningless. This article just passed a GA review about two weeks ago. It should not have been renominated so quickly. The current review will have no impact upon the article and, although we do appreciate the interest, you are encouraged to ignore it.UberCryxic 02:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you telling people to ignore a review so that you can get your own way? This is highly inappropriate.--Manboobies 18:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Please ignore his comment, it is not policy. Please feel free to add your opinion.--Manboobies 19:08, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, I will then. By resubmitting an article that does not need to be resubmitted, you are taking up precious time and energy that could have been spent on the permanent backlog of first-time GA candidates. Adrian M. H. 21:12, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

What's highly inappropriate is the GA review, as Adrian mentioned. Manboobies has displayed a poor understanding regarding this issue. In Wikipedia, articles or proposals that have just finished a major discussion should generally not be renominated through the same process so quickly.UberCryxic 04:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Problem with sorting dates

The opening column on list of Washington Metro stations isn't sorting properly. Other tables like surviving veterans of World War I are fine. What's going on? --NE2 20:25, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Ohhhhh. It's sorting by the second line column. --NE2 20:28, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Need help with page Vandalism.

I'm new,so I'm not sure what to do with this, but the page for Rasputin has been vandalized. Someone fixing it would be great. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by High Altitude Cooking Show (talkcontribs).

It's been reverted. Note that you can revert a page yourself if you see vandalism. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:04, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Wrong fonts or incorrect edits?

Please take a look for Special:Contributions/Moyogo, especially edits marked:

  • 11:29, 23 May 2007
  • 10:49, 23 May 2007
  • 20:30, 4 May 2007
  • 20:26, 4 May 2007

I see correct digraphs ("d" or "t" plus some variants of "z", "s", "c") replaced by incorrect (with e-grave instead of "d" and u-grave instead of "t"). Is it a problem of my font settings or just incorrect edits? -- Kcmamu 07:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Content

Resolved

While researching articles, i find something with tasks wikipedia has for wikipedians to do, one of them was was Wikify which had a list, the list had an article called Gold Coast City Art Gallery which I editted for Wikipedia. there wasn't a headline on it, so i added on to it, but the Content list thing at the end of the beginning of the article wasn't there, why ain't there a Content list? §→Nikro 04:02, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

A table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated when there are four or more section in an article. The Gold Coast City Art Gallery entry had only three, so no auto creation. You can force a TOC by adding the "magic word" __TOC__ in the article - which I did in this case for you. -- MarcoTolo 06:27, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

How to look up pictures by camera model?

Does anyone know how to look up Wikipedia images taken with a specific camera model, such as say, a Canon EOS 300D? What links here on the article for the model doesn't give any Image: links. I've identified a few users who use that camera for their pictures, but there's got to be a more efficient way. ShutterBugTrekker 23:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

One way is to search for "Canon EOS 300D" in the search bar. Once at the search page, go down to the bottom and deselect all the namespaces but "Image". Search again and you get a bunch of images whose uploaders were nice enough to specify their cameras. It's not elegant and it misses the users who let the system catch their metadata automatically, but it's better than wandering through the image space. Cheers, BanyanTree 08:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
It worked, it has been most informative. Thank you very much. ShutterBugTrekker 23:17, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

On external links, need another opinion.

Can someone look at the recent posts by 217.42.52.227. I was gonna nuke em all, but wanted a second opinion. The links seem worthless/advertising to me, but I'd rather not revert that much stuff without checking with others first. (apologies if this is the wrong place)Vaubin 21:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey - I've just nuked them :-). Adding links to that many articles is doubtless spam and they certainly don't comply with the external links policy. Regards. Will (aka Wimt) 21:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Problem with sorting dates

The opening column on list of Washington Metro stations isn't sorting properly. Other tables like surviving veterans of World War I are fine. What's going on? --NE2 20:25, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Ohhhhh. It's sorting by the second line column. --NE2 20:28, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Is it ever too late to report someone for violating 3RR?

A user recently violated WP:3RR, but that occurred on May 22-23. Today is the 27th, is it too late? --Imdanumber1 (talk · contribs) 14:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's definitely too late. Blocks are given to stop disruptive behaviour, not to punish offenders, and reports made several days later may look vindictive and will not reflect well on the reporter. What you could do is make a not of it, with diffs, on your own hard disk, and if the offender keeps offending, report the new violation, while mentioning the old one. Make sure you've warned this user, as well. ElinorD (talk) 14:22, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Where can you get help from an overacting Editor

As a beginner, I was trying to use the text editor, learn how to link and finally help some of the organizations that I am a member of. It takes time to learn how to write a Wiki article let alone respond to the extensive messages I received from my above efforts.

I have been accused on the Google SERP links of copyright violations by this editor. I have been accused of creating advertisements.

But as a one day old Wikipedia beginner, this person has over reacted so aggressively that I must continue my attempt to stop them from stating untruthful statements about me, my company or the organizations that I was attempting to help as an individual.

If I made mistakes, fine. Let me correct them or remove them. If they were interpreted as copy right violations, allow me to get authorization to use the information and send it to you. I did ask and did not receive an answer. I therefore must ask, how hard would it have been for them to refer me to: 1.1 Using copyrighted work from others.

Now, I have a very negative SERP under my user name that is also my company's. This I feel is unjust, mean and retaliatory. Has Wikipedia become a weapon?

I have asked for, without success, for guidance and was blocked from editing the information or in anyway defending my action to this over reaction. What USER:Shirahadasha has stated in the repeated entries is not accurate as to my intentions, my motives or even my wish. Isn't there guidelines against over reacting against beginners?

Can anyone help me with this?

71.252.185.90 23:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC) User:catanich

By way of background, this user posted or edited about a dozen articles using text copied from various companies' websites. When copyvio issues were raised, he asserted that he not only had permission, but was in fact being paid by his clients to post articles to Wikipedia. He was therefore indefblocked per the MyWikiBiz precedent. It should be noted that his claim of being blocked on his first day is just plain false, as his account was created six weeks before he was blocked. He even managed to get himself warned about using about using WP for promotion and advertising a mere 14 minutes after he created his account, so he should have been well aware of WP's policies in that regard. By the way, the 'SERP' he is referring to is the 'Search Engine Results Page' when you google his company name. --Butseriouslyfolks 03:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
And due to continuing self-confessed violations of WP:SOCK I have issued a 72 hour block on this IP address. DurovaCharge! 21:23, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I am not suggesting to remove the block, but this user is suffering damage to his business. Does he have the right to request deletion of his user page, or at least to change the username? He seems to have made a very bad mistake, but does he really deserve to lose his livelihood because of that? The punishment should be proportional to the offense. Jehochman Talk 23:23, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure that he can ask for a speedy deletion of his own user page since only he has significantly contributed to his own page.--Kylohk 15:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Where to seek a partial ban on a user

For several months, I and some other editors have sought to dissuade a particular editor from creating categories, because (as a relief summary of the problem) they are nearly all badly conceived and most of them end up being deleted or merged at WP:CFD. Repeated attempts over than six months have not produced any sustained change in behaviour, and I believe that the editor concerned should now be banned from creating categories or making any other edits in category space.

I'm, not seeking comments here on the merits of the situation, just guidance on where I should ask for this action to be taken. WP:ANI look like a possibility, as does WP:RFC/U, but a quick look at those areas suggests that few such discussions seem to lead this sort of outcome. Obviously, I don't want to prejudge what the outcome would be, but this is an issue previously discussed at WP:ANI, and several other editors have tried unsuccessfully to persuade the editors concern to stop a practice which has become productivedisruptive, so I don't believe that further attempts to persuade will help; I want this to be raised somewhere that wide-ranging sanctions can be imposed if those are agreed to be appropriate.

To which forum should I take this problem? Thanks in advance for any help. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The first stop would be WP:RFC/U as something like a request for comment can show the editor the weight of the opposition to their activities. WP:ANI rarely results in blocks without something like that having occured first in situations like this - you will just be pointed to WP:DR. ViridaeTalk 13:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I will take it to WP:RFC/U. --23:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use

Would using screenshots of games be a violation of Wikipedia's fair use policy in this article? SharkD 02:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

How about this article? Can screenshots of games be used for criticisms of a game genre, as opposed to an individual video game? SharkD 03:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Way too many images

East West University, Stamford University and Independent University, Bangladesh - articles on two universities in bangladesh has way too many images on them, driving up the size, making them ugly and difficult to read. And, the comment to that end on the talk page is not helping. What to do? Aditya Kabir 20:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Be bold.... Adrian M. H. 21:17, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Image queuing might be a solution. ssepp(talk) 21:24, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Being bold may get me into an edit-war in this instance, or I would have removed much of the irrelevant, purposeless images of plain buildings that just stand there with captions telling - "Humanities building", "Science building", "Library building" and so on. It may take a specific policy, or an editor who is not a target of trolling to make the condition a bit better. What to do now? Aditya Kabir 03:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Help with formatting problem?

Sedona, Arizona has developed an odd formatting problem, whose cause isn't obvious to me. Scroll down to "Education", and you'll see that the "Edit" buttons for that section, and the two above, are lumped together there. Help?

TIA & Cheers , Pete Tillman 19:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC) (Rimrock, AZ, nearby)

It is caused by the six images listed very close to each other (in the edit view) in the 'demographics section'. Spreading those out over the text should solve the problem. ssepp(talk) 21:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The article is undergoing GA review at WP:GA/R and I was hoping people here might be able to assist in giving their opinion on it. All welcome. I'm trying to draw a crowd of people so we get a fair discussion. Previously it's been somewhat limited. Thanks!--Manboobies 23:26, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Interested users should be aware that the above GA review is meaningless. This article just passed a GA review about two weeks ago. It should not have been renominated so quickly. The current review will have no impact upon the article and, although we do appreciate the interest, you are encouraged to ignore it.UberCryxic 02:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you telling people to ignore a review so that you can get your own way? This is highly inappropriate.--Manboobies 18:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Please ignore his comment, it is not policy. Please feel free to add your opinion.--Manboobies 19:08, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, I will then. By resubmitting an article that does not need to be resubmitted, you are taking up precious time and energy that could have been spent on the permanent backlog of first-time GA candidates. Adrian M. H. 21:12, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

What's highly inappropriate is the GA review, as Adrian mentioned. Manboobies has displayed a poor understanding regarding this issue. In Wikipedia, articles or proposals that have just finished a major discussion should generally not be renominated through the same process so quickly.UberCryxic 04:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Is the password system broken today?

Today, my existing autologin didn't log in, I can't log in manually, and a request for a new password didn't produce an e-mail response. What broke? (John Nagle) --71.139.160.226 16:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not having any problems either with auto or manual log-in. You sure that your account hasn't been compromised? - BanyanTree 02:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
There are no new edits on my account. I've had Wikipedia passwords mailed to me in the past, and last received an e-mail from Wikipedia on May 27th, so the e-mail address associated with the account is good. But today, I I requested a new password after login failed, and it didn't reach me. So now I'm locked out for at least 24 hours. (John Nagle) --71.139.160.226 03:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Still can't log in as Nagle (talk · contribs), so I created a temporary account User:TEMP-nagle, and sent a Wikipedia e-mail to myself at Nagle (talk · contribs), which I received. So the account has the correct E-mail address and isn't being spam-blocked. I'll try requesting another password once the 24 hour delay expires later today. --TEMP-nagle 16:26, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Was able to get a password change message through today, and am logged back in now. --John Nagle 19:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I see that User:DickieUK has added an external link to the Barnstaple page

and similar links to around 50 other place articles in the past two hours. Does this constitute spam, and should these be reverted? Regards, Lynbarn 12:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that link is one which you should avoid linking in Wikipedia, since it links to a website promoting those clubs and shops. Hence it's reverted per WP:SPAM.--Kylohk 15:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Too much cruft

Take a look at this article. Notice the "Homeworld Universe" infobox near the bottom of the page. Is it just me, or does it seem that this article has way too many spin-off articles providing way too much information for an encyclopedia? I'm tempted to mark all of those articles up for deletion. Comments? SharkD 03:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

A merger of some of those articles might be better but I am not sure how notable they are (having never played the game). But the Homeworld 2 article definitely has too much cruft in it. Lots of hit points? +204 damage? x42bn6 Talk Mess 11:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I request assistance with Imdanumber1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). He continues to bypass redirects because he dislikes redirects and "a guideline...cannot be violated". The latest can be seen at User talk:NE2#Redirects, in which he urges me to "be a better contributor on Wikipedia" by allowing him to continue his redirect bypassing. --NE2 22:47, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Left him a gentle notice. Keep us posted. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I will. --NE2 23:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Whoa, whoa, WHOA. First off, I really don't have any problem with redirects, but what I find that makes no sense is why he puts them in there. Also, he too has bypassed redirects as well, so the redirect bypassing issue shouldn't be a big deal if he decides to be a hypocrite by bypassing redirects himself, then warns others not to bypass redirects.
I have filed a mediation request regarding this issue. I don't think we need trolls on Wikipedia who try to assert themselves as they own the place. This guy has a lot of problems with other users, and I am willing to help if he learns what the meaning of consensus is. —Imdanumber1 (talk Â· contribs) 23:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah... he did it again. --NE2 16:25, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Have either of you considered the fact that both of you are in the wrong, and that continuing to do so might be a little pointy (or at least disruptive)? x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikichem Editors promoting own commercial projects

"WIKICHEM" Editors promoting own or related commercial projects such as "CHEMREFER", "CHEMSPIDER" and "EMOLECULES". They create/tolerate articles about these commercial websites. Martin Walker is part of the Chemspider Project, see: http://www.chemspider.com/Advisory.aspx It seems as if there is a conflict of interest and I would recommend that Wikipedia and Wikipedia users clearly define, which kind of articles are helpful! I do not think, that "Chemspider" is a helpful article that need to be part of an Encyclopedia. Please stop the commercialisation of Wikichem! 213.188.227.119 17:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Might you perhaps include some links to point us to where on Wikipedia these problems are? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:57, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
    • There are specific guidelines telling people not to write their articles like an ad, and there is also WP:COI to handle conflicts of interest. If it is blatant advertising, you can nominate it for deletion, especially if the subject is not notable (see WP:N). If it is notable, then you should ask someone to rewrite it according to the manual of style.--Kylohk 18:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
I guess you are talking about Talk:ChemSpider and its related article? Apparently, ChemSpider, whatever it is, is notable enough for its own article, and a link to that product's homepage is useful rather than advertising. But I do not know what this has to do with a user "Martin Walker", who appears not to exist on Wikipedia. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:55, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

False orphan

I have just received a massage saying that Image:Three of a Perfect Pair.jpg is an orphan. The image's description it states that no articles link to the image, but the same file still appears in the parent article Three of a Perfect Pair. How can this be fixed? Justin Foote 23:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I've done a null edit, which fixed the problem. Tra (Talk) 23:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

My changes were correct.

Yes, the reason why I added Evangelist Dorinda Clark Cole's bio is because it was from her official page http://www.dorindaclarkcole.net. That is all official information. But yet the bio up now is from an official source too. Also I changed her website because why would you use www.theclarksisters.com, when she has her own website www.dorindaclarkcole.net? It makes no sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MinisterCoreyM (talkcontribs)

The text that you added appears to mostly be cut-and-pasted from the individual's website. While it may be official, it is also likely to be copyrighted. Please read Wikipedia's guide to copyright for a explanation of why we cannot use the information you added in that form. Thanks. -- MarcoTolo 22:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Image

I'm currently working on Simple English Wikipedia, an article about Shields. I have an image i want to use on it. I need this image to be translated into a Wikipedia format, so it can be place on the article. the image is Here→[1] {if the screen opens and it's small, then click the maximize bottom at the top of screen to see the picture at it's real size.} All i need is the image's format, the one i need to paste on the article for the image.

§→Nikro 01:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The image may well be copyrighted. Part of the imame upload process requires you to confirm that the image use is not violating copyright, so you may want to be careful. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for example. Sorry. — RJH (talk) 15:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I believe it is. I went to the home page, and at the bottom of it I found the following statement.
"This page and all photos are copyrighted © by Valentine Armouries. Please ask us for permission to use these photos for any reason other than your own personal collection. All photos are of items at our armoury. Our medieval armoury is located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada."
If you want to upload them, you are going to have to ask permission from the owners of the company. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 19:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Okey, if they give it to me, then can you ranslate it into the right format it needs to be in.§→Nikro 4:19,67 May 7 (UCT)

Will someone send this e-mail to info@varmouries.com requesting the usage of the image, i can't send it because i'm only 14, and don't have an E-Mail address.

P.S. Strike this entry out if your going to send the e-mail. Thank you.

Dear Valentine Armories, I'm working on an article on Wikipedia, and while looking through images for it, I found your image, the image is http://www.varmouries.com/vpics/cru_200a.jpg. this image might have a copyright on it, and I ask if you may let me use the image for wikipedia. P.S. Please write back to my talk page, here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nikro Thank You.

§→Nikro 21:52, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Translate from German to English

I've worked a bit with some articles about some cities in Dithmarschen (Germany) at the Norwegian (BokmÃ¥l) WP. Now, I'm ready to translate the article about the city of Burg (Dithmarschen), but the problem is: It doesn't exist at all at English WP. I can't speak German, and the article isb't translated into Danish or Swedish either. It isn't necessary to translate the whole German article, just a small elementary part so I can translate it into Norwegian. I would be very happy if someone did it ;) Link to the German version: Burg (Dithmarschen) Thank you. Efloean 12:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Translation and maybe leave this message on the talk page there. YechielMan 05:23, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I want to add a link on my user page to a category, but without making my user page a listed member of the category? Is this possible? many thanks, Lynbarn 12:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Use the syntax [[:Category:Example]] Tra (Talk) 12:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
And pipe it to hide the colon. Adrian M. H. 18:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Resolved

Thanks both, Lynbarn

Edit

How do i edit a headline on Village Pump. there seems not to be any edit sign anywhere.

Click on the [edit] link to the right of the heading, then in the edit box that appears, you will see that the first line looks like == Text goes here == . This is the headline for that particular section. You can edit that by changing the text between the equals signs. Tra (Talk) 13:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Calvin Cooledge article being vandalized

I'm sorry, I thought you wiki-whateveryouares had tools to keep this from happening. Come on, guys, please take care! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.167.95.23 (talk) 04:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Everyone has the tools, even you. Even IP addresses can be used to revert vandalism. All you have to do is to click on the page history, and then click the previous version and edit it. The vandalism will be gone.--Kylohk 17:24, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Would the vandalism, by any chance, include spelling Calvin Coolidge correctly? - DavidWBrooks 00:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Flooding articles with cite flags ...

I'm sure others have seen it too. An editor comes to an article on a controversial subject and starts slapping [citation needed] flags onto everything in sight, even onto fully non-controversial assertions. Despite the assumption of good faith, it's perfectly clear that this editor has an axe to grind and is doing the citational equivalent of quibbling over the definition of "is" and "the". And yet ... and yet ...

What's happening in a case like this is that the editor in question is gaming the system, abusing one of Wikipedia's most precious core principles as a pretext for something that approaches vandalism, and is using verifiability as a pretext for attacking the subject of an article, for impugning the credibility of article by plastering lots of little blue [citation needed]'s all over it (I've seen the move referred to as "bluing out" an article), or for out-and-out censorship.

Where does this behaviour stand, under Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and how can it best be addressed? Does it fall under the concept of pushing POV, or vandalism, or what? Is there a guideline for when calling for citations becomes abusive or disruptive? For when an editor or group of editors may simply remove excessive [citation needed] flags?

--7Kim 19:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
C. f. Wp:citation#Tagging_unsourced_material. You might want to consider that it is actually more helpful to tag individual facts in need of sources than it is to tag the entire article. The former approach allows you to address the specific concerns, whereas an article-wide template is more vague. But if there's a {{Fact}} template in virtually every paragraph, then that's probably not too useful and should be replaced by a single template. — RJH (talk) 16:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't use the inline tags very much, unless something specific catches my eye, preferring instead to mark only completely unsourced articles or using {{citation style}} where appropriate. But I think that the editors who use the fact tag a lot are, for the most part, doing a good thing by marking out where the citations should have been. bear in mind that it would not happen if the articles were properly cited in the first place. Adrian M. H. 17:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
(I'm indending to the second level, but responding to both comments here.) You make some good observations, but I wouldn't even be raising the question if I didn't have a sense of "'sblood, there's something in this more than reasonable." If we have a sixteen-sentence article and somebody comes in and drops eighteen fact-flags into it, yes, that's perfectly reasonable and I have no objection ... so long as what's being flagged is eighteen unsourced assertions that are sufficiently controversial or outside the range of general knowledge to demand citation. In that case I'm all for it and it seems quite proper to me; there are some articles out there crying out for a taste of that sort of discipline. (I'm deliberately avoiding reference to any specific case, incidentally, because the recent cases I've seen have been in controversial articles I'm not closely involved with, and pushing in seems unwise. The people on the scene can work it out.) That even makes more sense to me than tagging the whole article, because if there are a number of editors working on the article they can clear the tags and essentially have a visible progress report.
The situation I'm talking about, though, is something that more closely approaches a veiled form of vandalism, in which the flagging editor gives the appearance of setting an unusually low threshold for what demands a citation -- not necessarily to the level of "You're saying the sky is blue? I demand a citation for that!" but close. Particularly where other edits this particular editor has made, or the pattern of which assertions e has chosen to flag, suggests an ax being ground or a double standard for views e likes vs. views e doesn't. If someone who is behaving in that way crosses the line, are there any good standards for recognising when the perfectly good and proper call for citation is being abused, and on the basis of what Wikipedia policies or guidelines can what action be taken?
--7Kim 23:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Can I get some advice on where to go with a question about copyrights and the Creative Commons as they pertain to images on Wikipedia? I had gotten the owner of a website (lukeisback.com) to license his photos under the Creative Commons (see here for more). Now I see that the new images he's uploading have a clear "© LUKEISBACK.COM" tag placed on them. My question is this: would these new photos qualify under the earlier permission for use on Wikipedia? I suspect not, but I want to sound out others first and I don't know where to go on that topic... Tabercil 23:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say that there is no problem with using the new photos. He still holds the copyright to all his images (even those that didn't have that little "© LUKEISBACK.COM" tag on them), but he has agreed to license the pictures under a CC-license. That tag just restates basic facts (and makes it impossible to forget to attribute the author :) ) — Ksero 15:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
In addition, if you think the "© LUKEISBACK.COM" is ugly, you can just crop the pictures. As long as you attribute the original creator.— Ksero 15:33, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikichem Editors promoting own commercial projects

"WIKICHEM" Editors promoting own or related commercial projects such as "CHEMREFER", "CHEMSPIDER" and "EMOLECULES". They create/tolerate articles about these commercial websites. Martin Walker is part of the Chemspider Project, see: http://www.chemspider.com/Advisory.aspx It seems as if there is a conflict of interest and I would recommend that Wikipedia and Wikipedia users clearly define, which kind of articles are helpful! I do not think, that "Chemspider" is a helpful article that need to be part of an Encyclopedia. Please stop the commercialisation of Wikichem! 213.188.227.119 17:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Might you perhaps include some links to point us to where on Wikipedia these problems are? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:57, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
    • There are specific guidelines telling people not to write their articles like an ad, and there is also WP:COI to handle conflicts of interest. If it is blatant advertising, you can nominate it for deletion, especially if the subject is not notable (see WP:N). If it is notable, then you should ask someone to rewrite it according to the manual of style.--Kylohk 18:04, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
I guess you are talking about Talk:ChemSpider and its related article? Apparently, ChemSpider, whatever it is, is notable enough for its own article, and a link to that product's homepage is useful rather than advertising. But I do not know what this has to do with a user "Martin Walker", who appears not to exist on Wikipedia. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:55, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

sending e-mails to an editor

I want to send an email to an editor that says on his user page that he will keep emails confidential. However, he doesn't provide a link to his email. How do I access his email, without posting the question on his talk page first? Thanks--Moon Rising 01:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

If the "E-mail this user" link in the toolbox does not work, then he has the feature turned off. Adrian M. H. 16:20, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Input requested on Talk:Neurotically Yours

There has been a variety of IPs trying to push through a fan invented name of a character in a webcomic (who's never been given a name by the creator) at the above article. Its been going on for over a year now. Another editor once again wants to re-open the issue, so I'd like to request some additional input. Quick facts:

  • The name is a pure creation of some fans
  • a forum link is provided to show that
  • there haven't been any reliable sources provided to show its use or notability
  • the creator has never referred to the character by name in any form.

In my experience this type of information has never been considered reliable or notable enough to be included in wikipedia articles. Please provide your take on the article talk page--Crossmr 16:49, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Tell them that fora are not reliable sources, even (especially?) for what could be described as a form of neologism. Its widespread use must be demonstrated by reliable sources, and try to educate them about those. If you get nowhere, RFC may be an option. 3O is out really, if you have more than one editor per side of the dispute. Adrian M. H. 16:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I request assistance with Imdanumber1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). He continues to bypass redirects because he dislikes redirects and "a guideline...cannot be violated". The latest can be seen at User talk:NE2#Redirects, in which he urges me to "be a better contributor on Wikipedia" by allowing him to continue his redirect bypassing. --NE2 22:47, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Left him a gentle notice. Keep us posted. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I will. --NE2 23:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Whoa, whoa, WHOA. First off, I really don't have any problem with redirects, but what I find that makes no sense is why he puts them in there. Also, he too has bypassed redirects as well, so the redirect bypassing issue shouldn't be a big deal if he decides to be a hypocrite by bypassing redirects himself, then warns others not to bypass redirects.
I have filed a mediation request regarding this issue. I don't think we need trolls on Wikipedia who try to assert themselves as they own the place. This guy has a lot of problems with other users, and I am willing to help if he learns what the meaning of consensus is. —Imdanumber1 (talk Â· contribs) 23:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah... he did it again. --NE2 16:25, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Have either of you considered the fact that both of you are in the wrong, and that continuing to do so might be a little pointy (or at least disruptive)? x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

When to remove an {{unsourced}} tag

User:AED placed an {{unsourced}} tag on Clarence Carter back in 2006. I've cleaned up the page a bit and added some references, but don't know if that's enough to merit removing the tag. Could someone take a look and let me know?

nb According to user contributions, AED has been inactive for some months. I have placed this question on User talk:AED but don't anticipate a speedy response!


Thanks Paul Tracy|\talk 21:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi, the template {{unreferenced}} was the template in use on the page. It is for articles with no references. Since you added some references (thanks!), that tag wasn't needed anymore, but more references are still needed. I replaced the {{unreferenced}} tag with {{refimprove}} tag to help attract more editors to improve this article. Sancho 22:13, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
You're quite right. Sorry, I had managed to confuse myself! Thanks for the help. Paul Tracy|\talk 22:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Small request for proof reading

Who can proof-read Patrick Hunt and Col de Clapier? Thanks a lot. -- 12:54, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

What does "in den Swiss Alps" mean? Changed 'massiv' to 'massif'. — RJH (talk) 19:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
There doesn't seem to be any typos, but I don't understand what "is favouring Col de Clapier" means. Perhaps you should rewrite it with another tone.--Kylohk 20:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Elaborate vandalism by user:StealBoy

A user has been creating a series of articles describing fictitious animation/cartoon films, and attempted to make them appear genuine by linking to them from various real articles. A glance at the user contributions will show thescale of the problem.

Although technically hoaxes, and definitely calculated vandalism, the wording of the 'report vandalism' page suggests that the user must be 'currently active' and have been given a complete set of warnings before he may be reported. Well, he was active a number of hours ago, and his IP address has been given a couple of anti-vandal warnings, but despite the disruptive nature of his editing, this would seem insufficient to be reported there. So, I have resorted to reporting the problem here as it is far too complex a web of edits for me check and to deal with in the limited time I have available just now -- besides which, I cannot speedy pages!.

The user in question is either StealBoy (talk · contribs) or 220.233.238.103 (talk · contribs). (The edit pattern would suggest they are the same person.)

As an example: The Clinger Winker was created by copying a section from the page The Clangers and changing a few words to make it look like a new article. It is clear to anyone who knows the Smallfilms canon that The Clinger Winker is just vandalism/nonsense/etc, and comparison of the two pages will quickly reveal the similarities.

The second example, also erroneously added to Smallfilms, is Ello It's Cheeky. This one includes a cast list, based on the fictional characters in Bagpuss, although none of the actors was involved with that series. This change goes further, since the fictitious film has now been added to the Richard Griffiths page.

Google searches will reveal no hits for either film (may need to refine search with the word 'smallfilms' to avoid flotsam.) And both link to the Bagpuss page at ImDB.

I have reverted the edits to Smallfilms, as it is within my sphere of knowledge, but the other pages are too much for me to take on. It would seem that a blanket revert of this user's edits might be appropriate since they appear to be intended to bring WP into disrepute.

Help? Please?? EdJogg 00:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

It certainly looks like this editor has indeed been doing some strange things. Assuming good faith for the moment, it's slightly possible that he/she is creating pages for these articles that reflect their names in other broadcasts, I guess, but I doubt it. I'll drop them a note, and see what the deal is, then go from there. These may need to be AFD'd, though. Tony Fox (arf!) 03:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
On second thought, I'm going to start the AFD process now, and see if the editor comes up with some reasoning through that. These aren't referenced properly or anything. Tony Fox (arf!) 03:20, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. EdJogg 09:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
The AfD process has been effectively completed. It was decided that all the erroneously-created articles should be 'speedied'. The original author has also been blocked, and the majority of contributions have been reverted by various editors.
EdJogg 01:03, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Citing a programme

I recently viewed Not the Messiah (yesterday, actually), and have added some information to the article. However, I have no idea how to cite it. WP:CITE isn't helping at all. The information is from the programme we received as we entered. It is a published work, I suppose, and thus completely trustworthy and reliable, but it's not publicly available. (Libraries don't have copies.) The show is only being performed for three nights. Initially I suggested that I could scan it in and upload relevant portions, but it is copyrighted material, so I oughtn't do that, especially not on Wikipedia servers. Any help? There is no "author" or "publisher" or "date of publication" or "city of publication" or any of the things you'd really need to cite it like a book, which is probably what it is closest to. There isn't even a title, really, it's just called "Performance", Summer 2007 issue. Is it a magazine? Still, we run in to the same problems as with citing it as a book: who publishes it, who "wrote the article", etc.

While I'm here, I also used a fact which Eric Idle mentioned in his monologue prior to the show beginning. Can I cite that like an interview? This is even more shaky! It is sort of unverifiable, isn't it? No video recordings are available, nor is the script. (The fact is the one about his mother being the sister of the mother of Peter Oundjian.) Goyston talk, contribs, play 21:14, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

In my strict interpretation of WP:ATT and WP:RS, citing a programme or film would verge on OR, and (when the subject is the source) would certainly be a primary source that is not independent. Though the degree to which that matters depends on what information you are citing. Someone asked this some while ago and we (he and those of use who responded) agreed that it would be very marginal and probably best avoided. Or at least backed up with written independent sources. Adrian M. H. 16:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
If you want to cite a TV programme, I suggest you use the correct template for it. Cite the name of the programme, its air date, episode name (if applicable) and the broadcaster. This should allow it to be looked up.--Kylohk 20:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

How to move a category?

I would like to change Category:Ella Fitzgerald songs to Category:Songs recorded by Ella Fitzgerald. How would one go about this?Proabivouac 06:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

You can list it at Categories for discussion. Adrian M. H. 17:04, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Reed spam

On it.wiki we noticed some spam of websites and services related to Reed Business Information, coming from one IP of them (http://private.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?%26ip%3D84.233.226.200).

Since you have a page about RBI full of links, maybe you should consider a cleanup. It seems clear that the company is abusing wikipedia to get commercial advantage. --Jollyroger 08:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

66.31.159.91 and 4.79.244.196 seem to have something to do with it, the second one already got warned for adding commercial links to Microprocessor and Boeing. However, the edits were made back in October 12-13 2006, does that mean it's too late to warn them? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 15:22, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Probably. If things get out of hand, then Wikipedia talk:Spam blacklist is for local blacklisting, m:Talk:Spam blacklist for blacklisting across all Wikipedias. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:00, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Odd redirect situation

The Mutiny was originally a redirect until someone decided to make it about a band by that name. I reverted it because I assume you aren't allowed to just change the subject of an article that way. Can anyone tell me what the policy is here? --P4k 19:39, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --P4k 06:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

2008 US elections

Is there a policy somewhere on wiki regarding the tone of articles on candidates aiming at the upcoming elections? Here is an example at Rick Goddard (U.S. Politician) where I had asked for some direction at the discussion page but to date no one has replied. My feeling is that this subject falls under a Db for importance at this time...after a successful run at the election, probably an article. I'll watch for reply. Thanks in advance! --Stormbay 21:51, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it might fall under WP:SPAM. I'm not sure though. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 23:11, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
If the person was made notable due to him running for the election, his article should simply redirect to the election article on Wikipedia, and give him a brief mention there.--Kylohk 17:38, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Article splitting and GFDL

I think the is the appropriate forum. I am going to be splitting up an article in the near future (List of musical works in unusual time signatures). I realise that people usually split articles by cutting the material from the original article and pasting it into the new article, then point to the new article/moved material in the old article, and link the old article in the new one. However, recent discussion at WP:AN#BJAODN Deleted has lead me on a mini-quest to see what exactly has to be done, from a WP:GFDL standpoint, when splitting articles. Is it sufficient to note in the edit summary where the original location of the moved material was? Is this sufficient in terms of authorship attribution (GFDL, 4B)? (Someone could go to the old article to find who added what). Links to a relevant page is fine. Regards, Flyguy649talkcontribs 19:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Summary style#Always mention in the edit summary when splitting. A link in the edit summary to the source article is sufficient, since it allows anyone sufficiently interested to track down the original edit. Note that the BJAODN thing is a bit different as, in many cases, the source article is deleted so the attribution would probably have to be detailed. - BanyanTree 04:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
What I suspected. Thanks! Flyguy649talkcontribs 22:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
There are two questions here. What is within the spirit of the license, and what is required by the letter of the license. The letter of the license is tricky, because it is vague in parts and over-specific in parts. We are doing fairly well in pursuing the spirit of attribution (list all authors, preserve edit history), but neither the recommended style for splitting nor pages of small excerpts such as BJAODN -- with or without deletion of the originals -- are 100% GFDL compliant. The best thing to do, would be to fix the GFDL. A second-best thing would be to add functionality to mediawiki that allows explicit merges and splits, and 'does the right thing' with regards to 'History' and other metadata. A split should contain the entire list of authors of the original in its 'history' section -- in this case perhaps what you see when you visit the History tab. A merge should merge the same list. And it is 4I that is tricky, more than 4B (which could forever be the first five contributors). +sj + 02:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The Snake Project

If anyone's not doing anything this week or day, please visit the Snake Project and help out with completion. For information about the Snake Project, please visit my userpage←here

§→Nikro 11:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Template

How do I make a musician template? Like the ones you see on the bottom of an article that contains the discography and singles. Quetzal123 02:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Navbox musical artist. –Pomte 08:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Automobile generation

Hi, I was wondering whether or not if there was someone who operates a bot that would be able to convert all instances of Template:Infobox Automobile generation to Template:Infobox Automobile. Both infoboxes are identical to each other, and a consensus has been suggested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles remove the template. Regards OSX (talk • contributions) 05:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

There is no such discussion. The discussion involves converting tables to infoboxes. --Sable232 12:38, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
If they are completely redundant to each other (with no extra parameters), and there is consensus that a separate infobox is not needed for generations, then you can simply redirect one to the other. –Pomte 08:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Co-Dependents Anonymous — why was the article deleted?

Does anyone know what happened to this valuable article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-Dependents_Anonymous
It is cached at Google.

— DavidMack 22:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It was deleted with the reason WP:CSD#A7 (Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If controversial, or if there has been a previous AfD that resulted in the article being kept, the article should be nominated for AfD instead.) x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
(EC) : Well, the deletion log lists it as:
02:04, 2 June 2007 Coelacan (Talk | contribs) deleted "Co-Dependents Anonymous"
It looks like it was speedy deleted under the A7 criteria ("Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject.") If you have further questions, I'd contact Coelacan and/or read Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?#What you can do about it. -- MarcoTolo 22:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I've taken it up with Coelacan. — DavidMack 22:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Category boxes

Hello

I have created my first page and I need to know how to put the Categories list into a box as it is alays seen. I've searched through the help pages but can't find anything. Please help. Thank you.

Blueturtle01 18:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Howdy and congratulations on the new page! Categories are classifications of a page by type (like "Salmon" might be in the "Fish" catgeory). To add a category to an article, just put [[Category:Fish]] at the bottom of the article. The article will also automatically appear in the category. If you want the article to be alphebetized in the category differently from the title (such as wanting "Ethel Merman" to alphebetized as "Merman, Ethel"), then you can pipe the category: [[Category:Singers|Merman, Ethel]]. I have taken the liberty of fixing the cats on the page you created; you can take a look at how it was done there. Let me know if I can help further. Thanks again and keep up the great work! --TeaDrinker 18:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use "consultation"

Since the 3 images used to identify the persons in The Bus Uncle has been removed, the article lacks images. I plan to upload 2 new images to be added, and would like to consult whether they fit the fair use criteria, particularly with regards to replaceability.

  • One image will show the "press-arranged" meeting between the young man and Bus Uncle, and will be placed in the Aftermath section. The purpose is to illustrate that second incident. I don't think it's replaceable with a free image because it's happened 1 year ago, and only the press will have photographs.
  • The second image will be a satirical cartoon showing the Bus Uncle's enthusiasm in cashing in on his 15 minutes of fame. Again, I don't think it's replaceable because if any editor uses Photoshop to create their own satirical image and upload it, they will be expressing their own opinion in doing so, violating NPOV.

Any comments?--Kylohk 11:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Good idea to have both of them in an image. It's important to show them doing something more than just looking at the camera or at each other though. Are they interacting with each other in some meaningful way?
  • Depending on what the second image looks like, it may be construed as slander on the Bus Uncle. But go for it if you have time to see how they react.
I would avoid pursuing this until the FAR is over, to prevent the issues from piling on each other. –Pomte 04:39, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Policies for lists/categories of religion/ethnicity vs. occupation

I'm having some difficulty locating a policy regarding when it is acceptible to cross-categorize or cross-list biographies by an intersection of ethnicity/religion versus occupation. (For example: List of Hindu mathematicians, List of Roman Catholic Church artists, List of African American astronauts, List of Jewish economists, List of Native American actors, List of Irish-American mobsters, &c. ... which all seem like suitable topics to me.) I found nothing on this topic under Wikipedia:Categorization of people. But this debate seems to keep coming up in various forms on PROD/CfD/AfD, so some clear guidelines would be useful in making a neutral assessment. Could somebody help? Thank you. — RJH (talk) 22:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

  • I'm actually in the process of writing up a policy proposal for just that, per your suggestion. Essentially just a overcategorization applied and tuned for lists. I'll try to have a prototype ready in a few days, which people can tweak and add to. Hopefully it will help with the millions of list AfDs that have come up in the last month or so. By the way, List of Roman Catholic Church artists wouldn't count in that list you give. It's not really an intersection of religion and occupation. It's more like one in the same. Bulldog123 16:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Map images

How do you go about getting the map graphics created. An example of this is Image:EnglandYorkshireTrad.png.

Keith D 14:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

What exactly do you need? I suggest making a request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps. --Aude (talk) 14:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I was thinking of some depicting civil parishes. Keith D 14:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Please help to verify validity of a page

I don't know if the "Gregory Ellison" page is true or not and I marked it for speedy deletion because it looked to be yet another made-up biography. Now it is contested. Please help.

Zaglith 03:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it too much. The creator has to provide some sort of reliable sources to prove the person's notability; any Survivor winner would be all over Google, but I'm not getting anything that would indicate anything in the article is true. A lot of people will use the 'hangon' template and never provide the needed notability; in that case, it doesn't look like anything is likely to turn up. Tony Fox (arf!) 03:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. I Googled it too and found a lot of "Gregory Ellison" results, but nothing about Survivor. Yes, I have seen people use the 'hangon' inproperly, but this biography seemed realistic somehow, as opposed to the stanard "My name is Bill. I like Pizza." kind of thing. Thanks for helping.

Zaglith 03:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

No worries. Frankly, if any Survivor winner didn't have a page already, something's wrong... the reality-show related editors are awfully quick with that. Tony Fox (arf!)
Is the person a winning of the latest survivor? To my knowledge, all winners would be mentioned on the archived websites of each season. Therefore, it should at least be one reliable source. There may also be papers that exist that follows such reality TV series. (Like the Sun in the UK, which follows Big Brother).--Kylohk 20:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
No, it said he had won in 2003, which didn't check out. It's been deleted now, so no worries either way. =) Tony Fox (arf!) 20:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

deleted pages in my contributions and watchlist

Hello everybody, for the past couple of days I've been tagging a lot of articles with speedy deletion tags. Some where deleted others were not. My question is, the ones that were deleted, how come they disappear from my watchlist and my contributions. I'd like to see those pages in order to see what the comment left by the person who deleted them. --Witchinghour 11:13, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

They disappear from there because deleted pages become invisible to everyone apart from admins. However, you can go to Special:Watchlist/edit then the pages that were deleted whilst on your watchlist will show up as red links. If you click on one of those red links, you can see the deletion log, which would look something like this:
  • <time>, <date> <admin name> (Talk | contribs) deleted "<page name>" (<reason>)
The text given for the reason will show the comment left by the admin. Most likely, this will be the number of the speedy deletion criteria (which can be looked up at WP:CSD) or a brief reason why the page was deleted. Tra (Talk) 12:11, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Hey thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for :) --Witchinghour 12:17, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at Tipton, Kansas: could someone check if the history section is appropriate? I don't think so, but I'm tired and I don't have the energy to check up on it now. Thanks! Nyttend 04:33, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I certainly didn't think it was appropriate - it was all copied from other sources, one a website and the other I couldn't track down. I've removed it, and left a note on the talk page suggesting that anyone who wants to actually write a history section using reliable sources would be more than welcome to do so. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Help with an article talk page

One particular talk page about a music genre, Talk:Eurodance, over the past month or so, has been getting filled up with disputes between new users. They are adding unsigned, unformatted contents to the top of the page instead of making new sections at the bottom, and some of it is uncivil. What should be done with the talk page? Should the edits be removed as uncivil, should we try to parse it out into numbered sections, or should we leave it alone because we don't want to get involved in it? Squidfryerchef 03:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

See WP:RTP, WP:TALK, and WP:ARCHIVE. Between them, they should answer your questions. Adrian M. H. 21:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I wasn't aware of RTP. It can be difficult to keep articles about musical genres on track. Squidfryerchef 22:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Simple Shield list

Can anyone please write down a large list of all the shield types they know {Example: Buckler, Kite shield} and at least try to have a good Simple english description and facts about them, this is for the simple english wikipedia's List of shields §→Nikro 07:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

User Boxes

How do I organize my user boxes into straight columns? N734LQ 04:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

For a single straight column, use the following:

To get the code for this box, simply click on the edit button for this section, and copy and paste the code. Hope that helps. Dreadnaught 16:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Baker image

Could someone please untangle the mess regarding Image:Baker.jpg? This was originally a picture of a monkey sent into space on a Jupiter missile. Due to an unfortunate sequence of events it became a picture of a minister of some sort. Needless to say, someone removed it from Jupiter (missile) thinking it a racist joke. But the image of the monkey is the one that matches the image description page! (sdsds - talk) 08:07, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted to the previous version of the image by clicking (rev) in its file history. –Pomte 08:38, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I hope all the different editors who want an image of that name can find other names for their images! (sdsds - talk) 14:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
The best solution to this issue is to rename the image to something more descriptive by uploading it under another title and fixing the references. Dcoetzee 06:53, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Blind snakes

Blind snakes were placed in three very small articles for all three types of blind snake, they all had stubs, so i moved onew of them to blind snakes, and pasted the other two to to it to make a larger, and more convient article, now someone proposed it be merged with blind snake (Blind Snakes and Blind snake) for some reason, so may someone complete the user's proposal to merge the two. I have the Snake Project to work with, and i don't know enough about the subject to merge the two, so i can't.

§→Nikro 02:57, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I left the disambig page as is and I moved "Blind Snakes" to its proper taxonomic family article. I think that's what you wanted; if not, please leave me a note and I'll try again. YechielMan 06:08, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

More fair use questions

I've been coming up against a ton of images without fair use rationale. For example, almost every concert shot on the Led Zeppelin page. Many of the images there were uploaded for fair use on articles about a concert DVD, but then apparently were put here because they look cool. Almost none of them have rationale listed for use in this article. I have found the pages describing how to go about providing fair use rationale vague and ill-defined. Rather than take the images down from the page, I would like to be a little more helpful and put up fair use rationale. It seems like this sort of stuff would be treated more seriously, with a little more care, given the legal issues it could raise. I guess that there is something of an attitude on Wikipedia that if nobody complains, then its okay, even if its illegal? I'm posting here in the hopes that somebody can let me know the best way to provide fair use rationale on non-free images used on pages where no rational is provided. Gaff ταλκ 22:16, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "best way". Do you mean best way to find such images or best way to quickly add fair use rationales? I would say the latter is discouraged, since people should be thinking carefully about why a non-free image is necessary. Otherwise one can use Category:Publicity Photographs with missing fair-use rationale or other categories to find such images. If you don't want to add rationales yourself, you can add {{db-badfairuse}} and let the uploader either put in a rationale or let it be deleted. - BanyanTree 22:40, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for helping me sort this out. I did not upload these images. They look great on the page, so I was wondering about how to put up fair use rationale. I think I will go ahead and try to whip up fair use rationale for these images. I'm surprised how murky the guidelines covering fair use are, however. Gaff ταλκ 22:56, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Odd redirect situation

The Mutiny was originally a redirect until someone decided to make it about a band by that name. I reverted it because I assume you aren't allowed to just change the subject of an article that way. Can anyone tell me what the policy is here? --P4k 19:39, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --P4k 06:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

The SNAKE PROJECT

The Snake Project needs helper and users to help create and finish the articles. For more information about the project, visite my userpage.

§→Nikro 08:36, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Please have a read of Wikipedia:Avoid self-references and Wikipedia:WikiProject to understand how wikiprojects operate. Also of interest will be Wikipedia:List guideline and Wikipedia:Featured list criteria. Thanks/wangi 19:06, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Mistake

I changed my preferences to something else on accident, don't ask why or how. Just please try and change it back to Minibook or whatever that was called.

§→Nikro 05:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, on "my preferences", the second tab from left is "skin". Click that, and the fourth choice is "Monobook." That's what you had before, so click and save changes. You might also need to purge your browser's cache (whatever the heck that means). :) YechielMan 06:11, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Reed spam

On it.wiki we noticed some spam of websites and services related to Reed Business Information, coming from one IP of them (http://private.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?%26ip%3D84.233.226.200).

Since you have a page about RBI full of links, maybe you should consider a cleanup. It seems clear that the company is abusing wikipedia to get commercial advantage. --Jollyroger 08:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

66.31.159.91 and 4.79.244.196 seem to have something to do with it, the second one already got warned for adding commercial links to Microprocessor and Boeing. However, the edits were made back in October 12-13 2006, does that mean it's too late to warn them? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 15:22, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Probably. If things get out of hand, then Wikipedia talk:Spam blacklist is for local blacklisting, m:Talk:Spam blacklist for blacklisting across all Wikipedias. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:00, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Need help from someone who knows Wikipedia better than I do

Hello all,

On Sunday I thought I'd be helpful and look for misspellings to correct and I arrived at these two articles (versions as I saw them): Chris Gore and Philip Zlotorynski. As they both appeared to be talking about the same person I added merge tags to both articles suggesting that they be merged into one.

Since then I have received a threatening email from someone claiming to be Chris Gore (User:GBone77). The email is threatening legal action against me for libel, saying that I have written vindictive things against the subject in the article, and demanding that I give him my telephone number to discuss further or he will bring the issue up with his lawyers and with Wikipedia management.

Apart from the obvious distress that this has caused me (I don't like being threatened, especially for things I didn't do) I am concerned that this person feels slandered by Wikipedia and don't know enough about Wikipedia policy in order to take this further. How can this be resolved?

All I did was suggest the articles be merged.

Roleplayer 11:44, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I think he didn't like the article in general rather than the idea of a merger, and so he complained to the first person on the page's history, i.e. you, just don't give him your phone number, I just gave him a conflict of interest warning and I'll see what else I can do, e.g. complain to admins. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 13:08, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Once legal action is threatened, it is no longer appropriate for a normal editor to be handling the matter. Refer the user to Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from subject), which specifies how to contact people who are authorized by the Wikimedia Foundation to deal with such matters. I will go inform the user in question now. - BanyanTree 04:01, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Many thanks to both of you. -- Roleplayer 12:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

problems with template

Would someone with experience in creating templates please assist us in fixing a problem with "Template:Freemasonry2"... it is 1) capturing all the text that comes after the inertion of the template (essentially this means it is capturing most of the article), which 2) causes the template to expand right across the page instead of nesting at the top right the way we want it to. No one can figure out what is wrong. For an example of the problem... see: York Rite. Thanks Blueboar 00:14, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Tra (Talk) 00:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks... such a simple thing... if only we had known. Blueboar 00:47, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Serious login problem

I just tried (and failed, mysteriously) to log in. So I asked for a new password; it was emailed to me, but I couldn't log in with that one either. Would someone please see whether something is screwed up with my account, and then leave a note on my user talk page? Thanks. Obviously, at this point I've clobbered my old password, but I need some way to get my account working again. Jmabel | talk / 66.212.79.108 21:22, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, seems to have worked 30 minutes later... - Jmabel | Talk 21:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Image:Main_Page_Uncyclopedia.png --> the logo and content of this image are creative commons, and the softwre is GPL. So surely this is a free image. I just don't know what to call it :( What should I do? It's all freely licensed material, but different components are released under two different licenses. Milto LOL pia

Bump. Milto LOL pia 21:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Uncyclopedia's license is By-NC-SA 2.0, which is not considered to be a free license by Wikipedia due to the NC part. So the image, as a whole, is non-free. (This neatly sidesteps the issue of the copyright status of an image consisting of elements that are all free but incompatibly licensed. For one possibility, see Image:Admin logo.gif, although it's arguable whether the reasoning used there would apply to cases where the differently licensed parts aren't so clearly separated.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism of my user page

A few hours ago, an IP vandalised my user page as seen here, adding "This user is a Rank 5 rapist!" to the top. I've reverted the change, of course, but I'm not sure what to do. First: what warning should be left for the IP, which has never had a message on its talk page: Template:Uw-npa1, Template:Uw-npa4im, or something else? And who should leave it: is it appropriate for me to leave such a message, or is it better for someone else to do it? I'd like to leave the npa4im myself, but I'm not sure whether either one would be the best. Nyttend 04:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

You can probably use Template:Uw-upv1 as a starting point; going to a fourth-level warning right away might be a bit sharp as a first warning. Wikipedia:Template_messages/User talk namespace has other options. I note the IP has done a few other dodgy edits; I'll sort those out as well as I can. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:36, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree, use Template:Uw-upv1, and if the ip continues, increase the severity of the next warning. --Tλε Rαnδоm Eδιτоr 19:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
For "rank 5 rapist", I'd say skipping a few levels would've been quite acceptable. In any case, the IP appears to have been blocked for their other edits anyway. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Image needs adjustment

File:Hasekpractice.jpg
Dominik Hasek (no longer) looks like he's skating on frozen urine. Help?

This is a good photo, but the lighting has made the colours awful. The ice should be white, not brownish-yellow. Could someone with Photoshop (or whatever) give this some quick attention? -Joshuapaquin 01:16, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Is this better?--72.81.33.113 01:48, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I've uploaded a new version with autocorrected white balance over the original. I also scaled the image down by 6, since it seemed to have been previously scaled up by that factor; this did wonders for the file size. (In the future, Wikipedia:Graphics Lab may be a better place for requests like this.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Help - Is this ok?

I have just added the paragraph "transfer speculation" on Fabio Quagliarella after reading headlines in the british press this morning, this is my first addition on wikipedia and if i am any policy breach or doing anythin illegal, please let me know at your earliest convenience. Regards, Simon — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.231.161 (talkcontribs)

It would be fine if you could cite a source for it.--Chaser - T 14:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, although it seems to have been removed now, the source was the daily mirror

Which I don't think is the most reliable source in the world, given it is a tabloid. Either way, it's probably recentism. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:19, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Opinions

I am currently not a registered Wikipedia person (?), but I do make edits to articles when I think they are appropriate. My edits are usually limited to grammatical/spelling/technical fixes, and an occasional, obvious NPOV issue. I recently read the wikipedia article on George Meade. At the end, there was a cited sentence that suggested that his strategy employed during the American Civil War should have been studied more closely by generals during WWI. Now this seems more like an opinion than the sort of reference material that would seem appropriate for a wikipedia article. However, before I go off half-cocked making revisions to the article (and most likely stepping on someone’s toes), I thought it would be best to ask if this sort of content is acceptable. Thanks for your guidance!

June 15, 2007

Despite the cite, the wording is an opinion. If it said something like, "historian X has said that ..." then it could be kept. Corvus cornix 16:58, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The article The Boston Cecilia has several excerpts taken directly from the page [www.bostoncecilia.org/about/about-us.html]. Suspecting a copyright violation, I placed a speedy delete tag on the article. However, the author claims ownership of the copyright. What is the appropriate action to take?

Senordingdong 18:13, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Point "the author" to WP:COPYREQ. If they are genuine, they will follow its instructions to give their permission formally. Or they might wish to add a GFDL license to "their website". The burden of proof is on them. See also WP:COPYVIO. Adrian M. H. 21:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Senordingdong 09:21, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

My image was deleted!

And I can't see the deletion log! Argh! This was fully copyrighted and referenced, Fair used, blah, blah blah. WHY? Image:Takashi_Murakami_c.jpg This is so frustrating! There was no discussion and I got no warning. Please can an admin help me? --Knulclunk 02:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You didn't mention that the image was on Commons, which would have made the search much quicker. See the Commons deletion log. Normally there's a bot that removes images deleted on Commons, but it would be impractical for the Commons admins to notify everyone who might be affected by a deletion on all the projects. - BanyanTree 03:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Fair use images do not belong to Wikimedia Commons. Upload them here instead.--Svetovid 11:39, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Being reverted twice while editing Jackie Chan

I'm in the middle of editing Jackie Chan to reach Good Article Status. However, my edits have been reverted twice by another user, asking me to "use the talk page before you even think about editing a section that has been there for years" and telling me not to "edit so fast". The thing is, having listed my reason on the talk page, no one responded. Therefore there really is nothing wrong with me making good faith edits in an attempt to improve the article. Is there anything that could be done by such potentially possessive behaviour? Thanks.--Kylohk 08:37, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, DaliusButkus (talk · contribs) has responded to you on the talk, though I note that user has already been warned for reverting Jackie Chan to his preferred version. I also note that he has no edits besides to his user page and Jackie Chan. It is perhaps unusual for someone who has never used a talk page to demand that you use one. I further note that his dismissal of your edits as "previously discussed" references a older section in which two of three users express support for the type of edits you have made. I'll drop a note in support of your position. - BanyanTree 10:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I'll drop in a note as well in favor of the guy backing off, as it seems he doesn't want anyone else to edit the page and has no good reason. "It's been here for years" doesn't make the content good or worth keeping, if its copied from another source. Dreadnaught 12:54, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
If anything, being bold should be welcomed, not stuffed back into obscurity. x42bn6 Talk Mess 21:58, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Looks like the other user is insisting on keeping the trivia section, in spite of my asking him to avoid it in articles. The user has continued to revert it again to that previous version. Although he hasn't technically reverted more than 3 times in a day, could anything be done about this?--Kylohk 09:10, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
WP:RFC. Corvus cornix 23:15, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't matter much now, the other user has backed down.--Kylohk 15:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair Use images

I have been adding screenshots to the turn-based strategy article, but someone keeps removing them, claiming that fair use does not apply in this case. Do you agree that fair use doesn't apply? How come articles like real-time strategy and real-time tactics can use screenshots while this article cannot?? SharkD 18:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, almost all of the screenshots in the gallery at real-time tactics are being improperly used. There is no fair-use rationale given, and they shouldn't appear in a gallery. They could only be used in the article the covers the game that they come from. They're also of unnessesarily high resolution. The screen shot that you've been trying to add to the turn-based strategy article would belong in an article that describes the game that that screenshot came from, but it doesn't add anything to the turn-based strategy article that can't be covered by text. Sancho 18:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me what happened here, and how I can fix it? I was trying to add references and I ended up causing the the end of the article to disappear. --P4k 04:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Instead of <ref name="asdf" /ref>, do <ref name="asdf" />. –Pomte 05:34, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. --P4k 06:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Help needed at Drawing board

Hi all. Help by experienced editors could be used over at Wikipedia:Drawing board. The new header has been attracting more submissions and there's still an old backlog too. Thanks! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 22:00, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Smooth jazz - where to go next?

(edit conflict) I have a bit of a dilemma. I was alerted to the smooth jazz article because of a number of problems. Because of the long history of disagreement on the article alongside its other problems, I asked for help from Wikipedia:Cleanup, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Jazz and Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce to no avail. It's way too big a task for me to cover and looking for references on Google isn't helped by the large numbers of smooth jazz radio stations on page after page of results.

The article violates most of Wikipedia policy, including WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:NOT#DIR, WP:EL and now I also believe the article also contains some peacock terms. I explained all in a bit more detail at Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce/Smooth jazz. My ideal situation would be to have the article deleted and start again from scratch, but I believe the subject is notable because of its role in radio history and being a major, if commercial fork of jazz (even if others may not agree), and so deletion shouldn't be an option (I hope!). What do other people suggest I can go from here? I and other people are stumped! --tgheretford (talk) 21:06, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with going ahead and rewriting the entire article. Cut down all OR, POV and inappropriate external links, then start sourcing specific claims. The article and task force aren't exactly active, and if someone shows up to stop you, then refer them to policy. –Pomte 21:56, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Not a promising start, but it is proving difficult to find articles online to cite references from, only weblogs, personal opinions and short generic passages amongst the number of smooth jazz radio station sites. I'll have a sleep, come back tomorrow and see where to go from here. --tgheretford (talk) 22:39, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Infobox alignment

Why do the infoboxes seem to be out of alignment today? Instead of being to the right, they appear to be at the top left side with the article below the infobox. NorthernThunder 20:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Example? –Pomte 21:56, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
West_Norriton_Township,_Pennsylvania Here is an example. When I view it, the Geobox Township box is on the lef-hand side and the rest of the article is directly below. NorthernThunder 22:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
I've checked that article on Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer and the infobox displays on the right hand side on both browsers on my machine. Does the same problem occur on a different browser? I'm suggesting it may be a problem with your browser. Have you tried doing a forced refresh of your browser? If that doesn't work, clear your cache as instructed on the linked page. --tgheretford (talk) 22:52, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Fixed it. Thanks. :) NorthernThunder 01:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

History Merges

One of the criteria for speedy deletion is "housekeeping, such as a history merge". What is a history merge, and how would I do it? :) GrooveDog 15:59, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

You have to get an admin to do it. See Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves and the holding pen it links to. –Pomte 19:15, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Question about a category

I found this category, which is filled with a lot of directory style lists of various chapters of student organizations: Category:Lists of chapters or members of United States student societies

I'm sure the parent organizations are reasonably notable, but I don't know if these lists are appropriate for Wikipedia. Does anybody else think they might be a concern? Mister.Manticore 21:42, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the lists should be merged into the articles on the societies. Most of them won't be very long. –Pomte 02:02, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Top 33

User:Crocodileman is adding his own made-up chart User:Crocodileman#Canadian_Top_33 to artist and song articles (see here). isn't this against WP:CHARTS policy? 69.156.78.240 19:27, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It does contradict the guideline, but guidelines aren't binding. Have you talked with Crocodileman? Maybe the editor isn't aware of this guideline, or maybe is aware of it, but doesn't think that anyone else disagrees with the changes... Sancho 19:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't think anyone's going to confuse that for an official chart with anything more than one person's arbitrary criteria. –Pomte 02:04, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

what can I do?

Hello,I'm Kazutoko@ja.Wikipedia.

  1. But,User:Kazutoko isn't mine.The account must be Vandalism.
  2. I want to use English Wikipedia as account"Kazutoko".

What can I do?--218.42.94.51(ja:User:Kazutoko)03:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It looks like they've made one edit, and that's to their own user page, back in January - with a reference in the edit summary to the account on other Wikis. I'm not sure if usurping usernames can be done for cross-Wiki accounts, but you may want to drop a note there and see what they say. Tony Fox (arf!) review? 04:13, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
OK.Thamk you!--218.42.94.51(ja:User:Kazutoko) 07:16, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Vulgarity at user pages

Should this type of vulgarity and comments disparaging the project be allowed at a user page? See [2]. --Kevin Murray 16:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes I think so, but then I'm against most forms of censorship. But an individual carrying around an attitude like that is bound to get himself banned at some point. — RJH (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
He is voicing an opinion, and his strong feelings, about a policy decision. This is well within the scope of user pages per Wikipedia:User page. Dcoetzee 07:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
per Wikipedia:User page.
Inappropriate content
There is broad agreement that you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute, or which is likely to give widespread offense. Wikipedia is not a soapbox is usually interpreted as applying to user space as well as the encyclopedia itself. You do have more latitude in user space than elsewhere, but remember: don't be a dick about it. Extremely offensive material may be removed on sight by any editor.
--Kevin Murray 12:35, 17 June 2007 (UTC)


There is a lot more to that than any of you realise. ViridaeTalk
Jeff's behavior has been disruptive in his participation, and now he seeks to be disruptive in his absence. If he wants to make a mature critical comment fine, but this sensational vulgarity should not be tolerated. --Kevin Murray 12:29, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Third-Party to Summarize AfD

The debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of deaths in The Sopranos series has somewhat wandered. It would be a great help if someone who is not involved in the debate could summarize the keep and delete arguments to get things back on track. Vagary 21:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The Admin ship

Hey, recently, the USS Adminship or whatever it is called (the image of the ship you get when you are an admin) disappeared from my userpage, and now I can't work out how to make it reappear or even where it went! It normally appears to the left of "I, Tony the Marine, hereby award...etc" in my "awards recieved" drop down bar (about 3 or 4 bars down on my main user page), it should appear just as the other images do on the other awards I have there, but it doesn't. Could someone take a look and find out why? If I replace the image with another in the code it works fine, and there is nothing wrong with the image itself when I go and look at it on other userpages, it is just on my userpage. Could someone have a go with it? SGGH speak! 19:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, fixed it myself SGGH speak! 12:55, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Could anyone improve this article: 2007 Chinese slave scandal?

Thanks.--Linuxwindows 21:44, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I just translated first paragraph. --Wrightbus 04:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Signature

I see that signatures have recently been limited to 255 characters. Is there a way for me to still use this signature: ---Signed By:[[Korn|<span style="color:#FF0000;">KoЯn</span>]]<span style="color:#000000;">fan71</span><small>([[User:Kornfan71|<span style="color:#FF0000;">User Page</span>]]—[[User talk:Kornfan71|<span style="color:#FF0000;">My Talk</span>]]—[[Special:Contributions/Kornfan71|<span style="color:#FF0000;">Contibs]])</small>

It has 326 characters with spaces, so you know. Thanks! ---Signed By:KoЯnfan71(User PageMy Talk) 00:10, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes.. but do you really need to? –Pomte 01:42, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I've shortened it down to:
—Signed By:[[Korn|<font color="red">KoЯn</font>]]<nowiki/>fan71<small>([[User:Kornfan71|<font color="red">User Page</font>]]—[[User talk:Kornfan71|<font color="red">My Talk</font>]]—[[Special:Contributions/Kornfan71|<font color="red">Contribs</font>]])</small>
But it's still six characters over the limit. To get it within the limit, you would need to alter the signature, perhaps by removing the contributions link, or by having 'fan71' link to your userpage instead of the 'User Page' link. You could also consider abbreviating the words used or removing some of the colour. Tra (Talk) 01:51, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Hey, thanks Pomte. I was able to slim it down a little more, then count it in Microsoft Word. It came it as 254 characters! ---Signed By:KoЯnfan71(User PageMy Talk) 00:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Eh, never mind. I'll just have to go with Tra's plan. Too many characters again! So this is my sig. ---Signed By KoЯnfan71 (User PageMy Talk) 00:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

page in the bin

I am hardly ever active on en:, and I do not know how to get rid of a page in my namespace. I made a copy of a page in the nl:Wikipedia, that became very succesfull there, but it didn't do enything here. See: User:Quichot/Hotlist, as a copy of nl:Wikipedia:Hotlist gewenste artikelen.

How can I get this page out of en:Wikipedia. It s useless when nobody thinks it's usefull? ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quichot (talkcontribs) 16:44, 19 June 2007

See How to delete a user subpage. -- MarcoTolo 22:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Template page help requested

We are in need of help at "Template:Freemasonry2". What we are trying to do is create a "nested" series of collapsable sections and sub-section in our template/info box... ie we would like to have a collapsable sub-section within a collapsed section. It seems so logical an idea, that I am sure it can be done... but none of us know how to do it. If I am not clear, see our discussions near the bottom of "Template talk:Freemasonry2". Thanks. Blueboar 15:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

User page error

although i receive a new message alert but no message appear.also some of my message had also been deleted.User talk:Yousaf465

Your user talk looks fine now to me. No worries.--Kylohk 14:05, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Image rendering

I changed the image (to The Thinker) on the intro box at Portal:Philosophy. It now has white space instead of background colour on three sides. It was a similar problem when I had it on the left hand side. I cannot see where the problem lies. Anyone have any ideas? --Alan Liefting 21:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, the trouble is that you're using "thumbnail" for the image, and the "thumbnail" functionality doesn't allow the background color (purple) to show through. I changed Portal:Philosophy/Intro to use a <div> instead, and that fixed it (at least on my browser). – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I now remember that I was trying to give the image a border to make it look a little better. The background of the image and the background colour of the box need some sort of delineation. Is that possible to achieve? -- Alan Liefting 13:39, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Got a border now but it needs a bit of padding between the text and border. -- Alan Liefting 13:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Is this what you mean? – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:01, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Close, but that has set me on the right track for what I want. Thanks for the help - hope I dont appear too pedantic. -- Alan Liefting 22:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Elevation profiles

Do people think Image:NY 52 profile.png is useful? (Please, no one currently involved comment; I'm trying to get people who aren't already opposed to everything I create.) --NE2 23:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Sure it's useful. It provides relevant information that could not be available to the encyclopedia any other way. A small thumbnailed image never killed anyone. Shalom Hello 06:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Try a thinner line in a different colour (grey or black perhaps?). It would have been great as a proper 3D elevation map, but I can appreciate that they are hard work to create. Adrian M. H. 16:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Looks useful to me. – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Requesting User Abu badali gets banned ASAP

The user Abu badali have had a long history of user harrassment by abusing fair use policies. He is well known for wikistalking and unfairly deleting images with absolutely no regard, please see here. Recently he has been following my edits and purposely deleting images and ignoring any fairuse rationale I have written down. He generally flags a page to "rm unnecessary unfree images". An example is the Image:ZhouXuanCDrelease.jpg removed from the Music of China page, which clearly have a rationale and a historical use. He is purposely avoiding any conversation. I believe this user should be immediately banned for

  1. Abusing any power, especially when has no administrative rights to begin with.
  2. Abusing the fair use policy by improperly making deletions with no regard.
  3. wikistalking
  4. He already has a lengthy history of negatively enforcing rules among a number of users.
  5. On his user page statements such as "Call me a stalker. It's fashionable now." and "Abu is targeting you" clearly demonstrate he has negative intentions and enjoy the harrassment for fun.
  6. He has shown no ability to differentiate between "decorations" and "historical context" for ANY article.

Benjwong 16:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

He needs to be banned indefinitely, as I believe there was such an attempt in March and May. For every edit he does, he is taking away massive contribution time from so many good users on wikipedia. Should I comment on that existing case or will someone start a new case? Benjwong 16:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
The case appears to be in the evidence presentation phase right now - you may be able to submit evidence there. I doubt the arbcom would accept two cases on the same issue. WilyD 17:18, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Number 1 does not follow - how can he abuse power when he has none... hbdragon88 06:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

He is harrassing again. He removed all the images from the Chinese rock page. Yet the US Rock and roll page was fine was a picture of Elvis. This user is making biased edits or have ZERO ability to figure out what's important. Benjwong 17:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Personally I just want to say he is a major league a**hole, He ruins everything and does nothing but send people's stress levels through the roof. I WANT HIM banned permanently, this is unacceptable and if he continues to do this he can call my lawyers. Because I am not going to stand for this harrassment any longer.--Jack Cox 23:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Legal threats can get yourself banned, Jack. -- Ned Scott 23:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Quite. Abu badali is not an administrator, so can't abuse his powers. He seems to be trying to bring our image use in line with our policy. How tactfully he goes about it, I cannot say. Judging from his user page, he may not be approaching it in the most sensible way. But there's absolutely no doubt that what he's doing is correct. ElinorD (talk) 23:19, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The policy clearly states that an image with good rationale can be used. Otherwise, why are millions of users wasting hours trying to write a good fairuse rationale? People have good intentions. The problem is that the rules allow anyone to flag anything they want as "unnecessary" and start wiping articles clean. This borderlines vandalism and is decreasing the quality of the articles. Benjwong 02:33, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
There are two parts: good rationale and good commentary. Fair use explicitly says that it must be the subject of "critical commentary". Abu badali is going after the second part of the policy. hbdragon88 06:34, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Contrary to what Benjwong asserts, our policy does not state that any image with a good rationale can be used. A non-free image can only be used if it complies with all ten of our non-free content criteria. If an image isn't usable on Wikipedia (because it's replaceable, or competes with the copyright-holder), then there's absolutely no point in trying to write a good fair-use rationale. Good intentions are not enough. If Abu badali were making bad faith nominations, then that would be a problem. But I haven't seen many cases of him tagging an image for deletion, where there wasn't at least some legitimate reason to question whether the image conforms to our policy. For instance, in the case you mention in your complaint, the CD cover is only used in an article that does not mention that particular CD at all, thus failing criterion #8. Remember that Abu does not have the ability to delete images -- they will only be deleted if a an administrator feels that the image is in violation. – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me what happened here, and how I can fix it? I was trying to add references and I ended up causing the the end of the article to disappear. --P4k 04:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Instead of <ref name="asdf" /ref>, do <ref name="asdf" />. –Pomte 05:34, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. --P4k 06:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't know what to do with apparent COI at Scientology

I've let myself get drawn into an edit war over on Scientology with User:COFS who I believe, as a self-described Scientologist, has a clear conflict of interest. I'm going to step back from editing and posting on Talk:Scientology for a while, in the hope that everyone's tempers can cool a little, but if a more experienced editor could review the situation, I would appreciate any offer of advice (to anyone involved). Thanks! SheffieldSteel 23:26, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

As the Scientologists have a notorious history of tightly managing their public image, it is hardly a surprise that they would continue such practices on wikipedia. Given the open nature of wikipedia, I'm not sure what can be done. — RJH (talk) 15:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm currently pursuing a resolution through community enforcement. Thanks for your reply. SheffieldSteel 17:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
For related, information, see Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/COFS. Smee 22:25, 20 June 2007 (UTC).

Can someone review this?

Can someone review this: [3], please?

And, does someone understand what happened?

To me it looks like it's edits by multiple unregistered users who all live in Toronto, Canada (i.e. right next to each other), is it some sort of Wiki edit party? Also, is it neutral? Thanks, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 13:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Unbelieavable , I actually see some major pretty neutral good contribution to an article done by some anon. I will stop from this day to filter out the registered user from vandal proof and will lit a candle to the neerest Cathedral.
Needless to say I'm in shock from now and my faith in humanity has been renewed. — Esurnir 02:45, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Probably a longtime user who's too lazy to log in. ;-) Dcoetzee 07:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, there are multiple intermediate IP addresses that aren't shown. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 22:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Full site map

Please contribute to this idea: Full site map. Thanks, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:26, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Prof. Erwin Rosenthal, who is not a registered user on any wikipedia as far as I know, nor contribute anonymously to expanding/refining article texts, is persistently re-adding an external link to his website (and on other language versions, as well). As far as I can tell, this link, albeit it contains some valueable information, serves only to promote his website. I have corresponded wiht him (see the talk page of the Polish Wikipedia's interwiki artilce, pl:Dyskusja:Świnoujście, asking his persmission to add content to that article based on his webpage (which would add his name and the webpage as a citation to the bibliography/references), but he has refused. It's either include an external link to his site, or nothing, and on the English Wikipedia, it is include his link brooking no opposition.

I think his adding the link to his website falls under conflict of interest section of WP:EL as well as under its "no links to webpages for the purpose of promoting the webpage". It would be nice to have him participate in Wikipedia or be able to include the information he has gathered in the Wikipedia articles, but that does not seem to be an option.

The site does include Google text advertisements, and Prof. Rosenthal says, that he makes money off of it in order to recoup expenses of his research, etc.

I would suggest that instead of linking to nonofficial sites, we wlink to

http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/Poland/Voivodships/Zachodniopomorskie/Localities/Swinoujscie/

Professor's webpage is already listed under the German-language and the Polish-language versions there, and he could add it to the English one. Linking to DMOZ would be an equitable way to solve this conflict, and such a solution is described as viable in WP:EL.

Since I could not reach an agreement with Prof. Rosenthal, and he has overcome my reverts of his adding the website - and I don't want to contravene WP:3RR, could other editors assist here?

--Mareklug talk 14:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The person who keeps re-adding the link does not appear cooperative, but the link itself looks rather harmless and does not have an objectionable amount of advertising in my opinion. The DMOZ link looks helpful as well. You might consider asking for semi-protection if you can establish a consensus on the article Talk page that the disputed link does not belong. EdJohnston 01:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

The Hallvard Graatop article

I'd like some seasoned editor with a background in history to review the article and discussion referred to in the header, to get an unbiased third-party opinion. I feel that the discussion goes to the core of what Wikipedia is and should be. leifbk 08:05, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there is a problem with the sourcing. Left a comment at Talk:Hallvard Graatop. EdJohnston 02:24, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

PLEASE HELP IN SNAKES

Please help to create more lists (Example: List of snakes in Missouri or List of snakes in Colorado). Only 8 lists are made so far. Please help make more.

§→Nikro 00:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

How about List of snakes on a plane? *Dan T.* 11:44, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
List of snakes on a plane? Now, that really is indisciminate information, and snakes appearing on a plane doesn't occur very often to generate a reasonably sized list.--Kylohk 13:51, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Except when Samuel L. Jackson is around. *Dan T.* 18:30, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

What to do when article deletion policy does not seem to be followed?

What do you do when the proper proceedure does not seem to have been followed in an article deletion? The article on Disappearance of the Universe had a deletion discussion already, and the conclusion was to not delete it. It's now been deleted without even having been marked for speedy deletion.

I find the book to be an annoying book by an annoying idiot, but judging by sales figures for it and the sequel, a significant book. The criteria for quick deletion fail, and in any case, were not even involed. Gene Ward Smith 04:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a link to the Articles for Deletion discussion? I can't seem to find it. Tony Fox (arf!) review? 05:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
There wasn't one for the book, only the author. Relevant dialog here. The article about the author was kept at AFD, but later redirected to the book article, which was deleted. I've already asked Pilotguy to restore the article.--Chaser - T 05:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The article is still gone. Where do I go to get the attention of an administrator? Gene Ward Smith 23:41, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Pilotguy's page indicates that he's gone on a wikibreak. The article looks like it could use a lot of work, but it's not obviously non-notable (especially if it's had good sales as Gene indicates) so I'm going to undelete it. Bryan Derksen 06:47, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's an article on Renard's successful spam campaign when the book moved to a bigger publisher:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA508787.html Gene Ward Smith 07:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

This item appears resolved. User:Pilotguy speedy-deleted the the article on the book The Disappearance of the Universe. on 13 June 2007 with the comment "Article about a non-notable individual, band, service, website or other entity". It is not clear why he would have chosen speedy deletion to deal with an article with such a long history and so many contributors. Then, as a result of this WP:VPA posting, User:Bryan Derksen undeleted the article. Since the book article was deleted on Pilotguy's own initiative, and there is no current AfD open or even any Talk page discussion running, I see nothing more to do here. User:Chaser has already notified Pilotguy that there is a VPA discussion of this deletion. In terms of earlier history, there was an AfD on Gary Renard which closed with a Keep in June 2006. Gary Renard remains a redirect to the book article. All the useful info from the author article seems to have been merged into the book article (you can still see the history under the redirect). Now that we can trace exactly what happened, WP:DRV would have been a more orthodox way to handle the undeletion than WP:VPA. Anyone who still has concerns about the article quality can comment at Talk:The Disappearance of the Universe. EdJohnston 03:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Images and permissions

Hi. A few weeks ago I was looking on Flickr for photos for our articles on Survivor contestants, and I noticed that Rupert Boneham had what looked like a promotional photo from the series (Image:Survivor rupert Photo.jpg). This would not be an acceptable use of such an image, and I would have tagged it as such, like I did with some others that day, but I noticed that the photo was uploaded by User:Jimmyswan, whose edits indicated that he was Mr. Boneham's manager. Two similar photos were uploaded, the second at Image:Rupert-boneham.jpg. User:Jimmyswan's tag on the photos was Template:PD-self, which I found rather unlikely. To clarify the situation, I found the contact information for Mr. Boneham, whose agent is indeed named Jimmy Swan, and sent an e-mail inquiring about the status of the photo. I explained the situation regarding this photo, and mentioned that if the license was in fact incorrect we would be happy to accept another photo with a correct license. I never received a reply, but just today I noticed that User:Jimmyswan returned last week for the first time since he uploaded the photos last September. He replaced one copy of the previous image at Image:Rupert-boneham.jpg and created another at Image:Rupert -head.jpg, both listed as Template:PD-self again, but with a more plausible description.

Is everything here fine, or should I do something? It's obviously a professional photo, and claims to be, but I guess in theory we have no proof that User:Jimmyswan is indeed Mr. Boneham's manager. I could send a copy of my original e-mail to OTRS, but I never got a reply, though it was obviously read and responded to. --Maxamegalon2000 02:16, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

My take is that you should IFD the images. I see two ways that this would work. The more transparent and least problematic is that Swan puts the images up on his own site and states that they are released under a free license. The second is that his identity as the copyright owner is confirmed by an administrator. So he would send an email to either an admin or OTRS from an email identifiably his, and the admin then states on the user talk page that he has received an email that provides enough superficial information to state that the user is who he says he is. The implicit confirmation of you sending an email to the official email address and an apparent response in editing is not enough, IMO. Once you have confirmation, I would also add {{Notable Wikipedian}} to Talk:Rupert Boneham so everyone knows what is going on and the potential COI. In fact, under the username policy, Jimmyswan (talk · contribs) should be blocked as possible impersonation, but you might want to hold off until matters are clarified.
If you're feeling energetic, you could also clarify who owns the pictures and if that is different from the author. "Rupert Boneham Head shoot taken by Ben Murray, Given full permission for to use freely" - seems to state that Ben Murray is the author, but I guess he did so as an employee of Swan, so Swan would be the owner. Therefore the person who has "given full permission" is a bit of a question. If Swan's identity is confirmed and can use sourcing like "Photo taken by Ben Murray under contract to Jimmy Swan. Swan released the image into the public domain", that would erase the question mark over these images. - BanyanTree 22:56, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
I think I'll send Mr. Swan another e-mail, asking him to confirm himself as the user in question, and to clarify the exact ownership status of the photo. Thanks. --Maxamegalon2000 05:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Republic NPOV or consensus

I am having trouble at List of Republics and Republic articles about other information. The clique that guards these articles won't let me enter Sparta as a republic even after I quote Paul A. Rahe and have an historical list with Sparta labelled as a Republic. Even Niccolo Machiavelli called Sparta a republic----but they always revert.

Now, User:Pmanderson has reverted me on the Republic article and his reason is "per consensus". Where is this in Wikipedia policy? Can someone explain? I thought the WP policy was NPOV and verifiability. I have the references---but they won't allow any edit to being done because of "per consensus". That is NOT NPOV! That is censorship by a clique!

Can some adminstrators look into this please! Maybe Jimmy Wales can be of some assistance? Are things done at Wikipedia by Verifiability and NPOV or "PER CONSENSUS"?WHEELER 19:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

My bad, there is a policy of "consensus". It seems I have been taken out of the loop. I have been diktated to!!! Amazing. So I must please consensus, a group!!!! OHHHHHHHHH, Censorship! I love it. Wikipedia is NOT a democracy BUUUUUTTTTTTTTT You must have consensus! OHHHHHH what hypocrisy!! I get it now. Can this clique of consensus show themselves and vote here. Let the Clique expose themselves. I love this! What hypocrisy. If you have "Per consensus" what difference does it make how many references I put out! NONE! It makes NO sense! I mean how silly is this that "Per Consensus" trumps verifiability and NPOV. How can you have NPOV when it is "per consensus"? Illogical!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You guys are really funny. WHEELER 19:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Boy have things changed around here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WHEELER 19:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Are you asking for assistance? Please make it clear what you want. Sancho 19:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I see this is just a copy and paste from your post at that article's discussion page... I responded there with some guidance... you haven't been taken out of the loop, you've just started to participate in it... give it some time, talk with the other editors, and you'll probably be happy with the end result. Sancho 19:49, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so kindly for your response. Hopefully this brings it to somebody's attention. I am open to negotiation. I had a negotiation with Kim Bruning many moons ago. The agreement was that the Republic article had the Modern meaning and in the intro there was a short description and a link to the Classical definition of republic. That was the Old set up at Wikipedia. The Classical definition of republic got deleted many moons ago.WHEELER 21:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

In some way it has been resolved but somebody really needs to talk to User:Pmanderson on the List_of_republics#Other_meanings_of_Republic he has got the Roman Empire. Now if that is not the MOST silliest thing I have ever seen or heard of. Can someone please talk with this man. I changed it to Roman Republic and he changes it back to Roman Empire. Come on people that is not right!WHEELER 01:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

There is no reason why you need to continue this discussion on this page. Corvus cornix 01:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Other meanings of Republic

For the archaizing meanings of the word republic, as the commonwealth, or as a translation of politeia or res publica, see those articles.

These were in some respects broader than the present meaning of republic, and would include not only the republics of antiquity, as above, but, for example, the following monarchies:

Since the Oxford English Dictionary last cites this meaning from 1684, it is difficult to tell to which present states it would have been applied.

I want everyone at Wikipedia to take a long good look at the above section, "Other meanings of republic" and if that is not the most stupidiest and insane sections I have ever seen. Do you really think Mr. Conix that that is a good example of Scholarship and professionality? I think this needs to be spread around. I think a lot of people need to see that. First off "Archaizing" the meaning. Mr. Pmanderson lost the argument and now he writes it. And so right off the bat, he slants the content as "archaizing". Then he calls Sparta a Monarchy. Did Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, Niccolas Macciavelli, or John Adams call Sparta a monarchy? No. Yet in the Past 24 hours NOT A SINGLE WP admin has commented on the talk page and this stuff remains. The Roman Empire is really a Republic? Why is called "Empire"? I changed it back to "Roman Republic" and he reverts me. Is that not the most supersilliest thing you have ever heard? Rome is Republic because it is Mixed; NOT because it didn't have kings. Do you all suffer from reading comphrension here? Why is a modern defintion transported back into time? When the Latins NEVER considered the definition of a republic as "not with a king". That is NOWHERE in Classical literature! If you don't find that above section silly, then I feel sorry for you people. This is an example of why you are the laughing stock in my book. That is one sick section.

Furthermore, Pmanderson lost the argument. But then HE gets to write the info. He lies on the Republic article when he reverts and says he has consensus. He never engaged in negotiation. He doesn't accept any reference. He doesn't produce any, but he is allowed to continue to control everything. Nothing has changed since I left. A clique still runs things at Wikipedia and Admin don't step in and correct this guy.

So, Mr. cornix, I think that above section needs to be publicly presented. I think that section needs the light of day.WHEELER 23:02, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

And why do you think this is a better forum than any of the choices at Dispute resolution? Corvus cornix 17:54, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
If "consensus" now runs everything at Wikipedia, what makes you think, "consensus" at Dispute resolution will do? Nada-nothing. Consensus rules. If consensus rules, so does the Clique. And it is obvious that the "Clique" are not going to go after one of their own. That is just common sense. What good is it going to do? nothing. I have ton of references that neither User:SimonP, nor User:Pmanderson, nor any of the other Users will accept. So what basis is there? None. Clique control, that is what consensus is.WHEELER 00:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair Use images

I have been adding screenshots to the turn-based strategy article, but someone keeps removing them, claiming that fair use does not apply in this case. Do you agree that fair use doesn't apply? How come articles like real-time strategy and real-time tactics can use screenshots while this article cannot?? SharkD 18:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, almost all of the screenshots in the gallery at real-time tactics are being improperly used. There is no fair-use rationale given, and they shouldn't appear in a gallery. They could only be used in the article the covers the game that they come from. They're also of unnessesarily high resolution. The screen shot that you've been trying to add to the turn-based strategy article would belong in an article that describes the game that that screenshot came from, but it doesn't add anything to the turn-based strategy article that can't be covered by text. Sancho 18:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Could I get some input at the above article? An editor (on his third revert) is refusing both the tagging of an inherently unverifiable sentence with fact, or once I found a citation, the placement of it calling the source unreliable, when the statement itself couldn't be worded anymore unreliably.--Crossmr 03:04, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

As it is this editor is making little sense and he removed the citation claiming this once again, must revert improperly formatted cite of uncontextualized source that disseminates unsubstantiated rumor, which makes me believe he feels the rumour is unsubstantiated (and lacking citation) yet objects to it being tagged as such.--Crossmr 03:09, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
So he doesn't accept a request for a citation, yet does not accept an attempt to provide a citation? He wants to keep what he describes as a rumour, without citing it or removing? Oh boy. . . good luck. Adrian M. H. 15:41, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Hence why I came here for some input. That has edit war written all over it.--Crossmr 18:20, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

New User Study Guide

I'm creating a list of different Wikipedia tasks in the order of complexity, I'm not sure that this is the correct place for this but please feel free to add something: New User Study Guide. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 22:25, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

It's looking pretty good, why don't you people have a look. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 12:28, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for a female model

If you are a woman with a camera and an extensive enough wardrobe:

Some of the articles for items worn (such as camiknickers and alice band) could use photos of a model wearing them.

In my personal opinion, it would be a good idea if all of the clothing and accessories articles had photos of the same model wearing each of the items, except for items customarily worn only by the opposite gender.

I wonder who would be our WikiModel?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.214.66.45 (talkcontribs)

That would be an expensive role to fill ! :-) Sancho 17:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not expecting @#$% Gisele or her ilk to fill the role, of course. Nearly any woman in her 20's, and most women in their 30's would be suitable. You don't have to be beautiful to model for this purpose. Why would you have to be? The aim is not to sell anything (or to sell anyone on anything).
No, I meant it would be expensive for the model to get access to all of the clothing and accessories that have articles on Wikipedia. Sancho 18:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
For cost-effectiveness, I nominate Wikipe-tan. –Pomte 21:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I have already asked User:Kasuga about this. He said he would make such drawings if necessary. What say you?
Manikin. — RJH (talk) 14:48, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Woman.
Why can't models be past their 30s? SharkD 18:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Manliness (book)

The article manliness (book) needs to have a disambiguation page. Right now, searching manliness automatically takes you to masculinity without even offering the book as a second option once there.--208.120.250.5 21:42, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Fixed by P4kMETS501 (talk) 00:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Full site map

Please contribute to this idea: Full site map. Thanks, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:26, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist shows just 3 items at a time

For the last few days, my watchlist has oddly shown only three items at a time. Is this a known issue, or am I the only one so afflicted? -- Ec5618 09:25, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Check your preferences. Unchecking "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" may help. –Pomte 09:32, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Wow, that worked. Thanks. I never would have thought of that. -- Ec5618 10:01, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Problem with Classing Articles.

As a member of the Food and Drink Wikiproject, I'm assessing all article but the problem is with lists. It still shows up as unassessed although listed as list. Can anyone help? -- Warfreak 10:08, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

The assessments update every couple days or so, but you can update it with this tool (type in "Food and drink". I have done so and that seems to do the job. –Pomte 07:22, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this category might require cleanup. A few entries look like they fail WP:N as in only linking to the site itself; no media coverage or anything like that, and there might be more because I haven't thoroughly looked at it. hbdragon88 21:21, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Violations of GFDL license

"Wikipedia's practice of complete deletion of articles[31] without reference to the original article, the author(s)/publisher(s) of the article, and the history and title(s) of the article, including modification history, description and appropriate dates, is a direct violation of at least GFDL version 1.2. Not only that, but the GFDL License states that if the article/document contains Copyright notices, that said notices must be preserved at all times. If those notices are removed, then they are in violation of Copyright Law, as well as the terms of the GFDL license. Furthermore, the question of them removing anything outright at all comes into quite a grey area. If one reads the GFDL License literally, then it implies that once the article document is posted, it is in distribution, and technical measures are not allowed to be taken to prevent the use of the document in question, and that no other conditions whatsoever can be added by you to those of the GFDL license.[32][33]" (via Conservapedia)

I noticed that the page history of Kalos Kagathos was tampered with. I left a notice on the talk page and it has been corrected. Now, I find that the page history of Hermann Rauschning has also been tampered with. Please see Talk:Hermann Rauschning for details.

And then you wonder why I am getting a little hyper active.WHEELER 19:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

AllanLake.jpg

I have uploaded an image and I'm looking for the correct tag to apply to it. I was previously discussing this with User:wangi, but they are unavailable to help now, and suggested here. I have been given permission to use this image for Wikipedia and any other uses I see fit. Tis ismage has been used on a website as well, which is a commercial activity. However, I am unsure of what tag to add. Any ideas? Cheers Adamiow 09:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

According to the upload wizard, the current permissions (as listed on Image:AllanLake.jpg) appears to be too restrictive for use on wikipedia. Ideally it would be released under a license such as GDFL. — RJH (talk) 18:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The current permission on the image is inaccurate, as I got very confused and gave incorrect information, which resulted in the current situation. However, the image is free to be used anywhere and for commercial activities. Any ideas what tag should be used? Cheers. Adamiow 19:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
You uploaded the image as being grabbed from a website without specifying a source. Ten minutes later, you said it was copyrighted and used for any purpose. When challenged on the source, you said "I have obtained the image from the subject, with their permission and it is their picture." and "It was just for Wikipedia use. Unfortunately, no other version is available." When wangi noted that this was not an acceptable tag, you stated, "I have just remembered that the that the image has been used elsewhere, other than just for Wikipedia, still not for commercial use." When told this was not an acceptable tag, you then stated, "I have been given permission to use this photo in any way I wished." You "gave incorrect information," as you word it above, three (4?) times so far, which just may be the worst case of short-term memory loss I've ever seen on the wiki. Whatever the reason, I am deleting the image, since I've read through all the relevant talk pages, which is unlikely to be true of any other admin.
If you wish to try again, you need to specify both a source and a license. The type of the latter will proceed from the former, and no tag will help if you don't state the source in a convincing manner. For an example of a good detailed sourcing in a complex copyright situation, see Image:Helicopter indarfur.jpg. - BanyanTree 23:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Constructing a table.

Hello i have constructed a table in a sandbox on my user page. I cannot get the honours section to fit correctly though, can anyone help? thanks in advance Woodym555 13:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

If you are referring to the Notable Managers table, that looks absolutely fine. Or are you referring to the incomplete code at the top of the page? Adrian M. H. 14:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
It looks fine because I'd fixed it for him. :-)  DoneQuadell (talk) (random) 14:25, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Thankyou very much Quadell for fixing it, the incomplete bit is a blank template for other villa tables. Thanks again Woodym555 14:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Image rendering

I changed the image (to The Thinker) on the intro box at Portal:Philosophy. It now has white space instead of background colour on three sides. It was a similar problem when I had it on the left hand side. I cannot see where the problem lies. Anyone have any ideas? --Alan Liefting 21:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, the trouble is that you're using "thumbnail" for the image, and the "thumbnail" functionality doesn't allow the background color (purple) to show through. I changed Portal:Philosophy/Intro to use a <div> instead, and that fixed it (at least on my browser). – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I now remember that I was trying to give the image a border to make it look a little better. The background of the image and the background colour of the box need some sort of delineation. Is that possible to achieve? -- Alan Liefting 13:39, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Got a border now but it needs a bit of padding between the text and border. -- Alan Liefting 13:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Is this what you mean? – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:01, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Close, but that has set me on the right track for what I want. Thanks for the help - hope I dont appear too pedantic. -- Alan Liefting 22:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Elevation profiles

Do people think Image:NY 52 profile.png is useful? (Please, no one currently involved comment; I'm trying to get people who aren't already opposed to everything I create.) --NE2 23:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Sure it's useful. It provides relevant information that could not be available to the encyclopedia any other way. A small thumbnailed image never killed anyone. Shalom Hello 06:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Try a thinner line in a different colour (grey or black perhaps?). It would have been great as a proper 3D elevation map, but I can appreciate that they are hard work to create. Adrian M. H. 16:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Looks useful to me. – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Reverting Tags

Is everyone allowed to revert a Neutrality tag or does it require and Admin or some other person of weight to do so ? I am a novice. I wanted to remove the tag on the Angela Davis article but I did not do so. The tag has been removed but I am very curious as to how and why it happened Albion moonlight 18:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC).

  • Anyone can remove neutrality tags or unreferenced tags or cleanup tags. These are simply flags for readers to caveat lector, and flags for editors to fix the problems. The only thing to do is to read through and make sure that the original concern has been resolved. There may also be discussion on the talk page.
Adminship is no big deal. Generally, if you can do something on Wikipedia, you are allowed to do it. That's part of the intent of the policy to ignore all rules. Shalom Hello 06:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't go that far, Shalom. But yeah, anyone can remove tags, and should if they don't apply. – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Requesting User Abu badali gets banned ASAP

The user Abu badali have had a long history of user harrassment by abusing fair use policies. He is well known for wikistalking and unfairly deleting images with absolutely no regard, please see here. Recently he has been following my edits and purposely deleting images and ignoring any fairuse rationale I have written down. He generally flags a page to "rm unnecessary unfree images". An example is the Image:ZhouXuanCDrelease.jpg removed from the Music of China page, which clearly have a rationale and a historical use. He is purposely avoiding any conversation. I believe this user should be immediately banned for

  1. Abusing any power, especially when has no administrative rights to begin with.
  2. Abusing the fair use policy by improperly making deletions with no regard.
  3. wikistalking
  4. He already has a lengthy history of negatively enforcing rules among a number of users.
  5. On his user page statements such as "Call me a stalker. It's fashionable now." and "Abu is targeting you" clearly demonstrate he has negative intentions and enjoy the harrassment for fun.
  6. He has shown no ability to differentiate between "decorations" and "historical context" for ANY article.

Benjwong 16:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

He needs to be banned indefinitely, as I believe there was such an attempt in March and May. For every edit he does, he is taking away massive contribution time from so many good users on wikipedia. Should I comment on that existing case or will someone start a new case? Benjwong 16:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
The case appears to be in the evidence presentation phase right now - you may be able to submit evidence there. I doubt the arbcom would accept two cases on the same issue. WilyD 17:18, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Number 1 does not follow - how can he abuse power when he has none... hbdragon88 06:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

He is harrassing again. He removed all the images from the Chinese rock page. Yet the US Rock and roll page was fine was a picture of Elvis. This user is making biased edits or have ZERO ability to figure out what's important. Benjwong 17:43, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Personally I just want to say he is a major league a**hole, He ruins everything and does nothing but send people's stress levels through the roof. I WANT HIM banned permanently, this is unacceptable and if he continues to do this he can call my lawyers. Because I am not going to stand for this harrassment any longer.--Jack Cox 23:03, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Legal threats can get yourself banned, Jack. -- Ned Scott 23:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Quite. Abu badali is not an administrator, so can't abuse his powers. He seems to be trying to bring our image use in line with our policy. How tactfully he goes about it, I cannot say. Judging from his user page, he may not be approaching it in the most sensible way. But there's absolutely no doubt that what he's doing is correct. ElinorD (talk) 23:19, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The policy clearly states that an image with good rationale can be used. Otherwise, why are millions of users wasting hours trying to write a good fairuse rationale? People have good intentions. The problem is that the rules allow anyone to flag anything they want as "unnecessary" and start wiping articles clean. This borderlines vandalism and is decreasing the quality of the articles. Benjwong 02:33, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
There are two parts: good rationale and good commentary. Fair use explicitly says that it must be the subject of "critical commentary". Abu badali is going after the second part of the policy. hbdragon88 06:34, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Contrary to what Benjwong asserts, our policy does not state that any image with a good rationale can be used. A non-free image can only be used if it complies with all ten of our non-free content criteria. If an image isn't usable on Wikipedia (because it's replaceable, or competes with the copyright-holder), then there's absolutely no point in trying to write a good fair-use rationale. Good intentions are not enough. If Abu badali were making bad faith nominations, then that would be a problem. But I haven't seen many cases of him tagging an image for deletion, where there wasn't at least some legitimate reason to question whether the image conforms to our policy. For instance, in the case you mention in your complaint, the CD cover is only used in an article that does not mention that particular CD at all, thus failing criterion #8. Remember that Abu does not have the ability to delete images -- they will only be deleted if a an administrator feels that the image is in violation. – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello, does anyone know, off the top of his or her head, the name of one of those nifty templates that lists some of the most useful wikipedia style and policy links? I'm thinking of the kind of thing people put on their user pages all wrapped up in a neatly formatted box. I run across them all the time, but now that I want one, I can't find it. I'd like to link to one on my user page because people seem to think the list I made for myself might be useful for them and they like to copy it, even though a lot of the stuff is obscure and project-specific. I'm not sure why this bothers me, but it does. And I'd like to help people out with something a little more general. Thanks! Latr, Katr 04:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

{{style}} perhaps? — RJH (talk) 22:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
That's the ticket! Thanks! Latr, Katr 23:00, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

How to break a redirect

I have made a case for breaking the redirect from Neophyte to Newbie (at Talk:Newbie#"Neophyte" should not redirect here). But I don't know what is the best thing to do with the blank Neophyte once the redirect is broken. Advice? -- Rob C (Alarob) 16:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

You should essentially define the word neophyte in an encyclopedic versus dictionary fashion. For example change the text #REDIRECT[[newbie]] to "Neophyte is a term used to describe...." "The word has been used since the 1400s..." You could include the examples you cited: "a newly created priest is a neophyte", "neophyte species", ect... You should probably circle back to other related terms such as "newbie" and novice, stating the differences in the terms (this is probably not something that a dictionary definition would include). As a related example, debutante does a good job of an encyclopedic presentation, you may wish to take some pointers from there. Hope this helps--DO11.10 17:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Another option would be to to move Newbie to Neophyte, and cover the modern term in one section. -- Petri Krohn 22:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Or move the existing page Neophyte (disambiguation) over Neophyte, and take down the dab notice on the top of Newbie. - BanyanTree 23:59, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is in Category:Anime films even though it's just a series, does anyone know how to fix this because it isn't possible to just edit away the category. Thanks, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 18:15, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

No one wants to help? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 23:04, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
The article includes some comparative discussion of the film, so Category:Anime films may still be appropriate. — RJH (talk) 22:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The category is there because it uses {{Infobox animanga/Movie}} for the movie Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society. I've removed the box as outside the scope of that article. –Pomte 22:28, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Khali

This is Thedeadmanandphenom and I was wondering what part of the article you were talking about. Is it the Health article? I will make it in my own words, that won't be very hard. Thedeadmanandphenom 15:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Hold on a moment; a bit of context would be welcome. Adrian M. H. 16:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Renaming an article without prior debate

<copied from AN/I in light of identical case> The article A.R.S.R. "Skadi", about a rowing club, was moved to Algemene Rotterdamse Studenten Roeivereniging by a new editor in his first edit to the page.[4] For very important reasons, that at this moment are beyond my capabilities to comprehend, this editor chose to change the name without prior discussion and to a factually incorrect name. Despite that he refused to undo the move. In response to my request at WP:RM I was told that first a discussion is needed as to whether the move should be undone. As I tried to explain here, here and here the club itself uses either A.R.S.R. "Skadi" or Algemene Rotterdamse Studenten Roeivereniging "Skadi" as its official name. Again, for very important reasons, it is impossible to undo the move and reinstate the name the club itself uses on their website and in correspondence.[5][6] Since it apparently is policy to discuss undoing hit-and-run edits I bring it here since I would appreciate restoring the article to its proper name, i.e. A.R.S.R. "Skadi" or Algemene Rotterdamse Studenten Roeivereniging "Skadi", (I prefer A.R.S.R. "Skadi" but have no objection to Algemene Rotterdamse Studenten Roeivereniging "Skadi") without the sillyness of waiting 5 days.

Second, for my information I have some questions:

  1. Is there any policy on WP prohibiting the use of the official name of a rowing club?
  2. Do I understand correctly that if I go to an article I never edited, I can rename it and its current editors are obliged to have an extensive debate on whether or not my move should be undone? Or, if a move is contested is it first undone and then a debate is started to see if the new editor (me in this example) can find consensus?
  3. Can somebody restore the article to its correct and official name?

Nomen NescioGnothi seauton 00:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

These questions belong at the village pump for policy discussion or village pump for assistance. This page is meant only for things that require urgent admin assistance, but the issue here is a content/title dispute. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:23, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I disagree, undoing the move requires admin tools does it not? Second, why is it impossible to undo what to me appears to be disruption without having an extensive debate? Shouldn't the move be immediately undone and the hit-and-run editor asked to start a debate? As I asked above, are you suggesting I can go to other articles, rename them, and then the editors there are forced to await disscussion on whether it should be undone?
Second, how can there be a content dispute with an editor that has never editted the article and made only one contribution? That is silly.Nomen NescioGnothi seauton 00:28, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
That is a content dispute, a dispute about content. Sort it out amongst yourselves. By the way, it doesnt matter if that was the users first edit or their 50000th. ViridaeTalk 00:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, I am on my way to start some "content disputes." My questions are answered and as it stands now the onus is not on one-time hit-and-run editors but on people contributin to an article to undo. Sigh.Nomen NescioGnothi seauton 00:40, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Since it is impossible to have someone at AN/I undo this hit-and-run-edit, which is erroneous and unsupported by consensus, I want some input here as to:

  1. How can one have a "content dispute" with a one-time editor who only renames an article and does not, and did not, contribute in any form on said article? Am I to infer that I can force similar debates on every article in WP, I never edited before, by unilaterally and without discussion moving them?
  2. Why is it impossible to undo this disruption without having the burocracy mandating some kind of UN inspired delay through debate? Especially in light of an identical case where it was possible to undo the mess and it was mandated that movers should first seek consensus.
  3. Is there any policy in wikipedia that obliges the current editors of a page to start a debate after a one-time editor arbitrarily moves the article? Even if said editor has taken no further interest in the page and no other people are discussing the matter?
  4. last, regarding the rationale behind the illfated move. Is there any policy in WP prohibiting the use of the officially chosen name of an organisation, see above, as title for an article?

Please can someone answer me those questions?Nomen NescioGnothi seauton 10:27, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

First of all, with but a quick look at this person's history they have well over 3000 edits to the project. Not that it matters actually, but this isn't just some "one edit account" like you seem to be implying.
Also, using an abbreviation in the name is against our naming conventions.
Lastly, this is what redirects are for. Simply adding some recirects from alternate names to "Skadi (rowing club)" something you should work on.
For future reference... Dispute resolution is over that way --> WP:DR ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 12:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
You misread my comment. This user, who probably is a major contributor, made one edit to this article. That one edit was moving it to a factually incorrect and never discussed name. To me moving an article by an editor that, besides that move, has no history with said article seems odd. Especially, if that move subsequently cannot be undone for bureaucratic reasons.
My principal question is still, whatever the policy here (BTW, why does Algemene Rotterdamse Studenten Roeivereniging "Skadi" violate policy?), why can't we use the official name an organisation chooses for itself? Is there policy against the use of official names? If so, could someone point me to it? Or, do we think policy should trump everything even if it results in us not being able to name an article adequately?Nomen NescioGnothi seauton 07:49, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikitabs template

I have created a tabs template (with a different look than Navigation Tabs) that can be found here. I have used it on my user pages and I think it looks pretty good. Do you guys think it is ready for the template space? Sorry, I don't really know where to ask, so I came here. Thanks for reading! Rahk E✘[[ my disscussions | Who Is ]] 01:59, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Never ending discussion. Help needed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Virtual_Console_games_%28North_America%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Price_guide_.28again.29 The subject is whether or not the Wii Points should be removed from the VCNA article. One side thinks it turns the article into a "price guide" while the other side disagrees and thinks that the Wii Points are a valuable part of the article, considering what the article is about. Yes, I'm part of the argument, but this really has gone on too long. Whenever the article is unprotected, there's reverting all over the place. There's also people who are not being very civil, and who are accusing others of going against WikiPolicy here and there. The whole thing is a mess, and there is no way at this rate there will be any resolution. Serious help is needed to end this, and quick. By whatever means necessary. LN3000 08:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow. This belongs on WP:LAME. – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Amen to that. Rahk E✘[[ my disscussions | Who Is ]] 01:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Syntax in English

Hello, Can you help me and give the english translation of the French wiki syntax

{{encadré texte|align=right|width=200px|texte= <center><span style="color:#FF0000;">'''Dernières nouvelles'''</span></center> 24/04/2007: texte etc. }}

Thank you --Friendly, Kasos_fr 09:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Encadré Texte means Framed Text, and Dernières nouvelles means Latest News, if that's any help. --NJJ.Rocher 14:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thank you, but it does not help me. Try to translate in English the Top Right Frame of this French Article

Spacebus

--Friendly, Kasos_fr 18:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I found the syntax, thanks for help

--Friendly, Kasos_fr 08:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Audio still down

Hello, is audio working on English Wikipedia? -Susanlesch 12:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Yep, seems to work. At least at reggae, which I tested. Cheers, #29 (talk) 12:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Cheers. I must just be having trouble with all those 0 byte uploads. Thanks for your reply, #29. -Susanlesch 20:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Now the four uploads from yesterday all work fine. I think I saw that happen once before and thought it was my error. Now I will know it might be something else. -Susanlesch 22:18, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

" Images"

How would you enter a image into Wikipedia? And how do you type in the proper components as to mkae the image seen alike any other posted?

See Wikipedia:Images. If Wikipedia does not yet have a copy of the image, you need to upload it (link on the left sidebar). Once that's done, you insert the code into the article. Look at the source code of other articles to see how it's done. For example,
[[File:Bad Title Example.png|thumb|300px|Images are cool!]]

gives you this:

Images are cool!

YechielMan 21:43, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


I have something to add to this. A question, that is. I want to show this image on my user page, but since the outcome is different for every computer, I cannot just save the image and then upload it. Is there a way I can use or upload the image but still get the unique result? (You have to click the link to see the result. Then you can also refresh the page for a different result. Questions about all of this? Ask them.) Thanks. ---Signed By KoЯnfan71 (User PageMy Talk) 00:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

No, you can't. Prodego talk 00:50, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Man, that stinks. ---Signed By KoЯnfan71 (User PageMy Talk) 00:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

3 Revert rule

If I delete or replace a word that appears in 5 different places on one page of an article is that one revert or 5 reverts. Albion moonlight 09:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

It depends on whether you're reverting or not! ;) Rahk E✘[[ my disscussions | Who Is ]] 13:33, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
And whether you do it all at once or revert them one at a time. Some guy 15:43, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

hidden diffs

The sideways-scrolling diffs have windows which are hiding text, rather than only hiding overly wide material. I've also seen diffs which seemed to have no changes, but maybe that was a side effect of trying to read crosssideways. How are the sideways diffs supposed to be used? (SEWilco 21:25, 1 July 2007 (UTC))

I might be wrong, but I believe the 'sideways-scrolling diffs ' your talking about are caused by long and unwrapping URL's or something similar forcing it to just keep going wide. As for the Diffs that 'seemed to have no changes' ... that happens when you remove an EXTRA space from it... very difficult to notice ... but USUALLY the cause Exit2DOS2000TC 22:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
But the text within the diff boxes tends to be wider than the window, so the content of the text columns is no longer visible. Could the long words/URLs be isolated to separate display lines for the purpose of the scroll window? (SEWilco 03:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC))

Archiving other users' talk pages

Is it OK to archive another user's talk page? Her talk page is over 60 topics from 2005-07 and she hasn't been active since last April. Right now she is only getting spam messages from orphan bots and a single WikiProject she was once part of (newsletters). (The other WikiProject she's a member of, has her name on their Inactive list.) The orphan bots leave messages about fair use images that are about to be deleted, the ones she uploaded during the period that she was active. I'd like to archive the page because my username is on it- and I've posted the message a long time ago.  Chantessy  14:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

If the user is active, it would be considered impolite. But anyone can edit any Wikipedia page (unless it's protected). Be bold! If the user comes back and doesn't like your change, she can revert it. – Quadell (talk) (random) 20:37, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
In the circumstance it sounds like it would be reasonable. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 20:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. The user is inactive.  Chantessy  00:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)