Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 23

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Centralized TV Episode Discussion

Over the past months, TV episodes have been redirected by (to name a couple) TTN, Eusebeus and others. No centralized discussion has taken place, so I'm asking everyone who has been involved in this issue to voice their opinions here in this centralized spot, be they pro or anti. Discussion is here [1]. --Maniwar (talk) 01:27, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I want to make a comment besides the general note above. This issue has been plaguing wikipedia for months, and instead of resolving, it is escalating into a serious mess. We need cool heads, and moderators to provide input and to help decide a resolution. --Maniwar (talk) 01:36, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The Simpsonification of Wikipedia

I understand that any show that has been around as long as The Simpsons has, and infuses so much pop culture, biographical and historical references as this show does is bound to weave its way into many Wikipedia articles. However, it is a little disconcerting to find a reference from the show in, like, one out of every ten articles I read (and I read a wide variety of articles). Perhaps we should just accept the inevitable, and include a Simpsons info box for every article...ever...showing what episode it references? Hopefully the reduction in trivia sections will reduce this, otherwise I am going to have to refer this website to my friends as "Wikipedia...starring The Simpsons".--Metron4 (talk) 21:12, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

As I'm guessing you already know, trivia sections are explicitly discouraged. Having said that, I agree that being mentioned on The Simpsons is not necessarily significant enough to be included in every article whose subject has been referenced on the show. Guest appearances might be different, however, as such does establish some degree of notability. John Carter (talk) 21:49, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Instead of just hoping that other people removing trivia will help the situation, you could remove unneeded trivia when you see it. Mr.Z-man 22:12, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I really like the guidelines we use at the Video Game project to judge cultural references (WP:VG/POP); if you can't describe the episode concisely without mentioning that element, it deserves mention. Every other case needs discussion or is meaningly. --MASEM 22:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I may have been hasty in my assessment of Simpsons references. Checking the "What links here" section revealed only approximately 4,000 actual article links. Out of two million English articles, that's hardly cause for worry at this point. I guess I hit a string of articles that linked to them by coincidence. Still, as the show keeps going and going...--Metron4 (talk) 00:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't worry. They ran out of jokes twelve seasons ago.
*Gets flambe'd* --Kizor 10:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
"I wouldn't worry. They ran out of jokes twelve seasons ago" - Sadly true. siarach (talk) 10:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd much rather institute Lore Sjöberg's suggestion of instituting the Wikipedia:Jessica Alba's Breasts policy. Argyriou (talk) 21:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Text of Legal Cases

What is the policy on uploading legal cases into wikipedia? I have seen case opinions hosted elsewhere linked from the article, but is there a way to upload the text of the opinions if no other site hosts it? Am I correct in thinking that it wouldn't be appropriate to just upload a .pdf of a Lexis case? Is the text of an opinion copyrighted--what if one gets the text of the opinion and creates a new .pdf out of that? --RedShiftPA (talk) 17:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

As a preliminary point, if this is legally possible, WikiSource would be the appropriate place to put it. The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling (though not full transcript) is already on Wikisource (Wikisource:Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District et al.), which is very useful; if this is legally possible, and there isn't a site that already does it, it sounds like a good project.
Taking such material from other sites would, as you note, require caution that copyrighted presentation wasn't copied. TSP (talk) 17:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Federal cases are in the public domain, as are most state cases; in any event, since they have no inherent commercial value (the state can't sell them to some and deny others the right to quote from them), it's easy to make out a fair use claim for reproducing them on an educational website such as ours. However, there is actually a case where Westlaw sued LexisNexis for copying Westlaw's "star pagination". Ergo, copy the text, but not the format. bd2412 T 18:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think Wikisource accepts "fair use" material. But yeah, whenever it's public domain, it's fine. Mangojuicetalk 19:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Ok, to clarify: One may copy the text of the opinion, but none of the extra formatting, notation, explanatory footnotes, or anything else beyond the text of the opinion? That sounds reasonable to me. Thanks everyone!--RedShiftPA (talk) 21:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Depends which court issued it. If it's a U.S. federal opinion (including Tax Court, TTAB, etc.) then yes. Use the text of the opinion all you want however you wish. If it's a state court opinion, state law may restrict it, but can not prevent its use for the purpose of informing people about what the law is in that state. bd2412 T 21:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Deletion review for categories?

Category:Towns in Missouri was deleted in 2006 on the grounds that there weren't officially any towns in Missouri. I think that I have evidence to the contrary; but how do I go about doing this? Can I take it to deletion review, or should I just recreate it, or is there some other process that I should take? Nyttend (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You could go to DRV, but I don't think that would be fruitful. If there really are towns there, then recreate and populate. To be safe, I'd add some detail on the talk page to explain exactly why the category is necessary. Also the introduction should indicate the criteria and why entries are there. No guarantee it will not be deleted, but I don't think adding it back will cause a stir given the time that has passed. You might even mention the CfD discussion in your comments on the talk page. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I would just recreate, taking a look at the old deletion discussion and being careful to create the category in a new way (possibly with a category page) that avoids the reason for deletion. Some people may not get the point but that takes it out of speedy deletion territory, and if anyone has a reason to complain they can do a deletion discussion all over again. I might float it as a trial balloon first if it's going to involve a heck of a lot of work.Wikidemo (talk) 21:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protect of the FA o' the Day

I had a policy proposal pop into my head earlier today and thought I'd kick it around here before going totally serious with it.

Because of the exposure the FA of the Day receives on the Main Page it is prone to a lot of IP address vandalism. At the very least it sees much more than on any other typical day for that article. Take yesterday's article, Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act, for example. It had 273 edits during the 24-hour period it was on the main page, and one edit the day before.

I would propose that in order to save lots of bot time and server bandwidth that the FA is automatically semi-protected during its stay on the main page.

I would like comments from more experienced wikipedians, and if anyone likes the idea I would like help in drafting a true policy proposal.--Greenguy1090 (talk) 02:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

See WP:NOPRO this has been being debated for years. --W.marsh 03:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I figured something like this had come up before, thanks for pointing me in the right direction!--Greenguy1090 (talk) 03:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

RFC to help resolve WP:EPISODE issues

I've opened an RFC that asked a couple key questions on the notability of individual episodes that will help to resolve the huge issue of WP:EPISODE that we've been having. --MASEM 05:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


Userbox content

A request for comment has been opened to discuss what could be deemed inappropriate content in userboxes. All users are invited to comment at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies/Userbox content. Thanks. - Mtmelendez (Talk) 05:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy proposal: Don't give up hope.

Over the years, several editors have fallen into cynicism and despair because of problems they see on Wikipedia. One thing that seems to have made policy on Wikipedia have an inclusionist bias and resistance to change is because the deletionists and cynics, given enough time, seem to inevitably leave Wikipedia, leaving the inclusionist majority behind to establish a policy on consensus that itself gives them authority. Now, even if you disagree with their overall views, it's important that Wikipedia make people of all different opinions feel welcome, that it discourages permanent "vacations". Often, veteran Wikipedians will say, "Keep the faith." This is in essence a good policy in my opinion, but unfortunately poorly-phrased through the introduction of unnecessary religious elements.

Instead, I have a proposal. WP:Don't give up hope. No matter who you are, whether you're an inclusionist or deletionist, or whatever, it's very easy to get wrapped up in Wikipedian politics. Folks should not "throw the baby out with the bathwater," so to speak, to think that they cannot make a difference just because Wikipedia has a few flaws. A few years ago, under an anonymous account (or perhaps my previous account, Nathyn), I wrote the majority of the article on Abdul Wahhab (the founder of Salafism, largely the religious basis for Al-Qaeda). Despite being a contentious issue that was vandalized by radical Muslims and probably even radical anti-Muslims, a few years later, I can look at the article, pick out sentences that I wrote and feel a sense of accomplishment.

No matter what the state of Wikipedian politics is, there are always ways that everyone can contribute. A hopeful belief in the Wikipedia project is the driving force behind its success. If it fails, cynical despair will be the driving force behind that failure. Some of you may say, "Just write an essay," but few people read those and so many people will ignore it. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 05:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC) Yeah, nevermind. It is, in fact, hopeless. Wikipedia is going to fail. I changed it back to a redirect to Esperanza.

Ummm, where is this "inclusionist majority" of which you speak? Apart from that, some good points. DuncanHill (talk) 05:42, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
See the above section, or more specifically WT:EPISODE. --MASEM 05:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
"Don't think about bananas". You did just now, think about bananas, didn't you? In a similar way "Don't give up hope" may cause some to think about giving up hope, because it contains the suggestion "give up hope" within it. It also suggests that hope is all we have. I believe Wikipedia is a lot stronger than that. There will always be those who get frustrated by the occasional ebb, and who are too impatient to wait for the flow. Wikipedia will hit critical mass relatively soon. I think we should be preparing for that. The Transhumanist 06:08, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm just a newbie and I'm close to giving up hope, so I support this. • Anakin (contribs • complaints) 14:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Transhumanist has a point because of Reactance (psychology). So, instead, how could we word it positively? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 21:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Here's a few positive name suggestions: (I'm finding it hard to be serious, but seeing as the idea is to restore people's spirit, perhaps that doesn't matter):
  • Wikipedia:Don't worry, be happy
  • Wikipedia:Have faith in Jimbo!
  • Wikipedia:We have a lot of good articles - don't worry about the bad ones
  • Wikipedia:It's okay, only the good articles get included in the release versions!!
• Anakin (contribs • complaints) 21:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy proposal added at WP:HOPE. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Featured articles

I think the featured article selection process is really bad at the moment. The articles that are featured well yeah, they're great and all, but we really should have featured articles about articles that people are going to research, for example World War II, the Battle of Hastings, articles that kids are going to need for homework, the need to be of the highest attainable quality --Hadseys (talk • contribs) 21:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

You can write a FA on either of those topics. The only way we get FAs, under the current system, is if people write them and deal with the reviewers at WP:FAC. It tends to be easier to do with a narrow topic, where there might be a total of 10 real references and little controversy... with a topic like World War II there are hundreds of thousands of references and multiple issues of great controversy, so it's far harder to write a FA on a topic. But what it comes down to is we only have a FA on a given topic if someone bothers writing it, so you can't really say "we should have more FAs on..." and expect that to generate more FAs on that topic, the only way to affect a change is to make it happen yourself. --W.marsh 21:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I think though that we should have a requested featured articles section though for enthusiasts on those topics to work on and therefore boost the quality of the more important articles. A FA on world war ii would be fairly straight forward in theory, state the facts and to avoid controversy say "however, this has been contested by ..."
Honestly, any student using Wikipedia as a primary source for their homework deserves to fail. Use the article to get an idea of the topic, then use the sources to do the homework. An article does not need a little gold star to be useful. Resolute 04:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Resolute. Hadseys, are you familiar with the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive? I was also involved in something similar- Spotlight, which is sadly now inactive. Also, WikiProjects often have their own 'collaboration of the month', or something similar. Finally, there are the core topics- it's not something I'm familiar with, but basically, they are the topics which would find themselves on the CD versions of Wikipedia, so are the most important to get to a high standard, which seems to be similar to your concerns. J Milburn (talk) 18:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

An NPOV question

I have been informed by more than one editor that a statement similar to "the atheist author X" whenever X is mentioned on Wikipedia is NPOV and acceptable and even preferred, even in context of subjects or topics not involved with religion. What do you think?--Filll (talk) 19:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

People really say this? It seems fairly unreasonable at first glance. Mentioning atheism like that may sometimes be appropriate if 1) the author is particularly known for being an atheist, and 2) it's relevant to the topic at hand. Friday (talk) 19:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
(e/c) To the extent the author's claim to fame is only vis a vis his or her authorship of atheist literature, and to the extent all mentions therefore would presumably be in relation to his or her writing, it may not be a problem. On the other hand, if the author happens to be atheist, but the mention of them is in a context unrelated to their lack of belief, volunteering that they are an atheist author might be odd, irrelevant and imply a pov. It's really hard to consider this in the hypothetical. Can you link to the discussion?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:06, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Does the qualifier even matter? Even when writing an article about religion or evolution, I would argue that just (for instance) "the author Richard Dawkins" would be fine. Stating that someone is an atheist or holds other religious views without a reasonable context for inclusion seems a bit pushy to me. In a lot of cases you would risk making the label perjorative or even making the religion seem ridiculous by association. The old tenet of "let someone follow the wikilinks to find out if they want to know" would seem more appropriate. Of course lots of people seem to love arguing about religions over the internet so maybe this won't be seen to be the best for everyone in all cases... 86.21.74.40 (talk) 20:16, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree. NPOV policy requires views to be represented without bias. If the intent of adding the label is to imply bias or a pejorative inflection to the data presented, then it seems the material can not be fairly represented without bias. Similar to Poisoning the well. Morphh (talk) 20:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I would think the appropriate use of an epithet is situational; sometimes it would be appropriate and sometimes not. Certainly, a blanket statement that "the atheist author X" whenever X is mentioned on Wikipedia is NPOV and acceptable and even preferred" is nonsense. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 23:06, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Reminds me of Joe Friday referring to "the Virgin Connie Swail" throughout Dragnet (1987 film).... :-) --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

NPOV is the mainstream view. Atheism is not "mainstream." Neither, however, is fundamentalist\evangelical Christianity. And the "atheist cabal" is no larger than the "Christian cabal." If anything, irreligion is NPOV. Users who approach articles to either preach or condemn a particular view should stay away from such articles, whether they're Christians or Atheists, and there's plenty of examples of this stuff on both sides.

Examples I've dealt with recently:

That first and second are probably going to be deleted. The third was improved to the point that it'll probably stay. I worked on the fourth a little bit, but there's a lot of work to go and it's hard to find sources on it, outside of political commentary. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 19:49, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Oops, um, a Neutral Point of view has nothing to do with the 'mainstream'. NPOV is rhetoric that does not advocate or argue for a position. In other words, it is descriptive of the topic. One can write a NPOV article on a fringe topic. Remember, the point is no advocacy either pro or con to the topic. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 20:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
The attacks on the 2nd article you mention seem a remarkable expression of opposition based on POV. NPOV is that there is no mainstream position pro or con religion in general or any particular religion. -- DGG (talk) 22:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I had something similar to this where editors wanted to apply labels to public policy institutions (such as left-liberal Brookings Institute or the fiscally conservative Beacon Hill Institute) when discussing their work in other articles. I argued that the labels were inappropriate as it was meant to imply bias or a pejorative inflection to the data presented. The particular data may not reflect such a view one way or another and the data under discussion wasn't even about big government or small government. The label is there today but I still don't agree with it. I think you should discuss political or religious leaning in the article about the person or organization and let the wikilink be the user's point for more information, unless the statement in the connecting article is directly about the view or leaning. Morphh (talk) 22:16, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Why is Montenegrin history rewritten on Wikipedia?

Why do you allow that so many stupid things are written on page about Montenegro? There should be only few editors, it's not possible that everyone knows everything. It just fills articles with untrue facts. 99% facts from Montenegrin history are wrong (please reffer to our school books). Most of statistics are wrong - somebody is rewriting number of inhabitans for some cities so instead of 10000 for example, there says that town has 50 inhabitans!? Please, this is not fair attitude and looks like somebody is moaking with Montenegro and Montenegrins.

Regards

I think this would be better served on the Administrators' Noticeboard, or on the talk pages of the articles themselves. In any case, unless you tell us which edits/editors seem to be in error, it will be difficult to settle this issue. superlusertc 2008 January 11, 19:59 (UTC)
Actually, a better idea is to fix the articles yourself (addressed to the person that raised the complaint). If you have access to books that contradict the information in an article, fix the article and cite the book where you get it from. That is an excellent way to solve the problem, since you have as much ability to change info on pages as anyone else. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 20:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
His complaint seems to be that there are multiple editors that are monkeying with articles. It's fine to change them yourself, but when it's one against many, it's difficult to stay on top of things. Even more so without violating 3RR.
Oh, and I was wrong. Complaints like these should probably go through WP:DR, not the noticeboard. superlusertc 2008 January 11, 20:11 (UTC)
I tryied to change them but, as someone said above, it's one against many. Everything that i write keeps being deleted. Sometimes i would think it's wikipedias default setting. I thought this is happening only to me but as i see talking to other people from my country, everything what we try to do, to put true facts about us, on Wiki, keeps being deleted. And, i didn't know where to put this, thanks for help. I'll try there as well. Cheers 85.94.106.187 (talk) 20:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I recommend that you create an account so that people can communicate with you more easily about your edits. Here is one change on the Montenegrins article that I reverted.[2] Is that one of yours? I reverted it solely because the numbers no longer corresponded to those listed in the sources linked alongside. It's very important to us that our articles be properly sourced. If you have good citations for your numbers, you should provide them in the article text when making such changes. Bovlb (talk) 21:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for Your support but main thing is that everyone who posts or edits and article can be moderated so only valid information can be presented. We are actualy working on www.crnogorska-enciklopedija.org project. Purpose is to put all those articles together so that becomes source of valid informations for articles about Montenegro. Don Sharky (talk) 23:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
(outdenting) From WP:V: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that readers should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed."
Your comments about facts being true or false is almost irrelevant. What matters is whether the facts are referenced and verifiable through reliable sources. If you add true facts without any reliable sources then your edits likely will be removed. If someone else adds facts that you know are false, but are supported by references to reliable sources, then you cannot delete them. So go find reliable sources for all of your edits and add them as references. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

What is commonly referred to as Wikipedia consensus is frequently like a mob of brain-eating zombies. Zenwhat (talk) 02:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I know what you mean. I have had people disagree with me, too. Rumiton (talk) 03:16, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


If I were to walk into said town with 50 inhabitants (~ 10-20 households), and discover that it has more than 1 street in it, I would seriously begin to doubt the given sources, and would be able to verify that the town had ~10000 inhabitants by direct observation on location. --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:11, 12 January 2008 (UTC) (Also, I might be able to find a town hall or mayors office or what have you and get census data, but that would detract from my story here, bear with me :-P )

Oh yeah, one more thing: it is very likely that Montenegro and articles on Montenegro have been subject to huge amounts of POV pushing on Wikipedia, and possibly this user has actually confirmed it. I suggest the article be checked with a fine-toothed comb. (And possibly don't trust the provided sources either. Be especially careful with sources originating in Serbia). --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC) welcome to world politics :-/

Actually, I am going to disagree with Sbowers here. If the reliability of a source is seriously brought into question, it should NOT be cited. Sources where the information they publish is patently untrue should NOT be cited. Not any source will do, and citing a source that you know is false, but citing just to have "something" is intellectual fraud, and should not be tolerated. It is better to have no information than information sourced to a reference which is known to be wrong. In this specific case, simply omitting all reference to population figures UNTIL a reliable source can be found is preferrable to republishing obviously fabricated figures just because someone else published it. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Is there any possibility that we can continue to contribute articles in proper bona fide manners about Montenegro. We still have issue that the so called editors of this chapter which are coming out of Serbia with the support of Serbian Wikipedia admin delete and impose they own ideas and imposing their opinion while negating culture and nation of Montenegro and disregard its existence. This is the same policy that Milosevic was imposing in the ex Yugoslavia and policy which caused tens of thousand of lives to be lost. They are imposing their own "supreme nation" over the others same as Hitler was imposing his ideas over the others and negated existence of sovereign nation of Montenegro. While they act any continuous support of this group is leading to the same results and this people do not have any scruples in the proper democratic approach of the writing about history and rights of sovereign nation as Montenegro is. This is highly against basic human rights and it is unclear while Wikipedia Serbian Admin do not react and eliminate this fascist propaganda approach which is still going on here on Wikipedia. Simple way is to ask for the opinion from any nation of former Yugoslavia as this is standard Serbian approach negating existence of any nation and sole problem is group of admin from Serbia which is acting on the already seen scenario of the Serbian propaganda from the past. Regards85.2.137.60 (talk) 17:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)LadyDaytona

This seems like a MUCH larger issue than Village Pump or even places like WP:ANI can deal with. Is this an issue that the arbitration committee should be dealing with? Massive POV pushing and ownership of articles by a small cadre of users seems like standard ArbCom material... The users above appear to have a valid complaint, and there should be a means to ajudicate it... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 04:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I understand this title. There is a certain Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts (a pair-off to the real Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts) in Montenegro, established several years ago, by Jevrem Brkovic, Novak Adic, Rifat Rastoder and Radoslav Rotkovic among others. It mainly deals with history, and mostly accounting to revisionist and biased unfounded controversial research. Their works have become a bit notable over the past due to an online forum, and their works have been used as sources for the Wikipedia. --PaxEquilibrium (talk) 20:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Modification to NPOV.

A lot of people seem to misunderstand WP:NPOV as a false compromise between competing biases and the way it's worded now, that is one way it can be interpreted, since the word "objective" is avoided. Journalists seem to use the guideline "neutral and objective." Objectivism, by itself, isn't reliable, because it can amount to original research. On the other hand, neutrality by itself also isn't reliable, because it can amount to supporting fringe theories. If you take into account WP:RS and WP:V, then WP:NPOV is objective, not just neutral. But then Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ states:

There's no such thing as objectivity.
...
This is probably the most common objection to the neutrality policy, as well as the most common misunderstanding of it. The policy says nothing about objectivity, or whether there is such a thing: a "view from nowhere" to use Thomas Nagel's phrase.

My response: Is that an objective assertion? Really? Who knows? Perhaps there is no objectivity, then. And thus, NPOV is simply a balance between competing biases. Articles on Christianity? Evangelical Christians POV-pushing + Anti-Christian atheists POV-pushing. To say that NPOV is to be without bias while at the same time saying it says nothing of objectivity is absurd, because that's precisely what objectivity is. And if objectivity is not Wikipedia's goal, so editors are free to engage in gonzo journalism, then that's even more absurd. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 03:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! You've just figured out how things really work around here. It's closer to the Peasant sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail than most would like to admit. -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 22:44, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Getting much wider consensus for an issue

This is not to try to get input on the Current RFC about TV episodes, but instead about trying to gain community consensus. The RFC has been added to the RFCpolicy list and announced here at VPP but given the strong divide over the involved editors, it seems we need more input. Is there any way to get a more WP-wide announcement besides those places, like as was done for rollback?

Also on the same issue, who can we turn to to make a determination of consensus on the issue? There is an ArbCom case that looks like it will be taken up about the issue but as that's more aimed at procedure and behavior than content, I'm not sure if the arbiters can make that determination. --MASEM 14:26, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia can fail: Remember that.

A lot of editors don't seem to acknowledge this possibility on here and it's scary, because it may lead to laziness and apathy.

In the famous talk at Stanford about how "Wikipedia matters," they seem to invoke the idea that Wikipedia is a feedback loop (in the Economics of Public choice, see virtuous circle and vicious circle).

The following image demonstrates the concept and seems to have been discussed on foreign language Wikis, like French Wikipedia [3]:

Please, share the above image, if not tagging it on one of the main pages on Wikipedia policy. Perhaps Wikipedia matters should itself be policy.

If Wikipedia fails, instead of being the "sum of all human knowledge," it will be the "sum of all human ignorance." And instead of informing the public, it dumbs them down. This may someday lead to Idiocracy.

Recognizing the above fact instead of simply adopting a naive obsession with WP:CONSENSUS seems to imply that Immediatism, Deletionism, and Wikithoritarianism are more beneficial to Wikipedia than Eventualism, Inclusionism, and Wikidemocratism. Because the longer we wait, the lesser chance we have of building WP:CONSENSUS to address the problems of Wikipedia.

In the long-run, consensus isn't always a good thing, because consensus can fail such that bad edits receive consensus, And that fate is not set in stone.

Just some thoughts here for any Wiki-hippies out there who might regularly discuss policy. Wikilove is evil. Zenwhat (talk) 04:01, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The link to Wikipedia Matters did not have any page there. Are you sure you have the correct link? Captain panda 04:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
"Wikidemocratism" - wow, a political movement named after my account name? I'm flattered. Wikidemo (talk) 03:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • One must recall the Zeroth law of Wikipedia: "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." In other words, every reasonable person would predict that anything this open-source, and this open to literally, edit by everyone, is bound to be a catastrophic failure. There is no reason why it works, and yet it clearly does. People have been predicting the doom of Wikipedia since its founding. I still don't see it coming. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
    I fixed the link to the speech on meta. Also, Zeroth's claim is absurd. It amounts to, "I can't logically explain why Wikipedia works, but I'm going to assume it does, anyway." If Wikipedia policy isn't based on reason but arbitrary decree to say that it "works," is misleading at best. Without appealing to reason, one has no basis to even discuss why one policy holds merit over another. Zenwhat (talk) 08:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
    I don't see why this is much of a policy concern. Wikipedia has done alright for itself. What does the possibility of failure have to do with policy, other than the fact that it could happen? Why fix what isn't broken? — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 08:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
    Anything, anytime, can fail. In fact, one must just take a short look at thermodynamics and entropy to be aware that, indeed, everything will fail. It's just a question of when. However, I don't believe Wikipedia can catastrophically fail. It's open-source. If Wikipedia itself is not doing so well anymore, anyone, anywhere, can start a new version of it elsewhere with attempts to correct what they see as the problem. Perhaps one of these forks would be successful, perhaps several. Either is fine, either alternative continues to provide resources to disseminate human knowledge. Perhaps even none would be. Even if so, versions of Wikipedia as it was at its zenith would still exist, and would always be freely redistributable. Someday, someone else might come up with the "newer, better Wikipedia", perhaps even using Wikipedia itself as the base. That would not be failure, it would be success! It would still serve to advance human knowledge. And ultimately, as long as Wikipedia has contributed toward that goal, it has succeeded—even if the site at en.wikipedia.org becomes long-forgotten. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
So even Wikipedia will fail. It's just a matter of time. Any moment now quantum indeterminacy might cause the law of gravity to suddenly work in reverse. Brilliant argument. I suppose I should hold onto my chair, then? Penguin: This has to do with Wikipedia policy because a certain particular underlying philosophy seems to have grabbed Wikipedia by the scrotum. I think this is a major problem -- the logic behind it is demonstrated in the above chart -- and people are arguing against it by invoking fallacies and pseudoscience. A broad array of policies reflect this worldview. Examples:
As it stands now, Wikipedia policy encourages misinformation through focusing entirely on Inclusionism, which is absurd, based on the chart above. There are groups like Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron keeping spam and internet memes on Wikipedia, while there is no Wikipedia:Article Deletion Armada.
Editors who grow frustrated with the anti-intellectualism of Wikipedia may be caustic. When they are, they are admonished or blocked for violating Wikipedia:Etiquette, something that is essentially an infringement on free speech in Wikipedia through the absurd requirement that people not just avoid flaming, but through punishing people for "not being nice." Imagine how this would work on forums. On second thought, this is an incredibly stupid thing to say, apparently based on ignorance of policy. Forgive me and please ignore it. Zenwhat (talk) 21:41, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Overall, while the general idea behind the policies make sense, they seem to all be intentionally worded to support Inclusionism.
This is a major criticism of Wikipedia that remains completely unaddressed. See WP:Expert rebellion, WP:Credentials, User:William M. Connolley, and User:Larry Sanger. The fact that this criticism was made appears to have made Wikipedians become even more firmly entrenched in their positions because I vaguely remember a time when Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions was a guideline. Because, after all, it's just a list of basic fallacies used in WP:DELETION. For these reasons, we may as well delete M:Deletionism from Meta, and replace it with, "Are you a creationist? A conspiracy theorist? A Neonazi racist? Add whatever nonsense you want. If you're friendly, you'll do just fine, per WP:POLICY." Zenwhat (talk) 09:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
The policy of letting everybody delete what they "don't like" would lead to cencorship, pov and the like. Every possible conflicting views would simply be removed. No mention of wars. No mention of politics. No mention of religion. Science would disappear. Silence would rule, because silentists could enforce silence. The result would be huge misinformation. Oceanh (talk) 11:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC).
Zenwhat you have a curious idea, namely that wikipedia will automatically become better if we delete articles. Wikipeida gets better by improving articles, and this is why there is a "bias for inclusionism". There is no such bias for bad articles that can not be improved. You list several points;
  • "alternatives to deletion" is in the front. But this makes sense, first consider what you can do to improve an article. It's a bit late to do this after the article is deleted. (Although hopefully if there is things you can do to improve an article then the article will not be deleted).
  • no Wikipedia:Why won't you let me delete?. You can always go back and look at the AfD discussion. There is no direct way to do so for deleted articles. So it's easy to find out why an article was kept, but harder to find out why an article was deleted.
  • Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions is as much about arguments that are not grounds for deletion as it is about arguments that's for inclusion. The "it's only an essay" swings both ways.
  • no Wikipedia:Help, I can't delete nonsense!. There is, it's a policy and it amounts to "feel free to delete nonsense": Wikipedia:Patent_nonsense.
  • Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators is about deleting articles. It makes sense to keep when there is doubt to allow those claiming that the issues involved can be fixed the opportunity to fix the problems. For content in the articles Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators in no way supersedes Wikipedia:Verifiability,Wikipedia:NPOV, and similar content policies.
  • You should note that [[Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron] has no wish to include spam, unsourced claims or other unencyclopedic content. Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron is about improving articles that stands to be deleted due the current state of the article to the point where the deletion rationale no longer applies.
  • Yup, we curtail free speak in that we require civility. I fail to see the problem here, and feel it would be a problem if we did not.
  • WP:Expert rebellion is about article content. I can find cases here where the experts feel that deletion of the article is the best option.
  • "Add whatever nonsense you want. If you're friendly, you'll do just fine" This statement is true, at least as long as the edits in question is made in good faith, equally true is the fact that such edits can and should be reverted unless they can be sourced. Please see WP:NPOVFAQ and WP:DUE.
In summary I have great problems seeing the cycles you refer to as a good reason to delete more articles. Taemyr (talk) 12:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Consider contributing to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is failing. –Pomte 12:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Poor quality articles can be tagged with {{fact}} and many other tags which indicate to readers that there are problems with them. Poor quality articles attract new editors, who first edit those, then move on to creating articles. A vacuum doesn't attract anything. An encyclopedia with a bunch of very high-quality articles and nothing else gives people the idea that they probably can't usefully contribute to it, so they don't. --Coppertwig (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Issues with Deletion Rrocess and the Article Rescue Squadron

Here are some points:

  • The Article Rescue Squadron project clearly states that it is not a bunch of wild-eyed inclusionists.
  • Having one article does not interfere with the existence of other articles, Wikipedia is not paper therefore we can have an article on Ace (which has NO sources) as well as an article on the "spammy internet meme" Chris Crocker (which has about 60 sources). There two articles will not interfere with each other, so people searching for ACE will not have to worry about weather or not there is a Chris Crocker article. If people are searching for Chris Crocker they will find one of the most in-depth and accurate works on him on the internet.
  • If I had never seen a deck of cards before, and followed Zenwhat's comments above: Because Ace is not referenced, and I don't know if it is spam or contains mis-information I should delete it strait away, not AfD, no consensus - just deletion. Never mind all the policy that says that articles should be improved before they are sent for deletion.
  • Deletion is the last step that should be taken in the maintenance of an article, this is why "alternatives to deletion" is listed before the steps for deletion on Wikipedia:Deletion
  • There is a good reason why Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions is not policy, if it were AfD would become an exercise in bureaucracy - and wikipedia is not a bureaucracy.

I hope you understand that I am not attacking you Zenwhat, but your ideas for how wikipedia should be run and very different to what the projects founder seems to think. He created an article that caused a LOT of controversy because over zealous deletionists tried to delete an article that the FOUNDER thought was worthy of inclusion. I am not raising Jimbo up as some sort of god here, but shorly if anyone knowns the level of notability required to be in wikipedia, he would? Fosnez (talk) 12:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The debate is improperly understood as "Inclusionism vs. Deletionism," which is what has muddled Wikipedia philosophy to begin with. I didn't want to post it here just yet, because I'm still in the process of writing it, but I'm writing an essay on the matter. See Wikipedia:Wikiliberalism. Framing it as Inclusionism vs. Deletionism is an improper framework that uses Inclusionist assumptions. By alternatively framing it as Precisionism vs. Protectionism, the distinctions are made more clear. So-called deletionists are nearly always motivated out of a desire to remove misinformation (so that Wikipedia is precisely accurate), not a subjective time-preference. Some small minority of users do appear motivated by a rabid desire to chew obscure articles to bits. If an edit is challenged, it ought to be the authority of the editor to back up unsourced claims with citations. For this reason, it makes perfect sense to reject Mzoli's Meats off-hand, but once it was shown Mzoli's Meats was mentioned in the press, responding, "Minor press coverage," is just as silly as citing unreliable sources to protect bad articles. From that standpoint, Mzoli's Meats wasn't "proof that Jimbo is an inclusionist" or "proof that inclusionism works!" On the contrary, you see both sides making spurious arguments with Jimbo, a precisionist stepping in. Zenwhat (talk) 14:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
In my experience, the 'deletionist' movement is most known for it's desire to chew up obscure articles than for it's desire to enforce precisionism. This is exactly what you would expect to find, as few disagree with WP:V based actions (which are highly defined and non-arguable) whilst WP:N is a major source of conflict and harm (I'd like to debate this point, actually, with someone of opposing viewpoint). Like how you state that most self-proclaimed deletionists really mean precisionist, most self-proclaimed inclusionists value precision over protectionism. The issue is that, as a rule, the loudest faction is perceived as the dominant force, and as such false deletionism (chewing up articles) appears to have a stronger base level of support. It is my personal opinion that the chewing-up movement is actually one which will contribute to the failure of wikipedia, as it typically values poorer measures above more strongly defined ones, and due to it's perceived strong backing, will only serve to alienate editors. LinaMishima (talk) 16:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Paradoxically, Wikipedia's anti-elitism is both its nemesis, and its secret of success. If there is a precarious balance to be maintained, it is the right handling of anti-elitist tendencies. We need to combat anti-elitism where it hurts the project (enabling trolls, frustrating competent editors), but we need to foster it just enough so it can do its fermenting work. dab (𒁳) 16:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Dab, there's one thing important to note, however: Wikipedia is not shrinking. Not even close. I may be wrong about this, since I don't have any accurate count of the number of articles created daily. But as it seems to me: It's a safe assumption that articles are added everyday by fanatics, bots, and some good editors. So long as Wikipedia is growing, an article on Mzoli's Meats or any other obscure article here and there being deleted isn't a problem -- if they're good articles Typo: If they're bad articles. Thanks, person below. Zenwhat (talk) 22:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC). As demonstrated above: It's better for Wikipedia to be empty than contain nonsense, because an empty Wikipedia is neutral in terms of its effects on public ignorance. A Wikipedia which is wildly expanding (as it seems to be now) creates a vicious cycle of stupidity that makes Wikipedia dumber and dumber as time goes on (see Idiocracy, don't let Wikipedia create it), unless some radical measures are made to cure the disease. You seem to acknowledge this idea yourself, even if you don't necessarily agree with the idea that Wikipedia is like that now. I think it is when I regularly came across situations like this. Zenwhat (talk) 18:21, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Are you sure you intended to say "obscure article here and there being deleted isn't a problem -- if they're good articles.", which implies that the deletion of well-sourced, well-written articles is not a problem? That does not make logical sense to me. The situation you describe is inherently different to that of quality obscure articles, and the existence or lack thereof of quality obscure articles will have little direct effect upon that problem (if anything, any quality article implies quality editors, which will help to avoid such problems). The biggest issue currently faced is not obscurity of covered material, but the poor quality of verification, however for some reason many editors seem to equate one to the other or use language which implies as such. The situation you link to seems more to be more relating to incorrect interpretations of policy, something which I have come up against myself in the past, and one of the reasons I have withdrawn from mainspace editing until the situation changes. LinaMishima (talk) 20:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Articles about obscure useless things are not such a big problem for Wikipedia (except maybe in terms of server resources) because the release versions don't contain them. Wikipedia is a work in progress remember. Give it marks for the articles that, one way or another, it gets right; don't take away marks for the articles that are bad. • Anakin (contribs • complaints) 20:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, that wording is going to cause debate. I suspect you mean "marking should be based on the non-trivial matters covered, not the trivial", as trivial articles existing fail to cause harm if good and are not normally a source of major upset when wrong, however bad articles on serious matters are obviously damaging. LinaMishima (talk) 20:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

To respond to the above users: I don't think that a blanket policy of supporting deletion of articles is necessarily a good thing -- unless it's to counterbalance a blanket policy of opposing deletion of articles -- which Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron does. It's inherent in the name, it's inherent in their goal, it's inherent in their methodology (such as listing the blatant advertisement Bawls on a list of "saved" articles they're proud of). Them having a specific section about "We're not wild-eyed Communists" is itself evidence.

The emphasis is taken away from factualism in support of two inconsistent philosophies: Inclusionism, because it makes no sense, and Deletionism on the other hand because, though the underlying philosophy (Factualism) is correct, referring to it as "Deletionism" assumes an Inclusionist framework. The framing of the debate as "Include vs. Delete" isn't how it seems to be defined. When I want to delete nonsense from Wikipedia, it's because it's nonsense, not because I think deleting is in and of itself a good thing. It's not a subjective time-preference for "fix it now" nor is it some malicious desire to see articles on Wikipedia burned.

In general, it's not particularly difficult to add information to Wikipedia. I'm fairly certain, for instance, that I could write articles on Christian Zen, expand the article on Gil Fronsdal, and so on, no problem. My utterly useless essays that no one reads certainly didn't have any problem getting up. But why should I be forced to be an Inclusionist who is never allowed to delete nonsense and instead has to focus on narrow issues, while the basic articles are screwed up? Much of this silliness stems from an over-emphasis on restrictive "responsibilities" and "policies" (see bureaucratic collectivism) while individual editors apparently have no rights to defend themselves. When policy is practiced, people don't say, "Such and such infringed on my right to X." Instead, they say, "Such and such did X, Y, and Z," and it's often like McCarthyism.

All over Wikipedia, there is this subtle perception that it isn't important to fix articles and remove incorrect material. As an example of two projects I'm a part of: In Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics, the articles listed there are stubs and stuff that needs expanding, but that's the least of the troubles in economic stuff on Wikipedia, when you see the widespread monetary crankery of Austrian economics and pseudoeconomic laissez-faire plastered everywhere from Monopoly to Fractional-reserve banking. Then, on Wikipedia:WikiProject Buddhism, there is a massive list of obscure tasks -- several of which appear to be obscure sectarian POV-pushing -- when even some basic articles on Buddhism like the one on Zen need fixing. From what I've seen, throughout that entire article (including in the lead) there isn't a single mention of the focus on "the present moment", the doctrine which is arguably the most prominent doctrine which defines Zen.

Then there's the matter of Eastern philosophy and Eastern religion being distinct when no such distinction is made and I proved that using particularly reliable secondary sources. A person who attempted to put forth a rebuttal was so sloppy with his citations, one of them actually proved my point. Despite this, you have several users who repeat the claim "but philosophy is not religion," without apparently having read any of the discussion. I can't do anything about because per Build Communism I will blocked for invoking the right of self-defense of my edits against random editors that don't discuss their edits until they end up on 3RR and I'm blocked by an admin sympathetic to their cause -- and when I challenge it (if the block isn't upheld by someone sympathetic to their cause), the cards are stacked against me: For clear and obvious reasons (see List of cognitive biases, Halo effect), even if you're in the right, if you're blocked first and then have to make the case to be unblocked, it's a lot more difficult than simply arguing against the block to begin with.

Imagine if this same policy were applied to legal systems: Juries are often useless. Let's imagine a world where "violation of the law" is determined strictly by "consensus." It would be Orwellian, to say the least, and the idea that the ability to appeal being imprisoned unjustifiably somehow justifies the status-quo is clearly absurd.

Overall, the underlying problem seems to be a lack of scientific culture. There is no academic taboo against hubris combined with the average man's anti-intellectualism, such that editors will spam Wikipedia with their ideas (sometimes literally) backed primarily by hits from Google (it's only a matter of time until Wikipedia:GOOGLE becomes an essay) and anyone who comes along, and says, "Hey wait a minute, that's pseudoscience" is blocked over 3RR or burned at the stake if they're an admin. They regularly exhibit the kind of behavior that would probably warrant a D- on college term papers and the kinds of things that the academics who write outside encyclopedias would be ashamed to say or do, like being accused of hubris and getting caught using sloppy references. The overall point: Inclusionism is collectivist, against the freedom of the individual editor, and is given far great deference than reason. Hence WP:Expert rebellion.

In conclusion: We should Delete the rogue squadron and fix the deletion policies above, so they are more weighted away from radical inclusionism. Zenwhat (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Woah, well done, some nice thoughts there! Although I'm not sure what this means with respect to merit-to-exist, I think on the whole I totally agree with you. Well, I would having been involved with the whole WP:Expert rebellion and WP:Expert retention discussions, and the entire point on the lack of (and arguably, the discouragement of) scientific culture on wikipedia being another reason I have withdrawn from mainspace editing for now. Pu this way, I think I agree with you that a "rescue squad" is perhaps emphasising the wrong idea (reactionism rather than preventionism), although on the other hand, I do disagree with the lack of simple investigation I often saw in AfD nominations. However that is part of the wider issue at hand, in many respects. Let me go re-read the deletion policies you mentioned before commenting upon them. LinaMishima (talk) 23:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
As promised, I've re-read the list of issues with current deletion processes. WP:ATA is a wonderful document that really should be a major guideline, yes. With respect to most of the rest, the key issue is interpretation of the meaning of 'nonsense'. Many seem happy (or at least a few are so vocal and powerful to make it seem like many) to call well-referenced articles 'nonsense' if they are on obscure areas, aspects that are poorly known within the western world (but of importance elsewhere in the world) or might be perceived to be 'fancruft'. This whole matter seems to me to be a part of the issue wikipedia has with scientific culture, rather than one specific to anything else. LinaMishima (talk) 23:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
As the person who nominated Bawls for deletion I find it easy to see why WP:ARS feels that this falls under their mission. Please note that the article was up for deletion for lack of notability. Within 24 hours of the nomination sources sufficient to show notability of the subject was provided. While there can be no question that the article as it stands is bad and needs to be edited to conform with our standards for encyclopedic writing. It's also very hard to argue that the topic does not pass our standards for notability. There was an earlier AfD for deletion, but ARS had nothing to do with this discussion. Taemyr (talk) 15:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
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