Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 41

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Is this biting the newbies?

I noticed this repeated removal of an anon's comment at Talk:Homeopathy [1][2][3] and the subsequent blocking of the anon. [4] This raised my eyebrows a bit, as it seemed against the spirit of WP:BITE and WP:AGF. Some editors justified the removal, accusing the anon of ranting or violating WP:SOAP and WP:TALK guidelines. Nevertheless, I feel there are very limited cases where a user's comments on talk pages should be removed, e.g. personal attacks or simple vandalism. I would like to know if there is an established consensus on how the policies apply to situations like this. It seems to be a dangerous trend to remove a user's comments on the basis they are ranting.

N.B. I am not presently involved in this discussion, but it was on my watchlist as I have made some minor contributions in the past. Dforest (talk) 08:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The user was also editing the article. [5] I don't know where the discussion about the user took place. -- SEWilco (talk) 14:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to the article discussion. Yes, I'm aware the user was editing the article. The user was duly warned for adding controversial content without discussion. So he/she moved it to talk, and then had his/her comments repeatedly deleted, and a subsequent block was placed. This seemed rather brash to me, and the comment deletion did not appear to be justified. It seems to give the message that anons' comments are not welcome here.Dforest (talk) 08:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

RfB consensus poll

The Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/RfB bar will end March 15. If you haven't already, please consider participating. Kingturtle (talk) 13:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Block threats

I notice this block threat at Waterboarding:

• Prior to making _any_ edits to this page, please make yourself familiar with the new rules that have been implemented for this article (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Waterboarding/Archive_6#New_rules_for_this_article). Failure to abide by these rules will result in an immediate block. Thanks!

This seems draconian to me. What do others think? Lightmouse (talk) 14:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

It is what it is because a large portion of the editors that worked on that article couldn't play nice on the playground. (and I have no comment about whether watching all of that unfold was torture or simply a "procedure"). It's not the first or last article/area of the wiki that goes "all the way to ArbComm" and ends up in that fashion. Unfortunate. Yes. Deserved? Yes. Draconian? Probably. Going away? No, not likely. One man's opinion. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 14:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Time to effect the merger of Academics with BIO

Absent strong objections at the talk page for WP:Academics I think that it is time to merge this page into WP:BIO. The better parts of this process have been incorporated into BIO for some time and this is now just a redundant page. Perhaps further ideas in clarification of BIO could be included in an essay. --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Accurate and precise use of terminology in policies/guidelines and elsewhere

I would like to propose some changes to make the wording of policy/guidelines more accurate, precise, and clear. They relate to the usage of the words "encyclopedic" and "consensus."

Encyclopedic

Sometimes, the words "encyclopedic" or "unencyclopedic" appear in guideline pages. The dictionary definition of "encyclopedic" is "broad in scope or content" or "comprehensive; of or relating to the characteristics of an encyclopedia." And our own definition of "encyclopedia" is "a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge."

We typically use "encyclopedic" to denote "appropriate for inclusion in an encyclopedia." It is even sometimes used to describe behavior; e.g. at WP:POINT, we have "Some readers consider such techniques spiteful and unencyclopedic..." At WP:DE, he have suggestions on what to do in response to a user's "first unencyclopedic entry." I have never seen these usages outside of Wikipedia. As noted at WP:UNENCYC, it is not a particularly helpful comment in deletion debates. I would favor dumping this term pretty much entirely from our lexicon, except when used as a complaint about something not being comprehensive enough. Ironically, one place where the term might be appropriate to use is WP:FAC; but if you were to vote "Object; clearly unencyclopedic" about an uncomprehensive article on an obviously notable subject, it would probably be mistaken for disruption.

In most cases, the word "unencyclopedic" could probably be replaced with a more precise term such as "non-notable" or perhaps a phrase including the word "inappropriate" (defined as "not suitable for a particular occasion etc," "not in keeping with what is correct or proper," etc.) That is, after all, what people are usually trying to get across with the word "unencyclopedic" – that certain actions or content are not suitable or proper for this project. If no one objects, I would like to begin replacing "encyclopedic" and its variants with better terminology when I run across them. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 22:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree on the need for better definition, but I think this is going in the wrong direction.-- "notable" is even more disputable a term than encyclopedic. At least encyclopedic can be reasonably defined as shorthand for :the sort of thing that belongs in an encyclopedia like this one". It doesn't say anything in particular, because there are a lot of reasons why something might not belong. What we need -- and do not have -- is agreement one what sort of things belong in an encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 17:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

"Notable" at least is the proper word to use for the concept people are talking about, as it means "noteworthy; worthy of notice; celebrated; widely known and esteemed." That is usually what people are getting at when they say something is encyclopedic or not. Changing the policy to decide we don't want to decide things based on notability is a whole other issue. Policy is meant to describe current practices (see WP:WIARM) and if we are going to describe what we do, we should use accurate terminology; otherwise the policy is neither proscriptive nor descriptive. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 18:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

(Cont'd) Is it possible to get agreement on what belongs in an encyclopedia? I think the only clear-cut way to do it would be to say "ANYTHING verifiable can be included." What we have now is a rule that says that substantial coverage in reliable sources is prima facie evidence of notability, and then a big grey area for things that don't have substantial coverage. E.g., arcane elements of the Star Trek universe get kept because there's a big constituency for it on Wikipedia, and stuff that doesn't a constituency here is subject to deletion. However, there is an easy solution, and that is to let the consensus do what it wills as far as notability is concerned; and anything they delete should be moved to another wiki. I believe there are ways that we can easily cross-link the wikis together, and I'll discuss that in more depth with you if you're interested. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 22:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

No, we don't back ourselves into a situation where we try to make everything black and white. The policies and guidelines cover the majority of circumstances, and there is room to debate those as well. What's wrong with a gray area? Mr.Z-man 23:08, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

"Anything verifiable" is too weak, because that means every person can have a page as long as their person info can be verified, and it only gets worse from there. The reason why the notability use of "significant coverage in secondary sources" is a good standard is that is thus immediately has topics fall under WP:V. We do, however, need to realize that there are topics that are covered, for example, the Star Trek esoteric stuff, which are non or barely notable and should get nowhere close to the same treatment as US Presidents or major historical events. There is a bias, and that does need to be overcome, convincing editors that maintain that certain topics they feel should be included really should not be. The use of external wikis needs to be encouraged more, so that main topics here can work in conjunction with those, where we don't need to meet certain guidelines. But at the end of the day, we still need some metric to make sure we don't become an indiscriminate collection of information, and what WP:N gives is a good starting point that gives a topic secondary sources, and thus makes it well on its way to being a topic that can be treated in an encyclopedic fashion (eg meeting V, NOR, and NPOV, for a start). --MASEM 23:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Consensus

"Consensus" I believe is another problematic word in some cases. It is inherently confusing because it has many possible definitions, some of which imply absolute unanimity, which is never a requirement here for action to be taken. However, other definitions do not carry this implication (see Wikipedia_talk:Consensus#Definition) so that by itself does not make it an incorrect use of terminology. It is hard to find a satisfactory definition of consensus, as applied to Wikipedia, and if you read through the archives of Wikipedia_talk:Consensus, you'll find that people have been grappling with this for some time. But let's start with a few that, while not entirely satisfactory, express certain attributes often applicable to Wikipedia decisionmaking:

• "An informal method for identifying approval of a proposal placed before a group. Consensus is not the same as unanimity. It is sometimes used as a political tool and may be proclaimed without individual voting but may not necessarily be an accurate assessment of the group's general desires." http://www.domainhandbook.com/gloss.html
• "General agreement, characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments NOTE Consensus need not imply unanimity" http://www.bsi-global.com/en/Standards-and-Publications/About-standards/Glossary/
• "The set of ideas, beliefs and values that are shared and agreed by the majority of the population, the centre ground that by definition often excludes alternative positions." http://faculty.harker.org/BeverleyM/LITINTOFILM/glossary3.html

Many guidelines suggest that decisions on Wikipedia are made by "rough consensus." For instance, WP:DEL states:

“ These processes are not decided through a head count, so participants are encouraged to explain their opinion and refer to policy. The discussion lasts at least five days; afterwards, pages are deleted by an administrator if there is consensus to do so. If there is no rough consensus, the page is kept and is again subject to normal editing, merging or redirecting as appropriate. ”

On its face, this appears to be an accurate description; and anyone who has been in deletion debates for awhile knows what it is talking about. But there are some subtle ambiguities and inaccuracies present in this statement (and many like it) that I believe we would do well to correct. It will take me awhile to pick apart and explain, but please bear with me.

It is often said that we make decisions primarily by "consensus" or through "discussion" rather than polling. (In using the word "consensus," there is some ambiguity – do we mean "consensus" in the sense of "an informal method for identifying approval of a proposal placed before a group," in which case it might mean basically the same thing as "discussion"; or do we mean that in most cases, the opinions are nearly unanimous one way or the other? Probably both of these things are implied, but the use of the word "consensus" makes it fuzzy.) On its face, this seems true. We do, after all, discuss things before a decision is announced, and the decisions is typically based on things said or brought to light in the course of the discussion. But is it accurate to say that our decisions are the result of the discussion or comments made therein? (Most deletion debates are closed with a statement such as "The result of the discussion was Keep")

In a system such as the U.S. Congress, it is correct to say that decisions are a result of the vote. Whatever the members vote to do, that is the action taken, as long as it doesn't contradict rules that they themselves have set up. Under their rules, it would be a perfectly valid decision for the body to pass a resolution, for instance, stating that "Whereas, mutated superintelligent polar bears with orange spots are bombarding the Pacific Northwest states with heavy artillery; and whereas this has had a profound negative impact on the economy of this region; now therefore be it Resolved that $10 million is appropriated for economic stimulus in this region, to be allocated by the President." Regardless of the facts being incorrect, they can vote to do what they wish, and action will be taken accordingly. Indeed, they can even violate their own rules if they raise a point of order and motion, and the members vote to interpret the rules in such a way that the violation is permitted; this is what the nuclear option is all about.

Now, on Wikipedia, what happens when the participants in a discussion ask for an article to be kept or deleted based on inaccurate facts or blatantly misapplication of policy? The closing admin has every right to take action based on the facts and policy. It does not even matter if the decisive argument was not raised in debate; facts and policy are what they are. The ten participants in a debate can unanimously argue in favor of keeping an unverifiable article, citing many eloquent reasons for why, and the closing admin can delete. So in that case, the action taken is not the result of the discussion or rough consensus.

The subject of deletion, due to its complexity, opens up a whole can of worms, so perhaps a better better example is WP:FAC. FAC rules state:

“ For a nomination to be promoted to FA status, consensus must be reached that it meets the criteria. Consensus is built among reviewers and nominators; the FA director, currently Raul654, determines whether there is consensus. (References in these instructions to "the director" include Raul654's nominated delegates.) If, after sufficient time, objections considered actionable by the director have not been resolved or consensus for promotion has not been reached, a nomination will be removed from the list and archived. The director determines the timing of the process for each nomination. ”

It might be more accurate to say that FACs are determined based on the merits as judged by the FA director, a determination that he makes after reviewing the article and taking into consideration the arguments made. Clearly, an article can be promoted even if there is unanimous opposition, if the director determines that the article is of sufficient quality and the objections are non-actionable. So, it is patently inaccurate to say that "For a nomination to be promoted to FA status, consensus must be reached that it meets the criteria."

And of course, article content is not decided by consensus, but by the merits. I believe TBSDY ran into this situation once, when the consensus was to change the article on Australia to say it is a republic. The one editor who, correctly, says that it is a constitutional monarchy is entitled to have his edit stand. WP:CONSENSUS already says, "Note that in the rare case that the "eccentric" position turns out to have merit, the consensus can change," but that's somewhat of an ambiguous statement. Does that mean that the person with the eccentric position is entitled to keep reverting back to the correct version, or that he is supposed to change consensus by persuading the others? What if they won't be persuaded? We might clarify that people are allowed to correct factual inaccuracies, no matter what the consensus is.

But what about situations (whether in FAC, AFD, or elsewhere) in which it's a close call as to how to best apply facts or policy and there is room for reasonable disagreement? In those cases, headcount can begin to play into things, most certainly; and the closer in strength the arguments on each opposing sides are, the more weight headcount will tend to carry. And I think MFD is often an excellent example of this. It is inaccurate to imply that decisions will never made by headcount. To say such a thing gives people an unrealistic expectation of how things will work here; and I think fostering that expectation can come back to bite us.

Rather than saying that decisions are made by discussion or consensus, it would be more accurate to say that decisions are made based on the merits when possible (specifically, facts and policy); that discussion is used to present relevant facts and arguments to aid in determining the merits; and that head count (with adjustments made to account for possible sockpuppets, votestacking, etc.) begins to become a factor as the strength of the arguments on each side approaches equality.

Of course, the application of policy is a bit of grey area, as some rules are not supposed to bend at all, and others (especially guidelines) have more give. All in all, it's a bit tricky in certain borderline cases, because the closing admin has to consider the relative weight of the facts, policies, guidelines, and possibly headcount. For these reasons, it's difficult to draft a statement that expresses clearly and accurately how decisions are made here. But to say that decisions are made as a result of "consensus" or "discussion" is clearly an oversimplification, and easily misinterpreted.

The catchall used (often implicitly) when a departure from the description of practice laid down in rules is made is WP:IAR. Thus, we can ignore the rule that decisions are made by consensus if the opinions expressed by a preponderance of editors is wrong. But, when possible, we should avoid having poorly-worded rules that make it necessary to invoke WP:IAR on a regular basis.

So, in short, I think we might revise references to decisionmaking by consensus to place more emphasis on decisionmaking being made primarily according to the merits, in a judgment made by the closing admin that is informed by the discussion, the facts he is able to assess for himself, and binding policies; and when there is some question as to the merits, taking into consideration rough consensus, as expressed in the more flexible guidelines and in the particular debate.

I am not proposing any change in the substance of the rules, just rather changing them to make them more accurately and precisely describe actual (and best) practices. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 19:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Responses

using non-notable for "non-encyclopedic" is a step backwards. At least encyclopedic has a meaning, whereas in practice the only actual meaning of non notable is not suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. I would rather remove the words notable and non-notable entirely fro all guidelines and policy pages, since they have no agreed-upon meaning. anyone who thinks they do , needs to spend more time watching the total disagreements at AfD. DGG (talk) 08:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that WP:N should be deprecated, but it'll never fly. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 16:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't read the discussion up until now, but in response to the header and original statement just below it: Consensus and encyclopedic are subjective terms. Wikipedia is a subjective place. When judging policy violations etc, people are told to use common sense. It don't get more subjective than that. This is intentional. Wikipedia is different from a state with laws. That is also intentional. Wikipedia doesn't want to be a legal system. That's why we discourage lawyering, and we say we're not a democracy or a bureaucracy. If everything were objective, we would be those things we don't want to be. Will it last? Can it last? Maybe, we'll see. But for now, people who can't live with a system like that should go elsewhere, because those are the core principles here and they're unlikely to change. My personal opinion is that I'm honestly not sure if it can last. It's a little bit like tyranny -- not in a derogatory sense, but in the sense that it is basically run by "lifetime rulers" who pass power on to each other, and who tell everyone that gets pissed off "if you don't like it, leave". That's a system begging to be overthrown, and it may happen. I myself think it's a very interesting system, and one that's more fun to participate in the way it currently stands; whereas if it were just like real life, I think it would be quite boring. So for as long as it lasts, I'll enjoy it. Equazcion •✗/C • 16:19, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is sometimes a subjective place, but it's not supposed to be primarily a subjective place. When facts are available, we're supposed to go by those regardless of what the consensus says. Also, certain policies don't yield bend. E.g., you can't delete a verifiable article for nonverifiability, even if the consensus wants to do so. There has to be some other rationale for deletion. Policy should reflect that's how we do things – on the merits when the merits are incontrovertible; and when they are not, by rough consensus. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 18:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yield? I don't know what that means exactly. You're saying you can't delete something verifiable for unverifiability? Yes, that's true, the laws of logic and physics still apply. Rules are ignorable though. We can delete verifiable things, if there's consensus to do so, despite the verifiability policy. As for what Wikipedia is "supposed to be"? Not for anyone to decide. It simply is what it is. It runs on consensus, a subjective thing. Facts are given their due weight regardless. I'm not sure what you're arguing exactly. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:24, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Various pages say that we make decisions by consensus. We don't, primarily. Decisions are made based on facts. Sometimes crucial facts emerge at the 11th hour, after almost everyone has already given input, and that can nonetheless can tip the decision the other way. As mentioned, this is not a proposal to change how we do things, but to have policy and guidelines more accurately describe our practices, which will be useful in avoiding problems in which people say, "Hey, why'd you do that??" I'm not saying we can't delete verifiable articles based on other things; but we can't just say, "We're deleting this obviously verifiable article based on the consensus reached in this debate that it was unverifiable." There would have to be some other reason, such as notability. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 18:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Facts can't decide actions. When there's a decision to be made based on facts, we have a discussion, and hopefully form a consensus. That's how we come to a decision. So I'm still not sure what you're saying. Let's get more specific: What change do you suggest, for example? Equazcion •✗/C • 18:57, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

(un-indent) For WP:FAC for instance, we might try this language:

“ For a nominated article to be promoted to FA status, it must meet the criteria. The FA director, currently Raul654, determines whether the criteria are met based upon his review of the article, taking into consideration objections presented in the discussion and edits made to address those objections. (References in these instructions to "the director" include Raul654's nominated delegates.) If, after sufficient time, objections considered actionable by the director have not been resolved, a nomination will be removed from the list and archived. The director determines the timing of the process for each nomination. ”

Isn't that much closer to how things actually work than to say that they are determined by consensus? There can be a unanimous vote of 50 people to promote an article, but if the article is crap, it doesn't get promoted. Likewise, if there is a 49-1 vote against promotion, but the article meets the FA criteria, it can be promoted. The proposed language would tend to discourage sockpuppetry and canvassing. (And if there's anything on Wikipedia I can't stand, it's those two things.) WP:DEL is going to be a tougher nut to crack, I'll need to think about that in more detail, but let's start with WP:FAC first. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 19:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Responses, cont'd

Hardening the language to describe how it works, even most of the time, locks us into certain practices and invites lawyering, which again we don't want. We don't want to have a process set in stone so that if, let's say, we feel the need to ignore it once in a while, someone can come around and lawyer their way into forcing us back into the process. There's simply no reason to harden the language as you suggest. Consensus is the broader version and covers what you perceive as the current practice, but also allows for other options should the need arise. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:48, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

What is an example of a situation involving FAC where we would want to use "other options," rather than relying on the criteria? An article should be well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable, meet the style guidelines, etc. in order to be promoted. And if it meets those criteria, then a consensus should not be able to prevent it from being promoted. Any exceptions can be written into the policy. Generally, if exceptions are anticipated, the best thing is to write them into the rule. But if exceptions are not anticipated, then we might as well harden the language, to prevent abuses. Rules are there, after all, to prevent abuses, not to create opportunities for them. As George Demeter wrote, "Rules are necessary because it is dangerous to rely on the inspiration of the moment for standards of action or conduct." Larry E. Jordan (talk) 21:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

A consensus should not be able to prevent it? For what reason? Just because exceptions are anticipated doesn't mean specific reasons for making exceptions are expected can be predicted. What you're suggesting is a complete change in the way Wikipedia works. And by now, you should be able to gather from both the percentage of responses in opposition as well as the overall lack of interest in this discussion, that it just ain't happening. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:50, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm not suggesting a change in how Wikipedia works. What I'm suggesting is a change to the wording of the rules to reflect how Wikipedia actually does work, so that it's not giving a false impression. Can you think of a time when an article that didn't meet the criteria got promoted based on a consensus, or an article that did meet the criteria didn't get promoted because of a consensus? But there are times when the promotion decision went against rough consensus, as it should have. For instance, sometimes people cast "object" votes, the objection is addressed, and they don't return to strike it out; and Raul654 disregards their objection because it doesn't square with the new facts. Occasionally, people freak out thinking that ill-informed or irrelevant votes will tip the outcome, because the rule, as currently stated, lead them to believe that. We can easily prevent that from happening by describing the process more accurately. Also, in reference to which side is on the majority in this Village Pump discussion, please note you are the only one who has responded with regard to the consensus question here; and with regard to the encyclopedic question, see Wikipedia_talk:Arguments_to_avoid_in_deletion_discussions#Definition_of_.22encyclopedic.22. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 22:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

← I had no idea you were only addressing FAC. I thought this was about using the word "consensus" in our policies in general. I don't know much about how FAC works, having never been very involved in it, so I'm ill-equipped to discuss that particular process or changes to its policy. You're right I'm the only one who responded -- I didn't realize that whole long thing was only your original post. But, again, that shows the lack of interest in this proposal, and the only one who responded (me) is against. Also, when people don't return to strike out their comments after they've been "addressed" doesn't mean they necessarily think the issue is resolved. I've often left objections in discussions, and despite their having been responses to them, I don't necessarily come back to continue the argument. Sometimes it's just not productive to do so, and the disagreement comes down to just that -- a disagreement -- that doesn't necessarily have hope of being resolved. If people stated what they wanted to state, not coming back doesn't mean they don't still stand by their objection. Equazcion •✗/C • 22:30, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

How do you know on which side the silent majority stands? Maybe those users who aren't participating here have better things to do, and didn't feel like reading my lengthy explanation? I knew that risk was involved in writing at such length, but it's a complex subject; that's probably part of the reason things are still worded the way they are. Especially when you're dealing with deletion, the issue gets confused because under conditions we do things one way, and under other conditions another. (Although that doesn't mean we can't still reduce it down to rules fairly easily; it's just a bit more complex than FAC.)

I think we should de-emphasize consensus in deletion policy and completely remove it from FAC policy. I just chose to address FAC first because it's a more clear-cut example. But if you want an example of facts overriding consensus, look no further than Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conversation opener. The consensus was clearly to delete (and indeed it was deleted) but deletion was overturned based on facts that had changed. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 22:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The decision was overturned because consensus at DRV was to overturn it. (and to address the length issue, i'd suggest you cut down your posts significantly. better that people respond and not necessarily get the full details right away, than no one read it to begin with, right?) Equazcion •✗/C • 22:56, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

There wasn't really a consensus on DRV either to undelete; I think GRBerry basically took it upon himself to do that, based on the facts. Most of my posts are fairly short, but this one had to be lengthy because of the nature of the subject matter. Wikipedians have been struggling for years trying to figure out how to define "consensus" and incorporate it into rules in a clear way that accurately reflects processes. That's not to say it can't be done, but all those attempts have produced so little agreement that all we have is an oversimplified version. It takes a little while to explain how it really does work. On Wikipedia, we say that the consensus rules. But sometimes it doesn't, and shouldn't!

It's kinda like two people arguing, with one saying, "America is a democracy where the majority rules. For instance, the majority of voters voted for Bush in 2004 and he was elected." And someone else argues, "No, it's not a democracy; in 2000, Bush didn't get the popular vote but he became President anyway." They can argue like that forever. The full story is more complicated and takes awhile to explain.

But if you want an accurate understanding of what's going on (and newbies to Wikipedia, who are supposed to be one of the main audiences of our policy, need to gain an accurate understanding) then what's needed is more than just an oversimplified version. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 23:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

← As for the silent majority, there is none. Wikipedia isn't a majority vote. If you don't show up for a discussion, you don't get your opinion heard. Period. I don't quite understand what you want to do. On one hand you seem to agree that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, but you are continuously pushing for new rules and changes to wording. Mr.Z-man 23:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Equazcion is arguing that since few people have participated in this discussion, that means the change in wording shouldn't be made. But as you say, if you don't show up for a discussion, you don't get your opinion heard. So why should we presume that those who are silent are against me, rather than for me, or neutral? Larry E. Jordan (talk) 23:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Try making the change and then see who speaks up. Doesn't matter anyway, since people are speaking up (myself and z-man), and they're against. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:27, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Oh good, I have permission to WP:BRD then? (One of the purposes of BRD, anyway, is to attract attention and input from those who care enough to have the page watchlisted.) By the way, although I often propose adding language to rules, that doesn't mean I'm in favor of more bureaucracy. Usually my changes are in favor of more freedom. For instance, policy creates a ban on canvassing. I try to carve out an exception that will allow consensual canvassing. Is that more bureaucracy? It's kinda like if there's a law that says you can't go through a red light, and someone adds language to the law saying that you can, in fact, go through a red light if you're turning right and stop first to make sure there's no one coming. Is that more bureaucracy, just because it makes the law longer? Larry E. Jordan (talk) 23:31, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

←Since when do you need anyone's permission to do anything? It's more bureaucracy because of the way disputes will have to play out due to those changes. When you hard-code things, you encourage people to go combing through policies looking for loopholes etc. There's already some of that going on here but we aim to avoid it. General wording means people use more common sense and less legal tactic. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:37, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

If we're going to be general, we might as well say that we make the decision based on facts and applicable policies, and leave it at that. As it is, we say that the decision is based on consensus. In reality, we base it on facts and applicable policies first (which the debate may or may not shed sufficient light on), and if facts and applicable policies alone don't/can't make the right decision obvious, then we base it on rough consensus as expressed in applicable guidelines and by the rough consensus in the particular XFD (or whatever decision it is.) It probably would be hard to nail it down any more firmly than that (and we might not want to). Larry E. Jordan (talk) 23:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Just remember, particularly for policy pages, it is WP:BRD, not WP:BRRRRRRRRRRR....D. If you get reverted, discuss it on the relevant talk page and see if there is consensus. If it is a significant change that all of WP maybe affected by, you may need to have an RFC on policy or the like. The key thing is that we are trying to write an encyclopedia, not create a framework of rules and requirements. Every policy and guideline, barring those edicts passed down from the Foundation, should be interpreted as common sense, not as rules and procedures. --MASEM 23:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Again, it's not a change to how we do things – just a wording to accurately reflect how we do things. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 23:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Consensus generates policy, it is not the other way around. --MASEM 23:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) It's a controversial change to the page, and you've been reverted. Now discuss. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:51, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

be bold and be instantly reverted. --87.113.93.118 (talk) 23:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

FAC instructions changed

Sorry, folks, but it's a bit strange that you decided to change FAC instructions without any discussion at WP:FAC; I've reverted, the change was unclear, now discuss please.[6] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Previous version:

For a nomination to be promoted to FA status, consensus must be reached that it meets the criteria. Consensus is built among reviewers and nominators; the FA director, currently Raul654, determines whether there is consensus. (References in these instructions to "the director" include Raul654's nominated delegates.) If, after sufficient time, objections considered actionable by the director have not been resolved or consensus for promotion has not been reached, a nomination will be removed from the list and archived. The director determines the timing of the process for each nomination.

was changed to:

For a nominated article to be promoted to FA status, it must meet the criteria. The FA director, currently Raul654, determines whether the criteria are met based upon his review of the article, taking into consideration objections presented in the discussion and edits made to address those objections. (References in these instructions to "the director" include Raul654's nominated delegates.) If, after sufficient time, objections considered actionable by the director have not been resolved, a nomination will be removed from the list and archived. The director determines the timing of the process for each nomination.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The new version is incorrect on its face; the FA director's decision is generally not mainly based on a review of the article, and indeed the director is not really expected to make a thorough review of the article personally. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Christopher, can we continue the discussion --> that-a-way to keep it in one place (and I agree with your comment; would you ming putting it over there?) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Darn, hate split discussions. I listed my first impressions here; these instructions don't quite hit the mark. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion to continue there, apparently. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

• Blocked user. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:55, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Abusive puppet master

This abusive puppet master (ten accounts I think) and known creator of hoax articles should be watched very very closely - any policy suggestions he makes should be treated with extreme care - he's part of an organised campaign to try and introduce proxy (which is a useful backdoor for POV pushers and sockmasters) voting to the encyclopaedia - this is just another stage in this campaign. --87.113.93.118 (talk) 23:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Mm, do I know you from somewhere? Larry E. Jordan (talk) 23:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Opting in to canvassing

We are discussing the wisdom of allowing consensual canvassing via user talk pages. Of course, I am taking the wikilibertarian viewpoint on this issue. My view is that if people specifically opt-in to receiving certain notices, e.g. using Template:Canvassing, then the community should not punish another user for giving that person the notices that they have indicated an interest in receiving. As "spam," by definition, is "unsolicited messages," this does not even count as internal spam, any more than weekly Signpost delivery to those who have signed up for it counts as spam.

Some might argue that this could change the course of Wikipedia decisionmaking. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Some Wikipedians already have gained an advantage that might be regarded as undesirable under that logic, through social networks they have established in which they coordinate action on pending discussions through emails, IRC, etc. At least talk page communication is more transparent. There are also ways in which it could be made minimally obnoxious, e.g. through "Show - Hide" messages similar to what we see in the ubiquitous RFA thankspam. Caucusing is a normal part of decisionmaking is large assemblies, and we should allow it. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 07:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Against, because once one group opts to receive canvassing notices, everyone else will feel the need to include themselves as well, lest the people who have agreed to canvassing get to push their POV more easily. Allowing this for those who want it may seem like a good idea since it's limited, of course, to those who specifically asked for it, but it will spread to everyone eventually, purely out of fear. Equazcion •✗/C • 07:18, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Might it not be helpful in finding users with similar interests to work with? If someone canvasses you about a subject you're interested in, perhaps you've gained a new colleague to work with on that subject. On the other hand, if you get canvassed on something you're not interested in, you can revise the restrictions to exclude that kind of topic, and keep tweaking so you're only getting the stuff you want.

We can already work through some fora, such as WikiProjects, to try to influence the results of discussions. What if there is no active WikiProject covering something? Canvassing can help fill the gap.

We can speculate about potential pitfalls till the cows come home, but we know from centuries of experience with deliberative assemblies that caucusing is a natural and beneficial occurrence. I'm not sure why it would be different here. Wikipedia:PARL#Allowability_of_caucuses Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 07:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't Wikipedia:Wikiprojects and Wikipedia:Portals and the various AfD topic lists and sitenotices for Big Things cover the legitimate uses of canvassing pretty well? MBisanz ^talk 07:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Do they? What about when it's a subject presently unknown to Wikipedia, that doesn't have a WikiProject yet? Or there are not enough interested users in that WikiProject to keep it active? Those would tend to be the subjects that are most likely to get AfD'ed, I would think, because no one here has ever heard of it. I suppose m:AIW could serve that purpose, but that site is pretty generalist. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 14:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with it being universally beneficial. As I said, it would have to spread by default. If I (for example) know that other people are being informed of things that I'm not, I will want to be informed too -- just in case someone who disagrees with me is informed of it and can therefore take action, while I can't. That's how this would have to play out, 'cause it's human nature. It would turn Wikipedia too political, in my opinion. Wait'll RfA candidates start taking part in the canvassing, and see how painfully similar to the real world this place will get. Not a good idea. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:44, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I 100% agree with Equazcion here. Too political. Too easily abused. Too difficult to maintain. And completely unnecessary. If subjects are getting AfD-ed because "no one has ever heard of it" there are two possible reasons. 1. It isn't notable and shouldn't be here and an editor has made a good faith nomination of a bad article. (this is where AGF comes in, Obuibo Mbstpo). Or 2. An editor has made a bad faith nomination of a good article. Those nominations and discussions get nipped pretty quickly and shut down at AfD without canvassing. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 14:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with Equazcion as well. AFD and other processes seem to get by just fine with their current level of participation. Also, from my experience, the more users who take part in a discussion, the more likely it will become off-topic, people will start to attack each other, and it will not gain consensus. This doesn't happen all the time in large discussions, but its much more likely than in small discussions. Also, you say "Some Wikipedians already have gained an advantage that might be regarded as undesirable under that logic, through social networks ..." If its undesirable, why would we want to increase it, but with slightly more transparency? Mr.Z-man 19:07, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not saying use of IRC, etc. for such purposes is undesirable – just that it's undesirable according to the logic that Equazcion uses in arguing against opt-in canvassing. If the theory were true, that creating such lines of communication makes everyone want to do it, then everyone would be wanting to go on IRC in order to level the playing field with others who are going on IRC. But empirically that's not correct, because people aren't doing that. Instead, some people are getting fed up with the unfairness of things and leaving. It's just not good to set up artificial constraints on consensual behavior. Opt-in canvassing might make it a bit easier for the more casual users, who don't have these outside social networks set up, to stay involved in decisions that affect them. And that's a good thing. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 20:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

IRC is not a passive medium. You're suggesting we allow people to make a one-time slap-on of a tag to their userspace, which allows them to be informed of all manner of things at any point in the future without having to do anything themselves ever again. Those are two very different things. Plenty of people sign in to IRC once in a while, or even leave themselves signed in for extended periods of time -- but its real-time nature means that it still requires active participation in order to get most of the benefit, unless you want to check it once a day and read through 24 hours' worth of real-time discussion. If IRC and other communication lines are a problem, your solution would be the ultimate problem. And the fact that a problem even exists is questionable. If there were a problem as you suggest, we'd be seeing a lot more XfD participation than we do now, in my opinion. It doesn't look to me like anyone is currently canvassing outside Wikipedia means. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:07, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

IRC only becomes problematic when it's not sufficiently balanced by on-wiki methods of caucusing. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 20:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There is no proof of that, it is conjecture. Equazcion has this right. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 20:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I do think that some XFD debates do need more attention. Some articles are nominated at off-peak times, get few or no comments and end up getting relisted, sometimes multiple times. But any sort of targeted canvassing or any list updated by users should be avoided. I would suggest something like a {{XFD attention}} template, using a list updated by a bot that adds any debate that has gone for 4 days with fewer than 3 comments. Just a list with links to the debates, no additional commentary, no sorting or targeting based on topic, no expansion to other types of discussion. Mr.Z-man 20:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

People can already look through XfD pages and see which discussions need attention, but I suppose having a centralized list for all the various types of deletion processes would make that easier. So I'd be for this. It would also be pretty easy to have a bot handle such tagging. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:01, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Now that, Z-man, I'd be ok with. "inclusionists" and "deletionists" alike could see the template and participate. As neutral as neutral can be around here. The problem, of course, is getting people to actually find, read, and react to the "list" of non-participated discussions. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:04, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This could be delivered to userspace via an opt-in subscription list, and not be canvassing. It would be similar to signpost or suggestbot -- simply an auto-generated list of deletion discussions that meet certain criteria, ie. over 4 days old with less than 3 comments, as Z-man suggests. Equazcion •✗/C • 21:54, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Other alternatives to canvassing

I went ahead and added this text to WP:CANVASS:

As an alternative to canvassing, one might establish a user subpage listing Articles for Deletion, for instance, that he wishes to draw other editors' attention to. He can then, over time, form relationships with editors he believes will be sympathetic to his general views, letting the existence of that user subpage spread through word of mouth. Other editors can watchlist it or transclude it to their own userspace (perhaps even their talk page), providing the advantages of canvassing without disruption. Patience is the key to making this work. Of course, opponents can watch that page as well, so the effect is balanced.

This seems in keeping with the spirit of the page, and I believe is sufficiently different from my previous rejected proposal that it is acceptable to be bold and introduce it there. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 18:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not - get consensus here. --Fredrick day (talk) 18:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

There needs to be a substantive objection to the text, rather than just a procedural objection. Otherwise I am allowed to place it back on the page after waiting a suitable period of time. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 18:35, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I've decided to begin implementing this via User:Obuibo Mbstpo/Discussions in progress. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 18:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no procedural objection. It's just an objection. As much as you're allowed to be bold, anyone else is allowed to revert you. And in the case of policies especially, noting an exception that nobody's ever discussed before will definitely garner a quick revert. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:20, 14 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Short of an objection being from a SPA or a banned user, an objection is an objection. Outside of BAG Technical v. Policy objections, there is no difference in objections or their weight. Users can and already do keep their own transclude-based lists of such things, but without the purpose of forming relationships with like-minded people to watch them. That is my objection to this change. MBisanz ^talk 20:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that it isn't significantly different from the proposal that was soundly rejected above. Mr.Z-man 22:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Just for the sake of clarification of how WP:BRD works, a procedural objection would be to say "This needs to get consensus first." Unless followed up with an objection that addresses the merits, it's meaningless because it's a conversation non-starter. Thus, the initial bold edit can be restored after a reasonable amount of time passes. You can't have BRD without the D. But now we've had some objections that address the merits so the question of whether the initial objection was procedural or substantive is moot. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Not true. A significant policy change should require a demonstration of consensus to back it up, except when non-controversial. Example: I change WP:V to say information no longer needs to be verifiable. Fine. I'm reverted based purely on the fact that it's too big a change to make without a demonstration of consensus. Anything wrong with that revert? No, because burden of proof falls on the person who made the change, not the other way around. After that revert, try to convince people that your edit should be made again. It's not up to the person who reverted you to defend the status quo. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:55, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

It is, actually. Because for all we know, the change that was boldly made was a revert of another bold edit made a long time ago, that no one caught. Arguing that "it's policy" or "it's process" isn't enough; see Wikipedia:BRD#Discuss. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 00:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

See WP:SILENCE. If no one reverts it, it can be considered accepted. The argument is not "its policy" but rather that they prefer the status quo. If we had to reestablish consensus on a policy everytime someone made an edit to it, simply to defend the status quo, we would never have any policies. Mr.Z-man 01:11, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If the change is a revert of something that didn't (doesn't) have consensus then it's not bold and a summary explaining that should be enough. And even so, no matter what, the question is whether or not it's controversial, as in a significant change to the way things are currently done, that many people might have a problem with. Anyway that's not what we're talking about here, is it. You made a controversial change, everyone knows that, and so you have to defend it. It's again not up to eveyone else to defend the status quo. If it were, then anyone could make any change they wanted to, no matter how ridiculous, and then demand that everyone else prove that it shouldn't be there. Hence the concept of "burden of proof". If one guy wants a change, he has to show that there's reason to make it. Not the other way around. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:09, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, and suppose the editor makes his case, and the reverter won't respond. You're saying that the reverter gets a veto, despite unwillingness to respond? No way; someone has to give a substantive objection, or else their silence can be assumed to imply they have been won over by the bold editor's arguments, and they consent to the revert being reverted. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 03:52, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps, but there was no silence here. You were reverted. Equazcion •✗/C • 17:32, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

In this case, people did come forward with arguments against the proposal, but I'm talking about the general case. If someone explains their change on a policy talk page, and implements it, and someone reverts and never gives a reason why, eventually their revert is itself revertible. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 20:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

← No, it's not. Or rather, if it is, a second reverter can (and probably will) come along and revert again. If the status quo is agreed upon widely enough, no one needs to defend it. Yet again I repeat: If we had to re-establish consensus for the status quo whenever someone challenged it, no matter how ridiculous the proposed change, we wouldn't have any policies. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:51, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Is it acceptable to try to change certain policies by voting to not apply them in individual cases?

Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines notes that there are three main avenues for changing policies. Basically, (1) You can codify existing practice which have developed from the grassroots; (2) you can propose a change in a top-down manner; or (3) Jimbo can change it. A number of essays, such as Wikipedia:Product, process, policy, discourage the last two methods, and note that it is very hard to change policy through formal proposals. Guidelines can be changed a bit more easily.

We know that, after the foundational principles were laid down, most subsequent Wikipedia guidance arose from codification of practices rather than through proposals. It seems clear that, if there is an issue not currently covered by guidance, but a practice for dealing with that issue has become pretty widespread, it is acceptable and fairly easy to enact new guidance codifying that practice.

What about if we want to actually change guidance – that is, remove an existing provision or even change it to the opposite of what it currently is? Many unsuccessful attempts are made to do this through avenue #2, proposals. Can the guidance be changed by deliberately changing current practice, e.g., pushing for actions to be taken that run counter to existing guidance, so that eventually the changed practice can be codified as a change to the policy or guideline page?

I want to make a distinction between three different kinds of situations, which I will label A, B, and C, as follows. (A) At times, it is obvious that we can/should ignore all rules and act contrary to policy for the good of the encyclopedia. (B) Sometimes the policy in question is a foundational policy that cannot be deviated from. In either of those situations (A or B), the acceptable action is clear-cut. (C) But sometimes there is room for legitimate disagreement as to what is the best course of action; typically, these cases involve guidelines or non-core policies (e.g. WP:N, WP:UP, certain provisions of WP:NOT, etc. as opposed to policies like WP:NPOV, WP:COPYVIO, etc.) In those cases, is there leeway to simply violate the guidance if the rough consensus of users decides it wants to do so as a way of changing the norm, and by extension, eventually the guidance codifying the norm?

Suppose, for instance, someone is playing a chess game in a userspace subpage, and someone else nominates it for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia:UP#Games and WP:NOT. Half the editors voting in the MfD want to keep it, because they disagree with the rule. The other half want to delete it. Should the keep votes be disregarded because they are contrary to guidance, and the page be deleted? Or should it have a result of "keep" or "no consensus" because this is a legitimate way to begin changing guidance through avenue #1? Wikipedia:MFD#Prerequisites would seem to suggest not; it notes, "This is not a forum for modifying or revoking policy." On the other hand, Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means says that most rules are descriptive, not proscriptive; so how does one really know when it is okay for the rough consensus on an individual 5-day XfD, for instance, to override policy that was presumably adopted by a broader consensus over a longer period of time? Does it basically just depend on what the closing admin thinks will survive a deletion review?

I'm thinking that what we have now is a bit like typical legal systems. Where is no statute, common law can develop through decisions in various cases. But where there is a statute, it overrides the common law, and the court can't make a decision contrary to it. On the other hand, the court can overturn the statute if it runs counter to foundational principles (which in the real world, might be the Constitution). And people (including those in positions of trust and power) sometimes disregard rules and processes if they think they can get away with it. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 20:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:Consensus can change, but changing against the wind is a difficult task.

Let's examine your chess analogy. First of all, scrub the idea of !votes, because Wikipedia is not a vote. The admin is trained to determine the merits of both sides of the debate, and rule whichever side provides the stronger case. That being said, the Keep argument has a higher burden of proof in this case, because they not only have to argue against the Delete argument, but must also prove that at least in this case that policy should be set aside. -- RoninBK _{T C} 21:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, OK. There seem to be a lot of cases where people say, "We have to get rid of that page; it's ugly, unprofessional, a waste of time, etc." and the other side says "I like it; it's harmless; why do you care; Editors matter;" etc. It seems to be basically a matter of opinion. But the admin closes one way or another, with the exact reasons unknown, and one side is pretty upset. Moreover, the odds of getting it overturned on DRV are pretty slim, so they typically don't bother. As Abd has noted, one of the problems is that admins usually don't state the exact reason(s) why they close debate a certain way; they just say "Result was _____." If they had to state the reason (e.g. a brief statement of the decisive policies/facts) then it would further help diminish the illusion that this is a vote and possibly lead to better DRV discussions. In fact, I think I'm going to propose this right now. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 21:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Please, in the future, distinguish between policies and guidelines. The examples you mention of "non-core policies" - WP:N and WP:UP, are in fact guidelines. Policies are very, very different from guidelines; in fact, they are sufficiently different as to almost make this discussion pointless. Guidelines do have some give; policies, while sometime ambiguous, don't allow discretion except when they are ambiguous. Sometimes arguments over guidelines - such as whether it's acceptable to put footnotes before punctuation rather than after - simply don't get decided; that's much less common with policies. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent point, thanks. However, WP:NOT is a policy which also governs userpages, and is frequently cited in deletion debates. So, would even a "unanimous minus 1" consensus of editors in an MFD be unable to disregard WP:NOT in the chess case? Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

You can also ignore all rules. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 21:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, policies can have exceptions too. The burden of proof is just an order of magnitude higher. The point is, if you are arguing against guideline/policy, you have to prove your case as to why we have to IAR. -- RoninBK _{T C} 22:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, OK. So it sounds like, if you successfully argue IAR in a lot of debates covering a certain issue, that could lead to policy eventually changing, because the practice has changed. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Theoretically possible, but you'll need one hell of a movement behind you, and it may be a protracted battle. A one-man war is gonna be VERY difficult to maintain, (I know there's at least one person in this conversation who could attest to that...) -- RoninBK _{T C} 22:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Is the reason why it's necessary to have a movement behind you that one person simply can't cover all the deletion debates? Theoretically, in each debate, it just takes one person with cogent arguments to make the difference, even if everyone else is against them. The closing admin can say, "You know what, he's right" and close accordingly. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:05, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

O:-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I say a movement, because an admin cannot close a discussion with, "Even though all these people said Delete, I'm gonna close as Keep just because Obuibo said so." Not even Jimbo Wales has that power anymore, (though if you can get him onto your side, it's a plus...) Winning an argument pretty much requires convincing others to your side. One person may be able to sway enough people to save an article from deletion, but to affect policy, you're going to need quite a few like-minded people backing you up -- RoninBK _{T C} 00:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

@Obuibo Mbstpo: If you need to argue and defend using IAR in the face of anything other than mindless process wonking, it probably doesn't apply. @RoninBK: They could. Deletion debates are not a vote and an incredibly convincing argument put up against a bunch of crap might win out. It would probably be contested, but its not forbidden. On an aside, Jimbo can do pretty much anything he wants that won't turn massive portions of the community against him. Mr.Z-man 04:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I use IAR, or rather WP:WIARM almost exclusively. --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The argument was not "close as keep just because X said so", but "close as keep because X's argument was rock solid". Whole worlds of difference between those two things. mike4ty4 (talk) 06:29, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

...In a perfect world. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 23:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I forgot, non-admins can close debates too. Sayyyyy, this gives me an idea... Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

And it'd better darn well be very careful, tactful, and well thought through! --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC) No poisoning the well for others please!

No, no, I would never want to do anything contrary to Wikipedia policy, guidelines or community standards. By the way, how about a nice game of chess? I've got User:Obuibo Mbstpo/Sandbox 3 set up so that you only need to enter the board position once and it shows you the perspective from both sides (white player and black). It rocks. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 02:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I might, but it looks like you got yourself a template loop there, Kasparov... -- RoninBK _{T C} 03:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't like your snide implication that I'm only the second-best chess player in the world. I would very much prefer that you refer to me as "Deep Blue." Thank you. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:24, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

My favorite game is "Global Thermonuclear War", but thanks.;-) I would very much prefer you ignored all rules and instead worked for the good of the encyclopedia. --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Well said, indeed. (I guess it is true, that the only way to win is not to play.) -- RoninBK _{T C} 04:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, I was thinking of making more edits such as this in which I voted, "Keep and record in central database of precedents for justifying future userpage-restriction-relaxing amendments to WP:NOT and WP:UP in accordance with Policy Change Source #1, 'Documenting actual practices and seeking consensus that the documentation truly reflects practices.'" I can write analogous remarks in my keep votes in which I am attempting to shift the boundaries of article notability at AFD. Perhaps some users will copy this technique, and by keeping track of the results, we can eventually have evidence in our favor for amending the policy. I was thinking that this is an alternative method to making a formal proposal and trying to argue it on the policy talk page, as WP:PQ would seem to recommend as a more efficient method. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 17:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The actual procedure is slightly more fluid. 1. people do stuff. 2. someone notices no one wrote it down yet. 3. they write it down. Voila, policy! This is process actually responsible for ~90% of our documentation afaict. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Note that we reject precedent. But if everyone *IS* doing something in a particular way at some moment, changing a policy page to say so at that moment is easy (while if no-one is doing it, changing a policy page is extremely hard) --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC) caveat: there are some problems with how policy is maintained atm. I hope to try and solve them through Wikipedia:Lectures, so that everyone is at least on the same page... but no promises.

I notice that the page specifically says, "This does not mean that Wikipedia ignores precedent. A precedent usually has reasons too, which may still be valid. There is a distinction between unresolved good-faith concerns over a reasonable or policy related matter, and disruptively trying to enforce an individual view. An issue decided in the past can always be discussed again, especially if there is new information or a question of policy being breached."

So, here it seems like it's saying that you aren't supposed to buck policy as a way of changing practice and thus changing the policy. Or at least, that people can challenge you about it. Hmmm. Well, anyway, it's obviously set up to try to prevent a wikilawyering approach. In that case, though, I think people should quit saying "Your viewpoint is to be completely disregarded in this XFD because it's in violation of policy!" when anything you say is really an expression of your opinion of what is best for the encyclopedia and could thus be an application of WP:IAR; moreover, consensus is simply made up of individual opinions taken as an aggregate, so whether you express your opinion in an XFD, or the village pump, or the policy talk page, it contributes to the consensus. However, it just might not carry as much weight as it would if it were supported by policy, or if policy were neutral, because policies are expressions of wider consensus than the consensus in an XFD.

Moreover, each statement made in XFDs (or Village Pump, or policy talk page, or anywhere else) could be viewed as flowing into the overall consensus much like drops of colored water from many pipettes might be poured into hundreds of beakers large and small, resulting in various shades of color in each beaker; and then they are all poured into one vat whose color reflects the contribution of all those beakers. Each drop of colored water that was put into all those little beakers contributes to the final color of the mixture at the end; the individual drops being metaphors for statements of opinion; the pipettes being metaphors for users; the beakers being metaphors for separate debates; and the vat being a metaphor for policy. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 19:00, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

WTF about the CCC link. Fixed.

Any good-faith position or edit always carries some amount of weight, depending on the reasoning you provide to support it. This weighting is not modified by policy, rather, policy pages put their own weight into the balance. Policy/guideline/essay pages explain what position a large number people actually currently support (or more accurately, what they used to support a couple of months ago). If policy/guideline/essay pages are well written, they might also contain some hints in which direction people's opinions might change. I don't think there's any hard-and-fast formula to actually calculate what the consensus is at any particular point in time. WP:SILENCE does document a hard and fast method to determine whether something does not have consensus. --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:41, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I love how you make policy page edits like that at a moment's notice. (Some people are timid and think they have to thrash it out on the talk page first.) Unfortunately, no one will be able to easily look later and tell what was the conversation surrounding the change. I was thinking that a cool technical change would be to add a button in the edit history to jump to that time in a user's contributions, so you can see the other edits they were making around the time that the edit was made. So, years from now, people might be able to figure out what prompted it. It could help in gaining insight into the evolution of policy (not to mention other pages). Shall I submit it to Bugzilla? Ah, I'll just be bold and do it, no need to talk about it first. See bug 13295. I'm not being sarcastic, by the way. Sometimes things can come off as sarcastic when we're not engaging in private and/or real time conversations. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 20:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

By the way... I'd be happy to ignore all rules and work for the good of the encyclopedia if the rules would ignore me for awhile! :) Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 00:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow, speaking of games, I found this cool article: http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Gaming_the_system Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 05:40, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

what's wiki policy to someone plagiarisng wiki articles and printing them as their own?

I have found a self published internet book for sale that consists entirely of two plagiarised wikipedia articles. what should i do about this? it doesn't appear to be covered under mirrors and forks section

You should probably raise it at Wikipedia talk:GFDL Compliance, pointing out the specific work. Vassyana (talk) 19:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

thanksJameselmo (talk) 22:48, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

it seems that this is ok to do as no one is interested, i'll maybe just print my own book using just wiki work, seems easy enough.Jameselmo (talk) 22:51, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

You didn't post at the GFDL compliance talk page, so I'm unsure of why you're saying no one is interested in reviewing the potential violation. Additionally, you did not specify what work is a problem, so it's impossible for any of us here at the pump to evaluate your claim. Vassyana (talk) 23:04, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:51, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The page has been marked as policy since March 2007, it just hasn't been categorized as such (nor listed at Wikipedia:List of policies). An editor just added this category to the page (and added it to the list) but otherwise didn't change the page. (Nothing to see here, folks; you can just move on.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Linking to Old Book resources

There are a number of internet projects to scan old & out of copyright books and make them available as online resource. E.g. project guttenburg, and the internet archive.

I cannot find any policy or recommendation on how this resource might or even should be linking to. E.g. Consider the Joseph Malet Lambert wrote a book called Two thousand years of gild life, which is available from the http://www.archive.org/details/twothousandyears00lambuoft The book it's self is probably not notable enough for it's own page, and none exists. However a link from the existing Joseph Malet Lambert page to the book probably would be justified. Some books in these archives might be notable enough for pages with a link E.g The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Volume 1 which can be downloaded from http://www.archive.org/details/theworksoflordby08901gut

Some policy or guidence on how this should be handled is required. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.66.238.27 (talk) 13:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

We don't link to online resources merely because they exist. If the resource is used as a source for an encyclopedia article, WP:CITE covers such citation of the source. If a book is notable enough that an article needs to be created for the book, then the online copy might get linked to, but not every book is notable. -- SEWilco (talk) 20:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

That said, I think linking to an online copy of a writer's book in an article about a writer is appropriate per WP:EL (assuming, of course, that the online copy is not a copyvio). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it is appropriate eg. in a bibliography section. DuncanHill (talk) 20:43, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I think those uses are allowed per WP:External links. -- SEWilco (talk) 20:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Where a title in PG is suitable for linking from a specific article, Template:Gutenberg can be useful in implementing that link.LeadSongDog (talk) 21:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Last notification for a while on this....

On the back of a few threads above, a proposed policy now exists in project space at Wikipedia:Notability (criminal acts). Comments, criticisms, etc. would be most appreciated. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:42, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

CSD Coverage

Is there a CSD that covers New Directions in Interactive Art & Entertainment - A New Fairy Tale -. I marked it as vandalism but I believe it is otherwise. The article is a supposed project started by students at York University and is meant for people on Wikipedia to add to a new fairy tale story they are creating. It is completely ridiculous, but I am not sure which CSD to mark it as. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 17:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Irishguy deleted it as a test page, which is probably about as close as CSD can come. I could also see an argument for vandalism. If I had seen it I would have PRODed it. Even though it was ridiculous, it didn't really fir any of the CSD. Not every thing that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia needs to be speedied. Dsmdgold (talk) 18:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Video Game developer information

I have found numerous video game articles that while they might give good converage as to the company, engine, etc. that developed it, they do not list any of the lead designers. As similar forms of media, such as movies, list actors, directors, etc. I believe video game articles should be required to list the lead developers, preferably in an infobox. They do not need to list every Tom, Dick and Jane that worked on it, but I find the lack of any names even for semi-popular series such as Star Ocean distubing, yet articles for other media of similar note, such as the movie Dragonheart is able to list actors, directors, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jinnai (talk • contribs) 20:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"Required..."? Article writers are not required to include any particular piece of information beyond the demonstration of the subject's notability. Go talk to the video games Wikiproject and suggest an addition to their infobox if necessary. Adrian M. H. 21:59, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Policy (Suicide threats, threats of violence, et cetera)

Could a few editors come over and take a look at Wikipedia:Threats of violence, see what you think, and if inclined, comment on the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Threats of violence. Thanks bunches, NonvocalScream (talk) 02:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

what's wiki policy to someone plagiarisng wiki articles and printing them as their own?

I have found a self published internet book for sale that consists entirely of two plagiarised wikipedia articles. what should i do about this? it doesn't appear to be covered under mirrors and forks section

You should probably raise it at Wikipedia talk:GFDL Compliance, pointing out the specific work. Vassyana (talk) 19:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

thanksJameselmo (talk) 22:48, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

it seems that this is ok to do as no one is interested, i'll maybe just print my own book using just wiki work, seems easy enough.Jameselmo (talk) 22:51, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

You didn't post at the GFDL compliance talk page, so I'm unsure of why you're saying no one is interested in reviewing the potential violation. Additionally, you did not specify what work is a problem, so it's impossible for any of us here at the pump to evaluate your claim. Vassyana (talk) 23:04, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:51, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The page has been marked as policy since March 2007, it just hasn't been categorized as such (nor listed at Wikipedia:List of policies). An editor just added this category to the page (and added it to the list) but otherwise didn't change the page. (Nothing to see here, folks; you can just move on.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Linking to Old Book resources

There are a number of internet projects to scan old & out of copyright books and make them available as online resource. E.g. project guttenburg, and the internet archive.

I cannot find any policy or recommendation on how this resource might or even should be linking to. E.g. Consider the Joseph Malet Lambert wrote a book called Two thousand years of gild life, which is available from the http://www.archive.org/details/twothousandyears00lambuoft The book it's self is probably not notable enough for it's own page, and none exists. However a link from the existing Joseph Malet Lambert page to the book probably would be justified. Some books in these archives might be notable enough for pages with a link E.g The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Volume 1 which can be downloaded from http://www.archive.org/details/theworksoflordby08901gut

Some policy or guidence on how this should be handled is required. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.66.238.27 (talk) 13:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

We don't link to online resources merely because they exist. If the resource is used as a source for an encyclopedia article, WP:CITE covers such citation of the source. If a book is notable enough that an article needs to be created for the book, then the online copy might get linked to, but not every book is notable. -- SEWilco (talk) 20:36, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

That said, I think linking to an online copy of a writer's book in an article about a writer is appropriate per WP:EL (assuming, of course, that the online copy is not a copyvio). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it is appropriate eg. in a bibliography section. DuncanHill (talk) 20:43, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I think those uses are allowed per WP:External links. -- SEWilco (talk) 20:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Where a title in PG is suitable for linking from a specific article, Template:Gutenberg can be useful in implementing that link.LeadSongDog (talk) 21:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Last notification for a while on this....

On the back of a few threads above, a proposed policy now exists in project space at Wikipedia:Notability (criminal acts). Comments, criticisms, etc. would be most appreciated. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:42, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

CSD Coverage

Is there a CSD that covers New Directions in Interactive Art & Entertainment - A New Fairy Tale -. I marked it as vandalism but I believe it is otherwise. The article is a supposed project started by students at York University and is meant for people on Wikipedia to add to a new fairy tale story they are creating. It is completely ridiculous, but I am not sure which CSD to mark it as. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 17:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Irishguy deleted it as a test page, which is probably about as close as CSD can come. I could also see an argument for vandalism. If I had seen it I would have PRODed it. Even though it was ridiculous, it didn't really fir any of the CSD. Not every thing that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia needs to be speedied. Dsmdgold (talk) 18:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Video Game developer information

I have found numerous video game articles that while they might give good converage as to the company, engine, etc. that developed it, they do not list any of the lead designers. As similar forms of media, such as movies, list actors, directors, etc. I believe video game articles should be required to list the lead developers, preferably in an infobox. They do not need to list every Tom, Dick and Jane that worked on it, but I find the lack of any names even for semi-popular series such as Star Ocean distubing, yet articles for other media of similar note, such as the movie Dragonheart is able to list actors, directors, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jinnai (talk • contribs) 20:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

"Required..."? Article writers are not required to include any particular piece of information beyond the demonstration of the subject's notability. Go talk to the video games Wikiproject and suggest an addition to their infobox if necessary. Adrian M. H. 21:59, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Bilingual Periodic Table

Hi,

I created a Hebrew-English periodic table, but dont know where to put it. Should it be in the mainspace, or maybe in wikisource, or perhaps somewhere else? Currently, its in my userspace, here. With some tweaking of the template, which I would be willing to do, this model could be adapted for any two languages.

Thanks, -Reuvenk_{T C} 23:33, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think this has a place in the English Wikipedia - sorry. If we had this for Hebrew-English, we'd be opening the door to similar articles for periodic tables for Russian-English and Spanish-English and 250+ other languages. And then for other articles with translations (list of Nobel prize winners, of example?). Nor is wikisource the place: that's for free artistic and intellectual works created throughout history, and to present these publications in a faithful wiki version. It's remotely possible that the Hebrew Wikipedia would take this. Otherwise, your best bet may be one of the many alternatives to Wikipedia, including such wiki farms as Wikia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Policy (Suicide threats, threats of violence, et cetera)

Could a few editors come over and take a look at Wikipedia:Threats of violence, see what you think, and if inclined, comment on the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Threats of violence. Thanks bunches, NonvocalScream (talk) 02:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

An issue of civiliity...

Noted that wikipedia has a policy of civility and explains why uncivility is wrong:

"Because it makes people unhappy, resulting in discouragement and departure from Wikipedia"

Why then does the article on Baha'u'llah below note the sensivity of Baha'is using of the Photograph of Baha'u'llah

There are two known photographs of Bahá'u'lláh. This photo was taken while he was in Adrianople (reproduced in William Miller's book on the Bahá'í Faith). Copies of both pictures are at the Bahá'í World Centre, and one is on display in the International Archives building, where the Bahá'ís view it as part of an organized pilgrimage. Outside of this experience Bahá'ís prefer not to view this photo in public, or even to display it in their private homes,[30] and Bahá'í institutions have requested the press not to publish the image in the media.[31] Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baha%27u%27llah

and then includes it anyway?

It would seem to violate the policy on civility..

- Arthur Gregory —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.116.135.184 (talk) 02:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it violates civility to publish the photo even if Bahais wish it were not published. Wikipedia also is not censored. Aleta ^Sing 02:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be analogous to the Muhammad situation and Muslims. I think the ideal solution would be to put the picture "below the fold" (down far enough so you have to scroll down to it), with a content warning and a link at the top of the page to a version of the page without the potentially offensive photo. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 08:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

below the fold assumes something about the technology being used to look at the page. I have a portrait monitor - there is no below the fold for me. You second suggestion of creating a folk of the page has also been rejected time and again by the community - it's a non-starter. --Fredrick day 13:12, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we tell users how to not see an image. I'm just suggesting we make it easier to do. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL has to do with editors fostering an atmosphere of civility within Wikipedia. It has nothing to do with whether anyone in the world might, for whatever reason, feel insulted, blasphemed, exposed, etc., by the fact that Wikipedia has documented something. Other policies might have an impact on that (WP:BLP, for one), but "X doesn't want us to cover Y" is no more relevant than "X wants us to cover Y." It would certainly gut the project if it were otherwise, as there is very little information that the simple fact of its distribution will not offend someone. Postdlf (talk) 21:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Its imposible to pander to the tastes and requirements of every human with an internet connection.

O keyes (talk) 01:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

How to refer to subject who changed his name?

I am working on an article about Stephen Donaldson, who was born Robert Martin and used that name for many years before adopting his pseudonym, Stephen Donaldson. As Robert Martin, he did many newsworthy things. Most published accounts of those activities, including all contemporary ones, refer to him by his birth name, Robert Martin, and I sometimes quote these. Later articles about him use the name Stephen Donaldson. To add to the complexity, he had another pseudonym/nickname, "Donny the Punk". How should the article refer to him? (He was known as "Donny" to his friends, of whom I was one.) You can see my dilemma in the article section on his military experience.Espertus (talk) 07:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Most commonly known name is used. If Donny the Punk is the name he is most frequently referred to as, then it is used. It's why we have Bill Clinton over William Clinton, 50 Cent over Curtis James Jackson, etc. Sephiroth BCR ^(Converse) 08:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. It's still not clear to me how to refer to him before he used his later name. For example, would you write, "As a child, 50 Cent..." or use the name he was known by then? What if you were quoting a review of his performing as a child in which his birth name was used? Espertus (talk) 18:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I've also seen this issue discussed in articles on royalty, whose title changed throughout their lives by ascending from prince to king or whatever. The practice as I recall is to avoid anachronisms—don't refer to a time in an individual's life by using a title (or name) that the individual did not possess at that time. 50 Cent seems to have it right, using "Jackson," his given last name, to refer to him in his early life. Postdlf (talk) 19:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Espertus (talk) 20:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe standard procedure is to title the article by the best-known name, and to use that name for any statements that do not involve a specific point in time. For statements that do involve a point in time, use the name the person went by at that time. --Carnildo (talk) 21:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Universities Article Guidelines

Once again I am listing WikiProject Universities Article Guidelines here to gain consensus. It appears we have reached consensus on the guidelines talk page. Please comment here and support or oppose the proposed guidelines. Thanks much!—Noetic Sage 00:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

RFC mandatory quotation of public domain text

Is it mandatory or acceptable to require that public domain text be in a quotation style? Please participate in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RFC mandatory quotation of public domain text. -- SEWilco (talk) 03:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Foreign military operational names (part 2)

I didn't get much response over at naming conventions, so I'm hoping to get a bit more here. As mentioned above, we've run into a snag at WP:Military History and I think we're content to let it be resolved here.

Basically, the question comes down to what level of translation to use for the article name of foreign military operations. Below is an example table.

Original name	Transliteration	Partial translation	Full translation
Fall Weiß	Fall Weiss	Case Weiss	Case White
Операция Искра	Operatsia Iskra	Operation Iskra	Operation Spark
捷号作戦	Sho-gō sakusen	Operation Sho-Go	Operation Victory
ケ号作戦	Ke-gō sakusen	Operation Ke-Go	Operation Ke
Unternehmen Barbarossa		Operation Barbarossa

For note, operations named after proper nouns (such as Barbarossa being named after Frederick Barbarossa) would not be translated (though potentially transliterated). Same goes for names like "Operation Ke"; since ke is a simple letter of the Japanese "alphabet" and thus has no meaning to translate.

Any opinions? Oberiko (talk) 23:48, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Quite a "snag". I read as far as the first break and didn't have the energy to continue. My choice is a full translation unless it is well-known as a partial translation (e.g. Operation Barbarossa). I assume that there would be redirects from other names and that the article would mention other names. Sbowers3 (talk) 21:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I vote for the "partial" translation, though I think we will need redirects from the transliterated version. As this is the English Wikipedia I am opposed to articles in non-Latin alphabets anyway. A bit of checking seems to show that the partial version is more common; however there is sure to be some hardhead searching under the transliteration. Mangoe (talk) 03:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

English Wikipedia, so use as full a translation as possible for the article title. Other names can be listed in the article. If the translation is wrong, someone will fix it. If you can't get it translated then start with what you've got. -- SEWilco (talk) 05:32, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

You may want to read Talk:Iaşi-Chişinău Offensive before making any suggestions.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 09:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I would have suggested the partial translation, for instance keep 'Operation' in English (or whatever the corresponding first word is, battle or, or whatever) but have the actual name in the original language, often they are named for places or so on that have the biggest impact in the original language. SGGH ^speak! 11:55, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Having looked at the case mentioned, there's a strong note of Romanian partisans trying to own an article about a Russian offensive. If it has to be in the original language, that original language is Russian in this case, since it was after all their offensive; the Romanian should be dismissed out of hand. However, the other problem is that the transliteration from Russian into Latin characters is a little uncertain. The whole Yassy/Jassy ambiguity arises because of a longstanding Latinism that is wont to use an initial "J" to represent a "Y" consonant sound. I personally think this is an archaism and that we should stick to the phonetically obvious "Yassy", redirecting from "Jassy". As for Iassy", that's for the Italian Wikipedia. Mangoe (talk) 14:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

If you can find a standard English-language reference to the operation, I would go for that. For non-Roman alphabets, my inclination would go for the full translation. For the Roman alphabet, it's more tricky... Bluap (talk) 04:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

My advice would be to go for a guideline that is both straightforward and subtle... if there is an overwhelmingly consistent form used in English-language publications, use that. If there's more than one, choose between them on the basis of the following:

1. expert advice
2. "trends" in the literature
3. fuller translations

If there is no real English-Language usage, or a wide variety, go for fuller translations. However, in both cases of fuller translations, stop at whatever point makes most sense; always transliterate, translate non-proper-nouns (don't translate proper nouns even if you can), unless there is no clean, concise translation, or if the foreign word is attested in English. Some care should be taken where a phrase may be translated cleanly, but the phrase has special significance in the original language that may be neglected by the translation. I can't think of a specific example of that right now. So, blitzkrieg would never be translated unless there was a strong indication of it being translated in the literature (which I'm fairly sure there isn't), because it's well attested in English, for example. SamBC(talk) 12:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm partial to agree myself. I should note that since the "boom" of code names happened as late as World War II, it's very common to have the same operation referred to (in English histories) as any of the latter three in roughly equal measure. We're not really looking at the "almost-always-referred-to-as" operations, but instead the "sometimes-X-sometimes-Y" situations. Oberiko (talk) 13:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

In those situations, I think my above comments are good guidance (well, I would, wouldn't I?), but another very important one is to follow the pattern of WP:ENGVAR—mention all of them, but pick one and stick with it otherwise, for the title and (mostly) every mention in the article. There should be a discussion of the different versions if relevant. A good acid test for this is if there's such a discussion at all in the literature. Alternatives to the "chosen" version can also be used in contexts (individual sections, captions, etc) where they are more appropriate. That's the sort of guidance I'd pick, anyway. SamBC(talk) 13:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I've started a rough tally below. If I've placed people correctly, it looks rather like the trend is towards full translation. Still, six people is hardly enough to get a meaningful consensus. Any one else have an opinion one way or the other? Oberiko (talk) 00:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that the guidance to use the name that is most recognisable to English-speakers and most commonly used in English-language sources is the most reasonable. Sometimes it calls for full translation, sometimes for partial translation, and sometimes for no translation (e.g. blietzkrieg). Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:21, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The ones we're dealing with are not usually well known to the public. Beyond about ten of the large ones, most operations are presented roughly equally (in terms of transliteration, partial translation and full translation) in historiographies. Oberiko (talk) 14:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

If the original (assuming it is in a language that uses the Latin alphabet), transliteration, partial translation, and full translation are used approximately equally by sources, then I think that title selection should be based on avoiding titles that could be confused with other events. For instance, Operation Barbarossa cannot be confused with any other military event. Operation Ke also seems to be a fairly unique title, and so should be used in preference to Ke-Go. Operation Victory, however, is rather generic; in that case, I think that "Operation Sho-Go" would be a better title for the article. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

How would you define unique? Would it be safe to say that you believe any operation not named after proper nouns (Victory, Red, Decision, Star, Green, Heaven, Sunflower etc.) should be kept in their original language? Oberiko (talk) 19:53, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, essentially, with one major caveat: all of this assumes that no single use or translation predominates in reliable English-language sources. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd say "It depends". If there's a name widely used in English literature, that should be used no matter what. If there isn't, and a partial translation gives you a reasonable-sounding name ("Operation whatever", "Case whatever"), that should be used. Otherwise, a transliteration should be used. In no case should a non-Latin alphabet be used for an article title. --Carnildo (talk) 21:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Tally

• Original: 0
• Transliteration: 0
• Partial translation: 4 (Mangoe, SGGH, Carnildo, Black Falcon)
• Full translation: 4 (Sbowers3, SEWilco, Bluap, SamBC)

Changing the way WP: DYK works

There's been some discussion about how we could use DYK to encourage article improvement (along with creation/expansion) here. Some more voices might help determine if there's any value to this, please take a look and make any suggestions/comments. Thanks RxS (talk) 18:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Deleting?

I just deleted a personal attack (not against me) from a page I watch. As an administrator, I can delete edits; am I allowed to delete these two edits because they were attacks? Nyttend (talk) 18:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The guidelines on deleting particular versions of pages is contained at Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators#Version deletion, Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators#Libel in edit summaries and Wikipedia:Selective deletion. Unless they fit the advice there or are so serious you think it really necessary to delete them then it is probably best just to revert. Davewild (talk) 19:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec)If the comments were purely personal attacks - there wasn't any discussion about content - then it's appropriate simply because article talk pages are for the purpose of discussing content, period. (If the attack was on a user page, it's clearly inappropriate since user pages generally are off-limits to others; if it was on a user talk page, then it's generally got to have at least a bit of constructive information - e.g., "I reverted your edit ... ").

The relevant guideline (which says essentially there is no standard approach) is WP:NPA#Removal of text.

The alternative, of course, is to prune the comment, removing the personal attack information but leaving the constructive parts alone, assuming a mix of personal attack and useful information. If you had done that, it would have been appropriate to note that as a follow-on comment.

And it really - in this case - makes no difference whether you're an admin or not; your being an admin would only be relevant if you were using admin powers (and then, of course, only where you had prior involvement - for example, to block someone with whom you were having a content dispute on an article). Anyone can delete personal attacks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:11, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

And looking at what Davewild said - I may have misunderstood. In general, you should not delete edits that violate WP:NPA - then there isn't any indication, to non-admins, of the problem. Much better to revert and leave an audit trail for everyone to see. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:11, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Did You Know that ...

There is a discussion at DYK#Changing_DYK_process on ways of slightly widening the scope of DYK. Please have a look. - Neparis (talk) 20:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Throwing several consensus-gathering projects into one basket

Several discussions (such as the ones at WT:Layout and WT:CITE) have dragged on a bit and seem to get stuck in some of the same places. The fact that we unfortunately let some of the style guidelines contradict each other (but we're working on that) is part of the problem, but there's a bigger issue. Every other day, I see a new question along the lines of "Encyclopedias generally look like this, why don't we?". And the fact that the printed Wikipedia Version 1.0 is approaching means we can't be certain that consensus hasn't changed or won't change on look-and-feel issues. Is there consensus to put See also first and External links last in end sections, how should quotations be handled, where should lines and pages break, should every book cite name the publisher? Except for that last bit, which just came up today, these are long-running discussions. People tend to care more about the appearance of printed material, and take it more seriously. Even Wikipedia policy takes printed material more seriously; see WP:V. (Btw, I've read everything I could find at WP:1, including the archived discussion from 2003, Thread on Wikipedia 1.0 Paper plus, including lots of input from Jimbo, and I don't see where any of these look-and-feel issues have ever come up in the context of Wikipedia Version 1.0. I've only seen them come up as off-hand remarks in current discussions. I'd be very happy to find out that I'm wrong.)

There's disagreement over the extent to which these issues should be discussed on policy pages vs. guideline pages. Stylistic choices follow guidelines, but if there really is consensus that, for instance, if the External links section exists, it should always be the last section (especially in the paper Wikipedia ... printed encyclopedias rarely allow authors discretion in look-and-feel issues), then are we talking about policy? Assuming that no one wants to go through a huge number of articles by hand looking for irregularities, how do we use bots appropriately, and aren't bots more suitable for policy issues than guidelines? You can see why we get stuck.

We have to get consensus before we do anything about any of this, but so far, everyone has been hesitant to post a narrow style question on a lot of wikiproject talk pages, for fear of looking spammy. But if we don't get wide consensus, we'll get flamed for that too. I'm wondering if the best way to proceed would be to generally get the word out (widely, but I'm agnostic on how widely) that certain look-and-feel issues need to be discussed, especially in the context of Version 1.0, so that we can figure out which things fall in the category of being so widely supported that standardization would be appropriate. So, you guys tell me, because I really don't know: which questions here are policy questions, and should those policy questions be dealt with here first, or would it be better just to create a page somewhere where people could nominate issues to be discussed, and then come back here with the results? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:27, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Questions... This seems to be about conforming articles that will be placed in Version 1.0 to a uniform format style... a desire which I can understand... but does 1.0 have to conform to the online version of Wikipedia and vise/versa? Do we need to have the article match exactly what goes to print? And is it really important that all our articles follow the same format style? Blueboar (talk) 13:14, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

There are a number of topics, particularly layout and look-and-feel topics, where it's perfectly reasonable to assume that consensus might change for a printed Wikipedia, so the presumption against re-opening discussion on already-settled consensus dies. I don't know if this answers your questions, but there's a principal of database design that storing two different versions of roughly the same information in two different places is a Very Bad Thing: people think they're referring to one when they meant the other, the data gets out of sync and therefore pulls down the credibility of both, it's an order of magnitude more work to update the data both places and continually check the two lists against each other ... the list goes on. For all these reasons, it would be a bad idea to "fork" Wikipedia Version 1.0 before it's really, really necessary, and you'll see support for that from Jimbo and others at the link I cited ... I'll pull out one of the messages from Jimbo if anyone is interested. And, really, how many people would have a cow if the External links in their favorite article moved to the end? These are just not the kinds of issues that inspire heated debate, generally. The debates that have dragged on have been more in the nature of "What gives YOU the right?", which is a perfectly valid objection. So, my proposal is to get everyone together who cares (which may not be all that many people), throw issues on the table that might be affected by Version 1.0, brainstorm them, come back here to get permission for anything that involves standardization, bots or policy, as opposed to all the little things that are pleasurable to style wonks like me, update policy and guidelines to reflect a world where we're trying to look good on paper as well as on the web, (as long as that doesn't unduly burden anyone) making sure that, through a combination of good design, clear guidelines, and helpful bots, it's not any harder for anyone to function under the new guidelines, and deploy. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 18:04, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I did the strikeout because I'm fairly confident that there's no need for this to be a struggle between conflicting desires; I don't have any Machiavellian plans to turn this into anything other than a way to find out those printed-encyclopedia style issues that almost everyone already agrees on, which aren't going to be very different from what we've got already, and we've already got years of consensus to give us a pretty good idea what those are. The new part of this is thinking about deploying bots to standardize, and I'm agnostic on whether bots should make any actual changes or simply alert people of changes that should be made. It seems to me it would work either way, simply because if bots or software aren't working, people will holler and we'll stop. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 18:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

P.P.S. I'm being deliberately vague about the topics because I want to be very careful not to "control" the process. We open a page, anyone who thinks they can get consensus for a look-and-feel or layout issue concerning Wikipedia 1.0 throws it on the table; we conduct a large poll saying "is there really consensus for this?" (stating the arguments pro and con, but without too much clever argumentation ... none of the stuff I've seen is breathtakingly important, even to style wonks), we ask if there's also consensus for using a bot to help flag irregularities, and if we can get a reliable bot running (or help from MediaWiki, if the techs decide they like that approach better than a bot), we do it. Simple, in theory, and hopefully in practice. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:00, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this issue, it is certainly interesting to those of us working on Wikipedia 1.0. FYI, we now have a test selection (around 15,000 articles) put together for Version 0.7, and once we have have some minor bugs resolved this will be ready for all to take a look at. At present the immediate plans are for a DVD version, but we would very much like to get a paper project going once the DVD is organised (are you interested in helping?). Our system is to create a dump of articles on a given day, and that becomes the snapshot we release, and there is always a lot of cleanup on this static dump - removing unwanted tags, unlinking redlinks, etc. We could re-organise the order of sections at that stage if needed, but that is an extra bit of work we'd rather not do.

As I see it, the problem you describe breaks down into two parts, formatting of articles online and formatting of articles in offline releases. Clearly the latter is influenced by the former, but there are quite a few things we change in going from one form to the other. I think standardization of format for the online version is a good end in itself, which will of course benefit WP1.0 as well. Must dash now, Walkerma (talk) 15:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I've been following progress at Wikipedia 1.0. As soon as this proposed project is finished, along with the WP:WPMoS project to find and correct resolve all contradictions among style guidelines, I'll be happy to help. I didn't want to come to you guys first and ask if you wanted to host this, because I felt that some projects get torpedoed for not taking the "blank slate" approach: state the goals without saying who owns it or what the topics can and can't be. But ... you're the only ones to show up so far. Is there any objection to allowing the Wikipedia 1.0 guys to host a page in their project where people can put these kinds of issues on the table? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 05:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

At User:Walkerma's invitation, I have started the project and created a talk page at WT:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Style guide. Please direct future input there. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 15:20, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia MUST NOT have an opinion of its own, over any issue

Although, Wikipedia follows the neutrality policy, it is quite evident in, practically all, articles, that Wikipedia articles, tend to favour a particular point of view. Although, it is quite natural that, viewpoint of editors, would take a strong position. This can be avoided by a couple of smart policies. Firstly, all information, in Wikipedia must only be represented as facts and not opinions. Example : "Prostitution is bad" is an opinion. However, "A majority of people in the world think, prostitution is bad", is a fact with a possibly, verifiable source. Since, there is no possibly, univerally acceptable definition of "good and bad" and "right or wrong", it is very likely that opinions would differ but facts would be remain true. It provides, the reader, the choice to opine, over the issue, in any way that he/she may wish to. This will significantly help Wikipedia, maintain high standards of neutrality. It will also ensure, that consensus is not necessarily valued over credential. Wikipedia (and wikipedians) should ensure that "highly-agreeable" standpoint over an issue, is not as important as a "highly-verifiable" fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.94.216.50 (talk) 16:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I would think that by its very nature and existence, Wikipedia takes the stances "Knowledge is good", and "Wide spread dispersion of knowledge is good". Dsmdgold (talk) 16:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You beat me to it. Postdlf (talk) 17:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I think most of this is already covered by WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V. And I don't think there are many cases where articles take such a black-and-white stance such as "X is bad." Mr.Z-man 17:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's not go here. This place is self-contradictory in the things it professes to believe. Everything we do, literally, on WP, we actually do on opinion, but it is forbidden to call it that. The very word "concensus", which we use so often, is short for "concensus opinion." We leave the last word off, due to the questions it raises, which are embarrassing. The cofounder of Wikipedia has officially declared, per his personal opinion, that wikipedia should be written from a neutral point of view. That's his opinion, and he's sticking to it. And those who side with this opinion (renamed "non-negociable policy" so you don't get it confused with some guy's inexpert opinon), will not tolerate any other opinions about what to call it, which are officially wrong. See "having the wrong opinion." Policies are realities here on wikipedia, and don't let us hear you calling them "mere opinions of people who epistemologically should know better." Okay? SBHarris 18:08, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Long usernames

This user was blocked because his username was too long. I'm not arguing with the block, as it was supported by multiple admins, and besides, I'm not sure it's my place to do so. But here's a practical suggestion. If Wikipedia has a limit on username length, why not put a limit on the number of characters that can be entered in the username field during new account creation? Jonneroo (talk) 07:31, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Corrected typo in the above text. Jonneroo (talk) 07:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that as a side issue, re-blocking someone after they've been unblocked to make a username change request is disruptive to the username change process. —Random832 20:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not prevent them from being created? MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist + .{30,} = no more Usernames longer than 30 characters. No more blocks, no more long usernames. - TheDaveRoss (talk) 22:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

See MediaWiki talk:Usernameblacklist#length limit — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 02:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Image licensing prohibition

Wikimedia:Resolution:Licensing policy will be celebrating its first birthday in two weeks. Is anyone still trying to fight against it? — Omegatron 14:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, lots of them. What I haven't seen is anyone trying to change it. --Carnildo (talk) 21:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Where are they? I've basically given up. The will of a few people on the Board completely overrides community consensus, apparently. — Omegatron 12:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Em-dashes

There is a discussion currently going on in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Em dash about whether the Manual of Style should only favour spaced en-dashes and unspaced em-dashes for disjunction (thus disallowing spaced em-dashes), each to be used consistently in any given article.

You are all welcome to comment. Waltham, The Duke of 03:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Hope there's no plan to ban editors for life for violating this one... --Shirahadasha (talk) 03:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Nah, I think mere probation will do. Waltham, The Duke of 17:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Relax WP:RS where traditional sources are incorrect

Occasionally traditional reliable sources publish innacurate or misleading information about a subject. This is especially prevalent in internet and technology related areas where old-media reporters may have no clue what they are talking about.

When editors have determined by concensus that the "reliable sources" are innacurate but other sources are good, I recommend that we relax the WP:RS guidelines to allow a wider range of sources. If editors determine by concensus that a news articles is misleading whereas a blog post covers the subject perfectly, lets use the blog post. If a fact is claimed that can't be sourced in WP:RS sources, but a video confirms that fact beyond a doubt, then lets keep the fact and cite the video (but be careful not to apply any extra interpretation).

In terms of policy, this isn't such a radical idea considering the "occasional exceptions" clause of WP:RS, and the command that we ignore rules that prevent us from improving the encyclopedia. However, in practice many (the majority of?) editors who completely agree that the sources are wrong will nevertheless tend to cling onto WP:RS and force misleading information to remain in articles.

Whether you agree with my proposal or not, I think this particular form of bias should be considered carefully. Z00r (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

We already have to consider which sources are reliable for the particular claim being made. If people decide source X is better than source Y, they may use X. In other words, this already gets done, as needed. And of course we need to tread carefully to avoid original research. It's a judgement call. Friday (talk) 17:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If people would do what you say then we would be great. My experience in practice has been quite the opposite, however. Z00r (talk) 17:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If you know for sure that a source is incorrect, then chances are, you learned it from a source that you trust. Why not use that? As Friday said, you have to consider the type of source. Time magazine is a good source for international politics, not so much for internet memes. However, if every reliable source you find appears to be wrong, there's the likely possibility that you might be wrong. Mr.Z-man 18:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

That is always a concern - the worst person to fool is yourself. That is one of the reasons why consensus is so important. However, sometimes the sources really are wrong. Jimmy Wales birthday really is August 7, the bulk of the primary source material on Anonymous (group) really is innacurate. During the Atlanta Project Chanology protests, the protesters really did put up a sign that said "do not honk" (you can see it on video). Now I wish I could bring up some examples from a broader set of issues than this, but my main experience here is editing math articles which tend to play by different rules. Z00r (talk) 18:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you provide the specific example involved? What article does this concern, wWhat statement in what newspaper article do you think is wrong, and what source do you think is more reliable? Thanks, --Shirahadasha (talk) 16:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, here's one that I came across yesterday: related to the V-masks worn at the Project Chanology protests [7] [8]. The masks are worn as part of the EFG meme, but the newspapers easily misinterpreted them as representing the V for vendetta movie. correct "unreliable" source: [9] vs. incorrect "reliable" source [10]. Note, I've got nothing against Cirt, he's a great editor. This is just an example where strictly following WP:RS is detrimental to the article. Z00r (talk) 17:49, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this should go to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard ?--Hu12 (talk) 17:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

A clearer way to handle this is to cite the sources directly in the text. Actually say "According to Time Magazine yada yada yada, however this is refuted by myunreliableblog.com or something. Let the SOURCES fight it out, not the editors, and let the readers decide for themselves... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

@Hu12 - the reliable sources noticeboard is for discussion of specific sources. This is for discussing the guidelines themselves.

@Jayron32 - I like your idea, but is there precedent for it, and would it be considered in line with acceptable policy? Z00r (talk) 18:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: Currently, in the article Project Chanology, every single sentence which describes usage of the Guy Fawkes mask from the film V for Vendetta already is attributed in each sentence directly to the cited source referenced, as per comment above by Jayron32 (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I think what Jayron is saying is that it would be legit to also add in other "less traditional" sources in such a situation. But anyways this is turning into yet another a chanology discussion, which is not what I intended. :/ Z00r (talk) 23:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Thorny Article Rescue issue

A user has been using article rescue arguments to save what looks to me like a walled garden in his user space. No attempts to improve these articles were made after userfication. I'm concerned that this might be a way people have discovered to circumvent this policy. Please comment here: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Tlogmer subpages. In particular, I think some standard for the amount of time that a deleted page is allowed to sit idly on a user's subpage needs to be established. Please comment. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Long usernames

This user was blocked because his username was too long. I'm not arguing with the block, as it was supported by multiple admins, and besides, I'm not sure it's my place to do so. But here's a practical suggestion. If Wikipedia has a limit on username length, why not put a limit on the number of characters that can be entered in the username field during new account creation? Jonneroo (talk) 07:31, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Corrected typo in the above text. Jonneroo (talk) 07:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that as a side issue, re-blocking someone after they've been unblocked to make a username change request is disruptive to the username change process. —Random832 20:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not prevent them from being created? MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist + .{30,} = no more Usernames longer than 30 characters. No more blocks, no more long usernames. - TheDaveRoss (talk) 22:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

See MediaWiki talk:Usernameblacklist#length limit — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 02:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Image licensing prohibition

Wikimedia:Resolution:Licensing policy will be celebrating its first birthday in two weeks. Is anyone still trying to fight against it? — Omegatron 14:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, lots of them. What I haven't seen is anyone trying to change it. --Carnildo (talk) 21:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Where are they? I've basically given up. The will of a few people on the Board completely overrides community consensus, apparently. — Omegatron 12:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Em-dashes

There is a discussion currently going on in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Em dash about whether the Manual of Style should only favour spaced en-dashes and unspaced em-dashes for disjunction (thus disallowing spaced em-dashes), each to be used consistently in any given article.

You are all welcome to comment. Waltham, The Duke of 03:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Hope there's no plan to ban editors for life for violating this one... --Shirahadasha (talk) 03:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Nah, I think mere probation will do. Waltham, The Duke of 17:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Relax WP:RS where traditional sources are incorrect

Occasionally traditional reliable sources publish innacurate or misleading information about a subject. This is especially prevalent in internet and technology related areas where old-media reporters may have no clue what they are talking about.

When editors have determined by concensus that the "reliable sources" are innacurate but other sources are good, I recommend that we relax the WP:RS guidelines to allow a wider range of sources. If editors determine by concensus that a news articles is misleading whereas a blog post covers the subject perfectly, lets use the blog post. If a fact is claimed that can't be sourced in WP:RS sources, but a video confirms that fact beyond a doubt, then lets keep the fact and cite the video (but be careful not to apply any extra interpretation).

In terms of policy, this isn't such a radical idea considering the "occasional exceptions" clause of WP:RS, and the command that we ignore rules that prevent us from improving the encyclopedia. However, in practice many (the majority of?) editors who completely agree that the sources are wrong will nevertheless tend to cling onto WP:RS and force misleading information to remain in articles.

Whether you agree with my proposal or not, I think this particular form of bias should be considered carefully. Z00r (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

We already have to consider which sources are reliable for the particular claim being made. If people decide source X is better than source Y, they may use X. In other words, this already gets done, as needed. And of course we need to tread carefully to avoid original research. It's a judgement call. Friday (talk) 17:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If people would do what you say then we would be great. My experience in practice has been quite the opposite, however. Z00r (talk) 17:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If you know for sure that a source is incorrect, then chances are, you learned it from a source that you trust. Why not use that? As Friday said, you have to consider the type of source. Time magazine is a good source for international politics, not so much for internet memes. However, if every reliable source you find appears to be wrong, there's the likely possibility that you might be wrong. Mr.Z-man 18:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

That is always a concern - the worst person to fool is yourself. That is one of the reasons why consensus is so important. However, sometimes the sources really are wrong. Jimmy Wales birthday really is August 7, the bulk of the primary source material on Anonymous (group) really is innacurate. During the Atlanta Project Chanology protests, the protesters really did put up a sign that said "do not honk" (you can see it on video). Now I wish I could bring up some examples from a broader set of issues than this, but my main experience here is editing math articles which tend to play by different rules. Z00r (talk) 18:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you provide the specific example involved? What article does this concern, wWhat statement in what newspaper article do you think is wrong, and what source do you think is more reliable? Thanks, --Shirahadasha (talk) 16:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, here's one that I came across yesterday: related to the V-masks worn at the Project Chanology protests [11] [12]. The masks are worn as part of the EFG meme, but the newspapers easily misinterpreted them as representing the V for vendetta movie. correct "unreliable" source: [13] vs. incorrect "reliable" source [14]. Note, I've got nothing against Cirt, he's a great editor. This is just an example where strictly following WP:RS is detrimental to the article. Z00r (talk) 17:49, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this should go to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard ?--Hu12 (talk) 17:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

A clearer way to handle this is to cite the sources directly in the text. Actually say "According to Time Magazine yada yada yada, however this is refuted by myunreliableblog.com or something. Let the SOURCES fight it out, not the editors, and let the readers decide for themselves... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

@Hu12 - the reliable sources noticeboard is for discussion of specific sources. This is for discussing the guidelines themselves.

@Jayron32 - I like your idea, but is there precedent for it, and would it be considered in line with acceptable policy? Z00r (talk) 18:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: Currently, in the article Project Chanology, every single sentence which describes usage of the Guy Fawkes mask from the film V for Vendetta already is attributed in each sentence directly to the cited source referenced, as per comment above by Jayron32 (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I think what Jayron is saying is that it would be legit to also add in other "less traditional" sources in such a situation. But anyways this is turning into yet another a chanology discussion, which is not what I intended. :/ Z00r (talk) 23:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Thorny Article Rescue issue

A user has been using article rescue arguments to save what looks to me like a walled garden in his user space. No attempts to improve these articles were made after userfication. I'm concerned that this might be a way people have discovered to circumvent this policy. Please comment here: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Tlogmer subpages. In particular, I think some standard for the amount of time that a deleted page is allowed to sit idly on a user's subpage needs to be established. Please comment. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:When to cite no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:When to cite (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Under discussion at Wikipedia talk:When to cite#essay or guideline?. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:NOT#MYSPACE

• Template:The First Signer of Guestbook Barnstar
• Template:AlcheMister barnstar

I would like to start a centralised discussion about this issue. I know that people often comment to the effect of "harmless", "builds community spirit" etcpp. I personally think that it's crap and should be deleted, with the positive side effect of possibly alienating one or two idiots who are only here to play the hidden page/link game or maintain their guestbooks. And I do think this is really one big issue. And awarding barnstars for such stuff is just outrageous. Imo. Comments? Dorftrottel (warn) 17:35, March 5, 2008

Agreed, both look like good candidates for speedy deletes. Oberiko (talk) 17:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I've been mildly disgusted by these for a while. Wikipedia isn't a game. Karanacs (talk) 18:20, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the second template to User:AlcheMister/AlcheMister barnstar, but neither are even remotely close to meeting a speedy deletion criteria. Mr.Z-man 18:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The first one should also be userfied. --SMS ^Talk 18:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

If the social material promotes a sense of well-being and community spirit which fosters article writing, then I am all for it. Not sure, are any folks who've given these ones been those who do article writing? Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed solution: Create class of users that can have social networking content

Here is my proposed solution to this issue. Establish two classes of users:

• Class 1: Your userpage is restricted to Wikipedia-related content; no social networking MYSPACEy or blogging-type stuff allowed. But you get no advertisements.
• Class 2: You get a quota (e.g. 10 MB of space) to have all your images, subpages, etc. and you can do pretty much whatever you want (except copyvios, personal attacks, etc.) but any non-Wikipedia-related subpages will need to have Google-style text-based advertising on them. This will provide revenue to support traffic to these pages. We might even have a separate namespace for this type of content.

Everyone would start out in Class 1. You can upgrade to Class 2 at any time. To go back to Class 1, you need to get rid of your social networking stuff first. Actually, now that I think about it, we probably don't even need to have classes – just have a rule that any social networking-type subpages need to have the ads.

I'm sure we can find a compromise that accommodates everyone. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 21:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Why would we do that? The single largest cost to the Wikipedia Foundation is the technical costs - server resources and bandwidth. The community rejected advertising ages ago. If you want a MySpace profile, then why not try MySpace? Guy (Help!) 14:25, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• Hell no, for the exact same reasoning is Guy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a social networking site. Go register on Facebook if you want to network socially. Resolute 14:28, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• "Social networking" of a sort is inevitable, but it should ultimately be about wikipedia. In short, it should be the same rules as now. There's already a fair amount of latitude in personalizing user pages. Status quo seems to work fine. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 14:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• I see no need for encyclopedia users to downgrade to a Class 2 user. There are other sites for that. If WF wants to create a separate site as a fund raising tool, that's fine and good luck. -- SEWilco (talk) 14:37, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
• Completely undermines WP:NOT - It would need to be fundamentally re-written. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 19:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

oppose - this is an encyclopaedia, anyone who fails to understand this after a couple of polite warning should be asked to leave. Why on earth would we voluntary want to fill up our servers with that type of crap? --Fredrick day (talk) 19:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply I agree that WP:NOT would need to be fundamentally rewritten, and I advocate that it be. And I'll use an example to illustrate why community-building content is important. Some people might say also that playing chess is a waste of server resources. But guess what, while I'm watching my watchlist to see if my opponent has moved, I'm also checking everything else, and if someone vandalizes one of my pages, I'll spot it. Or if someone responds to a discussion, I can reply to them, and we make progress faster. And rapport is built with other users, which in many cases leads to collaboration on encyclopedic subjects. So indirectly, the chess improves the quality of the encyclopedia. If I were over at Yahoo Chess doing that, then Wikipedia would not be getting those benefits. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Absolutely not. This is an encyclopedia. GlassCobra 20:13, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia has enough participation and man-hours already, and our priority is no longer to increase those numbers. But even disregarding that, the goal is to get and keep the right kind of people. If people come here so that they can play chess, there's a big question mark as to whether or not they'll ever be interested in writing an encyclopedia -- they could just as well play chess all day and waste resources. Whereas if we're purely just a big ol' boring encyclopedia, and people still come here nevertheless, the chances that our participants are interested in contributing increase significantly. Equazcion •✗/C • 22:23, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not at all clear on what problem this is intended to solve. Frankly, I think there's already a consensus that active, productive editors are allowed some leeway on the NOTMYSPACE thing, so I don't see a problem there. I don't think we want unproductive editors using Wikipedia as MySpace, whether or not there are associated ad revenues. Where's the problem? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

What about what happened to Vintei's shop? That guy was active and productive. Some people might specialize in the fun stuff and be a positive community-building influence. Kinda like how in our society, we have circus performers. Some people might say, Hey, these guys are not doing something productive. Oh, but they are. People who are employed doing other stuff can enjoy the carnival, and in fact the ability to spend money on fun stuff is part of the incentive to work.

But obviously people will say, "Well, if a user wants to only specialize in fun (community-building) stuff here, then take it off wiki." That's kinda like state governments that say, "We know we can't stop our citizens from gambling, but nonetheless, we don't want the casinos within our state lines." As long as they're going to do it anyway, wouldn't you want to be the ones to collect the tax revenues? If Vintei's stuff is going to make people happier here, and want to hang out more on Wikipedia, checking their watchlists and whatnot, then awesome. It doesn't matter whether he himself gets involved in building articles, etc.; he helps that happen indirectly.

We thrashed the community-building issues out on the MfD for Vintei's shop and many other places. But I think at this point, I've run out of arguments because it's just a battle of WP:EM vs. WP:NOT (as it currently stands) and we know which one is the trump card. By the way, I think the whole concept of "Wikipedia is an ENCYCLOPEDIA, NOT... (long string of things)" is somewhat fallacious because one could also argue, "Wikipedia is an ENCYCLOPEDIA, NOT a place for discussing encyclopedia policy," and vote to delete Village Pump. One might argue, "But the Village Pump, while it itself is not part of the encyclopedia, and attracts editor-hours that might otherwise be spent creating articles, it also indirectly helps the community and thus the article-creation process." Exactly – and that same argument could be used for keeping a lot of the MySpace-type stuff. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You're mistaking Wikipedia for the real world, or a society unto itself, in need of representation from all facets of an actual society, which we're not. We have a focused concern that is itself a part of the world. If a bunch of encyclopedia writers showed up at the circus tent demanding equal time, they'd likewise be told to get lost, 'cause that's not what circuses are for. We have our role and they have theirs. Equazcion •✗/C • 23:17, 13 Mar 2008 (UTC)

You may be missing my point. Here's an example that might be more apropos. I had a teacher who said that when she was in the corporate world, they appointed her the Vice President of Fun. Her job, apparently, was to figure out community-building stuff for the company to do. One might argue, that type of position is worthless; why not dispense with it? Apparently, they found it useful enough to keep. Similarly, we might have some users whose role is just to work on community-building stuff. If it helps bring in/retain editors, then it can be just as useful as someone who does stub-sorting, FA reviews, etc. We need all these specialists, including those who specialize in fun stuff. 1 Corinthians 12:17: "If the whole body [were] an eye, where [were] the hearing? If the whole [were] hearing, where [were] the smelling?" Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 01:50, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not missing your point. I'm disagreeing with you, like everyone else here. You need to re-read my reply from earlier above, that starts with "I think Wikipedia has enough participation and man-hours already, and our priority is no longer to increase those numbers..." as that paragraph answer these points you're making again for the second or third time. I completely understand your reasoning. I'm just saying you're wrong. This would not help us. Equazcion •✗/C • 02:08, 14 Mar 2008 (UTC)

OK, just making sure. The idea that Wikipedia has "enough" participation and man-hours is laughable. If there were, there wouldn't be gaping voids in the encylopedia's coverage. It's like saying that a company makes "enough" money or a charity feeds "enough" hungry people. That's only true if you reduce the scope of what you want to accomplish and arbitrarily set the bar at something less than its full potential. We haven't even covered the vital articles sufficiently. And guess what, it's the community's fault for driving people way with its wrongheaded, counterproductive philosophies that are often the antithesis of Wikipedia:Editors matter and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a community. It's rather telling that both of those are essays at this point, rather than guidelines. They represent a minority view, unfortunately. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The idea that Wikipedia has enough man-hours is entirely justified and not contradicted by gaps in coverage. The gaps are generally the more uninteresting topics. The popular ones are always covered, and more people does not equal coverage of the uninteresting or unpopular -- because these are still people, and if you tell people they're free to work on whatever they want to, they most assuredly won't pick the boring stuff. So your logic is pretty laughable there. And guess what, it's not anyone's "fault" but Jimbo's for creating an encyclopedia written freely by people. And that's if it indeed is a "fault", which it isn't. Your conclusions are contrived according to the point you're trying to make, which masks any actual merit your point might have. Which is a shame, because it may have some. You're just not making any sense. Equazcion •✗/C • 10:07, 15 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Could it be that certain subjects that people are interested in aren't necessary ones that attract people to write on them for no remuneration? To take another real world example, there are some people who like to both play computer games and write the code; in fact, a lot of people will do it for free, as evidenced by all the freeware out there. And then you have fields like fast food, which a lot of people want to eat; but few people will volunteer to serve behind the counter at Burger World for no pay. Some of those vital articles are like that. The need for them has been recognized and they've been on the list for awhile (much like Top-Importance articles in certain WikiProjects that have made little progress), but most people don't feel like working on them. Now, if you throw a little compensation in there, maybe. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:37, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a little far-fetched to think people will consider themselves compensated. The scenario would have to be one where according your model, people are attracted to the site possibly for the social aspect, and then see articles (on boring things) that need attention -- and they, what, start working on them because they figure Wikipedia does so much for them already, allowing myspace content and all, so they feel compelled to write about those topics? Like, compensation before the fact? It's not very likely that would be much of a motivator. Except where a legal obligation exists, people generally work to get compensation, they don't work because they've already been compensated. Not that the allowance of myspace content would even be considered any kind of reward to anyone, no matter when in this scheme they would receive it. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:56, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

This is sort of already done. See: Wikia. They use adverts to cover the costs. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

no they use ads to generate revenue and make a profit - the intention in no way, shape or or form is to 'cover costs'. --Fredrick day (talk) 22:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I admit I'm very green. I've only been running a company for approximately a year now. Making a profit doesn't cover your costs imply your costs are already covered? --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:17, 14 March 2008 (UTC) I may need to call my accountant again...

Profit is what's left after you've covered your costs. So you're both wrong. Ads cover the costs and make them a profit. Equazcion •✗/C • 01:23, 14 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Oops. A bit too fast with the humorous reply there... --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:54, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Got to watch out for that "sense of humor," Kim. How are others to know you aren't mocking them? Making fun of their serious comments. Sarcastically demeaning their lack of real business experience. Etc. Of course, you wouldn't do that. Sophisticated incivility: hold up a mirror. "Trolling," it will be called.--Abd (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Mmmm I didn't find Kim's comment trolly... I think most people knew it was humor... lighten up dude... Equazcion •✗/C • 02:37, 14 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Kinda backfired, didn't it? :-P Oh well, live and learn -- Brown Paper Bag 02:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

sorry I've only run for-profit business for over 40 years, so I'm afraid I miss gags from people who've only done it for less than five years (or bankrupts as we call them in the business) ;-) --Fredrick day 02:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah everyone who's only been running a business for less than 5 years must be bankrupt. That makes sense. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:27, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

It was a joke - most SMEs go bust with 5 years (according to the stats in my country). --Fredrick day 11:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

<snicker> I think we've both now made total fools of ourselves :-P --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, this is supposed to be a solution, but... what's the problem that its trying to solve? Also, ads on a handful of userpages wouldn't make much money, especially since they'd probably be fairly random. And 10MB of space is fairly pointless, even if the final total is 10MB, there might be 1000MB in old revisions to get to the final pages. Mr.Z-man 02:49, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The web hosting costs for myspace-type content on people's userpages is also negligible, but I think people object to hosting it because the principle of the thing. The advertising is more symbolic than anything. I'm just throwing out ideas in an attempt to reconcile the two concerns of not wanting to be people's free web host, and people wanting to have that content. Do you have any ideas, or is it going to be that old standby, "What we have now works fine"? That seems to be the "rough consensus" of those who haven't already left in disgust over how things work here. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia. Aside from the resource consumption issue, the reason for not allowing myspace-type content is that we don't want to encourage a change in focus. People serious about writing an encyclopedia may not want to deal with people who come here to chat with their friends and play games -- and it's the serious people who will be the most valuable toward our goal. Again, if we know everyone who comes here is coming as a result of seeing purely an encyclopedia, then we know to some degree certain things about what they'll be doing here. Your "manager of fun" example doesn't apply to Wikipedia -- Corporate employees are stuck at the workplace all day and benefit from having fun things specifically made available to them through the company. Wikipedia is a website you access from wherever you happen to be for as long as you want. You're not "stuck" within the Wikipedia website for an 8-hour day, and if nothing fun happens on Wikipedia, you simply have no fun for 8 hours. If Wikipedians want to participate in mysapce-type acticities while at Wikipedia, guess what? They can. Simply open two browsers. You seem think there are only two types of users, those who "left in disgust" and those who believe in keeping things as archaic as possible. That's pure conjecture. You're inventing a "problem" that needs to be "solved" based on the disgruntled people who left. For any given institution, especially one as large as Wikipedia, there will be plenty of ex-members who feel that their departure was caused by something being "wrong". Why would you base your attitude on them? They're not more objective just because they're now outside the system. In fact they're less so, because they were members, and only the ones who've had bad experiences. You're basically coming at this from an entirely unbalanced perspective. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:58, 15 Mar 2008 (UTC)

The community is opposed to myspace-y content and ads, so the solution to a problem invented by people who are no longer here is to combine them? Ads on a few userpages would still have a negative effect on the part of the community that is opposed to ads, with minimal benefit (revenue). Mr.Z-man 22:54, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Why do we prohibit making friends again?

In the course of being so vehemently against "the myspaceification of Wikipedia", it seems as though we're continuing to depersonalize editors and perpetuating the bitter disputes and arguments that plague the project. I don't see how it's harmful for users to publish information about themselves and their likes/dislikes, or have conversations with each other that (god forbid) don't relate directly to the project. Can someone explain this one to me?

Feel free to block me or report me to the Arbitration Committee for even suggesting it, but I think it might actually be beneficial to the project if it were set up as a social network. Someone gets pissed off at you while working on an article together, visits your talk page to chew you out, and then realizes you actually have some things in common. You're not such a bad guy after all, and they end up leaving a relatively friendly message instead of a "civil" one. I don't know. I just think it would help to defuse the constant tension that surrounds editing if Wikipedia were more... friendly.

(Also, I highly doubt this has anything to do with server load, and everything to do with comments like Dorftrottel's. As I understand, 99% of the server load is serving cached pages to unregistered users. Generating pages from scratch for logged-in users takes a lot more server resources per page, but we do it anyway because the amount of "registered user content" is much smaller than the amount of data being sent to unregistered users. Some graphs would be helpful here.) — Omegatron 04:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you're mistaking "Don't spend all your time editing your user space" with "Don't edit your user space". Lots of editors choose to have some information about themselves on their user pages, but if an editor is spending the majority of the time on social interests as opposed to project building, that's a concern. Shell ^babelfish 04:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a volunteer effort. It doesn't have to be MySpace, but if Wikipedia editing and other encyclopedia-maintaining activities become a grind, with no rewards or human interaction to be found, then it isn't WP:FUN. If we lose the human aspect, we will lose (as we have lost) editors. See also WP:EM. I nearly quit after a couple of weeks because I was witnessing a lot of acrimony. There didn't seem to be enough positive reinforcement and pleasant interaction with other human beings to mitigate the animosity and petty bickering I was seeing between other editors. Jonneroo (talk) 05:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Once again, see Shell's response. You're allowed to interact and have fun. You just can't spend all your time in userspace. Equazcion •✗/C • 12:17, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I have nominated the template for deletion, since the conversation here seems to have wandered somewhere elseWikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:The_Guestbook_Barnstar --Enric Naval (talk) 12:45, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for remedies - possible solution to dispute resolution scaling problems

Please review and tweak: Wikipedia:Requests for remedies. A very simple three-step system that can make trusted, final decisions on very tricky or complex matters, based on evaluations from trusted, uninvolved users on a given case in the dispute resolution process. It does add new process, but not many layers, or particularly complex layers by any stretch of the imagination. It's built entirely around consensus and the idea of certification, and is the opposite of Votes For Banning. Please weigh in at Wikipedia talk:Requests for remedies. The community needs a way to move forward in a trusted, fair manner on high-end, complex problems that are either unworkable for normal WP:AN, WP:ANI, or WP:RFC to handle, or that the Arbitration Committee can't take on, or that the Arbitration Committee relegates back to the Community. Lawrence § t/e 22:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure what problems exactly cannot be covered by WP:AN, WP:ANI, WP:RFC, WP:MC, and WP:ARBCOM (feel free to edit my comment and add more). I don't know about you, but I think the number of problems those 5 proccesses cannot handle seems pretty small to me. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 01:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

None of those scale. That's why.

Examples of scaling systems are Mediation Cabal (originated as an emergency measure when Mediation Committee stalled, and the Arbitration Committee almost followed), third opinion (similar to MEDCAB... actually predates it slightly IIRC), and Editor Assistence (created when the non-scaling Association of Members Advocates finally failed)

A scaling supplement/replacement/backup for Arbcom would be kind of nice. I've bookmarked the page. --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay then: I am not sure what problems exactly cannot be covered by WP:MEDCAB, WP:MC, WP:ARBCOM, WP:3O, and WP:EA (feel free to edit my comment and add more). I don't know about you, but I think the number of problems those 5 proccesses cannot handle seems pretty small to me. Parent5446^{(Murder me for my actions)} 02:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is specifically the Arbitration Committee, which is not designed to scale. Lawrence Cohen is trying to think of a drop-in-replacement/backup/supplement to precisely the arbitration committee; and his objective is to come up with something that does scale. His proposal may or may not be it, but it's interesting nevertheless. --Kim Bruning (talk) 03:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC) the reason why scalability is the holy grail is a topic too large to fit in this margin. ;-)

(outdent) And anything, at all, that will do any kind of role AND scale as we require like this will require new process. I'm keeping it deliberately simple on the proposal as much as possible. Everyone please read the talk page there. It's really a very, very simple process: you ask for Remedies to be generated--a Request for Remedies. A consensus of uninvolved users has to certify your request as valid. The team of the elected/trusted Remedy Committee then--but only the uninvolved Committee members, recusal is compulsory!--drafts up a set of "suggested" remedies based on the certified request (all this by the way needs no "clerks" or anything like that--its not like anyone here is above hitting "copy/paste" once a week). They post the suggested remedies then go to the RfR, and the wider community, *all* users, weigh in and certify any valid suggestions. Certified/supported consensus remedies go into effect. It's basically an attempt to leash and focus mob rule into something that works, is scalable, is fair (the limitations on involved users), and will have the benefit of simple, rigorous consensus checks to go into effect so no one can complain about getting railroaded. Lawrence § t/e 05:12, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

A committee is a central point of failure, and will not scale well. Can you eliminate? --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Good summary posted

This was added to the WP:REMEDY proposal today:

Request for remedies as a part of dispute resolution

The RfR process comes after venues such as mediation (formal, or informal), third opinion, administrator noticeboards (any), and requests for comment, but before the Arbitration Committee. It is a framework for generating an unbiased, neutral, and fair solution to a dispute. The committee will take a complaint certified by the community. It will provide a suggested solutions, based on policy, precedent and good practice.

Request for remedies is intended to complement the existing dispute resolution process by addressing three basic points:

1. Are the issues portrayed valid and accurately portrayed?
2. What are the best solutions and remedies to these problems, if they are valid?
3. Does the community support these suggested remedies?

Lawrence § t/e 16:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Deleting perfectly good articles is a bad idea

I'm sure this kind of opinion has been expressed to the death already, but I'm going to write it anyways.

While wikipedia is one of the greatest resources in the internet, I strongly oppose its braindead policy of attempting to be a "serious encyclopedia". Wikipedia is excellent exactly because it's possible to find information which you can't find in a normal encyclopedia. In my opinion wikipedia should be a collection of facts and articles, not an "encyclopedia".

I strongly oppose most of the article deletion policies at wikipedia. Perfectly good articles which do not t offend anyone and have nothing questionable in them are being deleted. Why? Who does it hurt to have such articles at wikipedia? Nobody is going to get offended, and it bothers nobody if such articles exist. In a physical book it would be understandable because you have very limited space. However, who does it hurt at wikipedia?

For example, recently the article "Silent protagonist" was removed. Why? It's a perfectly good article which doesn't hurt anyone, so why remove it? It may be interesting for someone to read, so why not have it? In the past the article "toki pona" was removed (later restored, for whatever reason). Why it was removed? Who does it hurt to have such an article? There are certainly tons of existing articles which are not removed and which are way worse and way less interesting and contain way less facts than these.

Wopr (talk) 12:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Silent protagonist was deleted as a result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Silent protagonist (2nd nomination). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, so many things that do not belong in an encyclopedia (such as Silent protagonist) are excluded or removed. While it may be interesting to some, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and as such does not publish original research (OR) or original thought. . Wikipedia:No original research (NOR) is one of three content policies. The others are Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (NPOV) and Wikipedia:Verifiability (V). Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable for inclusion.--Hu12 (talk) 14:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Wopr is already aware that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (hence "I strongly oppose its braindead policy of attempting to be a serious encyclopedia"). Wopr, if you oppose Wikipedia's attempt at being an encyclopedia, I'd say that's a perfectly reasonable suggestion that many have made before. Perhaps someday it will be something different. For now it doesn't really seem like most of the people who currently participate would agree with you. I'd suggest working from the inside-out, trying to make small changes gradually. A suggestion that everything needs to change completely probably won't have any effect. Equazcion •✗/C • 14:56, 17 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Without having seen the article, it sounds like it might better have been interwikied to Uncyclopedia or Wikibooks. WP:NOR doesn't mean don't do it, just don't do it on WP.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

If it was deleted after an AFD, then there was a consensus that it was not "perfectly good." Mr.Z-man 17:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced original research fails the core policy at WP:V. Corvus cornix_talk 19:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a perfectly good article which doesn't hurt anyone, so why remove it? - If you're not happy with what Wikipedia does and doesn't allow, your alternatives are (a) to try to change the relevant policies or (b) be a contributor at an alternative website. Complaining (here) about a specific article isn't going to get policy changed. And keep in mind that per WP:NOT, Wikipedia doesn't try to be all things for all people. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like an article that was killed because of arbitary time limits and google-centric thinking. If there was a morass of video game related trivia, the correct response would be to stubify it.--Nydas^(Talk) 21:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The damning problem appears to be that no one could show that the organizing concept—"silent protagonist"—was documented as a term of art or distinct concept rather than just a pairing of two words in their ordinary meaning. The deleted history of the article is retrievable by any admin, if anyone can show cause to resurrect it through actual sources and a valid WP:DRV argument. An AFD is always good occasion for article supporters to "put up or shut up." If the authors can't do so, they clearly didn't base it upon anything reliable, so we might as well start over rather than keep up something clearly invalid and unsupported. Postdlf (talk) 22:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Gazimoff's submission near the end has two reliable sources.--Nydas^(Talk) 22:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

This seems to fall squarely into the realm of a neologism, or even a protologism. Out of those sources, only one looked even remotely like satisfying WP:RS. -- Kesh (talk) 21:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What makes those reliable sources? Corvus cornix_talk 22:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

One is an article on Gamasutra, an award-winning games development site, the other is an article on Gamernode, which looks like a respectable games site. What makes these unreliable sources?--Nydas^(Talk) 09:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Are they peer reviewed? Corvus cornix_talk 18:23, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I dunno. Are IGN and Gamespot peer-reviewed? Is the BBC peer-reviewed? They have editors, if that helps.--Nydas^(Talk) 11:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if Gamespot is peer-reviewed, I don't know if it's a reliable source, either. Of course the BBC is peer reviewed. If we can't get answers to the question, then we can't assume the sources are reliable. Corvus cornix_talk 16:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Sources don't have to be peer-reviewed. If you think they should be, take it to the relevant policy pages. Otherwise, it's just special pleading.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion and proposals on protecting biographies.

SirFozzie has written a few proposals here that involve protecting biographies of living people upon request. I've also written a different set of criteria for article protection here. It'd be great if we could get some more input about this from a wider range of people... please take a look if you have time. Please comment there to keep things centralised. Thanks! -- Naerii 04:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I am ambivalent about this proposal. To put things in perspective, you may want to read this post] by Robert Spencer on his blog Jihad Watch, about his WP biography. On the one hand, celebrities with strong opinions have a lot of enemies and need help for the sake of freedom of speech. On the other hand, he should just get himself a username and watch the few pages about him and his work. Emmanuelm (talk) 15:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Outside opinions requested

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I have received a satisfactory answer on a different page, and am content to shelve this thread. If anyone wants to reopen it, go ahead.--Father Goose (talk) 11:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I'm in the midst of a dumb little dispute and would like some outside opinions.

1. Should new Wikipedia essays not be put in the Wikipedia: namespace?
2. Is not personally notifying another user of a revert (in this case a pagemove) an "issue"?

This is in reference to this conversation, if you're curious.--Father Goose (talk) 07:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If you think the dispute is dumb, just ignore it. Dorftrottel (troll) 09:26, March 22, 2008

I think he meant insignificant, obvious, something whose answer has already been established. Not derogatorily "dumb" per se. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:37, 22 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I think I do understand what he meant, thanks. Anyway, what is the "established answer"? That aggressive behaviour prevails. Different day, same shit. In other words: Heil! Dorftrottel (canvass) 09:44, March 22, 2008

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Gallery Policy?

I'm a bit confused on when it is alright to use a gallery on an article page. Some pages have them, some don't. Personally, I find no need for them now that you can easily link to a Wikimedia Commons page that basically is a gallery of images for that specific article. Also, some pages have a gallery AND a link to a Wikimedia Commons page which seems rather redundant. What is the policy here? Can I move the images from the article gallery to the Commons page in order to streamline everything? Thanks Torsodog (talk) 08:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Do what you want, others will tell you if they like it or not. When I created the indoor bonsai article, I decided that a combination of plain images and image gallery was the best, so that's what I did. And no, we do not need more policies. Emmanuelm (talk) 15:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Current interpetation of policy is that, as a rule galleries cannot be stand alone articles. Otherwise, galleries should be used when they will help readers better understand the subject of the article. When they don't add anything, then don't use them. The existence of a gallery on Commons, is in my opinion, irrelevent. Dsmdgold (talk) 18:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Mirroring wikipedia with lots of ads?

Hi,

from googling, I found a strange mirror site [15], which mirrors all articles in wikipedia (in all languages). It also contains lots of google's adaware ads. Does it comply with GFDL (of course it contains non-free use of many things also)? Ugha (talk) 09:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed modification of CSD A7

A modification to the CSD A7 criteria has been proposed at the CSD talk page. NonvocalScream (talk) 20:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject AfD closing participants

Category:WikiProject AfD closing participants was nominated for deletion at WP:CFD. But it got moved to WP:UCFD and then to WP:MFD, where I see no mention of it. Someone with knowledge of this matter should update all the affected pages to show the current status. Ma^t_chups 18:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

The UCFD was closed and no one seems to have started an MFD for the project page. I have removed the deletion template from the category and left a note on the nominator's talk page to inform him of the UCFD closure. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:42, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

What do I do if an RFC gets no outside comment?

I listed Talk:List of road-related terminology on requests for comment five days ago, but nobody that was not already arguing came in to help. What should I do? --NE2 20:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm assuming the relevant Wikiprojects are all involved, hence they can't provide new users. WP:3O will draw some (not much) new blood. Template:Cent is also a good place to list it to get discussion. Besides that, I'd have to do some digging. MBisanz ^talk 22:07, 23 March 2008 (UTC)