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Featured Article Cabal

Hello Wikipedia.

I am a sysop, checkuser, bot operator, bot writer, toolserver programmer and contributor on Wiktionary, another Wikimedia Foundation Project similar to Wikipedia. I am also a bot operator and bot writer here on Wikipedia.

A matter recently came to my attention on Wiktionary, which ultimately led me here. Trying to assess a particular class of vandalism on Wiktionary, I have found a direct link to "dodgy" featured articles here on Wikipedia. After asking some questions about Wikipedia and some aspects of it I obviously am unfamiliar with, I found myself at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. To my shock and dismay, I found a tight knot of dedicated Wikipedians there who vehemently promote bad article topics and immediately deride any coherent objection that does not match their point of view.

The history of featured articles is not clear. Certainly, the process used for selection is flawed. The lack of transparency, the subjective criteria of a single individual and the disregard of certain subsequent vandalism is baffling.

As I understand it, now, Wikipedia featured articles currently are skewed towards promoting non-encyclopedic topics. I now understand that a certain element has won out (to date) at Wikipedia, holding that any article that is not deleted can (and should) be a featured article. I also understand that the current Wikipedia criteria does not pose any limitations on topics that do not appear in any other general-use encyclopedias, instead allowing "specialty" encyclopedias as well.

To me, this represents a massive flaw in reasoning. When questionable, non-encyclopedic topics are featured on the main page of a website with over two million visitors per day, each of those visitors learns that Wikipedia is about writing featured articles on games, obscure trivia, movies, pop songs and TV shows. As a direct result, contributors who have encyclopedic knowledge to add to Wikipedia (and other WMF projects) are implicitly discouraged from doing so. At the same time, it encourages further "gaming of the system" with non-encyclopedic topics. Useless trivia suddenly becomes the primary focus, instead of useful facts. Ironically, "video games" (as a topic) seem to be a primary subject for "gaming the system" in this manner.


While I do have admiration for the dedication required to organize the current featured article efforts, there obviously are some changes needed. The lack of transparency in the decision-process must be addressed. The disregard for other WikiMedia projects needs to be eliminated. And the effects of featuring non-encyclopedic topics cannot be ignored.

I do not understand what it will take, to break this knot of Wikipedians out of their current mindset, which considers all other concerns as irrelevant. Particularly, the effect on other WikiMedia projects is currently ignored. Yet the overall negative effect on other projects is undeniable.

So, in summary, I have some questions:

  1. Can the featured articles process be reformed to something more wiki-like, such as the voting process used elsewhere on Wikipedia? The current featured articles process gives the strong impression that such a thing is possible, yet is currently overrun by an element that irrationally promotes trivial topics, based only on the prose and how well referenced an entry is. Worse still, that tight knot of contributors expends enormous energy on protecting their fiefdom/cabal, especially in the face of reasonable objections.
  2. Can the featured article criteria be changed to emphasize general-encyclopedia topics? I understand the compromise of allowing such topics to be entered, but featuring, advertising and promoting them is quite a different thing. Such promotion directly results in vandalism to other WikiMedia projects.

Thanks in advance,

--Connel MacKenzie - wikt 20:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, the Featured Article process doesn't discriminate against any specific topic. The problem is that those with the desire to write featured articles (such as myself) don't really have an interest in those so-called "encyclopedic" articles, the essentials, or what have you. I'm not entirely sure what you're promoting here, so I'm struggling a little bit, but are you saying that our crop of FAs are discouraging people from contributing? How so? If not, are you saying that level of importance should be a criteria? If so, importance to what? Is there some systematic bias in the FA process? Sure. But the answer is more to the point of working on those "important" articles, not what you appear to be suggesting. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) 1: Voting is evil. Plus, on what criteria should it than be based besides references and prose. How worthy a topic is? Some editors find the newest Pokemon way more interesting than Einstein. You can't force editors to work on 'general-encyclopedia' topics. Garion96 (talk) 20:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Seriously, there is no cabal. This is the discussion that sparked this, if anyone wants to have a look. Trebor 20:29, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for that link. I don't know why I thought that wasn't relevant. It is a good example, but then, so is today's FA. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 21:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
That article is getting shot down for its problems with encyclopedic quality. Wikipedia doesn't care about subject importance, we care about article quality. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I believe he was referring to the user above who is proposing this policy, who opposed based on the subject of the candidate.— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
That is a poor reason to exclude it. It should be excluded from consideration for being non-encyclopedic, and the remaining article improved (or removed.) --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 21:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Any article that is notable enough for inclsuion and includes enough information/sources can become a featured article. There is no "bias"; there are just a lot of quality articles coming out of the pop culture subjects. Nothing is stopping the other topics from becoming featured; heck, I believe it serves as a way to motivate enhanced quality for core topics, because they'll see the benchmark being set. — Deckiller 21:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
There is a bias at Wikipedia, but it is not in the Featured Article process. It is simply easier and more fun to write articles on trivial subjects like videogames and pop stars because one person can master all the details and does not have to fight with a bunch of editors with different views to reach a consensus version. I am a generalist, and all the "important" articles I have worked on, programming language, relational database, operating system, china, were in terrible shape when I found them and exhausting to work on. --Ideogram 21:15, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, but I obviously disagree. The overflow vandalism to other projects whenever a dodgy article is featured is too problematic to ignore any longer. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 21:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
May you elabote on how featured articles result in vandalism to other projects? I'm confused. — Deckiller 21:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to second this request for an example. You're saying there was a rash of star wars related vandalism on wiktionary or other wikis today? --Milo H Minderbinder 21:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
The flurry of additions of "fictional characters" entries that do not meet wikt:WT:CFI actually started yesterday, and hasn't yet been addressed. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
That doesn't sound like "vandalism" to me; that sounds like a couple of misguided, but good faith users who don't understand the policies on that wiki. Moreover, it doesn't really show and direct relation to the FAs over here, because we've been featuring fictional topics for years. — Deckiller 22:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Could you provide an example, or point us to a page where we might see some of these? Thanks. --Milo H Minderbinder 22:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
True, and I don't believe users should be punished for enjoying to work and improve pop culture (a lot of it is in poor shape due to fancruft and whatnot, which is even worse than most of the core topics); if we take this subject away, people won't be interested in editing the more difficult articles. We focus on articles that have the least amount of controversy, and good things result. It will help us build to the point where everyone is experienced enough to crack the tough nuts. — Deckiller 21:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I would never suggest punishment or otherwise trying to prevent people from working on what they enjoy. But our dismal coverage of important topics makes us look bad as an encyclopedia, and I don't see any easy solution. --Ideogram 21:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
If the purpose of including "fancruft" is to help people learn how to practice editing on trivial subjects, that might be relevant. But the topic here, is not directly about inclusion, rather, the focus is on the inordinate promotion of things you can't find in a traditional general-use encyclopedia. While my personal opinion is that the trivia topics should be removed, I understand that is but a pipe-dream. But the FA abuses (advertising/promoting trivia) cannot be ignored. I clearly am not exaggerating the problem; I am obviously understating it. Over two million per day are assaulted with these trivia topics. It is by far, the most prominent aspect of Wikipedia (and WikiMedia) that shapes the world's opinion of this project, and all related projects. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 21:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
So do you propose a stop to promoting so-called "trivial" articles, even though the "Featured" status only has to do with article quality? I mean, do you really consider Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to be a trivial subject? --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Stop promoting them by fixing the illogical notion that typography alone is a reason for FA status and "democratize" the voting practice of main page featured articles. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 21:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
This is a massive misrepresentation of the featured article criteria. The requirements that an article be "well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable" amount to far more than "typography alone". —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
And yes, I think today's featured article is completely inappropriate for something calling itself an encyclopedia. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 21:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
The FA articles on fiction aren't exactly fancruft, they take an outside universe view on the subject, just like any other encyclopedia. And Badlydrawnjeff is right, FA is about article quality, not what the article is written about. But could you explain how it is promoting trivia and advertisement? George Lucas isn't exactly paying us to have that on the front page, and Wikipedia isn't promoting his work as an advertisement for Star Wars or any of the other articles that have been up. In theory, any article that is placed on the front page could be considered advertising then. But that's not what FA is about. Wiki goes for a consensus based on what's best for the project, not a yes or no vote on what looks cool or is popular. Darthgriz98 22:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
No it doesn't. It goes off the subjective criteria of one individual, instead of a yes/no vote by the contributors of this project. At what point did I say George Lucas was paying for placement? --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
You didn't, and I never said that he was paying for it, which is the point, for us to be advertising, we would tell you to watch Star Wars, or something along those lines for what ever article is featured. As for the nomination process, it involves much more than one person's opinion. In the FA process, any editor can go through and criticize the heck out of the article to make sure it is what a Wikipedia article should be. This is the purpose of FA, to show that the article at that point in time is what we are looking for in a Wikipedia article. Darthgriz98 22:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The only thing I agree with in this proposal is that there should be a balance of subjects on the main page. And there already is; Raul picks featured articles very carefully, and pop culture FAs do not outbalance others in terms of main page inclusion. — Deckiller 22:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
The suggestion being made that there is a cabal on WP:FAC whose goal is to promote trivial articles on the grounds that they are well-referenced is, to put it mildly, laughable. However, I believe that more care should be taken in the choice of the Featured Article of the Day. Not enough people realize that the image of Wikipedia suffers when the article of the day is (I'm sure I'm going to get ripped for saying that) Torchic, Half-Life 2, Maraba Coffee or Stephen Colbert's performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Now that doesn't mean that these are not very high quality articles but I think we might want to rethink the idea of letting fairly trivial subjects (or, as in the above examples, entirely trivial subjects, no matter how fun they might be) become the day's example of the best we can do. Pascal.Tesson 22:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
In January there were eight pop/entertainment/sport articles featured on the main page. 8 out of 31, not bad at all. I think Raul makes a nice balance there. Garion96 (talk) 22:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
One per year might be a better balance. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps the pokemon and colbert, but one of the most successful games of the last few years and a type of coffee. How are they not "encyclopaedic" (even in a fairly traditional sense)? But even so, this is all supposition; how do we know what happens to the image? Trebor 22:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Can you provide references to other general-use encyclopedias that have these articles? As to what happens to the image, that is measurable, by the Wikipedia-related news articles and the number of times comedians pick Wikipedia as an easy target. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree that we need to focus on the most notable featured articles for inclusion on the main page. However, we cannot just exclude pop culture, because Final Fantasy VII and the current FA are certainly notable enough, as is illustrated in their respective articles. — Deckiller 22:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Those are both excellent examples of items that do not belong on the main page. Notable, but trivia oriented. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Deckiller, the notion that pop-culture trivia is relevant to a general-use encyclopedia, is false. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
It's not "trivia", it's a part of life, just like everything else. Something purchased by 6+ million people certainly is not trivia, nor is an item that has influenced countless forms of literature and films and brought its own influences into the light. By your logic, shouldn't books and whatnot also be "trivia"? Moreover, the consensus on Wikipedia certainly does not believe that pop culture is trivia. — Deckiller 22:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Trivia is not always trivial. But articles that focus only on pop-culture trivia have no place in an encyclopedia. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Surely everything is relevant to a general-use encyclopaedia. Trebor 22:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Then why are the topics in question only covered in "specialty" niche-segment encyclopedias? --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia and definitely also many niche encyclopedia's in one. Garion96 (talk) 22:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Precicely. That's why it's called general :) — Deckiller 22:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
So why are the Beatles relevant to Encyclopedia Britannica? [1]. They certainly seem to feel that pop culture should be included. --Milo H Minderbinder 22:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
One single band of historic importance is not all garage bands ever. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Not all garage bands are included in Wikipedia. We have notability guidelines, and I, among other admins, have deleted numerous articles that don't comply to WP:BAND. — Deckiller 22:37, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Just typing bands off the top of my head, it has articles on the Clash, Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, the Ramones, Devo, Springsteen. It seems like as long as you don't get recent, you can find most famous groups. Not to mention Pacman and Zelda (video games? how dare they??). The claim that encyclopedias don't cover pop culture is patently false. And once you admit that it's good to cover some pop culture, you turn the site into a popularity contest and end up arguing over which is more important instead of writing articles. While it is true that wikipedia covers more bands than EB, part of the reason is that WP has no space limitations and covers more of many topics - there are many "important" topics that WP gets that other encyclopedias either cover in less detail or miss completely. If pop culture is not encyclopedic, why does wiktionary have a bunch of entries that only appear in star wars (apparently in violation of the inclusion policies there)? --Milo H Minderbinder 22:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break 1

Wikipedia differs in important ways from a traditional encyclopedia. I have much more to say on this subject but not here and now. --Ideogram 22:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I agree, Wikipedia is anything but a normal encyclopedia. Darthgriz98 22:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Moreover, we have the ability to cover more topics and in a more comprehensive manner because of our larger edit base. We don't have a small group of hired editors, who have to focus on only the most important topics. — Deckiller 22:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
      • That is a fallacy. The ability to create articles has no bearing whatsoever, on what is promoted. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:37, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Yes it does, because like was said earlier, we should be promoting all subjects included. Consequently, we should get more core topics featured, but that is no reason to dock pop culture FAs. — Deckiller 22:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I gather, Connel, that you are suggesting that pop-culture topics should be excluded from becoming Featured Articles. This means incorporating either a subject-matter exclusion or some form of determination of "worthiness" into the featured article criteria. Either of these is problematic. Saying "no pop-culture articles" assumes that there's a clear line between pop culture and high culture — but that line was blurry long before Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol pointed the tension out. Is Jaws pop culture, or high culture, or both? It's been widely praised by notable critics, but also condemned as the first of many disposable blockbuster summer "popcorn" movies. There are many other cases that are legitimately part of both "pop" and "high" culture. We can't use Potter Stewart's pornography test ("I know it when I see it"), because every Wikipedian will have different opinions about what should or shouldn't be excluded.

That leaves us with the attempt to determine what subjects are "worthy" and what are "trivial". But how can we possibly determine what's too "trivial" to merit inclusion as a Featured Article? Some people would say that comic books as a genre are intrinisically trivial, and that the inclusion of Superman and Batman as featured articles diminishes Wikipedia. But does that mean that a comic with more literary aspirations, such as Watchmen, should be demoted? What about the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus — should that be excluded from ever becoming a Featured Article? If not, where can we draw the line?

The impossibility of making these determinations shows the wisdom of Wikipedia's inclusionism. Right now, the only bias is towards the inclinations of contributors. If we tried to use criteria of "worth", or exclude particular subjects from consideration, we would open the door to many more troublesome biases. It's a bad idea. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Limiting the decision to a single individual is worse. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
That's not a logical follow-on. There is currently no decision on "worthiness", due to the difficulties explained by Josiah. One individual will judge if there is community consensus to promote an article or not, based on quality. Trebor 22:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
You can't grasp the meaning logical statements? There is no current decision on sysop "worthiness" due to even greater difficulties, yet WP:RfA is not run by a single individual. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 22:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
And neither is WP:FAC. Connel, you're conflating the process of promoting articles to FA status and the process of placing them on the front page. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
(after conflict, in response to mackenzie) Eh? I don't think I'm following you. But to make sure I got my point across: we have featured articles. They are judged against the featured article criteria. Any article can become featured; there is no judgement as to whether an article is significant or important enough. Being featured does not make them appear on the main page, although to appear on the main page an article must be featured. People add comments in support or opposition of an article being featured. These comments should be based on the criteria, and opposition must include actionable improvements which can be made. After a consensus has formed, one person judges that consensus and features (or not) the article. If you don't feel that this system is correct and that it leads to too many supposedly trivial articles being featured, I'd advise finding a different project. Trebor 23:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Please go elsewhere yourself. As I stated at the start, I'm here only because the FA has such enormous secondary effects. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 23:14, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Just a suggestion. And I'll ask again how you know that us featuring certain articles has an effect on sister projects? The link seems very tenuous. Trebor 23:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I still haven't seen those "enormous secondary effects". Could you point to a diff or history page showing them? --Milo H Minderbinder 23:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I am not conflating anything. There is no separation between the two processes, and there should be. Currently, when trying to express one such comment, I was immediately attached by this cabal. If no place exists to express such comments, there should be one. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 23:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

With respect, Connel, you are conflating when you make reference to "a single individual" making decisions about what is featured. WP:FAC is open to all Wikipedians. It is true that one individual — currently Raul654 — makes the decisions about which featured articles will be included in Wikipedia:Today's featured article on the front page. (Incidentally, if you follow that link, you'll see the statement "Raul654 maintains a very small, unofficial list of featured articles that he does not intend to appear on the main page." This should slightly alleviate your concerns about unworthy topics being featured on the front page, and thus attracting unwelcome spillover to other Wikimedia projects.)

There is a distinction between which articles become featured and which featured articles are included on the front page. For the reasons I have stated, I think that subject-based or "worthiness"-based restrictions on the creation of featured articles are a bad idea; however, I can see the arguments for restricting which featured articles are placed on the front page. Wikipedians will differ on the merits of articles like Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, but the suggestion that merely because of its subject matter it should not have become a featured article is a non-starter, I'm afraid. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 00:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Please omit the cabal references. I see a lot of editors in this discussion that I've never seen before. We are users discussing why we feel that your idea would not be beneficial or work out, not a mob. — Deckiller 23:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Please stop behaving in a mob-like manner, then. I presented a thoughtful presentation of a very real problem, and have been set on, by a pack of FA contributors who wish to protect themselves and their POV. I've seen one thoughtful response so far, in opposition to my original proposal, two thoughtful responses in support, and innumerable misplaced or misguided defenses of the current practice. On one hand, I am partly responsible for "feeding the trolls" but on the other, the absurd statements defending the current practice need to be refuted immediately. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 23:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Once again, I'll remind you to assume good faith and be civil. Describing editors as mobs and trolls isn't helping your cause. I can't find any of the responses in support of your proposal; I think the majority of the community think it unworkable, and reflective of a very traditionalist view of an encyclopaedia. The current practice has been pretty successful in most people's eyes, and you've yet to substantiate any statement claiming it has caused increased vandalism to any other WM projects. Trebor 23:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
You are telling me to be WP:CIVIL after essentially telling me to go to hell? WTF? --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 23:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Point me to where I said anything like that; if I did, I apologise. I'd still like an answer as to how you know that the vandalism is connected to the featuring of "less serious" articles. Trebor 23:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm dying to see this "go to hell" comment as well. --Milo H Minderbinder 23:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the "go to hell" issue is referring to the good-faith suggestion above: "If you don't feel that this system is correct and that it leads to too many supposedly trivial articles being featured, I'd advise finding a different project". — Deckiller 00:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps, but I feel that paraphrasing that to "go to hell" is a misinterpretation of my comments. I was saying that the overwhelming consensus that FAs can be on any topic is unlikely to be changed, and if he was so diametrically opposed to this idea then perhaps Wikipedia wasn't a good project for him. I consider that slightly more measured (and subtle) than a simple "go to hell". Trebor 00:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, unless it was a way for him to say that Wikipedia = Heaven :) — Deckiller 00:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
If you want to test the strength of your argument, then this is the place. I tried it very recently, and found my proposal wanting. While I still believe in my concept I realise that it needs better arguing or simply a stronger argument. If everyone who responds is against your point of view then it is better to accept the opposing view as currently valid and attempt either (and or) refine your argument or accept the status quo. You (and I, separately) may well be right. It is for us to find the proof that will convince, and not complain about the trial. LessHeard vanU 23:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break 2

Maybe I should be clearer about my concern with Half-Life 2 as the article of the day. I think it's great that Wikipedia has quality articles on fairly trivial topics or on pop-culture. In fact, it's a (small) part of what makes Wikipedia so nice. But I think it's just silly to let articles on video-games, no matter how popular, be the article we show off with pride to the world. I really would have no interest in Wikipedia if it wasn't also creating fantastic articles on subjects where it is in direct competition with classical encyclopedias. Featured articles are supposed to exemplify our best work and I doubt that anyone can say without giggling that Torchic should be given the nod. It's great to impose the same stringent standards on pop-culture articles that we apply to top-priority topics but at some point we have to be honest and realize that Pokemon, Half-Life 2 articles and whatnot are ephemeral little things whose place on the front page should be secondary. Pascal.Tesson 22:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

But you do agree that they should be given the ability to become featured, right? Also, I somewhat disagree with excluding all video games; Mario, Final Fantasy, game consoles, and whatnot are not bad things to include on the main page, because they were well known and not too narrow. — Deckiller 22:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
(after edit conflict and database lock)I'm still not sure where this worry about what we "show-off" is coming from. If we didn't include our pop culture and niche articles, it wouldn't be a reflection of where a lot of the quality of Wikipedia is; we certainly don't want to mispresent ourselves to the world. Wikipedia is one of the best places to go for information on pop culture. It isn't (yet) perhaps, the best place to go for consistently detailed overviews of core topics for traditional encyclopaedias, but then traditional encyclopaedias don't allow anyone to edit and aren't staffed by volunteers. I certainly don't think there's any need to be embarrassed by Wikipedia. Trebor 22:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely. — Deckiller 22:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Pascal, I completely agree. The only ones not giggling are the same contributors gaming the FA system with items that will be long-forgotten in ten year's time. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 23:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Final Fantasy VII certainly hasn't been forgotten (and it was released ten years ago); Star Wars hasn't been forgotten, and it's 25+ years old; and I'm fairly certain that people remember Donkey Kong (video game), Pac-Man, and Jaws (film), as the articles explain. Nevertheless, I rarely, if ever, put FAs I work on in the FA request; attaining featured status is enough for me, unless I feel that the topic is notable enough to be placed on the main page (like the New England Patriots, or Rush (band)).
I do feel that, for topics to be featured and/or placed on the main page, there should be at least a 2 year history so that there can be some historical context and reception information to make the article comprehensive. That include non-pop culture topics, as well. — Deckiller 23:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Please assume good faith with the contributors. Whether or not you personally find the articles interesting, a lot of work goes into every featured article so I don't think describing them as "gaming the FA system" is particularly civil. Trebor 23:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
There is no good faith left to be assumed, when I was set-upon immediately for expressing an opinion. And I never said that improvements to those FAs were bad. But the gaming of the FA system is self-evident. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 23:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
You weren't set upon; we explained why your opinion wouldn't be regarded in the closing decision because it wasn't actionable or addressing the criteria. And I don't think the gaming is self-evident, or perhaps other people would be agreeing with you. Trebor 23:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes; I found that comment (like the cabal comments) offensive. I improve the quality of articles that interest me. It's not because I want to game the system and try to churn out a lot of "easy" featured articles (I haven't worked on one from scratch in a while, although Woonsocket, Rhode Island is on queue and I made a visit to the library), it's because I want to enhance quality where I can enhance it best. — Deckiller 23:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit confilct] FA articles are about comprehensive citations and overall quality of prose. The subject matter is unimportant. As you say, nobody may care about Half-Life 2 in 10 years time, but the argument could be made that nobody cares about Regulamentul Organic or History of saffron right now. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Precicely. The point of an encyclopedia is to inform, and if people are interested and obsessed with everything in an encyclopedia, what would be its point? — Deckiller 23:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Point of (minor) dispute: "good citations and prose" are qualities of an FA, but not really what it's 'about'; comprehensiveness of coverage of the subject is what's critical, regardless of what the subject is. Opabinia regalis 03:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Bah, keep your sound logic to yourself. :P I was just trying to make a succinct summary with a comment about content, though I admit it was perhaps a bit too succinct... EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Ah, but can you determine what will be forgotten in 10 years time? Perhaps a learned article on particle physics (surely a 'proper' encyclopedic subject) may be rendered obsolete by some discovery or theory which negates/supercedes current thinking, yet the music of a once popular band is still being enjoyed (and discovered) by a few. Which subject then still has relevance? The front page of Wikipedia serves much the same function as a newspaper, it is an advertisment for the contents. As such the breadth of subject must try to reach as many potential editors as possible, the only criteria being the quality of the presentation. What may appear to be a frivolous subject to some may be the item that gets people hooked into Wikipedia. Surely we cannot determine the suitability of potential editors by what it is that enthuses them? LessHeard vanU 23:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, I think everyone will agree that we already have plenty of editors willing to contribute to the pop-culture articles. What we are often lacking are editors who take the time to contribute to core topics. In the same sort of spirit, Wikipedia is already widely recognized as a great source for pop-culture information but no so much as a quality provider of content on core encyclopedic topics so it would make most sense to put these on the front page. Of course, no one can say what will be relevant in ten years but let's not kid ourselves: nobody in their right mind would bet any money that Half-Life 2 will be viewed as having more value than particle physics in a few years time. (Of course, an overwhelming majority would agree that the latter already has way more value) Pascal.Tesson 23:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

While it might not necessarily show why we should omit those articles from the main page every now and then, it does show why more attention needs to be paid to core topics by those who are willing and have the ability to contribute to those topics. I don't believe that pop culture topics are a pitfall for good editors; I'm no scientist, therefore, I rarely contribute to science topics. As I take more business classes, I'm sure I'll focus more on our business coverage. — Deckiller 23:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
This seems to be stemming from an underlying belief that we need to prove ourselves to be "good" at covering these core topics. But I don't think that's representative of our overall coverage; we don't want to dress ourselves up as something we're not. Trebor 00:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Having read through this thread, I'm still not seeing any specific evidence on how Wikipedia's choice of featured articles relate to higher levels of vandalism and nonsense posting on other Wikimedia projects. I'm not seeing the typical bored-schoolkid vandal noticing that the main page article is about Star Wars and thinking, 'Hm, I think I'll go screw around with the dictionary project that's linked at the very bottom of the main page!' Maybe Connel can point us to a non-WP:BEANSy summary of the results of his investigations? (Or, if it's already been posted somewhere, add a link?) I'm also wondering what FAC it is you looked at, Connel; if it's just GameFAQs, that's not much of a sample size. In the last few days I've reviewed three or four excellent historical articles; there may be a disproportionate number of pop-culture nominations, but I don't think that translates to a disproportionate number of pop-culture FAs (yes, that means I do think pop-culture noms fail at a higher-than-average rate). Have you compared the number of articles listed as FAs under "Media" to the number under "History" or "War"? Opabinia regalis 03:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

<This thread was previosuly split into a new section ("Summary of F.A.C section above"), I have merged that back in. But, I have removed a large table prepared by Connel MacKenzie (it was not appropriate, I can elaborate if need be), you can view it at the bottom of this version.--Commander Keane 05:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Until the featured article cabal is dismantled, I see no point in trying to cooperate with Wikipedia. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 03:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

And until you realize that there isn't a cabal just because people disagree with you, I see no point in trying to cooperate with you. Equilibrium has been achieved! :-P EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:13, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Hey EV, at least he gave you a complement in the chart :) — Deckiller 05:36, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, beggars can't be choosers, so I'll take what little I can get... EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the concisest response I can make: You say "Do you have any idea why the Wikipedia "Featured Articles" often feature items that one would never find in a traditional encyclopedia?" like it's a bad thing. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Can we please delete this grotesque table? I did not take the time to explain what I meant earlier only to see it boiled down to "(3) Supportive arguments (smashed into this cabal before, eh?)" (whatever that means). Also I get this weird sense that Connel MacKenzie believes I support his idea that FAC is being ruled by some evil pop-culture-crazy cabal. Again, quoting myself: that accusation is to put it mildly, laughable. Pascal.Tesson 04:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
This table does not help Connel's argument; it damanges it, for obvious reasons. Because I generally oppose the proposition, I feel that the table should stay. Also, it appears that I won the title for most tallies on the chart :). — Deckiller 05:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Damn, I thought I might get that. Seriously, Connel, that's way way over the lines of civility and into the area of personal attacks. I don't think I've made any comments that weren't addressed at the argument; if you feel got-at personally, I apologise. But believe me, there is no cabal. My contact with the editors here before this has been minimal. Trebor 08:21, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

All of this whining because GameFAQs was nom'd at FAC? oh dear lmao. --- RockMFR 07:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break 3

I'm concerned that a single individual (no matter how good or well-meaning) is the sole determiner of what FA goes onto the front page. That bothers me a lot for reasons that I think should be fairly obvious. But to be honest, if you look at Wikipedia:Featured article statistics you'll see that over the past year we have created just 354 new featured articles. Now - think about this...we consume one feature article every day by putting it on the front page - never to appear there again. So we used up 11 more articles than we accepted this year. Since the supply of FA's that have never been on the front page is limited, there will come a day when we don't have a new FA to put onto the front page. Raul is not so much picking which FA's make it onto the front page as simply switching the order of them around so that they are more evenly distributed by subject. That being the case, it's largely irrelevent how it's done - so I shouldn't be too bothered.
But what this shortage means that in the not-too-distant future, we'll have to do one of several things:
  1. Stop updating the main page FA every day.
  2. Lower our standards and allow more FA's to be created.
  3. Somehow push much harder to create more FAC's of sufficient standard.
  4. Put articles that are merely GA's onto the front page.
I don't think (2) or (4) would ever be considered a good idea. (1) sounds an awful lot like defeat. So we're left with finding a way to have more articles submitted to FAC or improving the quality of those that are submitted so that an increased number pass. I think there are ways to do both of those things - but what concerns me most is that people who might be writing significant and interesting articles are wasting far too much of their time doing WikiPolitics and in consequence doing too little editing.
This leaves open the possibility for a fanatical group of (to pick an actual example) Pokemon fans to churn out fairly formulaic articles that are very likely to pass FAC. After all, once you've found the magic formula to get Bulbasaur through the FAC process, you can write another FA-quality article very easily by picking one of the other few hundred Pokemon characters and making a page which quotes the same Pokedex books - has the same sections in the same order with pictures gathered in the same manner from the same sources. It ought to be pretty easy to come up with a few hundred articles that are very similar indeed. If one passes, then if our FAC process is logical and unbiassed, they all pretty much have to pass because we won't be able to find anything bad enough about any of them to disqualify them.
Try doing that with articles about European monarchs, Italian sportscars or Diseases of sheep! Each article has to be fought for - you've gotta track down books, read them, fight with other editors...it's a lot of work. So I think we have to accept that unless a lot of the really good editors around here stop playing politics and go back to writing articles, we should expect to see every single one of those Pokemon characters showing up on the front page. There are enough of them that we might see nothing else for six solid months! SteveBaker 05:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Very insightful comments, and I agree; although it's great that we're featuring pop culture topics, we should tip the focus if possible. — Deckiller 05:36, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
You're right that it's easier to copy another article than start from scratch; the Tropical Storms Wikiproject is very efficient in producing hurricane articles that meet the criteria. About having only one user decide what's on the main page, I think it's for practicality more than anything else. There are rarely compelling reasons for having an article on a particular day, so it'd be hard to form consensus in most cases. And having a bunch of users !voting over which article should go on which day doesn't improve the encyclopaedia at all, so it's rather a waste of time. I agree it would be nice to have more FAs on "core" topics, but we can't force volunteers to write on a particular topic, and "core" topic articles tend to be a lot harder to create. Trebor 08:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
That 354 figure is interesting; is that simply the quantity that passed FA in the period or the aggregate between passes and the articles delisted? If it is the latter, then a fifth option would be to ensure that the WP:FAR is even more directed at galvanising editors into keeping articles to standard. LessHeard vanU 13:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
354 is the total count of FAs as of Jan 2007 minus the total count as of Jan 2006 (i.e. the latter, including both newly promoted articles and those delisted). There's a backlog of articles that are being FAR'd, which I think will dry up in the not too distant future at which point FAs will increase more like the promotion rate. 561 articles were promoted in 2006. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
A bit related, we also have 213 featured lists, 27 added in the last month. Garion96 (talk) 16:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I'll be interested to see what happens after the uncited FAs go through FAR; at the moment, the vast majority of removals are for that reason. The criteria for FAs seem to have stabilised and ,unless they undergo another significant change, that should mean a faster increase in FAs. It is slightly depressing when as many articles are unfeatured as featured each week. Trebor 17:36, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Lots of points here!

  • The number of former featured articles has been increasing rapidly recently, mainly because the change to the FA criteria to require a better standard of citation has been applied more rigorously of late. This is sad, but a necessary evil.
  • There is, of course, a self-selected group of participants at WP:FAC and WP:FAR. This group is not a cabal - it includes all those who take part; all you have to become a member is propose an article as a FAC or FAR, or comment upon a FAC or FAR. There are accepted ways of doing things, of course, but I see new people joining the discussion all the time.
  • There was some noise about WP:100K a few months ago, but it remains a pipe-dream. The fact is that we do not create featured articles at a sufficiently fast rate. It is hard to meet the FA criteria - believe me! It is especially hard to write a featured article on a core topic, such as Physics or Law - the scope is so wide, everyone has 2p to throw on the heap, edit wars often break out, editors cannot agree on what to include and what, following summary style, should be left to daughter articles, ... Much easier to focus on a smaller topic that can be done well. On the other hand, wide topics can become featured: Dinosaur, for example, or Evolution, or African American literature.
  • Contrary to the argument above, despite Bulbasaur and Torchic becoming featured articles, there has not been a slew of featured-quality articles on Pokemon. That is also sad. I look forward to Pikachu and Charizard and Squirtle and Jigglypuff and Meowth and many others joining them.
  • The line has always been that any article that can survive WP:AFD can become featured (although some, such as lists, will clearly never meet the FA criteria). But what does "trivial" mean? Is Durer's Rhinoceros trivial (just a print, after all - not even a painting)? Is England expects that every man will do his duty trivial (some signal flags?!)? How about Oroonoko (an obscure novel)? Or Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (a photograph)? Other than requiring that an article is "notable" or "encyclopedic", why should be add another criterion, that it should not be "trivial" (if that is any different)? Surely it is a strength of Wikipedia that it extends beyond the boundaries of a paper encyclopedia to deal with topics that other encyclopedias leave out?
  • Raul654's position is anomalous. Determining consensus for promoting other featured content (pictures, lists, etc.) or for the reverse process, at WP:FAR, is not delegated to a single person but rather any one of the regular participants is trusted to make the decision. Similarly, choosing entries for WP:DYK or WP:ITN is not delegated to one person, but left to anyone who takes an interest. Raul654 has done an excellent job, and I have no problem with what he does or the way he does it, but I am not sure whether we need a "director". On the other hand, if the system is not broken, why fix it?
  • The original complaint seems to be that "low brow" featured articles on the Main Page attract vandalism. Well, yes - see the articles' edit history. Vandalism is a fact of wiki life. Just see what happens when The Colbert Report mentions Wikipedia. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:18, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Responding to your point on Raul: yes, it has always struck me as slightly odd too; I'm not sure I can think of many other "one-person" positions on the Wiki. But as you say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it (although after two and a bit years, I would have thought he might want to share the load). I think the system is working well, and certainly the "new breed" of very well-referenced FAs are top notch. Trebor 00:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
It's probably done by one person because it's really a one-person job at the current level of activity. If there were 50 viable FA nominations a day, more than one person would be needed, but as it is, it's not an unreasonable load for a single person. Opabinia regalis 01:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Show us the vandalism

The inception of this thread is based on the claim that featured articles of the day on wikipedia lead to vandalism on wiktionary. Multiple users have asked multiple times for examples demonstrating this. There have been many posts, mulitple heading breaks, you even took the time to make a table, yet no examples? I'd like to assume good faith, but it's hard not to suspect that the vandalism claims may be an attempt to give credibility to a weak IDONTLIKEIT complaint. So please, if you return to continue this discussion (and I certainly wouldn't object if you didn't), give us some diffs (or preferably a history page that shows a bunch of these if there is one). --Milo H Minderbinder 13:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I leave the subject of vandalism that has resulted from choice of featured article at Wikipedia to others, but it is most definitely true that Wikipedia editors should be aware that Wikipedia does not operate in a vacuum when it comes to other Wikimedia Foundation projects. Wiktionary has had to suffer the fall-out from the various Colbertisms targetted at Wikipedia, for example. "reality" and several related words have had to be, and are currently, protected. And we do regularly get people whose articles were deleted from Wikipedia coming to Wiktionary to re-create them. Uncle G 20:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that we here at Wikipedia are definitely aware that we do not operate in a vacuum. I, personally, and I'm sure my fellow editors here feel the same way, want to see all of the Wikimedia projects succeed, and we certainly don't want to feel like we are causing harm, even inadvertently, to other Wikis. However, no one has yet provided us with valid, concrete evidence that this is happening. We are certainly not at fault for the Colbert-related vandalism, and I'm not sure what we are supposed to do to stop people creating articles on Wiktionary that have been deleted here. Are we supposed to stop deleting all articles, no matter how worthy of deletion? Connell MacKenzie spent lots of time making a table to document his fanciful "Featured Article cabal", but didn't spend the 30 seconds it would take to provide even one concrete piece of evidence of extra-Wikipedia vandalism inspired by Wikipedia articles. If such evidence does exist, and someone who's seen it can direct our attention there, then we can do something about the problem. Until then, it seems like this whole discussion is pointless.--Aervanath 04:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to contribute my own hypothetical (because arrived at completely without a thorough statistical sampling) explanation of which articles tend to attract  graffiti taggers  vandals more often, and thus should not be featured on the main page lest their increased visibility draw increased vandalism. (1) Wiki-vandalism, like real-world "tagging", is an immature behavior, thus its practitioners tend to be of immature interests, very often due to immature age. Non-recent history, classic literature, and advanced sciences, tend to hold less interest for them than video-games and whatever else is "hot" in specifically young people's "popular culture" at the moment. (2) Vandals tend more often to read, and then "tag" for boasting purposes among their peers, articles that interest them. (3) Therefore articles on, say, 19th-century European statesmen will draw less vandalism than articles on Pokemon, World of Warcraft, and this year's most-talked-about sports figures and TV celebrities. (4) It follows that the best way to reduce main-page-inspired vandalism is to exclude such "hot" topics from the main page. In fact, don't feature any article there that could not have appeared in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, or that would have been a most-read article even in the EB. Our safety lies in boredom! If our main-page article bores vandals so much that they can't be bothered to finish reading it, likely they won't trouble to "tag" it either. In fact, the more boring Wikipedia as a whole becomes, the more likely vandals will go elsewhere, to "tag" something more interesting, like blogs. I suggest this become a new guideline, or even policy, as to what articles should aim for, or be deleted for lacking. Future old-timer Wikipedians will be recognized by their commenting to each other, "Say, remember when we used to have vandals here?" -- Helpfully yours, Ben 19:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Update

The nefarious Featured Article Cabal has now been added to Wikipedia:List of cabals. Users with experience of this sinister group are invited to adjust its description there. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:28, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal forWikipedia:Notability (politicians)

I've created a proposal for a notability guideline for political figures, at Wikipedia:Notability (politicians). I'd welcome input at the talk page. There's already a little discussion because I've been slow about listing the proposal. Argyriou (talk) 01:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Citing references

Hello, I am seeking clarification regarding whether citing references within an article is policy (or if it is fine merely to list references at the bottom of an article).-MsHyde 23:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You can reference sources at the bottom of an article. It can be more useful to the reader and future editors to have in-line citations, but it is more difficult and the reference system is unwieldy. For controversial biographical information about living person, or any controversial information, it is more important and helpful to have statements explicitly paired with citations. —Centrx→talk • 23:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. How is it determined that something is or is not controversial? (For example, may anyone request inline citations, as fact tags are used?)-MsHyde 23:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
If you have no particular reason to believe that a fact is controversial or incorrect, and are not interested in actually reading a reference if one is provided, then there is no need to request a reference "just in case" somebody else might someday want one. The policy is that everything must be verifiable in principle, not that it must be explicitly sourced.
Adding many fact tags to many articles in a short period of time would make it hard to believe you are requesting the references in good faith rather than making a point. Along these lines, let me point out that your account was created this month but the vast majority of your edits consist of tagging articles as unreferenced, prodding articles, and voting "delete" in AFD debates. CMummert · talk 01:24, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I am trying to help. If I know something about the subject, or find a reference on Google when trying to decide to prod or AfD, I add it to the article. Also, I vote keep sometimes, and add references to AfD. Can you show me where in policy it says everything must be verifiable in principle, but not explicitly sourced? It seems like this is actually undefined, or a gray area. I agree that not every line should be sourced, but perhaps every paragraph, especially in a long article. But clarity about what policy actually says would be appreciated. In actual practice, it seems to me that inline sourcing is preferred over leaving sources at the bottom, with no way for anyone to tell which parts of the article match which sources or parts of sources.-MsHyde 01:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Careful with adding comments. You messed up the (UTC) in his sig. Not every paragraph has to be sourced. That's just ridiculous. Only those bits which are disputable or not common knowledge need citing. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 01:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
That is what I meant about gray area. Everything is disputable; nothing is common knowledge. In a long article, I think there probably should be a reference for every paragraph, at least. But what explicitly is policy covers inline citations vs. references at the bottom?-MsHyde 05:28, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe there is any policy about which type of citation to use. Personally I prefer the <ref>, since these create standard footnotes that we are familiar with in printed material. Also if someone were to page-print an article, the footnotes would appear normally, the inline cites won't. Wjhonson 09:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
MsHyde probably already has read the policies, since she is familiar with the deletion process, but I will answer her question. WP:V and WP:ATT are carefully worded so that they don't require explicit citations for every fact. If such citations were required, the policies would have been written to explicitly say as much. It is only facts that are "challenged or likely to be challenged", or biographical material, that are held to a higher standard. WP:SCG was recently written to give more specific guidance in the context of scientific articles, and it has been adopted by several WikiProjects as an accurate description of the level of citation they would like to achieve. CMummert · talk 13:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the numerical stability article again, can I kindly suggest that MsHyde read the guidelines at WP:SCG before tagging any more math or science articles? It reads in part:

The verifiability criteria require that such [uncontroversial, widely known] statements be sourced so that in principle anyone can verify them. However, in many articles it is cumbersome to provide an in-line reference for every statement. In addition, such dense referencing can obscure the logical interdependence of statements.

Thanks, Lunch 23:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

In all articles with many refs, not just sci-tech, it is usual to group the references at the end of each sentence. For controversial articles in particular, having reference numbers after individual words in the same sentence looks somewhat aggressive. if it is necessary to make it absolutely clear which references said exactly what, it is clearer to use a quote. DGG 00:11, 9 February 2007 (UTC), one per sentence.

Can I copy stuff directly from 2005 Encyclopedia Brittanica?

Well? Andrewdt85

Absolutely not. It would be an instance of copyvio. Askari Mark (Talk) 04:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

You can, however, copy directly from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica! -newkai t-c 11:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. It has been released into the public domain, and can easily be downloaded in electronic form. Needless to say, much of the information contained is sorely outdated, but it's an excellent encyclopedia nevertheless. --Xertz 15:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Back when Wikipedia had substantially fewer entries, it was rather common for 1911 EB articles to be used almost verbatium. As far as I know, almost all 1911 EB article have been updated on Wikipedia since then, although they do still exist on s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. There are a few biographical entries here on Wikipedia that about the only reasonable source is this edition of EB, but those are some very obscure articles. Even then, some substantial POV cleanup has occured. --Robert Horning 20:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Note, though, that copyright protects expression, not fact. (needless to say IANAL, but if copyright protected facts it would be absolutely impossible for Wikipedia to exist.) --Random832(tc) 12:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

There is still a great deal of cleanup to do on those articles. Many of the edits are the addition of a few newer facts to the old article, rather than the necessary rewriting (That's historically been a common technique in EB as well). This may be one of the early decision made under the imperatives of getting started that have turned out to cause difficulties in the longer run. DGG 20:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

User blanking own talk page

Just wondering, what is the general stance on this. Is it allowed? The user in question has warnings on their talk page, nothing serious, more along the lines of untagged image notices. I still think this is an important notice and shouldn't be removed from the page...I've reverted it once to put back the relevant comments and it is just repeatedly blanked. However, I don't really know if I'm going about this the right way. Are users allowed to blank their own talk page, if the page in question includes an important notification pertinent to the user? I'm new around here and don't really know the policy on this, any help would be appreciated. --Xertz 04:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Generally, if a user has warnings on his/her talk page, then it is frowned upon to blank them, as it appears that they are trying to hide their past actions. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 04:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Warnings generally shouldn't be removed, as ChairmanS above has said. But i normally think untagged image notices don't really count. If we're talking about the same thing - then those untagged image notices are automatically placed by a bot. Warnings should be kept because...they're sort of a record of the editor's behaviour (or i suppose misbehaviour) which helps other editors. Automatically generated talk page warnings by a bot don't really reflect anything - often, it could just be because the person forgot and the bot beat them before they had a chance to fix the image. I don't really think there's any harm in removing those kind of warnings. Unless the person has been intentionally breaking image-related guidelines, in which case they'd most likely have been warned by another editor, not by an automatic bot. --`/aksha 04:57, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Also, if the warning is old, and the editor has since then corrected his behaviour, then i don't see why they *must* keep the warning on the talk page. --`/aksha 04:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I have to come down somewhere in the middle. Life is awkward if you are constantly clearing your page out. Supposed I start a conversation and you delete it. Now if that conversation was not over, where do I put the latest replies? Also, if the deleted text did happen to be warnings that were still relevant, we would have to search history to find them. Have you searched history looking for when vandalism was added to an article like Honda Civic? It can be a real pain. Same with what happened to all those deleted messages.

Having said all that, I do agree that old warnings should be removed. I propose that a bot look at the sig date on each one. When it sees a date that is old enough with no newer warnings, it removes the warning and adds a new message saying "Thank you for behaving." As for non-warnings, encourage users to use archiving tools. Will (Talk - contribs) 05:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

In this particular case, it seems antagnostic to revert notices that are so trivial in nature. As for the general situation, I would suggest that a user can blank *any* warning that is more than 30 days old. Wjhonson 06:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
It's not quite a month old, but it's getting there. The "warning" was from a bot, saying that the user had uploaded an untagged image. The image has since been tagged by the original uploader, so I suppose there is no justification in keeping him from blanking the talk page, as this untagged image warning is the only entry on his talk page that is of any real importance. --Xertz 15:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest that a user can blank any warning they damn well please. It's proof that they've read it, and if they continue to cause problems, they can't plead ignorance of the law. --Carnildo 09:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Blanking warnings is perfectly acceptable. As Carnildo points out, it means the user has read them. Re-adding the warnings and forcing the user to keep content they do not like on their talk page crosses into harassment quickly. While blanking of relevant warnings is not polite or nice, restoring them is even less polite. We do not keep permanent archives (other than page histories) of users' past misdeeds. Kusma (討論) 09:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

As above, many warnings are basically reminders for the user, like images without copyright warnings, once the issue has been solved there's no reason to keep them. I've had a couple of image copyright tags stuck up on my user page as the result of basic forgetfully (forgot to tag an image) or as a result of bot error. These things don't tell anybody anything useful about me except that I like to have at least one picture on each page that I create.
perfectblue 09:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Then how are we supposed to find those warnings? You must love searching history. Please tell me the exact edit that Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Requesting 3rd opinion on External Links was started. Then tell me how long it took to find that. Now you have picture of what it is like searching history. What a pain. Will (Talk - contribs) 09:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

  • The intent of warnings is to warn and educate the user; they do not serve as a record of past misdemeanors. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable for a user to remove warnings from their talk page. >Radiant< 10:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Then there's no point in our rising hierarchy of warnings {{test1}}, {{test2}}, {{test3}}, {{test4}}, etc. If the user is entitled to remove {{test1}} every time he gets one, he'll never get a {{test2}}. He'll be educated all right -- educated in how to avoid being blocked for vandalism. —Angr 10:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Surely you do not block simply because a user has test1 through 4 (or whatever the bloody templates have been renamed this week) on their talk page? A look at contributions is essential, and at that point things get more obvious. Plus we do not require a full suite of warnings before a user is blocked. Ta/wangi 10:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Not true at all. If the {{test1}} was recent, and assuming the suggested edit summary was left, it will be easy to spot in the history. You can't assume the messages haven't been deleted, so you need to check anyway. —Doug Bell talk 10:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I would only discover such a talk page because the user had been vandalizing. If there's no previous indication that he's been warned about it, I give him a test1 or test2 (which have been their names for years, what do you mean by "this week"?). If he's already received a "last warning" (or several -- the vandals must often laugh out loud at how many "last warnings" they get without getting blocked), I'll block for the vandalism that brought me to the user's talk page in the first place. —Angr 10:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I was referring to {{uw-test1}} et al... /wangi 11:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. Back when I did RC patrol, I would use {{test}} as a warning for newbie-test vandalism, {{test3}} for serious vandalism. Repeat vandalism after getting a warning would result in a short block. I never saw the point in the rest of the series. --Carnildo 22:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandals can't hide anything by removing warnings. Any admin who decides whether to block checks the user's contribution page, which will tell you whether the user has edited his own talk page and removed warnings. Any block is based on the user's contributions more than on how many warnings he has had. Kusma (討論) 11:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Certainly a common practise, with test3 or bv being used, thanks/wangi 23:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, they can hide information. This thread has gotten long enough to demonstrate. Please identify the edit where "warning is old, and the editor has since then corrected his behaviour" was added to the above posts. Please note that you will find only one such edit. (Behavior was misspelled.) If you can't do that, you probably can't verify something else was removed. Will (Talk - contribs) 22:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
You do not need to check the page history to see whether a user has removed warnings. You see that from their contributions. As you check a user's contributions anyway when you fight vandalism or decide whether to block, you don't even need an extra click. Kusma (討論) 14:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
You probably can't verify anything if you spend so much time worrying about UK vs US spellings and labelling one as misspelled! /wangi 23:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Will: It's true that it's very hard to find back a particular edit, unless you mark it in some way. You should be able to find back my edit easily, by just grepping page history on or around the time I signed for "MARK MARK MARK". You can also grep for "TEST 1". Finally, note that user talk pages have much less traffic than the village pump :-) --Kim Bruning 00:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Unless you can get tools like VandalProof to do all the work, there is no way to ensure we all agree on the edit summary. Even with tools like VandalProof, they might not be in agreement. Sure, you set some standard here. But how long does it take the authors of those tools to get up to coding that standard? Quite some time.

Besides. Some people that patrol, like myself, are stuck with computers where they can't install anything. This computer isn't mine. (That is dead for the foreseeable future.) It is as though I access Wikipedia from a public internet connection.

That leaves my browser and any JS tools I can find. However, some of the JS tools were written a while back and never updated. In one case, it took me months to figure out what some of the tabs did. No one ever responded to the queries I left on the scripts talk page.

For those that claim you don't need the level 4 warnings, I submit users like myself do. I am not an admin. Hence, I can't block anyone myself. For that, I have to report the user on WP:AIV. But that is useless -- until a level 4 warning is present has been there for sometime. Because of the political beliefs where I grew up (USA), I consider users to be innocent until proven guilty. I won't just bump the user up to level 4 without good reason. However, I don't have time to truely evaluate each case. So unless the edit that got me to add a warning to the user's page is severe, I won't bump more than one level per incident.

In short, without a track record, I am left in the dark. Again, due to time constraints, I don't check back through history very far. Just far enough to verify the user didn't remove warnings. Maybe not even that. Will (Talk - contribs) 05:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

4 level warnings are not required. Arbcom has said that repeatedly restoring warnings is harrassment. I'm sorry you don't have time to do things properly. Maybe you shouldn't do them then. pschemp | talk 05:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Restoring the warnings would be harassment only if the warnings were no longer relevant. To often, that is the case. The hardcore vandals will do what they can to avoid detection. You would leave me without the best tools I have. I doubt you care about fighting vandalism. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I think it's quite feasible for RC patrollers / CVU members to agree on which edit summaries to use. It's also quite feasible for people to set up a log of warnings if they really must. It's simply that user talk pages (1) are not intended as such a log, and (2) do not actually work well as such a log, since we can't prevent users from editing or blanking them. >Radiant< 10:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Will - you have repeatedly used edits to this page, and the history of this page, as examples of how difficult it is to find and evaluate past actions on a user talk page, assuming the user can freely delete messages. Please stop using this page as an example. This is a high volume page. A user talk page is almost always a low volume page, and if it's not, it's because the user is getting a lot of warnings. Someone looking at how serious a problem a user is, in addition to looking at contributions, need not go back 50 or 100 edits, even if there were that many - the last ten or so are almost always going to indicate if the editor has been a problem, and what the level of the next warning - or block - should be.
    • The purpose of allowing users to remove warnings (and anything else they want) on their user talk pages is to help good editors clear off vandalism and mistaken warnings and cruft. Allowing this certainly makes it (at least slightly) more difficult, sometimes, to evaluate problem users. That is just the price to be paid - there is no approach to anything in the world that has all advantages and no disadvantages. The alternative, saying that users cannot remove warnings, under threat of punishment, is to say that you and other editors cannot respond to being harassed on your own talk page, in the form of bogus warnings ("uncivil", "failure to assume good faith", "personal attack", "harassment", etc.), or that you and other editors will have constantly archive junk warnings by hand to get them off your pages. Yes, it would be nice if Wikipedia had a clear policy that allowed "good" editors to remove warnings but forced "bad" ones to keep them visible or archived - but I think you'll agree that such a policy is in fact unwritable. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 14:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

What happens when it seems a reliable source has mistakenly taken info from WP?

Brief background: The other day I came across an interesting issue at the Sacha Baron Cohen article. It seems that an act of vandalism in April 2006 led to a claim that his mother is of Iranian descent being added to the article (the same IP overtly vandalised another article 10 mins later). There's strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that a couple of reliable sources - 'The Guardian' and Yahoo Movies Bios - picked up this factoid from WP.

Since then several editors have tried to remove the factoid from the article, but it now appears verifiable, and the editor opposed to the removal can quite correctly cite WP:RS and WP:V as supporting inclusion.

I wrote more extensively about this, including my (circumstantial) evidence for believing that WP was incorrectly used as a source, on the talk page for the article.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this situation? As WP's visibility increases this kind of situation is likely to be an increasing danger when professionals are sloppy and use WP as an uncited source.

(I don't have any stake in whether the factoid is included or not, I just don't want to see WP's credibility undermined if it comes to light that this factoid is an incorrect rumour started by WP that has now spread quite widely).

SeanLegassick 08:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

If everybody would give the exact source for all information, such circular references would be impossible. Alithien 16:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Well I guess what you have defined as a "reliable source" is no longer reliable. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 10:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Sure, I hear you. As I mention in the talk page linked above, The Guardian isn't nicknamed "The Grauniad" in the UK for nothing. But it wouldn't be the only newspaper to publish mistakes, and I really don't see it as being viable to start arguing that The Guardian shouldn't be cited as a reliable source. A cursory search reveals 1,160 mentions within WP, most of which are cites.
SeanLegassick 10:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The point of using reliable sources is that a reliable source does fact-checking, takes responsibility for mistakes, etc. If we can prove that a reliable source took something from a Wikipedia article without fact-checking it, then *we've just proven that that source isn't reliable to begin with*. After all, if they don't fact-check Wikipedia references, why do we expect them to have fact checked anything else? Ken Arromdee 11:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Understood, and I should point out that at this stage I cannot prove that The Guardian took this from Wikipedia without fact-checking, although the circumstantial evidence heavily points to it. One editor was going to pursue a response from the Guardian journalist in question, but none has been forthcoming. I suspect that if she did use WP without fact-checking she'd be reluctant to admit it.
On the broader point, there are several well-documented cases of apparently reliable sources failing in their duty.
So I guess I have two questions really:
  • What are the implications for Wikipedia when an otherwise reliable source fails in its fact-checking duty and thus causes Wikipedia to, whilst following WP:V, fail to correctly portray facts?
  • Do we have additional responsibility in such cases if the source of incorrect facts can be reasonably demonstrated to come from Wikipedia vandalism?
In general I agree that the onus here is on the sources themselves to be professional in verifying published information, but I thought this case was interesting in the loop of verifiability that appears to have been created.
Yeah, the problem with Wikipedia becoming more prominent is that mistakes get propagated throughout otherwise reliable sources. I think I read somewhere on the mailing list that [cricinfo.com cricinfo] was now citing information froom Wikipedia. Whereas we'd previously been citing information from them. Something about that relationship no longer works. Trebor 12:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

If a reliable source states a fact, any WP article can use that fact with a reference to the source; no further proof is needed. We are not in the business of second-guessing reliable sources or trying to decide which statements in a reliable source are true and which are not. If you want to claim in an article that a reliable source is wrong, you need to find another reliable source that explicitly says so; personal suspicion is not enough. It This is a straightforward consequence of "verifiability, not truth" and WP:OR.

I am pointing this out because the interpretation I have just given is very important for the sciences. For example, there are lots of cranks who will argue that they "know" that relativity is false, and so the reliable sources on it must be wrong. Or they might "know" that the theory of evolution is false, or that they have created a perpetual-motion machine, or that a famous mathematical theorem is incorrect. The point of WP:OR is that we don't have to prove that reliable sources are correct in order to dispute the arguments of these cranks. CMummert · talk 14:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

In the sciences, maybe, but under these circumstances the applicable rule is WP:IAR. I don't think WP:V should be interpreted to require us to knowingly repeat false information... particularly in the biography of a living person. His descent is a fairly innocuous issue, but that sort of thing-- deliberately repeating information that you know or have grounds to believe is false-- is what "actual malice" means in libel law. DCB4W 14:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
As a side note, I've always taken "verifiability, not truth" to be a rule regarding the inclusion of data, not regarding its inclusion.
I assume you mean 'regarding the inclusion of data, not regarding its exclusion.' here right? I think it's a very pertinent point. Also note that media sources are not peer-reviewed, another difference from the science crank cases... SeanLegassick 19:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
You need to be able to verify information to add it to an article, but there are a host of reasons (see e.g. WP:NOT) to exclude verifiable information, and this is probably another one of them. DCB4W 14:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
CMummert, that's a strange point. We're under no obligation to include any particular bit of information even if it is published in a reliable source. Since otherwise reliable sources do sometimes get things wrong, editorial judgment is needed in individual cases such as this one anyway. According to a strict interpretation of what you posted, I can't write a science article and deliberately exclude a pertinent statement published in a peer-reviewed paper whose scholarship is clearly shoddy, or oppose its inclusion by another editor. Supporting the inclusion of information that we have a reason to believe is false, just to hold a hard line against cranks posting information we know to be false, is an awkward position. Opabinia regalis 02:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
In this case, the appropriate way to phrase the sentence would be "The Guardian newspaper has reported that his mother is of Iranian descent. [footnote]". That is an honest way to attribute a claim that, while possibly inaccurate, has been published by a reliable source. What I find uncomfortable is that the claim that the Guardian is incorrect is not based on any sort of published claim to that effect. In any other situation this second-guessing of published sources would be called original research. CMummert · talk 02:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Putting a personal analysis of a sourced claim in the article is OR. Using the same analysis to defend excluding the claim from the article is not necessarily OR, and may answer better to the description "editorial judgment". Your example is "honest", but unnecessary; if there is good reason to believe a particular claim is false, it would be silly to include it just because it was published in a source that is otherwise considered reliable. Opabinia regalis 06:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you under the assumption that there is a good reason to believe a particular claim is false. In this case, I see no such reason - what I see is just some speculation that it might be false. CMummert · talk 14:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I regard the combination of the various pieces of circumstantial evidence plus a claim to the contrary from someone (consistently and plausibly) claiming to be a family member as 'good reason to believe' that this is false. Certainly not enough evidence to include a 'He is not of Iranian descent' statement (which would obviously be silly anyway) but enough not to mention it, in my opinion. SeanLegassick 15:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Our standards seem to differ. CMummert · talk 15:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Looking at your user page, profession and areas of Wikipedia that you work in I guess it's not surprising that you see my arguments as fluffy. Sourcing pop culture articles in the media is a rather different kettle of fish to citing from peer-reviewed publications in mathematical logic. The criteria for making good editorial judgements are bound to be different. SeanLegassick 15:42, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Has any reliable source been presented that says his mother is not of Iranian descent, or that she is of some other descent? If there is not, but there is a reliable source that says she is, then it seems to me there is no problem with the article saying she is. What I see here is speculation that she is not of Iranian descent together with a reliable source that says she is. I'm not familiar with Cohen at all - what are the grounds for believing the Guardian article is incorrect? CMummert · talk 15:27, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
No, there's no reliable source to say the information is incorrect, and it's even possible that it is correct - although there's someone in the talk page claiming to be his cousin refuting the information (written by an anon Israeli IP so not sufficient for WP:V but enough to cast doubt)
I've written more about the additional circumstantial evidence in the talk page for the article but summarising:
  • The information was originally added to the article on 15 April 2006 by a demonstrable vandal (the same IP overtly vandalised another article 10 mins later)
  • The Guardian article in question appeared sometime later (September 2006) using wording very close to the WP article wording
  • No reliable source can be found for this fact before April 2006, or in fact before September 2006.
  • Several sources have asserted this fact since September 2006 again using very similar wording to both the Wikipedia vandalism and subsequent article in The Guardian.
So whilst there isn't a reliable source to refute the fact (if there was there'd be no real problem and I wouldn't have brought this up here) there is considerable reason to doubt it, and as I've argued in the article's talk page that as there's no necessity to make this claim (that Baron Cohen's mother is of Iranian descent) the doubt is sufficient to exclude it.
There is at least one editor, who on the basis of WP:RS believes the fact can now be included. We could just now punt this to The Guardian and other sources and say that, as mentioned above, our goal is verifiability not truth, but as this information seems to have originated in a piece of Wikipedia vandalism, I'm uncomfortable with that, hence seeking further input here.
SeanLegassick 19:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

WOW... as someone who deals a lot with reliabilty and verification issues, this discussion opens a whole canning factory of worms. Post-facto verification! I know this is only my paranoid imagination at work... but it does give me the shivers. Blueboar 16:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

From a Reliability perspective The Grauniad is not inherently reliable unless it's made clear in the usage that the statement is based on media reporting. Newspapers make mistakes and any contentious point should be corroborated as much as possible. In this case I'd request further independent verification. I've just had a look at Yahoo and given the lack of indication about where it derives its material from then whilst I'd expect a level of reliability you can't assure that.ALR 16:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

There is always a possibility of mistake or fraud. WP is not edited by machines, so it is appropriate to use our judgement if there really seems to be a problem. There can be. Say I am an editor (in the RW sense) of a peer-reviewed journal in a field I also write here on. If I what to introduce an idiosyncratic point, I can write an article & the other editors would arrange the peer review so as to accept the article in almost all cases. I could then cite it here. (I in fact know of one person who does do something very much like this--not primarily aimed at WP, but so she can cite it in other RW peer-reviewed articles).
In any serious controversy there will be RS on both sides, and most such disputes here occur in such cases. There simply is not a division in RS and nonRS. There's a gradation. A small town newspaper talking about a townsman's inventions is not the same as the NYTimes talking about these inventions, which is in turn less than say Scientific American talking about them, which in turn is not quite the same as Nature. The world of possible sources does not fall into 2 neat stacks, any more than the world in general for purposes of N. DGG 23:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Bear in mind that the authority in the field can also make mistakes, and that commonsense sometimes justifies the removal of such information even when there is no alternative source; an example of which is documented at talk:Autogyro in the section Records and Application. This is a case where a non expert knew the published data to be wrong. LessHeard vanU 23:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Assume the presence of a belly-button, even with normally reliable sources. -- Ben 00:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
It becomes harder when reliable sources disagree. Where Pete Doherty went to university was reported by the BBC and The Independent as Oxford, the biography of the band said University College London, and The Sunday Times said Queen Mary's. In these cases, I think editors have to use their best judgement to decide whether the information in the source is correct. Trebor 23:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Or alternatively present the confusion in full, and leave the judgement to the reader. A classic case is that of dates of birth. Sometimes old records are patchy, and no precise date of birth is possible. Sometimes several possibilities are reported, and the correct thing to do is give the possibilities, along with the sources. An example, though not sourced, is found at Isaac Roberts. Two possible birth dates and probably no way of confirming either way. Carcharoth 02:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Dates of birth can be a real problem, yeah, particularly as they're rarely cited. Someone came to the David Arnold article and changed the DOB, saying that they knew David and that it was incorrect. But searching online for it, you had real problems as the DOB from Wikipedia had gone everywhere (this was eventually settled by contacting David himself on his forums). Trebor 09:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
See User talk:Timecode. I tried citing the forum post in the article, as otherwise someone will just change it back again (not all the wrong information that was sent out by Wikipedia will get corrected). Unfortunately it is a flash media site, and I can't work out how to link to the exact post. Don't think it is possible. Can you, um, upload a screenshot? Carcharoth 11:20, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure, my computer has real trouble going on his website at all. The main problem was the IMDB date being wrong, but I've submitted a correction. Trebor 13:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how Wikipedia is in any way responsible for this. A newspaper, or other media outlet, has a responsibility to check their facts with a reliable source, and Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Whether or not journalists do their job properly is not Wikpedia's concern. A reader who spots a mistake in a newspaper (you or anyone else) could obviously write to them to point it out, but it's nothing to do with Wikipedia. Hobson 02:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC) I misunderstood the point being made. Hobson 02:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this still rumbling on? Why not contact the journalist? Mr Stephen 00:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sacha_Baron_Cohen#Request_For_Comment to get both side of the argument. regarding the sacha baron cohen case. Klymen 02:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not solely for the summarising of plot?

There's a discussion on removing the plot summary clause from WP:NOT. It presently reads:

Wider input would be helpful at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#We need to remove the part about plot summaries. Steve block Talk 19:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

So if you remove that clause then you are saying that articles containing only a plot summary should be OK? I think that's a poor thing to recommend. I mean we're going to get articles that have nothing buy a plot summary - and we might decide to let them slide on the grounds that maybe someone will come along and add more 'meat' to the article later - but to actually have policy that (in effect) encourages this style of article seems pretty poor to me. Am I misunderstanding what you are saying here? SteveBaker 20:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I've changed this to say "Raw plot summaries." - it better fits the description in the rest of the entry. Anyone else have any thoughts on this? --Random832(tc) 21:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah. I can't see what reason you could have for wanting to remove that very sensible clause. A plot summary is not a complete article. Can you imagine being assigned to write about Beowulf for a university, and handing in nothing but a summary of the plot? No mention of context, culture, meaning, language, just "he did this, he did this, he did this, the end?" That wouldn't be good enough for publication elsewhere, so why would it be suitable for Wikipedia? zadignose 23:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Like I say, your points would be more usefully made in terms of the wider debate at helpful at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#We need to remove the part about plot summaries. I've copied your comments over. Steve block Talk 08:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I do believe we have a long-standing precedent that articles that only contain a plot summary should be expanded to contain an actual analysis of the plot. Sometimes they are instead merged into a "list of episodes" with brief explanations, e.g. with simple series that do not really have an ongoing plot. WP:FICT and WP:WAF come to mind. >Radiant< 10:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Rewritten IAR page

I thought that the current policy is a little to vague, so I've put together a proposed rewrite of the policy. Thoughts? -- Selmo (talk) 04:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Yuck, looks like rules for IAR to me. SOmeone tries to do this every so often, but we always go back to the understated principle.--Docg 04:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Doc. The whole point of "Ignore All Rules" is that we are here to make a good encyclopedia, and any rule that stops us from doing that should be ignored. I don't agree that it is vague at all, I think that this is a very clearly stated general principle which we can refer to when we see a situation where the rules are counter-productive. It does not need to be broken down with instructions on how to use it, since those very instructions will be ignored if necessary. I like the current version just fine.--Aervanath 09:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Perhaps you should list these under the "see also" section instead. Of course, that'd only encourage people who don't like IAR to add links to the Steamroller clause, Be Timid In Updating Pages, and some Bureaucracy Is Good page. >Radiant< 13:35, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Sometimes I wonder whether the folk that try writing rules for IAR realize the irony in what they're doing. Chris cheese whine 01:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Fundamental changes in our "notability" criteria

A lot of fundamental changes regarding our "notability" criteria are being forced by some editors, and a discussion has sprung up on WP:N, WP:WEB, WP:BIO, and WP:MUSIC regarding the controversial changes. Please come by and offer your input. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It's somewhat unclear looking at the talk pages for those guidelines what, exactly, you are talking about. Is there one specific discussion or diff that you can point us to to show what changes you are looking for input on? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Supposedly based on discussion at WP:N, this change was put across the three I've listed. This diff, applied on the same day to those three, is the controverisial one. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It makes sense, the primary one is directly related to WP:V and WP:NOR (things must be based on reliable published sources), the others are just signs that things should meet that one. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Not really. The problem is the way they've been downgraded. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Hasn't the primary notability criteria always been:

A topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject itself and each other.

It seems like the diff Jeff mentioned is just pointing this out; it doesn't seem like a policy change to me. CMummert · talk 21:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It's never been "primary," nor does it consider itself primary. It's simply shared. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I concur- this is a clarification of notability, not a change. It would only look like a change to someone who never understood notability to begin with. Friday (talk) 21:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, that's not quite fair. Notability has been a fairly fluid concept up until the page finally got tagged as guideline, which was a couple months ago IIRC, and was based on observation of AFD results, not on consensus on the page itself. I think there's room for people who "understand notability to begin with" to argue about precisely why pages get deleted or kept in practice, as well as precisely why the criteria on the notability subpages were included, but if the outcome is the same, the distinction is largely philosophical. TheronJ 16:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
That's a bit insulting, Friday. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes; it's just the wording that has changed for clarity. The guideline's still basically the same. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


I think something is being forgotten here: what is inclusion? Is it having its own article or inclusion in another article? I believe the former is the standard usage, since otherwise WP:N would say that we couldn't include any fact that's not in multiple independent sources, but this doesn't "jive" with the principles behind summary style - breaking off a section when it becomes too long. For example, describing the rolling stock of a large rail system is a valid topic, and is often broken into a separate article because of length concerns. But, especially for a recent company, the only source may be company "propaganda" - no doubt true, but not independent sources. Thus we are cought in a dilemma - do we give "undue weight" to the rolling stock in the system's article, or split off an article that doesn't pass our notability criteria? --NE2 16:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

There is an interesting philosophical question about whether it is possible to form a consensus that certain articles are notable even without two non-trivial independent published references. (The editors might, for example, decide to write an article about every New York Times bestselling book, Fortune 1000 company, or professional baseball player based solely, if necessary, on "trivial" and/or "non-independent" references, provided that those references met WP:V.)
In practice, there's not much distinction between saying (A) "we don't delete articles about Nobel prizewinners because it is almost certain that there are multiple independent published sources, even if they are hard to find for some historical winners," or (B) "we don't delete articles about Nobel prizewinners because Nobel prizewinners are notable, whether or not non-trivial published resources exist, so long as verifiable sources exist of any kind." One the one hand, given that the main notability guideline was adopted over vigorous objection because it reflected actual experiences on AFD, I am not convinced that there is a consensus about whether any individual exception falls into case (A) or case (B). On the other hand, as long as we're not deleting pages that fit one of the consensus sub-criteria, the philosophical question of why we're not deleting them isn't that interesting. TheronJ 16:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand what you're saying. I'm questioning whether we should have guidelines that conflict with summary style practices. New York City Subway rolling stock is an example, though probably not the best (since there may be two independent sources on the subject, and since it doesn't actually cite sources), of an article that covers a subtopic of New York City Subway. --NE2 18:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I have always thought that "inclusion" means that a topic has its own article; a notable topic may have non-notable details that don't deserve their own article but are included in the main article. For example, winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee are not notable on their own, so they don't deserve their own articles, but they can be listed among winners of the spelling bee in its article. The issue is more complex with articles that are split off of long main articles, and I think case-by-case analysis is probably necessary. Sometimes these splits are non-notable POV forks and other times they are reasonable. CMummert · talk 19:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
So we have possible conflicts between this "case-by-case analysis" and the "one-size-fits-all" WP:N guideline. With WP:MUSIC, the obvious case that comes to mind is albums, but it might also relate to members of a band, where we have enough verifiable information for a separate article, but not enough "independent sources", and we are forced to go over the article size "limits" to satisfy WP:N. --NE2 19:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree it is the article size limit, and the prohibition on subpages in the main namespace, that is causing this conflict. Until these are sorted out, there isn't much we can do except use common sense. If somebody writes in an AfD discussion "this should be merged into the main article, except that then the main article would be too long", I hope that this would be taken into account by the closing admin. CMummert · talk 19:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Could we add that to WP:N? --NE2 19:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
  • To resolve one of the questions above, the 2nd sentence in WP:N is: "All topics must meet a minimum threshold of notability in order for an article on that topic to be included in Wikipedia." (Bold text is my emphasis). I understand this to mean that the notability criteria are for determining whether something is notable enough to warrant its own article. So, individual sections of that article still need to be well-sourced, but they don't need to meet the WP:N guideline on their own. If an article is written in summary style, with links to full articles on each of it's sections, then yes, those articles all need to meet WP:N.
  • As for the "central criterion" line in WP:MUSIC, I would keep it, but add text at the end to clarify that: "the criteria below are not proof of notability in and of themselves, just make it more likely that the central criterion can be satisfied with a little research." We want to emphasize that the central criterion is the only one that actually counts. Thoughts?--Aervanath 08:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
    • "If an article is written in summary style, with links to full articles on each of it's sections, then yes, those articles all need to meet WP:N." Looks to me like a reason to ignore WP:N. --NE2 12:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I've commented on some of those discussions mentioned, and I really do no know what can be meant by a fundamental change. There have been quite a number of changes, some aimed at decreasing the number of different criteria, some at making them more complicated. Some that might be called inclusionist, some the opposite, but most differing according to the point under discussion. The actual rules will not be whatever may be written on the N policy page, but what is applied at AfD and Deletion Review, and part of the motivation is trying to decrease what some see as the inconsistency there. Personally, I think that fairness and perceived fairness is part of the reason to have well thought out rules, and that these rules need thorough revision on a continuing basis as new areas open and as problems develop.
It is possible to go entirely on a case-by-case basis,but--looking beyond WP--this requires a very complicated system of multilayered decision-making to avoid inconsistency, and may not achieve it even then. An example outside WP is the US pattern, where the law in different parts of the country is different when different courts of appeal have made different decisions and the supreme court has not yet harmonized them. What corresponds to different courts of appeal in WP is the differing body who might be at AfD on a particular time.
going strictly by fixed rules leads to obvious inequity -- as for required minimum sentences --but also to complicated evasions. By being really clever it is possible to find RS for almost anything, if you go far enough outside the confines of Google. Very few people here have the experience, facilities, or time for the sort of exhaustive search made by, say, professional patent searchers. All real systems of fixed rules have very numerous exceptions. DGG 22:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Sorry to come late to this discussion, but I think there is something in the original point made. I've taken a look at this changeand it does appear to me to make a significant impact on articles about People. Under alternative criteria on WP:Notability (people), we have the professor test, and under the second part of the list that has been separated into secondary criteria by the change under discussion we have Published authors, editors and photographers who received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work and Painters, sculptors, architects, engineers, and other professionals whose work is widely recognized (for better or worse) and who are likely to become a part of the enduring historical record of that field. Now my problem is that people in these categories haven't necessarily had multiple biographies written about them. These people are notable by their work and the whole point about notability is that it is not the same as fame. Someone working in a relatively obscure field could have been completely key to that field, but the field could be one where biographies aren't common. I have written an article about Keith Muckelroy - I don't think you will ever find anyone in Maritime archaeology who disputes the key contribution he made, but there never has been a biography of him. As it happens he passes this new central criterion test, but only because he tragically died young and there were many obituaries. Even without the obituaries, his works are reviewed and are sometimes accompanied by introductions about the author, so the central facts about his life can be supported by objective sources. We can't guarantee that everyone made notable by their contribution to some field of research will die in sufficiently newsworthy and tragic circumstances to generate multiple obituaries. A person or their works may not necessarily be the primary subject of an article - an article could deal with several persons or deal with their work rather than the person - there is plenty of ground between primary subject and a passing mention. Viv Hamilton 13:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Formatting

While this may seem to be a semantic point, I think the Wikimedia Foundation should adopt the CE/BCE format for date rather than AD/BC. My main basis is to preserve NPOV (religious overtones would seem to have no place in a date format).

I also feel that there should be a markup method for metric/Imperial conversion. Any measurement could be submitted with the tag and based on the user's preference the appropriate measurement would be given priority (with the other following it in parentheses). Again, a minor quibble, but something which would be relatively simple to institute and would/should make the content more appropriate for it's audience. 167.1.143.100 18:29, 28 January 2007

I like those ideas! − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 23:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a textbook case where enforcement of a style is not only undesirable, but patetly harmful to the encyclopedia. Any attempt to enforce a specific date style would lead to the same problems attempts at enforcing a given spelling style cause.Circeus 23:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I disagree on the first point. I can live with a fairly common practice for BC/BCE, which is to use whichever date seems more appropriate for the subject matter, and omit the label entirely for AD-only articles-- for instance, the Solomon article is measured in BCE, whereas Augustus is in BC/AD and William the Conquerer and 1066 just use the years without designation (see WP:MOSNUM). (Bizarrely, Jesus uses both labels for reasons that make no sense to me whatsoever, as is the case with all good compromises.) However, I continue to believe that BC/AD has about as much religious significance in 2007 as Thursday, the day of Thor, and that BCE is a pointless affectation. I recognize that it is a fashionable and increasingly common affectation; I just think it's silly. There's no real reason to modify the current manual of style.
With regard to the unit conversion, I don't think it makes a big difference if there is one or not in most articles. (For instance, Orson Welles was 72" tall; the article doesn't suffer for not having that translated into meters.) More information can never hurt, though, and sometimes it will be handy. DCB4W 00:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
The funny thing is that Jesus was actually born before 0, so writing his year of birth as, say, 2 BC seems ridiculous—Jesus was born 2 years before Jesus? − Twas Now <small>( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 10:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
That's obtuse. First of all, there is no year 0 in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Second, the point at which BC ended and AD began was an estimation as the system was created long after Jesus lived. Finally, that Jesus was most likely born before 1 AD has no bearing on the use of the BC/AD system. Jinxmchue 14:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
In fact, by all modern scholarly estimates, Jesus was born no later than 2BC. Anyway, I made no suggestion that it would have any bearing on the use of either system. I think you missed the point of my comment, which was humour: "Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis." − Jack Handey. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 12:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, to clarify, the guideline proposal to limit BC/AD to Christianity related articles failed. The issue of "appropriate" appears to be made on an article by article basis by the involved editors. I think that is how it should be. DCB4W 00:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't fully agree with DCB4W. I think that there does need to be some kind of standard policy on this point. However, I don't agree that AD/BC is necessarily POV. --Aervanath 20:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Wow, I've totally changed my mind! I looked back at the archives of Talk:Jesus, and they've had some huge dust-ups over the AD/CE issue. It's an issue about which many people feel strongly, even though, in my opinion, it's fairly trivial. Trying to force a standardization to one system or the other is probably a can of worms which has been closed for good reason.--Aervanath 22:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I concur!!! Totally!
  1. It doesn't matter as they are numerically equivalent
  2. No matter what you change, somebody is going to see it as an attack
  3. Nothing is clarified by the change - No new information is imparted.
Though for neutrality reasons I prefer CE, this is a sleeping dog best left to lie. --BenBurch 22:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Most people use BC/AD and might not know what BCE/CE means, so there is a good argument for using it on most articles. However, there are many articles where people's religious beliefs might be insulted if BC/AD were used; on such articles, it would be wrong not to use BCE/CE.--Runcorn 22:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Much good info here; Anno Domini --BenBurch 22:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite get the POV argument; the numbers are still Christian-centric, so does it matter what letters you use? Change it to CE/BCE, it's still a numbering system created by Christians based on Christ. So why does it matter which we use? Just go with the original author and leave it at that. --Golbez 14:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not like anybody was looking for a return to Annum Urbis (Dated from the founding of Rome) is it? (Also known expressed as AUC for (ab urbe condita.) --BenBurch 17:34, Dies Veneris xx Januarus MMDCCLX AUC (UTC)

BC/AD has been in use for almost 1500 years. The system pervades almost everything in the Western world. To suddenly change the system with no real reason beyond some wrong-headed ideas of "tolerance" and "neutrality" will cause unnecessary strife and confusion. I also find it odd that many of the people who are against BC/AD because of its supposed bias are often the same ones who argue that the English phrase "in the year of our Lord" in documents like the Constitution is devoid of any religious meaning. That I simply don't get. Jinxmchue 14:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, Jinxie, in the Constitution and all similar documents it *is* devoid of all religious meaning. That is simply how documents were prepared at that time. And that is all such formal documents. I have seen this on deeds and charters from the period, for example, documents that had no intentions other than functional ones. Had the Founding Fathers intended to make a religious statement, they were about the most articulate and careful people I am aware of and could easily have made it totally clear. They would not have left us guessing about it now. --BenBurch 17:28, Dies Veneris xx Januarus MMDCCLX AUC (UTC)
Surely, just as a matter of contextual continuity, changing is at best unnecessary and at worst bad? Given that the numbers are the same (and incidentally, are used without objection in non-Christian countries) to change will do no more than cause confusion in the minds of those people who fail to appreciate the congruence. User:BenBurch, in dating his post from the date of the traditional foundation of Rome, may have a good idea (joke).--Anthony.bradbury 18:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with that. Nothing but confusion and ill-will will come of changing. And I am glad you appreciated the humor! --BenBurch 18:34, Dies Veneris xx Januarus MMDCCLX AUC (UTC)
lol! Okay, so in the Constitution, that phrase "*is* devoid of all religious meaning," but BC/AD are obviously religiously biased everywhere else and must be wiped out in favor of BCE/CE. I gotta tell you, Ben, that I've no doubt that the Founding Fathers used the phrase "in the year of our Lord" with far more piety than you are trying to argue. Jinxmchue 19:21, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I am not arguing that there was no piety in the Founding Fathers. Many of them were religious men. But I am arguing that "in The Year of Our Lord" appeared in dates on all manner of public documents no matter who authored them or for what purpose, and so making some special inference with regard to the Constitution on that basis is at best misguided. The Drafters clearly had their say about religion within the document, and then later within the Bill of Rights. The way the date was expressed just wasn't a part of it! --BenBurch 19:43, Dies Veneris xx Januarus MMDCCLX AUC (UTC)
Then I hope you would apply that same argument to the use of BC/AD. Trying to change BC/AD to BCE/CE because of some perceived religious bias is misguided. When people use BC/AD it's quite clear that they are not making some statement about Christianity. They are simply using a dating system that has been in place for centuries in the Western world. Jinxmchue 04:27, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
But, I just did, Jinxie! See above. While I do think CE is more neutral because there are jewish people and muslim people and many other religions that might find it offensive, and while scholars seem to prefer CE overwhelmingly in archeological papers I have read in recent years, I don't think it needs to be changed. Nor do I think that we need to make the switch in the other direction. Whatever the editors of a particular article agree on is fine by me. --BenBurch 05:51, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions

This Essay has been around for 8 months and is frequently cited on AfD, especially the "I Like It" part. It's cited so much, in fact, that I feel most people feel it is a guideline already. I'd like the community to 1) determine whether we like this as a guideline and 2) build a consensus on exactly what it should say, because people are citing it frequently already. Personally, I like the page and believe it should be a guideline.--CastAStone|(talk) 19:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... WP:POINT? :)
While the ILikeIt argument is certainly being cited, it is also being contested at several venues. I think a consensus, even if it isn't adopted as policy, would be useful.LessHeard vanU 22:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
That's really all I'm asking for. A clear "this should be a guideline" or "these are just some ideas". Or pick and choose what is, if anything, worthy of separating into a guideline. My problem is just that it is being treated as one now when it isnt one, and to me that means its time to determine whether it should or should not be one, and to make that result clear on the page. --CastAStone|(talk) 04:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Leave it as an essay. There is as much good as there is bad in that essay. I would hate to see it become a guideline because there are many portions of it that are arguable, and endorsing it as anything more than an essay would pretty much lend authority and credence to only one side of an argument. Agent 86 23:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
That's right. The reason the essay is cited so often is that most of it is simply common sense - however, some points are still quite contentious, and thus, it should not be the be-all-and-end-all in AfD discussions. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 00:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation page needed?

I came across Mediterranean Sea and it looks to me like it needs a disambiguation page. Comments?--Filll 17:15, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I made one at Mediterranean Sea (disambiguation). It could probably use some clean-up. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 17:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to overrule you ONUnicorn but there's already a Mediterranean (disambiguation) page which is more appropriate imo. I've merged the two dab pages. Pascal.Tesson 17:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Rollback

Can someone explain to me what the "rollback" feature does that means only admins should be allowed to have it? And, how, then, are users allowed to have "undo" or popups or whatever? --Random832(tc) 14:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Rollback reverts an edit and saves the revert with one click. With undo and popups you have to go through an extra step of saving the page separately to confirm that you want to do what you're doing. Also, rollback can be performed directly from a user's Contributions list, you don't have to even be looking at their edit to roll it back. —Angr 14:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
The ability to do it from a user's contribution list without reviewing the edit is the biggest reason that only admins should have it. In that form, it is really only useful for cleaning up spambots, vandalbots and the equivalent. The last POV warrior I went through all the contribs of, about 2 in 10 edits were worth keeping, so rollback would have been a mistake even though most of their edits needed to be removed. For undo and popups, you have to actually load the pages (though we can't make you look at them, we want people to) and thus are fine tools for anyone. GRBerry 15:02, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
But why not allow it from article history? There's, for example, no possible way that "← Blanked the page" can be a legitimate edit, or, even one deserving a better explanation than the rollback summary. How about a compromise - allow to undo without an extra step to save (waste of bandwidth, you've already seen the diff), and to undo from the history for any automatic edit summary (other than creation, which can't be undone, the only edits to get automatically summarized are blanking and replacement, and for replacement you get to see the replaced content so that on the off chance it's legitimate you won't click undo) - I think anything that reduces the amount of time editors have to sit around waiting for a page to load before reverting vandalism can only be a good thing. --Random832(tc) 15:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, "← Blanked the page" can and sometimes is a legitimate edit. Whenever you move a page and its associated talk page it leaves a re-direct. I will sometimes move a page and its talk page to make room for disambiguation. I then replace the redirect at the page with a disambiguation page and blank the talk page. Now that we have the automatic edit summary I figure "← Blanked the page" is as good as anything I could say, so I leave that as my edit summary. It's still a legitimate edit. Another instance involves talk pages created with just vandalism. No need to delete the talk page; so just blank it. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 15:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd rather a talk page without useful comments be deleted than blanked. It's frustrating to see that the link to an article's talk page is blue and then find nothing there. (It's just as frustrating to see that the link to an article's talk page is blue and then find nothing there but a template from some WikiProject that's claimed the article. I really wish we had a separate namespace for metainformation like that.) —Angr 15:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd just as soon every page that's created have its talk page created automatically. If there's no talk page IP editors can't create one. Hence, their voices are effectively silenced until someone creates the talk page. If the talk page is nothing but a redirect left from a page move or vandalism then I'd rather blank it and have a place for discussion than have it deleted and only registered users able to comment. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I wish we had that feature. Can we set it so IPs can create talk pages for pages that already exist? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
They already can, unless it's changed in the last week. An example. —Cryptic 17:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Wow, news to me. Maybe that needs to be better publicised. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the "only registered users can create new pages" only applies for the main namespace. I'm quite sure ips can create any talk page and user pages too. --`/aksha 05:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I just tried the simple experiment of logging out and then seeing if I could start a talk page. I can. —Angr 06:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Userspace autobiographies

Autobiographies are often moved from the mainspace to userspace by administators, either following a speedy deletion or an AfD debate. On one hand, this helps identity the user or his work through the userspace instead of deleting a perfectly good biography page. On the other, autobiographies are about the person himself and not about his Wikipedia activity, thus go against WP:USER as being unrelated to Wikipedia. I think there should be made a clear exception of this, or otherwise such actions should be disallowed. Michaelas10 (Talk) 17:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I often move such pages to userspace. To me, when User:Professor A writes Professor A with content like;

Professor A is a Professor of Middle Eastern History at University of Someplace. He was born in 1978 in Sometown, Someplace. He graduated with honors from Someplace High School in 1996 and got his BA degree from University of Someplace in 2000. He earned his Masters in History in 2003 and is currently working on his doctoral dissertation. His hobbies include playing World of Warcraft, reading Tolstoy, and drinking fine wine. He has been married since 2004 and has one child and another on the way.

That's a perfectly acceptable userpage that tells a lot about what areas we might expect this person to edit in and what sort of activities we might expect him to engage in. It seems like this person was trying to create a userpage and just stuck it in the wrong namespace. I don't see why you would object to the practice of userfying such content. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. I can't really see why this would be a big issue, since the alternative is simply to delete the entries, which would be a bit heavyhanded if the biography was made in good faith. In the end, WP:USER is a guideline, not a hard-and-fast rule, and many prominent editors have autobiographical info about themselves on their userpages. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 22:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Quite. A little autobiographical sketch is perfectly reasonable for a user's userpage, and userfying an autobiography takes some of the BITE out of being told they're not (yet) notable enough for the encyclopedia. I might be inclined to take a somewhat dimmer view of extravagant autobiographical userpages for editors who haven't made any contribution in mainspace, but I'm not going to get worked up over it. The only case that would really bother me is if they're using their userpage to push a product or service—that is, if they're using a user page solely to market something, and they're not contributing to the encyclopedia at all. We can step in (and have done so before) where a user page is essentially just spam. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
As someone guilty of making such a bio article as among my first edits, I am going to jump on the bandwagon and say that such pages pose relatively little threat to Wikipedia once they get moved into namespace. In particular, they provide helpful information in identifying a user's interests, skills, and background. --Thisisbossi 02:35, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
They're pretty harmless and userfying a page is a great way to not bite newbies. If a user stays long enough he'll end up fixing his userpage. If the user doesn't stay, well we waste 3kb and there's really no need to worry. Pascal.Tesson 02:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
As someone who's looked at several hundred of these drive-by userfications, I disagree strenuously. The majority of the ones I've looked at, in my experience, have few, if any, edits to Wikipedia, and seem to look upon Wikipedia as free webspace. Enabling this view strikes me as a Bad Idea. --Calton | Talk 06:45, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Userfied information should stay on the userpage, IFF it's being used to support helpful contributions to the Wikipedia. Once the article's been userfied, it's subject to the same guidelines as any other information on a userpage, viz., WP:USER. Otherwise we're just a free web host. ... discospinster talk 13:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Biography of living persons adminship

Biography of Living Persons Administrators ("BLP Admins") carry out a specialized, narrowly tailored administrative role within Wikipedia. Please see WP:BLPADMIN to offer your thoughts on this proposal. CyberAnth 03:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Question. What would be wrong with WP:FULL? I'm sure you already consider that as an option. Are their other category specific adminships? --ⅮⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅤⅠⅠ 04:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've marked it as rejected because consensus on the talk page seems unanimously against the proposal with the exception of CyberAnth. I don't think further piling-on is necessary. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:43, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I removed the tag for the time being. Only four or five people had commented when the tag was added. Let's give it a little more time before we say it's been rejected by the community. Some good suggestions might come of it. Frise 05:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm... No offense to CyberAnth but I'm not sure any good can come out of this. It's a bad idea that stands against so many things that the Wikipedia community has shown time and again it cares about. It's instruction creep, it's creation of a WikiPolice and it's making adminship a big deal. Pascal.Tesson 05:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and it would seem to encourage a more bureaucratic system of hierarchy, which is the last thing we want. Furthermore, I can't understand what extra powers these "biography admins" will actually have over normal editors. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 06:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I was going to go add the rejected tag again, but I can see there's been a small edit war over it already and I have no desire to become part of it. Seriously though, it's worse than 10-1 against it on the talk page I think and there's no chance in hell this will magically acquire consensus. Grandmasterka 11:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
In the end it probably doesn't matter, as the developers are never going to add this functionality to the wiki - particularly with such a lack of consensus. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 12:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

How to communicate about being a vandal

I was warned that I would be blocked unless I stopped editing/vandalizing the biographical entry for Kirsten Powers. As a neophyte, it is quite possible I did not follow appropriate guidelines. However, I believe the entry has factual errors, i.e., Powers is a "prominent" commentator. Moreover, the entry is written as if it was edited by her publicist.

The editor/adminstrator, zubdub, who said I'd be blocked does not accept messages, so there was no way to contact him or her.

So, how do I edit an unsourced biography for accuracy and bias? 12:23, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Latichever (talk • contribs) 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, starting a biographical article with shamelessly lied tonight violates a number of Wikipedia policies, ie it is a POV, potentially a libel, and unsourced. I would suggest you start editing on subjects you feel less strongly about. --Michael Johnson 01:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Latichever, you can read WP:NPOV, WP:OR, and WP:BIO for some information on the guidelines when writing biographical Wikipedia articles. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 01:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Seeking greater input into Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)

A lot of work has been done on Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) (aka "WP:CORP) lately, the most major change being the merger of Wikipedia:Notability (organizations) (aka WP:ORG) into it. Prior to the merge, WP:CORP was pretty stable as a guideline; WP:ORG was only a proposed guideline. A number of editors are working to synthesize the two; however, given that this is an oft-cited guideline at AfD, it would be nice if more editors took a look at this and added their own $0.02. Hopefully, that will result in a better end-product and will be something used by many that was created by more than a few. Agent 86 22:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Should WP:BK be made a guideline?

Sorry for the cross-posting... There is an ongoing discussion on whether or not the long-standing proposed guideline for the notability of books should be tagged as a guideline. Everyone's input would be really appreciated as past discussions have often involved a handful of editors, making it hard to judge consensus. Pascal.Tesson 16:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Scope

Two incidents have led me to question this recently. First was the addition of a WikiProject Afghanistan banner to Talk:Layla and Majnun and many other pages by STBot. The page is only distantly related to Afghanistan and I think at least 3 other country projects have a better claim to it. Then on Talk:Sari a user removed the Bangladesh WikiProject banner saying "Please, let's not plaster the top with national templates". On that page there are also easily three countries (Indian, Pakistan, Bangladesh) that could easily have their banner. Should one banner take precedence or in such situations where something is widely shared (such as, hats, maybe) should no national project have their banner? I don't particularly care but... it'd be nice to know what people think. gren グレン 17:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

My personal opinion, and only my personal opinion. If a Wikiproject is actively working on maintaining a page, having the banner there is helpful but not required. If a Wikiproject isn't actually working on something, it isn't helpful. I'm not a fan of bots adding project banners; the project team should do it when they get to an article. I'd be more of a fan of bots removing project banners when a project goes inactive. However, project banners should not be understood as national templates ... they are alerts that a group of active editors concerned about a topical area considers this one of the articles in their topical area of interest. This is why I think additions should be by hand - if they aren't interested enough to do the tagging, they aren't really interested in the article. GRBerry 18:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
The banners are useful in performing the assessments utilised for Version 1.0. They can be shrunk, if that helps, see Wikipedia:Talk page templates. See also Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment and Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ. Steve block Talk 19:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

A bit related, what's the best thing for disambiguation pages. I recently removed (and was reverted) a wikiproject tag on a disambiguation page. Talk:Speed (disambiguation). It doesn't really hurt, but it does sometimes seems pointless and clutters up a talk page. Garion96 (talk) 20:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't see why tags like that could possibly be needed on disambiguation pages. In the example you used (Talk:Speed (disambiguation)), the disambiguation page itself has nothing to do with Louisville, it simply links to an article that does - hence, there is no need for Wikiproject Louisville to ever need to work on it, making the tag just a needless source of clutter. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 23:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
WP:COMICS has America's Best Comics (disambiguation) tagged. WP:FILM have a few, Category:Disambig-Class film articles, for example A Christmas Carol (disambiguation). Hope that shows why tags can possibly be needed. Steve block Talk 23:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Clarification of WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:EL in regards to discussion forum posts

It is my reading of those three policies that discussion forum posts are never to be used as sources in an article, ever. No exceptions. They shouldn't even be linked in the external links section. Am I correct? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

On what article do you wish to reference a discussion forum? Forums posts should not be used, because they are almost by definition unreliable sources, where anybody can say anything. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 21:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes they're good sources of information, like a game developer or a writer posting on an official forum about details of their next project or interpretations of their past work. It's like a personal website--personal websites of reliable figures, like known writers or the subject of the article can be used for some info, but the posts of random people are not likely to be reliable. No blanket prohibition, since there are exceptions. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I figured someone would ask for a specific article. Chairman S., I'm not the one wishing to reference forum posts; I'm the one who removed the references to forum posts from an article and am now having to defend that action. You can probably figure out which article by looking at my last, oh, 400 hundred contributions or so, but I'm going to be more generic here. It's an article about a company. When I first found the article it cited no sources except two discussion forums where people were bashing the company. I cleaned up the prose, edited for NPOV, added an infobox, removed the references to the forums, added references to the Secretary of State's office, watchlisted it, and went away. A month or so later someone edited the article to re-add the discussion forums. I removed them and left a note on the talk page about them not be WP:RS and violating the WP:EL policy. The person who added them grumbled, but didn't re-add them. A few weeks later along comes someone who works for the company and starts editing the article. They provided references to WP:RS, but the person who added the links reverted them. I edited from a comparison to re-add the sources in an NPOV manner, and discussed with the company person, who realised that they had a WP:COI and promised not to edit the article any more, but pointed out some errors on the talk page. However, the person who wants to have the discussion forum links in is now in a toot, saying that unless those links are in the article then the article is "basically an ad" for the company and that the reliable sources do nothing more than "repeat sping for the company". This person edits only that article. I've repeatedly told this person that if they can find the criticism in reliable sources it can go in the article; but they keep adding it without sources and they revert me when I add [citation needed] to the criticism. They say I was wrong to remove the links to the discussion forums, and that I am misinterpreting the WP:RS and WP:EL guidelines. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion you are correct to remove these links as per WP:RS#Bulletin boards, wikis and posts to Usenet. However these claims have been published in a newspaper [2] (specifically referencing a blog [3] and one other source) which really should have been what the original poster looked for. Sure it just restates elements of those forum posts verbatim but it's from a reliable source.
No public forums or other means of non-controlled, open and potentially inflammatory or libellous content should be used as a source for a person or company; it wouldn't take me 2 seconds to find a forum posting saying (for example) "microsoft sucks" and it also wouldn't take me more than 2 seconds to find a reliable published mass-media source for the same. I could if I wished even write the post myself and reference it into the article. The source has to be verifiable or more importantly responsible for their actions. Most areas of mass-media and publishing have Codes of Practice and oversight bodies, they are accountable for their actions if they mis-state facts or publish erroneous or otherwise inflammatory items. Books, journals, news media and even large websites are likely to have lawsuits thrown at them like confetti if they printed wildly unfounded statements that could be easily refuted or found to be baseless. Individual small web forums are not. If the comments on a forum are deemed notable enough for inclusion as a cited source, then surely they should be notable enough to have been reported in a WP:RS - Foxhill 22:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much, both for the advice, and for finding that source! You stated more clearly than I could why forums are unreliable sources, and having a reliable source for the criticism will help the article dramatically. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 15:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

See User:Uncle G/On sources and content#Evaluating sources for some tips. Uncle G 19:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes

Do we have a guideline somewhere about infobox content? There seems to be a lot of confusion about what is and isn't appropriate for an infobox (e.g. fair-use images and enormous amounts of information are not appropriate). WP:INFOBOX points to Category:Infobox templates, not to a project-space guideline. —Angr 07:17, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Great timing, Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes is just getting started. (and I nabbed that shortcut too) -- Ned Scott 07:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

What about the future?

What are we going to do in the future about references to websites? Currently there are many websites used as a reference to information in an article. In fifty years most of those websites will be gone (and the information will be left without a reference). Bubba73 (talk), 02:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

All information gone? Says who?++aviper2k7++ 02:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
All information won't be gone, but the reference to that information will be gone, assuming Wikipedia is still around. Then it won't be Wikipedia:Verifiability, for Wikipedia:Citing sources. Bubba73 (talk), 02:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Why would the references be gone? Most new sources archive their articles.++aviper2k7++ 02:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
the website you click on for the reference will no longer be there. The source of the information will not be there. Bubba73 (talk), 02:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, then as time progresses I'm assuming Wikipedia will evolve too and new sources will have to be found, deleted, and added. I'm not that worried about it. Darthgriz98 02:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget about The Wayback Machine. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 02:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

But the links that are in the WP articles will no longer work. For instance, just a few days ago I tried to follow a link to a NASA photograph. The link in the article used to work, but it didn't then. I found the photo somewhere else. Even if other sources are found, that is going to be a lot of work down the road. People die, organizations go out of existance, ISPs shut down, etc. I think we should be worried about so many web pages being used as references, and the references will no longer be easily available. Bubba73 (talk), 03:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Print sources go out of availability also. I live in a city whose public library has a large collection (it is the library of last resort for the state), but even for it the majority of its book holdings aren't available to check out, and a large fraction have to be requested from non-public access and/or offsite storage, which doesn't exactly make it easily available for verification. GRBerry 03:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't make it easy, but it still makes it possible. The true problem with print is that many of the necessary resources are not available except in university libraries. You are fortunate being in one of the few cities that does at least have a research-quality public library. DGG 03:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
You'll appreciate the fact that I am at least 150km away from a university library ;). Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 03:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Eventually, I think Wikipedia is going to have to start keeping archived copies on our servers of whatever pages we referrence. JoshuaZ 03:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
That is what I was going to propose. I'm thinking about the long-term good of WP. who knows if the WayBack site is going to be around in 100 years or 1,000. We are having a little of the problem already. When links go down, most editors simply delete them. Well into the future are editors going to be more diligent and find another source, for something they may be a lot less familiar than current editors? I wouldn't bank on that. Bubba73 (talk), 13:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
If an on-line source disappears, then sooner or later someone will notice this disappearance and will request an updated citation. If it turns out that the only place where the piece of information was to be found was on a no-longer-available website, then I seriously have to question whether that information is still notable or reliable. Surely someone would have repeated the information elsewhere if it was still notable. Note: I am not saying that the information is not notable NOW... but notability is fluid, and in a few years it may fade.
also... did you consider that Wikipedia itself may not be around in 100 or 1000 years? Blueboar 14:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
(what about the future filler) After spending the past few hours photographing GE vacuum tubes of dubious notability with a Tiffen macro lens i'm a little tired and wondering if the maggot dripping zombie is still chasing the clown that might eat me around the imaginary fridge. Being connected to any sort of reality and encyclopedic dependibility kind of goes out the window when all the links go dead. Was anybody there? Was I the only one there watching the maggot dripping zombie chase the clown? Who cares, I like the encyclopedia and would be quite happy to sit in a corner by myself drinking a Coca-cola beverage reading Wikipedia. Even if a clown that might eat me goes by on the page every once in awhile and brings me back to the global warming reality.--John Zdralek 14:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Dominator UAV

Hello, would people with experience in naming conventions for articles please chime in at the Discussion page here: Talk:Dominator UAV. I am flexible on the article name, but I want to ensure people using search engines like "Google" and "Wikipedia" will find it quickly and easily. Thank you Headphonos 16:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Again, I will reiterate that WP:Air is where the aircraft article naming policy is set. Ergo, you should be discussing this there. —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 17:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Television Characters

Is there any policy regarding the treatment of current television characters to whom things are still happening? Sort of like the guidelines for "biographies of living persons." Cranston Lamont 18:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're asking. The treatment how? --Milo H Minderbinder 20:21, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
For instance, information about these characters is often added piecemeal on a week-by-week basis as it happens. There's a big tendancy to put on new stuff using the present tense, which gets awkward as time goes by. Should new additions to these character's stories always be added in past tense, and should that be an official policy in some way? Remembering that there are hundreds of articles like this out there. Cranston Lamont 20:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
For that specific question; check out WP:TENSE. Suprisingly, the advice there is to use the present tense. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah . . . I see where works of fiction are unique in that they are a static world that people should feel themselves immersed in. But I think serial stories like television series are fundamentally different; they have a growing time dimension that novels, etc. lack. In my humble opinion, new material about TV shows should be added in the past tense so that the narrative will continue to make sense after months or years. Cranston Lamont 00:27, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Here is my take on this... as soon as an episode ends the events in that eppisode become something that happend in the past... so ANY reference to a character should be posted in Past tense. Blueboar 16:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I've yet to see a literary style guide that does not recommend use of the so-called "literary present" tense. With writing about fiction, there are two distinct timelines: one for publication history of the fiction and one for the internal chronology within the fiction; we shouldn't conflate the two, even though they often correlate. The consensus developed among Wikipedia editors — at WP:WAF and WP:FICT, among other places — is that articles about work and elements of fiction should strive to treat fiction as a cultural artifact, and not attempt to stray too much "in-universe". Part of this entails recognition that fiction tells a story, no matter what happens in subsequent works. In describing this story, it is implicitly assumed that the point of reference within the fictional chronology moves along with the story. By doing this, it's also easier to handle cases where the fictional universe is rewritten over time through prequels, retcons, and the like. We can — and should — depict how the creators decided to change things over time, but the rewriting doesn't change what original version depicts. — TKD::Talk 15:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Non-admins protection power

feel free to take a look at Wikipedia:Non-admin protection_powers

...huh? EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:49, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Huh, that wouldn't work though, you can't cascade protect a non protected page. You can lock users out of their js files, I believe, so it would work if you semi-protected the page, then cascade protected. Due to a bug, that fully protects pages transcluded there. A vandal recently tried to do something like that. Prodego talk 04:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Coughs up some beans. Yes, though, this is technically impossible as if a sysop full protects a .js page, it locks the user out of it. Also, the semi-protection issue is apparently being fixed so that semi-protected pages cannot be cascading. Cowman109Talk 05:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Stewards can assign individual permissions (without using hacks), though we already have WP:RFPP, so I don't see how this is really necessary. trial adminship looks more realistic to me. -- Selmo (talk) 05:07, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Stewards can not assign individual permissions. Prodego talk 05:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

My mistake. I forgot that. -- Selmo (talk) 05:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
They do assign several single permissions though, such as oversight(actually 2 permissions) and checkuser, so that is what you were probably thinking of. One line of code would create a new 'protect' permission stewards could assign though, so it wouldn't be a huge deal to add something like this. Prodego talk 05:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

This makes no sense to me. The whole point of the adminship process being difficult is so that the community can judge whether the editor is trustworthy or not. It creates far too much hassle to give protection powers to pretty much everyone, and then revoke them when the tools are abused. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 05:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. There is a reason why the populace at large don't have access to page protection. Chris cheese whine 05:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I mean it wouldn't be hard on a technical level. I agree that this is not a great idea, especially since protection should be the second most rarely used admin ability, right after range blocking. Prodego talk 05:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. We should want to keep page protection to a minimum - not encourage it. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 06:49, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
In that case, I'm going to tag that as {{rejected}}. I would have said WP:SNOW, but on re-reading it, I think the proverbial snowball actually stands a far better chance of success than this. Chris cheese whine 07:07, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Note: This also works (may be part of the 'bug') if no protection is applied to the page other than move protection + cascade. — xaosflux Talk 07:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

People need instructions for accessing images from Commons

I wanted to use some images from Commons on my user page. However, I couldn't figure it out. Then I added the image to the page thinking it wouldn't work. But it did. Could a note be added somewhere that tells users they can treat images on Commons as though they were local? Putting Commons in front of the "Image:" just turns the image into a link. You can't turn it around. Will (Talk - contribs) 02:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Commons explains how to insert images from Commons. Chairman S. Talk Contribs 07:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Then given my experience, perhaps those instructions need to be more visible. Perhaps if each media or image page at Commons included a brief comment telling how to access the file, that would help. Will (Talk - contribs) 08:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

When is religion important...

Hello...

Where can I find policy on when it is important to list religious affiliation or lack thereof in a biographical article?

For instance...if an article is about a celebrity and their religion or lack there of is not part of their public persona, do we list their religion or just not put it in? KsprayDad 18:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I seem to remember a discussion about this recently; but I don't know if there's a policy or anything. I would say that, if there are sources that discuss their religion or lack thereof then it probably is part of their public persona and worth mentioning in the article. On the other hand, if there are not reliable sources that mention it, then we should not mention it anyway. My 2 cents. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
This issue isn't significantly different from political partisanship. Knowing which party Clint Eastwood or Ronald Reagan belong/ed to is significant because they are/were very active in politics. If the celebrity's work in their field is affected by their religion, it needs to be mentioned. If the celebrity's participation in religion is itself notable, it needs to be mentioned (the test I have in mind is the primary notabiltiy criteria, but evaluating only sources primarily about their participation in religion). If it is very difficult to verify religious affiliation, it almost definitely should not be mentioned. In between, it is an editorial judgement call, with an eye on WP:BLP. GRBerry 03:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Notable roles

The subject of the "notable roles" of actor/actress articles is cropping up in several areas of Wikipedia, and it revolves around the question of "which roles of the actor in question are actually notable enough for inclusion in their infoboxes?" Some argue that this is strictly POV while others (including myself) argue that a role's notability can be gauged with reference to reliable sources such as the number of awards won by the actor for a particular role, repeated references as "hits" in media sources, and similar methods to gain a reliable indicator of notability. If the "POV-argumentators" continue to insist (unreasonably IMO) that 'notable roles' are strictly a matter of personal opinion (POV) then this may require the removal of "notable roles" from the Actor Infobox Template. Opinions are requested, please. To gain further insight into the polemics of this issue, please take the time to quickly read through Talk:Shilpa_Shetty#Notable_roles and WT:INCINE#Notable_roles. Ekantik talk 05:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I've said it before and I"ll say it again. 'Notable' is POV. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
All respects but, this doesn't help to resolve the problem. Ekantik talk 23:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Notable roles may not win awards, the film/play may not have been good other than the subjects contribution or it was simply up against a superior/more popular choice (Paul Newman in "The Verdict"?), or it may have come too early in the career of the subject to garner industry notice at the time; in retrospect a role may be realised as being notable. Perhaps an authority like Halliwell should be referenced, their synopsis generally go for quality over an artists career. LessHeard vanU 01:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Good point, thank you, that was one of my suggestions too vis-a-vis consulting some kind of authority (or reliable source) to determine a particular actor's notable roles. Ekantik talk 05:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Another thought - figuring out which roles are significant for the career is easier in retrospect. Google testing will tend to produce the most recent roles, regardless of career significance. Look for sources that look back at a career, rather than focus on current projects, and see which they highlight as most important or spend time dwelling on. GRBerry 03:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Proper procedure to follow if you cannot reach consensus due to non-participation?

Several times now I've posted a proposed change on a talk page, only to have it completely ignored. I would appreciate some input on what the proper behavior in this instance is. Normally I would just be bold and assume no objections, but on a policy or guideline page, this can cause some heat, since it's obvious that I haven't "built consensus". Unfortunately, this seems to be a Catch-22, since no one else seemed to want to participate in the discussion to help build the consensus in the first place. Thanks in advance for your comments. --Aervanath 07:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

After looking at the policies and guidelines, I guess the best thing to do in this case would just be to go ahead and edit. Then, if someone reverts, we can start a discussion and come to a consensus. So, yeah...never mind. :)--Aervanath 08:29, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Move up one chair. Wjhonson 08:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

We have something for that: Bold-revert-discuss. Page does need tidying. (Like many pages do) --Kim Bruning 08:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

That is a great essay. I love it. I will take it home and make it my pet. Woof. (I'm not a cat person, sorry.) :-D (Actually, I really mean that. That's a very helpful essay. Thank you.)--Aervanath 08:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
You know, if the problem is lack of attention, not mentioning the name of the page is a great way to keep it from getting more attention. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I was just asking in a general sense, not talking about a specific article. If it comes up again, I know what to do now.--Aervanath 03:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Pre-emptive semi-protection

I am aware that pre-emptive protection or semi-protection is currently against Wikipedia policy. I would like to propose that, with apprpriate safeguards, this policy be changed under certain circumstances.

The article Auschwitz concentration camp is a major article, although not a featured one, and deals with a subject having, for many people, a very highly emotional content. It also, for some reason, is a major target for vandalism. I have seen it hit, on occasion, four or five times a day, nearly always by non-account-holders, and at least one hit per day is expected. The edits are, of course, mindless and/or childish and/or obscene and/or offensive, and must cause very significant distress to editors whose families were caught up in the Holocaust.

Devolve the decision to a bureaucrat, or a steward, or Jimbo himself if you like, but I would like there to be a procedure in place whereby pages of this type, vandalised in a way which causes emotional distress to other editors, can be permanently semi-protected. --Anthony.bradbury 17:30, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think this is reasonable. Of course, "appropriate safeguards" and "certain circumstances" are the keywords here and both would have to be explicited more formally before I wholly support such a change. Articles which, by nature, are the subject of extremely offensive vandalism (Nigger is another example that comes to mind) would benefit from such a measure. Vandalism is of course quickly reverted but every now and then some user will see the Auschwitz page replaced by "Jews burn" and the damage done is probably much greater than when a user wants to read on George Bush and sees it replaced by "I hope this guy dies". Pascal.Tesson 17:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you - that is exactly my point. I did not take the liberty of stipulating which safeguards or circumstances were appropriate; it seemed to me that, if the principle were approved, then these factors may emerge in the discussion. If you look back in the article's edit history you will find edits which are much more upsetting than the example which User:Pascal.Tesson quotes.--Anthony.bradbury 17:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Why do you think that the current request for protection process is insufficient? --Aervanath 18:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Because the current policies of protection and semi-protection do not encourage semi-protection as a preemptive tool against occasional vandalism. The argument being made here is that while the semi-protection policy makes perfect sense in most cases, vandalism on certain pages tends to be so very deeply offensive that permanent semi-protection should be considered as an option. Pascal.Tesson 00:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
While I'm sympathetic to your plight, but pages on sensitive subjects aren't the only ones that seem to be vandal magnets. Aircraft gets as much vandalism as you quote for Auschwitz concentration camp. (In fact, I'm surprised you aren't getting hit worse.) I'm not sure how a general rule can be devised that will govern when to use or not use permanent semi-protection if the goal is simply to reduce vandalism. Askari Mark (Talk) 01:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
As I understand it, the problem that Anthony.bradbury and Pascal.Tesson are trying to remedy here is not that pages like Auschwitz concentration camp and Nigger are "vandal magnets", necessarily, but when they are vandalized, the vandalism that they receive is extremely offensive. Whereas a page like President of the United States is frequently vandalized, the graffiti there is more likely to be something like "BUSH IS DUM" or something that people are not emotionally sensitive to. Or, similarly, the horde of "reality is a commodity" vandals incited by the Colbert Report yesterday. While that kind of vandalism is annoying, it doesn't provoke a strong emotional reaction, beyond the "damn it, now I've got to revert it again" sort. Whereas with pages like Auschwitz concentration camp and Nigger, the vandals there are more likely to insert racially charged and highly offensive language into the article. Therefore, Anthony.bradbury and Pascal.Tesson feel that those pages should be "pre-emptively" protected or semi-protected, to prevent this sort of attack, even when the pages are not necessarily vandalized often.

Does that sound like a fair re-statement of what you guys are trying to say? (I'm sorry to be so wordy, but at first I had the same mis-understanding that Askari Mark had. I just want to make sure I'm clear on what you guys are saying before I continue in the discussion.)--Aervanath 02:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly my point. I would suggest that readers or editors who have lost family members in the Holocaust could become deeply upset on finding some of the vandalism edits (check thje page history) whch frequently appear there. I have requested, and obtained, temporary semi-protection, but the problem is ongoing and long-standing.--Anthony.bradbury 12:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Yup. I do not doubt that Aircraft can be the target of much vandalism. However let's compare the last two examples of vandalism on that article (here and here) to the last two on the Auschwitz article (here and here). I believe we can all agree that the latter are extremely offensive and potentially much more damaging to Wikipedia's reputation because they will tend to stick into people's minds. I don't think it's unreasonable to guard against deeply offensive vandalism. Pascal.Tesson 15:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

In that case, I believe that the term "pre-emptive" is possibly misleading in this case. Pre-emptive means protecting a page before it has been vandalized at all. I do not support that. I think that protection should always be after-the-fact. However, I agree that in this case it doesn't need to be frequent vandalism. What I would support is having a standard for permanent semi-protection on pages with a history of highly-offensive or racially-charged vandalism. Therefore, I propose that the following language (or something similar) be added to WP:SEMI:

When an article has a history of semi-frequent highly-offensive or racially-charged vandilism, it is considered appropriate to indefinitely semi-protect that page.

Comments?--Aervanath 16:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I would accept this absolutely.--Anthony.bradbury 23:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, this is exactly what Anthony and I have been proposing. And it is pre-emptive in the sense that it's not aimed at protecting the page from on-going vandalism. "Pre-emptive" does not mean before a page has been vandalized at all as you seem to think. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find any non-stub article on Wikipedia that has never been vandalized. Pre-emptive means that the protection acts on perceived future incidents rather than current incidents. Pascal.Tesson 00:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see your point. I was thinking of "pre-emptive" in a more general sense, like the military would say "pre-emptive strike" to mean attacking first before the enemy has a chance to attack. Anyway, we'll leave that proposal up here for a few days, see if there are any more comments. If there aren't, then into policy it goes.--Aervanath 02:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I understand more clearly now. I think one of the conditions you should use is that the vandalism is more or less constant. On Aircraft, it comes in waves (and usually when the kids get their school lunch break it seems). That sets a useful boundary condition that may make it more acceptable to consensus. Askari Mark (Talk) 03:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
So it is time to move this discussion to the talk page of the protection policy, to work on getting consensus there, and then change the policy? -- John Broughton (☎☎) 04:29, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Not quite yet, John, since I don't quite understand Askari's last comment. Askari, when you say "one of the conditions you should use is that the vandalism is more or less constant", do you mean that this should be a requirement for protection under our new rule? Because that is not what we are trying to accomplish with this rule change. What we are trying to say is that some articles don't necessarily get vandalized a lot, or constantly. But the vandalism that happens at these articles is so offensive that it warrants indefinite semi-protection. If we make "constant vandalism" a requirement, then some of the articles we are trying to protect won't get protected. Do you see the difference? Or have I mis-understood your point?--Aervanath 06:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Like others, I'm sympathetic to what you're trying to do here, but I don't think pre-emptive fences around articles are the answer. Please trust the Wikipedia soft security method -- just try to make sure the most sensitive articles are on the watchlists of enough sensible people to ensure that any vandalism is reverted within minutes (as it looks like it usually is). Believe me, I know that reverting vandalism is frustrating, repetitive, and occasionally disturbing -- I have over three thousand articles on my watchlist, and make vandalism reverts daily -- but I really believe that it works better to leave most articles open and clean up afterwards. (For a somewhat-related topic, see Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection.)

I think of it as living next door to a public park: beautiful view, lovely birdsong, happy kids... and inevitable daily piles of dog feces, as my canine-loving and manners-impaired neighbors enjoy the park as well. Do I wish that they'd clean up after themselves (not vandalize)? Of course. Do we post signs asking them to do so (leave messages and warnings on talk pages)? Of course. Do I try to ban them and their dogs from the park (protect articles)? Of course not, unless they're doing something worthy of calling in the cops (need banning). Of course, in Wikipedia, you can clean up the crap with a single click, and it doesn't even stink!

I know it seems like there ought to be a way to reach the end of vandalism, to stop it once and for all, and not ever have to revert again. I found, though, that I was much happier once I accepted that it's not possible -- you can't protect every article, and you can't teach the vandals as every day you're dealing with new ones. Reverting is just the (relatively low) price of having an open system that works so well. — Catherine\talk 19:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

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