Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 111

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About incriminating someone by mimicking a sockpuppet of them[edit]

That might have happened on Chinese Wikipedia, where an editor got his ban prolonged for using sockpuppet to avoid ban, and he later complained that someone might created that sockpuppet from a VPN which he shared with others. I think this behavior is quite noteworthy, because it seems easy to carry out and almost free of costs-- You can just go to some public computer and do edits that looks like that user (For example, if he is banned, just repeat what makes him get banned). The differences in IP and User agent could pose doubt, but sometimes people reveal their location and what user agent they use on user pages or otherwise, making it possible to pick a location near that user. Even if you don't manage to mimic those features, chances are administrators would still think it is plausible that this user has gone to this location to avoid detection. After all, are there policies about dealing with such issues? Mainly, the user would complain about someone mimicking him/her, but how do we know if that complaint is genuine?--朝鲜的轮子 (talk) 06:02, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I believe (but correct me if I am wrong) that on enwp most sockpuppets are blocked by the WP:DUCK test without any technical analysis. So, if someone is clever at impersonating someone else and other folks are gullible, there may indeed be sanctions against the wrong person. Does anyone know if such a thing has ever been detected subsequently? Thincat (talk) 23:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Look like edit pattern is more important. I noticed in Wikipedia:CheckUser#Guide_to_checkusers "An editing pattern match is the important thing; the IP match is really just extra evidence (or not).", which may favor the imposters. From my observations of that case on Chinese wp, 33 edits within 3-4 days(18 of those may relate to previous conflicts)can result in Checkuser saying "Likely from editing pattern"(just like DUCK).
Plus, What is common treatment for sock masters on enwp? Will you just get your ban prolonged from 1 month to 1 year because of a suspected sockpuppet with 33 edits within 3-4 days?--朝鲜的轮子 (talk) 01:47, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I'd take what this user said with a very large pinch of salt. It's the standard "it wasn't me" defense. It is far from impossible that this has happened; but then again, Wikipedia blocks several VPNs and their IP addresses - only usually allowing the ones through that maintain the computer's default IP. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:32, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I guess that kind of complaint is just solved like other problems without a clear policy, we'll just debate until it's quiet... Wikipedia is not a legal system, so I think we shouldn't bug with rigid proof of something (for example, "I can prove I am out of internet/at a location different from where and when this puppet is operated").
Besides, I had a minor question about privacy: can a user accused of using sockpuppets get their own CU data? That might help them prove that they weren't using that IP at that time.(and also help them fabricate "proofs" that they aren't there?)--chao xian de lun zi (talk) 14:13, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
An accused user can't even ask for an innocence check - that is, for the CU to check the accused user and the accused sockpuppets, and see if they appear to be the same user. An accused user, armed with just his/her own data, couldn't do any better. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:49, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Abuse response/Guidelines no longer marked as a guideline[edit]

Wikipedia:Abuse response/Guidelines (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Nominations for the 2013 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are open[edit]

Nominations for the 2013 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are officially open. The nomination period runs from Sunday, 10 November at 00:01 (UTC) until Tuesday, 19 November at 23:59 (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Candidates then create a candidate page following the instructions there. 64.40.54.211 (talk) 06:50, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to re-engage the community[edit]

I was reading MIT technology review Vol. 116 No. 6. It details the diminishing community and quality of Wikipedia. One thing it mentioned specifically was: "the loose collective [of editors] that operate a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers" (p.52).

Having seen some of the talk pages about articles, I have to agree.

So my proposal is this: The bureaucracy is ran top down, and a number of the long term administrators and senior editors have become so engrained in the culture of Wikipedia and rule, yes, rule is the correct term, with a style that deters newcomers. Jimmy Wales should revoke all administrator privileges from every administrator.

The slate would be cleaned, the trenches that were dug during the nascent Wikipedia experiment would be filled in, and people who actually care about the site in the present time, not the past, would be reinvigorated. An additional benefit would be to eliminate the Fiefdom-esque behavior of some of the administrators who rule over Wikipedia. When everyone is equal again, your advancement depends on your merits, nothing more.

So there is my proposal. I estimate it has precisely 100% chance of going nowhere, but it sure would be interesting to shake things up again here and breathe new life into the system.

96.255.149.31 (talk) 00:13, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

If think that´s a reasonable estimate, starting with that Jimmy Wales can´t do that, and if he tried, he would (for the good reason of acting like a dictator) be metaphorically hung, drawn, and quarted. Well, probably metaphorically. I´ll agree it´s probably harder to get new stuff into Wikipedia nowadays. Much is already here in some form, and Wikipedia has become more selective as to what is reasonable content. And that is part of what makes Wikipedia valuable to readers, in my opinion. I´ve seen examples in other discussions that indicates that the argument that Wikipedia is worse than it was has been around for a long time. I´ve come to belive that part of this is that Wikipedia (to an editor) becomes a bit like the hobby or long-running tv-show that you used to like. You get fed up after awhile, possibly regaining interest later. Or not.
The diminishing quality argument interests me. What areas in Wikipedia mainspace did the magazine identify as being worse now compared to for example 2, 4, or 8 years ago, and how did they determine that? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
The Foundation wouldn't allow it for a start - not just because vandalism would destroy a huge number of articles once vandals knew they wouldn't be blocked, the PR firms would have a field day, libel and copyright violations would be rife, and Wikipedia would become junkapedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talkcontribs) 16:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Heavy Oppose There's no scenario which every administrator is desysopped and then chaos would not immediately follow. KonveyorBelt 17:16, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia bureaucracy is similar to the US Congress right now. The approval rating for Congress in the US is something like 10%. But when you ask people about their congressman approval jumps to 50%. Lots of people think Wikipedia is too bureaucratic. But if you start asking them if they support specific rules you're going to get lots of positive answers. So if we started over in terms of policies and processes, you'd probably end up with something substantially similar to what we have now - rules for what gets included, processes for getting rid of bad content, rules for dealing with problem users, and processes to give users extra rights. Certain things might be improved (though if you exclude experienced users and all their institutional knowledge of what has already been tried, this is less likely), but they'd serve the same purposes.
I hope you will do more research than than one often-inaccurate, overly dramatized article. In general, Wikipedia is a much, much looser collective than that indicates. The real problem preventing structural improvement is not some group of entrenched users trying to "rule" things their way. The real problem is simply inertia. Any major change requires a huge referendum and the longer that process takes, the more the result trends toward "no consensus, continue with the status quo."
There are numerous articles to work on here that are not "ruled" by anyone. I recently started improving an article related to my specialty that hadn't seen any substantial human edits since 2009. There are over 1.8 million articles that haven't been edited at all in at least 6 months. Mr.Z-man 18:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
You lost me at The bureaucracy is ran[sic] top down. I'm trying to think of another large organization that is less top down than this one, and I'm not coming up with any. Do you use the term differently than usual?--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:41, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
This is the article: [1] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:06, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I joined Wikipedia less than a year ago, and I must say that 95% of the editors and 100% of the admins with whom I have interacted have been supportive and helpful. While the some of the other 5% may have been somewhat patronizing and/or dismissive, no one except one brand new user has been rude or bossy. A lot of the talk pages that I read are about people discussing changes that will make Wikipedia easier to use or more friendly, and I have already seen several such changes take place. I guess I am not seeing a problem here. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I have just finished my first year of active editing, and my experiences have been mixed, with the problems not coming from top-down bureaucracy. I am sure there is no "typical" experience given the size of WP and the degree of interest (or disinterest) in various topics. My interests are very specific and narrow; which has had the unexpected result of my being the major contributor to several articles, adding the major content with only wordsmithing and grammar correction by others. There are general articles in The Arts that could use some attention, but I am not prepared to tackle them because I cannot improve them alone, and there does not appear to be any sustained interest. Or perhaps the online culture discourages most potential editors in the arts and humanities. FriendlyFred (talk) 04:29, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm still waiting for an example of articles whose quality has deteriorated in comparison with a few years ago. Speaking as someone who started editing near the begining, article content is definitely better than it was in, say, 2002. Or 2003, 2004 & I'm betting 2005-2007. I suspect what's happening is that people are looking beyond the usual, high-trafficked articles at the ones on more esoteric subjects & discovering that they're not as good. (I'm encountering that, & fixing those I can.) As for the problem of "a crushing bureaucracy", I figure that's just another way of saying "there are a lot of hostile editors on Wikipedia who revert edits". Which is true, & sometimes they're right in reverting the edit. And every editor encounters them. And lastly, I bet if there was a sweeping de-sysopping & re-authorizing of Admins, assuming that no vandals, PR flacks or POV-pushers exploited the ensuing chaos (as Dougweller points out above), I bet Wikipedia would end up with less than half the Admins needed to perform the administrative chores that keep it running--which would leave things worse off. -- llywrch (talk) 20:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Anybody is free to start up a new encyclopedia based on Mediawiki, 96.255.149.31. Be our guest. Just about all your assertions in your proposal are questionable or nearsighted. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:59, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Block Vandals After 3 Warnings, Not 4[edit]

Currently, vandals must be given 4 warnings before they can be blocked from editing. However, I feel it would be much more effective to block them after 3 warnings. After being warned 3 times, a vandal making a 4th edit will be doing it fully aware that they are causing disruption and I don't see how a 4th warning should be needed. Users edit warring are blocked after 1 warning and 3 reverts - why can't we make it similar for vandals (whose effects are arguably worse than edit wars). I would propose we do this by replacing the level 2 warning with level 3 and the current level 3 with level 4. That way, users still receive a gentle warning the first time they vandalize and are still warned twice that they will be blocked if they continue. However, it will make it easier to remove editors who only want to vandalize the site. Oddbodz - (Talk) (Contribs) 20:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

4 warnings then block is not actually a rule, more of a general guideline with the 3rd being stern and the 4th being "this is your last warning". But there is nothing to stop a vandal being blocked (or reported to AIV) after 3, 2, 1 or even no warnings. Sometimes a vandal is clearly not here for any other purpose, so there is no reason to mess about waiting for them to be warned 4 times.--Jac16888 Talk 20:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
It is not a "MUST" it is guideline. Sometimes they get blocked after one warning, sometimes they never get blocked. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 20:21, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
As per the others, there's no such requirement that vandals receive four warnings before being blocked. FWIW, my understanding of the current warning system is 1- Good Faith, 2 - No Faith, 3- Bad Faith, 4- Bad Faith/Final. I'm quite content to make my first warning a 3 if it's unambiguous vandalism. DonIago (talk) 20:24, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Block them after a single warning. Leaky Caldron 20:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Speaking as an abusive admin I would say you've a bit overcautious there Leaky, I've often blocked before they make an edit, just in case--Jac16888 Talk 20:29, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree vandals should be blocked sooner. Vandals know they're vandalizing. If it's apparent straight away that the editor isn't here to edit, it would be best to just block them as soon as they've made their intentions known. And if it is a library or school IP, let their admins know. They know who has logged in and can maybe help stop it, or slow it down, at their end. Malke 2010 (talk) 15:38, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

user with older accounts with prior misconducts. How do we know?[edit]

NOT HERE:

This is clearly not a policy discussion but rather a discussion of a particular user. Suggest dispute resolution or a user conduct RFC. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:38, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

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

  1. Recently I posed in wp:ae#Pluto2012 concerning user:Pluto2012 conduct. Had I known that one of his previous accounts* was probably blocked**, I could have replied positively for the question of his prior conduct problems. Is there a method to know a user prior misconducts under his other accounts?
  2. An administrator user:Zero0000 wrote: There are valid reasons for suppressing the earlier names of that user which you don't know about. I will block you if you expose that again. It reminds me the Stalin era. Is it true?

1*The user:Pluto2012 old names are user:Ceedjee, user:Noisetier, and more.

2**see [2] , [3]. Ykantor (talk)

Ok, you win. You are indeed a horrible editor. (Casual readers need not mind this allusion to a different conversation.) Neither of the abandoned accounts Noisetier and Ceedjee are blocked. Moreover, Pluto even admitted to being Ceedjee in his first edit. Now go away and read Wikipedia:Clean start. Zerotalk 15:32, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
if this is correct: "Prior to "retiring" and asking to be blocked, the user was warned he needs to leave the topic area, or be blocked. If he wants to be unblocked he needs to request it, and agree to leave the topic area." than Pluto should not edit the Arab- Israeli conflict articles. So why he is editing (and cheating etc.) those articles? ???? Ykantor (talk) 19:33, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

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


Non-consensus without valid counter-points[edit]

NOT THE RIGHT VENUE, NEVER THE RIGHT VENUE:

Content Dispute. Take it elsewhere rather than forumshopping. KonveyorBelt 04:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

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

I realise that Wikipedia asks for consensus but can someone really just sit there and say they disagree without offering valid counter-points or even debating the issue? The site seems to be full of kids who can't debate an issue and just sit there shaking their head.Z07x10 (talk) 09:44, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes but certainly been discussion, note the user has tried gaining a consensus for his point on the article talk page (more than once including an RFC and a bit of an edit war), Requests for mediation, ArbCom, DRN and has so far failed to gain support for his edit. Perhaps the question is how many times can a user raise the same point on different boards before it gets disruptive. MilborneOne (talk) 10:06, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Plus, three posts here to Village Pump. Man this is getting old. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:36, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
It's getting old because you have no valid counter-points and hate looking stupid. What you regard as 'secondary sources' are reprints of primary source information as explained on the sources article page, which I've linked for you several times. If consensus is simply a vote then I recommend that the consensus article page be edited to clearly state that so people don't waste their damn time with reasoned debate.Z07x10 (talk) 15:30, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
You think I look stupid do you? Please read WP:NPA. Dbrodbeck (talk) 19:20, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Counter-points have been raised in discussions on various forums, yet Z07x10 won't accept any result other than that desired by him. He refuses to accept consensus and so forum-shops his view, with the result that this becomes consensus by attrition as most editors simply grow tired of arguing with him. It is a minor point and Z07x10 should simply accept that he doesn't have consensus and move on and make useful contributions elsewhere Mztourist (talk) 04:16, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

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


question about WP:MOS[edit]

I'm interested in changing policy/guideline so that Wikipedia uses a capital D when referring to Deaf culture and the Deaf community. At this time, I'm looking for help with how I can best present arguments that will provide a productive discussion. What are several arguments I can make that are consistent with policy/guidelines in this area? What are the policy/guidelines that would need to be changed to make this happen? Thanks. Malke 2010 (talk) 15:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Here are a few sources that use the capital D in that context:
I think it's not really an MOS issue. MOS:CAPS is clear that we avoid unnecessary capitalization. But when there is a particular community or culture referred to by a proper name we capitalize it. So you just need to clarify when that's the case. Do that not by pointing at the various random uses, but rather at authoritative sources that explain the usage, such as the NAD who quote a book explaining "We use the lowercase deaf when referring to the audiological condition of not hearing, and the uppercase Deaf when referring to a particular group of deaf people who share a language – American Sign Language (ASL) – and a culture. The members of this group have inherited their sign language, use it as a primary means of communication among themselves, and hold a set of beliefs about themselves and their connection to the larger society. We distinguish them from, for example, those who find themselves losing their hearing because of illness, trauma or age; although these people share the condition of not hearing, they do not have access to the knowledge, beliefs, and practices that make up the culture of Deaf people." This is kind of distinction that the capitalization is good for, I think. Dicklyon (talk) 17:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Frankly I would be opposed to such a change unless three was clear evidence from reliable sources showing that such usage was not merely prevalent but dominant in either general or academic sources. Nationalities and ethnicities derived from or considered as comparable to nationalities should be capitalized, other groups generally should not in my view. DES (talk) 17:53, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
@Dicklyon:, I wasn't sure if I could use NAD.org because I didn't know if it would be considered as a primary source. This is why I included those random sources from the established entities like universities, state health depts., etc. The Penn State link has a definiiton I thought would be helpful. Malke 2010 (talk) 18:46, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Bear in mind the differences in practice. For example, I see that the British Deaf Association uses capitalisation for both words eg Deaf Community, the Royal Association for Deaf people capitalises Deaf but not people, Action on Hearing Loss (which as the Royal National Institute for the Deaf is the senior UK charity) appears not now to like the term deaf at all. All will insist they are correct and no doubt argue passionately why that is so. --AJHingston (talk) 18:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
@AJHingston:, Yes, I've noticed that elsewhere. But I don't think any source I've found capitalizes both Deaf and People. It's always Deaf culture, Deaf people, Deaf community. @DESiegel:, perhaps a general source would be newspaper MOS? Newspapers seem to be like indicator species of changes in usage. They seem to be the first to lead the way. Malke 2010 (talk) 18:53, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes many newspapers have house style guides or the like, when several major such works are in agreement on such a change it might be worth considering. When general style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style endorse such a change, that would add weight to the argument. But I would want to see this be at least the modal form in common use, or else completely dominant in general academic use, before I supported the change here. I would completely disregard any sources from the deaf community itself as a matter of advocacy, until others use this form generally, Wikipedia should not, in my view. DES (talk) 19:05, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I think that such an approach would find strong objections from within the community, and they would argue from precisely the reverse position. Think of the debates over terminology with regard to other groups. The point I was making is that any attempt to impose style rules, including Chicago which would not be accepted everywhere including the UK as the last word anyway, is to get WP involved in yet another high profile dispute which helps nobody and especially not WP itself. --AJHingston (talk) 21:01, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
My point is not to impose any one guide as definitive, I used Chicago merely as an example. But if multiple well-respected guides, of which Chicago might be one, adopt such a usage (capitol D in Deaf community and the like) that would be good evidence that such a usage was common and should be followed by Wikipedia. I am not arguing for any change or imposition here, I am arguing that the status quo should not be changed without clear evidence of widespread and/or authoritative use outside the deaf community. We have existing style guidance at MOS:CAP, I think it should not be changed on this point without much more and clearer evidence than I have seen to date. Use in a major general style guide would be one possible form of such evidence. There could be others. DES (talk) 21:10, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:SUBTITLES[edit]

It is now part of WP:naming conventions (books), but there are non-book titles with subtitles. Should this be a stand-alone guideline? --George Ho (talk) 07:28, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

  • @George Ho:, there were talks about this back when I requested that the shortcut be freed so that it could become a redirect during this requested move proposal. It seems that at this point, there's no objections to it being a "stand-alone guideline"; it's just waiting for someone to write it. Steel1943 (talk) 03:45, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I think there was also an idea to edit WP:Long titles to be converted to a subtitles guideline. Steel1943 (talk) 03:55, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Does the WP:QUOTEFARM rule apply always?[edit]

WP:QUOTEFARM states "quotes...try not to overuse them. Long quotations crowd the actual article and remove attention from other information...".

Long quotation could appear as:

  1. Block quotations. The quote is included in the article.
  2. footnotes: in line quotes with text. The quote is included in the article source, but does not appear as a part of the article, unless while the mouse is hovering around the reference tag (or when looking in the article bottom).
  3. footnotes: Explanatory notes ( seems to be the same as list-defined references). The "readable prose" does not include the quote, which is below the "readable prose", at the bottom. It appears while the mouse is hovering around the reference tag (or when looking in the article bottom).

I guess that the WP:QUOTEFARM applies for the first type only, the block quotations.

The third type, list-defined references is recommended to use in order to avoid clutter. Hence it seems like it is not related to the WP:QUOTEFARM.

Does the WP:QUOTEFARM rule applied to all those quotes types? Ykantor (talk) 19:35, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Excessive amounts of blockquoting would be a problem (in addition to singular excessively long blockquotes). Quotes that appear within references probably don't apply, but care should still be taken to respect the amount of copy-taking for them, but in terms of number of quotes, QUOTEFARM would not apply. --MASEM (t) 19:40, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Just ran across this: John Harvard (statue). Take a look at the (extensive) Notes section. Only some of those are quotes, but some are. I've never seen anything like this, but I don't know offhand of any reason that it's not allowed, and I'm not sure I don't like it. Of course, extensive quotes like this have to be in the public domain; fair use only covers minimum snippets. Herostratus (talk) 03:37, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
That I feel is a problem and seems to be trying to support excessive quoting by pushing it out of prose into the footnotes. Much of those notes should either be incorporated into the prose or trimmed down or removed. --MASEM (t) 04:02, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Some people feel that it is necessary to incorporate a quote into every citation in order to "prove" that the material is in the source. (edit conflict) The presence of a |quote= parameter in the copy/paste blank formats of most of those templates probably encourages such behaviour. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, this is especially helpful for sources that are not readily accessible. But regarding John Harvard (statue), I think I agree with Masem about trying to move some of the note content into the article. olderwiser 14:28, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Google Books wins fair use case. How will this affect Fair Use policy here at Wikipedia?[edit]

Recently, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. 2nd Circuit court decided in favor of Google in their fair use case regarding Google Books (See ""Google’s Book-Scanning Is Fair Use, Judge Rules in Landmark Copyright Case"). I'd really like to see Wikipedia be less paranoid about using copyrighted works under Fair Use, and increasing the amount of copyrighted works that people are able to include in articles. So I was wondering: what ways, if any, do you all see this ruling enabling a more permissive Fair Use policy here on Wikipedia? 2601:8:9F80:A76:688E:6B85:BC4C:9BFD (talk) 07:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

The case doesn't really apply to Wikipedia at all. That being said, Wikipedia does allow limited quotations of copyrighted works, as part of critical commentary, which is covered by fair use and which is perfectly fine. Wikipedia also uses 400,000 non-free images, occasionally as part of critical commentary, but often for the largely aesthetic reason of illustrating infoboxes. The argument for the applicability of fair use is much more contentious when it comes to files, and in my opinion we're doing a rather bad job with non-free images and should shed most of the ones we have. But as I said, the case doesn't really apply to Wikipedia at all, and besides, I don't believe that we're paranoid about using copyrighted works in the first place. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:02, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia was originally conceived as being a free content encyclopedia, not merely one that abided by the law. For text, our reluctance to use extended quotations stems from not wanting to plagiarise and from needing to write in a non-partisan manner. Fair use law rarely impinges. For images our restrictions on what we call "fair use" are again not so much legal requirements but more policy issues. The Wikimedia Foundation required Wikipedia to have an Exemption Doctrine Policy which for the English Wikipedia is at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria. Thincat (talk) 09:50, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
(This is why we try to emphasis that our image/media policy is "non-free content" which supersedes fair use law.) --MASEM (t) 15:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Unfortuantely, the judge's ruling does not say that copying books is legal. The circumstances of Google's scanning was central to the case, and the scanning was determined to be legal only because of a valid and intricate fair-use argument that Wikipedia might not be able to use. I doubt this ruling has any bearing on Wikipedia, and even if it did, that's something for the Foundation's lawyers to figure out, not us. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:02, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Add to the fact that the case was dismissed means there's no change to law or interpretation thereof that could be applied. It would be one thing if this was a SCOTUS decision in Google's favor, but as a lower court simply dismissing the case, there's little to be used from that. --MASEM (t) 15:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

What to do about IP's talk pages?[edit]

What does one do when an vandal or NOTHERE IP blanks his/her talk page, removing warning templates? Is it considered ok to revert them? KonveyorBelt 19:54, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

If the warning removal comes quickly enough that it is likely to be the actual person who is being warned, then the removal itself demonstrates that the warning has been seen. Otherwise, there is really no benefit to maintaining anything on an IP talk page for more than a few days, since we frequently have no way of knowing which person is editing from that IP address at any given moment. For IP talk pages more than a few months old, I generally replace the content with an {{OW}}. bd2412 T 20:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the one thing they are not allowed to remove permanently is the {{shared IP}} boxes.--Auric talk 20:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
  • An example is [4]. User has received about 7 warnings but only 3 remain, making it harder for admins to see that he is a vandal. KonveyorBelt 20:24, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
WP:BLANKING covers this (notice the phrase "any record of past warnings and discussions can be found in the page history if ever needed"); all of the IP's edits to the user talk page were within that guideline. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Terms of use has been marked as a policy[edit]

Wikipedia:Terms of use (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Create a guideline or policy for ALL biographies of dead people?[edit]

Look at Roddy McDowall; info about his "sexuality" has been added and removed cyclically. Also, there are debates about other people's sexuality after death. Also, there have been treatments on articles about deceased people, and no wonder pages like Benjamin Franklin are protected. But the proposed guideline won't go the way of WP:notability (fiction), will it? I hate to see such potential go to waste and let pages go cyclically vandalized. Currently, WP:biographies redirects to W:notability (people). --George Ho (talk) 22:35, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't WP:V and WP:UNDUE cover this? If such info can be sourced to WP:RS, it may go in, subject to appropriate weight, if not, it shouldn't. DES (talk) 22:50, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

As WP uses HTTPS, should (some) external links, too?[edit]

See also WP:PRURL -- GreenC 14:42, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

There is a clear consensus to "Use HTTPS links for HTTPS only sites, protocol relative links for sites that support both HTTP and HTTPS, and HTTP links for sites that don't support HTTPS at all". Note, however, that the discussion doesn't concern the implementation of this proposal, and therefore a new one should be initiated regarding this. Armbrust The Homunculus 12:17, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

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

`Tis to merge the open discussions at TT:YouTube, TT:OCLC, TT:Wayback, HT:CS1, WP:VP/M, et al. and finally find consensus.

In an effort to ensure readers' privacy, Wikimedia has enabled HTTPS support almost two years ago and is about to activate HTTPS by default in the near future. This begs the question whether Wikipedia should also care about whether our readers follow (some of) our external links on HTTPS.

This, of course, does not concern every external link, but only those that offer HTTPS support. In particular, I am talking about the Internet Archive and YouTube. The latter offers both HTTP and HTTPS for years. Our {{YouTube}} links to https://www.youtube.com/. The Internet Archive, which is arguably the most-linked repository on Wikipedia, recently switched to HTTPS by default. Basically all links to it from Wikipedia are still, of course, http://.

So should we, as Wikipedia gradually switches to HTTPS, also convert those external links? The most plausible options is implementing protocol-relative links.

Options on how to do this, although not the main concern of this discussion, are plenty. First of all, we could modify all the various external links templates, from {{YouTube}} to {{Wayback}}. Second, since quite a lot of those links are implemented in CS1 citation templates, we could add a nifty Lua module that takes http://www.youtube.com/ and http://web.archive.org/ link for HTTPS or PRU. And finally, there's always the bot option for the remaining links.

But, like I wrote, this is not so much about the how, but more about the whether at all. I'm in support of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bender235 (talkcontribs)

  • No we shouldn't. Note that the default switch of internal links to https drew significant objections and was delayed on those grounds, note thst the statement you reference says that "A number of countries, China being the largest example, completely block HTTPS to Wikimedia projects, so doing a hard-enable of HTTPS would probably block large numbers of users from accessing our projects at all. Because of this, we feel this action would probably do more harm than good,..." Switchign our links would amout to a hard-enable for outgoign links to particular destinations. Unless a destination will not accept http links, I don't see a good reason to do this at this time. DES (talk) 22:31, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
    • comment There have already been at least two significant discussions on this issue quite recently. Starting a third one seems rather like forum shopping. DES (talk) 22:31, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I've been told to start this discussion here. --bender235 (talk) 11:06, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This would make every link more data-intensive and slower to load, cause ELs to fail completely on many corporate networks, kill the links for countries which block HTTPS, negatively impact reader privacy in countries which treat visiting HTTPS sites as a sign of suspicious activity, and piss everyone off as watchlists are jammed with tens of thousands of changes, all in pursuit of the dubious belief that HTTPS is a huge benefit. By my count this is at least the third place you've forum-shopped this and you've had the same answer each time. Mogism (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I started this dicussion because I was told to do so. Also, the previous discussion at VP/M turned into a proxy war of non-tech people questioning the merits of HTTPS in general. --bender235 (talk) 11:50, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose As I have pointed out on several other pages, not everybody is using https: for Wikipedia. Some are unable to do so, others choose not to. If a website offers access via either http: or https: we should provide protocol-relative links so that readers are not inconvenienced by having the protocol switched unnecessarily. If the site allows either form but immediately switches people from one to the other (like Google switches people from http: to https:), that's their business; we should not pre-emptively force one protocol to be used when it is not necessary to do so. Links should be considered on a site-by-site basis: are the http: links to a given site actually broken? If so, fine, let's switch them to https: - but if they still work, why bother? If the site really want visitors to use https: they can set up their own redirection in the same fashion as Google (that's if they have not done so already). --Redrose64 (talk) 23:14, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
If a website offers access via either http: or https: we should provide protocol-relative links so that readers are not inconvenienced by having the protocol switched unnecessarily.
That is exactly what I proposed. Why is your vote "oppose" then? --bender235 (talk) 11:13, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose As several editors have noted, https does not work for everyone, and it can be slower. This is not Nannypedia where we must change as many external links to https to "protect" readers. If clicking an http link is going to cause trouble for someone, the fact that some small fraction of Wikipedia's external links use https will not save them because the next website they visit will probably use http links. The default protocol for accessing Wikipedia is totally irrelevant to the question of whether external links should be routinely changed to https. Johnuniq (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Use HTTPS links for HTTPS only sites, protocol relative links for sites that support both HTTP and HTTPS, and HTTP links for sites that don't support HTTPS at all
    • support: It's folly to force a user to either HTTP or HTTPS, unless there's a technical reason for doing so. In cases where a target site supports HTTPS only there's a strong technical reason to use HTTPS links: at best the site will redirect the user from HTTP to HTTPS, leaking their privacy for no good reason, and in the worst case the link simply won't work. For sites that support both HTTP and HTTPS, the link should be based on which protocol the browser is currently using (hence protocol relative URLs). If we don't use protocol relative URLs in that situation, we're leaking the user's privacy. If a site is HTTP only it's really obvious that HTTP links must be used. You may note that we use protocol relative links internally. Bottom line: stop politicizing this topic; it's completely a technical issue and this proposal is the correct technical implementation.--Ryan lane (talk) 23:42, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
    • support: Using only HTTPS links would severely degrade access for editors with only Dial-up Internet access. Also there are browser extensions (such as the EFF's HTTPS Everywhere) that enable HTTPS on capable sites, so we don't need to force it ourselves.--Auric talk 23:51, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support. This is the only sensible solution. — Andrew Garrett • talk 00:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support. If a user has real problems with HTTPS, they'll be reading Wikipedia in HTTP, so this won't cause them any problems. And users who prefer HTTPS will have their lives made easier. -- Ypnypn (talk) 01:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes, per Mr. Lane, an operations engineer for the Wikimedia Foundation. Killiondude (talk) 02:56, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support Ryan +1 --Jeremyb (talk) 04:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support, since it is exactly what I originally proposed. --bender235 (talk) 11:06, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support I was thinking the exact same thing and for the same reasons outlined by Ryan lane etc. (I considered proposing it before this VPP topic was even started but the multiple location discussion was so confusing and poorly handled that I couldn't be bothered.) Note I'm supporting the general principle only. I'm not suggesting we should implement a bot to mass edit in this manner as I'm unconvinced it's a good idea. Nil Einne (talk) 12:29, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support Of course, clearly best way to handle this. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support This really is the sensible solution. Novusuna talk 00:24, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support Nice idea. GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Support. Since this solution will not force users using HTTPS-Wikipedia onto an HTTP page where they could have remained within HTTPS, it seems like a good solution to me. It Is Me Here t / c 21:33, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

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


Only one soft redirect per external-wiki page[edit]

Could it be added as a policy to WP:SRD that, for any given external-wiki page e.g. \text{Meta:}\mathsf{A}, there be only one en.wp page \text{WP:}\mathsf{A_1} pointing to \text{Meta:}\mathsf{A}, and that all other en.wp pages \text{WP:}X hitherto pointing to \text{Meta:}\mathsf{A} be (hard) redirected to \text{WP:}\mathsf{A_1}?

So, if now we have:[1]

\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_1}\rightsquigarrow\text{Meta:}\mathsf{A}

\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_2}\rightsquigarrow\text{Meta:}\mathsf{A}

\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_3}\rightsquigarrow\text{Meta:}\mathsf{A}

We would get:

\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_1}\rightsquigarrow\text{Meta:}\mathsf{A}

\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_2}\rightarrow\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_1}

\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_3}\rightarrow\text{WP:}\mathsf{A_1}

... where \rightsquigarrow is soft-redirection and \rightarrow is hard-redirection.

There would still be the same number of clicks required to get to \text{Meta:}\mathsf{A} this way, so this system would not be any less efficient for users. The point of it would be that, if someone decided to create a local policy page on the subject of \mathsf{A}, people would immediately see that policy page, whichever (related) en.wp page they typed into the search bar – rather than possibly seeing the local page, but possibly seeing a different en.wp page still soft-redirecting away to an external WMF page. It Is Me Here t / c 22:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

References

"Second" vs "Endorse" a prod[edit]

A short discussion began at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion#"Second" a prod concerning the use of the word "second" to agree with or support a WP:PROD. Essentially, I have been taught in Parliamentary Procedure that someone who "seconds" a motion does not necessarily agree with the motion, but is merely indicating that they would like the group to talk about it. To me, that parallels "go to WP:AFD" and not "delete without further discussion". Another editor suggested using the word "endorse" instead of "second" and to me that seems to fit. Since it affects policy, I thought I'd bring the idea here.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Mere semantics and it makes no real difference either way. I'd agree "endorse" is simpler language, but nothing wrong with also using "second" or any other term of support. This also isn't a Parliament... GiantSnowman 14:48, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
If it isn't any Parliament, then we should avoid confusion by not using any parliamentary terms, shouldn't we?--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:22, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
As the original drafter of the template used for this purpose, i don't think the term "second" has confused many people in this context. However if you think "endorse" or "support" is clearer, I have no objection to such a change. I agree with GiantSnowman's comment above. DES (talk) 23:16, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
In general, does "endorsing" or "seconding" PRODS mean anything? I'm always quite baffled when I see that -what difference does it do on the PROD?--cyclopiaspeak! 23:53, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
It makes no technical difference; it simply may dissuade an editor from challenging the PROD if they see two editors in good standing who have supported deletion. GiantSnowman 12:24, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Is that supposed to be a good thing? PRODs should be for clear cut cases (ie cases that shouldn't need a "seconder" or "endorser" or what have you). If a PROD can not stand on its own merits, then it should be sent to AfD for further discussion (even if that discussion is only to briefly answer a few questions). So I am not sure we want to dissuade editors who might challenge (or even question) a prod. Blueboar (talk) 15:00, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
On other occasions the "endorse prod" is used to provide additional or other reasons that were not mentioned originally. It can also be an aide to the admin who comes accross the prod when he or she sees that it has already had two sets of eyes looking at it. Sjakkalle (Check!) 19:06, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Also, simply because someone decides to endorse the prod for some reason should not automatically mean that it can't stand on its own merits.--174.93.163.194 (talk) 20:35, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
It was created, when the PROD process was new, so that a second editor could add an opinion favoring Delete, largely as an aid to an admin reviewing the PROD and deciding whether to delete, and also as somneone who has expressed an interest if the matter is later taken to AfD. And as Sjakkalle said, it can be a way to list other reasons which the endorser thinks should be mentioned but which the original PRODer did not list. DES (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

about vandalism in polish version[edit]

In polish version ist vandalism. Jego rodzina częściej niż czystą polszczyzną posługiwała się dialektem języka białoruskiego, zaś sam Popiełuszko jako dziecko nie mówił po polsku[9].from http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Popie%C5%82uszko isn't true, because ↑ Wywiad z Ewą Hołuszką. Katarzyna Bielas: Skrzetuski to mamałyga. wyborcza.pl, 2012-12-12. [dostęp 2013-01-07]describe somthing different question but administrators polish version don't remove this. It do polish version like gossip and crush. Can you do somthing in order to make this more pofessional? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.46.30.52 (talk) 16:08, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The English and Polish Wikipedias are separate. You would either need to raise your complaint at PL.WP directly, or possibly go to Meta, the site for discussing multiple Wikis at once, if you think there is a systematic problem with PL.WP '​s Admin corps. It Is Me Here t / c 16:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

protecting mainpage articles[edit]

See Wikipedia_talk:Today's_featured_article#Is_it_time_to_revisit_the_protection_status_of_the_article_featured_on_the_main_page.3F. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:43, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC notice - proposed guideline in the Manual of Style with reference to applying "royal titles" to living members of deposed royal families[edit]

I have opened a RfC about a proposed guideline for the attribution of "royal titles and styles" to members of families whose ancestors were deposed as monarchs from various countries, often many years ago. At the moment many WP articles about these persons attribute "royal titles" to them in what seems to me a very misleading way. Please join in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies "Use of royal "Titles and styles" and honorific prefixes in articles and templates referring to pretenders to abolished royal titles and their families"[5].Smeat75 (talk) 04:45, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  • There are two ways to advertise an RFC. One is to post notices in central locations, like here, with a neutrally worded statement that describes the dispute without taking a side. That would be the correct way to do it. You did this the other way. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:50, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Copying wikipedia for profit[edit]

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but I thought I might as well ask. I saw this http://store.kobobooks.com/en-gb/books/Title/617RUrX48UyX_vMT4Nwvgw and wondered if this was ok. It looks like someone has taken a bunch of articles from wikipedia and bundled them into an ebook, and is selling them for profit. They also seem to be using wikipedias logo, presumably without consent, although im not sure if that is illegal or not as a recently saw something about it. Benboy00 (talk) 09:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

If Wikipedia is acknowledged as the source then there is no problem with the content - it's in the CC-BY-SA license. Use of the Wikipedia logo I'm not sure about. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
I informed the WMF legal team about the usage of the logo in that ebook item. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 13:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Why are deleted articles "oversighted"?[edit]

I understand that some article are genuinely oversighted. By why are other deleted article not available for inspection as a historic record, and whose content could be incorporated elsewhere, including a record of user contributions and discussion. --Iantresman (talk) 16:46, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:PERENNIAL#Deleted_pages_should_be_visible. --cyclopiaspeak! 16:50, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for that, very useful. --Iantresman (talk) 16:53, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Many deleted articles could be userfied to the creator's space. That way they eventually could develop into something fit for returning into the article space. This especially true for the entities deleted per A3 (no content), often minutes after the creation. I usually grant all requests for userfication unless the article grossly violate BLP and/or if it is an attack page. I guess many authors of potentially useful articles just do not bother to ask for userfication. It would be useful to have a "userfy" option on the delete button and some guidelines on its application (e.g. userfy all A3s unless BLP is involved) Alex Bakharev (talk) 07:16, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
That is a rather good proposal. --cyclopiaspeak! 23:54, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
If that is something a number of administrators want, it could be worked into Twinkle or CSDH or created as a separate script. What works best for everyone? Technical 13 (talk) 01:26, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
I do not see the value in userfying a page with no content. VQuakr (talk) 01:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
According to WP:CSD A3 might contain a list of useful sources. It is a pretty common situation then a novice user starts an article, enters links that inspired him, entered the subject and then started to read manuals trying to figure out how to create the fancy userbox he or she had seen on another article or how to bold the subject name or just simply went to have his lunch. When he returns to the article he finds that the article is deleted as an A3 and his links are gone. How many of novice users would bother to recreate the article or do something els on wiki? Alex Bakharev (talk) 03:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for providing a good example of the situation where an easier "userfy" tool would be used. Would the intent be to userfy all A3's by default, or just to add a tool to make it easier for an admin to userfy the page at their discretion? What about using a "delayed speedy" similar to the ones used for fixable file problems, allowing the user to add content without the complexity of moving the page around? VQuakr (talk) 04:01, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Sometimes there is a fair amount of valid information, and useful sources provided, in a deleted article that is completely lost. Sometimes only a little more information is required to revive and article, but deleted articles need recreating from the very beginning. --Iantresman (talk) 18:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Well they re oversighted, by the Wikipedia:Administrators. There's enough admins to keep on top of these. One wonders why Iantresman (talk · contribs) is not an admin, given his enthusiasm for the project. Barney the barney barney (talk) 18:43, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Two very different things are being conflated here. Oversight and deletion are not the same thing. Oversight (also known as suppression) of an entire article is extremely rare. Suppression is a much harsher measure than ordinary deletion and is only done if there are serious privacy issues or libel. Ordinary deletions can be done (or undone) by any admin and are publicly logged so that one can easily contact the deleting admin. Suppression actions can only be done by a small group of trusted users for a few very specific reasons, are not publicly logged, and are reviewed only by WP:AUSC. The only thing any "regular" user or admin can see is that someone removed something from a page's history.

Now that we've cleared that up, I seem to recall that not that long ado a proposal for automatic userfication was made and was rejected by the community. It may take some digging to locate it, but as I recall the gist was that this would just lead to even more neglected or abandoned drafts, which is no help to anyone. Making it easier to ask for userfication is not such a bad idea, making it automatic is. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:46, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Flaw in PROD notification process (esp. via Twinkle)[edit]

I've just run across this problem for a *second* time...

I receive a notification that my "article" has been PRODded (with helpful boilerplate).

Just one problem... I'd only created it as a redirect page, which someone else later replaced with a proper article. Whether this was the right choice and/or it was a good article or not isn't the point here- the point is that most people would agree I'm not really the "creator" of that article.

Yet apparently I'm seen as such by automated tools like Twinkle, so I get notified as being the "creator" and that later editor doesn't. It's not a massive problem for me right now, but perhaps it's something that ought to be considered- who counts as the creator and who should be notified?

The other issue is that *if* the PROD went ahead and the article was deleted, the redirect would also be lost rather than being restored.

Ubcule (talk) 23:54, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm the guilt party in this case, and I apologise to you @Ubcule:. I use twinkle to PROD/AfD quite a few articles while patrolling Category:Uncategorized_pages and this is the third or fourth time I've been made aware of this error. I'm guessing many redirects converted to articles end up in Category:Uncategorized_pages because they get missed by the standard new article creation mechanisms. A variation on error is when someone converts a AfD-closed-to-merge redirect to an article and it ends up in Category:Uncategorized_pages and the notification goes to the original creator (see Sylvester (Trapped In The Closet) for a current example, where the notification went to User talk:RobertSylwesterKelly not User talk:Affe97!). Stuartyeates (talk) 09:22, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
This topic has been discussed on the Twinkle talk page. It is not Twinkle that is the issue. Rather, it is Mediawiki software's interpretation of who owns what. Twinkle follows that to the letter. It seems logical to ask for a change to Mediawiki, which, at least to me, feels illogical in its actions when redirects are created by moving an article. Fiddle Faddle 18:28, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Wasn't really blaming Stuartyeates personally for the behaviour for a de facto community-endorsed tool anyway, but if Twinkle *is* really following policy to the letter couldn't it also notify the first non-redirect editor as an optional facility (i.e. there's nothing saying that you should *only* notify the technically-defined "creator" of the file, and most people when they understand the reasoning would probably be happy notify the "true" creator too).
That said, if this is ultimately an issue of policy, then that root cause should also be looked at, rather than just working around the symptoms in Twinkle.
Is it worth re-raising this issue if it's already known about? Ubcule (talk) 21:39, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Indef blocks of users with <10 edits[edit]

SNOW CLOSE:

Consensus does not favor this policy change. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:49, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

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

I've seen a number of these such blocks, and I frankly think they need to be outlawed. Here are the main reasons why:

  • It WP:BITEs the newcomers, newcomers should be warned rather than immediately blocked, especially blocked indef
  • 9 edits or fewer really isn't really enough time to gauge an account's pattern of editing
  • Even if all 9 are bad, and all are to different pages, they can be reverted rather quickly

As such, I think that blocking accounts indefinitely for vandalism or disruption when they have made less than 10 edits is a bad idea. That doesn't mean accounts that are promo, socks, or have bad usernames can't still be indeffed, or that accounts with fewer than 10 edits can get shorter blocks. I think the handing out of indef blocks to users with fewer than 10 edits is one thing that gives Wikipedia a black eye. Thoughts? pbp 19:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  • I'm sorry, but in under 10 edits there's a lot a editor can do. They can issue a legal threat, they can post a shock image, they can threaten violence/harm that we're obligated to report to the appropriate authorities, they can indicate their status as a banned user who is attempting to circumvent the terms of the ban, they could violate copyright, they could do a great many things that earn them an express ticket to Indef-ville. We've entrusted a portion of the community, that has demonstrated reasonable judgement, with the power to carry out swift justice and to Ignore All Rules when the situation merits it. I think this policy discussion should be tabled until a substantial and recurring pattern of admins abusing the editors is presented. Hasteur (talk) 19:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Yeah, but the majority of indeffed users are just blocked for vandalism that doesn't violate copyright and can be undone quickly. Even your examples of copyvio and shock image can be undone fairly quickly and don't justify an indef blocked if done just once. One time, I came across an account that was indeffed for making 3 edits, all to the same page and none of them in mainspace. That was excessive. Also, sockpuppetry means they racked up 10 edits under a different name anyway. pbp 19:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
  • If someone blanks a page 9 times and then gets indeffed who is the loser there? Spartaz Humbug! 19:36, 27 November 2013 (UTC)


  • Let's keep in mind that a block is not a ban. Maybe someone gets drunk, registers an account and goes on a vandalism spree, and the account gets indef'd. Then when he sobers up, he thinks he'd like to try out this editor thing for reals. What's the big deal? He makes a new account. There's nothing worth preserving from his history with the old one. --Trovatore (talk) 19:44, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
A couple items to note. First, IP's rarely (with a capital RARE) get indef blocks. Next, 10 or less edits that are all vandalism (and yes we can gauge what their intent is in less then 10 edits) deserve blocks so that we can prevent edits 11, 12 and 13 continuing the pattern of disruption. Remember that - except in the case of loud quacking - IPs usually get 5+ edits with escalating warnings before a block. Also, you may not be aware that IP hoppers love taking advantage of our AGF policies which is why we need to remember that said AGF is not a suicide pact. MarnetteD | Talk 19:47, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Was this in response to me? I don't see how it's responsive. Maybe you meant to respond to Pbp? --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Blocks, maybe. Indefs, no. Also, I was talking about non-IPs too. pbp 19:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Non IPs are, all to often socks and deserve indefs. Even if they aren't socks when they've proven they aren't here to edit productively there is no problem with an indef. Should they decide the want to edit productively they have Wikipedia:Standard offer and/or WP:FRESHSTART available to them or, as Trovetore points out, they can create a new account and proceed from there. MarnetteD | Talk 19:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. If someone creates an account to vandalise, we can do without them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Again, let's keep in mind the distinction between blocking (an account) and banning (a person). I would almost always be against banning a person on the basis of nine edits. Blocking an account doesn't bother me so much. --Trovatore (talk) 20:47, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
The thing is that it takes close to 10 edits to prove sockpuppetry definitively. And assuming that every non-IP who is new and makes is kinda stretching it/ABFing. pbp 20:21, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Not really. If an account created a page called "HAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRR", they would be blocked near-instantaneously. Some LTAs can be spotted with only 1 edit. Legoktm (talk) 20:31, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, but that'd be for sockpuppetry or username violation, not for the edits they've made. In general, accounts should be given 10 edits before being indeffed. pbp 20:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Many times I've worked to understand/confirm and then undo the damage from "vandalism only" accounts. Some of them are subtle vandalism that would otherwise might not get caught. They DO do a lot of harm. But I think that a 1 month block would work just as well as an indefinite block. Maybe even better, because if they use the same account again to vandalize, they would be more quickly assessed and handled. North8000 (talk) 21:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I've also undone a lot of vandalism by IP's. I think that short blocks of static IP's and no blocks for dynamic IP's are about the limit of usefulness there. Almost all static IP's are organizaitons, not individuals. And dynamic IP's have no relation to individuals. When I just started Wikipedia I was 100% shut out for a month due to a range block on dynamic IP's of my local internet provider (then AT&T) (including against account creations). When I explained/inquired at a noticeboard, I got a dumb answer "tell your neighbors not to sock". North8000 (talk) 21:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  • This thread is silly. We extend a certain amount of good faith and then we block to prevent damage. Users can request unblock if they demonstrate or promise they can benefit the project. Indef ≠ forever. Killiondude (talk) 23:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

This thread is indeed silly. It's also unworkable, because it's based on edit count AND interpretation of what constitutes vandalism v other blockable behaviour. There's an issue with the count too - editors can't see deleted edits, admins can't see suppressed edits, and finally, there's other reasons for blocking an account and so on. The addition of new rules preventing accounts with less than 10 edits being blocked indefinitely could easily have unintended consequences and provides new loopholes for people to cause disruption. Nick (talk) 23:37, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Oppose definitely not, for the above reasons. --Rschen7754 03:56, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose if an editor's first 10 edits are vandal edits, the odds are they've already been given a warning block of 24 hours which means that if they have come back, their intentions are obvious and an indef ban is for the best. Some will make this clear in less than 10, in which case they should be indef blocked earlier. As mentioned above, if they decide they want to edit constructively they can make a new account or, if the IP has been blocked also, they can request one. Oddbodz - (Talk) (Contribs) 20:31, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support, blocks are supposed to be preventative, not punitive. GregJackP Boomer! 01:42, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
    • .... what? --Rschen7754 03:58, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose unless Purplebackpack89 is willing to monitor "xxx SUCKS!" x 4 editors 24/7 until they hit 10 bad edits. Otherwise, stop devising more work for recent change patrollers. --NeilN talk to me 03:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
    • You can rollback nine edits PDQ pbp 04:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Under your criteria Purplebackpack89 if we rollback these edits we will have our rollback option removed due to lack of AGF. It would be nice if there was some logic to your theory in this thread. MarnetteD | Talk 05:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • If their first 10 edits are legitimate "testing" edits, then maybe we should AGF. But if all they're doing is blanking pages or doing crude schoolkid vandalism, the chances of them suddenly deciding to be a legitimate editor are around 0.00001%. The whole point of having multiple tiers of warning levels is so that if someone gets a warning that says "This is your last warning, if you keep vandalizing, you will be blocked" is so that we know that if they vandalize after that, that's obviously all they're here to do. But we still start with the "Hey, you may not know this, but what you're doing is against the rules" warning so that any potentially good user will know to stop well before they get to the point of being blocked. It does not take 10 edits to figure out if someone is only here to vandalize, especially if they get a warning after each edit and continue vandalizing. Vandal reversion is already a huge amount of work. Requiring 10 edits before they can be blocked would basically double that, if not more. Mr.Z-man 03:39, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Good point. Editors are rarely indeffed without multiple warnings given beforehand. Indeffing them after they ignore these notices does not give Wikipedia a black eye. Allowing them to continue to vandalize gives Wikipedia a black eye. --NeilN talk to me 03:45, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
      • However, blocking new editors who may become good ones because they haven't quite figured out how Wikipedia works does. I started this thread because I am of the opinion that we've swung too far in this direction, and the "Oppose" comments have merely reinforced my theory about the lack of good faith toward new editors pbp 04:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
        • Oh come on. Most of us continually experience situations in real life where we're not exactly sure what the norms are. Doesn't mean we repeatedly piss in the corner or start knocking over things, especially we're told not to do that. --NeilN talk to me 04:53, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
        • Again, that's why we give multiple warnings. If someone keeps vandalizing after being told 3-4 times to stop, then AGF no longer applies. Mr.Z-man 16:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • The old saw "AGF is not a suicide pact" applies here. If someone leaves a flaming bag of dog shit on your front porch, you don't assume they were trying to help light up your porch and just couldn't think of another way to do it, The same applies with vandals. They know they are vandalizing, and they need to have it made clear to them that it is not tolerated. Once in a while we even see vandals who turn around and become constructive contributors because they were blocked and came to understand that this is a project that a lot of people care about and spend a great deal of time and energy creating and maintaining. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:43, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose Trying to codify something that is best left to judgement is a bad idea here - there are too many variables, and handcuffing an admin from protecting the project due to some ridiculously random "edit count" is horrifically unsuitable for discussion. Of course, as noted, a block is not a ban... even first-time vandals sometimes clean up their act and become unblocked - that's why we have unblock processes. I really don't think the OP really thought this through. ES&L 12:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
The last statement was uncalled for. I considered the fact that an editor could make 9 acts of vandalism in a row. Then I considered the fact that 9 acts of vandalism can be reverted in about 2 minutes pbp 15:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
...and a new editor who has been indef blocked for nothing but vandal edits can ask to be unblocked in about 2 minutes, to be given a second chance to edit constructively; or they can create a new account in about 2 minutes to try a WP:FRESHSTART, as <10 vandal edits means there's no time investment or valid edit history in the blocked account anyway. So I can't take seriously the idea that we should care about someone deciding to leave and never come back because they were blocked after rapidly replacing the text of five articles with "Mr. Smith molests his cats". If your concern is genuinely over WP:BITEy practices that scare away potential new editors, then you should instead reflect on how we treat obviously good faith edits, such as being too trigger happy to delete, or deciding that edits that aren't perfect out of the gate are worthless, or other ways of imposing WP:DEADLINEs on volunteer contributions. postdlf (talk) 16:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Those 2 minutes add up. There are around 1000 accounts blocked every month as vandalism only accounts. Over the course of a year, that adds up to weeks of extra work. Mr.Z-man 16:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose This proposal is based on a number of flawed assumptions: that indef blocks are in some way more permanent than temporary blocks (they're not, they just require that a user address the issues raised before being unblocked); that it isn't possible to assess a new user's intent in fewer than ten edits (it's often quite easy to figure out whether they're WP:HERE from a single edit); that blocking disruptive editors somehow deprives Wikipedia of their potential good contributions (what good contributions?) and that the blocking of these editors somehow demonstrates a lack of good faith (good faith on "This is a test" is easy to assume, good faith on "My teacher is a fartbag, lol" is just idiotic). We already have a considerable problem with vandals; granting them leave to do more then twice as much damage before blocking is, quite frankly, an awful idea. Yunshui  15:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose per Yunshui, EatsShootsAndLeaves, and pretty much everyone else above. postdlf (talk) 16:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Obvious oppose - I don't even know what to say. The only thing I could say in support is that IAR applies, so outlawing this wouldn't matter for the cases when it's clearly appropriate. --Onorem (talk) 16:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Pretty much per Yunshui. Indefinite =/= infinite. Also, I would counter WP:BITE with WP:GOVANDALIZESOMEONEELSE. Resolute 16:42, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I think we can go ahead and call WP:SNOW on this one, just needs a nice winter hat. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per ESL and Yunshui. JohnCD (talk) 21:29, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

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


The meaning of words and that meanings destruction[edit]

So I've been browsing a lil here and there and I'm just curious in general on what the policy is on this or if we should establish one. Words true meaning sometimes gets dilluted for propaganda purposes. The word that got me thinking about this most recently was the word chemophobia which to me is clearly distorting both the meaning of chemistry and the meaning of phobia by adding to this improper term the definition that it is mainly concerned with artificial compounds and not chemical reactions or chemicals in general and that it is a general and irrational fear of them and not just a dislike or distrust. Almost all sources come from biased, industry or union (chemist) organisations.

Addition: Please use my talkpage to suggest or discuss a draft for a proposal concerning this. The dictionary framework is just one idea! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.59.34.174 (talk) 16:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Other words in the same category that sometimes get abused:

  • Terrorism It is used in such a blatantly broad context now that you can find sources for any violent action or even a peaceful demonstration to be terrorism. Are sources simply enough to make it so?
  • Democide A word pushed by one man and one man only and cited in primarily his work or work dealing with his work creating enormous bias in the article and any article including the citation as it concentrates on the ills of communists and fascist governments and neglects republics, monarchies and other types of governments. His figures for the Congo are for example completely outrageously false.
  • Homophobia Irrational perhaps but certainly not fear. Most people who are termed homophobic in the sources cited are in fact biased against that type of lifestyle/sexual choice for various reasons. The article even cited religious abhorence of homosexuals as homophobic. If we would list everything (irrational?) religions disagree with we'd run out of space for the list of phobias.
  • Xenophobia Similiar here but perhaps flipped in more cases than not. That is cultures which have been at war with each other often fear each other but not because of irrationality but because contact between them has caused distrust, hate or even death. In modern times there is perhaps irrational hatred of migrants but is it a phobia? Neither of these two articles provides any sources for any patients with these diagnoses nor are they connected with any medical group or list but with the category "discrimination".

These are just a few exampls since I started thinking about this 1 hour ago. What are your opinions about it?


PS: Terrorism the article isn't too bad in my opinion (I've only glanced) but concerning that point I am asking about references of terrorism in other articles per what ever source you find in a newspaper or announcement. 46.59.34.174 (talk) 16:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The meaning of a word is not merely the sum of the word's parts. X+phobia does not always mean irrational fear of X.
We accept the use of sources that some people believe are WP:BIASED. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Looks like etymological fallacy. postdlf (talk) 20:32, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia uses words because our sources do - we aren't here to 'fix' the language. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:35, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


Please understand that I am not a native english speaker and let me put it in an other way. It is my opinion that misuse of words is unencyclopedic and creates bias by itself. For example we can find sources from Assad press that the rebels are in general considered terrorists, the same from Iranian and some Russian sources. Does this make them so? Is such a wording incorrect because the source itself is biased? If so, who decide what's bias and what is not? Do we acknowledge that words can be molded and abused to fit ones purpose? Should we not follow academic definitions of a words meaning to avoid such conflicts and thus accept the word only based on sources found in official dictionaries with academic acknowledgement such as Oxford Dictionary? Please do reply and please understand that it is not an etymological fallacy. I ask that we follow the present rules and formalia concerning the construction of wordings and definitions. not historic. For an example that is constantly being discussed in the Syrian Civil-War article; sources supporting the rebellion declare the rebels to be freedom-fighters, rebels, insurgents at worst. The sources opposing the declare them to be terrorists or sometimes worse. In my opinion the biased sources should be acknowledged if they are reliable just like WP:BIAS suggests but the wording should be changed to fit current norm as per facts given.46.59.34.174 (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Except that homophobia does mean "bias against homosexuals". It is EXACTLY etymological fallacy to think that because the suffix "-phobia" means "fear of..." in other contexts that it is being used incorrectly here. Homophobia means exactly "hatred/bias/bigotry against gay people". That is the proper, modern, and correct usage. The same with the other words too. We use words here as they are actually used and not how one might imagine they should be used by overanalyzing the pieces of them. --Jayron32 23:43, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
My suggestion is that we use words as an encyclopedia does and should and that is by their definition in acadameia and academic dictionaries for that particular field. Now even the Oxford Dictionary defines it as the following: "an extreme and irrational aversion to homosexuality and homosexual people." this is of course based on the construct homo (same) and phobia (fear). It is only logical and it is logic which makes language understandable and researchable. It is precisely your incorrect information and your and other peoples incorrect disemination of such information for which I would like to establish a policy and through it avoid conflicts between editors. The policy would be simple: Words are defined by academic studies in relevant field or academic dictionaries. If not available then common, well established dictionaries are to be used. This also saves alot of the usual "criticism of the term" type of articles which are just a orgy of biased opinions not relevant to the facts within the article itself! 46.59.34.174 (talk) 23:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

46.59.34.174, here are some things you can do when you see a word being used in a biased or tendentious way. First, check the supporting source to see if the word in question is genuinely faithful to the source. Often editors who are engaged in WP:ADVOCACY slant their summary of a source to favor a conclusion they want to push. You can reword the summary neutrally. Or, you may find that the source is not reliable and thus facts cited from it should be removed. Second, search for authoritative, comprehensive sources, and add facts from those into the article. Editors with an agenda often seek out stray paragraphs in articles here or there in order to cherry-pick snippets that support their conclusion. Often you can greatly improve an article by going to a chapter or book specifically about the article's topic, and summarizing that. Such sources often have the most authoritative terminology for the topic, trumping even the OED. As Jayron32 pointed out, words do change their meanings. We have to reflect that, but we can at least follow the terminology of the most authoritative sources. And third, as you check sources, be ready to learn things that you don't already know. Many times when I've snorted in indignation at some "biased" claim I found in an article and set out to correct it, I found that there was actually a well-established line of scholarship that I was unfamiliar with. WP:BRINK has good advice to keep in mind whenever correcting other people's biases. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 00:11, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Greets BenKovitz and thanks for a polite and informative reply. I will read these links in due time and I have already read WP:BIAS since long ago. What often helps in study is a little guide or demonstration. How would I go about overturning the article of Homophobia for example? I am also having an even more difficult debate slightly out of this perspective in the article concerning Time Dilation (please note by broad interest in the question). The Time-Dilation perspective is one in which I contend with the support of several examples that all sources presented note in fact the bending of photons and their path thus affecting the calculation of time, not bending time itself. Time-Dilation is clearly connected with established scientific theories and terminology, yet some sources (but far from all) use the terminology incorrectly. It can not mean two things because one of them has such a huge impact on science that if it was proven it would absolutely cement theory into practise and the other would just acknowledge normal 3D physics without space-time or dimensional changes. Pick either one of them please and guide me even though you may disagree. The first one is perhaps easier because all established dictionaries and sources in ackowledged medicine support it but at the same time alot of non-academic sources use it the way Jayron23 suggests and a few social-study academics have hopped on the bandwagon making it quite touchy.These and many other complications is why instead of debating with each other and throwing sources in each other faces from books we don't all have I suggest that we go by dictionaries and if we have a problem with them we contact the institutions which regulate them! This way there are at least fewer paths to turn to. What do you think about my new policy suggestion?
PS: If you are interested indulge here in my reason for this new found passion...I believe that words have meaning and if you surrender their meaning your surrender half your cause. For this reason I wish to see Wikipedia to stay as neutral and straight as possible in these foggy waters.46.59.34.174 (talk) 00:27, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
On Homophobia or Time Dilation, here's an idea: pick a very small, specific problem with wording in just one place in the article. Check the source or find a source that clearly establishes what the better wording is. Fix that, and you'll have one improvement under your belt. Then repeat until all corrections have been made or it stops being enjoyable. As for updating policy or guidelines to give special weight to academic studies or dictionaries, I don't think you'll be able to get many editors to agree to that. The reason is, studies and dictionaries very often lag behind contemporary usage. There are just too many speech communities for academic researchers to keep up with them all. Also, dictionaries and studies often disagree with each other. The sources most specific to the article's topic have to be given the most weight, and when there are disagreements between sources, you just have to thoughtfully invent something that is well suited to that particular article. Yes, this means a lot of throwing sources back and forth. You just have to discuss and seek the best consensus you can. The keys are to target a specific sentence or paragraph, and supply a high-quality source. Generally speaking, when I've supplied a genuinely relevant and authoritative source for a fact or for some wording, other editors have respected it. And when I haven't, they haven't. Occasionally I've lost when I thought I should have won, but hey, Wikipedia isn't perfect. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 01:52, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi again Ben! In Sweden we have SAOL which is the Swedish Academies Dictionary (Svenska Akademins Ordlista). It is accepted as the de facto authority on the swedish language as it defines it and all official publication should be made in accordance with it. From my knowledge the Oxford Dictionary is close to having this authority if not at its level. Would it not suffice to use it when there are no academic dictionaries? Also from my experience academic dictionaries do not differ (except for the occasional, rare exception). Is there anything that speaks against such a policy? I am a democrat for sure but I believe that language is a science itself and that it needs a framework that should be followed. We shouldn't just agree among ourselves the meaning of different words for language is by definition (heh) structured by convention. Perhaps an even slimmer policy would be better; Follow academic dictionaries and when not possible or available follow the norm as defined by well established common dictionaries such as the Oxford Dictionary et al. (with accepted dictionaries instead being the point of debate and discussion) Would you support or oppose such a policy?46.59.34.174 (talk) 11:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
"In Sweden we have SAOL which is the Swedish Academies Dictionary (Svenska Akademins Ordlista). It is accepted as the de facto authority on the swedish language as it defines it and all official publication should be made in accordance with it. From my knowledge the Oxford Dictionary is close to having this authority if not at its level." - your knowledge is incorrect. There is nothing in English even remotely similar to the SAOL, especially not the OED, which is regarded as being the premier source for documentation of original usage of words, and markedly out-of-date in reflecting modern usage. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 12:04, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
A-ha, well perhaps it is not out of date but uses correct terminology following and protecting the structure of the language. For example it is very well possible and normal for a word to have two meanings within different contexts. This is how language traditionally develops in addition to new words themselves being created. There are some funny ones in the etymology article here in wikipedia. What is not normal and what is disastrous for the flow and understanding of language is when a word attains two different meanings within the same context. This makes it impossible to contextualize ones intention and a conflict by definition erupts. Language scientists (linguists) and those writing dictionaries avoid such things. Traditional propaganda techniques use this in acts of subterfuge and it should be guarded against. It is the invading terminology which obviously is the subterfugin the present one. Still this is a debate I would love to have and it is exacly as per my policy suggestion. We should try to establish conventions to follow for the use of dictionaries. Dictionaries themselves provide a guide to the convention of language - we ourselves should not.I hope you understand this very important distinction. All four examples up there are at risk. Terrorism as a term is used by more and more groups to associate their enemies with these ill acts disregarding whether they commit them or not. Following "sources" other than dictionaries here is disastrous for example. Would you please try to refute my logic and look for a solution together with me that can be applied as a broad and simple rule? 46.59.34.174 (talk) 12:18, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
For some existing policies and guidelines, please take a look at WP:NEO, WP:WORDS#Neologisms and new compounds, and MOS:#Contested vocabulary. These all favor using standard terminology and avoiding advocacy, and there is even a mention of general-purpose dictionaries. Having just checked them, it looks to me like there might be some room for improvement, for example, mentioning specialized dictionaries or addressing words whose only purpose is to advocate. The existing policies and guidelines might already be helpful if you're looking for policy or guidelines for changing the specific pages you mentioned above. Chemophobia, in particular, looks like it might violate WP:NEO; if so, the article should be deleted. I'll post something to the talk page over there. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 14:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
As an impartial reference work, Wikipedia takes a non-prescriptive approach to word usage. Our titling of articles and, to a great extent, our choice of terms used within articles reflect real-world usage. In any event, it has already been pointed out—correctly—that your complaint here is based on an etymological fallacy. (If you really have read the archives at Talk:Homophobia, as you said you did, you would have learned that already.) The English lexicon encompasses an extraordinarily diverse etymology and is highly fluid, and trying to apply rigid rules of logic to a given word is an exercise in futility. Rivertorch (talk) 18:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Well obviously I disagree with you and I don't see this as an exercise in futility. Instead I view the continous barrage of articles from opinionated sources dictating our word-usage as an exercise in futility. But as my suggestion steps on too many toes (everyone has their articles in good general order and nobody wants to have to deal with a complete restructuring) then I guess we can throw this in the bin unless something changes drastically. It's sad though because as I said words hold power and we as a community and people are giving that power away much to easily to various payed editors of no linguistic background. By payed editors I do not mean editors payed to write on Wikipedia. I mean payed* in general. I see language as a science directed by convention and you see it as something that can change based on what ever CNN or some payed lobbyist organisation writes in their paper. I feel sorry for our worlds future. Propagandists had it much harder in the past without veils of legitimacy such as Wikipedia. Heck maybe I'll write up a proposal one day and people can just vote support or oppose but I bet it will fail :/ *Certainly being payed to write is no crime but using a non linguist as a source for the meaning of a word is like using any non-academic source for the meaning of any part of the various scientific articles we have and shouldn't be done if there is an academic alternative.46.59.34.174 (talk) 07:35, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

RfC to add Pending Changes to all BLP with few or no watchers[edit]

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/RfC to add Pending Changes to all BLP with few or no watchers

The number of watchers of a BLP seems unrelated to the number of revisions it receives: Living People Watchers cross revs.svg

Perhaps 5% of BLPs are unwatched. The median number of watchers is somewhere between 2 and 4 (based on one limited toolserver query and one small sample). The question is: does this mean would ought to allow Pending Changes protection of these BLP purely because they're un- or under- watched? Josh Parris 20:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

But how many of those editors are active? Eric Corbett 20:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
You can get some information about active watchers at bug 49506http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49506. If you know how to write a script to automatically collect information of the sort in this chart, then filtering for active watchers shouldn't be that much more difficult. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't offering to do the work, I was simply asking a question. My guess would be that almost none of the watchers are active, but of course that has to be kept a secret from us unwashed masses. Eric Corbett 22:18, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I meant Josh, but now that I look into it, it appears that User:Valhallasw is the person who knows how to make these graphs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Propose change in policy for requesting protection[edit]

Editors often request protection because of edit warring when it is on their version. This means that their version is there unless an administrator decides that the other version is better, or an opposing editor gains strong consensus and requests a change. I am proposing that editors should not be allowed to request protection during edit wars if they are involved. 2AwwsomeTell me where I screwed up.See where I screwed up. 20:27, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

This is a dumb idea on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. Just lets start with the semantics: "editors should not be allowed to request protection during edit wars if they are involved". Who else but those involved in the edit war would know there was an edit war going on? Eric Corbett 20:46, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Seeing the history and talk page maybe? 2AwwsomeTell me where I screwed up.See where I screwed up. 20:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I think you've missed the point. Most WP pages aren't watched by anyone, so nobody would notice. Eric Corbett 20:51, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I thought the actual guideline for admin protecting the page was to revert to the last stable version first so as to not take sides.--Mark Miller (talk) 20:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
That never happens, and I haven't found that part of a guidelineanywhere. Can you point me to the section? 2AwwsomeTell me where I screwed up.See where I screwed up. 20:54, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with you, it never happens and there's no guideline. Eric Corbett 21:04, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Isn't meta:The Wrong Version the accepted practice? Face-wink.svg WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Hey Eric Corbett I don't know that this is the guideline, but I do know that it has happened.--Mark Miller (talk) 21:54, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Read what I said again. I said there is no guideline. Eric Corbett 21:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Hey 2Awwsome, here is the actual guideline policy and why I think there has been some confusion. It isn't a "requirement" but is written into this section for page protection per WP:PREFER which states:

Since protecting the most current version sometimes rewards edit warring by establishing a contentious revision, administrators may also revert to an old version of the page predating the edit war if such a clear point exists.

This does clearly state this as an "option" but not a requirement.--Mark Miller (talk) 22:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
And Eric Corbett is correct. There is no guideline. The above is policy.--Mark Miller (talk) 22:05, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I feel like even if you request while you're involved, it's a roll of the dice, because you could get undid before the page gets protected. pbp 22:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
    It is. Eric Corbett 22:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
    Right, while RFPP is generally pretty quick, it's not uncommon for requests to sit for several hours. And most sit for at least 1 hour. Mr.Z-man 22:54, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree that there needs to be some better clarity here. Obviously, if' there is a stable version of the page (there may not be if it is a new page and there are only ever two contributors to it), the administrator should probably revert to that revision. I wonder how much faster edit wars would get cleared up if pages were blanked and fully protected pending outcome. Of course, there would be those that intentionally do that to get pages blanked, but those cases are fairly obvious and those trolls would just get blocked with no effect on the page. Technical 13 (talk) 22:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Upgrade Wikipedia's license to CC-BY-SA 4.0?[edit]

Creative Commons 4.0 licenses are out (overview). There is discussion at the Commons Village Pump and a little at the Wikipedia Forum. The Wikimedia Foundation blog is positive but invites community discussion prior to adoption.

I believe we should upgrade. CC-BY-SA 4.0 provides a more comprehensive grant of non-copyright rights (e.g. database, moral, privacy and personality rights) if they exist in the relevant jurisdiction and are held by the licensor.

The new license is offered in one international version with deed translations rather than national "ports". It is designed to cover all jurisdictions, which might please international contributors.

It looks like we can upgrade due to clauses in our current license (CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported):

  • 4(b) "You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of:"
    • (2) "a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License" [Attribution, ShareAlike], and/or
    • (3) "a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License"

Other sites may need to upgrade to CC-BY-SA 4.0 to continue to import from us, per the equivalent clause [3(b)(1)]. That might be seen as an advantage, as it drives adoptions of a stronger license. I upgraded WikiFur in minutes; it's not a challenge. (We can import from them regardless, due to the 2.0/3.0 upgrade rights.) GreenReaper (talk) 10:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Exactly how does "comprehensive grant of non-copyright rights" not constitute different License Elements when going from 3.0 to 4.0? 131.137.245.206 (talk) 18:48, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
"License Elements" in relation to CC licenses means the options such as "-BY", "-SA", "-NC", and "-ND". So CC-BY-SA-4.0 has the same elements as CC-BY-SA-3.0, but CC-BY, CC-BY-SA-NC, and CC-BY-ND (whether 3.0 or 4.0) don't. Anomie 20:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Indeed, the problem is 4.0 CC-BY-SA gives away copyright-like rights that were not considered in earlier versions. So when someone adapts a 3.0 or earlier work and upgrades the license to 4.0, as it has similar license elements, they in effect give away someone else rights without their consent. When people assigned 3.0 they knew the license elements might be amended in the future but I doubt any of them envisioned new rights being given away. Saffron Blaze (talk) 00:14, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I think this discussion should take place on Meta, since it involves more than one project and is something the WMF legal team would need to review. πr2 (tc) 01:02, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, I've mirrored my initial comment on the Wikipedia Forum. GreenReaper (talk) 02:08, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
FYI, GreenReaper's comment on Forum is here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LVilla (WMF) (talkcontribs) 17:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

distinguish hatnote for heterographs[edit]

Do we need to add a {{distinguish}} hatnote for heterographs? One example is, jQuery and Jake Weary share a same pronounciation, a {{distinguish|Jake Weary}} was added twice at the top of jQuery by two editors, then was removed by others. The reason to add such hatnote is "Confusion is possible when done using a voice search (like by Siri)". This accessibility (see also WP:Accessibility and WP:WikiProject Accessibility) concern is not bad. However, such situation is not clearly discussed in WP:Hatnote. So, hatnote or no hatnote for such cases? --Tomchen1989 (talk) 14:12, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

How often has such confusion happened? Is there really a problem with people searching for Jake Weary and getting jQuery? —Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:04, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
I believe this is a real enough situation with a possibility percentage that is increasingly growing as technology filters through the social classes as such technology gets less expensive. I would support the use of something here. My question is, is there a way to do this and only make it obvious to those that might arrive on such a page in this manner? Perhaps a template that is only seen by text readers or one that is placed in the wikicode at the top of the page but displays on the rendered page at the bottom? Technical 13 (talk) 16:21, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
A template that only shows up in response to Siri queries might help. Before we add a hatnote for every pun, though, I think we'd be wise to understand the actual problem and its severity—or wait until a real problem exists. Siri and similar technology might find a way to handle this on their own. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think "confusion" is quite the right word. Hatnotes are intended to avoid the reader's confusion, but these are clearly different topics. The issue here is that the technology is unable to disambiguate between the two similar phonetic statements in different realms. Siri needs to get better at figuring out that a person is technical and probably wants jQuery (or is not, and wants Jake Weary). GreenReaper (talk) 02:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Oral/aural disambiguation is worth thinking about, but I don't think it is a priority. For the moment, Wikipedia is still primarily a visual medium (and in visual searching there is no "confusion" between Jake Weary and JQuery)... and while oral/aural search technology does exist, it isn't very prevalent. Blueboar (talk) 13:34, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I would support keeping the hatnotes, if people really are searching Wikipedia using Siri. Plus, the WMF seems generally keen on improving the mobile WP-browsing/-editing experience (see e.g. pp. 6–8 of this), so this policy would seem to chime with that. It Is Me Here t / c 14:23, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
It seems to me that users who access Wikipedia regularly with verbal commands develop skill in avoiding this sort of problem. Surely the user could say "Jake...Weary" or "Jay...Query" in the above example. People are better than computers at this sort of thing. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:00, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, maybe, but keeping the hatnotes does also seem to at least be in the spirit of the advice given by pages like Wikipedia:Redirects are cheap and Wikipedia:Disambiguations are cheap. It Is Me Here t / c 20:22, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Subpages[edit]

I think users should be able to delete subpages under their username. For example, for me, Greatpopcorn, it would look like: User:Greatpopcorn/John <- Greatpopcorn, but not Joe, should be able to delete this page. User:Joe/John <- Joe should be able to delete this page, but not Greatpopcorn.Greatpopcorn (talk) 00:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I will say that this has been discussed quite a few times before. I think the most powerful argument is that a user would be able to move something into their userspace, and then delete it, which is quite undesirable. Chris857 (talk) 00:23, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Technically not feasible without major software intervention to the site. Politically not feasible due to the user right level concerned, and for the very obvious reason given by Chris857. The consolation is that user pages can be nominated for speedy deletion by the user per WP:U1 and admins are very prompt to delete them without problems. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:42, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Change duration of WP:BLPPROD from 10 to 7 to days.[edit]

An RfC has been started to propose the changing the duration of WP:BLPPROD from 10 to 7 days. Please see: Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people/RfC: Change duration from 10 to 7 days. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Mass Message Sender[edit]

This mass message is very useful. But in order to send a mass message you need to be an admin that's bad. Edwards Bot has an access list where some trusted non-admins were listed to sent spams through the bot. But with the MassMessage no non-admin will be able to send a spam. Now that's why I'm requesting to create a new group massmessage sender (can be added and removed by sysops) here at English Wikipedia. So when Edwards Bot is left you can grant this right to the users who are in access list or trusted users who wants to be added for valid reason like User talk:EdwardsBot/Access list. Face-smile.svg --Pratyya (Hello!) 13:13, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:VPR#Create new user group for m:MassMessage. Anomie 13:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Promoting commercial services through Wikipedia[edit]

What's the policy on this?

I'm enquiring having just seen this entry : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_(ELT) It describes a teacher training scheme for which many organisations run courses and is apparently objective - but at the end of the article links to one organisation only which provides distance learning courses, (see the link to "Distance Delta" while there are in fact many. There is no indication of this in the article.

a) is it within accepted practice to link to a specific company when describing a product/service which is not specific to that company? b) if so, am I within my rights to add a link to the same course run by my own company?

Thank you.

Sue

a) No and b) No, the other link has been removed. Thanks for pointing that out. --NeilN talk to me 18:59, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


Thank you! Sue

And if you want more information, please see WP:External links, especially the WP:ELNO section. And if you don't mind helping us out, you might check back on that page (or similar ones) every now and again to make sure that nobody has re-added the inappropriate link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Move lists of loanwords to Wiktionary[edit]

I found out that we have a lot of lists of loanwords into languages. This doesn't seem to be part of our mission. Wouldn't they fit better in Wiktionary, where etymologies are covered systematically? At the moment there are problems with sourcing items. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Erm, yes, Lists of English words by country or language of origin is astounding. According to the talk page at least a couple of the individual lists have been deleted at AFD over the years. An RFC or discussion of some sort would seem appropriate given your valid concern. Killiondude (talk) 22:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Tentative proposal for a new PROD variant[edit]

Many people will know that I work a lot on Indic-related content here. What follows is based on experiences there but I'm sure that similar issues exist to a greater or lesser degree elsewhere. I can try to fill out some examples if needed but I edit a lot of articles & so it would be easier for me to add what I find in the next few days rather than trawl through the past/test my memory.

I see a lot of articles that have never been sourced and a lot more that once were sourced but have been stripped back due to issues of reliability. I have occasionally tried a PROD but sometimes even at AfD it has been the case that these things survive due to "no consensus". I find this odd since the burden is supposed to be on the person who adds content, yet completely unsourced material is retained. The most recent such example was Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tiwana, although that has now been renominated.

Going through all this hassle seems excessive. I've been thinking about a suggestion recently made by @GiantSnowman:. Has the idea of WP:UNREFPROD ever been discussed before? GiantSnowman suggests a procedure "whereby all articles without a reliable source are subject to deletion within 10 days - and unlike BLPPROD it would apply regardless to when the article was created". Yes, we should check for sources before nominating for deletion and, yes, asking patrolling admins to do so will add more work, but the principle seems worth discussing. If a patrolling admin sees that it is an experienced contributor of my ilk who has tagged the thing then they might well decide just to AGF that the pre-tag attempt to source has been done. I'd prefer a longer interval than 10 days, though. I assume that the 10 day rule for BLPs arose because of the potential for particularly egregious problems; I would have thought 30 days would be fine for UNREFPROD. Comments? - Sitush (talk) 12:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I am, of course, in favour of this proposal or similar. Regarding the 'deadline' - 10 days is more than enough time to find a reliable source. I'd even be in favour of 7 per standard PROD but I feel 10 is sensible to bring it into line with BLPPROD. It's time to start cleaning up Wikipedia properly - God knows how many unreferenced/untouched articles are out there... GiantSnowman 12:44, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
I would support this as well (although I think it doesn't have a chance of actually being accepted), but with a clear restriction that at most 200 articles a day may be tagged for this. This would enable us to chip away at the 237,000 pages of Category:All articles lacking sources (seeing that there are some 2,000 to 4,000 new additions to this cat per month, 200 a day would mean that more articles get tagged than added) without overwhelming those wanting to source these (you can't expect people to suddenly start sourcing 200,000 pages at once, of course). Fram (talk) 13:11, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
How would you police the '200 a day' limit? GiantSnowman 13:17, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
No idea :-) Fram (talk) 13:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not necessarily saying I'm in favor of this idea in general (though I'm leaning towards it as articles with no sources at all bug me, especially when they've been around for awhile and nothing's been done about them), but perhaps we could instead limit it to "One article per editor per day may be tagged for this." Do we think more than 200 editors are likely to tag articles for this on a daily basis? DonIago (talk) 14:52, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

IMHO a bad idea. If the article should exist (topic is wp:notable even if currently unsourced), then who are we punishing by deleting it for no refs - Wikipedia?. AFD determines whether or not it is wp:notable. You say "Yes, we should check for sources before nominating for deletion and, yes, asking patrolling admins to do so will add more work,", but if they actually do that then we are just transferring the AFD review work to the admin. And if they don't do that, then a determination of actual wp:notability has not been made. Next, the criteria for wp:notability is suitable coverage in RS's, not RS. (by North8000, someone split my post)

"1 tag per editor per day" is incredibly inefficient. We actually need to make a dent in these unsourced/non-notable articles. GiantSnowman 19:18, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Unsourced is completely unrelated to non-notable. Perhaps you should read up on and get a fuller understanding of those two concepts before deciding how to change Wikipedia. --Jayron32 00:52, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Finally IMHO the last thing we need is expansion of the disease of semi-robotic / semi-automatic / backroom decision-making deletion of good faith work done by non-robotic editors/humans. That requires real, public decisionmaking. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:14, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

  • I find myself in complete and total agreement with North on this one. This sounds like a truly awful idea. If you want to go around sourcing articles, please do so. If you find articles that don't seem to have any documentation, then tag them for AfD. But there is no indication at all that AfD is somehow deficient in meeting this task, and it kind of smells like you just don't like the litmus that AfD applies. If you want to change policy about sourcing of articles, then hold that conversation, but don't try to backdoor it in through some new process that sneaks this stuff around community input. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 14:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Why not try a bit of AGF, Vanisaac? I asked things such as whether this has been discussed before and I used words such as "tentative". If it were a formal proposal then I'd submit it as one. Would I have done what I just did at Sirki if I was trying to backdoor something? - Sitush (talk) 14:46, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
I apologize if your intention was merely exploratory and not serious. You proposed a procedure that manages to have both less community oversight (Prod vs XfD) and a lower threshold (actual sourcing vs possible sourcing) than the current method of dealing with the same situation. It may not have been your intention, but that is unquestionably a change in policy on dealing with unsourced articles, and it would come about via a procedural rather than policy proposal. Now you may have just been throwing out a random idea, to see what others think, but that is all kinds of red flags to me, and it seems like my experience is at least somewhat common. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 15:32, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Oppose Completely agree with North8000 and Vanisaac. Being frustrated because AfDs do not go the way you would like is not a reason to change policy. Such articles require more community discussion, not less. --cyclopiaspeak! 14:48, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • bad idea, did not learn from BLP prod drama. the sword of Damocles is a poor motivator. where is the plan to build a team or project to reference articles? "This would enable us to chip away"; would that be the royal we? tell you what, I will match you reference for reference: show me you can reference an article. with your work rate, it shouldn't take a year or two to knock out the backlog. Duckduckstop (talk) 17:49, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
        • Support All articles should have a reliable source especially on BLP articles. I would be more in favour however on looking at why articles created prior to 2010 should be excluded from BLP Prod, given they still are living people. I know why but think we need to be doing more to target the older unreferenced BLP'sBlethering Scot 17:50, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
excellent, reopen that can of worms. BLP prod was a compromise. since the BLP referencing was tranched by date, the prod did not apply to them, merely going forward. can you find an old unreferenced one? if all articles should have sources, then show me the articles you have sourced. Duckduckstop (talk) 17:27, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support If we are building a referenced encyclopaedia then we are building an encyclopaedia. Sources are essential. If we allow unsourced articles to remain then we have a blog. I am in favour of a longer timescale than 10 days, but understand arguments for the period to be shorter. I would be unhappy if a bot were unleashed to flag such articles, but only because it would create a huge backlog of work for hard pressed admins. Fiddle Faddle 17:57, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose If you can't make a case for why the article should be deleted at AfD, why should the nominator be rewarded with a lower threshold method? Part of putting a article up for AfD is standing by the nomination to be the advocate for the deletion. As others have said, AfD checks policies against the article. The most common justification is a notability challenge. While the article may have claims of notability, they claims have to be backed up by reliable sources for the claims to be valid. There might be a case for re-evaluating the "Low participation AfD discussions" proposal from a while back, but PROD already supports the use case proposed. Hasteur (talk) 18:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support in part. I would prefer a thirty day window rather than a ten day window, since editors may take breaks, and in the scope of things, waiting a few more weeks before the article disappears won't hurt anyone (we're talking about non-BLPs here). I would also like an automated notice to be sent to the talk page of the initial author. I presume that these articles would be categorized so that anyone can see the complete listing of unreferenced articles tagged for deletion by this method. bd2412 T 18:08, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support in part if this was applied only for articles created after a certain point (likely timing with the BLP requirement point set by the Foundation), and that otherwise have not been challenged before (PROD/AFD). Ideally, this can then be a tag that NPP patrolers can add. --MASEM (t) 18:15, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose I've got a lot of sympathy for this. I'd have no trouble finding a few dozen neglected articles about technically notable but IMO pointless articles (e.g., a lot of small non-profit organizations) that I'm pretty confident would survive AFD, but I'd be perfectly happy seeing them removed. We could clean out a lot of deadwood in the space of a few months. But WP:There is no deadline, not even for typing the names of the sources into the article. WP:N explicitly states that what matters is whether anyone, anywhere in the world, has published sources about the subject, not whether an editor has taken the time to type a list of sources into the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose for two reasons. One, vandals could remove references and we might not catch it. Two, the bots are imperfect, and may not recognize a reference section erroneously labeled as external links, or inline bare links not formatted properly as references. That much extra work would negate the benefit of this sort of policy. Thargor Orlando (talk) 18:29, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
@Thargor Orlando: - WP:BEFORE would apply and we would expect both the tagger and the deleting admin to check history to ensure valid reliable sources have not been previously removed by vandals. GiantSnowman 18:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
@GiantSnowman: yes, we would expect that. History tells us it won't happen enough, and it will simply create another unmanageable backlog on top of the existing ones. Thargor Orlando (talk) 19:06, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
If it is deleted in error then it should be as easy to restore as it is a normal PROD (i.e. extremely). GiantSnowman 19:19, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Except most editors aren't admins, and can't see deleted articles, so how would we ever have any idea whether or not something was deleted in error or not? Deletion is not a transparent result, and PROD bypasses the checks that the rest of the community relies on to make sure that the opacity of deletion is only applied when it is warranted. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 03:40, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support Generally speaking, you can't PROD something that's been AfDed and closed as keep, so that's not a concern. I agree with the rationale of the nominator, as well as the premise that there are too many unsourced articles of dubious notability pbp 18:54, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per North8000, VanIsaacWS, and Thargor Orlando. It is inexplicable to me that an automated process should be proposed to delete content that there is not consensus to delete after full discussion. And proposing alternate rules or processes just to get rid of articles you don't like, but that you can't yet get deleted by existing processes and express consensus, is really a lousy way to approach the project and other editors. I see you just renominated the AFD you cited anyway two days after the close, and have already generated more discussion (and delete !votes) than the first one, so I can't take seriously your implicit premise that current deletion procedures are inadequate.

    Aside from BLP issues, there is no reason to impose a deadline on what is really a cleanup issue. Our requirement is and has always been that reliable sources must exist somewhere, that article content per WP:V can be verified. We have never required that reliable sources be actually present in the four corners of an article on pain of deletion. Including references in an article is a development goal, not a threshold requirement. So says WP:PRESERVE, WP:BEFORE, WP:NOTCLEANUP, and even WP:BLPDEL. So it is unacceptable to point only to WP:BURDEN as if it exists in a vacuum or trumps all other considerations. I see absolutely no substantive reason offered to change any of these fundamental policy principals. postdlf (talk) 19:02, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Very strongly Oppose Our policies are clear that articles (with limited exceptions in the case of BLPs) must be verifible, but need not be verified until challenged in good faith. That policy should not, indeed must not, be changed without a widely advertised site-wide discussion, with broad participation. Moreover, even if that policy were to be changed, this is not the way to do it. The implementation of BLPPROD was a disaster, with perfectly useful content deleted faster than those trying to source it (Of whom I was one) could manage. (I might add that the majority of articles tagged for deletion in the initial wave were in fact sourcable when someone took the time and trouble. This would be far worse. I have no sympathy for this proposal whatsoever. Hasteur's reasoning is also spot on -- if you can't make a case at AfD now, why should a lower-threshold process be available instead? The core of deletion policy is "If in doubt, don't delete. This inverts that. Moreover, I find the NPP group too quick on the trigger now, the last thing I want is another tool in their hands. DES (talk) 19:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Cases cannot be made at AfD if people do not participate - that is a big part of the problem, as is differing opinions among closing admins. Some treat situations such as that as "no consensus", others treat it as "expired PROD". - Sitush (talk) 21:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • They shouldn't. There was recently a proposal to authorize treating such "unopposed" AfCs as expired PRODs. It signally failed to achieve consensus, so it i clear that such actions are deletions without consensus, and therefore, in the light of the deletion policy, against consensus. That is potentially grounds for desysoping. DES (talk) 21:54, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • So someone can create an article effectively without consensus (except WP:BOLD) and leave it unsourced; someone else turns up and can find no sources, sends it to AfD as an apparent WP:V/WP:GNG issue. Because no-one else is interested, the default is to keep the unsourced article because there is no consensus to over-ride the boldness? Crazy world, crazy encyclopaedia - and roll on our 5 millionth article. . - Sitush (talk) 22:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Welcome to Wikipedia, because that's exactly how it works. No one needs permission (i.e., prior consensus) to create an article. If you personally think an article topic fails inclusion guidelines or policies, but you cannot get a consensus (or even anyone at all) to agree with you on that, then the article stays. We're not flipping AFD to default to "delete" just because you're sometimes unable to generate sufficient interest in your deletion nominations. postdlf (talk) 02:59, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I've no idea why people are personalising this. I know that Wikipedia mostly consists of content of little worth and that a lot of people are happy enough with that, I accept that the worth is a subjective thing & that my standards are apparently higher than the average ... but I was merely asking a question after thinking about a suggestion offered by someone else in an AfD. Perhaps we need instead to take another look at how AfD works in "low participation" situations - Hasteur linked something above about that, although most people who have commented since have not mentioned it. Meanwhile, if I come across an unsourced something and it ends up "no consensus" at AfD in such a situation then I'll just send it straight back there a few days later and keep on doing so until there is consensus. I won't be doing it daily & so it won't be disruptive, and like the "indefinite does not mean infinite" mantra, "no consensus to delete does not mean consensus to keep". - Sitush (talk) 03:37, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Why are people "personalising" this? Because the only evidence you offered that there was a problem in need of solving is that you have personally had trouble getting a quorum or consensus for your own AFD nominations. That and your personal, obnoxious view that "Wikipedia mostly consists of content of little worth..." So this proposal has only been about what you want and it can be made easier for you to get that. postdlf (talk) 16:42, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • User:Postdlf, when people talk about Wikipedia articles generally being of low worth, it's very often because they are poorly referenced, have been for years, and show no signs of improvement. Likewise, one doesn't need permission to create articles, but they do have to create articles that follow our policies, one of which is sourcing. Both problems are solved by deleting unreferenced articles. pbp 23:14, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • User:Postdlf, you might consider my opinion to be "obnoxious" and you are entitled to that opinion. The problem is, you are referring to an opinion made by me after the personalisation. In other words, you are further personalising the issue because you've got the chronology wrong. You are also wrong to say that this is about what I want - read my opening statement, please. I'd expect an admin to take a bit more care but, hey, we all have off-days and we're all human even on our good days. . - Sitush (talk) 00:20, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Purplebackpack89, policy says that things have to be verifiable, not that they must be sourced. However, that is not carte blanche to retain challenged material for which there are apparently no reliable sources - that is a failure of WP:V and that is what is at the heart of this issue. We should not be retaining content for which there are no apparent reliable sources. If something turns up in future months or years then recreate it. There is a fundamental contradiction here regarding being bold in saying things and being conservative in requiring verifiability. I'm not sure what the solution may be and, doubtless, it will end up being generalised as yet another dispute between inclusionists and deletionists. For the record, my opinion is that if if ain't sourced then we should not be publishing it - simple as. - Sitush (talk) 00:39, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per North8000, VanIsaacWS, Thargor Orlando and Postdlf. AFD allows for consensus concerning policies: there is no need to automate this community process. jmcw (talk) 20:53, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Jmcw37 so I don't have to list all the names he did. GregJackP Boomer! 01:03, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. AfD is completely adequate for this task, wherever PROD is knocked back by a proponent of the article. "No consensus" is a completely normal result whenever interest is low and/or the deletion reason isn't sufficiently compelling based on current policy and guideline. Yes, it can be tedious and patience-testing to have to wait 7 or 10 days to get an article which burns your eyes off the Wiki. However, per WP:PRESERVE quite a lot of articles deserve a little TLC and a kick in the ass that a AfD can provide. I know - I've saved quite a few articles from deletion by digging in and finding those sources, along with other eager editors. I've also reluctantly !voted Delete in discussions of articles which just couldn't get to GNG due to poor sourcing at the moment, but which would likely pass later on. So, to userspace, AfC, or merge they go for now. --Lexein (talk) 03:26, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Most of those who have supported are saying it needs > 7 to 10 days, as do I. I'm also happy with userfying etc but you need participation to achieve that also. Perhaps a part of the issue is my involvement in the Indo-Pak stuff, which most people won't touch with a bargepole and thus AfD participation is low. - Sitush (talk) 03:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • partially Oppose: Actaully I am equally concerned and studying the issue of lack of refs and citations more closely, so I raised issue here earlier and I have feeling that Sitush came bit early to this forum for discussion.
We need to understand part of the globe has better in information resources and a part of it even does not understand what an encyclopedia is.Wikimedia Foundations goal is that everybody should be able to contribute to the sum of knowledge through its wiki projects freely.And so I tend to oppose outright steps of exclusivity.
I suggest roughly 4 paragraphs content 10000 bytes to 16000 bytes should be allowed to be retain per article without referencing unless individually challenged.And content additions above 900 bytes per user or 4000 bytes after first 7000 bytes per article can be easily controlled through edit filters, so I have placed a sub proposal RFC in below subsection and looking for openions to the same.

Rgds Mahitgar (talk) 09:04, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Oppose A particular problem is the case of the proposer here is that he likes to remove sources from articles. Removing sources and then prodding an article because it has no sources would be abusive and gamey. Warden (talk) 10:17, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose AFDs already establish consensus. Deleting stuff off Wikipedia is a negative for the project. So no consensus = no delete Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:33, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

RFC:Sub proposal to deal with Lack of references and citations through Edit filters[edit]

While this proposal has reference to the same concerns, as of above proposal for new PROD, regarding Lack of references and citations but wants to deal the issue in different manner.Mahitgar (talk) 08:41, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

A) This proposal belives that,Nobody comes to wikipedia with a Phd in Wikipedia rules and need to have enough space and openness for new comers to develope themselves and the process of inculcating wikipedia culture takes its own time and experince.
B) This proposal belives,just by forcing the people through rules and techniques, we may get quantity but not necessarily quality to the citations.We need to take users in the confidance and need more awareness building tools to help them.
C) Roughly 10% article only are challenged for citation still 237,000 pages of Category:All articles lacking sources are there (If you include pages never challenged figure of non-citation has to be far larger) and backlog is as old as from 2006.So at the same time we need to have adequate control mechanism that does not allow rampant addition of content without enough citations.We need to remind the user some where that ok now you have enough experience here and need to provide references here after.
D) This proposal belives that encyclopedic content size is available larger than 16000 bytes and no refferences situation;Some users stay with wikipedia long enough and still do not pick up skill and art of referencing then there is some gap some where.We need to search those gaps and find and redress those gaps.
E) This proposal belives that restrictions who contemplate restrictions and who manage edit filters also work in good faith.And admins are experienced enough to handle edit filters in sensible manner and in good faith that they will see that new users wont get discouraged any where in the process.


The Proposal:


1)Disallow after 4 attempts of more than 4000 bytes (Max 16000 bytes) per article without refferences and citations in a span of 16 hours with support of an Edit Filter.
4000 bytes of content is aprox 2 small paragraphs so in an article max will get added will be 16000 bytes (aprox 8 small paragraphs) .a) There is no logical reason that for content size more than 16000 bytes no source should be available.b) More often than not,content biger than 16000 bytes without references are likely to be copyright violations,Because it takes more effort and time to write 16000 bytes in one's own language.
Increasing or decreasing hours should be left for edit filter managers to decide.Filter should be private or public should be left to edit filter managers (since Number of hours may need to be hiden for effective implementation). Attempts and max byts content to be added we can discussed/negotiate here further for concensus.
2)No individual user should be allowd for more than 10 attempts of more than 900 bytes without references/citations,in a span of 7 days .
Leave span of days to be adjusted to edit filter managers.Bytes and attempts can be discussed here for consensus.
3)After 2 attempts of more than 900 bytes without reference/citations, user should receive awareness messages through edit filter about how to give references and how to understand quality.


  • Wow. Way to both add an unintelligible labyrinth of rules and completely discount editors' contributions by impersonal mathematical formula. I cannot imagine a proposal more dismissive, elitist, and destructive of editor retention than this clunker. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 09:56, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Actually I was expecting criticism from opposite camp that 16000 bytes is too liberal.I request users to study logic behind the proposal,and not to be moved by emotion.Go to the sand box, count the bytes what it means and let me know if this is not liberal enough. Let us see what others feel. Mahitgar (talk)
  • And no references to support this proposal, does that mean that remove it in 15 hours time? Anyway I don't think this will help build Wikipedia. We already have unreferenced tags, and there are some people who will assist by finding refs, a very tiny some, I don't think that will improve by prodding. BLPs already get their own special treatment this way, and other articles do not matter so much. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • 1)I wanted to rais the issue after more study and refs but some other user started discussion without being enough prepared.Still in any case,this does not dilute issue of lack of refferencing in Wikipedia articles.If you want to maintian some level of standard then one has to accept some level of restrictions too.
  • 2) Probably you did not read and study proposal in detail if you want you can add more after 16 hours/7days in other case.We can negotiate the restrictions;But we need to remind the user some where that ok now you have enough experience here and need to provide references here after.Mahitgar (talk) 10:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This has a similar problem to the other one, expecting new editors to know the preferences of the article structures. Will such a proposal treat an article with multiple external links but no inline references as lacking citation? How about articles with unformatted inline links? Bad idea. Thargor Orlando (talk) 14:47, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • a) For new editors after 2 non-cited edits additional guidance/awareness support can be provided through separate edit filter. b)Actually new extensions tourguide and visual editor can be very helpfull for new users for adding references easily c) If needed some exceptions can be offered for external links and unformatted inline links for some period to come. d) 10 to 15 edits without references should be enough for a new user before they learn how to give refs in wikipedia style.I suppose and request you can revisit the premise looking at need to put in controlls.Mahitgar (talk) 15:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Insane WP:BURO hell. I agree with Vanisaac completely, again. --cyclopiaspeak! 17:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose even more strongly than the previous proposal. We need more human interaction with new editors, not more robotic deletions. I can't imagine a batter way to reduce editor retention. DES (talk) 17:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Oppose Wikipedia has too many rules, to fix this we will create MORE RULES! *crowd cheers*. We already have ways for detecting/reviewing new pages that don't have references (WP:NPP). For every way people come up to make more process, the system will expand to fulfill the process. Hasteur (talk) 18:23, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

  • May be I did not write the proposal in a way to understand properly.First main intention is of partial process automation where possible.Where we save man hours we can spend those else where more constructively.
  • This proposal belives that a encyclopedic content size is available larger than 16000 bytes and no refferences situation;Some users stay with wikipedia long enough and still do not pick up skill and art of referencing then there is some gap some where.We need to search those gaps and find and redress those gaps.
    • This proposal is certainly proposing new rules, but trying to remain logical and reasonable.
  • Second,actually proposal point 1 and 2 intend to just give a break of say certain hours or days,factually it is not total diss allow, just brings in some pressure (That too on large edit sizes only).It is like take a break learn the skills and come back.And even if you could pick up the skills still you are welcome back.What more a proposal can be liberal than this. At what point pressure can be brought can be discussed and renegotiated, but I am surprised with outright refusals.
  • Third,I do not find any reason for opposing point no. 3 atleast because Point 3 is just using it for awareness.
  • Manual interaction is most ideal but there are limitations to human manual work.And my concern is about "Anybody, somebody and nobody" case.
  • Mahitgar (talk) 01:53, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Although this is already going down in flames, I think there's another good reason to oppose it: there are too many different reference formats that Wikipedia's MOS allows to make automatic detection of references possible or reliable. References don't have to be marked by footnotes. They don't have to be marked by external links. They don't have to be marked by cite templates. So how are you going to create an edit filter to do what you propose, without at the same time severely inconveniencing legitimate edits of articles whose reference format doesn't match the one you prefer? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:56, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Variation on the WP:UNREFPROD proposal[edit]

I thought I'd take a stab at making a proposal that combines some of the ideas that have recently been bubbling up through these forums. Since there is apparently support for a new "Draft:" namespace at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), I propose that:

  1. WP:UNREFPROD be created as proposed above, and
  2. any article that is not referenced within ten thirty days of this tag being added, rather than being deleted, will automatically be moved to the new noindexed Draft: namespace.

Cheers! bd2412 T 16:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

  • not opposed... However, I would make the time limit a bit longer (say 30 days). On more obscure topics, it may take that long for someone to even notice that the article has been tagged. Also, I do think we need to discuss how articles would be removed from this "Draft" namespace. Is adding one single ref enough? (my answer: not necessarily... it depends on what the ref says about the topic). Can articles in Draft space be nominated for deletion? (my answer: yes... if someone has made a reasonable search for sources and can not find any). Blueboar (talk) 17:13, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
    • I am agreeable to all points (I had actually proposed a thirty day period in the discussion above, but felt that the need for such leeway was less pressing for articles that are merely being moved to another namespace, rather than deleted altogether). I take it as a given that an article moved to Draft space will need to be decently referenced to be moved back out of it, and that articles in any space can be nominated for deletion. bd2412 T 17:27, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We don't need more bureaucracy and, as already explained in the proposal above, whether an article is referenced or not is too subjective and complicated to deal with through automated processes. Time spent tagging articles and discussing whether to move them back from an arbitrary limbo is time wasted, which could have instead been spent researching and expanding articles, or confirming whether they are proper AFD nominations. And we already have edit wars as it is regarding tags that don't even have such concrete consequences. postdlf (talk) 17:31, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Question. @BD2412: there's a question that should probably be answered that this proposal is missing: what happens to the "PROD'ed" article when the article is eligible for moving to the Draft: space, but the draft space already has a draft with the article's title name? Would there be a disambiguator added to the title of the PROD'ed article when it is moved to the draft space, or would the PROD'ed article override the draft currently in the draft space (or vice versa), or would the draft and the PROD'ed article be merged, etc.? Steel1943 (talk) 17:35, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
    • That raises the question, why would there be a draft in Draft space of an article already in Article space? Generally, I have only seen new drafts of existing articles created where there is a content dispute in the article, and an editor tries to settle it by coming up with a draft that will achieve consensus. I have seen that happen many times, but never where the article at issue was not already well-referenced. Drafts created to settle content disputes are usually created in the userspace of the proposing editor, or as a subpage of the talk page of the article at issue. I have no problem with Draft space subpages being created, linked from the Draft talk: page. We have unlimited flexibility to do such things, so that doesn't worry me at all. bd2412 T 17:47, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict) I have seen it fairly often at AfC where a new user didn't know to search for an existing article, or didn't search under an alternate title. Usually the result is a merge, or a deletion of the draft as redundant. Such cases don't usually cause much fuss. DES (talk) 17:50, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
        • @Steel1943: This is one of the major strengths of having a Draft namespace, rather than using the current AfC approach: the software could be programmed to block the creation of an article in Draft namespace if one already existed in mainspace. (And handle the opposite - someone wanting to create an article in mainspace could at least be warned, if not stopped, if a Draft namespace article existed). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
  • @John Broughton: I respect your idea about how the Draft space could be utilized, but I partially disagree with it. Even if there is currently a page with the same name in the article space, that should not automatically prevent the creation of a page with the same name in the Draft space. For example, there could be a case where a BLP article had so many violations that another editor wanted to try to create an new draft of the biography from scratch in the Draft space; if this proposed draft space block was in place, the user could not save or create their new draft (unless they wanted to save it in their user space.) In addition, blocking either namespace's page creation due to having a page with the same name in the other space could also deter editors from performing merges, especially if an editor wants to create a new draft, but merge only a few points from the article to make sure that the page is allowed more time to filter out all of the BLP violations from the good information; in addition, any good information currently in the article could be lost during any type of deletion. However, I do agree that a notification of the existence of same-named pages in either space is a good idea; it could prevent editors from redoing an article that has already been done by another, or prompt them to work on the existing page instead. Steel1943 (talk) 07:54, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment I think this should wait until we have clear consensus on a draft namespace, if we do. Even then, this is a significant policy change. Our current policy says that, aside from BLPs, an unreferenced article is fine if it could be referenced. If that is to change or be modified by this, wide support is needed, IMO. I would think that some varient of WP:BEFORE should be required, in that no one should apply such a tag unless s/he has at least done a web search for available references. More guidance on how things would be moved back out of draf is needed, the draft namespace proposal would (AIUI) allow any autoconfirmed user to move any draft to mainspace at any time -- would this change that? As this stands I would have to oppose, but changes might make it acceptable. DES (talk) 17:48, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
    • This proposal is, of course, contingent on the Draft: namespace actually being created. I would consider moving things to Draft: to be far less severe than deleting them altogether. A draft, at least, can be worked on, and even invites editors to work on it. As for moving things back to mainspace, I think there will need to be a general policy on moving things from Draft: to article space which goes beyond articles that just needed sources. bd2412 T 17:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Oppose If an article is unreferenced, one should look for sources (cfr. WP:BEFORE). If these don't pop out after reasonable search, then WP:PROD and WP:AFD are that-a-way. We already have long standing processes for this -to add another independent process to deal with such a trivial case is nonsensical. --cyclopiaspeak! 17:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support I don't like the fact that we have literally hundreds of thousands of articles without a single reference. Yet those opposed to nuking the entire group make some solid arguments. Moving these articles to the Draft space (obviously, assuming the proposal for such a space passes) neatly solves several problems. It doesn't delete the article, so the vast majority of editors who are no admins can find the material, yet it would be no-indexed, so casual users of Wikipedia are less likely to stumble upon material which isn't sourced.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:09, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose, addresses none of my concerns from the initial proposal. Thargor Orlando (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • How would this be functionally any different from simply adding __NOINDEX__ to the unreferenced tag? Except, of course, for being more convoluted and requiring excess volunteer time and admin intervention to move a draft back to the mainspace once it's been referenced. I keep trying to figure out what problem all of you are actually trying to solve, and I have to come to the conclusion that it's not that you want editors to be able to add references, you just don't want to ever come across an article where you have to do it for them. Because the only kind of proposal that isn't coming up is a way of making it easier for editors to add references to articles. These are just off the top of my head, but if you really wanted to enable editors to add references you could have A) a link on top of the edit window that will open up a new browser tab with a google search of the article title. B) a bot that copies no less than a dozen refs from the most unique pages that an article links to (fewest other what links here) and puts them on the talk page. But everything I'm seeing is about deleting, hiding, and marginalizing content that you feel is substandard, or making it impossible for good faith editors who are less concerned about referencing than you, less inclined to making those kinds of contributions, or with fewer material or mental resources, to contribute to this project. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:13, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment:
  • >>you just don't want to ever come across an article where you have to do it for them.<< I am surprised at this comment.I have spent almost 10 yrs in Wikipedia(mr) providing the help and human interaction.I do not deny importance of helping tools and human interaction but providing good help and interaction is also a skill very few people possess,practically majority of the new comers end up less than quality help and interaction for ever, work remains unattended just by putting some tags for the years together.
  • The point is as we provide help, we need to put some pressure also.If an admin is good experineced in providing help and interaction he can provide help and interaction through edit filters at a far larger audiance than manually possible.The problem here on english wikipedia is we view Edit filters as only a tool of punishment.Actually edit filters can provide help at the right time and put adequate amount of pressure also.IMO Only the help also does not help basic objective of content presenter if he is not told about requisite aspects in time,and content does not get a quality standard,so we need to put in adequate timely pressure too.What that pressure be can be always discussed.But no pressure at all may niether be best help nor the best policy.
Mahitgar (talk) 02:59, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
It's not that it's punishment, it's that edit filters actively discourage participation. So you'd better make sure that it's actually a contributor that we don't want to keep around - ie, a vandal. Anything else is good faith editors getting slapped around by a robot, and no matter if it's not intended as a punishment, it certainly is not a neutral experience. You also didn't answer the question: How is this proposal substantively any different from adding __NOINDEX__ to the unreferenced tag aside from wasting editor and admin time? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 03:27, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
This really boils down to the entire purpose of having a Draft namespace. It allows us to say that what we call "articles" are, in fact, encyclopedia articles, that have met at least some minimal standard of sourcing to merit being called that. What we have now is basically a mix of a few million referenced articles that make verifiable claims, and a few million pages that we don't really know to be anything more than an editor's opinion. Putting things in Draft space tells everyone, the article creator, other editors, the world in general, that this might be something, but we don't know yet, it's not ready for prime time yet. At the same time, since Draft space would be distinct from User space, it would signal that these Draft space pages are still pages that anyone can edit, improve, and bring up to the standards of articles. Editors looking for gaps that need filling would know that even though a start has been made, in article space, this link is still a red link, a need to be addressed (presumably, an editor clicking the link to create the page in article space would get a notification to the effect that "An article of this name exists in the Draft namespace", to avoid duplication of even that much effort). The difference between this proposal and nonindexing pages in article space is that this would allow us, at long last, to distinguish the encyclopedia that has been written from the one that looks like it has been on the surface, but still needs to be when considered in depth. bd2412 T 05:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
That right there is my concern - turning the draft namespace into a steerage-class mainspace instead of the workplace for gathering information and forming them into articles that it was proposed as. Moreover, this still doesn't really do anything that an unreferenced tag doesn't already do, aside from making sure that good faith editors know that their contribution has been deemed unworthy and ensuring that referencing an article now becomes a huge hassle, where you have to put in a move request, and an admin has to waste their time on another housekeeping chore, instead of just removing the {{unref}} tag. Should we do this with all maintenance tags as well? They all indicate that an article is substandard in some way. By the logic of this proposal, they all should be shunted off to sit in draft space where no one will ever see them so they can be improved. I think that this is an inherently bad idea, and that making referencing easier needs to happen long before you start even contemplating the, now three, draconian measures that I keep seeing here. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Your concern is effectively the opposite of what is being proposed here - by its very definition, Draft space will be a place where articles will be improved; that's the whole point of having a draft space. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that "no one will ever see" articles in draft space? Are you privy to some super-secret plot to make draft space invisible and uneditable on this otherwise transparent project? bd2412 T 13:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
No, my concern is exactly what's being proposed. Draft space may be "for" articles to be improved, but it doesn't just magically happen - or are you planning on foisting all these off on the already overwhelmed and neglected AfC project? There is nothing in this proposal that talks about starting up an effort to adopt unreferenced articles that have been shunted off into draft space, or even a simple mechanism to make the referencing process easier, and the last thing I'm seeing is any indication of how it is in any conceivable way not an enormous pain in the butt moving around an article back-and-forth between namespaces, let alone a single advantage to moving them into the draft namespace in the first place. As to the lack of visibility, are you seriously suggesting that articles in draft namespace will be even remotely equivalent in terms of visibility to the mainspace? What I object to is moving these things "out of sight, out of mind", and still see absolutely no possible productive outcome from this proposal that isn't already done with maintenance tags. In the end, one of the real crimes with this proposal is that it deprives drive-by readers from the opportunity to see that they can do something to improve the content that we do have. We already have a big problem with editor retention - why would we want to kill off an avenue for recruitment? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 16:41, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Vanisaac, I don't mean to get into it with you, I'm just hoping to understand your perspective a bit better. Do you feel that articles that have been without references long-term (say, over a year) and tagged for such are a significant problem? If so, what are your own feelings regarding how they can best be handled in situations? DonIago (talk) 17:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't know that they are a significant problem, I know that they can be a sometimes critical problem. That's why we have rules about unsourced BLPs. But if I were to come across an unreferenced stub on something like Lykavittos that said it's "a large hill in Athens, Greece, approximately 3 miles north of the acropolis and the city center." I would call the lack of details a problem, and the lack of references merely an annoyance. The worst possible outcome I could see is if it got deleted or unlinked from other articles - even in that state, it still would give a person reading up on Socrates or Alexander the Great a basic understanding of the location. It probably doesn't belong showing up on a Google search, but there's no conceivable reason why it shouldn't be visible from other articles. As for the best course of action, I would say that step D of WP:BEFORE is sort of the gold standard. If someone actually wants to do something about unsourced articles, I can't take you seriously if you haven't done that incredibly basic step. Once that's happened: 1) the article can be deleted via AfD, or 2) you now have sources and the problem has been, if not solved, at least improved. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 17:34, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate having more insight into your take on this. DonIago (talk) 17:45, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
The only visibility difference I have ever seen proposed for Draft space pages is noindexing. There is no other reduction in visibility that is either suggested or even particularly feasible. To be clear, once Draft space exists, it will be the place where most of Wikipedia's work gets done, the place to start and build articles until they are in good enough shape to credibly be called an encyclopedia article. Also, please note that my proposal now includes a full thirty day wait before a tagged article would even be moved, which is time enough for anyone who cares and is paying attention to add a reference and remove the tag. bd2412 T 17:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
The key question is whether articles in draft namespace will be linked from regular articles in the mainspace, either by direct link or redirect. Because that's part of visibility. If they do stay linked, then moving them is purely cosmetic and it should be rejected as a waste of editor and admin time dealing with moves, moves against redirect, etc, etc. If not, then you've made these articles invisible to every related article, making the problem of getting people to reference the article worse, not better. If the goal is to just get these noindexed, just add it to the {{unref}} tag, as I've suggested numerous times, above. But you can't have it both ways. This is either a substantive change that makes it less likely for referencing maintenance to happen, or it's a cosmetic change that makes unreferencing more difficult and onerous, whether the timer is set for thirty days or thirty years, there's no way it makes anything work better. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 17:52, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
  • >>making referencing easier needs to happen long before you start even contemplating the, now three,draconian measures that I keep seeing here.<<
Edit filters ideas are bad because people may misuse it,Deletions idea are bad because people may misuse it,People who do content additions without restrictions are doing in good faith and those wish to controll some where wont do restricting and controlling in good faith;Internet is bad because people may misuse it,Wikipedia is bad because people may misuse it,all these are logically fallacies and I doubt how far any such arguments to call them just draconian holds any ground.
Whether edit filters , moves or deletions are technologies and those can not be wrong in themselves,We have been using various technologies in wikipedia from time to time,We use tens of thousands of MediaWiki messages and hundreds of restrictions are displayed automatically and still newcomers are coming and editing.
Edit filters automatically can identify who has not been able to give references,Today we do not know clearly which new user is in need of exactly which kind of help.Edit filters can Guide them through messages at the right time when they are in need.manually copy pasting good guidance we can do for some users the same good messages can be delivered to every one at the right time through edit filter messaging.These are process automations, today we have new messaging system that makes easier to say thank you that is a process automation.Many time help tools progress when pressuer comes from other side.
If tomorrow, referencing becomes easier as you say,still credit would come to us for contemplating and meaning of draconian will change from negative to positive :).
Mahitgar (talk) 08:16, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Having an unsourced something, is often better then having nothing. Yes, it is better to have sourced content, and a prod could motivate editors to source the thing prodded, but mostly it would result in deletion of content that readers may have found useful. If we really want to go down the road of mandatory sourcing to avoid deletion, it would be better to start with the article creation rules, grandfathering in old articles as was done with BLPPROD. Yet, for many non-spammy topics, I still think that an unsourced article improves the encyclopedia over having none at all. Monty845 05:25, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't. People who've participated in this discussion seem to be reacting to all the bad press Wikipedia gets for articles being deleted. Have we forgotten how much bad press for being factually inaccurate, unsourced (and remember, without sources, you don't know), and for creating articles on obscure topics while very few of the important topics make it to GA or FA? You can put me down on the side of no articles being better than unsourced articles. pbp 05:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Bad press is a concern only because it signals the tip of the iceberg -that is, that in general Wikipedia is perceived to be failing when it does not cover a topic. Yes, Wikipedia is also perceived as somewhat inaccurate and oddly biased, and not without reason, but a bunch of unsourced articles are usually not the problem. Let us all remember that the nastier stuff that happened, like the Seigenthaler incident, was involving actually notable, sourced articles. An unsourced, poorly written blurb, even if dubious, can nonetheless be for many a starting point for a further research on a topic -eventually leading, if the reader is also an editor, to a better, sourced article. We are here to provide information to readers, after all. We want such information to be reliable and sourced, true, but annihilation of information which isn't up to our current standards does not make us better. It only throws out the baby with the bathwater. What we want is to improve that stuff, not to destroy it. --cyclopiaspeak! 10:52, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
@Monty845, did you post this in response to the original proposal? The variation proposed in this subsection would expressly not result in the deletion of anything. bd2412 T 12:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
My objection applies as well here as to the rest of the proposal, as it will be noindexed, so using a search engine wont result in readers finding it, nor will it be in main space, where regular wiki links or searches will find it. As far as the ordinary reader is concerned, a move without redirect to the drafts namespace is as good as deleted. Monty845 17:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Oppose For the exact same reason I opposed it above. You don't go creating exceptions in the deletion policy to scratch your own itch. Ideally you should raise the issue with a maintenance tag, address the issue on the talk page of said article, try to engage the creator (and major contributors) of the article. If your AGF efforts to try and get the article referenced are not resolved and you can't get it resolved yourself, you PROD the article for those reasons. If someone objects to the proposal, then take it to AfD showing all the effort you've made in trying to get the article referenced. The idea is to present your case at AfD for why it should be deleted on policy grounds. If the AfD gets closed as no consensus for lack of participation, wait a few weeks and launch a new AfD. If the AfD gets closed as keep with promises of references, wait 4 weeks for the references to materialize and start at the top of the unreferenced notice cycle (bypassing PROD). The idea is to make those editors who claim that the article is appropriate for the Wiki to back up their assertions with facts. Hasteur (talk) 18:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Yes, unreferenced articles are a problem on Wikipedia. The best solution is & will always be to add references to them. Yes, it's far more work than arguing over policy or adding tags, but that's how the problem gets fixed. Policy & tags ain't gonna fix the problem. I suggest that, before anyone makes another proposal to address this problem, she/she first adds references to at least one article, & anyone commenting on that proposal also does the same for at least one article. Now excuse me while I follow my own advice. -- llywrch (talk) 21:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose It is core policy that references are only required for direct quotations and controversial material. Text which is uncontroversial and reasonably obvious does not require a reference. This is because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a search engine. We are here to provide our original writing about topics, not lists of links to other works. Moreover, fussing over references gives the impression that writing which has a footnote is accurate. This is not the case because, without a proper review, you have no assurance that the source supports what is said in the text. We should not encourage placement of references for show because this may mislead - giving the impression that our writing is accurate when it isn't. Warden (talk) 08:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
I am surprised with the whole logic and how to be sure original writing is not equal to original reasearch ?
Mahitgar (talk) 16:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
This problem is endemic in Wikipedia, though. Just because something is said elsewhere on the internet does not make it true. Reliable (ie good) sources are what matter and for most topics that is not so much about who the publisher is, though that can matter, as who wrote it, when, and why what they say can be relied upon. Some of the most problematic articles I can think of are ones which are based in good faith on material that has itself little foundation or has been discredited by later or more expert research, but with references to that misleading information. I agree with Warden that stuffing articles with such references if the author knows no better can mislead other users. Some supposed references are completely useless, and even hoaxes, but give verisimilitude. Ironically, the prohibition on original research is a big block to improvement - those who are most likely to have expertise will often have done research and I have been in the position myself of having seen numerous original documents concerning an event which was misdated in WP. The only way I could correct it was to find another person's work which I could quote as a reference, but my reason for knowing that, rather then the other, was correct was my own knowledge of the topic. --AJHingston (talk) 19:10, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Indeed. Wikipedia's best protection against error is having many eyes reading the articles - knowledgeable people like you who can spot mistakes. Just copying what sources say is weak because even the best sources are fallible. And it leads to plagiarism and copyright violation. Warden (talk) 10:00, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Holy cow, still having these crazy backroom decision-making proposals to launch a mindless deletion spree - and the discussion wasting immense amounts of editor time, that could have been used to create or improve content. I left Wikipedia some years ago because of the BLP PROD madness. Best thing I've ever done. Huge relief. Cutting away a major source of nagging frustrations. Wikipedia is a sick place. Wouldn't trust it a piece of information. Power.corrupts (talk) 00:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

List of concerns expressed relating to absence of referencing and measures suggested[edit]

adressing the concerns[edit]

Hi,

Your comments and participation is welcome

  • I am also contemplating for some proposal to address concerns of User:Thargor Orlando,But are we still in fresh mood and open minded for more discussion on the above subject ?

Rgds Mahitgar (talk) 10:37, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:NPA clarity[edit]

Issues with and another editor where in WP:ANI, a certain editor advertise past actions/discredit me, shown here: [6] (keep in mind, i realize it doesn't look like much but in the past this has been a significant pattern of such in a much more incivil way). I've noted WP:NPA regarding the rule:

What can be considered a personal attack

  • Criticisms of, or references to, personal behavior in an inappropriate context, like on a policy or article talk page, or in an edit summary, rather than on a user page or conflict resolution page. Remember: Comment on content, not on the contributor. For dispute resolution including how best to address the behavior of others, please follow WP:DR.
    —Wikipedia, WP:NPA

Basically from what i interpret it as: don't make any criticism/reference of that editor that's out of context unless relevant to the discussion.

this editor claims that i'm misreading the rule shown hereand here

But for the sake of concluding (and any editor out there that has to put up with this, am i misinterpreting it?

i believe we should clarify so that no one wiki-lawyers would game the system using the rule. basically if this rule stays as is, some will game the system and assume they can make any comment about any editor in ANI even if their not the subject (like me). I've been a victim of this for a LONG time and this loophole can allow any editor to bring up any issue indiscriminately and inappropriately. Other editors shouldn't discredit others for past events, especially if one thinks its justifiable. If indeed the pattern continues of misinforming or just lack of knowledge, then there would be no reason to discredit the editor even if one claimed it was justified, the consensus would take care of that anyways by the people who are better informed.

I believe the rule should change to something like this:

modified version of what is considered a personal attack

  • "Criticism of, referencing to, personal behavior or past events in an inappropriate context such as in a policy, or talk page, or in an edit summary, rather than on a user page of the one subject to such criticism-referencing or making a subject of such issues within conflict resolution page.Comment on the relevant topic at hand where appropriate, not on the contributors. For dispute resolution including how best to address the behavior of others, please follow WP:DR and be civil about it if you choose to do so."

I know its not all grammatically correct but basically this clarification covers up all the holes that many admins in the past dismissed when someone is being uncivil. This also stops any "animosity" from other editors if the other editor chooses to reference another editor in a way that demotes him/her. So for example: if an editor has been banned, another editor can't make a note of it unless he brings it up in appropriate areas (such as if that editor is causing trouble again), not in a way that dismisses the other.

I've also noticed that many of those in ANI believe they have the option to be uncivil toward the ones being accused of inappropriate behavior, i think this rule should cover that as well.Lucia Black (talk) 21:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Given that you've violated your own proposal, by referencing the personal behaviour of another contributor here, I have to suggest that you've not really though this through. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:52, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Short version: Someone was questioning her line of thinking at ANI, and I referenced past times in which her line of thinking was also not in-line. Was it necessary to discredit her? One could argue no, and that's fine, its subjective. Was it a personal attack or a civility violation? Absolutely not. Sergecross73 msg me 21:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
@AndyTheGrump: not really, i realize that i may have been subject to this in the past, but i'm making it so its fair to all. Even if it means that i have to follow it and change my behavior as well. But that's precisely the point, it doesn't leave room for someone to dismiss it.
@Sergecross73: I wasn't suppose to be the subject in the first place Sergecross. It was inappropriate of that editor to even question my credibility in the first place if it wasn't i wasn't the subject, so it doesn't leave you an excuse to chime in. But beside the point, this is a clear "loophole" that editors have done. You're admitting you attempted to discredit me (how is that civil?). In which case was disruptive, and definitely causes animosity between me and you.
But lets say what WP:IDENTIFYUNCIVIL says: Direct rudeness(d) belittling a fellow editor, including the use of judgmental edit summaries or talk-page posts (e.g. "that is the stupidest thing I have ever seen", "snipped crap"). Its right there Serge...you violated this in the past, but right now you're shielding yourself by saying ANI is a place to bring these subjects up.Lucia Black (talk) 22:10, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
That wasn't "direct rudeness". Look, NPA/CIV isn't here to protect from little times like this. Sergecross73 msg me 22:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
"Judgmental" posts on ANI are not only common, but expected. It is practically impossible to comment on behavioural issues otherwise. If a (hypothetical) contributor is incapable of writing a coherent sentence for example, how would I raise the matter at ANI without saying so? And how would other contributors voice their opinions on the abilities of this supposed contributor? Yes, ANI isn't always as civil as it could be, but you can't enforce civility at the expense of neutering ANI entirely. And yes, it is sometimes (not always) entirely appropriate to bring up past behavioural issues at ANI. Decisions are made on the basis of the evidence - which often includes past behaviour. That is how it works. I can't see any other way it could work. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
@Sergecross73: It was plenty rude. how can you not see that? i was in that discussion, you knew it was going to cause animosity and you said it in a rude manner (I'm sure she'll make a big stink over me saying it, but quite frankly...) and you chose to continue. and we both know this has been a pattern of yours, so lets not call this a "one-time event". I've had enough of it, i would like it to stop. and i hope this clarification gets approved so that no one gets to be uncivil in ANI as well.
@AndyTheGrump: Would you honestly bring a (hypothetical) contributor in ANI simply because you can't understand his/her sentence? Ever thought about simply saying "i'm sorry, but i didn't understand what you just said, can you please clarify?"
but even if you want to bring the matter at ANI, you are still able to do it. the rule doesn't stop one from bringing it in ANI, it only stops one from being uncivil by getting off-topic and targeting another editor's ability or any other personal behavior (anywhere, ANI will no longer be the area to free to roam) rather than the topic at hand. So unless that specific editor's ability is the subject, it shouldn't be discussed there, it should be made into a new topic if he thinks its so important to make it into a subject.
So if in ANI someone wants to topic ban someone, and one editor defends the editor, would we belittle that editor's vote? in any other area, that would be unacceptable, so why make it unacceptable there? I find it odd you called it "neutering ANI". what would be "lettering ANI"? do you enjoy the incivility in ANI?Lucia Black (talk) 22:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
ANI is a place where we discuss behaviour. We can't discuss it without writing about it. End of story. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:50, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you understand the rule. Unless you can want to making personal attacks in ANI.Lucia Black (talk) 22:59, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I knew you'd make a stink about it, because you always do. It's a matter of trends, not due to its degree of rudeness. You wrongfully cry foul of NPA/CIV all the time. If you're going to get worked up every time you get a criticism at ANI, then you probably should stay clear of there. Its not a place for someone who has such a thin skin for comments from strangers on the internet. Beyond echoing exactly what AndyTheGrump said above me, I don't know what else to tell you. Sergecross73 msg me 23:00, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Do you listen to yourself? Serge, you know enough this has been going on for along time bot in and out of ANI. You can't deny your incivility towards me anymore. And for shame to make ANI, a place for people to be uncivil toward eachother. I am not going to clear a way from it.
this is a clear sign of both you wanting to drive real discussions. Can we get any editors wh actually care about civility?Lucia Black (talk) 23:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Stop now. You're border-lining on purely disruptive behavior. Criticism is not incivility. Stop accusing people of being "uncivil", "not caring", or "out to get you" when they comment on your behavior or disagree with you. That in itself is uncivil behavior. --ThomasO1989 (talk) 23:12, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
You've completely lost me now, Lucia. Are you making connections internally that you're not expressing externally or something? Sergecross73 msg me 23:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
@ThomasO1989: i'm not stopping, because I've said nothing wrong or nothing that's not true. Everything has been provided by Wikipedia's policy. Criticism is indeed incivility if its not called for. the principle of the rule is so that no one brings such irrelevant demeaning comments. I'm border-lining nothing Thomas. WP:NPA says it clear as day, which is part of considering what WP:UNVICIL says. Period. enough said. end of discussion. i will not even bother to point out the obvious TWICE for you. it's there. Say i'm misreading it all you want, but its there.
@Sergecross73: Wikipedia should be a neutral place in all areas. If incivility brought them to ANI, incivility shouldn't be flushing them out. Even to other editors who are merely putting a vote in a discussion. and it shows strong hypocrisy in wikipedia's core aspects, it only promotes more negativity in the end. ANI is indeed a place to discuss behavior, but you know better than to dumb it down to think that you can bring up anything you want. ANI is a place to discuss behavior that disrupts editing. I feel like the point of the clarification.
Or do you enjoy belittling/discrediting me? If you don't, then stop it, and be civil.

For anyone else: It has been clear, from this response that there is indeed a clear loophole and it is indeed being used (possibly extensively). I believe we need to clarify this rule so that other editors (even admins) don't promote negativity among other editors even in ANI.Lucia Black (talk) 00:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I think you got the last word in. Killiondude (talk) 00:58, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Lets just hear on what others have to say shall we? i may have had the last word among them, but i rather let this be for what it originally was,a discussion to re-clarify what that rule implies. Everyone else can vote, and why it would be a good idea or not.Lucia Black (talk) 01:02, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

All right, I'll be one of those "other editors" who will comment on your proposal:

You want to make "referencing to... past actions" be against policy, unless those references to past actions are either on:

  1. the user talk page of the person you are criticizing, or
  2. a dispute-resolution page, in a discussion about the person you are criticizing (this would include RFC/U and ANI).

"Referencing to... past actions" includes things like saying "He did a great job with that article yesterday" (presumably you meant only disparaging references?) or "He said something mean about me yesterday".

So if someone wanted to complain, "User:Example said something mean about me yesterday", then that person would be prohibited from saying that on any page except at User talk:Example or at an appropriate dispute resolution page, like an ANI section about User:Example or at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example. Your proposed policy would prohibit such statements anywhere else, because "said something mean about me" is a "reference" to User:Example's "past actions", and you propose that such statements may only be made in one of the two designated places.

Which means, Lucia, that the very first sentence that you wrote in this section seriously violates your proposed policy. Unless you actually mean to ban yourself from what you just said, then your proposal, as written, does not actually accomplish what you intend for it to accomplish, and it must be rejected on (at least) the grounds that it is very poorly written.

Writing policy is much harder than most people think it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing:, my proposal only clarifies the issue in the first place so that editors don't cause incivility simply because they believe its a loophole they are free to use, if you want i can even clarify even more. But the general idea of the revised version is that if one were to discuss any past action in a form of belittling or discrediting that editor (see WP:IDENTIFYUNCIVIL) even in ANI, that would be considered uncivil.

Wouldn't you agree that even if left as is, the majority of the issues you brought up are still there even if i don't clarify about "past actions"? Criticism to referencing to any personal behavior would still be left only in talk pages and conflict resolution pages such as ANI. Even in a positive way. I suppose I could re-clarify to say What is a personal attack: Criticism to, or referencing to personal behavior or past events in a form of belittling other members. If one has issues with these and affecting them significantly, one can bring it up in conflict resolution pages and or on the user's talkpage that is subject to such criticism/referencing in a civil and respectful manner.

Over simplified, but generally, air-tight. No one can use anything in the past simply to belittle another member anywhere. And also note that if one has to bring such issues, it can through conflict resolution pages and in the user's talkpage but personally i believe user's talkpage should come first before conflict resolution pages.

Now i suppose you could argue that i'm bringing this up in WP:VILLAGE makes me violate the very thing i'm proposing. but keep in mind, i only brought up what was relevant to the discussion. An the admin relevant chose to bring up the full personal issue and i only clarified the issue to him and why its an issue. So it's not like i came here to say "Look, how big of a jerk this guy is". my discussion began as "hey, this editor thinks i'm misreading a policy, what do you think?" When rules get applied, shouldn't it generally mean that once its establish anything from then on applies, not before it was a rule? If someone walked on grass of a park and went home, the next day would he get a penalty simply for walking on the grass the previous day just because a "Don't step on grass" sign has been placed the next morning?

Still we should consider this deeply because ANI is known for being a place where anything goes, and soul sucking place. And that's probably because its not the accuser but the ones making judgement. For now, i believe those who contribute extensively to ANI believe that any incivility can happen in there, and it wouldn't be a problem. But the fact is that ANI is a core aspect of Wikipedia. It's not like we're talking about a specific talkpage, we're talking about the area to resolve issues when editors get out of hand.Lucia Black (talk) 21:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you only brought up what you (in your personal, subjective opinion) thought was relevant. But your proposal does not allow that. There is no "unless you believe it is relevant" clause in your proposal.
If you can't have a discussion in which you said "He did this, and that's why I think we should change this policy", without directly violating your proposal, then there is something wrong with your proposal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
And if there was such a clause for relevancy, then, it would have excused have my comments anyways, because I feel my comments were relevant to the conversation. As everyone else has said, your proposal, is impossible in practice. Sergecross73 msg me 02:24, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm a bit baffled here. I was not aware of the discussion, but I saw it on my watch list. Even though Lucia Black is a good editor, I unfortunately have to object to Lucia Black's proposal per Serge's reasoning. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:42, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I concur that the proposal is unworkable as formulated. As far as I'm concerned It does not need to be rewritten with better grammar, however, because the proposal also seems unnecessary. It doesn't meaningfully augment existing policy regarding incivility nor does it improve the mechanisms for judgement of alleged violations of existing policy. The proposal also seems undesirable to me because those who have been sanctioned, for behaviour deemed inappropriate by the community, after due process, can't reasonably expect to have the record of their transgressions disappear in all but their semi-private talk space and the venues designed for arbitration and judgment. Adjudicated violations are public record because members of a community consider it beneficial to other members of the community to alert them to past transgressions of one of its members. A probation system is also in place in many jurisdictions, to discourage recidivism. The issues you refer to were considered deeply, not once but several times. The editors with whom you were interacting disagree with you on your interpretation of the situations you describe. If that is what is prompting you to come here you can't expect a different outcome than the one you already received, based on their original comments and based on the feedback you've received here from people who were not involved in the original exchanges. How many people must comment before you accept that?
I concur also that the manner in which your past transgressions were referenced wasn't uncivil. Furthermore, the underlying issue appears to be your perception that you were wrongfully blocked, not just whether or not your most recent temporary ban can be mentioned elsewhere. Those issues were also considered deeply and over a period of many months. In the end, consensus was reached that you had indeed exhibited undesirable, disruptive, behaviour. Consensus was reached that your interpretations of that situation and existing policies were not shared by the majority of the people who were asked to review either.
You wrote: “I do believe Admins (despite being editors just like us) have the responsibility of having a cool-head at all times, after all, their admins.”
Was that just a general comment or did you have (a) specific admin(s) in mind when you wrote that? What purpose did it serve in that particular moment and in that particular discussion to state that? At whom was it directed?
The more you type on this Village pump page, the more it appears to me that you are seeking a different venue for an appeal on your block. An appeal to a different set of your peers to re-evaluate the judgment made of your behaviour in the past. It also seems to me that you are exhibiting the behaviour that got you sanctioned in the first place. To me it seems that the behaviour is the same but you are substituting the editor you deem to have aggrieved you. You appear to be substituting the venue where you used to air your grievances for this page.
As far as I can tell the most recent blocks were put in place to make you reflect on the way you interact on Wikipedia. In major part the block was also for making you reflect on the way you seek validation and especially arbitration on every perceived slight. In spite of repeated efforts to make you seek the problem in your own behaviour you continue to attribute the daily conflicts you encounter to everyone else. Rather than see the comment as a reminder that you are prone to making errors in interpretation of what constitutes incivility and in stead of using that to temper your further involvement in the discussion you assumed that Sergecross wrote that comment merely to be uncivil towards you. In stead of letting it temper you and reflect, you obliged in the prediction and have indeed turned this into a big stink by escalating it into a policy proposal.
You wrote: “ … we're talking about the area to resolve issues when editors get out of hand” You were reminded that you were one of those editors who got out of hand but you don't appear to reflect on that. Are you aware that you are one of the editors who got out of hand? Can you acknowledge that? Whenever you write about your own block you phrase it as though it were an abstract situation which is at best only tangentially related to you. Whenever you write about editors who you deem to have wronged you, you more frequently refer to them by name and provide links that you perceive as examples of uncivil commentary. Doesn’t that strike you at the very least as a bit inconsistent? Do you consider your own role in those conflicts? Whenever you are advised that the examples don’t actually show incivility you lash out at those who tell you that your interpretations don’t follow from the material. In response you write comments like: "this is a clear sign of both you wanting to drive real discussions. Can we get any editors wh actually care about civility?" Have any editors who care about civility shown up here yet or have all the comments above been written only by editors who don't care about civility?
It seems to me you try to escape self reflection. First by skirting the rules of your ban and now by hiding behind "double jeopardy", "Nulla poena sine Lege" and similar legalese while disparaging the complete strangers who evaluated your past actions. You wrote: “We’re talking about the area to resolve issues”. right after you wrote "ANI is known for being a place where anything goes, and soul sucking place”. Seems to me you are demonstrating that the grudge exists in you while you project it on nearly everyone else you encounter. It shows that you didn’t learn the lessons for which the ban was imposed, by a panel of your peers consisting of complete strangers, after objective and lengthy review at different stages. Can you truly not see that? What possible motive can all these strangers have to continue making you the target of a perceived conspiracy? Editors don’t comment on your escalation of nearly every situation into a major conflict requiring mediation because they are out to get you. If people consistently tell you that your interpretations of what constitutes incivility don't follow from the material you cite, doesn't that give you pause? Is there even the remotest possibility that you are in fact misjudging the situation? Could you indeed be wrong? It looks to me that you’ve come to the village pump to air your past grievances under the guise of a proposal to improve policy. You were not wrongfully banned. It was justified. Explained at length and on careful consideration. Verso.Sciolto (talk) 04:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

break[edit]

@Verso.Sciolto: serious accusations aren't really needed here and therefore ignore all of them. all i can tell you is that i'm merely clarifying a rule so that admins and other editors don't have the excuse to not be civil within ANI. And if you look at both Sergecross73 and AndytheGrump's comments carefully, you notice that their not bringing real reasons. AndytheGrump for example called my proposal "neutering" ANI. As if it's a place meant for bigger and tougher (and i suppose male-oriented) editors. Another example was given when he made up a hypothetical situation where he couldn't understand a hypothetical editor and wants to bring it up to ANI (thinking that the clarification doesn't allow it) and when i clarified that he can still bring up that issue to ANI hypothetically, he just gave a short and simple answer that ANI is a place to discuss behavior, but that really doesn't change the proposed clarification, only that it doesn't allow any loopholes for any . The constant debate of Sergecross stating he wasn't rude or uncivil but when both WP:UNCIVIL and WP:NPA prove him wrong and shows he was indeed uncivil, he makes the claims that i'm trying to civility for every insignificant time, but its not that. the problem is that he's been doing it for a long time whenever our comments cross paths, and even in occasion he has nothing to bring to a discussion other than his personal opinion about me or past actions. This time, the excuse is that ANI allows him to do so. since its meant to discuss behavior, but that's dumbing it down. ANI is a place for people to discuss problematic ongoing behavior so that it can be resolved, not so that another editor can cause more tension between them. And this will inevitably happen if an editor places judgement, but also puts his feelings on the line more than the general reason (not saying that's my case but i've seen it multiple times in ANI). Which is why i find it bogus for Sergecross to make claims @WhatamIdoing: I'm merely trying to clarify the principle of that rule. the rule is't suppose to change completely. you keep saying it doesn't allow relevant place to discuss it, but the new rendition only clarifies on such comments in a form to belittle another editor. SO i think if you think you can clarify the issue by quoting the proposed area, and bolding it. I can attempt to clarify. @Sjones23: i really feel that ANI will stay the same regardless if it goes against wikipedia's standards of civility mainly because certain editors just don't want to change. I suppose you're attempting to save me of a fruitless effort, but i still find it a worthy cause. after all, the response i got from ANdytheGrump and Sergecross only shows minor issues that can be worked on. Other than ANI being aplace to "expect" incivility, at least for the most part it doesn't have to from those judging the incidents brought in thereLucia Black (talk) 06:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

They aren't accusations. It was actually an attempt to make you change course. It was with relief that I saw that you had patched up your differences after your break because your renewed cooperations did indeed result in better articles on topics that were previously at the core of the dispute. It was with relief that you had patched up your differences also because you both edit articles on a topic I am interested in. I think the two of us have also come to a better understanding and all these renewed cooperations can only benefit those articles as well - if all recognise their strengths but also their weaknesses.
The specific proposal. So far there appears to be consensus that the comments which prompted you to write this proposal do not warrant a change in policy such as the one you propose. The proposal as written furthermore isn't workable and the proposed remedy is not desirable. I don't think these conclusions are the result of misunderstanding your proposal. Verso.Sciolto (talk) 07:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Lucia, what I'm telling you is that your proposal, as written, even if you adding "in a belittling form", does not permit you to say that Sergecross said something hurtful about you on this page. The reason is that if Sergecross feels belittled by your reference to his past behavior, then he can reasonably claim that you have violated the policy. Then we have another NPA dispute rather than improved behavior.
Notice that the person who's feelings matter here are not yours: it's not about your alleged intent in telling the 2,700 people watching this page that he said something about you that is true but that you didn't want him to tell everyone. You might have meant it to be a purely unemotional statement of fact, but that is not sufficient. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: of course its suficient. And its pure devils advocacy if you say its not. Wouldn't that mean sergecross also falls in the same situation (in which case he isn't even denying that he intended to belittle me). But here's the difference, intent matters for a whole mess. Hypothetically I could be sensitive enough that you also belittle me for your very comment, but the intent is all based on policy clarification.
Serge can believe what he likes, the fact he chose to clarified means there's he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. So to him, these are my failed proposal. But let me be clear: the goal is to clarify the obvious. There's a small loophole and from this conversation, it is being exploited. Plus ironic to feel belittled about belittling others. Its like a wolf crying wolf. Not to make fun of or show bad light, but its the only anology I can think of.
So ill ask again WhatamIdoing, that if you know a way to clarify to not allow innapropriate comments even on ANI that would be great. But if you feel so against it, maybe a new thread should be done about WP:IDENTIFYCIVILITY and WP:NPA. Because I'm not making up new terms. Every clarification has been based on other aspects of WP:NPA and WP:UNCIVIL. The location shouldn't trump the action.Lucia Black (talk) 12:05, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
If it is sufficient for you to say that mentioning Serge's past actions here is not a violation of your proposal because you didn't mean to belittle him, then it is equally sufficient for Serge to say that mentioning your past actions at ANI is not a violation of your proposal because he didn't mean to belittle you.
I don't have a solution. If I knew of an effective way to make people demonstrated kindness and emotionally maturity, then I would have proposed it long ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
And that's exactly what I would have said in the situation Lucia is referencing. An editor was confused by Lucia's line of reasoning when it came to a civility related issue at ANI, and I said she has had problems with interpreting the policy in the past. I mean, I think this very discussion, and the way in which not a single person has agreed with her interpretation/proposal, (let alone a consensus in her favor) is proof that what I was saying was a legit observation, not a petty slap to the face. Sergecross73 msg me 17:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: it would be. but again, you're using devil's advocacy. Enough with the hypothetical defense. Here's the difference, I didn't bring it up, he did. Not only that but these "past actions" are shown irrelevant. These actions that are the basis of the discussion. And moreso the problems you have with the clarification already exist in the current version. So its not about the clarification, its about the rule itself and others related to it.

@Sergecross: but you didn't say that. Funny how you just suddenly said "you would've said" just now when we just had previous discussions about it. And no, you did not say that I had difficulty interpretting policy, you mentioned that my previous ANI's have failed in the past. In which another editor, although did not classify it as incivility or personal attack, still considered it as drama, and reasoned that it can be offensive and it was enough to archive the discussion. The editor wasn't confused about my reasoning, he just wanted to challenge it by using a hypothetical friend. If you want, we can bring it up for all to see, just to prove the accuracy.

And the problem here for the most part is clarifying an already existing policy. Because the principle to that rule. Not that I don't understand policy and that opinion itself is a huge exagerration considering this only involves civility and also the fact that no one has consensus, but the only valid opinion here is that it has its flaws, not the idea is wrong. Just because there's no consensus, doesn't mean a thing about whether I'm interpreting it wrong. In a previous discussion, hypothetically consensus was against you, would I use that to say you don't understand the subject next time you bring up a new discussion related to it? No one here saying I'm not misinterpretting the rule except you. Why even defend such an opinion?Lucia Black (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Alright then, if everything here is going so well for you, and I'm apparently to blame for all your troubles, by all means, I'll get out of your way and just let you continue this successful conversation where you're gather a lot of consensus in your favor. I'm done bickering with you. Sergecross73 msg me 21:13, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
The problem is, no one should belittle another editor INTENTIONALLY, even in ANI. i would like that to end, for good. Do you believe that ANI is a place for civility too?Lucia Black (talk) 21:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Come on, we've been through this a million times, why are you asking again, expecting a different answer? The problem isn't "Serge is pro-incivility, while Lucia is pro-civility". The problem is that the comments you define as personal attacks and incivility is quite a bit less than the current Wikipedia threshold. Every time someone says something the slightest bit unfavorable to/about you, you go off crying about incivility. You need to toughen up and carry on, not start these expansive discussions where you complain for days and ignore what everyone says to you until the discussion is archived without any consensus in your favor. Sergecross73 msg me 21:30, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Not really, WP:IUC says it all. (d) belittling a fellow editor, including the use of judgmental edit summaries or talk-page posts (e.g. "that is the stupidest thing I have ever seen", "snipped crap") But that was after the discussion with WhatamIdoing, when decided to talk for you when devil's advocacy was on your side. You need to know what incivility is. Because Serge, not to belittle you, but this has happens more often. You make it a mission to do it whenever you want to get involved in a discussion that i'm involved in. And it's pointless. I can find the multiple times, some more uncivil apparent than this one, but i choose not to, for the sake of moving on. but in order to move on it needs to stop.
You need to be considerate because Wikipedia is for all, not just for the tougher ones. plus you're an admin, its your responsibility to have a cool head when someone is uncivil to you. If you weren't tolerable, you wouldn't have any admin responsibilities. but the fact is, i'm not you. its not needed, and honestly, beg my incivility, but it shows a lot on your part how much you care what others see my opinion when you have to clarify to them what my previous failed attempts have been just to prove something that doesn't need to be proven. I don't do this "every time". This is the first time i'm actually making a stand against it publicly. i tolerated it for a while. but i did intend to make it so it was policy based, in which you chose to clarify to everyone with the situation in an inaccurate way, so what am i doing? putting accuracy in what you chose to reveal. And why should anyone make those comments Serge? Whats there to gain in the discussion at all? even in ANI when i'm not even the subject? How informative is it? Serge, you're not contesting it because your on the other side. Its not OK to belittle member,s in which you cannot deny your intent was simply to inform the other editor. NOt even WhatamIdoing can do so if saw the discussion.
I'm not misinterpreting the rule or the principle of the rule. simply because ANI allows one to discuss personal habits within Wikipedia. you said it yourself, not all my ANI post have been deemed relevant to you and have failed. SO why suddenly change opinion and say it valid for you to discuss irrelevant personal habits in someone else's ANI discussion when it doesn't even matter? i'm not trying to fight with you. but i want the unnecessary animosity. OR, if you still choose to continue, you'll get the same treatment when you do it. regardless if it sounds WP:POINTY, its to show you it's not something a civilized editor would do.Lucia Black (talk) 22:01, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
So, 2 separate editors have tried to close this like 3 times now, but Lucia persists. I'm treating this like a closed discussion, as it should be. I'm done, this conversation is over. Sergecross73 msg me 22:10, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
I indeed hope, further communication in the future aswell unless necessary aswell. even in ANI. thank you.Lucia Black (talk) 22:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposed amendment to WP:SPOILERS[edit]

There has been an ongoing discussion over at Talk:Survivor: Blood vs. Water#Episode 12 regarding preview videos. The issue is what details should stay and what details should be left out that possibly violate WP:OR for any television show that shows previews from reliable sources. The proposed amendment (WP:PREVIEWS) would show how to handle preview videos and what can/cant be used from them. For example: The video showing a cast member that can be Identified by face receiving an immunity necklace would of course be okay, but proving vote outcomes or who gets sent home in a reality show from the video alone would not be. Please share your thoughts below, would you like some kind of guideline on how to handle preview videos? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

If it's a reliable source, I consider it inappropriate to censor it. That's my reading of WP:Spoilers, and I agree with it. More to the point, I would consider any censoring based on not spoiling the ending I consider to be a violation of completeness, and an inherent NPOV problem. If the ending is censored from wikipedia, the article is inherently deficient. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 20:37, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
You misunderstand, the proposal would be to put something down on what can be verified by just looking at a spoiler preview, it would not be censored if the information is shown to be true and not things editors interpret from the video to be true (WP:OR). - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:57, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
What's in a broadcasted preview falls outside of spoilers once it's aired, but (and without checking that full discussion yet), intepreting things that are otherwise not obvious from the preview is considered to be original research. One must also recognize that in the past, the previews have deliberately contains non-aired footage to throw viewers off, so the preview may not be a reliable source to begin with. --MASEM (t) 20:53, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
For Survivor though for example editors use things in the preview to talk about upcoming episode information. if previews are unreliable even though they are posted on a reliable source that opens up a whole new discussion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:55, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
CBS as a network may be a reliable source, but Mark Burnett + his producers have been shown in the past (in an obvious fashion) to synthesize scenes for previews (back more when there were betting pools on Survivor, but that doesn't say the practice is gone now). As such, every Survivor preview should be considered suspect. If they show Tribal Council and X is wearing the Immunity Necklace, that does not mean that X won Immunity, it would be speculative knowing the history of such previews. That's a situation where the publisher (CBS) may be reliable but the author (Survivor) is not. --MASEM (t) 21:03, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
But to the point of SPOILER: Once it is broadcasted publically in the world somewhere, the cat's out of the bag, and SPOILER doesn't apply. --MASEM (t) 21:04, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Does this apply to any other tv show? What is stopping an editor from adding in preview info based off of what they see in a video with the edit summary "I saw this on a video from a reliable source so it must be true" or the like? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 21:09, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Going back to the discussion here and on topic this is why I feel there should be an amendment someplace on how to deal with previews videos. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 21:13, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I can see adding a section that says, once a preview is broadcasted (whether TV, film, etc.), the material it contains is fair game for inclusion in WP (spoilers no longer apply), but editors must be aware previews are meant as marketing tools and may distort the truth to get more viewers and as such, cannot be treated as absolutely reliable sources; one can describe what happens in the preview, but that may not be the truth of reality of the work itself. --MASEM (t) 21:22, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I agree with Masem. Plain factual description of what's in the preview is fine using it as a primary source, but interpretation of it would be impermissible. That has nothing to do with being a "spoiler", just with it being inappropriate original research on a primary source. If a reliable secondary source has done the interpreting and we cite that, it may be a different story. I don't think we need a new part to any guideline for that, it's already covered by the ones describing appropriate and inappropriate use of sources. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:57, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Masem and Seraphimblade as well, that all sounds in line with policy. Sergecross73 msg me 21:41, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree in most part, but disagree with Masem's viewpoint in relation to Survivor. There are somethings that can be known from the previews. For example, Tribal Swaps can be accurately determined from previews and have been for many seasons as they often indicate a tribal swap and then show the swapped tribes in brand-new challenges where (generally) the full set of swapped contestants are shown competing (or strategizing with their new buffs with people they weren't with earlier). Additionally, who has immunity can be determined in certain cases in the limited, few previews that ever show anyone wearing it. For example, in the preview in question, one clearly saw Gervaise amongst five others at a Final 6 tribal council. There is only one post-merge six person TC even with Redemption, it cannot be Burnett et al. trickery. But yes if they show a video of someone at the beach with immunity that is suspect Thegreyanomaly (talk) 22:01, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
They can't hide/mask the tribal swap as you say, but who wears that immunity necklace can be subject to both editing tricks as well as gameplay (I've not read yet they've disallowed people to give away the necklace at the lack minute before voting, just like with immunity idols). So if we see X with the necklace at TC, that doesn't necessarily mean they won immunity. That's the type of thing that should be cautioned against.
There's also another aspect and that's common sense. Okay, knowing the merge is coming is helpful as that allows the tables to be set up right and maybe assign appropriate tribes ahead of time, but the actual results? While no longer a spoiler due to its broadcast, does including partial results make sense? That's something we can't write into policy or guideline, that's just an editing decision I hope people can respect. --MASEM (t) 22:07, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Two quick responses 1) In the end knowing who actually won immunity is a minor detail, given the rarity in which it is given away the important aspect is who is wearing it at tribal. 2) CBS generally does a good job of not spoiling who has the Immunity Necklace at tribal, so most of this part of the discussion is moot. I've been watching since the end of the first season, the only other immunity spoil I remember getting from CBS was that Aras had immunity at Panama's F4 (which may be what you alluded to before with Cirie). Thegreyanomaly (talk) 22:46, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
As I read though this discussion, its clear that the issue isn't WP:SPOILER. SPOILER simply prevents editors from removing or tagging information based on reliable sources (often the work itself) on the pretense that it is a "spoiler". The issue here is whether a preview which aired at the end of one episode is a reliable source for what happens in the next episode. This is outside the scope of SPOILER and into the realm of WP:V and WP:RS. If the previews are determined to be reliable, then descriptive information based on those previews may be added to the article. 24.149.119.20 (talk) 12:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
To me, the real question relates to WP:TRIVIA... When considering whether to mention what is shown in the preview, I would ask: Is this information something that is likely to remain in the article once the episode actually airs? If the answer is "no", then it is probably unimportant trivia, and I would question adding it in the first place. Blueboar (talk) 13:24, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Trivia has no bearing in this discussion, the stuff inserted based on the preview stands after the episode actually airs (e.g., preview said that contestants would pick rocks, episode showed contestants drawing rocks) Thegreyanomaly (talk) 20:51, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Signatures[edit]

I've kinda wondered this, but do we still necessarily need to sign our posts anymore other than force of habit? Revision history usually provides all the context necessary to who said what at what time of day, down to the millisecond, which seems to make this practice obsolete. TeleComNasSprVen (talkcontribs) 22:40, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Wikipedia:Signature has this well covered with this:

Signing your posts on talk pages, both for the article and non-article namespaces, is good practice, and facilitates discussion by helping identify the author of a particular comment. Other users can then navigate to a talk page and address their comments to the specific, relevant user(s).

Killiondude (talk) 22:47, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
It would be very time consuming to examine page histories to find out who said what. Signatures are far more convenient. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:33, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I believe that User:Quiddity (WMF) would like to tell you all about how WP:Flow will solve this problem or you. Face-wink.svg WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I am hoping, hoping, hoping WMF learned something from the VE rollout debacle. --NeilN talk to me 01:13, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
One has to wonder. If they choose something that is unfriendly to the senior population, then they best not expect them to use it much if at all. Change for the sake of change or to benefit the younger population is not the proper direction. But then they probably have their own agenda. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:24, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

NeilN, if your use of the past tense in "learned" was meant to imply "finished learning", then the answer is definitely not. If you meant only that you hoped that they had already learned something, rather than the whole of what (IMO) they need to learn, then I believe that they have learned at least something so far, just like they have learned from the smaller problems in the past. I'm also happy to say that senior management is still talking about and trying to understand not only what happened in detail, but also what they did wrong, what they didn't understand adequately about this community, and what they could realistically do better in the future.
Along those lines, if anyone has concrete, specific, actionable suggestions, then please feel free to leave a note on my talk page or send me e-mail. Vegaswikian, I realize that some changes can be disruptive to people like you, who have made 200,000+, mostly small, edits over nearly a decade. But there are only about 50 editors in that category, out of the 127,756 currently active editors. The typical "long-term" Wikipedian is only active for a couple of years. I believe that we need to find a balance between supporting the needs of "the senior population" and supporting the needs of the other editors. We need everyone, not just the high-volume editors, and if we don't do something to enable new people and to support the people who want to make ten edits a month rather than two thousand, then there may not be enough people here to form a real community in a ten years.  :-/ Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Trust me, I was not talking about number of edits or longevity on the site. I'm talking about seniors plain and simple. As you age, you are less likely to want to see change. And then change has to make sense. So a threaded discussion like we use on a talk page is comfortable for many. Replies before questions and some of the blog formats are not easy to adjust to. So the changes need to consider this population. Not sure how you balance these varied opinions and skills. Remember that some users here have been dealing with this for over 50 years and while change is a way of life, over time it becomes tedious and less productive. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:28, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Replies before questions? I haven't had time to keep up with the latest at Flow, but I'm pretty sure that the idea is to have everything that's currently in a "section" still be presented in actual conversational order. So unless you're used to seeing the question in one ==Section== and the answer in another ==Section==, then I don't think that will happen. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
As it looks now, with the FLOW you are going to support people with 10 edits per months and drive away people with two thousand. And I am grossly disappointed that nobody wants to hear this.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:49, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

@TeleComNasSprVen, Killiondude, PrimeHunter: Indeed, Flow will definitely solve the signing-confusion for newcomers (or those of us who occasionally forget), and will also hopefully address the problem of knowing who wrote or changed what, and when.
@Vegaswikian, Ymblanter, NeilN: The agenda is simply (complexly): improve the discussion and collaboration system.
(What we have now is functional, but is not easy to learn (the hunting through markup for the correct place to insert one's own reply, the conventions of signing, etc), and is technically flawed in a few ways (eg the <dl> and <dd> HTML tags that we abuse to create these indents, or the difficulty in knowing by just looking at a discussion if anything was edited, or etc etc).
The target demographic is all current and potential editors - from power-users to occassional-users to special-needs-users (the designers and at least one of the devs are very familiar with WCAG, and I've been helping elderly or computer illiterate friends get online for over a decade (plus taking part in wikiprojects usability and accessibility here on Enwiki)). The pinnacle goal is: to create something that is better for, and preferred by, everyone. (Unanimity on all aspects/features, is of course impossible!)
This can only work if we/you (the existing community, from powerusers to newcomers (who remember freshly the problems they encountered)) give feedback, and suggestions, and requests:
  • Help discuss problems with the current system of wikitext talkpages;
  • Help discuss problems with the first iterations of Flow;
  • Help discuss ideas that could be added to Flow (both immediately/soon, or months/years from now).
  • Point out foreign/sister projects that have brilliant innovations.
  • Point out external sites that have brilliant discussion/collaboration features.
  • Discuss ways to help newcomers learn the ropes (or, just dabble at a simple level (per WAID's remarks above)), whilst retaining the abilities that we experienced editors (aka power users) have of being incredibly efficient in an often-overwhelming sea of information and options.
Wikip[m]edia only works because a lot of people dream a fantastically large dream (with a lot of variations, and much agreement and disagreement, and continual refinement). They (we) dream outloud, and dream comprehensively (from enabling the good-stuff, to preventing the bad-stuff). Slow and steady, as always, wins the race.
The Flow talkpages, (and my talkpage), would be immensely grateful for your feedback; both now, and slowly/steadily over the coming months. It is a very complex project (aspects-to-consider-wise), and (I/we/they/everyone involved and discussing it) continually try to find a balance between too much, or too little, information. HTH. –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Just back from testing the FLOW and ready to give my feedback. I am afraid the best thing you can do if you want to keep me personally on the English Wikipedia is to stop developing FLOW immediately and give assurances it would not be switched on. If it gets switched on, I am likely to leave the project or to continue working in the article space.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Specifically, I do not see how I can manage the messages left at the talk pages I currently have in my watchlist (several thousands) with the FLOW. I am a long-time FB user and I know what I am talking about.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:17, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Can you give me an example of what you mean by "managing" messages? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Right now, I have my watchlist. I use the custom script which shows where there are new edits, and which pages I have already looked at. There are many pages I do not look at immedialely and wait until there are more new edits which I can all assess at the same time. I decide whether I want to look at the page or not on the basis of the edit summary (for instance, if I see someone assessed a talk page of a rarely visited article for a project, chances are this is the only edit in the last several days and does not reuire my immediate attention.
Now, at least for the talk pages, the wacthlist will be replaced by FLOW. Right now it does not show which edits were made since my last visit, but imagine it would be modified to show them in a different color, this must be doable. (Note that it is more useful if one can mark threads as read and unread). However, even if it does, there is no tree structure, so if I want so understand what the new replies are related to, I need to refresh the whole branch of the discussion (which for long discussions may contain hundreds of replies left at different times). Even if the tree structure has been created (which is, again, doable though probably not intended at the moment), I still have to look through the whole thread of my messages on different talk pages, which is a lot more than what I am doing now, and is beyond the time capacity I have at my disposal.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:51, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: It can and will change, but only based on the feedback/suggestions/etc that are given. The better (more detailed, and collaborative/friendly) the feedback, the better Flow will turn out to be. Please, consider elaborating on your concerns, and suggestions, at WT:Flow (rather than here). (Note that various aspects you mention, such as indent levels, are already being actively discussed/critiqued/refined, and changes are being considered. See this table of some features, for example.) Thank you! –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 07:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry for not making my position clear enough. My feedback is that FLOW should not be installed on the English Wikipedia. Unless of course you find a way of opting me out.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:35, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Ymblanter, you don't have to threaten to quit Wikipedia to be heard – just tell us how you currently use edit summaries on talk pages. If they're vital to your and other editors' workflows, we'll add them in to Flow. It really is as simple as that! :)
In my experience, talk page edit summaries are generally not very useful; the most frequent thing that appears in that field on talk pages is something like "reply to User:Foo" or "cmt on blah," which is mostly redundant and purely conventional. The useful part of the edit summary field is generally the pre-filled portion before that, which lets you know which section is being replied to – we already have this in Flow, in the form of the topic title; that's not currently appearing next to watchlist elements, but there's no reason why it shouldn't. There may be other elements for which edit summaries would be nice to have (such as when the header area or comments get edited), but in order to start seeing those pain points and figuring out if they're important enough to address before other important things (like searching within Flow, or dynamically updating content, or more visual design tweaks), we need more than me and a couple of other Wikipedians to use the software. Building a prototype and letting users test is before it goes live anywhere on Wikipedia lets us spot these use-cases and apply them as needed (as you've helpfully done), but we need to release to a few pages on Wikipedia (as we're planning with the first release to get feedback from real users doing real work on the wiki so we can build it into the product before any wider rollout happens.
Tl;dr, the choice is not "stop deployment!" or "roll out everywhere with the product as it!" You have a team of world-class engineers and designers working for you; try the software, tell us what you need, and we'll make it happen! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
For user summaries, I more had in mind article talk pages, where those are almost always helpful. Anyway, if you can implement (i) edit summaries in the watchlist; (ii) deep threads (30 would possibly be enough) and make the markable watched threads, I do not see how it would be different from what we have now. It would be like changing a design. And I like the current design better, to say honestly.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:21, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Screenshots as sources[edit]

We are having a little discussion at Talk:Telangana#Tinypics about whether it is acceptable to do the following. Some non-English websites seem to delete their own articles after a certain amount of time and there don't appear to be archived copies. User:Ramcrk has taken screenshots of a few of these and uploaded them to Tinypics. Then the image is used as a reference for text in a Wikipedia article. I believe it falls under WP:USERGENERATED but as User:Ramcrk has pointed out to me, there is no specific mention of screenshots. We would appreciate some help in resolving this issue. Green Giant (talk) 03:31, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

linking to them would not be allowed by our copyright rules. and as we have no guarantee of authenticity prior to the user uploading, they are not acceptable as sources in and of themselves. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 04:04, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Green Giant, I would recommend using WebCite. See Wikipedia:Using WebCite. Killiondude (talk) 07:11, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
I would be more than happy if WebCite was being used but now there is a second editor on the talk page saying that screenshots are weak but acceptable in such situations where a webpage is not available and there are no archived versions. Green Giant (talk) 07:53, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Using WebCite or Archive.org is no different than using a screenshot of the site - in both cases we're using as a reference a cache of the content instead of the original website; it all revolves around the credibility we have on an accurate caching process and our trust that the cached copy hasn't been manipulated. I'd recommend using the ticket system whenever possible to verify that the screenshot correspond to the original source, and archiving it within Wikipedia; but other than that, if there's no reason to doubt of the accuracy of the copy, I don't find a problem to use it for verifiability; it certainly doesn't fall under WP:USERGENERATED if the screenshot is indeed an accurate copy of the source and the source is itself reliable. Diego (talk) 12:37, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The reason we prefer WC or Archive.org is that we have a matter of trust with them - that if you toss them a URL, the mirror they keep is unchanged from the original version even if the original version down the road disappears. Yes, the ticket system could be used for screenshots, but that introduces the issue of keeping likely-non-free media around just for the sake of validation of content, when we can use and link to WC/Archive.org (both legally clear in keeping copyrighted elements) without touching any non-free content here. --MASEM (t) 16:25, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Call me paranoid, but if we allow this, I fear fake screenshots popping out to support informations. It is trivial to generate one. A screenshot or mirror hosted by some reliable organization would be different. --cyclopiaspeak! 16:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Diego, the problem is that although I have every confidence in the editor who uploaded the screenshot, the archived images are hosted on tinypic.com. If the images were on Wikipedia or a trustworthy website, I would never have raised the issue but as User:Cyclopia says, if we accept this method of archiving, then we open ourselves to fake screenshots. User:Ramcrk is a good-natured editor who followed the time-honoured tradition of BRD but we all know that there are firebrands who fight tooth-and-nail for their own POV and allowing images hosted at tinypic or some other website would give them a narrow window to assert that their screenshot of a now-unavailable source website is the correct one. As to WP:USERG, I think this does fall under that category because tinypics images are mostly uploaded by users rather than "credentialed members of the sites' editorial staff". Green Giant (talk) 19:54, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Clarification on A7 Speedy Delete Criteria[edit]

Can it be assumed that any entity, person, group or thing that is mentioned in one or more legitimate Wikipedia articles automatically passes the 'importance or significance of the subject', if a link will be provided from the first article to the new article about the entity, person, group or thing whose importance is in question? If so can it be explicitly stated as such in the definition of the A7 rule? If not, I would suggest the editor that does the Speedy Deletion should be required to clean up any broken links (as an impediment to speedy deletion proportional to the number of times mentioned in various Wikipedia pages) Randykamradt (talk) 19:11, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

No, that cannot be assumed. A7 is about the content of the tagged article alone. CSD criteria are strictly defined and applied, and anything requiring the complexity of determining other articles' legitimacy, or even interpreting google results, belongs at AfD, not CSD. I know this sounds odd, but A7 has nothing to do with whether a subject is important or significant; A7 is only concerned with whether the article itself makes a legitimate claim that the subject is important or significant. It's a subtle difference, but it's what makes A7 a CSD criterion and not an AfD essay. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:40, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
That is an interpetation that I don't support whatsoever, and I will support the rejection of an A7 based on it's subject being mentioned in another article (that isn't legitimately speedyable itself). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm wondering how you go about checking that and whether you actually do that for every A7. Understand that as far as I'm concerned, any good faith rejection of a CSD tagging, including yours, I consider to be completely kosher, so while you may disagree with me, I don't actually disagree with you. I just don't think you are actually applying solely the defined A7 criteria when you do so, which states that the article makes no credible claim to importance or significance and says nothing about whether some other article somewhere else mentions the subject. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 20:06, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
No, I don't check that for every A7, though I do make an effort to check. However, if someone would check and find that it is mentioned in a different article, that is, to me, sufficient ground to deny A7. CSD are criteria under which content may be deleted without a full deletion process. It's a brightline rule for when you can bypass the process, not a demand to delete if it meets the criteria. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 20:29, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, any good faith grounds - even those unmentioned in any policy anywhere - are legitimate for denying a SPEEDY. They can always be sent to XfD. But I think that codifying all but the simplest and most basic means that we either have a categorically too permissive CSD criterion (hence, not #2 uncontestable), or we have one that is too complicated (hence, not #1 objective). A7 does not seem to fit either of those cases. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 00:42, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
As somebody who makes a point of looking regularly at AFD, I have been disturbed at the number of articles appearing there after being considered for speedy deletion on subjects that may very well may be notable from a brief glance at the article and in some cases turn out on further examination to be very much so. It leaves me wondering how many more fail to make it. My interpretation of A7 is that it is intended primarily to catch the straightforward 'she was a lovely grandmother' type articles, not the ones which require further examination. Inexperienced editors do not understand the subtleties of the notability criteria. It may be naive of them to suppose that 'whether a subject is important or significant' (to quote Vanisaac) is the criteria for inclusion, and not understand why we look for what are often proxy measures of notability (such as mention in certain media), but the onus should be on other more experienced editors to find those. It seems to me that in some cases A7 is being used essentially out of ignorance - because it is a topic that the admin does not know about and does not see why anyone would regard it as notable. Of course a reference in another article is no proof of notability, but it should count at this point. --AJHingston (talk) 01:19, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't think I understand the original question. Why would being mentioned on another article have any bearing whatsoever on A7? A simple example of a failure would be if a page on a company listed a number of the company's present or past officers (which it probably shouldn't do, but it might, especially if the company article hadn't had a good NPOV and V check). That certainly wouldn't mean that any of those officers would have importance sufficient to meet A7. That is, being an ex-CFO of Notable Company X is not an assertion of importance; it's an assertion of having held a job, but not one sufficient to meet A7. As with others above, I don't think I'd be too bothered if someone else tried to assert that that was sufficient to remove the CSD tag, but I think they'd be wrong to use that as the sole reason for removing the tag. But, more importantly, I wouldn't want to enshrine that point in the criteria itself, even if most of the time it were true, because it provides a loophole whereby someone can bypass the A7 criteria by going to another article first and dropping in the name--for example, you could add an extra/bit part actor to a list of actors in a film article to attempt to get the aspiring actor's article to pass A7. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
  • The whole purpose of A7 is to allow us to delete articles like "John Smith is a cool guy. He sits next to me in History class and annoys the teacher" and stuff of that ilk. It isn't meant to speedily delete ANY article where the text of the article gives ANY indication that the person MIGHT possibly, in some way, be notable. "John Smith is the COO of DynoMegaCorp" or "John Smith is a professional TiddlyWinks player with the Croation National TiddlyWinks team" or any of a number of other claims, no matter how tenuous or dubious, are enough to avoid A7 deletions. THAT DOESN'T MEAN WIKIPEDIA SHOULDN'T DELETE THE ARTICLE. It just means a more deliberative process, like AFD, is needed to vet the article more substantially, instead of deleting it because it's just about some friend of yours and you created an article about him as a goof. --Jayron32 02:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
  • My case in point is that I'm researching for an article for a webzine I write for, and of course Wikipedia is often first on my list for finding primary sources for my research. After I have done research for my writing, I occasionally go back to Wikipedia and amend or create articles on the subject that I'm writing about, given enough primary sources and new information. In my current project, searching on the subject matter in Wikipedia brought up no pages, but found a page where there was a mention. Going to that page, I see the subject, with a link that takes me to a page that says it was deleted based on the A7 criteria. So now, once I'm finished with my research, do I go back to Wikipedia and take the time and effort to update it, only to have it fall pray to being considered unimportant? In my opinion, I'm simply fixing a broken link. Important and significant are so subjective, especially in regards to the size of the audience. The 'my lovely grandmother' reference above is important and significant to at least the author. Lost Springs, Wyoming, with a population of less than ten (one according to the pictured road sign, four according to the 2010 census) has it's own page, I can't imagine too many people consider it important and significant. And since I often write about musical groups that are up-and-coming, they are often only important and significant to upwards of a thousand people. Putting the onus on me to put in the article the claim that they are significant and important seems redundant, I wouldn't be writing the article in the first place if I didn't think so. As it stands now, I believe A7 is too vague to be considered a legitimate criteria for anything aside from a popularity contest.Randykamradt (talk) 02:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, that doesn't really have much to do whether A7 should be allowed or declined on the subject. While I agree that its completely reasonable to deny A7 on any subject mentioned in another article doesn't mean I think Wikipedia should have an article on everything mentioned in another article (I don't). If you're not sure if something is suitable for inclusion, the go-to guideline to refer to is WP:N, not a speedy deletion criterion. I don't mind taking a look and giving my opinion on it meeting WP:N. Keep in mind though that in the end no single Wikipedian can make that call, but is always finally a community call at AfD. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:45, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
It is true that WP notability can be arcane. Attempts to make it purely objective will always fail and codification would be either too impenetrable or arbitrary, though with time it might be possible to get further consensus in favour of consistency. But it emphasises the nature of the problem with the A7 criterion. We know that certain things trigger notability - just as individual settlements always pass. On biographies at AfD often some fact will emerge that satisfies notability that the original editor perhaps did not know, but in many cases it appears just did not realise was critical for retention. Judging whether a topic might be notable is something of an art, and depends on picking up clues of what to look for and where to do so, and should not depend on the plain words of the article. The solution lies partly in guiding editors to advice preferably from somebody familiar with the topic area, but of course no one editor, however experienced, can be sure how the community will jump. --AJHingston (talk) 10:20, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
IMO a better solution is to throw WP:N, or at least most of it, out of the window. A clear consensus is (still?) against that though. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:16, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the information, WP:N looks like a much more reasonable criteria as it focuses on the third-party references on a topic, thereby putting the onus of determining the importance on the publishers of the referenced material. I would still argue that A7 might be replaced by a requirement that an article has at least one reference from a reliable published source, thereby freeing Wikipedia editors from making the judgement of importance. I also wonder about A9, why are musical recordings singled out, and not books, films, and other media? I'm sorry to harp on this subject, but the people, groups and objects that I write on tend to be right on the cusp of unimportant/important. While non of the articles I have written have been A7ed, the one that I am considering writing has been previously.Randykamradt (talk) 17:25, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
As it happens there has been a long discussion above on whether new articles should be required to have at least one reference. It is not as straightforward as it looks and although it certainly helps, a mere reference elsewhere does not necessarily establish notability, and poor quality references can actually be worse than nothing to a reader because they can mislead. Checking them would add to the burden of those screening new articles. As for apparent inconsistencies in the way that subjects are treated for notability I agree - that is not so much an issue at the 'speedy' deletion phase as for notability in general. The answer often lies in the way that Wikipedia developed and by whom - it is often said that 'boys' toys' and most sports are treated relatively generously, and the same is true of US television programmes and all those are things that are also easy to reference on the web. Things more different to reference may be just as notable though. Remember that just because somebody thinks that an article should be deleted does not mean that you cannot argue the case and guidelines can even be stretched; the important thing is to argue in terms that make sense in the light of WP:NOTABILITY and also have regard to What Wikipedia is not. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. --AJHingston (talk) 17:55, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Conflicted on "Open" Publications[edit]

First of all, let me say I love WP having read here a lot and now beginning to edit. WP is completely open and free to the public, yet we often refer readers to publications that are closed to public surfing unless you pay a fee. If an author is aware of this problem, they may elect to self-publish on a website. We say such publications are unreliable. Why don't we look at the stability (years on-line) and reliability of the author and allow such work to be referenced? Frank Layden (talk) 00:37, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:SPS we do.
But for an encyclopedia, we are far better able to have the highest quality content possible if we base our articles on the highest quality sources, even if they are not free to the public, than we are basing our articles on the sources that are most widely available for free. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:35, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Doom, that is logical and I have to agree. But what if an author wants to make their work freely available (on-line) to the public? Frank Layden (talk) 02:15, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Then we follow the directions that Doom linked at WP:SPS. SPS is a shortcut for "self-published sources". It outlines how to identify which self-published sources are likely to be reliable (e.g., because the author is an expert in the subject) and therefore acceptable to use (under some circumstances). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
I think Frank is referring to author-posted courtesy copies of published papers in reliable journals not available online. It seems to me that those should generally be considered reliable until and unless the author breaks our trust. WP:SPS is not relevant; it's more like WP:PAYWALL together with questions about the reliability of courtesy copies. We don't seem to have a guideline on the latter. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:44, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Convenience links to properly published materials have almost always been accepted, unless they are WP:LINKVIOs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:31, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
-:o — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:20, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

NSA spying on Wikipedia?[edit]

Yes, I gave the secret access code ( www.wikipedia.org ) above.  :-) North8000 (talk) 14:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

categorisatition can be implied discrimination[edit]

I have found that people born in the USA who are of a foreign descent are marked as "COUNTRY people" where Country can be any other country. The implication is that they are not US citizens but citizens of another country. This fact is even worse when a person is also categorised as "American people of COUNTRY descent".

In my opinion it is obviously wrong as it conforms to the definition given in discrimination. A secondary concern is that it prevents en,wp categories from being used as a source for Wikidata. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 10:04, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Can you give a couple of examples, please? RJFJR (talk) 14:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
The X of Y descent cats always amuse me, especially for places such as the US and Australia - taker it back far enough and with the exception of a relatively small number of indigenous groups, everyone is an X of some other descent. - Sitush (talk) 14:20, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
yeah, the Lithuanian people of Ethiopian descent cAtegory, and hundreds like it, need to go - many of these are categories which are simply not used or referred to by RS in a significant way. We also need to be more clear on how far back we go - I've seen people classified by their great great grandparents. I think it should be parents and grandparents only, no further. Finally, if someone is born in America, they are a us citizen and should of course be put in any 'American' categories. If they've lived long enough to get citizenship or residency or if RS call them American they should have that moniker as well. Nothing prevents them from having multiple categories - eg French novelists and American novelists.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:26, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Yep. The descent categories are in my opinion a disaster. How do you determine descent for categorization? By language fluently spoken? By the number of generations since someone left the said country? By the fraction of your blood from said country? By self identification? All of these in the end, with the possibility of being born there or maybe only one generation removed are arbitrary and hence not appropriate categorizes. Then you have the issue of the history of countries. We had a discussion somewhere about a Poland article. Given the history there a read and then tell me what qualifies as being from Poland in 30 words or less. Then we have all of the country name changes. Am I allowed to dissociate from the name of the new country if I don't want to be associated with it? Does my descent from country A change to country B simply because it changed after I moved from there? In the US the various tribes can not even agree on what percentage of blood makes you a member! So better to do away with the entire tree. Of course if someone can get consensus on solutions to all of the problems, including the ones listed here, I can change my mind. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:00, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Please may we have a category for Category:Descendants of the Emperor Charlemagne? See this blog et al. Fiddle Faddle 20:16, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
or Category:Descendants of the Gengis Khan [7]
Many people have ancestors from multiple countries, and would be difficult to classify anyway, and many other people's ancestry is not known. I don't such classification is necessary, but if it is done it should not go beyond the person's parents "X of Y parents". If a person is associated in some way with a country of his or her ancestry (for example, a Canadian singer who specializes in singing songs from Argentina) this can come out in the article. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:41, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)[edit]

Two editors have had a disagreement involving hot revert war and a cold war on the talk page over the retention or deletion of a sentence. I have structured a simple survey on whether to delete the sentence or keep it. See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)#When in doubt, do not use the definite article for universities) more opinions might help to end the dispute with a clear consensus. -- PBS (talk) 12:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Customizing main page for Zero users[edit]

Unsure if this is the right section, feel free to move to the right place with a link from here.

Zero project has now made the starting page customizable for all mobile users that come from the Zero-partner networks (about 600+ million mobile phone subscribers). Obviously this has huge impact, and the community should be the driving force behind the free-form text that is being shown on that page. Please see description on what that page does, who sees it, and how it can be changed. Currently, the message is empty for the English Wikipedia, and other language users see an English quote "Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration." by Henry Brougham (my personal choice in order to test this feature).

Thanks, and let me know if there are any questions! --Yurik (talk) 23:33, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Howdy and welcome to my words regard merging an article with one that is AiD.[edit]

So I think this is bad mojo. and I am very much opposed. but.... One editor noticed an article I was trying to work with went up for deletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_therapy_%28alternative_medicine%29 Now their have been some major medical advancements in the last year and many of the medical articles will be changing for it. For better or worse. The article I link goes to the former understanding of electro medcine as copyedited by "skeptics" and most every refference and the majority of the article are contradicted by Novocure and the clinical medical acceptence of their cancer treatment device. .....

So I am going at it and realizing deletion is gonna be the best way and about a half hour later or so somebody wants to merge the article on PEFT with this one on electromagnetic therapy and I was thinking it sounds... to be blunt, unethical.

TO merge an article with one already nominated for deletion? I thought that was a wiki nono... but lots has changed since I was playing here.

So I am unsure about things but I invite you all to watch the debate of the story unfold so that yall can take notes and learn from whatever this experience is about to provide for us. Observation is a great learning tool so don't take this invatation as RfC or anything I mean do what you want but I invite you to observe this mess of a merging article with a deletion article. Because I expect interesting stuff from it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1zeroate (talkcontribs) 02:50, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

It's never been a "no-no". The point is to discuss and come up with solutions to problems. Lots of discussions about what to do with articles come up with solutions other than deletion, and always have. It isn't a game or a contest, its a discussion to decide how to improve the encyclopedia. --Jayron32 06:17, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Emerging discussion re Draft: namespace[edit]

Please see and join the emerging discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Deletion_and_Draft: regarding part of the potential usage of the Draft: namespace. Fiddle Faddle 19:21, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Creative Commons Licence Clarification[edit]

Creative Commons have recently clarified their licence wrt image resolution. Users who upload a small 640x480 JPG to Wikipedia/Commons under CC have in fact released the underlying "copyright work" under CC. So the licence applies to any other form of that "copyright work", including the 24MP JPG you may have thought was safely "All rights reserved" on your pro photo site. Even if your larger version must be purchased, there is nothing stopping someone uploading it here should they acquire it. This is a surprising development. It is unclear as yet how this affects other variants of a copyright work such as cropping an image, a short cut of a video or even a single frame from a movie. Please discuss at Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Update. -- Colin°Talk 19:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I guess my writing skill is bad. I believe my UP TO DATE contribution should not be UNDO. For example, in "hata clan" section, someone is falsely implying what genetic study does not conclude. I also want to include quote from other section of wiki as a proof. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Real7777 (talkcontribs) 21:35, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

In Culture- in "popular" culture- in "Literature"- Legacy[edit]

Many articles have sections listing references to the subject of the article in fiction or arts.

I submit that certain headings for these sections imply a judgment that a work is high-quality, or is Literary, or is low-brow. I submit that these judgments are not ones we are qualified to make, as verifiable sources disagree, and there is even disagreement as to what popular culture is: whether it is less important or less valuable than "High culture" or what kinds of "culture" might not be "popular culture". Does "popular culture" comprise artistic works which do not require particular education to appreciate them, and if so, do such works exist?

Examples: Experience machine- "In literature", (literature sounds high-brow) referring to a story in Amazing Stories, and the film The Matrix. Dresden bombing "In popular culture" (sounds low-brow) and I found the novel Slaughterhouse-five outside this heading. This illustrates how invidious the judgment is. Whether a school could exclude it from the school library on moral grounds reached the US Supreme Court. Thomas Becket "Legacy" includes Murder in the Cathedral, a play by TS Eliot so arguably High culture, and churches named after him.

Is it worth creating a policy for a single heading for such parts of articles?

Advantages for such a policy: there would be no judgment, express or implied, on a work, whether it was written for a specific public, or was high quality, or was high-brow or low-brow. The judgment would only be whether it was significant enough to be included- I see this is not a question of WP:Notability.

Proposed heading:

In culture. I propose "In culture" to include literature and all other arts, to include "high-brow" or "serious" or "quality" or "politically correct" culture, and works which are arguably not. Abigailgem (talk) 15:59, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

You'd have people calling out that that's discriminating more mainstream media compared to what is "high-brow". The better solution is to use independent third-party sourcing that identifies when a topic is part of the pop culture, instead of relying on the just primary (the work itself). --MASEM (t) 16:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree that needing third party sources is a good thing- the long list about Alpha Centauri in fiction saying that it was mentioned in so many shows seem unencyclopaedic to me- but the purpose of my proposal is to avoid that judgment or discrimination. Is something not "popular" culture because it is something else- unpopular, highbrow, whatever? Everything fits under "In culture". Abigailgem (talk) 22:46, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I think Masem missed the point of what you were talking about, which is the variation in header naming and how it sometimes purports to target only "literary" cultural references and other times "pop culture" references. I agree with you that these distinctions should not be made in these sections, that the header naming should be something more neutral regardless of what threshold we decide for when a reference is substantive or notable enough to merit inclusion in that section. postdlf (talk) 17:50, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I see on naming the section, "Legacy" is the way to go. This implicitly puts weight on needing third-party sources that others considered the use of a previous work in a later work to be part of the previous work's legacy - irregardless if it is a classical or contemporary work. --MASEM (t) 22:47, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
The question posed by the OP addresses not just a reference in a later cultural work to an earlier one, but cultural references to or depictions of any article subject. "Legacy" would be an odd if not outright absurd place to put dramatizations or fictionalizations of a notable person's life ("Lincoln's legacy includes the Emancipation Proclamation and being fictionalized in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter"). And if the article subject is a cultural work, in my understanding "legacy" then focuses more on how the subject is later thought of popularly and academically and how it influences later works and culture, which is both more broad and more subtle than explicit references to that work within other works. And "legacy" would be an odd way of characterizing references in other cultural works that are roughly contemporaneous to the original work (such as opportunistic parodies of a popular movie). postdlf (talk) 23:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
Reception history? --Hegvald (talk) 09:25, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't see how that's relevant here. postdlf (talk) 22:24, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

RfC: template main versus template details and for what purpose(s) to use template main[edit]

This seems to be a perennially controversial issue, so I've started a RfC at Template talk:Main#RfC. Someone not using his real name (talk) 00:53, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Tagging articles with multiple non-free problems for NFCR review[edit]

{{non-free review}} exists to tag images that may be a problem with NFC as to be listed at NFCR rather that FFD. This is accepted. About May of this year, as NFCR began to be brought up more in light of recent NFC issues at that time, a couple editors decided to adopt the template to use in article space for article with overall NFC problems (too many, for example). After some editors objected to this tag being left at top of article pages, they opened an RFC which closed that the bold change to use on article space was imporoper consensus.

This still leaves the issue of how to alert editors of articles with NFC problems that are being discussed at NFCR. Tagging indiviuduasl file pages will not catch the right eyes. There doesn't seem to be any problem with these in article pages no I more than other maintenance tagsd and will look just as ugly. Or we could put the on article talk pages but I suspect this will reduce participation at NFCR , the primary reason we have been using NFCR more often. We need some type of alert template for article pages. --MASEM (t) 07:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

URL Links in Infobox[edit]

Im looking to firm up consenus re URL Links in info-boxes. Info-boxes such as Template:Infobox theatre advise us to use the template {{URL}} and display like so http://www.majestic-theatre.com, this leaves a full URL on display. The template allows the link to be formatted as we may do in main articles to display like so Majestic theatre, however this is depreciated although it does explain in the template documentation how to do it and it works. Im looking for two things, consensus on whether or not we should display full URL's in info-boxes (whether thats wrapped in an template or not) and if they should be displayed as a full URL should parameter 2 in {{URL}} be removed meaning the template cannot display a formatted link, the latter has been proposed here anyway. This has been discussed at various locations previously but not in big scale discussions and i feel it would be beneficial to bring consensus up to date and obviously look at what template URL should be used for.Blethering Scot 17:53, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

  • I note that this is for derivatives of the {{Infobox}} template that support the website parameter. The {{URL}} subtemplate doesn’t actually require a full URL, but will also accept an abbreviated form, omitting the protocol, e.g. www.example.com, and create the correct URL in the underlying tag's HREF attribute. In an infobox, the URL is almost always a domain name, only, so it's usually relatively short. If the URL has a path that makes it long, then it's really not a "website" and shouldn't be in the infobox website section. The domain name itself is an important visible means of identifying an entity, so I feel that it should remain as it is. (Also, is this a "policy" issue or a "style" issue?) —Danorton (talk) 18:23, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
  • The point of displaying a website in an infobox is so that a reader can quickly see the address of that website without necessarily having to click through to read the resulting page address. For that reason we display the word 'Website' followed by the url. There is no point whatsoever in clogging up the infobox for Apollo Theatre, for example, by displaying 'Website Apollo theatre'. As Basil Fawlty put it: "Next contestant, Mrs. Sybil Fawlty from Torquay. Specialist subject - the bleeding obvious". --RexxS (talk) 18:48, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Agree with Rexx (and concur with invoked apropos comment by Basil ).Make it simplest and easiest for the reader, always.(Littleolive oil (talk) 18:58, 20 December 2013 (UTC))
  • There is already consensus for the display of URLs in infoboxes, as was recently explained to Blethering Scot elsewhere. When challenged to find any dissent from that consensus other than his own, he offered none. It's hard to see this RfC as anything other than disruptive. It needs a WP:SNOW close. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Why is this being discussed here instead of at WT:EL? Well, never mind: IMO you should display the bare URL, unless the URL is so long and unwieldy that it wraps onto several lines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Showing the URL is useful for when someone prints an article on a sheet of paper, or reads it on a device without mouse-over capability. Showing the protocol could be useful if a new protocol someday becomes popular. For instance, SPDY is meant to replace HTTP in the same way that HTTP replaced Gopher. —rybec 01:07, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Tag people at Wikipedia[edit]

I would like to make a suggestion to mark all articles about real persons (humans).

At the moment it is very difficult to extract persons from Wikipedia. However, it is humans who write Wikipedia articles and who create all the knwoledge appearing at Wikipedia.

At present all humans are scattered over various categories (date birth, living people, lived people etc).

The Google matrix analysis with various ranking methods show that Wikipedia hyperlink network correctly selects the most influencial people of humanity (see Refs.1-5 below for ademic research). However, a computer selection of humans (real persons) is very difficult as the moment, not only for other languages but even for English.

In my opinion it will be very useful if a special tag (or Category people) would mark all real persons existed or exisitng in human hystory for all languages of Wikipedia. This would allow to perform an efficient network analysis of enhanglement of cultures and their interactions based on computer science methods.

Refs:

    Ref1. A.O.Zhirov, O.V.Zhirov and D.L.Shepelyansky, "Two-dimensional
     ranking of Wikipedia articles", Eur. Phys. J. B v.77, p.523-531 (2010)
     (arxiv:1006.4270[cs.IR]) http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/QWLIB/2drankwikipedia/
     Ref2. P.Aragón, A.Kaltenbrunner, D.Laniado, Y.Volkovich,
     "Biographical Social Networks on Wikipedia - A cross-cultural study of
     links that made history", Proceedings of WikiSym, 2012,
     (arXiv:1204.3799)
     Ref3. Y.-H.Eom, K.M.Frahm, A.Benczur and D.L.Shepelyansky, "Time evolution
     of Wikipedia network ranking", Eur. Phys. J. B v.86, p.492 (2013)
     (arXiv:1304.6601 [physics.soc-ph])
     Ref4. Y.-H.Eom and D.L.Shepelyansky, "Highlighting entanglement of
     cultures via ranking of multilingual Wikipedia articles", PLoS ONE
     v.8(10), p. e74554 (2013) (arXiv:1306.6259 [cs.SI])
     Ref5. S.Skiena, C.B.Ward, "Who is bigger?",
     Cambridge Univ. Press (2013) http://www.whoisbigger.com/


D.Shepelyansky

--shepelyansky (talk) December 25, 2013 —Preceding undated comment added 12:49, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi shepelyansky, I suggest that rather than trying to extract information out of Wikipedia, you use DBpedia or Wikidata, as they are two projects that extract information out of Wikipedia and allow it to be queried. John Vandenberg (chat) 00:13, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

We have {{Persondata}}. It isn't always used but it's currently on 1,111,893 pages. Category:Living people is the largest people category. It currently has 643,730 pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:22, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Hi DS - it appears you are the author of those studies? I do work in category space here so I could perhaps be of help. As you have found, it is indeed difficult to extract all people - I believe Category:People_categories_by_parameter will give you the best superset if you enumerate the contents recursively, but will also include fictional people, as well as other non-people articles esp those that are members of eponymous categories. We don't have any pure 'people' categories - even the pure ones will include lists and occasional other topical articles. There are many bios here, I would bet over 1.5m, so a suggestion to add a new category to so many pages is likely to be viewed in a dim light. I'd rather instead suggest you focus on use of other techniques to use nlp or other post processing to clean the superset list from the category above of articles that are either a) not about people (shouldn't be too hard) or b) not about real people (harder).--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:45, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Use of notability essays during AfD nominations[edit]

Wikipedia notability essays serve a useful purpose - providing thoughtful suggestions of notability, particularly when it comes to presumptive notability. However, there are instances when these (and possibly other essays) are invoked as the entire or predominate reason to nominate an article for deletion. When this occurs (particularly when supplied as an authoritatively-appearing Wikipedia:Shortcut), new and/or less experienced editors who may not be well-versed in the substantial differences between things like policy, guidelines, and essays can be misled by their invocation. While there are a few small warnings in place to keep editors aware that essays are not established policy, this type of use for an AfD nomination can still easily give the false impression that meeting the suggestions given by the essay are what is being debated, rather than the standards established in actual policy. Moreover, the suggestions given for presumptive notability are high, as they well should be. Thus, it can become discouraging for editors to even participate in AfD discussions where it appears that meeting those achievements is what is being debated, rather the true policy behind it.

My suggestion would be a small addendum to current deletion policy – a formalization that prohibits or strongly discourages the nomination of articles for deletion for simply not achieving the suggestions given in essays, rather than their adhering to actual policy or guidelines. As mentioned in the template for notability essays, they very much should be consulted for assistance during the AfD discussion, particularly when it comes to presumptive notability, but they however should not be listed as the deletion reason per se, as again this can appear to some as misrepresentative of what is actually being debated.

So, in sum, with this change an article would and should still be nominated for deletion for not meeting something like WP:GNG, WP:BLP, or as listed in WP:SPEEDY; it would not and should not be nominated for "failing to meet" the suggestions given in WP:MILNG, WP:CCWMOS, or WP:MMANOT. Rather, these essays could be used in the actual discussion as evidence toward deletion or retention. I believe that making this a best practice could go a long way to providing clarity for editors of all experience levels during AfD nominations. Thoughts? Buddy23Lee (talk) 19:31, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, wikiproject notability guidelines do not have global consensus like the subject-specific ones (like BIO), and certainly cannot override the GNG and these subject-specific ones, so nominations that are based on deletion due to failing to meet a project's guidelines (while still meeting the GNG or a subject-specific one) is not appropriate. At the same time, articles failing the GNG and subject-specific guidelines cannot be justified being kept because they meet a project's notability guidelines. (Project guidelines can be elevated to global ones if they work to include the concepts in one of the appropriate subject-specific ones, of course). --MASEM (t) 19:38, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Exactly, and I believe that this minor policy change would seek to address that inappropriateness. I consider myself an at least averagely savvy editor, and it took me quite a while to realize the essential difference between essays and policy when it came to AfD nominations. I think the process should be transparent to all sides of an AfD debate. Buddy23Lee (talk) 20:09, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

There is already WP:NOTPOLICY. Barney the barney barney (talk) 20:45, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Good point, but that appears to be an essay as well. I was thinking of a sentence or two could be added to actual deletion policy discouraging some of the practices mentioned in WP:NOTPOLICY and above. Buddy23Lee (talk) 21:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
  • IMO, this suggestion is a solution looking for a problem. AfD does alright even though some nominators appear to be clueless. At the end of the day the closing admins know what they are doing. Problem is, I feel pretty sure that many nominators don't follow up and see how their AfDs were closed. When I come across the rare misplaced AfDs, I usually leave some friendly advice for the nominator. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP. Failure to grasp the differences and nuances between policies, guidelines, essays, etc makes one look like a bit of a noob, but isn't big enough a problem that we need to legislate even more policy to prohibit it. Besides, if there were such a rule, editors likely to make such a basic mistake are exactly the sorts of editors who wouldn't know about the rule. Kudpung's assessment of "a solution looking for a problem" is about right. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 00:33, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't see how it would be much of an instance of creep when we already have extensive deletion policy and deletion guidlines that cover all sorts of minutia about AfDs aside from this. Obviously not all newer editors would be aware of this rule or suggestion, but it seems to me the vast majority of all AfD nominators are relatively experienced editors who are aware of policy and guidelines. Compelling them to only nominate articles based only on violations of policy and guidelines could only help to bring transparency and legitimacy to the process. Buddy23Lee (talk) 20:11, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - per WP:NOTPOLICY and WP:CREEP. I just feel like these sort of things tend to regulate itself - if things are wrongfully cited, they tend to not pick up much support either. Sergecross73 msg me 22:33, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose because there probably doesn't need to be a policy to stop people from using essays as if they were policy if there is an essay that tells people not to use essays as if they were policy. Also, WP:CREEP, even though that makes it look like I'm treating an essay as a policy myself (!). -Well-restedTalk 09:21, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

WikiProjects against portals[edit]

There is a dispute involving WP:Portals that could probably benefit from the views of uninvolved editors. To give you a quick summary, the fundamental question seems to be whether a WikiProject can reject links to (relevant) portals in articles within their scope. One way to put it might be this: May Members A, B, and C, none of whom are actively editing the article in question, tell Non-Members D and E, who are editing the article, that portal links are never acceptable, or is the inclusion or rejection of portal links something that must be decided article-by-article, by the editors on each separate article's talk page?

If the WikiProjects' WP:Advice pages are considered binding, then they apparently need help figuring out what to do when WikiProject #1 rejects the links and WikiProject #2 supports the same links.

The main discussion seems to be at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film#Cross WikiProject relations and decisions about portals right now. A variety of responses about the general issues as well as whether you would support or oppose inclusion of portal links on pages like this would probably be helpful.

Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Were infoboxes getting old so people had to find something else to argue about? I haven't kept up with the latest in the "can WikiProjects force use or non-use of infoboxes on articles in their scope" debates, but it seems to me this should go the same way. Anomie 16:05, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
This seems like another obvious overstepping of authority by WikiProjects and a WikiProject stating an portal, infobox, etc. cannot be used on their articles is a clear vilation of Own. Kumioko (talk) 16:26, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
To be fair, some portals are rather tenuously associated with the topics where they're being placed. When you get down to specifics, the anti-portal group may well have a totally valid point.
But, yes, this seems to be the latest incarnation of people sincerely, though erroneously, believing that self-identifying yourselves a "WikiProject" means that you are supposed to set some rules. We (the community) let this rumor persist without serious challenge for several years, and that means that hundreds of good editors have heard this misinformation through the grapevine, from people they trusted, and have no reason to disbelieve them. We're making progress, but based on how long it's taken to deal with the WP:Secondary does not mean independent problem, I'm guessing that this will take at least two or three years to get the news to everyone. Apparent "facts" that "somebody told me when I was a new editor" are very hard to dislodge. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
I think that each link should be decided y the whole community. In other words, WikiProject members should never have a higher status to decide things that non-members. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:02, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

About Time[edit]

Pictogram voting info.svg Note: Moved from Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback where it was left in error. — Scott talk 14:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

It's about time for change as I have a lot to contribute but can't figure out your code. A few suggestions. First is that you lock the topics so that not just anyone can edit them which would make Wiki more trustworthy. Include options instead where an edit is submitted to the original author, an email can be sent to the original author or the edit can be submitted to someone to review it who can submit it.

I used your current guide to submit an article for someone else to create it and submitted a request for a Chicago Gunners page to be created. Why? Professional football is interesting to me and there's some articles about obscure teams and league but others are missing. There were negro leagues during segregation but little about them is available online without a lot of effort so that when you find it, you want to share the information to make it easier for others. I submitted a request for an article about the Chicago Gunners as I keep running across the name in regard to games played back in the early 20th century but what little I have found out about the actual team is scant. By having a Wiki page where I could actually request more information, maybe other sports fans could contribute what they know and we could build an article from verifiable sources. But if people can't understand the code and the options are like pulling teeth, most people with this knowledge won't share it. If they had more options to contribute and get involved, that would be very good for Wiki.

But you have to do more to protect the existing articles from people adding false information or removing what's already been submitted so that locking the pages and forcing them to go through more official channels would be a better way to do it. Armorbeast (talk) 08:23, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

A few of your proposals have been made and rejected in the past. Allow me to provide a few helpful links
  • On the subject of disallowing IP editing: This is a proposal that has been made and rejected by the community a number of times, as IP editors make a large number of useful contributions to the wiki. Additionally, the ability for anybody to edit Wikipedia is a founding principle of the project.
  • On the subject of submitting edits to the original author: Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anybody can edit. The creator of an article does not own it; the encyclopedia is a collaborative project.
As for the Wiki markup being confusing, I can sympathize. It can take a while to master the markup, and if you are having trouble figuring it out, you could try a beta feature called VisualEditor. It is a WYSIWYG editor for Wikipedia, which you can enable in the beta section of your preferences. Keep in mind, though, that VE is a beta project, and may have some bugs. I do hope this has been helpful. --Novusuna talk 22:33, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
In addition, the original article author can add the article to their watchlist to monitor any changes. GoingBatty (talk) 23:19, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion on Discretionary Sanctions needs more voice[edit]

See this discussion. Add your voice  KoshVorlon. We are all Kosh   17:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

New MassMessage user group here[edit]

Hi. There's a new MassMessage user group on the English Wikipedia, following Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 108#Create new user group for m:MassMessage.

User:EdwardsBot/Access list should be transitioned to this user group, but that may be a matter of policy (of which there's none currently, besides "use good judgment"). Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:40, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 108#Questions (MM) clearly says (and I supported based on this) that all users on the existing list, excluding the ones on the talk page that aren't on the actual list yet, would be grandfathered in and not have to reapply. Are you asking if we should ignore the consensus already reached? I'm guessing no, but would like to be clear. Technical 13 (talk) 03:18, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Okay, that's simple enough to implement. I'll post to WP:AN now asking any passing admin to transition the list over. Any thoughts on how to approve new/future requests? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:48, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Posted the request. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Granted the group to all users who were not already sysops. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 18:17, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
As part of describing Massmessage procedure for mass message rights I'd like to point out that the user group currently links to Wikipedia:Massmessage senders, so that might be a place to start :D —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 18:23, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Template Vandalism[edit]

Background[edit]

For the past few days, trolls have been persistently vandalising a number of highly visible templates with official-looking advertisements and other explicit images. For example, see these two screenshots - [8] [9]. Every time one of these vandalisms occur, it takes quite some time for editors to revert, as well as causing issues with purging, which make the templates be displayed even after they're edited back to their original form.

So far the following templates have been vandalised, almost all of them used in multiple highly viewed articles (Number of transclusions available)-

As is visible, all of these templates are either transcluded in many pages, or are transcluded in some pages which have a lot of viewers, making it a deliberate attempt to cause disruption for a large number of our readers.

Relevant discussion can also be found at ANI Post1, ANI Post2, ANI Post3 Village Pump Post.

There has been one abuse filter at work but given how the vandals appear to know Wikipedia enough to know which templates to attack, it probably would not hold them off for long, even if it does. Meanwhile, it misleads a significant number of our readers (See the number of edits at this supposed "Discussion" page where the readers were directed to. Also see the now deleted Wikipedia_talk:Advertising_on_Wikipedia page on testwiki.)

Proposal[edit]

Technical Feasibility[edit]

  • Can anyone with the knowhow please tell us how feasible making this change will be, from a technical perspective? Likewise, how difficult will be the implementation? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:17, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
    • According to the Bugzilla report, there is already an option in the software to have templates transclude as the approved version, rather than the latest version. It just needs consensus for us to turn it on. This seems like the sensible way for the software to work so I don't think anyone would object to that per se, but obviously there is the question of when PC protection would be applied to templates, which is more controversial, as we can see from the discussion below. Yaris678 (talk) 17:18, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
      • I read that statement as meaning that FlaggedRevisions (PendingChanges) is an optional, existing feature, not that applying it to transcluded pages is an optional, existing feature. I'll ask around and see if I can find someone who knows the answer. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
        • Cool. I see you have now made this and this change, which note what you have found. Thanks. I see the devs have also updated the Bugzilla report. Coolio. Yaris678 (talk) 13:04, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion[edit]

If there are any parts of this RFC that ought to be changed, please feel free to make that change, and note it here. I would be happy to have any changes according to what the Consensus is. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:40, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Based on discussion at IRC, there was another view calling for PC1 to be limited only to the high-risk templates, rather than all templates. If other editors also agree with this view, then the proposal will be changed. To that extent, please state whether you prefer the current version or the alternate one. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:40, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Based on discussion with a couple editors and the initial !votes, I have changed this proposal to the above suggested alternate. If consensus so demands, I'm still open to reveting back. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:45, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I support the original variant, PC1 being applied to all pages in the Template namespace. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:51, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Template protection and the template editor user level were recently deployed a couple of months ago. This allows users with experience in template editing to maintain high-visible protected templates. Granted that not all highly-visible templates have yet been switched to the new protection setting, but this is an alternative option. I'm not sure if adding all templates to pending changes will be efficient: unless these experienced template editors will also be willing to monitor Special:PendingChanges, and most of those on pending changes patrol have little or no template experience to know whether incoming edits are valid or produce bugs, there will probably be lots and lots of backlogs. I'd rather have template editors monitor requests in one place (Category:Wikipedia template-protected edit requests) rather than both places. Zzyzx11 (talk) 20:46, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • While I do think pending changes protection should be used a little more than it is currently, PC1 protecting all high-risk templates could overload reviewers like myself monitoring Special:PendingChanges, especially those of us who aren't regular template editors and may not be able to distinguish good edits from bad at a glance. A better idea would be to apply template protection on the high risk templates, as that is exactly what that protection level was created to handle. Temporary PC1 or semi-protection could be used on templates that aren't high-risk, but still face vandalism. Novusuna talk 21:02, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Hi Novusuna, one of the features of WP:PC is that there is no urgency to approve the change. Reviewers should always skip a pending change unless they understand it and approve of the change. That applies to any type of change. If reviewers approve a change they dont understand, the community should consider removing their reviewer right, especially if the reviewer frequently does it, or they approve an obvious problematic change. Special:PendingChanges can be filtered by namespace, so reviewers can focus on namespaces that they are confident in. I don't think we'll have problems finding reviewers competent in the Template namespace. John Vandenberg (chat) 06:20, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
      • Point taken, and comment struck-through to reflect. I still feel that template protection is the solution for high risk templates, as that is precisely the situation it was created for. As for lower risk templates, I'm open to the possibility of expanding PC1, but I don't think the community agrees with me there. Novusuna talk 06:43, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I support the proposal except "If the vandalism persists, this will be converted to PC2." This is because there is "no consensus for use on the English Wikipedia" for PC2. Holdek (talk) 04:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Hi all. I am a new account holder here. Had been using wiki since the 2nd year of my college for my studies as well as source of numerous other unbiased information. I do not think implementing a PC1 or PC2 can actually go with the original essence of Wikipedia and the values with which it started. The path, in my sense, is absolutely wrong and will soon end up our wiki becoming a personal thing, monopolised therefore, in prime interest of corporate profit maximisation. Please do not do that. It is the only thing we all have when even "Education" and "Knowledge" is monetary profit oriented business. We need this place to express we have some rights. Right to knowledge, right to offer betterment, right to take part in unbiased knowledge sharing irrespective of time and situation. Even if we may have shortage of resources (time is one of the prime resources).

There is only one final solution for long run : Increase the number of registered editors and content suppliers. To get there, we can do the following:

  1. For the time being can use PC1 protection
  2. Within that period, there can be implementation of intelligent security to contents added or altered. [using standard identification of spam content etc. with different parameters, based on original contents]
  3. Image uploading must be under PC1 for a longer period, untill we get a working opensource to identify abusive image content.
  4. There should be a easy "complain" tag, like the "edit" one, which will redirect the complain to all active registered editors. The complain process must be easy, without much hassles, with a complain reason, and antibot checking. name field may be there, but should be optional. The editors will verify the complained content at once and issue a report to the administrator after making necessary changes if required at all. If a certain number of registered users find that content abusive but not easily restored to its original version, that content can be made hidden by the administrator. And for that content which has got complaint(s) and verified that it needs treatment, but not a major abusive one, and only needs a little time to restore, can be flagged as "Complaint issued, Restoration in Progress".
  5. There can be a special type of "Complain" alert in each registered user's notification icon.
  6. It can be added to the list of ethics that each online registered user (who were active at his or her account, at the time of complain and also upto 5 mins afterwards) must respond to the complained content, and send a preliminary "Able"/"Unable" report with a brief reason. These reports can be auto managed and filtered as required.
  7. The last edit of a content, for which the complaint is lodged, must be tracked back and the user must be given alerts / the registration may be cancelled depending upon the extent of abuse.
  8. We can have a spell checker (and syntax checker for each language. After all language detection processes are evolving.) here in text area.


We must still keep faith in collective global "Conscience" of "Humanity". We can do better without exercising our selfish interest on a global asset. Even the person, who posted those stuff, is one of us, just diffrently troubled. -- This should be the message. United we stand.

I donno if I am being stupid. Felt this as right. Thanks. --Aaniya B (talk) 13:27, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Votes[edit]

In the first few days, the proposal may be altered as per consensus. It is advised to discuss the proposal than oppose a part of it. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:40, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Support as proposer. Template edits are hard to find, and harder to restore on all transcluded pages. We certainly need some protection against such vandalism. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Neutral as amended (see below) Oppose as it stands. While I agree something needs to be done, there is just no way that locking down the entire Template: namespace is technically feasible or wise. PC1 in Template: is a bad idea as it inhibits may too many users from the trial and error needed to make proper /sandbox and /testcases pages to test their ideas and to propose proper edit requests. This is simply trying to hang a picture on the wall with a thumb tack and a sledgehammer. Technical 13 (talk) 20:02, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • With the change of the proposal to only high risk templates, the only question I would have left is what is the threshold for "high risk" I could see possibly a transclusion count of >100 for templates not designed to be substituted (which poses its own set of technical difficulties and decisions). Technical 13 (talk) 21:09, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Support This doesn't inhibit any kind of editing, since even anons can see unapproved versions of pages when they choose to. This vandal is persistent, and I don't think anything short of this will stop him. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:05, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per Technical 13. Not everything is Template namespace should be protected. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 20:18, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
    • Comment the problem here is that visibility is much more important part of this type of vandalism than transclusion count. I would even support applying PC1 to all templates transcluded in article space. We would need a bot for that to keep that up to date though. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 21:37, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose this proposal. There are many thousands of templates. Protecting all of them at any level would do more harm than good. We have appropriate protection levels for high-risk templates. Why not use those levels on an as-needed basis? [This statement has been changed based on an updated version of the proposal.] – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:10, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as overreaching. The only difference between template vandalism and normal article vandalism is the difficulty of rapid detection and the slow pace at which articles transcluding the templates are automatically purged. I think that (along with user education on how to detect template vandalism from an affected article) a combination of bot activity and edit filters can handle the vandalism itself, while a developer-side tweak to the job queue allowing promotion of the sort of purge jobs involved by a user with advanced permissions. I think that, with such a change, we can even roll back the level of protection to templates we're already protecting as "high-risk" when it's just because the specific template has been abused in the past. —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 22:52, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose either version. High-risk templates should have template protection, rendering the suggested measure redundant. The original idea (to apply PC to all templates) made more sense in the respect that such a change would make an actual difference, buy I regard this as major overkill. Additionally, there isn't even consensus to use PC level 2 at the English Wikipedia (and I don't believe that this is the correct context in which to establish it).
    TheOriginalSoni noted that "in the first few days, the proposal may be altered as per consensus", thereby rendering the discussion confusing and difficult to parse (as the version on which someone has commented might be unclear). A material revision already has occurred once, and TheOriginalSoni is "still open to reverting back". This suggests that the idea hasn't been fleshed out to a reasonable extent, which should have occurred before a formal proposal was made. —David Levy 23:18, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - I personally have combated these vandals. Some are outright hate speech. Commons is typically slow to remove offending images and there's not an easy way to monitor template edits specifically that I know of. I think this proposal for an adequate response to the problem. EvergreenFir (talk) 00:29, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
    How, in your view, would adding PC protection to templates that already have template protection (with all editors capable of editing them also possessing the reviewer right) improve the situation? —David Levy 00:38, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. First of all, if a template is WP:HIGHRISK, it should be permanently or template protected. If it isn't high risk, then we are the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and we have to tolerate needing to revert vandalism so that we can also get good edits from anons or new editors - which we all were at some stage. Secondly, PC1 and PC2 aren't the right tools for the job - the reviewer right has been given out with any consideration for template editing expertise. Iff this were to go ahead, then users that are trusted with templates (admins and template-editors) should be accepting the pending changes (ie, a pending changes level 3, rather than PC1 or PC2), and if you're gonna do that, why not just apply full or template protection, and have users make edit requests? So basically, we already have ways of protecting high risk templates. If you want to broaden the definition of high risk, perhaps you should propose that, rather than involving pending changes protection. If you want to patrol recent changes to the template namespace, then go to Special:RecentChanges and set namespace to template. - Evad37 [talk] 02:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We have an edit filter that's been created for the advertising thing; it should be stopping this, and if it's not, the solution is to improve the filter. Also, per Evad, you ought to propose a change to the "high risk" standards instead of making this request, because this request would involve a massive amount of work, causing much more work for almost all of our pages and overall producing much more difficulty than it would prevent. Nyttend (talk) 02:24, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. It is not at all necessary that all reviewers are good enough in template coding and would be able to help without breaking the codes. I am a reviewer too and I don't think that I would be able to do that. - Jayadevp13 02:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Support protecting high risk templates. Note there is no prefect solution, just "good enough for now." -- Safety Cap (talk) 02:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
    As discussed above, we already protect high-risk templates. Are you expressing support for the general concept, or do you believe that the proposed change would constitute an improvement? —David Levy 02:56, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Protection of any sort should not be applied pre-emptively, certainly not on the scale proposed here. SpinningSpark 03:34, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. High risk templates are already protected. I would rather see something see something like User:Anomie/previewtemplatelastmod provided automatically by the history of articles. Showing the latest changes to all templates ( and other transclusions) intermixed with the direct page edits. It would make template vandalism easier to handle by editors as it would bring the eyes of all impacted pages to the changes in the template. See also my comments to Template vandalism with images at WP:VPR. PaleAqua (talk) 03:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
    Also as I've commented on other pending change RFCs for templates, pending changes encourage the wrong approach to working with high risk templates. We should be encouraging sandboxes and test cases. PaleAqua (talk) 04:19, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Support With this change, "high-risk" templates are no longer high-risk, effectively removing one type of high profile vandalism, and reducing the number of {{edit protected}} requests needed, thereby reducing admin workload. John Vandenberg (chat) 04:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per my comment in the discussion section. Holdek (talk) 04:52, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Reviewers have no special ability to recognize template vandalism. And no matter how many back doors are tried, there's still no consensus to broaden the use of PC on the English Wikipedia. (There is consensus not to enable PC2.) Who is doing the vandalizing, anyway? If it's IPs and newbies, the solution here is semi-protection, and there is a newly created user group that is, one hopes, specially qualified to deal with the requests. If there's persistent template vandalism from sleeper socks, the solution is full protection. Rivertorch (talk) 05:19, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose: WP:TPROT already exists and is sufficient. Richard75 (talk) 13:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I have mentioned my logic and views in the Disciussion panel. --Aaniya B (talk) 13:32, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as unnecessary. Isn't this what Template Protection and its associated usergroup/permission is supposed to do? ElKevbo (talk) 14:20, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose using PC. This is a big problem, as it presents Wikipedia in a very negative light to the average user, who has no idea that templates even exist, much less the technical details of how they are implemented. (Even as a long-time Wikipedian, I've learned a lot about how purging works in the past couple days by following this issue and related discussions.) That said, pre-emptive implementation of PC1 goes against the policy at WP:PC1. I also haven't been able to find any info on what the actual pattern of vandalism has been…how big of a sock puppet problem are we facing? I'm also very concerned about using template protection too widely, as there are only 63(!) current users with template editor privileges. As a 10-year registered user who has done some infrequent but moderately advanced template work, I would be upset and discouraged if I got closed out of making ordinary edits to templates that affect hundreds, rather than thousands or millions of pages. —Ed Cormany (talk) 15:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • The strongest support that I can puff out. We need good faith IP editors! Dreth 17:32, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per SpinningShark. SpencerT♦C 17:49, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is what template protection is for. Besides, PC can't be applied to the template namespace.—cyberpower ChatOnline 19:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
  • That's not entirely true Cyberpower678 (C678—[[User:{{{3}}}|{{{3}}}]]). According to Matma Rex PC is used in Template: on pl.wp (IIRC) on an as needed basis. Technical 13 (talk) 00:50, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
    I'm just going off what was told to me about this Wiki. That it can only be applied to Article and Wikipedia namespaces and the software disallows the rest. Although, I haven't been following PC lately.—cyberpower ChatOnline 01:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
    If PC is PendingChanges (=FlaggedRevs), then on pl.wp the entire Template namespace (as well as main, Help and Portal namespaces) are entirely, fully and non-configurably under it (every edit needs to be accepted by a "trusted" user, the rights to do this are given automatically after some conditions are met). It definitely works. (Note that I have no idea what this discussion is about, I was pinged, so replying.) Matma Rex talk 01:27, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
    Yesterday, I asked the devs who wrote FlaggedRevs about this. PC can be used to protect transcluded pages (e.g., templates) if and only if the target page (e.g., articles using that template) is also PC protected. On Wikipedias where everything in the mainspace is already protected by PC, then it works fine. Here, it would only work for a tiny fraction of pages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:04, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I've opposed PC in general from the start, but there are specific problems in template space.
  1. Template editors aren't that common, so the changes may not get acted on while they are in a generic queue of recent PC changes
  2. Generally speaking a template edit - especially to a high risk template - needs to be checked very quickly to make sure nothing went wrong (sandbox development or no, there's always a chance) - and even more quickly reverted if something did. PC could hinder that and make it hard to observe changes as they happen.
  3. It is trivial to write a sub-template that pops up vandalism only after a specified timestamp and incorporate that into a template in a way that nobody but a superbly punctilious reviewer could ever possibly spot. You've noticed templates sometimes aren't all that easy to follow? Note that when I say "sub-template" I mean that in the functional sense - any page, in userspace, in talk space, wherever, can be transcluded.
The bottom line: the vandals will eat your reviewers alive. They'll slip their content right past them, then they can stack up an extra edit so your PC1 acts as de facto PC2 when a regular editor tries to revert their change, and then you have to scramble for a template reviewer to undo the change they make before you're even ready to start purging ... by which point, if they're feeling mean, they'll have another account or IP lined up to do it again. Look at old-fashioned semi-, template- or full- protection grades and forget PC. Wnt (talk) 04:33, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Alternate proposal[edit]

  1. Change the AN/ANI editnotices, and possibly push a notification to watchlists, reminding editors that upon encountering possible template/advertising vandalism they should:
    • First, purge the page, and if that does not fix it:
    • Go to "Related changes" and select only the "template" namespace, and inspect any changes from the last five to ten days,
    • Revert vandalism and request template protection for the affected templates, and
    • Post at some central discussion place (probably an AN subpage) so the appropriate process may be started at the wiki hosting the transcluded "ad" image to delete that file ASAP.
  2. Request a feature via bugzilla to allow bureaucrats (and possibly administrators) to raise the priority of jobs in the job queue.
    • This would allow such users to rapidly purge all pages depending on affected templates (clicking "purge" on a page has this effect with a single page, but it is probably inadvisable to encourage the mass use of this feature)
    • Upon the release of this feature, we can gradually roll back template protection on less prominent templates.

This should address all the problems we're currently facing and allow a means of resolving it with the minimum of interference with everyday life here. —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 19:23, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

A technical feature that would help enormously here is to automatically also put on a watchlist images and transclusions on a watched page. That would put an awfully lot more eyes on this sort of vandalism. SpinningSpark 23:39, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

That should be trivial or nearly trivial to implement with a bot, especially in conjunction with an edit filter. Any edit that displays a file in template namespace triggers the filter, and a bot watching recent changes sends the edit to the noticeboard for examination. That would actually be an awesome way to build up a sufficient corpus of edits to train a bot on. Editors mark the entries as good, simple vandalism, or advertising. Hell, it'd be simple even without an edit filter, but with would mean less workload on the bot/toolserver since it'd have to fetch all template namespace edits and check the diffs otherwise. —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 02:42, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
On that note, has it ever been considered that Patrolled Revisions (sans pending changes) could be used in this way to train vandalism-fighting bots? —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 09:20, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
I haven't seen this particular batch of ad spam, but you can make a pro-looking ad with some skill at CSS; you don't actually need to access a file. Wnt (talk) 04:38, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
It's generally been file links thus far. But point taken: it's a game of cat and mouse. But a cascading purge should help stem the tide of all of this. —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 08:29, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

REVIEW[edit]

I'm sort of fed up by all these people suggesting ideas for tricking the job queue. The job queue is there for a reason and you shouldn't bypass it. You guys are solving the wrong problem. If you don't want to accidentally cascade a template change into all pages, you need to use a turnstile instead of a seesaw to toss people back into the row [line] after they have passed the door. What you need is some form of flagged revisions. Be it PC or I don't give a crap how we configure and call it. THAT is what you need. We can FIND reviewers, we can ASSIGN groups and permissions. As far as I'm concerned, we retool template protection into a PC1 like protection, apply it to all templates used in mainspace (bot controlled) and we use PC2 where needed. This is not content space, content space decisions don't matter, we can use PC1 and PC2 just fine, as long as we set it up properly. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 20:06, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey, I don't disagree in principle, but the current consensus is no PC. If PC is barred, this is the best solution. And messing with the JQ is already available in the form of action=purge. I don't see why this is such an outlandish proposal, if even as a stopgap solution until PC gains consensus. Limit the people capable of executing immediate cascading purges to 'crats. Simple. —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 02:41, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
That's because the current consensus is based on FUD. The various forms of protection are technical measures and names like PC, Patrolled Revisions and Sighted versions are failed (content space) definitions around configurations for these measures. We should separate technical implementations from the proposals. template protection == full == semi protection, but with a different user group administrating it. The problem here is that no one dares to touch anything with regards to FR/PC/PR/SV with a ten foot pole anymore. And that means sane technical solutions are being discarded simply because we engage too much in politics here.. We'd rather use a badly performing wipe to clean up after the tsunami because we once decided we don't want a dike in front of our rivers. Time to consider building a sluice for this specific problem. The problem here is the cascading effect that templates have, not the job queue. People seem to want a bigger wipe. Any engineer will tell you that is a mediocre change to countermeasure your problem of regular tsunamis. As a volunteer MediaWiki developer I can tell you that quite possibly, we can make the job queue a bit smarter, with more priorities for instance and we can add more servers to process it quicker (both will probably happen at some time). The thing is, in the long term it's just not gonna help this problem much. If there are 2 jobs of 1500 pages with priority "very high", we still can't process those all at once and there are going to be plenty of times that ppl will think it won't be quick enough. —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 11:07, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
I think that the clear-cut barrier of something like template protection is more secure than a review scheme that new users can sneak things through. Wnt (talk) 16:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
  • The real "big picture" here is that we've been allowing spamming using templates for all kinds of reasons. Look up a song by the Beatles, and you'll get Google hits for a hundred songs you don't want that all link to it from the spam masterpiece Template:The Beatles. Look at the Special:WantedPages and you'll see dozens of nonexistent articles linked from ten thousand places because WikiProjects are allowed to spam their to-do lists to irrelevant talk page articles. Though at least those don't affect Google, I wonder if this is the reason that people seem to have given up maintaining Special:Wanted pages? We should set a policy that you can put a given navbox on a maximum of 50 articles or so, and use categories after that; and distinguish "utility" templates more clearly in a way that tries to quantify and limit the amount of non-unique content they dump into articles. I realize that when we do that we'll find all kinds of reasons and holes in it, but we might just be able to get things to the point where automated measures can immediately spot an ad being put in a major template simply because (for a change) it is the only non-discussed content being spammed to a thousand pages. Wnt (talk) 16:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Propose additional exceptions to interaction bans[edit]

In a one-way interaction ban, the banned editor is currently not allowed to reply to the other editor, even in discussions they are involved in, or in their own userspace or user talk space. The exceptions I am proposing are being allowed to reply to the other editor in discussions about the banned editor, but not reference their contributions outside the discussion, and an exception in the banned editor's user and user talk space, apart from making a reference to the other editor. Dark Sun (talk) 10:29, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

This sounds complicated to me.
Imagine that I've got a one-way interaction ban, so I'm not supposed to talk to you. You would like to propose that (for example):
  • If you post a note on my user talk page, that I can talk to you (in that discussion) all I want.
  • If someone else posts a note on my user talk page about you, then I can talk about you (in that discussion) all I want.
  • If there is a discussion somewhere about me, and you comment in it, then I can reply to you (in that discussion) all I want.
Do I understand your proposal correctly? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Are interaction bans even construed that way? I would think that the simple rule would be to treat them like orders of protection. If party A (the beneficiary of the order) interacts with party B (the one constrained), it should work as a waiver of the order within the scope of that interaction on that page, and party B would be permitted to interact within reason in that discussion.
Limitations would be that if it looks like party B is preemptively sticking his head into places where party A could later become involved, this would be constrained. For instance, suppose party A primarily or only edits sexology articles; if party B went and made some trivial response to every single discussion thread on every single sexology article talk page, that should not only prevent the exception from being triggered, but should probably count as an in-spirit breach of the interaction ban. Of course, in most situations this would be hard to figure out; few editors edit solely within one topic area, and few editors are going to intentionally set up a minefield for another editor to evade their interaction ban.
And of course, no party should be restricted from starting or participating in a discussion to impose or lift community restrictions against himself. But this just seems like common sense. Anything I'm missing? —/Mendaliv//Δ's/ 02:51, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
One-way interaction bans are unusual, but they do exist. They're not necessarily conceptualized as someone being a "beneficiary"; it may be one-way simply because the second person does some routine work that requires contacting the banned person every now and again (e.g., to deliver semi-automated notices of a suspected copyvio).
If the banned person feels he is being needlessly provoked by the non-banned person, then his primary recourse is to request that the ban be converted to a two-way ban. The interaction bans frequently extend to not permitting the banned editor to edit or post comments on talk pages that are being edited by the non-banned editor, so your example would likely count as a violation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Restore vs Restart -- Copyright Question[edit]

I am curious about the copyright issues on what happens when an article is deleted for insufficiency and then later comes back to life. Please note these questions are semi-legalistic and I know that only the WMF can give official legal answers but I am looking for a sense of what the WP community feelings are on this matter, especially my last question.

Essentially here is a common scenario of what happens as I understand things:

  1. an article stub is created by an editor.
  2. other editors may or may not work on the stub.
  3. at some point the article/stub and related talk and history pages are deleted for insufficiency (WP:N, CSD:A7, whatever).
  4. later an editor finds the needed sources and decides to resurrect the article.

At this point there are four options:

  • (A) restore the deleted article pages into the mainspace and add in the new material.
  • (B) restore and WP:INCUBATE the article pages.
  • (C) restore and WP:USERFY the article pages.
  • (C) restart the deleted article as a new article written from scratch.

My questions are as follows:

  1. What happens to the edit history of the first version of the page if the page is restarted (option D above)? Is it overwritten or can it be accessed somehow if needed?
  2. If the first version was created under the WP:CC-BY-SA license and any follow-up work (including a total rewrite) is essentially a derivative product of that work then does the first version of the page history need to be restored in order to keep faith with the Attribution condition of the CCA license?
  3. Per Section 11 of the GFDL v1.3 any article content added to Wikipedia after 1-November-2008 but before 15-July-2009 that work MAY fall exclusively under the GFDL (there are incompatible elements between the two licenses). How can this origination date be determined if the original edit history has been deleted/overwritten (see question #1 above)?
  4. Finally, and most significant to me, is the moral rights of the WP editors of the first version to have their good faith contributions recognized. I personally believe in giving credit where credit is due. If I am inspired by an article to do research and help that article, I like to be sure that the work of all the editors before me is acknowledged. What is the community consensus on this?

F6697 FORMERLY 66.97.209.215 TALK 08:53, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Trying for a simple answer to a complex question. In short all the history remains in deleted history. So all the old edits are there. If the new version of the article, is a fresh start, then all the old versions stay in deleted history, they are not available for the new author to copy from, so all the new work is new, there is no legal or ethical issue about the the old content.
Any admin can view and/or restore the deleted edit history (for themselves or a requester to work on). If there is something worth while in the deleted edit history it is generally restored with all the old edits, and resurrected from the deleted version maintaining the edit history for the CC requirement. Again no legal or ethical issue about the the old content.
Sometimes there is no value added content in the deleted history, so they will not be restored. Again no legal or ethical issue about the the old content. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:49, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
1. It's stored along with all the other deleted revisions and can be accessed by admins or restored at any time.
2. If it's a total rewrite from scratch, then it's not really a derivative. The general concept of an article is not copyrightable. If there is anything based on the original version, then we would need the full history for proper attribution.
3. Ask an admin
4. There is no policy on moral rights. The Wikipedia:Moral rights essay is mainly about the rights of other people's work that we reuse. There's also the WP:Plagiarism guideline. Since we don't allow original research, any article is about a topic that has already been developed and discussed by others. So the first editor didn't "create" the topic of the article, just the original text, which is itself (hopefully) based on works published by others. So if someone recreates a deleted article, without even seeing any of the deleted edits, I think it would be a bit of a stretch to say they're infringing on the moral rights of the author(s) of the deleted version. In practice we may undelete the old edits anyway, just for transparency's sake (unless they contain copyright/BLP violations). But that's more "because we can" than "because we have to." Mr.Z-man 17:20, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Making guideline on signatures into formal policy?[edit]

See Wikipedia talk:Signatures#Promotion to policy. DES (talk) 23:21, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
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