Wikiquote:Village pump archive 28

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AbuseFilter[edit]

The mw:Extension:AbuseFilter has been in testing for a good while and will most likely soon be rolled out on Wikisource (see s:Wikisource:Scriptorium#AbuseFilter). We have been having chronic issues with vandals lately and I think this would be an excellent way to help our project. We have a few admins who are quite familiar with various cross-wiki issues and I think in addition to Wikisource this will be a good wiki to implement this useful new feature. If you like, you can also take a look at it on Testwiki. Thoughts? Cirt (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

  • Support - I think this should be implemented soon, it will be a net-positive for the project and (hopefully) cut down on the chronic vandalism, especially during those times where vandals are active and there are no admins around, and the vandals get away with 100+ contribs before being blocked. Cirt (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Support - it appears to be a useful tool that would certainly help this site as well. ~ UDScott 13:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Wait - This looks like a promising idea, but still appears to be in an experimental stage of development. Its author indicated yesterday at Wikisource that it is not quite ready to be activated in a live environment. When it does become ready for beta-testing, we should consider whether we have the expertise+manpower to be one of the first guinea pigs. Maybe we do, but I wouldn't want to just assume so. ~ Ningauble 14:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    @Ningauble (talk · contributions) - have you tried it out on Testwiki? It works really well for set specific scenarios, I don't think that there is much chance of error or accidental problems. Cirt (talk) 15:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    No, I have not tested it. I did look for user documentation, but what I found was thin. I am not sure I want to get involved in the developer site, as my professional activities amply fulfill my interest in such matters. ~ Ningauble 16:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    Okay, fair enough - but it only takes a few seconds to try out Abuse Filter at Testwiki. Perhaps after it is turned on at Wikisource, Werdnum can give us some more feedback/explanation here as well (Though I still think it would be fine to turn it on here too, there aren't really any drawbacks). Cirt (talk) 16:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    If you have experimented with writing filter conditions yourself, what is your assessment of the learning curve for designing robust triggers? One of the potential downsides is that unexpected false positives, whether due to software malfunction or to mistaken filter design, could degrade the user experience. While nobody's life or fortune hangs on the outcome (been there), if I were managing the rollout (done that) I would spend more than "a few seconds" designing the protocol first.
    I don't mean to be a naysayer, the extension is a good idea. I just don't have a solid sense of readiness (its or ours). ~ Ningauble 18:02, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    I will ask Werdnum for some specific input and clarity for us here. Cirt (talk) 18:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Support sure, it's enabled on plenty of other live Wikimedia projects and Wikiquote could use it to combat vandalism. Cbrown1023 talk 21:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    I wasn't aware it was widely used, or even live yet. Please identify some projects that use it. I would like to learn about their experiences. ~ Ningauble 22:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    ruwiki, nowiki, dewiki, metawiki (all very large projects) Cbrown1023 talk 22:20, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
    I see that live testing has begun yesterday at Meta.[1] I will be looking in periodically to see how it goes and to learn by example. ~ Ningauble 21:07, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, all. Just a few comments/clarifications from what's been said above:

  • Addressing concerns of false positives, the filters can be set to merely flag which edits match them. This is intended and encouraged prior to a filter's full deployment. You can leave a filter in 'flag' mode for a week or so, and tweak it to limit false positives. When it's ready to deploy, it can be put into 'disallow' or 'block' mode.
  • I am aware that the user documentation is a bit thin, I'm going to be working on this in the near future.

If there are any other questions, please ask me here or directly. :-) Werdna 12:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

  • Comment: Please see Special:Contributions/Cinderblox and the deleted contribs. This is like the hundredth time this has happened. Often admins are not around and the vandal gets away with over 100+ vandal edits. Implementing AbuseFilter would help prevent this sort of thing. Cirt (talk) 08:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Support — We've been getting tons of vandalism recently, and I think the AbuseFilter would be able to help prevent all this vandalism from happening when administrators are not around when vandals are. — RyanCross (talk) 08:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Support – This wiki gets enough vandalism to warrant it. TheAE talk 19:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Update: Special:AbuseFilter is being rolled out on en.wikipedia, see Announcing the Abuse Filter. Cirt (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Lots more useful info at w:Wikipedia:Abuse filter. Cirt (talk) 06:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Update: Looks like it is working pretty well already at en.wikipedia. Cirt (talk) 11:50, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
I will be checking it out over the next day or three. I am already thinking about filter designs, and about what we may need by way of a policy page. ~ Ningauble 16:30, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
Great! Thank you so much, any help/input/proactive actions on this would of course be most appreciated. Cirt (talk) 16:47, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

It has been enabled at Special:AbuseFilter. Cirt (talk) 07:45, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Webcomic Quote Pages[edit]

I'm having trouble deciding the proper layout for quotes from webcomics. I have edited a few, and the layout I have seen and gone with is each major character has their own section, another section for "other characters" and one for "dialogues". Is this appropriate, or should they be laid out by date or year or some other layout? I found layout requirements for television show, movies, literature and people, but not comics or webcomics. Any help? Xeginy 18:39, 05 March 2009

You raise a good point that we do not have a good template for these, but my opinion is that these should not be arranged by character, but rather by date - see Dinosaur Comics for an example of what I mean. ~ UDScott 15:19, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree that chronological order is best. Cirt (talk) 15:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
I also agree—chronological order is best for serial productions. Another example using a simpler layout is The Order of the Stick (though it would be better if it included dates). Actually, I am a little dissatisfied with the way character groupings are sometimes used for movies: it makes sense for a particularly famous line or a major speech, but I think it tends to be overused. But that's another topic, and it's no big deal. ~ Ningauble 15:57, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, much better organized in chronological order for more user-friendly navigation. — RyanCross (talk) 23:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:Cite book problems[edit]

Our version of Template:Cite book has long needed an update from developments on Wikipedia, but the biggest obstacle has been the increasingly layered complexity of such a critical WP template. It requires a mix of porting complex WP features and styling not yet available to Wikiquote; simplifying other elements that we either don't need or can't easily port; and the relatively simple change of WP-specific terms, examples, and links to appropriate WQ ones. At least that's why I hadn't done it in the past.

Cirt has recently brought over a nearly-exact copy of w:Template:Cite book. This template replaces many logical parser functions with fancier functional notation that apparently doesn't completely work yet on WQ. (For instance, the "url" parameter correctly creates an external link for the book title, but also adds an ugly duplicate link at the end of the citation.) Unless someone gives a compelling reason not to, I plan to revert this template back to its antiquated but functional version until we can figure out how to make the new version work. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:23, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I changed it primarily because it actually increases utility/usability, with many added important features. For example, parameters for page=, or pages=, instead of just the default to pp.. We should figure out how to improve it, without reverting, IMO. Cirt (talk) 23:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm all for restoring the ported version after we address any and all issues, but given that this template is being used in over 200 pages, I feel that we need to revert it unless and until we're sure that it works with all of those uses. I'm not yet sure where I'm going to start on the larger effort to clean up critical templates, but if I start by examining current {{Cite book}} uses and find no significant problems, I'd be okay with leaving the current version in place. But with any template changes, we must be sure we either don't break usages or we fix any problems the changes cause. At the moment, I expect to find a number of instances where URLs mess up the citations. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:42, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Where are the specific problems with the new version? Perhaps we can work together to fix them? Cirt (talk) 14:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I believe the problem is that in {{Citation/core}} span class="printonly" is not working as intended, probably because Wikiquote's css is not in synch with Wikipedia's. As a quick-and-dirty fix, I propose to comment out the scope of that span in the template, disabling the nonfunctional functionality.
  • Pro: No "ugly URL" will be displayed on-screen.
  • Con: No "useful URL" will be printed in hardcopy. (Note the discussion at w:Template talk:Cite news#URLs printing where it is argued this is a Pro.)
I don't see anything else in the template malfunctioning, but there could very easily be problems I missed. ~ Ningauble 14:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes check.svgY Patched. Having slept on this, and hearing no alternatives or objections, I disabled URL printing in {{Citation/core}}. It wasn't working and we didn't have this feature before the recent changes anyway. If any more problems come to light we can reconsider reverting to the older version. ~ Ningauble 17:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Thank you! :) Cirt (talk) 17:56, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

IW Denmark on main page[edit]

The main page of Wikiquote lacks the iw for the Danish Wikiquote. Would someone kindly add it(seems to be protected)? --Saddhiyama 22:12, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I just got back from a short trip in time to notice your request, and this is now done. ~ Kalki 22:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Sangh[edit]

"Sangh will do nothing but create swayamsevaks. Swayamsevaks will respond to all needs of the society" Dr. Keshav Baliram Hegewar, founder of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the largest voluntary organisation in the world with head quarters in Nagpur, Bharat.

In Hindi "sangh kuch nahi karega. swayamsevaks sabh kuch karenge"

Vandalism IP apology[edit]

If you've seen vandalism from IP 84.45.219.185 (talk · contributions) well, it was an open proxy; now however, it's not, and is used by an Internet cafe. There was open proxy software installed on it, and general spyware, so if you blocked it, thanks for doing so.

The IP will behave now, and if any checkusers here are reading this, please be aware the IP range it's in is a shared dynamic one, so be careful... and don't mention users in your block summaries for the IP (in case people are unfamiliar with them - particularly as the IPs are shared. Best to use summaries like "spamming", "Internet cafe spam" etc.) --83.170.97.191 17:21, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Taking a fortnight off.[edit]

I'm taking a break for a few weeks to attend to family and academic obligations. I would really appreciate if the rest of you would buckle down and finish the Wikiquote by the time I get back. Cheers! BD2412 T 23:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope everything is alright with you IRL. Cirt (talk) 00:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
We could leave a little finishing work for your return from spring break—I wouldn't want you to feel left out. ~ Ningauble 12:34, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Tools[edit]

Are there any tools here,such as friendly we have on wikipedia.--Yousaf465 10:37, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

What are the guidelines/best use policies for adding pictures to a Wikiquote page? Which licenses are OK to use?[edit]

I was wondering what guidelines/considerations/best use policies apply when adding picture callouts to a Wikiquote page? The ones used on Kurt Vonnegut's Wikiquote page seem to have been done well. If pictures (from Wikimedia Commons) are added, which licenses are OK to use? So far I have only used images in the public domain. Are Shared Attribution licenses OK to link to from Wikiquote pages, as the authors are not listed on the Wikiquote page itself? Spoon at a Spork Fight 18:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)Spoon at a Spork Fight

Anything available at the commons is usable here. Although images directly related to the page's subject are often scarce, I find that there are many interesting images which can relate to points made by the quotes, and thus far there are no definite rules to follow, and image use is constrained only by your familiarity with what is available at the commons, and your imaginative capacities in linking that to such ideas as are expressed in the quotes. I just noted the selections I had made in working on the Vonnegut page, and am glad you liked them, and though I remain busy with many other projects, I hope to have time to be doing more image and quote work on many pages here in the months to come, than I've been able to do in the last year. ~ Kalki 20:26, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikimania 2009: Scholarships[edit]

Wikimania 2009, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is now accepting applications for scholarships to the conference. This year's conference will be handled from August 26-28 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The scholarship can be used to help offset the costs of travel and registration. For more information, check the official information page. Please remember that the Call for Participation is still open, please submit your papers! Without submissions, Wikimania would not be nearly as fun! - Rjd0060 02:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Please delete page "Roy & HG"[edit]

Hi,
I'm really sorry but I mistakenly created a page called "Roy & HG" (when I should've called it "Roy and HG" so it can link with the 'pedia article). Could you please delete it?
Thanks very much!--Tyranny Sue 08:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I ended up making two of the page ("Roy & HG" and "Roy and HG") as redirects to the radio show's page - which has been renamed as This Sporting Life (radio program). Hope this works for you. ~ UDScott 13:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Request for original voice quotes[edit]

Whenever possible, verbal quotations should be in the person's own voice. In researching U.S. President Ronald Reagan, sadly I found that his quotes were not in his own voice. Obviously, many, if not all of these quotes are available.

User:Oliversbio[edit]

As an admin on en:Wikipedia I have blocked this user indefinitely for copyright violations. He has followed me here and it may well be thought that he is unlikely to contribute effectively. Rodhullandemu 01:08, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Whom to credit with movie quotes?[edit]

It occurred to me that many times movie quotations are credited to the character or actor that spoke them in the film, when in reality they should be credited to the script writer who originated them for the sake of academic correctness. After all, anything worth remembering that was said came originally from the writer's brain. What is the wider practice on this in the world of language, and what do Wikiquotians feel should be done? All opinions welcome. Ictionary 17:59, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Movie quotes should be listed in an article about the movie, not the actor or character. Movie articles should credit the directors and writers, using the format of Wikiquote:Templates/Films. When a movie quote is included in a theme article (Wikiquote:Templates/Themes) the movie should be cited, preferably with a link, and the character can be identified (not the actor). ~ Ningauble 18:16, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Does Wikiquote not follow the NPOV guidelines?[edit]

When looking at the article about Khalil Gibran I am shocked at the amount of pictures put in, combined with quotes. Not only does this looks extremely unprofessional, in some cases it is a clear violation of NPOV (as opposed to putting the pictures there in the first place, which in my opinion MIGHT be POV). Take for example the picture of Jesus, combined with the quote "Am I less man because I believe in a greater man?". I mean come on!

Please do something about this as soon as possible. Images does not belong in quote pages to begin with if they aren't of the author IMO. Notwist 13:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

This is fine by me. We commonly use images to illustrate quotes, and in the case you have cited, the author happens to have written a lengthy poem about Jesus, so pictures of Jesus are entirely appropriate to illustrate lines of the poem. BD2412 T 23:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia (region)[edit]

Per the recent deletion debate, I've just cleaned about 30k worth of material out of this article, almost entirely premised on the length of the passages removed exceeding our limitations. I expect some resistance to this by people with an interest in the article, so I'd appreciate community review of my actions. Cheers! BD2412 T 22:45, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Question concerning copyright protected material[edit]

The Wikiquote page for Thomas Mann has “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” in the Unsourced section. This quote appears in Ch. 6 of The Magic Mountain, near the end of the chapter, in the section(?) titled "A Good Soldier". I was going to cite, as my source, the appropriate page (p. 506) of the (1996) John E. Woods translation, but I realized that this translation is copyright protected. A further problem is that, while "Ch. 6" is vague enough to use without creating a problem, this chapter is nearly 100 pages in length, which renders it fairly useless as a citation insofar as its usefulness for checking my accuracy. The title "A Good Soldier", the name of the section(?) of the chapter in which the quote appears, is also a translation by Mr. Woods; the section is shorter than the whole chapter, but still fairly lengthy. I have no prior experience editing Wikiquote and am not certain whether this is even an issue, or whether it raises an issue to even cite the Woods translation in this question(!): I would be grateful for guidance from someone more knowledgeable. Archimedes 23:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

This falls well within Wikiquote's policy for fair use at Wikiquote:Copyrights and the quantitative guidelines at Wikiquote:Limits on quotations. Citing the page number in a specifically identified edition with due credit to the translator is a Good Thing™. Additionally identifying the chapter/section is helpful for locating the passage in other editions. ~ Ningauble 16:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

New toy: "Highlight Administrators" gadget[edit]

I just copied over a gadget from the Simple English Wikipedia. Once you turn it on, links to any admin's talk page has a bright cyan background. This can be helpful for newbies that need to be able to find an admin pretty quickly, but also when checking the RC pages, as you can more easily tell what edits are done by a sysop (and therefore could probably be ignored, if you're watching for vandalism).

The list needs to be updated manually when we promote new admins, but I don't think that'll be much of a problem. EVula // talk // // 16:56, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Always count on EVula (talk · contributions) for the helpful new gadgets. ;) Cirt (talk) 17:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Looks like a fine new installment, EVula. — RyanCross (talk) 18:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

An Unresolved Issue : at the Winston Churchill page[edit]

On the Talk page for the Winston Churchill entry, I have placed a section titled An Unresolved Issue, which documents a question that was raised about one of the Churchill quotes back in August of 2005, and which is still unresolved. I believe that correct sourcing info for this quote is included in this section, & feel that the Churchill page should be updated accordingly. I would like to request that anyone who is interested read this material and record any objection they might have to this update. Archimedes (talk) 17:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, update has been made. Archimedes (talk) 19:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Complete Cleanup[edit]

This Wiki needs more users and needs a complete big overhaul.(Dennys 17:59, 13 May 2009 (UTC))

Feel free to help us out with research and sourcing. :) Cirt (talk) 19:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you retype the quotes from another website?[edit]

Hey,I've just found some quotes from Sam Houston on [2]]. Must the quotes be retyped and the brief note?Globalearth 15:52, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The answers.com page does not identify where the quotes came from. You will need to find a reliable and precise source for the quotes in order to contribute them to Wikiquote. Thanks. ~ Ningauble 16:24, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
To some extent one can cut and paste quotes, but not entire groups of them as presented elsewhere, without significant additions of information or quotation. The quotes I see on that page seem to be unsourced, and we currently require new additions to the pages be sourced, so to add these to the articles some search-engine use looking for the original sources, or if these cannot be found, some published secondary sources. Merely indicating a quotes presence on the internet, if not from a primary source or reliable educational or news establishment of some sort is not considered sufficient sourcing. ~ Kalki 16:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Kalki, for expanding on my short answer. I looked for the quotes in question and found attribution for only one of them: "The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government." This is attributed to Sam Huston by the University of Texas, and printed as an epigraph on all university publications (example) but the attribution is unverified according to Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations by Suzy Platt, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 1989; reprint: Barnes & Noble, 1992, ISBN 0880297689, p. 97. ~ Ningauble 20:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Using Quote on Wikipedia?[edit]

Hi guys, Is there any way to get the quote of the day to display on my Wikipedia userpage, perhaps an auto updated template or something? Cheers. Dottydotdot 17:26, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

It is easy enough to display it on your Wikiquote page, like this:
  • {{Wikiquote:Quote of the day/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}|color=#fff5f5}}
But I don't think you can automatically display the QotD on a Wikipedia page because transcluding (i.e. expanding templates) between projects has not been enabled for Wikimedia projects. There is an open request to make this possible at Bug#4547, so it might be possible someday... ~ Ningauble 18:32, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
We might be able to create some sort of bot, similar to w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot... Cirt (talk) 21:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Yep, I'm going to have a go over the next few weeks. Dottydotdot 19:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
You may wish to inquire with the creator of w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot, over at w:User talk:Misza13. Cirt (talk) 22:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
OK, I made one-currently requesting approval here. Dottydotdot 21:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Update: Link to actual thread itself is here: w:Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DottyQuoteBot. Cirt (talk) 21:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

US presence in Afghanistan

What do you think of my edits? Any tips?[edit]

What do you think of my edits? Any tips? Did I edit correctly?--Emmette Hernandez Coleman 16:16, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks like you've gotten some tips from Ningauble (talk · contributions). Cirt (talk) 11:28, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Where to put real-estate quotations?[edit]

I have a number of quotations related to the recent housing bubble. Where would they fit? My thought is to create a new theme page for 'Real Estate'; 'Housing Bubble' or 'Subprime Crisis' both seem too specific to me. Akuchling 20:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps Real estate, or an equivalent name at en.wikipedia for an existing article for ease of linking back and forth, such as w:Late-2000s recession or one of its sub-articles. Cirt (talk) 11:30, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

McKean's Law[edit]

McKean's Law: Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error. —VERBATIM, 2001


Erin McKean

--Pol7416 11:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Outlived its usefulness?[edit]

Wikiquote:Requested entries. Is it really that useful? It's currently a medley of unsourced quotes, outdated items, vague requests, and posted items that, really, don't need to be on the site in the first place. This is in addition to my recent dealings with someone insisting that, because a page was listed there, it needs to exist; that's certainly not the case.

So, I just thought I'd toss it out there before up and nominating it for deletion. ;) EVula // talk // // 03:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. We have lots of spontaneous creation from new users and IPs anyways. Cirt (talk) 05:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree it is mostly useless. The barrier to just boldly creating an entry is about as low as can be. Constructive uses of this page that could not be handled elsewhere (e.g. Reference desk & Anonymous) have been so few and far between that it hardly merits any effort to keep it cleaned up enough for holding discussions.
On the other hand, it seems mostly harmless. It can hardly be the page's fault if only one contributor made an idée fixe of it. Mea culpa: I directed the aforementioned insistent person's attention to that page in an attempt to mitigate spamming talk pages with requests. Had I reflected a bit, frustration was the only plausible outcome. ~ Ningauble 18:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Add a Quote to Wikiquote[edit]

How do you Add a quote to Wikiquote? I have a quote I would like to submit, but can't figure out how? Jeffreybay 18:16, 17 June 2009 (UTC) 6/17/09

A good place to start is Wikiquote:How to edit a page. I hope that helps. ~ Ningauble 18:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Links in section headings[edit]

It has been a long established practice to link section headings to Wikipedia articles (e.g. for literary works). However, as WFinch points out at Talk:Nero Wolfe, the Manual of Style says:

Avoid links within headings. Depending on their browser settings, some users may not see them clearly. It is much better to put the appropriate link in the first sentence after the heading.

This advice appears to be based on concerns about some older accessibility tools, as discussed at Wikipedia:Accessibility#Links. We should consider doing one of the following:

  1. Update the Manual of Style to reflect current practice, possibly at the risk of disenfranchising potential readers and contributors who use assistive technologies that cannot handle the markup.
  2. Update a few thousand articles to reposition links below the headers or in the external links sections at the bottom of the page.

Does anyone know whether this is still an issue with common contemporary assistive technologies? ~ Ningauble 19:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Manual of Style discourages links in section headings, too: "Section names should not normally contain links, especially ones that link only part of the heading; they will cause accessibility problems." I customarily undo section heading links when I come across them. It's not forbidden, by any means, just not "normally" done. I didn't realize it was a long established practice at Wikiquote. If the consensus is to have them, I'll restore them to the headings at Nero Wolfe. — WFinch 13:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
The MOS wording was originally copied from Wikipedia in 2003. At Wikipedia this bit was removed years ago. It was intermittently re-added as a matter of style without reference to browser issues, apparently because current versions of ordinary browsers don't have a problem with these links. The accessibility issue was introduced last year (dif), but the accessibility guideline was updated this January (dif) to indicate this is a glitch in obsolete versions of an assistive technology.

I don't want to be disaccommodating, but if it does not appear to be a problem for current browser and accessibility software then I recommend option #1 above: Remove this recommendation from our Manual of Style. ~ Ningauble 16:11, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
The sentence in the Accessibility article — "Avoid putting links in section headings, unless the link text is the only text in the title" — is definitive enough for me. I'll restore the links to the headings but leave the parenthetical publication dates out; those can go as easily in an introductory sentence. Since I'm quoting Wikipedia's current Manual of Style in my previous reply (maybe it was removed years ago but it's there now), maybe there should be an policy amendment there, too. — WFinch 23:40, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Limits and Editnotices[edit]

I'm wondering, would it perhaps be beneficial for us to have stock Editnotice pages for some of our Fair Use-heavy articles (such as films and TV shows) that clearly outline what the limitations are?

For those that don't know, an Editnotice is code that appears whenever you actually edit a page; for example, when you edit w:en:Wikipedia:Changing username, you're presented with instructions for placing a request.

Do we think that would help us keep some pages under control, content-wise? EVula // talk // // 04:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea - perhaps it would help educate users on the limits that exist. ~ UDScott 14:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Before undertaking to install the software mods and all the templates, CSS, & etc. involved in w:Wikipedia:Editnotice, I would suggest trying a simple tagging approach first. We could tag the talk pages of trimmed articles with a message box and, if an article continues to be problematic, discretely tag the bottom of the article itself. I think the tagging approach would be more transparent and much easier to implement and manage. There was some discussion last year about a whole suite of related templates, but it never got off the ground. ~ Ningauble 15:29, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with templates would be that they eat up real estate on the screen for readers, whereas an editnotice wouldn't appear until someone went to edit the page, so we could have a lot more detail in it. Installing the software mods wouldn't take much; we can just copy stuff like w:Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Changing username and make tweaks to the CSS as needed.
Implementing this in Editnotice will be just as much of a pain in the ass as implementing it in Template form, so that's a wash. :) EVula // talk // // 15:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal, this is a good idea by EVula (talk · contributions). Cirt (talk) 02:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm inclined to favor EVula's suggestion. There is, I would argue, no reason to think that most editors look at talk pages or history summaries before editing. This means that many of them do not know about the need for copyright trimming or simply choose to ignore it. If they do not know about it, EVula's device would make them aware; if they overlook it, they wouldn't be able to claim ignorance. The templates we had discussed, as Ningauble has mentioned, never caught on. Perhaps it was felt that their presence would be intrusive. If so, an editnotice would be an improvement, as it would not appear in the articles themselves. - InvisibleSun 23:56, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
(outdenting for a lengthy post) Ningauble

I completely agree that we need to do a better job of affording editors information they need to know about articles that push the limits of fair use. However, I oppose using the editnotice method for this purpose. Let me explain my perspective on transparency and manageability —

  1. Reader experience: First, there is indeed a tradeoff here. I agree with the principle that "notes to the editor" within articles should be kept to a minimum, and that a message in an acceptable article with a history or a potential for problems is not quite the same as a maintenance template in an article needing work. However, I think it is justified in this situation given the frequency of excessive additions, and that the drawbacks of editnotices are significant.
    The drawbacks of tagging can be mitigated by keeping the notice unobtrusive: one short line with a link to the talk page, placed at the bottom of the article just above the category box. It might even be formatted like the category box to signal metadata distinct from the article, and to make it harmonious with the overall page layout.
  2. Editor experience: The best time to point out that an article has reached its limit is not after a user has already formed an intention to add more and acted on it. Their action at this point is more than just clicking the Edit tab, for they will have already collected material to contribute and may have invested considerable time and effort transcribing it. Like, "Now you @#$%& tell me!" It would be better to give them a clue up-front.
  3. Reviewer experience: For people who do strange things like watching recent changes and surveying groups of articles for maintenance, it is very useful to have a visible indication when an article has already been identified as needing attention. Hiding this where it is only visible in edit mode would fail to afford useful information to such people, for whatever it's worth.
  4. Manageability: The link between an article and its editnotice exists entirely behind the scenes, being implemented by MediaWiki software recognizing a cross-namespace naming convention. This presents multiple challenges for maintenance. E.g., if a page is moved the link breaks without warning. E.g., editnotices cannot automatically put articles in maintenance categories the way tags can. (Manual categorization is very much a hit-or-miss affair.) E.g., item (3) above is itself a species of maintenance challenge. While this sort of loose coupling may be workable in the project namespace, I think that in article space it would become a maintenance nightmare in the long run.

Yes, unnecessary clutter is a bad thing, but I believe the drawbacks of this approach predominate. For what it's worth, my professional experience has taught me that items (2) and (4) are quite a bit more important than they might appear at first glance. I hope something like my suggestions in item (1) can make the tagging approach more palatable. ~ Ningauble 19:01, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Election Notice[edit]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you may be aware, there is concern that the sitenotices regarding submission of candidacy for the Board of Trustees election were not seen anywhere but Meta after the 11th of this month. Because of the potentially massive consequence of this, and to encourage a full and active election, the election committee has determined that:

- Candidacies will be accepted through July 27th at 23:59 (UTC)

- The period for questioning candidates begins immediately. Candidates that are "late to the party" will, no doubt, be scrutinized by the community. The Committee hopes that the community will work to actively ensure that all candidates receive equivalent questioning.

- The dates of election will not change. The election will begin on 28 July and end on 10 August.


Please know that we recognize the radical nature of altering the schedule in the midst of the election and would not do it if we did not absolutely believe that there was a possibility that others may be interested and qualified and may not have known about the key dates.

For the committee, Philippe 09:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

List of candidate's accounts at Wikiquote[edit]

Here are links to en.Wikiquote accounts of the 2009 Board candidates who have participated in this sisterproject, or not. (Alphabetical by username):

Who? Wikiwhat? ~ Ningauble 16:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

  • The three election winners are shown in bold above. ~ Ningauble 15:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Sysop detector gadget[edit]

I've installed a new gadget that allows for a user's flags to be displayed when you view their userpage. Nifty little script, so I figured I'd make it more widely available. :) EVula // talk // // 18:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

RfA instruction overhaul[edit]

Check out Wikiquote:Requests for adminship#Instructions. I cut a lot of the unnecessary instructions (like reminding people that RfAs here are only for here), but most importantly, I added a magic box that will pre-format new RfAs. EVula // talk // // 02:10, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Great improvements! Cirt (talk) 08:28, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Strategic Planning[edit]

The Wikimedia Foundation has begun a year long phase of strategic planning. During this time of planning, members of the community have the opportunity to propose ideas, ask questions, and help to chart the future of the Foundation. In order to create as centralized an area as possible for these discussions, the Strategy Wiki has been launched. This wiki will provide an overview of the strategic planning process and ways to get involved, including just a few questions that everyone can answer. All ideas are welcome, and everyone is invited to participate.

Please take a few moments to check out the strategy wiki. It is being translated into as many languages as possible now; feel free to leave your messages in your native language and we will have them translated (but, in case of any doubt, let us know what language it is, if not english!).

All proposals for the Wikimedia Foundation may be left in any language as well.

Please, take the time to join in this exciting process. The importance of your participation can not be overstated.

--Philippe

(please cross-post widely and forgive those who do)

I really, really wish it was strategery.wikimedia.org instead. ;) EVula // talk // // 20:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorting quotes on theme pages[edit]

Quotes on theme pages are not being sorted in a consistent manner: some are by author (which is what I have been doing), some by date (like author pages), some by quote (like unsourced proverbs), and some, of course, appear to be random. Our current guidelines recommend sorting by quote (see Guide to layout#Theme pages and Templates#Themes) but I am not aware of any regular contributors who currently do this, so I consider the guidance obsolete. Besides, I don't like it. Imagine shelving books that way!
Personally, I prefer to sort by author, as mentioned here and explained at some length on my talk page.

  • I propose to modify the guideline to recommend that theme pages be sorted by author, except where historical development of the subject makes chronological order particularly appropriate.
  • I also propose to update the guideline to be consistent with the template in recommending bulleted interlinear citation rather than inline citation, and in deprecating quotation marks around the quotes.

Achieving any kind of consistency would naturally be a gradual process. As with any style change, one would typically only rework a page one is already editing anyway. I am open to other suggestions for the preferred sort order, but one way or another we should try to be consistent. Opinions? ~ Ningauble 23:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

As I said on your Talk page, I am all for your proposal to sort the quotes by author - this seems to make the most sense. I fully support the proposed change to the template and guideline. ~ UDScott 01:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Support. Okay, obviously this is not a "vote" but support anyway. Cheers! BD2412 T 01:08, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes check.svgY Done, more or less. ~ Ningauble 21:11, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Major project possibly coming down the pike.[edit]

HOYT'S NEW CYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL QUOTATIONS was published in December of 1922, making it the last major quotations book published in the U.S. that has fallen into the public domain. There are 926 pages of quotes, and by my estimate there are an average of about 25 quotes per page, so we are looking at well over 20,000 well-sourced quotes. We may already have many of these, but should get the rest imported. I have asked the folks at Wikisource to upload the entire work there, and my plan is that once it is uploaded there, I'll copy it over to a temporary project space here. This is much, much bigger than the other public domain quotation books I've imported before, so I would really hope to have some community involvement in getting all of the Hoyt's quotes sorted into the write author and theme entries. If no one else is interested in this undertaking, I won't bother moving forward with it at this time. Cheers! BD2412 T 01:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh man, that's a huge find. It would be fantastic if we could have it, both here and at Wikisource. I could probably help with some of the organizing. EVula // talk // // 16:33, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Awesome! I think the main issue right now is editing out the typos. After that, it's practically cut and paste to bring over author quotes (or even to lift entire sections and make new theme articles). BD2412 T 21:47, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
A quick copyover has been done at Wikisource:Index:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations.djvu. If we can edit the pages over there, and then copy the edited versions into project space here, we can start plugging. Although they have over 1300 pages, only 926 of those contain quotes (the rest are indexes). BD2412 T 17:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I will register at Wikisource to help out with proofing and formatting. The OCR looks pretty good but wikimarkup is going to be tedious, so this will take a while... ~ Ningauble 13:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks - I personally think that Wikiquote is better served by having the "classic" quotes than by serving as a repository for popular bits from movies and TV series. Of course we have both, but it's the combination and our organization of them that distinguishes us from websites that have only one or the other, or that have some of both but mixed indiscriminately. BD2412 T 16:48, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Well put, BD2412. Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 00:27, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I can't find your help desk, but I need help![edit]

I regularly contribute on Wikipedia, which has a help desk; I'm not sure what the Wikiquote equivalent is--I couldn't find a "help desk" by name, so I'll drop this here. I edited the article for Hermann Hesse to move a picture which used to be at the top and I thought more appropriately fitting for his Wikiquote article. However, I went back and noticed it had been reverted, with a message "massive removal." So I was quite curious about what had happened and looked at the file size of my edit; noticing a significant change, where there shouldn't have been one (as I just moved material). So I looked at the diffs and there were a ton of changes shown as coming from MY EDIT, which I didn't make (i.e., all I did was move the picture, as my summary stated) diffs: [[3]]. I have never seen this happen before either on Wikiquote or Wikipedia (which I have been using for quite a while, not always as my username). What is going on? This quite disturbs me. Peace and Passion 19:33, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

The thing which is most likely to have occured is that an earlier version of the page was edited, as there were significant formatting differences as well, with images using the older "image" designation rather than the current "file" label. ~ Whiterose 19:42, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
You found it – this general discussion forum is also the help desk for our small community.
It looks like Witerose correctly diagnosed what happened: this dif appears to indicate that you edited an old version from 03:35, 2 July 2009, rolling back 32 intermediate revisions. I have no idea why that happened if it was not what you meant to do. I shudder to think it might have been a software glitch! The more likely scenarios are reviewing the page history and clicking "edit" in an inopportune context, or arriving at the page via an html link to an old version rather than a normal wikilink. ~ Ningauble 20:04, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Going against formatting standard[edit]

I'd just like to give a "heads up" to the admins and experienced Wikiquotians out there (so you don't think I'm a loose cannonball)! I have just started working on operation cleanup, in films. Unfortunately, though necessary, due to the restrictions at policy pages (Limits on Quotes, Quotability, and Copyright), many of the sections in films articles are getting quite small, and this is affecting how the sections distribute themselves visually, how edit tags bunch up, and how images display in groups. For one article, The Matrix Revolutions, I had to follow the Wikipolicy "Ignore all Rules" and reformat so it would appear more appropriately. The technique I used (after a lot of sandboxing here and at Wikipedia), more neatly distributes the sections, causes no edit tag bunching, and unifies the images nicely (only really necessary in an article with these particular issues in the first place). I have checked on both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and the page displays better on both. I do not mean to flaunt the style already established, I will only continue to modify when it makes a notable difference, second to content (i.e., copyright, etc.) cleanup; however, I was considering adding more images to the other Matrix articles and formatting so they would be internally consistent. Just wanted to let the other editors out there know what I was up to! Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 04:53, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Given the relatively small number of quotes which most films will be allowed, I'd say we should just combine the three Matrix films into a single entry. What's the point of having three separate articles for thirty quotes? BD2412 T 16:46, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Skipping a heading level for the character sections is ok with me but others might disagree, and I think it sometimes plays havoc with rendering the table of contents so I am a little unsure.
Actually, I am not all that keen on having character sections in the first place. Putting a soliloquy or a single line under dialogue may seem inapt (not to mention narration, little used in contemporary film), but character sections just encourage people to violate Wikiquote:Limits on quotations by "filling up" these very short sections and by adding more sections to give every character his due. Besides, we don't do this to literary works: I feel that giving structural priority to characters is an undue in-fiction perspective, and that chronological order would be more appropriate. (Cf. remarks by UDScott and MosheZadka years ago.) ~ Ningauble 19:26, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
After thinking about it, I'm not sure if adding the Matrix articles together would be the best idea. It will probably actually be easier to keep the moderately sized articles cleaner and better managed than one larger article with ~40 quotes, as 1 quote could be added by an IP and, in their eyes, it wouldn't seem significant. Having the articles discreetly placed makes it easier to implement the rules on the individual pages (smaller numbers equals less wiggle room), and the talk pages remain separate with the reasoning and length of each movie held intact. Of course, I don't mean for this reasoning to be applied to articles with very few quotes, such as TV articles, those are too few and must be merged.
About the rendering of the TOC, I checked in both Firefox and IE, and it appeared correct; whenever I make a formatting exception (such as this one), I will check both, and leave the change open to a community critique.
Not that I've been here long enough to discuss any really important overarching standards; but, I was looking through the link provided (by Ningauble for UDScott and MosheZadka). I would appreciate it if whenever communicating with me, if you think of an old discussion somewhere which relates to the topic at hand (that is, if you can find it), please provide me with a link to it; it would greatly improve my learning curve with respect to this project. As per the chronological order of quotes in movies, I think this kind of relates to WQ:Quotability and a series of posts I have read by JeffQ (sorry, can't remember where). Organizing the quotes in a film (by necessity) chronologically seems to imply that a chronological layout of the quotes is somehow important to understanding them. The quotes themselves, as per "Quotability" should be able to stand alone and not be contingent on being in chronological order (or really any order, for that matter—though a standard is nonetheless needed). As I included on the talk-page explanation of my cleanups, I had a preference for "quotes that were either especially significant to the movie, somewhat notable in the real world due to the movie, or are particularly quotable on their own." While chronological seems like a good, simple way to organize film quotes, I'd just be wary that it doesn't lead to the implication that the quotes ought to offer some sort of "bare-bones" structural retelling of the storyline. I know for articles like the Revolutions one which I cleaned up, the application of the applicable rules leads to drastically different formatting issues than were present when the articles were much longer. There were a couple occasions where I purposefully reorganized the order of quotes purely based on aesthetics: if it led to a significantly better visual balance for the article. I still think that the article in fact looks neater with the quotes still broken down by name, if only to provide a visual "backbone" for the article. Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 00:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
PS Just a point -- for a quote to be a quote it should be quotable. This sounds like a trivial tautology, but I think Wikiquote would do well to take it heed: So many chunks of extended dialogue are included which really have no place (this is where, I believe, copyright issues really pop up). For example, when choosing chunks of dialogue for the Matrix articles, I was especially "picky," and only choose ones which were concise, meaningful, (objectively) understandable, and relevant. Any chunks of dialogue which had a single "quotable" line in them, with a bunch of meaningless conversation surrounding it, should be turned into a single quote. Many articles, especially TV shows, seem to show an aptitude for attracting long, drawn-out, (often meaningless) conversations which appear to be just the additions of a "fan-boy" who kind of vicariously relives watching the scene by reading it. This is not "Quotability." Dialogue should only remain where the dialogue is a necessity, and a particular powerful interplay exists, as per some of these examples I chose to keep:
Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You've never used them before.

Commander Locke: Damnit, Morpheus, not everyone believes what you believe.
Morpheus: My beliefs don't require them to.
I will note that due to the nature of the Matrix, I did have to include some which were longer than I would normally think appropriate, but this is due to the drawn-out philosophizing and ridiculous explanations in the series of movies.
That is exactly why we need to finish Wikiquote:Quotability and bring it up to the level of policy. Right now it is in the shadowy area of a proposal that is occasionally pointed to as a good basis for including or excluding something. BD2412 T 03:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I have no experience whatsoever in the actual drafting of policy, but I would like to lend a hand. I have read through the policy (as proposed) itself, but upon looking at the talk page and starting to read it, it was definitely a bit "murky" and intimidating. But it appears as if it is pretty much a de facto policy at the moment, as it needs to be for the cleanup to have any real traction. In the process of the cleanup, we shouldn't be just cutting out quotes and moving on, we should be as discerning and objective as possible when picking which quotes to keep, thus we kind of kill two birds with one stone. It is definitely important though, as you say, that WQ:Quotablity is improved, polished, and made official; and, I'd like to help.... I guess you'll just have to tell me where to start ;)
Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 03:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
PS User JeffQ has drafted an EDP which contains some very concise renderings of how cleanup should be implemented (see "Implementation" section), but I don't know if anyone has ever connected that document with the current cleanup and quotability—it seems to have become a bit stale. From what I've read around here, User JeffQ has repeatedly, in varying ways, explained Wikiquote policies with such impressive prose that quotes of him could almost be elevated to policy.

Links on Persian page[edit]

Hi all,

All the links related to alphabets on Persian proverbs are broken. On the first page, corresponding to the first letter, if you click on any of the letters at the top of the page, nothing happens.

Could anyone more knowledgeable on these sorts of issues please have a look? Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Daniel 00:52, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed it for you. That was more work than I expected; I discovered old vandalism (page blanking) which had been missed in the article's history, then at a later date, some of the original material was added back in. So I had to revert to before the blanking, then, bit by bit, incorporate about 100 changes that had occurred since then back into the article. You'll see the article's links work now, and it is back to its old form. (There's a bit of a serious OR issue with this page, but it is so well established I will not even question it; it definitely deserves a place here).
Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 02:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
PS There was actually no problem with the linking of the alphabet, it was an artefact of the vandalism. All of the entries past the first letter of the Farsi alphabet were blanked, thus their "links" went nowhere. As the Farsi alphabet is right-to-left, the only link that worked was the far right one, linking to the first section of the article. Check the history to see what I mean.

Sourcing quotes[edit]

Just a quick question, not sure where to look this policy up (if someone could provide me with a link it would be great). Would a Youtube video of an important figure saying something count as an acceptable "Source"? I've just been thinking about it, and footage seems an even better source than any form of print, but knowing the controversy surrounding Youtube at Wikipedia, I thought I'd ask other editors opinions here.

Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 04:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Any linkable recording certainly could qualify as a verifiable source of a quote, but preferably there should also be, as much as possible, a citation as to the date and ultimate source of the original recording. ~ Kalki 07:47, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
If there is a written source, it should be preferred over an individual wikiquotian's transcription of an audio source. Often, important figures' public statements are published by their offices (at least "as prepared for delivery"). 121a0012 15:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

To link to Wikiquote or Wikipedia?[edit]

In my patrolling of the recent changes for vandalism, I came across this reversion [[4]]. An IP changed (obviously in good faith) a link in a quote from the Wikipedia article for a person to a Wikiquote article. It was reverted (with the summary: "don't remove links"). Now I'm just wondering if there's actually any standard established on links within the body of a Wikiquote article. Obviously those right at the beginning of the article ought to link to Wikipedia (or else they'd be "self-links"), but is there any established standard on whether or not we should link to a Wikiquote article? If a Wikiquote article is available, should it be linked first? I have noticed that, when available, topic pages sourcings link to the appropriate Wikiquote articles (at least the few I've checked). Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this, or it's been hashed out somewhere before? Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 04:26, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

There is ample precedent for preferring local links to Wikiquote articles on People and Works when available, and there is no loss of information since those target articles link to Wikipedia. While it is not codified in policies and guidelines, it is so widespread that I consider it a consensus in practice. Accordingly, I undid the above mentioned reversion. ~ Ningauble 13:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, that's what I thought. I fixed the edit tag bunching in that article. If anyone has trouble with edit-tag bunching (and don't know how to deal with it), just message me (or copy the formatting from the above article), and I'll try to fix it. Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 19:02, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

WQ:Q, from the opposite direction - policy now, perfection later[edit]

Having taken a fresh look over Wikiquote:Quotability, I realize that it has flaws that may be hammered out over the years to come, but it's also the closest thing we have to a policy for determining exactly which quotes merit inclusion. I'd like to propose that we go ahead and adopt it as an official policy now, and worry about perfecting it later. Thoughts on this? BD2412 T 06:10, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I obviously agree that this is an important page, since I often cite it, but I think it is more in the nature of a guideline than a policy. I would be hesitant to officially adopt its present form because of what I consider a couple fundamental flaws. I will comment there, and work on improving it. I agree that the time has come to expedite taking it over the threshold of official adoption, and that the perfect is the enemy of the good. ~ Ningauble 15:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Ningauble (talk · contributions), adoption as guideline sounds better than adoption as policy for the time being. Cirt (talk) 16:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I also agree with adopting it as a guideline for now. - InvisibleSun 02:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Copyright reversion template[edit]

Due to the nature of the copyright cleanup, I've noticed that it is getting more difficult to keep articles that have been cleaned up clean. I'm wondering if someone knows how to create templates could create a template something along the lines of this, to be placed on the talk page of the user or IP who has been reverted:

{{copyrightrevert|XXX|YYY|ZZZ}}

Where: XXX is the article name, YYY is the maximum amount of quotes, and ZZZ is the "type" of media, i.e., film, album, musician, etc. (this could be changed by the person who creates the template, but you get the idea.)

== '''XXX''' ==

Hi, just to let you know, I've reverted your change on the XXX article. Don't worry: there is nothing wrong with adding quotes (i.e., what you did wasn't vandalism), but Wikiquote has recently strongly implemented copyright protections, see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations and Wikiquote:Copyright. If you see the note on XXX talk page, the article already has its maximum permissible number of quotes (maximum YYY for that ZZZ, based on its length). If you'd like to add a quote, you have to remove a quote that is already there; please see Wikiquote:Quotability on how to decide how do this. Also note that switching quotes requires special consideration (see XXX talk and Quotability, linked above). Note that dialogue also has specific considerations, the Quotability links above will help with that too! Thanks for your contributions! ~~~~


I've just noticed that adding this to the user-talk of each reversion I do is getting a bit time consuming, so it would be nice to have a template to use. It would be unfortunate if we let the copyright cleanup run away on us after it's been done, so we should probably streamline the process of keeping it up-to-date as much as possible! Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Having thought this over for a bit, the problem is that we are inviting endless revert wars where an article on a film is up to its limit with quotes, and two editors have a differing opinion over which quotes should be included (i.e. each adds one they like and removes the one they don't like, prompting the other to reverse that action in favor of their own preferred quote). Take an example like The Big Lebowski. Lots of popular lines among its fans, and so people often seek to add one or another that's "missing" (which, right now, just gets reverted). If we are going to limit the film to ten quotes, and we know that the possible universe of quotes to be selected from is never going to change (because the film is what it is, and no more), then we should just determine which ten quotes are the ten best, have them in, and lock the article from future editing (confining discussions on alterations to the talk page, for a change to be made by an admin if a new consensus is reached). BD2412 T 00:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I like the suggested template for user talk pages. We have recently been discussing the problem of getting our message across about copyright trimming. Edit summaries and talk pages alone aren't doing it. We're also considering a discreetly placed message in the articles themselves.

As for locking a page which has reached its maximum quotes, it provokes some questions. Even after a page has reached its limit, there's still a lot of fine-tuning by editors: a word here, a comma there, etc. It would be hard to imagine people going to talk pages to propose minor edits. There is also the question of letting editors know why a page has now been locked. Presumably it would involve placing a message in the article: how else would they find it out? If so, it leads us back to our discussion of whether we want to put copyright messages in articles. In addition, how long would an article attain its maximum before it is locked: as soon as the maximum has been attained, or at some agreed-upon time thereafter? If at some time later, how do we implement it?

As of this posting, we have trimmed 368 pages. There are also hundreds of pages that have not yet been trimmed but are in need of it. Plainly we are reaching the point where the maintenance of trimming is more of a challenge. I keep adding to my watchlist many of the articles that are most in need of frequent maintenance: it's a list that's already grown quite long. I'm not averse to the necessity of locking a page, if it should come to that; but I admit that I'd rather find any other means if possible. Our practice is to semiprotect a page in the case of an edit war; and I suppose that the efforts to keep a page trimmed could be seen as a form of warring. But edit wars tend to involve bad-faith editing, which justifies semiprotection; this is not the case, however, with most of the editors who post excessively. For this reason, we have never blocked chronic copyright violators; it may be the time, nevertheless, to reconsider this. - InvisibleSun 02:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Regarding BD2412's comment above, the idea of this template isn't supposed to be able to be used in such a circumstance. It should only be used in a clear-cut example of a full article with a quote added to it by someone, or an IP, that probably isn't aware of "Limits" and "Quotability." The majority of the time, the quotes I see added on my watchlist and in recent changes aren't near as quotable as the ones already in the article that has been cleaned up by more experienced editors. Thus, in one fell swoop, similar to a "welcome," but specifically tailored to a particular edit / article / revert, we can introduce a new editor (or one unaware of the particular rules) to the applicable guidelines. A lot of the time, the traditional "welcome" may not be heeded, but when a message such as this concerns a particular edit, it may be more effective. For example, I posted it on one contributors page with respect to some Matrix edits, and he responded to my talk: "Ok, thanks. I was wondering why the number of quotes for the Matrix dropped so low. Juranas 18:45, 5 August 2009 (UTC)" This, in my opinion, was just what I was hoping for, so I posted back to his page something along the lines of "you're welcome, if you ever need any help, just drop me a line!" The template would be primarily for the use of editors involved in cleanup to make the process more personalized and hopefully educative for the "other" party involved. The way it is worded should definitely clearly imply / state that it is only to be used in the case of surpassing the guidelines, and not applicable in the certain circumstance as a "revert war"-style exchange on a particular page as mentioned above. As InvisibleSun states, there needs to be definite discussion about the situation arising due to the strict limits, but this is meant to speed up the simple cleanup and "keep clean" process. Perhaps once "Quotability" has been decided on (i.e., either guideline or policy, etc.) then there can be some discussion on something along the lines of a "Copyright Policy Implementation guideline" which codifies the community's thoughts and standards on how we should handle situations such as BD2412 and InvisibleSun describe above. Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 04:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
PS I have been hiding small warnings in the scripts of some articles I edit (ones which I think will be "difficult" to keep clean), along the lines of <!-- Before adding quotes to this article, familiarize yourself with Wikiquote:Limits on Quotes and Wikiquote:Quotability; if you add a quote here, you should probably remove another one. See talk for more information. -->
In response to InvisibleSun's concerns, we should have a process for community review of a page on an individual movie or similar work of finite material which is subject to copyright, which will result in a determination that the page is "done". A page on a movie that has the ten best quotes (or however many quotes the length of the work permits), and is properly formatted, should require no further edits. BD2412 T 18:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I get a warning?[edit]

I have been chasing around another incarnation of EVula XX, and tagging all it's creations with "delete" tags, and I get an automated comment on one of my edits telling me I've been identified as Pattern Vandal #4 and my established account priviliges have been revoked? You have got to be kidding me... What gives...? This vandal keeps going around with no mouse-trap catching him, and I get stopped from making an edit? Don't tell me with bots and the Metawiki software there's no way we can stop this ridiculous kind of vandalism... if I can get an automated slap on the wrist, why can't the software stop this BS? Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 03:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

PS For future reference, so I can stop this "in-the-bud" when I witness it and no local admins are here on Wikiquote, is there some sort of "meta"-vandal page where I can report it and someone with overarching capabilities could come and block / stop page creation? It would just be nice if it could be stopped when I notice it so that an admin doesn't have to come and spend a whole bunch of their time to undo everything one-by-one after the fact.
Wow, now I'm "a pointless troll who has yet to contribute anything worthwile." I knew contributing here could be thankless in the long run, I didn't know the balance would shift and it would be ultimately degrading. Sweet, Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
Now, "apparently a freemason." Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This user seems to have some sort of bizzare stalker complex. Hes following me around the place for no other reason than to make a general irriation of himself. Blanking sourced and dated quoted on random things he seems to "dislike". You know when you're sat out in the sun, minding your own business, drinking a refreshing glass of orange juice and suddenly a fly starts randomly irritating you for some unknown reason? This user is the fly. - Gennarous 05:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Now, "the fly." If only I got some fly superpowers to go with the distinction. Not to mention my "bizarre stalker complex." Nothing was blanked; just moved tertiary-sourced quotes to talk page, and replaced Spanish originals which had been blanked (and previously replaced by Ningauble). Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

You randomly blanked for fun; sourced, dated and referenced material from an article by the official journal of the Grand Lodge of England documenting the history of freemasons under Franco. Why? God only knows what your problem is. You apparently "wasn't keen on it" or something. Either that or you decided to fly about after me from the England article. Also, see that little "en" in the htttp address? we hablo ingles here, this is the English Wikiquote. - Gennarous 06:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Now, as per InvisibleSun's talk I'm "incredibly irritating and acidic, has contributed absolutely nothing so far." Also, I display "pest like behaviour." Furthermore, only "God [...] knows what [my] problem is." I would like it to be noted that I have not said a single personal thing about this editor. The most basic Wikiquote standard of referencing the original language of a quote is going unheeded, so how can I get into any more complicated policies / standards? Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 06:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
User, just a coincidence? Maybe, but maybe not when you look at the User Talk. User speaks the exact same way in numerous diffs presented on the talk page. The other accounts identified as socks also do, on the same subjects. Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 06:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Abuse Filter #4[edit]

I am going to make this filter slightly more permissive, so that it would not have flagged this edit. However, please reflect on whether such edits serve any constructive purpose. Considering what motivates a vandal, it is usually best to deny recognition. ~ Ningauble 13:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm sure ignoring would be the best policy with the "EVula XX" vandal. I was just trying an experiment with an odd piece of reverse-psychology on his talk page to see if I could turn his motivation on himself. (Can you see the attempted edit that tripped the filter?) Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 20:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
PS What is "filter #4"? I searched on Wikipedia so I could try and see why I tripped it, but then I realized that maybe the filters aren't "explained" anywhere because that would just make it easier for vandals to try and circumvent them.
You surmise correctly why even the name is nondescript. ~ Ningauble 16:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
PPS The Spanish original is still missing from Franco's article. I will stop reverting / editing that article for the time being, and let it slowly be filled up (and thus unbalanced) with anti-masonic quotes, but it would be nice if maybe an admin would at least put back the original Spanish of that one quote and cleanup the formatting.... The "sources" on that page are pretty weak (some tertiary sources which don't even assert where they got the quote from, e.g., one source says "Franco said this to a reporter"), and in the one book source that I was able to find through a Google-Book-Search, the quote was taken from what appeared to be a long fictionalized conversation in a biography [5] (the quote is on page 158, read from 154 on, what appears to be fictionalized explicative conversation as per some biographies; it would be nice for quotes of this type if we could find a much more definitive source — this being under "sourced" is rather misleading to the lay-reader).

Community observation[edit]

I just did my first serious unstubbings, and I'd like some of the community to look and see if they're up to par or if there's anything I missed. Wind and Monkeys (monkeys needs page move to "simians"). Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 08:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I think they look very nice - my only recommendation is to remove the subsections that are now on the pages. I moved the second page to Simians and removed the note about that move. Thanks for the good work. ~ UDScott 13:37, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
These are nice collections. I agree with UDScott about subsections. Where a section develops a distinct theme it can be split off as a stand-alone article. I think the main sections should be "Sourced" and "Proverbs" (assuming we will not need sections for quotes "Attributed" to monkeys, nor to the wind wherein the answer, my friend, is blowin'). ~ Ningauble 17:25, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Please read my talk page comments about sections; in the process of creating the article I came to the (quite thought out, after hours of compiling) conclusion that he subsections were appropriate, given the powerful contrast between the general and simians and humans sections (both considering their contextual weight and their aesthetic weight with respect to the layout of the page). Please read my talk page entry about both the aesthetics and context/content of the sections. If you still think so after reading my comments on talk, please mention it again. (Nonetheless, I very much appreciate your comments, I am new here and I would like to become the most useful and appropriate contributor possible, as I see that Wikiquote needs much more assistance than Wikipedia). Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 23:28, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Page views?[edit]

I know there is stats.grok.se to see the page view stats for Wikipeida, I wonder if anyone knows if there is a similar way to see the page views for a Wikiquote article? I just wanted to know where to find statistical information for Wikiquote to see how its layout applies to the way it is viewed.... Thanks, Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 23:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC).

[edit]

I am a Graphic Designer and I was wondering if WikiQuote would consider using my image for their logo. It is based off their original logo with some changes which I think would make it much more user enlightening. Since I am having a bit of trouble uploading images to WikiQuote, click here to view the image on Photobucket. Hardwigg

That's way too busy. I like the glossy effect on the main image, but not the gray stroke around everything. EVula // talk // // 16:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I cleaned it up and got rid of most of the shadows leaving just a small one on the logo. See the new version here.
Hardwigg 19:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
It is okay, but I just think simplest is best here. Cirt (talk) 19:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, well thanks for considering anyways! Hardwigg 20:22, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment: Boxing[edit]

I seem to have got myself into an argument with a single-purpose account over external links in the Boxing article. As there seems no prospect for consensus between the two of us, input from uninvolved editors at Talk:Boxing would be appreciated. Thanks. ~ Ningauble 16:45, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I've added my two cents - agreeing with your removal of the links in question. ~ UDScott 16:56, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Question about RMS Britannia[edit]

RMS BRitannia 1840 When I was eleven years old [ now in my severty's ] I made a water line model of the ship RMS Britannia. I would like to remake a full model of this ship, but all I can find in searching the web is four photo's of paintings and writen info on the ships history. What I need is a few measurments and basic drawings of the shipso I can draw my plans to my own scale and then remake the RMS Britannia can anyone help me?

                               Michael R.
Completely the wrong place to ask this question ;) . . . but I'll be charitable and answer anyway. You should (if you ever see this message!) find all the information you need at Wikipedia:RMS Britannia. All the stats are there, you could just scale them down. Have at 'er!
Peace and Passion ("I'm listening....") 05:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
PS Follow the links at the bottom of the page to other ships of the same class if you need better diagrams. You can use them to improvise.

Current People Template Obsolete?[edit]

It seems to me that the current People Template is obsolete. Recently, I recieved notice box on two articles I created, Keith Oatley and Poul Anderson, advising me to conform to the People Template. I've made the necessary changes, however, my original divergence from the norm was deliberate.

Mind you, I'm not arguing about your notices. Upon reflection, I probably should have tried making this argument before my proposed changes, but since reformatting my articles, it's been on mind.

Under the current standard format, all quotes are organized hierarchically under the two primary headings of "Sourced" and "Unsourced," followed by subordinate sections for each specific work quoted. This strikes me as rather absurd given the increasingly stringent opposition to unsourced quotes. In most instances, unsourced material is eventually deleted. Across Wikiquote, entire sections of unsourced quotes are being removed en mass. So then, what is the purpose of organizing all quotes under two just two headings when one of those headings is discouraged? Eventually, every quote on this site credited to an individual rather than a specific work is going to end up organized under the heading "Sourced" with no parallel categories.

The most logical course, to my thinking, would be to organize the quotes of individuals under the headings of the specific work quoted, as they are now, but then, (here's the change) categorize those works under headings that describe what type of media are quoted. Example headings might include: Television (for TV roles), Short Stories, Novels, Non-Fiction Texts, Movies (for character quotes), Lyrics, Interviews, Comics, Articles, etc.

When I raised the issue with User:UDScott, he and User:Ningauble generally agreed that the Sourced/Unsourced categories have just about outlived its usefulness.

The question what would work better for all People entries. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pipedreamergrey (talkcontribs) 04:17, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I do agree that as "Unsourced" sections are phased out the "Sourced" heading loses relevance. I suggest using "Quotes" as the heading for that main section of the article, on the principle that if it ain't cited it ain't a quote. The top level headings (cf. Wikiquote:Guide to layout#Sections (people) would then be:
  • Quotes (always)
  • Attributed (optional)
  • Misattributed (optional)
  • Criticism or About (optional)
  • See also (optional, a short inline list may be placed below the introduction instead)
  • External links (de rigueur when there is a Wikipedia article)
I agree with UDScott's opinion that chronological order is preferable to grouping by types of media or genre. Several articles currently do have separate headings for Lyrics or Poetry, in part because they are formatted differently from prose, and in part, I think, because it treats quotes from a "body of work" as distinct from other "personal quotes." Personally, I find this sort of categorization less valuable than preserving the chronology. I don't think it is necessary to treat verse separately, and distinguishing the life from the work can sometimes be problematic. (Roles and characters are a whole other issue, being performance rather than authorship. Perhaps this could be addressed in a general policy on appropriate article subjects.) ~ Ningauble 15:56, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Is there really any need for a separate top-level section for "quotes"? Isn't that what every article is supposed to be? If there's a need to add sections for ease of editing, the section heading should be more directly related to the organization of the quotations than just "well these are the quotes". (The other headings are OK by me, if we can get editors to understand what "Attributed" means. Are all the old "Attributed" sections gone now?) 121a0012 01:33, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I think that allowing a category as broad as "Quotes" would confuse newcomers into dumping everything under that heading. Let me take another stab at this. If you all dislike categorizing quotes by media, how about this:
  • Works - quotes from works published by the individual in any form. IE novels, stories, etc
  • Lyrics - always a subcategory of Works.
  • Poetry - always a subcategory of Works.
  • All quotes within the category organized chronologically, then alphabetically.
  • Attributed - remarks made outside of a work published by the individual. IE interviews, etc
  • All quotes within the category organized chronologically, then alphabetically.
  • Misattributed remarks never made by the individual.
  • All quotes within the category organized alphabetically.
  • About - remarks made by others about the individual.
  • Criticism - always a subcategory of About
  • All quotes within the category organized chronologically, then alphabetically.
  • See also (optional, a short inline list may be placed below the introduction instead)
  • External links (de rigueur when there is a Wikipedia article)
Pipedreamergrey 18:42, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Not all quotable quotes are from works published by the individual. Making "Criticism" subordinate to "About" strikes me as overcategorization, and quite a few readers misunderstand what is meant by criticism. ~ Ningauble 19:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I think we do need something to delineate between the introduction and the body of the article. Note that a bare-bones article would have three parts: an introduction, the quotes, and external links – three entirely distinct types of information. An <hr> tag would serve the purpose, but I think a header suits the overall page layout better. I wanted to suggest something simple, generic, and neutral in order to avoid problems that could arise from case-by-case organization choices. Having seen articles that used headings such as "Miscellaneous" and "Personal" for quotes not grouped by work (not to mention articles that introduce POV controversy in headings), I think it is actually better to say just "well these are the quotes". (Many of the old "Attributed" sections that do not cite attributions have been fixed, but not all. We need to rewrite Wikiquote:Sourced and Unsourced sections, explaining what "Attributed" means, and move it to Wikiquote:Sourced and Attributed sections, reversing the current redirect.) ~ Ningauble 19:49, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't mind the use of Quotes as a heading (and I agree that Criticism should be a separate section), and I also question another thing in the above schema: why would the quotes be sorted chronologically (which I understand and like) and then alphabetically (which I don't see the value in)? I understand why we did it in the old 'Unsourced' world, since there was no other way to sort them, but now with sources, I don't see the need.

As for the use of Works, it's not bad, but again strikes me as overcategorization and maybe we don't really need to force someone to choose what type of work in which to place a quote (and what would you do with novellas or pamphlets or fragments, etc.?) ~ UDScott 15:18, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Attributed, I don't see a need to put interviews here. A firsthand report by a reliable source is more than a mere attribution, and I have no problem considering them sourced. Of course some sources are more reliable than others, and even the most prestigious of newspapers have been caught in frauds, so there is a distinction; however, I would prefer not to demote quotes with good provenance out of the main chronology. In my mind, the "Attributed" section is best used for things that are widely quoted without reliable provenance. ~ Ningauble 15:42, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for being such a busybody, guys. :) I tend to be anal-retentive like that. Agreeing on the use of Quotes rather than Sourced and slowly transitioning away from the use of Unsourced would more than satisfy my concerns, and it's more than I had hoped for when I made my initial comment. Hopefully, the eventual eliminating of the Source/Unsourced headings will be a positive step forward in discouraging new users from dumping uncited material here. If you do codify the changes, I'll be more than happy to lend a hand transitioning all the articles. Thanks for your patience! Pipedreamergrey 08:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

If there are no further objections, I will go ahead and change "Sourced" to "Quotes" in the template (and collaterally in the Themes template), and update the Wikiquote:Guide to layout to use "Quotes" and "Attributed" instead of "Sourced" and "Unsourced" (with an indication that attributions should be cited). ~ Ningauble 17:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no strong objections to changing Sourced to Quotes, but the desirability of actually doing this seems only marginal to me. I do object to mandating a separate section for Attributed, and prefer to simply arrange quotes chronologically through available citations in available sources. In a truly rigorously skeptical stance ALL quotations not directly received by an individual in written or spoken from a person are to some extent attributions by someone else, but I certainly do NOT wish to actually advocate a habitual indulgence of such levels of extremely paranoid skepticism, and I really do not agree with or approve creating this level of distinction which seems to artificially marginalize generally reliable secondary sources, and further breaks up the chronological flow on pages beyond that of a section for general quotes and of separate works. I believe that the dates and general reputations of reliability of cited sources provide sufficient indication of the level of reliability of the quote, and as has already been pointed out in one previous statement somewhere — a genuinely rigorous application of this standard would necessitate placing ALL the quotes by many ancient authors in a section labelled "Attributed", rather than quotes, including those of Socrates, Jesus, Guatama Buddha and many others.
I have been too busy with many other things to get into many policy discussions here for a while, but it seems I must now get involved in this one. Anyone who knows me well knows I have an extreme distaste and hostility to the mass of presumptions that usually are often unnaturally arrogated into fixed policies by those who insist upon making set rules for everyone, as if they were necessities, rather than the more humble practice of making provisional rules for themselves by which to assess and discern the absolute rules of true necessity — which usually takes a great deal of time and patience and rarely if ever can these be shoe-horned into precise words or pigeon-holed into common concepts. I usually seek to encourage the use of loose and malleable guidelines which allow for adaptation to actual circumstances and gradual evolution, and generally refrain from what I consider the generally stupid practice of making absolute or overly rigid rules for as long as possible in any endeavor in which I am engaged. There are other policy matters on which I might eventually comment, but for now, I can accept that there should probably be a reform in the page templates, in accord with some relatively recent changes in other policies and practices, but I would prefer that these be simply such as this:
  • "See also:" — not actually a section heading, but an optional, short list of works with their own pages, placed below the introduction, to direct people searching for quotes from these works; I have never really been inclined to create or encourage the use of such a heading for "related subjects" links above the external links as some have done, though I have never taken any strong stand against it either.
  • Quotes (nearly always) - unlike some seem inclined to do, I would not even presume to make this an absolute rule, and would not delete pages merely because they have quotes of others about a person, and no quotes as yet by the person. OR, alternatively, the current Sourced headings could be retained, with a small notice just below it " Quotes without citations to published works can be suggested for sourcing on the [subject/discussion] page
  • [Specific works] - separate sections for individual works, usually arranged chronologically, but sometimes with exceptions for specific sets of works
  • Disputed (optional) — where editors can cite specific reasons for strongly doubting the authenticity of certain quotes, but where the evidence is not conclusive. This should be reserved for quotes where there is a genuinely unresolved dispute, which seems worthy of merit, rather than merely contentious claims about lack of credibility.
  • Misattributed (optional) - where quotes clearly originated from other than the pages subject, or strong evidence provides no credibility to any claim of their authorship. Unless a quote can be proven to originate elsewhere it is of course very difficult or impossible to "prove" it did not originate with a cited author, but there are usually strong bodies of evidence which leads one to conclude the person should be assumed to be "innocent" of having made the remark, until proven "guilty."
  • Quotes about [person/work] (optional)
  • External links

I know that other people have taken a cue from templates that I believe MosheZadka set up a few years ago using simply "About", but I have always stuck with the more specific Quotes about [person/work] as "About" seems to me far too generalized for a heading — it could be taken to mean or imply "information about", rather than "quotes about" — which can as often be as likely to be disinformation as information. The suggestion to use the heading Criticism is also one I have always rejected, as a heading which can also be too misleading to most. ~ Kalki 18:44, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I jumped the gun on "Misattributed" because it has not been considered sufficiently. My primary interest here is to get rid of "Unsourced" and consider whether, in its absence, "Sourced" is not the best heading for what remains.
  • "Quotes" vs." Sourced" – It may be superfluous to say "well these are the quotes" (like, what else did one expect?) but I think it is marginally better than "here are the sourced ones" (like, of course they are, aren't they?). I have no objection to articles that jump right in with sections on works, but some header is needed when there are loose quotes not grouped by work. It is not a big deal.
  • "Attributed" vs. unsegregated – There are advantages and disadvantages to drawing the distinction. I would not feel dogmatic about always, or never, breaking them out – I think it is an acceptable way to organize an article but need not be mandatory. Although ambiguity invites contention, this is a guide to layout, not a content policy. (I lean toward segregating them for a couple reasons: it encourages contributors to search for original sources, and it lends a degree of gravitas to the project. Wikimedia projects are both celebrated and ridiculed in the world at large, and anything that lends credibility without restricting valid content seems advantageous to me. In the rare instances where I have added "mere attributions" myself, I would be a little embarrassed to put them on a par with primary source material.) It is both a blessing and a curse that there is no bright line between pedagogy and pedantry.
  • "About" – I agree that "About What" is better, and that "Criticism" is commonly misunderstood to mean disparagement only. I approve of this change to the people template, and think related pages should be updated accordingly.
  • "See also" – Meh. I was just reiterating current practice. Sometimes they get a little out of hand, but I don't see a need to ban them.
Even when promulgating "rules," especially when promulgating them, I firmly believe that rules are made to be broken. The exercise of judgment ultimately cannot be abdicated to authority and, though I am surely guilty of lapses of attention, I have not intended to apply rules mindlessly. ~ Ningauble 22:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Never mind. ~ Ningauble 06:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

As regular contributors to Wikiquote are probably aware by now, the above discussion has prompted the loss of one of our most valued editors. I have commented at length about this elsewhere, as seen in my reply to remarks posted here. - InvisibleSun 09:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I am aggrieved to be thus denounced and anathematized before the community:
not that I feel threatened by such baseless disparagement of myself, aggravating though it be, nor that I take this fit of pique personally, being of a pattern with generalized vilifications seen elsewhere; but more,
  • I am dismayed to see an evidently intelligent and thoughtful person resort to declarations of hostility that shut off civil discourse, and
  • I am chagrined by the prospect that the Wikiquote community may not be the civil society of my sanguine expectation, and
  • I feel alienated because it is not my custom to participate in groups that do not, as many so-called communities do not, practice and uphold civility and comity, even though Wikiquote's mission is interesting to me and embodies a noble purpose worthy of support, as has been my great pleasure to have done for the past year; so therefore
I grieve for Kalki's angered frustration, for Wikiquote's fragile potential, and for my own frustrated interest. ~ Ningauble 13:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Fictional characters[edit]

Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Starscream is our latest volley regarding a page of quotes attributed to a specific fictional character, outside of the context of the writers or the larger media from which the character derives. I suggest we post a policy page (or amend whichever existing policy page is most appropriate to this subject matter) to make clear that this is the rule, and explain the reasoning behind it. As Ningauble has pointed out at User talk:Ningauble#Albus Dumbledore, such a page raises real copyright concerns. An additional rationale, I think, is that fictional characters do not author anything. Harry Potter has never come up with a sentence; J.K. Rowling has simply put words in his nonexistent mouth. Pages on fictional characters confuse real authorship, especially with a character such as VfD subject Starscream, for whom many different writers have penned words at different times. I could see exceptions being made for supposedly real persons of dubious historical pedigree, and possibly even for characters who are the unique central figure of a franchise (such as Indiana Jones, James Bond, or Rambo), since there are likely to be quotes about those characters that are not specific to a particular movie, but are still worth reporting. But the limitations on such pages would have to be strictly laid out. Any thoughts or amendments/disagreements? BD2412 T 04:27, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment: Agree with everything said above by BD2412 (talk · contributions). However, the last part, But the limitations on such pages would have to be strictly laid out. -- this is the particular issue that should be discussed and pounded out into some sort of specific coherence. Cirt (talk) 05:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
That is exactly the issue I'd like to have resolved, as a matter of policy that we can later point to when explaining why, for example, Starscream does not qualify for such a page. BD2412 T 15:51, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
So something like a dedicated page, Wikiquote:Fictional characters, to point people to? Cirt (talk) 15:54, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
   I agree with myself on the issue, and with BD2412 that it should be policy. It is a rather narrow point for a whole policy unto itself, and perhaps would be best addressed in a general policy on appropriate article subjects. However, I would endorse a stopgap policy covering this issue alone because there is clearly an ongoing need to codify the consensus into useful guidance and citable policy.
   I have no objection to using the name of a fictional character as the title of an article aggregating a body of work, considered as a fork from an article on the author, where it is the most convenient way to name the body of work and where it is done in lieu of forking separate articles on each work (e.g. Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe). The same would apply to a franchise without single authorship.
   I am leery of making an exception for theme pages with quotes about a character. While this could be appropriate in some very exceptional cases, and I once endorsed the idea [6], I would not want to encourage contributors to do this as a matter of course for all of their favorite characters. Such quotes really belong in the Criticism or About section of an article on the work or the author and, IMO, only if they express remarkably quotable commentary. (I think it would be ill-conceived to have an article or section of quotes about fictional characters by fictional characters, e.g. Dick Grayson#In Fiction). ~ Ningauble 16:14, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Starscream, Optimus Prime and Megatron pages were heavily requested for a long time and those pages would be awesome if they stayed.(Jackerson 05:04, 12 September 2009 (UTC))

Exactly. BD2412 T 16:11, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
This seems to conflict with this user's comment at WQ:AN, where he requested all pages on this project be deleted... Cirt (talk) 07:31, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Starscream, Optimus Prime and Megatron are fictional characters, they are not authors of anything, and none of them is a discreet work. What would constitute an "official" Optimus Prime quote? Would something from this parody program count? BD2412 T 16:02, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Note: Let's continue further discussion at Wikiquote talk:Fictional characters. Cirt (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Public apology[edit]

I apologise for the vandalism from this IP; OK, so it's not me personally who did this, but this is a shared IP, amongst 8 - 9 computers. Needless to say, said individuals who vandalised no longer use this network so there will not be a vandalism problem again, and the proxy is no longer an open/zombie, all spyware is removed, systems reimaged. Any sysops etc. - this is for your info. --84.45.219.185 10:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Checkuser discussion[edit]

Please see Wikiquote:Requests for checkuser/EVula. Cirt (talk) 19:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Template:Quotation limit[edit]

Okay, I've been working on a new template for us to use in conjunction with our copyvio problem articles. The idea is to place {{Quotation limit}} on the talk page, which will provide a quick reference for the editors that constantly do the pruning (usually sysops) when they need to go back in and cut stuff, as well as an explicit hard number to show people that keep adding content.

I've tried to make the template as simple as possible. All you have to do is specify the type of article (for the sake of clarity, I've only included the most problematic of types), and it will automatically spit out the requirements. For example:

{{quotation limit|type=tv}} will output:

VLC Icon.svg This article needs to conform to our limits on quotations policy.

The subject of this article is a television show, and as a result, there should only be: one quote for less than 30 minutes, two quotes for 30 minute shows, and five quotes for 60 minute shows (see our TV policy for shows of other lengths).

If you would like to add another quote to the page, you may first need to remove one that is already there in order to keep within the bounds of fair use of copyright material.


There are two optional fields. The first is length, which allows us to further specify just how long certain works are (ie: how many pages are in a book, or how long a show's episodes typically are). The second is the section, which changes the template to mention the requirements in conjunction with particular sections.

An example for length: if you use {{quotation limit|type=film|length=132 minutes}}, you'll get:

VLC Icon.svg This article needs to conform to our limits on quotations policy.

The subject of this article is a film, and as a result, there should only be: five quotes per hour (about one quote every 12 minutes).

If you would like to add another quote to the page, you may first need to remove one that is already there in order to keep within the bounds of fair use of copyright material.
For reference, the length of this work is: 132 minutes.


Anyway, I'm not thinking of this being plastered absolutely everywhere, though I wouldn't be opposed to it, but instead get used (especially at first) on the worst of the worst copyvio pages (I'm looking at you, The Nostalgia Critic), or to get placed on talk pages as they get cleaned up.

Thoughts? EVula // talk // // 00:29, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Nice work. I like them and I would think this would help in the ongoing struggle to control some of these pages. I fully support their use. ~ UDScott 00:32, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Some articles already have copyright notices on their talk pages, but these templates are more noticeable and are therefore more likely to be effective. - InvisibleSun 16:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
I also approve of making this more graphic. It has inpired me to experiment with developing a backbone message template for similar messages. (This is something I have been meaning to do for a while, because we should use a uniform style when we introduce additional prominent message boxes.)
The wording here is a good way to handle the heterogeneity of the policy, and I think it is ready to use as-is. I may make some additions and discuss at Template talk:Quotation limit. ~ Ningauble 17:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, one of those "oh yeah, been meaning to do that" things for me has been to import w:Template:Ambox from Wikipedia; that's the backbone for all the maintenance templates (and has since been spun out to several other WMF wikis). Would we want it here? EVula // talk // // 18:00, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
This context is more like that of w:Template:Tmbox. I am not sure it is best to just ape the Wikipedia style, although it is not the worst option. I also have some reservations about templates that rely on css maintained elsewhere. I see no reason not to have our own if we keep it simple. ~ Ningauble 18:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Using CSS pulled from the stylesheets is far better than inline styles for widely used stuff (like the ambox template); it allows users to cache the file, which means they're downloading less code with each page load, speeding up sites. (this is something true of regular websites, rather than wikis specifically; all the CSS necessary for ambox to work would get copied over to our local stylesheet, so that's a non-issue) I think we're doing just fine without it, though, which is one of the reasons I haven't really bothered copying everything over just yet. ;) EVula // talk // // 19:29, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The Nostalgia Critic[edit]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new and improved The Nostalgia Critic article. Down to just 74k, which is a massive improvement over... 495k. I'm not even joking.[7]

Here's hoping we can keep it svelte. :) EVula // talk // // 06:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

anon user and his nonexistent cats[edit]

For the past few days, an anon user with the IP 98.30.69.163 and anywhere within the 98.30.XX.XXX range has been putting jerry bruckheimer categories on virtually every article from bruckheimer movies. Ningauble and I have asked the user to stop putting them and yet he still persists. Do we block the IP? --Eaglestorm 14:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Cirt (talk) 14:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
But not without giving a warning first. ~ Ningauble 16:51, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Ah, good point, I thought per the comment above that was done already. Cirt (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Better to have linked the mentioned discussion before. ~ Ningauble 17:24, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Part II[edit]

Okay that user is at it again, this time trying the Jay Roach and Ridley Scott angles, this time on Meet The Parents and Gladiator, respectively. He definitely refuses to see the writing on the wall. Please lock this guy down. Thanks. --Eaglestorm 03:06, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha article[edit]

... I just reworked that article, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, to attempt to deal with the cleanup it needed. That said, I wasn't quite comfortable with unilaterally removing the cleanup tag from that article after I reworked it, especially since I'm new here. So if some of my fellow editors could check that and see if they think it qualifies as sufficiently cleaned up, that would be wonderful. Thanks. Counterpower 04:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine to me - I've removed the cleanup tag. ~ UDScott 12:19, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Defamation[edit]

Quotes in themselves are beyond NPOV, as they represent the point of view of a specific individual. But what happens if some person A makes a defamatory statement about some person B? It can't be edited to make it say something else, but should it be kept or removed? Belgrano 14:17, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a specific example? Cirt (talk) 14:25, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a question for your friendly neighborhood IP attorney! I will grant you that some people consider defamation to be separate from IP, but I never have, and I've had about a half dozen live cases where defamation was one of the causes of action. Here the concern is republication. If the statement at issue is clearly defamatory, for example, Joe Johnson says "I personally witnessed Sam Smith stealing money from the cash register at the grocery store", and we know the statement to be false, and yet we print the statement anyway, that is republication. Bear in mind, defamation in the United States is a state cause of action rather than a federal cause of action, so California has a different set of laws on the subject than Florida, which also has a different set of laws than Kansas, and so forth. We can not be held liable for reporting an allegedly defamatory quote if we note in the description that the claim made was in fact untrue. We are also immune from liability for reporting a statement made in the text of a court opinion. Finally, if the subject of the exam is a famous person, particularly a politician, the person must demonstrate that the statement was made with either knowledge or reckless disregard of falsity. BD2412 T 17:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Let's make Love...[edit]

... a perfect entry. Horribly unsourced as it stands, and Love/Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers needs to be merged in. BD2412 T 16:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

To start with, I just moved 56k of inadequately sourced quotes to the talk page. BD2412 T 22:53, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Although I've moved most of the quotes out as unsourced, I believe most will be sourceable. When they are returned, and the others noted above are moved in (and still more not noted above are moved in), the page will again be very long. I propose, therefore, breaking out shorter pages on Romantic love, Familial love, Religious love (or maybe Love of God/Love of Allah/Love of Brahma as appropriate), and leave only general and nonspecific love quotes on the "Love" page. BD2412 T 01:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I think splitting is a far better choice, especially for the long run. I'd say let's start with religious love and then split that further once we have enough to do so. EVula // talk // // 15:36, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
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