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:Argyriou, Im hostile against people who have '''''no''''' clue what they are talking about and attempt to force the fact that they are correct on others. the message BCBot points to is [[WP:NFCC#10c]] which clearly states the issues with the image and how to fix them ([[WP:FURG]]). Im sure your an expert with our non-free image policy and the foundation resolution with 17 image namespace edits. you cant seem to even follow our 3RR. You obviously dont understand the ArbCom case because your reasoning is way off base. I ask that you not slander my name by making false statements. And Geo Swan please read the templates that you are referring to. It clearly states the need for a Non-free use rationale. something that was not done. [[User talk:Betacommand|β<sup><sub>command</sub></sup>]] 19:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC) |
:Argyriou, Im hostile against people who have '''''no''''' clue what they are talking about and attempt to force the fact that they are correct on others. the message BCBot points to is [[WP:NFCC#10c]] which clearly states the issues with the image and how to fix them ([[WP:FURG]]). Im sure your an expert with our non-free image policy and the foundation resolution with 17 image namespace edits. you cant seem to even follow our 3RR. You obviously dont understand the ArbCom case because your reasoning is way off base. I ask that you not slander my name by making false statements. And Geo Swan please read the templates that you are referring to. It clearly states the need for a Non-free use rationale. something that was not done. [[User talk:Betacommand|β<sup><sub>command</sub></sup>]] 19:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC) |
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::Oh shut up, you paper-pushing bully. You were desysopped for your incivility and wikilawyering; your opinion of what people should do here is of negative value. <span style="font-family:serif;font-size:120%">'''[[User:Argyriou|Argyriou]]''' [[User talk:Argyriou|(talk)]]</span> 20:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC) |
::Oh shut up, you paper-pushing bully. You were desysopped for your incivility and wikilawyering; your opinion of what people should do here is of negative value. <span style="font-family:serif;font-size:120%">'''[[User:Argyriou|Argyriou]]''' [[User talk:Argyriou|(talk)]]</span> 20:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC) |
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:::Argyriou, this comment is wildly out of line and inappropriate. You owe Betacommand an apology. Regardless of what you think of his bot, his work, or his attitude, you may not address other contributors this way. - [[User:Philippe|Philippe]] | [[User talk:Philippe|Talk]] 21:04, 26 January 2008 (UTC) |
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*I think what is being asked for here is that the warnings should include a reference to {{tl|Non-free fair use rationale}} directly, so the user knows the most convenient way to add the needed rationale. I'd add one for the image in question here, but I'm not sure it actually qualifies here (it is low-resolution, but it appears on an article discussing the general phenomenon of Red Toryism that doesn't mention the book in particular). [[User talk:Crotalus horridus|<font color="#11A"><b><tt>*** Crotalus ***</tt></b></font>]] 14:23, 22 January 2008 (UTC) |
*I think what is being asked for here is that the warnings should include a reference to {{tl|Non-free fair use rationale}} directly, so the user knows the most convenient way to add the needed rationale. I'd add one for the image in question here, but I'm not sure it actually qualifies here (it is low-resolution, but it appears on an article discussing the general phenomenon of Red Toryism that doesn't mention the book in particular). [[User talk:Crotalus horridus|<font color="#11A"><b><tt>*** Crotalus ***</tt></b></font>]] 14:23, 22 January 2008 (UTC) |
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::The template is pretty easy to find in the link provided: [[Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline#Template]]. [[User:Vassyana|Vassyana]] ([[User talk:Vassyana|talk]]) 15:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC) |
::The template is pretty easy to find in the link provided: [[Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline#Template]]. [[User:Vassyana|Vassyana]] ([[User talk:Vassyana|talk]]) 15:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC) |
Revision as of 21:04, 26 January 2008
Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | WMF | Miscellaneous |
- Table of contents
- First discussion
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- New post
If you want to propose something new other than a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
No sex please, we're Wikipedians
Take a look at the articles in the Category:Human sexuality. Is there any particular reason why almost none of them have photographs? Wikiproject Pornography has a rule that explicit images of porn stars are completely forbidden; perhaps this is creeping into general sex articles.--Nydas(Talk) 21:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
- Although WP is not censored, it should not become a horrible pace for people to come to look at porn. Sex, etc. is already one of the most popular articles. I have no objection to encyclopedic images, but explicit ones should indeed be banned. They may be missing because free images of that could be hard to come by, especially encyclopedic ones. And even though we aren't censored, those who want it to be could have some influence there. Reywas92Talk 22:22, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
- Largely the lack of free images for the purpose, and the controversy that tends to arise when people add explicit images to articles. It's difficult to find free images because amateur photographers don't frequently have access to subjects who are willing to give up their sexual privacy. I find it upsetting that articles like anal-oral sex censor their images, when it's very clear what the topic is. Some say that diagrams are more illustrative, which I disagree with - I think both photos and diagrams illustrate the subject differently and should both be included. And finally, I think it's entirely appropriate to include naked photos of porn stars, particularly ones who are known for remarkable anatomy. Dcoetzee 22:25, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
- You must be upset half the time then. That picture of simulated analingus keeps getting taken out and put back in about twice a day. As long as the motivation is encyclopedic value, proper tone, and perhaps good taste rather than censorship. If we simply couldn't remove naked pictures they would accumulate and every article would have ten of them. On the other side, nothing wrong with adding a naked or even erotic picture to an article if the point is encyclopedic interest, illustration, and completeness rather than titilation or making a point. That could imperil Wikipedia in schools, with the workplace filters, etc., but we've made the decision not to bow down to that. That should be an editorial decision for the best outcome of the article, not somebody's agenda. Also, when you're in the territory of a wikiproject it's good form to honor their article standards. I think there are good reasons for an adult entertainment centered project to use clothed pictures. Most adult performers are clothed in their within-the-industry publicity shots. And despite the occasional act of exhibitionism in the afterparties and convention lobbies, they pretty much stay clothed for the business meetings, award ceremonies, etc. Think of it like a pop singer or opera star - their head shots don't all show them singing. So it is with performers in the sex industry, the bio pieces are usually clothed. It's just a matter of being a little more formal and businesslike in my opinion. Wikidemo (talk) 23:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
- The workplace filters are capable of selectively filtering Wikipedia articles. A classic example is the user who created the sex kitten article during his lunch break at work and then was immediately blocked from viewing it by Websense, presumably based on a keyword. Sarsaparilla (talk) 04:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think every photo of a porn star should show them naked, or that no naked picture should be removed - just that where they help to convey information about the subject they should be retained. For example, if a particular porn star is known for her large breasts, the article should explain this and show a picture of her breasts. This is particularly relevant to sexual acts where it's difficult to describe in words the relative position and orientation of things. And yes, redundant photos are to be avoided in any context - I think penis strikes a good balance (demonstrating a flacid and erect penis and ejaculation, all pretty different). Dcoetzee 23:34, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
- I think that only encyclopedic images should be allowed. We're not Hustler. JetLover (talk) (Report a mistake) 00:07, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
- I can imagine instances where the "pornographic" image is the most "encyclopaedic" image, meaning that it conveys the most descriptive visible information clearly and in focus/context. Wikipedia is not censored. Sometimes it is necessary to allow images to exist that you find personally "horrible" or "Hustler-like" just because that is the best way to illustate the concept. If it is a problem for *you*, then you can set your browser to always ask you before displaying images on *your* computer. Some of us, medical professionals, artists, visual historians, cultural critics, etc. look at images with a different frame of reference. We are not so easily disturbed or titilated (sp?) and thus see "information" where other people, for whatever reason, see "horrible porn." The Wikipedia cannot be redesigned to protect such easily disturbed or titilated people from their own subjective interpretations and perceptions. Saudade7 15:34, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
- I think that only encyclopedic images should be allowed. We're not Hustler. JetLover (talk) (Report a mistake) 00:07, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think every photo of a porn star should show them naked, or that no naked picture should be removed - just that where they help to convey information about the subject they should be retained. For example, if a particular porn star is known for her large breasts, the article should explain this and show a picture of her breasts. This is particularly relevant to sexual acts where it's difficult to describe in words the relative position and orientation of things. And yes, redundant photos are to be avoided in any context - I think penis strikes a good balance (demonstrating a flacid and erect penis and ejaculation, all pretty different). Dcoetzee 23:34, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
- Censorship is a most dangerous business for a free society and is the basis of fascist, represive entities. for some reason sexual acts and similars are a taboo for humanity in general mostly -i believe- because it triggers maybe unwelcomed basic instinctual mechanisms in the person tat is watching it or hearing it. i dont think this kind of information should be censored; it should be treated as any other kind of information. ppl should be able to put watever they want whenever wherever in the net, trying also to preserve functionality. and if ppl dont want to see those images, they just shouldnt see them but not try to prevent someone else to see it WonderingAngel-aesc78 (talk) 17:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
- This has nothing to do with censorship. The reason why most articles relating to sex don't have sexual explicit or pornographics photos is simple. They serve no encylopaedic purpose. Nearly every case which I've seen a diagram does a much better job of illustrating a concept then a pornographic image. As you youself mentioned, the primary purpose of pornography is to excite, not to educate. Nil Einne (talk) 16:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
- I concur with Nil above. It has long been settled by community consensus that we use illustrations to depict sexual acts, and photographs to depict body parts. --David Shankbone 16:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
- This has nothing to do with censorship. The reason why most articles relating to sex don't have sexual explicit or pornographics photos is simple. They serve no encylopaedic purpose. Nearly every case which I've seen a diagram does a much better job of illustrating a concept then a pornographic image. As you youself mentioned, the primary purpose of pornography is to excite, not to educate. Nil Einne (talk) 16:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
- I remember a previous debate on such a point, which one editor used the example of the Cleveland steamer as a case where words, images, ethics and censorship were closely interwoven on an article to establish consensus. Personally like him, I wish the article weren't here (ethics), but I'm glad it is because it shows we live the Wiki ethos (no censorship), and having WP:RS I'll hence defend its inclusion on that basis. The words describe that act sufficiently for an encyclopaedia - ie: describe what is it, in context. We don't need to go into more detail, as we are not instructing individuals on how to do it - just what it is, and in its sexual context what it involves. We apply the same "what in context, not how" procedure to many drugs related articles - we don't need to describe the detailed process of turning poppies into heroin! I'd add a note that the "how" issue gets rightly suppressed when it comes to health advice - quite often, for example on the anal sex article, we don't go into much detail about the act but do go into "how" detail on health and clean up issues. If we place pictures in the encyclopaedic context of wiki, then I think in general we get it right - a picture can summarise 1,000 words, but even in these days of multi-media a good line drawing meets our objectives without the need for "graphic" and hence possibly verging on pornographic images. I do however think rules on individuals bio's need to be watched carefully - for instance, some of the sports related articles show some athletes in skimpy/not a lot of clothing. I would imagine it difficult to source a good encyclopaedic picture of a high-diver for instance without showing them doing their thing - dressed in an Armani suit just wouldn't do it or meet our encyclopaedic objectives. Rgds, - Trident13 (talk) 16:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
- Okay Shankbone, maybe I am confused, as I often am but do you mean that illustrations can never be pornographic and all photographs showing people having sex are pornographic? As a cultural/visual historian that's a new one to me, but admittedly I am not really into porn. I don't even know if I know it when I see it! That just seems like a weird division because I've seen some hentai illustrations that are much more graphic and seemingly explicit than some photos of two people touching each other's naughty bits! Does it depend on how unattractive the people in the demonstrative image are? This is all silly! We are human beings that do things. If there is an article about the things we do there shouldn't be hang-ups about showing people doing those things. Now I guess I will go find out what a Cleveland steamer is...Saudade7 23:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
- No, I raise no such argument. I am simply stating that when this issue has been broached (repeatedly) community consensus has come down to graphic illustrations for sexual acts; photographs for body parts (such as scrotum, chest, or glans penis). The arguments have been many, and in the end, this has been the "truce" of the community consensus. The question comes up regularly on individual pages. --David Shankbone 23:50, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
- Shouldn't this alleged consensus be mentioned on WP:CENSORED? At the moment, it fails to mention the 'no sex photos' policy, and wrongly cites pornography as an article which contains objectionable content.--Nydas(Talk) 10:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- No, I raise no such argument. I am simply stating that when this issue has been broached (repeatedly) community consensus has come down to graphic illustrations for sexual acts; photographs for body parts (such as scrotum, chest, or glans penis). The arguments have been many, and in the end, this has been the "truce" of the community consensus. The question comes up regularly on individual pages. --David Shankbone 23:50, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
- Okay Shankbone, maybe I am confused, as I often am but do you mean that illustrations can never be pornographic and all photographs showing people having sex are pornographic? As a cultural/visual historian that's a new one to me, but admittedly I am not really into porn. I don't even know if I know it when I see it! That just seems like a weird division because I've seen some hentai illustrations that are much more graphic and seemingly explicit than some photos of two people touching each other's naughty bits! Does it depend on how unattractive the people in the demonstrative image are? This is all silly! We are human beings that do things. If there is an article about the things we do there shouldn't be hang-ups about showing people doing those things. Now I guess I will go find out what a Cleveland steamer is...Saudade7 23:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
- Is it possible to put a link (yes, a highly visible link... though may be at the bottom of the page) that leads to an image on a separate image page (not like the image description page which describes copyright status and stuff, but describing the content of the image... based on the article)? We can start to have NSFW image pages for explicit content. I don't agree to the reasoning that people would come to Wikipedia to take a look at porn (what would happen to all the books books on reproductive anatomy if we go by this line of reasoning?), but I definitely care about people trying to surf pages at work, shared space, academies (yes, you may need the article to write a classroom assignment, too) an so forth. Aditya(talk • contribs) 13:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think NSFW tags are a bad idea. If one is going to a page entitled "Clitoris" which happens to have photographs of...a clitoris, then I think a person should not reasonably assume that the clit page would not have clits on it. Generally, graphic photos are found on relevant articles, whose titles themselves would not be "safe for work" - we can't hold everyone's hand for safety; let's not be that American about it. --David Shankbone 17:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- And yet articles like missionary position are censored. Wouldn't one reasonably assume that it would have a photo as well?--Nydas(Talk) 17:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- Having looked at that articles history, I can't see where a "censorship" issue over an image has been raised? May be I am being slow here, but a direct example of what you see as bias or censorship on a specific article is normally better enabling for others to see your point. However, putting that aside, I can't see how an additional picture (photo or line drawing) would add to the current encyclopedic content of that article. Rgds, - Trident13 (talk) 17:52, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- It's just an example of a typical photo-free sex article. Around half of them have had photos removed, though this is not one of them. Oral sex is one where a photo was removed. I'd still like an explanation of why body part photos are OK, but sex photos aren't.--Nydas(Talk) 18:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- Nydas, the reason is a practical one, rather than the product of reasoned thinking: those Wikipedians who defend the use of images in sex-related articles have received more support for keeping body part photos than for sex photos from the rest of Wikipedia. I haven't seen this policy set forth until David Shankbone posted his comment above, but in my opinion (based on over five years of participation here), he did describe how Wikipedians handle the matter accurately. If you can find a way to change the situation -- either through education or by formulating a better rationale that is accepted as a guideline -- you are welcome to do so, as long as it is not disruptive. -- llywrch (talk) 18:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- I concur with Llywrch. I'm not saying that the general consensus is enshrined, but more what I have gleaned through arguments on individual pages, and in general discussion. I think most people think this is an adequate line to draw: non-sexual photographs of testicles are fine scrotum, but let's draw the line at every amateur shot of people in mid-coitus. But if you think this should be different, by all means spearhead a community effort to re-open the question. Otherwise, I think people with fucking photos are going to find themselves reverted every time. --David Shankbone 18:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- Nydas, the reason is a practical one, rather than the product of reasoned thinking: those Wikipedians who defend the use of images in sex-related articles have received more support for keeping body part photos than for sex photos from the rest of Wikipedia. I haven't seen this policy set forth until David Shankbone posted his comment above, but in my opinion (based on over five years of participation here), he did describe how Wikipedians handle the matter accurately. If you can find a way to change the situation -- either through education or by formulating a better rationale that is accepted as a guideline -- you are welcome to do so, as long as it is not disruptive. -- llywrch (talk) 18:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- It's just an example of a typical photo-free sex article. Around half of them have had photos removed, though this is not one of them. Oral sex is one where a photo was removed. I'd still like an explanation of why body part photos are OK, but sex photos aren't.--Nydas(Talk) 18:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- Having looked at that articles history, I can't see where a "censorship" issue over an image has been raised? May be I am being slow here, but a direct example of what you see as bias or censorship on a specific article is normally better enabling for others to see your point. However, putting that aside, I can't see how an additional picture (photo or line drawing) would add to the current encyclopedic content of that article. Rgds, - Trident13 (talk) 17:52, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- And yet articles like missionary position are censored. Wouldn't one reasonably assume that it would have a photo as well?--Nydas(Talk) 17:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think NSFW tags are a bad idea. If one is going to a page entitled "Clitoris" which happens to have photographs of...a clitoris, then I think a person should not reasonably assume that the clit page would not have clits on it. Generally, graphic photos are found on relevant articles, whose titles themselves would not be "safe for work" - we can't hold everyone's hand for safety; let's not be that American about it. --David Shankbone 17:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
(undent) While we're on this subject, you want to know what I find upsetting? I find it upsetting that people jerk off on a table and take a picture of it just so they can put it on wikipedia. I find it upsetting that people are taking pictures of their own assholes and crapping on plates and then edit warring to keep them in articles. Wikipedia is not for exhibitionists and such things should be discouraged extremely strongly-- there's plenty of medical diagrams and so forth that would serve the same purpose. Jtrainor (talk) 22:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I think if you really want to produce these sort of articles we should create, a placement picture of not suitable for general audiences and then click on that to get the picture, though that might be a stupid idea. I think like most people the idea of getting an eye full when reading a article is very disturbing. I also think warnings of upcomming offensive material will scare more people off the entire article. I am not completley against censorship like most of the .... well people on here. I don't think a bit of censorship is bad if it is what we need to keep a G rating. I like to know I won't see certain things on wikipedia while browsing around and I will see things on my porn sites when browsing around (just kidding).--AresAndEnyo (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm coming a bit late to the party here, but I think this comes down to a general issue; images of objects or things -- body parts, famous people, pokémon -- can be easily represented with a photograph of an example or two. Images of more abstract techniques or processes -- bedroom activities, warp core plasma flow, Irish sea shipping lanes -- would tend more to be obscured by the details of a concrete "real life" example, and are better suited to a line drawing or other diagram that can better abstract and elucidate the concept. Sometimes you can make a case for a photographic image even of this more abstract category, of course, when there's some facet of it that a diagram simply can't do justice to. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 10:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Tor nodes
An ongoing discussion is in progress regarding adjusting the blocking policy in reference to TOR nodes. The discussion is here. Regards, M-ercury at 13:18, January 8, 2008
Wikipedia can fail: Remember that.
A lot of editors don't seem to acknowledge this possibility on here and it's scary, because it may lead to laziness and apathy.
In the famous talk at Stanford about how "Wikipedia matters," they seem to invoke the idea that Wikipedia is a feedback loop (in the Economics of Public choice, see virtuous circle and vicious circle).
The following image demonstrates the concept and seems to have been discussed on foreign language Wikis, like French Wikipedia [1]:
File:Wikipedia feedback loop.jpg
Please, share the above image, if not tagging it on one of the main pages on Wikipedia policy. Perhaps Wikipedia matters should itself be policy.
If Wikipedia fails, instead of being the "sum of all human knowledge," it will be the "sum of all human ignorance." And instead of informing the public, it dumbs them down. This may someday lead to Idiocracy.
Recognizing the above fact instead of simply adopting a naive obsession with WP:CONSENSUS seems to imply that Immediatism, Deletionism, and Wikithoritarianism are more beneficial to Wikipedia than Eventualism, Inclusionism, and Wikidemocratism. Because the longer we wait, the lesser chance we have of building WP:CONSENSUS to address the problems of Wikipedia.
In the long-run, consensus isn't always a good thing, because consensus can fail such that bad edits receive consensus, And that fate is not set in stone.
Just some thoughts here for any Wiki-hippies out there who might regularly discuss policy. Wikilove is evil. Zenwhat (talk) 04:01, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- The link to Wikipedia Matters did not have any page there. Are you sure you have the correct link? Captain panda 04:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- One must recall the Zeroth law of Wikipedia: "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." In other words, every reasonable person would predict that anything this open-source, and this open to literally, edit by everyone, is bound to be a catastrophic failure. There is no reason why it works, and yet it clearly does. People have been predicting the doom of Wikipedia since its founding. I still don't see it coming. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- I fixed the link to the speech on meta. Also, Zeroth's claim is absurd. It amounts to, "I can't logically explain why Wikipedia works, but I'm going to assume it does, anyway." If Wikipedia policy isn't based on reason but arbitrary decree to say that it "works," is misleading at best. Without appealing to reason, one has no basis to even discuss why one policy holds merit over another. Zenwhat (talk) 08:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- I don't see why this is much of a policy concern. Wikipedia has done alright for itself. What does the possibility of failure have to do with policy, other than the fact that it could happen? Why fix what isn't broken? — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 08:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Anything, anytime, can fail. In fact, one must just take a short look at thermodynamics and entropy to be aware that, indeed, everything will fail. It's just a question of when. However, I don't believe Wikipedia can catastrophically fail. It's open-source. If Wikipedia itself is not doing so well anymore, anyone, anywhere, can start a new version of it elsewhere with attempts to correct what they see as the problem. Perhaps one of these forks would be successful, perhaps several. Either is fine, either alternative continues to provide resources to disseminate human knowledge. Perhaps even none would be. Even if so, versions of Wikipedia as it was at its zenith would still exist, and would always be freely redistributable. Someday, someone else might come up with the "newer, better Wikipedia", perhaps even using Wikipedia itself as the base. That would not be failure, it would be success! It would still serve to advance human knowledge. And ultimately, as long as Wikipedia has contributed toward that goal, it has succeeded—even if the site at en.wikipedia.org becomes long-forgotten. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- I don't see why this is much of a policy concern. Wikipedia has done alright for itself. What does the possibility of failure have to do with policy, other than the fact that it could happen? Why fix what isn't broken? — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 08:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- I fixed the link to the speech on meta. Also, Zeroth's claim is absurd. It amounts to, "I can't logically explain why Wikipedia works, but I'm going to assume it does, anyway." If Wikipedia policy isn't based on reason but arbitrary decree to say that it "works," is misleading at best. Without appealing to reason, one has no basis to even discuss why one policy holds merit over another. Zenwhat (talk) 08:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- So even Wikipedia will fail. It's just a matter of time. Any moment now quantum indeterminacy might cause the law of gravity to suddenly work in reverse. Brilliant argument. I suppose I should hold onto my chair, then? Penguin: This has to do with Wikipedia policy because a certain particular underlying philosophy seems to have grabbed Wikipedia by the scrotum. I think this is a major problem -- the logic behind it is demonstrated in the above chart -- and people are arguing against it by invoking fallacies and pseudoscience. A broad array of policies reflect this worldview. Examples:
- On Wikipedia:Deletion, "alternatives to deletion" is in the front, not the back and the lead is very vague.
- There is Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted? but there is no Wikipedia:Why won't you let me delete?
- Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions is based on basic logic and it makes sense, but they won't let it be a policy. The result is that when basic logic is invoked in deletion discussions by citing that article, people respond with the claim, "Oh, that's just an essay."
- There are Alternative outlets to recreate deleted articles (the title has been changed but that's the link name on WP:DELETION) but no Alternative outlets to deleted recreated articles
- There is Wikipedia:Help, my article got nominated for deletion! but no Wikipedia:Help, I can't delete nonsense!
- On Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators, it says "When in doubt, don't delete," which doesn't make sense. It's better for good information on Wikipedia to be lost -- even if that upsets some editors -- than for the public to be misinformed. The reason is simple: Public ignorance is a far worse problem and contributes to far more problems on Wikipedia than a few editors upset that their material was deleted. It is falsely assumed, on the one hand, that consensus always works in the end, while also falsely assumed that deleted material (if it's true) isn't always restored in the end.
- As it stands now, Wikipedia policy encourages misinformation through focusing entirely on Inclusionism, which is absurd, based on the chart above. There are groups like Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron keeping spam and internet memes on Wikipedia, while there is no Wikipedia:Article Deletion Armada.
Editors who grow frustrated with the anti-intellectualism of Wikipedia may be caustic. When they are, they are admonished or blocked for violating Wikipedia:Etiquette, something that is essentially an infringement on free speech in Wikipedia through the absurd requirement that people not just avoid flaming, but through punishing people for "not being nice." Imagine how this would work on forums.On second thought, this is an incredibly stupid thing to say, apparently based on ignorance of policy. Forgive me and please ignore it. Zenwhat (talk) 21:41, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Overall, while the general idea behind the policies make sense, they seem to all be intentionally worded to support Inclusionism.
- This is a major criticism of Wikipedia that remains completely unaddressed. See WP:Expert rebellion, WP:Credentials, User:William M. Connolley, and User:Larry Sanger. The fact that this criticism was made appears to have made Wikipedians become even more firmly entrenched in their positions because I vaguely remember a time when Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions was a guideline. Because, after all, it's just a list of basic fallacies used in WP:DELETION. For these reasons, we may as well delete M:Deletionism from Meta, and replace it with, "Are you a creationist? A conspiracy theorist? A Neonazi racist? Add whatever nonsense you want. If you're friendly, you'll do just fine, per WP:POLICY." Zenwhat (talk) 09:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- The policy of letting everybody delete what they "don't like" would lead to cencorship, pov and the like. Every possible conflicting views would simply be removed. No mention of wars. No mention of politics. No mention of religion. Science would disappear. Silence would rule, because silentists could enforce silence. The result would be huge misinformation. Oceanh (talk) 11:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC).
- Zenwhat you have a curious idea, namely that wikipedia will automatically become better if we delete articles. Wikipeida gets better by improving articles, and this is why there is a "bias for inclusionism". There is no such bias for bad articles that can not be improved. You list several points;
- "alternatives to deletion" is in the front. But this makes sense, first consider what you can do to improve an article. It's a bit late to do this after the article is deleted. (Although hopefully if there is things you can do to improve an article then the article will not be deleted).
- no Wikipedia:Why won't you let me delete?. You can always go back and look at the AfD discussion. There is no direct way to do so for deleted articles. So it's easy to find out why an article was kept, but harder to find out why an article was deleted.
- Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions is as much about arguments that are not grounds for deletion as it is about arguments that's for inclusion. The "it's only an essay" swings both ways.
- no Wikipedia:Help, I can't delete nonsense!. There is, it's a policy and it amounts to "feel free to delete nonsense": Wikipedia:Patent_nonsense.
- Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators is about deleting articles. It makes sense to keep when there is doubt to allow those claiming that the issues involved can be fixed the opportunity to fix the problems. For content in the articles Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators in no way supersedes Wikipedia:Verifiability,Wikipedia:NPOV, and similar content policies.
- You should note that [[Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron] has no wish to include spam, unsourced claims or other unencyclopedic content. Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron is about improving articles that stands to be deleted due the current state of the article to the point where the deletion rationale no longer applies.
- Yup, we curtail free speak in that we require civility. I fail to see the problem here, and feel it would be a problem if we did not.
- WP:Expert rebellion is about article content. I can find cases here where the experts feel that deletion of the article is the best option.
- "Add whatever nonsense you want. If you're friendly, you'll do just fine" This statement is true, at least as long as the edits in question is made in good faith, equally true is the fact that such edits can and should be reverted unless they can be sourced. Please see WP:NPOVFAQ and WP:DUE.
- In summary I have great problems seeing the cycles you refer to as a good reason to delete more articles. Taemyr (talk) 12:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Zenwhat you have a curious idea, namely that wikipedia will automatically become better if we delete articles. Wikipeida gets better by improving articles, and this is why there is a "bias for inclusionism". There is no such bias for bad articles that can not be improved. You list several points;
- Consider contributing to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is failing. –Pomte 12:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Poor quality articles can be tagged with {{fact}} and many other tags which indicate to readers that there are problems with them. Poor quality articles attract new editors, who first edit those, then move on to creating articles. A vacuum doesn't attract anything. An encyclopedia with a bunch of very high-quality articles and nothing else gives people the idea that they probably can't usefully contribute to it, so they don't. --Coppertwig (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Issues with Deletion Rrocess and the Article Rescue Squadron
Here are some points:
- The Article Rescue Squadron project clearly states that it is not a bunch of wild-eyed inclusionists.
- Having one article does not interfere with the existence of other articles, Wikipedia is not paper therefore we can have an article on Ace (which has NO sources) as well as an article on the "spammy internet meme" Chris Crocker (which has about 60 sources). There two articles will not interfere with each other, so people searching for ACE will not have to worry about weather or not there is a Chris Crocker article. If people are searching for Chris Crocker they will find one of the most in-depth and accurate works on him on the internet.
- If I had never seen a deck of cards before, and followed Zenwhat's comments above: Because Ace is not referenced, and I don't know if it is spam or contains mis-information I should delete it strait away, not AfD, no consensus - just deletion. Never mind all the policy that says that articles should be improved before they are sent for deletion.
- Deletion is the last step that should be taken in the maintenance of an article, this is why "alternatives to deletion" is listed before the steps for deletion on Wikipedia:Deletion
- There is a good reason why Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions is not policy, if it were AfD would become an exercise in bureaucracy - and wikipedia is not a bureaucracy.
I hope you understand that I am not attacking you Zenwhat, but your ideas for how wikipedia should be run and very different to what the projects founder seems to think. He created an article that caused a LOT of controversy because over zealous deletionists tried to delete an article that the FOUNDER thought was worthy of inclusion. I am not raising Jimbo up as some sort of god here, but shorly if anyone knowns the level of notability required to be in wikipedia, he would? Fosnez (talk) 12:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- The debate is improperly understood as "Inclusionism vs. Deletionism," which is what has muddled Wikipedia philosophy to begin with. I didn't want to post it here just yet, because I'm still in the process of writing it, but I'm writing an essay on the matter. See Wikipedia:Wikiliberalism. Framing it as Inclusionism vs. Deletionism is an improper framework that uses Inclusionist assumptions. By alternatively framing it as Precisionism vs. Protectionism, the distinctions are made more clear. So-called deletionists are nearly always motivated out of a desire to remove misinformation (so that Wikipedia is precisely accurate), not a subjective time-preference. Some small minority of users do appear motivated by a rabid desire to chew obscure articles to bits. If an edit is challenged, it ought to be the authority of the editor to back up unsourced claims with citations. For this reason, it makes perfect sense to reject Mzoli's Meats off-hand, but once it was shown Mzoli's Meats was mentioned in the press, responding, "Minor press coverage," is just as silly as citing unreliable sources to protect bad articles. From that standpoint, Mzoli's Meats wasn't "proof that Jimbo is an inclusionist" or "proof that inclusionism works!" On the contrary, you see both sides making spurious arguments with Jimbo, a precisionist stepping in. Zenwhat (talk) 14:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- In my experience, the 'deletionist' movement is most known for it's desire to chew up obscure articles than for it's desire to enforce precisionism. This is exactly what you would expect to find, as few disagree with WP:V based actions (which are highly defined and non-arguable) whilst WP:N is a major source of conflict and harm (I'd like to debate this point, actually, with someone of opposing viewpoint). Like how you state that most self-proclaimed deletionists really mean precisionist, most self-proclaimed inclusionists value precision over protectionism. The issue is that, as a rule, the loudest faction is perceived as the dominant force, and as such false deletionism (chewing up articles) appears to have a stronger base level of support. It is my personal opinion that the chewing-up movement is actually one which will contribute to the failure of wikipedia, as it typically values poorer measures above more strongly defined ones, and due to it's perceived strong backing, will only serve to alienate editors. LinaMishima (talk) 16:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- The debate is improperly understood as "Inclusionism vs. Deletionism," which is what has muddled Wikipedia philosophy to begin with. I didn't want to post it here just yet, because I'm still in the process of writing it, but I'm writing an essay on the matter. See Wikipedia:Wikiliberalism. Framing it as Inclusionism vs. Deletionism is an improper framework that uses Inclusionist assumptions. By alternatively framing it as Precisionism vs. Protectionism, the distinctions are made more clear. So-called deletionists are nearly always motivated out of a desire to remove misinformation (so that Wikipedia is precisely accurate), not a subjective time-preference. Some small minority of users do appear motivated by a rabid desire to chew obscure articles to bits. If an edit is challenged, it ought to be the authority of the editor to back up unsourced claims with citations. For this reason, it makes perfect sense to reject Mzoli's Meats off-hand, but once it was shown Mzoli's Meats was mentioned in the press, responding, "Minor press coverage," is just as silly as citing unreliable sources to protect bad articles. From that standpoint, Mzoli's Meats wasn't "proof that Jimbo is an inclusionist" or "proof that inclusionism works!" On the contrary, you see both sides making spurious arguments with Jimbo, a precisionist stepping in. Zenwhat (talk) 14:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Paradoxically, Wikipedia's anti-elitism is both its nemesis, and its secret of success. If there is a precarious balance to be maintained, it is the right handling of anti-elitist tendencies. We need to combat anti-elitism where it hurts the project (enabling trolls, frustrating competent editors), but we need to foster it just enough so it can do its fermenting work. dab (𒁳) 16:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Dab, there's one thing important to note, however: Wikipedia is not shrinking. Not even close. I may be wrong about this, since I don't have any accurate count of the number of articles created daily. But as it seems to me: It's a safe assumption that articles are added everyday by fanatics, bots, and some good editors. So long as Wikipedia is growing, an article on Mzoli's Meats or any other obscure article here and there being deleted isn't a problem --
if they're good articlesTypo: If they're bad articles. Thanks, person below. Zenwhat (talk) 22:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC). As demonstrated above: It's better for Wikipedia to be empty than contain nonsense, because an empty Wikipedia is neutral in terms of its effects on public ignorance. A Wikipedia which is wildly expanding (as it seems to be now) creates a vicious cycle of stupidity that makes Wikipedia dumber and dumber as time goes on (see Idiocracy, don't let Wikipedia create it), unless some radical measures are made to cure the disease. You seem to acknowledge this idea yourself, even if you don't necessarily agree with the idea that Wikipedia is like that now. I think it is when I regularly came across situations like this. Zenwhat (talk) 18:21, 10 January 2008 (UTC)- Are you sure you intended to say "obscure article here and there being deleted isn't a problem -- if they're good articles.", which implies that the deletion of well-sourced, well-written articles is not a problem? That does not make logical sense to me. The situation you describe is inherently different to that of quality obscure articles, and the existence or lack thereof of quality obscure articles will have little direct effect upon that problem (if anything, any quality article implies quality editors, which will help to avoid such problems). The biggest issue currently faced is not obscurity of covered material, but the poor quality of verification, however for some reason many editors seem to equate one to the other or use language which implies as such. The situation you link to seems more to be more relating to incorrect interpretations of policy, something which I have come up against myself in the past, and one of the reasons I have withdrawn from mainspace editing until the situation changes. LinaMishima (talk) 20:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Dab, there's one thing important to note, however: Wikipedia is not shrinking. Not even close. I may be wrong about this, since I don't have any accurate count of the number of articles created daily. But as it seems to me: It's a safe assumption that articles are added everyday by fanatics, bots, and some good editors. So long as Wikipedia is growing, an article on Mzoli's Meats or any other obscure article here and there being deleted isn't a problem --
- Articles about obscure useless things are not such a big problem for Wikipedia (except maybe in terms of server resources) because the release versions don't contain them. Wikipedia is a work in progress remember. Give it marks for the articles that, one way or another, it gets right; don't take away marks for the articles that are bad. • Anakin (contribs • complaints) 20:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Hmm, that wording is going to cause debate. I suspect you mean "marking should be based on the non-trivial matters covered, not the trivial", as trivial articles existing fail to cause harm if good and are not normally a source of major upset when wrong, however bad articles on serious matters are obviously damaging. LinaMishima (talk) 20:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Articles about obscure useless things are not such a big problem for Wikipedia (except maybe in terms of server resources) because the release versions don't contain them. Wikipedia is a work in progress remember. Give it marks for the articles that, one way or another, it gets right; don't take away marks for the articles that are bad. • Anakin (contribs • complaints) 20:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
To respond to the above users: I don't think that a blanket policy of supporting deletion of articles is necessarily a good thing -- unless it's to counterbalance a blanket policy of opposing deletion of articles -- which Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron does. It's inherent in the name, it's inherent in their goal, it's inherent in their methodology (such as listing the blatant advertisement Bawls on a list of "saved" articles they're proud of). Them having a specific section about "We're not wild-eyed Communists" is itself evidence.
The emphasis is taken away from factualism in support of two inconsistent philosophies: Inclusionism, because it makes no sense, and Deletionism on the other hand because, though the underlying philosophy (Factualism) is correct, referring to it as "Deletionism" assumes an Inclusionist framework. The framing of the debate as "Include vs. Delete" isn't how it seems to be defined. When I want to delete nonsense from Wikipedia, it's because it's nonsense, not because I think deleting is in and of itself a good thing. It's not a subjective time-preference for "fix it now" nor is it some malicious desire to see articles on Wikipedia burned.
In general, it's not particularly difficult to add information to Wikipedia. I'm fairly certain, for instance, that I could write articles on Christian Zen, expand the article on Gil Fronsdal, and so on, no problem. My utterly useless essays that no one reads certainly didn't have any problem getting up. But why should I be forced to be an Inclusionist who is never allowed to delete nonsense and instead has to focus on narrow issues, while the basic articles are screwed up? Much of this silliness stems from an over-emphasis on restrictive "responsibilities" and "policies" (see bureaucratic collectivism) while individual editors apparently have no rights to defend themselves. When policy is practiced, people don't say, "Such and such infringed on my right to X." Instead, they say, "Such and such did X, Y, and Z," and it's often like McCarthyism.
All over Wikipedia, there is this subtle perception that it isn't important to fix articles and remove incorrect material. As an example of two projects I'm a part of: In Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics, the articles listed there are stubs and stuff that needs expanding, but that's the least of the troubles in economic stuff on Wikipedia, when you see the widespread monetary crankery of Austrian economics and pseudoeconomic laissez-faire plastered everywhere from Monopoly to Fractional-reserve banking. Then, on Wikipedia:WikiProject Buddhism, there is a massive list of obscure tasks -- several of which appear to be obscure sectarian POV-pushing -- when even some basic articles on Buddhism like the one on Zen need fixing. From what I've seen, throughout that entire article (including in the lead) there isn't a single mention of the focus on "the present moment", the doctrine which is arguably the most prominent doctrine which defines Zen.
Then there's the matter of Eastern philosophy and Eastern religion being distinct when no such distinction is made and I proved that using particularly reliable secondary sources. A person who attempted to put forth a rebuttal was so sloppy with his citations, one of them actually proved my point. Despite this, you have several users who repeat the claim "but philosophy is not religion," without apparently having read any of the discussion. I can't do anything about because per Build Communism I will blocked for invoking the right of self-defense of my edits against random editors that don't discuss their edits until they end up on 3RR and I'm blocked by an admin sympathetic to their cause -- and when I challenge it (if the block isn't upheld by someone sympathetic to their cause), the cards are stacked against me: For clear and obvious reasons (see List of cognitive biases, Halo effect), even if you're in the right, if you're blocked first and then have to make the case to be unblocked, it's a lot more difficult than simply arguing against the block to begin with.
Imagine if this same policy were applied to legal systems: Juries are often useless. Let's imagine a world where "violation of the law" is determined strictly by "consensus." It would be Orwellian, to say the least, and the idea that the ability to appeal being imprisoned unjustifiably somehow justifies the status-quo is clearly absurd.
Overall, the underlying problem seems to be a lack of scientific culture. There is no academic taboo against hubris combined with the average man's anti-intellectualism, such that editors will spam Wikipedia with their ideas (sometimes literally) backed primarily by hits from Google (it's only a matter of time until Wikipedia:GOOGLE becomes an essay) and anyone who comes along, and says, "Hey wait a minute, that's pseudoscience" is blocked over 3RR or burned at the stake if they're an admin. They regularly exhibit the kind of behavior that would probably warrant a D- on college term papers and the kinds of things that the academics who write outside encyclopedias would be ashamed to say or do, like being accused of hubris and getting caught using sloppy references. The overall point: Inclusionism is collectivist, against the freedom of the individual editor, and is given far great deference than reason. Hence WP:Expert rebellion.
In conclusion: We should Delete the rogue squadron and fix the deletion policies above, so they are more weighted away from radical inclusionism. Zenwhat (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Woah, well done, some nice thoughts there! Although I'm not sure what this means with respect to merit-to-exist, I think on the whole I totally agree with you. Well, I would having been involved with the whole WP:Expert rebellion and WP:Expert retention discussions, and the entire point on the lack of (and arguably, the discouragement of) scientific culture on wikipedia being another reason I have withdrawn from mainspace editing for now. Pu this way, I think I agree with you that a "rescue squad" is perhaps emphasising the wrong idea (reactionism rather than preventionism), although on the other hand, I do disagree with the lack of simple investigation I often saw in AfD nominations. However that is part of the wider issue at hand, in many respects. Let me go re-read the deletion policies you mentioned before commenting upon them. LinaMishima (talk) 23:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- As promised, I've re-read the list of issues with current deletion processes. WP:ATA is a wonderful document that really should be a major guideline, yes. With respect to most of the rest, the key issue is interpretation of the meaning of 'nonsense'. Many seem happy (or at least a few are so vocal and powerful to make it seem like many) to call well-referenced articles 'nonsense' if they are on obscure areas, aspects that are poorly known within the western world (but of importance elsewhere in the world) or might be perceived to be 'fancruft'. This whole matter seems to me to be a part of the issue wikipedia has with scientific culture, rather than one specific to anything else. LinaMishima (talk) 23:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- As the person who nominated Bawls for deletion I find it easy to see why WP:ARS feels that this falls under their mission. Please note that the article was up for deletion for lack of notability. Within 24 hours of the nomination sources sufficient to show notability of the subject was provided. While there can be no question that the article as it stands is bad and needs to be edited to conform with our standards for encyclopedic writing. It's also very hard to argue that the topic does not pass our standards for notability. There was an earlier AfD for deletion, but ARS had nothing to do with this discussion. Taemyr (talk) 15:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- As promised, I've re-read the list of issues with current deletion processes. WP:ATA is a wonderful document that really should be a major guideline, yes. With respect to most of the rest, the key issue is interpretation of the meaning of 'nonsense'. Many seem happy (or at least a few are so vocal and powerful to make it seem like many) to call well-referenced articles 'nonsense' if they are on obscure areas, aspects that are poorly known within the western world (but of importance elsewhere in the world) or might be perceived to be 'fancruft'. This whole matter seems to me to be a part of the issue wikipedia has with scientific culture, rather than one specific to anything else. LinaMishima (talk) 23:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
All-red DAB pages?
Is there a policy with regard to the existence of DAB pages where all the DABed links are red? For example: Sainte-Barbe. Thanks! -- Avocado (talk) 02:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- It just means the articles haven't been written yet. Though unattractive, I don't think it's too big of a problem. EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- If you are asking if they are "allowed" then yes, they are. We just don't have articles about those things yet, although those things do exist. - Rjd0060 (talk) 04:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- And since populated places like those are generally considered inherently notable, it is not unreasonable to expect that we could have articles on them. If it was full of redlinks for non-notable people or companies, it may be inappropriate. Mr.Z-man 20:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- Perhaps someone could scare up a list of disambiguation pages with red links (comparable to Wikipedia:Templates with red links? bd2412 T 22:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Releasing IP addresses of registered users: the Video Professor incident
According to the January 2, 2008 Wikipedia Signpost [2], a company called Video Professor did not appreciate criticisms in a Wikipedia article about it and demanded the IP addresses of registered Wikipedia editors via subpoenas delivered to Wikipedia along with two websites which criticized the company. The two other websites, infomercialscams.com and ripoffreport.com did not provide the subpoenaed info. Wikipedia did, “without a fight” according the article cited from ConsumerAffairs.Com of December 18, 2007 entitled “Video Professor Drops Subpoena, Goes After Wikipedia Users” [3]. This was discussed at Jimbo Wales talk page, User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 31#Wikipedia surrendering users' info without a fight with those complaining about it being told by administrators that that page was not an appropriate forum to discuss it and that their recourse was to write to the Wikimedia Foundation. Wales himself disputed the news report, saying ”It is false to say that we did not put up a fight.” without providing any details of the degree to which Wikipedia did put up a fight for the anonymity of registered users and their IP addresses. The buck was passed to Comcast to fight against revealing the subscriber info for the IP address. Sometimes the IP address itself provides too much identifying information. It appears that the other two sites did successfully avoid providing identifying info about those who posted there, but Wikipedia provided all the info they had, namely the IP addresses. This practice can only have a chilling effect on the willingness of Wikipedia editors to add even well-sourced information critical of organizations or companies who can afford to and who are willing to engage in litigation similar to S.L.A.P.P. tactics to prevent negative information being posted in Wikipedia. S.L.A.P.P. more specifically refers to comments made in reference to public policy issues, and is defined as litigation “frequently filed by organizations or individuals to intimidate and silence critics or opponents by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense so that they abandon their criticism or opposition.” The discussion was then archived at Wales’ talk page, so that appears not to be the appropriate forum to discuss it. I feel that this is an important policy area for discussion, and this seems like an appropriate forum. How hard did and should the Wikipedia legal staff fight to avoid turning over all the identifying information they have about registered editors (i.e., their IP address) when persons or companies do not like the information posted about them in Wikipedia articles? The article cited from consumeraffairs.com says “It's unclear why Wikipedia forfeited the IP addresses. A Wikipedia spokesman returned ConsumerAffairs.com's call but did not have the information requested. The individual with specific information regarding the subpoena did not return a phone call and e-mail.” It is time for the powers-that-be at Wikipedia to fully address this important issue, and for us to discuss the degree to which the secrecy of our IP addresses should be defended by the foundation in such cases.. Edison (talk) 14:55, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- I agree it is disgusting, but when those "law gents" use their lawyer charms it takes alot to say no to any of their questions. I have a few users who I would like to know the address maybe I should just treaten leagal action and get it. But what is more disgusting is a company going after non-profiting private citizens cause they don't like what they say. Well I guess I could be in the sights so just to cover myself, I think the people at Video Proffesor are a fine group of fellows.--AresAndEnyo (talk) 15:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for starting this thread and reviving this topic. I do think that Wikipedia behaved in a rather cowardly and unprincipled manner in this case. I also found Jimbo's explanations to be disingenuous when he wrote: "And we were successful in pushing the company to seek identifying data not from us but from the cable broadband provider, which is protected under the Cable Act from complying with a mere subpoena". It is clear to me that the responsibility for making the First Amendment argument in court lies primarily with the content provider (in this case Wikipedia) rather than the internet service provider. Wikipedia simply decided to pass the buck in the quickest way possible. I also find it outrageous that Wikipedia, apparently, did not notify the WP users affected that their IP addressed have been released.
- I do think that these kind of actions by Wikipedia will have, or at least have a potential to have, a substantial chilling effect on editors of WP articles in the future, even when (which was not the case here) undisputably reliable sources are available for a particular bit of critical information. Also, if and when other companies find out about this Wikipedia practice, they will be encouraged to follow VP's example. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 16:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Were the users/IP editors/whomever notified by the WMF that their information was released? Lawrence Cohen 16:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I've been invited to comment here because of a post I made to Jimbo's talk page about this incident. More Wikipedians need to volunteer to resolve conflict of interest issues. This lawsuit is an example of what happens when the community fails. DurovaCharge! 19:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, but what are you talking about? The best I can tell, the WP community did not fail here. You should really look up the archived "talk" page for Video Professor. There was a dispute, followed by an involvement of an experienced WP editor (Barneca) in late August. There was an active discussion by all sides after that, and a clean consensus NPOV version of the article was written by Barneca in early September. This is exactly how the dispute resolution process is supposed to work in Wikipedia, isn't it? The lawsuit in question originally primarily targeted two other "customer reviews" websites. But those sites fought back. The company dropped its subpoena against them and went after the "weakest link", namely Wikipedia. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 19:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- Y'know what would make COI-monitoring easier? IP Addresses.
- If we're willing to release them to anyone who get a subpoena, we might as well let our own admins see them. It would make checkuser moot, reduce bureaucracy, virtually eliminate abusive sockpuppetry, and increasing transparency. I think it's time we revisit this. If we're willing to say (as said below) that Tor is the only assurance of privacy on Wikipedia, let's at least do something useful with it. Cool Hand Luke 05:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
This is why, A: if you want privacy, you should use Tor, and B:Why wikipedia must not blanket ban all traffic from Tor nodes. --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I have seen no response to the issue of why Wikipeda reportedly a) failed to respond in any way to the initial subpoena, and then later b)coughed up the IP address demanded by the aggrieved article's subject, unlike the other two websites who never did. Is this what we should expect of Wikipedia? Did other communications or legal processes take place behind the scenes? Should we expect that Wikipedia will fold like a house of cards if any person, company or group takes offense at any editing and tell them all they know about the real world identity of the editor who has in some way offended the aggrieved party? Does Wikipedeia have legal representation, and what are the policies for defending the privacy of editors? Edison (talk) 03:43, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- There was some discussion of this issue in Talk:Criticism of Wikipedia. Here is a quote from JzG's post there: "A subpoena as part of a court proceeding would have been passed to our general counsel, Mike Godwin. I don't imagine he'd have handed anything over unless he thought it was necessary". You can also read my response there. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 04:30, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- You seem to refer to Talk:Criticism of Wikipedia#Wikipedia surrendering users' info without a fight. The question is why Wikipedia apparently did not "put up a fight" while two other identified websites DID put up a fight and did not reveal the IP addresses of the posters in question. It appears that with a minimal legal effort, the identities of editor might have been protected. The implication is that editors should NEVER post anything which might offend anyone willing to hire a lawyer and demand to know the editor's identity. Edison (talk) 04:54, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh wow, this is really screwed up. -- Ned Scott 05:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Still screwed up, but I can only assume that, given Wikipedia's limited legal resources, they honestly did not believe they had any other reasonable choice in this situation. It's a situation that seems to be unfair to both the users and the Foundation. The action seems to be legal, even with the Foundation's privacy policy (however, I am in no way an expert on such things, and could be completely wrong about that). Wikipedia might be a giant of a website, but as an organization, it's pretty small. There isn't much to shield us from the outside world, unlike those other companies that did not give out IP addresses. I believe Jimbo when he says that they did put up a fight. I suspect the only real way for us to improve such a situation would be to better support the Foundation's legal resources, either with more volunteer lawyers, or monetary donations specifically intended for legal resources. -- Ned Scott 06:32, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- As I have explained privately to a number of individuals, the consumeraffairs writer was eager to rush a story out, and did not wait until I was able to respond to him regarding our compliance with the Video Professor case. The short answer is that we did not initially comply -- we resisted -- and the Video Professor people then proceeded to start a potentially expensive contempt-of-court process in Florida against us. We retained an outside law firm to represent us. We investigated how we might narrow their demand for compliance (we did narrow it), how much private information we'd then be disclosing (very little) and how to get the Video Professor people to realize that we don't maintain a lot of private data about, well, anyone. This is what we did, and then the Video Professor people were forced to seek private subscriber data from Internet providers (which do have subscriber data but also greater legal protections against producing it). So far as I know, the actual facts in our response have never been reported anywhere, and for various policy reasons, including our continuing ability to keep private information as safe as possible under the framework of legal protections we have, I simply cannot spell out everything we did in a public forum. Now, if the price of maintaining good legal practice on keeping confidential matters confidential is that we get the occasional critical blog entry or face imaginative assume-the-worst threads on the Village Pump, I'm okay with that. But I can pretty much assure you that just about every criticism offered here is factually wrong. Every single one. We paid money to outside counsel to respond to the Video Professor complaint, and it was well-spent, and the result was extremely limited in terms of WMF exposure or editor exposure. You may be believe it is appropriate for WMF to revise its privacy policy (which was created a year before I got here), and I can assure that the policy is under review. MikeGodwin (talk) 08:54, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, but that is just not good enough.
- 1) First a technical point. What is the WP privacy policy that you refer to and where can it be found?
- 2) I simply cannot believe that WP has more limited financial resources than the two other much smaller websites that were targeted by this lawsuit. If that is actually true, this case brings to light a major structural problem with the way WP operates that still needs to be addressed for the sake of the future. To me this means that the WMF needs to set up a separate "legal defense" fund and actively solicit contributions to such a fund that can be used in future legal actions. Moreover, even acception the "we are too poor to fight" argument, you did not have to go it alone and you did not actually have hire a private law firm to handle this case. There are other non-profit and public advocacy groups whose legal help you could have requested (and I am sure that a more favorable financial arrangement could have been negotiated with them than with a provate law firm). These include, for example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which has a separate legal department for helping with internet freedom of speech cases) and the Public Citizen (which was used by the other two websites in the case).
- 3) I am not impressed with your contention that the WMF did "fight back" based on the fact that you managed to limit the scope of the data released to the IP addresses and that you did not comply with the subpoena immediately. In most cases an IP address is the only info that WP has on a user. You managed to explain this to the plantiff. Bravo! That is quite a legal victory. But, seriously, IP addresses was what you had to give up and that is what you gave up. The fact that you were threatened with a contempt motion is also not a good excuse. So were the other two websites. They chose to contest the underlying subpoena on the First Amendment grounds but you did not. Isn't that correct?
- 4) Neither am I impressed by your argument that you passed the hot potato to the cable company which "has greater legal protection". This was your hot potato to hold and to deal with. In my view, it is self-evident that the primary responsibility for making the First Amendement freedom of speech argument in court lies with the content provider (in this case WP) rather than with the internet service provider (the cable company). It was your case to make, not the cable company's.
- 5) The stakes and potential consequences of this case are much greater for Wikipedia, which has millions of users, than for the two other websites targeted by the lawsuit, and they are greater than you would have us believe. This is not just a matter of geting "the occasional critical blog entry or face imaginative assume-the-worst threads on the Village Pump". The editorial independence and freedom of editors from intimidation are at stake here. This is an important basic principle which is at the core of what Wikipedia is and what it stands for. I am sure you are hoping that this matter will just go away. And maybe it will. But don't you realize what could happen if the info about this case spreads around, both to WP users and to the various companies which will be encouraged to follow the plantiff's example in this case. Just knowing what happened here has the potential of having a strong chilling self-cencorship effect on the future WP editors. I don't know about the others, but I sure as hell learned my lesson here to completely stay away from touching the WP articles dealing with any kinds of current commercial entities.
- 6) For the above reasons I think that it is important for WP to present its side of the story more fully.
- 7) You did not notify the WP users whose IP info was released correct? Would it have been to much to expect from you to leave brief messages at the affected WP users' talk pages asking them to contact the WMF foundation directly?
- "imaginative assume-the-worst threads on the Village Pump"?? The facts reported were that someone took offense at the contents of an article or its talk page, then demanded and got the IP address of the registered editor in question. It was posited that this sequence of events encourages other subjects of articles to similarly exercise a chilling effect on Wikipedia editors in their willingness to add content that someone willing and able to go to court might take offense at. Is it the fact that the other two websites, which successfully fought the subpoena actually have greater financial resources that we do? The Alexa ranking of infomercialscams.com is 115,497. That of ripoffreport.com is 13,127. The Alexa ranking of Wikipedia.org is 9. What is the cost of allowing litigious subjects of articles to stifle criticism in Wikipedia articles? Did we enlist the aid of Public Citizen [4] [5] ? Edison (talk) 14:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Besides the Public Citizen, how about the EFF? Presumably Mike is still on "good" terms with them. Lawrence Cohen 15:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- "imaginative assume-the-worst threads on the Village Pump"?? The facts reported were that someone took offense at the contents of an article or its talk page, then demanded and got the IP address of the registered editor in question. It was posited that this sequence of events encourages other subjects of articles to similarly exercise a chilling effect on Wikipedia editors in their willingness to add content that someone willing and able to go to court might take offense at. Is it the fact that the other two websites, which successfully fought the subpoena actually have greater financial resources that we do? The Alexa ranking of infomercialscams.com is 115,497. That of ripoffreport.com is 13,127. The Alexa ranking of Wikipedia.org is 9. What is the cost of allowing litigious subjects of articles to stifle criticism in Wikipedia articles? Did we enlist the aid of Public Citizen [4] [5] ? Edison (talk) 14:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Was the IP address given up to the cable company without contesting the supoenae because the cable company would also then have to be challenged to release their own client personal data? What if the IP address itself had personally identifying information, which is not uncommon? Would the challenge have been made to keep it in then? Lawrence Cohen 15:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Would it be possible for the WMF counsel to clarify if this has ever happened before, with information being released? When, and how many times? Lawrence Cohen 15:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm sorry you don't find my answer satisfactory. That said, these responses strike me as driven by a lack of awareness of the realities of the sheer volume of legal threats facing Wikimedia Foundation on a weekly basis. For example, a big deal is made out of how smaller websites responded -- conveniently ignoring the fact that Wikimedia Foundation is a larger website that has only the legal resources of a smaller website. We deal with many legal threats every week -- sometimes more than once a day -- and you never hear about them because they're handled quietly and efficiently in ways that are consistent with our values. We have to respond in volume to legal threats in ways that smaller websites don't have to. My view is that so long as my friends and former colleagues at EFF and Public Citizen are satisfied with my keeping them informed (after all, we've worked together for longer than the Foundation has been in existence), then I'm satisfied. Wikimedia of course has a privacy policy, approved by the Board fully a year prior to my being hired. That policy can be found by searching for "Privacy Policy" on Wikimedia.org. (If that's too hard, try <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy>.) If you believe that WMF's privacy policy is wrong or needs to be improved, I'm happy to listen. So's the Board. I certainly have some ideas about how to improve it. I'm especially interested in hearing your feedback if you're an attorney or otherwise legally trained. Brick-hurling and personal attacks will be less welcome, naturally. MikeGodwin (talk) 20:24, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- No disrespect nor attack was intended, Mike, I was just asking a couple of extra questions. I'm just myself primarily curious if, when such information is released, what steps are taken to notify individuals that their private information (IPs) was released, and are they notified to whom they were released? Lawrence Cohen 20:30, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- The privacy policy states that the IP address of a registered user may be released "In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement." The other websites challenged the validity of the subpoena. It is unfortunate if we are unable to dispute the validity of a subpoena as other websites did. Sorry if the questions or concerns expressed have seemed to you to be "Brick-hurling and personal attacks." It is great that daily legal problems are handled efficiently. I hope that the turning over of IP addresses is not a frequent occurrence; we still have not heard how often this happens. The suggestion above was a good one about seeking funding for the legal defense of the intellectual freedom of the foundation in preserving the right to anonymously add referenced, non-libellous content. Perhaps the balance of funding is tipped too far towards servers and not far enough toward the legal expenses. Edison (talk) 21:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Do you have a recommedation about how to notify those who've edited anonymously, whose IP address may be shared by many other individual users? Also, is there a recommendation about how to notify those whose listed contact information may be deliberately incorrect? MikeGodwin (talk) 21:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- In the case of IP-only editors, there is no practical way to do it, beyond leaving a note on the IP page directing the user to contact the Foundation I would imagine, and then the Foundation (who is responsible for the safekeeping of IP info) would need to vet to make sure the person contacting them did indeed make the edits in question. For the logged-in users, it would be as simple as mailing them via their Username, if they have email enabled. If not, leave a note asking them to contact the Foundation with urgency. Lawrence Cohen 21:15, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Exactly right. If a user has an e-mail address as a part of their WP profile, you can send an e-mail to the user at that address asking to contact WMF and, possibly, containing some kind of a key phrase or word that can be used for authentication purposes when that user does call WMF. Or you can simply include the information about the IP addresses disclosure in the e-mail message.
- If a WP user does not have an e-mail address on file, you could leave a message at that user's talk page asking them to contact WMF, or perhaps asking them to update their profile and include an e-mail address there. Even if a user is unwilling to provide an e-mail address as a part of their WP profile, there are other ways of devising an authentication protocol. E.g., off the top of my head: when the user calls WMF, you can ask him/her to make a specific edit somewhere on Wikipedia, using their username, and then immediately call back. Or something like that. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 22:07, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Do you have a recommedation about how to notify those who've edited anonymously, whose IP address may be shared by many other individual users? Also, is there a recommendation about how to notify those whose listed contact information may be deliberately incorrect? MikeGodwin (talk) 21:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
<undent> It might be good to canvas editors and particularly legally trained editors for their ideas. I also think this highlights the potential value of a separate legal warchest, and fundraising to meet legal threats and challenges. I personally might be more inclined to donate to a legal warchest than a general Wikimedia Foundation fund. This is a good thread to get people thinking about this kind of thing. Comments?--Filll (talk) 21:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- While I am not legally trained, I do have a few thoughts about this. I have just read the WMF privacy policy and it looks pretty wimpy. First, there is no requirement there for notification of registered WP users when their identifying info (IP addresses and possibly e-mail addresses) are being subpoenaed by third parties. In my view such a notification is absolutely necessary. Moreover, I think that such notification must occur at the moment when a subpoena is received, rather than after the identifying data is released. This way the users in question will have time to retain their own legal counsel and possibly contest the release of their data directly with the court involved. Second, some kind of higher bar needs to be set for releasing the data. As the privacy policy reads now, WMF can, if it so chooses, release the user's data simply upon receiving a subpoena. Simply having a valid subpoena from some civil suit (which is usually pretty easy to obtain) seems to be a rather low bar for releasing some user's info. Admittedly, I don't have a specific alternative suggestion at the moment but I believe it is possible to come up with one. Third, the policy is somewhat fuzzy on exactly what kind of identifying info may be released. E.g. it does not mention explicitly an e-mail address that a WP user may have on file as a part of their WP profile. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 22:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- And, oh yes, I certainly think that setting up a permanent legal defense fund for WMF is a good idea. Nsk92 (talk) 22:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- As someone who also edited the Video Professor page during the timeframe being discussed, I’ve two concerns here, one personal, one general.
- First, the personal. I would like to know if my IP address was provided to anyone. I would hope that if it was, someone would have felt a responsibility to try to contact me to tell me so (I’m pretty easy to reach). But if not, I’m directly requesting that they do so now. If this isn’t the place to make this request, please let me know what is; Mike Godwin’s email? info-en-o@wikimedia.org? Somewhere else?
- More generally, whether I’m directly affected or not, I’m still unclear (possibly my fault for not being able to parse legalese) whether the IP addresses that were released were provided to Video Professor, or whether they were provided to the corresponding ISP’s, who have more protection against this kind of fishing expedition. Was any of the other information that a Checkuser could provide, or (as Nsk92 asks above), email addresses, also provided to anyone?
- Mr. Goodwin, I understand the privacy policy I agreed to when I got an account here, but surely you understand the concerns of the affected people here? Is it really fair to characterize them as "imaginative assume-the-worst threads"? Volunteer organization or not, cash-strapped or not, whether you followed the letter of the privacy policy or not, if you did not fight hard against a fishing-expedition type subpoena, I’m very disappointed (for whatever that’s worth). If you did fight hard, then thank you. We're volunteers too, we're (many of us) cash strapped too, and we deserve all the fight you can muster, and deserve not to be dismissed as Chicken Little when we ask questions about how our privacy was treated by the WMF. --barneca (talk) 22:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- I don't know who Mr. Goodwin is. barneca, when you ask 'Is it really fair to characterize them as "imaginative assume-the-worst threads', my only question can be -- did you read the personal attacks started off in this thread? Did you pass over the words "cowardly" and "unprincipled" and "disingenuous"? Some people insist on denigrating those whose actions they disagree with. It seems to me to have happened here, early on, and, being a human being, I cannot help but be struck by it. If I was name-calling or personally attacking you, especially when you knew you had taken steps to protect everyone (and still are taking steps), would you take it well? This is not to say there is no room for constructive criticism -- obviously, there's plenty of room. But I think the culture of personal attack is unhelpful at solving any problems or improving anything. That's just my opinion. MikeGodwin (talk) 02:07, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Apologies for mispelling your name. Yes, one person has been criticising WMF much heavier than others, and if they asked my advice I'd suggest they tone it down if they want to get information out of you and achieve anything more than just pissing you off. But (a) they didn't start the thread, (b) as they are probably one of the targets of the subpoena, I can see why they're upset, even if they're handling it poorly, and (c) unless you've provided them with info you haven't provided me, they haven't been given much to go on. There are others discussing this here that have been polite, and (I think) have reasonable questions. I will note that I haven't made any personal attacks, and I still have two questions that remain unanswered. --barneca (talk) 02:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- barneca, I accept your apology. Without going into detail that I can't make public, I can say that I believe the recent dropping of the Video Professor lawsuit derives at least in part from our demonstration that, even though we complied (narrowly) with a lawful subpoena, the information we provided could not be usefully employed to identify mass defendants. (I would also say that it wasn't just one person doing the attacking -- it's just that one person did it less gracefully than another.) I believe my friend Paul Levy did a great job of promoting the defense of this case at Public Citizen, and I'm very grateful for his help in resolving this. See <http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2580>. (Paul of course knew to call me before making pronouncements about Wikipedia's response on this issue.) MikeGodwin (talk) 03:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- We just need to accept the fact that anonymity on the internet is a myth. I have worked on cases which required discovery of the true identities of posters of information on the internet (although not on Wikipedia). I can assure every one of you that none of us has an individual right to be anonymous on the internet; at least, not a right that a court will recognize. Granted, ISPs may keep such information close to the vest, but in a serious enough case, the information will end up in the hands of the party seeking it. The best solution to this problem is simple: be familiar where the line lies between conduct that is permissible and conduct which will subject you to legal sanction. In other words, don't defame, invade privacy, or infringe copyrights. This is not advice to go to the opposite extreme of legal paranoia - it is permissible to say bad, mean things about people if those bad, mean things are true. It is, moreover, permissible to report that party "X" has said specific bad, mean things about party "Y", so long as you can cite your sources, which is something we should be doing anyway, and particularly with respect to living persons and other active interests. It is equally permissible to repeat personal details that are elsewhere in the public domain. And it is equally permissible to make a fair use of copyrighted material. Let's stop living under the illusion that we can say whatever we want without our identity being known, and act so that what we say can not be used against us even if our identity is known. bd2412 T 03:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- BD2412, up to a point, I agree with your comments. But the key phrase here is "serious enough case". As a matter of policy, I think it is necessary for Wikipedia to set a more precise standard and more clearly define the circumstances under which the user info may be released. E.g., perhaps the policy could give a list of principles that will be applied in deciding which cases to contest and which not to contest. At the moment, in my opinion, the bar seems to be set pretty low: having a valid subpoena. If that is all it takes to have one's personal info released, than I don't see the position of extreme legal paranoya as being particularly unreasonable. Also, there is the question of notification of the affected users, which is not required by the current WMF privacy policy. I that that basic fairness considerations require that WP notify the users whose identifying info is being subpoenaed. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 04:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Oh, I'm not saying that "in a serious enough case" Wikipedia should give up the information; I'm saying that in a serious enough case the court will make Wikipedia give up the information. Wikipedia simply can not financially stand up against the typical thousand dollar per day contempt fine. A court could quite realistically order Wikipedia to turn over all records of all edits made (including the IP addresses behind all the users making those edits), and could send the local sheriff to wherever the servers are with a warrant and hard drive on which to copy all that info, to be turned over to the party who is suing. In fact, a new set of discovery rules was recently enacted (they came into effect in Dec. 2007) which makes it much easier for parties to get electronic database-type info from parties. The WMF can't provide a list of circumstances under which it will or will not turn over information, because there is no way to predict when an opposing party will be able to convince a court to force such a turnover. bd2412 T 04:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- It is interesting news about the new discovery rules. Could you please provide a reference? I would certainly like to look this up. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 04:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- The Yale Law Journal has an excellent article on the topic posted at this location. bd2412 T 05:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- There are a lot of persons who might find fault with what is said about them in Wikipedia, and a lot of judges in this country who might issue subpoenas which are overly broad or which would not survive legal challenges. Mr. Godwin, you said the consumeraffairs reporter did not wait for your reply. Did Wikipedia's legal representatives initially file any court papers challenging the validity of the subpoena? Mr. Levy did, and his are available for inspection. Did Wikipedia respond to the initial filing, or only to the later contempt threat? Did Wikipedia contact the registered user before the release, so that he/she might contest the subpoena? Did Wikipedia notify them after the fact of the information release? We must comply with legal subpoenas, but we should contest the validity of any overly broad fishing expeditions or subpoenas which do not conform to the applicable laws and precedents. I quote the recent memorial tribute from Jimbo Wales for a blogger in China who was beaten to death by government officials [6]: "Stop censoring the Internet. Change laws to give strong protections to people who are speaking the truth." That "strong protection" should include fighting hard against releasing personaly identifying information of registered editors, to avoid a blameless editor having to bear the cost of proving in court that what he published was true, not defamatory, and not a trademark infringement. Such a "victory" would in the end be a pyrric one, and would have a chilling effect on the completeness and accuracy of Wikipedia. Edison (talk) 05:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- The Yale Law Journal has an excellent article on the topic posted at this location. bd2412 T 05:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- It is interesting news about the new discovery rules. Could you please provide a reference? I would certainly like to look this up. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 04:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Oh, I'm not saying that "in a serious enough case" Wikipedia should give up the information; I'm saying that in a serious enough case the court will make Wikipedia give up the information. Wikipedia simply can not financially stand up against the typical thousand dollar per day contempt fine. A court could quite realistically order Wikipedia to turn over all records of all edits made (including the IP addresses behind all the users making those edits), and could send the local sheriff to wherever the servers are with a warrant and hard drive on which to copy all that info, to be turned over to the party who is suing. In fact, a new set of discovery rules was recently enacted (they came into effect in Dec. 2007) which makes it much easier for parties to get electronic database-type info from parties. The WMF can't provide a list of circumstances under which it will or will not turn over information, because there is no way to predict when an opposing party will be able to convince a court to force such a turnover. bd2412 T 04:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- BD2412, up to a point, I agree with your comments. But the key phrase here is "serious enough case". As a matter of policy, I think it is necessary for Wikipedia to set a more precise standard and more clearly define the circumstances under which the user info may be released. E.g., perhaps the policy could give a list of principles that will be applied in deciding which cases to contest and which not to contest. At the moment, in my opinion, the bar seems to be set pretty low: having a valid subpoena. If that is all it takes to have one's personal info released, than I don't see the position of extreme legal paranoya as being particularly unreasonable. Also, there is the question of notification of the affected users, which is not required by the current WMF privacy policy. I that that basic fairness considerations require that WP notify the users whose identifying info is being subpoenaed. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 04:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- We just need to accept the fact that anonymity on the internet is a myth. I have worked on cases which required discovery of the true identities of posters of information on the internet (although not on Wikipedia). I can assure every one of you that none of us has an individual right to be anonymous on the internet; at least, not a right that a court will recognize. Granted, ISPs may keep such information close to the vest, but in a serious enough case, the information will end up in the hands of the party seeking it. The best solution to this problem is simple: be familiar where the line lies between conduct that is permissible and conduct which will subject you to legal sanction. In other words, don't defame, invade privacy, or infringe copyrights. This is not advice to go to the opposite extreme of legal paranoia - it is permissible to say bad, mean things about people if those bad, mean things are true. It is, moreover, permissible to report that party "X" has said specific bad, mean things about party "Y", so long as you can cite your sources, which is something we should be doing anyway, and particularly with respect to living persons and other active interests. It is equally permissible to repeat personal details that are elsewhere in the public domain. And it is equally permissible to make a fair use of copyrighted material. Let's stop living under the illusion that we can say whatever we want without our identity being known, and act so that what we say can not be used against us even if our identity is known. bd2412 T 03:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- barneca, I accept your apology. Without going into detail that I can't make public, I can say that I believe the recent dropping of the Video Professor lawsuit derives at least in part from our demonstration that, even though we complied (narrowly) with a lawful subpoena, the information we provided could not be usefully employed to identify mass defendants. (I would also say that it wasn't just one person doing the attacking -- it's just that one person did it less gracefully than another.) I believe my friend Paul Levy did a great job of promoting the defense of this case at Public Citizen, and I'm very grateful for his help in resolving this. See <http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2580>. (Paul of course knew to call me before making pronouncements about Wikipedia's response on this issue.) MikeGodwin (talk) 03:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Edison, there are a number of hidden assumptions in your questions here, especially about what normal response to subpoenas is. For various attorney/client confidence reasons, I can't answer them at all. I will say that I don't believe we won a "Pyrrhic" victory at any point -- that what we succeeded in doing was more important, in that we demonstrated that compliance with the kind of laundry-list subpoena originally offered by Video Professor was something we are not going to do, and that compliance with a narrower subpoena is not going to be helpful for litigants fishing for information. I would go into more detail if you were a party bound by legal rules regarding confidential information, but unfortunately I cannot. If your view is that we might have handled things differently, I cannot help but agree with you, but if your view is that we did anything that did not ultimately serve the rights of anonymous contributors to Wikipedia, there I must disagree. And this is an answer I can't really elaborate on without violating professional ethics. MikeGodwin (talk) 09:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
3
- If there are "hidden assumptions" then identify them. I have not seen much willingness to respond to polite and reasonable questions. "Stonewalling" went out with Nixon. Somewhere there should be a clear account of what Wikipedia did in response to the subpoenas, in addition to vague claims that lots of effort was exerted. Edison (talk) 03:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- Note that when I referred to a "pyrrhic victory, I did not suggest that Wikipedia had attained one. I said that a pyrric victory is what an individual editor would have if a website delivered his personal information to the person who objected to a posting or edit, when the editor won in court after spending say tens of thousands of dollars to prove that his editing was true and not an libel or infringement of the plaintiffs rights. I still endorse the idea of a legal "warchest" to avoid the "S.L.A.P.P."ing of internet posters. In the end, perhaps what is needed (and may have been done) on the part of you and the foundation is a "lessons learned" session, even if we, the editors, administrators and controibutors get only the summary version, in accord with legal ethics, to see what was done right (such as narrowing the scope of the demand), what could have been done better (despite repeated requests you have never stated whether the Wikipedia editor was notified at any time that his info had been demanded or had been turned over) and how the public perception of the events could have been shaped better(despite a request above, you have not provided the information that the consumeraffairs reporter requiested and which you say he did not give you a chance to provide). Surely Wikipedia has some friendly contacts in the news communbity who would publish our side of the story. Did consumeraffairs refuse to publish your side of the legal battle after you responded to his request? Instead the impression is one of stonewalling in the face of widespread media criticism, with vague assertions of having put up a fight. Edison (talk) 13:59, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- I can answer, at least partially, one of the above questions. My IP data was released by WMF, as was confirmed yesterday by Mike Godwin in his e-mail to me. I had sent him an e-mail yesterday from an e-mail associated with my WP profile asking if my IP data had been released, and he responded. And, no, I was not notified by WMF at the time the release occurred, or at the time it was being sought. To be be fair to WMF, I should say that until recently I did not have an e-mail address associated with my WP profile. However, I think it was possible, and from my point of view, very desirable, for WMF to attempt to contact me at the time by leaving a brief message at my talk page and asking me to contact them directly; I believe that a reasonable authentication protocol could have been established. I don't know if, at the time, WMF tried to notify by e-mail those users who did have e-mail addresses associated with their WP profiles. I suspect that they did not, but if I am wrong, I'd like to be corrected. Speaking about lessons learned, I certainly think that the WMF privacy policy needs to be modified to include the notification requirement of the WP users whose identifying info is being sought by third parties. Basic fairness considerations require this. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 14:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- A few thoughts..... from someone who has done much business on the North American side of the pond. (1) One of the reasons I choose to live in what could be termed a damp and dull part of the world in winter, is because I love the history of Europe - one of the reasons I edit here. America offers much great opportunity, but the key issue for me has always been the constitutional dilemma between the right to free speech, and the right to carry arms - or in modern days, the right to fully fund a lawyer. I don't think anyone or any corporation has enough monies to stop a fully funded party who is determined enough, and even slowing them is expensive (2) With the right of free speech, comes the need for understanding the others point of view - you need not agree with it, but you must understand it. That way, much as though you have the right to say whatever you want about them, sometimes it is not wise to do so (3) As someone, like others here, who has worked in the IT/telecoms and internet industry for a while, there seems to be a view by some users that its the last bastion of being able to get away with whatever you want to. Wake up, it is not - much like any other open access space, the power of the law is absolute and because of technology does not separate it from the other parts of the real world. Screw up here or do something wrong, and the local lawyers office will be more than happy to prove the point, should an individual or the authorities choose to pursue you. At present, this area of law is still developing greatly, so coming up with hard and fast "rules" would presently be an unproductive waste of time. (4) It seems from reading the above debate, that some parties who took part in the editing of the article still don't know whether their details have been released. Can the board confirm the current status of informing each of those who edited between the key dates, whether their details have been released? (5) It does seem to me that one of the learning lessons from this incident is a need for re-drafting of the privacy guidelines here, and the associated need for some form of legal fighting fund if the project is to move forward along its current aims. Perhaps that fund is best created by some form of insurance levy, contributed by editors annually on an individual opt-in/opt-out basis - it wouldn't mean you get more protection from the rules/guidelines/laws BUT it would fund your defence if called on in the interests of the individual and the project. Setting certain legal precedents would be detrimental to the long term aims of Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia, and not defending correctly (fully?) would mean a degradation in capability and delivery. (6) Having looked through the editing history of the Video Professor article, it seems to me that in light of us being able to apply for the new rollback tool, there is a need to defend the project through the creation of a new automatic "article locking" tool. In September, the number of edits across a number of editors was extraordinary - around the 21st September, at least six editors (half anon's) added various pieces which were reverted/replaced by registered users. My credit card company recently chopped my card for an hour after I tried to put a 51p PayPal confirmation fee through it, due to security concerns - we should look at similar rules for creating a tool which, on certain criteria being met, allows trusted registered users (outside the administrator community?) the ability to lock an article quickly - or even automatically undertaken by the system. The edit record on Video Professor alone during the period in question should have said to someone on the admin team that "all was not well" and taken action to protect the project. Rgds, - Trident13 (talk) 14:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Here are a few interesting bits of information from the Dec 24 Public Citizen's motion opposing the extension of time [7]. First, it appears that the IP addresses of sixteen WP users were released. See page 10 of the motion: "in late November it apparently obtained IP information with respect to the sixteen Doe defendants whose pseudonyms are set forth in the subpoena to Wikipedia". Here is a quote from pages 5-6 of the motion: "Upon checking the docket, however, Leonard discovered that on December 17, VP had filed a motion to extension of “time to serve the defendants.” DN 10, proposed order. The motion recited that VP had obtained identifying IP information from Wikipedia after filing a motion to hold Wikipedia in contempt for failure to respond to its original subpoena, apparently without any notice to the posters." Admittedly, this comes from a somewhat indirect source, but the text does seem to indicate that at the time no notice was given by WMF to any of the WP users whose info was released. Another interesting quote, from pages 4-5 of the motion: "The record does not reflect it, but it is our understanding that the proprietor of ripoffreport.com similarly objected to disclosure. For reasons that do not appear of record, it appears that the Wikipedia Foundation failed to respond to its subpoena in any way." Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 17:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Why are we keeping these records in the first place, if doing so has the potential to place Wikipedia users in legal jeopardy? Is Checkuser really that important? Keep no IP records and there will be nothing to subpoena. Alternatively, get rid of the idiotic ban on open proxies (which violates foundation issue #2, incidentally) and let people use the effective tools that are already available to protect their own privacy. Sure, Willy on Wheels might come back if we do that, but I'd rather deal with Willy than with rich, amoral corporate lawyers. *** Crotalus *** 01:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- It looks like the fortunate among the 16 exposed editors are those who did their editing from an internet cafe, at a library, or via a neighbor's wireless internet portal. Woe betide the neighbor who did not password protect the access to his wireless router, and who gets a summmons which properly should go the unknown borrower of bandwidth. All hail the Wikipedia 16! Long may they edit. Has the foundation notified any of the other 15 yet? Edison (talk) 03:04, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Would somebody from WMF (Mike Godwin?) PLEASE comment here on the notification issue? Specifically, a) why the affected WP users were, apparently, not notified by WMF at the time the release of their IP data was being sought, and b) what you think about changing the WMF privacy policy to include some kind of notification requirement for these kind of situations. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 05:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- There is no "attorney-client" type privilege between you and Wikipedia. In other words, even if Wikipedia does not have to give up your ip address, if Wikipedia sends you a notification that it has been requested, that communication will be subject to discovery by the opposing party. bd2412 T 18:18, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- Hmmm, that is certainly something to consider. A few quick thoughts. First, for those WP users who do have an e-mail address associated with their WP profile, a notification could be sent to that e-mail. Presumably, the e-mail addresses in question would by subject to discovery by the opposing party anyway (along with the IP addresses), so sending a notification e-mail would not lead to revealing any additional identifying info, that would not have been revealed otherwise. Second, even if there is no e-mail address in the WP profile, there should be a way of devising a notification method that does not result in recording of any extra identifying info about the user (and thus no additional identifying info would be revealed to the third party even if the fact that the notification has occurred becomes known to it). E.g., something like this: WMF leaves a brief message at the affected user's talk page asking to call WMF from a public phone to discuss a legal matter. After receiving such a phone call, WMF would need to authenticate that the person calling is indeed the WP user in question. This could be done in a variety of ways. For example, the user may be asked to make a particular edit somewhere in Wikipedia or perhaps make a prescribed small change in that user's profile, and then call back at a particular time, at which point the user would be notified about the legal action in question. Perhaps there are other and simpler ways of achieving the same result. This way WMF will have no additional identifying information about the user to disclose, that WMF did not have already. Of course, the actual fact that a notification has occurred may have to be disclosed, but that does not seem to me to be a problem... I think that the WP users whose info is being sought by a third party deserve a chance to contest in court the release of their identifying info before such release actually occurs. Speaking for myself, I would have certainly liked to have that chance before my info was released. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 21:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
These are serious questions raised by both sides. I'd suggest that they be raised directly with Jimbo at Talk:Jimbo Wales.--Onlyjusthisonetime (talk) 20:16, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- It appears that was attempted first. IIRC, User:Edison was told that was not the proper forum (assuming you meant User talk:Jimbo Wales. --barneca (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- As usual, I'm close to being right, but just off enough to look dumb. Substitute User:Nsk92 for User:Edison in my comment above, and apologies to both. I may have to try to find out more about this "preview" button I keep hearing about --barneca (talk) 01:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
The individuals who know they were affected should probably contact the Foundation directly, by phone or mail:
This isn't a Jimbo thing, this is a legal counsel/Board of Trustees thing perhaps. That still leaves a lot of questions, though, of these other 15 IPs that were released, and if the Foundation knows which users were associated with them. Lawrence Cohen 21:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Arbitrary section break for VP thread
Thread was getting pretty long, so I've thrown in a section break for easier editing.
Addressing BD2412's comment above: Notification of affected users, without potentially risking their privacy further, would be easy:
- If the only requested information is the IP address, then:
- IP editors aren't affected
- Accounts can have a message put on their talk page, either with a notification that their IP address has been requested by subpoena, or just a message to contact the WMF via email. The editor can create a new throw-away email account at yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc. to correspond. At that time, the WMF can inform them what information was requested; if they just list the type of information requested, but don't specify the user-specific info, discovery is useless anyway. It's easy to confirm an email is from an account (for example, in the email you write "I will type "qwerty" on my user page 5 minutes after I send this email", and then you do so).
- If the requested information also includes checkuser-type info (not clear what that is, exactly, but from seeing WP:RFCU in action, the software is definitely collecting something besides just an IP address):
- Accounts can be handled the same as before
- IP editors can't be contacted by email (no way to confirm it's the same person). However, a simple message on the IP's talk page is better than nothing.
Since two people have emailed me, asking if I knew whether I was one of the 16 people, I've been told I am not. --barneca (talk) 22:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, I somehow missed the fact that Nsk92 covered this in a posting 15 minutes before mine. --barneca (talk) 22:02, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- I like the above suggestion of an "open notification model". Indeed, WMF could simply leave a message at the affected user's talk page saying that that user's identifying info is being sought by such and such party in relation to such and such lawsuit. Sure, other people would be able to see this message if they come across that user's talk page, but I don't really see a problem with that, provided that this notification protocol is included in the WMF privacy policy. Speaking about the privacy policy, I have a modest technical suggestion. When a person is creating a new WP account, at the very bottom of the account creation page there is a small link to the WMF privacy policy. But this link is not exactly conspicuous, and it is probably a good idea for it to be more prominently displayed on the account creation page (perhaps somewhere in the center rather than at the bottom, and in larger font). Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 23:30, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
A slightly different topic, also related to whether the Wikimedia Foundation will or will not effectively contest subpoenas demanding user information: Per its privacy policy [8], Wikipedia keeps for a time the IP addresses of all those who even look at each page of Wikipedia. If someone files a subpoena with Wikipedia, as Sheriff Joe Arpaio did with Village Voice Media and the Phoenix New Times website in 2007, per Joe Arpaio#Media Raids, demanding the IP addresses of everyone who reads something as well as (per cookies) what websites they had previously visited, would the Foundation meekly turn over whatever of that information it still had in its posession, as they did the 16 IP addresses of editors of the Village Professor article, or would they spend the money to fight it in court, as those two publication successfully did. The privacy policy says the info is kept "about 2 weeks" and is useful in checkuser investigations and in developing the secret statistics of the number of views of each page. Many subpoenas ultimately do not succeed if the recipient chooses to contest their validity. In the case in question, the subpoenas were thrown out when the recipients went to court and challenged their validity: "Judge Baca ruled that the subpoenas in this case were not validly issued." If that information were promptly deleted, perhaps in 24 hours, the question would be moot. This sort of fishing expedition would be the information age equivalent of the Nixon administration prelude to recent Patriot Act excesses in which the Justice Department demanded that libraries keep a list of who checked out books on Communism or radicalism, for possible investigation. If Wikipedia would turn over the info such as Arpaio sought, without a fight, that presents yet another chilling effect. Edison (talk) 14:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- To the best of my knowlege, Wikipedia does not keep any sort of page-view logs, because at two billion pageviews a day, they just don't have the server resources to do so. --Carnildo (talk) 02:16, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- To improve your knowledge, please read the privacy policy I cited where it says that info for each page visit is retained, such as the IP address of the person reading the page, along with the date and time and the operating system they use. No indication that the info on previous pages visited is retained (via cookies or some such). Would Wikipedia contest a subponea such as that from Arpaio. or would they meekly turn over the info in response to a subpoena to save the cost of litigation? Answers have not been forthcoming, just complaints that the attorney for Wikipedia feels attacked. Please answer the questions. Also, is it true that the only thing needed for something to be subpoenaed is that there be a law suit filed and that an attorney write up the subponea, without any need for a judge to find that it is valid (not excessively broad, compliant with laws and precedents?) It sounds like that many subpoenas should in fact be contested, to avoid them being used as a scare tactic to stifle free speech. Edison (talk) 05:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
This thread will soon apparently be archived, and no further response from the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel Mike Godwin or from Jimbo Wales appears to be forthcoming. Godwin expressed indignation that "bricks and insults" were being hurled by the questions above being asked, but still did not answer the questions. There were vague statements by Wales and Godwin that we fought hard and even hired outside counsel, but any details of what the legal team did have been withheld, apparently on grounds of attorney client priviledge, which the client (Wikimedia Foundation) should certaainly be free to waive. The attorneys for other parties in the incident have released certain legal briefs and motions they filed. We have seen no timeline of when Wikipedia or the Foundation received subpoenas and what response was made. The facts of the incident, and the defacto policy regarding release of identifying information of editors then appear to be that if a subject of a Wikipedia article chooses to hire a lawyer and to file a lawsuit over some claim of libel or some other legal theory that the postings were from a competitor, then the Wikimedia Foundation may or may not respond initially to the subpoenas filed by the plaintiff's attorney, while other websites successfully dispute their legitimacy. Then if the plaintiff moves for a contempt judgement, Wikipedia turns over all information they have, in this case the IP address, and leaves any further legal defense of the privacy of the editor to the internet provider. The editor might not be informed that his information has been subpoenaed or even that it has been released until after the fact. If there are any false or misleading statements in this summary I welcome their correction. Were these actions fully compliant with the published policies of Wikipedia regarding privacy, and if so should those policies be tightned? How can a legal defense fund be established to aid Wikipedia in defending the privacy of its editors to reduce the chilling effect of such incidents on the accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia and associated projects? Edison (talk) 14:03, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Why is Montenegrin history rewritten on Wikipedia?
Why do you allow that so many stupid things are written on page about Montenegro? There should be only few editors, it's not possible that everyone knows everything. It just fills articles with untrue facts. 99% facts from Montenegrin history are wrong (please reffer to our school books). Most of statistics are wrong - somebody is rewriting number of inhabitans for some cities so instead of 10000 for example, there says that town has 50 inhabitans!? Please, this is not fair attitude and looks like somebody is moaking with Montenegro and Montenegrins.
Regards
- I think this would be better served on the Administrators' Noticeboard, or on the talk pages of the articles themselves. In any case, unless you tell us which edits/editors seem to be in error, it will be difficult to settle this issue. superlusertc 2008 January 11, 19:59 (UTC)
- Actually, a better idea is to fix the articles yourself (addressed to the person that raised the complaint). If you have access to books that contradict the information in an article, fix the article and cite the book where you get it from. That is an excellent way to solve the problem, since you have as much ability to change info on pages as anyone else. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 20:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- His complaint seems to be that there are multiple editors that are monkeying with articles. It's fine to change them yourself, but when it's one against many, it's difficult to stay on top of things. Even more so without violating 3RR.
- Oh, and I was wrong. Complaints like these should probably go through WP:DR, not the noticeboard. superlusertc 2008 January 11, 20:11 (UTC)
- I tryied to change them but, as someone said above, it's one against many. Everything that i write keeps being deleted. Sometimes i would think it's wikipedias default setting. I thought this is happening only to me but as i see talking to other people from my country, everything what we try to do, to put true facts about us, on Wiki, keeps being deleted. And, i didn't know where to put this, thanks for help. I'll try there as well. Cheers 85.94.106.187 (talk) 20:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- I recommend that you create an account so that people can communicate with you more easily about your edits. Here is one change on the Montenegrins article that I reverted.[9] Is that one of yours? I reverted it solely because the numbers no longer corresponded to those listed in the sources linked alongside. It's very important to us that our articles be properly sourced. If you have good citations for your numbers, you should provide them in the article text when making such changes. Bovlb (talk) 21:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for Your support but main thing is that everyone who posts or edits and article can be moderated so only valid information can be presented. We are actualy working on www.crnogorska-enciklopedija.org project. Purpose is to put all those articles together so that becomes source of valid informations for articles about Montenegro. Don Sharky (talk) 23:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- I recommend that you create an account so that people can communicate with you more easily about your edits. Here is one change on the Montenegrins article that I reverted.[9] Is that one of yours? I reverted it solely because the numbers no longer corresponded to those listed in the sources linked alongside. It's very important to us that our articles be properly sourced. If you have good citations for your numbers, you should provide them in the article text when making such changes. Bovlb (talk) 21:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
- (outdenting) From WP:V: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that readers should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed."
- Your comments about facts being true or false is almost irrelevant. What matters is whether the facts are referenced and verifiable through reliable sources. If you add true facts without any reliable sources then your edits likely will be removed. If someone else adds facts that you know are false, but are supported by references to reliable sources, then you cannot delete them. So go find reliable sources for all of your edits and add them as references. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
What is commonly referred to as Wikipedia consensus is frequently like a mob of brain-eating zombies. Zenwhat (talk) 02:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
If I were to walk into said town with 50 inhabitants (~ 10-20 households), and discover that it has more than 1 street in it, I would seriously begin to doubt the given sources, and would be able to verify that the town had ~10000 inhabitants by direct observation on location. --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:11, 12 January 2008 (UTC) (Also, I might be able to find a town hall or mayors office or what have you and get census data, but that would detract from my story here, bear with me :-P )
Oh yeah, one more thing: it is very likely that Montenegro and articles on Montenegro have been subject to huge amounts of POV pushing on Wikipedia, and possibly this user has actually confirmed it. I suggest the article be checked with a fine-toothed comb. (And possibly don't trust the provided sources either. Be especially careful with sources originating in Serbia). --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC) welcome to world politics :-/
- Actually, I am going to disagree with Sbowers here. If the reliability of a source is seriously brought into question, it should NOT be cited. Sources where the information they publish is patently untrue should NOT be cited. Not any source will do, and citing a source that you know is false, but citing just to have "something" is intellectual fraud, and should not be tolerated. It is better to have no information than information sourced to a reference which is known to be wrong. In this specific case, simply omitting all reference to population figures UNTIL a reliable source can be found is preferrable to republishing obviously fabricated figures just because someone else published it. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Is there any possibility that we can continue to contribute articles in proper bona fide manners about Montenegro. We still have issue that the so called editors of this chapter which are coming out of Serbia with the support of Serbian Wikipedia admin delete and impose they own ideas and imposing their opinion while negating culture and nation of Montenegro and disregard its existence. This is the same policy that Milosevic was imposing in the ex Yugoslavia and policy which caused tens of thousand of lives to be lost. They are imposing their own "supreme nation" over the others same as Hitler was imposing his ideas over the others and negated existence of sovereign nation of Montenegro. While they act any continuous support of this group is leading to the same results and this people do not have any scruples in the proper democratic approach of the writing about history and rights of sovereign nation as Montenegro is. This is highly against basic human rights and it is unclear while Wikipedia Serbian Admin do not react and eliminate this fascist propaganda approach which is still going on here on Wikipedia. Simple way is to ask for the opinion from any nation of former Yugoslavia as this is standard Serbian approach negating existence of any nation and sole problem is group of admin from Serbia which is acting on the already seen scenario of the Serbian propaganda from the past. Regards85.2.137.60 (talk) 17:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)LadyDaytona
- This seems like a MUCH larger issue than Village Pump or even places like WP:ANI can deal with. Is this an issue that the arbitration committee should be dealing with? Massive POV pushing and ownership of articles by a small cadre of users seems like standard ArbCom material... The users above appear to have a valid complaint, and there should be a means to ajudicate it... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 04:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I think I understand this title. There is a certain Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts (a pair-off to the real Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts) in Montenegro, established several years ago, by Jevrem Brkovic, Novak Adic, Rifat Rastoder and Radoslav Rotkovic among others. It mainly deals with history, and mostly accounting to revisionist and biased unfounded controversial research. Their works have become a bit notable over the past due to an online forum, and their works have been used as sources for the Wikipedia. --PaxEquilibrium (talk) 20:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
when to include country information
Where can I find policy or simple guidelines on when it's necessary to include the county when identifying a city. Some editors feel it necessary to add the country to each and every mention of a city even when it's either obvious from the context of the article, or the city name is linked to an article on the city itself.--Rtphokie (talk) 14:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Once context is extablished with the first instance, then it is no longer necessary. For example, look at Manchester, New Hampshire. Once it is mentioned in the lead which state it is in, the rest of the article just calls it Manchester. It's like an article on John Smith. Once we have established that his full name is John Smith, we can call him John in the rest of the article without need to further elaborate... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- I see no need to mention it in every mention of a location, but it should be mentioned the first time a location is mentioned in an article unless there is no possible way of someone, especially from outside that country, misinterpreting it. It's simply good writing practice no matter the kind of writing you are doing, all international journalism, reports, papers etc will include a country to establish context, it's just common sense. It gives context to the article, allows the readership from all over the world to understand where is being discussed immediately, and just makes good sense. For the example of Manchester, New Hampshire it is established in the first sentence that it is in the United States (though not necessarily massively clearly to those unfamiliar with the US state system like most people from outside the US, but at least there is something.) I see no reason to not include a country for context in any article that discusses a location, and every reason to include it. The article that prompted this discussion was KTEP to which I added that it was in the United States, and Rtphokie removed it again (in a good faith edit, this isn't a war or argument) saying the context was obvious from the article. I don't believe it is, not everyone knows what or where Texas is, nevermind the university at El Paso, especially those outside the US. It must be noted the majority of these articles (simply by the demographics of editors) that don't have countries are US ones created by US editors. I can't see an article that mentions a location in Zimbabwe for instance not having the country, no one would know where was being discussed. Ben W Bell talk 14:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- One reason not to include a country name is in order not to be condescending when a general but educated readership can be expected to know what's going on; e.g., we all know that Beijing is in China and that Hawaii is in the United States. I started a thread on this below (see "Hanover, New Hampshire, United States", below) before having read this one. modify 20:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Varieties of football on first reference
A discussion on Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors has led me to propose a guideline:
- On first reference, do not use the word "football" without a qualifier. Call it American football, football (soccer), soccer, Australian rules football, etc. Subsequent references can simply say "football."
Current policy seems to be that a qualifier is not necessary, even on first reference, if the meaning is "clear from the context." There are two problems with this view:
- Some Wikipedia readers will be unfamiliar with the use of the word "football" to mean anything other than the variety of football popular in their country.
- Wikipedia should be as easy to read as possible, and we should not rely on the reader to do the work.
The inclusion of a single word to make things easier on the reader is so simple that it should not be controversial. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 19:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- The problem is that people who understand 'football' to mean 'Association Football' don't see any real need to qualify the word with a trailing (soccer). The only purpose for that, as they see it, is to help USAmericans understand that Association Football is being referred to. The point is that people who are perceived to need such help are not stupid and they will rapidly learn that, in particular contexts, football means Association Football. Thus in time, everyone will know what 'football' means in a given context. And the function of an encyclopaedia, to disseminate knowledge, will have been achieved at least in this case. -
- But that's not how an encyclopedia should work. The reader should not be expected to do the work. It's no different than an editor who simply wikilinks rather than defines a term necessary to understand an article, thinking that the reader can just go to the wikilinked article. That's not reader-friendly. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 20:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Are we to be believe that the unqualified word 'football' in different contexts really presents some people with a reading difficulty? That does seem very hard to believe. Even so, familiarity with the different contexts will soon enlighten any persons with such problems.
- There are only two countries in the world that use football to mean something other than Association football, Australia and USA, and they are both native English speaking countries so there is no language barrier to them understanding context. In the world in general football is considered to be Association football, you may need to qualify the other types of football since the majority of the world understands football to be Association football, however I do not think you need to qualify Association football as football(soccer). The second largest sporting event in the world is teh Football World Cup and they find no need to qualify it as the Football(soccer) World Cup. Pbradbury (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, 77.6% of native English speakers live in the U.S., Canada or Australia. That doesn't mean 77.6 of English Wikipedia users are from those countries, but it does mean a significant number of English Wikipedia users are from places where "football" means something other than the roundball game. Adding the word "soccer" on first reference is so easy and unobtrusive that I can't think of a single reason why not to do so. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Have a read of Football (word) - the issue is one of if we are native-speaker-centric (and hence it is soccer and football refers to the country's predominant form of football), or if we serve all English readers, in which case the article makes it clear that not only is British English favoured in formal writings, but that football has become a loanword for soccer in a number of different languages (the notable exception being the german translation). As for the debate here, I feel that the standard wikipedia rules on language apply - the words used should be the one most appropriate for the audience. In US, Canadian or Australian/NZ articles, the local form of football should be preferred and used without qualification. It seems that from the evidence, UK and international articles can follow the same principle, to use football without qualification as 'soccer'. This may be debatable for international articles, were full qualification might be desired. LinaMishima (talk) 01:00, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Hi Lina. I'm aware of the consensus that we generally use British English for British articles and American English for articles about American topics. I'm not contesting that. I'm just saying that we should use a qualifier on the first reference and first reference only, just to make it easier for readers. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- The statistic sited is not relevant, since it cannot be extrapolated in any way to the English speaking (native or not) population that use Wikipedia as a resource. There are many words in the English language that have more than one meaning, you do not place the meaning you want in parenthesis after the word so people know what you are talking about. Language is about more than just words, it has grammer and context. There is already a mechanism in place to deal with the multiple meanings of a word, it's context. If you believe that the context is insuffecient, then you should improve the sentance with further explanation or add a footnote. This way you do not stop the normal flow of a sentance by interupting the prose. This is also likely to be contentious in both types of football articles and result in many an edit war when people don't understand or disagree with the policy. So in summary.
- You are trying to solve a problem that is already solved using the English Language.
- It is likely to result in edit wars (IMHO).
- I see no compeling reason to change the way it is currently handled since it does not seem to cause any confusion (is their any evidence that people are confused, such as incorrect edits?)
- Its current existance in the namespace is simply to solve the problem that you cannot have two things in Wikipedia with exactly the smae name.
- As I said, I'm not suggesting that 77% of Wikipedia users speak American English. What I am saying is that there is a huge chunk of potential Wikipedia readers to whom football=something other than soccer. Many of those people have no idea the word "football" means something other than the pointy-ball game. I agree that they will be able to figure it out eventually, but why make them do that when the solution is as simple as a single word? It shouldn't result in edit wars if it becomes official policy. It's all about writing to make it easy on the reader, not the editors -- a practice all too often ignored on Wikipedia. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- You have not convinced me on that any of the main points I have raised in objection are incorrect (those being, problem already solved by use of language correctly, that it won't result in edit wars and that you have provided no evidence that it actually is a problem). Having spent a large portion of my life living in the US I have not experienced it as a problem of understanding when used in context. Also wikipedia is not a static written page, words are wikilinked, if a user is confused clarity can be obtained in one click. What you give up by creating this policy is well written gramatically correct articles where the prose flows well. Having said that I will labour the point no longer. So far I have not seen any support for this policy from any other users, and several users who have raised concerns. I will step back and see if there is any support from the wider community and/or a good counterpoint to any of the points I have raised, which may change my mind. Pbradbury (talk) 00:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that the proposal is really necessary except in places where there are other sports regularly referred to as football. I mean in places like Argentina, Brazil and many other countries, there is not really much scope for confusion about which code we are talking about. The risk of confusion to people that may think that Gridiron or Aussie rules are played in Argentina is mitigated by the fact that the first usage of the word football in an article should be wikilinked to the correct context. The problem with the idea of including the full link is that both Association Football and Football (soccer) are unwieldy compromises that are rarely used in reality. King of the NorthEast 12:18, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- You have not convinced me on that any of the main points I have raised in objection are incorrect (those being, problem already solved by use of language correctly, that it won't result in edit wars and that you have provided no evidence that it actually is a problem). Having spent a large portion of my life living in the US I have not experienced it as a problem of understanding when used in context. Also wikipedia is not a static written page, words are wikilinked, if a user is confused clarity can be obtained in one click. What you give up by creating this policy is well written gramatically correct articles where the prose flows well. Having said that I will labour the point no longer. So far I have not seen any support for this policy from any other users, and several users who have raised concerns. I will step back and see if there is any support from the wider community and/or a good counterpoint to any of the points I have raised, which may change my mind. Pbradbury (talk) 00:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- The statistic sited is not relevant, since it cannot be extrapolated in any way to the English speaking (native or not) population that use Wikipedia as a resource. There are many words in the English language that have more than one meaning, you do not place the meaning you want in parenthesis after the word so people know what you are talking about. Language is about more than just words, it has grammer and context. There is already a mechanism in place to deal with the multiple meanings of a word, it's context. If you believe that the context is insuffecient, then you should improve the sentance with further explanation or add a footnote. This way you do not stop the normal flow of a sentance by interupting the prose. This is also likely to be contentious in both types of football articles and result in many an edit war when people don't understand or disagree with the policy. So in summary.
- Hi Lina. I'm aware of the consensus that we generally use British English for British articles and American English for articles about American topics. I'm not contesting that. I'm just saying that we should use a qualifier on the first reference and first reference only, just to make it easier for readers. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Have a read of Football (word) - the issue is one of if we are native-speaker-centric (and hence it is soccer and football refers to the country's predominant form of football), or if we serve all English readers, in which case the article makes it clear that not only is British English favoured in formal writings, but that football has become a loanword for soccer in a number of different languages (the notable exception being the german translation). As for the debate here, I feel that the standard wikipedia rules on language apply - the words used should be the one most appropriate for the audience. In US, Canadian or Australian/NZ articles, the local form of football should be preferred and used without qualification. It seems that from the evidence, UK and international articles can follow the same principle, to use football without qualification as 'soccer'. This may be debatable for international articles, were full qualification might be desired. LinaMishima (talk) 01:00, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, 77.6% of native English speakers live in the U.S., Canada or Australia. That doesn't mean 77.6 of English Wikipedia users are from those countries, but it does mean a significant number of English Wikipedia users are from places where "football" means something other than the roundball game. Adding the word "soccer" on first reference is so easy and unobtrusive that I can't think of a single reason why not to do so. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
- Using a qualifier on the first reference seems simple. Mwalcoff doesn't seem to be saying editors should use International or US English - Mwalcoff seems to be saying that either use of the word football should be qualified the first time it's mentioned. It seems easy enough to say 'American Football' -or to say 'football (soccer)'- once and then use football. Why is that controversial? Dan Beale-Cocks 13:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- I totally agree with Pbradbury. Football (soccer) is non-sensical grammar wise in an ordinary sentence. How do we explain the term footballer? Footballer (soccer player)? Context is key not the word itself. Otherwise we would have thousands of qualifying words in brackets.
- I don't want to guess at the number of disambig pages. Each one has a similar article. Are we suggesting that each time we use one of them we have to put the qualifier in brackets? Peanut4 (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed. I also find it disingenuous to be assuming that because a reader is used to one form of football that he will not understand others exist. The context of the article will make it readily apparent that the it is related to Association/Australian/Canadian/American football. Resolute 20:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
- The use of a parenthetical is completely grammatical. Take, for instance, the following sentence: "Sheila Jones (my mom) is the PTA president." Perfectly acceptable, if not ideal. I don't quite understand Peanut4's objection; I'd appreciate some further explanation. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:01, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- OK, I'll try and help, the analogy you use is not accurate to the situation we are talking about, it would be more accurate if it was written as "Sheila Jones, my mom(mother), is the PTA president" which is not grammatically correct. A book I find very useful for grammer and what is correct or not is Eats Shoots and Leaves, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of grammer, I refer to it almost daily. Pbradbury (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- I love that book, but I don't remember it discussing parentheses (brackets). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English does and says that parentheses "set off explanatory or other additional material not needed in the main sentence. Stylistically, parentheses are a way of setting off an aside in a syntactic structure." That page gives several examples of parentheses used in a similar manner to what you are disdaining. What is absurd about your example is not the grammar but the idea that there is a need to qualify the word "mom." Certainly, everyone with even the slightest grasp of English knows what "mom" means, and there is no other meaning to the word. On the other hand, perhaps a majority of the 320 million English speakers in North America think "football" always refers to something other than the round-ball game. Thus the reason for saying "football (soccer)" on first reference. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:23, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Glad you love it, there is a whole chapter on brackets. BTW I simply corrected your analogy, I also think it is silly to put mom(mother), but it is analagous to what you are requesting be policy. Your original analogy would translate in a football sense to Miami Dolphins(American Football) or Manchester City(fottball(soccer)) which is not what we are discussing. Pbradbury (talk) 01:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- The "mom" thing is not anything like the "football" issue. As I said above, all English speakers know what the word "mom" means, and there is no other definition of it. You seem not to understand that millions of English speakers think "football" means something else. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Actually mom is an American slang term, different countries use other slang terms such as mum and may not be familiar with the term mom. I do not presume to know what people do or do not understand a word to mean. However if mom is used in proper context then I am sure most readers would understand what it meant. That being the whole point of what we are discussing. BTW even in countries outside of the US there is more than one type of football. For example in the UK there are three main types; Association football (slang term soccer derived from assoc.) along with both codes of Rugy Football, union and league, (slang term rugger derived from rugby). However given that people speak English they can understand context and therefore understand the difference without reverting to adding slang terms in brackets. This is my last post on this for five days I promise. Let's let others discuss it, you have stated your case and I have stated mine, I am not sure we are adding anything to them. If you want to debate it with me further, feel free to post to my talk page and if we have any more valid info, rather than tit for tat, to contribute following these discussions we can copy it back here. Pbradbury (talk) 00:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- It's worth noting for the record that, amongst all that I have met or heard the opinions of, virtually no-one in the UK would ever use 'football' to refer to any of the types of Rugby. Even though the sports share the same historical basis, they are now seen as entirely distinct and something that should not be similarly named. Most people seem to generally be of the opinion that American Football is a soft version of Rugby, anyhow :P LinaMishima (talk) 00:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Actually mom is an American slang term, different countries use other slang terms such as mum and may not be familiar with the term mom. I do not presume to know what people do or do not understand a word to mean. However if mom is used in proper context then I am sure most readers would understand what it meant. That being the whole point of what we are discussing. BTW even in countries outside of the US there is more than one type of football. For example in the UK there are three main types; Association football (slang term soccer derived from assoc.) along with both codes of Rugy Football, union and league, (slang term rugger derived from rugby). However given that people speak English they can understand context and therefore understand the difference without reverting to adding slang terms in brackets. This is my last post on this for five days I promise. Let's let others discuss it, you have stated your case and I have stated mine, I am not sure we are adding anything to them. If you want to debate it with me further, feel free to post to my talk page and if we have any more valid info, rather than tit for tat, to contribute following these discussions we can copy it back here. Pbradbury (talk) 00:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- The "mom" thing is not anything like the "football" issue. As I said above, all English speakers know what the word "mom" means, and there is no other definition of it. You seem not to understand that millions of English speakers think "football" means something else. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Glad you love it, there is a whole chapter on brackets. BTW I simply corrected your analogy, I also think it is silly to put mom(mother), but it is analagous to what you are requesting be policy. Your original analogy would translate in a football sense to Miami Dolphins(American Football) or Manchester City(fottball(soccer)) which is not what we are discussing. Pbradbury (talk) 01:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- I love that book, but I don't remember it discussing parentheses (brackets). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English does and says that parentheses "set off explanatory or other additional material not needed in the main sentence. Stylistically, parentheses are a way of setting off an aside in a syntactic structure." That page gives several examples of parentheses used in a similar manner to what you are disdaining. What is absurd about your example is not the grammar but the idea that there is a need to qualify the word "mom." Certainly, everyone with even the slightest grasp of English knows what "mom" means, and there is no other meaning to the word. On the other hand, perhaps a majority of the 320 million English speakers in North America think "football" always refers to something other than the round-ball game. Thus the reason for saying "football (soccer)" on first reference. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:23, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- OK, I'll try and help, the analogy you use is not accurate to the situation we are talking about, it would be more accurate if it was written as "Sheila Jones, my mom(mother), is the PTA president" which is not grammatically correct. A book I find very useful for grammer and what is correct or not is Eats Shoots and Leaves, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of grammer, I refer to it almost daily. Pbradbury (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- The use of a parenthetical is completely grammatical. Take, for instance, the following sentence: "Sheila Jones (my mom) is the PTA president." Perfectly acceptable, if not ideal. I don't quite understand Peanut4's objection; I'd appreciate some further explanation. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:01, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed. I also find it disingenuous to be assuming that because a reader is used to one form of football that he will not understand others exist. The context of the article will make it readily apparent that the it is related to Association/Australian/Canadian/American football. Resolute 20:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
The context issue
People seem to be failing to grasp why you can't just say, "Let the readers rely on the context." Well, you can, but not if you're thinking about what would be easiest for the reader.
Let's say there's a country somewhere where motorcycles are called "bicycles." You have no idea this is the case. One day, "Today's featured article" begins: "The Victory Vision Street is a luxury touring bicycle with engine displacement of 1,600 cc, a wet multiplate clutch and an aluminum swingarm rear suspension." You look at it and go, "WTF??? I know a lot about bicycles, but I have no idea what they're talking about." Eventually, by reading through the article and clicking on wikilinks, you figure out that the "bicycle" is really a motorcycle.
The alternative is for the article to say on first reference that the "bicycle" may also me known as a "motorcycle." This way, there is no "WTF" reaction, and the newbie reader is welcomed into the article.
I think if you read newspapers or mass-market books you'll see how everything is be spoon-fed to readers. For instance, American newspapers will say "Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama," when you'd think everyone knows who Obama is by now. It's about writing for the broadest possible audience. Never make the readers do the work to understand something. It's our job to make things clear, not their job to sort out all of our content. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:01, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Since you have started a sub topic about the central core of this discussion which you seem to not understand, I will jump back in and try to clarify
- The example you yourself have provided above is a great example to illustrate the point. The fact that the bicycle (which means it is a two wheeled vehicle) has an engine (in this case a 1,600 cc one) makes it a motorcycle (a two wheeled vehicle with an engine).
- The point you seem to be missing is Wikipedia is not a dictionary see WP:DICTIONARY. The fact that people do not understand the meaning of words when used in context is not the remit of Wikipedia.
- How US (or any other countries) Newspapers choose to write articles has no bearing on this discussion Pbradbury (talk) 00:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is not a crossword puzzle either. There's no point in forcing readers to scout around looking for clues to figure out what something is when we can just tell them. Your opinion that readers' failure to understand a word "is not the remit of Wikipedia" is all too reflective of an attitude I see way too often on Wikipedia: If readers don't get it, that's they're problem. No, it's not their problem; it's our problem, or at least our fault. We don't have to be exactly like newspapers, but newspapers are a good benchmark for how we should write because they are aimed at the widest possible audience, like Wikipedia should be. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- You are incorrect, I would also like to preface this with I did not make any of wikipedia's policies, and its not my opinion its wikipedia policy. Wikipedia is not here to appeal to the widest possible audience, it is supposed to be an encylopedia. Please read up on what Wikipedia is before declaring it should be something else. A certain amount amount of basic language skills are assumed by an encyclopedia, it is not supposed to be dumbed down, or use broken English to make it more likely to be understood, which is unproven supposition on your part. Again stepping away Pbradbury (talk) 01:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- /me bats head against the wall. You don't think an encyclopedia is supposed to reach the widest possible audience? What do you think it's for? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- documentation of knowledge Pbradbury (talk) 01:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Well, there you go, that's the difference between your philosophy and mine. You think Wikipedia is there to show the world what you know. I think it's to help people seeking knowledge to find it and to help spread knowledge. Your view is editor-centric and mine is reader-centric. That's the difference. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- documentation of knowledge Pbradbury (talk) 01:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- /me bats head against the wall. You don't think an encyclopedia is supposed to reach the widest possible audience? What do you think it's for? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- You are incorrect, I would also like to preface this with I did not make any of wikipedia's policies, and its not my opinion its wikipedia policy. Wikipedia is not here to appeal to the widest possible audience, it is supposed to be an encylopedia. Please read up on what Wikipedia is before declaring it should be something else. A certain amount amount of basic language skills are assumed by an encyclopedia, it is not supposed to be dumbed down, or use broken English to make it more likely to be understood, which is unproven supposition on your part. Again stepping away Pbradbury (talk) 01:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is not a crossword puzzle either. There's no point in forcing readers to scout around looking for clues to figure out what something is when we can just tell them. Your opinion that readers' failure to understand a word "is not the remit of Wikipedia" is all too reflective of an attitude I see way too often on Wikipedia: If readers don't get it, that's they're problem. No, it's not their problem; it's our problem, or at least our fault. We don't have to be exactly like newspapers, but newspapers are a good benchmark for how we should write because they are aimed at the widest possible audience, like Wikipedia should be. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
- If you think "motorcycle" would more clearly explain the subject to a general audience, why not be bold and change it or add an explanation? All content is supplied by editors. Nothing is fixed. Everything is subject to revision and anything can be improved. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 03:59, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
This discussion is having difficulty keeping on track. The simple matter is that there are seven major codes of "football" (and probably still some minor ones), and they are all often called "football" by their players and followers. It therefore makes sense to disambiguate them at first mention. I see no problem with football (soccer), athlough Association Football would be a viable alternative. In New Zealand articles I tend to use soccer alone, since that is the most common name for the sport here (indeed, the main problem seems to be rugby league fans simply writing "rugby", which a majority would assume to mean rugby union). dramatic (talk) 00:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- I would agree with the above. The main objections seem to be to the term "football (soccer)" (which is naturally parrallelled with "football (gridiron)" rather than "American football" - I suppose this could be an alternative solution). If, instead of this, we put "association football", would it be acceptable? Tevildo (talk) 17:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Mwalcoff, chill! The fact that, as you referenced above, 77.6% of native English speakers live in the U.S., Canada or Australia can't be allowed to stand in the way of the other 22.4% prevailing in any discussion/argument. Rule Britannia! By the way, I'm saying this tongue in check to try to lighten the atmosphere. All the best to all of you in this matter. Thanks.204.111.110.55 (talk) 04:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Ipblock exempt proposal
A proposal has started to allow established or trusted editors to edit via Tor, or other anon proxy. This discussion is located at
The proposed policy in its “needs to be worked on” form is located at
Regards, M-ercury at 23:22, January 14, 2008
Content ratings
I understand that "Wikipedia is not censored" and agree with the policy. However, I don't know that we have taken any steps to allow parents / schools to easily make that choice for themselves - sort of an all or nothing. Should we not have templates or include code in the Category template (not visible on the article) that would apply an ICRA rating (built into content filtering software, such as Internet Explorer) to a page (and possibly the talk) of certain articles? So if a child browses to an article that has the presence of nudity, sexual content, depiction of violence, explicit language, or other potentially harmful content such as gambling, drugs and alcohol, we have the standard ratings applied so such content can be filtered if desired. While it is not our policy to protect anyone from potentially harmful material, should we not have the ratings in place to allow parents to make those choices? The parent would be the censor, not us. It seems to me that this would be the responsible thing for an online encyclopedia to do. Morphh (talk) 15:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- I do not see how helping censorship would fit with Wikipedia's "not censored" position. DuncanHill (talk) 15:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- ICRA ratings are applied to a website as a whole and not a particular page. 86.21.74.40 (talk) 16:34, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- A proposal similar to yours was Wikipedia:Graphic and potentially disturbing images. It was rejected, and I agree with that choice. The main problem is that it's hard to determine what's inappropriate, see Wikipedia:Graphic_and_potentially_disturbing_images#Actual_examples for what exactly I mean. There are numerous other reasons for rejection, I strongly encourage you to read the original debate (caveat:it's really long). Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- You are mistaken, ICRA does support labeling individual pages. Personally, I think self-labeling would be a useful step to increasing the appearance of professionalism, but I think it is unlikely to happen here. Dragons flight (talk) 17:06, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- It probably is unlikely to happen here, partially because the content of pages can and actually is supposed to change. We would thus have to change the rating every time an image is changed. If one were to go ahead with your idea, though, it might not be a bad idea to create a program which would automatically label an individual page based on the inclusion of a particular image, if one would be able to be developed. John Carter (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Any image, words or information used is used in an educational way. We would be lowering the educational value of the encyclopedia aiding censorship in such a way. Not to mention it would lead to drama, instruction creep and another element of the encyclopedia that people would have to worry about when writing. It's difficult enough for new users anyway- images are hell, categories are awkward, sourcing doesn't seem so important, NPOV can be difficult to get your head around... And now, you are proposing that we start judging the content of the articles we write in terms of suitability for children? Something else- what about fundamentalist Christians who may not appreciate their children viewing information about atheism? What about fundamentalist Muslims who may not want their children seeing a woman's face uncovered? If you ask me, censorship is Pandora's box. Don't even go there. J Milburn (talk) 18:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- There are already ICRA classifications and they are very broad. It is not that hard to think that the anal sex or vagina article might be labeled for sex or nudity. We don't have to go crazy. This would likely be simpler then most content discussions and would be at the discretion of article editors. This is not censorship. This is choice. We're not censoring the material - we're only providing metadata so that viewers can make that choice on there own. ICRA labels are part of a global effort known as the "Semantic Web". These are common standards on the Internet that Wikipedia should include. Morphh (talk) 18:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- (ec) You're beating at a straw man. Many of the ICRA categories are objectively structured, e.g. "exposed breasts", "blood and dismemberment", etc. Some are subjective, but Wikipedia deals with subjective content disputes all the time. Even if we were to ignore the more subjective terms, I can't see how labeling images of "exposed genitalia" in a machine readable fashion would either lead to drama or decrease the educational value. Supporting such labeling schemes increases the usability of Wikipedia by encouraging it to be used in contexts where it would otherwise be excluded. Labeling is not censorship. Dragons flight (talk) 18:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Labeling collaborates with and facilitates censorship. --Lquilter (talk) 18:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- And thank you for the link to the ICRA rating categories. I can now see where homophobic editors would place LGBT content: "Content that sets a bad example for young children: that teaches or encourages children to perform harmful acts or imitate dangerous behaviour". --Lquilter (talk) 18:55, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Any image, words or information used is used in an educational way. We would be lowering the educational value of the encyclopedia aiding censorship in such a way. Not to mention it would lead to drama, instruction creep and another element of the encyclopedia that people would have to worry about when writing. It's difficult enough for new users anyway- images are hell, categories are awkward, sourcing doesn't seem so important, NPOV can be difficult to get your head around... And now, you are proposing that we start judging the content of the articles we write in terms of suitability for children? Something else- what about fundamentalist Christians who may not appreciate their children viewing information about atheism? What about fundamentalist Muslims who may not want their children seeing a woman's face uncovered? If you ask me, censorship is Pandora's box. Don't even go there. J Milburn (talk) 18:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- It probably is unlikely to happen here, partially because the content of pages can and actually is supposed to change. We would thus have to change the rating every time an image is changed. If one were to go ahead with your idea, though, it might not be a bad idea to create a program which would automatically label an individual page based on the inclusion of a particular image, if one would be able to be developed. John Carter (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- You are mistaken, ICRA does support labeling individual pages. Personally, I think self-labeling would be a useful step to increasing the appearance of professionalism, but I think it is unlikely to happen here. Dragons flight (talk) 17:06, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Any per-page rating would necessarily lag the page's content; the rating would not always reflect the material on the page, even discounting the obvious problem of vandalism. Ratings would be imposed by volunteers who may or may not be familiar with the rating system. POV pushers would know that they could limit access to certain pages by deliberately misstating their content. Vandals could fiddle with ratings in addition to screwing with the rest of the page content. We would be able to add all kinds of new entries to WP:LAME as editors battled for their preferred ratings. If we narrowly restrict the ability to set or change page ratings, then we're never going to get all of Wikipedia rated (we've more than a million articles).
- If a parent is uncomfortable with leaving a child alone with a copy of Britannica – with its articles on anal sex, body parts, Michelangelo's David, and so forth – then that parent shouldn't be letting their precious snowflake near a computer unsupervised. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Bascially what you just wrote is a rehash of the arguments that vandalism, ignorance, and incompetence will obviously destroy any knowledge gathering effort that relies on the open participation of volunteers. Funny, I seem to remember some very successful encyclopedia project that demonstrated that creating and organizing content can be successful even in spite of all those faults. Dragons flight (talk) 19:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think that you've missed an important distinction. A culture of eventualism works just fine for writing an encyclopedia. We acknowledge that much of what is here is a work in progress. We warn readers that material here may be incomplete, biased, or flatly wrong. Content ratings, however, aren't compatible with an eventualist philosophy. Take Victorian poet Robert Browning. He's a nice, child-safe topic. It gets the green light—kids can read it, it's got nothing naughty. What happens if someone adds a discussion about the sexual themes in Browning's dramatic monologues to the article? That person might not change the article rating to reflect the new content. Eventually someone might get around to updating the rating, but in the meantime the rating is worse than useless—it's flatly misleading. One could request a software change that stripped out ratings every time the article was edited, but most editors just wouldn't care enough to re-add them. How many editors are going to be willing to learn the ICRA standards to the point where they apply the rules correctly, or are going to be willing to review every edit made to the encyclopedia? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Content ratings are lame, schools can have readily avaible systems that wont desplay articles if they have alot of certian black listed words. BonesBrigade 19:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- So parents who want to filter, they should purchase software to view the free encyclopedia. Don't use open Internet standards but rely on proprietary software. Is that your take? If you think it's lame, you don't have to add them.. I'm just suggesting that we allow it. See how it goes. Morphh (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Such a tag would likely have no performance hit, not lag as you describe. It would be smaller then most templates on an article. Regarding that it may not reflect content on the page, vandalism, etc... You're describing the challenges that happen on wikipedia every day in numerous areas. The categories are specific enough that there would likely be little dispute and the vast majority of people don't use any filtering so there would be little to gain in applying a improper rating. It would be treated like any other form of vandalism. You wouldn't have to apply this to every article. Apply it to the articles where it makes sense. Give the control to the editors. Morphh (talk) 19:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- When I say that the rating would 'lag' the page's content I mean that the tag wouldn't necessarily remain up-to-date with changes to the page content, not that it would slow down page loads. (I agree that while the tags are a pointless waste of bandwidth they would represent a very small waste.)
- The tags would offer a false sense of security that doesn't now exist: a warm fuzzy security blanket, Dumbo's feather, a golden hammer. It would say to parents, "See? Wikipedia is a safe place to let your children play unsupervised, because our pages have been tagged with content warnings that will be automagically recognized by your screening software!" Frankly, Wikipedia is almost uniquely unqualified to even hint at such an assertion. Most web sites vet their own content before it goes live. That does not happen here. It's ludicrous for us to have a mechanism that announces some pages are unequivocally safe for children when a vandal or POV-pusher can for minutes, hours, or days at a time make liars of us.
- The most that we can ever say is "This page ought to usually be safe for children, but may – from time to time – contain objectionable material. The page may occasionally be vandalized, and you might be looking at a penis. Sorry about that. On the other hand, this very rating may in fact be the creation of a vandal, and you're actually reading at an article on anal sex. We apologize for that, too. Sucker." TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'd agree with those points but I'm not sure we need to state Wikipedia is somehow fully compliant or that we proclaim we're kid safe. Wikipedia is what it is and that should be understood but I'm not sure that prevents us from doing what we can. Morphh (talk) 20:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- The problem is that if we can't be fully compliant, then the ratings would be worse than useless—they would be deceptive. We shouldn't pretend to be child-safe (or even to have child-safe pages) when – with our present software and policies – we simply can't make that guarantee. As you say, Wikipedia is what it is. If we want to protect children, we should work to make parents aware that there is material on Wikipedia that is potentially controversial or offensive. Trying to keep on top of rating all the content of all our pages won't work. It would generate only an illusory sense of security. The first time someone posts a picture of a penis under a CHILD-SAFE ARTICLE banner, not only would we have failed to protect anyone, we also shoot our credibility in the foot. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- We wouldn't need to tag every article, very far from it. You also wouldn't have a banner. They would see the penis either way. However, you could apply it to articles that make sense. No banners, nothing to see... if they have the content filtering turn on, and they come to an article with such a tag, it would let the know and filter the content. It is just metadata about the article and should be treated like any content. Morphh (talk) 21:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- The problem is that if we can't be fully compliant, then the ratings would be worse than useless—they would be deceptive. We shouldn't pretend to be child-safe (or even to have child-safe pages) when – with our present software and policies – we simply can't make that guarantee. As you say, Wikipedia is what it is. If we want to protect children, we should work to make parents aware that there is material on Wikipedia that is potentially controversial or offensive. Trying to keep on top of rating all the content of all our pages won't work. It would generate only an illusory sense of security. The first time someone posts a picture of a penis under a CHILD-SAFE ARTICLE banner, not only would we have failed to protect anyone, we also shoot our credibility in the foot. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'd agree with those points but I'm not sure we need to state Wikipedia is somehow fully compliant or that we proclaim we're kid safe. Wikipedia is what it is and that should be understood but I'm not sure that prevents us from doing what we can. Morphh (talk) 20:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- Bascially what you just wrote is a rehash of the arguments that vandalism, ignorance, and incompetence will obviously destroy any knowledge gathering effort that relies on the open participation of volunteers. Funny, I seem to remember some very successful encyclopedia project that demonstrated that creating and organizing content can be successful even in spite of all those faults. Dragons flight (talk) 19:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Something has just occurred to me- what's the most objectionable content we have? What images do we have that could not be found in a standard school library? Some really offensive album covers or something? If we look at it from a school point of view (even a primary school) there are going to be textbooks that contains biological pictures of a human body, and that seems to be the example most people are giving. What are reasonable people actually going to object to? Do tell me if what I'm saying is ridiculous... J Milburn (talk) 21:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- We're not talking about censoring articles. This would only apply to those that actually want and choose to filter content (or the parent / school wants them to filtered). If someone uses the basic tools in Internet Explorer or any other program to filter content, should we try to respect it. That's all we're talking about... The Internet is a different form of medium and we should consider the technology and standards available to us to present the material. What is wrong with trying to respect a readers content settings? Morphh (talk) 21:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
TenOfAllTrades raises some valid concerns above about user expectations and time lag. I think those problems are likely correct. Nevertheless, I think this approach, if done on a voluntary basis, could be consistent with the principle of Eventualism. We're a volunteer organization using a tool that requires us to constantly fight vandalism. Any effort we make will be imperfect yet we still keep working on the encyclopedia. (And despite all the vandals, it gets better almost every day.)
If anyone was offended because a tag was not on a page where they thought it belonged, the right answer is to encourage them to fix it. An incorrect or missing tag would no more damage Wikipedia's reputation than the routine vandalism that we deal with daily.
These proposed tags strike me as just a particular form of categorization. I never add categories to a page and think that most of them are pretty pointless but I don't object when someone else adds them because I know that not everyone uses the encyclopedia the same way I do. If the category was added in good faith, presumably it is helpful to the person adding it. If a tag is added in good faith, it's not going to get in my way and might help the person adding the tag. Go for it. Rossami (talk) 23:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm certainly all for automatically tagging articles with an ICRA rating. It would hardly be difficult to do with a bot and would increase Wikipedia's accessibility by allowing access to those who want a filtered view while maintaining transparency. I can't see maintenance of the tags causing much overhead. In fact, we already have vandal bots that hunt down naughty words. The ICRA rating and tagging would not be substantially different. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 23:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) The one concern I have after looking into ICRA's methodology is the impact this would have on page-bloat. If implemented, it would need to be something as clean and non-intrusive as the existing categories or the interlanguage references. Clogging up the page with html code, even if hidden, would be a bad thing. Rossami (talk)
- Wait a sec. If they are offended, we should just tell them to fix it?? What's the point, then, of having a content ratings system anyway? "Sure, come visit our encyclopedia, but you have to vet the articles before showing them to your kids, because the content ratings might not be there, or they might be wrong." How exactly is that different than what we have now? --Kbdank71 16:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- There may be nothing to fix if they are offended - that's the way the article is if it is uncensored, unless it is incorrect. How is this different from anything else on wikipedia? The content might not be there or it may be wrong - it's Wikipedia and it has been shown to do well despite such faults. Morphh (talk) 17:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- You wouldn't see any of it in the article as it would be a simple template tag at the top or bottom of the article. The code itself would cause little to no time lag (as TenOfAllTrades stated above, this was a misunderstanding of the term - he meant that the tag wouldn't necessarily remain up-to-date, not loading performance). Morphh (talk) 0:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Totally wrong in principle. This is supporting the worst tendencies in those who wish to censor the internet. The limited view that would result is would be a parody of WP. It would bias editing: we would find people arguing we should remove an image of, say, exposed breasts, so the page wouldn't be tagged. Much much better to have WP as the example for why libraries and schools should not censor. But if someone wants to fork a WP and add tags, there's nothing to stop them. It's perfectly legal. DGG (talk) 15:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- So we should force this view on everyone and remove their personal choice to filter using open technologies. This is the other extreme of censoring. Forced censorsed or forced uncensored. Respect what the reader chooses to filter - it is there personal choice. Why should we decide that they not be able to filter using standard technologies. They can do so with more sophisticated proprietary software they have to purchase. Your not stopping it, your just saying you don't want to make it easier for them to make that choice. As for the picture example, removing such a picture would be against the "Wikipedia is not censored" policy, unless it had no value in the article at which point it might be argued that it is better off without it. This is not unlike any other discussion of image inclusion. Morphh (talk) 16:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- What ever happened to the parents being responsible for what their child sees? Why is it up to us? --Kbdank71 16:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Exactly but this would not make us responsible for what their child sees. The parent being responsible should have the ability to use standard Internet technologies to do this. We should only try to add metadata that allows such technologies to work. They choose and they are responsible. Morphh (talk) 16:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- That's not true at all. Any parent using such technology is relying on us to make sure the tags are there and they are correct. --Kbdank71 17:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Metadata is not any different then content. Are they also relying on us to make sure the content is correct? We do our best and wikipedia is what it is. Finding the most obvious articles for tags would not be such a difficult task and would be easy to manage. The percentage of such content on Wikipedia is very small. Morphh (talk) 17:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Correctness of content doesn't matter. The content ratings do. If a parent is using technology to keep their kids away from WP's naughty bits, they are relying on Wikipedia to make sure the ratings are correct, or else the use of the technology is pointless, as is the content ratings themselves. So going back to my original point, that makes US responsible for what they see. And I'd like to know when we became babysitters. --Kbdank71 18:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- To your point above, it is the parents responsibility. We can only try to accommodate the browser preferences and we make no claims that they may not end up looking at a penis by vandalism or run into a page that no one has bothered to rate. They can choose to fix it at that point. Morphh (talk) 18:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm still not sure you're understanding my point. By the time someone's child has seen that article with a penis on it, their technology and the content ratings system is completely and utterly useless. What you are saying is that in order for the content ratings to work, parents who want to use it are going to have to visit every article first, to make sure that the tag is there and correct. And if they have to do that, why use the technology/content ratings at all? --Kbdank71 18:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Editors would keep up the tags just as they keep up content and once it is placed it will likely be the same tag. Parents are not under the false security that this protects them from everything. It is helpful and that's all it is. I say if editors want to add a nudity rating to an article that contains such, great. If not, then no big deal, nothing lost nothing gained. Morphh (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think I'm going to bow out now, as it seems that neither of us will convince the other. I will leave you with this, phrased differently, one last time: if nobody adds a nudity rating to an article that contains such, what is the point of this? If a parent feels comfortable letting their child visit Wikipedia because we use content ratings, but that same child is surfing through articles with nudity, don't you think that parent is going to be a little pissed off? --Kbdank71 19:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Editors would keep up the tags just as they keep up content and once it is placed it will likely be the same tag. Parents are not under the false security that this protects them from everything. It is helpful and that's all it is. I say if editors want to add a nudity rating to an article that contains such, great. If not, then no big deal, nothing lost nothing gained. Morphh (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm still not sure you're understanding my point. By the time someone's child has seen that article with a penis on it, their technology and the content ratings system is completely and utterly useless. What you are saying is that in order for the content ratings to work, parents who want to use it are going to have to visit every article first, to make sure that the tag is there and correct. And if they have to do that, why use the technology/content ratings at all? --Kbdank71 18:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- To your point above, it is the parents responsibility. We can only try to accommodate the browser preferences and we make no claims that they may not end up looking at a penis by vandalism or run into a page that no one has bothered to rate. They can choose to fix it at that point. Morphh (talk) 18:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Correctness of content doesn't matter. The content ratings do. If a parent is using technology to keep their kids away from WP's naughty bits, they are relying on Wikipedia to make sure the ratings are correct, or else the use of the technology is pointless, as is the content ratings themselves. So going back to my original point, that makes US responsible for what they see. And I'd like to know when we became babysitters. --Kbdank71 18:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Metadata is not any different then content. Are they also relying on us to make sure the content is correct? We do our best and wikipedia is what it is. Finding the most obvious articles for tags would not be such a difficult task and would be easy to manage. The percentage of such content on Wikipedia is very small. Morphh (talk) 17:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- That's not true at all. Any parent using such technology is relying on us to make sure the tags are there and they are correct. --Kbdank71 17:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Hear, hear, Kbdank71. As for adding content or attempting to label or tag content to facilitate various censorware programs -- oh my god, what a disaster. Even if this were a good idea policy-wise (it's not), it's a horrible idea technology-wise and Wiki-community-wise. First, there are a gajillion such programs with all sorts of metrics and tags. How on earth would we pick and choose which sorts of programs to facilitate or work with or adopt their labeling? Why would we pick ICRA? How would we keep it up to date? And those programs have their own different internal sets, too. We'd have to develop our own labeling system and then the commercial censorware programs would develop interpretations -- omg what a pain. We should just have content and people can use whatever censorware they want. Censorware is already available to let people filter out words and images. We don't need to do a da*n thing to facilitate it. Second, community-wise, seriously. We have massive community flame-wars just over merging TV episodes to a list; can you imagine the horror if we started labeling sexual health content, LGBT content, "controversial" political content, and so on? Endless nightmares. --Lquilter (talk) 17:01, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Almost all content filter programs can utilize ICRA. You wouldn't have to create anything. The technology is simple and a common Internet standard. I can't understand this argument about keeping this up to date. This is wikipedia and what we do best. Excuses, Excuses, nothing would get done pessimism that exist here on how wikipedia works. Morphh (talk) 17:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think you misunderstand me. I am not opposing because I am pessimistic, I am opposing out of principle -- I am virulently opposed to collaborating with censorship. Moreover, I am not, in fact, "pessimistic"; I am optimistic -- that this proposal will go nowhere. --Lquilter (talk) 18:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Almost all content filter programs can utilize ICRA. You wouldn't have to create anything. The technology is simple and a common Internet standard. I can't understand this argument about keeping this up to date. This is wikipedia and what we do best. Excuses, Excuses, nothing would get done pessimism that exist here on how wikipedia works. Morphh (talk) 17:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Exactly but this would not make us responsible for what their child sees. The parent being responsible should have the ability to use standard Internet technologies to do this. We should only try to add metadata that allows such technologies to work. They choose and they are responsible. Morphh (talk) 16:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- What ever happened to the parents being responsible for what their child sees? Why is it up to us? --Kbdank71 16:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- So we should force this view on everyone and remove their personal choice to filter using open technologies. This is the other extreme of censoring. Forced censorsed or forced uncensored. Respect what the reader chooses to filter - it is there personal choice. Why should we decide that they not be able to filter using standard technologies. They can do so with more sophisticated proprietary software they have to purchase. Your not stopping it, your just saying you don't want to make it easier for them to make that choice. As for the picture example, removing such a picture would be against the "Wikipedia is not censored" policy, unless it had no value in the article at which point it might be argued that it is better off without it. This is not unlike any other discussion of image inclusion. Morphh (talk) 16:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Totally wrong in principle. This is supporting the worst tendencies in those who wish to censor the internet. The limited view that would result is would be a parody of WP. It would bias editing: we would find people arguing we should remove an image of, say, exposed breasts, so the page wouldn't be tagged. Much much better to have WP as the example for why libraries and schools should not censor. But if someone wants to fork a WP and add tags, there's nothing to stop them. It's perfectly legal. DGG (talk) 15:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- This is a fucking brilliant proposal. This motherfucking comment is rated PG, and if any asshole disagrees, I'll bash his kneecap with a crowbar, pour half a bottle of cask-strength Whisky into me and the other onto the poor sob, and light a match...! As an alternative, there is not reason why someone who wants to limit access cannot take a copy and add culturally appropriate ratings as an value-added service. I strongly doubt that USians would be happy with Swedish standards for nudity, or that Germans would like US ratings for violence. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- That may be the most sensible approach. Wikipedia's content – every last word – is freely available under the GFDL. Someone – and by 'someone' I mean an individual, a company, a nonprofit foundation, or a whole country – who would like to add content ratings can take a complete dump of the database and add whatever ratings they see fit. By working from a stable version of Wikipedia and controlling what revisions and updates are added, such an organization could ensure that the ratings were both up-to-date and 'accurate'—the two things that we cannot offer on Wikipedia, and the two problems that make content ratings worse than useless here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Wikipedia cannot ensure that anything here is up-to-date or accurate. That is not the point. If it turns out to be a mess, then it could easily be removed. A bot could quickly remove all the templates. Why is it difficult to allow people to try to offer this metadata?
- I'm certain it would be a mess. Vandals would have a field day with changing or removing the tags. --Kbdank71 17:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Such is life on wikipedia. With this argument, nothing would work h
- I'm repeating myself at this point so I'll stop after this comment. To reiterate, unreliable content ratings are worse than no content ratings. They would fail to protect children from unsavoury content, and they would bar children from accessing age-appropriate content. Unreliable content ratings would give a false sense of security to parents...until those parents noticed that our ratings were unreliable—at which point we'd get hit with a backlash. No thanks; we don't need the black eye, and modifying Wikipedia for the benefit of censorware is well out of the scope of our mandate. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:39, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Like saying that an unreliable encyclopedia is "worse" than no encyclopedia. Morphh (talk) 17:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- In a sense it is, but the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation still propel us forward to create a better encyclopedia. That which propels us forward for an improved content rating system is... uh... I don't know, think of the children! GracenotesT § 18:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Like saying that an unreliable encyclopedia is "worse" than no encyclopedia. Morphh (talk) 17:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm certain it would be a mess. Vandals would have a field day with changing or removing the tags. --Kbdank71 17:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Good point: anyone has the right to fork Wikipedia under the GFDL. If you want to set up a complete copy of all our articles that has a ratings system, there's nothing stopping you, but making swarms of Wikipedia editors acheive goals of content presentation that run contrary to content goals is not desirable. GracenotesT § 17:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- You wouldn't have to make anybody do anything.. it is a volunteer effort. I'll also don't think it is contrary to the content goals. You're not removing anything, your adding choice. Morphh (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Is that how we'd sell this? "Wikipedia, now with content ratings on a small section of articles, if the volunteers around here want to add them, and make sure they are correct, and make sure they haven't been vandalized." Wouldn't it be more honest to at least tell it like it is? "Wikipedia, we're not censored, nor are we going to pretend like we are." --Kbdank71 18:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- You wouldn't have to make anybody do anything.. it is a volunteer effort. I'll also don't think it is contrary to the content goals. You're not removing anything, your adding choice. Morphh (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Not to mention the fact that a lot of people would refrain from contributing if WP were collaborating with censorware. --Lquilter (talk) 17:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Now your just making stuff up... The excuses are endless. Give me a break. Morphh (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Calling other people's arguments & concerns "excuses" is a good example of a fallacious argument. Instead of merely attacking-by-labeling, why don't you give us a positive reason to do it, other than "it seems [to you] the responsible thing for an online encyclopedia to do"? There are numerous technical, community, and philosophical/policy problems with the idea. Why is it necessary, given that third-parties are completely capable of either (a) censoring/filtering content on their own, or (b) forking WP & offering a censored version? --Lquilter (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry for calling your argument an excuse but you labeled it as a fact with nothing to support such an assumption. We're not talking about every article, but a very small group that would be relatively easy to identify and manage. Why should we restrict this? Why not let editors do this if they so choose? Why fork anything. It is our job to create the best encyclopedia possible and why wouldn't metadata about the content using common standards included in most browsers be part of that. Morphh (talk) 18:07, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Here is the short answer: You will not get consensus to do this or how to do it, and while that is a prediction, not a fact, I am willing to bet cold hard cash on it. The reasons why include: (1) it is controversial, (2) a lot harder than you suggest to make the judgment calls about which "small group of articles" would get tagged (and how); (3) would add technical overhead to the project, and, most importantly, (4) not necessary because if there is a market for it, the GFDL licensing at WP means that other people (third-party developers, content-forkers) can and will do it. --Lquilter (talk) 18:25, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry for calling your argument an excuse but you labeled it as a fact with nothing to support such an assumption. We're not talking about every article, but a very small group that would be relatively easy to identify and manage. Why should we restrict this? Why not let editors do this if they so choose? Why fork anything. It is our job to create the best encyclopedia possible and why wouldn't metadata about the content using common standards included in most browsers be part of that. Morphh (talk) 18:07, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Calling other people's arguments & concerns "excuses" is a good example of a fallacious argument. Instead of merely attacking-by-labeling, why don't you give us a positive reason to do it, other than "it seems [to you] the responsible thing for an online encyclopedia to do"? There are numerous technical, community, and philosophical/policy problems with the idea. Why is it necessary, given that third-parties are completely capable of either (a) censoring/filtering content on their own, or (b) forking WP & offering a censored version? --Lquilter (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Now your just making stuff up... The excuses are endless. Give me a break. Morphh (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Wikipedia cannot ensure that anything here is up-to-date or accurate. That is not the point. If it turns out to be a mess, then it could easily be removed. A bot could quickly remove all the templates. Why is it difficult to allow people to try to offer this metadata?
- That may be the most sensible approach. Wikipedia's content – every last word – is freely available under the GFDL. Someone – and by 'someone' I mean an individual, a company, a nonprofit foundation, or a whole country – who would like to add content ratings can take a complete dump of the database and add whatever ratings they see fit. By working from a stable version of Wikipedia and controlling what revisions and updates are added, such an organization could ensure that the ratings were both up-to-date and 'accurate'—the two things that we cannot offer on Wikipedia, and the two problems that make content ratings worse than useless here. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm still mixed on whether or not this is a good idea, but I doubt you'd get the Wikimedia Foundation to go along with this, at least not the ICRA ratings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to use proprietary, copyrighted software. A plugin for the MediaWiki software might be possible, but software won't be installed here unless it is under a free license (such as the GPL) and is open source. This is why we use Ogg instead of MPEG and why we don't use reCAPTCHA. Mr.Z-man 18:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- ICRA labels are expressed using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. Specifically, ICRA was instrumental in defining and now uses RDF Content Labels, a generic platform designed to support digital labels and trustmarks of all kinds. Use of RDF means that ICRA labels are part of a much bigger global effort to make sense of the mass of online data known as the "Semantic Web." RSS news feeds, blogs, shared bookmarks and many other technologies are based on RDF and related standards. In order to facilitate filtering for parents using PICS filters (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer's Content Advisor), since January 2006 ICRA has also provided a simplified PICS interpretation of the current vocabulary alongside the RDF labels. Morphh (talk) 18:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
As a proud, card-carrying member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography ... I support the basic idea behind the proposal. No, it would not be perfect, but nothing in Wikipedia is. Yes, it would make us vulnerable to vandalism, but (shock) we are already, it would not increase that. As for implementation, the devil is in the details, of course. It would need to be per-page, and it would need to be easy to apply, and it would probably require a developer hack. So it probably won't happen. :-(. But for what it's worth, I support the idea. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:39, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- While it may not happen, ICRA tagging is not alien to what already happens on Wikipedia. We already have two processes to rate the 'quality' of articles: GA and FA. We already have vandal-fighting bots that hunt down and revert instances of naughty words. In other words, we do clean-up Wikipedia and try to present the best; see today's FA on the main page. A truly, absolutist, non-censured, free speech text would include all the nonsense that is dumped into Wikipedia hourly. We remove it freely. We call our censoring 'vandal-fighting'. Seriously, labeling content would allow parents the freedom to act responsibly by providing information. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- Wikipedia should never change content to conform to ICRA's (or anyone's) standards. Unobtrusive ICRA tagging is okay, but that may mean frequent updating of the tags. Superm401 - Talk 19:39, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- it should never be tagged at all, according to anyone standards. This is a direct violation of NOT CENSORED. Tagging is a form of censorship, and inevitably leads to more overt censorship. We prevent nobody from filtering,but they must add whatever they need by themselves. We'd as soon attach tags: this article offends/A/B/C... whatever. If you wouldnt support adding unobtrusive tags for those articles that might not be readable in the PRC, you should not support this proposal either. DGG (talk) 22:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- This is a Internet standard, not some selective made up criteria. It is not a violation of not censored as we do not sensor the content, we would change nothing on the content. It is metadata to describe the content and it would only effect those who choose to use the metadata to filter thier viewing. You're preventing them from using open standard technology built into the browser and forcing them to pay for products to filter the content. Morphh (talk) 0:54, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Even "Internet standards" of filtering / tagging terms are "selective made up criteria"; they're not holy writ. WP's content is open; fork it, tag it, and filter it all you like. --Lquilter (talk) 03:46, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- My computer science professors taught me that a false sense of security is actually worse than having no security system in place, because with a crappy security system people THINK they are safe and are not as watchful. As a parent, I'd be awfully ticked off to find out that a software I **thought** filtered out inappropriate content actually only filtered out 50% or 80% of the inappropriateness. For an open wiki like this, the only way for people to verify whether the content is really inappropriate is to look at it. I also agree with those that predict that this will cause huge edit wars all over wikipedia as varying factions argue over what should be labelled. Karanacs (talk) 03:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Ah yes, it's "an Internet standard." Made by "the Internet," no doubt! *cough*
"ICRA, the Internet Content Rating Association, is an international non-profit organization with offices in the United States and the United Kingdom."
- So, the standards for the whole world are based on the social needs of the USA and the UK. This is not, in any definition of the word, inclusive for the entire world. As someone stated above, Germany would not accept the US/UK levels of violence nor would the US/UK accept Sweden's level of nudity. This would not be useful to nations with different social norms. Rather, it would be quite disruptive as people argue over the "correct" level of tagging for articles/images. This is a proposal doomed to failure. -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 22:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think you misunderstand. The ratings are a description of the data, not a judgement. Internet standards refer to the technology used and integrated into products like Internet Explorer. Judgement is determined by the end user and that is country / family / person independent. An article would be labeled for "bare breasts", and what this describes is no different in China then it is in the U.S. It tags what the data is, and the person that filters it determins what their level of filtering is and they can do so in whatever moral belief or country they so choose. Morphh (talk) 22:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Does The Birth of Venus (Botticelli) depict full-frontal nudity, yes or no? I've had folks argue that it does, even though she's covered by her hair. So, now we introduce a new form of Wikilawyering: does X fall under category Y or Z of the ICRA? It doesn't solve anything, and just introduces more stuff for people to argue over. And, as others have pointed out, IE doesn't actually follow the granular approach of the ICRA: it just has a blanket "sliding scale" that interprets those items for the user. The user doesn't get to determine particular levels at all. Face it, this isn't going to work. -- Kesh (talk) 21:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think you misunderstand. The ratings are a description of the data, not a judgement. Internet standards refer to the technology used and integrated into products like Internet Explorer. Judgement is determined by the end user and that is country / family / person independent. An article would be labeled for "bare breasts", and what this describes is no different in China then it is in the U.S. It tags what the data is, and the person that filters it determins what their level of filtering is and they can do so in whatever moral belief or country they so choose. Morphh (talk) 22:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- This is a Internet standard, not some selective made up criteria. It is not a violation of not censored as we do not sensor the content, we would change nothing on the content. It is metadata to describe the content and it would only effect those who choose to use the metadata to filter thier viewing. You're preventing them from using open standard technology built into the browser and forcing them to pay for products to filter the content. Morphh (talk) 0:54, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- it should never be tagged at all, according to anyone standards. This is a direct violation of NOT CENSORED. Tagging is a form of censorship, and inevitably leads to more overt censorship. We prevent nobody from filtering,but they must add whatever they need by themselves. We'd as soon attach tags: this article offends/A/B/C... whatever. If you wouldnt support adding unobtrusive tags for those articles that might not be readable in the PRC, you should not support this proposal either. DGG (talk) 22:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I like how this proposal, as opposed to some of the other content-rating proposals that have appeared here over the years, does not seem to cast judgments, as Morphh states. However, I don't think it's that simple. Tagging pages with ICRA criteria would imply endorsement of the ICRA system. If some organization on its own initiative wants to enter Wikipedia URLs into a database based on criteria they have drawn up, that's their prerogative. If we do it, or if we adapt our code to sort their purposes, we are actually participating in the process, which raises a whole other set of issues.
The ICRA may say that it is a buffet system, where people can pick and choose what they want to ban. My understanding is, though, that the most widely known application of the ICRA ratings is in Internet Explorer, where they are converted into a series of sliding scales on language, nudity, sex and violence. For example, a user can set the Content Adviser to "nudity rating 2," which allows "partial nudity" but not "frontal nudity." This approach appears to be inconsistent with the predominant current of thought on Wikipedia, which is that nude images -- for example -- should be included or not included based on its "encyclopedic nature" rather than on whether it is frontal, rear or whatever.
I certainly understand the concern many users have about the content in Wikipedia. My big issue is the accidental display of unwanted material -- as in the case when I clicked on the word "buggery" on the Oscar Wilde article while at work and was taken to the anal sex page. (We don't use the word "buggery" in America, and I had no idea what it meant.) Last year, I proposed a guideline on "not safe for work" material. My idea was that NSFW content be placed "below the fold" (that is, not visible until you scroll down), with a warning template at the top and, when appropriate, an option to view the page without the NSFW material. The idea was dismissed because of -- you guessed it -- the "no censorship" policy. But I think that a system of warning templates, while raising its own series of issues, is less offensive from a censorship point of view than participation in a commercial ratings system. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 06:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I would call the ICRA commercial. It's an international non-profit organization, similar to Wikipedia - are we commercial? They are the only open standard content rating system that I am familar with. Morphh (talk) 17:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Modification to NPOV.
A lot of people seem to misunderstand WP:NPOV as a false compromise between competing biases and the way it's worded now, that is one way it can be interpreted, since the word "objective" is avoided. Journalists seem to use the guideline "neutral and objective." Objectivism, by itself, isn't reliable, because it can amount to original research. On the other hand, neutrality by itself also isn't reliable, because it can amount to supporting fringe theories. If you take into account WP:RS and WP:V, then WP:NPOV is objective, not just neutral. But then Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ states:
There's no such thing as objectivity.
...
This is probably the most common objection to the neutrality policy, as well as the most common misunderstanding of it. The policy says nothing about objectivity, or whether there is such a thing: a "view from nowhere" to use Thomas Nagel's phrase.
My response: Is that an objective assertion? Really? Who knows? Perhaps there is no objectivity, then. And thus, NPOV is simply a balance between competing biases. Articles on Christianity? Evangelical Christians POV-pushing + Anti-Christian atheists POV-pushing. To say that NPOV is to be without bias while at the same time saying it says nothing of objectivity is absurd, because that's precisely what objectivity is. And if objectivity is not Wikipedia's goal, so editors are free to engage in gonzo journalism, then that's even more absurd. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 03:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Welcome to Wikipedia! You've just figured out how things really work around here. It's closer to the Peasant sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail than most would like to admit. -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 22:44, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Excessive tagging of the day
A question on the reference desk prompted me to look at Parallax barrier. At the time of writing, this article contains one sentence of 17 words, which are followed by a stupid logo and a 13-word "this article is a stub" notice. Fine.
However, this content is also preceded by a much more prominent box (with a gray background, colored stripe, and another stupid logo), which takes 19 words to ask for the article to be cleaned up "to meet Wikipedia's quality standards". Well, of course the article needs improvement: it's a stub. No, worse yet, the box doesn't even say that the article needs improvement; it says it may need improvement. Why are articles being cluttered with boxes like this if it isn't even known whether they're needed?
And then there's still another prominent box with a gray background, a colored stripe, a third stupid logo, and 23 more words of self-important text from the "all Wikipedia articles must bristle with footnotes" brigade.
Good grief.
Okay, done ranting. I'll go away now. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 03:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- And its been an unsourced stub with almost no content since 2006. {{sofixit}}. Mr.Z-man 07:10, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Agree. But what riles me is that there's no attempt to control putting ugly and ineffective tags on good articles either. It doesn't normally help an article to put a {{fact}} tag on a statement; Anyone can see that there's no reference supporting it. What the tag normally means is I don't agree with this but I can't be bothered checking it, and as such it's inherently both POV, and unsourced!
- I think we need a policy allowing any such tags that are not backed up by an entry in the talk page to be removed on sight, and a bot to back it up. The effect of this would be that there were very few such tags; People considering putting one on would find it was normally less work to actually fix the article themselves, assuming they had a case. And if they had no case, this would be obvious in their comments, and again the tag would be removed. They'd get sick of this. Or, if they had no case and decided to update the article anyway, they'd get reverted, and again they'd get sick of it.
- I sometimes put a fact tag on a sentence because I have managed to source every other sentence in that paragraph except that one. By leaving the sentence without a fact tag, the reader could easily assume that the fact was covered by the next source, which is incorrect. I'm not about to leave a talk page message for every fact tag (it's pretty self-explanatory), and the alternative to not putting one is to delete the sentence, as I could not verify it. That means someone with access to different material than I have wouldn't have the opportunity to fix it, because they might not have known about that fact. Tags are really useful—both to editors and readers—so that we know what to fix or so we can warn readers that what they are reading might have an issue. Karanacs (talk) 17:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Dumb external link of the day
A sanity check, please.
Being reluctant to remove mediocre external links from worse articles, but yet unable to pretend that everybody thinks it's hunky-dory to be fed braindead pleas to install plugins that will increase their subjection to advertising, I perpetrated this edit. I believe I acted in accordance with this; but, bearing in mind the awestruck tone of the WP articles written about "luxury brands" (e.g. Cartier SA is a famous [sic] jeweller and watch manufacturer that is a subsidiary of Compagnie Financière Richemont SA. The maison [sic] is known for numerous celebrated [sic] pieces blah blah blah), I'm wondering if there's some obligation to be undeservedly polite about them in the external links department. Nobody's complained yet (it's only a few minutes ago), but did I do wrong? -- Hoary (talk) 09:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC) ... PS I later performed surgery on the Cartier article. It's still bad, but it's not malodorously bad. -- Hoary (talk) 10:03, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think it would have been better to remove the link. The added comments aren't particularly appropriate. At most, you might have included (requires Flash) next to the link. Karanacs (talk) 17:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Hanover, New Hampshire, United States
I've noticed that it's pretty common to use country names where they're not needed, as in the title for this comment. My understanding is that this is to make it easier for everyone to know what's going on and to avoid ethnocentrism. But often it goes too far in my opinion and becomes condescending. You'd never see "Hawaii, USA" in the Economist, even though it's not a US publication, because they assume an educated readership. My question is, is there a relevant policy of Wikipedia? Can someone direct me to a page from the manual of style so that I can find out more information? modify 11:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I believe you're looking for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements) --W.marsh 15:24, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I guess I'm confused--the example that you give doesn't seem to exist. The title of the article is Hanover, New Hampshire, and the logs do not show that the page has ever been moved. The article title Hanover, New Hampshire conforms to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements). Darkspots (talk) 19:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not sure what you're asking. Hanover, New Hampshire conforms to naming guidelines. --W.marsh 19:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- modify is under the impression that the article title is Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. I suppose my question is, why does he/she think that's the title when it isn't? Darkspots (talk) 19:49, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Unless perhaps Modify is giving "Hanover, New Hampshire, United States" as a hypothetical title that contains the country name, and is saying titles like this one (but not necessarily this exact title) exist and are undesirable. Modify, If you could perhaps clarify what you mean, it would be much appreciated. Tra (Talk) 20:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Or is modify asking about something like this? When I asked, several people agreed with me that it is useful to include the country with the first mention of the placename in the lead para (unless it's really obvious). —SMALLJIM 21:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Unless perhaps Modify is giving "Hanover, New Hampshire, United States" as a hypothetical title that contains the country name, and is saying titles like this one (but not necessarily this exact title) exist and are undesirable. Modify, If you could perhaps clarify what you mean, it would be much appreciated. Tra (Talk) 20:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- modify is under the impression that the article title is Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. I suppose my question is, why does he/she think that's the title when it isn't? Darkspots (talk) 19:49, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not sure what you're asking. Hanover, New Hampshire conforms to naming guidelines. --W.marsh 19:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I guess I'm confused--the example that you give doesn't seem to exist. The title of the article is Hanover, New Hampshire, and the logs do not show that the page has ever been moved. The article title Hanover, New Hampshire conforms to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements). Darkspots (talk) 19:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I think you're right, SmallJim, and that clears it up for me. I think putting the country name in articles about towns or provinces is a very good idea. I think we have to assume our readers are less sophisticated than the Economist does, simply because our readers could be anywhere, from any background. And I for one want to know that the small town I'm reading about is in India--and I think you'd find a number of Americans, for instance, who don't know where Queensland is, to pick a random example. Darkspots (talk) 00:07, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry about that, I should have given a specific reference. In this instance I was thinking of the lede of the featured article on the Tuck School of Business. I should read the link that Smalljim has pointed to. As for sophistication of the reader, it's obvious that all kinds of people read Wikipedia and that they come from a range of educational backgrounds. But we should not assume that they are unable to learn about these things just as we did ourselves when we knew less. The example of the small town in India is in a different category altogether from Mumbai, which everyone should know is in India. It seems really condescending to me when obvious details are put in articles simply for the sake of the uneducated. A little like speaking really loud and slowly to someone who doesn't know your language. Not to criticize some good points that have been made to the contrary. Thanks for the pointer, W.marsh. modify 19:44, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Getting much wider consensus for an issue
This is not to try to get input on the Current RFC about TV episodes, but instead about trying to gain community consensus. The RFC has been added to the RFCpolicy list and announced here at VPP but given the strong divide over the involved editors, it seems we need more input. Is there any way to get a more WP-wide announcement besides those places, like as was done for rollback?
Also on the same issue, who can we turn to to make a determination of consensus on the issue? There is an ArbCom case that looks like it will be taken up about the issue but as that's more aimed at procedure and behavior than content, I'm not sure if the arbiters can make that determination. --MASEM 14:26, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Is there a policy against data duplication?
Wikipedia is filled with data duplication. Look, for example, at the History section of United States vs History of the United States. Readers are confused, editors are waisting their time, contradictions are inevitable. This mess could be corrected with the generous use of soft redirects to channel everyone to a common article. Is there a policy against duplication and/or repetition? If not, why not? Emmanuelm (talk) 14:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think think this is covered by WP:SS. Top-level articles (like United States) should be summaries of more detailed subarticles. In theory it works out pretty well - readers can get a broad overview of a topic, then read progressively more detailed articles if they want. --W.marsh 14:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- Per W.marsh, it's normal to have parent articles that summarize (and link to) detailed daughter articles. What we do avoid is articles covering the same identical material under different titles. For example, we don't want to have History of the United States, United States history, and American history all in parallel. Such content forks result in needless duplication of effort. Wherever possible, we deal with such forks by Help:Merging and moving pages#merging all the content into one page, and then Wikipedia:Redirect#redirecting the titles to point at the merged page. (In my history example, the last two titles both redirect to the first one.) Hope that clears things up, TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- You're always welcome to improve articles in collaboration with other editors. If you believe that United States has too much information in the summary sections and some of the information should be in the child articles, why not cut the summary, reducing the duplicate material and moving non-duplicated material to the relevant child article? You might want to discuss this with other editors first by proposing such a change on Talk:United States and seeing what other editors think. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:05, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- A certain amount of duplication is IMO a good thing. Certainly there's an overhead in duplicating data, but there are also overheads in attempting not to. So there's an optimum amount of duplication - which might be zero as you suggest, but I doubt it. Andrewa (talk) 08:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks everyone for mentioning and discussing WP:SUMMARY. This is the first time I hear of it; this policy is clearly not discussed enough. It certainly is not one of the big five and, as we all know, it is neither respected nor enforced.
- Wikipedia has grown so bloated it is becoming too much for the average hight school student. Is it the time to make WP:SUMMARY more prominent? Is it time for a six pillar?
- Another idea : the WP code could be changed so that summary articles would be a) transformed into a "master page" that would b) be locked, and c) be a code-generated display of the lead sections of sub-articles, with the titles as paragraphs. This would keep the summary short, up-to-date, would eliminate duplications and would ensure that readers & editors go to the sub-article. Emmanuelm (talk) 20:08, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm going to have to agree with Shirahadasha's comment below mine. Making a hierarchical structure is a bad idea. Just using the two examples you gave of United States and History of the United States already makes this point become clear because the US History article isn't really a child of the US article. The US History article is a parent article in itself branching off into even more detailed articles. Are you suggesting the US History article also be a "master page" simply made up of summaries from the more detailed articles below it and have the history section of the US article be a "super master page" of summaries from the lower US History master page? It's already getting confusing and it's already taking the Wiki aspect of the encyclopedia out of the equation. Contradictions may be inevitable but are easily fixable and I think everyone benefits from reading similar information from different perspectives with different levels of summary and detail. In short, my first impression of your idea is I don't like it much. LonelyMarble (talk) 15:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- Is Christianity and homosexuality the sub-article of Christianity, Homosexuality, or perhaps Religion and homosexuality? Is Shechita the child of Kashrut or Slaughter? Does Parenting belong to Family or Child care? Does Morality belong to Law, Philosophy, Religion, or Sociobiology? Attempting to use a wiki to implement a hierarchical knowledge structure is likely to lead to nothing more than endless arguments over what parent should "own" what child. If we want to keep using a wiki, we'd probably best stick with a flexible, non-hierarchical network structure with all its risks of duplication. I simply don't see how WP:SUMMARY applies. WP:SUMMARY describes a process for creating articles, not a command that articles stay that way following creation. Child articles, like human children, move away from their parents following creation and develop a wide network of potentially duplicative (but potentially rewarding) associations. Nothing in WP:SUMMARY prohibits this. It may seem untidy, but it's actually a big source of Wikipedia's value. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep is marked as a guideline
Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change. -- VeblenBot (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
- If you ask me it should be a policy. MilesAgain (talk) 10:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Do we accept sources that cannot be publicly accessed (and thus verified)?
(Notice by Aexus (talk) 07:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC): I've found this discussion very fruitful, I've gathered all information it produced and declare this issue resolved. See bottom of this section for more details.)
In the article EVE Online an editor added a source to a topic in a forum that didn't allow public viewing. Readers had to register an account to access the source. However, the forum didn't allow new registrations. That prevented readers that didn't already have an account in that particular forum from accessing and verifying the source. I've found one guide that touches the topic of sites requiring registration, namely the guide Wikipedia:External links. It has an appropriate paragraph. But since this guide is about the External links section at the bottom of some articles it doesn't apply to sources.
Therefore my question is: Do we accept sources that cannot be publicly accessed (and thus verified)? How should we other editors of the article proceed in this case?
-- Aexus (talk) 02:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Well, if a source is "unverifiable" it fails verifiability, so I'd imagine yes. But a forum is not a reliable source anyway, see reliable sources, partially because it's pretty much a self-publishing source, a forum post. x42bn6 Talk Mess 02:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- As is often pointed out, we allow sources that can't be accessed online, like offline books, journals and newspapers. So references will sometimes be to sources you can't just load up in your web browser. A closed forum is a bit different though... you can't really access such a thing for free through a library, which is how you'd typically find an offline source if you wanted to. I don't think forums are particularly good sources in the first place... they used to be flatly barred from being acceptable sources in WP:RS. --W.marsh 02:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Its not a valid source, but it has NOTHING to do with accessability. As had been said, sources don't need to be instantly accessable, just accessable. This source should not be included as forum posts and blogs are inherantly unreliable. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Forum posts however can contain material that is no longer available online from the original source Eg various interviews with actors on sites like E or TV Guide .I know in the case of Sarah Michelle Gellar that some of her early interviews are only available on fan websites and forum posts now .Garda40 (talk) 03:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- If Gellar's interviews actually appeared in a paper edition of TV Guide, then they are citable. If they only appeared on the tvguide.com web site, and have since been taken down, it's in a grey area but I suggest that we not bother to cite them. Something that is not de facto accessible can hardly serve as a reference. I have seen people try to cite formerly-web-hosted material to a forum posting, but that could never serve to verify factual claims, since it could have been tampered with. EdJohnston (talk) 05:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- If the website has been taken down, you may be able to find an old copy on the Internet Archive. There is a huge difference between "unverifiable" and "hard to verify." A citation to a one of a kind historical book not available online, while not desirable, is still verifiable. Unverifiable generally means something like unpublished "personal speculation." Mr.Z-man 07:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- If Gellar's interviews actually appeared in a paper edition of TV Guide, then they are citable. If they only appeared on the tvguide.com web site, and have since been taken down, it's in a grey area but I suggest that we not bother to cite them. Something that is not de facto accessible can hardly serve as a reference. I have seen people try to cite formerly-web-hosted material to a forum posting, but that could never serve to verify factual claims, since it could have been tampered with. EdJohnston (talk) 05:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Forum posts however can contain material that is no longer available online from the original source Eg various interviews with actors on sites like E or TV Guide .I know in the case of Sarah Michelle Gellar that some of her early interviews are only available on fan websites and forum posts now .Garda40 (talk) 03:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Its not a valid source, but it has NOTHING to do with accessability. As had been said, sources don't need to be instantly accessable, just accessable. This source should not be included as forum posts and blogs are inherantly unreliable. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- We reference a lot of papers that are only available online with paid registration - and books that you can only get by paying money. If it's impossible to verify a fact without paying $500, that's one thing, but many sources will have some reasonable cost to access. The question is more where the cutoff point is. Dcoetzee 11:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Just to state very firmly that "universal accessibility" is not the standard for citing information. Most information in the world is not universally accessible -- access may be barred by cost, literacy, language, physical ability, presentation, intellectual property, etc. The limitation that Wikipedia cares about is "publicly available" or "published" -- available to the public, but not necessarily available to the public for free. The question of reliability of forums is quite properly addressed on WP:RS as several posters note. One person gave an example of sources that are no longer available except on fan forums. If they were originally published offline, then cite to that, but you can link to wherever you find the best available copy -- online at a fan site might be okay. If it was only ever published in a fansite or forum, then the question is whether that source met reliable sources to begin with. I would say the presumption is typically no, but that's just a presumption -- some sources may be better than others. --Lquilter (talk) 15:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Even so, I wouldn't link to the fan site. There is no assurance, due to the unreliability of the site, that the site in question faithfully reproduces the document, and to link to it would imply that the copy was somehow reliable or official. I don't understand the preoccupation with linking references. If it is online, sure, link it. However, the accademic world worked just fine on print references for MANY years before the invention of the internet. That does not stop being true now that websites exist. Just cite the issue of TV guide or whatever in proper bibliograhpic format and leave it at that. There is no compelling reason to provide a link. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:59, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- I am puzzled as to the belief especially to items that were online a long time ago , or it's unclear what print issue they were in , as to the belief that they are not faithfully reproduced.People copied and pasted material either fully or in part . I can't think of a case where people deleted individual words to change the meaning of an article .The purpose of putting the item on their website or forum after all was to bring the "news" to their viewers or members and altering it rather defeats that purpose .Garda40 (talk) 20:32, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- If an editor uses the version posted at the fan site to make a contribution, that should be noted as the source. It is not much different from avoiding the use of "pass-through" citations. If there is any question of reliability in the quality how the fan site transcribed the interview, that should be made clear from the citation. It would be dishonest to claim the authority of the original source if that was not actually used. older ≠ wiser 20:07, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Note: Questions of this nature are more rightly directly to the reliable sources noticeboard so editors expert in that particular area can respond. For this specific question see citing sources which has examples of citing an underlying source through an overlaying source. Wjhonson (talk) 21:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- As to the question of verifiability, although we do not require universal verifiability, the extreme opposite standard would be unverifiability. I.E. no new member of the public can ever access the data — period. That situation isn't acceptable either. In the middle we have some people can access the data some times, and by some people, any randomly selected person must be able to access it by some means would be one standard. On the issue of newspapers, while it is true that some require registration, there is *always* an option, without paying the website, to access the same data. You could order a microfilm through inter-library loan for example, you could call the library in that town and ask them to photocopy the page and pay them a small fee. While there may not be a "completly free" option, we should not have a system set-up which allows only a *single* option to get access if that option is not free. We are not here to allow any company to forcibly profit off our links, each link to a convenience site should as well point at the underlying non-corporate fee-free method of accessing the same information.Wjhonson (talk) 21:53, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your opinions so far. It's great to read what you think about the topic. I think I should highlight the source in question. It's a topic in the EVE Aurora forums. Aurora is a volunteer organisation that helps the developers and game masters of EVE Online organize in-game events. Technically everybody can access the topic in the Aurora forums. However, one had to apply for a position at Aurora first. To be accepted one had to play EVE Online and meet other requirements Aurora asked for.
Let's say I don't play the game; I'd just like to read the source. I can't. Only members of Aurora can. Yes, the source is accessible - even if it's not accessible for everybody. Does this make a difference in the source's acceptability?
When discussing this issue with a fellow editor of the EVE Online article he wrote (with public accessibility in mind): "It would not be unreasonable for a Hewlett-Packard employee to cite an internal forum, wiki or intranet site for some obscure technical detail of one of HP's products." Technically everybody could access and verify the source. One would have to apply for a job at Hewlett-Packard. But other than that - no problem. I can't wrap my mind around this yet. With this information in mind do you think it makes a difference in the Aurora forum topic's acceptability?
-- Aexus (talk) 01:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Your unease is seconded. Consider another example. A member of the Masons cites to a phamplet created in-chapter and only viewable by High MooCows. Technically a person *could* spend 14 years becoming a High MooCow in order to verify it, but this bar is incredibly high. Verification by a random person should be straightforward, relatively simple and relatively free. Information that is internal is not *published*, that is, it is not available to the public. Being available to the *private* (if you will) does not satisfy our verification criteria. So your counterparts example, needing to be hired by HP, fails. This bar is too high. In your specific example of playing a game, your might want to take your question as well to the talk page of WP:V to get more input, vis a vis *how much effort* should a random person have to expend to verify a source that requires hoop-jumping? Have a great day. Wjhonson (talk) 02:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- I would also argue that an internal forum, wiki, or intranet site at a company is probably data not intended for the public and thus used illegally (or at the very least at the risk of the poster getting fired). Forums are not reliable sources. They are self-published, meaning anyone can write anything. They can be extremely useful for helping to identify potential sources, but then the burden is on the article editor to go find the actual source. Otherwise you are taking the word of the poster that the information is accurate and complete. Karanacs (talk) 18:03, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Things are different when the forum IS the actual primary source. We're talking here about an online game and a forum used to run that game, not an internal random chat forum. There aren't going to be much if any paper sources. Online sources in these cases should be valid else you will never be able to say anything at all. In particular this is involving misconduct by that company that was exposed by an internal whistleblower using internal evidence. Publically published statements by the company over such an issue are naturally going to be of suspect bias. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Terlipressin (talk • contribs) 05:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- This particular thread however is talking about that those forums are not published because they are not "public" unless the user jumps through hoops. The discussion of how much effort a verifier has to expend to verify a source should be taken to the Talk page of WP:V. There's too much clutter here, and the people who monitor V are more expert in the specifics of the interpretation of that policy. Wjhonson (talk) 05:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you all very much for your input. I've gathered everything we've got so far. I declare this discussion closed and ask you to pursue the two aspects I've split it into. One is the reliability aspect that is now being discussed here on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard as suggested by Wjhonson on Sunday. The other is the verifiability aspect that is now being discussed here on the WP:V Talk page - also as suggested by Wjhonson. Again, thanks!
-- Aexus (talk) 07:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
A simple on site reference
I am very much a newbie in the area of editing articles What would be very nice and helpful is a simple reference of what each tag does, and how to add it in Also, in trying to find information *about* editing articles it is very hard. Everything in Wikipedia about Wikipedia is a Wiki - kind of annoying, when you want to discuss an issue with someone - I don't want to be involved in policy making, and I think its great that things are wiki, but there needs to be more clarity at finding information on editing - what each tag does.
Also there is such a plethora of information, it is not well organized in the site, its taken me three months to discover that there is a general discussion forum. and 'community portal' a simple link to a reference guide that tells me what every kind of tag does, would be helpful. I agree that it is important to know how to do it, and why one should do it. Having a quick reference of every single tag, would be terribly useful. It took me hours to discover how to put up a page for review etc. It shouldn't be the case
Thank you. Dannyza1981 (talk) 16:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- I agree that it's a right royal pain to find anything, but you might find the Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia helpful. Foxhill (talk) 16:40, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- Depending on the type of tags you want, see for example Help:Editing, Help:Wikitext examples and Help:HTML in wikitext, or Wikipedia:Template messages/Maintenance and Category:Wikipedia maintenance templates. The interaction box to the left has a link to Help:Contents. It includes links to Wikipedia:Village pump and to Wikipedia:Help desk where you can ask questions about using Wikipedia (which can admittedly be hard). PrimeHunter (talk) 16:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment is marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change. -- VeblenBot (talk) 19:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment is no longer marked as a policy, below. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:05, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Ipblock exempt proposal
Wider audience for commenting requested...
A proposal has started to allow established or trusted editors to edit via Tor, or other anon proxy. This discussion is located at
The proposed policy in its “needs to be worked on” form is located at
Mercury at 20:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Official names
Guideline proposal. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:official names. Andrewa (talk) 22:43, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Purpose of policy
I think it might be useful to understand and clarify the purpose of policy in Wikipedia. Is it to express aspirational ideals we hope to reach eventually? Or is it to express a minimum enforcement standard below which administrators should block editors for disrupting the encyclopedia? Most likely somewhere in between, but leaning in which direction? The more I read policy discussions the clearer it is becoming to me that there is basic disagreement as to what level we want "policy" to reflect. It might be useful to clarify this if possible. If policies are aspirational, WP:IAR should be used very frequently and we should be very lenient with editors since policies may well be inappropriate for addressing actual day-to-day matters. If policies are enforcement standards, WP:IAR should be rare (although still occassionally appropriate), but policies would be based not on what we'd like to happen but what we can realistically enforce under present circumstances. Much of this is part of unspoken Wikipedia culture. But if we could speak of it, we might be able to reach agreement on policy discussions more readily. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 15:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- there is basic disagreement as to what level we want "policy" to reflect - Would you mind actually citing a specific example or two? I think that would be helpful. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:03, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
When bots go wild....
On my watchlist this morning I see that some helpful soul set BetaCommandBot to add disputed image tags to a whole bunch of images. Here is the one added to Image:Red Tory.jpeg
{{di-disputed fair use rationale|concern=invalid rationale per [[WP:NFCC#10c]] The name of each article in which fair use is claimed for the item, and a separate fair-use rationale for each use of the item, as explained at [[Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline]]. The rationale is presented in clear, plain language, and is relevant to each use.|date=January 21 2008}}
In this particular case it probably never occurred to any of the human beings involved that the {{Non-free book cover}} justification for the image Red Tory had to explicitly name the article Red Tory.
I know there is a template for explicitly offering a fair use justification, to be used once per article the image is included in. My problem with this use of this bot is that it gives no hints to anyone who reads the dispute tag how to FIND that explicitly-named-fair-use tag.
If this instance of the bot is still running, it should be immediately halted. Every article it modified should have the message it left modified to give the name of the tag those who wanted to address the problem should use.
I'd like to suggest bot users consider this an example of how bots can be mis-used.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 16:34, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- That would require Betacommand to have consideration for his fellow editors, which everyone knows is not the case. Argyriou (talk) 16:41, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Betacommand is just following policy. The bot, though much maligned, is only tagging images and related article in accordance with policy. The explanation regarding fair use rationales is found, as indicated by the tag, at Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline. That project page clearly states (additional emphasis added):
“ | If you are using non-free images or other media, you must include two things on the image description page:
|
” |
- The tags, Betacommand and his bot are telling you nothing more than what policy requires. Tags are not rationales. The fact non-free images are allowed at all is a specific exemption to Foundation policy. These repeated insults on Betacommand and his bot are unwarranted and should really result in blocks. Vassyana (talk) 16:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Betacommand has been de-adminned for his lack of consideration for other editors - his bots keep running rampant doing things which are over the line of their remit, he runs bots and scripts from his main account, and he's incredibly hostile to anyone who challenges him, especially when he's in the wrong. Letting people know that expecting cooperative behavior from him is not reasonable is not a personal attack. Argyriou (talk) 19:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Betacommand's bots do not overstep the mark. They nominate images that do not meet our guidelines- just as I would if I came across them. Granted, they are bots, so don't fix minor errors, which I would, but the deleting admin, if they have an ounce of sense, will fix that when they come to delete the image anyway. It's win-win. J Milburn (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- I am not objecting to the idea of bots trying to relieve that part of the burden of maintaining the wikipedia that can be automated. I think that is a good idea. I applaud that idea. However, we have a right to expect a few minutes thought, on the part of the team automating the task, so the messages intended to be read by ordinary human beings, are actually useful to ordinary human being. If betacommand, or any other bot creator, needs help drafting a message that can be read and understood by the uninitiated, he or she should take on a partner, or ask for help.
- I wrote below about cognitive burden. J Milburn immediately above writes: "Granted, they are bots, so don't fix minor errors, which I would, but the deleting admin, if they have an ounce of sense, will fix that when they come to delete the image anyway."
- You seem to be saying you don't object if a poorly written bot imposes a cognitive burden on you.
- I wish I could count on every admin whose decisions I come across, showing a ounce of sense, in every decision. Heck, there are some admins who pleasantly surprise me if they even once show an ounce of sense.
- It would be better if bots didn't impose cognitive burdens on uninitiated users or on hard-working admins, because those writing them aren't willing to consider the end-users. Geo Swan (talk) 06:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- Betacommand's bots do not overstep the mark. They nominate images that do not meet our guidelines- just as I would if I came across them. Granted, they are bots, so don't fix minor errors, which I would, but the deleting admin, if they have an ounce of sense, will fix that when they come to delete the image anyway. It's win-win. J Milburn (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Betacommand has been de-adminned for his lack of consideration for other editors - his bots keep running rampant doing things which are over the line of their remit, he runs bots and scripts from his main account, and he's incredibly hostile to anyone who challenges him, especially when he's in the wrong. Letting people know that expecting cooperative behavior from him is not reasonable is not a personal attack. Argyriou (talk) 19:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Argyriou, Im hostile against people who have no clue what they are talking about and attempt to force the fact that they are correct on others. the message BCBot points to is WP:NFCC#10c which clearly states the issues with the image and how to fix them (WP:FURG). Im sure your an expert with our non-free image policy and the foundation resolution with 17 image namespace edits. you cant seem to even follow our 3RR. You obviously dont understand the ArbCom case because your reasoning is way off base. I ask that you not slander my name by making false statements. And Geo Swan please read the templates that you are referring to. It clearly states the need for a Non-free use rationale. something that was not done. βcommand 19:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think what is being asked for here is that the warnings should include a reference to {{Non-free fair use rationale}} directly, so the user knows the most convenient way to add the needed rationale. I'd add one for the image in question here, but I'm not sure it actually qualifies here (it is low-resolution, but it appears on an article discussing the general phenomenon of Red Toryism that doesn't mention the book in particular). *** Crotalus *** 14:23, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- The template is pretty easy to find in the link provided: Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline#Template. Vassyana (talk) 15:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Only if you know what "rationale" means on Wikipedia and how to use a template. Most users don't. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 00:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- "Rationale" has no special meaning on Wikipedia. It's used consistent with common English and the more particular copyright-related meaning in the real world. Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline explains plainly what is required in a rationale. The template is not required, but to be honest if someone cannot figure out how to use copy/paste and plug in the correct information in the obviously labeled fields, that's pretty sad. Vassyana (talk) 01:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- Only if you know what "rationale" means on Wikipedia and how to use a template. Most users don't. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 00:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- The template is pretty easy to find in the link provided: Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline#Template. Vassyana (talk) 15:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- People are missing the main point of the complaint here. The message that BetaCommandBot leaves is, to anyone but a thoroughly experienced Wikipedian, incomprehensible. It's a major flaw in usability.
- The message needs to be reworded to tell users a few clear, simple steps they need to follow, without resorting to Wikipedia jargon like "FURG", "rationale", or "image description page". If you insist that they use a template, then you need a preload link or something like it to create the template for them, because ordinary users don't understand templates. If there is no way to do this in simple steps, then the policy is broken.
- If we must create so much red tape (which I disagree with in general, especially rule 10c), at least give ordinary users a way to do what you're asking them to do. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 00:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- The sometimes complicated situation of fair-use is a consequence of the project allowing commercial and other non-free content, in combination with the rather permissive provisions of US law. Fair use is a rather uniquely American concept. The fair dealing allowed in Commonwealth countries is the closest international comparison and it is significantly less flexible than fair use. (It is unlikely that Wikipedia usage would qualify under fair dealing.) The requirement for rationales and very limited usage is rooted in the Foundation policy than allows the English Wikipedia to permit fair-use images. The need for exacting rationales is a consequence of American copyright case law. Even then, the explicit and detailed rationales only provide a limited measure of insulation against infringement suits. Much clearer fair use cases (such as parodies) have been subject to expensive and lengthy lawsuits. The project could reject using non-free images and entirely avoid this mess. Barring that, ensuring that the usage is as compliant with US copyright law as possible is necessary. Vassyana (talk) 01:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks Rspeer and User talk:Crotalus horridus. You understood my point exactly. I see no reason why finding the tag designed to regularize the status of an image should not be offered by the robot that has flagged it as a problem -- without regard to whether finding it is easy, or hard. -- Geo Swan (talk) 06:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:User page is marked as a guideline
Wikipedia:User page ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change. -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- False positive - as this diff shows, the page is the same now as it was 12 days ago. There was some intervening vandalism (blanking the page) that removed the marking of the page as a guideline. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment is no longer marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change. -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- "Policy" for less than 24 hours. Robots are cute, but not terribly bright. • Anakin (contribs • complaints) 20:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Options for making this one more intelligent are under discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/VeblenBot_6. The current proposal would remove additional notices such as this one, where the status changed back within 24 hours of the first change. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:05, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- On the other hand, let me point out that without this announcement, it would probably have taken a long time for anyone to notice that a little-noticed page like Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment had been marked as policy. Having some sort of automated announcement ensures community visibility of changes like this. The initial issues with repetitive announcements will be addressed, but shouldn't overshadow the benefits of having announcements when pages are promoted the first time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:08, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Definitely valuable; an occasional false positive is a small price to pay. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Proposed extension of Wikipedia:No original research
I've proposed a short extension of Wikipedia:No original research to clarify the requirements on descriptions of images (in brief, interpretations of images must be based on specifically relevant reliable sources, just like any other assertion of fact in an article). Please feel free to comment on this proposal at Wikipedia talk:No original research#Interpretation of images. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
My Account...
I created an account with wikipedia in my freshmen year. Now a Junior I see someone got into my account and has been posting porn on wikipedia. I am wondering how I would delete this account so I can end him putting up these things, but also make sure my name is not associated with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.165.88.239 (talk) 23:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Try going to Special:Userlogin. If your password still works, log in with it and immediately change your password; this will lock out whoever got in to it. If your password no longer works, try sending a password reminder to your e-mail address - hopefully it won't already have been changed. If neither of these work, you will no longer be able to access your account, although if the actions as mentioned above are taking place, the account will probably be blocked, which will prevent further misuse. It's not possible to delete accounts on Wikipedia, I'm afraid. Tra (Talk) 00:39, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Hoping I'm doing this right. It was Cj Will Win maybe no spaces. I found out about it by putting cjwillwin into google. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.165.88.239 (talk) 00:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. Neither is working, but I guess if he's blocked he can't do anything further. I was just upset that the first thing I find on google about my online name is something saying I've been posting porn and wrecking pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.165.88.239 (talk) 00:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Looking at the account name Cjwillwin (talk · contribs), it last edited in 2006 so although he's not currently blocked, it's unlikely they will edit further. I have blanked the talk page so that when the acount name is searched for in Google, you won't see the pictures added listed, unless you know what you are doing and look into the page history. I'm sorry, there's not much else I can do since there's no way for you to prove ownership of the account. Tra (Talk) 01:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.165.88.239 (talk) 01:18, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Requests for checkusership
Due to problematic issues around the appointments of checkusers behind closed doors, I've proposed this. Please comment. Thanks, Majorly (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- Proposal appears to have been withdrawn following intense discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Requests for checkusership. Andrewa (talk) 09:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- See meta:Privacy policy: When using a pseudonym, your IP address will not be available to the public except in cases of abuse. Changing this should be discussed at the meta talk page, and I doubt it will happen. But have a go. Andrewa (talk) 10:26, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
"Notable alumni", etc.
Dr. Vivek Kumar Pandey pops up in various articles (together with people having the same surname), though he doesn't yet have an article of his own. (See this.) He even found a rather unusual way into a category.
Not wanting either to be or to appear vindictive to Dr Pandey, in this edit to Azamgarh and this one to Allahabad University, I decided to be BOLD, simply removing every redlinked and nonlinked person (as well as miscellaneous other junk).
Nobody's yet complained or reverted, but did I overstep myself? (Is there any policy on this?) -- Hoary (talk) 11:25, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- If they are not notable enough for an article, how can they be notable alumni? AgneCheese/Wine 11:45, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Quite. But it could be said that they (or some of them) do deserve the articles that they haven't yet got, and even that listing them in this way encourages people to write those articles. To which my own response would be: Fine, then list them in a WikiProject page or similar. However, others might disagree. -- Hoary (talk) 11:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- People confusing Wikipedia with Facebook and adding themselves to articles like this is a constant niggling problem. Being notable enough for their article should be regarded as an absolute minimum for including someone this sort of section. In fact, even genuinely notable people don't always merit mentioning; otherwise the articles for places like University of Oxford and Harvard University would contain lists of hundreds or thousands of names. Don't think we have or need a formal policy on this, just discuss on the relevent talk page if anyone reverts you; I suspect that most editors will agree with you. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 12:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- and so they will have the thousands, when the relatively few people here interested in academic articles do the job properly. We can deal with lists of that length: usually, we divide them into groups by occupation. Anyone with a WP article qualifies to be listed as a notable alumnus of their university or universities. As for the ones who dont have articles and are listed, the advice is to make the articles & see if they stick--or, as Hoary suggests, ask for help doing it in a wikiproject. DGG (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- A never-ending argument of course, but personally I think categories work as well in many cases. But I don't plan to go on any of blue-link deletion crusades at the moment.
- To Hoary: Sorry, I misread exactly what you'd done - when I said "notable enough for their own article" I didn't necessarily mean having their own articles already. I've reinserted some people whose entries made a reasonable claim of notability - our coverage of Indian topics is far less complete than our coverage of western ones, and there's a big difference between having a redlink for "Ranganath Mishra, former Chief Justice of India" and one for a post-doc who decided to deposit his CV on Wikipedia. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 23:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Still less a post-doc who insistently deposits his CV on Wikipedia, most lately in an article that you have rightly prodded. (Have these people no shame?)
- I see your point. Still, List of photographers has got on pretty well with an absolute rule of "no article yet means no listing". This in turn means that a number of extremely deserving people -- e.g. Eugene Richards, let alone people I can't think of or have never heard of -- don't appear. That's what Talk:List of photographers is for.
- That's a lovely sig, by the way. -- Hoary (talk) 23:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks! No redlinks whatsoever is certainly the pragmatic approach - it's the same on the "births" sections of articles for days of the year, which are even more plagued by teenagers inserting themselves. I suppose the counter-argument is that the list of photographers can afford to take that view, because our coverage of photographers is presumably good enough that everyone who must be on the list if it's not to look silly has an article by now. That doesn't seem to be true even of the upper echelons of Indian society - looking through that list I was shocked to see just how many prominent Indian people (up to and including former cabinet ministers) we don't seem to have articles for. And I suppose the main argument for having a list of notable alumni is to show the influence of the university... in this respect "Ranganath Mishra, former Chief Justice of India" is equally useful whether we have an actual article on him or not. Anyway, there are some disordered thoughts... as for me, I think I feel an evening of writing stubs coming on. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 18:27, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- List of romantic novelists is doing the same thing as List of photographers. The coverage of romantic novelists on wikipedia was absolutely awful, and we had an overwhelming sea of red links on the list before. Now that we've separated out the names with articles and those without we are better able to identify which of the more prominent authors are missing and try to create those articles. We've also made it easier for the reader. I really like this method and think it would be useful for other groups at all. Karanacs (talk) 04:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- Quite. But it could be said that they (or some of them) do deserve the articles that they haven't yet got, and even that listing them in this way encourages people to write those articles. To which my own response would be: Fine, then list them in a WikiProject page or similar. However, others might disagree. -- Hoary (talk) 11:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Userspace and templates
Does anyone know what the policy is on userspace being used as a template? Or just transcluding in general? I assume that transcluding within a namespace is OK, but that there are restrictions on transcluding between namespaces? eg. Template namespace is designed to be transcluded everywhere. User namespace can be transcluded within user namespace (eg. to organise user pages and for userboxes). Discussions (the various talk namespaces) are sometimes transcluded to organise discussions. Portals have stuff transcluded on to them, and in effect this includes the Main Page. And so on. But is there anywhere that specifically says that transcluding userspace elsewhere (in this case from userspace to image namespace) is discouraged or forbidden? Carcharoth (talk) 13:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- It doesn't really matter. If they were more heavily used, moving them to the template namespace might make sense, but if they are only used by this user, then having them in user space is fine. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- It does seem a bit strange though. Editing an image page and finding a user's name on the page in that way. An example is here. Also, with other users (not this one) you might get problems with what happens if the user leaves, or if the user decides to nominate their subpage for deletion, and arguments (silly ones) over whether the page should be discussed (if it ever needs to be) at TfD or MfD. Carcharoth (talk) 13:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Discussion about IAR
There is a discussion on if Wikipedia:Ignore all rules should be expanded from its current version:[10] to a version with a story in it:[11].
Since this is a major change to core policy I think it important to get many points of view. We are having difficulty finding agreement, so please drop by WT:IAR and give your opinions. (1 == 2)Until 15:41, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks Until(1==2)! In actual fact, that particular edit was not so important. What we're actually trying to do is to use such a particularly suited page to figure out how to solve the issues found in this discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Disruptive_editing#Blocking_consensus. --Kim Bruning (talk) 18:10, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Interesting. IAR is a very simple thing, so a very simple explanation (like the one that is there) is sufficient, IMO. - Rjd0060 (talk) 23:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Which is not a topic anyone is really discussing there atm. (sorry about the misleading title earlier) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi! I created Wikipedia:Ignore all rules/Workshop as a "joint workshop" for people to work together on any suggestions for the IAR page while keeping the main policy page stable throughout the work, since it seems there is some controversy (it is protected currently anyway). Hopefully if people want to work towards gaining consensus for some changes to this page (which I think we all agree is a pretty important one!) then this will be helpful to them. Happy editing! --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 22:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
bot approval group
I have listed it at {{RFCpolicy}}, but I don't know how much traffic that gets, so, i'll mention it here too: WT:BAG#RFC. —Random832 18:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Modifying a map
Is it consistent with current policy to take a map from the CIA World Handbook, modify it, and then include it in Wikipedia as a CIA map without mentioning that the map has been modified?
This is what has been done with the CIA map of the Gaza strip om Wikipedia, which is included in the Gaza strip article. Specifically, the following text has been removed: "Israeli-occupied with current status subject to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement - permanent status to be determined through further negotiation" (compare [12]).
In Wikimedia Commons there are several other similarly modified maps ([13]), which are used in various articles.
/Yuslo (talk) 18:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm sure the answer is no, but I'm having a hard time figuring out which article to cite. Maybe Honesty. The simplest approach for the uploading user would be to *not* say it's a CIA map at all. I don't see why it would matter to include that. Anyone can see it's a map of the Gaza strip. Wjhonson (talk) 09:42, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- The image you include here doesn't seem to be the same one as actually on the Gaza strip article (which still includes the text). The Gz-map2.png you linked in above seems to have been originally uploaded unmodified, so I guess the changes could be tracked through its history; also I see Lojak has updated the Image page with a note on the changes. I guess the Gz-map.gif in Gaza strip should be replaced with this newer image? --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 07:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Redirects from foreign languages
Clarification on part of the policy on redirects has been requested at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Redirects from foreign languages. Please join the discussion at your convenience. Rossami (talk) 23:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Good blogs and bad blogs.
I saw this over at the RS noticeboard in somebody else's case (it's over here) and it occurred to me that this misunderstanding was what led me to butt heads with User:Sceptre a while back over whether to include the info about Gerstmann being fired from Gamespot on the Gamespot article. His objection was because "the sources were blogs." Technically, though, they seemed reliable at the time. I mean, Wired is just as reliable as postings made by the Gamespot company, right? Why not?
I propose the following (either to include at WP:V, WP:RS, WP:OR, or as an original policy at WP:BLOG).
It is not the technology used in blogging that makes it an unreliable source. The fact that a source is a blog, by itself, does not necessarily make it unreliable. What makes a blog an unreliable source is the same as with other independent news sources: the nature of the editorial process and the credibility of the editors.
Good blog: (wired.com, mainstream media blogs, etc.)
- Closed registration
- A handful of editors
- All editors are experts
AlwaysUsually accurate on the facts- They're journalists who do original stories
- Value-free reporting
Bad blog: (freerepublic, dailykos, digg, little green footballs, etc.)
- Open registrations
- Hundreds of editors
- Editors are average people
- Prone to having incorrect facts
- They copy and paste stuff from CNN and Fox News
- It's an editorial\opinion\advocacy
In general, blogs should be avoided, but in some cases (i.e., experts who run their own blogs), a "good blog," is not really a blog at all, but simply a mainstream news source that's being provided with a new form of technology, though it's still just as reliable and verifiable. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 02:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- Yes but change "always accurate" because you know that some pointy person is going to say oh well they goofed on that one little snit and so the whole thing is thrown out.Wjhonson (talk) 05:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- http://www.regrettheerror.com/ and United States journalism scandals -- SEWilco (talk) 05:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Ah, nevermind. Looks like it's already there here and the fifth reference on WP:V. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 09:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
British vs American
I know there are differences between some British and American words (colour/color). Which is standard on Wikipedia? QuasiAbstract (talk) 13:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
spelling
I just referenced Taj Mahal. In it there are several references to the Smithsonian Institute. THIS IS INCORRECT - IT IS INSTITUTION, NOT INSTITUTE. Jim Froehlich
- You are correct. Smithsonian Institute is a redirect to Smithsonian Institution for the benefit of people who don't know the correct name. You can edit Taj Mahal to correct those links. If you are really energetic you could correct the 200 other links that are misspelled. Sbowers3 (talk) 18:17, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- I just fixed ten of them. Someone else's turn now. Dsmdgold (talk) 04:45, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- Fixed. None remaining outside userspace + talkpages. Algebraist 16:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- I just fixed ten of them. Someone else's turn now. Dsmdgold (talk) 04:45, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to get a broader swath of community input on the articles at issue in this RfC. We have a small group of tax experts who routinely patrol these articles to prevent them from being used as founts of nonsense, but that makes us particularly susceptible to charges of bias. Therefore, I'd appreciate if some folks who have heretofore been uninvolved in these matters could evaluate this RfC. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm uninvolved. I despise Libertarians, but I'm an independent-minded Liberal who recently somewhat came to the conclusion that, yes, taxation is theft. Still, though, a lot of tax-protesters are like 9/11 twoofers, totally off-the-wall. Saying "there is no law requiring me to pay taxes" is insane. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 06:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Manual of Style - punctuation of dates question
This is a pretty trivial thing to bring up but I was wondering what is the correct punctuation to use when you mention the day of the week at the beginning of the date (do you use a comma)?
For example: Thursday, January 24, 2008 OR Thursday January 24, 2008 ?
Also: Thursday, 24 January 2008 OR Thursday 24 January 2008 ?
I didn't see any mention of this in either WP:MOS or WP:DATE. So does Wikipedia have a preference for this punctuation question? --LonelyMarble (talk) 05:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- It's pretty rare to include the day of the week; that might be useful for scheduled events that are about to occur (say, an election next Tuesday), but generally it's unnecessary. The American style is to put a comma after the date, and I suggest you follow that unless the norm elsewhere is different, and the article pertains to a topic of that (other) country. (This is the way spelling differences are handled, in general.)
- So no, we don't have a rule for everything; given that this question relates to a pretty unusual situation, feel free to just use your best judgment. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Naming Conventions: Monarchs
The naming convention for monarchs has previously been an exception to Wikipedia's general naming conventions. Efforts are now being made to bring them in line, with a propoasl for the most common name for a monarch to take precedence. (eg. William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mary, Queen of Scots.) Please consider the proposals at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Proposals to change Monarchal naming conventions so we can get wide consensus on this matter. Thanks. Gwinva (talk) 22:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
New project space essay for non-admin closure
I have created a new project space essay on non-admin closure. This was in response to a few delrevs that resulted in relisting some AFD's due to non-admin closure out-of-process, followed by an editor asking me where to find policy/guideline/instructions for it. Not finding any, I made this essay up, and am seeking input from others to improve it. I hope it will be promoted to guideline status after careful review and collaboration. The essay is located at Wikipedia:Non-admin closure, and a shortcut has been made at WP:NADC. I am also attempting to usurp the infrequently-used shortcut WP:NAC, which two users are currently linking-to from their userspace. John Broughton has already made some improvements, and will be adding this to the Wikipedia editor index. JERRY talk contribs 16:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Bot warnings
I've been RC Patrolling lately and have found myself beaten to the crime scene by those darned Bot vigilantes. How irksome! If a user is attracting all bot warnings, which do not really add up like the test2, 3, 4, etc do, should a real user tack on a "true" warning? Or, possibly, in order to avoid double jeopardy, erase a bot warning to add a real one?
Thanks in advance! --.ιΙ Inhuman14 Ιι. 02:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- The real solution, of course, is to fix the bots. It's a bit trickier than just escalating the warnings - in a sequence of four events A, B, W-A, W-B, warnings W-A and W-B should be at the same level, because the person doing edit B wouldn't have had a chance to see warning W-A before finishing with B. And even if the sequence is A, W-A, B, W-B, if edit B occured within a minute after W-A, an argument can be made that edit B was already underway and (again) that the editor may not have seen W-A until after saving edit B.
- Anyway, until the bots are fixed, I suggest adding a higher-level warning to the user talk page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Cool, thanks! --.ιΙ Inhuman14 Ιι. 02:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think that warning W-B shouldn't happen, unless it's for a significantly different action. If someone's added "penis" to two articles in a short time, they only need to be warned once about vandalism. On the other hand, if they add "penis" to one article, and add a spam link to another, they need to be warned about both vandalism and spamming. --Carnildo (talk) 04:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- I disagree. If they're repeating the same vandalism on multiple articles, they should get warned for each vandalism, otherwise they get a free ride because nobody will block when you report them at WP:AIV unles you've given them the full range of warnings. THAT is the big problem, refusal to deal with vandals who haven't had their hands held enough times. If admins would stop counting warnings and actually review the vandalism, we wouldn't have to deal with "only warn him once for all of the penis vandalism", vs. "warn him every time for each incidence." Corvus cornixtalk 00:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think that warning W-B shouldn't happen, unless it's for a significantly different action. If someone's added "penis" to two articles in a short time, they only need to be warned once about vandalism. On the other hand, if they add "penis" to one article, and add a spam link to another, they need to be warned about both vandalism and spamming. --Carnildo (talk) 04:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Jerome Kerviel and libel
I'm concerned about the information being posted about Jerome Kerviel. He has not been charged with a crime. All of the accusations against him are coming from the company. That said, it seems that every media outlet in the world, it seems, is assuming he is guilty of fraud.
Until a few minutes ago, our main page (on "In the News") said that Kerviel "is alleged" to have committed this massive fraud. It didn't mention who was doing the alleging. Now anyone who knows the first thing about media law in the U.S. knows that using empty terms like "is alleged" offers absolutely no libel protection. I reworded the In the News entry to eliminate Kerviel's name and had an administrator make the change. I also made changes to the Jerome Kerviel and Societe Generale articles to eliminate the most obvious libel risks.
We need to decide what to do about Kerviel across the encyclopedia. Obviously, we should ensure that every word of material is attributed to widely read media sources and that the source of every accusation is prominently mentioned. That won't provide 100% protection, since republication of libel is still libel. But with so many media outlets already accepting all of Societe Generale's accusations as fact, I'm sure Wikipedia editors will be averse to waiting before publishing ourselves. So the best we can do is make sure we are simply following the lead of the world's media. That may ensure that other media, not us, are the people who would bear the brunt of any defamation action taken by Kerviel's lawyers. (And that any future plaintiff with a libel case against Wikipedia couldn't establish a pattern of behavior of failing to address potentially libelous statements.) -- Mwalcoff (talk) 05:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- On the talk page of this article, Mwalcoff again asserted a claim that repeating libel offers no libel protection,etc, and I asked for a source which Mwalcoff provided here. However Mwalcoff's assertion can be plainly seen on-its-face to be a false characterization of the evidence. The link does not state that republication of libel is libel, rather it asserts that it might possibly be and after reading the entire article based on numerous cases by the way, we arrive at the final issue. A single, yes a single case, yes just one, where the US Supreme Court rejected without comment, a case submitted for docket. Since they rejected without comment, we will never know why, to turn and now assert that this proves that they are skeptical of the neutral reportage protection is surely a gross overstatement. To assert that some journalists might suspect the possibility that.... is pointless. Many state courts have asserted that neutral reportage is protected. I would conclude that the particular case was of a newspaper who reported the defamation of one public official by another, making the point just that much narrower. Wjhonson (talk) 05:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- The Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue, and I submit that the rule on neutral reportage was *created* by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the first place.Wjhonson (talk) 05:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Look, it's nearly 2 a.m., and I'm not going to go scour my bookshelf and the Internet for sources to prove to you the basic tenets of media law. Yes, it's more complicated than "republication of libel is libel." What is undoubtable, though, is that each repetition of libel is actionable. That means the plaintiff can sue the republisher. Think of it this way -- let's say a high-school newspaper in Nebraska libels someone. Then The New York Times reprints the libelous statement. Now the person's reputation is damaged because a million people have read the statement. The plaintiff can sue the high school newspaper, but he'll be far better off suing the NYT, which is really responsible for the damage to his reputation. That's what the republication rule means -- he can sue the Times, not just the first newspaper to print the libel.
- Now the Times, like any libel defendant, has some possible defenses. This is a separate issue. As Wjhonson points out, one defense is that of neutral reportage. I don't know if neutral reportage would cover what an employer says about an employee. I wouldn't count on it. I know that in 1996, NBC News aired a defamatory story about Olympic Park bombing suspect Richard Jewell that was based on information provided by his former boss. Jewell sued and obtained settlements from both the network and his former employer. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 07:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm off to work, but the source that you cite is a business journal. Someone should cite a reference in a legal journal, as that really is the bare minimum for legal discussions. superlusertc 2008 January 25, 12:46 (UTC)
- Here are two sources to look at: Barring the bar. By: Leslie, Gregg. News Media & the Law, Winter2005, Vol. 29 Issue 1, p16-16 and CONSTITUTIONAL LAW -- FREEDOM OF THE PRESS -- PENNSYLVANIA SUPREME COURT DECLINES TO ADOPT NEUTRAL REPORTAGE PRIVILEGE. -- Norton v. Glenn, 860 A.2d 48 (Pa. 2004). Harvard Law Review, Apr2005, Vol. 118 Issue 6, p2029-2036, 8p; superlusertc 2008 January 25, 12:51 (UTC)
Repeating libel is legal so long as there is no malice, but anyone can sue anyone anyway. WAS 4.250 (talk) 15:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, in Barrett v. Rosenthal, it was established that, in the US, repeating libel on the Internet is legal regardless of malice. Still, anyone can sue for anything. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:42, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
The problem MWalcoff with your unsourced assertions is that you are not an authority in this area. Neither am I. That is why we use sources. The source your provided does not, in fact, back up your claim, in fact it says the opposite, or rather it presents the case that the case is not actually known. It's a null paper. It collects together various cases where the status quo was upheld, and where it was not. We, as fellow journalists, are certainly in the same boat, as other publications. We, have no reason not to follow the same standards as other publications. If an article in the Los Angeles Times, on Britney Spears can state that she was "thrashing about wildly when arrested" then we can certainly quote it, standing on the same legal ground, as that initial publisher.Wjhonson (talk) 00:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikimedia's statistics are not trustworthy\Evidence Wikipedia is failing.
I made some substantial edits to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not failing. I suggest anyone involved in policy-making read it.
With that said, here's something to consider: The statistics put forth by Wikimedia at http://stats.wikimedia.org/ do not seem to be reliable or trustworthy, but they are depended upon heavily by people arguing that Wikipedia is either succeeding or failing.
Here is why I make that claim:
There is a correlation between "slowed growth in the userbase" on Wikipedia and the sudden decision by Wikimedia to stop releasing statistics. See the table here.
It's possible it's merely a coincidence (keep in mind: I'm no anti-Jimbo or anti-Wikimedia conspiracy theorist), but why would Wikimedia do this? If it was financial and pragmatic constraints, then why did the largest wikis not stop having their statistics released first? But rather, regardless of the size of the dump involved, as soon as there was a major drop in user growth, the statistics stopped being published.
It's true for Wikipedia in every language and overall, their data collection appears to have been very sloppy, since even small wikis, like the Sundanese Wikipedia have huge gaps in the data. If Wikimedia is not capable of collecting and compiling data dumps, how can we expect Wikipedia to succeed? They can't even self-evaluate their own progress.
As you'll see from the data, as soon as there was a sudden major shortfall in new user growth, the data stopped being published. Furthermore, I have noticed that there are inconsistencies between that page as it is currently and historical archives. I.E., as it is currently, it states that on May 2005, Wikipedia had 6767 new users. That page as it was published on July 2007 states that on May 2005, Wikipedia had 6746 new users. [14] That's just one inconsistency of several. The question is: When did they revise their estimate, why did they do so, and unlike good statisticians, why did they not make a note of their revision? As I said, I'm not a wacko, so I'm open to plausible explanations.
So far, since 2006, the data they have released has been sporadic, at best. [15] (Other newer tables are available elsewhere on their site, but not very much)
Their claim for this on the main page is:
All statistics on this site are extracted from full archive database dumps. Since a year it has become increasingly difficult to produce valid dumps for the largest wikipedias. Until that problem is fixed some figures will be outdated.
This leaves us with four possibilities, none of which is exclusive:
- Wikimedia has been lazy about releasing statistics
- Wikimedia has been incompetent about handling statistics
- Wikimedia does not have adequate funding for the servers necessary to process statistics
- Wikimedia has been intentionally not releasing statistics because the current data would make Wikipedia look bad.
No matter which explanation you choose, it gives support to the claim that WP:Wikipedia is failing. And we shouldn't twiddle our thumbs and do nothing, while that happens.
Based on the data above, it is a plausible hypothesis that the Wikipedia community's growth has either slowed substantially or possibly even shrank since the data stopped being collected. I had this suspicion, myself, because I quit Wikipedia a while back, then made a new account and when I came back I got the distinct feeling that things got a lot "smaller," as I keep seeing the same users from page-to-page.
The reason for this, in my opinion, has been a brain drain, the result of Wikipedia:Anti-elitism. Out of every Wikipedia, German Wikipedia seems to have done fairly well, however, because they are the most "elitist," for obvious cultural reasons and which is clear from how their policy pages are laid out. Apparently, this has empirically led to a far more effective wiki-process than the huggy-feely wikilove and tea-drinking on English Wikipedia and Dutch Wikipedia. (See also: Wikipedia:Zombies)
Finally, if it's true that the statistics aren't being released due to financial contraints, the foundation should hurry up with releasing their financial report for fiscal year 2007 and cut back on unnecessary expenses. Furthermore, if anyone suggests it's the Wikipedia community's job to collect such statistics, well, that's just lazy and stupid. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 08:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- There is another possibility. It is possible that the statistics that were being published were corrupted/worthless. You yourself came back under a new account. Does that make you a new user? What about bots? How do we remove such bias from our statistics? It may be that systemic flaws were detected in statistical collection methods and that with the English Wikipedia, correcting these flaws was impossible, so they just stopped presenting the statistics until the flaws could be corrected and the data normalized.
- I don't claim that that is true, but it is an alternate explanation. As they say, never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. superlusertc 2008 January 25, 12:33 (UTC)
Superluser, statistics, like computers, aren't people. They don't make mistakes. It's just as silly to "blame the computer" when something goes wrong as it is to blame the statistics for being "corrupted/worthless" when they're collected and published sloppily. If you are going to personify them, though, then I shall counter that assertion by saying that you should apologize to the statistics for your personal attack because you might have hurt their feelings. Who are you to call them "corrupted" or "worthless"? Meanie.
In addition, your claim isn't an "alternative explanation" because incompetence is #2 on the list of possible explanations. And Wikimedia incompetence is a sign of Wikipedia failure, is it not? Wikipedia is edited by the community, but it is facilitated by Wikimedia. Without an efficiently managed Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia cannot succeed.
TheDJ: It's not 2012...yet. (dun dun dun) Still, your claim appears to be an appeal to ridicule. My assertions are quite logical and I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe Bush did 9/11, that Jimbo's secretly running Wikipedia as a tax-shelter, Google is a CIA front, etc.. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 13:24, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- I believe you're seeing the same sort of thing that the University of Minnesota study on "damaged views" in Wikipedia was seeing, but even they failed to draw the correct conclusion. Wikipedia is getting worse, not better, over time. The novelty of helping to build the encyclopedia is far more appealing to the volunteer editor than is the drudgery of helping to maintain the encyclopedia once pages have taken an adequate, acceptable form. Meanwhile, as more and more "regular" editors begin to experience how Wikipedia's most active administrators and Arbitration Committee members are only here to play multi-player role games, and actually contribute very, very little to the building or maintainence of the encyclopedia, the regular editors abandon the project (and probably tell 10 friends why Wikipedia isn't worth their trouble, either). As for your theory about why the statistics have stopped, I would absolutely say it is nothing more than the server started choking when the larger data sets were being processed, and it is more important for the WMF to pay Sue Gardner and her staff $500,000 and set her up in cushy San Francisco, than it is for them to invest in a kick-ass server for self-analyzing statistics. I'm actually thinking of quitting this project, too, after years of contribution. - John Russ Finley (talk) 14:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
John, about that University of Minnesota study -- strange. You said they concluded Wikipedia was getting better, but as it seems to me they actually acknowledged Wikipedia was getting worse. I dug up their study [16] and their abstract reads:
Wikipedia’s brilliance and curse is that any user can edit any of the encyclopedia entries. We introduce the notion of the impact of an edit, measured by the number of times the edited version is viewed. Using several datasets, including recent logs of all article views, we show that frequent editors dominate what people see when they visit Wikipedia, and that this domination is increasing.
Similarly, using the same impact measure, we show that the probability of a typical article view being damaged is small but increasing, and we present empirically grounded classes of damage.
If somewhere buried in that study is an assertion that contradicts that abstract then, it's a flawed study. Their abstract, however, supports WP:FAIL and as such, it has been added. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 15:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Technicians tend to make pithy statements All statistics on this site are extracted from full archive database dumps. Since a year it has become increasingly difficult to produce valid dumps for the largest wikipedias. Until that problem is fixed some figures will be outdated.
Good, so the problem is not that there's no machine to do statistics, or that they are paying too much to someone else; could it possibly be <gasp> the trouble of making full-size archive database dumps.</gasp>? ... Naaaaah.... it's really because the illuminati have been taken over by aliens, and the wikipedia statistics would have revealed their evil plans! That's a much more logical explanation. --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC) There's a stack of problems making db dumps off of huge db's, many of them apparently to do with software.
- Kim Bruning, if that is your real name, please post a source stating that the illuminati have *not* been taken over by aliens. I would submit, for the record, that we have no way of knowing whether you yourself are not a mere shill planted by the aliens, to dissuade (sp?) us from the apparent obviousness of our dire situation. (I will freely admit the previous is a run-on sentence under torture.)Wjhonson (talk) 00:17, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
The "trouble of making full-size archive database dumps.".
Kim, you're "blaming the computer," just like superluser. It's not the database's fault that it's difficult to collect and compile database dumps, because machines have ZERO responsibility. It's somebody's fault, somewhere, for not addressing the problem. And again, your are making appeals to ridicule. Please, consider the rationality behind my argument instead of just personal attacks, thanks. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 02:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- "Fault" is the wrong word. Wikipedia grew (which is something everyone hoped for). A consequence of that growth is that the statistics system no longer works. It's a known issue, obviously. Fixing this issue will take server resources and more importantly developer time. Thus far Wikimedia has chosen not to devote the time and money necessary to fix the problem, because (presumably) they have chosen to devote resources to other things. Dragons flight (talk) 04:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
"Wikipedia growth" means more users and a larger database, but it also meant MORE MONEY, something you can see if you read the financial reports for FY 2004, 2005, and 2006. This meant that they had a greater capability to invest in technology, something they claim is where most of the money is supposed to go. See Planned Spending Distribution 2007-2008. That doesn't appear to have happened, however, because of how they've been unable to set up the server resources to collect database dumps despite hiring several new employees and the expensive task of moving their offices from Florida to San Francisco.
I.E., if Wikimedia is being crushed under the weight of its own popularity, as you claim, then resources should be shifted away from Wikipedia events where they aren't needed and towards server resources and technology where they desperately are needed. Devoting resources in the wrong places (as you suggest) is incompetent.
And that's what I'm trying to say: Unlike Finley, I'm not saying this is a conspiracy, "The evil Wikimedia board is spending your donations on champagne and caviar, mwahahahahaha!!!" No, it's just simple mismanagement stemming from incompetence, which has led to waste of resources. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 06:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Servers are mostly bought by Brion, who is competent, but overworked. First priority is to allow us all to edit. Database dumps are a bit low on the list :-( --Kim Bruning (talk) 07:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
No one understands the WP:SUMMARY policy -- please do something
(cross-posted in the Wikipedia talk:Summary style page)
For the last week, I tried to explain this WP:SUMMARY policy to editors of the United Nations article without success; they keep expanding a summary section while shunning the main article on the subject. In brief, few people understand this policy and, as a result, WP fills with duplications and contradictions. Please do something. Emmanuelm (talk) 14:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- I don't really like the word Summary here. This essay or guideline is really about "Summarizing", i.e. taking a long article, replacing it with a summary and forking the detailed content. When I see WP:SUMMARY I instead naturally think that I'm going to a page that is a summary of Wikipedia, or even meta-Wikipedia. Sort of an "About" page or a "What we are and what we're doing here" page. So I propose renaming your page to Summarizing, or even "Article Summarizing".Wjhonson (talk) 00:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests for checkusership has been marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Requests for checkusership ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change. -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Statute of Limitations
Is there a Statute of Limitations for long-past instances of vandalism? Say, for instance, a page that hasn't been edited for over a year, and I happen across it and revert the edit. It seems pretty stupid to warn someone that long, but is there a policy there?
Thanks! --.ιΙ Inhuman14 Ιι. 21:59, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Generally, I would recommend checking what they have been up to since. If they have remained a vandal, then warn. If they have not been active, then it might not be worth it. And if they're a good editor, then there isn't any need LinaMishima (talk) 22:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Just use common sense. The point of warning an editor is to get them to stop engaging in a disruptive behavior. If they've already stopped a year ago, then there's no point. In fact, it could have the opposite effect. -Chunky Rice (talk) 22:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
- Cool, I was just making sure that there wasn't a "THOU SHALT WARN" clause or something. Thanks! --.ιΙ Inhuman14 Ιι. 00:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Bureaucracy or Adhocracy?
So people keep adding fiddly little "rules", even though we have an ignore all rules kind of rule. In the end, this will cause wikipedia to become somewhat bureaucratic. Having well documented policies and process *can* be a good thing, and it *is* possible to grow and thrive as an organisation... if you manage to attain Capability Maturity Model level 5. Now who would care to bet with me on whether that is an attainable goal in a volunteer-driven networked organization? O:-)
Since wikipedia is on the internet, and things can change rapidly from day to day, it makes more sense to try to work towards running wikipedia as an Adhocracy, and that's what we've been doing.
Does that make sense?
--Kim Bruning (talk) 01:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Please refactor your comments to third-grade level. You can't expect me to understand all that high faluting lingo missy.Wjhonson (talk) 01:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Isn't it great to have an encyclopedia on-hand? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:49, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Rather than a bureaucracy or an adhocracy, I would submit that Wikipedia is becoming, more than ever a consensucracy. Don't blame me that your dictionary doesn't yet have that word, just remember that I made it up first. And here is my definition, a bureaucracy lives by its rules, no matter how senseless they have become. If you break a rule you are punished, even though no living person has been harmed. The rule itself becomes the person against which you are conflicting. In an adhocracy, the rules are overlooked in order to achieve a useful goal. In this sense ignore all rules is meant not to actually ignore the rules for your own gain, but to ignore them when the rules themselves harm the project because they have become too bureaucratic. That is, an adhocracy assumes there is a bureaucracy against which it's working. Wjhonson (talk) 02:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Okay now you say, Mr Johnson oh great sage o' the mountain etc, what then is a consensucracy? Your question is a good one Grasshopper. A Consensucracy is an organization that works by consensus. They do not have a bureaucracy and yet they have rules, however the rules are or can be in a constant state of flux, not being ignored, yet being reshaped constantly as new situations emerge. A Consensucracy is the ultimate democratic society. It is the end-result of the collision of Representative Government with Social Networking. It is the future my young friend, and those who do not conform to consensus must face the consequences! (0kay I'm done.)Wjhonson (talk) 02:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- The problem with a consensucracy is when its participants demand that the means to determining consensus become a bureaucracy :) It's easier to game the system when there's a system to game. This problem is a result of personal interests, but also results in another problem: vested interests. GracenotesT § 02:54, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Okay now you say, Mr Johnson oh great sage o' the mountain etc, what then is a consensucracy? Your question is a good one Grasshopper. A Consensucracy is an organization that works by consensus. They do not have a bureaucracy and yet they have rules, however the rules are or can be in a constant state of flux, not being ignored, yet being reshaped constantly as new situations emerge. A Consensucracy is the ultimate democratic society. It is the end-result of the collision of Representative Government with Social Networking. It is the future my young friend, and those who do not conform to consensus must face the consequences! (0kay I'm done.)Wjhonson (talk) 02:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- I dazzled myself so much with my sheer brilliance that I had to go have a nice cup of tea and a sit-down.Wjhonson (talk) 02:54, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Kim, I like the term "Adhocracy." The University of Minnesota used the term, "intellitent-task routing." They seemed to suggest something along the lines of Adhocracy -- that the proper way of editing be made explicit in policy pages and a rational system of incentives be set up to encourage users to make good edits, but that it ultimately leaves it up to humans to make good edits.
According to wikiquote, Jimmy suggested users need incentives to make good edits. Right now, there is no incentive to be a good editor (aside from the occasional barnstar, every few years -- woo-hoo!), above and beyond being a blatant vandal or troll. If I spam Wikipedia, put in patent nonsense, engage in sockpuppetry, vicious personal attacks, etc.., I will be intelligently routed out of here. On the other hand, it's not quite clear that there's any incentive to use reliable sources, to verify properly, to have a NPOV, to avoid copyright violation, to avoid slander & libel, to avoid conflicts-of-interest, etc., and a whole horde of other policies I've probably forgotten.
Good editors should be free to make good edits, while bad editors should be "intelligently routed" into making good edits. Is that what you mean by Adhocracy? ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 07:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Adhocracy explicitly rejects the concept of having strict policies for starters. Are you sure you're not confusing it with bureaucracy? --Kim Bruning (talk) 07:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
When I say "strict policies," I don't mean "unbreakable." I mean that somebody rational -- a philosopher king (aka User:Jimbo Wales) -- sets up a strong system whereby people are intelligently routed to perform certain tasks, that is, they are given incentives in accordance with the response expected by human behavior (see natural law). Any time a policy is formed that is not in accordance with that, people have the natural right of revolt (aka ignore all rules). Bureaucracy, democracy, and anarchy are rejected -- not simply because a policy page says so and people came to that conclusion -- but because bureaucracy, democracy, and anarchy all disturb the natural order. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 14:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- I still say that Wikipedia is not Bureaucracy. It's the massively multiplayer sequel. So perhaps we should try to encourage people to treat it less like one? superlusertc 2008 January 26, 18:52 (UTC)
- Maybe if we add XP and leveling to article editing, then the meta-game (politics) will become less important for people's enjoyment? LinaMishima (talk) 19:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- If you're equating revolution with ignore all rules, I think you're missing an essential point of that article. A revolution seeks to overthrow the established order, usually with the intention of replacing it with some other selected order, or with anarchy. IAR does not address that, but rather IAR opines that there are some situations, in which the bureaucratic rules get *in the way* of the project goals. That is, they hinder the development of the encyclopedia. It is only in that very narrow space that IAR applies. IAR is not for situations you don't personally like. I'm sure the hard scientists would really like to delete all articles on haunted houses. However that would harm the project and so IAR does not apply, imho. Wjhonson (talk) 19:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Are timelines of fictional universes derivative works?
For example, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions#Back to the Future timeline.
The Transhumanist 02:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Transhumanist, it appears that the community misunderstands copyright, or perhaps it isn't the community at all, but there's just a "cabal of fanboy editors" preventing fan-fiction on Wikipedia from being removed.
I attempted to simply blank the page until the deletion review was over, but Rogue Penguin reverted me. I e-mailed info-en-c@wikimedia.org. If anybody knows how to directly contact Mike Godwin, that might be a better idea. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 07:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I made a proposal here. Wikipedia:Fan fiction, since there's deadlock over at WP:FICT. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 07:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- For good reason. The community has a fine understanding of copyright. Transhumanist is confused on this specific issue, a reasonable thing indeed. You've jumped to the worst case scenario and gone crazy over enforcing it, an absolutely unproductive attitude. On a lighter note, make a new section for your proposal, otherwise it won't draw the attention required for consensus to form. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 07:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Jimbo quote
I have seen a quote someplace where Jimbo wrote, or said in a speech, that the name of the NPOV policy is misleading because it is not really neutral, but balanced in accordance with the prominence of the views. Where can I find this quote?--Filll (talk) 02:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Reading the policy is the best way to understand the policy. And Jimbo said arguments are less then stellar. Prodego talk 02:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Jimbo is an objectivist. Most Wikipedia users are wishy-washy collectivists, relativists, and subjectivists. See Sophism and anti-intellectualism. He established the NPOV policy, not as a false compromise or appeal to the middle, but because most people are not Objectivists or particularly rational, so arguing arguing "objective truth" would be a nightmare. Instead, people are supposed to argue over "objective verifiability." The objective part, however, has been wiped out of Wikipedia by the collectivists, hence the reason things like this and User:Shii/Hoaxes happen and The Community ™ doesn't do anything to stop it.
Frankly, I would like to know who this user, The Community ™, is and why they have not been blocked for harming Wikipedia.
The best way to edit Wikipedia is to glance across the policy pages, then think critically about what you're doing. If WP:NPOV is unclear, irrational, or downright harmful for Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, it should be ignored even if The Community ™ says otherwise. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 03:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Policy Proposal regarding admins
Before I create a subpage regarding this propsal, I would like to get a consensus from admins before proposing this to the wider Wikipedia community. Also posted at WP:AN.
I was just thinking this morning, and I think we need to have an actual systems for admins, should they make several mistakes while they are admins (some admins I know inthe past in have made mistakes). I am therefore proposing a proposal, named Three Strikes and You're Out (Subpage will be created if admins support the proposal. Should an admin do a wrong action once, they would be given a first strike. Should they commit an offence again, they will receive a second strike. Should they yet again do a wrong action (or it even could be simply edit warring - to something such as using the tools to harrass others); they will recieve a third and final warning. Because of this they will be notified via their third warning that an RFA will open on them. Should they fail the RFA, their admin tools will be taken off them. However only strikes should be given by un-involved administrators or good-faith editors. If any strikes are found to be in bad-faith the strike should be discussed and removed in due course if found to be in bad-faith.
Opinions on the above? D.M.N. (talk) 13:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Who decides that the admin has committed a wrong action? Any user? Another admin? An RfC process? Everyone makes mistakes. What constitutes a mistake serious enough to be considered a "strike"? Darkspots (talk) 14:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I think we should hire a bunch of Hungarian villagers with torches and pitchforks to do it. Whenever an admin does anything bad, they can chase them around, hurling fruit and other things at them. Admins which are particularly nasty can be tied to a pole and set on fire. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Comment I've slightly changed the above as a result of comments here and at WP:AN. D.M.N. (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
My concern is that - even under the best of circumstances - mistakes happen. Doctors make mistakes, lawyers make mistakes, construction workers make mistakes, and admins make mistakes. Many admins deal with - literally - THOUSANDS of administrative actions a month. Mistakes are going to happen, particularly with that high volume. Under your proposed system, how would you deal with legitimate mistakes versus actions taken with malice? How do you prove malice? Who judges them? I'm open to admin accountability, but I am not open to a system that runs off some of our very best contributors because they happen to make more edits than others and thus have a higher propensity for a RAW number of mistakes (which may actually be a much lower ratio of mistakes to administrative actions). - Philippe | Talk 17:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- I wonder if the two discussions 9this one and the WP:AN discussion, shouldn't be merged. What happens if this discussion finds consensus and the other doesn't? It's a bit confusing to read valid arguments in two places about the same topic. Can they be merged and not just linked? Keeper | 76 17:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- If being an admin is "no big deal" (as admins are fond of telling us mere mortals), then stopping being an admin should also be no big deal. But as long as we have "admins=trusted editors", which implies "non-admins=untrusted editors" combined with the current byzantine system for getting rid of crappy admins (and there are plenty of those) nothing will change. If someone makes lots of mistakes with their admin tools - then they shouldn't have them. To tell the truth, I am sick and tired of all the special pleading which crops up every time an admin acts like a bully or foul-mouthed buffoon. Many admins seem to me to be incapable of shewing respect to non-admins, and to regard any complaints about admins as wicked name-calling by untrustworthy plebs. I had an email this week from someone very upset by the behaviour of one admin in particular who is pretty notorious for his inability to remain civil, yet who seems to be a "special case", immune from criticism (even when he uses admin tools to edit protected articles in which he is involved in the content dispute). Attempts to get other admins to speak to him (it being pointless for anyone else to try, as he simply blanks comments from his talk page, often with abusive edit summaries) are largely fruitless - it's always shrugged off as "it's just his manner" or "he's stressed". I've seen non-admins indef-blocked for much less serious misbehaviour. I bet that if all admins were to be forced to restand for their tools, at least 50% wouldn't get them back. DuncanHill (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
This comment:
If being an admin is "no big deal" (as admins are fond of telling us mere mortals), then stopping being an admin should also be no big deal
That's a red herring aka irrelevant conclusion. The claim that increasing oversight of administrators would be a good thing has absolutely nothing to do with the claim that they don't have a lot of authority ("no big deal"). In fact, your premise implies the exact opposite conclusion: It's precisely because being an admin is "no big deal," that it doesn't come with that much greater amount of authority, that increased oversight seems necessary.
Furthermore, I have to ask: Who is going to oversee the overseers? ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 18:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Deletion Policy
Am I the only one who thinks the speedy deletion policy is dominated by a small group of people trying to become admins? It seems the more they try to 'clean up' articles by nominating them, the more they get kudos points from others, helping their eventual run for election to adminship. Iloveamerica2much (talk) 13:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- It's less about trying to become admins and more about improving the encyclopedia. Please assume good faith on the part of others, and presume that their actions are intended for the best of the project. GlassCobra 13:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- How can I assume good faith when all they do is run about and delete others work? How about they assume good faith about others for once? Iloveamerica2much (talk) 14:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- There are strict guidelines and criteria for speedy deletion, and notability must be met for articles to be kept. Malinaccier (talk) 14:17, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Lack of notability is not grounds for speedy deletion. I've seen plenty of evidence for Iloveamerica2much's contentions; additionally, the time lapse between tagging an article for speedy deletion and its deletion is often not enough for an article creator to respond or protest. Argyriou (talk) 20:40, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- There are strict guidelines and criteria for speedy deletion, and notability must be met for articles to be kept. Malinaccier (talk) 14:17, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Notability is often there in articles they nominate for deletion. I'm saying many nominate for alternative reasons, and don't actually care about the policies in question. Iloveamerica2much (talk) 14:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- If I had evidence to support that they are, I would. As it stands, no evidence supports that they are 'working in good faith for the project'. Iloveamerica2much (talk) 14:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I wish I got kudo points for deleting articles -- one of the thousands of articles on Wikipedia created every day that need to be zapped out of existence. Where do I go to get these kudo points and who is handing them out?
Also, WP:Assume good faith means exactly what it says. You shouldn't require "evidence that they are working in good faith," because you're supposed to assume that until there's evidence that demonstrates the contrary. ☯ Zenwhat (talk) 14:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Please WP:Assume good faith as everyone is asking you to. And i think you should concentrate more on developing that article which was proposed to be deleted speedily. --SMS Talk 14:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I see nothing wrong with editors practising deletion in order to become admins. It's excellent training for when they are admins. (Note: I'm not being satirical, I actually do think it's good training) • Anakin (contribs • complaints) 15:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
WP:RFC/U - time to get rid of it?
Moving from WT:RFC...
About two months ago, I listed Requests for user comment for deletion under the premise that it did not work, and it's basically a quagmire of personal attacks and a stepping stone to ArbCom. The consensus in the MFD, including the creator of the process and the MfD's closer, is that it doesn't really work 99.9% of the time, and only exists because there is no other process existent. Just get rid of it and reinstate the Community Sanction Noticeboard, as that actually did do some good. Will (talk) 17:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Sounds like a good idea. I personally prefered CSN better than RFC/U. D.M.N. (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- CSN had teeth, RFC/U hardly any. CSN saw discussion and nuance, RFC/U sees ganging up and party-lines half the time. With the same provisos as R. Baley, except I'd prefer six months, it would be good to have it back. Relata refero (talk) 18:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Maybe you could merge the two... CSN to me always seemed to arbitrary. Consensus could be declared in an hour or never... that kind of gives power to people who can generate a mob of "me too"s on demand. RFC is very structured but seldom goes anywhere. Is there any realistic way to have CSN but with a more normalized process, to give the accused a change to reply, slow down the mob mentality, and reasonably assess consensus? --W.marsh 18:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Would it need a new name possibly? Also please note than CSN only closed three and a half months ago and consensus might not of changed much since then. Also, a lot of things that "could" of gone there are instead now sent to WP:AN or WP:ANI, meaning they get a lot more traffic and stress put on them. D.M.N. (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- W.marsh, don't you think a minimum one-week period for each sanction discussion would help with the mob of "me-too"s? (Too much evidence has emerged lately of off-wiki co-ordination for us to discount that as a factor.) Relata refero (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- A week sounds reasonable. If it's truly an emergency WP:BLOCK should apply, and if someone's transgressions don't seem blockworthy a week after the fact, then a ban was a bad idea to begin with. I'd also like to look at a waiting period before people start bolding words (ban, don't ban, etc.) maybe 48 hours of pure discussion without people taking definitive stands like in a vote. I think that would lead to better discussion, people tend to feel psychologically committed to a stance once they're locked in to it. --W.marsh 18:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- At Arbcom they've decided to take the ambitious step of waiting (I believe 48 hours, but I can't remember) before voting on the proposed decision page. We could do something similar, discussion can take place for 2 days, but no proposed "remedies" (ban, topic ban, etc.) could be offered until 48 hours after a new complaint had been certified (maybe not "certified," just following the initial complaint --basically enforce 2 days of discussion before any talk of "banning"). R. Baley (talk) 18:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- A week sounds reasonable. If it's truly an emergency WP:BLOCK should apply, and if someone's transgressions don't seem blockworthy a week after the fact, then a ban was a bad idea to begin with. I'd also like to look at a waiting period before people start bolding words (ban, don't ban, etc.) maybe 48 hours of pure discussion without people taking definitive stands like in a vote. I think that would lead to better discussion, people tend to feel psychologically committed to a stance once they're locked in to it. --W.marsh 18:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
RFC works when it's used for asking for comments, it does not work when sanctions are sought, but that is not its purpose. The CSN should be brought back and RFC kept and used for its intended purpose. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- The Community Sanction Noticeboard had its own problems, though I'm not sure that it needed to be eliminated. Part of the problem is that dispute resolution mechanisms seem to come and go - Mediation went away, and now it's back under a new name, the CSN came and went, ANI seems to alter its mission every so often. I see three main problems with RFC/U: it is not empowered to sanction, it's intended to keep reduce the burden on ANI, and it's a mandatory step before going to ArbCom, which can sanction. The solution I see is to 1) bounce more stuff, both from RFC/U and ANI, to Mediation (wherever it's living right now), 2) have some level of sanction available at RFC/U, which would probably require administrator patrolling, and 3) allow admins to move complicated cases off ANI to RFC/U. Perhaps a name change would be in order - instead of "Request for Comment/User Conduct", it could become "Administrators' Noticeboard: Ongoing Problems" (to distinguish it from AN:Incidents). Making it part of the Administrators' Noticeboard would mean that sanctions would be available and it would be an appropriate preliminary step to ArbCom. It would also reduce the load at ANI, where probably half the volume of discussion is on complicated, drawn-out issues, even though those are fewer than 10% of the actual incidents reported. Community Sanctions would all get moved to AN/OP, also. As part of the AN cluster, AN/OP would be fairly highly visible. Argyriou (talk) 20:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/Article guidelines has been marked as a guideline
Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/Article guidelines ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change. -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:50, 26 January 2008 (UTC)