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::: The issue might be "''bigger than this single editor''", but it could be that the solution to almost all instances of it is more or less the same. Let's look at the "incident" again. First someone tagged an article without indicating what some of the tags mean and without using an edit summary. That was a mistake. Then you went to complain about it (about tagging, not about leaving no explanation). That was ''your'' mistake. The tagger got defensive (what else could one expect?). |
::: The issue might be "''bigger than this single editor''", but it could be that the solution to almost all instances of it is more or less the same. Let's look at the "incident" again. First someone tagged an article without indicating what some of the tags mean and without using an edit summary. That was a mistake. Then you went to complain about it (about tagging, not about leaving no explanation). That was ''your'' mistake. The tagger got defensive (what else could one expect?). |
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:::: Oh, it is my mistake? I've talked to the editors just a few days before, and he just made it similarly clear that I won't be able to convince him. Period. No further arguments from his side. And I was being more polite back then. Of course my reaction the next time was a bit more chilly (what else could one expect?). |
:::: Oh, it is my mistake? I've talked to the editors just a few days before, and he just made it similarly clear that I won't be able to convince him. Period. No further arguments from his side. And I was being more polite back then. Of course my reaction the next time was a bit more chilly (what else could one expect?). |
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::: Also, the tagger still hasn't explained what did he mean by the tags (well, no one actually asked him about that). So, you shouldn't have complained, you should have asked. Given that the tagger reacted rather politely, I see no reason to assume that such approach wouldn't have worked. |
::: Also, the tagger still hasn't explained what did he mean by the tags (well, no one actually asked him about that). |
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:::: He has been informed about this discussion two days ago. |
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::: So, you shouldn't have complained, you should have asked. Given that the tagger reacted rather politely, I see no reason to assume that such approach wouldn't have worked. |
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:::: Oh, and great! So the burden is on someone else than the tagger to get an explanation? |
:::: Oh, and great! So the burden is on someone else than the tagger to get an explanation? |
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::: And "''As long as such actions are permitted there will always be someone tagging articles at will.''"... Let's try this one: as long as editing the articles will be permitted to "almost anyone", there will always be someone vandalizing. So, we should forbid anyone but professional editors to edit the articles, right? I hope we all know the answer. |
::: And "''As long as such actions are permitted there will always be someone tagging articles at will.''"... Let's try this one: as long as editing the articles will be permitted to "almost anyone", there will always be someone vandalizing. So, we should forbid anyone but professional editors to edit the articles, right? I hope we all know the answer. |
Revision as of 10:02, 21 September 2010
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 that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
Notability of cities, towns, and neighborhoods
I'm looking at a couple of articles about neighborhoods within a good sized city. Some of them are no brainers as the areas are frequently referred to in reliable sources and some even have national historic status, others are more vague. Is there a guideline or policy (beyond WP:N) I can use to help determine which of these are notable and which need to be discussed deletion?--RadioFan (talk) 11:16, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- basically, if they meet WP:N they are obviously notable. Otherwise, if not much can't be found, but theer is evidence that they used to be a separate village (town, hamlet, whatever) before becoming a neighborhood of a larger community, then they shuold be treated like every other location-based article, i.e. inherently notable, and probably not deletable through AfD. However, merging them one level up may be the best solution in many cases (as here). Fram (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- I was looking for a policy page on cities and towns, it sounds like one does not exist. I'm considering starting a deletion discussion on a neighborhood article. Which I dont think is automatically notable. Is there nothing beyond WP:N for these kinds of articles?--RadioFan (talk) 11:46, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- I am not usre where MBelgrano gets his ideas from, but not from any policy or guideline that I know of. The inclusion criteria for all settlements is Wikipedia:Notability. It is a large guideline, so focus on WP:GNG for the key inclusion criteria. MBelgrano ideas fall foul of WP:ITSLOCAL. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:32, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- I was looking for a policy page on cities and towns, it sounds like one does not exist. I'm considering starting a deletion discussion on a neighborhood article. Which I dont think is automatically notable. Is there nothing beyond WP:N for these kinds of articles?--RadioFan (talk) 11:46, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- As far as towns and cities are concerned, there were some 'bots that created a whole bunch of articles in the past on en.wikipedia and some of the other languages too, and much of the debate is old news in terms of the notability of these places. Much of this came from government databases and many of these locality based articles have been updated and refined to move them beyond stubs too, even if some of the more obscure towns still are largely just the raw census/government data and not much more. For most of North America, the UK, and some parts of Europe there were so many articles of this nature created that the driving need to even raise this issue hasn't even been an issue. The few additional town articles that didn't already exist were rare, or found in places that typically don't have native English speakers.
For myself, I don't see any special or unique guidelines for neighborhoods other than simply verifiability, at least a couple of 3rd party sources (aka no "original research"), and other standard notability guidelines that apply to all articles. Census defined places already have this with multiple sources, but neighborhoods not explicitly labeled or defined with government statistical reports are less likely to meet these standards. Articles about neighborhoods in New York City like SoHo and Greenwich Village certainly deserve Wikipedia articles and these are in fact quite well developed articles too. Generally I would think that smaller towns would be less likely to meet notability guidelines at least in terms of published articles, books or other sources that would confirm the existence of these kind of neighborhoods. If the neighborhood is commonly used in local news media, I think notability could be easily determined from references to it, and perhaps even a definition of the neighborhood from those sources. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:53, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- As someone who has made/expanded probably over three dozen town, village, city, hamlet, and neighborhood articles (all in NY so I am using those terms as legal definitions by NY standards) I would like to point out that- if you can actually write something more than a sentence or two stub about a place, then it is notable and you probably wont get enough !votes to delete the article. Anyone feeling up to the task is more than welcome to go to my user page and nominate for deletion any of the neighborhood articles I have listed there that I created, good luck! I really don't get why people get all bent out of shape about geographic places having articles... Kingdom City, Missouri has around 125 people and it has its own article, should it? Yes, it is a legally defined village incorporated under state law. Anything more required? No. For unincorporated places/city neighborhoods notability I say should go by the old rule of thumb- if you can actually write something meaningful then its notable. (Which is a better rule of thumb than I see most of the time- "I dont know what notability is, but I know it when I see it"). So in a nutshell- if its more than a stub and has a history section, demographics, geography, etc then leave it alone and dont bother to nominate it for deletion.Camelbinky (talk) 16:08, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- As far as towns and cities are concerned, there were some 'bots that created a whole bunch of articles in the past on en.wikipedia and some of the other languages too, and much of the debate is old news in terms of the notability of these places. Much of this came from government databases and many of these locality based articles have been updated and refined to move them beyond stubs too, even if some of the more obscure towns still are largely just the raw census/government data and not much more. For most of North America, the UK, and some parts of Europe there were so many articles of this nature created that the driving need to even raise this issue hasn't even been an issue. The few additional town articles that didn't already exist were rare, or found in places that typically don't have native English speakers.
- My ideas come from here: all cities and towns have a history, demographics, economy, political life, relations with all the rest of the cities of the country, etc; and all such things can be found very easily at typical sources. Therefore, they are all notable. I may turn the question backwards: is there any city or town that is not notable? And if there is, how did that happen? MBelgrano (talk) 18:02, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- I would extend MBelgrano's question to inclued the so-called ghost towns which by definition wouldnt have demographics, economy, or political life would still have a history (if it can be found) and therefore would be notable for their distinction of being a ghost town, often notable for whatever event led to the depopulation. (Was a reservoir formed that flooded the town? A gold mine dried up? A nuclear reactor meltdown? Interstate bypassed it leading to the town just drying up on the old two lane highway?)Camelbinky (talk) 19:02, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- Just stopping by to state that I agree with Camelbinky here. Killiondude (talk) 19:07, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- That makes little difference. Ghost towns do not have such stadistics now, but they had them in the past, and what is not known for sure is speculated by historians based on other evidence anyway (meaning, we still have something to write on the matter, still following WP:V and WP:NOR). If someone nominates Ur for deletion, the reactions would be surely fun to see MBelgrano (talk) 19:18, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- My ideas come from here: all cities and towns have a history, demographics, economy, political life, relations with all the rest of the cities of the country, etc; and all such things can be found very easily at typical sources. Therefore, they are all notable. I may turn the question backwards: is there any city or town that is not notable? And if there is, how did that happen? MBelgrano (talk) 18:02, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ha! A trick question. If a city or town was not notable we would not have heard of it. –xenotalk 19:24, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- True for towns and cities, but not for neighborhoods. Every slightly largish new groups of houses gets a fancy name, but that doesn't mean that this "neighborhood" is notable. Obviously, things like the Bronx and so on are very notable, but this can't be generalized. Fram (talk) 19:46, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ha! A trick question. If a city or town was not notable we would not have heard of it. –xenotalk 19:24, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- I would argue that, though I disagree these towns should have automatic notability based on past argues, that as long as WP is part gazetteer, and that we don't yet have WikiAtlas or comparable sister project, such pages on towns do meet the goals of Wikipedia, notable or not. That said, we really need to memorialize this common consensus somewhere. --MASEM (t) 19:33, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Notability (geography) is one attempt to capture our practice and it looks quite reasonable; I don't think it was ever proposed as a guideline. Also see Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations) for previous debate. What we should be trying to do is document current practice, not imposing our own views (e.g. Gavin Collin's insistent on the GNG when the GNG is almost universally agreed to not be required to be met for populated places or geographic features). Fences&Windows 00:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
I had proposed to codify existing practice into a guideline for Wikipedia gazetteer content for WP:NOT (not WP:N) but it gets murky because of several long-approved bots which auto-create articles based on government-provided data. Very simply, existing practice is any geographic entity which can be cited from a government source can be created as a stub article.patsw (talk) 13:05, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
- I think we have to absolutely clear that the creation of new articles is dependent on the topic's notability, not WP:ITSLOCAL. There are no polices or guidelines that suggest otherwise. What is practise is purely a matter of conjecture. What you are liable to hear from the babble ain't necessarily so. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:13, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
- Our policy and guidelines are based on what practice is. It is practice these are kept even if they aren't "notable" per the GNG, thus we should codify that somehow, the best route seeming to be as part of the gazetteer function of wikipedia. --MASEM (t) 15:21, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
- Practice becomes policy, policy should never dictate and create new practice EVER. If you attempt to say that places must be notable, what is the criteria for notability?! Would Wyoming be notable? Would Tonga be notable? What is so notable about Cape Girardeau, Missouri or Berlin, New York? We would start having arguments with people saying one hand "I've never heard of it, it isnt notable worldwide" and others saying "its notable in our region of this state". This basically boils down to some people around Wikipedia who think if they havent heard of it then it isnt notable. Why does it matter to "you" whether these articles exist or not? NOTPAPER. We are a gazetteer. We probably always will be. Just give up and work on whatever articles you like and let others work on articles they like.Camelbinky (talk) 16:01, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
- Stating that only a notable topic should become a stand-alone article is a definition, not an illuminating statement. Significant coverage of the topic in a third-party reliable source is what we call WP:GNG, and that should not be conflated with notability. It should be obvious to editors by this point that passing WP:GNG is neither necessary nor sufficient to create an article, however common it is to be found in articles and AFD discussions. patsw (talk) 16:50, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
- Our policy and guidelines are based on what practice is. It is practice these are kept even if they aren't "notable" per the GNG, thus we should codify that somehow, the best route seeming to be as part of the gazetteer function of wikipedia. --MASEM (t) 15:21, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Question is there a limit to how small something can be without further reason for notability? The Town I grew up in has an article - which is all fair and good because it's reasonably notable but the neighbourhood within that does not. At first I couldn't think of much notable about that neighbourhood Antonshill but an internet search returned [1] which defines it as a village, another hit defines details of the farm on which land the neighbourhood was built as well as a hit to Wikipedia itself A88_road - So there's enough material there to generate a stub but how useful is it, does it really deserve an article when there is so little of note? The other option is to include the information within Stenhousemuir but it doesn't really fit within the article there and as soon as you start to add lots of neighbourhoods because they're not notable enough to stand alone it looks untidy. Of course even smaller locations like Mojave_phone_booth exist with further reasons to justify their notability. Even a gazetteer has to draw a limit somewhere - My garden is not noteable but it is a sizeable geographic location. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 17:10, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
- On these location articles, it is generally that it is or was a national government-recognized settlement which was used to generate the stubs, which seems like a fairly good limit. The point is that we seem to be including these not that these are are necessary notable, but that they are needed to "complete" Wikipedia's aspect of being a gazetteer. I would argue that one can make a similar comparison between words and their definitions, and that that isn't a function of Wikipedia but is a function of Wikitionary. But while we can easily draw lines between a dictionary entry and a encyclopedia entry, it's a lot harder to draw the same lines for gazetteer and encyclopedia entries. --MASEM (t) 17:25, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
- I completely agree with the need to "complete" Wikipedia's aspect of being a gazetteer (though I believe there is a significant amount of Data that may warrant a separate project as commons and wiktionary are) but it's the level of resolution I'm questioning. For the example I give above, various other gazetteers will either resolve down directly onto the neighbourhood (regarding it a village) or will only drill down onto the town there seems to be a 50/50 split of each type. The Government is not much better. Certain arms of the government (such as Surveyor general or Equivalent) may regard it as an identifiable settlement, yet another arm (such as the Census Bureau) may regard it's inhabitants as inhabiting the larger town or conurbation essentially regarding it as non-existent. Then again other arms like the Postmaster don't care either way whether or not it exists they just care what the street or house name is. Then again you have Unorganised Townships which arent government recognised but are large enough they should be covered in a Gazetteer. All in all it's a very thorny issue. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
There is no reason not to include an article on a populated place for which we have a verifiable location and statistics, no matter how small the place and even if we can't foresee a way to expand the article at present, no reason that is other than some kind of misguidedly dogmatic adherence to notability guidelines. But notability guidelines are a means to an end; they help us ensure that only topics are included in the encyclopedia for which there is a minimum of verifiable and NPOV information from reliable sources. We certainly don't have any such concerns with including articles on any populated place for which there is an official record, such as a census, government map, etc., so excluding such articles might satisfy the letter of notability guidelines without furthering any legitimate purpose or policy. Unless we pretend that reducing the number of articles and limiting our coverage of the real, verifiable world is somehow a legitimate goal.
Neighborhoods, however, may be more difficult to verify than populated places (i.e., standalone cities, towns, villages, however termed or sized). Neighborhoods may have some official recognition, as through designated historical districts or community boards, but not always. So we don't always have as clear a guide as we do with populated places to separate the substantive ones from what may simply be a real estate developer or a group of college kids trying to characterize a few blocks as a distinctive community. You could also have one guy claiming his house and general store in the middle of an open plain constitute a "town," but I think that's much less common than private individuals trying to generate a neighborhood out of nothing, and its absence from any official records would just shift the question to general notability criteria. postdlf (talk) 18:52, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
- There is a reason not to include an article about a populated place for which we have a verifiable location and statistics: lack of notability. If a topic is not notable, then it lacks significant coverage, so there is no point in creating a stub that is just a set of co-ordinates. Such information is just not encyclopedic, because it provides the reader with even less information than a map. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:17, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- Notability guidelines are only a means to an end, and not the only means to that end. Requiring that articles on populated places satisfy GNG, even if they are verifiable, would not only eliminate the very short articles that you don't like, but also eliminate longer, substantial articles that have been compiled solely out of census data (unless we just call census data "significant coverage"), such as Blacklick Estates, Ohio, for example. All of this would undermine Wikipedia's function as a gazetteer, and for no benefit that I can see. I probably would not bother to create a stub that just has coordinates (note my comment above was supporting articles with verifiable locations and statistics, such as population), but I also would not delete it either because even a bare "X is a village in Y" statement still took time to write and post, has a kernel of verifiable information, and provides the start of article infrastructure that can be at least theoretically expanded eventually. At a bare minimum, we could hope that any named populated place could be expanded to give an explanation of the name and population figures, and this is a valuable part of a gazetteer even if we can never write a full history, culture, etc. for those places. postdlf (talk) 14:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- The basic reason for keeping all populated place articles is that they've almost all had enough coverage to justify it, but many aren't very good at showing it. Random example: this was a one-line stub of exactly the type that could easily have be deleted. But after a month's worth of improvements by two or three of us, it now looks like this, and had a DYK appearance. It's just an ordinary small village with 100 people and one road, but it has that much coverage available! The current system seems to work, so why change it? Alzarian16 (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- This is a reasonable rule of thumb, but it is also a sweeping generalisation. A town or a settlement is notable only if it has been the subject of verifiable evidence to that effect. Simply assuming all settlements to be notable is too broad an approach to follow, since it is a rule of thumb that will not apply in every case. We can't assume that it is an absolute truth that every settlement is notable - there has to be verifiable evidence so support the presumption on an individual case basis. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:21, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- In my opinion, any city, town or village recognized as a govermental entity should by definition have an article in an encyclopedia that also strives to be a gazatteer. WP:FIVE. Neighborhoods, being more subjective, should be held to a higher standard of notability. I've researched neighborhood "boundaries" in San Francisco, and there are no commonly accepted boundaries. However, issues pertaining to neighborhoods are very important in understanding San Francisco history and politics. Reliable sources are essential when writing about neighborhoods. Cullen328 (talk) 23:02, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- The basic reason for keeping all populated place articles is that they've almost all had enough coverage to justify it, but many aren't very good at showing it. Random example: this was a one-line stub of exactly the type that could easily have be deleted. But after a month's worth of improvements by two or three of us, it now looks like this, and had a DYK appearance. It's just an ordinary small village with 100 people and one road, but it has that much coverage available! The current system seems to work, so why change it? Alzarian16 (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- Notability guidelines are only a means to an end, and not the only means to that end. Requiring that articles on populated places satisfy GNG, even if they are verifiable, would not only eliminate the very short articles that you don't like, but also eliminate longer, substantial articles that have been compiled solely out of census data (unless we just call census data "significant coverage"), such as Blacklick Estates, Ohio, for example. All of this would undermine Wikipedia's function as a gazetteer, and for no benefit that I can see. I probably would not bother to create a stub that just has coordinates (note my comment above was supporting articles with verifiable locations and statistics, such as population), but I also would not delete it either because even a bare "X is a village in Y" statement still took time to write and post, has a kernel of verifiable information, and provides the start of article infrastructure that can be at least theoretically expanded eventually. At a bare minimum, we could hope that any named populated place could be expanded to give an explanation of the name and population figures, and this is a valuable part of a gazetteer even if we can never write a full history, culture, etc. for those places. postdlf (talk) 14:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I come to bury editors, not to praise them ...
It is believed that the deletion policy is not being properly followed. Whilst I am not experienced in patrolling pages and therefore do not have a broad overview of the issues, the small amount of evidence I do see gives me cause for concern. I believe part of the problem is that the ATD section of the deletion policy should be described in the lead as per LEAD. This would hightlight to editors that articles can, in many cases should, be improved by the main contributing editor, in this context, usually an inexperienced editor. The processes, CSD's, PROD's and AFD (have I missed one?) are being applied to articles by nominators that, in the cases I have seen, are not topic aware enough to make such judgements. In one case, a PROD occured within two minutes of the page creation. The net result is that new editors are being driven away by our over-prescriptive approach when common sense suggests a more gentle and sympathetic treatment of such editors is required.
I am a relatively new editor, who wishes to write articles of interest, with some limited success. I am however distracted by what I see as an unjust deletion process against new or inexperienced editors. I am frustrated because I do not feel I can express the issue properly, as I do not have the experience nor tools necessary, am too new to see the wider picture and the examples that I can give will unfairly single out a few patrollers and limited topic areas. What follows is a list of articles that have been rescued
Article | Type | New user | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
Hosa Technology} | rescue | Jmlnarik01 (talk · contribs) | My first rescue; probably would not pass an afd now |
Polly Morgan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | CSD#A7 rescue | Perryjarvis (talk · contribs) | Editor never returned. First item on talk is negative |
Zinneke Parade (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD rescue | HenryXVII (talk · contribs) | All items on talk negative |
Baxterley Church (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD rescue | MarkBegg (talk · contribs) | Welcomed then lots of negative with no attempt to talk to editor |
St Mary the Virgin Church Uttoxeter (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD rescue | MarkBegg (talk · contribs) | Welcomed then lots of negative with no attempt to talk to editor |
Church of the Resurrection, Hurley (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD rescue | MarkBegg (talk · contribs) | Welcomed then lots of negative with no attempt to talk to editor |
St Saviour's, Branston (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD rescue | MarkBegg (talk · contribs) | Welcomed then lots of negative with no attempt to talk to editor |
Eli Maor (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD rescue | ArnoLagrange (talk · contribs) | Hmmm an unblock is first thing on talk page |
Joel Chan (actor) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD extended | Darkreason (talk · contribs) | Welcome (1 line) then lots of negatives |
Gohar Jageer (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | rescue | Kasuri929 (talk · contribs) | Got to this editor early :) |
Counsel and Care (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | CSD#A7 rescue | Care4elderly (talk · contribs) | Struggling editor who sees nothing but negatives |
St. Mary's Church, Secunderabad (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD | Jgittins (talk · contribs) | |
Wesley_Church,_Clock_Tower (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD | Jgittins (talk · contribs) | |
Holy_Trinity_Church,_Bollarum (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD | Jgittins (talk · contribs) | |
Centenary_Baptist_Church,_Secunderabad (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | CSD#A7 | Jgittins (talk · contribs) | |
Eight queens puzzle solutions (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) | AfD result=delete | ZeeXy (talk · contribs) |
I guess what I am trying to alert you to is that new editors are not being treated with respect. Each one I come across already has a bad experience via a csd, prod, or afd which are very aggressive processes to new people who do not understand the policy driven terminology we use. In all the articles above, a little gentle encouragement on the new editors concerned may have created a new editor; instead many of them have gone.
As a community, we should resolve to do the following
- Patrol editors are not using AGF nor are they considering please do not bite the newcomers
- aggressive posting on new editors talk pages should be punished, this includes writing wiki-speak which has no meaning to a new person - perhaps for every such post found, 5,000 edits are removed from the editors "edits since" count! That would stop them
- Cease and desist posting negative sections (prods, afd, policy violations etc) on new editors talk pages without first considering if the new editor needs sympathetic help
- be more proactive with the mentor programme. If necessary wikipedia should be prescriptive with established editors, such as every wikipedian must adopt one new editor a month or something similar
If you have read this far you deserve a little light relief. You have probably quite rightly ignored the subtle message embedded in the list above. In addition, you have probably interpreted the mis-quote from Julius Ceasar in one particular way. Which way? If you are one of the patrollers I have been describing, then cynically, the mis-quote is your mantra. My original meaning was not to praise the patrollers! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Senra (talk • contribs) 15:53, September 11, 2010
- For what it is worth I have been involved in four or five deletions, one of which was the second article I ever wrote. In all but one case it was as you described... an editor who basically was deleting because "I never heard of this". Deleting based on technical aspects of an editor not knowing how to source correctly or not living up to our expectations is NEVER a reason to delete and anyone deleting on that reason should be banned from putting up an AfD ever again. We are a work in progress and if you see an article you think reflects poorly on the quality of Wikipedia then either clean it up or move along, do not delete. If you cant clean it up because you are too lazy, then please be too lazy to nominate it for deletion. Notability is the only issue that comes into play. That is my comment to these editors who are deleting what they consider to be "low quality" work. Do some freakin' work of your own.Camelbinky (talk) 00:46, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- Some of us disagree. What both of you are advocating is View Two of WP:DEADLINE--that is, as long as an article might potentially be good/source-able/neutral, then it should be kept and improved. However, please note that some of us, myself included, take View One, which is that there is no hurry to create articles, and that an article should already fulfill basic policies prior to being put into mainspace. There are several ways to develop articles prior to adding them to the live encyclopedia, and if you can't bring it into compliance with policy prior to that point, then it shouldn't be in mainspace. I agree that we don't need to be too hasty in deletions, but I think that's only a problem with speedy deletions. By definition, both of the other deletion processes take at least a week, and that should be plenty of time for someone to fix the problems, if they are, in fact, fixable. Yes, we shouldn't prod a (non-BLP) article within minutes of creation, but that doesn't mean we need to let it lie around for a long time, hoping someone will improve the article. As for the claim that we're too "lazy," please see WP:BURDEN. If I believe an article is non-notable, I do a few searches in appropriate places, and I don't find anything, it's not up to me to go to the library, search through thousands of pages of false hits in an online search, etc. It's up to the person who wants to include the article. Perhaps the only thing I agree with is that people need to be careful with subjects outside of their realm of ability. I, for instance, have become far more cautious than I once was on articles relating to music, because I find the notability guidelines difficult to apply and in contradiction to WP:GNG; rather than try to deal with the conflict every time, I simply stay out of it, for the most part. But there are times where exactly what is needed is someone who does not have subject matter competence--that is the person who can evaluate a little more carefully things like WP:N and WP:OR. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:11, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- You are justifying actions that are in contrast to policy by quoting an essay. Not a great argument. Policy states that we are always under construction and that an editor's good faith contributions done incorrectly or incompletely do not invalidate their contributions. There may be two views, but one is codified in policy and one is codified in an essay. Who do you think we should follow? I see no reason to delete something. WP:PRESERVE is part of POLICY and precedence over that essay. Preserve instead of delete.Camelbinky (talk) 02:20, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'm sure he will respond himself, but it seems to me that Qwyrxian is trying to explain a difference in philosophy, not mandate what any one person should be doing, so whether it's an essay or a policy or something written on a fortune cookie really makes no difference. There is no doubt that the approach Qwyrxian advocates leads to better-quality articles, but it also inevitably leads to fewer new articles and fewer new productive editors. Whether or not that's a reasonable trade-off is very much a matter of individual opinion. Regardless of one's feelings on that, there is a real issue with how new editors are welcomed and treated when they make their first edits. For a new user to put together a good-faith article and press the "Save page" button may represent hours of work, learning wiki markup and tweaking their wording. They desperately need to feel validated and encouraged, and to understand that their effort is appreciated. Having their article tagged for speedy deletion or similar within minutes of creation must be a terrible discouragement, and many promising wiki-careers probably end right there. Thparkth (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- So then what do we do if their article really is unsalvageable? Let it sit around for a few days or weeks, until we think they can handle it, then say "Oh, by the way, we need to delete that, we've just been lying to you all this time"? What about all the thousands of articles that clearly did not represent hours of work? The ones that are riddled with spelling errors and are totally unformatted? Mr.Z-man 04:04, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- (@ Mr.Z-man) - I regularly patrol the pages tagged for speedy deletion, and I can back up what you're saying about the "thousands of articles that clearly did not represent hours of work." The majority of pages tagged for speedy deletion absolutely need to be deleted, as speedily as possible. In my opinion, someone who comes here to write an article that is blatantly spam, or someone who writes an attack page, or someone who wants to impress Suzanne in the 8th grade by having a Wikipedia article about themselves... I'm not too concerned about hurting their feelings, because they are clearly not motivated to improve wikipedia anyway.
- But there are other cases too. There are articles by retired carpenters about some technical detail of their craft, utterly unsourced and probably unsourcable, but almost certainly true, and almost certianly harmless. There are articles by systems adminstrators (like me) who know perfectly well that dig is an essential tool used by millions of people every day, and that the world economy would actually suffer a blip if it stopped working, so who don't comprehend why we might question it's notability. Or maybe they don't understand yet that the UNIX manual page for it is not a "reliable source" in wiki-speak, when in the real world it's THE reliable source, far more "reliable" than some crappy article by a know-nothing tech journalist, which for some reason we want them to reference instead ;)
- I'm rambling here, but the point is that things that seem obvious to those of us who've been around this project for a while, that aren't obvious to a newbie - even a smart one. There are many articles being created in good faith, by people motivated to improve the encyclopedia, containing nothing but true information with absolutely no legal issues, which are nevertheless deleted within minutes of creation because some over-eager new page patroller and some lazy admin had never heard of it and didn't find it in the first page of a google search. This is losing us people - the specific people we want to keep. I'm not arguing that those articles shouldn't ever be deleted, but they certainly shouldn't be speedily-deleted, with the article creator having basically no chance to learn about the problem and fix it. There is no hurry to delete a harmless article IMHO. Why not work with the creator to see if it can be improved? If it's done right, it will either end up with a good article that can be kept forever, or with the article creator agreeing themselves that it probably should be deleted, because although interesting, it just doesn't fit the guidelines.
- Of course, this will never happen, because the people with great content editing and mentoring skills are generally busy editing content and mentoring people, rather than doing new page patrols - different people have different skills. But what if there was a formal "new article resuscitation" team waiting to handle new articles identified by patrollers as being possibly hopeless, but made in good faith? I'd sign up for that. Thparkth (talk) 04:29, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- This isn't really a direct reply, as I mostly agree, at least in theory. Personally, I think we need to simply discourage people from creating new articles. They should be encouraged instead to add their information to existing ones. It kills 3 birds with one stone 1) Its easier to edit an existing article than create a new one so they're less likely to be reverted or discouraged simply by the process of editing. 2) It results in a net improvement in our huge corpus of stubs, rather than continuing to expand it. 3) It reduces the load on new page patrollers, so they potentially can devote more time to each page. Why can't the retired carpenter add his content to one of our other dozens of articles on the subject? If one is working within the context of existing articles, primary sources like man pages are often perfectly acceptable. The current idea that "new users create articles" stopped making sense about 2.5 million articles ago. We've been scraping the bottom of the notability barrel for a few years now. But of course, that too will never happen - old habits die hard. We have a discussion like this every couple of months. People complain that new users aren't being treated well and present some solutions that are either too vague to be workable or wholly impractical, while the underlying problem (Why the hell do so many people feel the need to create a new article as their first edit?) is not considered. Mr.Z-man 05:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- So then what do we do if their article really is unsalvageable? Let it sit around for a few days or weeks, until we think they can handle it, then say "Oh, by the way, we need to delete that, we've just been lying to you all this time"? What about all the thousands of articles that clearly did not represent hours of work? The ones that are riddled with spelling errors and are totally unformatted? Mr.Z-man 04:04, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'm sure he will respond himself, but it seems to me that Qwyrxian is trying to explain a difference in philosophy, not mandate what any one person should be doing, so whether it's an essay or a policy or something written on a fortune cookie really makes no difference. There is no doubt that the approach Qwyrxian advocates leads to better-quality articles, but it also inevitably leads to fewer new articles and fewer new productive editors. Whether or not that's a reasonable trade-off is very much a matter of individual opinion. Regardless of one's feelings on that, there is a real issue with how new editors are welcomed and treated when they make their first edits. For a new user to put together a good-faith article and press the "Save page" button may represent hours of work, learning wiki markup and tweaking their wording. They desperately need to feel validated and encouraged, and to understand that their effort is appreciated. Having their article tagged for speedy deletion or similar within minutes of creation must be a terrible discouragement, and many promising wiki-careers probably end right there. Thparkth (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- You are justifying actions that are in contrast to policy by quoting an essay. Not a great argument. Policy states that we are always under construction and that an editor's good faith contributions done incorrectly or incompletely do not invalidate their contributions. There may be two views, but one is codified in policy and one is codified in an essay. Who do you think we should follow? I see no reason to delete something. WP:PRESERVE is part of POLICY and precedence over that essay. Preserve instead of delete.Camelbinky (talk) 02:20, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- Some of us disagree. What both of you are advocating is View Two of WP:DEADLINE--that is, as long as an article might potentially be good/source-able/neutral, then it should be kept and improved. However, please note that some of us, myself included, take View One, which is that there is no hurry to create articles, and that an article should already fulfill basic policies prior to being put into mainspace. There are several ways to develop articles prior to adding them to the live encyclopedia, and if you can't bring it into compliance with policy prior to that point, then it shouldn't be in mainspace. I agree that we don't need to be too hasty in deletions, but I think that's only a problem with speedy deletions. By definition, both of the other deletion processes take at least a week, and that should be plenty of time for someone to fix the problems, if they are, in fact, fixable. Yes, we shouldn't prod a (non-BLP) article within minutes of creation, but that doesn't mean we need to let it lie around for a long time, hoping someone will improve the article. As for the claim that we're too "lazy," please see WP:BURDEN. If I believe an article is non-notable, I do a few searches in appropriate places, and I don't find anything, it's not up to me to go to the library, search through thousands of pages of false hits in an online search, etc. It's up to the person who wants to include the article. Perhaps the only thing I agree with is that people need to be careful with subjects outside of their realm of ability. I, for instance, have become far more cautious than I once was on articles relating to music, because I find the notability guidelines difficult to apply and in contradiction to WP:GNG; rather than try to deal with the conflict every time, I simply stay out of it, for the most part. But there are times where exactly what is needed is someone who does not have subject matter competence--that is the person who can evaluate a little more carefully things like WP:N and WP:OR. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:11, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- For what it is worth I have been involved in four or five deletions, one of which was the second article I ever wrote. In all but one case it was as you described... an editor who basically was deleting because "I never heard of this". Deleting based on technical aspects of an editor not knowing how to source correctly or not living up to our expectations is NEVER a reason to delete and anyone deleting on that reason should be banned from putting up an AfD ever again. We are a work in progress and if you see an article you think reflects poorly on the quality of Wikipedia then either clean it up or move along, do not delete. If you cant clean it up because you are too lazy, then please be too lazy to nominate it for deletion. Notability is the only issue that comes into play. That is my comment to these editors who are deleting what they consider to be "low quality" work. Do some freakin' work of your own.Camelbinky (talk) 00:46, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- <ec>I'll admit to being guilty of this. I tend to be in favor of keeping and improving material rather than deleting it, but when I use tools to delete things I just post the generic templates that the Twinkle tool gives. As what I often do is remove an attempt to summarily remove material (WP:PROD) and replace it with an actual discussion (WP:AFD), I'm actually trying to give their work a chance. But what they get is a wall of notices. So we have two issues. #1 We do have inclusion guidelines such as WP:N which insists that "good" sourcing must exist on a given topic for us to have an article. I favor this pretty strongly. But at the same time we want to avoid WP:BITE because otherwise we'll lose potentially useful editors. Honestly I think the problem is that the standards we have for Wikipedia have gotten so high that it's really hard for a new user to contribute without doing a lot of reading and work first. And that's going to scare away people. But we also don't want so many bad articles that the encyclopedia is an unmaintainable disaster. And frankly the new page patrollers are already overworked, so writing nice notes to each person just isn't realistic. One thought I've had is to have articles fit into different layers of Wikipedia. Some articles are just bad and are part of the outer ring. Some are good, some are featured etc. It's pretty much what we do right now, with Good and Featured articles, but maybe we need a new layer, the "seems okay" layer and somehow only grant access to the layer below that when the user specifically asks for it. Given that people generally use search engines to get here, we'd need to work something out with them so that any such tag shows up in the search result. Probably not viable, but it's the best I've got. Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 02:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- Actually, I see Senra has suggested that by default we move articles without BLP/copyright problems into the creator's userspace. I think doing that with a tag at the top which A) describes issues that need to be resolved B) states if it stays in userspace for more than (say) 6 months it will be deleted and C) makes it plain this isn't an article might be a great way to handle this. Thoughts? I think it would be a wonderful change to our standard procedures without causing any meaningful harm I can see. Hobit (talk) 02:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- This is such a huge change in the basic philosophy of Wikipedia that I'm beside myself to even see such a concept in print, much less advocated strongly. Assuming good faith is a fundamental principle behind Wikipedia that to give it up is to change the nature of this project entirely. While I don't mind user space articles if they are under development for some reason or another, I think that is something which should be strongly discouraged and that articles ought to be kept in the main development space even if they are stubs. An incomplete article, even a single sentence is just fine in terms of an article. Label it as a stub if you have to, but don't go deleting things just because you've never heard about it.
- Actually, I see Senra has suggested that by default we move articles without BLP/copyright problems into the creator's userspace. I think doing that with a tag at the top which A) describes issues that need to be resolved B) states if it stays in userspace for more than (say) 6 months it will be deleted and C) makes it plain this isn't an article might be a great way to handle this. Thoughts? I think it would be a wonderful change to our standard procedures without causing any meaningful harm I can see. Hobit (talk) 02:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- For myself, it ticks me off to no end to see somebody PROD an article a mere minutes after its creation and demand two or more reliable sources for it when clearly the article is under active development. I've had that happen to me on articles I've created... and I'm hardly even a newcomer to this project. A much more friendly tone can certainly be coming from the crew that is involved in recent changes patrol to distinguish between a good-faith article creation attempt and something that is pure drivel, spam, or trollish behavior. If you can't tell the difference, hold back and learn a bit before you start PROD'ing articles again and ask questions. I've been an admin before (I'm not on Wikipedia, but I don't want to involve myself in the politics here) and I do know some of the tricks and trash that happens when trying to stop the trolls. Unfortunately all edits start to look like trolls when in fact they aren't. Don't get hyper sensitive here and do encourage new contributors. A few bad admins can really spoil the environment for everybody here too.
- If the complaint is about disc space on the servers, I should point out that deleting articles actually takes up more hard drive space than simply keeping the article in place. If something needs to be merged into another article, make the merger and add the redirect. Unfortunately that is often much harder to perform as it requires real editing as opposed to simply hitting the "delete" button. Nobody said that participation on Wikipedia was easy, and if you are using admin tools you should be cautious about using those extra tools that mere mortals don't have. My first instinct as an admin has always been to do what I can with the normal editor tools and use the admin stuff as a very last resort.
- Importantly, remember the five pillars and don't create unnecessary bureaucracy and policies that start conflicting with those principles. I was involved with this project back in the Nupedia days, and remember how Wikipedia was set up as a sort of bastard child of the "serious" encyclopedia effort. I sure hope that we don't need to go back to that original model of Wikipedia on another site where we need to create a website where the "rest of us" can edit while the privileged and select few concentrate on refining the ever higher standards for inclusion into the main project. Just look at how successful Nupedia became and how widely used its content has been spread around the globe and then tell me which method works out better. Time and experience shows that a project of this nature works out best when you are as inclusive of all ideas as possible and the people you need to be stopping are those who somehow block new users from participating. Those are the real trolls here. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:33, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- Adding a P.S. here. It was said above by Hobit
'And frankly the new page patrollers are already overworked, so writing nice notes to each person just isn't realistic."
- I completely disagree. While perhaps the new page patrollers may feel overworked, try to be human here for a change. You can't get to everybody, but if you get to somebody and respond to their work with some real words of encouragement, it goes a long way. Whenever I do an introduction to a new user, I always include a personal note on top of and beyond the simple template. It is quality over quantity, even if you can't get to everybody or look at everything. A "nice note" to a person who has raised an eyebrow in terms of something questionable goes a long way to finding out what the real problem might be... or if that person is simply a troll. You might be surprised and get a real answer to a query you make too. From my own experience, far more new users respond to a genuine query than don't, unless they are sock puppets or troll accounts. Generally it is easy to tel the difference too. Just don't go assuming that everybody is a troll. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:43, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- "I certainly see where you are coming from. But A) I think userfying articles that we are currently deleting is more friendly, not less and B) the new page patrol folks are overworked. Either things don't get patrolled (which maybe okay) or templates are the best you're going to get. As far as the userficaiton thing goes, I would worry that by having such a policy we'd start "deleting" more articles and we'd move more toward a future where stubs of notable topics are userfied rather than left in mainspace. That would suck. Bah. So what is the next step forward? How can we make this place more friendly for new editors? Should we ask the new page patrol to patrol less and work with users more? Assuming that generates a backlog (which I strongly suspect it would) is that acceptable? What should we do with articles that have no hope of meeting WP:N? Deleting them 15 minutes after creation is a problem (per WP:BITE), but leaving them around is also a problem (do we really want to have a massive number of unsourced and unsourcable articles?) Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 04:03, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- Is a backlog acceptable? All that shows is where some extra help is needed on Wikipedia, and if this project is more inviting to newcomers it will generate the support and help to take care of the problems from massive growth. If instead you are pushing new users away from this project, it indicates a dying project that will only require more effort with fewer people willing to do the work. No, I don't think having a massive number of unsourced and "unsourceable" articles. If it bugs you, clean it up. Demand that sources be found. At least give the person creating the article a chance to create the article.... which implies something on the order of months to develop the article instead of mere minutes or days. If an article goes unnoticed for a couple of years and then gets an AfD, it makes no difference if it is a bad article. I say give the new users the benefit of the doubt here, and cleanup can happen in other ways besides squishing the new users within the first few minutes of their contributions. There are articles that were created years ago that are in much worse shape than many of the articles that come up for AfD.
- I also argue that if we let a "massive number of unsourced and unsourceable articles" into Wikipedia, there will also be a number of those articles that will eventually turn into quality articles. The question here is where should be draw the line on these articles? Articles that are stale are ones that ought to be more of a concern, such as WP:DUSTY. If the topic is something that nobody is paying attention to, generally you aren't hurting new users when you are deleting old content that hasn't had an update for years. I say let those article go stale and then delete them rather than "protecting" Wikipedia to keep them from getting created in the first place. Obvious trollish behavior is a exception. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:51, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- (e/c)I'm personally not a huge fan of userfication (in most cases it results in no improvement). If we not going to delete them, the Article incubator is nice, as it allows everyone to work on, and it means we're keeping track of what's there. The problem is that these articles are not "incomplete" like a stub, they don't meet basic standards of verifiability and NPOV. I agree that things shouldn't be tagged for deletion within minutes, but when does "active development" end? An hour without an edit? A day? A week? Wikipedia is long past the point where we can continue to treat it like was done in 2001. We're a top-5 website that millions of people turn to every day for information. That calls for higher standards. If we've learned anything from the history of the project, its that the "it doesn't matter if it sucks, someone will fix it" philosophy doesn't work. Unless someone comes up with a way to automate the fixing, the problems just keep piling up. About 3 years ago, there were 26,000 articles needing cleanup. Today there are more than 60,000 including nearly 200 that were tagged in 2006. The number of people creating substandard content is greater than the number of people improving it. And yes, the people doing new page patrol are overworked. 2 users have done 25% of the new article review work this month so far (each more than 1200 articles, or about 100 articles per day). Mr.Z-man 04:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is one of the top-5 websites because of the policies of openness, being friendly to new contributors, and a willingness to allow article creation that doesn't require a lengthly process for somebody willing to start a page on that topic. Where the complaints about Wikipedia come from are those who have been manhandled and disrespected... usually with a gross violation of established policies in terms of editor to editor or admin to editor conduct. There are detractors to Wikipedia, and not all of them are trolls that have been burned in the past. There are some very valid complaints that do need to be addressed.
- My broad and general experience over years of participation is that "if it sucks, somebody will fix it" actually happens. You need to have the perspective of years of effort rather than merely hours or weeks. The statistics you are quoting here indicate a growth of this project rather than a lack of effort to clean up articles. That is a good thing and is indicating that the efforts to review articles is being successful. The problem facing new page patrollers is that those people who are patrolling new pages are not accepting new users nor are doing an effective job at recruitment. If the number of people involved with that activity is going down, the question should be raised in terms of what is driving folks away from that activity and how can new users be introduced into helping to support that work.... including training those new users on what is an acceptable practice and what isn't. If you are feeling overworked, that is a system problem that requires more openness and developing tools to help with the issue.
- My issue is that new page patrollers are the front-line folks meeting new people coming to Wikipedia. It is a people to people issue more than being a bunch of security guards watching the front door. To me, I'd rather let a few articles slip by that may be of poor quality and instead concentrate on helping those who may be lost and need an extra little bit of help. A "kinder, gentler" new page patroller group that is focused on working with new users may be a much better paradigm than acting like security guards at a major airport. That, to me, is where the problem lies. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- No, we're a top-5 website because of the amount of information we have. On a normal day, 4-6 million people view the Main Page, only about 30,000 people edit the site, including vandals. Readers outnumber editors by about 150:1, many are totally clueless about where the content comes from. There really are people who don't know that anyone can edit Wikipedia. I've been here for years as well. I've seen how little the average quality of the site has improved. That is not just a "growth of the project" - hundreds of articles have been waiting nearly 4 years for cleanup. In 2007 around this time, we had about 2 million articles. We now have 3.4 million, a 170% increase. The cleanup category increased by 230% in the same time. We get about 2000 new articles every day; probably about 500 of them will be deleted. A few articles slipping by might be 10 or 20 every day. That adds up fast. The real problem, to me, is our nonsensical quantity over quality approach. It seems like most people on Wikipedia would rather have 20 stubs than one high quality, comprehensive article. People should be encouraged to add their knowledge to existing articles, creating a new one only as a last resort if no other article should reasonably contain that information. Mr.Z-man 18:41, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- "I certainly see where you are coming from. But A) I think userfying articles that we are currently deleting is more friendly, not less and B) the new page patrol folks are overworked. Either things don't get patrolled (which maybe okay) or templates are the best you're going to get. As far as the userficaiton thing goes, I would worry that by having such a policy we'd start "deleting" more articles and we'd move more toward a future where stubs of notable topics are userfied rather than left in mainspace. That would suck. Bah. So what is the next step forward? How can we make this place more friendly for new editors? Should we ask the new page patrol to patrol less and work with users more? Assuming that generates a backlog (which I strongly suspect it would) is that acceptable? What should we do with articles that have no hope of meeting WP:N? Deleting them 15 minutes after creation is a problem (per WP:BITE), but leaving them around is also a problem (do we really want to have a massive number of unsourced and unsourcable articles?) Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 04:03, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- I completely disagree. While perhaps the new page patrollers may feel overworked, try to be human here for a change. You can't get to everybody, but if you get to somebody and respond to their work with some real words of encouragement, it goes a long way. Whenever I do an introduction to a new user, I always include a personal note on top of and beyond the simple template. It is quality over quantity, even if you can't get to everybody or look at everything. A "nice note" to a person who has raised an eyebrow in terms of something questionable goes a long way to finding out what the real problem might be... or if that person is simply a troll. You might be surprised and get a real answer to a query you make too. From my own experience, far more new users respond to a genuine query than don't, unless they are sock puppets or troll accounts. Generally it is easy to tel the difference too. Just don't go assuming that everybody is a troll. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:43, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- How did all of that content get written in the first place if it wasn't open to new contributors? What standard is being used here for "average content"? I've seen the quality of the top articles certainly improve over time, and the standards for becoming a featured article dramatically increase. The quality improvement is there as well, and when watching individual articles that at least are getting some regular attention, I most certainly watch the quality improve gradually over time. The trick is to get some eyeballs on an article and get at least some level of regular contributors. Even articles I've worked on have had some major overhauls that included text I wrote... and had some of that text substantially improved simply because somebody with better skills than I have was able to edit the article. I argue that while the backlog is certainly there for some cleanup, you don't need to stress oer the increase here.... all that is showing is the growth of the project not necessarily that problems are happening here.
- Restricting new article creation and demanding that articles appearing on Wikipedia meeting some minimum standards before the article is in the main namespace is something that I think is flat out wrong and is contrary to how this project was started in the first place. The encouragement of quantity over quality is something foundational and part of what makes Wikipedia work out the way that it does. It is a strength, not a weakness. It isn't nonsense, it is precisely the way that got so many people together to be contributing to the development of the content that is found here. 30,000 people editing Wikipedia on any given day? How wonderful! Isn't it amazing that so many people are willing to help here and contribute so many hours of effort to share information with others! It sounds like things are working out just fine and the problem here is the complaint about the growth, and a desire to change Wikipedia into something it never was in the first place. Nupedia was a flop and I don't want to see Wikipedia be turned into Nupedia II. It will fail as a project if that happens. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- No, the main complaint is that our articles are of an extremely low average quality. More than 40% of our articles are stubs and more than 20% have a maintenance tag. Nearly 400,000 articles (not including disambig pages) have fewer than 1000 characters of wikitext - assuming no formatting, templates, or categories that would be ~200 words. The encouragement of quantity over quality is why Wikipedia is not taken seriously in the real world. Most of the newest articles are seen by a handful of people (the creator, his friends, and search engine bots) a month because they're of such minor interest, meanwhile we have articles seen by thousands that are embarrassingly short and unreferenced. Mr.Z-man 04:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Restricting new article creation and demanding that articles appearing on Wikipedia meeting some minimum standards before the article is in the main namespace is something that I think is flat out wrong and is contrary to how this project was started in the first place. The encouragement of quantity over quality is something foundational and part of what makes Wikipedia work out the way that it does. It is a strength, not a weakness. It isn't nonsense, it is precisely the way that got so many people together to be contributing to the development of the content that is found here. 30,000 people editing Wikipedia on any given day? How wonderful! Isn't it amazing that so many people are willing to help here and contribute so many hours of effort to share information with others! It sounds like things are working out just fine and the problem here is the complaint about the growth, and a desire to change Wikipedia into something it never was in the first place. Nupedia was a flop and I don't want to see Wikipedia be turned into Nupedia II. It will fail as a project if that happens. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- There is no possible way to placate most of the critics involved here, other than going to a traditional proprietary model of encyclopedia article writing that has a stiff gateway of contributors that must have a PhD after their name. Wikipedia has never been taken all that seriously and I don't think it should either. It is the incarnation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but done with slightly less humor. If an article on Podunk, Oklahoma says only "mostly harmless", that seems to be typical for many of these articles that you are complaining about here. I stand by my statement that over time articles are improved and that this is an issue of recruitment and not standard raising. The rest is a complaint about notability guidelines being too lax. I argue that those articles aren't being read anyway so it isn't really an issue. Deleting these minor articles isn't going to get the articles read by thousands fixed any time soon.... which are precisely the ones I am arguing are getting improved over time. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not saying we need perfection, but frankly, much of what we have is just marginally better than "useless" (though we do have some that's worse). Its not that we don't need the information, its that we don't need it so massively spread out. We should be making an effort to consolidate information into comprehensive articles rather than have a billion 2 sentence stubs just so that we can say we have 2 billion articles on the main page. Why do we need 50 nearly-identical stubs on towns like Podunk, Oklahoma, when we could have a much more useful "List of towns in Podunk County, Oklahoma" - where we only split off individual articles when there's a significant amount of information. Its not even that the notability guidelines are too lax, its that people take them too seriously. Some people feel that if notability allows it, that we not only can have an article on a subject, but we actually need one. Though I still disagree that articles are improved over time. We not only have articles that need cleanup from 2006, we have articles that haven't been touched since 2006. Or, take Studio album for example (200000+ pageviews last month). It was created in 2005 as a 3 sentence stub. 5+ years and 200+ edits later, it has ... 3 sentences. They're better/longer, but its not much of an improvement, especially for 5 years on a highly visible article. While some are improved, certainly, we are getting more low-quality new articles than we're improving old ones. Recruiting more users to do cleanup will help with that imbalance, but its probably the more difficult option. Mr.Z-man 02:40, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- From long experience on many other wiki projects besides Wikipedia, I have noted that a wiki tends to get much more participation and fewer editor disputes when you have more articles rather than fewer. Using the Podunk, Oklamhoma example, there is bound to be an occasional editor that is from one of those towns in "Podunk County, Oklahoma" that will start to edit. Sure, it is still only once in awhile, but it does happen. I am simply noting that the philosophy of deleting seldom edited articles to concentrate all new users into editing the "popular" articles doesn't work. Not everybody is willing to get into the fray of editing Barack Obama or George W. Bush. I don't think they should either... those aren't very good articles for new users to make their first edits. Removing articles from my perspective and experience tends to drive new contributors away more than it helps in concentrating the efforts of new users. BTW, many of those dusty articles are obscure topics like things taken from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica... obscure because it is old history. That is part of the bias that Wikipedia has in terms of its editor community, which is particular strong on technology, arts (popular culture), and science. Proportionally, I say we are getting as many poorly written articles and stubs turning into high quality articles as ever happened, and the reason more low-quality new articles is being written is simply because that is where high quality articles start. Almost no article starts out on edit #2 or #3 completely finished as a featured article candidate... and on those I tend to get very suspicious if I'm patrolling as those tend to be copyvios instead. The poor quality articles are a part of the process and how this project gets its high quality content. Killing off the low quality stubs will kill off the culture that has brought about Wikipedia as we know it. --Robert Horning (talk) 20:57, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- If the new page patrolers are overworked, they can stop being new page patrolers. Everyone's a volunteer here, I don't understand why so many people seem to forget that. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:14, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- I believe new page patrolling should be done in two waves, one shortly after say a few hours or a day, and another a week or so after. The first pass should be mainly speedy deletes of the obvious attack pages and suchlike obvious total rubbish, they could also tag the page for the probable type content if that is missing. The second pass could select by content type or missing type and check more carefully when there has been time for something that might eventually be reasonable. Having new pages tagged quickly could also alert people with an interest in a subject so the editor might get some support or be shown an existing page covering the topic. Dmcq (talk) 11:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- I believe Wikipedia:New pages patrol says all the right sorts of things. I believe though that a two stage process would take less overall effort and give a better result than having in effect a single check as it is at present. Dmcq (talk) 11:20, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Senra makes a good point. I'm not sure that this can be fixed by policy changes (I'm not saying it can't either). I try to follow the behavior he has described. It is time consuming. A couple of suggestions, beyond just being mindful of what he has said: 1) People, don't be shy about chiding an editor who has tagged or deleted an article that could have been salvaged, or tagged it too soon, or not engaged the editor beyond using a template (when warranted). You're doing them and everyone a favor, how else can they learn? 2) We need to change the template graphics, I think. The triangle-wow sign used to notify editors that there article is being considered for deletion is the same sign use for second warnings to vandals (I think). Herostratus (talk) 14:26, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
- Perhaps part of the reason I differed above is that maybe myself and Camelbinky (and, presumably others) are actually talking about a different kind of article. While WP:PRESERVE is policy, so is WP:V and WP:OR, and WP:N is a guideline (and policies do not trump guidelines). If an article is unsourced, at least 2 people (a nominator and an admin if speedy/PROD; more if AfD) need to make a judgment call as to whether or not the information can ever meet those criteria. If it appears to be the case (e.g., non-notable companies, actors who are "about" to make it, scientific principles of highly dubious quality and no reliable sources), we shouldn't PRESERVE that information, because that information is fundamentally inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Let me make bring up a set of examples, ones I see a lot because of the time zone I live in--articles about people, townships, and schools in India. If an article comes up about a living person, and it has no sources, it should either be marked for speedy deletion or with a BLP-prod, and I have no qualms doing that within an hour of the article's creation, because BLPs fall under far more stringent rules than anything else. If a school shows up without sources, I'm inclined to let it sit for quite a bit longer, because it's likely that (if it's HS or post-secondary), it counts as notable, and it's likely that sources can, eventually, be found. If an article about a village shows up (or is significantly expanded), it's really important (I think) to get in there and start editing right away, if you can. That's because I find that those articles, while fundamentally notable and valuable, are regularly filled with all sorts of non-encyclopedic information that should not be preserved (lists of people who live there, puffery about how great the village is, dubious unsourced claims of historical importance, etc.). Now, I certainly think that, along with all of these instances (save for outright vandalism or disruptive edits), it's nice to add some detailed, personal, non-templated information to the editor's talk page--if nothing else, that increases the likelihood that the info won't be re-added without any conversation.
- Sorry, I know I'm going on and on, but I'm trying to get down to the idea that simply because one editor added something, or created a new article, that doesn't mean we are automatically compelled to keep it. WP:PRESERVE actually contains all of the explanation I listed above and more for why deletion is sometimes the best choice. I don't believe that I'm alone in thinking that a better encyclopedia is, well, better than a large one. Maybe that's even what people above meant, and I just misinterpreted their words; if so, I'm sorry. I agree that the retired carpenter should be encouraged to find a way to get what he knows (that can be "reliably sourced") into the encyclopedia. I think that if patrollers are just speedying these articles and not giving at least a one paragraph, personal discussion to the contributor, then they're doing something wrong. But I don't think the way to get that person to become a "good" contributor is to let their contributions float around in our encyclopedia indefinitely, hoping someone sometime improves it until it meets minimum standards. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- I completely agree with you Qwyrxian.Camelbinky (talk) 00:52, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- The problem is that speedies at least don't require that an article can't be improved. In some cases a lack of assertion of notability is enough. In other words it's about the state of the article and it can be improved. Perhaps speedy deletion notes like that should go to the creator and let them know userfication is an option... Hobit (talk) 13:20, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- Notability is such a subjective and slippery slope to follow. My main complaint there is throwing up the notability complaint immediately after the article is being created fails to even give the opportunity to even list references in the first place, much less be able to document the notability or lack thereof of the article topic. I'm not saying that notability should be removed as a rationale for deletion, but I am saying that there should be at least an effort to find out if it is non-notable before it is PROD'd. Several new page patrollers abuse the tools and PROD just about anything they've personally never heard about, often getting overruled and having notability proven. That is most certainly not friendly to new contributors, particularly if a substantial number of articles end up going through the AfD process. That is generally not a pleasant way to introduce new contributors to Wikipedia, even if the article is "proven" as notable in the process. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- The problem is that speedies at least don't require that an article can't be improved. In some cases a lack of assertion of notability is enough. In other words it's about the state of the article and it can be improved. Perhaps speedy deletion notes like that should go to the creator and let them know userfication is an option... Hobit (talk) 13:20, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- Conciseness would have helped get across many of the contributions above! I'm a novice to article creation and deletion, but two issues appear to be (1) civility and respect: I prefer to give and receive a personal message to a template. (2) Finality of deletion. Where poor or insufficient content have been the reasons for deletion, yes, page would be better "off-line". Off-line (eg. moved to user space) as a concept is an incentive to the creator to improve the article, get it into shape; deletion, the opposite. Feedback from non-contributing users amonst my friends indicates a poor-quality article is a worse reflection on WP than no article. Let articles be incubated before they're thrown up for instant gratification and then become throw-away! As per Qwyrxian, "..there is no hurry to create" –most– "articles.." (my qualification). Best, Trev M ~ 13:56, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
A similar problem was mentioned a year ago at Bullypedia, A Wikipedian Who’s Tired of Getting Beat Up. This lead to a month long test of how newbies were treated at WP:CSD. The results of that test were recorded at Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion. A lot of the same issues were brought up at that time. A series of proposed solutions was the result, so maybe reviewing them could be helpful. 64.40.61.22 (talk) 15:04, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
- Related article at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-11-09/New pages experiment 64.40.61.22 (talk) 15:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
So, why don't we solve both problems? Quite honestly, it's very rare that I see a new editor contribute an article that's on a topic that's even workable. Happens, but rare. We just waste a bunch of time from experienced editors cleaning it up, while pissing off the new editors who don't understand that this is not the place for an article on your dog, or your best friend, even if you write it really well. (And most of it is not written really well). So I propose we solve both problems, and don't let people start right out by creating articles. Make it (at least) an autoconfirmed right. Non-autoconfirmed editors can still use articles for creation as normal, if they've got something they're sure works. Everyone else can get a few edits under their belt before starting to create pages—and hopefully learn a few things in the process, including quite possibly that the page they were intending really won't work. It'll reduce biting on the newbies (and I think "You're not allowed to do that quite yet, but you can try it with some help here" is far less bitey than "Your page is going to be deleted immediately.") Don't get me wrong. I'm all for deletion, and consolidation, and cleanup. We don't need hundreds of thousands of articles that will never be more than a stub. But this problem can be solved at its root, and save frustration and trouble for everyone involved—the newbies and the old hands. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- This approach worked before, too - pre 1995 and instant gratification. Anyone an experienced USENET contributor from those days likely remembers that newbies were always told to lurk to get a feel for how the community worked. I see no reason why, from a WP standpoint, we can't limit article creation to an editor with a reasonable amount of time or handful of other edits under their belt; it is far from harmful and will improve the perceptions new editors get. --MASEM (t) 04:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, please. Even if we don't technically restrict article creation by new users, we should at least stop going out of our way to encourage it. Mr.Z-man 04:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- The technical ability to restrict article creation is clearly in the MediaWiki software. If you want, we could restrict this to only somebody with a "founder" flag on their account. I certainly don't advocate such a position. There is also a "Autoconfirmed users" category that applies to users with multiple edits.... currently used to restrict page moves only for established accounts. I might.... grudgingly... accept this as a compromise in terms of where article creation ought to be allowed. The current requirements are 10 edits and an account that is at least 4 days old to be a part of this category and doesn't require any extra administration. That to me is still a relatively low threshold but keeps the trolls more at bay and requires somebody at least trying to participate with Wikipedia before new articles can be contributed. This is a change that could technically be done right now, but as a policy question it is something that does cut deep into the heart of what Wikipedia actually is. I certainly don't see the developers making a change of this nature without a major site-wide policy poll being taken... and expect a flame war royale if the question is posed in a formal manner with commentary by the WMF board too. There would be incredible resistance to any tougher standards than this. See also Special:ListGroupRights
- I also don't see that this is going to resolve the whole problem, but it does resolve a complete novice landing on a red link and typing in some random gibberish. That might be beneficial. This kind of change coupled with an increased effort to put the new page patrollers into a new user helper attitude would go a long way to "fixing" this problem. It can't be solved purely by technical means as this is a people to people issue, and it can only really be resolved by having people responding to people in a very human way. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:40, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Would it be possible to put that restriction in place but still allow a user to create a new page in userspace without being autoconfirmed? Also, I find myself wondering whether or not it would be useful to beef up the text on the page when a user tries to create a new page--it seems to me that it would be helpful to guide users to create new articles in userspace, so they can work on it a bit before bringing it to mainspace. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:06, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I also don't see that this is going to resolve the whole problem, but it does resolve a complete novice landing on a red link and typing in some random gibberish. That might be beneficial. This kind of change coupled with an increased effort to put the new page patrollers into a new user helper attitude would go a long way to "fixing" this problem. It can't be solved purely by technical means as this is a people to people issue, and it can only really be resolved by having people responding to people in a very human way. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:40, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Not sure I expected such a well reasoned and informative debate, so thank you all for your comments. I am sorely tempted to respond, though I expect I would merely end up cherry picking responses which support my thesis. Please be assured I am watching these posts --Senra (Talk) 23:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
How do we procede?
An issue was raised and generated a lot of input. I'm new here and don't know how things work. So how do we procede to ensure that the issue is addressed and that the community is satisfied? Thanks. - Hydroxonium (talk) 23:49, 14 September 2010 (UTC)(fix edit conflict Hydroxonium (talk 23:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
- Concensus seems to be centering on changing the user rights for creating new article to be changed to Autoconfirmed users. Secondary concensus seems to be centered more on how the new page patrollers interact with those creating those articles... with an emphasis on perhaps some education/training of new page patrollers in some fashion. These are two distinctively different proposals.
- This is significant enough that I think a formal poll needs to happen in terms of the technical changes to the user rights, and announced beyond just the Village Pump. The question here is who wants to run this, and who is impartial on this topic that would also be willing to get the leg work happening to make this known to the wider Wikipedia community. At the very least, notifying the en-wikipedia mailing list and putting something in the Signpost would be a place to start, as would the Admin noticeboard to perhaps get something on a sitenotice message.... if we think it deserves that level of attention. --Robert Horning (talk) 00:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I proposed last year that users not be able to create articles one microsecond after registering their account, but was not successful. That discussion is still technically active at Wikipedia talk:User access levels#Be autoconfirmed to create a page? and there is a previous discussion along these lines at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 53#autoconfirmed for unassisted article creation. I continue to think this a good idea, but be warned that you have a hard road ahead of you if you want to actually make it policy. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Oh yeah, please don't make it "poll" per se, a WP:RFC is probably a good format for this, once constructed it can be added to WP:CENT and any other relevant forums can be notified. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I proposed last year that users not be able to create articles one microsecond after registering their account, but was not successful. That discussion is still technically active at Wikipedia talk:User access levels#Be autoconfirmed to create a page? and there is a previous discussion along these lines at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 53#autoconfirmed for unassisted article creation. I continue to think this a good idea, but be warned that you have a hard road ahead of you if you want to actually make it policy. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- One thing I'd like to see done is gathering of actual statistics regarding new users. How many users actually do get their start by creating a new article? How many actually quit after their article gets deleted? If their article isn't deleted, how many still don't edit afterward? We had WP:NEWT, but its experimental methods were so shoddy, its impossible to draw any real conclusions from it. Mr.Z-man 03:01, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Perhaps the proposal could be along the lines that users without a small edit record only be able to create pages in user space, or some other off-line space and that such articles may be requested to be moved to mainspace? I go to new page patrol and there's not many pages I can say whether are Notable enough (they probably aren't), so I'm reluctant to "define them" as such by clicking patrolled or recommending them for deletion, but I would be prepared to cast a quick vote either way for them that didn't change their status, in a process that automatically took several editors views into account, and the same for a page that was being incubated that was not yet on line. I know that's beyond the policy of whether straight into mainspace or not is on, but a simpler, quicker and not so heavy on any one assessor means of evaluating articles is surely fundamental to dealing with the flow, whether they already be in main space or a queue to get there? Trev M ~ 09:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
One thing to keep in mind when discussing a restriction of page creation to autoconfirmed users: IP editors are never autoconfirmed. Even if they could create articles in their user space this would be problematic, because they are unlikely to remember their old IP if that changes. So we would effectively bar IPs from creating articles. Personally I think that IP editing should be thought of as a no-barriers preview to editing Wikipedia, and that in a sense most long-term IP editors are abusing the system. But if you don't follow this theory (which doesn't seem to be a popular one), then forbidding IPs to create articles is problematic. Hans Adler 10:07, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Tell me about long term IP editors! Personally, I think the privilege of creating articles in main space should come with at least a user name. What other un-notable website lets you come along and start creating content without even giving yourself a handle? But as for an IP editor finding the article they just created in their user space: they can bookmark with their browser, can't they, or search for it? (although I do now see what you mean about if tthey wanted to edit their article from a different IP address. They soon realise the value of being autoconfirmed. Trev M ~ 10:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)Et seq.
- IP editors have been prevented from creating articles for years. Mr.Z-man 12:04, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- At the very least, I suggest deletion policy be modified to be more NPOV by having more than zero sentences in the lead suggesting alternatives to deletion --Senra (Talk) 10:38, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Surely you realize that NPOV applies to content and not policy? Anyway when you get to the part about the actual process at Wikipedia:GTD#Nomination, it is very explicit in explaining alternatives to deletion. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:36, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- (re Beeblebrox) now that response is nit-picking. The spirit of what I am saying, irrespective of guidelines or policy, is that the lead of the deletion policy "article" should be written from a more neutral perspective, to more fairly represent the fact that deletion should be a last resort. Currently, the WP:ATD (alternatives to deletion) section is not mentioned within the deletion policy "article" until around one-third of the way into the document. To be clear, I was knowingly and explicitly referring to policy; your reference (Wikipedia:GTD#Nomination), whilst valid, is to a guideline only document --Senra (Talk) 19:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Considering that there are clearly Deletionists, Mergists, and Inclusionists on Wikipedia, I would say that the principles of NPOV apply to policy as well as content. Yes, this it nitpicking here, but there is no reason that it can't or shouldn't be written in a neutral tone rather than taking on the philosophy and point of view of one of these editing camps. NPOV is a basic pillar policy that can and perhaps even should be considered a meta-policy. It certainly is the one indisputable policy that must apply to all language versions of Wikipedia and is also in all Wikimedia projects. Why shouldn't that also apply to most policies as well? --Robert Horning (talk) 20:23, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I have to agree with Robert Horning...I'm not so sure that deletion should always be the last resort. Additionally, my understanding is that it is incorrect to say that policy necessarily trumps guidelines. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- We are wandering farther and farther afield from the original subject of this discussion, but let me say that the lead to the deletion policy is in fact written like the lead of an article in that it provides a broad overview of the subject without delving into details and in fact is followed by a brief section listing valid reasons for deletion, followed by seven subsections detailing alternatives to deletion. In short, even if we accept a content policy as a valid guide for how a policy page should be constructed I still consider the argument that alternatives are not given enough weight invalid. If this line of discussion is going to continue to be pursued I suggest it be split off into it's own section as it has little bearing on the proposal we are supposed to be discussing.(as an aside I was not trying to lay down a "trump card" by mentioning WP:GTD, I just thought it was the most widely used deletion related guide page and is the one I always refer people to if they have questions about deletion.) Beeblebrox (talk) 00:37, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- The original subject of this whole debate is that far too many articles are being needlessly nominated for deletion and that some recent change patrollers are complaining that they are being "overworked" by the crushing influx of new pages being created by apparently clueless new users. The topic is how to deal with those new users and if perhaps something ought to be done to help with this situation.... including a minor rework of the instruction that are being given to those who perform a vital function to Wikipedia in general. There is a problem here, and more than one solution can be applied in terms of how to resolve it. If this includes reworking the lead paragraph of the formal deletion policy, perhaps that is something which can be very useful to make those who are applying this policy to be encouraged to be more friendly to new users in general. How is that for staying on topic? --Robert Horning (talk) 00:52, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- We are wandering farther and farther afield from the original subject of this discussion, but let me say that the lead to the deletion policy is in fact written like the lead of an article in that it provides a broad overview of the subject without delving into details and in fact is followed by a brief section listing valid reasons for deletion, followed by seven subsections detailing alternatives to deletion. In short, even if we accept a content policy as a valid guide for how a policy page should be constructed I still consider the argument that alternatives are not given enough weight invalid. If this line of discussion is going to continue to be pursued I suggest it be split off into it's own section as it has little bearing on the proposal we are supposed to be discussing.(as an aside I was not trying to lay down a "trump card" by mentioning WP:GTD, I just thought it was the most widely used deletion related guide page and is the one I always refer people to if they have questions about deletion.) Beeblebrox (talk) 00:37, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- I have to agree with Robert Horning...I'm not so sure that deletion should always be the last resort. Additionally, my understanding is that it is incorrect to say that policy necessarily trumps guidelines. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- As a result of following this thread, I've had a fairly informative read of WP:DEL and it actually suggests many of the things that I thought "ought" to be implemented, not least of moving articles to the incubator! So armed with that one at least, I shall do a bit of duty on the new page patrol, and send any that fit that criterion off for incubation. But hey, as I was reminded above, IP editors can't create their own pages; nor can hatchling editors: can't the proposal simply be that that x-day, y-edits period be extended for main-space page creation? That's not an earth shattering policy change: that's just adjustments: new page numbers excessive + quality poor = increase incubation time: fewer but better live. By the time they've built their page in their user space they'll have all the edit-credits they need and had time to compare and re-evaluate their page, or got bored and gone away and left less work for other editors...? But those statistics talked about by Z-man would be good to see. If editors with time served are creating crap pages, then forget all the above! Trev M ~ 01:12, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- As someone who routinely does NPP, I like this idea. It makes no sense to allow users to create articles if they have no idea what the hell they're doing, any more than it makes sense to allow users to begin moving articles before they're familiar with the relevant guidelines (MoS, NPOV, and others). Not only would this be easier on the new editors, it'd make our job as patrollers much easier. I'd be glad not to sift through the enormous reams of garage bands and guides on how to become an Internet millionare (if you think I'm kidding...) that new users frequently create. Having users wait a few days would cut down the amount of suspicion we patrollers have when we see a new article, especially one with "band" in the title, and reduce the hair trigger CSD tagging. In short, it'd help everyone, and help solve, not exacerbate, the underlying problem. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:46, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Considering that there are clearly Deletionists, Mergists, and Inclusionists on Wikipedia, I would say that the principles of NPOV apply to policy as well as content. Yes, this it nitpicking here, but there is no reason that it can't or shouldn't be written in a neutral tone rather than taking on the philosophy and point of view of one of these editing camps. NPOV is a basic pillar policy that can and perhaps even should be considered a meta-policy. It certainly is the one indisputable policy that must apply to all language versions of Wikipedia and is also in all Wikimedia projects. Why shouldn't that also apply to most policies as well? --Robert Horning (talk) 20:23, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Summarizing issues and suggestions
Important: Wikipedia needs new editors to help improve and maintain the project.
Issues
- New editors are leaving from a negative experience with a WP:CSD, WP:AfD or WP:PROD because new page patrollers are being too strict with WP:NOTABLE and not following WP:AGF and WP:BITE
Suggestions
- Educate new page patrollers to use WP:INCUBATOR and WP:USERFY more often and to be nicer to new users
- Modify WP:ATD section of deletion policy
- Encourage new editors before posting notices on talk pages
- Increase mentoring of new users
- Educate new users that new pages must be notable
- Modify notices used on talk pages and related notice images
- Change requirements for creating new pages — previous discussions here and here.
- Collect statistics of the situation
- Only allow new users to create articles in their userspace
- Change deletion policy to be more neutral
- Educate new users that articles must follow WP:MoS and WP:NPOV
Does this accurately summarize the situation? - Hydroxonium (talk) 10:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
The SCOTUS recently ruled that promotion of illegal material is not a guaranteed right; however, someone keeps adding links to illegal material to the Tor article.
Someone keeps re-adding the 'Hidden Wiki'. I told them to discuss it with me on the talk page; however, they ignore my request and revert. Where do I take this issue? I am not experienced with the bureaucracy of Wikipedia, and mainly do minor edits and such. Any help will be great. Ismouton (talk) 09:37, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Take a look at these pages: WP:dispute resolution WP:edit war WP:third opinion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:26, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- You might also ask for help at the WP:External links noticeboard. Since an anon is involved, User:XLinkBot may also be able to help you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:18, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- It is true that WP:EL rules out "sites containing... content that is illegal to access in the state of Florida". However, doing a Google search for "The Hidden Wiki" I am immediately presented with a page that appears to be the exact same URL as the one subject to the current edit war, except with .tor2web.com in the place of .onion. This page does contain a link to one site that it describes as containing a compilation of "underage" links.
- However, I am not persuaded that that is against WP:EL or anything else. The Google search I link above is ruled out by WP:EL because it's a Google search, but is it ruled out as a site that links to hidden material? How about plain www.google.com and the words "The Hidden Wiki" (which are the same thing). And since most people, on reading the name, go straight to Google.com, that's also pretty much the same thing as just saying the words "The Hidden Wiki". And what about links to pages about The Hidden Wiki? And pages that link to those?
- Are we down to that — to declaring "Unpersons" that can't be named or mentioned in any way on Wikipedia? Because if we aren't, then we should draw a line before we get there.
- The most obvious line to draw is to dismiss all censorship. But if you can't do that, then only censor links to pages that in and of themselves contain content illegal in Florida - not pages that link to pages that link to pages that might contain some kind of illegal content, if you dared to read them to find out. Wnt (talk) 00:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- The SCOTUS decision was not an unconditional ban. I think the best policy is to link to the most useful sites we can to describe the topic of the article, while making it clear that we don't encourage illegal behavior. Obviously merely omitting a link does not actually make the site significantly more difficult to locate - sometimes it's better to follow the spirit of the law than the letter. Dcoetzee 18:28, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia image policy?
Alas none of us is a mind reader, so we can not know why images get added. But suppose that an up and coming motor manufacturer, say Chery Automobile wants to get its name in front of the public in the US. Can they get a few of their marketing people to add images of Cherry products all over Wikipedia? Is there a policy regarding that? Can the images of a compact SUV be a Chery Tiggo, the image of a station wagon be a Chery V5 the image of a transmission that of a Cherry transmission and the image of a Disc brake a Cherry disc brake? (By the way, any Cherry executives reading this, please do send me a generous wire transfer for mentioning your name here.) And of course Etro can replace all images of gloves, scarves and shirts by distinctively colorful Etro designs. But this will tun Wikipedia into a marketplace, not an encyclopedia. I do not see a Wikipedia policy on this issue. And that can be the source of debates. I would therefore suggest a coherent policy suggestion for how images are to be handled. But given the fragmentation issue humans will not be able to see the image distributions easily enough, and the best (and not difficult) way will be to have a bot that produces a report of "vendor presence" within Wikipedia. But the bot will need a policy. So I would suggest a policy discussion in the suitable place, then a bot design to provide such reports. Suggestions will be appreciated. Cheers. History2007 (talk) 13:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I think two policies work to discourage this:
- First, is our standard image policy, specifically, WP:NFC. If the company uploads images of their cars but not in the public domain, they will be removed because cars can be photographed freely and thus a free replacement is possible. Of course, this could mean the company uploads a bunch of free content photos of their cars, which is great because likely every car model by a notable manufacture is notable, we'll have a good picture to use for that car.
- But in this latter case, if they're pushing their images of the cars the defacto images for general car models (like coupe and SUV), that becomes a conflict of interest issue, particularly if they insist on doing this after being reverted. Consensus needs to decide what images to use for these broader articles, and if they happen to chose one from the manufacture, hey great. --MASEM (t) 14:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, I meant that they add public domain images. If so, how do you know it was the company doing it and not their PR agents from home, or from a Starbucks WIFI type place? How can you show the company did that? Do you know who added the images to Compact SUV? Did any of them work for a car company? I have no idea. History2007 (talk) 14:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Honestly, I don't think it matters if a company is providing us free-use imagery of their cars (especially since they could do so under a more restrictive, but still open, license than public domain). The only issue is when a company (of any type) tries to make their product the de facto example of a concept, but WP:COI is the relevant policy, as pointed out by Masem. Not sure what the point of this is. If you're curious about who added the images to Compact SUV, just look at the article's history; it's open to absolutely everyone, so it's not like the information is obscured in any way. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I used SUV as an example. But I also think there is no image policy in place for WP:COI is too broad. As is, Wikipedia seems like a good way to promote a name for free - it is just a question of time before that happens at a larger scale and gets used by marketing people. And that can not be a great thing for an encyclopedia. It is not a burning question, but in time such a policy may be needed. At times I wonder if the section on the benefits of a specific type of health supplements (say Resveratrol) have been contributed by manufacturers of such products as well, although that is another story. History2007 (talk) 16:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- There is Wikipedia:COI#Photographs and media files. Is this a hypothetical situation or is there an actual incident of an editor inappropriately pushing certain images? –xenotalk 16:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I used SUV as an example. But I also think there is no image policy in place for WP:COI is too broad. As is, Wikipedia seems like a good way to promote a name for free - it is just a question of time before that happens at a larger scale and gets used by marketing people. And that can not be a great thing for an encyclopedia. It is not a burning question, but in time such a policy may be needed. At times I wonder if the section on the benefits of a specific type of health supplements (say Resveratrol) have been contributed by manufacturers of such products as well, although that is another story. History2007 (talk) 16:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Honestly, I don't think it matters if a company is providing us free-use imagery of their cars (especially since they could do so under a more restrictive, but still open, license than public domain). The only issue is when a company (of any type) tries to make their product the de facto example of a concept, but WP:COI is the relevant policy, as pointed out by Masem. Not sure what the point of this is. If you're curious about who added the images to Compact SUV, just look at the article's history; it's open to absolutely everyone, so it's not like the information is obscured in any way. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry, I meant that they add public domain images. If so, how do you know it was the company doing it and not their PR agents from home, or from a Starbucks WIFI type place? How can you show the company did that? Do you know who added the images to Compact SUV? Did any of them work for a car company? I have no idea. History2007 (talk) 14:45, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Policies flexible enough and we may enforce the spirit of the rule even if the specific case is so original that it wasn't ever written down anywhere. Wikilawyering is not welcome, real law may have room for legal vacuums or technicisms, but wikipedia does not. If someone tries to make spam through images, videos or sounds, it's the same as if was done with mere external links.
- By the way, there's no need to discuss image licences in here: when History2007 said "public domain", surely he was trying to say "with a commons-compatible licence". Whenever the owner releases the spam image into public domain, under a creative commons licence or some other variant has no importance for this discussion
- As for the usage in many articles at once, the real important thing is whenever the image is ilustrative of the article topic in general or the specific point adressed in the section. to illustrate the article about a car motor it has little importance whose trademark does the motor have, as long as the main components that make it work can be seen and described as needed. An image added to articles without adding anything to it may be removed simply because of that; an image of a topic added to articles that lacked an image on such topic (because it was too technical or hard to take a photo of it) is welcome. MBelgrano (talk) 12:03, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- To be honest, I think this is exactly the same as trying to keep people from putting pictures of their beloved Fluffy as the lead image on cat; there's no "legal" reason not to add them, but we all agree it's not a beneficial thing to do, and we remove them when spotted - which is most of the time. Making an explicit rule against this sort of thing would, in some ways, be worse - we'd create a hard line of what wasn't acceptable, encouraging people to push close to it and complain if their "legitimate" edits were removed. Shimgray | talk | 23:10, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Loading vs use policies and technologies to harmonize them
Since Xeno asked about hypothetical vs actual cases, I should answer both. There is a general (you may say hypothetical) background, as well as several cases where I have wished for an "image use policy" to point to.
The general background is my general lack of satisfaction with "image management" within both Wikimedia and Wikipedia. My general ongoing improvement list includes the comment that the simple website www.WGA.hu works so much more smoothly than Wikimedia. I have actually sketched a better design that I will write up sooner or later, but I am not sure where to post that. Now, for specific examples, although again not being a mind reader I can not speculate on motives.
There are two issues:
- Loading images. There are simple policies and simple bots here that check things. But a long way to go.
- Using images: I can not see clear policies here, except that Wikipedia is not a gallery, and fewer images should be used. Are there policies about "image relevance", "image domination" or use of images as "semi-advertising"?
Loading images: I would really, really like to see a simple bot built into Wikimedia that stops people from adding any images without clear information about author, source, date, etc. as well as "image content tags" that relate to categories, e.g. this is an image of a car, not a piece of fruit. As is the Wikimedia mentality seems to be that of 5 years ago: "let us get as many images as we can load up". That was good a few years ago, but now too much has been hoarded, without suitable policies on management and use. As is Wikimedia policies are an invitation to chaos. And I think MOST users would just fill in the relevant information if the bot prompts them before they can save the imkage. A simple set of policies (plus enforcing bots) will go a long way here.
Using Images: Some time ago, I noticed that User:Vertistar kept adding the same image (which was probably from near his own location) to several pages, e.g. see: Talk:Mary_(mother_of_Jesus)#Solid_wood.3F. I left him a brief message and that was handled smoothly: User_talk:Vertistar. But thereafter I saw that users keep adding images (possibly from near their own locations) somewhat freely, and often multiple images. A recent example from the same page was this edit where I had to ask if 4 images of the same item were needed. But did I have a policy to point to? No. As is, the user added back 2 of them to the middle of the page and it still messes up the text. If I start a discussion on that, do I have a policy to point to? No. Is there a policy that relates placement of images to the text? I can not see one. I would like to find a policy for image placement. My suggestion here would be something like:
- If a section is less than 7% to 10% of an article, images related to that section should not be larger than 10% of the total images, etc.
On the page Our Lady of Mount Carmel an IP in Spain kept adding an image from Span (a few miles from his own geolocation). It took a lot of discussion via a 3rd opinion to deal with that. Have you had that problem with someone's favorite cat? On the page Leo XIII there was, and still is an ongoing discussion as to whether a new coat of arms (originally added with the artist's name on the page in the caption) might have been a promotional item. Same image was deleted from German Wikipedia as spam. The issue remains undecided since there is no policy to point to on English Wikipedia. And actually the list goes on. And these are some examples. There are other pages where I have seen these types of things but I can not be on all pages at all times. I have tried to "reduce the chaos" by building specific image galleries within Wikimedia such as this one that avoid 3 copies of the same painting. But really there needs to be a better way and better policies.
Two tiered system: Eventually I would like to see a two tiered system:
- Leopold's Wikimedia: Better known as "Wikimedia Commons" is where images are hoarded to no end, just like today, but with more control over image tags. The motto here is: Grab and run, get whatever you can, after all it is free.
- Quality Wikimedia: Also known as "Wikimedia Uncommons" as a system that will be data-based rather than file-based. A simple, really simple, system like www.WGA.hu already does that and "Quality Wikimedia" should do even better.
There is no need for technical inventions here. Just a desire for improvement beyond let us get as many things as we can. And goals must be set to improve usage policies. The "let us grab it all" approach and "we will police it via common sense" method were good 4 years ago, but their days are numbered, I think. History2007 (talk) 23:40, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think that huge numbers of images are a problem, in and of itself. The system used in Commons is to use the categories for all the images about something, and galleries for "the best" images, or with order, explanations or whatever is needed. If you are concerned that some topic has too many images, make a gallery and fix the link to the category into a link to the gallery.
- By the way, Commons does not allow anything, there is a Project scope. Personal images without educative purpose, or duplicated images (such as multiple renditions of a same portrait) may be nominated for deletion, or even speedily deleted in obvious cases MBelgrano (talk) 22:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
It will be easier for me to write a proposal on how to improve the technology of Commons. It will be fun to write. As is Commons technology is based on Google-like text search, not Oracle-like queries. Both are needed. Please use that WGA link above to see how nice it is. And I think therre are just 2-3 people running that part time. I will write a design doc for "Wikimedia Uncommons" as something above Commons. But where do I post that? However, your comment addressed only loading, not usage. Ideas on that? History2007 (talk) 22:22, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- MBelgrano, I started writing A design for Wikimedia Uncommons. I will need 7-10 days or so to get a first draft together. Please check back in a week or so. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 19:22, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
University "reputation" sections
I am concerned about the evel of activity on Wikipedia regarding university "reputation" sections. This is particularly in reference to British universities (esp. upper-middle status ones like Bristol, Durham, St Andrews, Warwick, etc) for whom there are a plethora of newspaper "guides" which more often than not tell virtually nothing about the university but direct parents to choose one over the other for their children. Inclusion of this information often involves cherry-picking some high rankings from a number of recent years or composing huge unwieldy collages of guides (see this as an example). The encyclopedic value is nil, but the incentive for editing is high as Wikipedia articles are often the main source of public information. This is why a lot of anonymous activity is behind it. I'm personally in favour of banning all such rankings for university articles, as this is the only realistic way of safeguarding the 'Pedia against this pressure and comes really at no loss ... but something does need to be done. It's making lots of these university articles look ridiculous. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 19:20, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'd agree, but this is a fairly mundane content issue and way too specific to make policy. You might take it up with the relevant project as something to watch for, but I don't think you'd be able to make a meaningful general rule other than enforcing WP:PROMOTION, one of the sub-bits of WP:SOAP, part of one of our very important rules that people can't lightly ignore. SDY (talk) 02:18, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'm inclined to think it is a more serious matter than this. It seems to be acceptable to a lot of people to abuse Wikipedia for promotional purposes here, while few are interested in stopping it. I'm happy to take the lead in cutting this out, but I want to know people will be with me. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 23:10, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- I personally would totally agree with this stance. As someone who in a previous life did some work to these I included at most things like RAE scores because they are official and relevant to funding, and even then only when appropriate like on prominent research universities. Newspaper league tables are simply not encyclopaedic and are seemingly constantly used for promotion, including selective use of figures. I would agree though regulating this through specific policy is difficult past WP:PROMOTION. ChiZeroOne (talk) 07:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Email from email provider
Can anything be done to make the following, received Feb. 19 of this year, a valid source? I can't find anything online to document the change in the Lycos article; maybe there are other sources that have the information but I just haven't found them. I know from looking at forums that this has been a traumatic experience for Lycos mail users, myself included. Lycos has some qualities that I like for certain purposes, as mentioned on the Computing Reference Desk.
Dear Lycos Mail user,
We're renovating! Lycos Mail is upgrading all users to a new platform, powered by Zimbra. Many of our users have reported that the new Lycos Mail is easier to use, loads more quickly on modern browsers, and supports more languages and features than the existing one. We hope you will enjoy the changes.
Your account is scheduled to be moved within the next several weeks. We will send you another notification when the transition is complete.
In conjunction with the upgrades, we are offering a discount on Lycos
Mail Plus to our long-standing free members. As one of those members,
your qualify for a discounted membership rate of $5.95 per year (a
savings of 70%). This rate is only available to a limited time and may
only be accessed by clicking here: [ http://registration.lycos.com/signup.php?m_PR=27&m_DL_USA_LycosMail_XPlus_Promo595=1 ].
Taking this promotion does not affect your move to the new Lycos Mail in any way.
Best regards,
The Lycos Mail Team
Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:06, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- Not from the e-mail itself, no. There's no way to verify to Wikipedia policy satisfaction that you received it or that Lycos sent it. You need a source that everyone has access to; no one but you can access your e-mail inbox. A press release verifiably attributable to the company itself would be something, and if these changes are generating as much discussion as you think, eventually a reliable source is going to comment on them outside of an unreliable forum. postdlf (talk) 20:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
- This is really not germane to the purpose of this noticeboard. We have a dedicated forum for this type of discussion at WP:RSN. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:33, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Need Button: "This Article Needs a Practical Example"
I am continuing to run into a trend on Wikipedia: lots of data with no practical application.
Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-angle_lens
This entire article is filled with scientific and technical facts, data, and jargon.
However, it does not say anywhere : What a Wide-Angle Lens is Used For
There is no practical application of the data at all or real-world physical examples.
If a beginning photography student wants to know what lens to use for what application, they would not be able to use this page even though it is EXACTLY the page to be going to in order to learn about a Wide-angle lens.
This entry is not the only one. There are many such entries; all theory with no real examples of usage: all science, no practical.
I am suggesting that editors be able to click on a "This article needs a Practical Application or Real-World Example" button to flag such articles.
'Theory only' learning without real examples is one of the things that turns people off of continuing a path of study.
It would be nice to see examples of a building shot with a normal lens and a Wide-Angle lens so that a student could see the practicality and differences of the lens. THEN all of the technical data about focal distances and angles, etc., would start to make sense.
Perhaps this really is asking for a policy for technical subjects to also have a Practical Examples Section.
My thoughts. --MahLeon (talk) 10:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- My thoughts. Wide-angle lens#Characteristics and the image I've posted to the left would seem to tell anyone who has eyes to see, what a wide-angle lens does in comparison to a normal lens. I'm not clear on what practical application you lack, but perhaps you could give us an example. Of course, if you do not understand terms such as depth of field or angle of view, and are not prepared to check out their definitions, then you may come away from the article with an inadequate understanding. I think it reasonable that the wide-angle lens article does not itself provide definitions and explanations of these terms. Wikipedia is not a how to guide; do not expect it to be a photographers manual. And that's not to say that the article is not capable of being very much improved. But it is to say that I don't find evidence of need for your suggested button in your example article. In the first instance, I advise that you're probably as well dropping a note on a talk page of an article which you think needs practical examples, since many articles are watched by people familiar with the article and the subject matter. I don't think - personally - that more spammy nag boxes at the top of articles is a good way to go, not least for this not-proven issue. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:12, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- While I don't think more infoboxes is the way to go, I think the wide angle article could do with some discussion of use. Wide-angle lens#Characteristics gives an overview of what using a wide-angle does for an image. But this tells me, a non-photographer, very little about when a wide-angle can and should be used. Taemyr (talk) 18:07, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- If a beginning photography student wants to know what lens to use for what application, they would not be able to use this page even though it is EXACTLY the page to be going to in order to learn about a Wide-angle lens. - No, they should consult a photography manual. I think you are misunderstanding what an encyclopaedia is, it is a collection of facts. Wikipedia is not an instruction manual, see WP:NOTAMANUAL for more details. I agree with Tagishsimon the article could be greatly improved, like the unexplained jargon, but that the current images and links/navbox sufficiently explain the context of the lens type without going beyond the scope of an encyclopaedia. ChiZeroOne (talk) 05:00, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- comment The balance between a dry technical presentation and a hands-on, how-to tutorial is very delicate. Wikipedia rules tend to downplay the how-to part (it's not a tutorial, not a how-to, not a directory, not an encyclopedia). Worse, it's not a personal recollection. As if it wasn't enough, we're talking about an artistic tool - an area where personal tastes and hardly quantifiable skills rule... but these are "unencyclopedic". You're looking for the perfect editor, someone who excels in painting with the brush, teaching his art, and referencing his first-hand khowledge with citations extracted from elsewhere... bad luck. These people are rare.
- That said, any "how-to" or "what-for" will be incomplete and make someone unhappy. Every photography 101 says "wide angle is not for portraits". And yet here and there professionals use it for portrait, on purpose. And if someone accepts the facts and writes "wide angle is used for everything" the reader will be just as unhappy as he is today. It's photography, not changing oil. East of Borschov 15:49, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Talking about wide-angle lenses in a straight-forward and informative manner is the purpose of Wikipedia. Talking about when to use (and when to not use) wide-angle lenses is the purpose of Wikibooks (or Wikiversity, if someone made a general photography "lesson"). EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:06, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Self-Identification versus Verifiable Fact.
Although this relates to an article I've been tending; I want to post it in a more General way in hopes for a clearer interpretation of policy. Recently in a debate on the content of an article, another editor (and administrator) made the statement "Yes, a person and pretty much self-identify by any criteria, assuming they're not doing so facetiously or rhetorically." in response to examples of individuals self-identifying blatantly false facts about themselves. Reading through WP:BLP identifies only two situations where self-identification appears to be appropriate Sexual Orientation and Religion, every other situation looks for a consensus of reliable secondary sources and reading through the archives of this page Self Identification finds the following nnunchallenged statement "If reliable sources identify them as something other than (or in addition to) what they self-identify as, then it is not a WP:BLP violation to identify them as such." The Self Identification took place in a list which generally appears to follow the same rules as categorisation requiring a consensus of reliable secondary sources for any inclusion, so my belief is that in such cases we should rule with the consensus rather than any self-identification.
Furthermore the self identification occurs within a statement that may have 1 or more of three possible meanings for instance a quote from an individual with citable heterosexual orientation saying "I'm Gay" could either mean he's happy or it could mean the he's really homosexual. Again I would consider the identification to be unreliable for this reason and the other secondary sources should take preference but the other editor believes it to be unequivocal statement that both cases are true (he's a happy homosexual) where does policy stand in this case?
Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 17:08, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not sure exactly what point you're trying to clarify here. The idea behind wp:BLP policy is that we do not want to make potentially defamatory statements about living people, for moral reasons as much as for legal reasons. Wikipedia isn't a scandal rag. If someone self-identifies as X and sources identify him as Y, then the burden lies on the sources to show that Y is the correct designation, otherwise we ought to use X. Sometimes this is clear-cut, sometimes not, but we should generally err on the side of caution if there are doubts.
- If someone makes the public statement "I'm gay", it is fairly evident that s/he means that s/he's homosexual, and there will probably be multiple sources that verify it. If someone makes an ambiguous statement, like "I'm feeling gay this evening", then we should not take it as a statement that s/he is homosexual without some more clearcut statement (since assertions of homosexuality have a far greater potential for defamation than assertions that s/he means s/he's happy).
- You will occasionally run across editors with an urge (or occasionally feel the urge yourself) to edit in some potentially scandalous material about some person. IMO, that urge should always be resisted. Potentially scandalous material should not be added to an article unless it can be clearly attributed to reliable sources. Potentially scandalous material should not be entered into Wikipedia at all until it is so well-accepted that it's almost boring; stick with the 'Wikipedia does not enter into disputes' model of editing. --Ludwigs2 18:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- The material isn't scandalous in nature but WP:BPL is being used quite bluntly to remove many entries from the list. In this case X could refer to the person's ethnicity, or it could refer to the person's cultural upbringing, or it could refer to a religion the person follows. There are sources that identify the person as X by ethnicity through their father. However in the quote they say roughly "I am not X, but my father is." The context certainly seems to be referring to the cultural aspect but would also rule out the religious aspect - what it can't rule out is the ethnicity and the second half of the quote backs up the other sources that place them as ethnically X. Ultimately I'm not too bothered about whether the entry stays or not but would rather clarify the policy in this regard as there may be further similar quotes within cites for other list entries. I'm also concerned by the idea that sourceable criteria such as ethnicity (someone's ancestry), nationality, gender can be overridden by a self-identification without a consensus of sources. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 19:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- If all we have on an issue is a two word public statement by the subject with no context and no secondary source commentary interpreting it, I don't see how that would merit inclusion in an article anyway. But even if we assume it is substantial and encyclopedic for a particular subject, sexual orientation is not a binary or static thing; even proof of a same-sex liaison does not establish an individual is straight, gay, or bisexual. Nor do we always need to make a judgment who is "right," so an article could state with no contradiction "Numerous news sources reported that Mayor Schmoe had a long-term sexual relationship with a male advisor, though Schmoe insisted in numerous public statements that he is strictly heterosexual." postdlf (talk) 18:36, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- In the article it's being used to justify the removal of material, which can be justified for inclusion using other references . I've taken a position that I won't re-insert this material but have a concern that the same argument may be used to remove further material that I may have a stronger concern about retaining and wish to be clear on policy. As I say above, I'm also concerned by the idea that sourceable criteria such as ethnicity (someone's ancestry), nationality, gender can be overridden by a self-identification without a consensus of sources. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 19:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- You pretty much need to tell us where this is happening, otherwise we're stuck talking in generalities (which may or may not apply). For instance, a case like Tiger Woods (who has been repeatedly referred to as black by sportscasters - rather innocently - though he self identifies as asian) would be handled differently than a case like Obama (who has had numerous sources trying to alter perceptions of his nationality, ethnicity and religion for political gain). can you provide a link? --Ludwigs2 20:38, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- O.K. the Person in question is Lake Bell and the article in question is the List of Jewish actors though her own page has seen some editing in regard to this debate. Most references to her ethnicity stop at her father being Jewish and her mother being a WASP but some like [2] declare her Jewish because of her ethnicity on her father's side. However the contentious self-identification occurs on [3] Where she says "I wanted her to be far more Jewish and have the last name of Cohen or Rosenberg because I'm not Jewish and I wanted the opportunity to play Jewish, make the father's side of my family proud." The Context can be seen to be about culturally connecting with her father's side of the family (and in other articles she identifies with her mother's WASP culture) but it's being used as an unequivocal denial of any Jewishness. Without knowing more about the questions asked in the interview it can't be taken as an unequivocal denial especially when citable evidence confirms a definition that can't be denied only disproven. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- Longstanding practice in Judaism is that Jewish identity is matrilineal. Children of a Jewish mother are always accepted as Jews. Children of a non Jewish mother and a Jewish father are only accepted as Jewish if they convert (traditional denominations) or publically and openly self identify as Jewish (Reform Judaism). No Jewish movement accepts an unconverted child of a non Jewish mother as Jewish, especially if that person does not assert a Jewish self identity. By the way, I am a convert to Judaism. Cullen328 (talk) 00:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- The above is entirely correct, the standard definition of a Jew is based on Matrilineage. In fact I'm surprised you haven't looked at the conspicuous link at the top of that page. Her mother being a WASP precludes her from being considered a Jew by the large majority of Jewish society. Remember Judaism is a religion, not directly an ethnicity, and Jewish law has historically decided who is and is not a Jew. Because that law is effectively hereditary to be "Jewish" has become synonymous with an ethnicity in common usage, but that is a bit inaccurate because it's a "legal" definiton. The sources are merely confirming that she would not be considered Jewish by her peers. Indeed it seems clear to me the quote of hers isn't a self-identification but a recognition that she wishes she could be considered Jewish to please her father.
- So really the problem here is simply that the removing of only people who state they are not Jewish is inconsistent because it misunderstands the statement is probably based on the Halaka. The chances are the people who only have Jewish fathers and state they are not Jews are doing so simply because that is the standard interpretation based on Jewish law, not actually a self-identification at all. If they are going to be removed then all those unconverted with non-Jewish mothers should be removed also, which IMO is the correct solution. It is not Wikipedia's position to tell Judaism who is and is not a Jew! ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:52, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Yeah, there are plenty of entries in that list at present that have a Jewish father but non-Jewish mother according to the list's "Jewish lineage" column. Are those included only because they self-identify as a Jew or have not disclaimed self-identification as a Jew? Or should all of those be removed too? postdlf (talk) 05:45, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- In general entries should use Who is a Jew? as a rule of thumb. Although the Halaka states matriarchal lineage confirming Judaism, liberal and Reform Jews accept either parent as lineage - though they tend to also require the individual is raised in the Jewish faith . This would be consistent with ethnological or genealogical (also considered within the Jewish identity article) approach to descent being taken from either parent which does not require culture or religion . There are several entries of actors with Jewish Father playing roles to identify with their Jewish side - Adam Goldberg is a better known example of this kind of person (Jewish Father, Christian Mother, Raised Christian, But regularly identifies with Jewishness by playing Jewish Roles) and Lake Bell would appear to be wanting to do the same. However it should be noted that in the way that WP:BLP is being used in the article - showing matriarchal lineage as regards the Halaka would still not be enough to identify Jewishness, it would be deemed to be WP:OR through WP:Synthesis.
- However focusing on particularly Jewishness, distances the debate from the wider idea of Self-identification challenging verifiable fact. For example there are a number of right wing videos on the web which show Barak Obama saying "I'm not American" - these are edited to remove context so it may have been made facetiously or rhetorically and there are no alternate versions of the video but if it was decided they were reliable, could they be used to outweigh all the reliable verifiable information we have that that proves his American nationality? Similarly Megan Fox made the claim "I'm a Man with a Vagina" (if used in context it would be about the way she identifies to masculine characteristics) does this suddenly outweigh all the reliable verifiable evidence that she is in fact female? Logic seems to say not, but with an admin stating that a person can self-identify by any criteria then we could see other claims (particularly in smaller articles) slipping in. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 08:37, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Having had the opportunity now to read the talk page on that article I see now you probably already know most of the above. Overall I must say that articles of this variety never seem to turn out to be of much encyclopaedic worth. Indeed there have been a number of times this has been brought up including, Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession
- Anyway, for some suggestions about how lists could be handled here's an essay on lists, WP:LISTV, note particularly the part on membership criteria. This is one of the big problems for me with this situation, simply that there is no set definition of what is accepted. The administrator you were debating with is correct that the source must state in so many words the person is Jewish for this list to have any encyclopaedic worth, but the problem is they are not defining any criteria that the source must confirm and hence you get the problem with "conflicting" sources. They only conflict because the sources are using different definitions, in most cases this is trivial as the definitions are universally accepted but in cases of identity they often aren't.
- It is perfectly possible for a list to require membership criteria that may not be universally accepted, in fact it seems the standard. I know this particularly from the Spaceflight lists I've dealt with where for certain reasons the lists use criteria for inclusion that appear somewhat odd, but this is usually just to make the list "work" as an encyclopaedic article. Btw it wouldn't be a problem using Matrilineage as a criteria so long as the sources used state "X" is "Y" because "Z". Of course this would be rather difficult to find sources for, but as I said it's one of the more widely accepted criteria.
- Having said all this, as I said before the separation between "Jewish" and "Jewish ethnicity" is very tenuous indeed. I suggest both uses of the word be treated as "religion" under the BLP guidelines requiring that additionally the person should identify as Jewish themselves, for a number of reasons including some made in that "lists by professions" link above.
- As for the "I'm not American" thing and related points, this is where Wikipedia's demand for reliable evidence comes in. A reliable source should provide context, if it does not it is not a reliable source! If it's about a notable subject then there should be reliable sources, if it's not a notable subject it shouldn't be on Wikipedia........ChiZeroOne (talk) 10:44, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you for the link to Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession that was quite insightful in regard to this issue. I do believe that this list does have encyclopaedic value (outside of my personal use for it which is detailed in the article's talk place) in that many (though not all) are often notable for playing Jewish characters and their own Jewishness is often a notable factor in that choice particularly where like Lake Bell or Adam Goldberg they wish to play the role to try and connect with their Jewish Roots. The problem I see with treating Jewish to mean Religion in the case of this list means moving away from that notability (and encyclopedic value) and over-populating the list with Actors and actresses who can be cited as followers of Judaism perhaps through Kabbalah like Madonna, Mick Jagger or Britney Spears (I know they're all primarily Singers who *also* Act but it was the first three examples I came across) but it is not a notable part of their Acting. I have in the past advocated a split of the article to List of Actors of Jewish Descent and List of Actors of Jewish Faith which would solve this problem by defining clear criteria and allow a far wider scope of who could be included - citing becomes easier as it is less debatable which definition of Jewishness you are including them by and you only need to cite descent not a self-identification of that descent; but there has been little follow up on it by other editors and question could still remain as to whether Lake Bell's self-identification is a denial of Jewish descent despite sources to the contrary - including at least one that calls her "Jewish on her fathers side".
- In the more general case I'm trying to take it from the context that it is reliable and that person genuinely believes they are not X despite a consensus of other sources (and possibly common sense) agreeing that they are X. The reason may not be rhetorical or facetious it may be that the individual has a misunderstanding of what X is, or does not want to be associated with X despite no negative connotations to be formed from being associated with X (if Nicholas Cage were to turn round and claim not to be a Coppola for instance) would the self-identification outweigh the consensus? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- I went to the list, picked one actor (Rachel Stevens) at random, and checked the reference. It's an interview of her by a Jewish website in the UK. The interview says NOTHING about Judaism or her religious identity. Is being interviewed by a Jewish website proof an actor is Jewish? Hint - Jewish publications often interview non-Jews. I don't have time to do further research because my wife needs her feet massaged. Cullen328 (talk) 06:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Rachel Stevens is included because she has Jewish Lineage through both parents. I haven't checked that particular citation but there are other cites out there about her Jewishness through descent. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 08:37, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- You may be right, but the current source is inadequate. I hope that this is not common throughout the list. Cullen328 (talk) 14:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- The cite is included because it identifies her as "Jewish pop princess Rachel Stevens" which is a title not challenged by anything Rachel says. There are other sources, such as her Jewish Court Case Against Dick and Dom because they attempted to force her to be Gunged with non-kosher ingredients[4]; but there are rarely any sources on the page that are self-identifications of any criteria of Jewishness. I don't have the time to check all 641 references to make sure they are adequate. If another editor raises an issue with a reference, I will do my best to find a replacement as I have recently done for Jesse Eisenberg and Ben Feldman . Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 15:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
I would love for someone to explain how someone's Jewishness, outside of a instances where such a thing is immediately relevant (religion, Zionist history, Holocaust history, etc... in other words, not an actor), is even relevant enough and encyclopedic enough to have this kind of argument over. --Golbez (talk) 20:37, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- I agree, that article probably shouldn't even exist anyway. But to be fair this discussion isn't directly about the article, the first editor simply was using it as an example to question the current policy on identity, sourcing and BLP. We only asked for clarification on what the example was to provide better context.
- And regarding whether these sorts of articles should exist, policy as currently written on lists is rather ambiguous as has been said many times before as per the link I gave above. The BLP policy regarding religion and sexual orientation {i.e "Identity") about categories is applied to lists as well in one of the articles above. Whereas WP:EGRS essentially allows a wide range of categories that many would argue aren't relevant either. To quote,
- Category:African American musicians is valid, but Category:African American economists is not.
- Why? I wasn't aware your ethnicity was directly related to your music either, Eminem anyone? So it seems clear to me here a definition different to just "directly related" is being used, one that uses a highly subjective definition of "culturally relevant". IMO that's nonsense.
- But the point the original editor was getting at remains that an encyclopedia will include peoples identity (religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity etc) but policy as given would appear deficient in explaining the standard way identity should be treated. For example when the first person to reply said,
- If someone self-identifies as X and sources identify him as Y, then the burden lies on the sources to show that Y is the correct designation [emphasis added], otherwise we ought to use X. Sometimes this is clear-cut, sometimes not, but we should generally err on the side of caution if there are doubts.
- Which while nice in theory is not possible in reality, because all identity is not clear-cut. This doesn't just relate to BLP either, for example Karl Marx is tagged with plenty of Jewish categories but it is clear that these are done only by using the Halachic definition. Some sources will say he is a Jew because of that, others will say he's not because of his religion etc. Both are technically correct. ChiZeroOne (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- But there are probably communist/socialist who will state he was not Jewish because they don't accept the Halachic definition. Marx also took an Anti-Semetic position that could be seen as a self-identification of "Not Jewish", indeed history records that any attempt to get an identification of Jewish usually resorted in an angry response from Marx. Marx is probably a better example of this kind of thing (at least in relation to Judaism, though the general case still exists) because some of his statements are clearly denials of any definition of Jewishness including the verifiable ethnicity Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 07:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- What kind of twisted reasoning is that? Are you saying that an internal principle of a group, Jews, claims the right to define who belongs to the group, Karl Marx, despite the explicit rejection of belonging. So, if the Jewish community decides to define somebody as one of them, they're trapped? What's to prevent me from defining X:ianism, setting up the rule that anybody with 'e' as the second letter of their name to be a member, and required to preach my word to the world. If somebody was to reject me, I'd say that no, you are not a non-X:ian, you're a self-hating heretic X-ian, and I will label you as that whenever I get the opportunity. My point: Judaism's internal rules can not apply to those who reject them, and Wikipedia shouldn't blindly follow! /Coffeeshivers (talk) 19:03, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Coffeeshivers—you say, "What's to prevent me from defining X:ianism, setting up the rule that anybody with 'e' as the second letter of their name to be a member, and required to preach my word to the world." I just would like to clarify one thing. Judaism and Jews do not "preach" to the "world." Judaism is a non-proselytizing religion (with exceptions), and Christianity is a proselytizing religion (with exceptions). There are parallels between the religions but there are also disconnects. Bus stop (talk) 19:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Yeah, I know, and I guess that was a bad choice for the example. Proselytizing or not, my point is about the undefendable and unrejectable labelling of belonging./Coffeeshivers (talk) 20:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Strongly agree with Coffeeshivers' sentiments. Judiac law is entirely irrelevant in definining who is a Jew on WP. Policy on WP quite clearly gives great weight to "self-identification". If Lake Bell has made an unambiguous statement that she is Jewish, then she is Jewish. Lacking "self-identification" you've got to produce a large amount of high quality RS to assign a religon/ethnicity to someone. NickCT (talk) 19:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Wikipedia should just be reporting what reliable sources says. Whatever reliable sources says is what should be included in our article. If two sources are at odds with one another—so be it. This is not a problem. We simply report what each source says. We are just compilers of the assertions of reliable sources. The reader does not need to receive predigested information. The reader can do the digesting themselves. Contradictory indications of religious affinity is something I think our articles can comfortably contain. We shouldn't attempt to resolve such apparent contradictions. Bus stop (talk) 20:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- I take a similar position that Judaic law is not an issue here, but I do see two positions: as a religion WP accepts self-identification without problem and had the issue been an individual stating they were Jewish we would have to accept that. The problem is that ethnicity (A shared descent - in the case of Jewish descent back to the Tribes of Israel) is something that is fixed and can be proven by RS, whatever the individual states to the contrary. In both the cases of Karl Marx and Lake Bell we have sources identifying their parent's ethnicity and have sources identifying the individual as Jewish because of the extension of that ethnicity (even in Lake Bell's case where Jewish Law may consider her not Jewish.) If a notable individual says "I'm not Italian American" despite many reliable sources showing one parent to be Italian and the other American and further other reliable sources calling them Italian American should they be called Italian American? In the general case we can talk about other criteria such as Gender, Nationality (something I've dealt with in the case of Isla Fisher whose nationality cannot be proven to be Australian despite it regularly being added to her article), and other criteria that cannot be self-defined.
- Whilst a conflict can sit comfortably within an article - resolving whether a categorisation or listing is appropriate based on conflicting sources requires a guideline as to how resolve the conflict. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 21:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Wikipedia should just be reporting what reliable sources says. Whatever reliable sources says is what should be included in our article. If two sources are at odds with one another—so be it. This is not a problem. We simply report what each source says. We are just compilers of the assertions of reliable sources. The reader does not need to receive predigested information. The reader can do the digesting themselves. Contradictory indications of religious affinity is something I think our articles can comfortably contain. We shouldn't attempt to resolve such apparent contradictions. Bus stop (talk) 20:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Coffeeshivers—you say, "What's to prevent me from defining X:ianism, setting up the rule that anybody with 'e' as the second letter of their name to be a member, and required to preach my word to the world." I just would like to clarify one thing. Judaism and Jews do not "preach" to the "world." Judaism is a non-proselytizing religion (with exceptions), and Christianity is a proselytizing religion (with exceptions). There are parallels between the religions but there are also disconnects. Bus stop (talk) 19:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- (ec) Categorization shouldn't be a problem either: put them in both categories even if the two categories contradict one another. (I can't think of an example where categories contradict one another.) The alternative is worse, in my opinion: to put them in neither category. In other words we don't have to resolve discrepancies. The discrepancies exist outside of Wikipedia therefore Wikipedia should reflect them.
- I think we should always err on the side of putting someone in a category. A boilerplate disclaimer should accompany all category pages stating that categorization has to be considered tentative and in many instances a simplification of actual facts which can only be determined with reference to the actual article. Bus stop (talk) 22:09, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- That's contrary to categorization guidelines and practice, which hold that categorization should be left for uncontroversial statements of fact, and must be supportable by verifiable statements within an article. (I can't think of any explicitly contradictory categories either, unless we were to put one person in two different year of birth categories or something like that; otherwise, it isn't like we have Category:Jews and Category:Not Jews.) Lists can be looser because we can annotate reasons for inclusion when those may differ, and add qualifiers directly to the entry if there is disagreement. postdlf (talk) 22:25, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- I think we should always err on the side of putting someone in a category. A boilerplate disclaimer should accompany all category pages stating that categorization has to be considered tentative and in many instances a simplification of actual facts which can only be determined with reference to the actual article. Bus stop (talk) 22:09, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- I've heard (Bus Stop's) opinion expressed before (it's the "categories are for navigation" idea) but I really don't agree. Categories are prominently displayed at the bottom of the page, and often appear to be factual claims about the subject matter (worse, ones for which there is no mechanism to attribute them to a source).
- If all categories are applied for which some argument can be made, casual readers will come away with the idea that Wikipedia is asserting authoritatively that Georg Cantor was Jewish, that Michael Moore is an anti-American activist, that string theory is pseudoscience, and on and on. --Trovatore (talk) 22:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ok. The gut of the issue is that "Jew" has both ethnic and religious meaning. While I think we all agree self-identification is primal to religious association, I think we still question whether self-identification is primal to ethnic association.
- The only way to solve this is to decide whether "Jew" is primarily a religious term or primarily an ethnic one. Per most reliable dictionary's definition of the term, I'd say it's primarily religious, and hence I'd conclude that "self-identification" is primal in determining whether someone is a "jew". NickCT (talk) 22:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- We go by what sources say. We don't have to "decide whether 'Jew' is primarily a religious term or primarily an ethnic one." Sorry but I disagree. Our job is not to make decisions. We refer to sources. We have to gather together those sources that address a topic. The important thing is that every jot and tittle be supported by reliable sources. The reader should not be understood to have come to Wikipedia to find predigested information. The reader should be understood to have come to Wikipedia to be given the relevant and reliable facts as sources lay them out—even if they are contradictory—even if they present different perspectives and contain different implications about other topics. Bus stop (talk) 22:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- We don't even have to decide for such a list as the List of Jewish actors, because we can include people for religious and/or ethnic reasons and annotate which applies, and add qualifiers to that annotation such as "has Jewish father, does not self-identify as Jewish" or whatever. We could specify narrower inclusion criteria for the list, like "this is a list of Jewish actors who have expressly said they practice Judaism", but then we're (needlessly) leaning towards POV and OR hairsplitting of a classification that is broader in real world practice. In either case, however, the inclusion criteria needs to be made explicit, whether loose and varying or narrow and specific. postdlf (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- postdlf - Tell me this, if you were an actor of Jewish lineage/ethnicity, but for some reason abhorred the Jewish faith, do you think you might object to being categorized as a Jewish actor? Seems like a WP:BLP violation. People who don't want to be identified as Jews should not be identified as Jews. NickCT (talk) 23:48, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think personal feelings of the subject is a relevant question here. But I also don't have a final judgment on the value of self-identification on this issue. For any list, the relevance of self-identification to inclusion needs to be discussed and justified, and any inclusion criteria for any list must be made explicit. That doesn't appear to have been done here, even if self-identification is ultimately a valid factor to consider. postdlf (talk) 07:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- postdlf - Tell me this, if you were an actor of Jewish lineage/ethnicity, but for some reason abhorred the Jewish faith, do you think you might object to being categorized as a Jewish actor? Seems like a WP:BLP violation. People who don't want to be identified as Jews should not be identified as Jews. NickCT (talk) 23:48, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- We don't even have to decide for such a list as the List of Jewish actors, because we can include people for religious and/or ethnic reasons and annotate which applies, and add qualifiers to that annotation such as "has Jewish father, does not self-identify as Jewish" or whatever. We could specify narrower inclusion criteria for the list, like "this is a list of Jewish actors who have expressly said they practice Judaism", but then we're (needlessly) leaning towards POV and OR hairsplitting of a classification that is broader in real world practice. In either case, however, the inclusion criteria needs to be made explicit, whether loose and varying or narrow and specific. postdlf (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- We go by what sources say. We don't have to "decide whether 'Jew' is primarily a religious term or primarily an ethnic one." Sorry but I disagree. Our job is not to make decisions. We refer to sources. We have to gather together those sources that address a topic. The important thing is that every jot and tittle be supported by reliable sources. The reader should not be understood to have come to Wikipedia to find predigested information. The reader should be understood to have come to Wikipedia to be given the relevant and reliable facts as sources lay them out—even if they are contradictory—even if they present different perspectives and contain different implications about other topics. Bus stop (talk) 22:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Everyone: Can we pick a less emotionally charged example? I assume no one here thinks it's bad to be a Jew, and I further assume that we're all similarly assuming that, but a casual reader could potentially misunderstand. The question is whether some sort of group identity should be attributed to a person who rejects it, and if so on what basis?
- I definitely agree that such group identity should not be attributed merely on the basis of rules accepted by the group in question. However it might be attributed if it can be demonstrated that our sources in general consider the person to belong to the group. --Trovatore (talk) 00:43, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- In article space there should be no issue. Does everyone agree with that? There should be no issue in article space because all applicable factors can be laid out. It doesn't matter if they disagree with one another. I believe the only problem arises with placement in categories, because categorization in some circumstances requires us to digest a variety of factors that may be at odds with one another. I suggested a solution above but I see it is rejected. My solution was to place in all categories. Part of my solution was to have boilerplate disclaimers displayed prominently wherever the reader will encounter Wikipedia's use of "Categories." That should even include the article page itself. Bus stop (talk) 02:01, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- @Trovatore - Re "Can we pick a less emotionally charged example?" - I'm not sure there is another example of a term that can infer both religious belief and ethnicity like "Jew" does. Can you? If so, I'd be happy to use it.
- The question is, can somebody be labelled "Jewish" because there parents are, even if that person no longer subscribes to the faith.
- To answer my own question, I think if you think "Jewish" is primarily a religious term the answer is no. If you think it is primarily an ethnic term the answer is yes. I'd say no. NickCT (talk) 02:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- In article space there should be no issue. Does everyone agree with that? There should be no issue in article space because all applicable factors can be laid out. It doesn't matter if they disagree with one another. I believe the only problem arises with placement in categories, because categorization in some circumstances requires us to digest a variety of factors that may be at odds with one another. I suggested a solution above but I see it is rejected. My solution was to place in all categories. Part of my solution was to have boilerplate disclaimers displayed prominently wherever the reader will encounter Wikipedia's use of "Categories." That should even include the article page itself. Bus stop (talk) 02:01, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
NickCT—you are applying to Judaism what is only applicable to Christianity. As I said above, these two religions have parallels but these two religions also have disconnects. In Christianity, for instance, one must accept Jesus as one's Savior, in order to be a Christian. But no such counterpart to that exists in Judaism. You speak of subscribing to a faith. One does not become a Jew by subscribing to a faith and one does not cease to be a Jew as a consequence of a failure to subscribe to a faith. This is one of the disconnects between Judaism and Christianity. Many Jews—perhaps the majority of Jews—are nonobservant. In fact most Jews are semi-observant. There happens to be a spectrum of Jewish observance—from utterly nonobservant to very observant. But this is somewhat off-topic. A Wikipedia article should be faithful to sources. We need not categorize people—certainly not in article space. The placement or non-placement into Categories is a more difficult problem. But in article space I think our task, as concerns the question of this thread, is to report what impeccable sources say. Sources are the most important thing. How would we know if someone "self-identified"? Answer: only because a source told us so. How would we know if someone denied an identity? Answer: only if a source said so. We should also endeavor to provide surrounding information to put any such assertions into context. We need not say someone is or is not Jewish. We should convey the information that addresses that general question in the form that we receive it. The reader should be assumed to be capable of accepting the ambiguous, if that is the case. And we would be doing the intelligent reader a disservice if we left out all of the complicating factors. Bus stop (talk) 04:33, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- Both of you are getting way too specific. This has nothing to do with the nature of Judaism or Christianity. It's a very general question -- under what circumstances should a group identity be attributed to someone who rejects it? If the answer is specific to Judaism or Christianity, or even specific to "religion" versus "ethnicity", well, that's bad. We need a general principle, simple to state and understand, that works for them all. --Trovatore (talk) 07:03, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- The only question is whether we "digest" information before giving it to the reader or not. "Lists" are not so simple and "Categories" are not so simple. Boilerplate but clear disclaimers should be placed on "Lists" and "Categories". But articles on individuals can easily convey the information that is particular to that person regarding their identity. We don't have to decide whether someone has any particular identity or not. To do so is to process, or digest, the information we have to reach a conclusion. Of course if the information is unambiguous we simply state it in the starkest terms. But that doesn't seem to be what this question is about. This question seems to be about that instance in which, for whatever reason, we are not sure. Under such a circumstance we simply state our reasons for being unsure (backed by sources, of course). There may not be any easy answer. The reader will just have to accept that factor A points to one conclusion, while factor B points to a different conclusion. Bus stop (talk) 09:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- File:EARLY MORNING BEFORE FISHING.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
- Perkons (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Apparently the uploader is the nephew of his notable uncle, who made this painting. How should we go about handling the permission on this image? It's likely the uploader doesn't hold the copyright to the underlying image, but how do we determine what he/she does own? And gaining OTRS permission? I already deleted a few of this contributor's uploads before coming across this file where uploader explained he/she is the nephew/niece of the original author. Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Additionally, the uploader is claiming to be executor of estate - File:AUTUMN SMALL FILE.jpg. Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:28, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
- If the person is the executor of the artist's estate, then that person has the authority to license that artist's work as he/she sees fit. Cullen328 (talk) 00:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
So we should simply take this claim at face value? Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:06, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- If someone uploads a photo to a Wikimedia project and asserts that he/she took the photo and is thereby authorized to license it appropriately, we take that at face value unless there is evidence to the contrary, don't we? Why shouldn't the legitimate rights of the executor of an estate be respected in the same way? 05:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cullen328 (talk • contribs)
- No, we don't require evidence to the contrary. If there is reasonable doubt that the person is telling the truth, we may decide to remove it. In this case, it shouldn't be difficult for the original uploader to supply documentation to WP:OTRS proving his claim. Anomie⚔ 19:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Whether we call it evidence or reasonable doubt, what is the basis for the doubt that this person is truthful about being his/her uncle's executor and authorized to license the image? Would it be necessary to produce a will? Cullen328 (talk) 21:19, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
WMF study
Please view Meta:2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content and speak out. Wnt (talk) 23:26, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh dear. We'll have find another way to drive away women, young people, and people with a shred of taste. Herostratus (talk) 02:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Don't worry hero, I'm sure someone will think of something... --Ludwigs2 20:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Could the title of this section, "WMF study opens door to censorship", be any more provocative? Both Wnt and Herostratus are taking extreme views. A lack of censorship is important to the site, but the study so far emphasizes the need to minimize the negative consequences of avoiding censorship. These negative consequences are not trivial. I oppose censorship, but there are measures that we can take within our principles that will avoid some of the consequences of our current blunt approach to the issue. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 20:57, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Thanks for the heads up, Wnt. Very worrying. I didn't know about the study. 1)How binding is it supposed to be? 2)What can be done to limit damages? --Cyclopiatalk 20:59, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
The power of the Arbitration Committee
Currently the Arbitration Committee functions as the governing body of the English Wikipedia. I believe that ArbCom and MedCom were set up by Jimbo to aid in the process of dispute resolution, MedCom has stayed true to that but ArbCom has evolved into the governing body of Wikipedia, it has become a case of "What we say is final". The Committee itself has too much power. I am proposing the following changes:
- Decentralisation and removal of the power currently vested upon the Committee.
- Creation of a new committee that will be responsible for looking after Policy and putting forward the remedies proposed by ArbCom to the greater community in order to gain consensus on these remedies, the final decision then lies with the Stewards who will determine the consensus established and make the final decision.
- Removal of Jimbo's authority, he should not be the person to make the final decision. He should be allowed a say in discussion but should have no part in enacting these decisions, such decisions are for the community and the community alone.
- Allowing the community a greater say, the community should be allowed to have a greater say in decisions. The Arbitration Committee should then evaluate the opinions of the community and take them to heart. They should not override community consensus and should not have the final say, the final say always lies with the community.
- User rights, sanctions and editing restrictions should be decided by the community through a simple Request for Comment, the Arbitration Committee should not be the ones to decide who does what, the community are capable of deciding for themselves. Whether or not a user should keep their admin/crat bits and whether or not a user should be made a Checkuser and given Oversight permissions should be decided by the community in the same manner as a request for admin/bureaucratship, with a requirement of 80% Support for promotion.
In setting up a new hierarchy we can eliminate the gap of power and give the community greater say. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 07:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- There's a draft new arbitration policy available for discussion - Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Draft - you might consider making suggestions there. I tend to agree that power should rest more with the community, but there needs to be a body that has the power to determine what the community's view is (given that individuals within the community have widely differing views, and usually each side considers that their view is that of the community). I do believe, though, that the arbitration process is a symptom of mudddled thinking - everything ArbCom does (except things requiring access to confidential information) should really be done by the community or rather by admins - then ArbCom could simply act as a body to review (and overturn, if necessary) the decisions of admins. (I keep suggesting this and no-one ever answers, which could mean one of two things.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ok, I copied the suggestion there. Which is why consensus needs to be evaluated, everyone should be allowed to participate in ArbCom cases without having their say overrided. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 07:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- "Decentralisation and removal of the power currently vested upon the Committee" and "Allowing the community a greater say": that would be a disaster. Most of the service ArbCom provides is a hard daily grind and would bore us silly. ArbCom is part of the cost of doing business on a free wiki: unfettered freedom would be chaos.
- Policy committee: is just won't work. While ArbCom involves itself in content and policy only insofar it is absolutely necessary to sort out behavioural issues in a case, the idea of a WP government has been tried and failed miserably. We, the people, are the government, and consensus is the mechanism.
- "Removal of Jimbo's authority"—I used to be strongly against his authority as the ultimate appeal, but I've softened. He never uses it, and frankly, there's a bunch of reasons for not bothering to change this symbolic status. However, I believe Jimbo should not interfere in the democratic process of ArbCom elections. Tony (talk) 09:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- See WP:PEREN. Tony is pretty much spot on. There is large participation in the annual elections for arbcom, showing the majority of the community realizes we need it. Cases get to arbcom because the community is incapable of solving a situation. Not to mention such a proposal would destroy the ability of the community to handle highly personal matters that pretty much anyone except arbs and ex-arbs is totally unaware that we handle. When I first got on arbcom and became aware of all the intensely personal stuff arbcom deals with, I was stunned. And that was after having been an arbclerk. Believe me, this is stuff I'd prefer not to know but someone on wiki has to deal with it. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ouch, my proposal was based off an old proposal I saw. So some of my statements may not apply in this time. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 11:06, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Right now, the question isn't whether ArbCom's power will be restricted, but whether it would be expanded by proposals such as Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Draft. I think what's crucial here is to keep ArbCom restricted to a judicial role, entirely subordinate to community discussions of policy. As I've commented there, I think that expansion of their executive power puts Wikipedia at risk of being subverted by political manipulations, and runs contrary to the basic idea of community consensus that people have been using. I don't want to be entirely thankless for the ArbCom's role in settling issues, but I think that they've sometimes been heavy-handed against editors, and their role in issues like WP:BLPBAN and WP:Child protection has turned issues on which consensus might easily have been achieved into burning points of contention. I don't believe we can trust ArbCom to redefine and expand its own scope, because there would be a huge careerist benefit for people who can say that "the dozen of us ran Wikipedia...", at the expense of the rest of the community. Wnt (talk) 17:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'm all for it, ArbCom doesn't need so many powers and if we can separate these powers into a 3 level system, Judiciary (ArbCom), Legislative and Executive (PolCom?). This is based off the systems used in many democratic countries, it worked there so why can't it work here? —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 20:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Because we don't need the extra bureaucracy. ArbCom only generates real policy when its relevant to a case. The last thing we need is a group who just sits around and makes up policy, whether we need it or not. A policy committee would either be a bureaucracy factory or a useless group that does nothing. And in many cases, the judiciary does create laws. As for "Allowing the community a greater say", ArbCom does listen to the community; they certainly don't go through long, drawn-out cases for fun. The community does have the final say. ArbCom is for when the community can't agree on what that should be. Nothing happens without community support. ArbCom is 14 users, there are probably about 10,000 or so regular editors. If the majority of the community opposes something, it will be overturned. People seem to forget this sometimes; a handful of users can't actually run Wikipedia on their own. Mr.Z-man 04:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I'm all for it, ArbCom doesn't need so many powers and if we can separate these powers into a 3 level system, Judiciary (ArbCom), Legislative and Executive (PolCom?). This is based off the systems used in many democratic countries, it worked there so why can't it work here? —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 20:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Right now, the question isn't whether ArbCom's power will be restricted, but whether it would be expanded by proposals such as Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy/Draft. I think what's crucial here is to keep ArbCom restricted to a judicial role, entirely subordinate to community discussions of policy. As I've commented there, I think that expansion of their executive power puts Wikipedia at risk of being subverted by political manipulations, and runs contrary to the basic idea of community consensus that people have been using. I don't want to be entirely thankless for the ArbCom's role in settling issues, but I think that they've sometimes been heavy-handed against editors, and their role in issues like WP:BLPBAN and WP:Child protection has turned issues on which consensus might easily have been achieved into burning points of contention. I don't believe we can trust ArbCom to redefine and expand its own scope, because there would be a huge careerist benefit for people who can say that "the dozen of us ran Wikipedia...", at the expense of the rest of the community. Wnt (talk) 17:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ouch, my proposal was based off an old proposal I saw. So some of my statements may not apply in this time. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 11:06, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- See WP:PEREN. Tony is pretty much spot on. There is large participation in the annual elections for arbcom, showing the majority of the community realizes we need it. Cases get to arbcom because the community is incapable of solving a situation. Not to mention such a proposal would destroy the ability of the community to handle highly personal matters that pretty much anyone except arbs and ex-arbs is totally unaware that we handle. When I first got on arbcom and became aware of all the intensely personal stuff arbcom deals with, I was stunned. And that was after having been an arbclerk. Believe me, this is stuff I'd prefer not to know but someone on wiki has to deal with it. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ok, I copied the suggestion there. Which is why consensus needs to be evaluated, everyone should be allowed to participate in ArbCom cases without having their say overrided. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 07:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
It seems about 90% of all MedCom requests get rejected due to either parties not agreeing or to draconian standards needed to accept cases. Moreover, most cases eventually end up in front of ArbCom, anyways, and it is they whom people send their problems to (as the other oft-ignored and underused areas of dispute resolution). It is also no doubt that the community in general pay more attention to what happens on the Arbitration side, so the community at large is also complicit in ArbCom's status as some "high and mighty power". I don't know if the community is capable of resolving some issues by themselves, frankly, and IMO they depend on ArbCom to do all that work for them instead of doing the collective "legwork" themselves. –MuZemike 01:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- It should be noted that ArbCom turns down more cases than it accepts, in nearly all cases I have seen, this is to send an issue back to the community, or to ask the disputants to try other dispute resolution methods. ArbCom really does consider itself the court of last resort. Since it only deals with stuff the community finds itself unable to deal with, its cases tend to be contentious and messy, so by definition their decisions piss off roughly half (or more) of the community. That's because if most of the community could agree in the first place on how to handle a situation, it would have never gotten to ArbCom! Without ArbCom to do the hard and unpopular work of cleaning up after the community's inability to solve certain problems, we'd be in a much worse situation. --Jayron32 04:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Or, in particularly polarised cases, when trying to deal with both sides evenly, 100% of the community :) Roger Davies talk 09:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I understand the arguments presented, I would like to ask if it would be plausible for ArbCom to separate its sanction imposing etc. powers into a separate sub-committee. With the main body of ArbCom itself dealing with WP:DR and the propsed sub-committee looking after DR remedies. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 09:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Well, that's tricky because the DR aspect is closely interlinked with the sanctions aspect. By the time a case comes to us, it usually way beyond the stage where suggesting the parties go off and have a cup of tea together will have any actual impact. There is incidentally already a division of sorts: only a small sub-set of arbitrators generally draft cases but the whole committee (who have usually been following developments from the wings) votes on it. Roger Davies talk 09:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I understand, could this system not be trialled first, surely if it works then Arbitrators themselves will have a lighter workload. Also I still oppose the idea of CU/OS candidates requiring internal discussion before deciding if they are fit to run. —Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм • Champagne? • 05:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Well, that's tricky because the DR aspect is closely interlinked with the sanctions aspect. By the time a case comes to us, it usually way beyond the stage where suggesting the parties go off and have a cup of tea together will have any actual impact. There is incidentally already a division of sorts: only a small sub-set of arbitrators generally draft cases but the whole committee (who have usually been following developments from the wings) votes on it. Roger Davies talk 09:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Fridae'sDoom, it turns out that we already have most of what you say you want. It's called Requests for Comment, and it is a fully decentralized system that allows absolutely any editor to have the greatest possible say on both content and behavior, and it is a formative step in most community-imposed sanctions.
- It's also a process that is sadly neglected, because most uninvolved people (e.g., you) never bother to show up and have their say. There are currently six RFC/U cases open. The list is right here, and you are invited to help resolve these disputes. And if you personally can't, or won't -- then what makes you think that "the community" will magically have more time and energy to do this work if we blow up ArbCom? They're (and you're) not doing it now; why would they do it then?
- I suggest that you become more familiar with the existing procedures -- and the critical resource limitations affecting them -- before you try to reform the only dispute resolution process on Wikipedia that can be relied upon to provide some sort of response to disputants. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Do we really need to wow! users when informing them that their article is up for deletion?
Do we have to have this graphic come up when notifying someone that their article has been proposed for deletion?
I understand that we want to get their attention, but other posts are important too, and they don't have a big wow sign. The person does get a "you have new messages" notice after all, and presumably they read all their messages (or if not, that's their prerogative). The only only time we use signs like this is when we are warning people that they are in big trouble. Even if you commit out-and-out vandalism (and if its not too egregious) you only get a little "i" information icon.
It's not friendly. Sure, sometimes the person has contributed a really bad article, but lots of times not. My questions are:
- Would it be OK to either remove this graphic, or replace it with something friendlier? How about ? Or the "i" information icon? Or something else.
- Since these notices are generated by Twinkle, how to I get to them to edit them? Are they templates, or just bits of code somewhere? If they are templates, I can take this up on the appropriate talk pages. Any hints on where to find them? Herostratus (talk) 15:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- I understand the idea behind the proposal, but I would frankly prefer a big warning sign telling me that something I spent my time on is at risk of being trashed, than a nice flower that doesn't give me the idea of what's going on. I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of the sign -it's not a "hey, you did it wrong!" finger pointing, it's more a "warning! what you wrote is at risk of being deleted! your input would be welcome!" --Cyclopiatalk 15:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- I agree fully with Cyclopedia and would prefer an obvious alerting sign, although whether it needs to be quite so big I'm not sure! --Bermicourt (talk) 17:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Isn't this something you should be asking the people at WP:TWINKLE? It's not a policy decision, it's just how twinkle is setup. AliveFreeHappy (talk) 17:28, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- No, it is not Twinkle but Template:AfD-notice. So it can be discussed at Template talk:AfD-notice. –xenotalk 17:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Template talk:AfD-notice is probably not the best place to discuss this idea. It is also used on Template:Proposed deletion notify (different color) for notifying users about Prods and on Template:Nn-warn for notifying users about A7 speedy deletions. It is probably used on other notices about speedy deletions, I didn't look. Wouldn't this or one of the ther village pumps be the best place to consolidate the discussion? ~~ GB fan ~~ 17:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- It could be discussed here, but generally the pumps should mostly contain threads pointing to relevant discussions at the proper locations, not the discussions themselves. In practice of course, this isn't always the case. The rationale for this is that the discussion will be archived in a relevant contextual location, rather than in the massive pump archives. WT:Deletion process maybe? or WT:UW. –xenotalk 17:49, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks xeno and GB Fan (and all who took the time to reply). The points about wanting an attention-getter above are well-taken. In my opinion it couldn't hurt to think about a different graphic; maybe I'll ask them at Wikipedia talk:Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop if anybody wants to futz around with that (with notifications at the places GB Fan was kind enough to point me to). Or maybe... isn't there a place somewhere where you can request something like this for a price? Herostratus (talk) 23:40, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- When I was a new editor, I was shocked that an AfD popped up within minutes of posting a new article I was working on. I made the newbie mistake of posting the article to main space without references, even though I had the references on my desk in front of me, ready to add to the article over the course of half an hour or so. How many newbies have been scared away forever by being hit so hard immediately after uploading a first attempt? I urge new page patrollers to be sensitive and diplomatic, especially when the article appears to be a good faith effort. If reworking a graphic makes new and inexperienced editor acting in good faith feel less "attacked" by a Wikibureaucracy, then I am all in favor of such a change. Cullen328 (talk) 00:27, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Cullen, that's a big problem, and there's one reliable solution: People like you need to do some of the new page patrolling. Click here and then click on your choice of the time delays in the info box at the top of the page. Everything in yellow wants your attention. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:48, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- I am willing to do a bit of that from time to time, but my main interest is creating new articles on subjects I consider interesting, as well as improving articles in areas where I have knowledge. Thanks for the suggestion. Cullen328 (talk) 02:41, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Every little bit helps. Every page reviewed by you is a page that isn't going to be attacked by an overzealous "editor" who's never written a single article. Please keep it in mind whenever you have a few minutes free, even if that means only one or two articles a week. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- It could be discussed here, but generally the pumps should mostly contain threads pointing to relevant discussions at the proper locations, not the discussions themselves. In practice of course, this isn't always the case. The rationale for this is that the discussion will be archived in a relevant contextual location, rather than in the massive pump archives. WT:Deletion process maybe? or WT:UW. –xenotalk 17:49, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Template talk:AfD-notice is probably not the best place to discuss this idea. It is also used on Template:Proposed deletion notify (different color) for notifying users about Prods and on Template:Nn-warn for notifying users about A7 speedy deletions. It is probably used on other notices about speedy deletions, I didn't look. Wouldn't this or one of the ther village pumps be the best place to consolidate the discussion? ~~ GB fan ~~ 17:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- No, it is not Twinkle but Template:AfD-notice. So it can be discussed at Template talk:AfD-notice. –xenotalk 17:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps a smaller version of the image or something less edgy, but a flower? Are you kidding me? –MuZemike 01:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
It is never required to use any template - you can type a message by hand on the user's page. Without any image. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Yes but Twinkle places the templates automatically. Herostratus (talk) 04:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
For myself, I think this image needs to stay and perhaps be even more shocking and annoying. No, this isn't to scare the new users, but to remind those who are putting these kind of templates onto new user pages of the seriousness of what it is that they are doing, and that putting such templates on is a last resort... something that should be done only if you really think there is no way to salvage the article. It shouldn't be put onto articles that fail to have references... those are called stubs for a reason. The problem here isn't the template being such a shock, but its apparent overuse.
If an article fails to meet Wikipedia guidelines for one reason or another, it is important to let those new users know that they aren't following policy and why. For myself, I think a more human approach would help, which is part of the problem. Those who are involved with the new page patrol are trying to scan each and every article and have decided to dehumanize the process. I don't mind treating blatant trolls with contempt and automating the process of removing troll pages (test pages, and other patent nonsense) but for what is obviously a good faith effort to create an article, a knee jerk deletion nomination shouldn't be the first thing to come to mind. I've covered this in another discussion listed above too, but in this case I think that this is the wrong approach in terms of dealing with this icon. There is obviously a problem or else this issue wouldn't have come up in the first place. Don't try to tone down and make nice the fact that some editors are trying to delete content that might possibly meet Wikipedia guidelines. --Robert Horning (talk) 04:01, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- I don't really agree. For AfD, no one is "trying to delete content". They are simply opening the floor for a fruitful discussion. For speedies, it might be true. But I don't think that that someone about to improperly nominate a speedy is going to be put off by they thought that this might make the article creator feel that they have done something wrong.
Anyway, I have created the discussion at Template talk:AfD-notice#CENTRALIZED DISCUSSION - Replacing icon (File:Ambox warning pn.svg) as a location for a discussion that will be more accessible (and not soon be archived as this one will be), as discussed above, and will post links to that discussion in various places. Further discussion would best be taken up there. Thanks to all for your input! Herostratus (talk) 04:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Interwiki links vs. red links
I recently worked with User:SpinningSpark on the article Mechanical filter. At one point, the article mentioned Ernest Mercadier, whose article did not exist in English but did exist in French. SpinningSpark was of the opinion that linking to the French article was more useful than a redlink because many of our readers do speak both French and English. I was of the opinion that a redlink was more useful because it indicates an avenue of expansion and because if the English article were created, the former redlink would immediately change to reflect this, whereas the French link would mislead readers. We eventually settled on having a redlink in the article along with a footnote that mentioned the French article. This was a reasonable solution for this one instance, but I am interested in finding a more general solution for this sort of issue. I didn't find any hints in our web of policy pages indicating whether SpinningSpark's original idea was acceptable, nor any explicit statements that the redlink is preferred. Thoughts? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I think the Manual of Style on linking is quite clear in preferring red links to remain rather than any inadequate substitute, past creating a stub of the article yourself. Indeed with the stub you can always link to the wiki with a more detailed page through the language links normally placed at the bottom of the page, and it encourages people to translate the page too. ChiZeroOne (talk) 16:34, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- The MOS comes down for red links in favour of no link at all, but I don't see anything favouring redlinks over foreign-language Wikipedia article links. It appears not to have been previously considered. Maybe I have missed something, would you mind quoting the passage you think supports this. SpinningSpark 19:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Certainly whenever I've seen this discussed in the past there's been a general understanding that cross-language links are generally disliked unless essential for some reason. My interpretation would be that a link to another language project is treated the same as a "general" external link - which are, of course, discouraged in the text of an article. Shimgray | talk | 19:13, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- The MOS comes down for red links in favour of no link at all, but I don't see anything favouring redlinks over foreign-language Wikipedia article links. It appears not to have been previously considered. Maybe I have missed something, would you mind quoting the passage you think supports this. SpinningSpark 19:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- You don't want to surprise a reader like that. As this is the English Wikipedia, it is expected and understood that links will go to English articles. A redlink is preferable to any foreign language link. Not only to avoid confusion with readers, but also to encourage editors to create articles on notable topics that are redlinked. Resolute 19:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Link to both, e.g. Redlink (fr:Redlink). Fences&Windows 20:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- To what purpose? Near as I can tell, there isn't even a point behind adding a French interwiki other than to avoid an English redlink. And as far as your suggestion goes, I hear David Beckham (fr:David Beckham, de:David Beckham, es:David Beckham, la:David Beckham, nl:David Beckham, it:David Beckham, fi:David Beckham) is a hell of a soccer player. Resolute 00:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- A sad strawman pointy comment - pity, up to now the discussion had been intelligent. SpinningSpark 00:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- To what purpose? Near as I can tell, there isn't even a point behind adding a French interwiki other than to avoid an English redlink. And as far as your suggestion goes, I hear David Beckham (fr:David Beckham, de:David Beckham, es:David Beckham, la:David Beckham, nl:David Beckham, it:David Beckham, fi:David Beckham) is a hell of a soccer player. Resolute 00:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Link to both, e.g. Redlink (fr:Redlink). Fences&Windows 20:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I've found a more relevant piece of policy, Inline interlanguage links, which I think shows that if the subject is notable for the purposes of English Wikipedia then the red link should remain. I would agree with this as I have recent experience of a case where only interlanguage links were present. An Italian engineer notable for their contribution to spaceflight only had interlanguage link to the Italian article, as there was no red link where his name had been mentioned in other articles and he had a common name, it was a pain trying to find all the cases and link them to the article I created. I also agree that really you should not require an understanding of any other language to find information about a topic on English Wikipedia. There is a case for doing as the above says and linking to both, but personally I would create the stub instead and interlanguage it. If it is not notable enough to have its own page it should not be redlinked anyway. ChiZeroOne (talk) 00:27, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- You don't want to surprise a reader like that. As this is the English Wikipedia, it is expected and understood that links will go to English articles. A redlink is preferable to any foreign language link. Not only to avoid confusion with readers, but also to encourage editors to create articles on notable topics that are redlinked. Resolute 19:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Ernest Mercadier is actually a poor example, even the French article is a hopeless stub, so I was not really sorry to lose that one from the article. Some better examples of where I have used this tactic are in the Paul Boucherot article. fr:Méthode de Boucherot is undestandable with a bit of effort even to a non-French speaker since the treatment is mathematical. This snippet of electrical transformer theory due to Boucherot cannot be found anywhere on the English Wikipedia as far as I can tell, but again is understandable to a non-French speaker from the circuit diagrams. Another example was in the Wilhelm Cauer article where de:Mix & Genest, a company with which Cauer was once associated, is mentioned. At the time, I judged that Mix & Genest was an obscure enough German company not to get a Wikipedia article any time soon. However, the mere existence of this foreign Wikipedia link seems to have provoked an editor into creating Mix & Genest here which I am quite sure would not have happened with a blank redlink. SpinningSpark 20:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I generally agree that a red link is preferable to a foreign language link and that there may be rare circumstances where it is useful e.g. where the interwiki is perhaps a list, say, of the Dukes of XXXX, which is more or less readable. I usually remove red links where the topic is foreign and even the relevant foreign language wiki doesn't yet have an article. --Bermicourt (talk) 22:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Isn't there a procedure where an editor of the English language Wikipedia can request a translation of a Wikipedia article in another language? I haven't yet tried this but am curious whether it works well. I write and edit mountaineering related articles and there are articles on the French and German Wikipedias that are lacking here. I would like to learn how to collaborate with translators to help make that happen. Cullen328 (talk) 05:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- That is an excellent suggestion which is probably acceptable to both sides here (when I say both sides, it is beginning to look very much like me as the lone Beserker standing on Stamford Bridge holding up the rest of Wikipedia trying to cross). The procedure is at WP:Translation and basically requires adding the template {{Expand <language>|<article>}} to the stub article page. The translation process seems to work well on the few occasions I have seen it in operation, but I have no idea how long it takes before an interested translator picks up a request. Probably very variable depending on what the volunteer translators are interested in. SpinningSpark 09:31, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- I have translated nearly 2,000 articles (from German Wikipedia), but not via the request process as translation is very time-consuming and so I usually like to have an interest in what I am translating. However, there may be good news for Cullen328 because I am quite interested in German and Austrian mountains and have already created many articles in that sphere including the List of the highest mountains in Germany and its Austrian counterpart! --Bermicourt (talk) 14:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- That is an excellent suggestion which is probably acceptable to both sides here (when I say both sides, it is beginning to look very much like me as the lone Beserker standing on Stamford Bridge holding up the rest of Wikipedia trying to cross). The procedure is at WP:Translation and basically requires adding the template {{Expand <language>|<article>}} to the stub article page. The translation process seems to work well on the few occasions I have seen it in operation, but I have no idea how long it takes before an interested translator picks up a request. Probably very variable depending on what the volunteer translators are interested in. SpinningSpark 09:31, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Isn't there a procedure where an editor of the English language Wikipedia can request a translation of a Wikipedia article in another language? I haven't yet tried this but am curious whether it works well. I write and edit mountaineering related articles and there are articles on the French and German Wikipedias that are lacking here. I would like to learn how to collaborate with translators to help make that happen. Cullen328 (talk) 05:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- I generally agree that a red link is preferable to a foreign language link and that there may be rare circumstances where it is useful e.g. where the interwiki is perhaps a list, say, of the Dukes of XXXX, which is more or less readable. I usually remove red links where the topic is foreign and even the relevant foreign language wiki doesn't yet have an article. --Bermicourt (talk) 22:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Article cleanup templates
I'm not sure whether this is the right place to discuss this... if not, please redirect me. As far as I can tell we neither have a policy nor a guideline to plaster articles with myriads of cleanup templates. Please, where is the consensus that these templates do any good to an article? Take Authentication for example. Does it help the reader? It has been argued that the reader can be "warned" about the article's lack of quality... heck, by that argument we'd have to tag every article that is not featured or at least good by our standards. Does it help editors? Certainly not editors working on the article... they know the issues very well. Does it attract other editors? I highly doubt that... it usually doesn't even help asking on wikiproject pages for help! Do we have any statistics that such templates really do any good? Nageh (talk) 17:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I think some are useful as they alert readers that there may be severe problems with the article. However, templates like Template:Orphan that only refer to editorial issues are clutter, and should be placed on the talk page instead. Fences&Windows 19:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Would it be possible to display some of these templates via editnotice rather than on the main article (for example, the BLP editnotice)? This would allow editors to view issues with the article while editing it, without having to view the talk page, and at the same time prevent casual readers from being distracted by them. Some of these templates could still remain on the main page to warn readers of sub-par content. Intelligentsium 19:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- This has come up many times before, you may want to check the archives for past discussions. Anomie⚔ 20:18, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- It doesn't surprise me that this issue has come up before. Yet, the arguments given at WP:PEREN are surprisingly inaccurate. A reader doesn't get ideas on how to improve an article simply because somebody has attached a one-liner to it saying how bad the article is. But the main problem I see is that if we are consistent in tagging all articles with issues we must do so for every single article that is not featured. That some users (or drive-by taggers) really are tagging for pedantic reasons can be seen in Authentication as an example. So either we set up stricter guidelines on when to tag an article, or we may (and will) end up with an ever growing list of articles with a pitoresque banner in the lead section. Nageh (talk) 20:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- The reasons make some sense, and I've seen plenty of articles with tags improved by users new and old as a result of them. But I agree with F&W that {{orphan}} isn't relevant to readers in general, so i would support moving that one to the talk page. Alzarian16 (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- As I said, the problem is that if we don't differentiate what and when issues must be so dominantly pointed out on the article page we may just as well end up with all articles tagged (subtract the featured ones). Currently we can't do anything about overzealous drive-by tagging – and some people (often those not adding content at all) enjoy this extensively! (Take Authentication for example: Lack of references is obvious, yet this won't change a thing by merely pointing this out. Instructions or how-to? I cannot even find this in the article. General cleanup? Of course, it's a C-class article!) Nageh (talk) 21:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I couldn't agree more about drive-by tagging, a completely useless pastime. There really is no need for a copyediting tag as a banner. What is a reader supposed to make of that - oh, maybe I should not read this article, the English is going to be bad? Is it supposed that readers will not notice the article has poor English without a banner headline informing them of it? Likewise wikilinking, likewise categories, likewise MOS issues. There may be a case for content problems like POV, OR, fringe, US-centricism etc but often it still too "in your face". I am not even convinced of the need for banners for inline citations, I have noticed several editors moving these to the references section. So often the issue is merely a mechanical task of reading/finding the references and creating appropriate inlines. In cases where the content is truly thought to be suspect, that is different, but that is not usually the case, usually the tagging is a purely mechanical process with no consideration of the actual article content. SpinningSpark 22:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I have to agree that these are overused. I think that most of the time this problem results because the templates don't make it clear exactly what needs to be fixed, so nobody is sure whether to take them out. I would suggest, as a rule of thumb, that if a regular editor of an article doesn't understand what a banner template is asking for, he should take it out. Wnt (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I do tend to do that, but often it makes the tagger angry who then restores it with a fire-breathing edit summary for daring to remove their template. If only they would put half that effort into a couple of sentences on the talk page, their actions would be so much more effective. SpinningSpark 23:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I have to agree that these are overused. I think that most of the time this problem results because the templates don't make it clear exactly what needs to be fixed, so nobody is sure whether to take them out. I would suggest, as a rule of thumb, that if a regular editor of an article doesn't understand what a banner template is asking for, he should take it out. Wnt (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I couldn't agree more about drive-by tagging, a completely useless pastime. There really is no need for a copyediting tag as a banner. What is a reader supposed to make of that - oh, maybe I should not read this article, the English is going to be bad? Is it supposed that readers will not notice the article has poor English without a banner headline informing them of it? Likewise wikilinking, likewise categories, likewise MOS issues. There may be a case for content problems like POV, OR, fringe, US-centricism etc but often it still too "in your face". I am not even convinced of the need for banners for inline citations, I have noticed several editors moving these to the references section. So often the issue is merely a mechanical task of reading/finding the references and creating appropriate inlines. In cases where the content is truly thought to be suspect, that is different, but that is not usually the case, usually the tagging is a purely mechanical process with no consideration of the actual article content. SpinningSpark 22:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- As I said, the problem is that if we don't differentiate what and when issues must be so dominantly pointed out on the article page we may just as well end up with all articles tagged (subtract the featured ones). Currently we can't do anything about overzealous drive-by tagging – and some people (often those not adding content at all) enjoy this extensively! (Take Authentication for example: Lack of references is obvious, yet this won't change a thing by merely pointing this out. Instructions or how-to? I cannot even find this in the article. General cleanup? Of course, it's a C-class article!) Nageh (talk) 21:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- The reasons make some sense, and I've seen plenty of articles with tags improved by users new and old as a result of them. But I agree with F&W that {{orphan}} isn't relevant to readers in general, so i would support moving that one to the talk page. Alzarian16 (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- It doesn't surprise me that this issue has come up before. Yet, the arguments given at WP:PEREN are surprisingly inaccurate. A reader doesn't get ideas on how to improve an article simply because somebody has attached a one-liner to it saying how bad the article is. But the main problem I see is that if we are consistent in tagging all articles with issues we must do so for every single article that is not featured. That some users (or drive-by taggers) really are tagging for pedantic reasons can be seen in Authentication as an example. So either we set up stricter guidelines on when to tag an article, or we may (and will) end up with an ever growing list of articles with a pitoresque banner in the lead section. Nageh (talk) 20:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
My point is, banners should be only used to point out important issues. POV, OR, and fringe are certainly important issues. Kinds of cleanup that you'd expect to be done for an article to become featured are not important issues. (A cleanup tag may be warranted for articles such as Block code or Linear code though.)
Please have a look at Authentication again: Additional referencing required? Debatable whether this should be placed so dominantly in the heading, or better moved to the References section for example, or even pointed out at all (after all it is obvious!). How-to content? Certainly not – I cannot even find evidence for that! General cleanup? Now that's probably the favorite term for drive-by taggers... can you be a bit more specific? Yet, when say I'd remove these tags (probably move the first to References) this sure would escalate into an edit war with the tagger (who as far as I can see virtually never contributes by adding content to an article).
Is it possible to get consensus that banners should only be used to point out important issues? (otherwise inflational meaning, may tag all non-featured articles in the end, etc.) Nageh (talk) 11:51, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- There is one more reason to tag the articles: readers (potential writers) might wish to use the articles they read as examples for the articles they are going to write. Thus, when the reader sees a tag "Additional referencing required", it also says "Don't forget the references when you write your own article!". It is useful even if the reader doesn't try to find references for the article he's reading. By the way, it looks like this "phenomenon" has also been noted in User:Uncle G/Cargo cult encyclopaedia article writing ([5]).
- As for the "Template:Cleanup" ([6]) tag... Maybe we could try what I did with the deletion tag (lt:Šablonas:Trinti, [7]) in Lithuanian Wikipedia? If the reason hasn't been provided as parameter, it would show "The reason hasn't been specified, but it might have been given in the talk page or in article history". Thus it would gently hint to the tagger that giving the reason would be nice, and the reader would know where to look for it. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 13:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Potential writers should always be pointed to featured articles, only! As I said before, you may thus just as well add a tag to any article that is non-featured. (Anyway, pointing out a major lack of references in the lead may be argued for, so I don't complain about that specifically. There are other more minor issues that taggers like to point out but that certainly do not require that kind of dominant reader attention.)
- The problem I see here is that most taggers, especially drive-by taggers, will not provide a reason unless they are forced to (and in which case that most likely wouldn't have more meaning than "this page needs clean-up".) Nageh (talk) 14:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- (I collected both your statements to the same place, if you don't mind) It's easy to say that potential writers (in other words - "almost everyone") should look to featured articles for examples (and, maybe, that we should only choose the featured articles as good examples), but, unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way... The readers are not going to read the featured articles just because they are "the examples". They came to Wikipedia to read what interests them, not what is "the best".
- Side thought: Hm, maybe it is a good suggestion then to point a newcomer to featured articles when attempting to edit an article (above the edit box)?
- It is also wrong to imply that all articles that are not featured are somehow "bad". Many of them are good examples - they tell you that an article should start from a definition, have at least one category etc.
- Probably true. At the same time they do have issues, otherwise they were already in featured state. Yet there is no point in pointing out these issues within a lead section banner.
- As for the "drive-by taggers" - may I remind you that assuming good faith is good for your (and not only your) health..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 14:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- (I collected both your statements to the same place, if you don't mind) It's easy to say that potential writers (in other words - "almost everyone") should look to featured articles for examples (and, maybe, that we should only choose the featured articles as good examples), but, unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way... The readers are not going to read the featured articles just because they are "the examples". They came to Wikipedia to read what interests them, not what is "the best".
- (ec)Still, that's not an argument for banner tagging at the top of the article. A lot of this could go on the talk page or elsewhere. As for a link pointing to the talk page, some templates already do this, but if you follows the link, guess what, 9 times out of 10 there is nothing there, it was just drive-by tagging. This is especially annoying with "merge" templates. If I want to oppose the merge it is hard to present arguments against the rationale of the proposer when they fail to reveal what they were. In my view, a talk page post or embedded comment should be compulsory when posting banner templates except in the most obvious cases, and failure to provide them should warrant escalating templated warnings. It is actually disruptive to have all this unexplained litter and it wastes the time of content contributers trying to figure out what it means. SpinningSpark 14:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- "Still, that's not an argument for banner tagging at the top of the article. A lot of this could go on the talk page or elsewhere." - Once again, maybe it would work if the readers would be known to read the talk pages habitually. But, as the things go, the talk page is the place for tags that are useful to "almost no one" - for example, wikiproject tags (they are useful to the members of those wikiprojects, but that is a small minority of all readers and editors).
- As for the absence of the reason in the talk page - that is exactly why I also added a link to the article history. Hopefully, someone who doesn't add anything to the talk page doesn't forget the edit summary..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 14:52, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- maybe it would work if the readers would be known to read the talk pages If it is essential information for the reader then the talk page is no good, but the discussion here is on editorial tags like copyedit. These need to attract the attention of editors, not readers. SpinningSpark 21:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Some articles have To-do lists on their talk pages (e.g., Talk:Digital signature). IMO these are much more useful. — So maybe what could be done is add a small, non-intrusive tag to an article (maybe somewhere on the right side), pointing to the To-do list on the talk page when it is non-empty. Nageh (talk) 14:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Would they inform the reader that the article should not be used as an example in some respect? I doubt that... But, given your comment about something "small, non-intrusive"... What exactly is wrong with the tags? I have seen many discussions where some user claimed that the tags are ugly, but how comes that such statements generally support something like "The tags must be abolished!" or "The tags must be moved somewhere where no one would see them!", and not "We should make the tags beautiful!"..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 15:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- What I'm trying to suggest is, issues that are mostly relevant to editors moved to the To-do list on the talk page. Issues that we think are important enough to be pointed out to the reader stay as a shiny banner in the lead section. But I strongly think that we should not point out each and every minor issue within a banner (again, featured articles and such). Nageh (talk) 15:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- The idea of a small, non-intrusive box would be that an interested reader could be pointed to issues collected for an article but primarily of interest to an editor, written out in prose rather than a "helpful" "this article needs cleanup". (It is a separate suggestion from pointing out minor issues via banners.) Nageh (talk) 15:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Would they inform the reader that the article should not be used as an example in some respect? I doubt that... But, given your comment about something "small, non-intrusive"... What exactly is wrong with the tags? I have seen many discussions where some user claimed that the tags are ugly, but how comes that such statements generally support something like "The tags must be abolished!" or "The tags must be moved somewhere where no one would see them!", and not "We should make the tags beautiful!"..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 15:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
There is already a template for this, {{Multiple issues}}, that allows to tag multiple problems without adding several templates, and the resulting template is shorter. Besides, if an article has two or more problem templates that point basically to the same general problem, it's simply a matter of choosing the most apropiate one and removing the others. For example, the templates {{Hoax}} and {{Disputed}}, an article wouldn't need both. MBelgrano (talk) 14:11, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- That doesn't address the issue of potentially tagging each and every article for some issue. I would like to see some minimum requirements for when tagging is an appropriate solution, i.e. an article contains issues that are important to be pointed out to a reader. Nageh (talk) 14:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- I think most of the useful arguments have been outlined above, but I would like to add a few more I couldn't see. First is the "Yes, we know this article is a bit rubbish. We're going to do something about it (eventually)" argument. In other words, "we don't like this particular facet of the article either", which shows at least a modicum of solidarity with the reader. Secondly, whilst I dislike drive-by tagging by people who really ought to just get on and fix the article, it's important that a wiki is a two-way process even for readers who do not have sufficient capacity to fix the articles themsleves. And thirdly, templates like unreferenced are useful for highlighting the "maybe you shouldn't take this as gospel truth" element of Wikipedia. A lot of criticism of the site in the mainstream press is about inaccuracy, and it's useful to highlight particularly flawed articles -- even if we ourselves think it's obvious you shouldn't trust us. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 14:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Just to clarify. I'm only attempting to discuss (head level) banner templates, not inline templates like {{unreferenced}} (which would be a separate discussion). Nageh (talk) 14:59, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Tagging "each and every article" shouldn't be a problem in itself. The important thing is if each article, considered on its own, deserves or not the template. If I wrote articles with the plots of all the episodes of a given TV comedy and they are all tagged with "In-Universe" (if that was the case), then who cares if they were all tagged at once or in different occasions? The problem may be if all the articles of a series had a problem, except a few that are better, and those are labeled as well. Even so, that would be simply a mistake, easy and uncontroversial to fix. It would be too trivial to concern ourselves with it. MBelgrano (talk) 15:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- I think most of the useful arguments have been outlined above, but I would like to add a few more I couldn't see. First is the "Yes, we know this article is a bit rubbish. We're going to do something about it (eventually)" argument. In other words, "we don't like this particular facet of the article either", which shows at least a modicum of solidarity with the reader. Secondly, whilst I dislike drive-by tagging by people who really ought to just get on and fix the article, it's important that a wiki is a two-way process even for readers who do not have sufficient capacity to fix the articles themsleves. And thirdly, templates like unreferenced are useful for highlighting the "maybe you shouldn't take this as gospel truth" element of Wikipedia. A lot of criticism of the site in the mainstream press is about inaccuracy, and it's useful to highlight particularly flawed articles -- even if we ourselves think it's obvious you shouldn't trust us. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 14:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't know what to make out of all these comments. In general I think that all issues should be pointed out as detailed as possible on the talk page, possibly within a To-do list. Only major issues that really should be pointed out to a reader should go the article page. This includes POV, OR, fringe, etc., and may include references when there is a clear lack, but does not include minor copy editing and similar cleanup tasks. Currently there is nothing to prevent an editor tagging each article for any issue he likes as long as the article is not featured. "Oh, there is still 'lead too long/short', 'too many see-alsos', 'lead missing', 'MOS'," but generally he will just tag with a simple 'cleanup'.
If you still disagree, I'll want to ask why you think the issues pointed out so dominantly at Authentication (as an example) are justified (and need to be raised in a header banner). I'll accept a "useful" vote for the lack of references argument, but how-to and "general" cleanup? Nageh (talk) 17:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- The ones added in edit [8]? Well, it is not exactly an exemplary edit... No edit summary (not even "Tags added."), no other explanation in some obvious place... "Cleanup"... Well, there was one unnecessary empty line (subsequently corrected by a bot), statements like "Efforts to control the supply chain and educate consumers to evaluate the packaging and labeling help ensure that authentic products are sold and used." also do not look too well... But I wouldn't say that "cleanup" is a suitable tag for those... Maybe "Template:Essay-like", "Template:Inappropriate tone", even "Template:POV" or "Template:Original research"..? On the other hand, maybe "Unreferenced" would cover it..? As for "how to"... No, I failed to find anything. So, why don't you ask the tagger, what did he have in mind? I see that you have already complained to him ([9]; by the way, would it have been a good idea for you to show this diff to us?), but you didn't seem to ask (like "Sorry, but I do not seem to understand what exactly did you mean by your tag 'how to' in [article, maybe diff]... Could you, please, elaborate on that? Thank you in advance.")... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 18:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- The issue is bigger than this single editor. (And he made it clear that I would not be able to convince him.) As long as such actions are permitted there will always be someone tagging articles at will. Nageh (talk) 20:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- The issue might be "bigger than this single editor", but it could be that the solution to almost all instances of it is more or less the same. Let's look at the "incident" again. First someone tagged an article without indicating what some of the tags mean and without using an edit summary. That was a mistake. Then you went to complain about it (about tagging, not about leaving no explanation). That was your mistake. The tagger got defensive (what else could one expect?).
- Oh, it is my mistake? I've talked to the editors just a few days before, and he just made it similarly clear that I won't be able to convince him. Period. No further arguments from his side. And I was being more polite back then. Of course my reaction the next time was a bit more chilly (what else could one expect?).
- Also, the tagger still hasn't explained what did he mean by the tags (well, no one actually asked him about that).
- He has been informed about this discussion two days ago.
- So, you shouldn't have complained, you should have asked. Given that the tagger reacted rather politely, I see no reason to assume that such approach wouldn't have worked.
- Oh, and great! So the burden is on someone else than the tagger to get an explanation?
- And "As long as such actions are permitted there will always be someone tagging articles at will."... Let's try this one: as long as editing the articles will be permitted to "almost anyone", there will always be someone vandalizing. So, we should forbid anyone but professional editors to edit the articles, right? I hope we all know the answer.
- So, in short, try to avoid getting upset because of some tags. It just isn't worth it. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 17:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- The issue might be "bigger than this single editor", but it could be that the solution to almost all instances of it is more or less the same. Let's look at the "incident" again. First someone tagged an article without indicating what some of the tags mean and without using an edit summary. That was a mistake. Then you went to complain about it (about tagging, not about leaving no explanation). That was your mistake. The tagger got defensive (what else could one expect?).
- This is really more of a problem with a certain group of users than a problem with the tags themselves. Drive-by tagging is indeed annoying and often completely pointless. However, I have long been a supporter of not putting tags such as
{{orphan}}
or{{uncategorized}}
on articles. They do not alert the reader to any pressing issue with the article. I find the uncategorized tag particularly pointless because it takes just as much time and effort to go ahead and add a category as it does to add the tag. I could see putting these tags on the talk page, or maybe turning them into categories, but there is no need to alert a casual reader to the fact that the article they are reading is not in any categories. They don't care. We often lose sight of the fact that this project is for everyone, the articles are written to share knowledge with the world, and any edits to the article itself should be made in the interest of advancing that goal. Tagging something as an uncategorized orphan does not do that. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:43, 19 September 2010 (UTC) - I completely agree re: drive-by-mass-taggers, as being annoying and often less-than-helpful. However:
Re: {{Cleanup}}, it has clear documentation saying that a more specific banner should be added it at all possible (or the cleanup banner removed if the problem is unclear) – it's like the generic {{stub}} tag, the specific problem should be clarified, and preferably soon.
Re: {{uncategorized}}, that template is often added by editors (like me) who aren't familiar with a topic or aren't comfortable making a judgment call. It's usually on new-articles, so it reminds the creator to add some categories. (the creator is often the most likely person to know which categories belong, and will have it watchlisted).
Re: {{orphan}} and {{copyedit}} and others, these are the types of tag that recruit new editors. (a {{wikify}} tag was the bait that first hooked me as an anon. I thought "I know html markup, maybe I can add links to articles easily...") They also let readers get a sense of our processes (getting a look at the people behind the curtain).
One core reason behind putting style banners on articles, instead of on talkpages, is it provides a large impetus for editors to fix the problem soon, rather than postponing until later - out of sight, out of mind. Another reason is radical transparency - people appreciate it, and trust us more because of it.
There is good documentation at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (article message boxes), and the full lists of templates can be found at Wikipedia:Template messages. Most of the yellow style-class templates can be found at the specific subpages: Wikipedia:Template messages/Maintenance and Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup and there are good instructions at the top of that second listing regarding when not to template.
See also WP:Overtagging, WP:Tag bombing, and WP:Responsible tagging. HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the links, they are helpful at least in part. What is interesting though is that WP:Overtagging advocates the general {cleanup} tag, stating that "{cleanup} is a good general-purpose tag", while WP:Responsible tagging contradicts this by saying that some more specific cleanup tag should be selected.
- I would consider {wikify} a major copy editing issue, as such article could be really inconsistent with common article layout. But I don't see tagging for minor issues (especially without explanations) as something useful for reader or editor. So I would really vote for some form of guidelines saying that banners (especially for cleanup) should be added to point out issues that need particular attention by either reader or editor, and not to criticize minor issues. And furthermore that for banners that are unspecific about the issues explanatory text must be added either inline as in Block code or on the talk page. Nageh (talk) 20:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Sure {{wikify}} is helpful to our readers but it is hardly a disaster if it is not done. It is a minor editorial issue and would be better on the talk page. Major issues which really need to be brought to the readers attention are things which are potentially misleading (or downright wrong information) such as POV. SpinningSpark 21:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- I should point out that the Cleanup template documentation does ask people to use the 'reason' parameter, though the parameter was added fairly recently and may not be generally known. I've spent some time trying to clean up some of the articles so tagged and found a large percentage with no discernible issue to correct. One problem seems to be that once a tag is added it tends to stay if the reason for its being there is vague. No one wants to remove the tag since it's hard to tell if the issue has been fixed.--RDBury (talk) 23:30, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Sure {{wikify}} is helpful to our readers but it is hardly a disaster if it is not done. It is a minor editorial issue and would be better on the talk page. Major issues which really need to be brought to the readers attention are things which are potentially misleading (or downright wrong information) such as POV. SpinningSpark 21:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the links, they are helpful at least in part. What is interesting though is that WP:Overtagging advocates the general {cleanup} tag, stating that "{cleanup} is a good general-purpose tag", while WP:Responsible tagging contradicts this by saying that some more specific cleanup tag should be selected.
- I think a point that's been missed in this discussion is that the point of adding a tag is not to have a tagged article but to tickle someone into fixing the issue. There wouldn't be a problem if we didn't have articles that had tags that remained unaddressed, even when they point out serious issues, for years sometimes. I think I've done my share of clean-up duty in this respect, including keeping all the articles I've created tag-free, but have found task rather thankless and unrewarding. One problem with the all-volunteer model of effort is that the division of labor tends to get a bit skewed. If a newspaper was run this way then everyone would get to be star reporter or editor-in-chief and important but unglamorous tasks such as fact checking would go undone. For Wikipedia, I think the solution lies in understanding why people donate their time and effort and then figuring out how to channel this energy in a way that does the most good. One thing we need to do better is prioritize which tags in which articles should be addressed first, for example there are 310,000 articles with no references, an issue that will take years to address even assuming that we can get a reasonable number of people to work on it regularly, but there is nothing that says "This article is seen by thousands of people per day and should be addressed as quickly as possible."
- Another reason to have these tags is to point out that the article in question is not a model to be followed by future editors. Most people who edit or create articles are going to imitate the articles they've seen, the de facto standard, whatever policies or guidelines we write. If people commonly see articles with no references then they will go ahead and create more of the same. At least when an article is tagged it says to a potential editor "This article wasn't done correctly, don't use it as an example." Unfortunately, with tags becoming more and more common and insufficient effort being made to address the issues, the de facto standard is becoming problematic articles with tags rather than articles with no issues.--RDBury (talk) 23:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- Your observation about the all-volunteer model and division of labor is very keen, and I wish more people would read your post.
- Regarding tagging, I believe it is way overdone. Many times a tag represents someone's opinion -- they come to an article and think it needs something, leave a gigantic banner at the top, without explanation, and walk away. No attempt to fix the problem; just a spray-painted tag that something needs to be fixed. Instead of picking up the hitchhiker in the desert, they hang a sign around his neck, "hey! someone pick this person up!" and drive off. Since it's a wiki, anyone can add a tag, and anyone can remove one. If a tagger lacks the rudimentary courtesy to explain on the talk page why that banner is going on the top of the article, they do need a corresponding courtesy explaining why you summarily remove it. Be bold; take them out when they are unwarranted. I do it all the time.
- I suggested once a third Wiki space besides "article" and "talk" -- "meta article" which contains all the tags and notes on what needs improvement. Didn't get any traction.
- The rate at which people are adding tags greatly exceeds the rate at which they are being removed. Removal by finding citations, sources, doing copyeding, de-orphanning, wikifying, takes effort and time; tagging takes none. If there are any taggers reading this -- do the honorable thing and fix some of the problems you have helpfully pointed out rather than just walking away from them.
- Thanks for listening, Antandrus (talk) 00:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
RfC on wording of poll relating to Pending Changes
There is an RfC on the wording of a proposed poll relating to Pending Changes at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Quick poll on interim use of Pending Changes. DuncanHill (talk) 06:11, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- A request for comment on an under construction poll related to the never-ending debate on pending changes.... I think I'll skip that. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
British Library
What is the copyright status of images uploaded from the website of the British Library? Simply south (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
- They are British Library copyright and cannot be used without permission, which is not usually forthcoming. However, the BL has been very cooperative with Wikipedia taking our own photographs of the exhibits, and are even willing to take them off display for a short period by arrangement. SpinningSpark 00:48, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Does that include paintings\posters\pictures from 100 years ago? Simply south (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Foundation policy does not recognize separate copyright in accurate photographs of two-dimensional subjects. A photograph of a public domain painting is itself public domain.
- Does that include paintings\posters\pictures from 100 years ago? Simply south (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
“ | To put it plainly, WMF's position has always been that faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain, and that claims to the contrary represent an assault on the very concept of a public domain. If museums and galleries not only claim copyright on reproductions, but also control the access to the ability to reproduce pictures (by prohibiting photos, etc.), important historical works that are legally in the public domain can be made inaccessible to the public except through gatekeepers. WMF has made it clear that in the absence of even a strong legal complaint, we don't think it's a good idea to dignify such claims of copyright on public domain works. And, if we ever were seriously legally challenged, we would have a good internal debate about whether we'd fight such a case, and build publicity around it. This is neither a policy change (at least from WMF's point of view), nor is it a change that has implications for other Commons policies. |
” |
- (From Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag.) Photographs of 3-D public domain objects (i.e., sculptures, buildings) can be independently copyrighted, however. postdlf (talk) 15:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- I';m not sure if it is a photo. This is going back to a couple of images i uploaded, both of which would be very useful to an article i have still to get round to writing. Simply south (talk) 16:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Photo = scan = ...what are the other possibilities? Doesn't matter what technology was used; if it is an accurate, unoriginal reproduction, then it does not merit an independent copyright and is therefore just a copy of a public domain image. This would certainly apply to the images you just posted. If the original image is in the public domain, then so are these copies. postdlf (talk) 16:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
New poll on interim use of Pending Changes
Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on Interim Usage. DuncanHill (talk) 13:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Arguments to avoid
I would like some advice. I have suggested the move of Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions to Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in discussions but have only just noticed that someone has created the second page. My reason for the move is based on the fact that numerous discussions outside of deletion link to the shortcuts on the page as general arguments to avoid. Instead should i suggest a merger? Although probably a history merge would be needed as well. Simply south (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- That's not really a policy issue. It looks like the two pages cover the same material and could just be merged though. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Meat puppetry has been marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Meat puppetry ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- An editor has boldly split WP:SOCK and WP:MEAT into two separate policies.
- I'm still thinking about whether this is a good approach. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:22, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
- Hmmmmph. This feels like wp:CREEP to me. Socking and 'meating' are the same problem - trying to manipulate or circumvent consensus decisions by giving the appearance of uninvolved support - and I can't really see that they require separate articles. plus, the language in the new page is problematic. I'm going to remove the policy tag and mark it as proposed, and then we can discuss the issue a bit. --Ludwigs2 02:49, 21 September 2010 (UTC)