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Having had no involvement in the drafting of this guideline and given the delicate nature of these situations, I don't particularly feel like it would be appropriate for me to just be bold, not where people's feelings may be so heavily engaged. That said, again, I do suspect that bahamut0013 would have been very pleased with these particular barnstars. --[[User:Moonriddengirl|Moonriddengirl]] <sup>[[User talk:Moonriddengirl|(talk)]]</sup> 10:49, 20 September 2011 (UTC) |
Having had no involvement in the drafting of this guideline and given the delicate nature of these situations, I don't particularly feel like it would be appropriate for me to just be bold, not where people's feelings may be so heavily engaged. That said, again, I do suspect that bahamut0013 would have been very pleased with these particular barnstars. --[[User:Moonriddengirl|Moonriddengirl]] <sup>[[User talk:Moonriddengirl|(talk)]]</sup> 10:49, 20 September 2011 (UTC) |
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:In this particular case I know that the widow is in contact with some users here. So she could be asked or alerted. I might be wrong but if I was her I would be happy to see such an award. [[User:Agathoclea|Agathoclea]] ([[User talk:Agathoclea|talk]]) 11:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC) |
:In this particular case I know that the widow is in contact with some users here. So she could be asked or alerted. I might be wrong but if I was her I would be happy to see such an award. [[User:Agathoclea|Agathoclea]] ([[User talk:Agathoclea|talk]]) 11:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC) |
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== RfC: Should underage editors be topic banned from articles in the WikiProject Pornography topic area? == |
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{{rfc|policy}} |
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[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&oldid=451521672#Self_identified_13_year_old_joins_WP:WikiProject_Pornography Prompted by this in Jimbo's talk page] Proposal for a permanent community topic ban of underage (under Florida law) editors from all editing and participation in the WikiProject Pornography topic area, narrowly construed to articles with the WikiProject banner in the talk page and the associated Portal and the WikiProject itself. If enough support for this is expressed in the RfC, then the ban will come into effect immediately, but a draft for a policy will be made for further community consideration - the idea is to have this become a permanent behavioral policy. There are some editors who feel all areas regarding human sexuality are inherently pornographic in the way we treat them, hence this topic ban is narrowly construed to evade such controversies. Furthermore, most of the articles in the WikiProject Pornography are uncontroversially not pornographic - lots of BLPs and BIOs etc - so the topic ban is not construed in terms of editing behavior/content but of topic area participation. I think this would strike a balance between our need to protect the project from needless controversy and our need to follow ''correct'' application of [[WP:NOTCENSORED]].--[[User:Cerejota|Cerejota]] ([[User_talk:Cerejota#top|talk]]) 19:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC) |
Revision as of 19:34, 20 September 2011
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RFC on the bot-addition of identifier links to citations
There's been some kerfuffle about bots adding of identifier links to citations recently. Specifically, whether links to a topical database (aka things like arXiv preprints, Bibcode links to the Astrophysics Data System, Mathematical Reviews, PMC or PMID links to PubMed, SSRN, Zentralblatt MATH, etc...) should be added regardless of the topic of the Wikipedia article, or if bots should only add "topic-neutral databases" links (aka doi, JSTOR, ISBN, etc.), unless the bot can guarantee that the identifier links added are "topical".
Field | Citation |
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Astronomy | J. Cami; et al. (2010). "Detection of C60 and C70 in a Young Planetary Nebula". Science. 329 (5996): 1180. Bibcode:2010Sci...329.1180C. doi:10.1126/science.1192035. PMID 20651118. {{cite journal}} : Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
|
Chemistry | N. Sano; et al. (2001). "Synthesis of carbon 'onions' in water". Nature. 414 (6863): 506. Bibcode:2001Natur.414..506S. doi:10.1038/35107141. PMID 11734841. {{cite journal}} : Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
|
Mathematics | G.L. Cohen (1990). "On an integers' infinitary divisors". Mathematics of Computation. 54 (189): 395–411. Bibcode:1990MaCom..54..395C. doi:10.1090/S0025-5718-1990-0993927-5. MR 0993927. |
Medicine | F. Barré-Sinoussi; et al. (1983). "Isolation of a T-lymphotropic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)". Science. 220 (4599): 868–871. Bibcode:1983Sci...220..868B. doi:10.1126/science.6189183. PMID 6189183. {{cite journal}} : Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
|
Physics | F. Abe et al. (CDF Collaboration) (1995). "Observation of top quark production in pp collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab". Physical Review Letters. 74 (14): 2626–2631. arXiv:hep-ex/9503002. Bibcode:1995PhRvL..74.2626A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.2626. PMID 10057978. |
Each database cover different things differently, some contain "citation coverage" (aka "who cites this journal article"), and complement each other (citation counts will differ, and listings will not mention the same citing journal articles, as e.g. the bibcode link will cover "citations in physics & astronomy" journals, while e.g. the PMID will cover "citations in the medical field"), some might contain links to preprints, links to free digitized versions, etc... One could certainly argue that these identifier links do a great deal to established the reliability and verifiability of a citation and the Wikipedia article it is supporting in general.
There's also a great deal to be said about letting people choose which database they prefer. If someone familiar with mathematics databases runs across a Wikipedia article on astronomy, and one of the references is indexed in both the astronomy and mathematics databases, why should they be forced to use the astronomy database if they would rather use the mathematics database (despite the astronomy database link being almost certainly better). If someone familiar with medicine journals stumble across a mathematics citation which is indexed in both mathematics and medical database, why should they be forced to use the mathematics database if they would rather see what PubMed has to say about it? If someone from a physics background runs across a medicine citation, why should they be forced to use the medical database if they would prefer using something they are familiar with?
On the other hand, other people feel these identifier links do little more than clutter the citations and confuse the reader, and should be omitted (or at the least should not be added by bots) unless the identifier link can be guaranteed to be on a database that matches the topic of the the Wikipedia article, or that it requires human judgment to decide whether or not an arxiv/bibcode/PMC/PMID/MR/SSRN/Zbl link should be added to the citation. This would mean that in the relevant Wikipedia articles, you would see something like
Field | Citation |
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Astronomy | J. Cami; et al. (2010). "Detection of C60 and C70 in a Young Planetary Nebula". Science. 329 (5996): 1180. Bibcode:2010Sci...329.1180C. doi:10.1126/science.1192035. {{cite journal}} : Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
|
Chemistry | N. Sano; et al. (2001). "Synthesis of carbon 'onions' in water". Nature. 414 (6863): 506. doi:10.1038/35107141. {{cite journal}} : Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
|
Mathematics | G.L. Cohen (1990). "On an integers' infinitary divisors". Mathematics of Computation. 54 (189): 395–411. doi:10.1090/S0025-5718-1990-0993927-5. MR 0993927. |
Medicine | F. Barré-Sinoussi; et al. (1983). "Isolation of a T-lymphotropic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)". Science. 220 (4599): 868–871. doi:10.1126/science.6189183. PMID 6189183. {{cite journal}} : Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
|
Physics | F. Abe et al. (CDF Collaboration) (1995). "Observation of top quark production in pp collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab". Physical Review Letters. 74 (14): 2626–2631. arXiv:hep-ex/9503002. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.2626. |
This would have consequences for bots such as Citation Bot (which could not add links to arXiv preprints, bibcodes, PMC links, or PMIDs automatically, like it's been doing for the past few years), Bibcode Bot (which would be restricted to astronomy & physics articles), and any future bot such as the hypothetical "SSRN-Bot" or "Mathematical Review-Bot" (which would be restricted to their topics), or users who run scripts to add identifiers to articles such as Rjwilmsi.
Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:45, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Comments
- Isn't a DOI enough? The links all point to the same journal article; the only difference seems to be some extra details about the citation counts and whatnot. We're not concerned about that as an encyclopedia, we're just citing the article. I mean, it's not even a big deal, so it's sort of depressing that people have been arguing about this, but to me it seems simplest if we use one standard link (e.g., DOI) as anyone who really cares about the other databases will know how to look for the same article on them. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:03, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- There are two main things a reader wants from a reference: (1) access to the abstract, (2) access to the full text. I am opposed to bots adding any links to references unless the bot has the intelligence to determine that (a) one of those two things is missing, and (b) the added link provides the thing that is missing. I do not believe that adding clutter to reflists is harmless: it makes them harder for ordinary readers to use. I have no objection to human editors adding whatever information they feel is helpful; my issue is only to having this done on a massive scale by bots. Looie496 (talk) 16:05, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- I strongly support adding Bibcodes and Arxiv ids to any and all references which are included in those databases. ADS is an excellent free resource which massively improves the chances of a reader finding a copy of the full text that they can access. Arxiv papers are not the 'final' version, but are always available for free to everyone. This is totally different to the DOI, which in almost all cases redirects to a journal website with an extremely expensive paywall. I'm less familiar with the other identifiers mentioned above, but see little harm in including them. There obviously has to be a line drawn somewhere (no point in have 27 different ids on every reference), but even the most extreme example given above is fine. Modest Genius talk 16:16, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Oh and I should point out that both ADS and Arxiv cover a huge range of subjects, not just their 'traditional' strengths (in astronomy and particle physics respectively). Modest Genius talk 16:21, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- This RfC should've been presented without the pro-bibcode etc. rhetoric. Anyway, PMID/PMC and doi are all I would want/need to see in any bibliography. There's no need to give excessive alternatives; even without any identifier an average user could find any paper in seconds, but a doi and/or PMID provides handy one-click access without bloating the bibliography Jebus989✰ 16:18, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Even on mathematics articles? And physics articles? Or social science articles? That's awfully self-centered of you. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think there is any 'pro-bibcode rhetoric' in the above. It does slant in favour of more IDs, but barely mentions Bibcodes more than any of the other IDs discussed. Modest Genius talk 16:25, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- You misquoted me, "pro-bibcode etc." was what I said. I mean the RfC is written primarily as an argument in support of adding a wide variety of accessions, and I hope it doesn't take me picking out sentences for you to realise that. As a non-mathematician, I know of no pubmed equivalent, but if I were to read such an article, and found only the doi, I would definitely try work up the gumption to click it, rather than perusing through 5 alternative links to the same article and choosing my favourite. I'll ignore the personal attack, but I remind you this is a request for comment, not an "agree with me or I will argue with you until you do" Jebus989✰ 19:14, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think there is any 'pro-bibcode rhetoric' in the above. It does slant in favour of more IDs, but barely mentions Bibcodes more than any of the other IDs discussed. Modest Genius talk 16:25, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- For reference, I'm for the addition of any and all links on any and all articles. I've edited physics & astronomy articles for as long as I could remember and the various PMIDs and MRs links have never bothered me. In fact I found them to be extremely useful in fixing citations or verifying that the references did support the text (or that they were reliable). It would be utterly catastrophic for Wikipedia to disallow bots to add these links by default. Medicine people would lose Citation bot's ability to add the PMID/PMC automatically. Astronomy (and related topics) people would lose Citation bot's ability to add bibcodes. Physics (and related topics) would lose Citation bot's ability to add arxiv preprints. Everyone lose, no one wins.
For anyone these links truly bother, that could easily be "fixed" with a skin tweak (monobook.js/vector.js). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:30, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Putting every single identifier known to man (as well is wikilinking what they are) does seem to produce a vast, confusing sea of messy links which will be meaningless (and possibly distracting) to the average non-academic reader. Idealy there would be a way of hiding these away like we do with ISBN numbers and special:booksources -where clicking on one link would bring up all appropriate identifiers.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:01, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- I appreciate seeing the two versions of the references side-by-side, which is quite helpful. I think that the default state should be the shorter, topic-specific format. The other way does, indeed, look overly cluttered. I can imagine a reader from the general reading public, not someone who is an aficionado of databases, but just someone wanting to read up on a subject, looking at the lengthier version and having a case of "too much information". I recommend making the topic-specific format the default, with the proviso that any editor may always add more manually, and any WikiProject, by consensus, may request that a bot add more to pages within their project. I also like Nigel Ish's idea of having more but hiding them. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:09, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Interesting issue. I agree with Looie496 on what users want and that in the short run humans should make these decisions rather than have a proliferation of alternatives added by bots which 99% of readers wouldn't use. Yet the added content is definitely useful. Perhaps in the short run the links at the end of the biblio entry could be compacted, showing just (ArXiv)(PMID)(doi)(JSTOR), each linked to the appropriate source for that biblio entry. This avoids showing the full details of the code to every reader, and sticks to showing human-useful/readable content. Those details could be in HTML comments. In the long run I think this problem should not be solved right in the article, where it takes up vertical space and mind space, perhaps increasingly over time as the number of such outside sites grows. Instead it would be good if all those links the bot would have offered can be offered on the doi page or some wikimedia-specific intermediate page made available when the user clicks on the biblio entry. Might be created on the fly, or static. If static, the bots could add lavishly to that intermediate page and the bibliography user-interface would be uncluttered and easy to use. Not trivial to implement unfortunately. Wikisource might be friendly to it but their agenda is not directing-to-sources but rather offering the sources. (I see that Nigel Ish suggested this too during an edit-conflict. Hot topic!) -- Econterms (talk) 17:12, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Let me be the third person to endorse Nigel Ish's observation that ideally the links should be there (because they really are useful to someone who knows what they mean) but hidden (because they are confusing clutter to people who don't know what they mean). --Joel B. Lewis (talk) 17:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- i support adding as many identifiers as exist. different people will have access to different databases. there might be some reasonable limits similar to books that make sense here also that might be simple enough to get broad support, but i'd rather have more identifier links that are possibly redundant than restrictive rules. generally for books with isbn, oclc and asin are not also listed. pmc and arxiv are really good and should always be listed if available. doi usually doesn't go to a full free-access copy, but many people have institutional access. jstor only shows the first page. pmid and bibcode show bibliographic info with an abstract. this is the first time i've seen the mr database and it doesn't look all that useful from this example. it looks like a link to a doi that goes to jstor. —Chris Capoccia T⁄C 17:36, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- I strongly oppose bots automatically adding any information to Wikipedia articles. Bots can never replace a living person. Bots are very useful tools that editors can use to research information (including citation information). However, a thinking person needs to review the bot results before the information is actually placed into an article. Even something as simple as a spell or grammar checker bot can cause all sorts of unexpected errors and problems. Blueboar (talk) 17:46, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- I think that Errant's comment on ANI and Nigel Ish's comment here have got to the bottom of this: we should focus on working out how we can configure a default display of the citation that is not crowded, while also allowing the option of displaying the full identifier information. That ought to give the simplified display desired by casual readers and (maybe at one click) the full information and options desired by more knowledgeable readers or researchers. I think this RFC should be to discuss how to display the information, not on whether it should be there in the first place. Rjwilmsi 17:53, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support adding a variety of identifiers/sources, but I want a way to reduce the "clutter". Since that seems to be a dominant issue here, something like this would be sufficient for me (trade-off seeing actual identifier values for space and broader choice):
- F. Abe et al. (CDF Collaboration) (1995). "Observation of top quark production in pp collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab". Physical Review Letters 74 (14): 2626–2631. arXiv:hep-ex/9503002. Bibcode 1995PhRvL..74.2626A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.2626. PMID 10057978.
- becoming
- F. Abe et al. (CDF Collaboration) (1995). "Observation of top quark production in pp collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab". Physical Review Letters 74 (14): 2626–2631. arXiv. Bibcode. doi. PMID.
- F. Abe et al. (CDF Collaboration) (1995). "Observation of top quark production in pp collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab". Physical Review Letters 74 (14): 2626–2631. arXiv:hep-ex/9503002. Bibcode 1995PhRvL..74.2626A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.2626. PMID 10057978.
- I also understand a certain identifier may be more useful than others based on the topic/journal, so something like
|primaryidentifier=doi
could be employed:- F. Abe et al. (CDF Collaboration) (1995). "Observation of top quark production in pp collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab". Physical Review Letters 74 (14): 2626–2631. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.2626. arXiv. Bibcode. PMID.
- I realize it's impossible to please everyone, but I also don't want "clutter" to come in the way of presenting our readers with a wide selection of database links. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 18:06, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- As a note to the "let's tweak the information", that's fine and all, but you have to remember that Wikipedia should be for all people. "Compact links" such as [ [arXiv] [bibcode] [doi] [ISBN] [JSTOR] [pmid] ] will be horrible for people with screenreaders, and will be horrible when the page is printed. The only way to "tweak" it without affecting accessibility and print versions is to do it via skin tweaks (monobook.js/vector.js/etc...).Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:07, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- We should consider not only what readers see, but also what editors see. When the citation becomes of excessive size, the article becomes difficult to edit. The idea solution would be a link to a sort of automated source ombudsman, where a reader could specify which libraries are nearby and/or which databases the reader has paid access to, and the automated ombudsman would display which sources provide the full text at no incremental cost to that reader. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:12, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Given that different users have different databases they can access, it seems obvious that "anyone can edit" implies that whichever such resources the user has available should be linked. For the fortunate few with institutional access to such databases that does not always extend to all databases or even all of a particular database. My access to JSTOR, for example, is only fulltext for a portion of the serials it contains. Providing diversity of linkages gives editors and readers the best possible chance of finding the source in a repository which is freely accessible (for them). When we choose to omit these links we effectively inhibit people who could otherwise read the source from doing so. That cannot be a constructive practice. A little blue on the screen is a small price to pay. I have no objection to hiding it in hovertext or some such technical approach so long as the linkage is easily available to users that want it. The issue of trusting humans more than bots to make the call misses the fact that many of our human editors are very weak at citations: we're still fighting naked urls! While it should be simple for a human editor to remove links that don't work, and bots should respect such decisions, humans should not delete them simply because a link didn't work for them. Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request shows us everyday the utility of pooling access. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:14, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment on fancy display technology: this is a red herring and can't help us. Wikipedia pages need to work also as PDFs (onscreen with simple hyperlinks or printed out on paper); on a variety of mobile devices which may not support the concept of "hover"; on browsers where JavaScript is disabled, with screen reader technology, and where the Wikipedia page is being mirrored by another website. Any option that requires an account (such as a user-specific skin tweak) is also a non-starter as nearly all of our readers are not logged in. It is an important attribute that one can select the display text and copy/paste it: something that popup bits would make impossible. Colin°Talk 18:54, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment—Perhaps we could wrap the identifiers with an inline expandable display? See here for example. This way the text would normally be hidden unless somebody wants to look up the reference. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:19, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Don't know if that could be done, but the default should be the expanded start, otherwise this would create a drastic clash between "manual" citations and template citations. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:41, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Leaving it default expanded would make it pointless to implement; no viewer is ever going to go through the list and contract the views. But "manual" citations could probably implement this using a separate template for inline identifiers. RJH (talk) 20:37, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Don't know if that could be done, but the default should be the expanded start, otherwise this would create a drastic clash between "manual" citations and template citations. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:41, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- I oppose bots adding these links to articles until the clutter is reduced by appropriate template magic/user preferences/CSS. Once such a solution is implemented, I will change by !vote to support. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:21, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Something similar to what RJHall and Nigel Ish said would be the best course to take here: give all citation databases and let the reader pick which one to use. Edge cases such as the ones Colin identified can still see the current format. That said, getting to the crux of the issue, I don't see a point in removing existing bibcodes/PMIDs because of a few editors' perceptions of the utility of the citation databases. Give the readers more credit. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 19:33, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- If we do go down the 'keep them but reduce the clutter' route, could it not be hidden behind a 'show/hide' bit of Javascript, like collapsed navigation boxes? That way it still shows up when printed / on screen readers, but reduces the clutter for everyone else. Modest Genius talk 19:34, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Show/hide boxes work exactly the same on modern screen readers as they do for other people. I would favour keeping the links expanded as they are now, if only because we shouldn't add more bloated JavaScript to pages if we can help it; the citation links don't cause any problems for screen readers. I don't have any strong opinions about which databases should be used. Graham87 00:30, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support - Information is good. —SW— express 20:25, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Certain of these identifier can be assumed to be topical: (1) arXiv: if an article is on the arXiv, then the author put it there, (2) MR (aka Mathematical Reviews) & Zentralblatt: only lists math articles, so for any article that has an MR, the MR should be topical. I don't know enough about the other identifiers to say, but I don't think that non-topical identifiers should be automatically listed, except for ISBN and DOI (ISSN, too maybe?); by which I mean, I think it would be better to keep the displayed identifiers restricted to topical ones, ISBN, and DOI, but I'm all for adding other ones to the source code, but have them commented out, or somesuch. Additionally, at least the two identifiers I have listed provide useful information that I believe should be linked to from the citation on wikipedia, (and if a bot can do it instead of me, I'm all for that). For the arXiv, this includes a free copy of the paper (though they are sometimes not the same version as the print copy), and for MR & Zbl, this (almost always) includes a summary of the paper, as well as a link to the papers that cite the paper in question. RobHar (talk) 20:30, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- The only requirement we have for citations is that they identify the source of the text used to write the article text. A plain text standard printed citation or a raw URL both satisfy this requirement, though each can be improved upon. We are careful not to add external links to articles just because someone thinks they are useful and similarly we should be careful not to turn our References section into an external link farm. We are an encyclopaedia, not a compendium of journal database links. Perhaps folk should put pressure on the various journal database websites to do some cross referencing themselves. It shouldn't be too hard for PubMed to link to ADS, say. After all, indexing journals is their job, not ours. As Looie496 says, the aim of our convenience links should be to give the reader access to the full text and the abstract. Access to the full text is complicated by the fact that nearly all our readers will lack the necessary subscriptions for subscription-only texts, or the text may not be online at the publisher's website. So services like PMC and arXiv provide a backup for the full text. The databases themselves provide useful functionality but this is very much secondary to our purpose. There is a strong consensus for linking to PubMed for bio-medical papers and I dare say the same goes for astronomy/physics papers and the ADS. If the paper is only indexed in one of the databases, then there is probably merit in linking without considering the topic of the paper.
The bot should only perform actions where there is a clear consensus and where the edit is useful. So unless we come to a consensus that linking to PubMed and linking to ADS is desirable always, then the bot needs to work out what kind of paper the citation is for. A bot could use the journal to decide the topic in most cases. For journals like Science and Nature, that cross the fields, then the WP article may give a clue as to whether the paper is a life or physical science topic. I think using only the WP article as a guide is rather crude and only reliable for a subset. So, in summary, PMC/arXiv are probably always useful unless the bot can tell that a link to a free online full text is already present. DOI is always useful. Where both a PMID and bibcode are possible, the bot should consider the journal and possibly additionally the article topic and pick the most appropriate -- and if unsure then don't add. -- Colin°Talk 20:37, 15 August 2011 (UTC) - I'd like to see PMID links and ISBNs whenever possible, even for non-medical articles (which might, after all, contain some medicine-related information). I don't care about the others, but I suspect that if I always want to see links to foo, then someone else will always want to see bar, so I'm in favor of listing everything as the default. There should, however, be some sort of opt-out system, like an invisible template that editors can place in an article to say "Bibcodes (or whatever) not wanted in this article, thanks". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support If you can get a source for free then its a no brainer to add the (legal) links --Guerillero | My Talk 21:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support. More pointers is better than none or a few useless ones, which can still be deleted manually if they are a splinter in an editor's mind, right? Peter S Strempel | Talk 22:55, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose Bots should not be doing controversial edits. The important stuff here is the citation; once that is given, all other links are convenience. Adding a lot of them makes the citation itself, which can be used in whatever tool the reader has available, harder to find; if, as some arguments here would suggest, we add links to every conceivable citation system, our articles will be buried in kilobytes of linkcruft. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:53, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- I generally support some modest quantity of redundant IDs, because they sometimes can be helpful in tracking down an article (for example when a DOI stops resolving, which is a moderately frequent occurrence). I guess I'm a weak oppose on the subject of having bots add them, however. Having a bot add a PMC has rarely seemed like an intrusion (even if there is already a free link of some kind), but kerfuffles of this sort seem to be par for the course when bots are involved and I'm not sure how a bot would know how many IDs is enough. Perhaps there is a middle ground, like an approved list of IDs which are bot-addable. But if we can't resolve it that way, falling back to human editors doesn't strike me as a horrifying thought. Kingdon (talk) 02:24, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- I support adding additional info to citations. As others have pointed out, these are useful for readers who have access to different databases. And many are topical, such as the Math Reviews number or the PubMed number, and will only be available for articles in a certain discipline. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:33, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support - Anything that helps our readers get to the original sources used for our articles is a benefit to all. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 03:05, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: The proposed solution does not scale in the long term. I would suggest a solution similar to that for either Books or Map Coordinates; in each case a link leads to a master list where the identifier is auto-integrated with resource links. However, the central-linking solution would need to be refined somewhat for the present solution, as the consistency of ISBN or lat-lon is not present for scholarly articles yet (DOI approaches, but has not reached 100% penetrance ... anyone have stats on that?). What might need to be done is a two step process - create links via bot on a central resource page, then review links via bot for ability to resolve to a target, followed by either link culling or link annotation (verified, unverified, unavailable type flags). I've not read through the comments, so I don't know whether this is a new idea or just a rehash of an old one oft added above. Thanks for considering this, nonetheless. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:22, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Fully, strongly support. Note, I am not a Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine person, nor a Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy person (actually, I am a Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry person).
- 1) PMIDs are useful, they are available for a lot of articles, they do provide extra information over a DOI (DOIs directly link to the article, generally the search capabilities of the site where that is hosted is limited to the site of the journal - the page on PubMed is generally cross-site). And that is not only true for articles in the medical corner, it is not only true for statements with a medical implication on articles outside the medical corner. When a PMID is available, it should be added, it does lead you to more info.
- 1 (too)) BibCodes are equally useful, they are available for another set of articles, they do provide extra information over a DOI (vide supra, comment on usefulness of PMIDs). That is not only true for the astronomy corner, it is not only true for statements with an astronomy implication on articles outside the medical corner. When a BibCode is available, it should be added, it does lead you to more info.
- 2) the number of journals that is overlapping is quite minimal, they are mainly the general science journals (Nature, Science and such), those articles benefit of identifiers all over Wikipedia. I would be disappointed if CitationBot would not add a PMID to an article in chemistry (as it does already), I would be equally disappointed if Bibcode bot would not add a BibCode to an article in chemistry. Or about whichever subject.
- 3) it is not up to us to decide whether an identifier is useful for others. I can bring up many examples where a PMID is useless clutter for me, I can bring up just as many examples where a BibCode is useless clutter for me. I can even find examples where both are useless clutter for me. The problem in both statements is 'for me'. Sure, I can guess that in most of these cases will also be true for most other readers of the text, but then we get to 'most' - it may be useful for someone, and that should be enough. (Yes, in most cases, I am interested in the article, not in what links to the article, which articles are cited by the article and how often those articles are cited, or articles that cite the article, who wrote it, where it is published, a direct link to the article will do, DOI is enough, per Fetchcomms, thank you).
- 4) I am active in subject A, and for references we have a database linked to subject B and a database linked to subject C. Now, subject B nor subject C are topical for subject A. But both the database of subject B and the database of subject A do give more info than the DOI only would, they both provide extra info, extra search capabilities. Unbiased addition of both is then leading to more info, as obviously no choice can be made whether B or C will be better.
- 5) Regarding 'clutter' - these identifiers are in references, not in prose. Reading references is like reading a telephone book:
no-onehardly anybody does it for fun. When reading a reference you already have to go through a whole set of 'clutter', journal codecs, year of publishing, volume, issue, pagenumbers, &c. &c. (and all presented in different ways .. per convention in the local subject). One extra code does not 'clutter up the reference'. When you are used to code XXXX:1234, then when code YYYY is not there, you scan for the 'XXXX:' and click on the code next to it, when code YYYY:4321, ZZZZ:5678, CCCC:9876 and PPPP:4578 are there, you scan for the 'XXXX:' and click on the code next to it. It does not add clutter, at all. - 6) Now, say, we have a medical article with a medical statement with a medical reference with, obviously a PMID. But that medical article turns out to be also in a astronomy database, and the astronomy database gets added as identifier. When that is not a general journal (Nature, Science) but something specific, then I might wonder 'why is this article in an astronomy database, the article does not have any astronomical content at all?' .. it may turn out, that some info from the article is missing, since there actually turns out to be an astronomical side to the content. A great incentive to look further into that aspect.
- 7) (unlikely scenario) - say database XXXX goes down (temporarily, or is locally blocked behind a firewall, something I could imagine in places/countries where information is restricted), then you have at least access via database YYYY. If XXXX and YYYY provide equal enhanced information over ZZZZ, then even if the article is in the subject of XXXX, then YYYY may be useful when XXXX for some reason goes down (or whatever).
- All in all, I see no reason to not add all identifiers everywhere. They may be useful to some, and that should be enough. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:04, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- P.S. If you really think that the references contain too much clutter, then I am sure that it is possible to put something in your user stylesheet or javascript that reduces references to just the info you want. E.g. which filters out BibCodes from the parsed text, or another identifier, or even reduces a full-text reference to just 'XXXX' when identifier XXXX is available in that reference. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- P.P.S. I know that cross-namespace links are being frowned upon. But what if citationbot does something smart with the transcluded templates (the {{cite DOI/123456}}-type references)? --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- P.P.S.-Note: See #'Fancy display tech'. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:24, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- I strongly oppose
- cluttering references with anything beyond a doi; once there is a doi, users can trivially retrieve whatever bibliographic information in whatever database;
- automatizing controversial edits;
- doing so while there is an ongoing discussion. -- Marie Poise (talk) 14:25, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Trivial? Really? I for one have no idea how to find an arXiv preprint just from the DOI. Similarly for ADS. And I use both of those databases every day. And remember that getting any information whatsoever out of a DOI depends upon the journal website providing it (without being hidden behind a paywall). Journals generally do NOT link to citation databases for the simple reason that it reduces the chances of anyone actually paying for the article. Modest Genius talk 17:50, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- I strongly oppose bot-induced clutter of footnotes. The advocates of this mechanized mess have their opinions, but it is clear from the comments above that there is dissent and they should NOT be assuming consensus here. Carrite (talk) 15:29, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment not all links have similar value to all readers - so I would oppose limiting links to only one standard (unless links to the others are directly available through that one standard). For example, PMIDs are the most valuable to me, because my library affiliation provides full-text access for a huge range of pubs when linking via PubMed - any other link is far less useful. I would imagine similar considerations apply for other users (and database links other than PubMed - so I'm not simply arguing for PMIDs). If it's possible to make this a reader-level customization for display then that would be great (but might be a resource hog); absent such customization, I would favor inclusive linking. -- Scray (talk) 18:06, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Strongly support adding links - Not all educational institutes buy access to every single database. Thus I think we should add links to every database the journal's article appears in to help ensure that people reading the Wikipedia article will be able to find the full text without having to go look up the article in the database they have access to. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:27, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment How about DOI plus a single link to a page that can have as many links as you want, like Special:BookSources? --Kkmurray (talk) 19:37, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment Although I support adding more information to citations, I am troubled by some automated edits. An article gets an automatic edit, it tickles many watch lists, and then many people check the edit. The bots also seem to add a lot of text to the reference that many users will ignore. Bots may pull a citation away from the intended citation to a different one; each fixing something that it perceives is wrong, and the next bot "improving" the citation further. A different approach might be better. The cite/citation templates could have a check for sources link; that link would include some unique information, but it would go to a wikipedia page that would run a (possibly precomputed) query for other sources. The bots could work on fixing the info in the second database without disturbing the article page. They could flag or correct basic info in the article (e.g., adding dates, authors, etc.), but they would not be edit the article merely to include another opaque identifier for some data source. If an article starts getting a lot of click throughs for a source, then the article could be edited to include a direct link for that source. Updates could be limited to so many per month per article. Glrx (talk) 00:46, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- Too many identifiers. Bots should only add topical ids, like pmid for medical articles, arxiv for physics, etc. A bot shouldn't be cluttering refs with multiple redundants ids. I would support a less ambitious bot that added only a minimal number of ids. I also support bots that add ids to references where there is no id, that tag non-existing ids, that tag possibly wrong ids, etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:58, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- Comment That different editors have different preferred citation display styles is perfectly reasonable. The current citation setup holds the raw data to support it, but doesn't offer much flexibility in rendering. There's been a lot of debate trying to get display preferences out by changing the raw data going in, but that solution can't work. The way forward must be to implement editor display preferences to differentiate between the source fields available and the fields shown to the editor in the rendered page. Of course is must be compatible with screen readers, mobile browsers, print versions, usability etc. and not break existing data, but we have some very knowledgeable technical editors and template writers, I'm sure a neat and effective solution can be found. I really think we must focus our effort on collaborating on neat and sensible editor display preferences. Rjwilmsi 22:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- I would agree with that. No real reason why citations couldn't be displayed according to certain preferences. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:35, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
- See my comment above about fancy display tech. Not going to work. Does anyone know the ratio of readers to editors? It is high enough that our individual preferences are pretty irrelevant, certainly so for something unconnected with editing. I bet the "let's fix this with editor preferences" solution is probably one of those perenial suggestions that keep getting shot down. Remember date formatting as an editor preference. That turned out well. Not. Colin°Talk 07:20, 18 August 2011 (UTC) Plus this suggestion does smell a bit of "Once I can make this problem go away for me then I'll be happy." The real issue is that we've gone away from thinking about what the core requirements of references in an encyclopaedia are, and have started adding "useful" bells and whistles. Our sources don't add these extras to their references sections. And just like our WP:EL policy, we need to draw a line and consider what is essential to our purpose. Colin°Talk 07:38, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- The 'fancy display tech' does not necessarily mean that it should only be restricted to logged in users (there is also global CSS and JS ..). And, using CSS and JS is only one way (but indeed, suboptimal), but it may also be possible in other ways (/me puts on thinking cap again). The two main opposing concerns I think there are is that it is useful for certain people (seen that PMIDs are everywhere, and not only added by Citationbot, also by human editors), but that it does clutter our references (which is for another group of editors clearly a big problem). Removing the extra identifiers leaves out info which is used but removes the clutter, having them there clutters, but gives us extra information. Say for yourself, you use the PMID link in the articles where you have them - I do as well, but my 'WP:MED-activity' is just on a thin overlapping border. I would miss them, badly. Removing them all would also mean to remove them from WP:MED, or allowing them in WP:MED means that other projects would also have the possibility to allow them .. and that would just continue the controversy, inevitably WP:MED and WP:Astronomy will overlap, and then the fight comes in how much, and ... do I need to continue? --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- See #'Fancy display tech'. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:24, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- This isn't an RFC on removing or adding these links -- that would be an issue for the MOS -- it is about bot edits. Most people are happy with these links when added by human beings after consideration as to the utility of them. After all, the citations aren't inserted by a bot, so there was a human involved when they first got added. The issue that started this is that a bot is adding these simply because it can and not necessarily because it should. That's a fundamental issue wrt all bot edits. The question of whether it should quite clearly has little consensus one way or the other and the bot owners need to grasp this and start applying Wikipedia:Bot policy rather than endlessly arguing with the rest of to accept their personal opinion. The compromise position of only adding them when the chances of utility are very high (based on the topical relevance of the journal being cited and the article containing the citation) seems likely to upset the least number of people. Bots should tackle the low-hanging fruit. Colin°Talk 08:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well, that is where the issue is .. I think that these links should be added, irregardless of the topic, irregardless of which identifier, irregardless of who adds it, even irregardless if it is by a bot or not. That the bot does it does not make any difference. The underlying issue is not a bot issue, it is a MOS-issue. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:49, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well if you think that, then create another RFC and raise it at MOS+world. This RFC is on bot additions. Look at the title. It is a separate issue because what you are demanding is that not only are these links added by bots, but that they should be always added by humans too and never removed. That's imposing a citation requirement above what is necessary to actually cite the source. Considering that citations are an issue where WP typically refuses to impose rules, you don't stand much chance. Remember that even using templates isn't mandatory and is never likely to be. Colin°Talk 09:24, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- Well, I do stick to that .. as I do think that the bots should be adding these, as I do think they are useful, everywhere. In that way, I don't need to bother finding them myself. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- This isn't an RFC on removing or adding these links -- that would be an issue for the MOS -- it is about bot edits. Most people are happy with these links when added by human beings after consideration as to the utility of them. After all, the citations aren't inserted by a bot, so there was a human involved when they first got added. The issue that started this is that a bot is adding these simply because it can and not necessarily because it should. That's a fundamental issue wrt all bot edits. The question of whether it should quite clearly has little consensus one way or the other and the bot owners need to grasp this and start applying Wikipedia:Bot policy rather than endlessly arguing with the rest of to accept their personal opinion. The compromise position of only adding them when the chances of utility are very high (based on the topical relevance of the journal being cited and the article containing the citation) seems likely to upset the least number of people. Bots should tackle the low-hanging fruit. Colin°Talk 08:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
- Strongly support adding identifiers that (1) point directly to the publisher's official version of a paper (doi, or jstor); (2) provide unofficial but free versions of papers (arxiv, or sometimes but not always bibcode), or (3) provide third-party reviews of citations rather than just a copy of the abstract (sometimes but not always mr). I don't have a strong opinion about identifiers that don't meet these criteria. And I also prefer not to see both doi and jstor when they end up both going to the same place. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:10, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support keeping all links; I don't see how removing them would improve Wikipedia. I would also support condensing them by making the external link shorter in read mode, but would oppose condensing them by using subpages. It Is Me Here t / c 10:11, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
- Support adding ONE free full text link. A bot with a mandate of making free full text available is highly valuable. A bot with a mandate of adding a second, third, fourth way to get the same article is much harder to justify. I am willing to accept an occasional redundant link added by bot if it is the only workable way to get a free full text link on a significant fraction of the articles. Just don't make a fetish out of putting every possible link for every possible paper just for the heck of it. Oh, and it should be easy for a user to invoke the bot to provide all possible information for a reference he selects, both to allow him to edit the article to add it and to follow it for his own use. Wnt (talk) 21:55, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
"Gene Wiki" partnership with an academic journal
The Gene Wiki is an initiative to improve Wikipedia articles related to human genes. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ProteinBoxBot for historical context. Although there are many editors who are far more active on these gene articles, my direct coworkers and I have focused on bot editing (through User:ProteinBoxBot) and evangelism for this effort among biologists.
Recently we have been talking with the editors of the academic journal Gene about ways to further develop these articles. A proposed partnership emerged that would go something like this:
- My team would identify gene articles with the greatest "gap" between the Wikipedia article and what's known about that gene in the literature
- My team would identify potential experts in this area by mining author lists in articles related to each gene
- The journal would invite these authors to write a review article on that gene, which would then be peer-reviewed according to the typical standards of the journal
- If the review article is accepted in Gene, my team would work with the authors to integrate that review article into the Wikipedia article (which most of the time would be a mere stub)
- As the source of a substantial amount of text and figures, attribution to the primary article in Gene would be placed on the talk page and cited inline
On the obvious point of copyright, we have confirmed with the journal editors and with the lawyers at Elsevier (the publisher) that they would not consider this to be a copyright violation provided it is the authors who initiate the information reuse on their article. This use falls under the Authors' Rights when publishing in Gene.
Before we move too much further on this proposal, are their additional issues we need to address (or address more fully)? Are there additional parties that should be consulted? (I will post a note at WP:MCB, where much of the initial Gene Wiki work was discussed.) Comments appreciated. Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 22:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
- It is encouraging to see efforts to get experts writing for Wikipedia. I have some concerns, however. I think the copyright issue should be run by some of our Wikipedia experts on copyright. There may be some issues that haven't been raised with Elsevier such as commercial reuse of Wikipedia's text and issues with images or diagrams. The Terms of Use on WP seem to require the source text to have a CC-BY-SA license, which this wouldn't as far as I can see.
- My biggest concern is that Wikipedia articles are not review articles. There are a number of differences, which are grounded in policy. Bear in mind that my (lay) experience is with medical papers, not science papers, so some differences may apply.
- Typically, reviews cite the primary literature; Wikipedia articles cite the secondary literature. WP:V, WP:MEDRS, WP:PSTS.
- Reviews are written by experts in the field; Wikipedia articles cite the published works of experts in the field.
- A review author may select which information she considers correct and which erroneous, which important and which irrelevant. This may be done with a scientific objective approach or subjectively drawing on their own expertise and bias. Wikipedia editors cannot do this and rely on the secondary sources to indicate the weight to give to various viewpoints or facts. WP:NPOV.
- Reviews may, to a small degree, contain information not sourced to previously published works (for example, draw on unpublished personal communications, on yet-to-be-published work, or on the author's own experience); Wikipedia articles must not. WP:NOR.
- The expert writing a review can (indeed is expected to) draw on his own experience and wisdom to generalise and extrapolate from the primary research. For example, they may cite research in rats or on a small number of patients, and report these findings as being relevant to humans or to a wider population. Wikipedia authors are very limited in what they can do with primary sources, and this would count as original research. WP:NOR.
- A scientific paper may be authored at a level suitable for one's scientific peers. Wikipedia articles should aim for a wider audience. For very academic subjects, we consider "one level down" to be a reasonable step, but other subjects could well be aimed at the "general reader". WP:NOT PAPERS, WP:TECHNICAL.
- A published paper has a fixed small set of authors and never changes once published. Wikipedia articles may be written by anyone and will change text and authorship over time. The authors would have to accept they don't own the article and allow other editors to change it, even in ways they disagree with. WP:OWN.
- I'd certainly be keen to see the review made available free online. That would give us a reliable, accessible, published secondary source to use for a WP article. Colin°Talk 08:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
- While helpful in encouraging experts to "contribute" to wikipedia, There are many gene articles which are not warranted to have their own pages (ie not enough is known about them). The ones that are well known and have enough data, likely have plenty, and will continue to have plenty of reviews. Also, in the spirit of collaborative editing, will these pages be locked? If not will people cite the wiki page (if that is the point) or the gene article? If they are not locked, then will authors risk attachment to documents which are no longer under their control? Finally, how will your group choose the experts? Davebridges (talk) 13:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
- Hi everyone, thanks for your insights. I will try to address some of the key issues raised to the best of my ability, but I'd also appreciate your thoughts and others' viewpoints. (If I've seemingly ignored or brushed off a comment above that you think is critical, please highlight it again! For brevity, I did my best to capture major themes...)
- Copyright: Images is one thing I hadn't thought about in the context of the stricter requirements for inclusion in WP. Correct that the default Elsevier license is not CC-BY-SA, but perhaps I could convince them to grant specific permission for the articles destined for WP. In any case, I will start up another discussion at WT:C (and WP:MCQ) on this point specifically.
- Differences between WP and review articles: In the area of biology, I actually don't see too many differences on the surface. By example, I usually use Reelin as the prototypical article we'd be trying to match for other genes. I like this article because it contains information for both a general audience and a scientific readership, and it contains numerous inline citations to the literature (both primary and secondary). Colin, do you (or others) see any big problems with that article with regards to WP policy?
- WP:NOR: A quick note on WP:NOR specifically. Agreed, some review articles do include some NOR info, though I typically see it in anecdotal asides. We could include specific instructions to authors that this type of comment would not be permitted.
- WP:OWN: Raised by both Colin and Davebridges, I also think this is an area that is primarily a point of author education. These articles would certainly not be locked. The "article of record" would be the GENE version. But once it is integrated into WP, it would be free to evolve as any other WP article. To make this distinction clear, I think we would add a statement like this to the talk page: "A substantial amount of content for this article was sourced from [GENE citation]. However, as with all other Wikipedia articles, this article is now maintained by the Wikipedia community independently from the authors of the GENE article". Or something like that...
- Recruiting authors: Selecting which authors to invite would follow the same basic principles as any other invited review article by a journal. Basically the editorial staff would be responsible for identifying the experts in a field according to their academic credentials. It is also worth emphasizing that the final submission will be peer reviewed for quality (of both the content and presentation).
- Next steps -- author instructions: I should have also mentioned that I will be officially involved with the journal as a member of the editorial board. So through me, we (the WP community) do have the ability to present specific instructions to invited authors. This I think is the next step (in addition to further discussion on any of the issues above and working out copyright issues with the journal publisher). While WP articles and review articles are not the same, there is significant overlap in what would be a good example of both. So we need to guide the authors toward writing something that hits that intersection. Personally, I think the key points to emphasize are WP:OWN and WP:TECHNICAL. Other thoughts on key points?
- Many thanks for your thoughts everyone... Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 17:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Hi everyone, thanks for your insights. I will try to address some of the key issues raised to the best of my ability, but I'd also appreciate your thoughts and others' viewpoints. (If I've seemingly ignored or brushed off a comment above that you think is critical, please highlight it again! For brevity, I did my best to capture major themes...)
Licensing for anything other than text (e.g. illustrations) is important, because we cannot work around a lack of permission (for text, we can). — One point about writing for Wikipedia: the integration with other articles is much tighter than for typical review articles; authors should keep in mind that here, related articles are just one mouse click away. Also, common restrictions (space, color illustrations, movies) are necessary for typical review articles but make Wikipedia articles worse. You may want to encourage the authors to provide supplementary material to Wikipedia (most of our pictures have not passed peer review anyway). — I would not worry about the distinction between primary and secondary sources. If you commission review articles and have them peer reviewed, they are reliable secondary sources. Pasting them into a freshly created article is just quoting that source wholesale. I can't see that creating problems with policies, guidelines, or common sense. -- Also, locking vs. citing is a non-issue; they can always cite with a permanent link pointing to the precise version of the article that passed peer review. Rl (talk) 15:00, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- The comment about primary/secondary not being an issue is dead wrong. Reviewers are allowed and expected to interpret the primary sources. WP:NOR says we cannot. We never quote a source wholesale, as you put it. Pasting a copyright work into Wikipedia (and one that is written under different restrictions than WP operates under) creates huge problems with practically every policy and guideline, as I have detailed above. Colin°Talk 10:19, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- We really can't "work around a lack of permission" for text either. Stats and statistical data can't be copyrighted, but any complete sentences or copyrightable text can't be used without that text being released under a free license. – Quadell (talk) 20:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- Pretty much all of Wikipedia content is derived from non-free source text. It's not only stats, the information itself is not copyrighted. You can write an article that is just as good or better than the non-free sources it is based on (but it is hard work, and review articles released under a free license would be a tremendous help). Finding or creating a free, adequate (let alone better) substitute for non-free images is much harder. Rl (talk) 06:57, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for your thoughts. Media copyright and licensing does sound like one of the more important issues to be sure we get right. I've posted a question at WP:MCQ ([1]). Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 16:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
This all starts to fall apart when we get to the bit "my team would work the authors to integrate that review article into the Wikipedia article" - why would any Academic worth their salt want to waste their time doing this when they could be turning out papers? A wikipedia article is worthless in terms of cash or impact. I used to edit some article in my own area of expertise and gave up because it's simply too much hassle dealing with assholes and wikilawyers. Are you saying that you are compelling authors to do this or that you are making this part of their terms of acceptance in the journal? Truthfully, if I thought I was getting instructions off nobodies on wikipedia, I'd tell you to ram it up your hoop. --Cameron Scott (talk) 08:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- Re: worthless wikipedia articles: tenure? Also the journal
RNARNA Biology utilised a similar wikipedia program some time ago (link). Many academics use Wikipedia contributions as an example of public outreach Jebus989✰ 10:54, 14 September 2011 (UTC)- Any experiences made by RNA would probably be valuable to the project proposed by AndrewGNF. Rl (talk) 13:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- For more information there's the wikinews and, more usefully, a blog post detailing criticisms and reactions. If Andrew is interested, I suggest he contact Ppgardne (talk · contribs) for more information. Bear in mind a key difference between the proposals, though, with RNA the Wikipedia article and journal article were two distinct entities. Note: Also I incorrectly named the journal RNA, I actually meant RNA Biology Jebus989✰ 13:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- Any experiences made by RNA would probably be valuable to the project proposed by AndrewGNF. Rl (talk) 13:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- This comment is verging on trolling, and nothing to do with policy issues surrounding the venture. Let's ignore it and stick to the point of this noticeboard. Colin°Talk 11:10, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- It's not trolling - setting up a collaboration process isn't simply about the underlying mechanisms, it's about providing something for both parties and managing cultural expectations - at the moment, I'm unclear what is meant by "work the authors" - it certainly doesn't sound like the basis for a positive relationship to me. --Cameron Scott (talk) 11:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- You have a point. Such a project would likely need a community liaison to answer Wikipedia related questions and assist should any conflict with other editors arise. That said, I am sure AndrewGNF never meant to leave the review authors without some sort of support. Rl (talk) 13:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- It's not trolling - setting up a collaboration process isn't simply about the underlying mechanisms, it's about providing something for both parties and managing cultural expectations - at the moment, I'm unclear what is meant by "work the authors" - it certainly doesn't sound like the basis for a positive relationship to me. --Cameron Scott (talk) 11:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- Hi Cameron, apologies if this key point wasn't clear in my original post. You are exactly right that many academics don't see the value of editing on Wikipedia because it's not tied to any traditional academic metric (for promotion, tenure, awards, etc.) This effort is meant to exactly address the lack of incentives by tying a Wikipedia article to a traditional journal article in GENE. Make sense? And regarding others' points about the RNA Biology partnership, yes we communicate with that team on a regular basis. Their effort wasn't the exact inspiration for this proposal (though it should have been -- could have gotten started years ago), but I'm sure we've subconsciously ingested many of their good ideas already including this one. Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 16:26, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- It would seem that there are several open-access journals that might be similarly engaged whether or not Gene turns out to be unworkable. I'm inclined to want a scheme which does not prefer specific journals, particularly if they might stand to gain a commercial advantage as a result. The very idea that human genes, usually identified with public or charitable funding, are being turned into private property in many jurisdictions seems to run against the spirit of WP's mission. The least we can do is try to ensure that we don't facilitate that process. Will Gene and others accept publication of these papers under a truly open license, such as the GFDL or CC-BY-SA? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:07, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- That is exactly the question that I'm pursuing with Elsevier right now. More soon. Yes, we've talked with open access journals as well, but in the majority of cases those journals operate under an "author pays" model. In short, the authors pay some sum of money to underwrite the publisher's costs, and then the final article is open access. But that becomes a financial burden for the authors who are invited to contribute and I think would be an impediment to participation. The hope was that a partnership with Elsevier would have been ideal since their subscription costs would pay for the production fees, and content could be contributed to Wikipedia under the authors' retained rights. But that's the current sticking point that we're trying to work through. In any case, all options are still on the table, so feel free to contribute any other ideas... (FWIW, Elsevier's open access options are shown here.) Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 17:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- Keep Gene article and Wikipedia article as separate entities: I think that the pitfalls outweigh the benefits of there being a direct relationship between the Wikipedia article and the Gene article. I think that a major outcome of the presented efforts will be the availability of material from Elsevier which can be used in the CC-by-SA context of Wikipedia authorship, which is a major benefit. Another advantage of this kind of collaboration is that it provides Wikipedia with a pre-digested knowledge pile in the form of the review article to use as material to construct / improve a Wikipedia article. One of the main barriers to creation of high quality Wikipedia articles is that there may not be a critical mass of authoritatively digested published material on a particular topic, meaning that the Wikipedia article becomes the defacto review target for information seekers. In this case, the authoritative digest would be the Gene review and the Wikipedia article would, in the cases envisioned, use this as starting material and build forward as more is learned about the topic as publication of research proceeds over ensuing years. Would citation in a Wikipedia article benefit authors? It might, as more eyes will see the Wikipedia article and it's citations than the Gene article and citations used therein; however, I would not extend the promise of personal or professional benefit to Wikipedia editors in this (or any other) context as that is too closely tied to conflict of interest issues. Better to have a publisher-centric association between Elsevier and Wikimedia Foundation than an author-centric one. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:13, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Essay Icon
For polîcies, we have a green check mark in the information window. For guidelines, we have a blue check mark. And for essays - we have what appears to be a pencil writing on paper. I don't think that this reflects the nature of essays and their relationships to other policies well. I think the representation of essays should be changed - I have no preference about which (different) image to use, so suggestions are welcome. Interchangeable|talk to me 20:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
- Policies and guidelines have official standing. Essays are opinions relating to policies and guidelines. They are, as the icon suggests, a piece of writing. For the icon to be "wrong" (or less than optimal) you must have an idea of what consitutes a better representation, or be able to put into words the discrepancy between what you feel essays are and what the icon represents. GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
- It still doesn't seem quite right to treat them merely as opinions - many essays are just as important as policies or guidelines (although they cannot be enforced). Essays are not just writing - they have a variety of purposes, and we should not treat them solely as opinions. Interchangeable|talk to me 16:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
- Sure, but some of our best policies and guidelines are "just opinions", too. For example, WP:POLICY is a collection of the community's opinions about how to write and maintain decent policies and guidelines. WP:MOS is a collection of the community's opinions about how to write a decent article. WP:IAR is the community's opinion about whether you should mindlessly follow written rules or use your best judgment.
- Along those lines, some of you might like to read about WP:The differences between policies, guidelines, and essays. This "mere essay", which explains how blurry the lines are, grew out of long discussions and persistent demands for prescriptive rules for classifying pages (and, usually, a desire to have a gold-plated get-out-of-jail-free card with respect to some widely supported essay like WP:BRD or WP:Use common sense). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Okay, then - perhaps the essay symbol should be changed to a greyîsh check mark. It's unobtrusive and better reflects the opinions of some essays. Interchangeable|talk to me 14:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- We should not change the icon on essay pages per WP:BIKESHED. Inconsequential changes shouldn't be done because they are inconsequential; time spent discussing, debating, voting on, and implementing inconsequential changes is time not spent doing stuff that matters. --Jayron32 03:22, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- That îs only an essay and cannot be treated as a policy. (There may be some irony in that...) What about the Minor Edit Barnstar? Can we consider minor edits something that should not be done? Interchangeable|talk to me 18:37, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- Minor edits are not always inconsequential. Fixing a typo is a minor edit, but it can be very important to the reader, especially if the typo resulted in a different word, or made the word incomprehensible to an English language learner.
- Changing the icon on an essay template, though, isn't really going to help anyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- That îs only an essay and cannot be treated as a policy. (There may be some irony in that...) What about the Minor Edit Barnstar? Can we consider minor edits something that should not be done? Interchangeable|talk to me 18:37, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- In my view, there are two types of essays, one if normal essays, for which current icon is fine; But the second type is essays that are referenced from other guidelines and/or policies; Which are more than an mere essay. →AzaToth 18:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- What you are proposing is a bit revolutionary. What criteria would be used to distinguish the referenced essays from the opinions? And, regrettably, WP:DGAF may fall into the first category, and I certainly don't want such an Uncyclopedia-worthy essay to be distinguished from or "above" other essays. Also, my main point is to show that the essay icon does not accurately reflect the nature of essays in Wikipedia, and (now that I think about it) it's actually rather dull compared to policies' and guidelines' icons. Interchangeable|talk to me 22:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Overlinking in edit summaries - how about limiting editors to just a SINGLE link in an edit summary?
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm finding a raft of IPs are chronically making minor edits and then loading up the edit summary with a long list of their favorite wikilinks. For example, look at [this IP's list of contribs]. Note their behavior is continuing even [after a warning]. I can point to a number of other IPs that seem to favor the same collection of (overlinked) links in the edit summary.
Would it be hard to limit the edit summary to containing just a single link? That might be a more effective way to minimize the annoying behavior than taking multiple anons thru ANI, and its not obvious that there would be a major penalty for the rest of us NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose because it's very often valuable to use multiple links in edit-summaries, especially links to policy pages (eg. rvt per WP:NOR, WP:V etc.) and this proposal seems to be an overreaction to low-level disruptive behaviour. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 20:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose There have been a couple of cases where I've had to use 4+ links in edit summaries...link to user, and three policies to help convey thoughts (WP:N, WP:V, WP:3RR). If anything, I think there are a few cases were I feel the edit summaries should allow for longer text...but it's just a summary. There is no forseeable penalty to having a wikilink in an edit summary versus just text from an HTML standpoint...Now if there were external links (inappropriate links, etc), then we might need to tread on water there. JguyTalkDone 20:47, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
MODIFIED PROPOSAL: To address two opposing comments above, how about limiting the edit summary to containing just a single link of any kind - be it wiki or external - except (i.e., not counting) those that are preceded by prefix WP: NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Once again, Oppose...what about pages in the Special namespace? User namespace? This seems to be more trouble than it's worth. Sometimes editors need to link in the main and main_talk namespace. What is the harm in overlinking in the edit summary? I can't see one from a page load time standpoint... JguyTalkDone 21:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose- as others have pointed out, multiple links in an edit summary have legitimate and useful purposes. If someone is using a usually productive feature disruptively, you deal with them; you don't prevent everyone else from using that feature. Reyk YO! 21:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. When I read this proposal I immediately thought: "This is absurd. I have only met one editor who behaves like that in several years with the project." Turns out the editor you linked to is precisely the one I was thinking of. (The editor is easily recognisable by the edits to climate change articles.) We don't need formal rules for slightly problematic behaviour that is so extremely rare. Hans Adler 22:05, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Linking can be extremly useful and limiting it because one editor makes a hash of it is overkill. Agathoclea (talk) 22:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose - Don't limit productive editors because of a single disruptive editor. GB fan 22:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- reluctant Oppose. I don't agree with Hans; it's the same editor, but he uses hundreds of IPs; when he skips more rapidly than usual, some of his absurd edits may not be caught unless someone aware of his tactics is watching that particular article. Furthermore, I wouldn't say that it's rare; you'll probably find that most IP edits on climate change articles, or articles that he thinks are related to climate change, are this editor.
- However, even the default "undo" text has two links, one to the user talk page, and one to Special:Contributions. More seriously, there are times when I find that linking to two articles in the summary makes sense. Perhaps a more complex form, that if more than one article- or article-talk-space link is used, there must be more unlinked text than linked text.
- Whatever the decision, if we agree on it, the edit filter people can probably implement it, although I don't know if the load would be too great. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- FWIW, I don't think there's a particular need to pile on further bolded positions. Remember that developers require strong affirmative consensus prior to implementing a change such as this. –xenotalk 22:25, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
- No, this is a solution to something that's not really a problem. LadyofShalott 22:29, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
RESOLVED well that's clear, thanks for commenting.... Then again, if it isn't YOUR house getting regularly TP'd you might think TPing was a minor annoyance. I see this crap in my watchlist all the time.... its hard to find things in my watchlist due to clutter, and I end up taking time inspecting minor non-edits. But I'll pursue another idea. If anyone has followup suggestions to deal with the behavior (other than ignoring it) please write me at my talk page. Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
Acting without consensus
I've just noticed a bot called User:AnomieBOT/docs/FlagIconRemover which is starting to go from WikiProject to WikiProject deleting flagicons in infoboxes quoting WP:MOSFLAG and claiming it has the consensus of that project. However, WP:MOSFLAG itself is highly contentious and the discussion on the use of flags in infoboxes here reached an impasse with many votes for and against. The bot has automatically deleted flags from infoboxes in the relating to WP:WikiProject World Heritage Sites but I see no discussion or reference to a discussion at all on the talk page and a thread but no votes or consensus for mass deletion on the talk page of the actual template. Where there is discussion, the flag burners from WP:MOSFLAG are turning up on the project pages pushing for mass deletion, having failed to gain support on their own talk page. This appears to run contrary to Wikipedia's normal consensual approach. I propose 2 things:
- The bot is deleted before it wreaks any more havoc. There is no broad consensus at WP:MOSFLAG for this approach.
- WP:MOSFLAG is amended to better reflect the range of views on Wikipedia rather than being pro-flag burning as at present to avoid giving licence to those who do not have a clear majority of Wikipedia editors behind them. --Bermicourt (talk) 06:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- Having or not having a flag is the least of the problems with this dreadful template, which is totally inappropriate for most of the articles it is used on, as it gives all the wrong information. Johnbod (talk) 09:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- The bot only removes flags from within certain specific infoboxes, all of which have specific consensus for the bot to do this:
- Template:Infobox company – Template talk:Infobox company#Flag icons, WT:MOSFLAG#Flag icons in company and power station infoboxes
- Template:Infobox power station – Template talk:Infobox power station#Flag icons, WT:MOSFLAG#Flag icons in company and power station infoboxes
- Template:Infobox World Heritage Site – Template talk:Infobox World Heritage Site#Gradual improvements, Template talk:Infobox World Heritage Site#Flags and links
- You would know this if you had bothered to read the very page you linked to. If you see the bot actually removing flags from anywhere else besides within one of those three templates (or any templates that might be added by consensus in the future), please let me know (preferably by posting here) as that would be a bug and needs immediate repair. Anomie⚔ 10:40, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- There is no consensus for mass deletion of flags from infoboxes at MOSFLAG which makes the existence of the bot a concern. There is also no consensus within at least one of the projects named - World Heritage Sites. The two threads on the template talk page, here and here, are not conclusive; there is only vague reference to them at the Project Talk Page and, oddly, not one of the participants is a member of the project, but at least 3 are opponents of flags at WP:MOSFLAG. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- Fortunately, the bot doesn't try to do any "mass deletion of flags from infoboxes" as you continue to claim. As for the other, in one thread I see 3 supports and zero opposes, and in the other I see one person opposing versus three supporting. I have no way to tell if any person is a "member" of a project. Anomie⚔ 12:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- And "membership" of the project is not in any way relevant. Some members of some projects appear to think they OWN the pages their project is interested in. They do not. The suggestion that wikipedians who venture opinions you do not favour are some form of outsider is fairly repugnant. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- @Anomie. By "mass deletion" I mean the bot removes flag icons from all instances of a given infobox template, rather than editors doing this one article at a time.
- @Tagishsimon. But it is odd that not a single member of a project commented on the use of the bot to wipe out flags from the associated infobox, but several of the anti-flag group turned up. Of course, project members don't "own" the project infoboxes, but neither do the flag-burners, especially as they haven't achieved anywhere near a consensus.
- I'm only arguing for consensus and I feel this is being circumvented. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:25, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- If you have a discussion where several editors with a specific opinion show up and contribute to it, but more local project members don't care enough to argue against, then that is a form of consensus, right? —Akrabbimtalk 18:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- If a team of people with an agenda, abandon the main talk page on the issue and press ahead anyway by having a quick chat on obscure template talk pages, without clearly alerting those working on the project, calling it "consensus" and using a bot to achieve their aim, then moving to the next project, then that is a form of railroading. Not really in keeping with Wikipedia's ethos. I do hope that is not what is happening, but it rather looks like it. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- RE WHS: If a discussion which started on 26 January 2010 and extended to 27 July 2011 was a "quick chat", if the discussions on the infobox talk page wouldn't have been linked to multiple times from the WikiProject talk page and if a page watched by 40 editors is more "obscure" than one watched by less than 30 editors than you could have been right. --Elekhh (talk) 23:49, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- If a team of people with an agenda, abandon the main talk page on the issue and press ahead anyway by having a quick chat on obscure template talk pages, without clearly alerting those working on the project, calling it "consensus" and using a bot to achieve their aim, then moving to the next project, then that is a form of railroading. Not really in keeping with Wikipedia's ethos. I do hope that is not what is happening, but it rather looks like it. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- If you have a discussion where several editors with a specific opinion show up and contribute to it, but more local project members don't care enough to argue against, then that is a form of consensus, right? —Akrabbimtalk 18:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- And "membership" of the project is not in any way relevant. Some members of some projects appear to think they OWN the pages their project is interested in. They do not. The suggestion that wikipedians who venture opinions you do not favour are some form of outsider is fairly repugnant. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- Fortunately, the bot doesn't try to do any "mass deletion of flags from infoboxes" as you continue to claim. As for the other, in one thread I see 3 supports and zero opposes, and in the other I see one person opposing versus three supporting. I have no way to tell if any person is a "member" of a project. Anomie⚔ 12:45, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
- There is no consensus for mass deletion of flags from infoboxes at MOSFLAG which makes the existence of the bot a concern. There is also no consensus within at least one of the projects named - World Heritage Sites. The two threads on the template talk page, here and here, are not conclusive; there is only vague reference to them at the Project Talk Page and, oddly, not one of the participants is a member of the project, but at least 3 are opponents of flags at WP:MOSFLAG. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
Iff the bot is making articles compliant with the MOS, and iff there's been agreement with the respective wikiprojects, that's fine by me; asking for further "consensus" on another page seems to be needlessly obstructionary.. I think the burden of proof (so to speak) should be the other way round; if somebody opposes actions already in line with MOS and in line with the local community, it's up to them to bring a bigger stronger consensus if they want to stop the actions. Until then it's contempt for the existing consensus. bobrayner (talk) 02:56, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- But the MOS is discredited because it doesn't have consensus and in the case I scanned, there hasn't been agreement with the project. Instead, a few flag-burners have appeared on the template talk page, had a chat and then the bot has been let loose deleting infobox flags. That's avoiding the need for true consensus. --Bermicourt (talk) 05:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- You didn't get a consensus for your proposed change in June 2011. Is that what you mean by "discredited"? Has the burden of proof shifted since then? Incidentally, that proposal included wording about "flags ... deprecated by the relevant WikiProject following fair discussion", which is the basis of the bot action we're discussing here. Have the goalposts moved again? bobrayner (talk) 10:53, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- I shouldn't have to spell this out... the discussion showed there was no consensus for the existing MOSFLAG text: some wanted change - so clearly they aren't in favour of the existing text, some didn't. Even the most biassed reader can surely see the existing policy is not endorsed by anything that remotely approaches consensus! --Bermicourt (talk) 14:04, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- You didn't get a consensus for your proposed change in June 2011. Is that what you mean by "discredited"? Has the burden of proof shifted since then? Incidentally, that proposal included wording about "flags ... deprecated by the relevant WikiProject following fair discussion", which is the basis of the bot action we're discussing here. Have the goalposts moved again? bobrayner (talk) 10:53, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Is RfC bounded to accept a majority vote?
Hi,
I need your advice.
We have a long standing discussion about issue 2 (Bolivian Declaration of War) in Talk:War of the Pacific.
Eight editors (MarshalN20, Cloudaoc, 165.91.173.221, Tagishsimon, Marco polo, 90.197.66.202, Alex Harvey and Keysanger) have been involved and seven out of them are against me (Keysanger), the only one on the other side. Four (165.91.173.221, Tagishsimon, Marco polo, 90.197.66.202) out of the seven have participated with only one contribution to the discussion that began on 18 July 2011 and never again. From the rest 2 (MarshalN20, Cloudaoc) are Peruvians patriots (see his answers to the issue #10 in the Talk page). Alex Harvey has until now mediate very good but, in my opinion, is trapped in the Argument to moderation fallacy.
We had agreed to initate a RfC about the case, but now, based in the 7:1 majority they MarshalN20, and Alex, want to coerce me to accept the vote in the RfC.
I answered with WP:RFC RfCs are not votes. Discussion controls the outcome; it is not a matter of counting up the number of votes., but they insists.
What do you think about? Is it right to blackmail me?.
--Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 08:39, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
In which Tagishsimon whinges about Keysanger's post giving a false impression that Tagishsimon was involved in coercion. |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Which of these are you asking:
- It categorically the case that a majority in an RFC is binding on the article?
- For comments or feedback on this on your particular case
- Wanting to receive a general, non-contextual answer on #1 and then imply that it is an in-context answer for your particular dispute?
North8000 (talk) 11:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
Number 3. For the particular case, if you like use the talk page. --Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 09:49, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- While RfC's are not votes, per WP:CONSENSUS, "Consensus is not necessarily unanimity. Ideally, it arrives with an absence of objections, but if this proves impossible, a majority decision must be taken." If 7 people are telling you something, and what those seven people are saying is compliant with our policies, there has to come a point where the situation is resolved and the super-majority is considered consensus. If you are absolutely certain, despite being in such a tremendous numerical minority, that your position is correct, consider mediation; if you believe that other editors are somehow violating behavioral policies, consider arbitration. But, of course, be way of possible boomerangs before taking such a drastic step. Be especially careful if some of the super-majority comes from uninvolved editors. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:14, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- There can be a blatantly contradiction between consensus on the one hand and verificability, NOR, and NPOV on the other hand, specially if the article is interesting only for a smallish minority of WP editors, as in this case. What is your opinion, how good is Wikipedia finding the right article's position between consensus and verificability?. I fear that to a RfC will come 2 or 3 WP-editors plus some others IP-editors of dubious seriousness. Is there a criterion to decide the next step?. --Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 15:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
- Follow dispute resolution. The next stay may be mediation, or taking the issue to the dispute resolution noticeboard. Note, though, that just because you think you're absolutely correct and following policy when 7 other editors are not, does not mean that you necessarily are. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:07, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- There can be a blatantly contradiction between consensus on the one hand and verificability, NOR, and NPOV on the other hand, specially if the article is interesting only for a smallish minority of WP editors, as in this case. What is your opinion, how good is Wikipedia finding the right article's position between consensus and verificability?. I fear that to a RfC will come 2 or 3 WP-editors plus some others IP-editors of dubious seriousness. Is there a criterion to decide the next step?. --Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 15:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Pending changes post-mortem; what did we like, what did we hate, what needs more work?
Pending changes has not been used on articles for some time, and the trial that never ended is dead, so I'm hoping we can have a sensible discussion about the matter. Before anybody makes any proposals, I think it would be helpful, now the dust has settled, to answer a few questions, which I'll post in subsections so they can be discussed individually. Feel free to add your own subsections, but I'm hoping this can be more of a post-mortem than any sort of proposal. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
What worked well
While pending changes was in regular use, which parts of it (if any) were beneficial? What was good about it, what did we like, what (if anything) was better about it than 'traditional' protection methods?
- I appreciated pending changes for what it was - 'pending changes'. I still believe that all BLPs should necessarily have 'pending changes' implemented. I work occasionally on the foundation's wikinews site and the pending changes concept works fantastically well there too. Wifione Message 15:50, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- Concur that BLP articles should receive 'pending changes' protection as a default, even though this defies WP:BOLD. High-profile persons are favored targets of vandals, POV-pushers, and similar miscreants, and while forcing pending-changes protection on BLP articles would slow down legitimate edits, it would also have (IMO) a chilling effect on said miscreants, and with a bit of good fortune, get them to turn their attention elsewhere...like maybe to something actually productive, like backhoe wrestling. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 16:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- Have you considered the workload from that? A quick Back-of-the-envelope calculation shows we have to approve around 5000 edits per day from IPs alone (and probably several thousand more from new editors) if we protect the 500.000 BLPs. Who is gonna do that? Not saying it can't be done, but this needs to be considered. Yoenit (talk) 09:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
- File this under the "technical limitations" section below, along with the old military adage of "you can have it fast, cheap or right...pick two." I think it would be highly beneficial to drop pending-changes protection onto BLP articles as a default, but implementing it won't be easy, and unless someone comes up with a technological solution that simplifies the job for patrollers, it won't be fast. But I think that's why we have these RfC sessions: not only do they give us a chance to make ourselves heard, they also allow for a bit of brainstorming. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 14:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
- Have you considered the workload from that? A quick Back-of-the-envelope calculation shows we have to approve around 5000 edits per day from IPs alone (and probably several thousand more from new editors) if we protect the 500.000 BLPs. Who is gonna do that? Not saying it can't be done, but this needs to be considered. Yoenit (talk) 09:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
- Concur that BLP articles should receive 'pending changes' protection as a default, even though this defies WP:BOLD. High-profile persons are favored targets of vandals, POV-pushers, and similar miscreants, and while forcing pending-changes protection on BLP articles would slow down legitimate edits, it would also have (IMO) a chilling effect on said miscreants, and with a bit of good fortune, get them to turn their attention elsewhere...like maybe to something actually productive, like backhoe wrestling. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 16:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- I liked the big cultural advantage I saw in this plan - which didn't really appear because of the limited deployment - and that is that by removing pressure from recent changes and new pages patrollers and killing the "siege mentality" that normally characterises these places, we can be nicer to newbies. Unlike switching off article creation, it doesn't have an immediate impact on the new users - but what it does do is destroy the idea of recent changes as a race. We have a lot less pressure, and the result is that we can afford to be nicer to people, because the pressure is to do things right, and not to do lots of things. Ironholds (talk) 14:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
- I think it was a very useful tool while it existed. There was loud opposition to the way it was implemented, but I think it was a useful tool. A blanket policy (ie. all BLPs) might be a little excessive (although in a sense it would makes requirements on reviewers much clearer because pending changes would become synonymous with one particular content policy, BLP). Personally, I think we'd be better off with PC being an extra tool in the toolbox, an alternative to semiprotection (a low bar; easy for a determined miscreant to get over) and full-protection (a high bar because almost all regular good-faith editors are shut out as well as the baddies) to be used when appropriate. PC would be perfect for an article with a history like John Craven. bobrayner (talk) 02:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- I though it is a much better way of protection when articles are being repeatedly vandalized. I think we should use it as the primary means of protection in such cases and that it should be time limited though the time could be quite long where the vandalism is obviously long term and persistent. I don't think we should specially use it for BLP articles except perhaps being more ready to apply it when vandalism is occurring. Together with using it much less often and just for vandalism I would also up the requirements of reviewers a bit to deter long term vandals setting up lots of usernames with reviewer rights. Overall I believe it is a very useful anti vandalism tool and better than just banning ips. Dmcq (talk) 13:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't agree that it was a good solution to the BLP problem. (See my comment below.) That being said... I do appreciate that it was part of an overall movement to do something about badly sourced, even malicious BLPs. I would not recommend using flagged revisions for BLPs in the future. But perhaps we can use this cultural momentum to focus on better ways to avoid harmful BLPs. Dzlife (talk) 14:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I suppose it is no big surprise that I like this tool a lot and look forward to the day when we can use it again. At first I shared some of the concerns others expressed about creating more "class division" on the project, but I didn't see that during the trial, and in fact it lowers the bar for getting an edit live on a protected article and gives users an admin-like right that is fairly easy to get. In short, the benefits outweighed the problems we had, and if we start using it again, the Foundation is willing to improve and refine the tool to better suit the specific needs of this project. If the day comes when we are ready to move beyond discussion and try it again, I already have a temporary policy draft and an draft RFC on it's use all ready to go if anyone wants to take them over. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
What did not work well
What policy or cultural aspects of pending changes would need to be changed if pending changes were ever to be used in the future? In terms of policy or Wikipedia culture, what did we hate, what were the drawbacks, what (if anything) was worse about it than 'traditional' protection methods?
- Maybe this has been proven wrong, but it seemed like IPs fixing BLP problems was what pending changes prevented. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:18, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
- Toward the end of the trial many problems became apparent. What was originally mooted as a "quick check for vandalism" became a system where reviewers become responsible, perhaps even legally responsible, for the content of any edit they approve. In cases where the reviewer couldn't determine the validity of the edit, the default was shifting to reject rather than accept. A reviewer (namely me) could even be stripped of reviewer rights for philosophically opposing expansive interpretations of BLP (i.e. believing in WP:WELLKNOWN, part of BLP I might add). There was no policy for who gets or loses reviewer rights. A single admin could put an article under Pending Changes Level 2 so that no one but reviewers could approve changes, then ride herd over the reviewers deciding what they could accept or not, thus owning the article lock stock and barrel. Combined with procedural irregularities in the trial, the effect was not merely a technical inequality among editors, but a very strongly hierarchical system. In other words, the system revealed itself as a tool for censorship, by which I mean, the right of a small number of persons to decide what widely publicized, easily available content shall never go into Wikipedia because they don't like how it looks. I am convinced that it should not be accepted in any form. Wnt (talk) 15:40, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
- when I do outreach, and try to get new active editors for Wikipedia, one of the points which appeals to people most is that when they fix something on Wikipedia, it becomes immediately visible to the world: there is nothing else an ordinary person can do that has such impact. Last week, when introducing Wikipedia to a class, I experienced once more the same reaction: we made a change together, and there it was--there was the sort of intake of breath that people do when they see something remarkable. The class ended, with them eager to start doing it themselves. Obviously, this has its dangers also--but most people who contribute contribute usefully. We know how to handle vandalism--there are multiple ways we do it, some obvious, some less so. What we do not yet really know how to do is increase participation, We need everything we can get. The WP that pending changes was modeled after was the deWP--the same WP that wants to reduce its size by half. instead of growing. And they have indeed found a technique that might do that. DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Pending changes had the worst of all worlds. The obstacles of a closed editing environment combined with the workload of maintaining an open editing environment, with a level of confusion to new editors worse than either open or closed. I would sooner consider semi-protection for a wider range of articles than continue with flagged revisions. I might even sooner consider endless vandalism to BLPs over semi-protection, if I didn't think it was slowly killing the morale of the few people who have a taste for clean-up activities. Pending changes was always a solution in search of a problem. A tool that no one asked for. Dzlife (talk) 14:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Technical limitations
What technical aspects would need to be addressed if pending changes were ever to be used in the future?
General comments
For miscellaneous comments or queries that do not fit into the above sections
- It might save time and effort to go back to the previous discussions, where exactly these kinds of questions were asked before, and answered in a lot of detail, with a lot of community input (for example, the technical issues that were reported). What I would most like to see before any new proposal is contemplated is an addressing of the problems that were perceived by the community before. Any new proposal needs to have already fixed those things, if it is to have a ghost of a chance. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:51, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- We've had discussions about the technical issues, but I don't know of any real discussion on the benefits and drawbacks. Most of that seems to have been raised in the format of straw polls, which are essentially just votes with a rationale appended, but no real discussion. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:26, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- I never wanted pending changes or any other backdoor implementation of flagged revisions, and I was glad to see the trial end. I've never liked the idea at all. It creates another two-tier user right that differentiates between those who're allowed to edit this article right now and those who aren't; and it adds another layer of technical complexity for a new user to learn. Neither of these is a good thing at a time when the number of active users is declining. We need to find ways to make Wikipedia simpler and easier to edit.—S Marshall T/C 00:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
- When reviewing there were times I felt I was being put in the position of a public censure. If I hit an edit that I knew would be rolled-back by some and retained by others (such as a subjective change that, while policy compliant, I personally disagreed with) I oftentimes passed on reviewing it rather than being put in an uncomfortable position. Watching over every edit and stamping their acceptance/denial like this felt creepy, bureaucratic, and strangely Kafkaesque. I'm not sure if other editors were comfortable with reviewing in this manner, but I was not. ThemFromSpace 01:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- It became a bondongle, however it is used in other Wikimedia projects. The issue I think, is that we lost focus of the basic problem, which is how to fight vandalism while also lowering the threshold to entry for legitimate editors. While I do support anonymous editing and recognize this is a way to start (it is, almost to a person, how we all started), there is also the reality that other than obvious vandalic trolling, more subtle forms cannot be stopped in any systemic fashion. We are extremely vulnerable to these kinds of editing. I can understand opposing flagrev and reviewed changes, but what about a less intrusive method to provide watchfulness, like we do with new pages? If we lower the barriers to entry we have to also lower the barriers to patrolling, and this is very seldom discussed.--Cerejota (talk) 03:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Writing as someone who was initially mildly favorable to the proposal, but came to oppose it, the entire exercise to get it adopted proved to be an example of how not to attempt to achieve changes on Wikipedia. It originally was sold as a solution to the BLP problem (whatever that is), & Jimmy Wales bet his reputation on getting it adopted. But at no time did anyone provide any solid facts to show whether this worked -- not even a quantifiable definition of what "worked" was. Instead, the entire process appeared to be simply an effort of will to get Pending changes accepted by the community. As a result, all discussion about Pending changes drifted into the worst of all possible situations: people were left to argue about it based on their opinions -- & everyone has one -- allowing some to pontificate over their usual talking points, others to find an excuse to continue personal feuds, & still others to simply stir up trouble. Had the whole process been tied to obtaining tangible & measurable data, the community could have come to a true consensus-based conclusion. Instead, I believe a lot of people were left disheartened by this debacle, & a lot of good people are reconsidering just how committed they should be to contributing to Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 06:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- The trial was a failure, a monument to how not to do things. I think pretty much everyone agrees that at this point that the trial was a disaster and that somebody really messed up by not monitoring the data associated with the trial. What that data was and who was supposed to be collecting it is of course the massive grey area that screwed the whole thing up. Hopefully we can take that as a lesson learned about getting specificity for any future trial periods and move on with the conversation on the usefulness of this tool instead of rehashing the mistakes of the past. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:18, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
{{Flatlist}}
Should we be using {{flatlist}} in navboxes, or is using • , · , • still okay?Smallman12q (talk) 23:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
- The left alignment of {{flatlist}} looks utterly shit. If it where to center the text it might be a useful alternative, but as it stands now I would replace it in any navbox I find for aesthetic reasons. Yoenit (talk) 08:33, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Request for Comment: Capitalization of common names of animal species
As customary to notify this noticeboard, I have started a request for comment for the 2011 Arbitration Committee Elections. The community is invited and encouraged to discuss the issues at hand in order to develop a rough consensus for the procedures and rules for the election in December. –MuZemike 00:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Editors deleting things from Userspace drafts
I didn't know editors could even do this, but I've had two of them recently run Bots through my drafts, for no rational purpose I can determine except to waste their own time, and make my work more difficult to do. I want to know how this can be prevented? They're drafts, they aren't posted live yet, why are they changing them on me?
One of the editors, I'm finding his actions repeatedly disruptive. in the past month I've reversed two deletion decision by this person, they have years of editing experience and yet wanted to delete two posted articles that clearly met the notability criteria. Today I see he used a bot to delete the category tags from two draft articles in my Userspace. I've left a couple of messages on his Talk page, one over this, one in the past, he doesn't respond. What's the next recourse in dealing with him?
OttawaAC (talk) 22:59, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- You're not supposed to link to userspace from mainspace. Including all those categories inside your userspace draft has that effect, so it is quite correct to remove them. You only put the categories in when the article goes live. Reyk YO! 23:31, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for the quick response.
I still need some clarification on the user docs though. The article for Help:Userspace draft doesn't mention the category problem at all. I see that Wikipedia:User_pages does mention it, but I need a clearer technical explanation; it states:
You can also force a portion of text to be ignored by adding after it, or by adding a colon before "Category", like this: Category:Bridges to force a category link to act like a plain wikilink.
What's the definition of "wikilink"? What's the distinction between that and a category link?
One other issue, one of the editors used a Bot that didn't touch the category links, but it went through doing something to templates within a French article that I had yet to translate to English. The French Wikipedia templates don't function in the English Wikipedia, so I don't understand what was happening there. During the translation process, I would have removed the templates anyway, but I wonder why the Bot would identify them and try cleaning them up if they aren't English templates. Are there cleanup Bots that go after {{}} in Userspace drafts??
OttawaAC (talk) 00:33, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Plain wikilinks just link to the target category, they serve as a placeholder. Regular category links put that page into public categories, which means readers will find them. As for the bots, please link to the edits so we know what you're talking about. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 00:37, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
User:OttawaAC/women_and_literary_salons The Bot was Plasticspork. It translated the French words in a Portal tag to the English versions, I think maybe that's all it did. The other one was HotCat in another article, Women in Tunisia. The user documentation is a little contradictory, the Wikipedia: User_pages says not to use templates (is that anything with {{}} in your markup?), but then Help:Userspace draft says: You can use the template to tag a userspace draft if it is not automatically done for you.
Sorry to hijack the forum with technical help issues, if you want me to cut and paste this in another forum, let me know. I appreciate your help. OttawaAC (talk) 00:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Well, it is kinda policy related as well as technical so there's no real problem. Glad to be able to help. Reyk YO! 08:09, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Neither User:Alan Liefting nor User:Plasticspork are bots (bots always have Bot at the end of their name). I don't have a problem with their edit, but if you want to discuss it I suggest you bring it up with the user in question. Templates are indeed anything between {{}} (see Wikipedia:Transclusion for more information about what curly brackets do) and you are allowed to use them in userspace. I think you misread Wikipedia: User pages, as it only says you are not allowed to add categories. Yoenit (talk) 08:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I never said those Users were Bots. The edit history appears to me to indicate that they used edit tools of some kind, which I thought were bots. I have to find out why/how Plastikspork edited a template, but Alan Liefting was using something called HotCat, if it isn't a bot, then I would guess it's a macro? Or something else? So many editing tool mysteries to be unravelled... The Wikipedia:User pages article has header/content conflicts, IMO. If you look at the index box at the top, you can see that header 6 is "What may I not have in my user pages?" Nested under that is 6.3 "Categories, templates and redirects"... For me it's precise in its ambiguity...I assume too much I guess. I'm off to read some more user documentation and figure out what goes on with the more advanced editing. OttawaAC (talk) 21:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
a link to a page that redirects back to the original page?
On first line of 4th Dimension (software), there is a link to Laurent Ribardiere which redirects back to 4th Dimension (software). Should I leave it like that, change the link to the page itself, remove the link, or remove the link and make it bold? Coeur (talk) 08:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- remove the link, but don't make it bold (that is typically only done for alternative names). Yoenit (talk) 08:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Deleting entries from disambiguation page - asserting?
The disambiguation page RTG two entries for Royal Thai Government and Regular tree grammar that another editor seems to think won't fit there because those articles do not assert that they are also known as "RTG". So is this how wikipedia policy should be interpretated? Because if one try to find out what "RTG" means and it's one of the deleted interpretations then wikipedia will be of no value in that case.Electron9 (talk) 21:24, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- Stop whining and go update Regular tree grammar with some of these sources to include the shortcut, then readd it to the dab. And for the Thai government use these. Now was that so hard? Yoenit (talk) 21:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
- I support the notion that if the target article does not mention the term on the dab page, that dab entry should be dropped. It might not be a specific statement in policy, but it is in line with the whole encyclopedic concept of verifiability. This shouldn't be done blithely or without an edit note, though, as sometimes the target article supporting passage is removed by an editor who isn't aware of the utility of it, which leads back to Yoenit's pointing out that they should be supported by citations in the target article, again in keeping with policy. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Delegitimization as a tactic has been marked as a policy
Wikipedia:Delegitimization as a tactic ( | 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, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Done Cambalachero (talk) 02:40, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Why I haven't donated to Wikipedia yet > notoriety standards / policies too strict
[Skip to the bottom if you just want to see my suggestion.]
I love Wikipedia to death, but I can't get behind your site's unrealistic standards of what makes something notable, culturally relevant or factual. These rules prevent creating articles on many valid real world subjects. Just because information is obscure, does not appear in print on paper, or was not published by a corporate source, does not make it invalid or mean Wikipedia should ignore it.
I can understand that for credibility purposes, Wikipedia might want to fact check and require references. However, by being too strict about this, you are severely limiting the value of the site to accurately document the real world.
The requirements for citing a source need to be relaxed. One should not be limited to parroting some other source in order to contribute information to the Web site.
For example, a search for "Mark Prindle" turns up nothing. Although he is a well known music journalist who
- has interviewed hundreds of noteworthy individuals (who themselves are documented in Wikipedia), and
- whose name can be found in many many OTHER Wikipedia articles, and
- who has been repeatedly featured on TV (Fox's "Red Eye"), and
- has many visitors to his Web site & followers on Facebook, etc.
evidently he is just not famous enough for Wikipedia. Several people have tried to create an article on the subject of "Mark Prindle" and it has been repeatedly deleted. Wikipedia lets Paris Hilton have an entry. Wikipedia lets the Unabomber have an entry. Wikipedia even lets Sanjaya from American Idol (whose 15 minutes of fame are pretty thin compared to markprindle.com's 15-year presence with its thousands of record reviews) have a page. What's wrong with this picture?
Over the years, I have tried to enter articles on various bands, magazines, and noteworthy individuals, only to see the majority of them deleted because they weren't noticed by Time Magazine or the New York Times. As it stands, subjects like the 80s/90s central NJ music magazine The Splatter Effect, the Philadelphia avante garde indie band The Tibetan Bowlers, and music journalist Mark Prindle, are doomed to be forgotten if Wikipedia were to triumph as the de-facto document of the history of planet Earth.
So you have to be mainstream famous to be in Wikipedia? I just can't justify giving money to an organization that supports such elitism in the media.
The whole point of "wiki" is supposed to be collaboration, which implies that we are all participants and worthy of inclusion. One of the great benefits and potentials of the Internet is that it allows the public to circumvent traditional media channels and BE the media, so that no one all-powerful entity controls the flow of information.
As such, I would propose the following change: Rather, why not assign a "credibility score" to each article, so you can allow articles on obscure topics. That way, instead of deleting articles that could not be verified or do not pertain to a mainstream subject, readers can at least access the information, with a caveat that it is not necessarily "bona fide". For deletions, the only content you really need to restrict and delete would be slanderous or libelous information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.97.224.10 (talk • contribs) 22:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- tl;dr version: "Waaah. my personal hobbyhorse doesn't have an entry on Wikipedia. Waaah." → ROUX ₪ 05:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Your entire argument is based on an assumption that almost every Wikipedian would disagree with: "Just because information is obscure, does not appear in print on paper, or was not published by a corporate source, does not make it invalid or mean Wikipedia should ignore it." If nobody else has taken the time to write about something, why would Wikipedia document it? We aren't generating content here, we are accumulating, consolidating, and presenting information. —Akrabbimtalk 12:28, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- re:76.97.224.10 So who decides what information is true or not? If there are no sources available, then how will you source the article once you make it and how are other editors going to verify the information? Are you going to allow anyone to write material from their experience no matter how obscure the subject? WP:N, WP:V, and WP:OR are there for a reason. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 12:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- A lot of people can't get passed the term "notability", and take it as a personal insult when a preferred topic isn't covered. Notability is still just about sources. On one hand, requiring good sources protects the encyclopedia from articles written entirely from personal observations and opinions. But on the other hand, it also protects the subject from being written entirely from personal observations and opinions. This is especially the case for biographies of living people. It sounds frustrating to be excluded from the encyclopedia. But imagine how much more frustrating it would be to have an article about a subject that's been written by someone with an axe to grind, and no one else knows enough about the subject to figure out it the article is fair. Shorter note: the policies are there for a reason, and requiring good sources is better for all the parties involved. Dzlife (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- Notability, subtly, is not just about sources, though first and foremost it does help to affirm that a topic can be written about in a manner to meet WP:V, WP:NOR, and other core policy. What notability does, by requiring secondary sources, assures that we can write a good article on a subject, one that doesn't just rattle off primary facts, but in facts helps to assert the context and importance of that topic. Without that aspect, we're just a large database, and no helpful then any other reference work. By having the in-depth sources and using those effectively, we can easily write a well-comprehensive article that provides more information for the reader to read further on. --MASEM (t) 14:25, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Posthumous barnstars
I'm sorry to say that we have recently lost a Wikipedian. For those of you who don't already know, User:Bahamut0013 passed away. In the standard way of things, his user page has been protected. Well-wishers have left messages at his talk page, including two posthumous barnstars. I've been asked at my talk page about elegantly displaying those somewhere on his user page (there was only one at the time I was asked), and I wanted to check and see if there's any established protocol for that. The talk page of Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Guidelines suggests that it is not heavily watched.
In this particular case, the barnstars given are likely to have been very special to the recipient, particularly the WikiChevrons. I don't know of any other barnstar that must be bestowed by a WikiProject instead of individually. But I do worry that a general practice of opening pages for barnstars could lead to cluttering of the page at best, and it doesn't necessarily preserve the memory of the individual. This particular user has an awards page at User:bahamut0013/Wiki Stuff to which the material could be added since it isn't protected (should it be? or just the top page?).
Basically, I'm looking for an idea of how the community feels we should approach a few things:
- Given full page protection recommended at Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Guidelines, should we protect user page subpages as well?
- Should the user page(s) be edited to add anything other than the hatnote explaining the situation? If posthumous barnstars are permitted, should they always be permitted (so long as given in good faith, of course) or should the wellwishers at the talk page agree which and where?
Having had no involvement in the drafting of this guideline and given the delicate nature of these situations, I don't particularly feel like it would be appropriate for me to just be bold, not where people's feelings may be so heavily engaged. That said, again, I do suspect that bahamut0013 would have been very pleased with these particular barnstars. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:49, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- In this particular case I know that the widow is in contact with some users here. So she could be asked or alerted. I might be wrong but if I was her I would be happy to see such an award. Agathoclea (talk) 11:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
RfC: Should underage editors be topic banned from articles in the WikiProject Pornography topic area?
Prompted by this in Jimbo's talk page Proposal for a permanent community topic ban of underage (under Florida law) editors from all editing and participation in the WikiProject Pornography topic area, narrowly construed to articles with the WikiProject banner in the talk page and the associated Portal and the WikiProject itself. If enough support for this is expressed in the RfC, then the ban will come into effect immediately, but a draft for a policy will be made for further community consideration - the idea is to have this become a permanent behavioral policy. There are some editors who feel all areas regarding human sexuality are inherently pornographic in the way we treat them, hence this topic ban is narrowly construed to evade such controversies. Furthermore, most of the articles in the WikiProject Pornography are uncontroversially not pornographic - lots of BLPs and BIOs etc - so the topic ban is not construed in terms of editing behavior/content but of topic area participation. I think this would strike a balance between our need to protect the project from needless controversy and our need to follow correct application of WP:NOTCENSORED.--Cerejota (talk) 19:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)