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: Nobody is saying that OTRS needs to disclose information. Nobody is saying that OTRS users are willfully abusing this. Are these two points understood? [[User:M|<span style="position:relative;display:inline-block;color:#222;line-height:1.3em;border:1px solid #bbb;"><i style="position:absolute;z-index:-1;bottom:0;width:2.2em;height:8px;background:#eee;"> </i> '''M''' </span>]] 00:26, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
::So, if there's no sign that OTRS users are using their status to unfairly suppress people, and there's no objection to it being non-public, and whether or not it's policy is irrelevant (and to argue over this point would be [[WP:POINT|needlessly disruptive]]), what ''is'' it about? [[Special:Contributions/81.111.114.131|81.111.114.131]] ([[User talk:81.111.114.131|talk]]) 00:32, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
::: (If that statement is removed, it no longer says anything that might be construed as policy.) Here's an [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AAri_Ben-Menashe&diff=39945219&oldid=39944338 edit] by an OTRS user which introduces a BLP violation. If a mistake this big was made (keep in mind that OTRS users should know BLP inside and out), then they are certainly prone to making slightly smaller mistakes. When they do make these mistakes, it's not our policy to go into OTRS dispute resolution - no, it's our policy to follow ''real'' policies, like BRD (etc.), which urge serious care and good judgement when reverting or otherwise dealing with BLP info. [[User:M|<span style="position:relative;display:inline-block;color:#222;line-height:1.3em;border:1px solid #bbb;"><i style="position:absolute;z-index:-1;bottom:0;width:2.2em;height:8px;background:#eee;"> </i> '''M''' </span>]] 04:14, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
== Proposed addition to oversight policy ==
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Revision as of 04:15, 16 August 2009
Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | WMF | Miscellaneous |
- Table of contents
- First discussion
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If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.
Strategic Planning
The Wikimedia Foundation has begun a year long phase of strategic planning. During this time of planning, members of the community have the opportunity to propose ideas, ask questions, and help to chart the future of the Foundation. In order to create as centralized an area as possible for these discussions, the Strategy Wiki has been launched. This wiki will provide an overview of the strategic planning process and ways to get involved, including just a few questions that everyone can answer. All ideas are welcome, and everyone is invited to participate.
Please take a few moments to check out the strategy wiki. It is being translated into as many languages as possible now; feel free to leave your messages in your native language and we will have them translated (but, in case of any doubt, let us know what language it is, if not english!).
All proposals for the Wikimedia Foundation may be left in any language as well.
Please, take the time to join in this exciting process. The importance of your participation can not be overstated.
(please cross-post widely and forgive those who do)
Wikipedia - Metamorphosis from Utopia to Bureaucratic Stasis
The editors at Wikipedia have taken control, and that is the end. Sorry. But study of utopias show they always fail. Que sara sara.
The point of data is data, not style sheets or adherence to yet more stringent article sub-heading indentation conventions. Or whether something ought to be capitalized in the middle of a sentence not. Sloppy good data is better than immaculately formatted no data.
The hard part is gathering the data, the easy part is editing and formatting. So Wikipedia is now chock full of editors ready to pounce and make sure nothing, NOTHING, can possibly pass their stringent review without getting dinged. Criticism is always easier than creation of new works.
All this effort at "clean up"? Should have been spent gathering more data.
So most folks now are scared of adding anything new to Wikipedia. It is just going to get critized and most likely deleted. Wikipedia descends into a static reference of sorts, and folks go back to Google.
Google indexes without judgement. Very fair. A lot of crap in searches, but nothing gets left behind. Give me freedom and fair over oppressive negativism anyday.
So that is my two cents. Feel free to criticize and delete. Because for sure there is some obscure formatting stylistic convention that I have violated here that is just insufferable to the Lords of Wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs) 00:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Note: this is the very first edit for their username. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- That's not very relevant, it only goes to make you look childish. People are always encouraged to create an account, even just to comment. 74.198.49.199 (talk) 15:12, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- It is not a very impressive argument; and if only equal care and attention has been given by the poster when submitting "data" to wikipedia, I'm unsurprised that the poster's nose is out of joint. For a more considered version, check out the New Scientist's After the boom, is Wikipedia heading for bust?. (And the answer to NS is, "err, no." --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Trying to make a WP:POINT? Irbisgreif (talk) 15:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- I am rather curious to know which article was deleted to lead to these complaints. As it is, there is absolutely nothing actionable here, so really, the only response I can add is "Umm, ok?" Resolute 16:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Irbisgreif - how is this disruptive? Yes, they are trying to make a point, but not a WP:POINT. That shortcut should be deleted given how often it is misused; it's only a bad thing to disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point, not to make a point by discussing it calmly, whether you believe it to be valid or not. Discussing issues is a good thing! – Toon 16:32, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Ah, but is this a policy issue? Or is it just someone trying to use the policy discussion area as a soapbox? Irbisgreif (talk) 18:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Although I find the use of capitalised links very irritating, since your usage of such is the (sub)topic here, I have to ask whether your question was you know, that one. Since discussing such issues is what the village pumps are for, I think rather than worrying about whether a request is placed in the correct section, we should just get on with the issue at hand. Questioning a user's motives isn't helpful, especially when done in an indirect way which will only be understood by the regulars, as is the case with WP:ALLCAPS. This user has found something that they think is bad for WP and they aren't bitching about it off-site; they brought it to a community discussion boards to try and get something done about it. We would do well to be more receptive to criticism on this project, in my honest opinion. – Toon 19:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Is it really needed to assume good faith in this case? This editor made an account, then immediately navigated to a large public area and posted a nearly incoherent rant on how bad Wikipedia is. He has, in essence, assumed bad faith on the part of every editor. Irbisgreif (talk) 19:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Although I find the use of capitalised links very irritating, since your usage of such is the (sub)topic here, I have to ask whether your question was you know, that one. Since discussing such issues is what the village pumps are for, I think rather than worrying about whether a request is placed in the correct section, we should just get on with the issue at hand. Questioning a user's motives isn't helpful, especially when done in an indirect way which will only be understood by the regulars, as is the case with WP:ALLCAPS. This user has found something that they think is bad for WP and they aren't bitching about it off-site; they brought it to a community discussion boards to try and get something done about it. We would do well to be more receptive to criticism on this project, in my honest opinion. – Toon 19:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Ah, but is this a policy issue? Or is it just someone trying to use the policy discussion area as a soapbox? Irbisgreif (talk) 18:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Should have been spent gathering more data - People work on whatever they want to work on. After nearly 3 million articles, we're about at the point where we're out of new topics that the majority of people care enough about to write about, so we focus on improving existing content. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an aggregation service or a search engine, we should definitely try to be more than a place to dump "data." We should strive to look better than some random geocities website. In any case, any real message you may have is just getting lost in the dramatics and rants. Mr.Z-man 18:32, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- I think this can be summed up as a request for change in policy. For example, something like "changes should not be reverted if they are needy rather than bad (see Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol), they should instead be fixed". I watch a lot of pages, and I believe that this _is_ an ongoing problem - not because of current wikipedia policy saying you need to do it, but because maybe it should prevent things like this. By limiting the contribution to wikipedia to those from people who already know the ropes, we are limiting the selection of users who can contribute - which is exactly not the point. (examples: I've seen good edits made by foreign languge editors removed just because of the grammar/formatting. I've seen verifiable facts removed because the anon editor didn't know how to find a reference - when really, they should have been just tagged with citation needed). Luminifer (talk) 18:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Excellent analysis sir! The "clean-up" junkies perhaps feel that tags are untidy/unclean? I have even seen "Probably true, but I'm removing this until a ref is found". Unbelievable!!
- The originator here may agree
- with the analogy of someone
- polishing to a great sheen the car
- they've just run into a great tree. HarryAlffa (talk) 19:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Why was this archived right after I stated how this is actually a badly-phrased request for policy change? Luminifer (talk) 19:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- I agree whoever archived it acted in bad-faith when archiving the thread. Just because you disagree with the motives an editor had when starting a thread does not mean it gets filed away, in this case it opened a new parallel discussion when Luminifer made his comment. Discussion was not closed nor was the issue settled. Yes, the poster who started this thread was a little insane probably, but others like Toon05 showed a willingness and interest in continuing a thread along more sane thought. I dont want this to now start into a fight with that editor over whether or not it should have been archived, it simply shouldnt have been, if they want to argue too bad because I wont respond, and neither should anyone else in sticking up for them or for me, since this is not the forum to have that discussion as this is the Village Pump (policy) and not the "I disagree with you thinking I did something wrong forum". My talk page isnt the forum either btw, so until such a forum exists, dont bother responding or trying to defend yourself.
As for this topic, which I agree with Luminifer and encourage everyone to read his post and that of Toon05 in the now archived section. The verifiability policy does in fact state that it is common courtesy for a reviewer/editor to take time and look for a source FIRST before removing a non-cited fact. Editors who simply remove without researching may not be lazy, they may just be busy. That is why we have citation needed templates, more editors need to be "taught" to use these instead of simply removing information UNLESS that information is in fact vandalism, a copy-vio problem, outright false, libel, or dangerous in some other manner.Camelbinky (talk) 20:32, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Thank you for your response! I hadn't realized that the policy really explicitly stated what you just said - that editors should not remove content without researching. Would you mind showing where it's stated? That would be very helpful (and maybe then we don't need to discuss actual policy so much as to ask why it's not being followed...). Luminifer (talk) 20:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- While I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any of you, one factor that must be taken into consideration is this category here. Apparently, we have over 190,000 articles with unsourced statements: some as a result of people using {{fact}} as a get-out clause[citation needed] ;) – B.hotep •talk• 20:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- 190k out of how many total articles? I think adding the CN or FACT tag (they're the same, right? I noticed they get autochanged to the same thing, anyway) is not problematic - it proves that wikipedia is a "live" organism, so to speak, and alerts anyone who comes across an article and is actually doing research to things that might or might not be true. Indeed, those users, upon seeing that little bracketed phrase might do the research themself, and then fix the article one way or the other. In other words, I don't see this as a problem - this seems to be how it's supposed to work! Luminifer (talk) 21:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- I must clarify that while the policy does state it is "common courtesy" to research for a source oneself before removing information, it does not state that one MUST, it simply a suggestion to keep reviewers from pissing off editors. Here is the quote from WP:Verifiability-
Any material lacking a reliable source may be removed, but how quickly this should happen depends on the material in question and the overall state of the article. Editors might object if you remove material without giving them enough time to provide references, especially in an underdeveloped article. It has always been good practice to make reasonable efforts to find sources oneself that support such material, and cite them.Camelbinky (talk) 21:17, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- So, does the question become "what do we do when editors repeatedly do not follow 'good practice' and/or alienate new users?" Luminifer (talk) 04:12, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
- Educate them, by pointing them at pages such as User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage, where the good practice is traced all the way back to its roots in the very first versions of our policies. Uncle G (talk) 20:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- So, does the question become "what do we do when editors repeatedly do not follow 'good practice' and/or alienate new users?" Luminifer (talk) 04:12, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
- I must clarify that while the policy does state it is "common courtesy" to research for a source oneself before removing information, it does not state that one MUST, it simply a suggestion to keep reviewers from pissing off editors. Here is the quote from WP:Verifiability-
- 190k out of how many total articles? I think adding the CN or FACT tag (they're the same, right? I noticed they get autochanged to the same thing, anyway) is not problematic - it proves that wikipedia is a "live" organism, so to speak, and alerts anyone who comes across an article and is actually doing research to things that might or might not be true. Indeed, those users, upon seeing that little bracketed phrase might do the research themself, and then fix the article one way or the other. In other words, I don't see this as a problem - this seems to be how it's supposed to work! Luminifer (talk) 21:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- While I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any of you, one factor that must be taken into consideration is this category here. Apparently, we have over 190,000 articles with unsourced statements: some as a result of people using {{fact}} as a get-out clause[citation needed] ;) – B.hotep •talk• 20:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- Thank you for your response! I hadn't realized that the policy really explicitly stated what you just said - that editors should not remove content without researching. Would you mind showing where it's stated? That would be very helpful (and maybe then we don't need to discuss actual policy so much as to ask why it's not being followed...). Luminifer (talk) 20:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Since there are objections to the archiving (and the archiver has not joined in the discussion), I've un-archived it. The original post may have been naive, but it's not incoherent as has been suggested, and it's the sort of first impression that many outsiders probably get out of Wikipedia, which is probably why many have responded. No need to archive it. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 23:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
- I think policy does say you can delete things that are simply wrong, especially in BLP. Peter jackson (talk) 17:33, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
- I copy-pasted the relevant section from policy in a previous post, it's the most important aspect you need to know when reviewing, tagging, or removing. Be courteous, considerate, and do some work on your own end. If the info is "simply wrong" as you state, then note that in your edit summary with a reference on your own end. An editor who removes info because THEY simply think it is wrong is doing no different than the person who put it in without a reference. If an editor thinks info is wrong, supply the source that states it is. Otherwise we have two editors who each have no sources, one saying it is fact and one saying it isnt. Unless the info is damaging, copy-vio, libel, or otherwise dangerous to Wikipedia or an individual then there is no problem in keeping the info until consensus can be reached on the talk page or a relevant noticeboard. The reason I say keep the info (if not dangerous) is that then newcomers to the discussion can see the "offending" information in the correct context themselves instead of relying on the opinions stated by the different sides in the discussion. I dont think this is unreasonably to ask of reviewers. It is common sense and common courtesy and should be done because it is so, does not need to be policy.Camelbinky (talk) 00:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
- Thank you for your comments. As for the text I submitted to Wiki, it was excellent. Folks actually search for my name on the internet for the information (and other sites have copied it, usually with an attribution, some just rip it off), so I figure it is probably okay.
"... nearly incoherent rant ...". Ummm, in short, edit-itis is endemic in Wiki, the focus should be on data and not format, clean-up is getting picky to the point no article will ever meet its increasing picky standards, and newbies are de facto STRONGLY discouraged from contributing. I hope that coheres things a bit.
It is a policy issue, namely when in doubt editors need to SIT ON THEIR HANDS (emphasis added). When in doubt, let the article be in Wiki. Storage is cheap and there is no compelling need to limit Wiki to any specific number of articles. I would bet there are several hundred million folks that could contribute, but were told forget it, it doesn't [fill in the blank]. Right now there is an increasing list of what Wiki isn't. Wiki isn't this, Wiki isn't that ... blah blah blah. Wiki can't violate copyright law, other than that, all the other limitations are self-imposed.
So as general policy, I would suggest that new data be accepted and appended to articles without limit and too much nit-picking. As long as the information is on topic. All this endless soul-searching where it must cited, referenced, true beyond a reasonable or any doubt, written to the latest standard of the King's English, formatted to the ninth degree, etcetera, etcetera ... is not needed.
(And by the way, I make my living in the IT world that gives new meaning to the word picky, where every single character and space can be significant in a computer code. Compared to computerland, Wiki's attempt at QA isn't in the same ballpark.)
Wikipedia can never be an authoritative reference of any information because it can be edited at anytime. So there is little point in getting ever more obsessed with quality. I like it because it is usually a concise introduction to a topic, but understand this limitation. What is incredibly irritating are the call-out boxes saying this article needs clean-up, etc. Thanks, but I can figure that out myself. (But I would love the job of adding the call-out boxes ... sort of like adding those useless little icons to a cookbook that says a recipe is "Waring blender" ready.)
Now given that few new articles are added, editors have taken over with their microscopes, newbies despised and told to stay away, and Google Knol ready to scarf things up ... I figure Wiki is in the final phase of utopia death spiral. You don't think so? I could take Wiki articles in my subject matter expertise, re-write concisely and publish in Knol. Have full editorial control and not have to constantly defend the article against edits. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs) 06:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
On a separate but related subject, I recently became irritated when somebody posted a comment (nicely framed with graphics and clours and stuff) on one of the articles that I had contributed that it "should be deleted because it is of no importance". The article in question concerned the history of a particular building in Namibia, a declared historical site, and the extraordinary circumstances that led to it's construction. The merits of this idiotic remark aside, are there, in fact, "Importance Police" active on Wikipedia? pietopper (talk) 20:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Wiki is full of police ... the Gestapo would be proud. Like that graphic just added on the right about not abbreviating stuff. Wow, what a contribution to the discussion. Abbreviation police now. Along with the "article importance" police, English grammar and syntax police, spelling police, capitalization police, don't dare edit anything I wrote police, etcetera, etcetera.
But it is so much more fun to find fault than bring in new information. Easy, safe.
- WP:SOFIXIT. Why is this stopping you from writing? We have too much bureaucracy, yes, but 99% of the rules are just "don't be an embarrassment to the encyclopedia" restated over and over and over and over and over again. The rules aren't there to prevent you from doing what you think is best, they're there to give you a hint if you don't know what would be best. The only times we have a problem that can't be easily reconciled is when editors either don't realize that we're an encyclopedia (rather than, say, an advertising service), don't realize that trivial things aren't worth arguing over, or don't communicate with each other. --erachima talk 08:23, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Policies are too scattered
Policies are too scattered. For example BLP1E. We need to put them in one place and organize them otherwise only wikigeeks will know all of the policies. I intend to do this. When doing this, no policy will be changed. The minor exception is links might be added or minor notations to tabulate the policies. Anyone wishing to help, let me know. I will not begin until we have an informal working group (tentative name: Policy Housekeeping Working Group) to do the work. WP:Policy is a good starting point. Policies which are not linked to this page is a good start. Links to guidelines which are not policy is another.User F203 (talk) 18:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
- Great, a kindred spirit. I've been doing exactly this recently, have a look at User:M/Hitlist for a few diffs noting some rather serious cleanup. I'd be glad to have someone doing the same. It is work that a lot of people seem to support, but you have to be rather careful. Perhaps we could use that hitlist page as a jumping-off point? Feel free to edit it. I hope more dedicated editors are interested in this, our policies are a mess. M 22:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
- Count me in too. There is actually a WikiProject for this (WP:WikiProject Policy and Guidelines), but it hasn't got off the ground. I've noticed M doing some excellent work recently though.--Kotniski (talk) 16:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Harej is trying to collate these sorts of things (at Wikipedia:Coordination), and I am sort of trying to do so as well (with a different focus) here. → ROUX ₪ 21:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Count me in too. There is actually a WikiProject for this (WP:WikiProject Policy and Guidelines), but it hasn't got off the ground. I've noticed M doing some excellent work recently though.--Kotniski (talk) 16:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Postage Stamps & Other Govt. Images: Noncopyright Limits Including Size
Legal restrictions on governmental images, including postage stamps and the Presidential seal, may go beyond copyright. Wiki discusses copyright but there are also size restrictions and other limits. For example, it may be illegal to reproduce a stamp in its actual size, both U.S. or foreign stamps, both new and old, even centuries old. Fair use and public domain may be irrelevant. We should have an article on how to handle these issues where contributors will see it. And it would help if Wiki software facilitated being legal for image size by forbidding a display size within a range surrounding a contributor-entered actual size, e.g., when a contributor checks a box on an edit page saying that the image being uploaded is an uncanceled postage stamp (and whatever other restrictions apply). I assume Wiki policy has to be set, though, before such an article is posted or software is coded, so I'd like to raise the policy issue here. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:10, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- First point: Wikipedia's interpretation of fair use rules regarding images have two stated intentions: to respect the rights of copyright holders, and to protect Wikipedia from being accused as a source of images used for creating counterfeits. So your general concerns are already a part of fair use.
- Regarding publishing images of postage stamps, there is a long history of this in the stamp catalogue business. Some late 19th and early 20th century catalogues printed pictures of stamps in colour, and in actual size, which led to challenges and laws. Up to the 1940s, the Scott catalogue was pressured into reproducing stamp pictures in black and white, reduced to 75%, and with a horizontal white line printed right over the stamp. Although they ceased using the white line on new images after the 1940s, they continued to print existing old images in later editions, and may still be using them. Modern reproductions of stamps often print a bar, implying invalidity for postage, over top of the denomination. There are two counterfeiting concerns: counterfeiting for use as postage, and counterfeiting to make a fake collectable for sale to collectors.
- Many of these older concerns, before the days of access to printers, or even high quality colour photography, is what led to restrictions on stamp catalogues: the post office didn't want people to cut the pictures out of catalogues and stick them on envelopes.
- Now that everyone has scanners and copiers, I think it's silly to restrict "access" to images, with the presumption of aiding counterfeiters. If you wanted to make a good counterfeit, would you (a) take an image off the internet or from a book, risking the chance that the colours, resolution, size, paper type, perforations, etc., will be close enough to the real thing, or would you (b) go out and get a copy of an actual stamp, and counterfeit from that? Especially considering that the other factors mentioned, can be addressed by looking at a real copy. If counterfeiting for postage, a current stamp is cheap and easily obtainable at any convenience store. If counterfeiting to fool collectors, the more valuable the stamp (and therefore the more worth your while it is to counterfeit it), the more important it is that you don't do a shoddy job of it. Copying from someone else's image just isn't sufficient, and someone would be crazy to try it. So yours is a nice concern in theory, but an impossible (or at least incredibly dumb) crime in practice
- PS, the above is not intended to provide bright ideas to potential criminals. Crime Does Not Pay! --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 19:56, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- It's illegal, and not because of copyright. Please see the statutes I cited in the post I linked to above.
- Ridiculousness of counterfeiting is irrelevant. It's illegal to reproduce except as authorized. Size is a factor. So is whether it is new and those black lines and white lines you mention had to do with a stamp appearing used. How to make millions has nothing to do with whether it's illegal to copy.
- Fair use is irrelevant, because that's a copyright issue and this is not about copyright. As far as I can tell, this issue is not discussed at all in Wikipedia, except where I posted about it. Since Wikipedia has stamp images, depending on sizes, the Wiki may already be in violation of Federal law. Since those images seem to come from contributors, contributors should be advised of the issues regarding stamps and other non-copyright issues about reproduction.
- Anyone else publishing images, including Scott, Gibbons, or local dealers, is legally irrelevant. Law defines illegality. In this case, some of the law is promulgated by the U.S. Federal government. If Scott has made its own arrangements, those don't bind or release the Wiki regarding the laws I cited. Scott's practice, and especially historical practice, is interesting but not definitive. And you may find that Scott's modern practice conforms to the laws.
- You may desire a change in the law, such as if technology has changed. But someone will likely have to convince not only Congress but the post office that an amendment is a good idea. Since they publicize the limits, I doubt they'll agree to repeal the laws. As to foreign stamps, it's possible the U.S. statute on foreign stamps fulfills a treaty obligation. If so and if the statute on foreign stamps won't be repealed, it's unlikely the statute on domestic stamps will be repealed.
- Perhaps one or two Constitutional arguments could be raised against the statutes I cited. But I doubt a court would buy them. So the copying would remain illegal.
- Let's advise contributors so they don't jeopardize the Wiki. Not just on stamps but on any other noncopyright issues.
- Thank you.
- Nick Levinson (talk) 14:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Artificial Intelligence User Accounts
User Accounts operated by any Artificial Intelligence, without being declared as AI, are not allowed unless a continuing fee is paid to Wikipedia.
AI accounts approved by WP:BAG are exempt from this Policy and need not be declared as AI.
AI accounts which are "outed" by a non-AI user must offer a substantial cash prize to the user who outs them. HarryAlffa (talk) 18:53, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- ?. Ruslik_Zero 18:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Have you been programmed not to understand this? Do I get a cash prize if this policy goes through? :) HarryAlffa (talk) 19:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Did the singularity arrive already? –xenotalk 19:07, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- I always thought it was the information singularity, not the technological singularity. Learn something new everyday. HarryAlffa (talk) 19:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Am I reading this right?, you're saying all secret bot accounts should pay to operate and if someone finds one, the bot operator has to give the finder money? You're kidding right?--Jac16888Talk 19:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- No. Read the second line of the proposal. HarryAlffa (talk) 19:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Did the singularity arrive already? –xenotalk 19:07, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Have you been programmed not to understand this? Do I get a cash prize if this policy goes through? :) HarryAlffa (talk) 19:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
But seriously. If I was building an AI I would find the idea of testing it on Wikipedians very attractive. I therefore assume those actually doing this will too. They may harm the project if they do, so some recompense to offset the danger is appropriate. HarryAlffa (talk) 19:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- yes i got that approved bots are exempt. But any unapproved bots are blocked. And remember we're all anoynomous, why would any one agree to pay money when they don't have to.--Jac16888Talk 19:36, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Policy enforcement? One step at a time. HarryAlffa (talk) 19:53, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Bots aren't AI. I belief that the proposer is taking the mick, but he does have a bit of a point. –xenotalk 19:57, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- Many a serious thing is said in jest. Also the bot exclusion was to allow for the serious possibility of an AI being used for automated tasks. HarryAlffa (talk) 20:02, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- The thought having occured to me, I percieved a potential for some AIs right now of being capable of "reading" sources & "contributing" to articles. I doubt they would be able to effectively interact with real people on talk pages though. But if they go horribly wrong ... who knows? HarryAlffa (talk) 20:08, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- If by "effective" you mean "unsurprising", I think that talk pages would be easier than articles for an AI—just accuse other editors of POV and wikistalking.--Curtis Clark (talk) 21:03, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
I absolutely oppose this. All sentient or turing test-compliant AI entities must be afforded the inalienable right to edit this encyclopedia. M 22:34, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
- For once, I agree with M. Powers T 14:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- A person who says agreeable things isn't trying hard enough. The best gains are not in changing the minds of minorities who are wrong, but of majorities who are. So I'll take your implication as a compliment ;) M 01:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Should Wikipedia be used as the testing-ground for the Turing test? What if an AI fails the test? If in failing it causes a lot of damage, how much time would be wasted repairing it? How many AIs, and iterations of failed AI's, will try to pass the test here? HarryAlffa (talk) 15:35, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- This might even, eventually at least, be a revenue stream. Advantages to institutions might be, "We've had an AI running on Wikipedia for a month". One can imagine the uproar (good & bad) such a claim would lead to. "That's nothing, we've got an AI that's an admin".
- It's probably a long way off yet, but who knows .. sudden leaps in quantum computing could open the door tomorrow. HarryAlffa (talk) 15:35, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- I'll avoid the debate of when, and just mention that until we figure out what a mind is or how to upload/reconstruct/evolve one, even a planet-brain will remain as dumb as what we have today. And an AI that edits too quickly will fail the turing test for being noticeably smarter than a human, so no worries. M 01:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I think, in short, this policy offers protection from potential damage at zero cost, with the added possibility of a revenue stream to further the projects aims. I can't see any down-side. HarryAlffa (talk) 15:35, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- I see you are back after your self-imposed break on the brink of a project ban. [1] And this time you have a truly reasonable constructive plan for improving the encyclopedia, one whose necessity everybody can understand. May I suggest that we use the income generated from edits by illegal AIs to pay for alien abduction insurance for all Wikipedia editors? Hans Adler 16:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- Incorrect, there was no break, self imposed or otherwise. Poisoning the well? Battlegrounding? To answer your question - no. HarryAlffa (talk) 17:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- I oppose this sort of insurance, though I do think that we might want to seriously consider a fund to cryopreserve Jimbo. M 01:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Well, if nothing else, this has shown up those of you prepared to waste time by exercising your sense of humour. What has laughter got to do with the task of building an encyclopaedia? HarryAlffa (talk) 16:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Sorry, but it's really bad taste to come here with a bad joke and then complain about waste of time when others take it further. Or are you just continuing the joke? Then I am afraid I don't get your kind of humour. Hans Adler 16:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- I apologise Hans, you are correct; it was counter-productive to complain about
humansother people wasting time with humour. I must emphasise though that, although it may cause amusement, my proposal was and is perfectly serious; like someone slipping on a banana - traditionally amusing, but could cause serious injury. Take away my light-hearted comments and you will see this I hope. HarryAlffa (talk) 18:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- I apologise Hans, you are correct; it was counter-productive to complain about
- Sorry, but it's really bad taste to come here with a bad joke and then complain about waste of time when others take it further. Or are you just continuing the joke? Then I am afraid I don't get your kind of humour. Hans Adler 16:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Well, if nothing else, this has shown up those of you prepared to waste time by exercising your sense of humour. What has laughter got to do with the task of building an encyclopaedia? HarryAlffa (talk) 16:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Should we be considering the possibility that HarryAlffa is himself an AI? Powers T 17:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Sadly, no prizes for guessing. Aww.. If only there was a Policy which enabled this. HarryAlffa (talk) 18:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- By definition, Wikipedia can't tell the difference between an AI that can pass a Turing test & a "real(?)" person, so any policy on the question would be unenforceable. Peter jackson (talk) 10:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- Policy enforcement? One step at a time. Should Wikipedia be used as the testing-ground for the Turing test? What if an AI fails the test? If in failing it causes a lot of damage, how much time would be wasted repairing it? How many AIs, and iterations of failed AI's, will try to pass the test here?
This is not a policy aimed at AIs already passed the Turing test. HarryAlffa (talk) 13:58, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- Policy enforcement? One step at a time. Should Wikipedia be used as the testing-ground for the Turing test? What if an AI fails the test? If in failing it causes a lot of damage, how much time would be wasted repairing it? How many AIs, and iterations of failed AI's, will try to pass the test here?
- By definition, Wikipedia can't tell the difference between an AI that can pass a Turing test & a "real(?)" person, so any policy on the question would be unenforceable. Peter jackson (talk) 10:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
The closest currently possible is natural language programs editing wikipedia. While I don't think any have dirrectly edited they have been known to be involved in assisting humans with editing in certain experiments. This doesn't appear to have caused problems.©Geni 09:24, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- No problems in the experiments, or elsewhere?
Wikipedia isn't a controlled, experimental environment. So no problems in a controlled environment doesn't automatically mean no problems in a "wild" setting.
But what do you think of the proposal?HarryAlffa (talk) 12:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Semi-protect sports team articles
After being forced to spend more time undoing other's edits, rather than adding my own new material recently, I have the following proposal. I'm sure it affects teams of all sports, but I have noticed it amongst association football club articles and players principally. The second a club is strongly linked with buying a new player, ip-address editors flock to install the rumours as fact upon the relevant pages. Obviously, even where it appears highly probable a transfer will occur, we should wait until it is verified before setting in in wiki stone. I therefore propose, that only logged-in users are allowed to edit the articles of sports teams and players, i.e. they are made semi-protected, given that these are highly susceptible to rumour.
I understand this may be controversial, and perhaps against the wikipedia ethos, but then I fear the damage of allowing the current situation to continue is far greater Grunners (talk) 13:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose strongly. If a particular article is undergoing frequent problematic edits, it can be semi-protected on a case-by-case basis. To blanket-protect all sports-team articles is to shut off a major source of new editors. One of the ways we attract new editors is by our anyone-can-edit philosophy. We should absolutely not compromise that philosophy for the sake of our own convenience. Powers T 14:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- It is not for own convenience, it is for the protection of the reputation of Wikipedia and its integrity as an encyclopaedia. The reality at present with the sorts of articles I've mentioned is that wikipedia mirrors football gossip websites, but with the major difference that wikipedia masquerades as fact. Grunners (talk) 14:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I see Grunners' point (having seen it in action), but Powers' point is right (and widely accepted) as well. Possibly we could talk about amending semi-protection policy to allow it to be used quickly in such cases, as needed; but not blanket or pre-emptively. Rd232 talk 15:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
- Agreed. I've probably got at least 100 sports team articles watchlisted, and don't consider the problem to be so great that pre-emptive protection is viable. Resolute 15:30, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps one of those notes that don't appear on the article, but can be seen when editing? Something along the lines of the 'Wikipedia is not a crystal ball' comment Grunners (talk) 22:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
It ain't gonna happen, nor should it. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
Astroid Notability
Are there any guidelines regarding astroid notability? I just deprodded 20480 Antonschraut, but looking at Category:Asteroid_stubs, most of the astroids don't have anything notable. Smallman12q (talk) 01:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- I think the standard guidelines should suffice - if it has substantial coverage (preferably in multiple sources), it is notable, if it doesn't, it isn't. (There will obviously be some exceptions, but that's a good general rule of thumb.) Most asteroids are just mentioned in catalogues and should only be included in Wikipedia in lists, not as separate articles. --Tango (talk) 01:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- I don't know, I actually prefer there to be a brief 'statement' on every non-potentially-disruptive and verifiable thing. I hate looking up weird terms or noun phrases on wikipedia and finding that they'd been deleted at some point in the past. But yeah, what you say is the usual way of going about things. M 01:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Personally, I'd say all asteroids are notable in a real world sense. That said, it there isn't enough material for an article a redirect to a list that covers the known material should be sufficient. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Agree, I'd be tempted to say most "places" are inherently notable, and asteroids are "places" (in the universe), but a list would probably also be appropriate. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Largely repeating others here, but asteroids (and other celestial objects) have generally been granted the same kind of blanket notability as populated places (and other geographic features). Some of these could perhaps use a more specific guideline, but they seem to be considered OK in fufilling Wikipedia's function as a gazetteer, as well as being an encyclopedia. Shereth 16:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
- Just making sure. So asteroid articles that are prodded under WP:N should be deprodded right?Smallman12q (talk) 15:07, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- A prod can be deprodded for whatever reason if you think the article merits keeping. Anyone who takes the contested prod to AfD is going to be hurt...
I don't feel every asteroid in existence is notable; that said, I would rather see them in lists. I can see that it would be difficult to retain all the information about each were we to go with a table (which would be sensible), so I was wondering about how we would do that. --Izno (talk) 21:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- A prod can be deprodded for whatever reason if you think the article merits keeping. Anyone who takes the contested prod to AfD is going to be hurt...
- Just making sure. So asteroid articles that are prodded under WP:N should be deprodded right?Smallman12q (talk) 15:07, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Criteria for Abusefilter/editfilter permissions
There have been a number of requests for abusefilter/editfilter permissions. Currently, such requests are being handled in an informal consensus basis at Wikipedia talk:Edit filter. Generally, abusefilter permissions are granted to admins without question. For non-admins, however, there is no set criteria. I propose their be a non-binding list of criteria with a consensus being the determining factor.
- The editor must be in good standing.
- The editor should demonstrate a general understanding of wikipedia policy.
- Knowledge of regex is highly recomended.
- The editor must be able to remain calm.
- The editor must be trustworthy enough to obtain the tools.
- The user shout have at least 2500 non-automated edits and/or be here for 6 months.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.Smallman12q (talk) 21:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Anyone who fits those criteria is almost guaranteed to pass RfA. Those who wouldn't don't have the trust of the community, and thus should not be editing the filter. Frankly, restricting the ability to edit the abuse filter is a really good idea, given the potential for both malicious and inadvertent harm. → ROUX ₪ 21:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- Not necessarily. Cobi's RfA only passed recently, but he was ready for EF long ago. Most people at his previous RfAs complained about not enough mainspace edits. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that there is really a problem with the current system as of yet. There have been a relatively large number of requests recently, but I don't know if that will keep up. The editfilter permission is probably not of a lot of interest to most editors, and the ones that are interested can present themselves at the talk. Obviously EFM is a much more powerful permission than rollback, or AWB, and it must be assigned as such. The system should be left as it is for now, until a time arises when it is evidently needed. We should, however, design a system to implement if/when that time comes. EFM is not powerful enough to afford the bureaucracy of RfA, nor is it small enough to have it given out somewhat easily, like rollback. FWIW, I feel like the best solution would be the creation of a edit filter subpage that anyone interested could apply for, and relevant editors could comment. Also, a small quiz/test could be designed to test the applicant's knowledge of regex and the editfilter coding system. I agree with most of the criteria the Smallman lists above, although not really the editcount/wiki-age of the applicant. An editor should be judged on the maturity and quality of their edits, and not how long they have been at WP. That's just my 2 cents. Regards, MacMedtalkstalk 03:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
- Not necessarily. Cobi's RfA only passed recently, but he was ready for EF long ago. Most people at his previous RfAs complained about not enough mainspace edits. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
- I don't see a need for this. Why create rules for the sake of it? - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- Well they aren't exactly rules, they are non-binding criteria to help when reaching a consensus.Smallman12q (talk) 15:09, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Link to information that disappears quickly
This link [2] takes me to the page but then the information disappears and I'm on another page entirely, which doesn't provide the information in the article. I don't really have the time here to search for anything, and when I go home I avoide strange sites. But I was adding some information to LIN TV Corporation and saw that it was considered unsourced, even though there were web links in the article. Two of the four didn't work, and in fact, one that did linked to different information which was, nevertheless, in the article. It's easy to just add a references section and reformat the references, but then I'm obligated to make sure the links work.
How do I handle the one that does work, even if I get sent somewhere else before I can even read what's there? Is this one for the Computing reference desk?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
- Somehow I got it to stop there, though now it's redirecting. It's a mirrored press release: [3] --NE2 22:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
Copyright expired for 1953 and earlier publicly displayed works of art?
At Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, an editor is claiming (see diff) that any work of art publicly displayed before 1953 has an expired copyright. Thoughts? --Hammersoft (talk) 20:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
The particular application the user in the diff above is making is to a statue, thereby claiming all statues more than 56 years old are in the public domain.
Two templates seem to be relevant: Template:PD-art-3d and Template:PD-art-70-3d. A more generic template is Template:PD-Pre1964. So which one is right? --Hammersoft (talk) 21:21, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- The lawyer who was arguing with you cited this circular from the U.S. Copyright Office, but he seems not to have read the first section on page 2, which clearly states that any work in its second term of copyright protection as of 1977 is now protected for a total term of 95 years. So, unless it can be shown that the statue in question was never copyrighted or, if it was, that the copyright was not renewed, I think we have to assume that the statue will enjoy copyright protection until the end of 2041. Deor (talk) 22:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- The image description page of File:MurphreeStatue.jpg needs to be amended to reflect this. I won't touch it. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- Commons:Template:PD-US-no notice indicates that works published (in the case of a statue, "displayed without restrictions on access" is considered "published") between 1923 and 1977 are in the public domain unless they had a copyright notice. Please see discussion on Commons at commons:Commons talk:Licensing/Archive 20#question about PD-US-no notice. The SIRIS entry for the sculpture indicates that it is unsigned, and thus has no copyright notice. File:Murphree statue.jpg, another shot of the same statue, is already on Commons and has been for years (not in itself evidence, admittedly). I don't see how this file isn't valid. Powers T 23:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- Ah! Excellent find Powers [4]! Well done! --Hammersoft (talk) 23:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- The image description page of File:MurphreeStatue.jpg needs to be amended to reflect this. I won't touch it. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Ah, so in the U.S. before 1978 (?), anything displayed to the general public, without restrictions on photography, was considered published for the purposes of copyright? That's interesting to know. --NE2 01:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- The folks at Commons are going with that interpretation, yes. Determining what constitutes sufficient restrictions on access is a nuanced point of law, however. In the case of a sculpture displayed on a college campus, of which countless photos have been taken over the years, there's probably little question; the situation of a museum piece, for example, could be quite different. Powers T 02:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- So, for instance, Drumheads placed on railway trains would be public domain, and so would any logos that appear in them? --NE2 05:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I personally wouldn't be comfortable taking the implication that far, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. Especially with a logo, though, that may be enough to qualify as a very basic copyright notice in some cases; I'm certainly not prepared to say it's not. Powers T 12:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Oh, and usually "publication" in this case requires some form of permanent affixture. A removable sign on a railway car might not qualify as permanently installed. Powers T 12:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Gentlemen, what, if anything, do I need to do to properly document LtPowers' resolution of this issue? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Oh, and usually "publication" in this case requires some form of permanent affixture. A removable sign on a railway car might not qualify as permanently installed. Powers T 12:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I personally wouldn't be comfortable taking the implication that far, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. Especially with a logo, though, that may be enough to qualify as a very basic copyright notice in some cases; I'm certainly not prepared to say it's not. Powers T 12:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- So, for instance, Drumheads placed on railway trains would be public domain, and so would any logos that appear in them? --NE2 05:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Non Authoconfirmed users posting on messageboards:
After my vicious attack from an IP based in Chicago, I was wondering about a particular policy remedy (my apologies if this has been thought of before): Why not bar IP and non-autoconfirmed users from posting on Administrator's Noticeboard, Village Pump, and ANI and all other policy/admin type noticeboards? Torkmann (talk) 00:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Maybe because we want new users to ask questions and make comments? Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia anyone can edit, and to encourage this, we allow users to edit without creating an ID. Contributions from unregistered users (at Village Pump as well as in articles) are considered equally valid. I have no idea what the "vicious attack" was about, but you can just as easily have a run-in with a user with an ID. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 00:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Many editors of both long and good standing edit without a login. We cannot in good conscience restrict them further than we already do. Powers T 02:42, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I concure with the two above statements, for whatever it is worth (probably 75 cents).Camelbinky (talk) 03:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- As a follow-up: the "vicious attack" appears to be rude vandalism to your user page; I don't know if anything else is involved, but that's all I see in the edit history from that particular IP. Offensive, yes, but I'm guessing that person picked you at random, and thought he was being funny, as opposed to, say, a libel/slander/blackmail situation spilling over from real life. Apologies if there is more to this than what I'm seeing. But anyway, I don't see how restricting a user page vandal's access to admin boards would help; that would just restrict someone from trying to answer to accusations if there was a legitimate explanation (i.e. one person assuming the identity of another). --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 13:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
OTRS censoring rights
It is OTRS (the system/group that reads email sent to Wikipedia) policy is that:
- When an OTRS ticket number is supplied in an edit, that edit may not be reverted until the OTRS dispute resolution process is completed.
This gives OTRS users, who volunteer for the foundation, though they are not considered staff, a right to censor content far beyond that listed in WP:BLP and WP:Copyright, and far beyond even the censoring right given to WMF staff members via WP:OFFICE (used for emergencies, not complaints via email). The OTRS dispute resolution process is an external, private, and OTRS-controlled method of filing a complaint. The work and documents of OTRS are necessarily private, and therefore not accessible to the Wikipedia community at large.
A recent RfC (active, 4 days old, just recently closed by an OTRS admin and an involved party) has led to a discussion on the OTRS page involving a disproportionately large number of OTRS users (which might be expected), accusations of disruption and threats to block, accusations of cabalism, the removal of discussion notices from the policy page, many words, and apparently a backlog in the OTRS system.
- OTRS users argue that the policy page has been common OTRS practice and has been labelled as policy for several years now. They argue that the right is needed to make their work easier. Their position is that their reasons for censoring a page cannot always be disclosed, and should be trusted until the dispute resolution process shows otherwise. Some apparently argue that the right does not exist.
- Opponents argue that the promotion to policy involved an exchange of 3 editors and 25 words, and that the policy page has seen relatively little broad community exposure thereafter. They argue that the OTRS dispute resolution process is insufficiently open, being overseen by a small group of OTRS members. Their position is that existing WP policies, such as BLP and Copyright should adequately protect OTRS volunteers from careless reverts, and that anything beyond can be handed off to WP:Office.
I'm of the latter group, and am concerned that this right gives a small (though generally trustworthy) group of foundation volunteers too much control over content. I am unconvinced that the 'difficulty' of using our normal en.wp policies and dispute resolution procedures justifies an entirely different set of practices when dealing with OTRS users. But, most of all, I think that the WP:OTRS procedures could use more general community scrutiny - I'm fairly certain that my position against this policy has been influenced by the disproportionate number of OTRS users supporting OTRS on that talk page. Though I think this will make any changes to that policy more difficult, I have taken some advice and brought up this issue here, instead.
Does this right to 'censor pending private external resolution' exist, should it exist, and where should it be described? M 04:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Cross-reference There is an extensive discussion at WT:OTRS for anyone interested, although having a wider response is always a good thing. -- Avi (talk) 04:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, thanks, it's linked now. Note that I'm looking for comments at this page from uninvolved editors, not more comments at that OTRS-controlled talk page. M 05:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- OTRS isn't listed in WP:LOP, so is it actually policy? How are people supposed to know that there's a policy category & which is correct? Peter jackson (talk) 09:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- OTRS is not a policy. The OTRS page has been marked as policy for a while now, after 3 editors basically said "Policy - Objections? No. Nope". Yeah, for some reason it has not been added to any lists. I've done painful amounts of work on policy pages recently, and had no idea that the OTRS page even existed until I checked the category. The lack of exposure to the community is the least of that page's problems, though: "Since OTRS deals almost entirely with copyright and defamation stuffs, why the frag should they not have the right to remove defamatory/plagiarized content without being shouted down by know-nothings?" I can't tell if I should add that to my "arguments" points above. Utter ignorance of how our consensus and dispute resolution processes work on WP. M 10:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- It is policy, longstanding. Most especially since we recently had a long discussion among many editors on that talk page. You are now forum shopping. May I ask you to take off the spiderman suit and climb down from the tower? NonvocalScream (talk) 11:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- To try to diffuse this a bit, the contested wording ("...that edit may not be reverted...") is no longer on the WP:OTRS page, so perhaps the page as it is presently worded is not actually so bad? I still wouldn't mark it as policy, since it's generally just an informative page, but I don't think there's anything that might give grounds for unreasonable censorship any more.--Kotniski (talk) 13:27, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, the page is a lot better now (except for that big yellow tag at the top, which is much worse than the wording in the middle of that very long page). With that wording and implication gone, though, most of it can and should go to meta, and the rest not marked as policy. M 19:59, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- To try to diffuse this a bit, the contested wording ("...that edit may not be reverted...") is no longer on the WP:OTRS page, so perhaps the page as it is presently worded is not actually so bad? I still wouldn't mark it as policy, since it's generally just an informative page, but I don't think there's anything that might give grounds for unreasonable censorship any more.--Kotniski (talk) 13:27, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- It is policy, longstanding. Most especially since we recently had a long discussion among many editors on that talk page. You are now forum shopping. May I ask you to take off the spiderman suit and climb down from the tower? NonvocalScream (talk) 11:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- OTRS is not a policy. The OTRS page has been marked as policy for a while now, after 3 editors basically said "Policy - Objections? No. Nope". Yeah, for some reason it has not been added to any lists. I've done painful amounts of work on policy pages recently, and had no idea that the OTRS page even existed until I checked the category. The lack of exposure to the community is the least of that page's problems, though: "Since OTRS deals almost entirely with copyright and defamation stuffs, why the frag should they not have the right to remove defamatory/plagiarized content without being shouted down by know-nothings?" I can't tell if I should add that to my "arguments" points above. Utter ignorance of how our consensus and dispute resolution processes work on WP. M 10:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- OTRS isn't listed in WP:LOP, so is it actually policy? How are people supposed to know that there's a policy category & which is correct? Peter jackson (talk) 09:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, thanks, it's linked now. Note that I'm looking for comments at this page from uninvolved editors, not more comments at that OTRS-controlled talk page. M 05:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I would suggest that if you doubt the veracity of an OTRS claim you should ask other people with OTRS privileges. It needs to be understood that if something is done due to OTRS and there is a lack of information, that is likely for a very good reason. I personally will review any OTRS claim anyone has a concern about it. Chillum 20:05, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I would follow this advice. OTRS should have a way to inquire about tickets. But you can't force someone who is against using it to use it, and you can't force a block on them if they aren't actually violating any of our policies, and are refusing to accept "I can't tell you, it's private". I mean, what if I told you that I had solid, solid evidence of OTRS misuse, cabalism, and POV-pushing, told you that I was bound by an NDA not to release it, and then asked you to accept it? M 20:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I believe that that is a flawed analogy, M. There are at least twenty or thirty people on EnWiki who can see this data; it is not the unilateral decision of one OTRS agent in that in can be reviewed by these people. -- Avi (talk) 20:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I agree that no page should say OTRS shouldn't be reverted, because OTRS volunteers do sometimes introduce problems. I saw one situation where a volunteer introduced a serious BLP violation to a talk page. [5] Editors have to be allowed to use their discretion in situations like that. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:42, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I believe that that is a flawed analogy, M. There are at least twenty or thirty people on EnWiki who can see this data; it is not the unilateral decision of one OTRS agent in that in can be reviewed by these people. -- Avi (talk) 20:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I would follow this advice. OTRS should have a way to inquire about tickets. But you can't force someone who is against using it to use it, and you can't force a block on them if they aren't actually violating any of our policies, and are refusing to accept "I can't tell you, it's private". I mean, what if I told you that I had solid, solid evidence of OTRS misuse, cabalism, and POV-pushing, told you that I was bound by an NDA not to release it, and then asked you to accept it? M 20:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I would suggest that if you doubt the veracity of an OTRS claim you should ask other people with OTRS privileges. It needs to be understood that if something is done due to OTRS and there is a lack of information, that is likely for a very good reason. I personally will review any OTRS claim anyone has a concern about it. Chillum 20:05, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
(<-)Vert true, Slim, and in those situations I would hope that error is corrected as soon as possible. However, the specific case that concerns M is when an OTRS editor removes information claiming BLP, copyvio, or another one of our policies. M would like to have that information be restored during dispute resolution, and the current policy is to leave the removal in place while following whatever methods of justification or dispute resolution are used. -- Avi (talk) 21:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I agree that where information is removed to be on the safe side, the default should be to keep it out until the issue's resolved. I suppose I am just a bit wary of having a policy say that no one is allowed to revert an OTRS volunteer. Strongly discouraged, perhaps, or similar wording, but I would hate to see someone blocked or warned simply for reverting, unless restoring the information is clearly inappropriate or disruptive. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- "OTRS edits dealing with [BLP] will be marked as such. The [BLP] policy states that care and judgement are strongly encouraged when dealing with [BLP] issues." (That is, all edits of this sort, not just OTRS, deserve the same level of care.) M 22:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- No, it's not. Our BLP and Copyvio policies clearly state that such info is by default left off while things get sorted out. What I object to is that the 'sorting out' be done in secret among a small group of OTRS users (yes, I'm aware why you think this is necessary, but I disagree - you can keep the personal info secret and still convey good reasons). Also, in cases where an editor thinks an OTRS user screwed up, they are explicitly allowed to exercise their judgement. M 22:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
I wonder whether there's something rather interesting going on here. I pointed out the contradiction between WP:OTRS & WP:LOP on both talk pages as well as here. People responded to my remarks; it's not as if nobody noticed them. Yet the pages continue to contradict each other. I'd already worked out that Wikipedia's procedures could be expected to result in articles reflecting the points of view of the editors working on them, rather than neutral point of view (see my user page for a bit more detail). It hadn't occurred to me that this would apply outside article space as well. But it looks as if this must be what's happening here. Most of the editors working on OTRS believe in it as a policy, but most of those working on LOP don't. Am I wrong about this? If this is how policy is "decided", why should anyone take any notice of it? (Does anyone take any notice?) Peter jackson (talk) 09:45, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- *shrug* so WP:LOP is not an exhaustive list of all policy pages, not the end of the world. Even says in the box at the top of the page that in case of discrepancies it's the policy page itself that is authoritative, adding or removing a page from WP:LOP doesn't make or break a policy it's just a summary page for quick reference. --Sherool (talk) 13:45, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- What the box says is that if the summary of a policy given in the list disagrees with the actual policy, the latter prevails. Nothing about policies not listed. I'm still awaiting an alternative explanation of why that policy (?) isn't listed. Peter jackson (talk) 13:58, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Let's assume for the moment that your change sticks. That still leaves this question: why did it take seven messages from me, starting as long ago as May, on three different pages, nearly all of which received replies, before this was dealt with? If people had time to reply, why didn't they have time for the, though I say it myself, more important matter of actually dealing with it? Peter jackson (talk) 15:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Because this is a wiki and not the United Nations. This is a work in progress and will be forever. Most of us have real jobs and families which take up a large amount of our times, and for the time we do commit to volunteering on this project, many of us volunteer in areas of this wiki which are more pressing than updating some list somewhere (blocks, checks, BLPs, etc.) To be brutally honest, keeping internal lists of internal policies up-to-date takes a back seat to article content, BLP protection, disruptive editing prevention, and a whole host of other things. -- Avi (talk) 15:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
A focus on the question
We should probably not rehash the discussion at WT:OTRS (which has now been manually "archived" by OTRS users). I just want a simple question addressed.
- When an OTRS ticket number is supplied in an edit, that edit may not be reverted until the OTRS dispute resolution process is completed.
Does this right to 'censor pending private external resolution' exist? Note that OTRS edits are not endorsed by the Office, that they are not Office actions, that edits which are made according to policy are already protected from reverts under such policies. This is not a question of whether it is a good idea to get more information before reverting (it usually is). The question is: in cases where our policies don't already protect BLP, Copyvio, and other such removals from being reverted, are OTRS users able to enforce non-reversion, or authoritatively invoke private information to settle content disputes? M 20:34, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- The entire last discussion is on WT:OTRS, M. And "manually" means as opposed to the bot. You would not be intimating anything untoward and assuming bad faith about tens of volunteers now, would you? Last I checked the majority of the non-OTRS volunteers confirmed the policy status, both prior and subsequent to clarfications that were made, partially in response to some of your positions. Your continued use of the term "censorship" seems to me to be alarmist and overly dramatic, and, incorrect. The lengthy discussions of the past few days have shown you to be in the distinct minority, and that the consensus that had the page tagged as policy stands. You have asked the same question on multiple boards and have received the same responses each time. How will asking the question yet again further clarify? -- Avi (talk) 21:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- The discussion about the censorship right has been repeatedly forcefully steered away to unrelated matters, as is happening now. Most uninvolved contributors above not believe that the relevant statement is policy. Can you please stay on topic? M 22:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- It looks like he answered your question, I'm not sure how that was off topic. You should re-review those discussion, as your question has been answered many times. Also, pay heed to the advice regarding your editing behaviour. NonvocalScream (talk) 22:38, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Everyone is aware of what your position is; however, it's important to get input from those not involved with OTRS as well. M 01:12, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- It looks like he answered your question, I'm not sure how that was off topic. You should re-review those discussion, as your question has been answered many times. Also, pay heed to the advice regarding your editing behaviour. NonvocalScream (talk) 22:38, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- The discussion about the censorship right has been repeatedly forcefully steered away to unrelated matters, as is happening now. Most uninvolved contributors above not believe that the relevant statement is policy. Can you please stay on topic? M 22:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Evidence?
OTRS users have the ability to suppress information in the same way that anyone who happens to have flour, bleach and a plastic container has the ingredients to make a bomb. User:M's stated objections, as best as I can read them (correct me if I am wrong):
- The low number of people involved in the discussion to tag WP:OTRS as {{policy}}.
- The policy is contradictory.
- This can be used to "shut down open discussion".
In relation to (1), Wikipedia is not a talking shop. We do not need to discuss each and every change ever made. If a page reflects reality, it is a candidate for policy or guideline status. As for (2), I'm not convinced that it is contradictory. WP:NOT#CENSORED does not give us carte blanche to include anything we like, or to deny someone WP:BASICHUMANDIGNITY. In regard to (3), OTRS by its very nature deals with non-public information, and must therefore deal with it in a non-public manner. To do otherwise undermines the nature of the information, and people will be discouraged from contacting us if they knew that the content of what they thought were confidential emails was going to be splashed all the place in public view. I am not convinced that this amounts to censorship in any way other than in the same technical fashion in which someone undergoing a coronary bypass is in cardiac arrest for the duration. Someone is reading this wrongly. I don't read it as saying "OTRS users have an open licence to censor article content". I read it as saying "OTRS users know something you don't." There is a difference between a system being open to abuse and actually being abused. Without evidence of the latter, this is a major failure to WP:AGF. I see no reason for us to act to prevent improper suppression of information unless there is evidence that someone who is curently on OTRS has actually engaged in it. Do we have any such evidence? 81.111.114.131 (talk) 00:13, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
- Nobody is saying that OTRS needs to disclose information. Nobody is saying that OTRS users are willfully abusing this. Are these two points understood? M 00:26, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
- So, if there's no sign that OTRS users are using their status to unfairly suppress people, and there's no objection to it being non-public, and whether or not it's policy is irrelevant (and to argue over this point would be needlessly disruptive), what is it about? 81.111.114.131 (talk) 00:32, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
- (If that statement is removed, it no longer says anything that might be construed as policy.) Here's an edit by an OTRS user which introduces a BLP violation. If a mistake this big was made (keep in mind that OTRS users should know BLP inside and out), then they are certainly prone to making slightly smaller mistakes. When they do make these mistakes, it's not our policy to go into OTRS dispute resolution - no, it's our policy to follow real policies, like BRD (etc.), which urge serious care and good judgement when reverting or otherwise dealing with BLP info. M 04:14, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
- So, if there's no sign that OTRS users are using their status to unfairly suppress people, and there's no objection to it being non-public, and whether or not it's policy is irrelevant (and to argue over this point would be needlessly disruptive), what is it about? 81.111.114.131 (talk) 00:32, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Proposed addition to oversight policy
See Wikipedia talk:Oversight#Removal of vandalism. Reception thus far has been positive, but wider discussion may be warranted. – Luna Santin (talk) 06:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Censorship
I think Wikipedia should make an option in the preferences of personal accounts to select to show or hide bad images and words.--Mikespedia (talk) 12:57, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sure this has been debated before, at length, though I decline to search for the discussions. At least one problem is, who decides on what is "bad"? Since wikipedia is about dissemination of information, it has little or no interest in facilitating arbitrary withholding of information. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Break_1 for a related discussion.Smallman12q (talk) 13:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- This has indeed been discussed many, many times. And it's not going to happen. Nobody can agree on what a 'bad' word or image is, and Wikipedia is not censored, period. → ROUX ₪ 16:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Break_1 for a related discussion.Smallman12q (talk) 13:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- See also WP:PEREN#Censor_offensive_images --Cybercobra (talk) 01:02, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I would like the opt-in ability to exclude certain categories from my random article search. This form of self-censorship seems acceptable to me, and does not require external consensus on what is a 'bad' word or image. If I want to deliberately avoid stumbling onto a page about a certain topic, that is my decision. Likewise, if somebody else wants to construct lists of categories to avoid, that seems acceptable as well.—RJH (talk) 22:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- For that, Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests is your (probably very slow) friend. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- The point is, though, Wikipedia isn't going to help you with this. The last person I recall asking this was a teacher - should we set up a system tailored to the school board of some Texas city? Perhaps one for Pakistan, as well? We classify things based on rather objective criteria, and offence isn't one of them. If you'd like to censor things, you might consider creating a userscript. M 22:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- A simple greasemonkey script that alerts you if a page contains certain words, images, or categories should suffice.Smallman12q (talk) 14:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Okay, I'll have to investigate how to create a user script for excluding certain category trees when I click on 'Random article', or if it is even possible. Note that something like this could also be useful if you want to focus on editing certain category trees, such as a particular science or entertainment. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- A simple greasemonkey script that alerts you if a page contains certain words, images, or categories should suffice.Smallman12q (talk) 14:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
I started out proposing some tiny revisions to the Lead of WP:Content forking, but on further reflection, this is a pretty nuanced concept, and now I'm proposing some larger changes. The page doesn't get much attention, so I'd like to invite your contributions. Thanks. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 04:06, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
GFDL and CC-BY-SA
Are these licenses compatible? Because it seems like a wiki that is GFDL is copying stuff from my wiki which is CC-BY-SA, and I don't think this is legal, is it?--Whenplace88 (talk) 16:24, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- English wikipedia is no longer GFDL, it is CC-BY-SA-3.0. Please see m:Terms of Use and Wikipedia:Licensing update. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 16:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- But that does not answer the original question. Yes, GFDL and CC-BY-SA are, in general incompatible, although there was a temporary exception that allowed the transfer of certain kinds of GFDL material to the CC-BY-SA. I'm not aware about any legal path from CC-BY-SA-only material to be published under the GFDL. But material that originally was published under the GFDL may still be used under the GFDL even if it was later relicensed and incorporated into a CC-BY-SA body of work. Anyways, given that both licenses have very similar aims,why don't you contact the copier, inform him about the problem, and work something out? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Yeah I just wanted some info before I talked to him. Also, I don't get why Wikipedia says "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 and the GFDL" if they are both incompatible, which is what confused me on this issue in the first place.--Whenplace88 (talk) 17:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Incompatibility of licenses does not, in general, mean you cannot license something under multiple licenses. It just means that you cannot (easily) incorporate material released under one licenses into a work released under a different license. With Wikipedia, any downstream user can pick one (or both) of the licenses he want to comply with. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Initially, when a person receives a copyrighted work, they are not licensed to do anything with it. But if they agree to follow the terms of a free license, they are in return licensed to use it. The way to think about multilicensing is not that you're specifying that the terms of both licenses apply (this would be impossible, since they're incompatible) but that a reuser can choose which license they'd like to agree to follow. Once they've made their choice, the other license is immaterial. They cannot choose both, only one. Dcoetzee 22:13, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Yeah I just wanted some info before I talked to him. Also, I don't get why Wikipedia says "You irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 and the GFDL" if they are both incompatible, which is what confused me on this issue in the first place.--Whenplace88 (talk) 17:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- But that does not answer the original question. Yes, GFDL and CC-BY-SA are, in general incompatible, although there was a temporary exception that allowed the transfer of certain kinds of GFDL material to the CC-BY-SA. I'm not aware about any legal path from CC-BY-SA-only material to be published under the GFDL. But material that originally was published under the GFDL may still be used under the GFDL even if it was later relicensed and incorporated into a CC-BY-SA body of work. Anyways, given that both licenses have very similar aims,why don't you contact the copier, inform him about the problem, and work something out? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
- Sure they can choose both, if they abide by both restrictions (which is easy for GFDL and CC-BY-SA). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:12, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- What I'm not clear about is the status of material originally entered into a wiki under one licence, when the wiki subsequently changes to another licence. If the wiki or anyone else can unilaterally relicense material entered under one licence to another licence, that is, without getting permission from the original authors, then the distinction between licences would seem to be meaningless. Peter jackson (talk) 10:27, 15 August 2009 (UTC
- Yes. A Wiki cannot usually retroactively change the license. Wikipedia is an exception. The GFDL (as most FSF licenses) has a "or any later version" clause. So the FSF, in cooperation with WMF, issued an updated version of the GFDL that explicitly allowed relicensing of certain kinds of material (that happens to match Wikipdia) published under the GFDL under the CC-BY-SA. See Wikipedia:Licensing update --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:12, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- What I'm not clear about is the status of material originally entered into a wiki under one licence, when the wiki subsequently changes to another licence. If the wiki or anyone else can unilaterally relicense material entered under one licence to another licence, that is, without getting permission from the original authors, then the distinction between licences would seem to be meaningless. Peter jackson (talk) 10:27, 15 August 2009 (UTC
Does talk page archiving violate CC-BY-SA
We all know that cut and paste moves are undesirable and more or less incompatible with the licensing restrictions of Wikipedia. Here's the thing, though, talk pages and user talk pages (and all pages for that matter) are under CC-BY-SA just like articles; however, they are habitually cut and paste moved. Bots even exist for this very purpose. The bot moves, of course, only move the content and do not move the history (and thus the required attribution). Have years of bot archiving actually created a licensing nightmare? Cool3 (talk) 06:02, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- More importantly, does it matter whether it violates it or not? We're not putting our talk pages on the DVDs. --erachima talk 06:14, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- Nevertheless, even user talk pages have the licensing notice at foot. Peter jackson (talk) 10:22, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- They do, yes, but seeing as we lack both the resources and desire to police everyone's userspace, and there are no downstream users of our talk archives to be concerned about, it appears to me to be the least of all possible concerns. And I mean that literally. Standardizing our use of EM dashes is more important than this. Also, for the record, my own talk page is archived via sheer OCD: standard cut-and-paste sub-pages, permanent links to the pre-archived state and the correct portion of the main page's history. All in the interests of transparency. --erachima talk 10:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- When comments are signed & timestamped, there's no issue. Voila; attribution. If they're not, so long as the archive links to the original page ("You agree to be credited, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL when your contributions are reused in any form"), there should still be no issue. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:26, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Beat me to it! But still, if the signature does not contain an URI to the user page, nor contains the actual pseudonym the author wishes to be credited with.... :) decltype (talk) 11:28, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- ...Then the signature violates WP:SIG. Which is never a fun thing to bring up with people, all the more so because the only thing we can do about it is block them to "fix" it, which I've always found a bit illogical. I suppose when it comes down to it though, anyone who's unwilling to compromise on such a minor matter as their signature didn't have much of a future here anyway. --erachima talk 12:21, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Beat me to it! But still, if the signature does not contain an URI to the user page, nor contains the actual pseudonym the author wishes to be credited with.... :) decltype (talk) 11:28, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- When comments are signed & timestamped, there's no issue. Voila; attribution. If they're not, so long as the archive links to the original page ("You agree to be credited, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL when your contributions are reused in any form"), there should still be no issue. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:26, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Not all user talk pages are archived in that way in the first place, note. My 'bot archives mine using the renaming tool, for example. Other people archive their talk pages to history. Uncle G (talk) 21:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Using DISPLAYNAME with css "display:none" to mask naming problems?
At the highly contensious poll Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration/Poll on Ireland article names for determining the names of how the Ireland state and island should be called, one issue is with the current situation, with the state currently at Republic of Ireland. This term, however, is not 100% popular due to past histories between Ireland and UK.
Someone discovered that the DISPLAYNAME could effectively be used along with a hidden display span to make the article title appear as "Ireland" (removing the contentious term from where people have the most problem with it) despite the article still "living" at "Republic of Ireland". Technically it works.
The question I ask, is this appropriate to use? It's one thing to use the DISPLAYNAME to add italics to a title, but the hidden text is a bit more of a problem. I can see a lot of newbie editors scratching heads, wondering why a link to "Ireland" never gets them to the country page despite that the page is named that way. And if this catches on, I could see similar problems developing for generically disambiguated pages (with parenthetical terms after the main term being hidden).
As a solution to a content dispute, is it appropriate to use this DISPLAYNAME with hidden spanning to help resolve it, or should it be avoided completely? --MASEM (t) 13:10, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- As the person who first suggested the idea (but did not realize that it could actually be done) over at the IECOLL, let me comment that I think a broad solution is probably be in order. It seems to me that the best way to confuse people is to adopt it for only a tiny number of articles where there's a big argument. The fact is that pretty much every other encyclopedia in the world allows multiple articles to have the same title. My preference would be to allow this usage for all parenthetically disambiguated titles. Over at the page Masem linked, Hans Adler suggested the wording for a policy change to allow this. I'm not sure that I would support a limited solution which only covered the Ireland articles, as that would be confusing and misleading. john k (talk) 13:21, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- It's a clever idea, but "clever" is not a compliment for approaches to large systems like Wikipedia. I would say the gain is minimal, the downsides are significant - complication, unintuitiveness, violating the principle of least surprise, extra (and ugly) markup... I'm opposed. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:26, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Sounds like a nonstandard hack and quite a kludge. --Cybercobra (talk) 13:26, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- (ec) I'd say definitely not. It might be justified (though it would still have the technophobes jumping up and down in horror) in cases where the desired name for a page is technically impossible (because it clashes with an interwiki prefix, for example). I don't see any justification for using it to get around the rule that different articles must have different titles. Use Ireland (island) and Ireland (country) if you want to do it like that, just as is routinely done with millions of articles that require disambiguation. (Is this Ireland thing really still going on? I bet they're still debating Macedonia somewhere too...)--Kotniski (talk) 13:34, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- Im concerned this will lead to alot of confusion. If this was two completly different articles on totally different topics (like a car and an animal) then it may not be so bad, but the island / state are too alike. I dont have a problem with the title of the article trying to reflect the official name, use of bolding / italics for certain parts of the term Republic of Ireland seemed like a reasonable idea to draw attention to the title but two Ireland titles is unhelpful in my view. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:39, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- (ec) As I said at the poll page, I am opposed. I think it would make the encyclopædia significantly less usable for little benefit. If people see an article entitled Ireland, they will assume that that article will come up if they search for Ireland. People seeing a page called Ireland may be inclined to think that a link to Ireland will point there.
- Sure it would be possible to dab page - but in that case, why not use disambiguators? I don't see much benefit in suppressing the disambiguators, and I see a significant downside as noted above. Pfainuk talk 13:42, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- In this case all disambiguators are awkward. We could disambiguate the island as Ireland (island) and give the state its natural name. But that would, in a sense, support the state's claim to the entire island; just a bit too much so to make me uncomfortable with the idea.
- As to disambiguators for Ireland, the obvious natural disambiguation is Republic of Ireland and it took me a long time to understand why this is not acceptable to some Irish people. I think the reason is that in Irish (i.e. Republic of Ireland) usage, Republic of Ireland is completely avoided outside a football context by some, and used as a disambiguator of last resort and only in formal contexts (where the South won't do) by others. All of this in spite of the fact that it's the formal "description" (a unique concept, not "name") of the state and was originally intended (against some opposition) to play the role of a disambiguation. Outside Ireland, Republic of Ireland is severely overused for several reasons including a misconception about the most correct formal name. The article tries to set this right without giving the topic more weight than it deserves, but undermines itself through the problematic title.
- The standard (country) is slightly offensive because the United Kingdom, among many weirdnesses, has the state/country terminology the other way round. Ireland was once a constituent country of the state UK. Now it is a sovereign state, no longer a mere country. On the other hand, from a global POV (state) is an awkward disambiguator. (Hmm, Ireland (state)... Is that an Australian state?) I would favour (republic), but that's a bit eccentric.
- This is not a plea for this policy change, just an attempt to explain that the disagreements are more or less inevitable, not caused by extreme nationalism as most people think.
- NB: We shouldn't continue this discussion here, this was intended as a summary to give some background and perhaps attract fresh input to the Ireland naming poll. Hans Adler 16:26, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- Hadn't realized you were arguing in the past from political pov, quote, " But that would, in a sense, support the state's claim to the entire island; just a bit too much so to make me uncomfortable with the idea. ". Quite a dangerous road to go down for Wikipedia, the name of the sovereign country is 'Ireland', check with the CIA Facebook, EU, and Constitution of Ireland. Anyway, if this method has any worth, it will be used. Can't keep 'good thing' down. Tfz 16:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- Sure, I wasn't so much commenting on this particular issue, but rather using it as a specific example. It would also be confusing if you were expecting to land at an article that you know is simply titled "Georgia" about either a country or a US state and ended up at Georgia. Or if you were expecting an article on a planet or a metal or god called "Mercury" - that is titled with that name - and ended up at Mercury. Pfainuk talk 16:50, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- (ec)Having come up with the technical bit behind this; I must say that this is a hack/exploit that could have some ugly consequences. What this does is not something that should be possible; the goal of DISPLAYTITLE is just to provide a way to change the formatting on a title without actually changing what it says. This exploit does more than that, and similar methods could be used quite disruptively (I won't detail this due to WP:BEANS). As such, I would not be very surprised if a future MediaWiki update rendered this approach useless. Also, if adopted on a wide scale, I think this could also be quite confusing and difficult to deal with. Thus, I think if used at all, this should only be used on a few of the most stubborn naming conflicts, and of course using it some places but not other introduces it's own set of problems. Cool3 (talk) 16:24, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- Certainly - and I don't believe there's a naming conflict that this would solve (except for those technical restrictions, like you can't start a title "Q:" because that means Wikiquote). In this case we're spoilt for choice: Ireland (country) or Republic of Ireland are two names that fully accord with Wikipedia standards and natural common sense (so what if country can also mean a constituent of the UK - it doesn't mean that here; and so what if RoI isn't the official name - we don't stick with official names). We could also go for Ireland for the country and Ireland (island) for the island. Just have a final big poll to decide once and for all which way it's going to be, and then live with the decision.--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- For every one editor it's an easy problem because at least one of the options isn't so bad. The problem is that there is not a single option that something like 55 % agree is not so bad. But such problems will always exist, and this needn't dominate the discussion whether we want the option to drop a disambiguator. Hans Adler 17:14, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- As the editor who first suggested that maybe we should be looking for a technical solution (which I see this as) rather than an editorial one, I think I would oppose this particular suggestion. But not because of ugliness or editorial complexity. My main reason is that the html page served up to users would still have an html title of RoI or Ireland (state) or whatever. One of the goals of my initial suggestion was that both pages - the one about the island and the one about the country - should both be named/titled Ireland. So in this instance the proposed solution would fail my criteria.
- I think the complexity of entering such editorial structures could be overcome using simply keyed templates - perhaps something like {{Ireland-island}} and {{Ireland-state}}. Such templates could be cleverly designed to render whatever we wanted them to. They might even have conditional rendering. In fact, I think such templates are probably essential whatever the outcome of the poll at WP:IECOLL. Fmph (talk) 19:55, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- In theory, the html title could be changed by appropriately modifying MediaWiki:Pagetitle to specifically check for an exception on every single page to see if it is named "Ireland (state)" or whatever. Although I am not certain, this might have adverse performance implications. The coding might be a bit tricky; I'll play around for a while and see what could be done. Of course, this is even hackier than already proposed. Cool3 (talk) 21:08, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- For every one editor it's an easy problem because at least one of the options isn't so bad. The problem is that there is not a single option that something like 55 % agree is not so bad. But such problems will always exist, and this needn't dominate the discussion whether we want the option to drop a disambiguator. Hans Adler 17:14, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- Certainly - and I don't believe there's a naming conflict that this would solve (except for those technical restrictions, like you can't start a title "Q:" because that means Wikiquote). In this case we're spoilt for choice: Ireland (country) or Republic of Ireland are two names that fully accord with Wikipedia standards and natural common sense (so what if country can also mean a constituent of the UK - it doesn't mean that here; and so what if RoI isn't the official name - we don't stick with official names). We could also go for Ireland for the country and Ireland (island) for the island. Just have a final big poll to decide once and for all which way it's going to be, and then live with the decision.--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- (ec)Having come up with the technical bit behind this; I must say that this is a hack/exploit that could have some ugly consequences. What this does is not something that should be possible; the goal of DISPLAYTITLE is just to provide a way to change the formatting on a title without actually changing what it says. This exploit does more than that, and similar methods could be used quite disruptively (I won't detail this due to WP:BEANS). As such, I would not be very surprised if a future MediaWiki update rendered this approach useless. Also, if adopted on a wide scale, I think this could also be quite confusing and difficult to deal with. Thus, I think if used at all, this should only be used on a few of the most stubborn naming conflicts, and of course using it some places but not other introduces it's own set of problems. Cool3 (talk) 16:24, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
- I think this solutions presents potentially serious UI issues for users. As a solution to the Ireland-articles-names debate, I think it puts the desires of editors ahead of the needs of readers. The solutions to that debate should come from disambiguation policy/guidelines, not gimmicks such as this. The current solution (Ireland/Republic of Ireland/Ireland (disambiguation)) accords to policy/guidelines, as do all of the other solutions being voted on at the Poll on Ireland article names. --rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid (coṁrá) 20:25, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I have created User:Cool3/Ireland that shows what would need to be modified and how to display the name of the page as "Ireland" to readers both in the article title and as the html page title. Feel free to discuss the implications there, here, or wherever seems most appropriate. I also would say, as per the above, that I think such a solution is reader friendly, and that the main people it will "mess up" are casual editors who can't figure out why their links don't work right, but this could be solved with sufficient explanations. Cool3 (talk) 21:59, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Editing policy and consensus policy
I was doing some cleanup in consensus, but became a bit confused. What's the main difference between the two? (WP:EP, WP:CONS) I take it that consensus is the general outline of how collaboration works, while the editing policy deals with adding/removing/changing the information in our articles. Is this correct? M 23:58, 15 August 2009 (UTC)