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Contents
- 1 Proposal to change the focus of pending changes
- 2 Is citing the definition of a dictionary an original research
- 3 Limits on promotional lists
- 4 Welcome or reject mention of Google doodles throughout the encyclopaedia?
- 5 RfC: Guidance on commas after Jr. and Sr.
- 6 Commas after first word of lede
- 7 English policy: So blindly obvious, but...
- 8 RfC: Should the holder of a political office be linked within an infobox more than once (i.e. as the successor), when they have already been linked (e.g. as the vice president, predecessor, lieutenant, etc.)?
- 9 RfC re:Anthroponymy page guidelines
- 10 RfC: Establish MoS as the official page for style questions
- 11 Animated GIFs in infoboxes
- 12 IPv6 IPs
- 13 "Fair use" from third party as opposed to official sources
- 14 "Comprised of" and the problem of pet peeves in editing
- 15 Article consensus vs blacklist consensus
Proposal to change the focus of pending changes
Some years ago, pending changes were introduced on an experimental basis. A subsequent RfC voted to end the experiment, but pending changes are still with us. Some administrators take advantage of this fact by putting more articles in. Most of the work on Islamic calendar, for example, is done by IPs, but since it was put in pending changes (for no good reason) editing has stopped. I suggest we enforce the RfC and that all articles currently in pending changes be taken out.
This will mean that pending changes reviewers (who I take to be everyone who is autoconfirmed) will have nothing to do. I therefore propose that IPs be given back the right to start articles for an experimental period of six months on a pending changes basis. That is to say, their articles would not be publicly visible until the text had been approved by an editor.
Technically, I suppose that what would happen would be that the article would be created and accessible as normal, with the usual edit and history tabs. The text created by the IP would appear in the edit box but would not be seen publicly (the article would appear as any page does when it has been blanked). Editing would be as normal for pending changes, with the first edit to be publicly visible being the first edit by an autoconfirmed editor. Normal deletion policy would apply.
Where an editor tags for CSD he may find it convenient to make the offending text publicly visible to assist those following up. Either way, if there are no objections an administrator will be along about fifteen minutes later to delete. Every article started in this way will automatically remain within pending changes for one month after creation.
There are two big advantages of this proposal. Article growth went well from inception until just shy of the five million mark, when it stalled. This proposal will put it back on track. It will also result in an infusion of new blood. Wikipedia is haemorrhaging editors. It desperately needs new ones. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 14:46, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Isn't that essentially AfC? Kharkiv07Talk 15:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- The difference is that you can put something in AfC and it hangs around for months so most people don't bother. Under this proposal you are in the driving seat so a lot more people will add worthwhile content. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 15:48, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
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- As is, most articles created by newcomers are deleted quickly without discussion, a situation which I believe to be very BITEy, and possibly is a significant cause of Wikipedia "haemorrhaging editors"; move the permission to create articles a bit farther back, and the situation will become worse, not better. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:28, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
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- The difference is that you can put something in AfC and it hangs around for months so most people don't bother. Under this proposal you are in the driving seat so a lot more people will add worthwhile content. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 15:48, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm confused by your proposal for a few reasons. First, IP editors can still edit with pending changes, in effect it is a weaker version of semi-protection which BLOCKS all IP editors. I would suggest moving many semi pages to pending changes actually and strongly oppose removal of pending changes. As for AfC, it works. Reviewing a new article is a process, more so than a simple pending changes button, and does take a little longer. And third, only users with the Pending changes reviewer can review the pending changes, even though any auto confirmed users edits will be accepted. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 23:31, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- You seem to have missed the series of RFCs that reauthorized the use of pending changes protection (level 1 only). Monty845 23:43, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
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- The last RfC decided that PC was wanted and it was up to editors to decide how to implement it. To date there has been no consensus on this so there is no mandate to put Islamic calendar (or any other article for that matter) into PC. PC seems to be very complex - there are at least two levels of it and SlimVirgin said she didn't understand it. I think it is too complicated. Given that here in March there was a consensus that PC should not operate for an extended period all that is needed is a week of semi - protection where necessary to drive the vandals away.
- Od Mishehu says that "most articles created by newcomers are deleted quickly without discussion". That's a failure by the established editors. They should work to bring the articles up to standard, not delete them. This is why IPs should be allowed to create articles - they then get the benefit of all the other editors who know something about the subject adding sources and content. That is the essence of crowdsourcing.
- Replying to EoRdE6, AfC takes months and is permanently backlogged. With direct article creation other editors can come in and get the article on the road to GA status in a few days. You see articles like the Charlie Hebdo massacre which within just a few hours of creation are full of content and sources. The system of creating stubs giving experts the opportunity to come in and build a full length article has worked well.
- There is a proverb "If you want a job done do it yourself". AfC relies on getting other people to post the content to mainspace. It's a form of action by proxy which is proven to be inefficient. The British government in 2002 experimented with postal voting - included was the local council election in my area. There were no polling stations (no electronic voting here - today is the general election and everyone takes printed ballots, fills them in and posts them into the ballot box). The voters had to fill in the ballot papers then give them to the postmen who had to give them to the council. Needless to say the experiment was not repeated.
- It's the same everywhere. We got supermarkets from America - before then shoppers queued at the grocer's while he picked their selections off his shelves. Now checkout operators have been done away with and customers scan their shopping themselves - no more queuing. No more queuing at the public library either - readers return and renew their books themselves at self - service kiosks, resulting in a more efficient use of their and the staff's time. Self - service machines are at railway stations - everywhere you can think of. Introduction of AfC was a retrograde step. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 11:21, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
- I suggest you take a reread of Wikipedia:Protection_policy#Pending changes protection and Wikipedia:Pending changes as you are mistaken. The closing statement of the last RFC which dealt with the issue is quite clear Wikipedia:PC2012/RfC 3.
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There was very strong consensus to enable the use of Pending Changes throughout all namespaces
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- and further
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The consensus on this was fairly clearly against having any specific criteria, but a significant minority expressed concern that its use is less well-defined than is the use for conventional protection methods; if enormous inconsistencies with application are seen upon implementation, this may be a topic worth revisiting
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- and at the end
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As with the previous RfC, assessing the usefulness of what gained consensus here will require some monitoring. The same time frames (1 month for obvious problems, more for subtler issues) seem to fit with everything in this discussion as well. It appears that after this and the previous RfCs, we have the necessary framework to roll out Pending Changes, and we know what aspects of its use will require the most monitoring and later attention.
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- So no we aren't waiting for the community to come to some sort of agreement on how to use it. (There were earlier RfCs which also dealt with when to use PC1.)
- Of course, if you feel that PC1 is being in ways that are unhelpful in some instances, you're welcome to start a properly fleshed-out RfC on the matter, but I strongly urge you to talk to others about this before hand, and make sure you actually otherstand what the history is, otherwise your RfC is unlikely to do anything useful. (As it stands, you're failing to follow information I had sort of heard before, but to be honest had mostly forgotten by now and only properly relearned by actually reading the PC page and following the links to the RfC has lead to your proposal being sidetracked by this unnecessary discussion.) Now if you feel the admin's closing wasn't an accurate summation of the RfC consensus, or if you feel that the RfCs had insufficient participation compared to earlier RfCs, you could try to dispute that, but relitigating stuff after 2+ years rarely works well.
- There were two followup RfCs, Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2013 and Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2014, which concerned PC2 and ultimately came up with criteria for the use of PC2, but no actual consensus to use PC2. These don't of course affect the use of PC1, for which in the absence of clear evidence consensus has changed, we stick with the older RfCs which showed there is consensus to use PC1.
- Nil Einne (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- Your example also seems fairly poor.
Perhaps Islamic calendar may have had useful IP edits, but it also had many that were reverted (which look to be more or less the same edit from a persistent IP hopper). I didn't look in to these enough to say if the reversions were proper, simply that they happened therefore whether before or after PC, IP edits were being rejected.
More importantly perhaps, the time frame here is insufficient to tell us anything about pending changes, particularly if you look at the logs or edit history carefully. On 13 April, both PC1 and semi protection were applied with the PC1 due to expire on 13 July and the semiprotection on 27 April. My thoughts and a search confirmed via Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 March 18#Pending changes and Semi-protection simultaneously that this works and is evidently done sometimes when it's felt that there is an acute problem that needs to be dealt with via semiprotection for a short time, and a chronic problem that needs PC1.
Without commenting on whether this was the case for Islamic calender, this means it was impossible for IPs to directly edit from 17:36 13 April to 27 April. So there's a fair chance the absence of IP edits for this period had nothing to do with PC1.
So really all you're talking about is from 27 April until now. In that period, we had 3 IP edits. 2 were rejected, 1 accepted. Again without commenting on the appropriateness of any of these edits, unless we were getting an average of 1 useful IP edit on average every 3 days or so (which it doesn't look like we were), it's difficult to useful conclude things were so much better before PC1. You simply lack sufficient data to be able to make any conclusion about a reduction of helpful IP edits. And at the very least, the editor who kept making the same change which I think lead up to the semiprotections and PC1 seems to have left for now.
BTW, for the avoidance of doubt and confusion, I should mention I'm aware editors who haven't been auto/confirmed are affected as well, I just used IPs for shorthand and since it's also harder to spot such editors.
Nil Einne (talk) 15:59, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think that the proposal that an article should go into PC just because a lot of IPs don't edit it is misconceived. The Islamic calendar is hardly a mainstream subject. Your comments on PC generally are a joke. About twenty years ago the local council proposed to demolish a housing estate and being short of cash proposed to sell off the land to a private developer. To do that, it needed the consent of the tenants. It assured them that the estate would not be sold if the majority were opposed. The tenants kept asking for a ballot but the council ignored them. Finally the ballot papers arrived, and the tenants were dismayed to see that their votes would be rolled up among those of tenants on other estates which were going to be refurbished. This followed an "opinion poll" conducted by a survey company which doorknocked to ask the tenants what they wanted for their estate but did not ask the key question Do you want your estate to be sold or not? The council's ballot paper was craftily worded - not "Do you want your estate to be sold?" as discussed in literature and meetings but "Do you want your home to be sold, meaning that the tenants' views would be submerged amongst the views of all the tenants on other estates who were going to get new kitchens and bathrooms instead of seeing their homes reduced to rubble.
- Same here, there was a lot of discussion about how pending changes might work, but no discussion of whether its reenablement would be a good or bad thing. Since pending changes is a dead loss, let me reformulate my proposal. IPs would be able to create articles just as before Siegenthaler with one exception - edits by non - autoconfirmed editors would only become publicly visible when the page was first edited by an autoconfirmed user. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 13:21, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
- Your example also seems fairly poor.
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The claim "Some years ago, pending changes were introduced on an experimental basis. A subsequent RfC voted to end the experiment, but pending changes are still with us" is factually untrue. What happened is that PC was implemented with permission of the community with the restriction that it be removed after a set period, that promise was broken and PC remained, then all hell broke loose. Later, after it was removed and we put down the pitchforks and torches, a second proposal was made to implement PC permanently, and the decision of the community was yes for level one PC and no for level two PC. So the reality is that [A] the current PC policy is supported by the community and [B] we would be fools to ever again believe a promise like "let's try this for six months and then we will turn it off and evaluate how theexperiment went" after having been lied to in the past. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:34, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Editors were given two alternatives: PC anywhere or PC in restricted areas. The third alternative, PC nowhere, was not presented. This is the same trick the council played when wording its ballot on council house selloffs. After John Prescott was told where he could stick his housing policy he came up with more alternatives:
- transfer to private landlord (and if you disagree there's no money to maintain your home so it will fall to pieces around you)
- private finance initiative (PFI) where developers get a long lease in return for financing the work
- arms - length management organisation (ALMO) where the council retains ownership of the homes but the management is farmed out to a quango (quasi non - governmental organisation).
The fourth option, stay as you are, was not presented.
Tenants were ballotted on the three options and - surprise - the council claimed 80% of them were in favour of option 3. In fact, hardly anyone voted, so the actual percentage in favour was tiny.
As for broken promises, anyone can start an RfC suggesting that PC be turned off, and if it wins a consensus that's more power to the community. Don't underestimate the power of public opinion - Prescott had a scheme to decimate (and I don't mean reduce by 10%) perfectly serviceable housing in Liverpool which was withdrawn in the face of strong opposition. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 16:30, 21 May 2015 (UTC) 156.61.250.250, I suggest that you read the discussions and RfCs in question and edit the above claims accordingly.
In particular, Wikipedia:PC2012/RfC 2 and Wikipedia:PC2012/RfC 3 clearly show that your your claim "The third alternative, PC nowhere, was not presented" has zero basis in reality. Did you really imagine that nobody would check? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:33, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- You've linked to eleven RfCs on this subject. I was given just two to look up, one of them being Wikipedia:PC2012/RfC3 which you also cite. I don't see anywhere in that wall of text where editors were asked to !vote on the proposition "Do you (a) want to enable PC or (b) switch it off. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 08:43, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Is citing the definition of a dictionary an original research
Hello
I'm not sure this is the right place for the discussion, please forgiev me and show me the way to the correct place in this case.
in Role-playing game terms#R, we can read
- Race: A character's species, ethnicity, type, or other description of their physical and cultural heredity. Role-playing games often include fantasy races, mutants, robots and other non-human types.
This imho obviously extends usual definition of a race, e.g. in wiktionary:race#Etymology 2
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- A group of sentient beings, particularly people, distinguished by common heritage or characteristics
- A population geographically separated from others of its species that develops significantly different characteristics; an informal term for a subspecies.
(although in the first definition, "sentient beings" could be wide enough to enclose positronic brains). Am I right or am I flawed by the fact that I'm not a native english speaker?
If I'm right -- and even if I'm wrong, the problem could be for another topic --, can I then cite a definition of the dictionary and mention this discrepancy, or would it be considered as an original analysis of primary sources and thus an original research?
cdang|write me 09:53, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
- Anyone can edit Wiktionary so it shouldn't be used as a source per WP:USERGENERATED. Furthermore, the lead of Role-playing game terms is clear that the shown meanings are in the context of role-playing games. Words often have different meanings or nuances in different contexts so citing a "discrepancy" with a reliable dictionary would also be bad, unless that dictionary specifically talks about the meaning of "race" in role-playing games. Such games are full of supernatural and fictional beings so it's hardly surprising if the terminology doesn't adhere strictly to the common usage for real beings. And we certainly don't want users going through Category:Glossaries and point out whenever a field gives a new or modified meaning to an existing word. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:33, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for your answer. I used the Wiktionary because I don't know reliable online English dictionaries and don't have a paper English dictionary with me (I'm not a native English speaker); but the question is about any reliable dictionary, online or paper.
- I agree with you that the definition of some words is different in fictional works and in common usage, the question is: is it possible write that it is different, just refering to the definition of a reliable dictionary, or would it be considered as an original research? (The aim is not to point out every word in the glossary; but it can be relevant in some cases.)
- cdang|write me 07:54, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
- OK, maybe I could be a bit more specific. I wrote the article Character race. It was a draft until a few hours, and was accepted sooner than I expected (I won't complain (-: ). The aim of my question was to clarify a point to be sure it would be accepted, but my question remains.
- I wrote : "The term “race” is even broader than the usual meaning, as it also includes extra-terrestrial beings, vegetal beings — e.g. the Aldryami in Glorantha (1978)[6], the Sylvanians in Fantasy Craft (2010)[7] — and robots — e.g. Artificials in Fantasy Craft or the Forgeborn/Dwarf-forged optional race in 13th Age (2013)[8]."
- Notice that I even didn't cite a dictionary (which would be a primary source). Can I write this without a secondary source stating this ?
- It may look ridiculous as this, because this statement is quite obvious. But obviousness is a valid arguument for Descartes, it is not for Wikipedia. And, believe it or not, this statement caused me some problem in the French wiki, on the same topic.
- So, is it the same on the English WP? Would someone add {{refneeded}} or is the statement acceptable as this?
- cdang|write me 20:29, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue. In cases like this though, citing a definition to a defining source would be appropriate, I believe. So yes, you can cite a dictionary (like Oxford or Merriam-Webster, or a game’s rulebook). —174.141.182.82 (talk) 22:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
- OK, I'm a bit paranoid then (-:
- I realise that the main problem is not on the content of the article itself, but on the language. The english word "race" was initially translated as race in French; in French, it was used for both humans and for animals (means "breed"). In the early 1980's, when D&D was first translated in French, this was still accurate, although a bit outdated. But things evolved, essentially pushed by the bad memories of the WWII and the evolution of genetics. A 1991 French dictionary already notes that the notion of race "is to be rejected" for humans (but still give the definition, which is OK because we need to understand outdated texts). Now the consensus is that race can only be used for "breed", and is banned for humans (we use ethnicity or type instead); the word race was even banned from the laws which punishes racism (16 May 2013, [1]).
- So it is obvious to me (as the skye is blue) that "race" has become a faux ami (see table below), but well, this is quite new, and there is no source that really states "race is a faux ami", all I have are dictionaries. And thus it is obvious to me that the title of the French article cannot be "race" and I used the word peuple (people) instead. But as the word "race" is still widely used in role-playing game rulebooks in French, I don't have a secondary source citing "people" (but have some primary ones), and "race" is what comes up with Google, so many claim that the notion of "people" does not exist in RPG and that it is an original research of mine. See the point?
- So, that does not concern the English WP, but I wanted to explain why I asked that silly question. Sorry for the disturbance.
- cdang|write me 12:31, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue. In cases like this though, citing a definition to a defining source would be appropriate, I believe. So yes, you can cite a dictionary (like Oxford or Merriam-Webster, or a game’s rulebook). —174.141.182.82 (talk) 22:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
Modern English | Modern French |
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race | éthnie, type |
breed | race |
- A similar question has also come up at Landrace, in such rancorous debate at Talk:Landrace that resolution has been stalled for many months. In that case, one editor wants to include in the lead some wording from and a citation to a general dictionary, and a similar one from an internal regulatory document of the FAO. Meanwhile another editor wants to limit the article's examination of definitional issues to a terminology section devoted to that, including more precise and nuanced definitions from topically-specialized sources, and have the lead only present an overview of what the term refers to, without citing either the dictionary or FAO sources, detailing in the terminology section why these two sources may be questionable on the matter. Each editor has made WP:NOR and WP:NPOV claims against the other over this editing dispute (see Talk:Landrace#POV promotion of vague FAO and OED definitions, and some earlier threads, for details). It needs some new eyes, preferably ones of editors who do not have any vested interest in domestic animal topics. Obviously I am the second of the two editors in this dispute. Both of us are making an effort to avoid further interpersonal conflict, so I think it would be especially helpful in this case for non-involved editors to weigh in on this matter, and others raised on the same talk page. A cursory scan of the article shows that it's stuck in the same in-between state it has been for months, with the dictionary definition moved to the terminology section, but the FAO definition retained in the first sentence of the lead. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 12:01, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Hi SMcCandlish, If it's just the two editors involved in the content dispute, have you considered requesting a third opinion at WP:3O? If you don't get anything there, I'll try to have a look myself, but it might be a day or so. Hope this helps. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:20, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Ryk72: I've attempted formal WP:DR with the editor before, but this was rebuffed. I'm skeptical that the opinion of a single additional voice via WP:3O would help much. Rather, multiple editors applying critical thinking about what constitutes WP:OR/WP:SYNTH is needed. Each editor claims that the other is engaging in novel synthesis, and it's unlikely that they can both be right, when the edits they make are back-and-forth, directly opposite edits to the same small bit of the lead. (Of course it's possible for two editors to engage in SYNTH in different ways on the same page.) Either a vague dictionary definition and an out-of-context NGO one from a house organ can be used in place of more particular, secondary, journal sources, or they can't. PS: A third editor might already be involved (one that the other enlists against me in a WP:TAGTEAM on virtually every page in which we come into conflict, for around 18 months now), or WP:3O might not even be available. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 14:45, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Hi SMcCandlish, If it's just the two editors involved in the content dispute, have you considered requesting a third opinion at WP:3O? If you don't get anything there, I'll try to have a look myself, but it might be a day or so. Hope this helps. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:20, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Limits on promotional lists
Some types of items, such as entertainment industry awards, are largely inherently promotional in nature. Since we don’t want to unduly promote things on Wikipedia, should we have guidance, perhaps at MOS:SAL, instructing to be more selective in listings of such items than we may be with other types of lists? (Note: There is some discussion of this question in a narrower scope at WT:FILM. I don’t know whether we do need a rule like this; that’s why I’m asking the community. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:50, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
(clarification copied from a reply below) What I mean by this question is, should we only list the likes of the high-profile Golden Globes or Academy Awards, or Pulitzers, or the Nobel Prize in Literature? Or should we list every single verifiable award (including frivolous ones)? Every notable award? Only awards that meet some yet-to-be-determined threshold? Or are our current guidelines sufficient for editors to make case-by-case judgements without issues? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:33, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- Recognition is not promotion. Things like the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards are widely recognized and accepted as significant accomplishments within the film industry. It is not promotional to note who wins such awards anymore than it is for the Nobel Prizes or the Pulitzer Prizes or anything else. Just because Wikipedia contains information about commercial ventures does not mean it is promoting those ventures. --Jayron32 10:54, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm assuming the nominator hoped people would read the very long discussion on that page so did not go into more detail regarding this issue. The issue is this (again, please read the long discussion as I won't do justice by summarizing it): should stand-alone list articles regarding awards (that was the original issue) list -all- awards that a given subject has received or notable awards only. What are notable awards? Awards that have or should have (but currently don't) a Wikipedia article (and thus satisfying notability guidelines). Why should we limit them? Because if a local elementary school gives an award to actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and it was covered by some local newspaper, should an article such as List of awards and nominations received by Philip Seymour Hoffman add that award to the list. The side not wanting to add non-notable awards cited WP:CSC#1 ("Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. Red-linked entries are acceptable if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group, and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the future. This standard prevents Wikipedia from becoming an indiscriminate list, and prevents individual lists from being too large to be useful to readers. Many of the best lists on Wikipedia reflect this type of editorial judgment.") as adding non-notable awards to such a list serves only those non-notable organizations which as a consequence become notable not because of what they do, but because they have Wikipedia mentions. --Gonnym (talk) 11:08, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don’t think anyone’s of the opinion that we shouldn’t list awards like the Golden Globes or Academy Awards, or Pulitzers, or the Nobel Prize in Literature. But should we only list awards of that caliber? Should we list every single verifiable award (including frivolous ones)? Every notable award? Only awards that meet some yet-to-be-determined threshold? Or are our current guidelines sufficient for editors to make case-by-case judgements without issues? That’s what I meant by my question here. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:06, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm assuming the nominator hoped people would read the very long discussion on that page so did not go into more detail regarding this issue. The issue is this (again, please read the long discussion as I won't do justice by summarizing it): should stand-alone list articles regarding awards (that was the original issue) list -all- awards that a given subject has received or notable awards only. What are notable awards? Awards that have or should have (but currently don't) a Wikipedia article (and thus satisfying notability guidelines). Why should we limit them? Because if a local elementary school gives an award to actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and it was covered by some local newspaper, should an article such as List of awards and nominations received by Philip Seymour Hoffman add that award to the list. The side not wanting to add non-notable awards cited WP:CSC#1 ("Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. Red-linked entries are acceptable if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group, and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the future. This standard prevents Wikipedia from becoming an indiscriminate list, and prevents individual lists from being too large to be useful to readers. Many of the best lists on Wikipedia reflect this type of editorial judgment.") as adding non-notable awards to such a list serves only those non-notable organizations which as a consequence become notable not because of what they do, but because they have Wikipedia mentions. --Gonnym (talk) 11:08, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
- We should rely on WP:notability and other long-standing guidelines. Awards that get in-depth coverage in independent third party reliable sources get articles. Note that 'local person wins obscure award' coverage is not in depth coverage of the obscure award but of local person. Those articles can be expanded (with lists of winners, lists of judges, etc) where those are found in reliable sources, as per WP:Article size. Breaking out by year or category requires than each year or category has received in-depth coverage in independent third party reliable sources. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:56, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I strongly suggest this discussion be {hat}ed. A closely overlapping RfC is scheduled to close in a day or so. A new Village Pump discussion can be started, if appropriate, with more clarity and focus once that RfC closes. Alsee (talk) 16:30, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- I’m of the opinion that that discussion should have been hatted long ago. That RFC in that place is not capable of producing a binding consensus on the topic it deviated into. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:38, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- I disagree. I do not see it deviating from its original topic. With 34 editors contributing to the discussion, some more than once, it seems the issue answered all the possible questions someone might have and if viewing its "vote" count it would seem those in favor of limiting award lists articles to only notable awards are almost twice as many as those against (18 in favor, 10 oppose (with one writing "No" but his comment seemed more as a support) and 6 commented in the discussion without stating clearly their opinion). --Gonnym (talk) 08:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- But that RFC was asking whether our guidelines already do limit award list articles. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 00:48, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- I disagree. I do not see it deviating from its original topic. With 34 editors contributing to the discussion, some more than once, it seems the issue answered all the possible questions someone might have and if viewing its "vote" count it would seem those in favor of limiting award lists articles to only notable awards are almost twice as many as those against (18 in favor, 10 oppose (with one writing "No" but his comment seemed more as a support) and 6 commented in the discussion without stating clearly their opinion). --Gonnym (talk) 08:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- Comment: Awards don't seem to qualify as "promotional items" in the usual sense, something that exists primarily to promote or sell, like a promotional T-shirt printed with an advertising message. Insofar as awards recognize superior achievement, they have an inherent promotional value, but they are about evaluating merit, not selling stuff. This does not seem like a reason to create special list inclusion guidelines specifically for awards. --Tsavage (talk) 01:13, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Comments/analysis WP:N and WP:GNG apply to article topics only, not content within articles, so there is no policy basis on which to exclude verifiable facts from such a list (whether a stand-alone or embedded list) on the basis of subjective personal estimates of whether something's trivial or not, unless they clearly trigger some other identifiable concern like WP:SPAM, WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE, or WP:NFT. One of the most important distinguishing characteristics governing the content of a list vs. a WP:Category of whole articles is much more permissive inclusion criteria than WP:N. Many not-quite-notable things get intentionally merged into lists as a way to retain the content. It's absolutely unworkable to wholesale exclude industry (or other within-field) awards from stand-alone or embedded-in-article lists of awards received by someone/something (or a list of the awards in a particular field) because only a vanishingly small fraction of verifiable awards are notable for WP purposes as article topics in their own right. As just one example, there may well be no cue sports-related award besides the BCA Hall of Fame and World Snooker HoF (which doesn't have it's own article here, and may never) that would satisfy the GNG, aside from competition medals, e.g. from the Asian Games. But it would be an editing "crime" to gut all cue sports biographical articles of awards-related information, some of which may pertain to amateur leagues, and smaller pro circuits, or disciplines that are not shown on ESPN, or which have not existed since 1940, or whatever. Doing so, when that material is verifiable with reliable sources, would not only be a WP:NPOV problem, of personal bias in favor of only a certain few "preferred" awards, it would also be an end-run notability attack on the bio subjects themselves, since many of the reliable sources about them may be sports journalism and sometimes mainstream journalism articles that are specifically about those very awards! Getting into the One-pocket Hall of Fame is probably at least as significant as getting into the BCA HoF, because one-pocket is a vastly more difficult discipline than more popular cue sports like nine-ball, despite being a less well-recognized HoF for a sport with a comparatively small number of pro players.
There's also a WP:Systemic bias problem, in that awards conferred in certain fields (e.g. filmmaking and popular music) are heaped with a grossly undue amount of attention in Western culture, while honors awarded at a regional, national or even international level in areas of endeavor that are not "hot" topics (geophysics, herpetology, whatever) may have no article here at all, and be hard to establish as notable, especially if they pertain mostly to non-Anglophone countries. It's a pure accident that Soviet Russian regalia (and big cats) attract just barely enough special interest editing that the old mountaineering medal, the Snow Leopard award, has an article here; an exact equivalent award issued by Argentina or Sweden almost certainly would not have an article here even 20 years from now.
Yet another problem is that the relevance and notability-establishment value of the same award to one subject may be higher than for another. A "best voice acting" award from a foreign anime cinema organization is probably meaningless for notability establishment purposes for, say, Angelina Jolie, and might be omitted from her article entirely, but may be important for an article on a new actress with only 3 film credits. [If you think no such article should exist anyway, the community disagrees, as I found out when I nominated Chipo Chung as a tiny stub for deletion back when she had only a handful of credits, and little more than passing mention in any reviews anywhere, but the article was kept anyway. I would argue to keep it now myself, as her career has progressed and the article has improved, along with reliable sourcing for it, but at the time it appeared to be a clear WP:NOTYET.] Another example of different weighting might be that mention of winning an amateur city championship by someone notable as a professional boxer with a long career could be overkill/trivia (unless appropriately worked into a section on their early life/career), but it might be very salient in a paragraph on some notable news anchor or painter who also competes as a boxer (reportage of that win might be the sole reliable source for his pugilistic hobby).
When it comes to truly trivial, entirely promotional "awards" issued by non-organizations no one could reasonably care about, this will be self-evident probably. I don't think that Jimbob's Restaurant Poughkeepsie Frisbee Player of the Year would sanely get included in a article, unless there were some particular reason to mention it, like some unusual controversy. Such a case could conceivably arise over, e.g., a publicized fistfight at a celebrity fund-raising tournament, or whatever. But WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE policy already covers attempts to include really pointless garbage, and WP:SPAM/WP:EL cover attempts to include what amounts to advertising for the commercial sponsors of non-organizational promotional opportunities masquerading as "awards", and WP:NFT additionally covers attempts to include awards someone made up the other day, like at a university organization (NFT covers content generally, not just whole articles). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:17, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Welcome or reject mention of Google doodles throughout the encyclopaedia?
I hope that this was not discussed already. I couldn’t find anything about it except this in a noticeboard.
I regularly see, freshly added to articles, the mention that the topic of the article (often, a person) was the subject of one of Google’s “doodles”. Often, such mention is placed in a “legacy and honors” (or similar) section, as shown in this most recent example.
One could view those mentions either as
- welcome additions to encyclopaedic content that make articles more complete and useful;
or as
- trivial information that, taken as a whole (throughout the encyclopaedia), amounts to pervasive spam and is better avoided (except for special cases).
I hold the latter opinion but others may disagree. So I would like to propose, assuming that it hasn’t been done before, that we clarify whether this quasi-systematic mention of Google doodles is, in fact, welcome or not. Regardless of the outcome, I think that it would be a good thing to have an archive of the discussion about it, so that people like me can refer to it and know what to do (or not to do).
To start, here’s my take on this issue.
Regardless of what one may think of the actual doodle (the graphic artwork published by Google), and of the general popularity enjoyed by the corporation and its doodles, the fact that a subject was chosen by a handful of Google employees as inspiration for an amusing illustration of the day does not constitute any particularly great recognition of a person or topic, worthy of mention in an encyclopaedia. It constitutes, at best, trivia.
It is not rare to find trivia in Wikipedia articles, and such trivia can be entertaining and interesting. However, not all trivia is equal. The article on Veuve Clicquot mentions that the company’s product is featured in the motion picture Casablanca, but the article on Casablanca is mum on the topic, and rightfully so. When the article on Humphrey Bogart mentions the “Bogart” issue of the Phantom, it is probably acceptable because it’s a notable and rare occurrence in the history of the series, with much work devoted to the topic. Google doodle’s, on the other hand, come often, cover all kinds of topic, have no end in sight and promise to therefore appear throughout the entire encyclopaedia, at Google’s whim. Additionally, they are associated to little work on Google’s part (besides the single piece of graphic artwork). If Claude Monet is mentioned in the article on water lilies, it is because of extensive and enduring work on those subjects. If he is cursorily mentioned again (among other artists) in the article on roses, it’s for similar reasons, with the addition of a recognised trend. Should he then also receive mention in the articles on poppies, willows, poplars, etc.? Probably not (thankfully, he doesn’t).
Given what they are, the amount of press coverage received by Google’s doodles is rather stunning and that fact has been used to argue in favour of the lists of Google doodles maintained on Wikipedia. Press coverage is often (but not always) prompted by the topic’s popularity, and one should not confuse one for the other. I find that such coverage (see the Washington Post and Gizmodo for examples) typically carries little information of interest (besides repeating what any encyclopaedia says better). After all, those among their readers who use Google’s search engine cannot easily miss the doodle; those who don’t probably do not care and if they do, well it’s one trivial click away. In other words, it’s neither great art (not more than, say, the daily Dilbert) nor great news. So why do press outlets slavishly cover the doodles? Perhaps, a few do it out of fanboyishness but I’d wager that most only seek to ride Google’s coattails. Such coverage (basically, free advertisement) is precisely what Google seeks with its doodles. And, in return, it effectively (through the miracles of SEO algorithms) and tangibly rewards the covering site with a top spot on the doodle’s “results” page and with extra inbound traffic.
Do we want Wikipedia to be part of this? Do we want to give Google free advertising space throughout the encyclopaedia, in exchange for some extra traffic? Since Wikipedia is not in the business of selling advertising space, I believe that the answer should be, unequivocally, “no”.
In the end, I’d be in favour of the systematic review and, if appropriate, deletion of such mentions already in the encyclopaedia. I am also in favour of a bot flagging all freshly-added references to Google doodles, allowing for review and reversion as appropriate, along with a notice on the talk page of the user adding such reference to help him understand the reasons for the deletion. I am not against references to the rare doodles that may have achieved special notability through some other event (hypothetical example: some famous artist creates artwork that is based on a Google doodle). I am not opposed to having lists of the Google doodles on dedicated pages as currently done; though I don’t find them particularly useful (after all, Google publishes a much better list), they’re not harmful either.
Thanks for reading and sincere apologies if this had already been debated.
—Wlgrin 03:46, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:10 year test. I agree, mention of Google Doodles is usually trivia that quickly becomes worthless. Alsee (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- I see it as comparable to WP:XKCD. We don’t (or shouldn’t) edit Wikipedia for every xkcd reference. We likewise shouldn’t edit Wikipedia for every Google Doodle. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- It's just more of the "foo in popular culture" crap that already degrades the quality of many articles as it is. And no, it is not relevant to virtually any article to which it is added. I'd favour a blanket removal. Resolute 23:50, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- For any pop culture reference thing, I always look to third-party/secondary non-Google sources that make more than a passing mention, in this case, that X was the feature of a Google Doodle. That rarely happens for the most part. Just being there, I totally agree we should not mention it. --MASEM (t) 00:01, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- While the Lists of Google Doodles are okay, I would generally consider references to them in individual articles to be trivia, which should usually be removed/avoided. The doodles themselves aren't really special anymore now that there's a new one nearly every day. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 00:41, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Don't mention them. Google is a commercial site that sells advertising. Why give it free publicity? There are other search engines. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 22:59, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Don't mention - unless there is a specific case that passes WP:GNG. For example, a Google doodle could become widely covered if it was deemed to be somehow newsworthy, by being historic or offensive or drawn by Kim Jong Un or whatever. —МандичкаYO 😜 04:49, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Correction: WP:GNG applies to article subjects only, not things mentioned in the content of articles on notable subjects. An enormous percentage of specific things mentioned in WP articles are not independently notable. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 10:14, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- It's fine to mention them, especially in passing in a legacy/honors section, or as an item in a popular culture section. Given that Google is the most-used online resources in the world, seen by at least hundreds of millions, and possibly billions, every single day (Google averages about 3.5 billion hits per day, but many persons do more than one search), it's not at all a trivial honor, and certainly exceeds the relevance of, say, an homage in an episode of some minor TV series, which we would routinely include, and is arguably more significant than being given some award like [Whatever] of the Year by some little-known industry association, or the Key to the City of San Lorenzo, California, which would also routinely be included. "The medium is not the message"; don't be a Google hatah. ;-) NB: I'm not arguing that "In popular culture" sections are a great idea, but there appears to be both a consensus to keep them and a consensus that they can be rather inclusive, so WP:NPOV requires being even-handed toward Google Doodles (which are certainly more noteworthy thanxkcd mentions, as much as I love that webcomic). WP:XKCD actually gives salient advice here: 'The best way to treat "in popular culture" sections of articles is to use them to cover examples which have actually influenced the way that the public looks at the subject.' Google Doodles undeniably have that effect. I'm pretty well-educated and culturally literate, but there are at least a dozen historical figures I did not know a single thing about until I clicked on a Google Doodle. I cannot possibly be alone in that. The very point of them is to honor some biographical figure in a way that's informative to the public. This is a much more above-board influence on the way the public looks at such subjects than any obscure geeky references in sci-fi nerd webtoons. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 10:14, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Don't mention - here's an archive of old Doodles. Of course there are some interesting mentions in it, but also a lot of trivial and gimmicky doodles. With a few exceptions (widely discussed, controversial, ...), most of those doodles are not a significant part of their topic on Wikipedia and are forgotten in a few days (quick test: how many doodles of the last 3 months do you still remember?). It's a nice feature for a short moment, but in a long-term perspective it's just trivia. GermanJoe (talk) 11:49, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Don't mention, unless there's been non-trivial commentary on them. Much of the little commentary I've seen has been of the kind For the first time ever, Google has recognized an Erewhonian. As an Erewhonian myself, I'm delighted that Erewhon has at last got some much-deserved recognition, zzz. Trivial and uninteresting, though admittedly no more so than "namechecks" in pop songs and so forth. -- Hoary (talk) 12:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC: Guidance on commas after Jr. and Sr.
The previous RfC: Guidance on commas before Jr. and Sr. has been closed with the decision to allow the comma before Jr. or Sr. to be optional provided that each article is interally consistent. Accordingly, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies § Names §§ First mention §§§ Child named for parent or predecessor has been amended to read:
Editors may use or omit a comma before Jr. or Sr. so long as each article is internally consistent. Do not place a comma before a Roman numeral designation. Examples: Sammy Davis Jr.; Martin Luther King, Sr.; Otis D. Wright II, not Otis D. Wright, II.
Hopefully this will avoid ongoing arguments on which is the "right" form for individual subjects (based on their preferences or sources' preferences) and won't lead to editwarring (see MOS:DATERET for the guideline avoiding similar editwarring over date formats).
As flagged in the previous discussion, this raises the issue of commas appearing after Jr. and Sr.. All style guides state that, if a comma is used before, a matching comma must appear afterwards if the sentence continues—acting as an appositive, much like commas after dates in MDY format (MOS:DATEFORMAT) and after city–state combinations (MOS:COMMA).
Style guides on commas before and after Jr. and Sr. |
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Unfortunately, many editors are not aware of this rule in English and sometimes argue against it. Therefore, I recommend this section be further amended as follows:
Editors may use or omit a comma before Jr. or Sr. so long as each article is internally consistent (Sammy Davis Jr. or Martin Luther King, Sr.). If using a comma before, also include a comma after Jr. or Sr. if the sentence continues (John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was an American financer and philanthropist...).
Do not place a comma before a Roman numeral designation (Otis D. Wright II, not Otis D. Wright, II).
—sroc 💬 05:54, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Guidance on commas after Jr. and Sr.: Comments
- [Support:] Yes, if a comma goes before, it goes after. Standard logical clause construction. NB. Much prefer the British style where Jr and Sr do not need the period. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support the use of proposed addition. Consistency is a poor justification for going against WP:UCRN. GregKaye 06:34, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- User:GregKaye - what does requiring the second comma have to do with WP:UCRN? Dohn joe (talk) 16:54, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Dohn joe My personal preference is that we should generally use a form of name that corresponds to WP:RECOGNIZABILITY and WP:NATURALNESS. Unless there are other pressing concerns, these are the considerations we, I think, should predominantly follow the way things are normally done for that person. WP:UCRN presents that: "Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural." GregKaye 18:56, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- User:GregKaye - agreed. But again, what does that have to do with whether we allow "John Smith, Jr., was..." and/or "John Smith, Jr. was..."? This RfC is only about whether we require that second comma after Jr. or not, not how we present the name (except for cases below like the Rockefeller library). I'm still confused about the relevance of wp:ucrn. Dohn joe (talk) 19:04, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Dohn joe My personal preference is that we should generally use a form of name that corresponds to WP:RECOGNIZABILITY and WP:NATURALNESS. Unless there are other pressing concerns, these are the considerations we, I think, should predominantly follow the way things are normally done for that person. WP:UCRN presents that: "Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural." GregKaye 18:56, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- User:GregKaye - what does requiring the second comma have to do with WP:UCRN? Dohn joe (talk) 16:54, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Dohn joe My apologies for not understanding what you were saying. My support is mainly for the inclusion of examples such as "Sammy Davis Jr. or Martin Luther King, Sr.". I still think the commas content makes reasonable sense but you are right to point that this has nothing to do with issues relating to prevalence of use. GregKaye 19:40, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
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Oppose - What are you trying to do? The whole proposal that you have supported had no consensus. I checked the closed discussion, and you're still persistent on having all commas before successor or predecessor omitted. Also, you haven't contacted or pinged Go Phightins!, who accurately closed the previous discussion. Well, I'm still in favor of omitting a comma, but not when sources are divided or when consensus opposes it. This is instructional creep. --George Ho (talk) 07:04, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @George Ho: What are you on about? This RfC isn't about the comma before Jr. or Sr.—it's about the separate issue of providing guidance for the comma after Jr. or Sr. All style guides say if there's a comma before there must be a comma after. That's all this RfC seeks to add to the guideline for clarification. —sroc 💬 15:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Note that this proposal was already flagged in the previous RfC:
Note: This RfC only concerns the comma before Jr. and Sr. If the result allows for that comma, then a follow-up discussion may be necessary regarding guidance on a comma after Jr. or Sr.
- My bad. If you're concerned about a comma after Jr or Sr, perhaps I was mistaken. I struck original vote, so I will make a fresher one. George Ho (talk) 18:37, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Weak support - Look like an instructional creep, but a comma after Jr/Sr makes more sense when a comma before Jr/Sr is added. No comma before, no comma after, however. And I wouldn't care about regional differences as long as commas are properly used.
- Oppose, it's an archaic style that's still listed in quite a few places and used in even less. The Jr. or Sr. without a comma has been the standard way of using the style as long as Jr. and Sr. have existed, or at least in my experience, which is almost as long. Official names, such as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, don't use it, probably because it makes things look worse instead of better and is so uncommon that the mind latches onto it and won't let go, like some kind of little dog sitting there growling at the preceding period. Randy Kryn 10:54, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Randy Kryn: That would be a good argument to do away with the commas altogether, but that argument has been and gone. English construction and style guides universally agree that a comma before requires a comma after. The fact that some sources flout this rule is no reason for this encyclopedia to follow in their folly. —sroc 💬 15:56, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - The recently closed RFC closure on the issue of commas before Jr. or Sr. (essentially saying that we should have no rule other than "be internally consistent" within an article) reflected a practical and common sense approach that accounts for our lack of consensus on the issue. I think the same approach should be applied to the question of commas after... The important thing is for the style to be internally consistent within any given article. More than that is unnecessary instruction creep. Blueboar (talk) 13:33, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Blueboar: Style guides generally agree that commas may be included or omitted (the trend is to omit them) but all agree that a comma before requires a comma after. If we're consistent within each article about whether or not to have the comma before, "common sense" requires that we also be consistent about whether or not to include the comma after. —sroc 💬 15:24, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose I'm fairly certain this covention is completely unknown in British English - were any of the "all style guides" for BE? People should be more careful about this. Even in AE it doesn't seem to me to be what is usual. Just in case it is adopted it should be made clear that this applies within AE only, for ENGVAR purposes. Johnbod (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support – The following comma is required in both British English and American English, and always has been (I'm a Briton). If the form with the comma before is to be allowed, the following comma must also be required. RGloucester — ☎ 14:24, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
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- This is simply nonsense! Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- There is nothing "nonsense" about it. Yes, we don't generally use "junior" and "senior" suffixes in British English. However, the rules of comma usage remain the same. Completing the apposition requires a following comma. Take a look at this guide here, which explains the use of commas with appositives quite well. In the American context, one might look at this Chicago style guide bit, which notes the necessary nature of the following comma. RGloucester — ☎ 15:09, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- This is simply nonsense! Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Support Now I know why the British omit the period, so you do not have to argue of the mid sentence period. I agree that you should have a comma after a mid sentence period, except after Mr. and Dr. and others that are name prefixes, but that has nothing to do with changing the titles of articles. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:52, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose. It may be that all style guides that address the issue recommend using the second comma, but there are two complications. 1) Not all style guides even discuss this relatively minor point of punctuation. 2) In practice, many reputable sources leave out the second comma, regardless of the preferences of style guides. For example:
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- Routledge: Cromwell, Adelaide M. An African Victorian Feminist: The Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford 1848-1960. p.31. 2014.
- Oxford University Press: Lischer, Richard. The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America. p.197. 1995.
- Many more (see for yourself with this Google Books search).
- We have also already come across the case where WP editors have decided that the second comma might not be a part of the name of something. For example:
- Leaving out the second comma in general does nothing to change the ability of our readers to comprehend the meaning of the sentence. Despite style guides' efforts, the second comma is quite often left out, even in reputable, professionally edited sources. Real-world usage shows that both using and leaving out the second comma is acceptable in English. WP should therefore allow both styles, as long as an article is internally consistent. Any particularly strong argument for including or omitting the second comma should be taken up on a case-by-case basis. Dohn joe (talk) 16:41, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Dohn joe: The fact that some sources don't follow proper punctuation is no reason for this encyclopedia to follow in their folly. Cases like the Memorial Parkway (where even the "official" sources disagreed on the punctuation) show exactly why we should have proper guidance on this to avoid recurring debates by editors who are singularly focussed on particular articles without a considered understanding of this specific punctuation issue. —sroc 💬 03:55, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- User:sroc - the point is that style guides do not have a monopoly on what is "proper punctuation." Usage in reputable, professionally edited sources is good evidence of what is proper usage. When a significant portion of sources use a style (as with not using a second comma after Jr.), then WP should be allowed to permit usage of that style. Dohn joe (talk) 15:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Dohn joe: Prescriptivism vs descriptivism. I would rather defer to style guides on matters of style. If there was some leeway in some style guides then I might accept the argument, but all the style guides I've seen say comma before requires a comma after; none concede that the comma after is optional when the comma before is used. It's poor form for an encyclopedia's style guide to go against all style guides on proper punctuation. —sroc 💬 04:22, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- If this is folly, as you repeat, then the U.S. government is guilty of folly (not for the first time, if truth be told) over and over again. The comma after a Jr. or Sr. would change the name of institutions and memorials, of books and beanstalks. As I said, the use of comma after such a word combination misses the point of clear and clean language, and just adds more data into something which doesn't need to be explained. Randy Kryn 11:10, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- The comma is there precisely because it makes for "clear" language by following standard logical rules, as explained by the mentioned style guides. Some sources fail (for example, it has been said that newspapers omit the comma after MDY dates and city–state conjunctions to economise on space in narrow columns) and often disagree (for example, the same geographical feature is "officially" named as "John D. Rockefeller, Junior, Memorial Parkway" in founding legislation; "John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway" on signs and publications; and "John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway" on its website). Where others fail, we should strive for accuracy and encyclopedic standards. —sroc 💬 11:40, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- If this is folly, as you repeat, then the U.S. government is guilty of folly (not for the first time, if truth be told) over and over again. The comma after a Jr. or Sr. would change the name of institutions and memorials, of books and beanstalks. As I said, the use of comma after such a word combination misses the point of clear and clean language, and just adds more data into something which doesn't need to be explained. Randy Kryn 11:10, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Dohn joe: Prescriptivism vs descriptivism. I would rather defer to style guides on matters of style. If there was some leeway in some style guides then I might accept the argument, but all the style guides I've seen say comma before requires a comma after; none concede that the comma after is optional when the comma before is used. It's poor form for an encyclopedia's style guide to go against all style guides on proper punctuation. —sroc 💬 04:22, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- User:sroc - the point is that style guides do not have a monopoly on what is "proper punctuation." Usage in reputable, professionally edited sources is good evidence of what is proper usage. When a significant portion of sources use a style (as with not using a second comma after Jr.), then WP should be allowed to permit usage of that style. Dohn joe (talk) 15:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Dohn joe: The fact that some sources don't follow proper punctuation is no reason for this encyclopedia to follow in their folly. Cases like the Memorial Parkway (where even the "official" sources disagreed on the punctuation) show exactly why we should have proper guidance on this to avoid recurring debates by editors who are singularly focussed on particular articles without a considered understanding of this specific punctuation issue. —sroc 💬 03:55, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Support - As far as I am concerned, British English uses' this standard. CookieMonster755 (talk) 23:12, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support—if editors are going to use a comma before Sr./Jr., then some form of punctuation is necessary to close the appositive. By default that is another comma, but it could be a semicolon, dash or terminal punctuation. We do this with constructions like "Milwaukee, Wisconsin", so we should be doing this with these types of names. (Dropping the comma completely in these names would simplify things greatly, of course.) Imzadi 1979 → 05:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- The comma in the Jr. or Sr. is part of a person's proper name. "Milwaukee" is a proper name on its own, as is "Wisconsin", so in that form the comma is needed, but not if the comma is part of the proper name. Randy Kryn 1:38, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Except his name is often given simply as "Martin Luther King" and the "Jr." is only added as a distinguishing feature when needed; and in any case, this involves the rules of English punctuation which are supported by the cited style guides—you have provided no style guide references to contradict this. —sroc 💬 01:43, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- King himself used the comma as part of his proper name. The U.S. government, in its naming of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day have set the style in his case. Randy Kryn 1:48, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Except his name is often given simply as "Martin Luther King" and the "Jr." is only added as a distinguishing feature when needed; and in any case, this involves the rules of English punctuation which are supported by the cited style guides—you have provided no style guide references to contradict this. —sroc 💬 01:43, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Support - on the basis of completing the apposition. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:52, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support- logical --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 18:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support as proposed. If anyone doubts this lack of clarity results in editwarring, guess again. —sroc 💬 01:38, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- You began that editwar (I'd rather call it an edit disagreement, or edit snowball fight) by choosing the very prominent Dr. King page to place the awkward after-proper-name commas without a consensus being reached. The consistency in Wikipedia of not using the comma after King's name is present in using the names that the U.S. government has given to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Randy Kryn 1:54, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
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- You may think it "awkward", but it's English. The alternative was to do away with commas before "Jr."/"Sr.", but the consensus went against that. Americans failing English punctuation is no excuse for Wikipedia to pander to them. —sroc 💬 01:59, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Eh, it's generally everyone but American's who are dropping the commas, though. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:53, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish: I was responding to Randy Kryn's comment about US government sources. I don't care who's dropping the comma after; mismatched commas are wrong and an encyclopedia shouldn't settle for sub-standard punctuation. —sroc 💬 17:47, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Eh, it's generally everyone but American's who are dropping the commas, though. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:53, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- You may think it "awkward", but it's English. The alternative was to do away with commas before "Jr."/"Sr.", but the consensus went against that. Americans failing English punctuation is no excuse for Wikipedia to pander to them. —sroc 💬 01:59, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Support a comma after when there is one before. – SJ + 15:15, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support: Yes, this is basic English punctuation. I'm skeptical that a Village pump (policy) RfC was needed for this. Minor clarification edits to MOS pages are discussed at their talk pages, or at the main WT:MOS talk page if the MOS subpage's talk page is poorly attended. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 14:56, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I posted it here because the antecedent RfC: Guidance on commas before Jr. and Sr. was posted here, and that was because it was considered that MOS was not sufficiently patrolled for a previous RfC. Notification was also posted at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies § RfC: Comma or no comma before Jr. and Sr. §§ New RfCs. —sroc 💬 02:16, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- By the way, I would have hoped this wouldn't be controversial, but alas my fear that this would court controversy was realised. —sroc 💬 02:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Commas after first word of lede
Is there a policy of putting a comma after the first word of a lede (see Romania and others)? It's not grammatically correct, and is redundant with the set of parentheses. Whispered (talk) 23:58, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- The applicable guideline is WP:LEADSENTENCE and it says nothing about a comma. You're correct, it's bad punctuation and should be removed. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:04, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for the link to the guideline - the reason I asked instead of simply removing it was it appears on other pages I see too, such as China, but not Berlin. Is it safe to assume I can just remove them if there's not a dependent/descriptive clause immediately following the first word that isn't in parenthesis? Whispered (talk) 00:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't think there is a grammatical rule against a comma after the first word of a sentence per se. Consider this example from WP:LEADSENTENCE: Mumbai, also known as Bombay, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. The comma here is used to introduce a parenthetical phrase, which is grammatically correct, according to the article on comma. Simmilarly, the comma in China looks OK. But I agree that the comma in Romania should not be there.--Mhockey (talk) 09:35, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
- I have removed the comma from Romania as it was ungrammatical, as you rightly pointed out. It's not a rule that a comma cannot follow the first word in a sentence; it's a question of whether the comma should be there or not. In many articles, the headword is followed by additional information in parentheses (e.g., pronunciation); imagine that the parentheses and everything within them were deleted and, if a comma would be included after the headword, then the comma goes after the parentheses:
- Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is an Oceanian country ...
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- (commas surround clause with the official name)
- Berlin is the capital of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany.
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- (no comma required)
- China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state located in East Asia.
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- (commas surround clause with the official name)
- Romania is a unitary semi-presidential republic located in Southeastern-Central Europe ...
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- Not sure if there is an explicit rule, but by convention at least certain "metadata" (e.g., pronunciation, birth/death dates, etc.) are put in parentheses because they are not part of the prose. Commas are more suited to prose. For example, the above lines read well, but then add in the parentheses:
- Australia (/ɒˈstreɪliə/, /ə-/, colloquially /-jə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is an Oceanian country ...
- Berlin (/bərˈlɪn/, German: [bɛɐ̯ˈliːn] (
listen)) is the capital of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany.
- China (simplified Chinese: 中国; traditional Chinese: 中國; pinyin: Zhōngguó), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state located in East Asia.
- Romania (
i/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] (
listen)) is a unitary semi-presidential republic located in Southeastern-Central Europe ...
- This makes it more readable overall (e.g., you can mentally skip over the parentheses to read the opening line as prose without missing any fundamental meaning). Replacing the commas with parentheses would create a multitude of parentheses for unrelated purposes. Replacing the parentheses with commas would make for some very convoluted opening sentences and make reading the introductory lines more difficult. —sroc 💬 19:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Not sure if there is an explicit rule, but by convention at least certain "metadata" (e.g., pronunciation, birth/death dates, etc.) are put in parentheses because they are not part of the prose. Commas are more suited to prose. For example, the above lines read well, but then add in the parentheses:
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- Style matters are WP:MOS guideline matters, not policy matters. We don't even need a guideline about this, it's just basic English punctuation, and Whispered illustrates the correct forms with and without the commas. They are appropriate in some constructions, not in others. This is true of comma usage in any type of sentence, and has nothing to do with WP:LEADs in particular. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:50, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Actually, that was me (I forgot to sign). —sroc 💬 16:55, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
English policy: So blindly obvious, but...
Over the weekend I had an incident on Wikipedia that convinced me the following needs to be proposed as policy:
All entries in article space need to be in EnglishPreambleIn order to assure all involved that any article satisfies the Five Pillars of Wikipedia, as well as Wikipedia's policies and guidelines the article needs to be able to be read. Since English is the language of this particular wiki, most users on this Wikipedia read English and communicate in English. Further, most of the users on this Wikipedia do not read any other language. Therefore it would be impossible to assure that any article meets the aforementioned Five Pillars and guidelines without being able actually understand what's being written. Therefore any article in the article namespace needs to be in English. InstructionsSince Wikipedia assumes good faith, articles not in English can be moved to the Draft namespace and a tag requesting translation can be added there. That way, there is a mechanism for allowing a non-English submission to be considered for Wikipedia. Once the article is translated in Draft namespace and judged to meet all policies and applicable guidelines, it can then be moved to the article namespace. Any article not in English posted in article namespace should be moved into the Draft namespace and a note to the submitting author must be sent informing them what has happened. This is being done to verify that the article in question doesn't violate copyright, which is a pretty serious issue here, doesn't violate any office actions, and more simply put, that it doesn't violate any Wikipedia policy or guideline. This cannot be done if it's in a language that cannot be read on this Wikipedia (i.e. English). We have other vrrsions of Wikipedia for other languages, therefore, it's not an issue of exclusion, but rather one of making sure that the article meets all guidelines and policies. |
KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 11:02, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
English policy: Support
- Support as proposer, not to mention it's so blindly obvious KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 11:02, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Supportallnon-English articles should generally be moved to draftspaceon sightwhen they don't qualify for speedy deletion but also can't be fixed up in a short amount of time. With the current process, if someone creates an article about some non-notable nonsense in English then it gets speedied in five seconds, but if the article happens to be in some other language then we give it a two-week grace period to see if it gets translated and/or it may get forgotten entirely -- this doesn't make any sense to me and dealing with these articles is pretty annoying. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 11:36, 18 May 2015 (UTC) amended — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 17:23, 18 May 2015 (UTC)- Amending my !vote: this doesn't necessarily have to be a new policy page, it can also be written into some other policy or information page, and described as a standard/approved/okay method of dealing with non-English articles. But also it doesn't have to be mandatory to move every non-English article into draftspace (if an editor feels that it will be easy enough to turn that article into something worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia, i.e. they understand what the topic is and have the time to work on it). — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 14:55, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I think this is the essence of just do it! If you can translate the article, do it! But if you can't or don't have the time right now, add it to the list at WP:PNT and you or someone else can get to it soon. Is it easy enough to move an article back from Drafts to the mainspace, or does this require an admin to move over a redirect? —sroc 💬 15:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- After moving an article to draftspace, the redirect that gets created after the move should be speedied as R2. Cross-namespace redirects -- articlespace redirects that redirect to the Draft namespace should get deleted. So, assuming some time has passed and the redirect has been deleted, it will be easy to move the draft back to mainspace. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think this is the essence of just do it! If you can translate the article, do it! But if you can't or don't have the time right now, add it to the list at WP:PNT and you or someone else can get to it soon. Is it easy enough to move an article back from Drafts to the mainspace, or does this require an admin to move over a redirect? —sroc 💬 15:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Another amendment: as said I don't necessarily support the creation of a new policy, but, wherever it is written, we should not include this part: "This cannot be done if it's in a language that cannot be read on this Wikipedia (English)." -- we can indeed judge articles even if they're in a language we can't understand, it can often be possible to determine (like by using a translator) if an article is total baloney or not. We can do it and we're allowed to, too. (And then tag for speedy (with an explanation for deleting admin if necessary) instead of moving to draftspace.) — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 17:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support-ish. I don't see that we need to enshrine in policy the fact that this is the English Wikipedia, but I'm a big fan of the idea of automatically moving non-English submissions into Draft-space. Yunshui 雲水 11:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Yunshui: What do you think of my counter-proposal below? —sroc 💬 14:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support – Anything that makes WP:ENGLISH stronger is welcome in my view. --IJBall (talk) 13:06, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - yes, I think that this should be obvious; however, I think that draftifying non-English articles is better than either keeping them in the mainspace or deleting them outright. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:10, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Od Mishehu: What do you think of my counter-proposal below? —sroc 💬 14:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support This will only have positive effects.Bosstopher (talk) 13:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support As per above. A no-brainer IMO. Regards Aloha27 talk 13:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support I don't know if there's something in the water but there seem to be more and more non-English articles turning up at NPP (or simply I'm noticing them more), and investigating why people are not inclined to put them in the right language Wikipedia is probably also worth investigating. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:52, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support as per above. But are there any non-English articles in mainspace, or is this preventive? Robert McClenon (talk) 13:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Robert McClenon: See Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation. Winner 42 Talk to me! 13:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support This is a fairly common sense proposal. It is preferable to the current status quo of tagging them for translation and leaving them in article space. Winner 42 Talk to me! 13:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Winner 42: So move them and tag them. We don't need a policy for this. See my counter-proposal below. —sroc 💬 14:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support, I have seen non-English articles in mainspace before, most of which get mopped up in the NPP process. I have also seen articles that have been vandalized and left with completely non-English text for months though, so I would add the cautionary note of "any editor who is preparing to move a non-English page to the draft namespace must check the edit history to see if there is an English version that can be restored". Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 14:26, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Duh. This is the English wiki, if someone wants an article in a different language, it should be directed to that language's wiki. GregJackP Boomer! 15:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. Lingua anglicana est universale.--Sigehelmus (talk) 22:55, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support it really is a no-brainer. Get them into draft space so they can be translated and verified more easily. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:53, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
English policy: Oppose
- Oppose creating a new policy to say we can do this. There is nothing in any policy that says we can not move (not cut and paste) an article that is not ready from the mainspace to the draft space. An article that is not written in English is not ready for the mainspace so there is nothing stopping us from moving it. The creator should be notified where the article was moved to and why, so they can work on it. -- GB fan 12:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Well that's an option too: we don't need a policy for this, if an editor is still allowed to move an article into draftspace for the main reason that it's not in English. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 12:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose the proposed policy as unnecessary. I have an alternative proposal set out below which I think is a lot simpler and easier to implement. —sroc 💬 14:05, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose This is a good example of an idea with a lot of merit, but some flaws that need addressing. A candidate for the Idea Lab to work out the kinks before asking for an up or down vote. Examples of kinks:
- Suppose I run across an article in mainspace in another language, which when translated, is absolute gibberish, and qualifies as a G1. Of course, after moving to draft space I can delete it as a G1, but this policy, as written, requires that I move it to draft space first. If I do not, I am potentially santionable for violating policy.
- Rinse and repeat for an article which is a clear copyvio, but in another language.
- Or an article which is an attack. Yes, this could be fixed, but there are other issues to address. It states that the article will be moved to draft to verify that the article in question doesn't violate copyright . Moving an article to draft space doesn't solve the copyright problem. We don't have an exception that allows copyvios in draft space. There are other issues as well, so it isn't the case that a couple minor copy edits will make this acceptable as is. That said, it has promise.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- These are problems that we already have. Currently it's not possible to speedy an article simply because it's non-English, and often that's a problem because we can't tell whether the article complies with policy or not. It could be blatant vandalism but we have to keep it for at least two weeks until someone can identify what we're dealing with. Moving that kind of an article out of mainspace (and to somewhere where search engines can't find it) is a good compromise. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 15:07, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Yes, it is possible to speedy an existing article in another language. (After re-reading, I guess you are saying that simply being in non-English is not a sufficient reason for CSD, but as I'll explain, I can identify valid CSDs even though my language skills are minimal.) I can tell that something is a copyvio if it is clearly an exact copy of a published item. Google translate is deficient for some purposes, but if Google Translate produces John Doe is a well-know child molester I don't need a competent human translator to tell me it can be deleted. If the article is created by a banned or blocked user, I don't even need to translate the content. Yet, this proposed policy says I should move it to draft space first. Why?--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Does it really say that? That you must? I'm not seeing it. If you can tell that an article qualifies for speedy then of course you can speedy it, I don't think anyone would argue that. Though in cases like this you may have to leave a note behind explaining how it qualifies, if it's not immediately obvious to admins who do the deleting. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 17:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, it is possible to speedy an existing article in another language. (After re-reading, I guess you are saying that simply being in non-English is not a sufficient reason for CSD, but as I'll explain, I can identify valid CSDs even though my language skills are minimal.) I can tell that something is a copyvio if it is clearly an exact copy of a published item. Google translate is deficient for some purposes, but if Google Translate produces John Doe is a well-know child molester I don't need a competent human translator to tell me it can be deleted. If the article is created by a banned or blocked user, I don't even need to translate the content. Yet, this proposed policy says I should move it to draft space first. Why?--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Oppose as unnecessary bureaucracy. Speaking as one of the half dozen or so editors who handle non-English articles at PNT every single day, we always deal with these articles in the best and most efficient way possible. This can be one of many ways, sometimes they're translated, becoming valuable articles, sometimes they are speedy deleted if they meet a criteria (and yes I'll admit that I usually IAR delete the essays and rants we often get), sometimes they are prodded/blpprodded or afd'd if we think they're not worth translating, if we think they are worth an article but can't translate them ourselves we leave them (and after two weeks they are prodded and deleted it not translated) and yes we sometimes userfy them if we feel they were created in good faith and that . To just point out how small a problem this is, currently there are 6 articles (out of 4,877,736) that are entirely not in English, 3 of which are currently prodded. Trying to enforce a firm rule that all non-English articles be immediately userfied is just overkill, and a good way to prevent potential good articles, the current system works just fine, the article which started this whole drama-fest being a perfect example.--Jac16888 Talk 17:18, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose per WP:CREEP. We already have processes for non-English articles. While they are not perfect they work well enough, better than this clunky idea would anyway. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:04, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose per Jac16888 who says the current system is working fine. Also, we assume good faith until shown otherwise. We don't assume the article may be "dodgy" just because we can't read it. SpinningSpark 18:22, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose There is already an established procedure for translating non-English articles, Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. This happened to me once. I created a new article by copy-pasting the French language version, then proceeded to translate it in place. I expected this to be a quick task, but got sidetracked and then interrupted by an offline event. (I should have created it in the draft space, but this requires an admin request.) For my trouble I got templated that I should first list the article for translation, and then come back and translate it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:07, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- * Comment Actually it doesn't require admin permissions. I've created a draft space article and I'm definitely not an admin. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 20:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Even IPs can create draftspace pages. o_O — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 20:16, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- True! But unfortunately moving the draft article to the mainspace causes a redirect to be left behind, which then requires a CSD (admin request) to delete. So I try to avoid this whenever I possibly can. Sorry, I did not make myself clear. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:53, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Redirects from draftspace to mainspace are okay. AFC reviewers leave them behind all the time. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 09:06, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Hawkeye7: When moving an article there is an option to not leave behind a redirect = uncheck the "leave a redirect behind" box. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:42, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Ceyockey: Not true if you aren't an admin. Though I have been pushing for allowing this permission for non admins recently, it has been met with resistance. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 00:45, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- @EoRdE6: Ahhh. I did not realize this was an admin-only function. Apologies and thanks for highlighting that. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:58, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Ceyockey: Not true if you aren't an admin. Though I have been pushing for allowing this permission for non admins recently, it has been met with resistance. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 00:45, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- True! But unfortunately moving the draft article to the mainspace causes a redirect to be left behind, which then requires a CSD (admin request) to delete. So I try to avoid this whenever I possibly can. Sorry, I did not make myself clear. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:53, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Even IPs can create draftspace pages. o_O — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 20:16, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- * Comment Actually it doesn't require admin permissions. I've created a draft space article and I'm definitely not an admin. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 20:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose revoking WP:PNT#Standard procedures without the proposer either acknowledging its long-standing acceptance or notifying the page that he hopes to revoke it (perhaps he just didn't know that it exists? Nobody can keep up with everything around here, because there are so many pages). In fact, most of the above "votes" don't seem to know that we have a procedure for handling such pages. I expect they all would have guessed that "edit-war to blank the page" isn't it, though. Jeraphine, Yunshui, IJBall, Od, Bosstopher, Aloha27, Ritchie333, Robert, Winner, Luke, Greg, I'd be interested in knowing how many of you were aware of the standard procedure before this discussion, and whether you think that years-old advice is probably an adequate approach, or if you still think we need yet another policy or guideline for the occasional article that isn't written in English. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:39, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I was aware of the standard procedure when !voting, and have looked at and speedied persian article on WP:PNT from time to time. I voted under the assumption that if this passed, PNT would still function, only pages translated would be temporarily moved to draftspace first. This seems like the most common sense solution.Bosstopher (talk) 21:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I can see why a reasonable person might hope for that, but this policy would actually preclude the standard procedure. The proposed policy prohibits leaving a non-English article in the mainspace for two weeks (= it prohibits "the standard procedure"). The editors at PNT do not handle articles anywhere else (by choice, and those WP:VOLUNTEERS are the only ones who get to make that choice). It is not possible to have "the new policy" and "the standard procedure" operating at the same time. "There must never be articles needing translation in the mainspace" and "We only translate articles in the mainspace" cannot function at the same time.
- The potential for confusion is why I'm unhappy about the failure to be more explicit about the policy's effects. I am worried that some people are voting for a benign-sounding, commonsensical statement without understanding that the intended outcome is to eliminate a long-standing process. This proposal amounts to revoking PNT's standard procedure, although it doesn't come out and say so in ways that will be clearly understood by everyone. If you want to change an old process, that's fine, but IMO you should say so, using words that cannot possibly be misunderstood (e.g., "I propose stopping the bad old way and replacing it with this obviously better idea:").
- The immediate history also gives me pause: The precipitating incident is that the proposer blanked an article (three times in three hours, if the comment below is correct) and was told that the standard procedure is to tag it and wait for two weeks. He was not satisfied with waiting for two weeks, so he proposes here a policy to override it. However, he does not mention the existing standard procedure. He gives only the briefest mention that he lost a dispute because of it. The sole practical effect of his proposed policy is to revoke the process that caused him to lose the dispute. He makes no acknowledgement of how this proposal affects longstanding processes. I've spent years around policy pages, and I can tell you that this situation is a fairly reliable recipe for disaster and drama. If you want to kill an old process, then you need to tell to people that you're doing it.
- Note that I don't mind changing old processes, if that's what people want to do. I've done it myself. My only requirement is that supporters understand that's the point of the proposal and say that they're intentionally replacing an old process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think it's very simple to keep the old and new processes in place at the same time. You just apply all the same rules to the drafts that you would to non english articles, and speedy them if no one translates after two weeks. A venue for translation is still maintained and you don't end up with old non-english articles on god-knows-what languishing about in draftspace. Best of both worlds.Bosstopher (talk) 23:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- This proposal doesn't actually do what you want it to do. (The alternate below does something close, but the original does not.)
- In my experience it is never "simple" to force volunteers do things that they do not choose to do, and the volunteers at PNT have already said that they have no interest in doing what you want them to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:43, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- First of all I am someone who volunteers from time to time at PNT (as is GregJackP who supported the proposal and responded to you below), and in my capacity as someone who does so I believe its better to not have completely non-english articles languishing about in mainspace, and I would completely willingly move non-english articles to draft space. Also can you point me to exactly where the collective you refer to as the "volunteers at PNT" have unanimously opposed this decision? As for the proposal not doing what i think its supposed to do, this seems to be another example of an incredibly simple and beneficial change being bogged down in Village pump bureaucracy. I'm sure the closing admin will be able to interpret what I mean.Bosstopher (talk) 16:48, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I base my statement about the volunteers at PNT on the comment below: "There is a long-held consensus, re-affirmed just a few weeks ago, at PNT that draft articles do not fall within our scope of work..." by User:Jac16888. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for directing me to that. Although I'd forgotten about it, I actually took part in that discussion and at the time (although I didnt write it because enough other people had) was opposed to the idea of putting all non-english drafts in PNT. However, I think this case is very different to that, as only drafts that were intitially posted in article space would be brought to PNT for temporary holding, as opposed to any gibberish written in draftspace. I think it's an apples and oranges situation. Bosstopher (talk) 20:22, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- I base my statement about the volunteers at PNT on the comment below: "There is a long-held consensus, re-affirmed just a few weeks ago, at PNT that draft articles do not fall within our scope of work..." by User:Jac16888. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I think it's very simple to keep the old and new processes in place at the same time. You just apply all the same rules to the drafts that you would to non english articles, and speedy them if no one translates after two weeks. A venue for translation is still maintained and you don't end up with old non-english articles on god-knows-what languishing about in draftspace. Best of both worlds.Bosstopher (talk) 23:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I was aware also, and have tagged many such articles. I've also watched articles not be translated for significant periods of time. However, I don't think that we need to keep articles which are not written in English. BTW, your comment was very condescending, I guess us mere non-WMF editors wouldn't have thought of other options. GregJackP Boomer! 22:53, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- It's worth noting that the existing standard procedure predates the existence of the Draft namespace, and therefore might be due an overhaul with the new option in mind. That's probably something for the appropriate talkpage, though. It's my opinion that the suggestions offered here, especially the alternative version below, constitute an improvement on the current process. Yunshui 雲水 07:50, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- I was aware of the standard procedure when !voting, and have looked at and speedied persian article on WP:PNT from time to time. I voted under the assumption that if this passed, PNT would still function, only pages translated would be temporarily moved to draftspace first. This seems like the most common sense solution.Bosstopher (talk) 21:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose Over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga we use a template called Template:nihongo, not everything should be in English per WP:BIAS. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:59, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose I agree with Beeblebrox that this is nothing but WP:CREEP. There is no need to have a policy or guideline to state that the English Wikipedia should in English. —Farix (t | c) 00:31, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose (a) the proposal incorrectly implies that there is a single english language and (b) articles have very good and well established grounds for using non-English languages (be it Japanese, Arabic; Latin or native american languages) in places (alternative names, linguistic examples, etc, etc); many articles would be significantly impaired with those. Stuartyeates (talk) 10:43, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose per several comments above. Most notably, we already delete or translate articles written in foreign languages, so this proposed policy does not actually accomplish anything. As such, it is unnecessary WP:CREEP. Resolute 14:10, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Comment Knowledgekid87 Bias huh ? Note the proposal is for articles not templates (I'm also a self-described Otaku :) ) TheFarix I actually agree, this shouldn't have to be policy, I would have thought it common sense, however this little incident told me otherwise. SpinningSpark AGF is not a suicide pact, further, author editors, even in good faith sometimes run afoul of copyright concerns because they're not aware of how ours works (and BLP as well ). KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 15:42, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
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- The template makes both Japanese and English text appear on the page, we also have Japanese names as article titles and as character names (as such the name would be included in the article's body) per WP:COMMONNAME. By all in English do you mean all content of a given article? I want to have an open mind but please specify as it sounds too broad if I read "All entries in article space need to be in English" right. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:29, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- @KoshVorlon: I would support your proposal for entries that are written fully in another language or a certain percentage of the article, there has to be some kind of footnotes/exceptions though if this is to become policy. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:40, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Kosh, you continue to refer to your "little incident" as why this change needs to be made, and yet the article which started all of this (Detective Willy for anyone not already aware), was, once properly reported to PNT, translated and then prodded within a few hours of being created, similarly a dozen+ other articles have been created and dealt with in the time since then - I don't see how any of this is problematic. If anything your incident shows that, when procedure if actually followed, the system we have works great --Jac16888 Talk 20:41, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- "Hard cases make bad law" or in this case bad policy/guidelines. It's clear in that discussion that you didn't follow already existing procedures for handling such types of articles. But I honestly don't see the need for a policy over just one incident. —Farix (t | c) 20:20, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Oppose. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. The current process is working fine, and no non-English article is kept any longer than necessary. De728631 (talk) 18:30, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose: no pressing need to adopt an English only policy for the first appearance of an article. A working proceedure is in place. — Neonorange (talk) 21:22, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Comment For those opposing, please see this recent posting to WP:AN where the the reverse happened. Just so I'm totally clear, I'm not suggesting that if we have an article about a Japanese term, or a Spanish term, that we can't use the Spanish or Japanese word itself, nor am I suggesting that that word be written out in the English alphabet. What I'm suggesting is that any article in article space needs to be in English, currently we're getting entries in article space that are 100% not English. I'm suggesting that they be placed in draft space where they can be translated , then judged to be in compliance with all applicable Wikipedia policies and guildelines. That's it, simple, obvious and very much common sense. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 11:00, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
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- You mean the posting which shows that when a non-english article is submitted to the proper place, it is dealt within just a few hours? A perfect example to me of how well the current PNT system works, when of course it it is actually used rather than ignored--Jac16888 Talk 16:32, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- Except that article space is the wrong place for non-English articles. So no, it wasn't in the proper place. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 16:42, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Not sure if you're intentionally misunderstood my point there or not. By "proper place", I mean PNT, as in, a user followed procedure and logged it there, and then it was resolved shortly afterwards. In fact had you done so yourself, or had you actually moved it to the draftspace properly (that being one way we do deal with non-english articles already anyway), there would have been no issue. I feel I have to ask this, as you've never actually addressed this: please can you tell me that you understand why blanking a page or copying and pasting it to another place is a bad thing--Jac16888 Talk 17:00, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Jac16888 - yeah, I did. I consider article space to not be the proper place for articles not in English, rather I'd say Draft space is. The article was in article space when I first ran across it. Yes, I agree PNT acted correctly by translating the article, I wasn't trying to change the process that got the article translated, rather the fact that the article should have been in article space prior to translation. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 15:29, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Not sure if you're intentionally misunderstood my point there or not. By "proper place", I mean PNT, as in, a user followed procedure and logged it there, and then it was resolved shortly afterwards. In fact had you done so yourself, or had you actually moved it to the draftspace properly (that being one way we do deal with non-english articles already anyway), there would have been no issue. I feel I have to ask this, as you've never actually addressed this: please can you tell me that you understand why blanking a page or copying and pasting it to another place is a bad thing--Jac16888 Talk 17:00, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Except that article space is the wrong place for non-English articles. So no, it wasn't in the proper place. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 16:42, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- You mean the posting which shows that when a non-english article is submitted to the proper place, it is dealt within just a few hours? A perfect example to me of how well the current PNT system works, when of course it it is actually used rather than ignored--Jac16888 Talk 16:32, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - you lost me at "Further, most of the users on this Wikipedia do not read any other language." That's absurd. Where did you get this information? I don't remember indicating what languages I can read when I created an account. It seems that, because you can't read any other languages, you assume everyone is the same? Otherwise why would you assume this? Further, how often are there articles that are entirely in another language that are not copyright violations or able to be removed for another basic reason? Why is this policy necessary? I looked at the ANI you suggested as cause for the proposal and I agree with Jac16888 - your insistence that you should be able to blank a page because it's in another language is not sound. It's laziness at best, censorship at worse. —МандичкаYO 😜 00:28, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Actually, what I mean is the language of this Wikipedia is English. I see your name is in Russian (ok, Cryllic , so it might not be Russian as other languages use the Cryllic Alphabet ) assuming you ARE Russian, would it make sense to have an article in ru.wikipedia.org in English rather than in Russian, even though there may be people on that Wikipedia that read English ? Of course not, it's common sense, the lingua franca on that Wikipedia is Russian, just the the lingua franca on this wikipedia is English. Articles should conform to the lingua franca, obviously there may be portions of the article that need to be in a different language (reliable references in other languages, a term in another language that needs to be in. That kind of thing. ). What we should not have in an article of any sort , written completely in another language. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 15:29, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- What irks me more is how we have maps that are written in different languages being used (Examples: Battle maps, road maps, ect...). Yeah the maps are encyclopedic but unless you speak the language there is no way to understand them. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:54, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- A good caption on the map can usually address that problem adequately. There's also a brand-new tool for making charts and maps (links at Wikipedia:Graphs and charts#Vega) that should make it much easier to translate vector-based maps. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- What irks me more is how we have maps that are written in different languages being used (Examples: Battle maps, road maps, ect...). Yeah the maps are encyclopedic but unless you speak the language there is no way to understand them. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:54, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Actually, what I mean is the language of this Wikipedia is English. I see your name is in Russian (ok, Cryllic , so it might not be Russian as other languages use the Cryllic Alphabet ) assuming you ARE Russian, would it make sense to have an article in ru.wikipedia.org in English rather than in Russian, even though there may be people on that Wikipedia that read English ? Of course not, it's common sense, the lingua franca on that Wikipedia is Russian, just the the lingua franca on this wikipedia is English. Articles should conform to the lingua franca, obviously there may be portions of the article that need to be in a different language (reliable references in other languages, a term in another language that needs to be in. That kind of thing. ). What we should not have in an article of any sort , written completely in another language. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 15:29, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose: We don't need a WP:POLICY for this. That's overkill. Userspacing or deleting these things is already standard operating procedure. [PS: The expression is "blindingly obvious", not "blindly obvious"; it's a metaphoric reference to a very bright light.] — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:47, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
English policy: Discussion
- Why is this necessary? We already have Wikipedia:Manual of Style § National varieties of English ("The English Wikipedia prefers no major national variety of the language over any other") and Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English ("This version of Wikipedia is written in English") for example, and it's inherent in the fact that this is the English Wikipedia (there are other language varieties). Is this really a problem? Or a solution looking for a problem? —sroc 💬 11:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I can see that KoshVorlon had an issue (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § Behavior of Jac16888) after blanking (three times in three hours) the article Detective Willy which was written in Spanish (it was translated into English within two hours afterwards).
- Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English (WP:PNT) provides a process encouraging translation before hasty deletion, which may be a useful approach. It worked for the above-mentioned article and, if the article survives proposed deletion on notability grounds, it will be a good addition to Wikipedia. PNT isn't a policy or guideline, but if the policy proposed here were adopted, it would need to be completely re-worked. Accordingly, I have flagged this discussion on its talk page (Wikipedia talk:Pages needing translation into English § Proposed policy to move articles in foreign languages to draft space).
- —sroc 💬 12:36, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't see why an article could not both be (1) moved into draftspace and (2) listed at PNT. Wholly non-English articles where it's hard to even determine the subject, are not ready for articlespace, and they shouldn't be immune from our usual deletion criteria (like A7) simply because we can't understand what's going on in those articles. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 12:42, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Jeraphine Gryphon: I don't think Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion § A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events) necessarily applies just because an article is in a foreign language; however, you're quite right that an article which has no (or barely any) English-language content doesn't belong in article space. Wikipedia:Deletion policy § Alternatives to deletion §§ Incubation can be applied to move them to draft space while they are being re-worked.
- I note that some of the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English § Pages for consideration have some English-language content and some foreign-language content requiring translation, so these would not be ripe for deletion and leaving them in article space may attract users to bring them up to grade. There are some articles, however, that are entirely in a foreign languages and have been listed for some time:
- Shkolla fillore 7 marsi (since 25 April, 23 days ago)
- SMK Permas Jaya (since 29 April, 19 days ago)
- ئهشكهوتى پاڵى گهوره (since 1 May, 17 days ago)
- Les Pétards (since 3 May, 15 days ago)
- That's just the ones that are over the two-week period. This shows that while the system can sometimes work quickly (as in the case of Detective Willy), articles can languish in article space waiting for attention. This being the case, I would support WP:PNT being revised to encourage moving articles to draft space until they are translated, perhaps then allowing a longer period before nominating them for deletion to give them a better chance of being salvaged. I'm not convinced this needs to be enshrined in a separate policy, however. —sroc 💬 13:43, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't see why an article could not both be (1) moved into draftspace and (2) listed at PNT. Wholly non-English articles where it's hard to even determine the subject, are not ready for articlespace, and they shouldn't be immune from our usual deletion criteria (like A7) simply because we can't understand what's going on in those articles. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 12:42, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- This has nothing to do with varieties of English. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 12:30, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Question: Will this be appended to, or be a new part of, the pre-existing WP:ENGLISH? Or will these be merged together? If not, how will this work?... --IJBall (talk) 12:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- IJBall I'd suggest making this part of WP:ENGLISH. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 13:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Sroc You're right. That's what started this proposal. KoshVorlon Rassekali ternii i mlechnye puti 13:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- WP:ENGLISH is actually Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), which I see as interpreting Article titles policy, so I don't think it can simply be appended there -- at least not without additional changes. This new rule would apply to the whole article, more like WP:MOS. I see this new rule as based more on the policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not or Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, where the English-language Wikipedia should be defined as written in English. --Boson (talk) 13:40, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I agree that this should not be part of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). There's a section Wikipedia:Drafts#Incubation which discusses moving articles from mainspace to draft space. Maybe a paragraph about when this is appropriate could be added there, including pages not in English.—Anne Delong (talk) 13:47, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Suggestion: As this is the case, I suggest that the new policy's "shortcut" should become "WP:ENGLISH" if adopted, and the "old" WP:ENGLISH's shortcut should become something line WP:ENGLISHTITLE or some such... --IJBall (talk) 13:53, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:ENGLISH is a bit vague, and WP:ENGLISHTITLE may be better. However, a new policy may not be needed; instructions to move pages awaiting translation to Draft space can be added at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English#Standard procedures.—Anne Delong (talk) 13:59, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:ENGLISHNAME would also work. --IJBall (talk) 14:02, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Changing the target of shortcuts if often a bad idea, because previous usages of the shortcut will then all point to the wrong target. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 14:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:ENGLISHNAME would also work. --IJBall (talk) 14:02, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:ENGLISH is a bit vague, and WP:ENGLISHTITLE may be better. However, a new policy may not be needed; instructions to move pages awaiting translation to Draft space can be added at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English#Standard procedures.—Anne Delong (talk) 13:59, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think changing the description of the process would be better than a "policy" change, but am still wondering about whether any change in normal practice is necessary. In any case, it might be appropriate to change WP:English into something like a disambiguation page pointing to a number of pages that also deal with the use of English (e.g. pages needing translation, diacritics, transliteration etc.).--Boson (talk) 19:27, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Or at least to add a hatnote to ENGLISH that directs people to WP:PNT#Standard procedure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:42, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Suggestion: As this is the case, I suggest that the new policy's "shortcut" should become "WP:ENGLISH" if adopted, and the "old" WP:ENGLISH's shortcut should become something line WP:ENGLISHTITLE or some such... --IJBall (talk) 13:53, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that this should not be part of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). There's a section Wikipedia:Drafts#Incubation which discusses moving articles from mainspace to draft space. Maybe a paragraph about when this is appropriate could be added there, including pages not in English.—Anne Delong (talk) 13:47, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- WP:ENGLISH is actually Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), which I see as interpreting Article titles policy, so I don't think it can simply be appended there -- at least not without additional changes. This new rule would apply to the whole article, more like WP:MOS. I see this new rule as based more on the policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not or Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, where the English-language Wikipedia should be defined as written in English. --Boson (talk) 13:40, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Alternative proposal for dealing with foreign-language articles
The proposed new policy is unnecessary and would conflict with existing processes, such as Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English (WP:PNT), which would then need to be re-worked. Instead, in order to streamline things and avoid fracturing, I would recommend amending WP:PNT to change the process for dealing with articles entirely (or almost entirely) in foreign languages as follows:
- Move the article into the Draft namespace.
- List the article at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English § Pages for consideration.
- Articles that are not likely to survive may be proposed for deletion according to the usual deletion policy or speedy deletion criteria to the extent that they apply to drafts (see Wikipedia:Drafts § Deleting a draft).
—sroc 💬 14:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge KoshVorlon's insight in highlighting this issue and getting the discussion going.
- I would like to add that my proposed process doesn't need to be mandatory: if an article in a foreign language is obviously a copyvio, vandalism, etc., it can be sent straight to speedy deletion as usual without having to be moved to Draft first. This process is intended for articles that could survive if they are translated into English. —sroc 💬 17:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Support - Not because I disagree with us KoshVorlon's idea, but because we don't need a policy, we need a process. As a new page patroller, I routinely move articles to draft space as an alternative to deletion, or as an alternative to leaving really incomplete content in article space. If either of these proposals passes, someone should follow up with the Twinkle developers to make sure that this multi-step process can be semi-automated.- MrX 14:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support I'd be equally happy with this proposal (and hear hear to getting the process Twinklified). Yunshui 雲水 14:39, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support Has the same net effect as the above policy, but is a more efficient implementation. Per MrX I would like to see Twinkle support moving articles to draft space more easily. I would also like to here other editors thoughts on moving other types of very-low quality articles by new editors into draft space without going through AfD to do it. Winner 42 Talk to me! 14:44, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support – OK, this sounds good as well. --IJBall (talk) 15:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support It seems clear that KoshVorlon's idea is based on an actual problem (and not an imaginary one) but I am skittish about adding still more rules to Wikipedia's already large collection. This looks like it would dovetail well with the existing structure. Also, "most, if not all read no other language"? Mis seis años de clases de español no están de acuerdo contigo. WP:COMMONSENSE already covers the idea that the English Wikipedia must be in English, and this looks like it would protect Wikipedia from copyright violations without overdoing it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:15, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose As noted above, there are articles entirely in non-English that may qualify as a CSD. If this policy is approved, it means if I find an article in Spanish written by a banned user, I cannot simply delete it as a G5, but I must first move it to Draft space. This is the very definition of silly bureaucracy. On a more general note, what is the reluctance to use the Idea Lab to sort out a sensible approach?--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:05, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- This would not be a policy. It would be a process that you can choose to use, or not. Neither this nor the previous proposal would prevent other deletion processes from being used as needed. You say that this is the definition of a silly bureaucracy, but suggest sending it to the Idea Lab. Irony?- MrX 17:23, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Sphilbrick: Are you saying this to oppose Kosh's proposed policy or my proposed amendment to WP:PNT? Articles could still be deleted without being moved to Draft first, at least with my proposal, so your reasoning doesn't hold. —sroc 💬 17:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Given that the original was proposed as a new Policy, and this is labeled as an Alternate proposal, I thought it was intended to be alternative proposal for a policy. I now see it is an alternate proposal for a rewording of a process, so it doesn't contain the same weight as a policy. Still, my objection remains. The proposal step one says Move the article into the Draft namespace. I disagree. I'd start with Determine whether it qualifies as a CSD as is.If not, or indeterminate, move into the Draft namespace But this is OTTOMH and could use word smithing. Re "irony" I think it is misplaced. I am a big fan of bureaucracy, when sensible. We ought to have well-thought out rules for handling solutions, and well-thought out processes for dealing with issues. What I oppose is mindless bureaucracy, such as moving an article to Draft space, then deleting it when it is perfectly obvious it should be deleted as is. The entire concept of the Idea Lab is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to write up new Policies, and there ought to be a place to work on them, and get them ready for an up or down vote. Both the original and the alternate proposals qualify. Neither were ready for prime time. Both has some good ideas that I could support if the issues were addressed. The Idea Lab is intended as a place to address them. I get why people want to come here first, because they think their idea is so good it can be supported exactly as worded, or maybe with a tiny word change, but they miss that it often takes a robust discussion of issues to come up with good wording for a new proposal. This is more true today than it was in the early days of WP, when there was so low-hanging fruit, and it might have been reasonable to slap together a policy and approve it.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:09, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Sroc: I oppose the policy proposed by Kosh as written, for the reasons I outlined (and there are more objections, I just didn't think it was necessary to be exhaustive.) I oppose the alternative wording of WP:PMT. The existing process has a set of steps for entire articles. Your proposed step 1, which presumably replaces the existing step 1, says Move the article into the Draft namespace. Maybe you think it is implicit that you can delete via CSD before this step, but that's not what it says.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:16, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Sphilbrick: Nothing in my proposal seeks to usurp current deletion policy, and I've expressly said in my further comment that articles could still be deleted as usual without having to move them to Draft namespace first. I haven't set out the exact wording as I was just seeking ro assess general support—the exact implementation might be put to an RfC if necessary—but I was especially hoping to point out that although Kosh's intentions were good, that doesn't mean we have to leap to the first proposal (i.e., a new policy) and alternatives should be considered. —sroc 💬 19:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Sphilbrick: Are you saying this to oppose Kosh's proposed policy or my proposed amendment to WP:PNT? Articles could still be deleted without being moved to Draft first, at least with my proposal, so your reasoning doesn't hold. —sroc 💬 17:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose also per WP:CREEP. We don't need a new policy, or a new process. And I do not like setting a precedent that anyone can just move an article into draft space on a whim, that will put us on a slippery slope. The correwct way to currently deal with such issues is to put the great big {{translate}} tag on the article, list it at pages needing translation, and add one the appropriate tag from WP:PNT/T to the creating user's talk page. I don't see how temporarily hiding it in the draft namespace on top of all that is any better. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:12, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I don't disagree with @Beeblebrox: on many things, so I'm probably wrong here, but I wouldn't mind if we were more aggressive in moving articles into draft space. However, I'd prefer to do it as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the review process, in which articles which aren't quite ready for prime time were moved to Draft space, and I see articles written in a foreign language (which are otherwise not eligible for CSD) as an important special case. However, I worry that Draft may become a wasteland, so I wouldn't support it unless we had some good processes for clearing it out. I'm struggling with this because my position is closer to Kosh's and Sroc's than my opposes may suggest. I, too, have run across articles in main space, written entirely in another language, and thought that moving them into the Draft space might be a good next step. But while I can think of such examples, getting from a couple examples to a policy or even a process is trickier than some seem to realize.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:25, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Beeblebrox: My counter-proposal is not really a "new process" but refining an existing one. In fact, moving an article to Draft namespace may save potential articles that just need to be translated that might otherwise be hastily deleted just because the current (arbitrary) two-week time limit has passed. —sroc 💬 19:12, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I now see the language in wp:PNT I had missed earlier Articles that are not in English are still subject to all other forms of speedy deletion should they meet the criteria. That mitigates my concern, but emphasizes the need to improve that page. When I see a process page with a list of steps, it seems reasonable that I should start with step 1.
- In fact, one is expected to carry out some unnumbered steps first, which I will number, with the smartaleck convention of keeping the existing numbering intact:
- Step -2: If someone speaks the language the article is written in and can state that it is not worth translating, the item should be moved to AfD or tagged with {{prod}}
- Step -1: If the article is a mere copy of (all or part of) an article in a foreign-language Wikipedia, it can just be tagged with {{db-foreign}} to get added to Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion
- Step 0: Check to see if other CSD criteria apply
- Step 1 (existing): Use the notice {{notenglish|NameOfLanguage}} ...
- Step 1 (proposed by you):Move the article into the Draft namespace.
- Did you ever read the book Onion John? (I loved it, my daughter hated it), John
waswanted a barn door hinge for the door on his house, because the wood is so rotten, standard house hinges won't hold. The town decides that they shouldn't just do the minor fix, they should replace the whole house. It goes badly. Which is unfortunate for me, because I'm looking at your proposed replacement of step 1 with a different step, and I'm noticing that the house is falling down, and think we ought to fix the house, while the lesson in the story is that this approach ends badly. So I don't know what to do, but I am still unhappy about tinkering with a process and ignoring the glaring problems.--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)- @Sphilbrick: I haven't read that book, but I see your point. I agree WP:PNT could use some work and can probably be simpler to follow. I would support a re-working of WP:PNT to solve the underlying issues and incorporate the use of Draft namespace (at whatever stage); I think that would be more productive than a new policy (which would only make WP:PNT harder to follow).
- The comments here suggest an emerging consensus that: (1) something needs to be done to prompt utilising the Draft namespace for articles in languages other than English that need attention before being re-admitted to article namespace; (2) a new policy is not necessary or desirable to achieve this; (3) WP:PNT should be re-worked to address this (amongst fixing the barn generally). Perhaps this should be workshopped on the Wikipedia talk:Pages needing translation into English talk page? —sroc 💬 21:27, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose per Beeblebrox and SPhilbrick. GregJackP Boomer! 19:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I feel I need to make another clarification here in regards to this counter-proposal, it will read a bit odd at first, but bear with me. WP:PNT is not a translation project (keep going): it is an article crisis-centre, along the lines of Wikipedia:Copyright problems, Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard and more. Just like those pages we focus on a specific issue and we fix it however we can. There is a long-held consensus, re-affirmed just a few weeks ago, at PNT that draft articles do not fall within our scope of work, as they do not fall under many other "problem article" pages, to change that would be to swamp us with hundreds of pages that are simply not a problem for Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Translation is the translation project, it is there that editors specifically looking at translating articles (properly I mean, not just dropping non-English articles into the articlespace) --Jac16888 Talk 21:40, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @Jac16888: Thanks for the insight. Do you think this would work better if articles that have not received attention after the two-week period, and which otherwise do not obviously meet any deletion criteria, be moved to the Draft namespace then? Thus, all articles in foreign languages: (1) would be marked with a maintenance tag and listed at WP:PNT, as they are now; (2) after two weeks, would then moved to Draft namespace where someone could recover it in due course if they felt inclined; (3) could be deleted at any time just as with any article or draft subject to the deletion criteria. —sroc 💬 22:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support I dont see the earlier proposal as clashing with this one, but oh well.Bosstopher (talk) 20:15, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose - first, there is already a process that works fine. If the good people who patrol WP:PNT felt there needed to be a new policy and their current routine wasn't working, I would defer to them. Instead this seems to me to be about an editor who randomly came across a page in Spanish and doesn't like that his decision to blank it kept getting reverted. Secondly, moving them to userspace decreases the likelihood that an editor who doesn't patrol WP:PNT will come across the article and help translate it. I strongly feel tagging the article with "please translate me if you can" is the best approach. —МандичкаYO 😜 00:38, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose, but do clarify: Existing processes are working. User:Sphilbrick's note above about "Step -2", etc., indicates that extant procedure needs clarification, but that can be done without a proposal like this, simply by amending the PNT instructions. His "smartaleck" list (with adjusted numbering) is actually a good draft of what to use. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:05, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC: Should the holder of a political office be linked within an infobox more than once (i.e. as the successor), when they have already been linked (e.g. as the vice president, predecessor, lieutenant, etc.)?
Opening rationale and instructions
some possible Reasons to Support-
- Ease of navigation
- WP:OVERLINK (certain parts)
- Conformity with articles where this issue does not occur
- WP:IAR, occasional exceptions to rules
some possible Reasons to Oppose-
- WP:OVERLINK (spirit of the guideline) and that this issue is already covered there
Having recently closed an RfC discussion at an article regarding this a similar issue, I will not be expressing an opinion here (in the spirit of neutrality). I'm simply advocating consistency, in the hope to unify the style that should be used when this occurs throughout the encyclopedia. —Godsy(TALKCONT) 05:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
"equal[ing] out the reasons.... [in the spirit of]... fair[ness]" [2]
some more possible Reasons to Oppose-
- It looks less professional and more cluttered
- Harder on the eyes to follow with continual alternating colors
- Multiple links in an infobox are simply unnecessary
Fyunck(click) (talk) 23 May 2015 (UTC) (Restored @Fyunck(click):'s changes here, as opposed to changing my opening post.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 09:43, 23 May 2015 (UTC))
Support (names should be linked more than once)
- Strong support - any place where readers are likely to expect links, we should give them those links. While in prose text there are issues with some browsers (so I ubderstand, when it comes to browsers for the blind), these issues don't come up as much in infoboxes. And if someone wants to follow up, for example, on all Israeli prime ministers since 1990, they would expect a link to the next prime minister for the 1992-1995 term of Yitzhak Rabin. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:06, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - WP:OVERLINK does exist for a reason, and it is best that we apply it where practical; however, we need to actually apply common sense before going to endless lengths to ensure that every last policy or guideline is met. Dustin (talk) 11:35, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support - WP:OVERLINK says "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes". That seems pretty explicit, so why is IAR listed under "some possible Reasons to Support"? There's no IAR necessary. Unlike an article, which has a top-to-bottom flow/narrative, infoboxes and tables are things people scan for particular information -- and we should have that information linked. To be clear, though, I don't think this requires additional language be added to any of the guidelines unless consensus opposes. If supported it's just a reaffirmation of what WP:OVERLINK already says. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:53, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support I try to use common sense as well. While I hate overlinking (everyone knows what an rabbit is) I frequently relink when a lot of names are being used or when information is lenghty and/or difficult to understand, as in a medical article. I try to put myself in the place of a person that has no previous knowledge of the subject. Gandydancer (talk) 15:13, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- This is a good point. Often in wiki table usage we relink things because to re-find the first linked instance isn't always easy when you want to click on it for more info. In prose it disrupts flow of reading. In an infobox some readers expect all names to be linked because they specifically use it to navigate. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:43, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. I think it's useful there. I've used those links to navigate, and I know others have, too. And, as noted above, there's a clear exception in the overlink policy that supports useful links in infoboxes.--Coemgenus (talk) 15:58, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support. WP:OVERLINK explicitly says links can be repeated in infoboxes. It benefits readers to have the links repeated there and it does not clutter the page like overlinking in the prose does. Calidum T|C 16:05, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support The whole purpose of the infobox is to present material in a succinct manner. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:03, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support Of course it's helpful to repeat links, and we should do it. Not everybody reads articles top to bottom. Some just look at the infobox, some only read the text without the infobox, many only read a particular section (and we have links to sections all over the place), in some cases users might skip to the navboxes at the bottom. We should be accommodating all of these reading styles, and that means repeating links, sometimes 5 to 10 times in an article. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:13, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support As a matter of common sense, it makes navigating Wikipedia easier for readers. WP:OVERLINK is a policy designed to prevent linking to the same article multiple times within the body, which makes sense because if someone is reading through the page, they've already seen the available wikilink. However, when navigating through successive offices (or for that matter NFL seasons, NBA seasons, Artist singles, etc.) using the infobox, it is best to have everything linked for convenience. Yes, this means sometimes people who hold multiple offices will be linked more than once, but for the sake of sanity we should just link them all, if we have to go through each article and determine which ones to do de-link it will be a headache for editors and readers alike, and only serve to cause confusion. We have a hard enough time enforcing WP:OVERLINK within the bodies of articles, let's not give ourselves extra work for no good reason. -War wizard90 (talk) 23:32, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support per all the sound reasons listed above —МандичкаYO 😜 00:40, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support because it allows much more easy navigation and helps spread knowledge by making it easier to access. StudiesWorld (talk) 21:32, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support—it helps with navigation, and WP:OVERLINK specifically says it can be repeated. Imzadi 1979 → 04:34, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support (weakly, on a case-by-case basis). The reason for discouraging duplicate links in running text is that we expect readers to go through the text sequentially, so when they encounter the second instance of the name they will already have seen the first. But the tabulated format of an infobox is designed for non-sequential reading – you can use it for looking up just one piece of information at a time, in any order. A second set of arguments about using or avoiding link is that bluelinks in running text increase visual distraction – but if in a tabulated box you have all entries bluelinked, then the same kind of distraction may be created by having a single one among them not blue. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:02, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support readers expect infobox items to be linked and probably think it is an error if it is not. I cant see why it would be seen as overlinking as that really deals with the article body. MilborneOne (talk) 12:24, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
- Support Guidelines using the word "generally" are easily overruled by rational justification. The spirit of WP:OVERLINK is to avoid clutter. Logical or expected links are not clutter. Easy and consistent navigation is a high value justification. Alsee (talk) 04:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Oppose (names should not be linked more than once)
- Oppose - WP:REPEATLINK says if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes. We have to ask "is it helpful" to repeat this link and generally the answer is no. An infobox is supposed to summarise key features of the page's subject. It is effectively the same as a single, listified section and we don't link multiple times in a section so why would we link multiple times in the infobox? It's unnecessary. --AussieLegend (✉) 07:55, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose as unnecessary repetition. As AussieLegend said, it doesn't really benefit to repeat links. Snuggums (talk / edits) 14:39, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:OVERLINK oppose. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:07, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Does that mean you support rewording the part of WP:OVERLINK that says, "... but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead." because unless that wording is changed, then I don't see how WP:OVERLINK can be used to oppose this RfC. -War wizard90 (talk) 05:20, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Obviously, because its not "helpful for readers" as AussieLegend already said. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:33, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Does that mean you support rewording the part of WP:OVERLINK that says, "... but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead." because unless that wording is changed, then I don't see how WP:OVERLINK can be used to oppose this RfC. -War wizard90 (talk) 05:20, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose per WP:REPEATLINK/WP:OVERLINK. It isn't "helpful for readers" to repeat links in a back-to-back or nearly back-to-back way (and not just in infoboxes; it's a general principle). WP:COMMONSENSE application of "helpful for readers" tells us that in very long infoboxes, where the recurrence of the name is widely separated from its initial occurrence, it's okay to relink. Many of the support !votes are effectively making the case that it's somehow always useful for readers if we repeatedly link these names in infoboxes, but that cannot possibly be true or the "if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes..." wording would not exist! QED. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:33, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Neutral
- Policy and guidelines on this already make it clear that multiple links can be used where appropriate. We do not not need a "should" or "shouldn't" policy over and above what we already have. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:42, 23 May 2015 (UTC).
Discussion
- Comment - This is not exactly the same topic that was closed recently at Talk:FDR. That was specifically about the President of the United States and the problems it creates (especially for children) when the "Preceded by" and "Succeeded by" are not linked. Every other President of the United States was linked for easy access EXCEPT for Franklin Roosevelt. Truman was the third vice-President so it was not instantly apparent where to click for Truman. And when a youngster is doing a report we want them to have easy access to information, especially for the highest office in the United States. Being able to click from infobox to infobox was very helpful. Of course the result was a snowball to make it consistent with all other US Presidents and because of the importance of the office.
- Now whether that should hold true for every other political office/elected official (that would include elected judges/mayors/councilpersons/school board members/etc) I do have my doubts. We've established it for US Presidents, but I'd like to read some viewpoints here on whether that should also apply to every political office. Maybe overlinking shouldn't apply to infoboxes since they are a helpful summary of the most important items of an article? Then again, unless it's as important as potus, why do we really need it linked over and over? Food for thought and I'll be reading some posts before deciding whether to expand things or not. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:13, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
- Why is this specific to political offices? There are plethora other templates that link to names. For example, where a TV show uses {{infobox television}}, it is common that the same person may be listed in multiple roles (e.g., in Louie, Louie CK is listed as the creator, writer, director, and star) but only linked in the infobox the first time. Whether it is convenient to do this may depend on how the infobox is built (e.g., whether links are inserted automatically and not easily overridden) and how they appear (e.g., whether the references to the same person appear close together), but what is the reason to treat political offices as a special case and could/should this have a broader application. —sroc 💬 14:36, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
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- There is succession in political offices. For example a user may want to browse through all the governors of New York in order, from the 1st to the 56th. It could be argued that it would be convenient to have all the successors linked, even if they happened to serve as the previous administration's lieutenant governor for ease of navigation. The same cannot be said about the benefit of linking other non-ordered things, such as in your example. That's why I specified the proposal in the way that I did. —Godsy(TALKCONT) 15:19, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
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- What about, for example, {{infobox flag}}, which links the words "Name" and "Use" for every flag when multiple flags are listed, such as Flag of Germany? Should that be treated any differently? —sroc 💬 22:50, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
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- @AussieLegend:We often link multiple times in long tables, and the infobox is closer to a table of information than reading actual prose. We know that overlinking in prose is a distraction to the flow of reading. That's why we don't overlink in prose. My question is, if many readers are finding it helpful to use the infoboxes as navigation tools, what does it hurt to link everything? It's usually done in row after row formatting so it really shouldn't cause added eyestrain. Other than it breaks some rule, how does it really hurt those who say we shouldn't do it? Does it really make it harder for people to view the infoboxes if everything is linked? I'm trying to get a grip on why this rule interpretation came into being. Maybe the overlink writers weren't really thinking about infoboxes when it was initially written. I'm not sure. And since if everything is linked in an infobox I don't think it would bother me at all, I'd like to hear some views as to why it causes problems. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:07, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
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- The content in an infobox is a range of essentially disjointed information, whereas in a table the content has a common theme. As such, it is closer to this than this, so the table analogy is incorrect. --AussieLegend (✉) 03:23, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- For the record, there's been someone, using various IP addresses, going through political candidates and removing the extra links, even though this discussion is ongoing. I don't have a horse in this race, but someone should maybe speak to them and invite them to the discussion. Either they don't know about it (AGF) or they do, and are ignoring the trends here. Lets hope its the first. --Jayron32 16:37, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Looking through "support" and "oppose" reasons again, I have to say this proposal comes off as biased for listing more "support" reasons than "oppose" reasons. Snuggums (talk / edits) 12:11, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I made an attempt to summarize/generalize both sides of a recent rfc I closed regarding a similar issue. I didn't inject any original thought about the proposal, or try and raise reasons that weren't brought up there for the sake of neutrality. I think trying to measure bias numerically has its flaws. There could be 10 reasons against something, while only 1 reason for it, the 1 could be particularly sound. That aside, I apologize if in my attempt at neutrality, I didn't put forth enough for one of the sides. I could have played the angel's advocate and found new reasons for a side, but (again) I'd have had to have put my own thought into it, which I was trying to avoid. I have trust in the competency of the community to find their own reasoning or verses in the guidelines. The reasons were meant more as neutral examples to encourage taking positions and having opinions with a basis, rather than simply liking it or not. —Godsy(TALKCONT) 12:48, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC re:Anthroponymy page guidelines
There is an active RfC on moving Wikipedia:WikiProject_Anthroponymy/Standards into the MOS, at either Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Anthroponymy pages or Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Anthroponymy. Please contribute. Thanks! —Swpbtalk 20:13, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
RfC: Establish MoS as the official page for style questions
There is now a proposal at the Village Pump that WT:MoS be established as Wikipedia's official page for style Q&A (rather than create a dedicated style noticeboard). This would involve actively guiding editors with style questions to WT:MoS and away from other pages. Participation is welcome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:16, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Animated GIFs in infoboxes
The new Shri Ram Institute of Technology has had an animated GIF put in its infobox, where one would normally expect a logo or similar. Is this allowed? I find it rather distracting. (see GIF at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shri_Ram_Group.gif) 220 of Borg 13:51, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikipedia has no rules against the use of animated GIFs, AFAIK. There are some that have been featured picture of the day, even. That being said, merely because something is allowed, doesn't mean it is a good idea; editorial discretion and article quality are more important than rules, and if the image detracts from the article quality 1) feel free to remove it and 2) if someone objects and puts it back, don't edit war but instead have a discussion and come to a consensus. --Jayron32 16:36, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
- Kill it. Kill it with fire. If we don't have a rule against animated GIFs in infoboxes we should make one. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:14, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I largely agree with Guy. I think animated Gifs have their place, and think we could use more, especially good ones, but generally oppose them in infoboxes. I'm not quite ready to support a firm rule, as I can imagine excepts. we do not have an article on animated Gifs or animated Google Doodles yet, but in such an article it might be desirable for an example in the info box. I do see that there is an animated Gif in Gif, and think that is a bad idea, but I don't have the energy to start the discussion there.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Although rare, gifs are useful in some articles. For example, in our chess articles, where certain positions or a sequence of moves must be presented to describe the topic. See Scholar's Mate for an example; it doesn't have an infobox, but if it did, I can't imagine any image being appropriate there except a gif of that particular sequence. The OP's example is obviously a very different case, and that gif should probably be removed. — Jess· Δ♥ 06:50, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
- GIF animations of instructive things like chess moves are simply WP:VIDEOS, covered by that quasi-guideline. The use of the same technology to animate an oversized icon to be attention getting is arguably already within the purview of MOS:ICONS (basically: don't use icons as decoration), and even if we don't think it's covered, it's a simple matter to ensure that it becomes covered there. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:39, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
IPv6 IPs
Anybody can edit Wikipedia. But we need to remeber an Ip user when we want to mentyion him/her in any discussion. these huge Ip s are not easy to remember. So we must encourage them to register. And the check user tool should be good enough to deal with these huge alpha-numeric IPs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2602:306:8B0B:5020:68:EF0B:4734:D9C2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2601:8C:4000:9C:7D6D:A070:E47C:7EE4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2602:306:3485:AF10:E409:E027:2054:89CE
Now if i mention them anywhere in talk page discussion just think how difficult it would be remember them. Sometimes user report IP socks when they see similar range. But in these cases the users won't be able to recognize IP-shifting socks as it may not be possible for human brain to recognize the IP-range. Wikipedia can't stop them from editing. But if they don't listen to request of opening account, we can come to some solution where they can be shortened through some software.
--C E (talk) 16:55, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
- The length of IPv6 addresses is certainly a real problem. What I don't see here, however, is any proposal to make it easier. Do you have a proposal here Cosmic Emperor? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:58, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I suggest adding language to the welcome template for IPs that points out that IPv6 addresses are difficult to remember, as an additional incentive to create an account. (IPv4 addresses are worse in one respect. They are usually dynamic, because ISPs have to manage the pool, and this is a different factor that makes it difficult to communicate with them.) About the only reasonable thing that comes to my mind is adding language to the welcome template. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:04, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
"Fair use" from third party as opposed to official sources
Given that a truly free image to illustrate the John Menzies retail outlets can't be found after a reasonable amount of searching, is there any preference in the "fair use" policy to using a non-free images from a third party (e.g. this person's website) as opposed to one taken from the company in question's site ([3]) and presumably owned by them?
My gut instinct would be that the latter is preferable, but I've no idea if that has a basis in legal fact and/or WP policy...? Can any one clarify this?
Ubcule (talk) 17:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think neither are acceptable, but perhaps I am misunderstanding the question. The business still exists, so why can't someone walk over an take a photo?
- Are you talking about photos from other eras?
- By the way, this is a subject for this page, which is to discuss chnages in policy, not the applciation of policy. The help desk or wp:MCQ is a better place.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:29, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
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- While Menzies still exists as a newspaper distribution and aviation business, the retail side- which was widespread and very well-known (particularly in Scotland)- was sold off in the late 1990s, and I've been unable to find free photographs of the shops in their original state.
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- As per your comment, though, I've moved the discussion. Ubcule (talk) 19:51, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
"Comprised of" and the problem of pet peeves in editing
Giraffedata (talk · contribs) is by now well known for his crusade against the phrase "comprised of" (the phrase has its own article). Some people think it is good that he "takes an interest in grammar", others think it is silly or offensive that he thinks he needs to enforce his own arbitrary preference onto other peoples' completley crammatically correct language usage. I admit I am among the latter. The problem is that his practice creates conflicts, as can be seen from his talkpage where editors regularly complain about his changes to their language, frequently saying that they use the phrase deliberately and pointing out that it is not in fact considered incorrect by English style authorities, or by linguists who specialize in English. Giraffedata, generally responds with contempt asserting that he has a right to change any word in the encyclopedia as he sees fit. This is of course true in principle, but it seems to conflict with our general approach to arbitrary style issues such as WP:RETAIN, WP:CITEVAR and WP:ERA which generally suggests that editors should not arbitrarily change between styles in articles to which they are not major contributors. Giraffedata responds, correctly, that neither these nor the MOS explicitly cover questions such as grammar and word usage.
The problem of course with this attitude is that if Giraffedata can use semiautomatic tools to change between styles, and refuse to for example make a list of exceptions, or to even concede the right of other editors to use these expressions in article space, then any other editor can do the same. I could for example with the same reasoning create a bot to insert the wording "comprised of" instead of "composed of" across articles, or simply manually revert Giraffedata's changes. Or I could choose some other arbitrary style choice or word to systematically change. Currently there is nothing in policy or practice that could deter me or someone else from doing so, or any policy that could be applied if I were to do it, that would not also apply in kind to Giraffedata's practices.
So I think it is time that as a community we discuss the principles in this and whether they should motivate us to change policy, MOS or make some other decision to avoid this kind of issue getting disruptive. I realize that this discussion is both about policy and about dispute and about user conduct - but I hope we can focus on the principle of it, and work towards finding a solution that will make most editors happy.
I think that different possible solutions could be to 1. create a policy that covers this, such as a parallel to WP:RETAIN that states that whenever two grammatical forms can be considered equally correct, the choices of the main contributor should be respected. 2. Require that people doing large scale changes of a single term or construction should maintain a list of articles that are exceptions and will not be "corrected". My suggested solutions can be seen in the essay WP:NOPETPEEVES ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:27, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
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- For the record, I think the editor you mention as an example is doing good work and contributing positively to the encyclopedia. I am with you in the spirit of your new Wikipedia essay, but the devil is in the detail of discussing when differences of usage matter and when they do not. As a reference on that topic, I recommend that all the editors following this discussion here or watching Maunus's essay under construction read Steven Pinker's book The Sense of Style at their earliest opportunity. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:18, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think there is a sufficient fraction of our readership that is going to find "comprised of" jarring that we probably ought to avoid it, even if there are ambits where it's considered unremarkable. It strikes me as rare that it would really be important to phrase things that way. This is sort of in the spirit of WP:COMMONALITY — don't strain to use forms that will appear inferior to a lot of readers, even if you don't think they're inferior, provided there are good substitutes.
- Similarly, the which-v-that thing is mostly noticeable only to American readers, but if it makes no difference to UK readers, then why not use "that" even in BrEng articles? --Trovatore (talk) 19:49, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Whether or not it is important to phrase it like that is kind of besides the point - because there are significant fractions that feel either way. The point is that dozens of editors approach Giraffedata on his page to tell him to please not correct that which is not in their eyes wrong. Why should their views be overruled by Giraffedata and the other "significant fractions" views?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:45, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think you meant to say "beside the point". --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:54, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Whether or not it is important to phrase it like that is kind of besides the point - because there are significant fractions that feel either way. The point is that dozens of editors approach Giraffedata on his page to tell him to please not correct that which is not in their eyes wrong. Why should their views be overruled by Giraffedata and the other "significant fractions" views?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:45, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Meh. Unless it is part of a direct quotation, I agree with Trovatore that there's little benefit to insisting on using a form that many will find problematic. older ≠ wiser 19:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- There is a lot of words and usages that "many" find problematic, but which are nonetheless an entirely accepted and acceptable part of ordinary English usage. Should we allow other editors to create crusades to remove split infinitives? Prepositions at the ends of sentences? Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia involving people with many different views, and that alone means there is value to allow pluralism whenever possible. What are your thoughts on the larger principle, that of avoiding conflict over irrelevant style issues?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Has there been an RfC on this? Counting those who complain the loudest (on either side) on a user talk page isn't a reliable way of gauging community consensus. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:55, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't think there has been no, but counting those who complain the highest in an RfC also isnt a good way to gauge consensus necessarily. RfCU's have a tendency to degenerate very quickly. I had hoped that this could be a venue to address the issue without making it about the person, but obviously I shouldnt have named the thread the way I did then (I will proceed to rename it). That is why I am trying to see here whether anyone else sees the problem - which is not specifically Giraffedata's edits but the principle of avoiding conflict on arbitrary style issues. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:00, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- "Comprised of" is a perfectly acceptable phrase used on a regular basis by the English-speaking world (see comprised of for some examples). I find it disruptive for one user to dedicate himself solely to removing it, despite objections of others. Calidum T|C 00:01, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- In areas of significant dispute, I think widespread changes should require explicit community support. RfCs may be flawed, but they are the best we have at this point; and most of the flaws are within us, not the process itself. I think (1) Giraffedata should run an RfC, bear the consensus burden, and refrain in the meantime, and (2) Giraffedata should agree beforehand that they will leave all changes of this type to others if the RfC fails, something of a voluntary topic ban. (Side note: Maunus said "RfCU's have a tendency to degenerate very quickly", and I don't know whether that was a typo. RFC/U has been dead for some time, and that's not the kind of RfC I'm referring to.) ―Mandruss ☎ 05:36, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Numerous mainstream style guides deprecate the use of "comprised of"; hopefully, no one here wants to argue that point. I will remove or replace the phrase in any article of which I am doing a significant re-write because better word choices are available. That said, it is a relatively minor style point, like campaigning for the mandatory use of the serial comma or such. Frankly, I find it rather weird that anyone would aggressively work for the phrase's universal removal -- who has the time to spend on such a trivial matter across four million Wikipedia articles? There is an element of obsessive-compulsive insanity about it. I suppose the question that should be asked is Are these edits really disruptive, or just irritating to a handful of editors who think "comprised of" represents good writing? If these edits really are disruptive, how about some examples of such disruption? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 06:36, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't think your question is answerable in any objective way; it's a matter of perspective. If Ngram Viewer shows nothing but increase in the use of "comprised of" in books, that's enough to require an RfC to establish community consensus. Any evidence from style guides could be presented and considered in the RfC. To clarify, I'm not suggesting that the RfC would decide whether "comprised of" should be abandoned completely, but whether there is community support for widespread changes of a crusade nature such as is being considered here. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:45, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Just the fact that he can make hundreds of edits every day of the week, shows that the phrase is considered a totally natural part of many thousand editor's usage. it simply is waaaaay too commonly occurring to be considered incorrect. And of course it is found in literature by writers from Herman Melville to Pynchon. 4,3 million hits on google books, 1,1 million on google scholar.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:42, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Myriad English-language quirks, colloquialisms and errors are "natural" parts of thousands of editors' everyday language usage, but that doesn't make them all appropriate in an encyclopedic register. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:56, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Just the fact that he can make hundreds of edits every day of the week, shows that the phrase is considered a totally natural part of many thousand editor's usage. it simply is waaaaay too commonly occurring to be considered incorrect. And of course it is found in literature by writers from Herman Melville to Pynchon. 4,3 million hits on google books, 1,1 million on google scholar.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:42, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Actually, the relevant Ngram viewer would seem to be one comparing comprised of and composed of, which shows "comprised of" (falling rapidly) well ahead of "composed of" (rising slowly), which leads me to ask what's the third alternative that's taking grammatical market share away from "composed of"? But I think the issue is: does this change protect the integrity of Wikipedia more than it discourages participation? If "comprised of" is grammatical then it is hard to argue that obliterating it protects the integrity of Wikipedia. So then the follow-up question becomes do hypercorrections discourage participation? Thisisnotatest (talk) 08:09, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I'm 100% in agreement with Trovatore. Giraffedata's edits are in the spirit of WP:COMMONALITY, which takes precedence over WP:RETAIN. The former is about seeking common ground (e.g., the mutually acceptable "glasses" instead of "eyeglasses" or "spectacles", each of which is widely used only in certain English varieties). The latter is to be relied upon when there's no consensus that either/any option has tangible benefits when compared with the other. Despite a common misconception, WP:RETAIN is not an instruction to refrain from modifying any style that isn't flat-out incorrect, irrespective of the rationale.
Opinions differ as to whether "comprised of" is proper English. Does anyone assert that Giraffedata's alternative wording isn't (or that it's inferior in some other respect)? If not, what harm is he causing?
It seems as though much of the opposition is based on the principle of the matter, not a belief that Giraffedata is damaging the encyclopedia. Some view his edits – which they perceive as the replacement of one perfectly acceptable style with another – as utterly pointless. That's a valid opinion, but why is it grounds to counter his efforts? If the result is something equally good (albeit not better, in your view), what's the problem? That Giraffedata is wasting his time instead of doing something that you consider worthwhile?
In my opinion, the real waste of time is the crusade to counter Giraffedata's crusade. All of us have better things to do than revert harmless-at-worst edits and participate in discussions such as this one.
Of course, if someone asserts – in good faith – that some of Giraffedata's replacement wording is inferior to "comprised of" (for one or more reasons unrelated to which phrase appeared in the article first), that's a different story. I want to stress that I'm not referring to such a scenario above. —David Levy 08:03, 25 May 2015 (UTC)- I have a few pet peeves myself, but I have refrained from hunting down and "fixing violations" because I felt that would be seen as disruptive. These pet peeves are no different from what is being discussed here. Like this, they are in gray areas where there is no clear consensus in style guides or among the Wikipedia community, but some will of course disagree with them since nothing has total agreement at Wikipedia. They are a matter of personal opinion, and, like Giraffedata, I would be implementing mine on a widespread scale. If your view wins out here I'll consider that a community green light for such activity. It would not be WP:POINTy behavior, as I would be doing it to make what I consider improvements to the encyclopedia, not simply to make a point; my desire to make these changes predates this discussion. Are you ok with this? ―Mandruss ☎ 08:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- If, among those with an opinion on the matter, a significant percentage regards the styling that you wish to remove as less valid than its potential replacement and substantially everyone else regards the two styles as equally valid, I'm beyond okay with that. —David Levy 10:47, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Where are you getting your information about how the community feels about "comprised of"? ―Mandruss ☎ 11:18, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Please reread my 08:03 message, wherein I convey my observational impression and inquire as to whether anyone's position is inconsistent therewith. You're welcome to answer my questions, of course. —David Levy 12:18, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I have no particular perception in that area, and I wouldn't use it as a basis for argument if I did because it would be very error-prone. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:57, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not requesting an assessment of positions held by the community at large. I'm asking whether any individual's opposition to Giraffedata's edits stems from a sincere belief that the resultant prose is inferior to that which it replaced (i.e., that Giraffedata's changes aren't merely unnecessary, but actually reduce the articles' quality). —David Levy 13:20, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Sorry for my misunderstanding. When writing new prose, I think I would generally choose "comprised of" over "composed of", I guess because "comprise" has a narrower range of definitions than "compose" and is therefore more precise. This is based on nothing but instinct, but I would have to say that, in my opinion, "composed of" does slightly reduce articles' quality. Does the difference matter to five percent of readers? Probably not, and that's why I'm not roaming Wikipedia making this change wherever I see it. I simply ask that others offer me and those like me the same consideration. Does that answer your question? ―Mandruss ☎ 13:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not requesting an assessment of positions held by the community at large. I'm asking whether any individual's opposition to Giraffedata's edits stems from a sincere belief that the resultant prose is inferior to that which it replaced (i.e., that Giraffedata's changes aren't merely unnecessary, but actually reduce the articles' quality). —David Levy 13:20, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I have no particular perception in that area, and I wouldn't use it as a basis for argument if I did because it would be very error-prone. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:57, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Please reread my 08:03 message, wherein I convey my observational impression and inquire as to whether anyone's position is inconsistent therewith. You're welcome to answer my questions, of course. —David Levy 12:18, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Where are you getting your information about how the community feels about "comprised of"? ―Mandruss ☎ 11:18, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- If, among those with an opinion on the matter, a significant percentage regards the styling that you wish to remove as less valid than its potential replacement and substantially everyone else regards the two styles as equally valid, I'm beyond okay with that. —David Levy 10:47, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I have a few pet peeves myself, but I have refrained from hunting down and "fixing violations" because I felt that would be seen as disruptive. These pet peeves are no different from what is being discussed here. Like this, they are in gray areas where there is no clear consensus in style guides or among the Wikipedia community, but some will of course disagree with them since nothing has total agreement at Wikipedia. They are a matter of personal opinion, and, like Giraffedata, I would be implementing mine on a widespread scale. If your view wins out here I'll consider that a community green light for such activity. It would not be WP:POINTy behavior, as I would be doing it to make what I consider improvements to the encyclopedia, not simply to make a point; my desire to make these changes predates this discussion. Are you ok with this? ―Mandruss ☎ 08:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I think Giraffedata's replacements are sometimes, not infrequently but not always, clearly inferior. I think "composed of" and "comprised of" are not fully synonymous in all contexts, and sometimes give different nuances to the meaning. To me composed of means that something has been composed into a certain order, with the components in specific relation to eachother, whereas comprised of means that some category simply subsumes a set of elements.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- That could be a valid point in some contexts (especially patent law, as I observed elsewhere). But we know that Giraffedata doesn't robotically replace all cases of "comprised of" with "composed of", and in any given case it's unlikely that he (or anyone else) would object to some other alternative. The fact his choices are not 100% perfect every time according to everyone isn't indicative of a policy problem, a user behavior problem, a generalized style/grammar problem, or any other real problem. There are simply sometimes personal, contextual disagreements, that can be resolved in the usual way. I don't see any evidence provided that Giraffedata insists on retaining his preferred wording. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:03, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think Giraffedata's replacements are sometimes, not infrequently but not always, clearly inferior. I think "composed of" and "comprised of" are not fully synonymous in all contexts, and sometimes give different nuances to the meaning. To me composed of means that something has been composed into a certain order, with the components in specific relation to eachother, whereas comprised of means that some category simply subsumes a set of elements.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- The issue, though, is that you don't need an "of" with "comprised". "Comprise" is grammatically the equivalent of "include". You would not say that something is "included of" or "including of" something else; you would say that it "includes" something else, or is "including" something else. See Transitional phrase for the use of these terms in patent law, which is very serious about using the right terms. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:25, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- But "include" and "comprise" are not equivalent. It is valid to use "comprised of" but not valid to use "included of". Omnedon (talk) 16:46, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- BD2412: The issue, though, is that you don't need an "of" with "comprised". "Comprise" is grammatically the equivalent of "include". You would not say that something is "included of" or "including of" something else; you would say that it "includes" something else, or is "including" something else. Let's suppose for a moment that there is an issue (though I'm not at all sure that there is one). Then this isn't it. Not only is it not the issue, but (like many people) you've conflated the verb COMPRISE (which of course has forms comprised) with what's being (unnecessarily?) discussed in this section: the adjective COMPRISED. (See the article "Comprised of" for the distinction.) That you wouldn't say that something is "included of" or "including of" something else (as I too would not) is by the way. ¶ "Comprised of" is a mildly interesting formula. If it's anomalous, it's not uniquely so: consider the pair POSSESS and possessed of. (Props to Ecwaine for bringing it to our attention.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:25, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- That goes straight to my later point, that we should not be using words with potentially confusing meanings when more common words are available that don't have this problem. bd2412 T 00:51, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
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- The problem with this word is that "The committee comprised three members" and "Three members were comprised by [or in] the committee" are also valid. See any dictionary if you don't believe me. Even wikt:comprise has this in considerable detail. The word is an auto-antonym and thus its use is generally always going to be confusing to someone, even pretty intelligent people, no matter what. A strong case can thus be made that it should generally not be used here except where it must be, and probably the one and only case that is true is, as bd2412 and I have both already pointed out, in patent law, where it is a strictly defined term of art. The fact that there are some editors who do not understand this problem and thus think there is no problem with "comprised of" does not somehow make their opinion that the phrase shouldn't be changed equally valid. WP:Consensus does not require unanimity, and it very, very often comes down to which argument makes more sense, not which is argued with more fervor or preferred by more arguers. There simply is no contest when it comes to which side of that debate has more facts on its side and what conclusion they point to. The auto-antonym problem is genuinely intractable and incontrovertible. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:44, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- Please explain how comprise is an auto-antonym, how it can mean either x or not x. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- Never mind. I read Talk:Comprised_of#Auto-antonymy and consider that a misuse of the term, but I'm not going to quibble over unimportant semantics. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:48, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- I hadn't read that talk page thread, and can't vouch for it. If you just search this VP for "auto-autonomy", you'll find my reasoning on the matter. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- The problem with this word is that "The committee comprised three members" and "Three members were comprised by [or in] the committee" are also valid. See any dictionary if you don't believe me. Even wikt:comprise has this in considerable detail. The word is an auto-antonym and thus its use is generally always going to be confusing to someone, even pretty intelligent people, no matter what. A strong case can thus be made that it should generally not be used here except where it must be, and probably the one and only case that is true is, as bd2412 and I have both already pointed out, in patent law, where it is a strictly defined term of art. The fact that there are some editors who do not understand this problem and thus think there is no problem with "comprised of" does not somehow make their opinion that the phrase shouldn't be changed equally valid. WP:Consensus does not require unanimity, and it very, very often comes down to which argument makes more sense, not which is argued with more fervor or preferred by more arguers. There simply is no contest when it comes to which side of that debate has more facts on its side and what conclusion they point to. The auto-antonym problem is genuinely intractable and incontrovertible. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:44, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
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- That goes straight to my later point, that we should not be using words with potentially confusing meanings when more common words are available that don't have this problem. bd2412 T 00:51, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- The issue, though, is that you don't need an "of" with "comprised". "Comprise" is grammatically the equivalent of "include". You would not say that something is "included of" or "including of" something else; you would say that it "includes" something else, or is "including" something else. See Transitional phrase for the use of these terms in patent law, which is very serious about using the right terms. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:25, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- My knee-jerk reaction is to object to editors going around enforcing their views on prescriptive grammar. This is mainly because prescriptivists are often misinformed. I also appreciate that using a form acceptable to both sides may result in a loss of richness in language (as Geoffrey Pullum and/or Arnold Zwicky put it: acceptance means that "crazies win"). However, on examining several of the edits by Giraffedata (talk · contribs) I generally found them to improve the style and/or reduce potential ambiguity, so I agreed with them. I also found the explanation on the user's subpage well-informed and valid (which does not mean that I agree with everything). Similarly with "that"/"which", where I usually find the use of "that" equally appropriate where "which" is used to introduce a "restrictive" relative clause. I have so far resisted the urge to revert what may look like prescriptivist "corrections", since I believe that the restrictive "that" is (at least consciously) accepted by more people, though it should also be noted that many who say they insist on "that" intuitively prefer "which" in some circumstances in their own writing. Another consideration is that some people object to use of "that" when the antecedent is human. So, on balance, I think the decision shoud be based on what is stylistically better and on commonality. For this sort of issue, I am not in favour of invoking strict application of anything like WP:RETAIN and WP:ENGVAR, which, I think, have the potential to create more disruption. I would be in favour of advice that recommended avoidance of ambiguity (for instance where "comprise" and "include" may be viewed as denoting substantially different logical relationships, the use or non-use of a comma may be regarded as insufficient differentiation between supplementary and integrated use of relative clauses, or the avoidance of a split infinitive may introduce ambiguity). --Boson (talk) 16:02, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Several points to respond to in this proposal and thread:
- Ultimately, I agree with programmatic efforts to remove a potentially confusing construction that uses an auto-antonym like "comprise", and replace it with something clearer. If the same editor were changing all "comprised of" sentences to "comprising" ones, to invert which of the two self-contradictory meanings of "comprise" were being used, that would be an actual problem and potentially disruptive. Replacing either of them with clearer language is not. [Note, however, that "comprise" and "compose" have specific and mutually exclusive definitions in patent law, and should not be changed in that context. Since almost no one knows this, when we need to use them in WP articles referring to patents, we should probably expand them to indicate their meaning, e.g. with "comprises at least x, y, and z" vs. "is composed exclusively of x, y, and z".]
- I agree WP:COMMONALITY supersedes WP:RETAIN. And it's a mistake to extrapolate from a handful of very narrowly defined rules like WP:ENGVAR/WP:RETAIN, WP:CITEVAR and WP:ERA, which happen to be similar in only one way, that there's a general principle that whoever edited earlier has more editorial rights at a page than later editors. This is flatly contradicted by policy at WP:BOLD, and by the WP:Five pillars. WP would have nearly no content, and it would all be terrible, if it were true. The only reason those three rules swim against WP:BOLD is that too much editorial strife results otherwise, in those very limited circumstances. They're cases where WP:COMMONSENSE is overriding a general rule, for serious reasons. [Honestly we could drop CITEVAR; it's actually frequently an impediment to article improvement, and leads to pointless editwarring, which is what it was supposed to be preventing. Hopefully we'll make it moot by just finally settling on a single citation style instead of entertaining multiple variants for no clear benefit. WP must be the only major publication in the world that does so.] I shouldn't have to note this about ENGVAR/CITEVAR/ERA, but I clearly do, because people at disparate venues as WP:RM debates and the very one we're in now, quite frequently try to extrapolate from them a generalized principle that names, spellings, styles, wording selections, sentence structures, etc. must not be changed because the original creator of the article or adder of the material didn't want it that way. It's total bollocks.
- I have to observe that a great deal of what is done with WP:AWB by numerous editors, programmatically across many/all articles, is what someone pejoratively labelled "hypercorrection". The sky has not fallen, and we are not banning AWB. It's very purpose is semi-automating minor, WP:GNOMEy edits, so most of them will, pretty much by definition, look trivial to a lot of other editors, and be the kind of editing they don't feel they want to do or examine. One editor's "pet peeve" is another editor's "cleanup". One editor's "crusade" is another editor's "routine". One editor's "obsession with trivia" is another's "improving readability". Just because you don't share someone else's focus and feelings doesn't mean what they do is worthless. Also, the Crusades were a series of genocidal military campaigns by Christians to take the Holy Land from Muslims. Nothing on Wikipedia is sanely comparable to that, and every time someone refers to another editor as a "crusader" or "on a crusade", they're triggering a corollary of Godwin's law, just substituting the Crusaders for the Nazis, but depending on pro-Christian bias in the English-speaking world to get away with it undetected by people's BS filters. It's also a WP:Civility violation.
- There's a serious logic problem inherent in simultaneously holding that these things are trivial and don't matter, but that some people focusing on them discourages the participation of others. Only someone who is inordinately concerned with a tiny style/grammar nitpick like this would quit Wikipedia over it, or flee from editing a particular article, or some other WP:DRAMA response. Ergo, no one who feels "discouraged" over something like this can, without hypocrisy, criticize another editor for being supposedly too concerned about the alleged nitpick in question. What would really be happening is they're at least equally concerned about it, just opposed over what the "right" version is. And, in the more generalized case, it's pretty laughable when someone from a wikiproject, who rarely edits anything but articles on a narrow topic of limited interest to most readers and editors, tries to criticize WP:MOS/WP:AT-focused editors for being "too focused" on style and title editing. Cf. WP:KETTLE.
- Another latent issue in discussions of this sort is that the textual size of an edit really has nothing to do with its importance, and neither does the conceptual category into which someone wants to place it. A view that amounts to "little tweaks like swapping one word or glyph for another are just trivia", or more broadly "style and grammar matters are a waste of time" are common but idiosyncratic and emotional responses to a feeling one could probably summarize as "I don't personally care much about style, usage, grammar and punctuation, and I'm personally irritated by people who are". This attitude accounts for much of the virulently anti-WP:MOS sentiment espoused by a small number of editors. At it's core, it's simply a sublimated form of incivility and assumption of bad faith. Read any flamey WP:MOS or WP:AT-related discussion, and you'll see immediately how quickly the veil drops and the hate comes out in plain view, including on this page right now (just text search for "obsessive" and you'll find numerous nasty examples, with plenty more a post or two away from these). A touch of this view also underlies comments like "I find it disruptive for one user to dedicate himself solely to" [whatever]. Well, most of the rest of us find it disruptive for one user to try dictate what other editors may spend their volunteer time working on.
- Whether something is technically "grammatical" (according to what sources, contradicted by what other sources?) has little to do with whether it's good writing. "My naked lamps migrate over chicken-massaged postal seeds" is perfectly grammatical but meaningless. The "comprise" problem is that the word is an auto-antonym. All of this grandstanding about it on both sides is a waste of time, because the real solution here is obviously to avoid (and replace) auto-antonyms in any usage in which the meaning could be unclear. We should probably just put that into MOS. It really has nothing at all to do with whether the "proper" use (says who?) is "a collection comprising 50 pieces" (also conveyed by "a collection comprised of 50 pieces") or "50 pieces comprising a collection" (also conveyed by "50 pieces comprised by/in a collection"). Both contradictory meanings of "comprise" have long been well-attested, and while one is older and less common today, possibly headed for obsolescence (or, if you feel the other way, one is somewhat neologistic and only attested in more recent sources), neither are "wrong", despite them being opposite. [The genuinely incorrect one would be "a collection comprised by 50 pieces", which illogically mixes the "by" construction of the "included in" meaning, with the reversed hierarchical order of the "includes" meaning, which can take an "of" construction. Using the "of" construction when the verb is active, as in "a collection which comprises of 50 pieces", is also substandard in almost all English dialects.]
- Mandruss makes a good point: 'I have a few pet peeves myself, but I have refrained from hunting down and "fixing violations" because I felt that would be seen as disruptive.' We all do [need to] resist this urge. I've observed many times before that it's essentially impossible for any one person to agree with every rule in MOS, because the whole thing is necessarily a compromise between radically divergent style rules from every geographical and vocational part of the English-speaking world. The thing to look at here is that Giraffedata's edits are not simply a "peeve", a willy-nilly preference, but have a reasonable, reader-facing rationale. There's a big difference between that and, say, going around and changing every instance of "forwards" to "forward" just because you hate that minor redundancy and your English dialect doesn't favo[u]r it.
- I also agree with all of Boson's commonsense observations, immediately above mine.
- The proponent's 'Template:Currently there is nothing in policy or practice that could deter me or someone else from doing so...' stuff, which almost has a WP:POINTy I'm gonna do this to punish you all, if you don't stop me by agreeing to the rules I want against my own bad idea air to it, also raises WP:BEANS concerns. We should not and do draft up elaborate, problematic policies to pre-emptively address problems that are not extant, because it just inspires troublesome editors to do precisely what we're newly proscribing when there wasn't anyone doing it before. Thus it's also an exercise in instruction creep.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:58, 25 May 2015 (UTC) Updated: 01:51, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- For words like this that have multiple senses that can be confusing because of their nuance, can't we just replace them with clearer language? Perhaps "the collection includes 50 pieces" or "there are 50 pieces in the collection". While this is not at the level of certain hard sciences articles that use jargon that is incomprehensible to the average reader, vocabulary selections can be a barrier to clear understanding, and one that is easily avoided. bd2412 T 17:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, that's the very idea that's at issue here. Some editors are convinced that such constructions are in no way problematic, and want to take Giraffedata to task for changing them to clearer language. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:14, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Giraffedata does not change it to comprising, in fact he also removes "comprising" and all other occurences of the verb comprise. The argument that he is simply taking thers to task to make them use clearer language is of course predicated on the notion that comprising is unclear or confusing - an assertion foer which there is no evidence whatsoever. It is not the case that auto-antonyms are necessarily confusing, and I have yet to see a usage of "comprised of" that was actually ambiguous. It is ambiguous only in the mind of someone who thinks it is language's job to be fully governed by binary logic and is unable to understand that meaning of words vary in context. If Giraffedata was actually making attempts to understand the reason why people choose to use the word or see how it fits into contexts, and only changing those that were possibly confusing then I am sure this issue would have never arisen. but that is not his approach, his approach is a one-size (his) fits all argument. Which can be reasonably and non-civility-breachingly be called a crusade.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:25, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Here is one instance of Giraffedata changing "comprised of" to "comprising". bd2412 T 19:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- (EC) bd2412, Giraffedata most commonly uses "composed of" or "consists of", but explains the various replacements here. It's also instructive to actually look at the related threads on Giraffedata's talk page. You find that the characterization of him as 'generally respond[ing] with contempt asserting that he has a right to change any word in the encyclopedia as he sees fit' is quite disingenuous, and borders on psychological projection. Giraffedata even has a well-reasoned and well-researched user essay about the "comprised of" matter at User:Giraffedata/comprised of, but most complainants have not even looked at it, despite his edit summaries linking to it, and despite the fact that the whole point of it is addressing their concerns with reason and sources. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:01, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I can count at least three editors on the talkpage saying that they have read his essay and disagrees, and requests for him not to continue to change it in the specific articles they have used the wording int. And in each case he responds in an offended tone, and draws the same ludicruous "ownership" argument that you defend below - which amounts to saying that the person who actually wrote an article has less of a right to determine wording in it than some one who hasn't because allowing any of their preferences to stand would be condoning article ownership. He makes no attempt to reach a consensus on the question, just stubbornly asserts his right to make the change. Yes, I get stubborn and angry as well when faced with that kind of an attitude - but that is EXACTLY the reason we need some kind of policy or guideline on this issue. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- I have to respectfully disagree. I find his "tone" (to the extent that word makes sense in a text environment) to be measured, calm, and reasonable. Neither me nor Giraffedata have made any such argument 'that the person who actually wrote an article has less of a right to determine wording in it than some one who hasn't'; rather, the clear fact is that no editor has more or fewer editing rights in this regard, but the proposal we're discussing here would install one, that conflicts with already long-established policy. The rewording of it just above is also self-contradictory on its face, since making any such wording edit automatically constitutes helping to write the article, so it's a self-fulfilling "condition".
Some further background may help others understand why this dispute is a one-sided tempest in a teapot, a demand to fight being made against someone trying to avoid a fight (i.e. you engaging in what looks like the very "bullying" you complain of). Giraffedata said 'You don't have to agree with me either', and explicitly suggests that you revert him in articles where you insist on disagreeing with him, 'unless you're interested in finding a compromise or you think you can convince me this is the least awkward wording'. You'd earlier said to him 'What else do you want me to do, edit war?', to which he responded 'You won't be able to edit war on this, though, because I won't participate. Note that the Wikipedia definition of edit war requires making the same edit multiple times per day, and you have never seen me do that.' I just really don't see a problem here. You're being at least as "stubborn" as he is. I think anyone would be "stubborn" in the face of baldfaced claims that they have no right to edit an article here. When I turned your requirements back on you in a tongue-in-cheek way, you reacted with immediate umbrage, remember? [All of these quotes are from User talk:Giraffedata#Roaring Creek (Pennsylvania), shortly before you opened this VP thread.] — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:52, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- No, policy is very clear that slow editwarring is also editwarring. And all of te arguments you produce apply in equal measure to giraffedata- his edits are ALSO selfish, You seem to be graduating the latter of disgusting rhetorical strategies, now also attributing quotes to me that I never said. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Edit warring does not say what you seem to think it says. I just read it top to bottom, in case it changed. Another relevant policy, WP:Consensus makes it clear that consensus can change, so the notion that once a change is reverted it can never be made again is not applicable. But let's return to your accusations and the facts: Where's the proof that Giraffedata has in fact gamed the three revert rule by slowly re-reverting and re-re-re-reverting the exact same edit? I see no evidence of this, but it is required. Direct policy quote: 'An edit war only arises if the situation develops into a series of back-and-forth reverts.' I'm sure you're aware, as we all are, that it's common editing procedure to try an alternative change if one change is reverted but an editor still feels the present text is flawed. This appears to be Giraffedata's editing pattern. It simply is not the case that he always changes "comprised of" to (or back to) a specific alternative like "composed of". You even said so yourself earlier. And if anyone doubts that I'm quoting accurately, they can simply go read the original thread, since I posted exactly where it is. [PS: If you're just objecting to the [interpolation in square brackets], it was from the sentence immediately preceding the quoted part, which anyone can verify.] I have to observe that there's a clear pattern emerging here: I and others address your points in detail, while you respond with emotive hyperbole and red herring distractions that seem to serve a FUD purpose, but which evade answering most or any actual points raised against your position, and which especially fail to provide any evidence that is asked for. I have to say I don't think this strategy will be successful. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:43, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- No, policy is very clear that slow editwarring is also editwarring. And all of te arguments you produce apply in equal measure to giraffedata- his edits are ALSO selfish, You seem to be graduating the latter of disgusting rhetorical strategies, now also attributing quotes to me that I never said. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I have to respectfully disagree. I find his "tone" (to the extent that word makes sense in a text environment) to be measured, calm, and reasonable. Neither me nor Giraffedata have made any such argument 'that the person who actually wrote an article has less of a right to determine wording in it than some one who hasn't'; rather, the clear fact is that no editor has more or fewer editing rights in this regard, but the proposal we're discussing here would install one, that conflicts with already long-established policy. The rewording of it just above is also self-contradictory on its face, since making any such wording edit automatically constitutes helping to write the article, so it's a self-fulfilling "condition".
- I can count at least three editors on the talkpage saying that they have read his essay and disagrees, and requests for him not to continue to change it in the specific articles they have used the wording int. And in each case he responds in an offended tone, and draws the same ludicruous "ownership" argument that you defend below - which amounts to saying that the person who actually wrote an article has less of a right to determine wording in it than some one who hasn't because allowing any of their preferences to stand would be condoning article ownership. He makes no attempt to reach a consensus on the question, just stubbornly asserts his right to make the change. Yes, I get stubborn and angry as well when faced with that kind of an attitude - but that is EXACTLY the reason we need some kind of policy or guideline on this issue. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Giraffedata does not change it to comprising, in fact he also removes "comprising" and all other occurences of the verb comprise. The argument that he is simply taking thers to task to make them use clearer language is of course predicated on the notion that comprising is unclear or confusing - an assertion foer which there is no evidence whatsoever. It is not the case that auto-antonyms are necessarily confusing, and I have yet to see a usage of "comprised of" that was actually ambiguous. It is ambiguous only in the mind of someone who thinks it is language's job to be fully governed by binary logic and is unable to understand that meaning of words vary in context. If Giraffedata was actually making attempts to understand the reason why people choose to use the word or see how it fits into contexts, and only changing those that were possibly confusing then I am sure this issue would have never arisen. but that is not his approach, his approach is a one-size (his) fits all argument. Which can be reasonably and non-civility-breachingly be called a crusade.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:25, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Most people here are failing to address the substance of the proposal, sticking to their own opinions about "comprised of" specifically. The question is: what is the poper etiquette and procedure for enforcing one's pet peeves on other peoples writing? If there were a consensus that "comprised of" should not be used in wikipedia then of course that would settle the specific question here, but not the wider principle of how to handle style related conflicts where there is no "right answer". ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:16, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- In general, I think that if constructions such as "comprised of" are deemed grammatical, then it's unhelpful for someone to do nothing on Wikipedia but remove them. I would wonder about the motives of someone who edits in such a fashion anyway. Are they here to construct an encyclopedia or just to eradicate a grammar foible that they don't like? That said, if changing wording makes the sentence clearer for people to read, then fair enough. However, I would echo BD2412's point that, if you are going to make wording clearer, use a more common word entirely, or a construction that is unambiguous.
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- Perhaps, if an editor wants to make a grammar edit where the grammar was previously correct, he/she should only do so while making other substantive edits to the article. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:28, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- To get us back on track: Mandruss has let us know that if i turns out that there is a general consensus in this discussion to the effect that as long as someone can argue that their preference is preferable to some other choice, and there is no general consensus to say otherwise, then an editor is justified in programatically enforcing their preference, then Mandruss will personally take up such a practice. I will myself do the same of course. So what rules of etiquette would you like Mandruss and
meI to follow as we purge the encyclopedia systematically of usages that bug us and that we consider to be likely to be bugging likeminded readers?·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:34, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- The "substance of the proposal" is that Maunus wants to turn WP:OWN on its ear. His request for 'a parallel to WP:RETAIN that states that whenever two grammatical forms can be considered equally correct, the choices of the main contributor should be respected' is grotesque and un-wiki. Such an idea is not parallel at all to WP:RETAIN, but an argument for "whoever can dump the most words into a page, whether they are encyclopedic or not, controls it forever". Such a rule would be an unmitigated disaster, and nothing on Wikipedia works anything like that. See also User talk:Giraffedata#Roaring Creek (Pennsylvania), where Maunus makes patent WP:OWN claims over an article: 'No you do not [have as much right to choose article wording]. If you were to actually do something useful and write an article, then you would have a right to make style choices for it.' Maunus then vows a WP:POINTy, WP:BATTLEGROUNDing revertwar campaign: 'I for one am not going to back down, and the next time you revert "comprised of" in an article where I have reverted you once I will not be this gracious about it.' (Note: Nothing was gracious about Maunus's post.). Most of what Maunus says in that thread is very confused about various policies and guidelines, as is what he's saying on this page, too. So, let's be really clear about this: No, Maunus, you do not own and control an article or any page here by virtue of jealously guarding it and ensuring that your own edits dominate its wording. The fact that you object to someone editing "other people's wording", by which you really mean your wording, means you do not understand WP:Five pillars. PS: A key detail in the proposal is ""two grammatical forms [that] can be considered equally correct", which is rarely the actual case with any two forms, is certainly not the case with "comprised of" (which is widely denigrated in numerous reliable sources) and even in cases where is it approximately true that there's "equal" acceptance, it's usually a difference between UK and US English, i.e. it's already governed by WP:ENGVAR. It simply comes up so infrequently that editors like Maunus will vow they're "not going to back down" and "will not be ... gracious about it", that we do not need some new etiquette rule about people using AWB to make minor wording tweaks to articles in series and over time. That's what AWB is designed to do. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:01, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- OOh what a civil way to insult and personally attack someone. Very impressive, you must have practiced that a long time. Giraffedata is the one who is in constant battleground mode and is slow editwarring without having any backing by consensus. If there were a consensus that comprised should never be used then I would follow it, but I am not obligated by policy to sit down and peacefully let him bully anyone who disagrees with him. If he wants to change this usage in articles on my watchlist he will have to get a consensus for it on the talkpage in each separate case untill there is a general projectwide consensus that supports him. And in doing so I will be entirely within policy as it currently exists. So either you make a set of guidelines for how to approach this issue, or I will be fully justified in reverting giraffedata on any article where he makes this change - untill a local consensus is established. That is the substance. So if you would like me not to do this I suggest you get your head out of your sanctimonious bum and address the actual issue. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for making my case for me. Please actually read WP:POINT for starters. An "I will hunt you to the ends of the earth if you dare edit one of my pages" attitude is not going to serve you well here. Let's turn your reasoning back on you: Show me a site-wide consensus that the alternatives to "comprised of" that Giraffedata uses (there are lots of them, depending on the contexts in which the phrase is found) and which many other editors prefer, should never be used. None of us are obligated by policy to let you bully us into accepting wording that many find awkward, confusing, ignorant, or jarring. If you ever want to use that phrase again, you must get consensus for it on the talk page in each separate case until there is a general project-wide consensus that supports you. Does that sound fair and reasonable to you? BTW, I've actually read most of the relevant threads on Giraffedata's talk page, and he's quite calm, reasonable, civil, and patient, in stark contrast to the ranty fist-shaking posted there by you and several others with an axe to grind. The fact that it's in favor of some pet peeve instead of against one doesn't make it any less a case of axe-grinding and of advancing the very kind of pet peeve you just produced an essay about avoiding. PS: Being civil does not require being flattering or refraining from criticism. Here's an example of being actually incivil, you referring to another editor's work as 'your crusade'. (See my previous post for why this is essentially the same as saying "your Kristalnacht"). It's also hypocritical to disrespectfully confront another editor, and make long-term editwarring threats, and then call them 'confrontational and disrespectful'. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:48, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- So this is where your argument collapses, and you are forced to admit that this kind of behavior is not ok and is disruptive and problematic. Yuo could only see that problem, when it was in the context of an edit with which you didnt agree and by an editor you didnt like. but you saw it. If you can see that it would be a problem if I were agressively inserting comprised of into articles to which I have not otherwise contributed without getting consensus, then of course you can realize that that is esxactly what Giraffedata is doing (and what I am not...yet). And no, using the word the word crusade as a metaphor for a similar agressive coampaign to make the rest of the world conform to one's belief is not a personal attack. Imputing other editors viewpoints they have not expressed or speculating about their real motivations in a snide and sarcastic manner is. So pardon me while I go vomit over your hypocrisy.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- That response is an incoherent hand wave, full of straw men, and unresponsive to any point I made. Hmm, "imputing other editors['] viewpoints they have not expressed or speculating about their real motivations..." A good example of that would be "could only see that problem, when it was in the context of an edit with which you didnt agree and by an editor you didnt like. but you saw it." Anyway, you utterly missed the point. I too think it would be unfair to require of you all those things before you could make such an series of edits! That was the whole message of that Gedankenexperiment. Please exit the "me vs. them" mode. I believe, and Giraffedata has also said, you are free to make such edits yourself, even to simply revert him. No one is trying to impose pre-emptive consensus-seeking requirements on you before you can make minor wording tweaks to articles, much less invent some new policy to enforce it. WP:Be bold is already genuine policy here. It's unreasonable of you to expect that policy to not apply to someone else just because you happen to disagree with them on some point of grammar, and to propose your new anti-BOLD policy. I'll quote Giraffedata directly why he doesn't think you should go on a spree of reverting him: 'that [would be] pretty selfish, since I think your choice is one of the most awkward, but I let it stand for months.' That strikes me as remarkably non-confrontational on his part. What we really have here is two editors each with a conflicting preference and each occasionally editing in their preference at a particular article to see if it sticks, and each using a similar rationale. This happens a zillion times a day on Wikipedia, and it's actually highly unusual for one party to such a disagreement to wait months before approaching the change again. It's the exact opposite of edit-warring. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)later and reinser the same change.
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- Sloweditwarring is also editwarring. And yes, Giraffedata does editwar, he will come back to the same article two months and revert again. And he does not keep a list of articles where his edits are contested. And when requested to make an exception he states that making the edit is his right and that people dissagreeing with him are wrong and selfish to insist in correcting his corrections back. And no, my polic is not anti-bold it is specifically about what to do when a bold style edit s reverted. And the answer is GET CONSENSUS> which is basic fucking policy already. So it is you who is trying to create an exempt category of edits, where the burden of discussion and argumentation is reversed. And yes I am being almost equally stubborn as giraffedata (not yet to the degree of embarking on a crusade) but for some reason you are fine with only faulting me for being stubborn and selfish not him, in spite of the fact that I am the one trying to make a proposal to avoid people being stubborn and selfish in general. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:10, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
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- But only because it suits your editing goals. You've not identified a real problem, you've conjured up a hypothetical abuse problem, and are scapegoating an individual editor whose grammar you don't like. Re: 'Giraffedata does editwar' – For the fifth time: Prove it. Where are the diffs? Attempts at proof by assertion won't convince anyone. I don't only fault you for being stubborn. I clearly observed that being supposedly stubborn in response to threats to your editing rights is entirely reasonably, and that's it's hypocritical to call someone else doing that "stubborn" when you do it yourself. I scare-quoted "stubborn" because it's your word, not mine. We can analyze other word choices of yours like this. Take "crusade". Aside from my feeling that it's a variant of argumentum ad Hitlerum using Saracen-slaughter instead of Jew-slaughter, I think you making a big stink at VP about this rather illusory problem, that is not demonstrably disrupting anything at all, over a personality dispute with another editor, looks like a "crusade" to anyone who doesn't mind that pejorative label, and a particularly ad hominen type of campaign at that. It's fallacious to point at one editor and say what amounts to We have to do something about this terrible problem that might happen if someone other than him abuses editing tools in ways I can't prove he's really doing. It's even worse to then defend at length all your animosity about this particular editor and his edits, while trying to convince us you are really focusing on a general problem, not this editor, and that people are misinterpreting the point of the proposal. It's disingenuous, or confused, I'm not sure which. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:35, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
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- That response is an incoherent hand wave, full of straw men, and unresponsive to any point I made. Hmm, "imputing other editors['] viewpoints they have not expressed or speculating about their real motivations..." A good example of that would be "could only see that problem, when it was in the context of an edit with which you didnt agree and by an editor you didnt like. but you saw it." Anyway, you utterly missed the point. I too think it would be unfair to require of you all those things before you could make such an series of edits! That was the whole message of that Gedankenexperiment. Please exit the "me vs. them" mode. I believe, and Giraffedata has also said, you are free to make such edits yourself, even to simply revert him. No one is trying to impose pre-emptive consensus-seeking requirements on you before you can make minor wording tweaks to articles, much less invent some new policy to enforce it. WP:Be bold is already genuine policy here. It's unreasonable of you to expect that policy to not apply to someone else just because you happen to disagree with them on some point of grammar, and to propose your new anti-BOLD policy. I'll quote Giraffedata directly why he doesn't think you should go on a spree of reverting him: 'that [would be] pretty selfish, since I think your choice is one of the most awkward, but I let it stand for months.' That strikes me as remarkably non-confrontational on his part. What we really have here is two editors each with a conflicting preference and each occasionally editing in their preference at a particular article to see if it sticks, and each using a similar rationale. This happens a zillion times a day on Wikipedia, and it's actually highly unusual for one party to such a disagreement to wait months before approaching the change again. It's the exact opposite of edit-warring. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)later and reinser the same change.
- So this is where your argument collapses, and you are forced to admit that this kind of behavior is not ok and is disruptive and problematic. Yuo could only see that problem, when it was in the context of an edit with which you didnt agree and by an editor you didnt like. but you saw it. If you can see that it would be a problem if I were agressively inserting comprised of into articles to which I have not otherwise contributed without getting consensus, then of course you can realize that that is esxactly what Giraffedata is doing (and what I am not...yet). And no, using the word the word crusade as a metaphor for a similar agressive coampaign to make the rest of the world conform to one's belief is not a personal attack. Imputing other editors viewpoints they have not expressed or speculating about their real motivations in a snide and sarcastic manner is. So pardon me while I go vomit over your hypocrisy.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Thanks for making my case for me. Please actually read WP:POINT for starters. An "I will hunt you to the ends of the earth if you dare edit one of my pages" attitude is not going to serve you well here. Let's turn your reasoning back on you: Show me a site-wide consensus that the alternatives to "comprised of" that Giraffedata uses (there are lots of them, depending on the contexts in which the phrase is found) and which many other editors prefer, should never be used. None of us are obligated by policy to let you bully us into accepting wording that many find awkward, confusing, ignorant, or jarring. If you ever want to use that phrase again, you must get consensus for it on the talk page in each separate case until there is a general project-wide consensus that supports you. Does that sound fair and reasonable to you? BTW, I've actually read most of the relevant threads on Giraffedata's talk page, and he's quite calm, reasonable, civil, and patient, in stark contrast to the ranty fist-shaking posted there by you and several others with an axe to grind. The fact that it's in favor of some pet peeve instead of against one doesn't make it any less a case of axe-grinding and of advancing the very kind of pet peeve you just produced an essay about avoiding. PS: Being civil does not require being flattering or refraining from criticism. Here's an example of being actually incivil, you referring to another editor's work as 'your crusade'. (See my previous post for why this is essentially the same as saying "your Kristalnacht"). It's also hypocritical to disrespectfully confront another editor, and make long-term editwarring threats, and then call them 'confrontational and disrespectful'. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:48, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- OOh what a civil way to insult and personally attack someone. Very impressive, you must have practiced that a long time. Giraffedata is the one who is in constant battleground mode and is slow editwarring without having any backing by consensus. If there were a consensus that comprised should never be used then I would follow it, but I am not obligated by policy to sit down and peacefully let him bully anyone who disagrees with him. If he wants to change this usage in articles on my watchlist he will have to get a consensus for it on the talkpage in each separate case untill there is a general projectwide consensus that supports him. And in doing so I will be entirely within policy as it currently exists. So either you make a set of guidelines for how to approach this issue, or I will be fully justified in reverting giraffedata on any article where he makes this change - untill a local consensus is established. That is the substance. So if you would like me not to do this I suggest you get your head out of your sanctimonious bum and address the actual issue. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- To me this sounds like a behavioral issue... not a content issue. The fact is, going on a Wiki-crusade of any sort is disruptive - no matter what the cause or how just and right it may be. Make a correction (of any sort) in one article, and you are seen as improving wikipedia ... go on a crusade, and make the same correction in thousands of articles, and you are quickly seen as being a disruptive asshole. Blueboar (talk) 20:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Not a content issue true, but a behavioral issue which is not covered by any of our behavior policies and which some editors condone because they happen to agree with the person causing the disruption. A solution to the immediate problem would be to establish a consensus that "comprised of" needs to be removed aggressively and people should have barnstaers for doing so. This would however quickly cause other people to do the same, introducing changes that may not be as agreeable to the majority, and then we have the problem again. So the solution is to have a behavior guideline on how to proceed when you want to make style changes across many articles.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:36, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I don't know about that. I have made hundreds of thousands of disambiguation fixes with AWB, and have done mass-repairs of misspellings of "received" and "hierarchy", and have only very rarely been criticized for doing so, even when I have made runs of many thousands of edits at a time. A style change that is likely to make the wording of an article more accessible to a broader audience is not much different, in my view. bd2412 T 21:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Well there is a difference whether or not you can see it. Namely that Giraffedata's talkpage is full of equal amounts of praise and criticism. The difference may have to do with the fact that all users of English agree that recieve and haeirarchy are errors, but there is not such agreement on comprised of and a bunch of other style changes that some consider improving prose and accessibility and other's dont.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:13, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- "Not much different" already concedes there's a difference. The talk page comments are not really equal, and Wikipedia doesn't work on the basis of voting and headcounts (except to an extent at WP:RFA). We all already surely know that people are an order of magnitude more likely to invest the time and energy to register a disagreement than an agreement; this is a well-known fact of human behavior generally. More interestingly, the praise received is often from editors who never even thought about the question before and were not participating in any related discussions, while the criticisms never seem to be from uninvolved editors. I don't see anyone at his talk page posting that they agree with one of his edits, but oppose his ability to use AWB to make it. No one is even saying that they are undecided on this usage point, but sure that he alone should somehow be retrained from being able to edit articles to reflect what he thinks is better wording. There's also a huge civility gulf; most of the commenters against this editing pattern arrive on his talk page with an aggressive "how dare you" attitude, a belittling view that he's wrong and/or stupid, and that his contributions are of no value and "obsessive". It's deeply insulting, and evidentiary of problems that exist between those commenters' keyboards and chairs.More importantly, the fact that many do consider the changes to be an improvement is reason enough to make them. WP:BOLD is policy; the only way that WP improves is by people boldly making such changes. The burden is on resisters against wording tweaks to demonstrate that they should be reverted. A change in readability is not comparable to something like insertion of a new fact that may not be properly sourced. Changes to articles that trigger core policy concerns like WP:V, WP:BLP, or WP:COPYRIGHT can basically be reverted with impunity until the policy concerns are satisfied, but there is no comparable policy concern raised by whether "comprised of" or "composed of" (or whatever) is better wording. The Wikipedia default is that such changes can be made "mercilessly". As Giraffedata himself frequently points out, other editors are free to revert such a change at an article. The only place in this dispute where I see anyone suggesting that one editor has no or less right to edit an article is Maunus's comments. I'll quote it again in case anyone missed it: 'If you were to actually do something useful and write an article, then you would have a right to make style choices for it.' I.e., if you did not write most of an article, you have no right to make style edits in it, and if you are not writing an article, the work you're doing on Wikipedia is not useful. It's simultaneously among the most confused and most insulting things I've ever seen here. (BTW, I'm having this reaction without previous involvement; I don't recall ever having interacted with Giraffedata in any way before today, and my interactions with Maunus have been brief, uncommon, and barely memorable.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:09, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- Talk about not understanding basic policy: "The burden is on resisters against wording tweaks to demonstrate that they should be reverted." And here you are just inventing policy on the spot: "A change in readability is not comparable to something like insertion of a new fact that may not be properly sourced." Again thanks for the gratuitous condescension and veiled insults - I am getting used to that from the selfavowed upholders of civility by now. Please. And yes I admit wholeheartedly that I consider Giraffedata to be an utterly useless editor who is in no way improving the encyclopedia, but merely wasting other peoples time - but the purpose of this entire discussion is exactly not to enforce that view on others, but to find a way to deal with the problems that this approach would cause if it were generally adopted by others.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:22, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:EDITWAR: 'Note that an editor who repeatedly restores his or her preferred version is edit warring, whether or not the edits were justifiable: "but my edits were right, so it wasn't edit warring" is no defense.' You self-admittedly directly revert Giraffedata, and have vowed on this talk page to continue to do so, programmatically and pointedly: 'I for one am not going to back down, and ... I will not be ... gracious about it'. For I think the fourth time, I demand proof that Giraffedata is actually engaging in reverts at all. What I see is that he sometimes makes similar edits to the same page, sometimes months after the fact. These do not constitute reverts. But if he once in a while incidentally makes the same edit, it doesn't establish anything like a pattern of editwarring as defined at WP:EDITWAR policy. It's unlikely that any regular editor has never incidentally made the same minor editor long after having made it once before. Next, an observation that some things, like insertion of alleged facts without sources, trigger specific policy concerns, like compliance with WP:V, while making a stylistic change does not trigger them, is not "inventing policy on the spot", it's reading comprehension and basic reasoning. Thanks for at least and at last conceding that you have what we can all see is an intense personality conflict with Giraffedata. No new policy needs to address that. More to the main point, we don't need a new policy that sharply conflicts with established policy, to address some evidence-free hypothetical, like people doing stupid or malicious things with tools like AWB, when we already have permissions approval and revocation processes for them. I think I've covered every point I need to about this proposal and your defenses of it, and it already has so many other objectors that it could never gain consensus, so I'm skeptical that I need to respond here further. My interaction with you directly is just getting circular because you keeping going back to emotive complaints about who is asking evidence instead of providing the evidence. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:25, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- Talk about not understanding basic policy: "The burden is on resisters against wording tweaks to demonstrate that they should be reverted." And here you are just inventing policy on the spot: "A change in readability is not comparable to something like insertion of a new fact that may not be properly sourced." Again thanks for the gratuitous condescension and veiled insults - I am getting used to that from the selfavowed upholders of civility by now. Please. And yes I admit wholeheartedly that I consider Giraffedata to be an utterly useless editor who is in no way improving the encyclopedia, but merely wasting other peoples time - but the purpose of this entire discussion is exactly not to enforce that view on others, but to find a way to deal with the problems that this approach would cause if it were generally adopted by others.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:22, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- "Not much different" already concedes there's a difference. The talk page comments are not really equal, and Wikipedia doesn't work on the basis of voting and headcounts (except to an extent at WP:RFA). We all already surely know that people are an order of magnitude more likely to invest the time and energy to register a disagreement than an agreement; this is a well-known fact of human behavior generally. More interestingly, the praise received is often from editors who never even thought about the question before and were not participating in any related discussions, while the criticisms never seem to be from uninvolved editors. I don't see anyone at his talk page posting that they agree with one of his edits, but oppose his ability to use AWB to make it. No one is even saying that they are undecided on this usage point, but sure that he alone should somehow be retrained from being able to edit articles to reflect what he thinks is better wording. There's also a huge civility gulf; most of the commenters against this editing pattern arrive on his talk page with an aggressive "how dare you" attitude, a belittling view that he's wrong and/or stupid, and that his contributions are of no value and "obsessive". It's deeply insulting, and evidentiary of problems that exist between those commenters' keyboards and chairs.More importantly, the fact that many do consider the changes to be an improvement is reason enough to make them. WP:BOLD is policy; the only way that WP improves is by people boldly making such changes. The burden is on resisters against wording tweaks to demonstrate that they should be reverted. A change in readability is not comparable to something like insertion of a new fact that may not be properly sourced. Changes to articles that trigger core policy concerns like WP:V, WP:BLP, or WP:COPYRIGHT can basically be reverted with impunity until the policy concerns are satisfied, but there is no comparable policy concern raised by whether "comprised of" or "composed of" (or whatever) is better wording. The Wikipedia default is that such changes can be made "mercilessly". As Giraffedata himself frequently points out, other editors are free to revert such a change at an article. The only place in this dispute where I see anyone suggesting that one editor has no or less right to edit an article is Maunus's comments. I'll quote it again in case anyone missed it: 'If you were to actually do something useful and write an article, then you would have a right to make style choices for it.' I.e., if you did not write most of an article, you have no right to make style edits in it, and if you are not writing an article, the work you're doing on Wikipedia is not useful. It's simultaneously among the most confused and most insulting things I've ever seen here. (BTW, I'm having this reaction without previous involvement; I don't recall ever having interacted with Giraffedata in any way before today, and my interactions with Maunus have been brief, uncommon, and barely memorable.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:09, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Well there is a difference whether or not you can see it. Namely that Giraffedata's talkpage is full of equal amounts of praise and criticism. The difference may have to do with the fact that all users of English agree that recieve and haeirarchy are errors, but there is not such agreement on comprised of and a bunch of other style changes that some consider improving prose and accessibility and other's dont.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:13, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
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- I know this discussion isn't supposed to be about the word "comprise", my efforts to minimize its use to mean "compose" in Wikipedia, or me, but since I'm being used as the primary example of the problematic behavior, I want to correct a few misconceptions a person could have after reading some of the above: "comprised of" is not a pet peeve of mine; and I don't enforce any particular grammar in Wikipedia.
- "Comprised of" does not peeve me any more than about a hundred other forms of fractured English, and probably a thousand other human behaviors, that are common. And it doesn't peeve me more than it peeves everyone else. There are plenty of people who are equally peeved by this - I find them everywhere I look. But I have probably read more "comprised of" than anyone in the world, and have become desensitized to it like a surgeon is to blood.
- Enforcing a view would be watching an article and reverting any attempt to change it to something inconsistent with that view. In contrast, I edit an article once. That's nearly always enough, but in rare cases, someone changes it back to its original wording any time I touch it. 2-3 times a year, I'll find that same article again and edit it again. This is entirely reasonable, because any day, the owner of an article could retire or otherwise loosen his grip on the article and give the rest of us a shot. And it's simply not a great burden on someone who cares enough about these two words to argue about it to reinsert them 2-3 times a year. Wikipedia even provides a convenient "I'm right and you're wrong" button for that. Ideally, the person would seek a compromise, but I certainly don't insist. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:29, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Article consensus vs blacklist consensus
There have arrived a problem where article consensus conflict with the blacklist consensus, and as a work-around, a link exist in text format rather than link format.
The article consensus was to add the link to the article, but a non-unanimity consensus had been reached previously on the blacklist page that the type of link that the link represented was bad, and a wildcard entry had been added for the type. A whitelist request was thus requested, but denied since the type of the link was unchanged and thus the situation was identical to the one at blacklisting. Looking at spam blacklist policy and spam policy, it all seem to assume that blocked content are unwanted spam that the community/consensus around an article would not want.
The blacklist policy gives a rather free range of operation to the blacklist operators, by the inclusion of the "or simply violates Wikipedia's policies" line. With this and the infamous WP:IAR we have gotten to the situation where one consensus and interpretation of Wikipedia's policies has been decided on the blacklist, and an other consensus and interpretation on a article talk page. This creates a result in which the link in question is technically blocked in the link format, but then used in text format in the article as per consensus. This seems as an imperfect solution, sends conflicting messages to editors, and where clear policy would help find a consistent solution. Belorn (talk) 08:49, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Been there done that. The "simply violates Wikipedia's policies" means that ideology trumps building an encyclopaedia. For some reason the content creators have never accepted that. Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:00, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- As I've already advised you elsewhere, if you want to reverse existing consensus, or dispute that a consensus exists, raise an RfC. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:30, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Consensus at a single article talk page cannot overrule wider community consensus; this is detailed at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:30, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Local consensus on a talk page can't override our policies. This is a good thing IMHO and hardly to do with ideology. Doug Weller (talk) 12:56, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
Interesting case. The operators of TPB were convicted as accessory to crime against copyright law in Sweden and WP:ELNEVER states that "For policy or technical reasons, editors are restricted from linking to the following, without exception: Policy: material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked." By providing direct links to TPB sites, are we saying that they don't primarily host copyright infringements according to U.S. law? --NeilN talk to me 13:27, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- Some interesting comments.
- @Andy; is each blacklist entry equivalent to an policy decision regarding that entry? Both people on the talk page and the people on the blacklist read the policies, reach their own conclusion based on the policy, and thus a consensus was formed on two separate Wikipedia pages. People reaching different conclusion based on same policy is not unheard of, and when the participants are low (3 in one, 3 in the other) I would even be so bold to say it is common. The question is which consensus should overrule the other, and the current consequences that both consensus are followed at the same time.
- @NeilN; The site do not have material that violates copyright, but does encourage copyright infringement, which is what the site founders got caught for. People have discussed this subject several time if TPB official link triggers ELNEVER, and previous consensus has been to keep it, and that anyone is free to send a email to the foundation and ask for their legal input (vaguely recall someone doing that, but could be mistaking it for an other article discussion). The question regarding linking to people who encourage copyright infringement, and if it itself is illegal under U.S. law is an interesting question (Would be assisting in assisting in copyright infringement, but that would only be up to discussion in Sweden if "the primary purpose of the service (Wikipedia) is assistance" as per court judgment quote), but I suspect that is a discussion for different time and place. Belorn (talk) 14:30, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- There is no policy violation in linking to something that is not a copyright violation at a site that has some things on it which are copyright violations. If this were the case, we could never link to anything on YouTube or any site like it, since enormous amounts of material on them are copyvios. BTW, it's a known fact that some bands, etc., intentionally release their own material via TPB and other torrent sites. So, the plain language of policy, that "material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked", is not in any way triggered by a link to something non-infringing on a site that may have infringing things on it, including the site's homepage if the article it about that site, or a source being cited if that's the principal or only way to obtain it. Whether there's a simple way to work this fact into how the blacklist works is an open question, as is whether the editors who control it will cooperate enough to make any such solution likely to be practical. There may be non-"ideological" reasons for blacklisting certain types of link (
magnet:
URLs, or whatever; I honestly don't know what URL schemes and such are blacklisted). And in the case of the archive.is kerfuffle, there are obviously additional concerns at work, including the behavior on WP of people associated with the site. That said, the fact that a few editors took it upon themselves to strip archive.is URLs out of innumerable citations without replacing thearchiveurl
s with alternatives is at least potentially a serious problem (how serious depends on how many of those changes resulted in actual dead links, and have not been fixed). Archive.is no longer appears to be blacklisted.[4]PS: I'm not convinced by an overbroad, lopsided WP:LOCALCONSENSUS interpretation here. Specific decisions to blacklist this or that often appear to made with very little input, even if they're not unilateral or uncontestible. I'm sympathetic to the view that there being a site-wide, centralized place for this at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist means a decision to blacklist something is less likely to be a LOCALCONSENSUS itself, but that doesn't mean that it's infallible and that local consensus problems can't arise there. It's a much more rarified venue than, say, WT:MOS or WT:RS, which have wide participation and are watchlisted by thousands of editors. If editors at articles keep coming up with local consensuses that the blacklist has entries on it that impede improving the encyclopedia, then it's probably true. And it also may be the kind of instance where resorting to WP:IAR is actually valid. The fact that the blacklist technologically makes it hard to IAR in certain ways is a little problematic. This might be mitigated by the fact that there's more than one way to get around the blacklist if you really want to, e.g. using an "approved" archive site to archive a page at an "unapproved" archive site. >;-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
- It seems to me that there is very little copyrightable material on TPB homepages on various domains other than the logo. If there is no claim that the logo is copyright-infringing (and I've not seen such a claim), I see no policy-based reason that they can't be linked to. I believe that technically this can be allowed by ensuring that the entry in the blacklist entry contains \b which would match the / between the domain and the path path of the URL. If the blacklist maintainers are not amenable to this, start an RFC to make them amenable (and feel free to ping me of you start an RFC). Stuartyeates (talk) 01:46, 26 May 2015 (UTC)