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Issue with sourcing, original research and stuff

I was directed here by one of the admins to express my concerns over the issue of third party sources for verification, and how it is affected by original research as well as proving notability and all that.

There are a number of locations in the world where notable events occur and there is no record of it that would under normal circumstances be recorded due to local circumstances - such as the lack of a local newspaper, or the lack of a local subject specific publication. Even though the event or group or anything else is worth recording as it is no different to others that have such sources.

It concerns me that it will leave the WP database incomplete. There is a dispute occuring at present where a number of wrestling promotions were marked for deletion due to an alleged lack of notability and a lack of sources. To me that looked like an over reaction - particularly in the case of one article. PCW

An admin who shall remain nameless alleged that unsourced articles will be deleted - even if the article is not original research. The Carnage Controversy noted in the article I mentioned is definitely a notable event - in that it had a major negative effect on the industry in Melbourne as a whole. But because this fact was never recorded - it could lead to an wholly unacceptable article deletion. It creates a conundrum - if articles like this and events like this are deleted, editors will leave. WP relies heavily on editors to get the information to make WP reliable, and the less editors there are the less reliable WP will be.

Whether WP likes it or not - it is seen by the Internet community as an "Encyclopedia for Everything". It is widely used as a source in this regard - indeed I've used it myself for this reason, and have linked the Aspergers Syndrome article which is magnificent. I mention Wikipedia a lot in other regards as a spot to start research. I am now discouraged from doing this because of the rock hard belief that all articles have to have reliable third party sources. It stops me from providing articles on other independant pro wrestling promotions in Australia, as one place that is not seen as a reliable source as I understand it is the fed's official website. That's a bad thing because mostly in this case it is the ONLY external source.

I hope I have covered the problem sufficiently, and I seek comment. I am seriously considering leaving WP over this issue, because if I hold to this rock hard attitude I have nothing to contribute. And the amount of material that I wanted to place on Wikipedia will not be added. I consider that to be poor form and a bad thing for an online encyclopedia. Curse of Fenric 21:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

An admin who shall remain nameless alleged that unsourced articles will be deleted - even if the article is not original research. How, exactly, does one distinguish between an article that IS original research, and one that simply lacks sources?
The assumption that is usually made in my experience is that unsourced statements and so forth are labelled original research because of the lack of sources. Especially the lack of online sources. I know of one wrestling promotion in Adelaide for example that does not have a website (they aren't listed on the Pro Wrestling in Australia page for this reason - and of course do not have an article. And in that case rightly so). Original research is personal experience. Lack of sources could be a POV issue - ie acting off rumours, not original research (heavy emphasis of "research"). Curse of Fenric 09:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
You say "original research is personal experience". Does WP:NOR say that? Original research is previously unpublished material. -GTBacchus(talk) 01:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Regarding your concern that editors will stop joining Wikipedia if they realize that they can't add articles without reliable sources, that's an interesting hypothesis. Last I looked, new accounts were being established at the rate of something like 10 per second 5 per minute (more than seven thousand per day) [1]. I suppose if that rate were halved, it would mean something, though exactly what is unclear.
With respect, I consider that stat to be misleading because it is possible that - at a ball park guess - 3 or 4 1 of them could be accounts created purely for reasons of vandalism and other such behaviour. But I would suggest that if it did get around that the verification rules and all that were going to be strictly enforced - then yes, WP could indeed lose half of those new editors. Notwithstanding the existing ones as well. Curse of Fenric 09:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Regarding your statement that Wikipedia is seen as an "Encyclopedia for Everything", that certainly argues for correcting such a misunderstanding, because that's not what Wikipedia is. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. (emphasis in original, from WP:V, one of the three main content policies.) So yes, there will always be holes in Wikipedia. Fortunately or otherwise, there is so more work to be done on what CAN be documented by reliables sources that the editors here are never going to come close to finishing things. John Broughton | Talk 22:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Well you've got your work cut out to eliminate that "misunderstanding". Wikipedia is being referenced for a large number of things over a wide range of subjects - in many cases over other online encyclopedias for the very reason I explained. That's why I say the loss of editors is such a threat. Curse of Fenric 09:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
See also my impassioned plea above regarding oral and tribal knowledge....Regarding your assumprion the the 'fed's official website' is not a 'reliable' source, I did see a reference recently here that websites can be cited. not young enough to know everything 07:22, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Could you find where you saw that reference, Pietopper? That would be a useful note if it can be confirmed. Curse of Fenric 09:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
See Jayron32's response under 'Original research and griefing'. not young enough to know everything 11:41, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Pietopper! I'll record that on a page on my user page should I get a chance to. Curse of Fenric 20:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Extent of "No Original Research" policy?

All: I am currently in a dispute with (mainly) User:Lunokhod on the interpretation of the Wikipedia:No_original_research policy. He recently started a project on everything related to the Moon, and included some articles that I have been contributing to. I had added some numerical facts, that I derived from published and referenced sources. He objects on grounds of the NOR policy. I understand his objection to be that the exact numerical values listed in the articles have not been taken literally from published sources, but computed from them: he regards that as "original research" and therefore forbidden by the NOR policy. He wants these published in a reliable source (journal or on-line) literally before accepting them in a Wikipedia article. I disagree with this interpretation for reasons that I will outline below. I ask for the opinion of the Wikipedia community on this issue. Disputed pages are mainly new moon, also full moon and lunar phase, and (related but in my opinion centered on other issues) full moon cycle.

  • Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. By its very nature it is a compilation and summary of existing material: at best from reliable and verifiable sources and written by knowledgeable experts. Copying of existing sources is explicitly forbidden because of copyright: it must be original work. So the "NOR" policy will conflict with the very nature of Wikipedia if it is interpreted strictly.
  • The NOR policy is closely related to the NPOV and Verifiability policies. Its stated purpose is to prevent Wikipedia becoming a forum for discussion or propagation of new and potentially controversial ideas. My interpretation is that applying computational and mathematical operations on source data in the course of digesting sources for presentation in Wikipedia is NOT original research forbidden by the policy. First, it is not in the "excluded" list in the policy; second, arithmetic and mathematical operations and their results can not be controversial (but at worst mis-understood or wrongly applied), and they are verifiable by any competent potential author on the subject.
  • Specifically, most of the disputed expressions involve (among other things) a change of units. Wikipedia is full of conversions from SI to imperial units, always unexplained and unreferenced. Most readers will be confused when trying to convert unfamiliar units like those in the disputed pages, but it is not fundamentally different from miles per gallon -> km per liter conversions. Potential authors knowledgeable on the subject can be expected to reproduce this.
  • Which brings on the issue of verifiability: by whom? Do we require that each factoid in Wikipedia can be verified by any reader? I say not. To the long list of what Wikipedia is not, I'd like to add: Wikipdeia IS NOT a scientific journal, and IS NOT a student's text book. Not everything that is inhere can be expected to be verifiable by all its users. Without propagating an elitist attitude: people read encyclopedias because they need to learn something they do not know. That means that generally they are not competent to verify the validity or understand the referenced sources; nor do they care about all these details, as long as they can trust the content. Experts do not read encyclopedias, they write them. They read their specialized literature inaccessible (both in location and content) to most people, and rework the information to make it digestible for some more general audience (and we can debate endlessly what the level of understanding of the target audience(s) of Wikipedia might be). If this process is to work, then the Wikipedia community must trust its expert writers to do their thing and apply the tricks of their trade to process the primary sources to something more palatable to the general public. Sources should be referenced so other experts can verify the content of the article, but authors should be allowed to assume that their peers are familiar with relevant literature, data, procedures, and techniques, and can reproduce results using their own skills without detailed instructions that would clutter the Wikipedia.
  • If each factoid in Wikipedia should be literally quoted from an existing source, this has consequences for the relevance of Wikipedia:
    • it becomes a list of links to existing data, and has little added value. A reader would probably be better off doing a Google search, because then (s)he gets many results and gets an impression of consensus (not that factual knowledge should be decided by majority vote...), while Wikipedia will only present one or two links for which Wikipedia can not even guarantee the relevance or accuracy.
    • the (text from) original sources may be incomprehensible to the reader anyway.
  • I want to make the following observation. Publishers of journals, books, and websites, and the expert communities they serve, only accept cutting-edge non-trivial new and insightful contributions, that are not available elsewhere (like in the Wikipedia...). There is a large gap with the lay public. People trained in engineering and natural sciences do manipulation of formulae and numbers all the time. It is perfectly allright to do such things when at work or when condensing information for Wikipedia. But you cannot publish such results in a "reliable source" exactly because any competent peer can generate the same when needed. In fact the Wikipedia is a perfect place to make generally available facts that are trivial to experts but not to the general public, iff they are of general interest. Example: the Gregorian_calendar#Numerical_fact is full of factoids that anyone with a calculator can find out themselves, but which find their way into Wikipedia anyway. A personal webpage is less suitable because it is not as persistent as Wikipedia and not as reliable, since in the Wikipedia at least another expert can correct errors.
  • My motivation why I put those numerical expressions in the Wikipedia pages: I thought they would be useful, also to a general audience, but did not find them on-line anywhere. The original ephemeride expressions are there for those who know where to look and how to use them, and there are plenty of ready-to-run programs (some with source code) that can compute e.g. the time of New Moon with high accuracy: but those are black boxes to their users. I think the Wikipedia articles on these subjects with these expressions explain something to their non-expert readers, without exposing them to cutting-edge ephemeris computation. Yet I feel obliged to present the best available data, even if that requires some computation not published or publishable elsewhere.

Tom Peters 14:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

In response to your first bullet: The term is no original research, not no original writing. --Golbez 14:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanx for making the distinction explicit, I suppose the issue is what is "research" in the context of the policy. I think that computation is not. 167.202.196.71 15:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
One of the problems that I see here is that deriving equations or ephemereses, as Tom Peters has wanted to do with articles such as full moon cycle, is a form of research. Many theoretical astronomy papers are based on deriving new equations and relations from existing equations and data. The computations or derivations may be based on referenced material, but the derivations and computations are new. These derivations need to be validated to ensure that they are physically valid and contain no errors. Based on this, I would say that it is appropriate to present equations that are already published but that it is inappropriate to derive new results from these existing equations.
Another issue is that Tom Peters does not seem to understand that Wikipedia is a tertiary reference. It is not supposed to draw conclusions; it is simply supposed to survey the existing material. In contrast, primary references (such as journal articles) would present raw data or new calculations, and either primary or secondary references (journal articles or journal review articles) would draw conclusions based on those data. Tertiary references should simply report the results. They can report the results in interesting ways by highlighting the most important results and how those results improved people's knowledge of the subject matter. Nonetheless, tertiary references are not the place for new results, including new computations. Dr. Submillimeter 17:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, the application of verifiable mathematical relationships, within the bounds with which they are stated to be relevant, should not be considered original research. In other words, we can apply the fact that the area of a circle is pi*r^2 to find the area of a circle of radius 10 m, even if no known reference explicit lists the answer for this particular value of r. However, one should be cautious about applying formulae (or deriving new formulae) if the process being studied lends itself to disputes over what is the right mathematical approach. Dragons flight 17:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Dragons flight's comments here. Simple calculations do not need intensive references. On the other hand, if someone transcribed a new twenty-step derivation based on existing equations, then that would be original research. (However, referencing the derivation in a journal article is OK.) The major question is: at what length or level of complexity does a derivation or calculation change from being common sense to original research? Dr. Submillimeter 17:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
interjections chronologically
In my opinion, if the equation   were to be published, Wikipedia should not quote   unless this has been published before in the context as described in the text. If no one ever published this "variant", then it is apparently not important for the scientific community, and giving this "new" equation would not be a summary of existing published knowledge. I think that converting the units of a, x, and/or y is fine. However, the debate at hand is whether we should be able to update the constant "a." Doing so, in my opinion, would be original research, even if it is just calculating a new value for a new epoch (say years 2000+ instead of 1950-2000) based on a pre-existing equation. I understand that some of these mathematical manipulations are simple (to some), and that there is a desire to keep Wikipedia update, but the problem is that this is only verifiable by repeating the calculations oneself, and some people are not endowed with mathematical abilities. In addition, there is always the possibility that one could make a simple mistake, or even transcribe the value of the constant "a" incorrectly to a wikipedia page. If a transcription error occurred, this could not be verified by an external source, and the only way that this could be corrected would be by a "scientific peer review" of the article. Furthermore, by leaving out all of the (simple) intermediate steps, we are in essence asking the reader to swallow a statement like "it can be shown." Even if every intermediate step was given, if there is not a reference, I, as a scientist, would naturally be suspicious of the result. For instance, are there more complicated secord order details (such as the eccentricity of the lunar orbit) that are being neglected? Or, Are all the digits following the decimal point really justified? A good primary reference would give error bars for each quantity. Lunokhod 15:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
How is converting units OK but inverting a formula not OK? It seems to me that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. As to verifiability, the beauty of wikipedia is that anybody can do the verifying and are encouraged to do so. Of all encyclopedias, wikipedia is the most suited to this sort of thing. I think we should also be able to assume the reader of an article has the intelligence to comprehend the article he's interested in. We should grant him/her the right to follow along. That's not possible if there is nothing to follow. If there is a transcription error or any other error for that matter, someone can correct it. Isn't that what wikipedia is all about? Furthermore, having a plethora of citations is of little use if the references are not available to the readers. If we can expect the reader to find and verify an obscure document, why can we not expect them to be able to derive a simple formula? Victor Engel 16:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I would prefer that all units be quoted in their original SI units! Fortunately, few scientific journals use imperial units, and thus it is sometimes helpful to give the result in something like "miles" for our american colleques. I would consider such a conversion to be "trivial," as it can be performed at google and only involves one multiplication. The operations that are being discussed here are, in principle, "simple", not trivial. Simple calculations generally involve solving an equation, or contain intermediate steps. In my opinion, only trivial mathematical operations should be allowed at wikipedia, and we should attemp to define what is the most complicated trival operation. Lunokhod 17:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Don't assume that all papers are written using SI units just because no one uses imperial units. I would prefer that derived CGS units such as ergs and dynes be converted to SI. Other papers could use electronvolts for energy, or, as is often done, use electronvolts for everything with c=\hbar=1. --Philosophus T 17:21, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Chronological skip ends
Also, there is the problem of "assumption" and "applicability." Just because a formula can be used from a reference and applied explicitly within an article does not prevent someone to do OR. The relevant assumptions and boundaries must be verifiable, and thus be found in a reliable source. I would object to all such applications, if they are not of the simplest kind, as given in the above example. I would suggest to all that we rather err on the side of having a verifiable source than on thinking "it's just simple arithmetic." Awolf002 18:09, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
This is a rather interesting discussion! In Tom Peter's own words, "What I did was re-compute Meeus' expressions (which are essentially 25 years old) with newer constants from the 2002 Chapront paper already referenced." (from Talk:New_moon#Numerical_formulae_and_sources). My question: is that "unverified" section where Tom Peters uses the newer constants to calculate some values (the step under debate, I assume) even necessary? If it's easy enough for anyone to do, yet it isn't published, then why does it belong in the article? In my opinion, the whole section New_moon#Explanation_of_the_formulae needs to be cleaned up for terminology and readibility. -sthomson 19:59, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I have no problem with a straight forward set of simple equations like these outside of presentation issues of understandability (I really only looked at New Moon, but do caution that terms and conventions within a discipline or any technical area of specialized knowledge like this need to have an adequate introduction of terminology, discussion of meaning, and go slowly enough to be comprehensible. IMHO, the following section needs similar 'dumbing down' balanced with encyclopedaic tone. Like sthomson06, I thought cleanup was in order. I did some of that (link above) and tagged the Full Moon and it's talk with {{confusing}}.
   As far as formula that are derivative in general, the derivations should be set out clearly in the talk by first citing the source and their equations, then the adaptations made to reach the state of the ones given in the article. OR, would necessarily involve introductions of new physical constants and the like which are not established by conventions in at least one text book... which means they'd also be present in preceding journals and such as discussed by Dr. Submillimeter above. If the equations were outside perameters like that, then they probably are verging on OR. OTOH, if set forth where the many technically trained editors here can cross-check for errors, mathematical formula are generally precise and exact in meaning and scope. It's getting the accompanying basis concepts to be understood that gets to be the difficult task.
   Returning to Sthomson06's objection, from what I can grasp, the alteration is a normalization—a correction to give an old formula a new and more convienient updated bases year (2000). This would in all probability be considered 'trivial' math by the journals and savants, and is not going to be 'published' outside of a revisitation of the topic in a text, perhaps. Normalizing values is a commonplace and time honored technique in presenting information more clearly. // FrankB 20:39, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
To be precise, this is not about a change of epoch; rather, most computations involve a change of time units (from Julian centuries to synodic months). The expression is based on published polynomials for an angular (i.e. cyclic) parameter, D; the expression tells you when D is 0 . Meeus published such an expression based on older published ephemeride theories; I adapted that from a more recent publication, so using a) published numbers and b) a published method to c) get an update for a published expression: my opinion has been that that is not original research. If it is, I would be very happy if someone could name me a journal editor who would publish that. Tom Peters 22:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I think it's worth quoting a bit from the WP:NOR policy, because (in my opinion) it forbids more than what people think of as "research": Original research is a term used in Wikipedia to refer to material that has not been published by a reliable source. It includes unpublished facts, arguments, concepts, statements, or theories ... John Broughton | Talk 21:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but continues "... that appears to advance a position."; I understand that to refer to an opinion. I don't see how that applies to results of mathematical procedures. Tom Peters 22:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
In deriving a mathematical ephemeris, you are effectively advancing your technique as a valid one for deriving an ephemeris. Your position is that your derivation works, just like a theorist's position is that his derivation of physics equations describes a physical process. Dr. Submillimeter 22:29, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Remarkably, WP:NOR does not refer to calculations directly! However, we could argue that a derivation is an "argument". We should probably note this discussion on the talk page for WP:NOR and ask that the policy be clarified regarding the derivation of equations or the calculation of numbers in the future. Dr. Submillimeter 22:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I cannot object to what Tom Peters has written - I don't know enough about the topic or about WP:NOR. FrankB said what I wanted to say much more clearly. -sthomson 22:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Tom Peters's derivations of astronomical ephemerises is not the first to cause problems in Wikipedia. Last month, a user had derived an ephemeris for Halley's Comet and had posted it on the Halley's Comet page. He later removed it when he learned about the original research policy. (The user was unhappy about many things in Wikipedia. He seemed particularly upset that most people did not want to use Comet Halley in the title of the article on the comet.)

This leads to a particular problem. At the moment, we only have the assertion of Tom Peters and his collaborators that their derivation is valid. The same could be said about other people who place such derivations on Wikipedia. What if someone (not necessarily Peters) has made a mistake but refuses to admit it (or does not recognize it)? Worse yet, what if someone intentionally falsifies an ephemeris. This could be problematic. It makes Wikipedia look like it is directly disseminating bad information. On the other hand, if a primary or secondary reference contains the error, then Wikipedia is not directly responsible for disseminating the bad informaton. Moreover, it is more likely that the reference will have been reviewed before publication, so it is more likely that the material will be accurate.

I do not think that Tom Peters should take this personally. It sounds like he has put a lot of work into his calculations. Nonetheless, the "original research" policy is intended as protection against the people who lie or make egregious mistakes. Unfortunately, it means that some good original research cannot be placed on Wikipedia. Dr. Submillimeter 22:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Now, alas, I'm concerned that Tom Peters now seems to be arguing that he has introduced new factors into the periodicity of the relations (or do I misapprehend? I was aware of the Julian bases, et. al. when writing above—we may be just coming at this from different viewpoints, as I'm not trained in astronomy convention, but can parse an equation, have some knowledge of navigation and spherical trig, and as an engineer, calculus is a familiar friend). Speaking mathematically, casting a set of equations into a new form to establish an equivilent more differentiable, or integrable form is for example one technique for dealing with anomalies about a given data point. In many models, equations are what the mathematicians refer to as piecewise continuous. So I would infer your derivation is merely a different set with techniques to remove an odd removable singularity as is quite common with dealing with solutions involving periodic functions. (We're in big trouble if a year or month isn't periodic! <g>)
   Normalizing a basis year should not be affecting a periodicity driven factor in the equation set. Granted that several adjustments would have to be made amongst the terms, most should just be a change to a constant or the addition or subtraction of a constant within the particular term of the equation so as to normalize it's part of the whole. Generally, any constant in a general solution is itself a tell-tale of an given initial condition, in the overall general solution. So, Tom Peters, have you messed with the General solution, or are the derivatives of the equations the same. If the derivative is different, then we're in murky waters as we have lost the fig-leaf of other authority. If not, if they are the same equation, then they are merely an adjustment into the current millenium time epoch, a resetting of the zero points as I understood when writing the above.
   A good corrallary question would be to know how many test dates you verified such that you get equivilent results with your authorities equations. If the answer is less than 5-10, some deliberately selected to stress a given sub-term singularity, then I must raise me eyebrows.
   OTOH, I just caught up with your rejoiner to User:Lunokhod on Talk:New_moon#Numerical_formulae_and_sources, and I think it important to note here that we are discussing equations on articles which have been in place for a lengthy time, on your behalf, and that I agree in general with what your comment had to say on derivations to Lunokhod. Having seen your attitude and response therein, let me add kudos for your patience, willingness to re-derive and explain the equations which have been in place for so long. I'm sure it's an imposition, especially given the season. IMHO, your obvious self-confidence and measured response to the 'new perturbations' of User:Lunokhod are more than sufficient to give me a great deal of confidence in your formula.
   Bearing in mind the demands of the season, I would advise you and ask all here participating as well as User:Lunokhod to be patient on a presentation of your derivations. I'm quite comfortable suggesting we can wait until the new year, so I suggest Jan 10th as a quasi-unofficial deadline. I'd much rather some effort be put into the presentation verbiage and organization (i.e. the English text explaining them and their use) vice having you rush to present any additional math at this time. Even if the math has apparent unjustifiable new factors, such that the derivatives of the equations differ, I think we can cut you that much slack as a courtesy. Since it is now evident the articles were 'stale' from your perspective, perhaps we can team up and adjust the presentation to a junior high level reader. Best regards to all. // FrankB 00:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanx for the moral support, but now I am confused. Are we still talking about Full moon cycle, and possibly New moon (on which you commented) here? What I have been describing in New moon is a solution for almost exactly this secondary-school-exam-type question: "The distance between Forrest and Kalgoorlie in Southern Australia is 700 km. A car drives from F to K with a constant speed of 50 miles per hour. At the same time a pedestrian starts to walk from K to F at 1.5 meters per second. After how many minutes do they meet, and at what distance from K in km?". Chapront provided expressions for the position of the car and the pedestrian as a function of time, and I worked that around to a formula to when they meet, every time they traveled around the world. It is somewhat more complicated because the expression is a polynomial, and I expect not many people can actually derive such an equation (which is why I did it and put it on a public spot): but it is not calculus and can easily be checked by people with just good arithmetical skills. Tom Peters 23:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
At this time, I am talking about anyone who wants to calculate astronomical data using equations or methods that they have developed themselves. Full moon cycle was not the first place where an amateur astronomer posted a complicated calculation related to predicting the location of a celestial body, nor will it be the last place. Regardless of whether we can trust Tom Peters's ephemerises, we need to ask whether we can trust other people's calculations as well. For example, suppose someone derives formulae to predict the right ascension and declination of Halley's Comet as seen from Mars? Do we trust that calculation, even if it is derived from a series of more basic equations that are referenced? Dr. Submillimeter 00:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Question: Let's say that I wanted to use these formulae in a scientific article, and I gave as a justification of the new adjusted ephemerides a reference to Wikipedia. Would this be acceptable for a peer reviewed scientific journal? I would say No. While what Tom Peters did might be considered "simple" (by some), it is not "trivial" (as in the above example of the area of a circle for an arbitrary radius). I object to his claim that this is too simple to be published, as there are a large number of "reputable" (in the words of wikipedia) possibilities that range from journals for teachers to technical reports published by amateur astronomical societies. In some cases, a reputable source might not even be peer reviewed (as in the case of online or supplementary documentation of, say, the DE405 ephemerides). "Reputable" should not be confused with "hard-core" astronomical journals. I do not doubt the accuracy of what he wrote, but the important point is: the ONLY way that this material can be verified is for the reader to rederive the equations himself. I think Dr. Submillimeter's point that Wikipedia is a tertiary source is important. We are only allowed to summarize what has been previously published. As much as we might like to, this forbids us from "improving" upon previously published material in the process. This is too bad in some cases, but that is the consequence of the NOR policy. Lunokhod 16:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Need advice regarding (un)suitable external links

I recently added an External links section to Vegetarianism after suggesting it on the talk page, and added http://www.vegsoc.org/ and http://www.vegetarian.org.uk/. I also explained on the talk page that both sites were respected non-profit organizations.

Soon after Mwanner removed both links and completely deleted the External links section, on the basis that no External links section existed before I added one, so there is no reason to add one now. Their reason for deleting the links was that both the sites "engage in retail", which is very misleading; both sites are registered charities. The Vegetarian Society is the oldest vegetarian organization in the world, their front page has over 40 links, one of which leads to their website store. I didn't even know it was there until I tried to find anything commercial on that site just now.

The only guidelines I can find related to the "engage in retail" reason that Mwanner gave are "sites that primarily exist to sell products or services" and "sites with objectionable amounts of advertising". Neither of the sites I added come anywhere near those guidlines.

I'd really appreciate it if someone could take a look at the sites I linked to and also the talk page, and give me any suggestions on what they think. Thanks - Psychonaut3000 01:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the sites in question, I can understand why you added them in good faith, but please also understand that it appears they were removed in good faith. External links should really be about linking to sites that talk about the subject, not ones that take a one sided view of the subject. I make no judegments about the "goodness" of these websites, merely to note that they only present one side of an issue, and as charities, they are about promoting vegetarianism, and not just talking about it. Including them as external links could be seen as a violation of wikipedia's policy on neutral points of view. --Jayron32 04:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I would expect a Wikipedia article on "Political parties in the United States" (or wherever) to include external links to the various parties' websites, not just the Democrats and Republicans, but also the Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, on down the line, including recent single-candidate parties like Ross Perot's. Impartially giving access to all points of view, by way of such a list of links, is being an "honest broker" of ideas, which is my idea of neutrality. – SAJordan talkcontribs 20:16, 21 Dec 2006 (UTC).
The relevant guideline is WP:EL. There's no particular requirement that linked-to sites be neutral that I know of. The article on cancer has a link to the American Cancer Society, an anti-cancer organization that opposes smoking and advises people how to quit [2] to the likely dissatisfaction of the cigarette industry. I don't think there's any good reason to remove that link. Basically whether to include a particular link is a matter of editorial judgement. We are, I think, trying to get rid of "external links" sections in general, since they attract spam. There's also no particular dispensation from spam guidelines for sites that are operated by nonprofit entities such as charities. I haven't looked at the vegetarian links in question but maybe one of them could be in an "further reading" section. I suggest bringing it up on the article discussion page. 67.117.130.181 09:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Except that this is a bad analogy. Cancer is a disease. There is not an issue where two sides say "we should cure it" and "we should not cure it". The ACS is trying to fund research to cure a disease. Vegetarianism is a lifestyle choise with benefits and costs and meat-eating is not a disease. Promoting research to cure cancer is not the same as promoting advertising to stop people from eating meat. There are many legitimate objections to vegitarianism. I know of know legitimate objections to curing cancer. --Jayron32 22:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Also note that WP:EL is under much vigorous discussion about whether "External links" should exist at all, and if so, what an external link is actually meant to be. Some editors (myself included) take the very narrow view that ELs should be of the same "quality" as a reference and should only be excluded from actually being used as a reference because their content is "technically unsuitable" (i.e. too much level of detail etc). Other editors see ELs as a portal for providing further info on the topic that isn't covered in the article and would link things that have "unsuitable content" for the article itself, where this unsuitability is not "technical" but "content-related". This distinction is quite important and we're still bashing it out on the Talk page of WP:EL. Zunaid©Please rate me at Editor Review! 09:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

On the need for citations and references

I, for one, sometimes find the demands for citations, etc, to be dull, and sometimes I even carp about it. Here is a cautionary tale.

In 1926 Maurice Maeterlinck, a Nobel Prize winner, published La Vie des Termites (The Life of the White Ant) plagiarising "The Soul of the White Ant" researched and written by the South African poet and scientist Eugene Marais (1871 - 1936). Marais's later suicide has been attributed to this act of plagiarism by some. Maeterlinck's own words in La Vie de Termites indicate that the possible discovery or accusation of plagiarism worried him:

It would have been easy, in regard to every statement, to allow the text to bristle with footnotes and references. In some chapters there is not a sentence but would have clamoured for these; and the letterpress would have been swallowed up by vast masses of comment, like one of those deadful books we hated so much at school. There is a short bibliography at the end of the volume which will no doubt serve the same purpose.

Sadly, the name of Eugene Marais is conspicuous by its absence from the bibliography. pietopper 11:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I think cites and refs are very important - but I do rail at the liberal scattering of little blue bracketed numbers all over the text. It's ugly as all hell and it doesn't help 99.999% of readers who will get the information they need and never even look at the references. For those who do need to check a fact or read further, I feel it would suffice to move all of the annoying little tags to the end of the section they show up in. Right now, I'm unilaterally moving all of mine to the ends of paragraphs so they don't litter the interior of the paragraph. Since a paragraph is supposed to be about one subject - there shouldn't be a serious problem with doing that. I really wish that more editorial effort went into finding references than moaning about the lack of them. SteveBaker 20:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't really agree with you. In a short paragraph ok, put them at the end; but quite often a paragraph contains two or three essential facts, and we need to know to which datum the footnote refers to. What we should do, of course, is to exercise restraint in the number of footnotes we use.--Anthony.bradbury 22:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with Anthony, unless the paragraph is really small then the footnotes should be located in the paragraph after the particular sentence(s) it refers to so as to avoid confusion as to which fact came from which source. This is how any academic paper is written and for good reason. Aesthetic concerns should not override academic/factual ones. --The Way 22:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Athletic Retirements in "In the News"

Today an athlete, Shane Warne, decided to retire. This is apparently of enough importance to be placed in In the News. Warne follows Ian Thorpe, Michael Schumacher and others. There was a bit of controversy when Thorpe's retirement was included but Milton Friedman's death wasn't (see Template talk:In the news/Archive 10#Please add Friedman). Now, I'm willing to accept that if a famous person dies of natural causes, it isn't important enough for ITN. But not if athletes' retirements are added. I don't care if it's the world's highest-paid athlete or a x-times gold olympic swimmer. It's simply retirement. Retirement from sports also occur because of natural causes! Some athletes come out of retirement. Would that be ITN-worthy? Michael Jordan would have certainly been an ITN-Allstar if Wikipedia had been around during his retirement from basketball, retirement from baseball, recall of retirement from basketball, and final retirement from basketball! Anyway, I bring this up here because doing so was suggested to me back during the Friedman controversy last month, and since this topic really needs some additional debate. For the current debate regarding Shane Warne, see Template talk:In the news#Shane Warne. -newkai t-c 07:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion about diffusing categories

I have a recurring problem when editors on their own, after no discussion, take on the task of diffusing large categories into smaller subcategories. I am fully aware of how this used to be the norm, and necessary for technical reasons, especially with subcategories by nationality. However, that is no longer the case. Many perfectly fine categories are getting chopped into little pieces for no good reason. A pure wiki system of regulating this does not work. Unchecked, categories will be diffused into meaningless tiny overcategorizations. It has been my understanding that the diffusion of large categories should happen only after there has been discussion. Id like to formalize this as policy and propose that CFD be the forum for these discussions. The problem is that unless this is caught early, it is huge task to undo or redo. The policy should be "Depopulating of existing categories should not be undertaken without discussion at CFD". There could be an exception for quick depopulation shortly after the category was created, and if it was created by the same person. I'd go so far as to say I think that if depopulation continues after a warning, it should be a blockable offense. Any other opinions? Please respond on the CFD talk page. -- Samuel Wantman 09:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:USURP

Hey everyone. Over at Wikipedia:Usurpation we've got a useful proposed policy to allow active users in good standing be renamed to already existing but totally unused accounts. It's got a fair bit of support, but it doesn't seem to have been commented on by a lot of people, so the bureaucrats are worried the community doesn't really know about it. It'd be pretty good if people would go read it and comment. --Gwern (contribs) 20:16 3 December 2006 (GMT)

  • Archived, incorrect timestamp was causing problems for the bot, so adding arbitrary one here, User:Steve block 09:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Sprotect all templates?

Rationale: Generally, only experienced users know about templates, and how they are used. Templates ate frequently targeted for vandalism, due to their wide reaching effects. While we already have many high profile templates protected, there are many more that can be used disruptively, and few, if any reasons why new or anonymous users would need to edit them. Also, it can be reasonably assumed that anyone with sufficient knowledge of templates that would be affected by this and would reasonably need to change a template would also know how to request a change.

Proposed Policy Admins are permitted and encouraged to indefinitely sprotect templates used in the article namespace (only established users able to edit it), in order to prevent their use for mass vandalism.

Current Policy A current de facto policy of full-protecting high risk templates seems to exist, both to prevent vandalism and denial of service.

Comments? - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 10:12, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure I see a compelling reason for this; has there been a lot of template vandalism recently? -- Visviva
There was at least one pretty serious bout of vandalism the other day, inserting offensive images into little-known but widely used templates, yes. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Anecdotally, it seems to be a more and more common way to attack the FA-of-the-day; rather than simply vandalising the page itself - which will be reverted in seconds - vandalise an obscure transcluded template, which can take five or ten minutes to notice and track down... Shimgray | talk | 14:39, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Template vandalism, which can be maddeningly difficult to locate and fix, seems to be increasingly common. The proposer's points are well-taken. Newyorkbrad 14:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Perhaps I'm missing something, but this change seems to only have positive features. Under what circumstances would we ever WANT to have an anonymous IP editor or an editor registered for less than four days CHANGING a template? If such users should, for some reason, actually figure out that there really was a problem with a specific template, they could always post to the template talk page or notify an admin or even just another user.
On the other hand, we DO know that templates have been vandalized, including some within the past few days that were used in a Main Page article, and we DO know one avenue to attack templates is an experienced vandal doing so anonymously or via newly registered accounts (sock puppets).
Will semiprotection stop all or even most template vandalism? Quite possibly not. Will vandals figure out ways around it (sleeper accounts, for example)? Some certainly will. But changing this policy clearly will stop SOME vandalism, and there really seems just about no downside to this proposed change. John Broughton | Talk 14:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
  • After looking through the histories of various navboxes I'm familiar with, I would have to disagree with the premises of this proposal -- that unregistered users do not understand templates, or that their contributions are unlikely to be anything but vandalism. Actually, I see lots of constructive (though mostly trivial) changes by anons, like this one to a history navbox... Some templates were even created by anons (not possible anymore, of course). There is some vandalism in those histories too, but nothing terribly out of line. Now, I recognize that Wikipedia is slipping slowly (inevitably?) away from being "a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but I don't think we need to hasten the process. For my money protected pages are still considered harmful, even when they are templates. I concede that we should be a bit more aggressive in protecting or semi-protecting heavily-used templates, or those which are particularly inviting targets for vandalism; but the ground rules at WP:PPOL already allow for that. -- Visviva 15:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Her'e what WP:PPOL says (in total) about protecting templates: A permanent or semi-permanent protection is used for ... Protecting certain "system administration" pages. This includes many editorial templates, such as deletion notices and stub templates.
I suspect that a lot of admins would be troubled by the leap from "system administration" templates, clearly covered by the policy, and "heavily-used templates, or those which are particularly inviting targets for vandalism", which aren't mentioned in the policy, unless the policy was reworded. For example, I don't think the templates that were vandalized on the Main Page article recently were "system administration" templates, though I could be wrong. John Broughton | Talk 16:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, a lot of heavily-used templates already are permanently protected, in accordance with Wikipedia:High-risk templates, so in practice it seems that they are considered to fall under system administration. That's as it should be; vandalism to something like Template:! would cause a mess to horrible to consider. On the other hand, I don't think that most garden-variety templates really fall under the high-risk category, and I don't see why such templates should be protected. It's not that hard to spot and fix vandalism to a simple navbox or infobox, and changes can be tracked through "Related changes". -- Visviva 16:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I'm wrong on that last point; "Related changes" doesn't seem to cover transclusion links at all. Bit of a bug there, if you ask me. -- Visviva 04:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Template vandalism is not effectively prevented by present methods. See recent main-page featured articles and Talk:Main Page. Catchpole 09:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Sounds like a reasonable corollary to WP:HRT. I've noticed that a naughty image on a page is quickly removed, but one on a template can stay there for quite a bit longer as a significant amount of editors don't know where to find it. (Radiant) 17:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment One could argue that actually, anons not editing templates is the real problem. They can't figure out how templates work and so don't edit them. One ad hoc approach I once tried was include an external link to the edit link for the template in the template itself, but this violates Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. Another approach is the software feature that links templates used in the article on the edit page, but this is easy to overlook and not very intuitive. Any other ideas? Deco 10:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't think that's a very serious WP:SELF violation; but there is concern about it, you could enclose the edit link in Template:Selfref. Thinking about it, such edit links are probably most appropriate for navboxes (which are fairly transparent and don't normally take any arguments), rather than for infoboxes and other more esoteric things. -- Visviva 04:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. I can see no reason not to. -- Zanimum 16:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Troubled: Am I misunderstanding, or is this a general proposal driven largely by concerns about articles featured on the front page? If so, that seems to be very much putting the cart before the horse; the front page is a tiny part of Wikipedia, and not really central to our mission of building a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Perhaps WP:HRT should simply be amended to include templates currently transcluded into an article of the day? -- Visviva 04:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Template vandalism in general, and the recent template vandalism specifically, affect tens of thousands of pages, especially the main topics that have many more readers (most of the 1.5 million total articles are more rarely read, whereas the main articles can receive hundreds or thousands of visitors an hour). It also much more difficult to identify and remove. As has been said before, checked/stable revisions for templates would be a better solution, but what other option is there? —Centrx→talk &bull; 04:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support-ish. I believe that while the semi-protection of every template in existence would be overkill, that the indefinite semi-protection of templates with any significant history of vandalism should be made normal practice. In other words, if it would qualify for a few days or week of semi-protection as an article, we could safely bump that to indefinite for a template. This, combined with the full protection of any template that is going to be put on the main page, should be able to curb template vandalism easily enough. --tjstrf talk 05:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. WP:AGF even applies to anon users. There is NO reason why an anon user could not be a long-time editor and get to know Wikipedia well enough to reliably edit templates. If a specific template is a target of constant vandalism, then protection is in order. But we must not enact any restrictive protections of any class of pages simply because some users are targeting some templates for vandalism. Until a page becomes a problem, there is no reason to assume it will be a target. Until any user, even an Anon user, has shown themselves to be a vandal, we cannot assume they will vandalise. --Jayron32 04:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • While there's no reason they couldn't become one, I challenge you to find any anon or newbie whose first edits are legit changes to templates, other than perhaps reverts. They just don't exist. -- Zanimum 19:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Here's one dif, to a template I use and watch: [3]. This user has made several other valid changes to this template. They are minor but real, and in some cases useful and knowledgable, changes. There are many reasons why an experienced editor may not want to make an account. WP:AGF means we don't need to ask why. An experienced but anon user has a valid reason NOT to create an account, and we should not ban them from making constructive edits just because they never register. If a user, anon or not, is vandalising templates, block them. We shouldn't assume all anon users who show a knowledge of wikipedia to be vandals. Many are good, experienced editors who prefer to remain anonymous. --Jayron32 23:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Widely used templates (say, anything transcluded into more than 100 articles, or into any templates transcluded into other templates that are transcluded into more than 100 articles), can be identified and protected. As pointed out above, high-use templates already have full protection. I don't see the real value in extending this to all templates. I agree with Jayron32 that there are undoubtedly long-time anon editors. —Doug Bell talk 16:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: The relatively few anonymous editors who do make positive contributions to templates can continue to do so even when templates are soft-protected, simply by posting to the talk page of the template (I'm assuming there is some soft of flag they can be post, requesting assistance, so they aren't watchlist-dependent for assistance). They can also be encouraged to become registered users. John Broughton | Talk 02:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose: we need better tools to deal with the kind of vandalism, rather than a change in policy. e.g. a tool to show a history of edits of all transcluded templates used in an article. As long as we're allowing both registered and anon users to edit wikipedia, we should continue allowing everyone to edit templates. —Pengo talk · contribs 02:03, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, and I'd hope that included BOT replacements of renamed pages on templates. Moreover, I think it would be a good idea to indef Protect such widely used templates like {{Wiktionary}}, {{Commonscat}}, {{Wikibooks}}, {{Wikisource}}, etc. (Most of those are, however, Wikisource is open).
       I would further suggest that the attraction of a 'big score' of attacking a FA or former FA candidate through a template vandalism would be essentially eliminated if the templates used on FA pages were hard protected when the article was put up, and kept that way for a week or two afterwards. Actually, I'd rather see a indef Protect once a page achieves a GA status. (Not GAC) Why leave ourselves wide open on security grounds. I've never bought into the idealism of fully editable by anyone, as even vandalism is such an edit, and I'd rather the collective talent were more free to improve articles vice chase bad edits by the sicko looking for a kick. Sorry, AGF is a bit too wide open as we as a society don't do that at all, just ask anyone patrolling recent changes why they're doing that. Most other (non-infobox) templates would tend to occur low enough on a random article page, that normal policing should be sufficient. // FrankB 02:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The idealism of being a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is exactly what has gotten us this far. If you really find WP:AGF so problematic -- and I'd prefer to believe that you don't, but are just making a point -- then, well, perhaps you should reconsider why you are here. -- Visviva 14:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Support sprotect seems reasonable given the wide-ranging effects template vandalism can have across hundreds of articles. An anon could easily suggest changes on the template's Talk page, and should be encouraged to create an account anyway. Zunaid©Please rate me at Editor Review! 11:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

    • I don't particularly see why. By the same logic, it seems to me that we should semi-protect all pages. After all, anyone can suggest a change to an article on the Talk page. Why should we trust anons at all? This is a seductive line of thought, especially for those of us who spend a lot of time housekeeping; but the logic of stasis and closure has long since led DMOZ to failure, and it will lead us there too if we do not stand firm. -- Visviva 14:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I am a long-time anon-editor, and I am finding that Wikipedia is a less and less desirable place to contribute to because of the default assumption that all anons are vandals and haughtiness by some registered users who consider anons worthless. 132.205.93.89 23:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • suggestion ban all anon users from editing anything except talk pages. Then I'll be free of any desire to contribute, and people can "think" they've solved the vandalism problem (even though making a throwaway account and vandalizing with it is common enough). 132.205.93.89 23:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • You're a long-time anon-editor with less than 100 edits, who is free to register, of course (Wikipedia:Why create an account?). Doing so would give you more credibility when you make an edit. It may be a stereotype, but for most of the articles on my watchlist, there's at least a 50% chance that an anon IP edit is vandalism; the percentage is far less for named users (many of who are, in fact, reverting vandalism of anons when they post.) So yes, I tend to behave differently when I see an anon edit than when I see a named user edit, and I'm not going to apologize for that. John Broughton | Talk 18:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - Whilst vandals can theoretically get around sprotection by creating 'throw-away' accounts - they hardly ever do that. Whilst anonymous contributors might theoretically have good reasons not to create accounts - they hardly ever do. SteveBaker 20:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support While the occasional anon does do something helpful for a template, rarely is that the case. I don't see any significant harm as a result of protecting templates. In fact, the opposite is true. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 20:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support although I think Semi Protection is probably not good enough due to the prevalence of sleeper accts. I strongly suggest Template space become defacto admin only like MediaWiki space.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 16:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. This seems like a good policy; there really is very likely no reason anonymous users would have to edit templates. If they feel they must edit them, they can register and wait the requisite time. -- Myles Long 16:43, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

New guideline proposal: Notable Alumni

I have proposed a new guideline for notable alumni.

Any commentary would be appreciated. Thesmothete 05:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Commentary moved to proposal talk page, to keep everything central. >Radiant< 12:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Crediting forks?

What? Wouldn't we only have to note in the edit summary that we got it from CZ? Unless they are basing their articles off original research, then they're just at level as any other contributor to Wikipedia, and no one can sign their own work on the site. -- Zanimum 17:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Photo Censorship

Some of you might not agree with me, but I think that all photos in wikipedia should be censored. By no means am I saying that pictures of nude persons or of sexual organs, should be deleted; all I'm saying is that photos portraying some sort of nudity should be replaced by diagrams. There are two main reasons for this to be done

  • Wikipedia is not only used by adults, but also by young children for schoolprojects. We do not have any control on who views wikipedia pages, therefore there is no way of stopping young children from seeing erotic pictures. Another solution would be to create an online encyclopedia for children (I know that you are already working on wikijunior, but there's still some work to be done on it), but that would still not stop children from entering wikipedia.
  • The other reason is to preserve the human dignity. Respect should not only be shown to a person by the way to talk to him/her, or by the way you behave in his/her presence. It also involves respect to that person's body. There might also be poeple who do not wish to see such photos on the web, such as married adults, priests (of any religion), and poeple who consider such things as dirty.

As I said before, I'm not against pictures showing nudity or sexual organs, but against photos. Once again I'd like to emphatise that I thing that the solution to this is by replacing such photos by diagrams. Keith Azzopardi 19:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

What about the respect and dignity that is associated with showing the human body in its most natural form? Nudity or even "erotic" images are not, by themselves, inherently bad or disrespectful. It the POV of the observer that colors that view. 205.157.110.11 19:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
While I agree with you, you've got to keep in mind that it is very difficult to see things from that point of view. Nature is beautiful, as long as human beings keep it that way. Keith Azzopardi 19:37, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with the proposal. Without going into a debate about our ethics on sexuality, I want to say that sexually explicit photos are only added to "illustrate the subject". That constitutes them as encyclopedic. Furthermore they are, to my knowledge, never appear on the main page or any other neutral place. The above points have already been considered many times in the past, always ending with a conclusion that wikipedia is not censored. Of course if you feel that any image is used for a purely pornographic or shock value purpose, you can be bold in removing it or discussing the issue on the article's talk page. - Tutmosis 21:16, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Rejected, because we rejected it mere days ago when someone asked the exact same thing.
Well, at least this time the proposer was honest that he wanted to introduce censorship, rather than dancing around it and going THINKOFTHECHILDREN. The answer is quite simply no, Wikipedia is not censored and it will remain that way. If you do not wish to see such things, do not look up the articles on them. I'm sorry that you wasted your time. --tjstrf talk 04:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I think parents should be aware of what is on the internet, and monitor their children's internet access accordingly. -Freekee 04:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is not censored. See also WP:PEREN. (Radiant) 13:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • If PHOTOS are replaced by HAND-DRAWN DIAGRAMS, wikipedia will still remain as encyclopedic, the Wikipedia is not censored policy will still be held, and so will the dignity and respect to the human body. Keith Azzopardi 10:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I disagree, Wikipedia will not survive if it resorts to censorship.Logical Argument talk 21:33, 23 December 2006
Strong oppose. Patent nonsense, with all my respect. Censoring "natural" or "normal" nudity is POV: you're trying to impose your narrow viewpoint not just to your own children but also to my children and myself as adult. If you want your children to live in an artificial reality, disconnect them from the Internet - if you can. --Sugaar 00:22, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
I would not call that comment "patent nonsense". There are people that are offended by photos of nudity, and that is a fact. The answer to this request should be: I understand your concern, but Wikipedia is not censored. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Real life and fiction

As it very well known there are many current or historical real people wich are "added" to fictional works, not as "guest appearence" but as regular characters from it. Not very common with current and alive people, but common with iconic people from history.

My understanding is that Wikipedia should keep both things clearly apart. One thing is the real person, and another the ficticious character made from him/her. When I found an article about a politician categorized as a character, I removed that category, as it seemed incorrect, but such change was later reverted.

To avoid starting a circle of place/remove editions I want to know then wich is the policy about this. Can an article about a real person, who is used as a fictional character in a work of fiction, be categorized about things that relate not to the real person but to the character made of it? --Perón 18:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It would not make sense to have a separate article about say Queen Victoria (fictional character) if it referred to someone who was really supposed to be Queen Victoria. However, I cannot see that just because she has appeared in various books and films she could be categorised as a fictional character. We get into murkier water with characters who really existed but are best known from fiction, like Hereward the Wake.--Runcorn 19:38, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
If there are enough of these to merit a spinoff, they should probably follow the established "X in Y" pattern, i.e. Queen Victoria in popular culture or Abraham Lincoln in literature or what have you. -- Visviva 01:36, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Basque toponyms (proposed guideline)

A new proposed guideline is under discussion inside the Basque WikiProject. It is: Wikipedia:WikiProject Basque/Basque toponyms, that some felt was really needed. If you are interested pass by and discuss. --Sugaar 00:27, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

IP editing of an article during a major event and semi-protection?

Again, as I hear the sad news of the death of James Brown, I took a trip to his article, and found it semi-protected. Looking at the history, it seems that virtually all of the vandalism done to that page were done by unregistered accounts. Hence, the page got semi-protected as per semi-protection policy. I have noticed the same thing happened when Richard Hammond had his Vampire dragster crash and Steve Irwin died. In every case, the pages were semi-protected.

In light of what keeps happening to pages when a major event happens, would it be possible if an event happens (as I have said above) could the article be semi-protected immediately to avoid widespread vandalism. For example, if the {{current}} or {{current-section}} templates are added, an administrator is alerted and can review the article before deciding whether it deserves semi-protection or not. In regards to what gets written by vandalising IP's, even if it is reverted quickly, it could damage Wikipedia's reputation. --tgheretford (talk) 11:19, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use of promotional photographs

Hi all,

There is a vote to allow the fair use of promotional photographs of living people. Some people believe the fair use policy currently disallows fair use of promotional photographs of living people if they occasionally make public appearances, others disagree with this. This proposal would clarify the issue.

Cedars 22:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Voting cannot overturn policy. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:06, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
I would assert that the vote is not to overturn policy, but to come to a consensus about how the policy is to be interpreted. Ken Arromdee 21:27, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Song Lyrics

Are we officially allowed to put song lyrics on the song pages? Or is it considered violating copyright? I couldn't find a specific answer to it in the Policy and whatnot BlackxxJapan 16:01, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

No, we can't. Song lyrics have copyright. You can talk about the lyrics, or mention specific quotes of it, but the whole song can not be placed. However, external links can lead to whatever content, so you can include a link to a web page other than Wikipedia that displays the lyric of the song. --Perón 16:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
No, you may not link to pages with the lyrics. See WP:EL. We may not link to other pages which violate copyright. Only link to a page if it's from someone who has the rights to the lyrics. Like the band or the recording company. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:07, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
It's similar to images. Small bits for critical commentary is acceptable, but simply posting lyrics is not. -newkai t-c 16:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
The specific policy statement you are looking for is probably this one: Wikipedia:Fair use#Text. For more about writing song articles, you might be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs. -Freekee 18:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
I suppose it should be mentioned that no all songs are copyrighted, many are old enough for the copyright to have expirred or were anonymous to begin with. However an article should contain more than just the lyrics. Dsmdgold 18:00, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

A new policy about images linked from Commons

Please consider the Wikipedia:Images for blocking policy proposal `'mikkanarxi 19:18, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Writing about math

[moved from Talk:Main Page]

I am working on a guideline, Wikipedia:Writing about math. Can you people please look at it? --Ineffable3000 23:32, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

On allowing unregistered users to edit

I think it is not wise for Wikipedia to allow un-registered users to freely edit. I must revert at least 5 pages a day that have been vandalized by an anonymous user. Since registration is free and simple, and does not really reveal your identity, then what would be the argument against only allowing registered users to edit Wikipedia? You might still have revert wars, but not wholesale vandalism. Dullfig 22:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

We have lots of arguments over the merits of permanently semiprotecting high-risk templates, so I'm not sure that we'll disable anonymous contributions anytime soon. I believe the canned answer is that vandalism is easy to spot and trivial to revert (if you didn't fix it, the next reader would), and that Wikipedia faces much less obvious problems from registered users in the form of POV-pushing and the like. --Interiot 22:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I would personally like all pages to be routinely sem-protected; it is, after all, only necessary to create an account, at no cost, and wait I think three days. I feel that this would stop casual users from finding the encyclopedia and mauling it. But I do recognise that this has been discussed many times before, and the consensus has always been that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia open for all to edit. Basic Policy.--Anthony.bradbury 22:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, why not let unregistered users edit? It makes no difference whether the people editing are IPs or registered users. What really matters is the contributions one provides. A registered user could vandalize a page just as easily as an IP and an IP can make as good a contribution as a registered user. Even though I am an IP, I revert vandalism just like most other users here. Just check out my contributions and you'll notice that there isn't a single bad edit among them. Granted, it is harder to find out exactly which pages of your interest have been edited without a watchlist, but I still think that IPs should be able edit. The only reason I continue to edit under an IP account is to prove that not all IPs are as bad as people make them seem. Simply ridding the site from IPs will not get rid of vandalism. There are still users out there who will make an account, vandalize pages mercilessly, be blocked, and simply come back with a sockpuppet and start all over. I'm sure plenty of other editors will agree with me on this one. 68.57.97.152 22:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, as I said most other editors do. The only vandals we might discourage are the single-edit IPs, of whom, as you know, we get quite a lot. But I'm not arguing, because it was decided long ago.--Anthony.bradbury 23:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I do recommend people to create accounts versus editing from IP's because it has been said in the past that anonymity is actually greater when using a named account than when using an IP ... the IP provides a varying degree of information depending on the subnet and the nature of the ISP, which anyone can access, while it takes special privileges to uncover the IP address and associated ISP information for a registered user — and I don't think there is any limit (over the practical availability limits) as to how many registered accounts a person might make over time; they would be socks by definition, but that would not be an issue if the conduct of the editing was well behaved and constructive. At any rate, the majority of IP-associated editors are constructive and help us; it just so happens that a majority (I think) of the hit-and-run vandals are IP-associated editors. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

There are problems when people edit anonymously from schools or Internet cafés, or from ISPs that keep reassigning IP addresses, because there may be several people behind a given IP - some vandals, some not.--Runcorn 19:41, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a massively vandal-hugging community. Anything that takes away the rights of idiot children will be frowned upon. The "it takes a second to revert" argument is bullshit, as anyone with more than 3 articles in their watchlist can tell you. I spend at least 5-10 minutes a day reverting crap from a small fraction of articles on my list. That's 30 minutes a week, 2 hours a month, a full 24 hours a year. If my rights as a contributor were respected anywhere near the protection received by vandals, I would be contributing one "good"- or "featured"-quality article per year instead. As it stands, vandal-hugging admins won't even semi-protect articles with daily vandalism (e.g. Pearl Harbor, Nuclear weapon) because "it's too few instances to warrant protection." The time of honest contributors is nothing next to the rights of some retard with an internet connection.
As for our honest IP-editing friend, sorry bud but I only take seriously work from users whose contributions I'm familiar with. I don't know if IP is the same person every time, and by virtue of you contributing from an IP, I will assume bad faith every time I see an edit from you or any other IP. I know for a fact I'm not alone in this. If it bothers you that people assume you are a vandal every time you contribute, freakin' register. - Emt147 Burninate! 01:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I'm way ahead of you on that one. I already have an account and I've had it since July. I'm just having a little fun with my rarely used IP address. But, as you said, you're correct about not being alone on the whole "Oh, an IP edited an article so it must be vandalism" thing. I think the same way. I have over 200 articles on my watchlist (on my registered account, of course) and normally, I'll scan through to see which ones have been edited by an IP and start reverting and editing from there. I, too, spend hours a week trying to revert the crap that the IPs write. I would just hate to imagine how much time I spend reverting vandalism from IPs in a month's time. The "vandal-hugging admins" are another good topic to discuss. I just went to the Pearl Harbor article, searched through it's edit history, and noticed, just by scrolling down the list without even taking the time to count how many times its been vandalized, that the page has been vandalized at least 15-20 in the past two days. You'd expect an article like that to be semi'd, no? Think again. I'm not targeting any admins in particlur here, but you'd think that they'd have the common sense to protect an article that gets as much attention as that one does. That's why I've been looking into nominating myself for adminship in a few years (I'm sure that no one here wants a 14-year-old to become an admin). 68.57.97.152 02:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry to say that I agree with the OP. 99% of the vandalism I find is from an IP. Sure, some quality edits are done by IPs... but go to the recent changes log, and look for edits done by IP. I guarantee that 9 out of 10 edits will be vandalism. This makes me think that maybe limiting Wikipedia to registered accounts would be a good idea. It would still be the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit", as getting an account here is free and there's no criteria for joining. That seems like it would halt a great majority of casual vandalism. I think many vandals think that, if they don't use an account, there'd be no way to trace it -- when their IP changes, everything will be just like it used to be. Sadly, they're right. If they have dialup, it's a new IP each time. If they have broadband internet, their IP can still change (and does regularly. Well, at least mine does.) Making it so only accounts can edit makes it just slightly harder for vandals to do their work, and I think that would discourage many vandals. Quite a few people don't want to go through the registration process just so that they can write "poop" or "ass" or their friend's name on an article. .V. 06:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Clarification of protection policy on pages that aren't supposed to be edited.

Wikipedia:Village pump (all) is a page that shows all the current discussions on all the villiage pump pages. New discussions aren't supposed to be added to it. Werdnabot doesn't archive it. On the rare occasion that someone posts to it they don't get an adequate response.

After some confusion, I removed the old discussions from it the other day, then requested permanent full protection for it. It seems to me that there's no reason not to protect it, and every reason to protect it. I realize that protected pages are considered harmful; but in this case I think that having it unprotected does more harm. The request was denied, ("There is not enough recent activity to justify protection at this time") however.

Looking at Wikipedia:Protection policy, however, it seems like it might be similar to the "*Protecting certain "system administration" pages. This includes many editorial templates, such as deletion notices and stub templates.

  • Protecting the MediaWiki namespace and pages transcluded to it. These pages affect the system interface for all users. "

clauses.

Basically, there's no reason for anyone to be editing that page; it's a "system administration" page. So why not protect it? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs) 15:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Agree - this is one of the rare cases where, indeed, leaving it unprotected is worse. I've nearly accidentally posted there myself, and if someone really DOES want to edit that page, they can do so via the talk page and requesting an admin to make the edit. Perel 18:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Done, but please make such requests to WP:RFPP in the future. >Radiant< 13:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for protecting it Radiant. However, if you read my comment, I did make a request to WP:RFPP and said request was denied. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs) 16:48, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and by the way; someone seems to have posted something about YouTube there prior to your protecting it. That needs to be fixed. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs) 16:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what you refer to, but it's not on the VPA page. >Radiant< 12:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Angela fixed it. And thank you again for protecting it. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs) 15:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Classifying South Asians by caste

Various Indian editors have been adding caste information to South Asian biographical articles. When I see it, I've been removing it -- that is, unless the subject him or herself has made a point of publicly identifying with that caste, as in the case of Dalit activists. I don't think editors should be classifying subjects of biographies by caste. Someone added caste information to the article on Madhuri Dixit, an Indian actress, I removed it, and there's an on-going fight at Talk:Madhuri Dixit. Several editors are claiming that of course articles on South Asians should state the subject's caste. What? Can we have a ruling that this is just out of bounds? We don't classify US citizens as white, black, mulatto, octoroon, etc., or South Africans as white, colored, or black ... why should the proponents of the Indian caste system get to classify people who haven't indicated their willingness to be so classified? Zora 18:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well Zora, you really dont understand. In India, caste is the basic and most primary identifying parameter used by the people (yes ask anyone, even the guys at SM will vouch for this). We are NOT being casteist by identifying with our caste. Every caste has its own localised culture and history.

why should the proponents of the Indian caste system get to classify people who haven't indicated their willingness to be so classified?

One i'm not a proponent of casteist nonsense. Secondly you are opening a can of worms here. As i said. Sadly caste is A primary ethnic identifying factor for Indians. Even Indian government demand people to declare their caste (see Indian Quota system. I can take you views even further by isisting we remove any mention of a person's nationality unless he prefers to be identified with it.

अमेय आर्यन DaBrood© 18:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Ahem on WP:INB we already came to a consensus about keeping caste things on lists rather than categories. Merely adding two words on which community someones belongs especially in context to their upbringing, is harmless. Perhaps one should ask the Indian editors if its useful, rather than non-Indians who are completely ignorant of the situation and especially those prone to misrepresentation and taking things out of context. Zora is the only user trying to make this a "caste issue", the rest of us merely document the "community" that a certain person belongs to. In fact I have removed caste categories from countless pages and even started the discussion on INB to rid wiki of the large amount caste nonsense that pops up. In Dixit's case though, I have outlined why it is relevant to keep two words about the "community" in the early life section.Bakaman 18:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I have argued against classification by caste in the past - a list of members of a caste has come up on AfD twice. Wikipedia should not perpetuate the racist caste system. It should record history, not participate in it, and having the caste information does much more to preserve it than not having it does to wipe it out. -- Kjkolb 18:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Note: my comment is a reply to Zora, as when I wrote it there had been no replies. -- Kjkolb 18:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I think we all agree that caste system was a racit system. The thing is guys, Caste is used in a different context. It is primary identifying paraemeter used by Indians and Indian government (see Indian Caste system.

अमेय आर्यन DaBrood© 19:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I wouldnt call it racist. There is no proof that dalits are darker than high caste people. Its merely a socio-conomic phenomenon gone awry due to invasion, oppression, and opportunism.Bakaman 21:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
There does not need to be a skin color difference for there to be racism. For example, here is the opening sentence from the Wikipedia article on racism, "Racism is commonly defined as a belief or doctrine where inherent biological differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, with a corollary that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others." That appears to fit the caste system very well. They just use "caste" instead of "race". Since you are born into a caste and a race based upon who your parents are and you cannot change either, I do not see why they should not be treated equivalently in regards to racism. Also, some scientists believe that races are just as much of a social construct as castes. I do not know if members of different castes are thought to be physically/biologically different (since caste is based upon birth, I would think that that would be a factor), but that would be another reason for considering the caste system racist.
If a person's life was profoundly impacted by the caste he or she was born in, that can be mentioned in the article. However, giving it in other articles does nothing but satisfy reader curiosity and perpetuate the caste system (Wikipedia is not a place to wage war against racism in society, but as I mentioned before, not specifying castes does less to stop the practice than specifying them does to preserve it). Also, as I understand it, the caste system is used by the government merely to give benefits to the lower castes (they should really rethink that system). How is it used by people? Do they ask each other's caste upon meeting? Is a person's caste put into personal or business ads? -- Kjkolb 05:40, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a tough issue to deal with as many people do view the caste system as a form of discrimination. However, Wikipedia is not censored and the fact remains that a person's caste has been of the utmost importance throughout the region's history and though it is less important now, it still remains notable enough to place in their articles. In this instance we are merely recording fact and making no value judgements. Its up to the readers to decide their own opinions on trhe caste system, we can't censoer it out of articles as that would mean that we would be taking the POV that the caste system is bad and that we want to pretend it doesn't exist. Also, it should not be relevant as to whether or not the individuals in question publicly embrace their caste. We don't have that criteria for other facts regarding people, if we did it would be a lot harder to include any 'negative' information. --The Way 20:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Response to kj' - Umm black people look way different than white people who look different than Asian people. There are the four major castes (you all are familiar with these, Brahmin, Ksatrya, Vaisya, Sudra) and then there are communities within castes which many times function independent of the rigid four varna system. Madhuri Dixit belongs to the Konkanastha community. Though she belongs to the Brahmin varna, this is immaterial in the film world (interreligious/intercaste/interethnic marriages are the norm). What is material is which community of people (Iyer, Jat, Yadav, etc) she belongs to. Some are the descendants of Kings, others are refugees, etc. The communitiy one is born in doesnt change while the caste one belongs to can change (refer to Rigveda, Mahabharata, Gita). There is a marked difference between caste and community which is central to the issue. Wiki's view on this is irrelevant compared to the major distinction that has to be made.Bakaman 20:16, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

"Indians want to do this" is a bad argument for classifying South Asian biographical subjects by caste (varna and jati). Some Indians want to do this; other Indians regard the caste-ist Indians as benighted reactionaries and bigots. The post-Independence Congress government in India tried to wipe out caste and stopped recording caste in censuses. However, they did make an exception for Untouchables/Harijans/Dalits and OBC (Other Backward Castes) who could claim caste status to qualify for various affirmative action set-asides. These set-asides have been extremely controversial. You'll find people of all politcal persuasions supporting them or calling for their abolition.

So the government of India doesn't support labeling people by varna and jati unless they are dalits or OBCs. What about popular practice? The old strictures about not taking food from lower castes, not being touched by lower castes, etc. may survive in villages but have been dropped in urban centers. You can't live a modern life if you're worried that the cook in the restaurant is the wrong caste! However, a significant proportion of Indians still want their children to marry within their jati. You'll see this baldly stated in matrimonial ads. However, there are also ads that say "caste no bar". In public life, in the media, the subject of caste is suppressed. In Bollywood movies, the prejudiced parents who keep loving couples apart are motivated by class prejudice, not caste. Being concerned with caste is not "modern". It's the kind of thing one keeps to oneself -- like being a racist in America. It's not publicly acceptable, even if it's common.

The Indian editors arguing in favor of mentioning caste are presenting themselves as representing all of India. That's simply not true. For some reason, we have an over-abundance of Hindu nationalist editors on WP, and very few secularists and modernists. This is just one of the many demographic imbalances here. I think it would be tragic if we let a few editors who support the caste system convince us that it was OK for WP to support it too, when in fact it's an extremely contentious topic in India and an large but unknown percentage of Indians reject it totally. Zora 20:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Replies - "Overabundance of Hindu nationalists" - please stop fantasizing about Imperialist bots and Hindu nationalists. Did yopu not read any of my points cited above about communities? Making a long rant doesnt make it more correct. I myself do not support the caste system and unfortunately for you, neither do "Hindu extremists" or "Hindu fascists". In fact, I was the editor who brought about a consensus to not classify people by caste in categories. We really dont need non-Indian anti-Hindus ranting about "demographic imbalances" with their obvious ignorance of the situation. This discussion is now a joke thanks to incoherent ultra-emotional rants like the one above. Being a Chitpavan (compared to say an Iyer) is like being an ashkenazi rather than a sephardi. Neither is better but both are different. There are no casteists among established Indian editors on wiki. All of us are view it as outdated and useless. The varna system was defined outwardly, sometimes castes which were Brahmins in one area were Shudras in another and vice-versa. My own Community was historically Brahmin in one state and historically Kshatriya less than 100 miles away. The same community of people! The system of clans is inwardly defining, and is disjoint from the caste system. Two words on the community is != "Classifying/pidgeonholin/etc. by caste". If you wish to discuss quit ranting.Bakaman 21:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Of Note Relative to this discussion - Wikipedia_talk:Notice_board_for_India-related_topics/archive18#Caste_lists_vs._Caste_cats the official status quo of keeping caste/community classifications to lists and not categories. Adding two words on the community is not classifying. Adding them to a list/cat is.Bakaman 21:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


Zora... You've got it all wrong. We are NOT being casteist. Needless to say caste is used as more of an ethnic term rather than varna. Caste system as layed down by Manu has been all but dead expect perhaps in remotests of places. More of your insinuations that I am a Hindu nationalist is comical... I've published work critical of the movement [5] at a popular British blog (we are a sister blog of Sepia Mutiny).. whats more, Hindutavdis themselves are OBCs...

Mentioning caste carrys no racist/casteist connotations. अमेय आर्यन DaBrood© 17:16, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

the title is "south asians," but who else use caste system? Aren't Indians the only people who use that? do people form pakistan or burma use that, too? 75.3.235.100 00:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

A new type of protection?

Its clear that policy states that Featured Articles should not be protected except for short times and for good reason. However, there appears to be a growing problem of accounts uploading extremely obscene, violent, and even illegal shock images and posting them on the article. Unlike normal text vandalism, this is far more detrimental to Wikipedia and its readers, yet even semiprotection won't stop them--they need to have an autoconfirmed account to upload images in the first place. I propose a new type of protection, which though would require some technical work, should be quite possible.

  • "FA Protection." Lasts only as long as the FA is on the main page.
  1. No image can be added or removed from an FA-protected article or any template transcluded in it except by an admin.
  2. All images currently in the article are protected.
This would allow us to limit protection to the article text itself as much as possible while preventing shock images from being posted all over them. — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 03:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Having seen two of the graphic shock photos overlaid on the FA article about Torchic, a Pokémon character, I fully second Dark Shikari’s proposal. I was considering calling my second-grader, a devoted Pokémon gamer, to read the article with me, but fortunately I chose to scan it first.
I think, though, that this problem is part of a larger problem that is due to the policy that Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." While I have no problem with that, per se, I do have a problem with the fact that anyone can edit without becoming a member first. Most of the vandalism I’ve reverted has come from "fly-by" vandals who seem to like nothing more than watching the "ants" fix their page wipes or seeing their mild profanities in print. There are some who even like to change a small fact or number here and there just to subtly undermine the reliability of the encyclopedia. Those who join Wikipedia are usually far less likely to be vandals than the "editors off the street." All in all, the amount of time spent repairing the damage of short-timer vandals could be better put to use adding and improving articles. I would like to suggest that the policy "anyone can edit" be restricted to anyone who joins up; after all, anyone can become a member. Askari Mark (Talk) 03:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Unrelated to this point. Only members can upload images, in fact, you have to wait 4 days to be able to do so. These vandals are persistent and know exactly what they are doing. — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 04:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this type of protection even technically possible? I suppose I can see its value, but I don't think it can be implemented at this point. Fagstein 06:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It would likely work similarly to the spam blacklist. First of all, a script would run that would flag all templates transcluded in an article with this protection (or an admin could do it--it wouldn't take long, likely). Then, whenever someone saved this page while its protected, it would check the diff to see if an image was added or removed. If it was, it would refuse to save the edit, just like the spam blacklist. I don't think it would be that difficult at all. — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 13:06, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. Adding images is not a type of editing that someone does upon discovering Wikipedia. -Freekee 04:56, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea if it is technically feasible. If it is not technically feasible, then an exception should be made to allow at least semi-protection of the article for as long as it is a featured article. This is the public face of Wikipedia, and it should not be allowed to be (virtually) spraypainted by taggers. --BenBurch 03:07, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

  • No, this is not possible in the current implementation of the software. You'd have to ask the developers over at WP:BUG. Note that the software is not actually aware which articles are featured, or on the front page. However, see also Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection. >Radiant< 13:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Why can't it simply be activated by Raul when he places an article on the front page? "FA Protection" would eliminate the problem of shock images without actually protecting the text of the article. — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 18:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Original Research or acceptable self published sourcing?

The owner and admin of the political discussion forum Democratic Underground was contacted by the U.S. Secret Service requesting info on two banned users who posted what the Secret Service considered to be possible threats. This info was not reported by any RS V secondary sources, just on Democratic Underground and a couple very minor blogs which are neither notable, nor RS V. Some editors want to include info on this incident, and link to the posts on Democratic Underground itself, claiming that this falls under WP:self published. I disagree and claim it's WP:OR. Who is right? info in question Note that I would not be objecting to the inclusion of this info if it were documented by RS V secondary sources, like the mention of the 'Tsunami theories' or disparaging comments following Reagan's death. It wasn't. Thanks - F.A.A.F.A. 09:33, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

If there has been no journalistic reports, it is likely OR. For exceptions please see [Wikipedia:Attribution#Questionable_or_self-published_sources], which perhaps fits under the first exception (Questionable or self-published sources in articles about their authors). I could see how the incident could be relevant to the article, but it seems otbe supporting claims not directly related to the source, or about third parties. Atom 12:31, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

The source (Dave "Skinner" Allen) was contacted by the Secret Service, he described the contact and his response, and therefore the claim is directly related to the source. It is about Democratic Underground, not about third parties. - 12ptHelvetica 22:55, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Seems the web site should be an acceptable primary source for itself. --Infrangible 03:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Aye, the above editor is correct. .V. 05:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

What is the precedence on userpages?

Hello, User:GabrielF/ConspiracyNoticeboard is currently up for deletion.

My question:

I am wondering what the precedence is on deleting userpages which encourage others to comment a certain way in AfDs MfDs and on wikipolicy.

Wikipedia:Spam#Canvassing and Wikipedia:User page don't seem to address this particular issue.

I am simply asking what the AfD precedent is. Thanks in advance. Best wishes, Travb (talk) 02:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

As a minot point, user pages belong on MfD, not AFD. I've never participated regularly in MfD. However, in the one instance I recollect where a similar page was talked about, we decided that a similar page was better placed as a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting - an example would be Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia. In the case that I'm thinking of, the user page that was superceded has not been deleted or even nominated for deletion. There is plenty of discussion at the MfD page, and you are better off reading all of that (plus the prior MfD for the same page) than looking for additional opinions here.
Ultimatlely, precedent is not binding. If there is a sufficient volume of similar precedent, we may eventually record it as an essay or guideline. I am not aware of any such volume of precedent in this area - but I am not an MfD regular. GRBerry 18:40, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
User:GRBerry wrote: However, in the one instance I recollect where a similar page was talked about, we decided that a similar page was better placed as a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting
Do you recall the userpage name?
I think a comprimise of placing User:GabrielF/ConspiracyNoticeboard on a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting would be great.
I have actually brought up this suggest here: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:GabrielF/ConspiracyNoticeboard (2nd mfd)#comp
Thank you so much for your time. Travb (talk) 19:59, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wales Shuts Down Straw Poll, Calls Vote on Fair Use Photo Proposal "Meaningless"

Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales has stepped in and stopped straw poll voting on a proposal to clarify the policy allowing fair use of promotional photos of living people. In addition, Wales blanked the page in question, while encouraging Wikipedians to engage in what he calls a "continuation of a healthy and robust discussion of this complex issue." Wales newly-blanked page failed to include a link to an area deemed more appropriate for such further discussion.

The page had attracted a fair amount of attention over the Christmas holiday season, with more than 85 editors and Wikipedia administrators making their views known via the now-closed and removed straw poll. Wales' message to Wikipedia editors seeking to change the current promotional photography policies was unambigious. "We do not vote on issues in this manner," the Wikipedia founder wrote in bold type at the top of the page. Wales also indicated the page was "meaningless," writing of the oft-contentious debate, "enough is enough." When shut down, the straw poll was running about even, with no clear consensus in favor of adopting a wording change in the fair use criteria permitting, but not encouraging, the fair use of promotional photographs of living people (including bands) in articles describing those people until a free alternative becomes available. Jenolen speak it! 12:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's get the whole text in here instead of one person's inerpretation:
(From Wikipedia:Elimination of Fair Use Rationale in Promotional Photos/Vote:)

Proposal to allow the fair use of promotional photographs of living people

Please note that this is a meaningless page. It now closed and all further discussion moved elsewhere. We do not vote on issues in this manner.

You may visit the history of this page to see what all the fuss was about. But enough is enough. This is not the right way to change policy in Wikipedia, and the proposal listed here is entirely contrary to our fundamental goals. --Jimbo Wales 02:55, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, I support the continuation of a healthy and robust discussion of this complex issue. I do not support a premature and heavily biased "vote" or "straw poll" which will only serve to entrench people in various extreme positions. Let's seek common ground.--Jimbo Wales 03:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

—Wknight94 (talk) 13:51, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo's decision was correct; a straw poll should not be used for this purpose. Especially when it comes to legal issues (such as those of copyright), "more people want it this way" is not valid justification for enacting or modifying policy. —David Levy 14:04, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
ceyockey comment my gut feeling is that the page should be protected - would you agree? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
  1. Jimbo only called the /Vote page meaningless. I corrected the title of this section to reflect that, and I added a "From <page>:" indication to the quote copied here by Wknight (we don't want to give false impressions do we?) - As for the rationale for such decision by Jimbo, I think m:Polling is evil, the content of Wikipedia:How to create policy, of Wikipedia:Straw polls and the like, are sufficient reason to stop most votes on guidance proposals. As a non-sysop I've stopped several votes for the same reason. Jimbo did not deploy any exceptional authority here, nor would that have been needed.
  2. As for "[...] failed to include a link to an area deemed more appropriate for such further discussion" - pardon? The first link one encounters on the /Vote page is Wikipedia:Elimination of Fair Use Rationale in Promotional Photos - what would be wrong with continuing the discussion there? --Francis Schonken 14:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
    Other alternatives: WP:REFU or even Wikipedia:Deleted fair use image replacement. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:56, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
  3. As for Jimbo's "[...] the proposal [...] is entirely contrary to our fundamental goals." - yes he used a dint of "Wikipedia founder" authority there (which he is entitled to, see e.g. Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#How are policies started?, third bullet). You won't get a change in policy on this issue without convincing Jimbo too, I think that is clear. Trying to convince Jimbo with a vote, is one of the least effective strategies (probably only using vandalism could be worse as a strategy to convince Jimbo). Let me explain this a bit further, User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles contains "The GNU FDL license, the openness and viral nature of it, are fundamental to the long-term success of the site." (#5), that's what Jimbo wrote in 2001 - nonetheless, Jimbo got convinced, after some initial reluctance, that some of the CC licenses would do very well as a complement to GNU FDL in some cases. Let me tell you, it was not a vote of any sort that made Jimbo change his mind on this. --Francis Schonken 15:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
  • As much to the point: even if Wikists voted unanimously in favor of filling up the Wikis with fair-use content, and even if Jimmy and Brad and the Board agreed to that, it would not change US copyright law, or any other nation's copyright law, or the Berne Convention. The fact would still remain that "fair-use material" (unlike public-domain material) is copyrighted, and (unlike GFDL or CC or other free-license material) does not come with permission for its unlimited use.
In fact, strictly speaking, there is no such category as "fair-use material". What there is, really, is a limited leeway in the copyright laws themselves, allowing "fair use" of copyrighted materials within rather tight limits. You want to review a new book for your newspaper? You can quote short snippets of it to demonstrate the author's style. That's a "fair use". It doesn't extend to reprinting whole chapters and selling the copies. That's beyond "fair use".
Notice, it's the same material. What makes the difference between "fair use" and "not fair use" is how much of it you use (subject to it being a legitimate use in the first place), like short quotes rather than fully copying.
The Wikis likewise can use very limited amounts of copyrighted material, under the "fair use" provisions of the law. But if they use too much, suddenly that same material stops being covered as "fair use". In the quantities of "reprints" (whether hardcopy, CD-ROM, or online) that the Wikis hope for, there's a distinct risk of crossing into "not fair use" very quickly, with the possibility of huge civil (financial) penalties and even criminal (prison) penalties. So Jimmy and Brad and the Board have good reason to be careful.
Bottom line: the Wikis and the WMF are subject to the same legal limits as anyone else, with the added restriction that (being international) they have many more national copyright laws to avoid breaking. User votes won't change that. That's what makes a "straw poll" pointless, and even misleading.
I Am Not A Lawyer. Do Not Take This As Legal Advice. – SAJordan talkcontribs 17:10, 26 Dec 2006 (UTC).
You are may not be lawyer but your overall reasoning is quite sound. We can't simply vote to change copyright law. When you combine your point with Francis Schonken's above, that a strong commitment to free content has always been a fundamental aspect of the project, you can see why many people are so dismissive of any attempt to change this aspect of our operation via a straw poll. --Gmaxwell 00:09, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Kind of a tangent, but where exactly are Jimbo's powers over Wikipedia described? In other words, what can he and can't he do here, and why? Postdlf 16:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Wikipedia is a creature of the Wikimedia Foundation. The board and executives have fiduciary responsibility for the assets of the Foundation, and need authority to resolve content and behavioral issues, especially where these could give rise to liability. It pretty much couldn't operate otherwise. Robert A.West (Talk) 00:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The color scheme and the definition of NPOV

Here is the problem. Wikipedia recently use color at Recentchanges and Watchlist, green for positive, and red for negative. But these colors not apply worldwide. In China, and perhaps also other East Asian cultures, they are used exactly opposite — red for positive, green for negative. For most westerners, if you see the screen found in a Chinese stock market, you might feel strange and very uncomfortable, so do I here. In my opinion, English Wikipedia only written in English language, it should be neutral among cultures. I hope this feature could be customized per user. Yao Ziyuan 14:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that they are. See Wikipedia:Added or removed characters. Dsmdgold 14:57, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Wait, the user shouldn't have to make it NPOV, Wikipedia should make it NPOV. Green edits may be adding vandalism, and red edits may be removing vandalism. It is very confusing to have colors. Scepia 07:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
They refer solely to the bytes, not the quality, and the + and - clarify them well enough already. --tjstrf talk 07:38, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

self-appointed gatekeepers

Wikipedia is a truly remarkable experiment. One of the ironies is that its strength can also be its weakness.

The opportunity for "just anyone" to edit content is exciting. It makes it possible to get information that otherwise would not be available, as well as provide information one might not otherwise have had an opportunity to provide.

One of the major frustrations I have is when someone decides to adopt a series of articles and appoints themselves as gatekeeper; these types basically lurk, wait for others to make changes, and then simply reverts the changes, dismissing the contributions of others with no regard for the level of merit that may have been in the contribution.

What makes this even more sad is when the contributions they revert are of value. Yet, simply because they have the time to sit and just revert each change, their point of view will win out. It's especially obvious when a contribution someone makes based on some breadth of research and experience is almost immediately instantly reverted by someone who couldn't possibly have taken any time to research the contribution first to assess the merit in it - it's just a knee-jerk reversion based purely on their self-appointed gatekeeper status.

The problem is, again, the open nature of the wiki is the strength. This unfortunate byproduct ma be a problem, but it appears to be intrinsic to the nature of the wiki itself. If it's going to be open, it's going to be open. The obvious solution is to hire qualified moderators...but then this is most probably best seen as an evolutionary step backwards towards what the wiki was intended in part to get away from - authorities preventing anyone from having a contribution.

I don't know what the solution is, I just think some kind of dialog should begin to consider this real problem.

Perhaps a limit saying a contribution can't be reverted for a minimum of 48 hrs - perhaps most lurks might forget about the changes by then...? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.116.214.132 (talk • contribs)

It's always wise to give examples of what you're talking about rather than just generalities, so we can know whether your complaints are actually appropriate to the situation. Regardless, we already have policies against contributors acting as if they have ownership of articles, and against repeated edit warring. Locking contributions in for any minimum amount of time is not only unwise (as it would prevent the removal of vandalism), but also completely unworkable, as there would be no way to separate out a particular edit from being changed (did someone "revert" you, or just happen to delete a sentence you added when they copyedited an entire paragraph?) without protecting the entire article. It's also completely without any tailoring to the problem. If you think that an edit you made was improperly removed, tell the contributor who removed it on their talk page, and/or post a comment on the article talk page. Often it's also not inappropriate to simply replace the edit with an edit summary explaining why you think it should stay (after which, if there is still dispute, you can then resort to the talk pages). Postdlf 19:32, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that it's a bad idea to put a timelimit on an edit. This would make sabotaging articles way too easy. I have another idea -- for edits to have a conditional stage before being made permanent. Editors could in effect vote for edits that they see. If positive votes are in the majority, then the edit remains. If negative votes are in the majority, the change maintains a conditional status and does not appear to nonregistered users or users not logged in. Details of how this worked would have to be worked out, of course.
Another idea I have is to maintain a list of referrers. If an article has a significant list of referrers (external and/or internal links liking to the article) then make renaming/deletion of the article more difficult. Victor Engel 20:08, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Such a proposal would hinder efforts against vandalism and against the sort of POV and/or unverifiable material that plagues certain articles. Once an article has reached some level of maturity, it is likely to have "gatekeepers" who are subject-matter experts, either by profession, or by long experience working on the article. These people are familiar with the field, and spend a great deal of time keeping out garbage. Often, the edit does not need to be researched, because it is the same urban legend (or crank theory, or political essay) that twelve previous editors have tried to insert over the past couple of years.

Yes, there are some articles that are infested by POV-warriors who keep down reasonable edits, but they are outnumbered by the articles that are guarded by knowledgable, responsible editors. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm very happy to know that you folks are at least thinking of the issue. I agree that edit freezing is not a good idea, I was merely stoking the fires of discussion to come up with SOME WAY to address this issue of "edit warring".

The concept of revision status pending a vote of approval is an interesting idea. It might slow down the process, but then that might be a small price to pay.

A specific example of what finally prompted me to make this entry in the Village pump is regarding the article on heavy metal. In it, I referred to "glam rock"'s alternate name, "glitter rock." No sooner had I finished saving it, some other contributor reverted it, and his comment was 'glitter rock'? what?" suggesting that, since he'd never heard of it, it must not be. I felt it a worthy contribution to the article simply because glam metal in the 80s is not just an extension of glam rock of the 70s; further, the concept of "glitter" in the 70s was very connected to the culture of the 70s and has almost no similar connection to the culture of the 80s. Anyway, the wiki article on glitter rock further expands this discussion. I referred the warring editor to that article showing that, even though he hadn't heard of it (and therefore really should consider himself unqualified to be so quick and unthoughtful in his editing) there is plenty of documentation that artists such as Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop and Gary Glitter are primary examples of this sub-genre under that name.

This may sound trite and silly, but insofar as this is a discussion of socio-cultural history and art history (and in asmuch as wikipedia wants to be recognized as an authoritative and reliable source of information, useful in academic circles and scholarly discourses) quality of information should not be hampered by people with scant regard for the integrity of the website beyond their own promotion.

I just checked, and Glitter rock is a redirect to Glam rock. On the more general issue of people reverting because they mistook your edits for random commentary, that's a very easy problem to fix via discussion. I get "what the hell are you talking about?" type reverts done to my contributions occasionally, at which point I usually just readd it with an explanation in the edit summary saying that the concept I referred to does in fact exist, or take it up on the article talk page. --tjstrf talk 07:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Publicity rights for images

Is there currently an official policy or guideline page on handling publicity rights for images of living people? That is, a statement of if/when we need the subject's permission to use their photo, and how complete that permission must be (e.g. a model's release). Given that the only practical/realistic way of getting a free image of a celeb, is generally having an amateur take it, I think clearer rules are needed on this. Many of the free photos we have have no indication of the subject's permission, or if they do, its simply permission to have the photo taken, and no more. Generally, we've worked on the premise that the copyright holder (usually the photographer) has the exclusive right to release the image under a free license, and that's all that's needed. Now, if that's what the rule should be, then that should be stated. If that's insufficient to publish an image, we should state precisely what is needed. We should have rules for varying circumsntances: nudity/suxual images (obviously these need a model's release), private images of private people (likely need a release), public images of public people (hopefully, they don't need a release). IANL, and I'm frustrated at contridictory information I've read around Wikipedia. I mentioned this there as well, but PUMP may be more appropriate. If this is already discussed and/or settled elsewhere, please point me to the appropriate page. I haven't a particular position on what policy should be, but I want to know what it is, before investing time taking photos, uploading them, and having somebody delete them in the future. --Rob 21:22, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Publicity rights aren't a concern for us because this website is not exploiting anyone's likeness for commercial gain. They're only a concern for reusers of Wikipedia content, and they'll just have to watch their own backs as they would under any other law. The worst thing we could do is tell the world that our policies ensure that anyone can use our content without limit without any fear of any civil or criminal liability, because that will simply never be true. The best we can really say is that we won't sue downstream users for copyright infringement as long as they comply with the GFDL.
To the extent that Wikipedia is subject only to U.S. jurisdiction, the First Amendment protects our academic and informative uses of photos of public figures, or even of private figures taken in public places (see, e.g., Nussenzweig v. DiCorcia). Rights of privacy may be a concern for images of people (whether nude or not) taken in private, but I would think that's more an issue of whether the photographer had the right to be where he was and openly took the photograph of the subject with their implied or express consent (a boyfriend in the bedroom as opposed to someone hiding with a camera in a bathroom stall, for example). Postdlf 21:38, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Some relevant policies and guidelines are Wikipedia:Image use policy, Wikipedia:Images of living people (proposed), and Wikipedia:Images of living people (proposed). John Broughton | Talk 17:22, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Format Issues

Central to the potential of Wikipedia is it's capabiltiy to adapt--unlike conventional print encyclopedias which become out of date as soon as they come off the press. Wikipedia is not paper-and-ink bound, which is a great advantage. But the "-pedia" component of its name may be an impediment, for it may sugges our model to be the traditional encyclopedia. Such a conventional presumption limits exploration of this electronic media.

Encyclopedias developed in an age of printing, prior to the advent of photography, when even use of labor-intensive engravings was limited. We may carry, unquestioned, a notion of what a proper "encyclopedia" should be: pages of dense text, with few illustrations, these restricted to postage-stamp size.

I have been discussing the matter of format with several others, who seem to share that sort of notion of what is "proper" for an encyclopedia. Why, I ask, should this be a proper encyclopedia? Why not do what paper encyclopedias cannot do? Cost of paper and ink is not a limitation with Wikipedia, nor is heft of volumes in the hands of readers. This is why Wikipedia has become the largest encyclopedia in the world. In many ways it is innovative, but far less so in the "image' we carry in our mind's eye, our paradigm of what an "encyclopedia" should be.

Specifically, why should we constrain the size of images in this electronic medium? Is cost a factor? Capactiy of the pipeline? Someone has mentioned slowness of loading image-heavy pages. That may be the case in some parts of the world, but surely technology is rapidly changing. Dial-up modems are largely historic relics here, where broadband cable connections make slowness a non-issue.

I have contributed articles to conventional encyclopedias and have prepared websites. They are two different sorts of projects, with very different limitations and potentials. I certainly find the potential of the electronic media far more promising, and have became quite a regular contributor to Wikipedia. I continue to have issues with editors, however, who seem to prefer the text-heavy convention of the paper-and-print encyclopedis, suggesting that large images are inappropriate. Why?

As the old adage goes, "the picture is worth a thousand words." And, for increasingly less literate users, "the medium is the message." Can we cease discouraging use of large images?

Paul Malo Phmalo 23:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Where has the use of large images been discouraged? On the main article page, the images should be large enough to be useful as thumbnails. And if you want it full-size, you click on the image. I don't think I'm following your point. Trebor 00:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Large images are discouraged from being dispayed inline, to make the article more readable. The full-sized version can be opened with a click. Very large images are not the best for that purpose either, because not everyone has the time to wait around for such images to load. -Freekee 00:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
We want the encyclopedia to be workable for those with very limited displays (cell phone, pda, etc...) or bandwith (cell phones, dial-up modems, etc...). That is why we have a goal of keeping each article down to 32KB of text. Large images undermine both those goals. We also want derivative versions on CD/DVD or paper. Large images don't work well for those either. GRBerry 03:09, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Permission to use in exchange for ad space

Hi all. I would like some feedback on this issue: User:Attilios has been posting aircraft profiles to multiple Wikipedia pages. Apparently, he worked out a deal with the creator of the profiles where his copyright work could be displayed on Wikipedia in exchange for what effectively amounts to advertisement. For example, see Image:1SPIT Vb RAF JPG Copyright Giovanni Paulli.jpg and how it is used on Supermarine Spitfire (down by the "Specifications" section, also read the comments section of the image tag). This is obviously "free use in exchange for ad space" which is not directly addressed by any Wikipedia policies that I could find. I'm conflicted -- on the one hand the material is nice and it is a potential avenue for use of copyrighted non-Fair Use material on WP. On the other hand, this type of exchange will open monster floodgates to advertising and the material is not really essential to the page. Thus, my inclination is to remove it from Spitfire and several other pages where it is used, but I would like some feedback from the community first (and so I can direct the original poster/dealmaker to this discussion). Thanks! - Emt147 Burninate! 00:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The link in the article itself would seem to violate Wikipedia's spam guideline. However, in a scan of the other pictures in the conditional use images category, it is fairly common for photographers to require credit in order for the image to be used and in some cases a link is provided to the person's website. --Bobblehead 00:52, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd brought this up before, actually listing the image for deletion, and it was voted down. I still think that it's an underhanded tactic and the images, while nice, are totally nonessential. Artist link in the image page itself? Not a problem! But everywhere the image is used? Big problem, in my opinion. ericg ✈ 00:58, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
He's welcome to upload images that he holds the copyright to, and if he has a website, he can link to it on the image's page (strictly as the source). Anything outside of this is spam. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:14, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The uploader used the {{CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat}} template with the condition that the author and the website link are shown in every article using the image. That's pretty blatant advertisement. Of course, the simple solution would be to not obey the conditions and not use the images. - Emt147 Burninate! 01:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think including a link on the article page is a good idea, unless the images provided are very exceptional (for whatever reason). On the image page would be fine, but this does seem like pretty blatant advertising. Trebor 01:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems like this deal that was struck goes against Wikipedia policies, and unless a new one can be struck, the images will have to be deleted. Attilios doesn't speak for the Foundation, and it is not within his capability to accept a deal that requires image attribution above and beyond what our site policies already provide. We do image attribution on the image pages and in the image names (as applicable); we don't do image attribution on the articles the images are used in because that is unenforceable, and also leads to spam. Please get in contact with the guy who originally made the images and ask if he can just release them under plain GFDL; the attributions will still be on all of the images pages. --Cyde Weys 06:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and unlinked the articles with Giovanni Paulli images linked to them. At least the images that had the "provided that" tag template on them. In every case there was at least one other free image (some of them drawings) that were included on the article and those other images did not require such conditions. --Bobblehead 08:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I think the action taken here makes perfect sense. I'm glad to see this spam being dealt with, and hopefully M. Paulli will be willing to adjust his license accordingly. ericg ✈ 20:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Policy against FAQ's (became a discussion on transwikification)

I created an article Fortran_FAQ with a few frequently asked questions about the Fortran programming language and their answers. The article was immediately deleted with the curt explanation, (paraphrasing), "Wikipedia is not a free hosting service for FAQs." There is an article on Fortran, but an FAQ could cover some topics not in that article. Is there a blanket policy against FAQs? If so, could a Fortran FAQ be a reasonable topic for a Wikibook or a chapter of a Wikibook?

What Wikipedia is not is the relevant policy - FAQs are not considered encyclopaedic. I'm not especially au fait with Wikibooks, but I think it would be welcome there. Trebor 01:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I think the option of Transwikification is not well known enough in certain deletion discussions/nominations. Xiner (talk, email) 20:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Agreed ... there are very few people who know about transwikification options let alone how to do it. This is a major gap which has a significant negative impact on the project. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:08, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
So do some advertising of the project again. Maybe a series of articles in the Signpost? Maybe notices at the Community Bulletin Board? GRBerry 14:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
This discussion is an effective advertisement. The best advertisement is to do it and in AfD discussions suggest it with links to procedures for doing it. I am the only person to add anything to Wikipedia:Transwiki log/Articles moved from here/en.wiktionary since the end of October 2006. I think that most folks find it too tedious to consider when all they want to do is speedy delete things, which is counterproductive to the aims of the project as a whole. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
True. I'll read up on the process, and do the best I can as a non-admin to help out. Xiner (talk, email) 15:13, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, but remember that anyone can do the work of transwikification - the only steps that require an admin are the final cleanup if the article on the originating wikimedia project needs to be deleted and the cleanup of transwiki space on each project. All other steps are within the scope of the tools available to editors-at-large. This would not be true if the automated mechanisms for conducting transwiki operations were in operation, which they are not by and large. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello. I use User:CopyToWiktionaryBot in combination with my main account wikt:User:Connel MacKenzie (sysop) to do full imports. You might do better to remind me that I'm supposed to update that page when I do my Special:Imports (via script.) I'll try and update the past few months with the several hundred I've transwikied using that method (including 90 or so yesterday.) Please feel free to nag me at wikt:User talk:Connel MacKenzie when the backlog has built up unacceptably. The full import of all edits is certainly prefereable to importing just the latest version (to comply properly with the GFDL.) --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 00:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I'll get in touch with you in more detail later. My understanding was that most but by no means all 'import' functions are currently disabled between wikimedia projects (the only one I have direct access to is the Wikipedia one via Special:Specialpages). Your informing us that the import feature on Wiktionary is working, correct, and that manual tranwikification to Wiktionary should be stopped in favor of using the import feature, which is available to Wiktionary admins (I assume you are one at this point), yes? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes.
I'm trying to improve the script I use to do it. It tears everything out of CAT:MtW at once, and Special:Imports them from Wiktionary under my sysop account, then edits the articles here replacing the various transwiki tags with {{TWCleanup}}, then edits the transwikied articles now on Wiktionary to do the same (wikt:Template:TWCleanup is slightly different over there, needing to be subst:'ed to get the monthly category.) The script transwiki2.sh that comes back and tags the talk pages (with the "this has been transwikied" template) and finally is supposed to update the Wikipedia transwiki log is horrificly broken at the moment. I've not had anyone screaming at me to get that part of it working, and frankly, I forgot about it. When I get back from dinner, I'll paste in the other four logs and start debugging it (if the neighborhood kids don't usurp my laptop to watch a DVD.) --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 02:45, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Add this feature

Please allow registered users to change their User name too.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.75.192.20 (talk • contribs)

See Wikipedia:Changing username. You just have to submit a request. -- Fan-1967 03:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Financial rewards to editing Wikipedia?

I came across this today: Wikipedia:Reward board. Before my edit, the lead of the article was describing financial rewards offered and asked for editing articles. I was surprised that I never saw that page before. I bring this to the attention of the community at large to discuss the implications of such Reward board. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:26, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Overcategorization

A user asserts that this guidelines not only violates consensus, but was proposed without telling the community (besides proofs to the contrary). Are there any other users that believes the guidelines is not consensual? Circeus 14:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I assert neither of those things, nor do I believe the last sentence to be true. Please join the discussion at the talk page to see what the dispute is actually about. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Er, Jeff, if as you just said you do not assert that this violates consensus, nor that you believe that it's not consensual, then why on earth are you disputing it? >Radiant< 14:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't violate it, there's simply no way to judge the consensus. If the consensus goes one way or the other, then that's that - we simply don't know. I'm disputing it because it's a poorly thought essay, as I've said before and you've continually ignored. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I am speechless. You've just stated that because we can't assert consensus, no Wikipedia guideline that is not being actively discussed is valid. Does this apply to Wikipedia:Guide to layout. Circeus 14:40, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
You may want to actually read what i have to say. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, Jeff, I tend to continually ignore unsourced allegations as well as baseless opinions. If you don't want your words ignored, show some actual evidence. >Radiant< 14:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I could be extra-snarky here, but I won't. WP:KETTLE, perhaps? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Didn't we have some guidance to the effect of "Guidelines that overlap, are irrelevant or overly limited in scope should not be created". Oh yes we have, it's called Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep. For that reason I'd reject Wikipedia:Overcategorization. Seems like rulecruft to me.

Imho it's up to those who propose new guidance, to convince their fellow-wikipedians that the new guidance...

  • ...is not redundant (overlapping guidelines are very difficult to maintain, I think there is overlap with Wikipedia:Categorization, and with half of the guidance listed in Wikipedia:Categorization#See also);
  • ...is not irrelevant (the formulation of the guidance seems pretty much "wishful thinking"-like in it's formulation, not a tool with which to forge good solutions);
  • ...is not overly limited in scope (a scope problem is that the guidance currently only foresees throwing out categories: where is the effort to create an appropriate replacement for destroyed patches of the categorisation tissue?).

Sorry, no, not a good idea imho. --Francis Schonken 18:19, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I implore you to share this at the talk page there. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Interestingly, neither WP:CREEP nor m:instruction creep says any of those things. But to address your points, (1) yes, it overlaps with WP:CAT, and a merge has already been proposed; (2) it's not wishful thinking, it's based on actual practice; and (3) the page does recommend creating (sortable!) lists as an alternative, and for some of the others there simply is no replacement necessary, for instance if a categorization isn't objectively verifiable. >Radiant< 12:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

New user greetings

One of the things I've tried to do more recently is greeting new users, but then I realized, when you sign up on many other websites, you'll get an automatic greeting, be it an email, message box or whatnot. Why don't we do it here? Xiner (talk, email) 17:58, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I think it would be a good idea to do it by e-mail if one is provided. Traditionally greetings have been seen as a social thing on Wikipedia, you greet someone if you appreciate their edits and want them to stick around, in theory it's a very welcoming thing and gets people to stick around. I dunno, I personally was welcomed by a serial welcomer who just used the default template, might as well have been a bot honestly... but people in my WikiProject give special welcomes to new users interested in the topic, to encourage them to stick around and edit more. I think that's a good thing. At any rate, proposals for automatic welcomes have been rejected on numerous grounds other than being impersonal, they'd consume a lot of resources, and also would welcome lots of vandals and people who'd never actually edit any articles. But a typical email "Thanks for signing up an account at Wikipedia!" e-mail might be a good idea if devs want to implement it. --W.marsh 19:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    • That's true. Come to think of it, I made some mistakes when I first began editing and the welcome templates that came my way as a result...well, I ignored them until the greeter wrote me a personal note. Hmm. Xiner (talk, email) 19:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

YouTube

Why is there a policy NOT to use YouTube links ? If the video is on topic and adds value to the article, I do not see a problem with it. Wiki allows other external links. Perhaps, we could discuss the policy on this matter. Headphonos 13:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I can think of two problems: 1) because anyone can upload anything, whatever factual claims a video is being used to support are not verifiable or reliable; and 2) because anyone can upload anything, there's a great risk that the video's presence on YouTube is a copyright infringement, and if we link to an infringing site we can be contributorily liable. Postdlf 22:09, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
WP:EL has some good information on what should ... and shouldn't... be used as external links. Jenolen speak it! 22:28, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
There is no current policy banning a link to YouTube, despite some mis-representation otherwise. There is policy against linking to material reproduced in violation of copyright, but each incident should be judged on a case by case issue. There are many instances where a link to YouTube or MySpace video hosting is appropriate, and even recommendable. For instance, links to an authorized music video, or short film.
There may be other reasons for not linking to a youtube video from an article, specific to the situation. Check WP:EL for guidelines.--Barberio 23:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
This appears to be a new 'feature' of User:VoABot_II which auto-reverts links to YouTube from 'new' editors. I'm not sure if this is appropriate action for a bot to take, and have contacted User:VoABot_II over this. --Barberio 00:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
The description of VoABot II is a bot is to patrol articles and revert edits from obnoxious banned users/trolls with revolving IPs. The description says nothing about YouTube per se, and nothing about reverting selected links of all new users. If the bot conforms to its description, it may well be reverting some YouTube edits from new editors, but certainly should not be reverting all YouTube postings by new editors. John Broughton | Talk 14:40, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Matching donor Spam

Appologies if this is the wrong place to raise this...

Editing this page, I am presented with the Sitenotice banner regarding the current fundraiser. While I have always recognized that as a "necessary evil" in and of itself, I've noticed today that there is an additional advertisement link for Virgin Unite with their company logo, announcing that they are matching donations today.

So, when did Wikipedia become an advertising platform? --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 00:23, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

We're actually losing millions of dollars by not running ads, instead relying on traditional fundraising drives like this.
Hell, I wish we were running actual ads; then I'd actually have the damn file servers I need to make sure we can provide full data and image dumps. --brion 01:27, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
To clarify my position (after my initial hostile-sounding outburst): I think it is really nice of that company to be matching contributions. I vehemently object to pandering their logo in return.
By the way, "we" aren't losing a penny by not running ads. If this were a commercial entity from the get-go, it would still have only a handful of contributors and would suck.
As far as wants, certainly you realize you are not the only one that desires more things, that money can buy. 'Twould be nice to have a server that could actually stay up for more than a couple days at a time without hardware errors, to actually use those XML dumps, to keep some of my ongoing IO intensive tasks off the main servers.
--Connel MacKenzie - wikt 04:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
We await your non-logoed sizable contribution. If you are unable to provide one, perhaps you would like to indicate what level of logo or advertising you are willing to accept to be able to use your XML dumps. --Golbez 12:38, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Why User:Golbez, what a curious thing to say. You have 1/3 to 1/2 as many WMF contributions as I do, yet you think WMF is going to give you my donation? Someone mentioned the word "ingrate" in these conversations...I think you just demonstrated that character flaw quite accurately. Should I stop running User:CopyToWiktionaryBot too? Or are you suggesting I should halt all my Wiktionary bots as well? Remove my {{spellchecker}} from toolserver? What are you trying to say? That I should resort to your lever of personal attacks to achieve a much-needed wikibreak? --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 15:38, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Call for Universal and Perpetual No Advertising Policy

The matching donations by virgin unite (VU) is obviously extremely dangerous and clear evidence that Wikipedia needs a strong, PERPETUAL and committed "ABSOLUTELY NO ADVERTISING" policy and it needs it now! This donation and VU article has effectively become a cheap advert for virgin foundation and -- by extension -- Virgin group. Accepting and advertising these corporate-based funds could go down as Wikipedia's biggest mistake to date. Would we accept and advertise a corporate donation or grant from one of those supposedly independent "public interest" or "research" groups funded by the tobacco or oil industry? This is a very slippery slope indeed!

It is notable that that despite the many debates in the media over the virgin foundation there is no critique to be found in the article. The {POV} tag and discussion entry were immediately censored. But the situation is deeper and more troubling than the lack of a criticism section in an article. (1) The point is it that every edit to a Virgin Foundation or Virgin Group entry will now be judged in terms of whether wikipedians are being soft on the foundation because of financial contributions or, conversely, harsh in order to prove that we're really very objective! (2) The virgin icon is now being plastered on the Main Page and across wikipedia pages of countless topics in multiple languages! Such practices do not engender confidence in an encyclopedia! By having a logo on unrelated entries, the "donation" is insidiously tainting every ad-tagged article and undermining the neutral POV policy wholesale.

Impartiality is like justice: It's not enough for it to be done, it must be seen to be done! It doesn't matter whether the VU donations are generous or intended as lobbying. The funds and postings are clearly being seen by many as sponsored advertising and no explaining in the world can help remove that doubt.

In the short term, the only way I can see to deal with this is to immediately stop this particular VU promotional run and remove the logo from all article headers. In the long term, there needs to be a new Wikipedia-wide policy implemented as broadly as these icons were plastered. It's time to go beyond the wishy-washy "no immediate plans for advertising" and make "no advertising" a permanent and perpetual pillar of Wikipedia. That's the only way to fix the VU article in particular and its essential for ensuring confidence that Wikipedia is truly independent and will continue to forward and uphold the highest principles. OFW (Open and Free Wikian - as in free from corporate bias). 74.12.147.213 15:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I would tolerate ad's for Wikipedia donations only, showing the corporate logo of a company matching the donations is borderline. As long as users can permanently dismiss it. But that should be the line. Of course, I am not paying for the servers, so if that is what it takes to keep this site going, sigh, ok. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I think donation advertisements should be restricted to the existing donor pages. They should be prominent advertisements there (in analogy to a sponsorship t-shirt.) --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 17:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Do you mean that only people who are already donors will see the ads, or the ads will only show on the donor's talk page? I could go for a tasteful ad that people could put on their own talk page soliciting donations. I would even support the Donations button on the side to be bolded. It would be much better than putting it up for everyone.
Perhaps an opt-out option in the preferences would be kind. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 17:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
There is an opt-out. It's called clicking "dismiss". User:Zoe|(talk) 18:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
You've already seen it when you click dismiss, and that is what an advertiser wants: publicity and brand recognition. That also does not prevent the majority of readers from seeing the advertisement repeatedly on every single page. —Centrx→talk • 05:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I did, then it came back later, so I clicked it again, this has repeated 4 times now. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
In the previous section, brion specified the CSS code to eliminate the site notices in perpetuity. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 18:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
The problem there is that the sitenotice is used for legitimately internal Wikimedia purposes. If the sitenotice is hidden entirely, a person will not see the board of trustees election, or any future donation drives. Perhaps we could have a separate MediaWiki:Advertisement... —Centrx→talk • 05:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Good tip. Thanks. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
See my reply to you above as well; the "dismiss" link should be working if cookies are enabled. (Note that the SiteNotice will appear if it has been changed and you will have to click "dismiss" again, but this should be rare.) This would be much more optimal than removing the entire SiteNotice, as it may be used for important messages (not related to fundraising) later on that you may miss if it is removed via CSS. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 19:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I like how this chap says he's free from corporate bias - I guess government, non-profit, and individual biases are just dandy. --Golbez 12:36, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
No, I don't think they're just dandy. The issue here was corporate advertising, so I said "corporate free". I don't think putting up ads from individuals or governments would be any better and in some cases it might be even worse (of course, there are some important differences between private corporations and democratic public governments, but that's another debate). The point here is that there should be a committed policy that Wikipedia will stick to its original form and we won't ever run ads or mass-post corporate logos as gratitude notices... not individual, not NGO, not corporate, not government. Simple: no ads, ever. OFW. 74.12.143.40 16:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I think donations are an important part of a free Wikipedia. So much has been done since Wikipedia was born, with all of it based on the fact that everyone can contribute - mainly because it's free and accessible to all. I think big flashy banners or endless streams of pop-ups make Wikipedia look cheap (like answers.com) and gives an impression that corporations run everything. I do, however, think that acknowledging a company's kindness (or marketing ploy if you like) is the least we could do to show we appreciate their financial support. Acknowledging that a private donator is matching donations is fine in my opinion, as long 1) There are no continuous advertisements that make Wikipedia 'addicted' to corporate sponors and 2) The content of Wikipedia will not change as a result of private/corporate donors. Alex Ng 08:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Image use policy#Free licenses

"No non-commercial images except by fair use" still applies to Creative Commons {{cc-by-nc-2.0}}, {{cc-by-nc-nd-2.0}}, etc., right? So I'm a bit confused by these edits ([6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] ) removing speedy tags from images I put on images which were clearly mistagged by the uploader (if you look at the original Flickr pages, you can see these images being clearly marked as non-commercial only). Thanks. cab 08:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Distances - km or miles?

Here in the UK we still use miles for road signs and distances. WP policy is to use measurement units appropriate to the country being discussed.

I have been writing a few articles on villages in Lincolnshire and expressed all distances in miles. One of my pages, Hackthorn has been edited several times and they have been changed to km with the miles equivalent in brackets. Further more he has changed the 'as the crow flies' distance to the acual distance by road (which is significantly further). I tried changing it back but he reverted it. I think the chap who has done the changes lives there but gives no user name (last edit was 86.31.193.189).

Am I right in thinking that for articles on geographic places the distances should be 'as the crow flies' and in the appropriate units for the country, ie miles in this case? Should I revert the edits or give in?Dsergeant 09:06, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Both KM and miles are generally acceptable. Usually something along the lines of 10 km (6.21 mi) is acceptable. As far as how the crow flies versus road distance, is it really necessary to include either? You could just include the coordinates in an infobox as London does. That way the distance from other locations isn't important.--Bobblehead 09:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I see User:Someguy0830 has reverted the edits back to the miles(km) format which is a reasonable compromise. He has also taken out some of flowery text the previous chap had put in which I thought was a bit excessive, many thanks. But I guess he will be back later and put it back!! I have not put in an infobox as it is probably unnecessary for most of these small villages, but the coordinates are available via the map references.Dsergeant 10:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Advertising on Wikipedia/Wiki projects

Given that Jimmy Wales is considering the advertising option and a search engine rival to Google, it seems, especially given the latter, that the advertising option is going to be exercised.

Is this good or bad? Is it the start of the decline of Wikipedia? Should we embrace it, if so how? Should we reject it and make Wikipedia a pay for access site?

I think the decision on advertising will be the turning point in this glorious experiment - although which way that turn goes is an enormous unknown. I suspect most would probably prefer to see Wikipedia continue as an open source, free information, global contribution, sharing the body of knowledge (about time the Universities started doing that a little more too!) - and ditto Wiki Projects. But the thing needs money to run. Will Jimmy use the search engine as a commercial (advertising) platform to raise money? Will the advertising model be Google like (and as suspect) or something else? Your thoughts on this matter are important so please contribute your perspective. How should WIKI evolve???

--Rimrock 12:20, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

  • The short answer is "no". See also WP:PEREN. >Radiant< 12:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Is this a duplicate topic to the numerous kb of zOMG AN AD!/THAT'S NOT AN AD! we have going on slightly higher up the page, or did I miss some giant announcement about Wikipedia going commercial, or is Rimrock trying to discuss something different? Because I can't tell. --tjstrf talk 12:46, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm hoping we can get a lively debate going on the direction of Wikipedia with consideration of the whole issue of advertising - and funding methods - rather than discussion of specific interpretations of what constitutes an advertising spot or if Virgin is getting cheap exposure. Feel free to comment. --Rimrock 13:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Right... duplicate topic then. Thanks. --tjstrf talk 13:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I was tempted to put a {{fact}} tag on the assertion that Jimmy Wales is considering the advertising option, but instead, I will just say it here. Where do you find any such assertion? User:Zoe|(talk) 17:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Garbled news reports on the Wikia search project, I think... Shimgray | talk | 20:29, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes I also was wondering the same thing as Zoe. Care to provide a link to a valid source which states this?¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 20:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Change to Non-administrators closing discussions

I propose the following change to clear up statements. I believe this would be a better wording. Just moving the statment to a more appropiate bullet Navou talk 16:59, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

In general, administrators are responsible for closing discussions about deletions. In practice, the various deletion discussions tend to be badly backlogged. Editors in good-standing who have not been made administrators may close deletion discussions under the following conditions:

  1. Non-administrators may only close decisions which are unambiguous "keep" decisions. Close calls and controversial or ambiguous decisions should be left to an administrator.
    • Non-administrators may also close the other variations of "keep" such as unambiguous "merge and redirect".
    • Non-administrators generally should not close "delete" decisions even if they are unanimous. Only administrators have the ability to actually delete the target article, so they will have to re-check for a valid AfD in any case.
    • Non-administrators may not "speedy-close" deletion discussions. One exception is if you are closing your own withdrawn nomination as a speedy keep, and all other viewpoints expressed were for keep as well. They must either express their view that the debate should be "speedy-closed" in the normal procedure, or wait until the discussion has run the full AfD period to close it as a "keep" if there is a consensus to do so.
    • In some situations, an administrator may delete an article without closing the AfD, possibly because they thought the material was suitable for deletion on sight, and did not notice the AfD. If so, the AfD may be closed by a non-administrator. It is advisable for the non-administrator to say who deleted the article, and give the administrator's deletion summary.
  2. Closing discussions in which you have offered an opinion presents a conflict of interest and should be generally avoided; if necessary, contact someone uninvolved to perform the close. One exception is if you are closing your own withdrawn nomination as a speedy keep, and all other viewpoints expressed were for keep as well.
  3. Closing decisions are subject to review and may be reopened. If this happens, take it only as a sign that the decision was not as unambiguous as you thought.
  • A discussion is also on the talk page of WP:DPR Navou talk 00:43, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Actually, I'll just post my reply on the talk page in question --W.marsh 15:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Policy on blocked users participating in dispute resolution?

This conversation [15] didn't answer my questions, and I am wondering if this issue is covered by policy, and I just can't find it? (I have noticed Arbcom cases in which users were unblocked strictly to participate in dispute resolution, so I thought there was precedent.) Thanks in advance for any help or advice, Cindery 02:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

A different criteria for inclusion: a subject's ability to be written about.

Tell me what you think of it. -- Chris is me 07:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Eh, this really seems to say the same thing as the spirit of WP:N (by that I mean the concepts from Uncle G's essay). If there's sufficient independent coverage, we can write a decent, reliable NPOV article about anything. We really should stick to just making sure that WP:N is understood and followed... it currently isn't, and multiple guidelines saying the same thing doesn't help that at all, sorry. --W.marsh 15:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I see. The reason I don't think Notability wroks is that, rather than restricting it to these guidelines, Wikipedians make guidelines that say "you need this may Google hits" or stuff like that. There are some clearly notable articles that shouldn't be, since you can't write about them, and some non-notable articles that should be, since you can. -- Chris is me 18:19, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Delete -- This propsal accomplishes nothing that cannot be accmplished using WP:N, either in its current form, or in some modified form. WP:N needs to be better enforced(I don't think its being properly enforced at the moment), and this policy proposal will make WP:N harder to enforce.Librarylefty 01:20, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Canvassing (WP:CANVAS)

This is not a new guideline, just a spin-off of the "internal spamming" content from WP:SPAM to make both guidelines more readable. So for all intents and purposes the content stays the same, except in separate places. Discussion at WT:SPAM#WP:CANVAS WT:CANVAS. ~ trialsanderrors 03:16, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Need wiki lawyer, potential edit war, irrelavent sources, spam, little known facts/hard to verify, conflict with anon user

I have a IP address that is trying to cause a edit war with me, but im trying to settle it with him personally before I goto the article's talk page for 2nd opinions. There is a fact that a user is claiming, his sources dont back up his fact what so ever and he claims they are Press Releases/News Releases, they are links to homepages of 2 companies, 1 indirectly related to the article, the other not at all. The websites do not answer his fact or my fact as true or false. My side of the fact is supported by mostly forum posts(poor source I know), and 1 Consumer Reports article. Anyways, what policys/guidelines can I look at to determine if I am right or wrong, and if he is right or wrong, and what can I point out to him? I am thinking something along the lines of "irrelavent/invalid source", "spam" (I cant see what his websites are trying to sell, so it might not be spam?????), maybe "orignal research" (then again what im saying can be seen as OR), "verifiable" (how can something be verified that a company refuses to talk about and is considered proprietory business practices/trade secrets, and is only known by hackers and enthusiasts and is never discussed by the company since it can be viewed as a dark secret?) "pushing a cause" (is this a WP policy? I could be doing it myself, if I use NPOV, then all criticism is considerd POV) I need a wiki lawyer. I first want to try deal with this person myself, if that doesnt work, then I guess Ill deal with it on the articles talk page or whatever WP does for edit wars. It shouldnt matter what the subject is at this point. I have a username but I dont want this person tracking me to this post. 24.90.122.153 05:04, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Question Just, and only out of morbid curiosity, what is the article in question? Navou talk 05:12, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Guidance In so far as dispute resolution, wikipedia has a resource located at WP:DR that may be of assistance to you. If you have any questions about this or don't know how to go about it, feel free to comment here, or on my talk page. Good luck to you. Navou talk 19:18, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

images with partial fair use sections

I've noticed some images, for example Image:Nintendo 64.jpg and Image:Nintendo DS Lite side.jpg feature copyrighted logos. They are tagged as GFDL and used as GFDL, but they do incorporate copyrighted content. In both such cases, the images could be edited to remove the fair use parts, while still illustrating the subject well. Any input? Scepia 07:23, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

A similar situation occurs in just about any picture taken in a public urban setting, since they almost inevitably contain copyrighted signs, billboards, posters, etc. The general consensus seems to be that such "incidental" inclusions are not a problem, as long as the copyrighted content is not the main subject of the image. Technically, the copyrighted elements are included in the image under (legal) fair use, while the image itself, as a whole, is freely licensed and included in Wikipedia as such.
Of course, the whole idea rests on the argument that the amount and nature of included copyrighted material is insignificant enough, its use transformative enough and its inclusion in any equivalent image inevitable enough that no court could possibly consider the use to be anything but fair, regardless of how and where the image as a whole is used. There is a wide gray area, where prudence dictates that we should generally err on the side of caution, in cases where the copyrighted content occupies a significant portion of the image, even if it is not the actual subject, and where it is reproduced more or less verbatim.
In the images you mentioned, the "Nintendo DS" logo on the screen might fall into that area; so might the cover of the cartridge in the first image, but, as with billboards in the city, I fail to see how anyone could reasonably take an image showing a Nintendo console with an inserted cartridge without also showing some of the cartridge cover. The fact that only part of the cover is showing is in our favor here, since it means that we're using no more of the cover than we need and that our image can't be used as a substitute for the entire cover.
You do have a point in that the logo on the screen could be edited away, and the cartridge cover could perhaps, for example, be blurred to make the use even less substantial. There are, however, limits to how far we can practically go down that road: for example, while the "Nintendo 64" logo in the first image could also be manipulated away, the resulting image would no longer be a in a work reasonable representation of what the actual console looks like. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
There's a legal concept called de minimis: below a certain point, the inclusion of copyrighted material owned by people other than the creator of the work is irrelevant to the copyright status of that work. Logos, billboards, and similar things, if they are incidental to the image, usually fall below that point. --Carnildo 10:12, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. There are other cases where it is a much larger issue. For example, in Image:IMac.jpg, the screenshot part takes up a considerable amount of space on the image. Instead, to display the capabilities of the monitor, a personal image could be displayed on the screen (see Image:IMac G4 sunflower8.png). I agree that some things are simply part of the product, but in this case it seems to overstep it's boundaries. The operating system should be illustrated seperately, or if it is illustrated with the computer, it needs to be tagged as fair use. Scepia 21:17, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

What is your opinion of a Wikipedia user page that announces the following:

I am a born again 5-point reformed/calvinist noncessational, covenantal, evangelical, presuppositional, nondenominational, protestant Christian. I am an apologist in training and a member of CARM (Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry). As a member of CARM and the Counter-Cult Movement, I seek to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who have not yet receive it, defend the Christian faith against nonbelievers, and counter nonchristian cults such as Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Catholicism, Oneness Pentecostal, Unitarianism, Christadelphianism, Christian Science, and so on.

I personally find it mildly disturbing. He has a lot of other stuff on his page too. And he has a long history of vandalism of other's pages as well in his "spreading the gospel" mission. Comments?--Filll 05:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, most of that is just basic personal information and the rest is disclosure of bias. Any disruption case against him would have to be pursued based on his activities, not merely his statement of beliefs. --tjstrf talk 05:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
You can keep an eye on his contribs and take action when necessary. Xiner (talk, email) 20:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Xiner and tjstrf; watch his posts and edits for bias, warn him if NPOV violations are spotted, suggest less inflammatory ways of phrasing his edits or pages, and remind him that Wikipedia is not a tract. I myself am a born-again Christian, and though I believe the necessity of spreading the Gospel, I do it through reasoned arguments when passionate appeals are inappropriate, and through clearing up misconceptions of the faith when reasoned arguments are inappropriate. (And they're inappropriate here.) For example, I recently heard someone say that Jesus was "born again" when He rose from the grave; that is a misunderstanding of the mainstream Christian belief in the Resurrection. Stating common misconceptions is allowed on Wikipedia, but calling someone false or wicked is downright inappropriate. So watch him, watch me, but don't go ballistic at the first hint of an NPOV. Remember, he's an apologist in training. --BlueNight 22:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
As a Roman Catholic I am a little disturbed to find out, after all this time, that I am not a Christian. But I guess he's allowed to say it.--Anthony.bradbury 23:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

He is entitled to his personal beliefs. Evangelism, however is immoral, and we should stop any attempts by him, or anyone else to evangelize their religious beliefs on Wikipedia, should this occur. Atom 16:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

  • How dare they hold a controversial belief?! --Infrangible 04:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Evangelism includes such activities as getting together and debating the pros and cons of a belief system and whether adopting it would be a good idea. There is nothing wrong with this. What would be wrong would be to try and enforce a particular point of view on wikpedia and to prevent others from having their points of view fairly represented. Would you agree with that, tjstrf? Ireneshusband 06:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that trying to skew articles towards your own personal view is wrong. Though why you target your comment towards me specifically I have no idea. --tjstrf talk 06:30, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure who you might be replying to. I am stating that people that feel that they are obligated to interfere with other belief systems are immoral. We should respect all belief systems and superstitions. No one is suggesting that the facts about any belief system should be omitted or prohibited from Wikipedia. NPOV would suggest that allowing all perspectives is appropriate. What I object to is evangelism, not religion or other superstitions. Evangelism is not a religion, evangelism is a mode of preaching or proseltyzing ones particular religion. Moreso, Christian Evangelists believe that it is their obligation, their duty, a directive from God, to "save" others from their "incorrect" religious beliefs and make them christians. It is a kind of religious imperialism. So, what I am saying is that people who want to interfere with others religious views, or feel obligated to force their personal dogma on others should be asked to do that elsewhere.

Remember that the original context was concern given about editor/user User:Jedi_Davideus whose user page says "I seek to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who have not yet receive it, defend the Christian faith against nonbelievers, and counter nonchristian cults such as Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Catholicism, Oneness Pentecostal, Unitarianism, Christadelphianism, Christian Science, and so on." and "My goal in Wikipedia is to ...Counter/correct biased articles that are slanted towards a secular point of view ", "From my experience, many articles are presented either from an atheistic, evolutionist, or simply a secular point of view."

Of course I respect his right to be whatever he wants, and to believe whatever he wants, and to practice his religion however he chooses. I do have concerns if his intent is to vandalize Wikipedia articles by trying to remove non-theistic, evolutionist and secular views in favor of views that he has stated (for instance, that catholics and mormons are not christians, and his intent to push his views on others.)

Atom 16:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree except I don't think you can call it vandalism. Nil Einne 09:50, 1 January 2007 (NZDT UTC+13)

What are the rules about deletion of material from talk pages?

I have encountered a very difficult editor who is throwing what appears to be tantrums and is deleting material from my user talk page (at least once), the article's talk page (5 or 6 times at least), and being combative and slinging insults. What are the rules about this?--Filll 01:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Removing content from a user's talk page is considered vandalism unless the content they are removing is vandalism itself (same applies for an article's talk page); insults, I believe, are punishable under WP:PA; as for the combative part, I can't really be sure without seeing the edits myself. // Sasuke-kun27 01:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
The prohibition against editing (or deleting) comments of others on article talk pages is contained in Help:Talk page. You can report personal attacks at Wikipedia:Personal attack intervention noticeboard, but (as discussed there) you need to post warnings to the user's talk page before administrators will take action (for repeated attacks). If you revert deletions on an article talk page and the other user persists in deleting the comments, there may also be a WP:3RR violation that you can report. John Broughton | Talk 03:14, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
It's all right to remove material from one's own user talk page. Other than vandalism and personal attacks, it's vandalism to remove material elsewhere. DurovaCharge! 21:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Be aware that the policy on biographic material about living people, WP:BLP, requires the removal of some unsourced negative material or personal details about living people everywhere in Wikipedia, including talk pages. See the policy for more details. GRBerry 14:41, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Is 'unholy alliance' personal attack?

I would like to have somebody clarify a case of application of policy. Is 'unholy alliance' personal attack? In English Wiki I used it referring to some sysops in zh.wiki (the notorious Chinese Wiki, which is recently greatly discredited by major media), and I got a warning from Tjstrf saying such 'personal attack' will result in my being banned from English Wiki. I think it's only a common rhetoric usage. Does that qualify a 'personal attack'? Thank you. --Uponsnow 12:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. --Sam Blanning(talk) 12:55, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I said you would be blocked, not banned. There is a major difference. Also, the context of the statement was an accusation, found here, that the zh.wiki admins are a communist conspiracy. --tjstrf talk 12:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is Communism", after all...Just H 01:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the most applicable section in this particular situation is WP:NOT#BATTLEGROUND. --tjstrf talk 02:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick response. Would you mind elaborate more? What if I used 'holy alliance' to intend some humor? Thanks. --Uponsnow 13:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Obviously using the statement in humour is unlikely to be considered a personal attack. But be wary with humour as it may be misconstrued. I'm presuming here you really mean in humour/jest rather then in sarcasm. Obviously using the statement with the attention to attack a user, even in sarcasm is likely to be considered a personal attack. I don't know about your statements, but if they are in the same vain as those SummerThunder has been making, I think it's quite justifiable that they are termed personal attacks. For example, accusing other editors of being lackeys of the Chinese Communist Party or insinuation such, would generally be considered a personal attack. Nil Einne 02:44, 1 January 2007 (NZDT UTC+13)

Thanks. Season's greetings here. --Uponsnow 10:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

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