User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 113

In regards to raising €/$/¥/£ for the WMF:

A charity journey from the 1,000,000th to the 4,000,000th article locations could raise a lot!

It could be a caravan of buses all ridden by Wikipedians. (Or if the community wishes, a group of Wikipedian cyclists, or a posse of Wikipedian train-riders if you all decide to take (most of) the journey on a train.)

Numerous charity events involved journeying thousands of miles in order to promote and raise funds for noble causes. Therefore, what say there be a trip that editors who start from Jordanhill Railway Station and finish at Izbat al-Burj?

This is the route from Jordanhill to Izbat al-Burj. It will take about a week, in order to account for fuel, food, resting, and recreational (sightseeing) stops. (The 86-hour figure would not.)

This is the no-toll route, but slightly longer.

Yes, both would involve ferries, but that's another sort of excitement.

Such an event could raise significant media coverage, which would lead to even more funds raised for the Wikimedia Foundation.

^{As a bonus, if traveling on the route through Spain, the traveling group could meet the cast & crew of El Hormiguero at their studio. Or if not through Spain, if the bus and/or train receives international TV broadcasts, the passengers can tune to the subject of the 2,000,000th article. If that can't happen, they could order DVDs of it to watch throughout the trip. Moreover, I would recommend inviting Beate Eriksen to come along!}

If the motorcoach has a microphone & PA system, any of the passengers could feel free to lecture the articles about Joe Connor and the kanab ambersnail, word-for-word.

After the 1M-4M trip concludes, some of the travelers may feel like flying to Hastings, New Zealand, or prefer to fly to Russia to visit the former Forced settlements in the Soviet Union first.

Just thought to pass along a suggestion with a lot of fundraising potential! --129.130.239.163 (talk) 04:22, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) PS: If any other Wikipedians happen to be anywhere along the route, the caravan should feel free to pick them up as seats are available. (If a train, the Wikipedians down the route just need to wait at any station ahead of it.) --129.130.239.163 (talk) 04:34, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Which article is the millionth or four millionth changes often due to deletions.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:30, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

See Template:Million milestones. They've been long-established as such. --129.130.239.163 (talk) 04:34, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I've always wondered a bit about the ethics and general cost effectiveness of such "fundraisers". Unless you can get a TV series to pick up the whole tab the net result is that a bunch of people have an interesting adventure holiday and a whole lot of people chip in to fund it with maybe a minority of the money going to charity. My preference is for the efficiency of asking for donations instead. ϢereSpielChequers 15:00, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

The use of accent marks in article title

I am raising this issue here, not because of your dated comment on the issue (as technology has moved on). But to advertise an issue that has caused division in the community, which greater exposure and hence comments by others may help resolve, and as this page is watched by many others who do not necessarily watch other common ways to advertise RfCs.

There are currently two different RfCs in which users familiar to the debate are discussing the use of accent marks in article titles. Some believe that accent marks should not be used and all article titles should be restricted to the ASCII character set (the English Alphabet and characters like ")"). Some believe that the article title should be guided by WP:V and follow usage in reliable English language sources (as described in WP:UE). Some believe names should be spelled the way they are in the native language of the subject of the article with little or no regard to English usage (the argument put forward is that any English language source that does not use the native language spelling is an unreliable source for deciding on the correct spelling of a name). Input from more editors would perhaps help form a consensus on which strategy is the best to follow. See:

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#RFC: Names with diacritics and other non-ASCII letters: Should we permit, require, or prohibit ASCIIfied versions?
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Vietnamese)#RfC on spelling

-- PBS (talk) 15:59, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Didn't we just get done with this with the whole GoodDay ArbCom case? - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 16:33, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

That was a user conduct case. ArbCom can't settle content disputes, of which this one has been simmering for some time. Resolute 16:45, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

We have this discussion every few months and every few months it ends up at almost a 50-50 split. And more often than not they end with atleast one editor being admonished. ie the GoodDay ArbCom case Jorgath mentions. I know I haven't commented in the current ones because I am tired of rehashing the same arguments over and over again. I am sure others feel the same. -DJSasso (talk) 16:42, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The interresting thing about these discussions is that at a MOS level - ie the people who are interested in making rules - there is that gridlock. At userlevel - ie the people actually maintaining articles and commenting at RMs the usage of diacritics is clearly favoured. Attempting to write rules agaist diacritics is the only option left who want to protect the English language from itself. Agathoclea (talk) 17:35, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

YGM :)

You have new email, Jimbo Wales/Archive 113 - please check your mail client! Thank you :) Fish^Barking? 03:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Redefined

Main page: Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § External site redesigning Wikipedia

Further information: Wikipedia:Unsolicited redesigns

The link to this website offering ideas for a makeover of WP surfaced in a thread at Wikipediocracy. I assume that the WMF people keep an eye on this page and pass it along for their information as well as yours: Wikipedia Redefined. Carrite (talk) 06:44, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

A good example of giving graphic designers total control of your website's design. A design less intuitive and useful than the current design. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the idea of making editing easier and less "code-dependent" is a good one, but they don't really explain how this would work. Just saying "more user friendly" doesn't really convince me that they know how to make editing more user friendly. There are bits and pieces of other good ideas in here, but overall I don't think the general redesign would really be a significant improvement. I am a little curious about their focus on what they call the "home page" of Wikipedia, that is www.wikipedia.org. I wonder how many people ever even go to that page. I don't, I start with the main page of English Wikipedia. I suppose that people who routinely edit multiple Wikipedias might use the wikipedia.org page to select the language they want, but I wonder how many people there are who do that. Neutron (talk) 14:26, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

KILL IT!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!! <slap!> Oh, sorry. Let me try again. In my considered opinion, the web page cited above falls into the common fallacy of treating user interface design as an art (subjective and non-falsifiable) rather than as a science. The author would do well to study the works of Donald Norman, Edward Tufte and other scientists who have done research in the fields of usability engineering and information design, with an emphasis on usability in general and the tension between being appealing to novices and being productive for experienced users. Other areas of study that I might suggest are Interaction design and Human–computer interaction. Or, to put it in simpler (perhaps oversimplified) terms, Kill it. Kill it with fire. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes it does remind me of the thinking behind downgrading the system from Monobook to Vector. Also the I that looks like a J is not helpful. As for the analysis of the relative importance of the search box and the other languages, well as their suggestion showed there is only so much space that you need for a search box. They are right to call for WYSIWYG editing, and their endorsement of the main IT direction that we are following is the main lesson that I'd draw from their work. ϢereSpielChequers 14:53, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I was going to say something about the irritating font that makes the I and J look the same, until I looked at it again and noticed that they aren't exactly the same, only extremely similar. The J dips a little below the line, while the I doesn't. It's still irritating. Neutron (talk) 15:55, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I definitely think it would be good to think about getting rid of the left-hand menu. This links there (maybe with the exception of "help") are not exactly high priority either for readers or editors. Formerip (talk) 18:03, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't be so sure of that, I use them extensively, and know a number of others who probably do as well. -DJSasso (talk) 18:08, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I use the toolbox on the LHS a lot, that's about it. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:11, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I think about half the items in the left-side menu could be eliminated and not be missed by more than a few people. It does look a bit cluttered. But that hardly falls under the category of "redefining" Wikipedia. It's just the normal tweaking that goes on all the time anyway. (Though the usual progression of these things is to add menu items, not take them away.) Neutron (talk) 20:59, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I mentioned it because the redesign referenced by the OP does away with the sidebar. This improves the look of the site quite considerably, and you don't lose much in terms of functionality, because most of what's there is not that important, or else it can be moved to somewhere else on the page. Formerip (talk) 22:54, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

An issue is that we shouldn't be losing any functionality for sake of the aesthetics. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:29, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd say it's a bit artificial to separate out aesthetics and functionality. Reducing clutter, giving prime real-estate to the most important functions, getting rid of throwbacks like "random article" - these things would improve both the look and the functionality of the front page. Formerip (talk) 11:20, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we should definitely get rid of the second most used Wikipedia link after the Main Page. the wub "?!" 12:44, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what that data shows. I imagine that special:random ranks highly because it used by a lot of scripts, not because people really want quick access to things they weren't looking for. Special:Export/Robert L. Bradley, Jr has about the same number of page views if you take the data for July. Should that maybe be added to the LH menu? Formerip (talk) 13:05, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

"Random article" also gives casual users a hands-on way of getting a bit more feel for Wikipedia in its entirety... 2c, —Misty_(MORN) 13:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

By the way, I don't have a particular hatred of "random". But, as a front-page function, it seems basically designed to showcase to the reader what a surprising diversity of content we have. Once upon a time, this was something that it was useful to demonstrate, but no more. Formerip (talk) 13:38, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Misty_(MORN) 13:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I've no claim to being representative, but I do like to click it sometimes. —MistyMORN 21:35, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

As long we don't have a real parser (Wikimedia's "parser" isn't a parser) for wiki-syntax, that is able to create a well defined structure out of the page source, it is rather fruitless to illustrate design work that depends on such fundamental functionality. Step after Step. This is one step to far at the moment. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼ 署名の宣言 11:27, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I sense a little NIH. Tactically, they may have been better off engaging us first, building some hype, then presenting this, but it is what it is.

I see a lot of positive ideas here. We obviously don't have to take it or leave it as a package, but there's a lot that should be considered. The clutter-free Google main page is often praised for it's simplicity; that clearly drove some of their thinking, whether explicitly or implicitly.

I agree with [[User:FormerIP}]] that the random feature may have outlived its strength. When Wikipedia was new, it did help illustrate the breadth. Not needed any more, unless you've lived in a cave, you know about the breath of this project. Doesn't mean it has to disappear, but let's rethink the prominence.

I'm also a heavy user of the tools in the left-hand toolbar, but that doesn't mean I support the prominence of the feature on the left side of the screen. I'd like to see a usability study to find out how often those links are used by casual readers. Perhaps they could be made an option.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:55, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't criticize the ideas found in the proposal, but i think to implement the more advanced features at the front end we would need to make a step forward at the back end as well. Layout is the one thing, the technical background the other. But usually you can only create cool new features based on an improved back end. Thats why we can not implement all the great ideas at the moment. Some things would simply be impossible or extremely hard to do. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼ 署名の宣言 17:45, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

• New features to add: While we are talking new features, rather than yellow-highlighting whatever hand-selected text, I would add a custom-display feature to highlight or mask words from a filter list. So, for example, an article could be re-displayed with highlights for each of the following:

· Words to highlight: [ don't, aint, won't, wont, thier, it's, aren't, can't, he's, he'd        ]

The listed words could be highlighted in the text when an article page is displayed, or perhaps only during an edit-preview, to help spot the noted words faster. The example I gave was to detect slang contractions and such, but the list could be, instead, some search words or peacock terms such as "greatest, famous, prominent, renowned". -Wikid77 18:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

It might be hard to find, but we already have the wikilint for such stuff. Additioally some Javascript or even CSS might work. --／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼ 署名の宣言 18:51, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Google now links #subheaders

I have noticed that Google Search, as similar to Bing subheaders, now lists the subheaders of an article as direct links to each "#<subheader>" such as an entry listing WP article "Usage share of web browsers" will also list 4 subheaders, including "Summary table" as a hyperlink to section:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table

That means Google recognizes the Wikipedia pound-sign syntax of "#<subheader>" to directly link to an article section, from the list on a Google search-results page. For that reason, I have warned to be careful when wording the subheader titles, because they can receive top-billing in Bing or Google Search results. A bottom subheader worded as a veiled insult, or tendentious slant "Deceptive practices of X", could still be displayed by Google as a section-link on the search-results page. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:03, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

[Non-American readers can see an explanation of the phrase "pound sign" in the introduction of Number sign (version of 05:39, 9 August 2012).

—Wavelength (talk) 14:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)]

Or look at a bag of horsefeed in the U.S. marked as "50#" to indicate 50 pounds (22.7 kg). -Wikid77 18:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Morale and good editor retention

Jimbo - I've already posted here my view that there's a problem with our disciplinary processes trumping our wider community culture in many Wikipedia users' perceptions.

Here's an uncomfortable example of this concern: How to prevent driving away highly capable editors who've put they're backs into bringing pages to a level which can showcase the best work of Wikipedia? The issue here is real, and has nothing to do with WP:DIVA - an essay that's often quoted most inappropriately, imo. The truth is that "grinding down willing contributors" by failing to factor in other ediors' feelings can harm in more ways than one.

Personally, I don't feel that this is an issue which can be resolved by discipline (ANI etc) alone. But anyway, I wanted to bring this broad but very real question of what I'd call "good editor retention" to your attention.
Disclaimer: No intention to canvas here about infoboxes, involved individuals, or anything else. Rather, to use this concrete example to raise an issue which goes beyond individual personalities or any particular dispute.

—MistyMORN 17:51, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

• Keep spreading the good news: There are enormous burnout pressures, but just remind good editors that, overall, Wikipedia works to inform the readers. When facing wp:TAGTEAM opposition, move on to other articles, or when thwarted by extreme wp:Wikihounding, then request a wp:CLEANSTART for a new username. At times, there is the illusion that "wiki-compassion fatigue" has reached 100% everywhere, but new editors reveal the enthusiasm to create whole new sets of fascinating articles. Remember, even the "Costa Concordia disaster" was submitted for AfD-deletion on 15 January 2012, as some ho-hum shipwreck to be covered in the ship's main article. There was even a "possibility" that the shipwreck might be significant some day: "if the event is later proven to have enduring historical significance then the article can be recreated". So, even when they do not show compassion fatigue, some people are trying the compassion of others to wonder how can people not understand the notability of a shipwreck "requiring the evacuation of the 4,252 people on board" as the ship quickly capsized on an underwater ledge near deeper seawater. Rather than dwell on those frustrating aspects, just accept the level of resistance, and remember that Wikipedia still works regardless of the current opposition to progress. -Wikid77 20:44, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

The one thing I honestly feel I "get" from Wikid's post is the possible relevance of compassion fatigue. I feel that could be one candidate factor that might help explain some of the blind indifference flying around towards the sensibilities of other hard-working contributors. —MistyMORN 20:54, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

For those who are not familiar with the saga, there has been a dispute going on for many years over infoboxes. People like PigsontheWing/Andy Mabbett think they are a good thing; successive generations of editors involved in classical music articles think they are a bad thing. The article on the conductor Georg Solti was featured article of the day about two weeks ago. Andy Mabbett thought that that very day was the ideal time to revisit the dispute and insert the infobox into the article, thus spoiling the day for the editors who had worked to get the article to FA with accusations of WP:OWN etc. This was to say the list s very WP:POINTy act.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:16, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thank you. Infoboxes and the individuals in question represent the background. The point I was trying to raise was "...spoiling the day for the editors who had worked to get the article to FA with accusations of WP:OWN etc" as one obvious example of grinding down willing contributors by a lack of awareness of their normal (not divaesque) human sensibilities. I feel that's a relevant issue for retention of highly capable editors, some of whom may not be much interested in getting into meta-discussions like this. —MistyMORN 21:30, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

• If you are interested in other ideas regarding editor retention, or want to share them with people who also are concerned about it, try WP:WikiProject Editor Retention. It was founded a couple months ago and the response has been quite strong. Lots of people who think this is one of the most important concerns we face. It is all about trying to create a more positive environment here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 21:23, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations!

This user has transferred the rights to their Wikipedia contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation. (This does not affect the license.)

Hello Jimbo. After 7 months of editing anonymously, I have determined that my contributions here are not noteworthy and it's not ethical to require people to attribute 68.173.113.106 (talk) for an edit that consists merely of slapping a maintenance tag on some article. I'm permanently transferring my English Wikipedia copyrights to the Wikimedia Foundation (if that's okay with you). Though this does not imply signing any kind of exclusive deal - the contributions are still licensed under BY-SA.

And happy birthday, by the way. I would sing the song but it's copywronged. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 02:39, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

You never had a copyright to begin with. Once you hit that "Save page" button, you do irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the CC-By-SA. It was all copyleft. --MuZemike 04:46, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Not quite. Technically, yes he/she has copyright to many types of submissions (but not unoriginal maintenance tag additions), however he/she has licensed those rights. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:25, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

More opportunities for you to access free research databases!

The quest for get Wikipedia editors the sources they need is gaining momentum. Here's what's happening and what you can sign up for right now:

• Credo Reference provides full-text online versions of nearly 1200 published reference works from more than 70 publishers in every major subject, including general and subject dictionaries and encyclopedias. There are 125 full Credo 350 accounts available, with access even to 100 more references works than in Credo's original donation. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.
• HighBeam Research has access to over 80 million articles from 6,500 publications including newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines and encyclopedias. Thousands of new articles are added daily, and archives date back over 25 years covering a wide range of subjects and industries. There are 250 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.
• Questia is an online research library for books and journal articles focusing on the humanities and social sciences. Questia has curated titles from over 300 trusted publishers including 77,000 full-text books and 4 million journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, as well as encyclopedia entries. There will soon be 1000 full access 1-year accounts available. All you need is a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Sign up here.

In addition to these great partnerships, you might be interested in the next-generation idea to create a central Wikipedia Library where approved editors would have access to all participating resource donors. It's still in the preliminary stages, but if you like the idea, add your feedback to the Community Fellowship proposal to start developing the project. Drop by my talk page if you have any questions. Now, go sign up! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 18:11, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

This is so epic!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:46, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Third help request

Hi, I upload 8 photo files form [ir.voanews.com Persian VOA] in commons. Some of them take by Persian site and some of them take from video file by VOA, but non of them have not any specific note for limitation use and they publish in that site for public usage, but right now one of the commons administer candidate them for deletion (you can see them in my talk page there) these picture relate to very famous Iranian person for example Behdad Salimi up to now this article has not any picture in fa.wiki!!! please help us in fa.wiki most of Persian article has not any picture, they are very hard rule in Wikipedia for upload files and picture, i upload them from VOA you can see source that show no limitation, i want to you to do something against this severity please. sincerely. --H.b.sh (talk) 22:10, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I am afraid you are mistaken about copyright law.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:45, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

COMPLAINTS AND PROBLEMS REGARDING WIKIPEDIA USERS AND ADMINISTRATORS

Resolved: Editor posted copyvio article & was blocked to discuss first. -Wikid77 08:08, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

FIRST OF ALL SIR,MANY MANY HAPPY WRITTEN S OF THE DAY

I DO HAVE A COMPLAINT REGARDING MY ARTICLES BEING DELETED BEFORE ALMOST BEING SAVED. I WAS GOING ON DISCUSSING WITH ONE ADMINISTRATOR AND WITH ANOTHER AND SO ON WITHOUT ANY RESOLUTION.I DO HAVE A DOUBT REGARDING THIS AS IT LOOKS LIKE THE SAME PERSON WITH DIFFERENT USER NAMES ATTACKING MY ARTICLES.WHEN I ASK ONE ADMINISTRATOR HE WILL BLAME THE OTHER AND EVEN DENY HE/SHE IS NOT AN ADMINISTRATOR OR THAT HE HAD NOT TAGGED MY ARTICLE FOR DELETION AND AGAIN SAY THE OPPOSITE.EVEN MY COMPUTER GOT JAMMED WHEN I WAS WORKING WITH MY ARTICLES.I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WIKIPEDIA HAS SO MANY UNDISCLOSED USERS WHO DELETES ARTICLES OF EACH OTHERS.IT LOOKS LIKE I HAVE WASTED HOURS ON THE ARTICLE AND DECIDED NEVER TO COME TO WIKIPEDIA.THERE ARE NUMBER OF ARTICLES IN WIKIPEDIA WHICH ARE UNRELIABLE AND ARE DESTRUCTIVE AND WHICH ALSO GIVE VERY FALSE INFORMATION ABOUT FAMOUS PERSONS WHICH DEFAMES THEM(I CAN GIVE YOU LOT OF EXAMPLES).SUCH ARTICLES DO EXIST FOR A LONG TIME ......BUT A WELL ARRANGED ARTICLE OF MINE WHICH HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM VARIOUS RELIABLE SOURCES GETS DELETED.

NOW I DO HAVE A DOUBT WHETHER LOGGING IN AS A WIKIPEDIA USER MAY SOMETIMES COMPROMISE MY COMPUTERS SECURITY.I DON'T KNOW WHETHER WIKIPEDIA HAS SAFEGUARDS TO TACKLE HACKERS AND CYBER CRIMES. AND I DO SUSPECT THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE DELETING THE ARTICLES FOR THE PURPOSE OF INVITING THE USERS TO CERTAIN FORUMS TO EARN POINTS OR SOME BARN STARS.

ANOTHER THING IS THAT NONE OF MY ARTICLES OR MY USERNAME DOES NOT COME IN THE DELETION LOG. THESE ARE THE ADMINISTRATORS WHO HAVE DELETED MY ARTICLES.

IronGargoyle‎

AutomaticStrikeout‎

Nthep‎ Gogo

Dodo

Jimfbleak‎ I WOULD REQUEST YOU TAKE PROPER ACTIONS REGARDING MY COMPLAINTS,

THANKING YOU 

PAYANSARUN --Payansarun (talk) 23:26, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I see that I have been reported here for tagging this user's article for speedy deletion. Apparently, I've also been accused of sockpuppetting and lying when I accurately stated that I was not an administrator. I don't appreciate the hounding I have received from this editor, consisting of all-caps messages, often in extra large font sizes. I don't appreciate that they have questioned whether or not I am a genuine editor, especially since they are the one that has re-created this article two or three times after it was deleted. I just figured I would defend myself against the allegations above, and I am tired of being harassed by someone who claims that every problem can be solved in a friendly way". AutomaticStrikeout 23:30, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

If you wish to work on an article that is still not ready to be put out in the limelight, you can do so in your sandbox. The sandbox is the link at the top of the page that says "My Sandbox". Note that if the material is infringing on copyright, then unfortunately we can't let you edit that in your sandbox as that would be in violation of copyright law. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:51, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Wow. I tried to politely engage them, and got this lovely reply (it looks even worse if you simply look at my talkpage). Competence is required, and unfortunately they're not apparently willing to take the assistance needed to gain such competence at this time dangerouspanda 00:00, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

"I DO HAVE A DOUBT REGARDING THIS AS IT LOOKS LIKE THE SAME PERSON WITH DIFFERENT USER NAMES ATTACKING MY ARTICLES."

1. They are not your articles. Once you hit the "Save page" button, they become the community's articles and can be edited in any way deemed fit per our policies and common sense. Please read the material that is directly below the "Save page" button.
2. Regarding the quote above, I was about to ask the same of you.

--MuZemike 00:08, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

The user didn't even wait for a reply to the message he posted on my talk page (in caps) before coming here. I've also reverted the vandalism to Dangerous Panda's page Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:53, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Wow, tag a suspected copyvio and end up being mentioned here. As it all appears to have been resolved one way or another, nothing more to be said. NtheP (talk) 07:57, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Just for the record: They don't become the community's articles in this case. This 2010 AsiaNews article with Nirmala Carvalho in the byline still remains the property of its copyright owner, for instance. The person didn't really "waste hours", at least not of xyr own time. It probably took xem less than ten seconds to half-inch someone else's work using copy and paste. Quite a lot of our time was wasted, though. Uncle G (talk) 14:45, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Jimbo. First time poster, long time reader. Unsurprisingly, they have returned with a sockpuppet: Coolram. Now claiming to be a journalist and is "study user and administrators behavior in wikis around the world" and "bring this kind of a wikipedia user behaviour to the notice of various medias around the world". The original article was actually a copyright violation of multiple articles. Besides the one listed by Uncle G, it was also a copy of http://www.srranimaria.com/lifehistory.html. I suspect this is not the last sockpuppet we will see. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 05:44, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

• Also indicates need for Template:Fixcaps: That user with copyvio troubles also shows the widespread use of all-caps text. Although relatively rare, when articles have been edited to contain several long tracts of all-caps text, use {subst:fixcaps}:

• {{fixcaps|LOOKS LIKE THE /SAME /PERSON WITH DIFFERENT USER NAMES}}
    → Looks like the Same Person with different user names

By wp:Subst'ing the uppercase text, as mixed-case text, then town names, or local gods and goddesses, can be recast with lowercase letters. -Wikid77 19:03, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

It is obvious to this point that this user does not care about what Wikipedia is or does aside from scoring GoogleJuice. These are times in which I do need to don my administrator (and CheckUser) cap and take action. It disappoints me that some people just refuse to listen to any advice or warnings given to them. Perhaps it's a cultural thing or a "because I can" thing – I tend to think it's the latter more than anything else. --MuZemike 04:43, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. I spent a lot of time removing junk from a banned long term abuser who was quite candid, both on and off wiki: people like me (who removed his junk) were obviously wankers because if Wikipedia did not want his rants or his spam, he would not be allowed to post it so easily. Johnuniq (talk) 00:26, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Your user page

I don't think this makes sense: "and I am grateful for what it has offered to millions of people worldwide." I brought it here rather than trying to reword it, as it's your user page. Acoma Magic (talk) 06:40, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I actually like this edit. It was very clever! – Confession0791 ^talk 10:14, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that was cool. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 14:13, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Is that referring to that actual sentence or the previous one though? Acoma Magic (talk) 17:15, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, never mind. I read it as referring to the previous sentence but I see the word "this". Acoma Magic (talk) 17:19, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay, so is it a cool, clever line that illustrates the point very nicely, or is it somehow a prank? Let's determine if it belongs. AutomaticStrikeout 19:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see how it could be a prank. I think it's cool. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 19:01, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah me too. It even triggered it's own little edit war ;) benzband (talk) 21:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo, what do you think? That IP had a really good idea, imo. I think the edit was reverted merely because it was made by an IP. – Confession0791 ^talk 22:20, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

"I am proud of founding Wikipedia, and I am grateful for what it has offered to millions of people worldwide."

→ Wikipedia has offered free access to knowledge to those people. benzband (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't really make sense though. It could be that he's grateful that so many people use it/benefit from it. Acoma Magic (talk) 22:16, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Is this an example of verifiable-but-false?

Talk:2012_Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_controversy#Assertion_that_"Chick-fil-A_did_not_contribute_"via_WinShape"._"

Summary:

1) "Reliable sources" claim that Chick-Fil-A gives millions of dollars to anti-gay-marriage groups.

2) Someone tracked the information down and found that most of the money goes to groups that, while they oppose gay-marriage for religious reasons, actually spend their money on completely different things and don't actively work against gay marriage at all. So the widely spread claim is literally true, but misleading.

2a) (I haven't tracked down this information myself, so I'm just assuming it's correct since nobody's seriously tried to rebut it. YMMV)

3) We may not treat the misleading claim as misleading, since it comes from reliable sources, and figuring out that it is misleading is original research.

Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:33, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Sucks to be Chick-fil-a then. IMO the misleading claim would have to stay, and I personally dont find it that misleading, they ARE anti-gay groups and money is fungible. You cant say the money that Chick-fil-a gives them does not go to anti-gay activities because "most" or even 99% of the money doesn't, even if NO money goes to homophobic activities. The fact is that if the group states they are anti-gay then there you go, they are an anti-gay group, and Chick-fil-a gives money to them. It is factually true, and more importantly not OR. Now if that someone who tracked down the information gets published or someone reliable (ie- news that is not Fox news) states it then you have something to run with. But I foresee further answers, if they come, will be colored by pre-determined political and religious views.97.85.211.124 (talk) 01:09, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Money being fungible would only apply if they spent, say, 40% on opposing gay marriage and Chick-Fil-A claimed to be giving them money for the other 60% of their activities. It doesn't apply if the percentage of their total receipts spent on it is tiny or nonexistent and Chick-Fil-A's contribution to it is therefore tiny or nonexistent even when taken proportionately.

And "factually true" information can still be misleading, and in practice, a lie. "Gave millions of dollars to anti-gay-marriage groups" implies that the millions went to opposing gay marriage. Making that claim when the groups oppose gay marriage but the money went to other things, is basically a lie, despite being literally correct.

(Also, Fox News should be acceptable here. It wouldn't be quoted because it is factual, but because it is a notable opposing critical view. And if we can independently determine that they are being accurate this time, we should be able use them as a secondary source anyway, regardless of whether they are generally reliable.) 208.65.89.142 (talk) 09:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

"The misleading claim would have to stay." I find this totally and completely at odds with the purpose and spirit of Wikipedia. Deli nk (talk) 10:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I do think this is a very good example. Stepping back from this particular example, let's look at what type of example it is. Many of the past examples that people have put forward have to do with specific simple errors like a date of birth. Here we have a problem that consists largely of excitement-driven bias rather than outright simple error.

I have a friend who spends a lot of time working on issues relating to human rights in North Korea. He's also associated with the Catholic Church. If his biography in Wikipedia said that he's "associated with groups promoting an anti-gay-marriage" agenda, that'd be undeniably true, therefore. However, I have no idea about his personal position on gay marriage (probably opposed, since he's a devout Catholic) nor is it relevant to his work or career in any way. His affiliation with the Catholic Church is not based on or motivated by issues relating to homosexuality.

At the moment this is not an issue, but with the right combination of unfortunate events, it could be. And that's what happened in the case of Chick-Fil-A. The CEO made a statement in an interview opposing gay marriage and suddenly his entire work is cast in the light of something that, as far as the overall facts show, he's had very little to do with. He's been known to be a conservative Christian for many years. (At one point, and possibly still today - I don't eat there - there were Bibles on display in the restaurants.) His charitable giving, personally and through the company, is substantial. And that giving, as far as I can tell, has had virtually nothing to do with advocating gay marriage. He apparently has an (unsurprising) view on the matter, but it is not his main issue, and his giving is not based on or motivated by issues relating to homosexuality.

What can Wikipedia do about this? Thoughtful judgment and quiet reflection on the discussion page by serious people who may be on different sides of the fundamental issue should lead us to a presentation that avoids the bias found in the over-excited media reports. This consensus of thoughtful Wikipedians is an important part of our process. As I have said many times in the past couple of years, we are not transcription monkeys. We need facts from reliable sources, but we can and must exercise editorial judgment to ensure a well-rounded consensus of what the facts are.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:31, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

This is an endemic problem on BLPs especially - (see the Rick Warren mediation as an example - where I argued that where a person is a member of a religion, that the BLP should not stress tenets of that religion in the BLP as the result may mislead the reader, and that only where the person specifically and notably disagrees with his stated religion should it be relevant in the BLP) Similarly I would suggest that where a person donates to any organization, that specific acts or positions of that organization do not belong in the article. The "silly season" business is still well out of hand on Wikipedia - the proper task is to make a lasting and accurate article for a reader a century hence to read, and not to mislead readers as to anyone's actual acts or words. Heck, some would argue that donating to the BSA is a "homophobic" act, etc. Collect (talk) 12:18, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Well said. I'd add a few caveats, though. A religious tenet is also relevant in a BLP if the LP is performing significant public advocacy or notable activity on the basis of that tenet (i.e. if Bryce Harper took two years off to do missionary work). Likewise, donations to an organization should mention the most basic descriptor of the group that's available (i.e. "so-and-so donates to the human rights group Amnesty International") without going into any more details about what the group does or stands for. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 14:12, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Alas - some seem to find "significance" at a very low level - vide the Cathy case mentioned above. Especially, as I said, during "silly season." Thus I would prefer to say "no" than to say "well if any editor finds it significant" for such claims. YMMV. Collect (talk) 14:22, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I agree. I just think that there's exceptions. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 14:36, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Something related that came up in this: I believe Jimbo has suggested in the past that in a verifiable-but-false case, a source that repeats a demonstrably untrue claim is, by definition, not a reliable source for that claim, even if it's reliable for other things. I suggested that that is what should be done here and someone replied that we cannot do this since Wikipedia "goes by the consensus of reputable sources. For an editor to decide which of such reputable sources is "unreliable" is itself OR." Ken Arromdee (talk) 14:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I rather think that is an unsubtle analysis. While it is still RS, the issue is whether the information has been properly contextualized in the article. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:07, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I find Jimbo's response a bit puzzling implying that it is not very noteworthy/newsworthy the homophobic stance of Chick-fil-a. It is the company for whom the CEO was speaking for. He did not say "my personal beliefs" he spoke FOR the company, as it's CEO (and I believe it was his own father who started the company). We are supposed to have quiet reflection and stew on this... Jim Hensen Company, owner of the Muppets didnt sit and reflect, they DID something, the pulled their contract with Chick-fil-a and took that last check from Chick-fil-a and donated it to a GLAAD. We instantly create articles over news events that happen that very day basically violating notnews, we create articles about ongoing news events before we can see how they play out and if they really are encyclopedic, but THIS matter... we should reflect and be careful and not "mislead". To say this is a "silly season" game being played, oh I agree. But from I believe it to be the other position that is playing a game. Chick-fil-a donated to an organization that lobbied the US Congress to not fund change to anti-gay laws in other countries... say money isnt fungible again and claim Chick-fil-a's donations arent motivated by what such organizations stand for.97.85.211.124 (talk) 00:23, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

• Even major misunderstandings can be notable: While the long-term goal is to "report the truth" of the entire matter, all the current controversy can be considered as "notable" to justify a subarticle. However, I would avoid mention of too much in the main article, "Chick-fil-a" as being a somewhat fringe topic. Here in the U.S. last week, there were long lines of cars at Chick-fil-a restaurants on 1 August 2012, as support for whatever they were supporting. The news coverage of those events will justify a subarticle about the related nation-wide events in the U.S. In the subarticle, then a detailed balance of the various 1-versus-2 viewpoints can be explained, without wp:UNDUE weight within the main company article. Long-term, then the text in the subarticle can be updated if the sources misjudged the events, without wp:GRANDstanding of those opinions in the main article. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:54, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the news coverage of the lines was de minimis which means we likely should not give any weight to the issue pretty much at all. A 90days-wonfer does not warrant Wikipedia coverage. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:40, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Emotions

Hi Jimbo, I heard you are a fan of Ayn Rand. I am too. Yet imho her flaw was the handling of emotions.

Objectivism is great, and Wikipedia is great referring to objective facts. A flaw of Wikipedia is perhaps the handling of emotions in the community, which *could* be a reason why there are so few female contributors.

Perhaps the flaw of Ayn Rand repeats in Wikipedia.

May I suggest to contact Nathaniel Branden, the former partner of Ayn Rand (and the person in her life who was the prototype of John Galt)? He could have some ideas for the handling of emotions in the WP community.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fan4524 (talk • contribs) 11:29, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

• Also mentioned OOD: In the past, I have noted the significance of Oppositional defiant disorder (OOD), as helping to explain some hostile reactions around here. However, I think Jimbo will also appreciate your insights above. Some of the veiled insults against Jimbo have been very severe, and many people do not even imagine that he is an experienced admin, as well as an active editor with over 11 years working on Wikipedia, who still comes here to offer advice, along with following various daily forums. One British user noted about users not showing proper respect, here, that they do not respect anyone, so their anger is not about anything that he has done. There is a joke about "P.M.S." in men: "Plain Mean Son-of-a-bitch". Perhaps some people think hostile reactions are due to real-world disputes, but many are inventing "windmills to battle" while most of Wikipedia is happily editing thousands of interesting articles. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:28, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Rand's fundamental flaw is her rejection of "lifeboat ethics" which absolves cooperation from personal responsibility. In reality, the Earth is one big lifeboat, and the deleterious effects of pollution, graft, income inequality, lack of access to education, the emergence of multiple drug resistant communicable diseases, infrastructure shortfalls, lack of access to preventative healthcare, and capital flight are real, affecting real people -- including Wikipedia editors and readers, far more than intellectual property laws in almost all cases. If they aren't dealt with with "lifeboat ethics" then they cause very serious problems. There's simply no way to use private property rights to address air pollution or tuberculosis outbreaks. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 23:04, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

TfD for new Cite_web/smart

I am contacting you, per wp:CANVAS, after contacting mostly negative or positive editors, as a user previously neutral about quick, fast citation templates, in considering the latest TfD discussion. In this case, the template {Cite_web/smart} is finally the big upgrade to entirely replace {Cite_web} with a faster version that carefully checks the parameters to only invoke the massive {Citation/core} for any rare parameters, else quickly formats a cite. See TfD of 11 August 2012:

• WP:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_August_11#Template:Cite_web.2Fsmart

This notice is only an FYI, as announcing the discussion under way. Feel free to oppose the template, support the template, ignore the discussion, or even delete this message. The TfD just started, so there should be, at least, 7 days to consider the issues. Thanks. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:32, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Bright Line

I figured this was as good a place as any to let folks know about a few mundane projects intended to make the Bright Line more practical and obvious for COIs.

• A company like Rusk (hair care) can't use AfC, because a two-sentence article already exists. So Nouniquenames and I teamed up to expand the {{request edit}} template. It now has a rustic AfC-like system with decline templates and a special template for requesting large improvements. This should make it easier for volunteers to provide standardized feedback, without becoming enslaved by the COI to improve it themselves, while giving COIs an alternative to unwatched Talk pages.

• Thanks to a lot of help from BigNate37 and feedback in the village pump and RfC we've created a template intended as either an edit-notice or a Talk page template on company articles. It asks editors to be more cautious about editing on an extant organization, encourages them to watch it for NPOV violations and provides links/advice for COIs regarding COIN, {{request edit}}, etc. This is like beaming the "Financial COI" section of WP:COI and other important links directly to the article.

• A quick guide to {{request edit}}

• Dennis Brown, myself and others have worked on a draft of a new essay, though it is very similar to WP:PSCOI.

A lot of these are still a work-in-progress, so I welcome feedback and improvements. This is just some in-the-mud, getting our hands dirty kinds of projects to make the Bright Line more practical for COIs and volunteers. As a COI editor myself, I'm partially devoted for the sake of using the tools/processes personally. User:King4057 (EthicalWiki) 22:57, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

It's me again!

Anyway Jimbo, I'm wondering what you think about this new way to get rid of Vandalism (technically). By creating a page that's MEANT TO BE vandalized. Only that page is allowed to, much less encouraged, to be Vandalized. Thanks, --Jayemd (talk) 04:29, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

We already have that. It's called the Sandbox. Looie496 (talk) 04:39, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Advertising

Instead of advertising, why not ask people to visit an alternate site when they want to make purchases through certain online companies? You could have affiliate links to numerous companies and products. If everyone reading Wikipedia were to do this just once a year, you would have more than enough money to fund your operation. Wikipedia remains free of ads and you still get to benefit from them. What could possibly be wrong with this?74.100.47.237 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:31, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It's hard to understand concretely what you are suggesting. Ask people how? What sort of alternate site? Which online companies? Affiliate links implemented how? Looie496 (talk) 15:39, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It's just another form of advertising, and would prostitute and compromise this project just as badly as if we had enormous "Upgrade to Windows 8 Immediately!" banners across the top and bottom of every page. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:44, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• Might attract trouble like bees to syrup: Although a separate website seems like a safe alternative, I wonder about a slippery slope, where once Wikipedia is seen as offering some type of adverts, then marketing people might expand efforts to influence readers by modifying articles to remind users of the related advert system, or more people might actively lobby for even more ads ("camel's nose under the tent"), because the current allowed adverts might then attract greater pressure for more adverts, or "add 6 side-menu options to connect with the advert website". Remember, few other websites allow the users to write "sourced text" about any notable product or company that might appear in the related ads. Google Search still works because it is nearly impossible to flood the Google-Search results with more than 6 lines about any product. Perhaps compare with other websites which allow writing about the displayed ads. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:45, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

There is an article "Camel's nose".—Wavelength (talk) 19:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

help

jimbo user Electriccatfish2 has been hacking on to me and my friends accounts please block him asap. thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moshecarroll123 (talk • contribs) 19:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Um, can you give us some examples? You seem to have been inactive for a couple of months before raising this issue and I don't see any reprehensible activity on Electriccatfish2's part. AutomaticStrikeout 19:23, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

What? Electric Catfish 20:36, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, looks like there aren't any examples. Just someone throwing around accusations. Catfish, do you remember this name at all? AutomaticStrikeout 20:38, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I see where EC put up a vandalism notice on this user's talk page. Methinks that might speak to Moshecarroll123's motivations. Ebikeguy (talk) 20:43, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but that goes back to June, so I'm not sure why he waited this long. AutomaticStrikeout 20:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It could be that the editor didn't log in again until now, then saw the message and didn't understand that anybody could edit his talk page. Ryan Vesey 21:05, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll remove the warning. Electric Catfish 21:07, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

July editors return after June drop

The active-editor data for July 2012 is still showing a base of nearly 34,000 active editors (33,680 >4 edits), with a core of 3,410 highly active >99 edits/month. After a slight seasonal drop in June (vacations?), the editor-count levels returned back in July near the May levels for the first time in 4 years. Typically, July usually loses over 1,300-3,000 editors lower than June, not return back with 158 editors less than May (33,838 active, 3377 busy in May).

Again, something big is happening out there, similar to the analogy of waves at sea losing the high up/down levels, as when passengers on the R.M.S. Titanic reported the sea was so calm, they could see the stars reflected on the ocean's surface. Later sea reports of the massive, surrounding field ice explained why typical waves could not move past the regional ice. The broader area was surrounded by other icebergs and field ice. With Wikipedia editors, some big factor is causing editors to remain at current levels, rather than leave by the thousands. The seasonal pattern had been thousands fewer editors in May/June/July, to increase later in August/September, but for over a year, the seasonal reductions have been less of a drop, and now only 158 fewer editors lower than May 2012.

• Current editor stats: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm

Perhaps the current editors represent a more worldwide, global balance, so that local vacation seasons have little impact on editor totals, or perhaps more people are editing Wikipedia during vacation trips, or something. The June drop was more typical, as down 1,176 (33,838-32,662), but the large rebound gain in July is a total shock, compared to the typical July drop of 1,300-3,000 in the 3 prior years. Of course, the upcoming August levels should reflect higher activity for the 2012 Summer Olympics, yet I do not see that as a reason to explain 3,000 more active editors in July than typical, but perhaps so. Anyway, the August active-editor data will provide more insights, regarding the Olympics articles. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes we are seeing a consistent pattern here, the size of the editing community is broadly stable, perhaps with a very gentle decline. Most indices are positive - in terms of readership we are growing faster than the Internet. As far as I'm aware there are very few really troubling indicators, apart of course from our steadily declining number of active admins. So far this year we are down 38, and the number of new admins looks set to follow the pattern of dropping by a third year on year. If the community was stable you'd expect to get an ever increasing proportion becoming admins - if anything the reverse applies. ϢereSpielChequers 17:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Hoping someone does something with WP:RFA2012. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 22:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Not complicated. As more interesting, creative, editors are driven away by bureaucracy obsessed rule-tards, editing patterns will become more and more dominated by the type of person who believes 61mph in a 60mph limit deserves a dangerous driving ticket. Consistency of mediocrity will be the result. :) Egg Centric 01:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Gentlemen, I hate to induce a panic or seem rude but...regardless of what the numbers may show, the participation levels of the pedia are waning. I'm not sure how the calculations are derived but let me pose a couple of things I have noticed. RFA's are way down, Participation in areas like Featured article and Good article reviews are down, admin backlogs are up, participation in WikiProject's is significantly down. The numbers may show that the number of editors are stable with a stable number of edits, but the overall participation is down. You can see it and feel it as you move about the pedia. Less and less new faces, more and more beauracracy and politics and I agree with Egg centric. Kumioko (talk) 02:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Since our heyday there has been a dramatic shift from improving articles to tagging them for others to improve. There has been a decline in time consuming complex work such as FAC reviewing and actually adding referenced content, which has been masked by the total number of edits being broadly stable because of the rise of the templaters. However I'm not sure whether the rise of the templaters was a transition which we went through some time around 06/07 and that the pedia has been stable since, or whether it is part of a continuing trend. If reviewing and WikiProjects are still in decline then perhaps the drift towards templating is continuing. Part of the solution would be easy, templates such as orphan and uncategorised could and should be replaced with automatically generated hidden cats. ϢereSpielChequers 09:11, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

RFA2012 ready for RFC?

Jimmy, do you think the time is right to refactor WP:RFA2012 into one big 60-day RFC with all its different proposals up for discussion with the understanding that any resulting set(s) of conflicting proposals winning approval would face each other in a subsequent run-off RFC to decide among them, and another RFC six months down the road to decide whether to return to today's status quo? There are lots of great ideas in there but without someone senior such as yourself opening a community-wide discussion on which of them to approve, I doubt anyone will. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 02:14, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I personally see little point in an RFC. Everyone knows the RFA process is broken but the problem is there is no way to achieve a consensus to change it or what to change it too. Furthermore there probably never will be. Its unfortunate really that the pedia is held hostage to the very principles that make it great but its unfortunately true. Kumioko (talk) 02:41, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The point of an RFCs is to determine and achieve consensus in just such situations, is it not? I think the larger problem is that policy RFC participation is strongly correlated with the seniority of the admin(s) opening them, and RFA2012 has an abundance of choices. If I tried to open it, it would probably be ignored because it's too much work. If you opened it and announced it, it would probably get a couple dozen respondents across the several separate proposals. If Jimbo opened it or asked other admins to, it would get several dozen in a few days. There is plenty of reason to believe that admin shortages are causing most if not all of the larger issues you mention above. Bureaucracy and politics are worse when people have less overall time to devote to measured solutions. When ANI is a banfest, nobody wins. When admins have the time to show people the ropes, everyone wins. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 08:04, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The current situation is unstable, the number of "active" admins has been falling for years and unless we reform RFA it will eventually get to the point where panic measures have to be taken. I would prefer that we reformed things in good time, but just as it took years to convince people that we had a drought at RFA it seems to be taking years to convince people that the question is how they want RFA to change not whether they want it to change. But I'm not sure that this month is the best time for an RFC. Part of the problem is that we don't have good metrics of the situation, we don't know what proportion of our active admins are doing as much admin work as they are comfortable with, are doing a bit more than they'd like or indeed would happily do more but always find AIV etc well manned when they look there. We don't even have stats as to how many admins are active as admins - the definition of an "active" admin is entirely based on edits. It is clear from the stats of admin actions by admin that a small number of very active admins do the bulk of the deletions, blocks and other admin actions. But we don't know how many very active admins we currently have nor how that number has been changing over time. With better metrics we'd have an idea as to what our safety margin is, but measuring these things is complex. Some admin functions need to be done almost immediately and others can wait for the US evening. The likelihood is that we will be getting hours at AIV without admins long before we get days go by when there are insufficient admins. If we had better metrics on the situation it would greatly help the debate, if we thought we had a couple of years before big gaps emerged at AIV then some of us could relax a bit and some of the defenders of the status quo might shift their position. So my preference would be to get some research done and then hold an RFC. ϢereSpielChequers 10:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Update. Of the 10.8 million logged admin actions done by over 2000 admin accounts since Dec 2004, approx 4 million have been done by just fifty admin accounts. Some of those fifty are no longer active, others are no longer admins. I need to dig further and to filter out admin bots. But there is already one marked contrast to WP:EDITS, whilst the editors with the highest ever edit counts are almost all still active, several of our most active admins are now inactive or desysopped. ϢereSpielChequers 10:54, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

A huge amount of research was done for WP:RFA2011. I don't see any neeed to rehash it all, other than perhaps to update some of the stats in the dozens of tables. What I have noticed, is that there appears to be a trend that RfA may have cleaned itself up. Time will tell, and until it does, I see no panic. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec)Thats because Wikipedia IMO has grown into a culture of block first and ask questions later, the RFA process has become a gruelling gauntlet, etc. Its ironic that people with very high edit counts who edit a wide spectrum of things get the most heat from people. A lot more people see what they do due to a combination of things and that attracts criticism, jealousy and arguments. I have seen people blocked or desysopped in recent weeks for creating a simple good faith redirect, enforcing 3RR, article ownership, enforcing copyright, performing minor edits, etc. Its also become nearly impossible to garner any kind of consensus (my RFA unfortunately being one of the a rare exceptions) on controversial topics. Wikipedia is in a sad state. Feel free to open the RFC mentioned above but I just doubt it will get a consensus. What its going to take is someone from the board, Jimbo, etc. to just direct a change. Whether that change be to make it easier to become/ remove admins abilities, to break the admin tasks into more groups like was done to rollbacker and filemover, etc. Probably multiple ideas in fact will be needed. I'm sorry to say that but IMO that's what its going to take. I sincerely hope I am wrong. Kumioko (talk) 11:07, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

@Kudpung. There was a lot of research into the RFA process, patterns of questioning and criteria, but not as far as I can see research into the size of the admin cadre, how much spare capacity we currently have and when that is likely to be exhausted. The only metrics we have are the number of successful RFAs and the number of "active" admins. I've been keeping tabs on both since long before RFA2011 and I've long come to the conclusion that neither is a good measure as to how long we will continue to have sufficient admins if we don't reform. If I've missed it and that was covered then I'd be very grateful for a link. ϢereSpielChequers 13:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Techcrunch gives a nice nod to our "exemplary" TOS

Excerpt: "Project lead Hugo Roy tells me that he considers Wikipedia to be an exemplary service, though it hasn’t been rated by TOS;DR. He says both Wikipedia’s short, clear summary of its TOS and its practice of soliciting feedback from users before a change in terms should be widely adopted as best practices for the web."

Source: [1] Ocaasi ^{t | c} 14:55, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

What would we need to do to allow the creation and survival of this article?

In 2010, I left a message on your Talk page (though, as an IP. Seems I forgot to login?), titled "Hello, goodsir." After a single response from you, and from others, there were no more responses. The BYOND (http://www.byond.com) community remains without an article. Mostly, due to the fact that every time a user on BYOND has tried to create such an article, it's been deleted for lack of notability, as stated in the previous message, two years ago. BYOND is a community of developers, gamers, and has its own programming language, it's an engine for games - it's been around since the mid 90s. It's never achieved fame, nor much notability. There is apparently a single BYOND game that has an article, NEStalgia created by a BYOND member, using the BYOND engine. Unfortunately, unlike NEStalgia, BYOND itself has never had widespread advertising. Somehow, the lack of the engine being known to the interwerbs has stopped us from being part of the "sum of all human knowledge". If an article for BYOND was created again, and again, with little to no sources outside of the website itself, what would we have to do to stop it from being labeled as 'Lack of notability'? Tako (talk) 23:08, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

• I made some small tweaks to the NEStalgia article, such as changing out the word "touted." I think it's interesting and worth noting that the game uses small servers to create small, tight-nit communities.

  As for BYOND, we can't create an article on a subject that hasn't been covered by credible, independent, sources. This isn't just about whether the subject has achieved "fame" but our practical ability to create an article based on information from impartial and reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

  In my opinion, this does create a problem with no obvious solution that organizations that pass WP:CORP are the ones that invest in public relations. User:King4057 (EthicalWiki) 23:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

  • Why is BYOND not credible when many independent resources have reported of a creation (NEStalgia) which was created with this engine? 24.147.167.99 (talk) 01:06, 13 August 2012 (UTC)Cloud_Magic, user of BYOND for 4 years
    • Kingt0457 said credible sources. The more usual term is reliable sources. If you want to know why humans document one thing and not the other, then the humans who did that are the people to talk to. Go and ask the people out in the world outwith Wikipedia why they wrote about NEStalgia but not about BYOND. That's not something that an encyclopaedia or encyclopaedists can authoritatively answer on their behalves. Uncle G (talk) 10:34, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
• As in my post from 2010, I mentioned an article, A+. This article, also on a programming language, has one external link, and one reference. Both are from the same website - the language's own website. I don't see the difference between this article and BYOND, besides for the fact that that A+ is just a language, while BYOND is an engine, community website, AND language. Tako (talk) 01:12, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
  • You were told the answer to this, by two separate people, back in April 2009, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/BYOND (2nd nomination). Continuing in the same vein whilst completely ignoring what you were told three years ago isn't going to get you very far. As is complaining here. You're in completely the wrong place. Jimbo Wales doesn't go around reliably documenting heretofore undocumented gaming engines and programming languages. And it isn't within the remit of the Wikipedia project to do so. Go and spend three years talking to people outwith Wikipedia who do document this stuff — who do collect, fact check, write down, review, and publish knowledge in these fields outwith Wikipedia. The world isn't exactly short of identifiable people, with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy, who write about computers. That approach to getting yourselves into the reliably documented general corpus of human knowledge will work. (Moreover, it will work even if Wikipedia doesn't catch up later. It might not even take three years, either.) Short-circuiting the entire process by coming straight to the tertiary source end point doesn't. Uncle G (talk) 10:34, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
    • That's all true, but I can't help but notice that the OP raises a good point that many of us deal with every day. Notable topics can be ignored by sources. In the US, the practice of ignoring topics is the highest form of censorship, and our major media outlets have elevated it to an art form. I can give numerous examples, but the point remains, there are notable topics that cannot necessarily be judged by mainstream secondary sources due to a dearth of coverage. Viriditas (talk) 10:49, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
      • One only comes to that conclusion by making the erroneous assumption that "mainstream media" and "reliable sources" are synonymous and identical. That's a false generalization made by Wikipedia novices who see so much of our (pop culture) content sourced to newspapers that they think that all content is to be sourced that way. This error from novices comes up with a depressing regularity in AFD, and time and again AFD patrollers explain that it's identifiable people with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy and credentialled experts writing seriously with peer review in their fields of expertise that Wikipedia needs, and that our guidelines clearly talk about.

        I'll say it again: The world isn't exactly short of identifiable people, with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy, who write about computers. That does not mean just newspapers sold at the tabac/presse. There's everything from Ziff-Davis publications to Communications of the ACM, with a whole lot in between. Despite the facts of our presence on Jimbo Wales' user talk page and of the existence of Seth Finkelstein, there really is more in this world than The Guardian. ☺

        Uncle G (talk) 11:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

        • I'm not sure what you're on about, but reliable sources are mainstream by definition, so you're wrong. Ziff-Davis is a mainstream publisher as is the Association for Computing Machinery, but their publications may be oriented towards specialists and specialist topics rather than a mainstream audience. While it is true that specialist (niche) sources may also be considered reliable, reliable specialist sources in wide use on Wikipedia are for the most part considered part of the mainstream. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the mainstream media means newspapers, but that's a mistake on your part. There are quite a number of niche market publications that may also be considered reliable, but the criteria for usage is much narrower. In any event, none of this has anything to do with my comment which concerns the lack of coverage of certain topics by mainstream sources and how Wikipedia deals with it. For example, there are notable books written by notable authors that have received little coverage, making it difficult (but not impossible) to write about them. There are also notable events that have received less than optimal coverage. This does not imply that they did receive coverage in specialist sources as you erroneously inferred. It means, that they did not. To summarize, there are notable topics that have little mainstream coverage. For example, the longest serving Independent member of Congress, Bernie Sanders, wrote a book in 2011 called The Speech. The book is basically a transcript of an 8.5 hour speech he gave in 2010. While the speech did receive a little coverage, his book received almost none except for one or two blurbs here or there; it was virtually ignored. Whether this is because he is branded as a socialist or if it is because he has come out strongly against the corporations who fund the media reviews, nobody will ever know, but if one were to attempt to write about this book (which does in fact cover a notable incident) it would be very difficult because the mainstream media made a decision to ignore it. Viriditas (talk) 12:47, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
          • Facepalm "notable events that have received less than optimal coverage" is a simplistic fallacy; coverage is what makes an event notable. I'd also take a dim view on something that is only covered in specialist/niche sources, as that is essentially what WP:PORNBIO was all about for several years until recent tightening, that the porn industry handing out the obscurest of awards was all that was needed to justify a starlet's article. If you want an article on an event or group, then you're going to have to find some actual reliable sources that cover it, otherwise it simply isn't worthy for inclusion in an encyclopedia. Tarc (talk) 12:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
            • That is simply not true. The event received "optimal" coverage, but the book did not. The book documents the event, and the author and publisher are both notable. There are lots of examples like this, particularly when it comes to products such as video games, recordings, books, etc. A dearth of coverage does not mean a topic lacks notability or cannot be included. Viriditas (talk) 12:56, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
              • A dearth of coverage means precisely that. This isn't 2006, where "keep, I like it" was more than sufficient enough of a vote to retain an article at a deletion discussion. Tarc (talk) 13:03, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
                • When you have to use a "facepalm", you've already lost the argument. We have notable topics that lack mainstream, "optimal" coverage in every facet of this encyclopedia. From books to films, from recordings to historical events, we consider these topics notable based on different criteria. The community who inhabits AfD has consistently chosen to keep poorly sourced articles because the bar for inclusion is set very low. Viriditas (talk) 13:07, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
                  • An "argument" implies equal sides that had a reasonable chance at coming out on top, but I'm afraid you never did. This section was begun by a user who like thousands of other users over the years thinks that the Thing He Likes(tm) is special, and he is disconcerted to find that others out there don't quite see it that way. If there are reliable sources out there to support BYOND, then find them. If they cannot be found, then the article stays deleted. Simple as that. Pointing out that there are many current poor articles with poor to no sourcing doesn't exactly create a persuasive argument for retention of this article, but rather just highlights the fact that we still have a lot of clean-up to do around here of non-notable, trivial fluff. Tarc (talk) 15:19, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you are confusing things, if an event is notable (i.e significant coverage in reliable independent sources) we can use the book as a primary source about the event. The book itself though (or any source) has no claims to notability if no one has been bothered to write about it (it is not worthy of note as evidenced by the lack of sources discussing it in any detail) to satisfy WP:GNG etc. If only the author is notable then there may be some sources which mention he wrote the book. Significant coverage isn't required for article content itself, just due weight (although what is required varies article to article). IRWolfie- (talk) 13:06, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Significant coverage isn't required for article content, but events and things have a very low threshold for inclusion. Historically, a "dearth" of sources has not led to a round of deletions on AfD, and we have thousands of poorly sourced articles at every level. In the example of Sanders that I raised, reliable sources have mentioned that he published the book, but to my knowledge, except for one or two sources, there are virtually no book reviews and little mainstream coverage of the book after it was published. However, the event the book refers to is notable and has coverage. Essentially, it is a primary source and could be used in an article about the event (which has more source coverage), but it would be difficult to support creating a separate article about the book, even though the author, publisher, and topic are already notable. Viriditas (talk) 13:12, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why the book should be notable just because the author and topic are notable; sometimes notable people write books that just have zero impact. Also, bear in mind being non-notable doesn't mean mentioning the book in the authors article is undue, it just means an article can't be made which is dedicated to the book. Notable scientists write many articles and books; we don't expect them all to be notable, or even necessarily any of them. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:13, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I find that non-mainstream sources often have the deepest and most academic content for creating a comprehensive and neutral article. Unlike Wikipedia, the media is paid by the click, which provides incentive to be sensational and they have to churn out many stories a day quickly, which leads to over-simplification of complex issues. But, for small organizations looking to muster past the WP:CORP criteria, media is the most likely source and PR is the most likely way for them to achieve such sources.

This is somewhat problematic, because it creates a favoratism towards companies that do PR. The notability criteria asks for sources "without incentive, promotion, or other influence by people connected to the topic matter." However most media coverage, especially for smaller organizations, is "influenced by people connected to the topic." A reporter doing 5 stories a day will basically re-write the press release and slap in a couple quotes. This isn't representative of the type of independent investigation we expect based on the criteria for reliable sources. User:King4057 (EthicalWiki) 16:00, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by mainstream. For example, monograms and other peer reviewed academic sources such as journals are considered mainstream sources for notability; they are just select in their audience. I think the issue in this particular case (the one by the original poster) is that there is a complete lack of reliable sources. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:24, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Complete lack of reliable sources, outside of the website itself, yes. The problem is that the website has never had advertising outside of forum posts, and being spread by word-of-mouth. No one documents the website's history besides the users of the website. I'm pretty sure the most of BYOND that exists outside of BYOND that'd be 'notable' would be being listed on http://www.stroustrup.com/applications.html, Bjarne Stroustrup's list of applications written in C++. Oh man. The guy who invented C++ knows us. Does this constitute Notability? If not, what the heck does? There are articles that shouldn't exist on Wikipedia, and yet still exist, but, we can't have one, because BYOND doesn't exist outside of itself. Tako (talk) 18:21, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It's a one line mention. I think it's a bad idea if we lower the bar and allow people to stitch articles together from forum posts, blogs etc. Why not just create your own wiki on wikia etc? IRWolfie- (talk) 22:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Do you really think it'll hurt Wikipedia to just let it have an article? I don't understand why it's such a big deal. BYOND clearly exists, everything that was in the article, before it was deleted, was verifiable. Why can't the website itself be used as a reference? Tako (talk) 00:14, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

There are billions (yes billions) of things which can be shown to exist. Every single website in existence can be shown to exist. So can every single book, every single article, every single newspaper article, the respective authors, the respective companies, etc etc. By setting the bar so low, anyone and anything could be mentioned with no hope of future quality. IRWolfie- (talk) 11:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

So, an article about a ~20 year old Game engine will somehow kill Wikipedia forever? By not allowing BYOND to have an article, you limit its spread to other sources who can't find BYOND on their own, thus not allowing it to have any references in the future. Tako (talk) 17:40, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes, the WP:NOHARM argument. An encyclopedia is neither a blog nor a creator of original content. It chronicles what others have said about a particular person, place, or product. Tarc (talk) 17:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

For a second there, I thought an encyclopedia collected facts and information about a topic, you know "human knowledge" as Jimmy Wales says. Something that is clearly not being allowed to happen here. Apparently, Wikipedia has a history of deleting articles game engines and MUDs. Even Richard Bartle, the father of the MUD, pointed this out on one of his blogs. (Except those articles ended up being restored, because they managed to find sources.) If the standards of Wikipedia allow the deletion of a multitude of articles due to lack of "notability" - yet are completely verifiable, if you actually go and check against the Engine, or read anything about it on the actual website, then the standards are clearly wrong, and need to be rewritten. Tako (talk) 18:32, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

"Except those articles ended up being restored, because they managed to find sources." - Great...so now you understand. Find some sources? --Onorem♠Dil 18:52, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

And the issue remains that none exist outside of the website itself that would be considered 'good sources'Tako (talk) 18:58, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the problem then. You started this discussion by asking "What would we need to do to allow the creation and survival of this article?" The answer is find 3rd party sources that discuss the topic in detail. --Onorem♠Dil 19:04, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

That's a funny coincidence; I had initially wrote a longer response discussing "nerd lore" and used MUDs as a specific example, as I was once quite involved with that scene, particularly DikuMUD. Nerds (and I am one of those, so the term is not being use derogatorily) have niches, niches about things that they love. The problem with nerd-lore is that much of it doesn't extend beyond their own little sphere of of interest. There's much I could write about the history of DikuMUDS, all of it would be verifiable but since no reliable sources make an account of it, it isn't notable to the general public. Being notable to me doesn't cut it. That's the same boat that this BYOND thing is in; it exists, we all can verify that it exists, but it simply isn't important enough to have been written about by reliable sources. Yes, the Wikipedia is a collective of human knowledge, but not every scrip and scrap of everything that has ever haappened or existed, anywhere at any time. We, editors, discern by our guidelines and policies, what is worth writing about. Otherwise, the Wikipedia would sink under the weight of the banal and the trivial. Every dude's garage band who once played at his cousin's bar mitzfah, every web forum that spawned some forgettable meme, every woman who falls into a mall fountain while texting. Strive to be better than an electronic amalgamation of everything. Tarc (talk) 19:03, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

You are making a terrible false equivalency. You can't really compare software that, at the moment of writing and has over 5 thousand users online, has spawned hundreds of games to a garage band. Using your own DikuMUD as an example, besides being better sourced than the old Byond article was, why would it be any more relevant than BYOND? Honestly all I see is a bunch of Editors conflating "Not notable" with "I don't care for it". If the argument was purely about sources, I could certainly see an argument for not restoring the page until it is in proper shape, but if Byond isn't notable by your standards, then there are hundreds of video game or computer science based articles that you should probably mark for deletion as well. Techgamer (talk) 19:31, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFF. That's about deletion discussion points and not creating, but the point stands. Yes. There are very likely many articles that should be marked for deletion. Feel free to do so as you run across them. "besides being better sourced?" The fact that it can be sourced (to a 3rd party) is the entire point. It is purely about sources. --Onorem♠Dil 19:36, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

And I'm agreeing with that. I'm sure that there are sources that could be used that are just fine. I just dislike the idea of completely dismissing the subject because it, by it's nature isn't going to have nearly as many usable sources than a similar corporate or academic platform would have. Techgamer (talk) 19:40, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Nearly as many...or a single one? The topic isn't being dismissed because it has less 3rd party sourcing. It's being deleted because, to my knowledge, nobody has ever shown here a single reliable source that indicates what makes it notable. --Onorem♠Dil 19:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

http://mmorpg-info.org/fun/byond-a-great-engine/
http://getryan.com/tag/byond
http://www.indiegamemag.com/freeware-game-pick-nestalgia/#.UCqpevhmxMJ (mentioned at the bottom)
http://members.tripod.com/~virtual_cat/games/complete.html
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/12/make_your_own_v.html
http://www.zagidulin.net/links/muds/index.html
http://www.stroustrup.com/applications.html
By Wikipedia's wacky standards, I'm pretty sure none of these few mentions of BYOND outside of BYOND qualify it as notable. Tako (talk) 19:55, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

None of those pass reliable source standards, no. This just isn't an important enough topic to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia, sorry. This is what I was getting at with the nerd-lore tangent; being passionate about something important to you doesn't necessarily mean it is important to the outside world. This isn't a webhost for a billion niche fandoms. Perhaps wikia.com would be a better place for you and this game site. Tarc (talk) 20:27, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you give an example of what the hell a "reliable source" is, then? No one has given a single reason why articles like Nitrome, Blue_(programming_language), A+_(programming_language) continue to exist. I'm not even going to point out what's wrong with them, because it's pretty clear: exactly the same issues of why BYOND isn't allowed to have an article. Oh, lets look at this article here: HipSoft. This isn't notable. Only a single game they made is. Yet, all of the sources in the article are about Build-a-lot - yet they somehow contribute to the notability of the company's article? Where is this goddamn logic? Do the editors of Wikipedia just have a hard-on for not allowing notable (by everyone's standards but Wikipedia's), yet not newsworthy things to have articles? Tako (talk) 20:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

*sigh* So maybe those other articles need to be deleted too, hence the WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument. Here's the best advice: put as much effort into creating a WP:USERSPACEDRAFT as you're putting into this fruitless discussion. Find ref's that meet WP:RS. If in doubt, check the reliable sources noticeboard. Have a few people who've commented in here check out your work after a few weeks of effort. By then, you may have drafted something usable. dangerouspanda 21:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

And crafting such an article, would be pointless, because it'd have no references other than those that I've pointed out earlier, apparently, those aren't reliable enough. There are hilariously long articles, where the only references are those from the article's own website. This apparently isn't reliable - but it's still done. What I'm saying is: the guidelines and standards are wrong. They do not fit every case, and they should be flexible. Otherwise Wikipedia has to lose a million articles vs. looking like a piece of hypocritical shit, or the policies about sources, notability, verifiability become loose and everyone remains happy. There clearly are meant to be different guidelines for articles about politicians vs game engines vs garage bands. One policy should not rule them all. Tako (talk) 21:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I once wrote an article about an individual who ran for city council in a community of a million people, was guest author of a series of newspaper columns, is a book author, known songwriter and internationally-known radio show host, and someone who had been "mentioned" online by some of the best and brightest people around...to this day, they're still not considered notable enough. WP:GNG's a fickle wench :-) dangerouspanda 19:23, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that there are subjects, particularly computer related, which are written about, but not written about in printed or broadcasted mass media.

1) Wikipedia's idea of reliable sources is broken when it comes to things mainly discussed on the Internet.

2) The idea that notability only depends on reliable sources is also broken. If something is discussed on a billion blogs, it ought to be considered notable. (And before you ask how we can write an article if there aren't any reliable sources, WP:GNG also has the "significant coverage" requirement which doesn't allow things that would be allowed under plain RS. And it tries to Wikilawyer itself by claiming that using a non-significant-coverage reliable source is original research, which it's not.)

Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:27, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Editing under the influence?

Howdy Jimbo,

I'm about to pop off to bed but I seem to have been in the pub in my apartment building. I was just wondering if you ever edit under the influence of drugs, legal like alcohol and tobacco or illegal like... well, all sorts of things! And furthermore, what your view on chemically aided editing is?

Ta,

Egg Centric 01:43, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

When this question came up some years ago on IRC, there was wide agreement that Wikipedia servers don't count as heavy machinery in the pharmaceutical warnings sense, a clear majority of editors claim to prefer editing under the influnce of caffeinated beverages, and several editors agreed that a few alcoholic drinks make much of the drudgery associated with bringing citations up to Featured Article status more bearable. Excessive impairment is likely to manifest in grammar mistakes, and sometimes various forms of uncooperative behavior. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 02:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

This is actually an interesting question, as I have a pet theory that much of the aggression on Wikipedia is caused by the use of legal stimulants and alcohol. Viriditas (talk) 03:12, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

There have been incidents that could hardly be explained any other way, though I wouldn't be too sure about the "legal" part. Neutron (talk) 03:17, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Or there's cases where someone is simply stressed out and uses Wikipedia as a vehicle to vent. And, of course, some people just aren't very nice. AutomaticStrikeout 03:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Now, I'm really curious. Has anyone studied this issue or run a survey? I think the results could be extremely useful. Viriditas (talk) 03:49, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I doubt any serious study, specially related to illegal substances, would be ever possible. But this entire thread left me wandering how would editing WP look while on LSD... I bet it is not a ฿₳₯ †ЯЇР. On the other side, I don´t even want to imagine what would be like having content disputes while on coke, although there are some users which usually behave that way on daily basys ("Don´t touch it! The article is mine!!!"). MDMA should work much better, it would make consensus building much easier. I supose lower dosis of opium should also work well, specially when contributing to non-controversial stuff. What would also be interesting to see are the preferences and characteristic behaviour of each group :) But, how to make any study of such kind as I don´t see any users coming and saying "Yes, editing Ming Dynasty is so cool after my morning heroin fix!" FkpCascais (talk) 06:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

As I said, I don't think "illegal substances" are the problem, but legal stimulants and alcohol. It's odd how when somebody says "drugs" people automatically assume "illegal". The biggest health problems are caused by legal not illegal drugs. From the blurb to Stephen Fried's 1999 book: "According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), adverse drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in America. Reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medications kill far more people annually than all illegal drug use combined."[2] Viriditas (talk) 08:03, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

"Tobacco" is now considered a "legal drug"? Editing under the influence of coke, the "demon" weed, and your grandpa's cough syrup is contraindicated. If you couldn't handle it before editing WP, do not start now that you're here. It won't help your ability to edit (if you couldn't handle it in the first place). Purple monkey dishwasher. Doc talk 09:24, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

"It is most commonly used as a drug" (from the lede of Tobacco). Its general legality is not being argued, I don't think, so I assumed it was the "drug" portion you were questionning. dangerouspanda 10:50, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I've always wondered if the people who create 5000 stubs a day are on some potent pharmaceutical stimulant, but I suppose that's none of my business. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:16, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I for one have found my alcohol consumption has massively reduced since I became an active editor. Caffeine however is another story. ϢereSpielChequers 13:23, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I've noted the same thing. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:16, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Is this something we could get one of those Fellowship grants to study? Windowpane vs. dancing bears say, or BC Bud vs. Kona? Regular vs. menthol? ;) Franamax (talk) 20:36, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I thought you said methanol there. I got some of that in my eye yesterday (boring, silly story). It hurts.

As for the study, I am quite happy to do it if wikimedia wants to fun the grant. Egg Centric 15:57, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Admins instantly revert even minor edits such as spelling fixes

It doesn't even seem like they check what you've written, they just look for any edit and strike you down instantly. This isn't an encyclopedia where everyone can make edits, it's one where only admins really can.174.91.73.195 (talk) 00:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Could you be a little more specific as to what your complaint is? It looks to me like several of your edits have not been undone. AutomaticStrikeout 00:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Well my edits haven't really been struck down but I've seen it happen to my friends first-hand. Pages are instantly reverted even if it's just minor like the use of synonymous words or spelling fixes.174.91.73.195 (talk) 00:11, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you provide diffs? AutomaticStrikeout 00:15, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

• Reverts of corrections usually involve other changes: The practice of reverting corrections to spellings alone seems very rare. Instead, I have seen a person correct several vandalism glitches but also add a black-listed external link, so an automated Bot program reverted the whole edit, re-adding all vandalized text while removing the invalid web-link, and no one else fixed the vandalism text for months after the Bot restored it into the article. Typically vandalism is spotted as the last edit by a user, but I guess few imagine that Bots would restore vandalized text which other people have tried to fix. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:56, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I revert quite a number of edits in which editors clearly in good faith think they are correcting spelling or grammar, but actually are making it incorrect. Looie496 (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I also think the IP is a bit confused - perhaps they believe only Admins can revert? Dougweller (talk) 19:17, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Making separate revisions for different types of changes might help in the prevention of apparently indiscriminate (undiscriminating) reversions, even if it slightly congests article page histories and editor contribution histories.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:39, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe a report of recent reversions can be accessed through Recent changes.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:44, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The better advice is to give us some examples - we could guess about anything, and still be wrong. Anyone on the project can revert an edit. Part of the reality is that an anonymous editor who makes an edit without an edit summary is unfortunately more likely to get reverted - it's the sad nature of things. However, that's just conjecture as to the real problem too. dangerouspanda 19:53, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I can say without hesitation that some time ago when I was editing as an IP on an insecure computer doing simple corrections like typos, I found myself repeatedly reverted, and was one warning away from being blocked - even though every single edit I had made was not only within policy, but improved the article. The next time I had a secure connection, I went to each of the editors who reverted me and asked for an explanation. It boiled down to "well, it looked like vandalism to me!" That was perhaps even more infuriating: that the "RC patrollers" couldn't tell the difference between a typo and vandalism. Risker (talk) 20:25, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The only times I remember simple spelling "corrections" being reverted have been when an editor has, usually in good faith, changed a British spelling to an American spelling, or possibly vice versa, and when diacritics have been removed, or added.--Boson (talk) 20:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

See now, this is the problem. If a longtime editor and administrator can make the statement that "I was reverted for fixing typos when not logged in" and is immediately informed that she must have done something wrong, then the real issue is the out-of-hand dismissal of legitimate concerns. Believe me, I know that "teh" is not a word, but "the" is, and I was pretty darn insulted to have my correction reverted - as would any other editor, whether registered or not. Risker (talk) 20:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't blame you. It shouldn't happen. Not as bad probably is finding a vandal whose obviously vandalistic edits have been greeted with a welcome thank you. I wish editors would be more careful with warnings and welcomes. Part of the problem though is a very large amount of vandalism with not enough editors to spend enough time making sure edits are vandalism and fixing it. Dougweller (talk) 20:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Ahem. You reported your experience; I reported mine. If you read into that an accusation that you had done something wrong or that my comment was in any way an "out-of-hand dismissal of legitimate concerns", I suggest you re-read my comment and reply appropriately. --Boson (talk) 20:53, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Apologies, Boson - I did not realise you were speaking of your own experience, as you were writing in the third person. Risker (talk) 21:06, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

My experiences are similar to those of Risker. When not logged in (UTRS used to link back to Wikipedia through http, and I was logged in through https), I was told that I was 'lucky' that I was just reverted and received an uw-v4im rather than having an SPI opened and 'being banned indefinately'. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 20:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

It's not just admins who have a bias against IPs, it is everyone. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, most of us are more inclined to revert/warn an IP than a logged-in user. It may not be fair, but I think the perception is that more of the vandalism comes from IPs, people who see the "edit" button, and think "Why not have some fun?" A user who has an account and has been active for awhile is less likely to do this because he does not want to compromise his position(s) as a member. Of course, there are vandalism-only accounts, but I think we are more inclined to be suspicious of someone who won't take the time to create an account. Also, it seems to me that oftentimes IPs fail to leave edit summaries, leaving them even less likely to get the benefit of the doubt. Lastly, I'd like to see Martijn and Risker provide some diffs here, maybe it would be more helpful to see some real-life evidence of what has been going on. AutomaticStrikeout 21:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I won't be providing diffs, first because it was some time ago and I have no idea what IP I was using at the time, and secondly because revealing the IP would reveal private information about why I was in the position of doing some supposedly nice, relaxing editing using an insecure connection. Risker (talk) 21:08, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Very well, I understand. AutomaticStrikeout 21:10, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I find this puzzling. I have a long watchlist, and I frequently look at reverts when they pop up -- not always by any means, but pretty often. It's hard for me to think of a single case I have seen of an IP fixing an unequivocal spelling or grammar error and then being reverted. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I don't believe it happens very frequently. Looie496 (talk) 21:11, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I recommend all admins to edit as IPs now and then — not too infrequently. It's very educational. (Have you tried it, Looie?) Bishonen | talk 21:14, 15 August 2012 (UTC).

It might also be beneficial for regular editors to have temporary trial periods (maybe of a few days or a week each) as administrators or as recent change patrollers.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Not a bad thought although can't anyone patrol recent changes? AutomaticStrikeout 21:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Even if anyone can, the trial can involve the editor trying the experience of being on patrol.

—Wavelength (talk) 22:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I've occasionally edited as an IP, and next time I know I'm on an insecure connection I'll probably do the same. Nobody gave me any messages, or at least not whilst I was online and I'm pretty sure I wasn't reverted, at least I didn't notice those pages returning next time I looked for those same typos. But I did give clear edit summaries and I was only fixing typos. Where I do think that IPs have problems is when they add unsourced but uncontentious information, I don't know what proportion of such edits get reverted as opposed to {{fact}} tagged, but I've run across a number of editors who don't extend AGF to IPs and revert such edits as a matter of course. I think that part of the problem is that Huggle seems to have an option to revert unsourced but it abbreviates the policy in its instructions so that some people think it OK to simply revert all unsourced edits, contentious or otherwise. ϢereSpielChequers 23:27, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

It's hard to find the right balance here. When I see an IP change a number (a birthday, a year, earnings, etc.) and I cannot confirm that change with a quick google search, I revert and politely ask for a source. I've seen too many instances where wrong numbers were put into our articles for weeks or months because an IP changed it without comment, and no one bothered to check. --Conti|✉ 23:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with people who google and either reference or revert the unreferenced change, or who revert an unreferenced change to referenced information. My concern is that some people are reverting unreferenced uncontroversial changes without doing such a check. I've just removed a bunch of unreferenced material, but it was a series of unsourced statements about named people allegedly performing nude. ϢereSpielChequers 11:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

This section is moving inexorably towards farce. Time to let it go, perhaps? Bishonen | talk 13:02, 16 August 2012 (UTC).

7/22 Commission Report

We already have 9/11 Commission Report. We don't have the 7/22 Commission Report yet.

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOU_2012:_14,_Rapport_fra_22._juli-kommisjonen.

Is it cool that [3] one user is edit warring, and thereafter trying to get me banned. Conflict of interest? --Froshirt (talk) 09:18, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

YGM?

You (and the circling vultures) may want to see some of this. [4] 99.251.125.65 (talk) 03:37, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Even I, with long years of experience, am a bit astonished that we have a longstanding feud resulting in interaction bans, sockpuppeting, and all that... about whether mid-sentence references to should be to the Beatles or The Beatles. I think, per the amusing discussion here recently about editing and drinking caffeine or alcohol, that some people need to have either more or less of one of those two, depending on personal affinity and circumstances.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:05, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

There have seemingly been arbitration cases over diacritics, so anything is possible! IRWolfie- (talk) 16:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom has also had to deal with disputes over the capitalisation of titles and the use of hyphens and en dashes. Typography is serious business. Robofish (talk) 17:16, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It's not the grammar that is the problem. The problem is from the politics going on behind the scenes over the months and years with this the/The issue. A admin and many reg editors have been banned, warned and generally discouraged at the bias that become apparent after reading some history. Side issues are raised for each and every opposer of one main pointy editor that just will not collaborate with anybody. He appears to be backed by admins and other "warning and blocking" editors that agree with him. **sigh** I have attempted several times in the last months to shed some light on this only to be banned and indeffed incorrectly many times by drive by righteous doers after attempting to use WP processes to correct some injustices and unwarranted behaviours (IMO). Since I don't care anymore about my own account, here I am, one more time. Yeah, sometimes I have given up after a block and spouted obscenities against some of these gang members but I have never started the feud and seldom been granted audience with any opposing points or neutral clarification requests. IPs are clearly not welcome on WP and the editors seem terrified of them resulting in fear mongering and attack dog habits. My main attacker started with "He knows too much" and it blossomed from there. This really verifies the really bad press WP is getting elsewhere online. AFAIC the typical collaboration on WP is only repression of edits for fear of reprisal driven and the articles suffer with only the POV of editors with the biggest, baddest and scariest user pages with huge decals and brag 1.38M edits. Geeezz I have had seasoned editors call me an "idiot" and "stupid", let alone continuously "troll" only to have the edit diffs removed and magically disappear, after I was user page blocked, by admins attempting to smooth things over. The history of these DOES NOT EXIST anymore. Some helped me but most helped their gang members. Bet you a nickle this and my account doesn't last more than 24 hours for correcting grammar. LOL. Thanks. /rant 99.251.125.65 (talk) 21:39, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh Yeah. Thanks for your response. I am honoured. 99.251.125.65 (talk) 21:41, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Fiction & Mass-Culture

if you use google-translate, you could read at ru:Википедия:Форум/Вымышленные миры, that some administrators insists that Fiction & Mass-Culture should be prohibited in Russian Wikipedia as irrelevant to encylcopledy, and "kindly" suddegets a good proposal to (re-)move all articles about Fiction & Mass-Culture from Wikipedia to other server...
• whether is it right for purpose of Wikipeida as a Free Encylopedia?
• and whether they have right to do this? (Idot (talk) 19:12, 17 August 2012 (UTC))

you could also check voting about Fiction & Mass-Culture at ru:Участник:Abiyoyo/Отзывы/Вымышленные миры‎, 22 people (including 13 of admin & non-admin closures) strongly supported deleting Fiction & Mass-Culture, and 44 people (including 8 of admin & non-admin closures) strongly disagreed deleting such articles, and 3 people (3 of admin & non-admin closures) weakly supported deleting some articles (Idot (talk) 19:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC))

Database wikis

Many editors on Wikipedia feel this burning driving need to dump databases into Wikipedia. It may be to document every player and every match played in every lacrosse game for instance or every track on every music CD or list every stop on all the train or bus timetables or every political opinion for every election - the list is endless. These tend to form articles with no real secondary source content except a one line lead and often the citations if any are iffy. I'm not sure if it is just obsessive or they really think it is important or whether they are worried about their sources disappearing and they want the stuff preserved for posterity. The big problem with it all besides just not being notable is that Wikipedia cannot act to preserve stuff as we require sources, also of course who is going to stop it being completely vandalised if the originator stops watching the stuff?

I am not asking for a crusade against such editors, in fact in many cases such a war would be lost because of the numbers of them, what I think would be better is if a way could be provided to satisfy their urge without damaging Wikipedia. In fact what I would like set up is wikis for such database facts where people could become acknowledged experts and entries could be marked as checked by such people and were protected better against random vandalism. We could then refer to entries there in the externals section as well as any secondary source and there would be much less pressure here to do anything besides put in halfway interesting stuff that had been written about in secondary sources rather than listings of team members back to 1870. Dmcq (talk) 11:33, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Not 100% sure, but I thought wikisource was for that kind of stuff? IRWolfie- (talk) 14:22, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Collections of facts would be new work, perhaps combined from multiple published sources, whereas Wikisource tends to hold separate text documents, rather than updated lists of basic facts or statistics. -Wikid77 15:45, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• Restrict minor entries to be only in lists: There was a recent BLP removal request from one of those myriad 20th century Olympic athletes, because the article gained speculation text, but the woman was not even listed in the "full" lists of greatest, highest, mostest whatever sports athletes, where those non-tabloid lists are perhaps too boring to create, rather just create athlete articles for rumors. We need a guideline policy wp:ONLYLIST, to emphasize limiting all those thousands, millions of athletes into only lists of yearly award winners, where the person's name redirects into a list, not have a stub article for everyone who ever "moved a muscle". In the case of this athlete, I wanted to know the other "greatest" athletes for each year or nation, and WP had no such article, just picked the one woman who wanted not to be discussed for rumors. So, I saw that as a major failure of WP, to not have lists of yearly leaders, or world records, in each sport. See essay "wp:How many footballers?" about the current 70,000 footballer articles, while the website Playerhistory.com has documented over 242,000 footballers, perhaps in lists. Also, some lists are copyvio problems, where the entire list is a copyrighted work, and only part of the rank can be repeated. This long-list concept goes back to those 171,000 numbered asteroids which were stored in a "database" at Harvard, stored in 37 large datafiles, but were expanded in WP as over 2,000 asteroid articles, listing only 100 asteroids per article, when 1,000 per article would have given a better data mining scan, as a sample size of 1,000 by summarizing each whole article. We could not get consensus to avoid tiny lists, so those 2,000+ articles remained. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• See WikiData. It was announced earlier this year [after many years of background]. (Journalism is important for an informed citizenry! Read/support your Signpost! ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 04:21, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• WikiData seems good to update town populations: Currently, we use town-group templates to keep current population figures for all the 2,600(?) cities/towns in Austria, through the Austria City/Town infobox. However, it seems WikiData would be more efficient, to expand auto-retrieved population figures for larger nations. Population figures become outdated very quickly, due to the tedious nature of updating counts in each small town, while larger cities tend to be updated sooner due to the wider interest and fewer of them. This backlog of outdated populations is a law of "information physics", so beyond Austria's towns, or similar template-based population updates, expect population figures of mid-size towns to be outdated for years. It has to be made easier for typical editors to update all towns within an hour or so; otherwise population fanatics tend to burnout, and population counts fall out of date. I think both Austria and Germany's town articles have current, template-based populations, and there were plans to also update town articles of France. -Wikid77 15:45, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

We seem to be forgetting in this thread that Wikipedia, in addition to being an encyclopedia, does have the content of an almanac. Such lists are found in almanacs, thus OK for Wikipedia.97.85.211.124 (talk) 15:28, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Prem Rawat

Oh dear. Wikipedia's old friend 'The Lord of the Universe' aka Prem Rawat, seems to be winning the battle to 'Rule Wikipedia' again. It seems that despite the banning of former Rawat champion Jossi Fresco, there is little remaining will to resist His dogged followers who just will not give up their clean-up campaign. I think us objectors have nearly one and all tired of the battle. Sorry, but the Prem Rawat article seems a lost cause. Maybe someone could just put a statement at the top to warn people that the article is being inexorably rewritten by followers of the guy. Cheers.PatW (talk) 22:17, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Maybe you should give your opinion on this. It is being discussed whether the word 'Wikipedia' should be italicized or not (Talk:Wikipedia#Italic_title). 200.215.101.210 (talk) 00:22, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Website is in the black list of Wikipedia: B E A T L E S. R U

Website is in the black list of Wikipedia: B E A T L E S. R U. But Wikipedia uses materials of the club - illegally (article: The Beatles - in Russian Wikipedia). Wikipedia does not contain the permission. Club does not contain the Creative Commons license. Club got terrible moral damage (and not only moral). Thus, Wikipedia is offender. Report was made already for: http://www.iprcenter.gov/referral (IPR Center). Wikipedia must to wait big troubles (if will continue to violate copyright). Warning. The only one. Kind regards. - 95.29.75.169 (talk) 20:55, 18 August 2012 (UTC).

Would you mind restating that a little more clearly? AutomaticStrikeout 21:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The user is alleging that the Russian-language Wikipedia's article on the Beatles contains material copyrighted by the Beatles.ru website, and making legal threats to the effect that the offending material should be removed or Wikipedia will be sued. Someone should look into it. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:11, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I left a note in the talk page of the article. If the article really contains materials from beatlesDOTry, then it has to be attributed to that website, even if the website is in the spam blacklist. You can attribute the website using <nowiki>http:// beatles . ru</nowiki> --Enric Naval (talk) 22:22, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

ru.wp uses beatles.ru as a source (attributed) for information about the recording of the song "Free As A Bird". The source looks like a copyvio (so I guess ru.wp probably shouldn't link to it - but spam blacklist doesn't apply there). The ru.wp article doesn't lift this material or "close paraphrase" it, although it includes a quote which is on the long side and the amount of material based on the source (a 1990s interview with the surviving Beatles) is quite a lot (3 paras). beatles.ru is also in the external links, but there doesn't seem to be any other material in the article related to it. Formerip (talk) 22:28, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be being discussed on the Russian wiki? AutomaticStrikeout 22:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• This IP is ban-evading troll and spammer, banned in enwiki and ruwiki - Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Crazy1980/Archive, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/John Torn/Archive, see also this discussion for example. So it's highly recommended Wikipedia:Do not feed the trolls. OneLittleMouse (talk) 04:32, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I think instead of labeling the IP troll, you owe us an explanation if what the IP says are true (I asked once in wp.ru, ignored). If Beatles.py is indeed copyvio and on the blacklist of the copyright holder(s) of Beatles materials, you should remove all links and references from the Wikipedia article. There's no excuse to it unless the article itself is about the court case of Beatles.py's copyvio. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 05:47, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Some discussions in ruwiki: ru:Обсуждение:The Beatles#Фан-клуб Beatles.ru против EMI и Apple Corps, ru:Википедия:Запросы к ботоводам/Архив/2012/2#Удалить ссылки на Beatles.Ru, ru:Википедия:Оспаривание административных действий/Архив/2012#Удаление статьи Клуб Beatles.Ru. After massive spam attacks from this IP's ranges ("Corbina", "Beeline") site was black-listed, but: 1) It's largest and most well-known russian Beatles fun-site; 2) facts of copyright violations on this site was not proved. In ruwiki (where this discussion should be taken) there is no consensus that remaining links to this site should be removed (at least from ru:The Beatles). Facts of copyright violations in ru:The Beatles was not shown too. About this user - with 99% probability he has no any relationship to authors and owners of beatles.ru; and making fake "personal sites" of WP users and links it here (see below) do not leave any possibility to WP:AGF and to taking this threats seriously. Pardon my english, in russian here. OneLittleMouse (talk) 12:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

• Somebody forgot that the DMCA gives the only one chance (this chance is not used here as we see). Besides, range of IP addresses may contain a large number of addresses inside of self. Even when someone is sockpuppet - it is does not mean that violation of copyright must be continued. The such violations are clearly displayed:

1) Fan club actually does not contain of any license (but sign of copyright is there).

2) When website is located in the black list - is not happiness for the owners (shame and damage for reputation): but reason to forbid the usage of its materials (relevant measure for defence). Only stupid human can think something other.

3) In the history (of the article about The Beatles) we can find trails of the terrible war (not exist proofs that members of this war are not the owners of the club). This fact gives great grounds think, that it was the violation of copyright.

4) Notice about violation is on the page of main human in the wiki system (any disclaimer not will in focus of attention).

5) OneLittleMouse is poor man and his legendary site confirms this fact.

6) Please show me the permission to use materials of the fan club. - 95.29.86.242 (talk) 22:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC).

Merchandise

Jimbo, a question for you (and your many userpage-stalkers :D):

We may not advertise on Wikipedia, but do we get money for the project through merchandise? I was just thinking to myself that I would gladly buy a put-it-together wikipedia logo globe (similar to these)... and that got me thinking... why don't we design some Wiki-merchandise and get it out there into the world, to get some great money for the project, and also increase awareness of it. We can hold various wiki-functions etc. for the general public and therefore give our brand more awareness in the global market. Since we're in the process of redesigning the main page (FWIW IMHO we should redesign the layout of the pages as well - those discussions on the talk pages have always been a real b**** to follow), this seems like an awesome time to think about this.--Coin945 (talk) 08:32, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

See Meta:Fundraising ideas. As I understand, at one point all the merchandising was being done through Cafe Press, but now www.cafepress.com/wikipedia just points to their main page (and is officially blacklisted link now), and searching "Wikipedia" there gets you mostly (but not entirely) Assange/Wikileaks related items. Wnt (talk) 13:58, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

[5]. Doc talk 17:01, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone even know that site exists? I certainly didn't.--Coin945 (talk) 17:40, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I noticed it just the other day - look to your left where "Main Page", "Contents", etc. are. It's at the bottom. Doc talk 17:42, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't sound very reassuring.... :)--Coin945 (talk) 06:39, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

He guys :) I agree not totally reassuring but shows you how many people don't look at the sidebar ;). To be fair I kinda knew that was going to be the case. Right now the sidebar link only shows in some countries (Canada, US and Mexico right now) even though we'll mail anywhere in the world. We're looking at better ways to market it and get it known and are working on a plan that we will probably start implementing in a month or so. Right now we have a steady, but relatively 'low' , flow of orders and we're going to be making some relatively large changes to the backend fulfillment system to try and make it a lot cleaner. After that's done we want to start pushing it a bit more. If you guys have any thoughts on marketing / items etc I'd love to hear them. We have a Meta page as well as a Shop advisory team that I work with for anyone interested. I'll also watch here obviously and anyone can feel free to drop me a line by email :). Jalexander--WMF 21:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Any plans for a "put-it-together wikipedia logo globe", as suggested by Coin945? I didn't even know I wanted one, but now I can't stop thinking about it. DoctorKubla (talk) 06:20, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Plus, thanks to this page, we won't have to worry about having an imcomplete globe!--Coin945 (talk) 06:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks like someone beat us to it... :) but it looks a bit more like a wall feature (I'm still sure that if that product got marketed, many wikipedians would by it. A Wikipedia put-it-together puzzle logo coming out of your wall.... what could be better?!!! :D--Coin945 (talk) 06:38, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Any attempt to standardize "facts" between articles? Some articles conflict with each other.

The particular case that brings me this question is History of China has a gif map that rotates through the political boundaries of China and at the end it skips from the Qing to the Present, both of which had political control over Tibet, and yet in the Tibet article (and in any reliable source) in between that period Tibet, along with several other parts of China, were independent. The map skips over an entire period of time in which China lost control of minority lands and later conquered them by military force.

The question itself is what mechanism does Wikipedia have to keep all the articles consistent between each other, and to keep articles that may have large numbers of fans or adherents or other loyalists who may overhelm the talk page and hinder consensus to neutrality. I see this especially with Chinese history articles, where those who otherwise would be opposing the current PRC find themselves in support of propaganda that puts Chinese history in a superior light. Countries that are smaller and less influential, or have large anti-whatever group have the opposite problem, and don't have the ability to portray their history in the same light (example- Imagine if Israel portrayed the conquest of the West Bank in the same light that the PRC's conquest of Tibet is (not) portrayed in that series of maps... Israel occupied the West Bank longer than China occupied Tibet, both have large groups rallying for freedom, and yet there can be quite a difference in how they are treated in articles due to consensus rules).97.85.211.124 (talk) 20:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I am not the first one to bring up this issue, File talk:Territories of Dynasties in China.gif has at least one instance of this being problem being mentioned. And there are other instances and each time it's replied with "Tibet was never independent". All reliable neutral sources state Tibet was independent and China invaded in 1950s. I even have a globe from 1942 showing it independent!97.85.211.124 (talk) 23:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

A note on your the administrators

The problem seems to have been solved!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hello Mr Wales, as a regular user of Wikipedia who until today had only good things to say about it, I would like to draw your attention to an incident involving at least two of your administrators. Not being sure what to do or where else to go, I have arrived here. I suppose this might be regarded as a "Complaint", and I am aware that "the best thing to do if you have a complaint is to start with the help desk." However, the help desk seems unsuitable for this particular incident. "Ask a short, friendly question and fellow Wikipedians will be happy to help you" - well, I'm afraid experience tells me this is not at all the case. Therefore, I hope I am correct in thinking that I have "exhausted all other possible remedies." At the very least, I think you should be interested in what Wikipedia's administrators get up to behind the scenes. The administrators in question are User:Panyd and User:Hu12, and I believe I was mistreated by them specifically because of my IP status. I had, in good faith, been making numerous constructive edits today before I was blocked without warning for a total of 48 hours by User:Panyd. The block appears to have resulted from adding links to various Year in Country articles, relating to a history documentary series which airs archive footage of same years. I added these links to nine Wikipedia entries concerning the years 1990 to 1999, as was already the case in the equivalent entries from 2000 to 2009, thinking that it could do no harm and that it may even be helpful. In doing so my aim was to provide a source for what were several Wikipedia entries lacking in references. I was abruptly blocked, after making one further, seemingly harmless, edit (the exchanging of an "A" for an "a"). While blocked, I tried to respond rationally and calmly but to no avail. User:Panyd ignored me, and continued to ignore me, even hours later while it was evident from their contributions that they were still editing. Also, while blocked, User:Hu12 used the rollback function to which he or she is entitled to revert numerous edits intended as constructive and in good faith. They marked these edits as minor. I found these actions to be unsuitable behaviour for any editor, let alone an administrator, but could do nothing about it, apart from taking note on my talk page (the only page I could edit). I consulted Wikipedia:Rollback, where I found Standard rollback may only be used in certain situations – editors who misuse standard rollback (for example, by using it to reverse good-faith edits in situations where an explanatory edit summary would normally be expected) may have their rollback rights removed. Since rollback is part of the core administrator tools, an admin could be stripped of their administrative privileges in order to remove those tools. The administrator User:Hu12, apart from not knowing when to mark their edits "minor", appears to have grossly violated the rollback principle. I mean, what is this? Finding myself momentarily powerless I left, returning several hours later to find there had been no further developments and that I was still blocked. At this stage, while trying as calmly as was possible in the circumstances to plead for assistance, I was insulted by various other editors, editors who no doubt looked upon me with suspicion as an IP, and a blocked IP at that. The notice telling me I am blocked from editing seems to have (at least temporarily) gone so I am attempting to leave this message here. I have done my utmost to remain calm and civil throughout, though I have been extremely discouraged by today's experiences. I am alerting you in the hope that other editors may never have to go through the same ordeal, and in the hope that you reconsider the type of editor to whom Wikipedia grants these special powers and privileges (even though they are probably not supposed to allow some to rule over others, it is plainly evident that they do). Further details are visible on the talk page and through examination of the history. --86.40.96.187 (talk) 01:23, 20 August 2012 (UTC) A little note: messaging Jimbo Wales probably won't help, as he rarely replies here. And the admins here are not Jimmy Wales' admins. They are Wikipedia's admins, which are two completely different things. I mean, what is this? There's nothing wrong with that revert, as your edits are not the correct way of using categories. That's all I want to say. I'll leave the rest to other admins or users. --Vincent Liu (something to say?) 04:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC) And how is that not the correct way to use categories? See, for example, Category:2000s in television. The revert has placed it back at the top instead of under "I" beside India as I had attempted to put it. That revert was carried out when I was placed under a block for similar so-called vandalism, thus ensuring I could not protest or ask the administrator why they did it. --86.40.96.187 (talk) 04:53, 20 August 2012 (UTC) I have changed "your" to "the", assuming that is what is meant above. --86.40.96.187 (talk) 04:59, 20 August 2012 (UTC) You're right, that is the correct way to use categories. Reading through your talk page, this whole affair seems to have been a massive WP:AGF failure. That said, it looks like you have now been unblocked, and I strongly advise you to let the matter drop. We're all human, we all make mistakes. Raking over old coals never ends well. It was an unfortunate incident, and I hope it hasn't deterred you from editing Wikipedia, but it's time to move on. DoctorKubla (talk) 05:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC) And WP:AGF the admin that blocked you. --Vincent Liu (something to say?) 05:25, 20 August 2012 (UTC) Categories of categories can be confusing: Hence, many users, including admins, can be puzzled by changes to sort keys of subcategories (see: Help:Category). In cases like this, everyone should compare to similar categories to see how the edits by the IP 86.40.96.187 were helping to improve the sorted order (compare 2000s_in_Irish_television to Category:2000s_in_French_television&action=edit). When sorted properly, "Irish telev." should list between "Indian~" and "Japanese~" within the category tree: Special:CategoryTree/2000s_in_television. Perhaps other editors should re-revert the admin's revert to show support for the IP's edit to improve the category sort-keys in Category:2000s_in Irish_television. -Wikid77 08:26/08:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC) Not to go to far astray but this is precisely the sort of reason I have been harping for a while that blocks are used too often and for the wrong reasons. We seem willing to block any new editor for the most trivial of misunderstandings but when admins, who should know better, are wrong we just brush it off as an accident. If the admins don't understand the rules then they either shouldn't be admins or shouldn't fiddle in that particular area of the toolset unless they understand it. In this case the user spoke up but this sort of thing happens frequently and this is one of the reasons IMO that we are seeing a decline in contributors. The rules of editing in WP are very hard to learn and we make it all the more difficult in bad faith blocks like this, for things that we shouldn't even be blocking people for in the first place and driving off potential future editors. Kumioko (talk) 14:29, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Re: Articles for deletion/Steve Nicholls discussion

Sockpuppet investigation/Morning277 is pertinent to understanding the discussion. Take care, DocTree (ʞlɐʇ) (cont) Join WER 15:39, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you are saying, it looks to me like none of the alleged socks have participated in the Nicholls AfD. I don't entirely understand how sockpuppet investigations work and I'm somewhat confused by the one you linked, but why has Morning277 not been notified of this situation? AutomaticStrikeout 16:14, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Notification is not required for SPIs, for some very good reasons. It's polite to do so if you don't think they're going to then create more unknown socks before the SPI is done, but it's not required. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 16:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the explanation. Still, I'm a little bewildered as to what evidence there is to connect Morning277 to this. AutomaticStrikeout 16:39, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

DYK Online Magazine

Hi Jimbo and friends, I would like to create a free monthly online magazine called 'DYK' on Issuu, sourced from many Wikipedia projects, including texts and images. It can be embedded in websites and blogs too to promote Wikipedia. How can I take this further? Many thanks! -- RexRowan  Talk  17:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, it would have to be under the CC-BY-SA license. Don't know about the rest. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 17:50, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Interesting article

Typed wikipedia into google news and this article caught my attention: [6].

Specifically this comment:

They need to basically allow vandalism as long as it’s funny. I’ve contributed dozens of improvements to Wikipedia over the years, and some of the funniest ones have stayed up only because they’re on obscure pages that no one checks on. --SpockAugust 14, 2012 at 10:38 PM

--Coin945 (talk) 17:28, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Let's not give too much credibility to the opinion of someone who supports vandalism. AutomaticStrikeout 17:42, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Of course not. My point is that we should find out who this user is, so we can go to all the "obscure pages" and fix up those vandalism edits. I also thought it was good to bring up this notion of sneaky vandalism in general. In no way endorsing it. Was editing from my phone before so kept my post short (and unfortunately vague as well).--Coin945 (talk) 02:25, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

No, I never believe you were endorsing it. I don't know if we can identify this particular editor though. It's annoying that people can be like this, but it's a good reminder to check all the contributions when you find a vandal. AutomaticStrikeout 02:27, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Well said. :)--Coin945 (talk) 06:46, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia in italics

Maybe you should give your opinion on this. It is being discussed whether the word 'Wikipedia' should be italicized or not (Talk:Wikipedia#Italic_title). 187.4.209.78 (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I am aware of exactly one external page where the word "Wikipedia" is italicized.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:44, 20 August 2012 (UTC) and 22:27, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Sunlight Foundation

I just noticed the Sunlight Foundation and borrowed one of their charts (CC-BY-3.0) File:Romney Income vs tax rate Sunshine.jpg, but clearly messed up the name in the title I gave it.

Then I noticed that you are one of their advisors. Keep up the good work! You might advise them on how to make some more of their work easily available on Wikipedia.

All the best, Smallbones (talk) 22:09, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Village Pump Proposal to eliminate WQA

Just thought I'd let you know that there is currently a major Village Pump discussion regarding eliminating WP:WQA, as well as drawing up possible replacements. Since this is a major revision of existing dispute resolution policies, I just wanted to drop you (and any other editors watching this page) a note in case you hadn't seen it.

The discussion can be found here.

Cheers! Zaldax (talk) 17:21, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

KISS image filter

Hi Jimbo,

about a month ago you created User:Jimbo Wales/Personal Image Filter. Discussion on that has petered out (no comments in 3 weeks), and we don't seem any nearer to a solution that meets your criteria listed at User:Jimbo Wales/Personal Image Filter.

So, here's my suggestion, a (very) partial and (hopefully) uncontroversial answer to the perennial image filter question by giving users more control over what they see (see m:Controversial_content/Brainstorming#KISS). It is simply a tool that will

1. put an images on/off switch at the top right of every article, defaulting to images on.
2. in images off mode, leave the image space blank, and show images when hovering over them. Icons (images below a certain size, say 50 pixels) and images transcluded by templates would be excluded from this mode: neither should ever present images that someone would want to hide.
3. allow logged-in users to change their preferences, so images can be off by default (i.e. shown only when hovering), and to hide the images on/off switch.

Now, I asked recently at Wikipedia:VPT#Gadget_for_control_of_image_display thinking that this tool could be done in Javascript only, as a gadget; based on comments there, it may need to be MediaWiki/PHP. But even if it's technically a bit harder than I thought, it's conceptually very simple, and is probably as uncontroversial as any solution to this problem can be. For a problem that has defied any kind of solution, even this very partial solution would be a whole lot better than nothing. In addition, implementing this allows us to get more of a handle on real world preferences, instead of much much much speculation, by collecting real (suitably anonymised!) data on what people actually do, for analysis. Rd232 ^talk 18:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I forgot point 4, which is more work but makes it more image filtery, and less like a browser image switch. Point 4. the switch in point 1 gives users the option to apply the choice to the page or to the site; and for logged-in users, remember per-page on/off settings. Rd232 ^talk 09:59, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I definitely support this idea as an interim solution that will give us the time we need to really hash out exactly how we're going to address this problem long-term. But I want to be clear that I don't think this itself is a long-term solution. - Jorgath (talk) ^(contribs) 18:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I definitely support this and I think even for people not too worried about filtering it could provide a useful speed up for mobile use. Dmcq (talk) 09:53, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

If the tool prevents the images downloading until requested (it could also download but prevent their display until requested), yes, it will help speed things up and reduce bandwidth costs. Rd232 ^talk 09:59, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't switch on images for mere hover, a stray mouse pointer is too easy. But click or something would be good. I still want the merest switch for "images on or off", as it would actually be useful and used, and I have yet to hear a filter proponent explain why this is such a bad idea that none of them seem aware of demand for it. Do they feel that having such a function would detract from more elaborate solutions? What's the problem with it? - David Gerard (talk) 14:51, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

You're not the only person to ask that first question; I don't know the answer. But I'm a filter proponent who supports this proposal, with your amendment. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:39, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

click or hover, I don't mind; click may be better. The real question is whether anyone capable of getting the tool done (directly, or indirectly by getting someone else to do it - hint hint Jimbo) is willing to do something. Rd232 ^talk 18:50, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

If there is unambiguous support for the idea, and the volunteer developers can't implement it, we can ask the foundation. But let's see what degree of support there is first. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

strange question

Peter Jensen (trainer) is at AfD -- in an earlier incarnation it referred to him as a "psychologist" which in the US doe not have the same meaning it apparently has in Canada. The BLP was given a prod stating Peter Jensen is not a psychologist. This title is restricted to members of the college of pscyhologist, which he is not. Furthermore, he does not hold a phd in psychology. Here is his linkedin profile. As you will see, he had removed the title 'psychologist' with speaker

Now I do not recall that Wikipedia is bound by Canadian laws on such matters, nor do I regard LinkedIn profiles as being "reliable sources" for anyone on anything <g>

The issue I find puzzling is the invocation of GNG when the fellow is mentioned in scads of stories over a period of three decades as a "sports psychologist" with no one being sued for mis-stating his job AFAICT , including stories in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Toronto Star, on CBC, etc. ad nauseam. Clearly I would think the large numbers of quotes from him in clearly reliable sources is sufficient to establish notability - but AfD allows "fails GNG" as a very strong policy-based rationale for deletion.

Now -- is Wikipedia bound to respect Canadian law when citing US and Canadian sources which all "violate Canadian law" in some way? Thanks! Collect (talk) 23:40, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I very much doubt that Canadian law has anything to say about what we call him. My view is that this is not a legal question but rather an editorial question.

I agree with your conclusion that it is ok to refer to him as a psychologist (though I think there is a better solution), and will explain my reasons below. But, on the other hand, I very much disagree part of your with your analysis and think it wrong to slavishly follow "reliable sources" when they contradict what we know to be the truth. This goes back to the longstanding complaint that the majority of people have had with the formulation "veriability, not truth' - that expression has led many people to the wrong ideas here.

Imagine if his professional website does not refer to him as a psychologist. And that his linkedin profile doesn't. And that we find that his degree is in sports management. And that he's well known for training athletes particularly with the mental/psychological aspects of peak performance. And that some reliable sources refer to him, incorrectly, as a psychologist. Then, particularly given the BLP implications of people getting it wrong, we should conclude using valid editorial judgment that the reliable sources are simply wrong, and set them aside on that point. Does this give rise to complex debates and arguments? Sometimes, but that's the work we have chosen for ourselves: to get it right above all else.

Now, as to why I agree with your conclusion that it is ok to call him 'psychologist' - in fact my hypotheticals above are not true. His degree is in sports psychology. His website refers to him as 'sports psychologist'. Editorially, I think it would be ok to call him a psychologist. However, it would be more accurate and would resolve the BLP concern that Hillabear10 raised, to simply call him 'sports psychologist'.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:13, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Addendum - I also don't agree that merely being mentioned or quoted in "scads of stories" is sufficient to establish notability. Remember, what we are generally thinking about when we think about whether we should have a biography of someone is whether or not there is sufficient information about them in reliable sources to be able to write a proper biography. What that means can vary to some degree according to the context, but what I'd be looking for to establish notability is stories about him.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:20, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I added a cite from an Olympic gold medal winner where she specifically credits him with allowing her to play with "abandon". And a cite from the NYT specifically using him as an outside expert on a story - thus further showing his credentials. One person at the AFD even has the gall to assert:

I notice also that Collect is claiming in the article that he is a psychologist, although there is no source that he ever made that claim and it is illegal to do so if one is not registered as a psychologist

About which sort of "edit" I take umbrage. Not Dorothy. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you (Jimbo) have not edited in areas of great national or ethnic controversy before. If we followed your lead here, we'd end up with indefinite fights among people who know for certain that say, X tribe in India is from a high ranking caste, not a low-ranking one like the sources say . And I hate to think of what would happen if people tried to invoke Jimbo's rule ("to get it right above all else") in Arab-Israeli-Palestinian issues, or in Eastern Europe, or on the page of a U.S. Senator whose staff knows what is right in the midst of all of the badly spun news stories. If our job is to get it right, we better start convening, and paying, groups of experts, and probably strongly consider eliminating anonymous editing. Do I exaggerate? Only a little. For me, Wikipedia works only because it's not about truth, and because it is about verifiability. "Truth" above "verifiability" has been tried, and I don't know about everyone else here, but I'd much rather get my information verified at Wikipedia than "truthified" at Conservapedia. As a side note, your example doesn't work, because your example is actually about a contradiction between reliable sources, not about sources saying one thing and the "truth" being another. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:23, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo is right about V not T here, and it's a really good example, because there could be real-world consequences if WP were happy to advertise people as having a professional status that they have not earned. We should never include material in Wikipedia if we know or believe it to be false, but this falls into a category where we have a particularly strong moral duty, along with, for example, claims about medical treatments.

However, Jimbo, you are wrong on the particulars here. Psychology is like law or medicine in that, if you want to put an ad in the Gazette calling yourself a psychologist, it is not enough to have a degree. You have to fulfil a full set of professional requirements and be registered (this is true for the US, UK and Canada, at least). This applies as much to "sports psychologist" as any other type, as shown by the links given by Hillabear10 which inlcude examples of people prosecuted for falsely holding out as a sports psychologist.

In the present case, there are a number of indications that the subject may perhaps not be entitled to advertise his services as a psychologist. Firstly, his name does not come up on the professional database register local to him. Secondly, the website of his last known employer lists various of his colleagues as "sports psychologist" but lists him as "mental training consultant". To be clear, this is not enough to make any attack on the integrity of the subject appropriate. We could, for example, be dealing with simple clerical error. However, our duty per WP:BLP is to approach the matter conservatively and err against including potentially false information in an article.

There's a behavioural issue here too. The article is headed for likely deletion and the probable lack of notability of the subject should obviate the need to get into these tricky BLP issues. Particularly where there is a risk of harm to the subject of the article (it is possible that any discussion we hold about him may inadvertently defame him), fighting the deletion process in order to wage an unrelated battle in the name of "verifiability not truth" is bad form. Formerip (talk) 10:06, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Important addition: I have not seen any evidence that the subject of the article has ever claimed to be a psychologist, only that he has been described as one in sources, which may be an error on the part of the sources. So I'd definitely want it to be understood that I am not intending to imply that he is any kind of fraud or charlatan. Formerip (talk) 23:58, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

The guy was cited as an expert in the New York Times. Credited in a just published book by a gold medal winning athlete. Mentioned by the CBC fer gosh sakes! And use of words in Wikipedia does not affect "legality" at all. I agree with Jimbo that he is a recognized expert in his field, cited by doxens of A-One reliable sources, and so on. He is a published author - yet the magic value of GNG is being perverted at the AfD for some unknown reason which you described to ne as

Significant and credible BLP concerns have been raised with respect to this article, which I'll not go into but I hope you'll take my word for it that they exist

Which suggests strongly that the GNG is not the real rationale at all for the AfD. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Being cited as an expert, given credit in a book, mentioned by CBC etc don't demonstrate significant coverage in reliable sources; it just shows a lot of passing mentions. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:52, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Most of the times the policies and guidelines work, but sometimes people slavishly follow reliable sources when they know them to be wrong (I've seen edit summaries to that effect). When everyone involved knows some information is wrong, it is acceptable to ignore the rules and omit the incorrect information; but it should only ever be done sparingly. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:52, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

If we followed your lead here, we'd end up with indefinite fights among people who know for certain that say, X tribe in India is from a high ranking caste...

Nobody's saying that we should make editorial information based on what people claim to know. They are saying we should make editorial decisions based on information that isn't eligible for direct inclusion in Wikipedia. The requirements for including things in Wikipedia are strict enough that there's a pretty big gap between the two and we can have situations where we can figure out that a statement is false without meeting Wikipedia's requirements. Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

What's so bad about transcription monkeys? There are so many people on Wikipedia all worked up trying to figure out what "Jewish" or "psychologist" really means. I think if the source says somebody is X we say he's X. If another source (besides purely original research) says that somebody isn't really X then we say that source A, B, C describes him as X but D and E say that's not technically true because of such-and-such. We don't need to be deep original thinkers here - we just need to direct the reader to the sources and let him figure them out. Wnt (talk) 18:56, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Image filter

I've been discussing a filter proposal at m:Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Updated_summary for several months. It's fairly mature. By that I mean the proposal has now evolved into something stable, that accommodates most criticisms. I would appreciate your thoughts. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:12, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Does running for office confer automatic notability for an article?

I have seen a recent increase in bio articles about candidates running for office, especially now that many states have wrapped up their primaries, or presumptive nominees are locking up their chances ahead of time. Is it standard practice that someone whose article would never have been created, let alone pass an AfD, be allowed to stay based only on the fact that they are running for an office? And what happens if that person loses? At what point do we say that having run for a congressional district in rural Utah in 2012 is not a notable enough reason to be in Wikipedia? (the year 2020...2040... when the person dies?...)97.88.87.68 (talk) 17:49, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

See WP:POLITICIAN. --Tango (talk) 18:09, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Any such articles created should be redirected to the article for the district election, e.g. Kara Anastasio currently redirects to Ohio's 7th congressional district#Election results because she has done nothing to satisfy the general notability guide. Tarc (talk) 18:45, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

But let's be clear on what WP:POLITICIAN actually says on the subject: Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". So a candidate who has not held a significant office previously may be notable anyway, and therefore merit their own article. Some people like to go around before elections blanking and redirecting almost any "candidate" article they can find for deletion; sometimes its warranted, sometimes its not. Neutron (talk) 22:54, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Possible, but uncommon. When I have sifted through these sorts of articles on occasion, I've seen a few candidates who were notable for, say, being a noted leader in an industry, or a prominent and covered business owner. Tarc (talk) 23:12, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it is too uncommon, consider Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. He is only notable for running for office. When it comes to candidates, they should be judged based on GNG. Some may be notable only for running. The important aspect is making sure the coverage isn't trivial. Many candidates will get a lot of trivial mentions, fewer will get in depth coverage. Ryan Vesey 23:45, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The big problem is that we get coverage of somebody running against an incumbent who is only being covered because they are a candidate; and the only coverage of them is not on their own merits as notable persons, but rather due to their status as candidates or nominees. A twenty-year-old living in an upstairs apartment does not become notable just because he filed for and received a major party nomination to take on an incumbent: the notability if any attaches to the race, not the nominee(s), if they would not otherwise meet WP:GNG - it's kinda like WP:BLP1E that way. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:01, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

To summarize the situation: An incumbent has an article. The election has an article. A challenger is running, but if he hasn't held past elective office his notability is questioned. His article is deleted. FEC filings, Open Secrets, On the Issues, Project Vote Smart all provide information on federal candidates. Even if that material for the challenger is merged into the election article, let alone his background, it is deleted for Bias and Undue Weight as the incumbent has that material in his own article, not the election article. I don't know why everyone pretends this is a new problem when this game is played every single election year, even in elections which are polled as being close. A lot of voters would like to get information on politicians from Wikipedia, and are surprised by the official view (consensus of Admins) that who will represent them is too trivial to cover beyond the official campaign site. This is the incumbent advantage. Even Bill Foster, who had founded a major cimpany with his brother and won a Nobel Prize In science, was considered unnotable and had his article deleted countless times the first time he ran. Don't pretend this is unbiased. ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.78.81.245 (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

If the person who is a candidate won a Nobel Prize, then they meet the notability requirements outside of the political sphere - if it's provable, then it should be good, IMHO dangerouspanda 16:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Any voters coming to the Wikipedia to find information on a candidate are about as intelligent as those who once said they voted for Jimmy Carter because he had a nice smile. The "anyone can edit" model does not lend itself well to creating neutral political articles. Tarc (talk) 16:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

That's not true, but thank you for sharing. As I wrote, "FEC filings, Open Secrets, On the Issues, Project Vote Smart all provide information on federal candidates." You find those biased? Perhaps you worked on the Eric Hovde article, which ignored those sources as well? Or do Tea Party candidates get special dispensation from including facts? Or being notable? Your bullying snarkiness, particularly about Democrats, may amuse some and discourage others, but this is a discussion of notability, and the double standard being applied. Not your opinion of Jimmy Carter supporters. This is 2012. I looked at that Hovde article after he lost the primary this week. It was written two months ago, never had serious souces, and its 'facts' were fluff from his campaign website. Glittering generalities with no non-partisan information. I would like to see decent articles about every candidate for federal office who has some actual support. You would prefer to try to derail the conversation. Tell me. Does your bullying, insulting and tantrum-throwing usually have the desired effect of ending discussions? I only ask because you do it so often you must believe it works. How many editors have you driven off? 184.78.81.245 (talk) 13:25, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Baseless complaining aside....I find such coverage (FEC filings, etc...) to be routine and not a basis for establishing notability. A person has to have done something prior to becoming a candidate in order to justify an article. To have held another elected position, be a notable businessman or received some sort of coverage in reliable sources. There are indeed cases though where just being a candidate for office itself attracts reliable source coverage, such as Jean Carnahan. Tarc (talk) 14:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I have redirected the Hovde article to United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2012. If that does not stick, it will be taken to AfD. Tarc (talk) 14:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Again, you pretend to miss the point. Hovde lost, so who would argue against deletion at this point? You're closing the barn door after the horse has left the building. A merge and redirect is appropriate, with its history kept as an example for what future articles should NOT be. This was a very close primary election. A good article would have helped readers. This was a bad article, despite the 'help' of various Wikipedians after it was deleted and restored two months ago. Those people were well aware of what other politician articles include, but they chose to meet the letter not the spirit of notability and references. It was, and remained, a campaign brochure. I did NOT present FEC filings etc as proof of notability. My point was that if an article exists for a candidate, certainly those should be included. If a separate article does not exist, then that information should be in the election article and not deleted as Undue Weight and Bias. Would you like me to repost my first comment with bolding? I do find notability to be inherent in a candidate running for federal office with real support. So do many other people, including many of those on the Project over the years. You do not. Fine. Make that point and stop making strawman arguments, claiming I'm saying something I'm not. I'm not doing 'baseless complaining', I am pointing out facts. You choose to whinge and make excuses and go off topic and resort to name-calling. That's not what a serious Wikipedian does. My comments deserve despect and consideration. Your attitude is a serious problem, whether or not you realize it. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 17:52, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you believe "notability to be inherent in a candidate running for federal office with real support", but unfortunately that runs counter to the consensus regarding politician notability at this time. Non-notable politicians should not have any info on their campaign in any Wikipedia article, either a standalone bio or at the target of the candidate name's redirect. Anything else? Tarc (talk) 18:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

...or at the target of the candidate name's redirect. It is your opinion, not the consensus, but thank you for finally providing your view. I'm sure it will come as a great surprise to many that even in a close election, no mention may be made of one of the candidates, presumably including the campaign website. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 19:10, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Simply running for office is not sufficient for an article, as per consensus on the project. Candidate listings, tiny local newspapers, blogs, and the candidate website are NOT sufficient to add additional notability. If the person does have additional notability - such as a Nobel Prize - then as long as it's provable via 3rd party reliable sources then they may have deserved an article (and still might). An absence or presence of an encyclopedia article (that is WP:NOTNEWS) would not have had an effect on an election - anyone who thinks it would does not understand the purpose of an encyclopedia, or might be thinking promotion is somehow permitted dangerouspanda 19:07, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing, but that is NOT the issue being addressed. Tarc did address it, and I replied. 184.78.81.245 (talk) <s@pan style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding undated comment added 19:14, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Right, and the above answers the question - and pretty much should have stopped it further. You're making it sound like Wikipedia is at fault for not having an article, and therefore someone lost. The policy is clear, and has been explained - there should be no further need for discussion here. If you wish to try and change the policy, that can be discussed elsewhere. danBgerouspanda 19:28, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The statement by Tarc was that an election article should ignore certain candidates, even in a close election, is both risible and unencyclopedic. There are articles about every federal election in every U.S. state, as has been the custom for years, so your comment doesn't make sense. The election article is the target of the candidate name's redirect. That's what Tarc said. You've never contributed to this Project, have you? Reporting a close election as if it were uncontested would be misleading, yet both of you are claiming that's what Wikipedia should do. All right. Any more Wikipedians with thoughts on this? 184.78.81.245 (talk) 23:10, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

You're taking my statement to a rather ludicrous extreme. What I feel the article should look like is pretty much like United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2012 looks like at the present, just a straight-forward who's who about the election and participants. No great laundry lists of what the candidates positions are on every topic under the sun, their oppoent's reactions, and the counter-reactions. Tarc (talk) 02:15, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

How is that "a rather ludicrous extreme"? In that election article Hovde's name is listed. His generic occupation of 'businessman' is listed. His campaign website is listed. Polling results, forecasts and rankings are included for the race in great detail, but nothing about campaign contributions, issue positions, personal or business background relevant to office, debates, interviews or newspaper coverage. No links to FEC, Follow the Money, Project Vote Smart, On the Issues, or C-Span. It's not that no one has bothered to add the, but that you claim the 'consensus' is that they are not and will not be permitted. (There is a link to Open Secrets, but I added that recently so it isn't relevant.) Election articles in previous years always included campaign finance information, at least Open Secrets. The current articles clearly used the earlier ones as a base, yet all that has been 'cleansed' as unimportant and not relevant? Unlike forecasts, rankings and poll results? The Tommy Thompson and Tammy Baldwin articles have all that and much more about their political lives, with little else. Presumably that's what readers are interested in, and what is considered important, relevant and notable about them. I see a troubling double standard. Neither of your names appears on the Admin list, yet you claim to speak with great knowledge and authority. You are absolutely adamant that nothing about candidates, even in very close elections, appear anywhere, in any article, in Wikipedia unless they have previously held a state or federal office and alreay have an article on that basis. You are willing to now make an exception for a Nobel Prize winner. Pokemen characters, TV serial episodes, TV sitcom characters (as opposed to the actors) are all considered notable, worthy of a separate article, yet you claim there is a 'consensus' that a candidate in serious contention for U.S. federal office is not only unworthy of an article, but no mention in the election article beyond name, occupation and campaign website. No one else has weighed in on this, including Jimmy. Are any of those facts in dispute? 184.78.81.245 (talk) 13:03, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

As the person who started this thread let me state my opinion. No candidate for an office should have an article who otherwise would not have an article. With the possible exception of a candidate for President/Vice President from one of the two major parties (or to make it global, any major party of a country with a real chance of electability), just to make for the possibility that one day a relatively unknown were to make it, it's happened in America's past, though with the depth of Wikipedia covering every House candidate and war hero this is unlikely that a Presidential or VP candidate would be unknown to the Wikipedia, whereas in the past a candidate may have been unknown to the leading encyclopedias of the age (we've had some very obscure VPs). I agree with Panda and Tarc on how to structure an article on an election, though the way I interpret NOTNEWS, I really think all election articles should be held off on until after the election, IMHO. I disagree with Tarc's assertion that people who use WP for learning about candidates are not intelligent voters, well I agree that they arent intelligent, but unfortunately a vast majority of our voters ARENT intelligent! No polling I can find has been done, but I'm sure more than we would like are coming to Wikipedia when they see someone's name they dont know, and using this as a place to find information. Look at the fact that candidates are now using Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, Blogger, and USA Today had an article a week or two ago about candidates using Pinterest even! Is using Wikipedia to frame their views any different from their point of view than using any form of social media?97.88.87.68 (talk) 16:01, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for rejoining the conversation. I am surprised you consider the FEC, Follow the Money, Project Vote Smart, On the Issues and C-Span to be the equivalent of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and Blogger. Is that only true for election articles, or are you suggesting C-SPAN be removed as a reliable reference in all Wikipedia articles? How about the FEC and other government sources? Should they too be removed as reliable references? I've never heard this suggestion of yours that only campaign websites should be included for politicians. Quite thought-provoking. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 16:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Kara Anastasio isn't notable. Just because in three minutes on Google I find out she's wife of John Hagelin doesn't count (not even worth a redirect, apparently). The Washington Post doesn't count, and it probably risks much even to mention lesser sources. No, there's nothing to be done for this. If you want to do something people here will respect and admire you for, follow Peter Cohen's example and write up a bunch of blather about how Wikipedia's purpose is to provide biased campaign coverage and try to get their tax exemption revoked. Meanwhile, do like everyone else and use Google - the top ten hits give you a more thorough, less biased view of the subject than Wikipedia ever will. Because Google doesn't believe in "ethics". Wnt (talk) 05:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. She does not technically fall into the "notable for one event only" category, as she was the Democratic nominee twice. Was that your point? Regardless, she should have redirects to the appropriate election articles. It seems you are taking the view of Tarc and others that if a person isn't notable enough for her own article, then only her name, occupations and campaign website should be allowed to be included in the election article. Perhaps her pre-election poll results also, but that's the limit. Is that correct? Also, you're wrong about Google. I recently googled for a candidate name and the first 14 references were her campaign website and 13 subsections of it. Not the old all-in-one-area display, but 14 SEPARATE listings. I have yet to find the relevant FEC, Follow the Money, Project Vote Smart, On the Issues and C-Span links in the top ten, and often not on the top 100 or more. Why do you consider those biased and not 'thorough' sources? The results depend on the candidate, of course. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 16:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, sarcasm. A shame it isn't obvious... Wnt (talk) 14:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, then let's try an example on point. I remembered something else about the Bill Foster back-and-forth article deletions which went on for months. Once it was finally accepted that the founder of a major company and a Nobel prize winner might indeed be allowed to have an article, all mention of his cadidacy for U.S. Representative in that article was deleted, on the basis that was not what he was noted for! Pretending this sort of thing is anything but partisan gameplaying, intended to run out the clock until the election, forcing article writers to spend endless hours proving the obvious, is absurd. At what point does one stop assuming good faith? 184.78.81.245 (talk) 13:42, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

To return to the subject and to summarize, the issue is what to do with information about candidates for U.S. federal office, in serious contention with widespread support. This would include, but not be limited to, information from sources such as the FEC, Follow the Money, Project Vote Smart, On the Issues and C-Span. Tarc and some others claim a consensus that those who have not held former federeal or state office will be assumed to be non-notable and have their articles deleted. More troubling, they then claim this information about the candidates should be excluded from the election article. I can understand that someone might be notable for only one event, although that gets tricky when they run more than once, but I do not understand how it makes sense to have an election article which purposely excludes all information about the actual candidates for election other than name, occupation and link to official website. Instead, the focus seems to be on polling results. Those are relevant and interesting, but I do need to know the reason why those commenting here find the actual election candidates irrelevant to an election article, when they are the point of an election. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 13:42, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I searched for earler discussions in 2010 and found this series on Noticeboard Incidents. Tarc and BWilkens were active participants there, as here. User:Balloonman, an Administrator who retired in June, proposed an injunction against Tarc. Quite a brawl, and the promised post-election discussions don't appear to have materialized. I don't know how many of the other participants remain active. The issue of refusing to include candidate information in the election articles was raised there as well. I'll check for possible 2008, 2006 and so forth, election discussions when I have more time. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 14:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

This discussion has gone on for a while here. What is the problem? Being a candidate does not make one notable - neither does it make one not notable! GNG still applies and there is no exception for candiates. We have a lot of rules presuming someone to be notable because of a certain status. That is not because that status makes someone notable, but because having that status the needed coverage as required by GNG can be presumed without even looking. I don't know what level elections you are talking about here, but hte higher the level the more sources will exist. That only leaves the BLP1E argument which would also apply to Obama as he only had one term so far. 14:26, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Ahh yea, I'd almost forgotten about that 2010 brouhaha. Yes, Ballonman proposed tossing me from political AfDs, a proposal which failed. Not much else to that. What else are you still looking for here? As for th eabove comment, BLP1E for Obama? Seriously? Tarc (talk) 14:32, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm still waiting for an answer to my 13:42, 20 August 2012 post. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 23:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I have generally argued that being a candidate of a major party in a two party system for national office is intrinsically notable, and can also be considered such on the basis of the likelihood of meeting the GNG. In general an adequate search for news articles in the papers covering the district involved will always find significant coverage. Sometimes this can be readily found in google news, sometimes not, and thus our inclusion criterion has become not whether sources exist, but whether GN has the sources readily available, making us not an encyclopedia, but an index to Google. I would say that basic information should always be included. To be sure, many such articles, perhaps most, are entirely promotional, and I have consistently deleted some as such. (It's much harder removing promotionalism for the articles on the incumbents.) But I thing the best protection against promotionalism here as elsewhere is for us ourself as non-involved editors to have decent articles in place in advance. Unfortunately, I must admit that my argument does not yet have consensus. DGG ( talk ) 00:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Do you have an opinion on the question of the contents of the election articles in connection with the candidates standing for election? 184.78.81.245 (talk) 12:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I think that declaring that certain political parties are worth covering and others may not be is at least perilously close to using the encyclopedia as a political endorsement. To be clear, no sarcasm this time, if we can cite reliable sources that cover a campaign, that campaign should be covered. Wnt (talk) 13:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, there's an enormous profusion of notability subpages, all of which should read nothing more than "just use WP:N". Higher standards for narrow classes of articles are bizarre (and in general, it's usually held meeting N is enough, regardless of what Wikipedia:Notability of Characters in Harry Potter Fanfiction's Garments says, and any less means you can't hope to meet NPOV or V. WilyD 13:17, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

WilyD, thank you for sharing but I have absolutely no idea what you're on about, other than that you seem to enjoy using casual blasphemy intended to be shocking. #FAIL The one link you provided is red. #FAIL You did not provide a link for WP:N. #FAIL I am neither your parent nor your teacher. You are responsible for your own actions. I came here to have a serious discussion about what appears to be a long-standing serious problem. I hope you rewrite your post so we can achieve that. Wnt, the phrase 'covering a campaign' has been interpreted to mean 'reporting polling results'. I want to be clear that the question is about candidates in serious contention who do not have their own article. They're currently limited, according to Tarc, to name, occupation and official campaign website. He claims their background, experience and so forth are irrelevant, claiming a 'consensus' I have yet to to find. Others have repeatedly tried to claim I'm talking about no-hopers. This obfuscation, in reaction to what was a simple and straightforward question, is making me wonder what's going on here. Either all you Wikipedians are still confused about the question, or you're doing everything you can to avoid answering it. I'm not interested in providing any of you with later deniability. I asked a relevant question, and I deserve a relevant answer. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 16:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC) Explanation: I deleted the content this IP referrs to as "casual blasphemy." --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:58, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

The tl;dr is "You should always just apply WP:GNG, rather than trying to use an unending proliferation of specialty guidelines on narrow topics". WilyD 17:16, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 20:28, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Good Love!!!!

	The Heart of Justice
	You did a good job! 4321068861matthewho (talk) 13:27, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

A book

Yesterday I edited my stuff here and I am receiving a notice from you that you got rid of it and I don't know why.I am telling people of a book 'THE PAIN OF LOVE' WHICH IS ADDRESSING SOCIAL PROBLEMS PEOPLE have in their relationships.It is all about the causes of the pains people encounter in their relationships which leads other people to kill their partners before taking their own lives.Solutions to the problems as well as counseling for those whose relationships are on the rocks is also availed in this book.Passion killings is a global problem which each one of us has to know how to avoid it in order to live happily and peacefully with one's loved one.This book is there to prepare people's minds in case they find themselves in some unfortunate situations.I think it was a mistake to remove the content of the message from the list as it is a very helpful information to the people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.167.180.51 (talk) 09:09, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Since this is only your third edit under this IP address, it appears that you are talking about what happened to your second edit. You added what is essentially an advertisement (in all caps no less) for a book about murder-suicides in romantic relationships to the page Talk:Human Rights Watch, where it had no discernible relationship to the subject at hand (which is improving the article Human Rights Watch). Another editor, User:Ravensfire (not Jimbo), removed it, and in his edit summary said your edit was "spam", which it was. You might want to contact that editor, and if you feel that your edit was NOT "spam" or advertising, and that it actually did have something to do with the talk page in question, calmly explain why, but it looks like the deletion was appropriate. Neutron (talk) 22:04, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

strange situation at the Barak Obama talk page

Recently I added a single reliably-sourced word, "African," to the list of Barak Obama's mother's ethnic origins near the beginning of the Barak Obama article. My basic point is that if the article mentions Obama's mother's single Scottish ancestor (who was born 400 years ago), as well as Obama's Irish and Swiss ancestry, then there shouldn't be a problem with an equally-brief mention of her African ancestry. My one-word addition to the article was first modified and then deleted, so I opened a talk page here. The discussion has taken a disturbing turn, and seems to have hit a nerve of racial discomfort among some wikipedia editors. In particular, the suggestion to delete the entire list of ethnic origins as a way to avoid adding the word "African" strikes me as a potential public relations black eye for wikipedia, which is why I am making this post here.--Other Choices (talk) 02:36, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

No, that's not the problem. The article currently states " His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, and was of mostly English ancestry, along with Scottish, Irish, German, and Swiss." (with six references not included here). The proposed edit adds "and African" (with a seventh reference). The problem is that at some point adding ancestry information crosses a line and goes outside what is due—if "African" had been added earlier, editors on the talk page would be objecting to adding "Swiss". I think that (as recently proposed at the talk) all the ancestry information should probably be removed, although I would like someone to read the references and determine whether any of them have DUE information for the article. I think the issue is that Obama's mother was born in the US, but some want to point to her "mostly English ancestry" (I don't know if that's appropriate or not), but that phrase has led to more and more being added. As a percentage, very few people born in the US would be "pure" anything—almost everyone would have ancestors from at least a dozen countries, yet knowing that someone has, say, a Swiss ancestor does not tell you anything about the person, their personality, or their achievements. It's like giving their shoe size—interesting to some, but unless very unusual, not DUE. Johnuniq (talk) 03:35, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

John, the fact that he is believed to have had an African ancestor on his mother's side is far more notable than the fact that he has a Swiss or German ancestor on that side. [7][8] It's literally been world news. JN466 13:03, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Interesting, and not just a slave but the "first" slave. I learned something new. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:17, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

While the structure can be rethought (perhaps this is not an incidental note on her "background" in the common and perhaps disturbingly discriminatory sense, to be given in the first sentence, but might be explained more in reference to a cottage industry surrounding Obama's ancestry and citizenship) --- nonetheless, no version of the article, however organized, should omit this reference and its main conclusions, i.e. that she definitely has some African ancestry, and that the evidence suggests the progenitor was the famous John Punch (slave). The sources say it, so we should say it. What part of "the sum of all human knowledge" does not apply here? This fact is interesting as it tends to confirm in my mind the notion that there is a higher aesthetic organization to the plot of the universe than is commonly supposed, and the story of John Punch should remind us of how readily the satanic influence of contracts and economic inequality can be transformed into centuries of most open injustice. Wnt (talk) 14:33, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Re: "she definitely has some African ancestry'" - perhaps a pedantic point, but we all do. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:14, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, to be pedantic, the Y chromosomes of the Bunches apparently can be traced specifically to Cameroon. Saying "we all have African ancestry" apparently didn't play well in Virginia in 1640. Fortunately, us transcription monkeys don't have to reason the philosophy of whether Africa's status as the birthplace of mankind rules out any mention that some people are African-American; we can simply recite what the sources say, without comprehension. Wnt (talk) 20:32, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

As I read it, the source doesn't say she had African ancestry. It says the evidence "suggests" that she may have. It all sounds a little tenuous. If this is going to be in the article, it has to be there with all of the qualifications and maybes that are in the source, and not just the one word. I don't think it's worth it. Neutron (talk) 22:30, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

The source claims this: "Its team, while lacking definitive proof, said it had evidence that “strongly suggests” Mr. Obama’s family tree — on his mother’s side — stretches back nearly four centuries to a slave in colonial Virginia named John Punch." So no, it cannot be used to support the claim as it was originaly made as a fact with that one word addition. Also, sorry, but the source is not RS. It is a hyper partisan site, that is copying the original source, which is the The New York Times, Herald-Tribune and the partisan source does not link to the original story and has no author information. It does not pass reliable sources criteria.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:05, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know which source you say is bad, but it's only a moment to find many.[9][10][11] It's an educated guess that John Punch was the ancestor, but the Bunches were definitely "mulatto" and carry a Cameroonian Y chromosome, according to the sources. Wnt (talk) 23:28, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

The original proposed edit and the "seventh" reference added.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:42, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't see an educated guess as encyclopedic, it is mere speculation. I think consensus can determine the inclusion or exclusion at the originating talk page.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:44, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Suggs

Interesting Daily Mail article here. Suggs found out about his father's death by reading wikipedia!♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:51, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

• Suggs (singer).--ukexpat (talk) 16:12, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
  • edit by Mdmason (talk · contribs). Uncle G (talk) 19:22, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Because why not?

Aadmm (talk) 19:55, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

An invitation for you!

	Hello, Jimbo Wales. We are in the early stages of initiating a project to plan, gain consensus on, and coordinate adding a feature to the main page wherein an article will be listed daily for collaborative improvement. If you're interested in participating, please add your name to the list of members.

 Happy editing! AutomaticStrikeout 20:59, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Dennis Brown using abusive language as a moderator

Please review moderator Dennis Brown's use of foul language ("smart ass") response to my question, and the false accusation (sock puppetry). There was no call for such language. Please judge for yourself if Mr. Brown upholds your ideals for Administrators of Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Inetcafebooth6#Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations.2FInetcafebooth6.2FArchive

Sherlock Holmes: It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.
Please specify who "they" are. You were involved as your name appears as follows: "2 weeks for master, indef for sock and sock's former name. Closing Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 23:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)"
University Internet Cafe Booth 6 (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

If you are trying to persuade me, being a smart ass isn't the way to do it. Contact the CU, go to ANI, whatever you think is best, but I'm not inclined to review it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 00:51, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

University Internet Cafe Booth 6 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone object to me indef blocking this user? He's already been caught socking and his talk page is a laundry list of other disruptive behavior. His edits after his most recent sock block show he does not intend to change his behavior to conform to the community norms. MBisanz ^talk 20:24, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I notified Dennis of this thread since Inet did not do so. LadyofShalott 20:28, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Talk of retaliation for a user making a complaint is noted, along with repeat of false accusation (sock). Courtesy, accuracy, and fairness should be the community norms for Wikipedia.
University Internet Cafe Booth 6 (talk) 20:31, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

This user has been indefinitely blocked by me for disruptive editing, the above posts being the final straw. Fram (talk) 21:05, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Regardless of what the user did, and did deserve to be blocked, can we please make a statement for LadyofShalott to understand no one is required to contact anyone regarding being mentioned on this page. This is not AN/I or any other such forum. To make it seem someone needs to be informed and that failing to do so is a violation is not in keeping with Jimbo's philosophy that going to his page is a fundamental right, is not forum shopping, is not canvassing, and that all have the right to bring their complaints to him regardless of any other mitigating circumstances. Let's not discourage people from coming here.97.85.211.124 (talk) 01:48, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

While true, and I agree that it is not a requirement, it is a common courtesy. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 01:54, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec) I agree that it is purely a matter of courtesy, and a not something that will occur to all users. On the more substantive matter while calling someone a "smart ass" might be considered normal in our wonderful community, it is quite reasonable for someone to be surprised at that, and it would seem that pointing out that a certain level of robustness is normal in out community, and closing the discussion there, rather than blocking the guy over it, would be an appropriate response. Rich Farmbrough, 02:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC).

That is not a reasonable summary of the situation (I have seen the OP's disruptive POV pushing at a couple of places, and there is plenty of background to explain what occurred, and the "report" here was just an attempt to exploit a flaw in what an opponent said—the opponent being one of Wikipedia's most patient and helpful admins who was just doing his job of trying to protect the encyclopedia). Johnuniq (talk) 03:40, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I really have to agree with Johnunig, the administrator in question isn't one to make snap decisions with blocks and I have say, that while I myself would not use these terms, I have had two seperate editors get upset that I said "sir", and said it was as if I slapped them in the face with a white glove. Unfortunately, in this world we type, called Wikipedia, there are criteria to meet a threshold that many times works against people in a discussion when making the accusation of some kind. (Trust me...I am learning this) Did the admin actually call the other editor a name (per policy of no personal attacks) or did he simply warn against a type of behavior he might see as a route the editor could be attempting to take. It appears to be a warning not to cross a line to become a "Smart Ass", and not actually saying "Hey, you're a smart ass!". We should all be adults here and not get too upset over this and maybe we should all take this as a moment to actually review policy again. Why not, how can it hurt.--Amadscientist (talk) 04:02, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Claiming "I didn't call him a smart ass, I just warned him about becoming a smart ass" is wikilawyering. The policy is obviously not meant to allow names just because you are phrasing the statement in the future tense; an insult doesn't magically become not an insult just because when literally parsed it only insults the target conditionally.

We'd certainly never accept this excuse in the context of other types of disagreement than with administrators: "I didn't call him an asshole, I just said that if he keeps insisting on putting this material in the article he'd be an asshole". 208.65.89.142 (talk) 12:44, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Except, if you really were starting to be an asshole then maybe you needed the blunt message. No, he didn't call him an asshole. If the mere suggestion that one is beginning to take that route and that's a bad idea offends you, perhaps just being offended isn't enough. And before you get your knickers out of alignment I was handled by Dennis in a similar manner but he didn't have to say the words because another did it for him. Sorry, but accept it if you really are starting to become an asshole, maybe a blunt manner is the best way to get the message through. To me this person needed it spelled out.--Amadscientist (talk) 12:54, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that this is becoming a red herring, the aim should be to get these editors contributing constructively and collegialy. It should not be beyond our wit to at least make a decent attempt at this. Rich Farmbrough, 13:49, 25 August 2012 (UTC).

Indeed, I have commended Dennis to our editor, and suggested that his course of action was unwise. There is a tendency, though, and I doubt anyone would disagree, to assume that all editors know how Wikipedia works, on one level or another. The truth of the matter is that no-one actually knows, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in academic social science research on Wikipedia, so my ignorance is relatively authoritative. And so we see an editor, here, who has been involved in conflict, which is not unusual, been subject to an SPI, which has fairly clearly not been explained properly to him, and has been subject to what must appear form his point of view as "admins circling the wagons". We, of course, from our lofty perches of experience, know that he has been handling things somewhat wrongly, both in his disputes about content, and in his reactions to administrative actions. However we should not allow our intimate knowledge to blind us to how this seems form the editor's point of view. From their point of view their well sourced information was removed from WP with a blank edit summary, and attempts to put it back were resisted by apparently partisan editors. Someone in their household, office or internet cafe (let us AGF, and it seems not unlikely) very unwisely (but how were they to know?) reinserted the information. Suddenly both users are blocked, and nasty things are being said about them. Not unnaturally the editor becomes annoyed at this, makes a query of the blocking admin (our much maligned Dennis) and is told that "it is nothing to do with him it is the CU". Presumably our editor has no idea what a CU is, and asks for clarification. When he thinks he is being messed around he takes his complaint here. Bringing it here shows a certain amount of naivete, as indeed does the complaint as a whole, but that is hardly enough to damn the user for eternity, which seems to be the current approach, instead it is an opportunity to educate. Rich Farmbrough, 04:37, 25 August 2012 (UTC).

Yeah...we generally write non-fiction on Wikipedia, but that was "purdy". They have three unblock requests, denied for good reason and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Inetcafebooth6/Archive. I am confident this has been handled properly and in the correct manner.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:24, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it has been "handled properly and in the correct manner", by and large (ideally the same admin should not be responding to unblock appeals, for example). My point is that despite this, you do not need to assume much good faith to envision a user who feels justly aggrieved. It is for example blatantly clear with the slightest investigation, that despite the checkuser coming back positive, these accounts belong to two different people. Now what should have happened at that point is the WP:MEATPUPPET and WP:CANVASSING and WP:NOTAGOODIDEA should have been explained to both users. Given that, of course, the unblock declines turn largely on the socking claims. Am I the only one that would like to see a positive outcome? I do hope not. Rich Farmbrough, 13:40, 25 August 2012 (UTC).

Wow. Blatantly clear the accounts belong to two different people? Where in the world do you get that impression from? The CU confirms that the accounts are technically identical, and both accounts have edited the same articles in the same manner. Even to someone who is not well versed on internet trolling and sock puppetry, it should be "blatantly clear" that both accounts are in fact the same editor. Looking at the editors contributions, it's an obvious single purpose account that is insistent on accusing other users of lying(1,2) and pushing a fringe POV. There are numerous other examples, but I am wondering if you are really looking at the same editor here. The editor is clearly disruptive and not here to improve the project. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 13:56, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't try to convince him, DD2K, the only reason he is trying to find fault with this block is because of who did the indef blocking. WP:ABF, I know, but sometimes things are a bit too blatant to pretend they aren't happening. Anyway, I'm also looking forward to his explanation of what his "slightest investigation" actually showed that made it so clear that these are meat- instead of sockpuppets. Fram (talk) 21:13, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Because neither editor has successfully hidden their RL identity. And yes there are issues around interaction and POV, we resolve this sort of thing every day. Rich Farmbrough, 00:56, 26 August 2012 (UTC).

There is no "either editor", there is one editor. I would provide the 'technical evidence' here that I have(which I'm pretty sure the CU found), but I'm afraid it would amount to outing. But if any admin that has any real issues with the block of this editor, they can contact me via email and I would be happy to provide them with 100% proof. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 03:07, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

To 97... required? No, but as Inet was clearly appealing to Jimbo as an authority to call down Dennis, the polite thing to do was to give Dennis fair notice. That's all I have to say on the matter. LadyofShalott 06:42, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

It is a common mistake and yes, sometimes done purposely, but I have complained on here about admin and didn't notify them and they still got the message. While this is not a noticeboard, be assured that the admin being complained about is going to be informed by another admin watch listing this page...if they themselves don't already. I would be very surprised if Dennis didn't have this page watched...so with that I bow out as having said my peice. It was all to familiar to me but this one went way south for many reasons it seems. Thanks LadyofShalott for watching out for another editor though.--Amadscientist (talk) 13:33, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Javanese Wikipedia

The articles "Papat Limpad" and "Papat Limpad 2012" discuss efforts to revitalize Javanese Wikipedia.
—Wavelength (talk) 14:53, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Editors can use Category:User jv to find Wikipedians who speak the Javanese language.
—Wavelength (talk) 03:05, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Pillars

Mr. Wales, I like Wikipedia a lot. I like depth and breadth of it. I can easily get lost reading about moths, and trees, and dinosaurs, and rare earth metals, and before I know it, I find I've wasted half of a Saturday morning. From one side, it looks really amazing and impressive.

But as an editor, I have to say, it feels like so much of a battle, so much of the time. While civility is a common practice in polite society, it seems to quickly become scarce in Wikipedia between our editors. And while I don't like to paint with broad brushes, the Administrator's Noticeboard probably running right behind Mos Eisley as a wretched hive of incivility. I like to imagine that our Pillars actually mean something here. And I would like to think that among all the editors we have, our Administrators would take our Pillars in hand with the utmost respect and professionalism. Unfortunately, you are more likely to get attacked by the regulars at Administrator's Noticeboard than helped. If you're new and don't understand things, you'll get attacked for being new and stupid. If you try to stick up for other people, you'll get attacked for that. Well, I won't belabor the point, but you get attacked mostly for just not agreeing wholeheartedly with whatever the mind of the mob is for that day.

Is WP:Civility as a Pillar a lost cause? -- Avanu (talk) 08:35, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

The current case cannot be defended (the incivility was extreme), but as has been pointed out on the many other occasions you have raised similar matters, the actual problem that the community cannot deal with is the civil pushing of POV and FRINGE views that drive good editors to incivility. Yes, the incivility needs to be dealt with, but it is a symptom of the underlying problem (the inability to deal with POV/FRINGE pushing because passers-by derail noticeboard discussions with links to AGF/BITE/CIVIL).

Problem editors need a clear message at noticeboards: we're sorry someone was rude, but please change your ways if you plan to do more editing because what has happened so far is not acceptable (link to policy goes here). Johnuniq (talk) 09:26, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

While I agree 100% with your comment, Johnuniq, I specifically raised a concern here because AN/I is broken. It isn't *totally* broken, and in fact a good 70% of incidents pass through it with a good outcome. But WAYYYY too often, people are snarky, dickish, and patronizing, rather than professional and courteous. I realize that these are volunteers, but they are unmanaged and uncoordinated. So while you have moments of splendor and touching service, you don't have consistency. And in light of the ideal of Civility, being dickish a large part of the time, and an angel the rest, doesn't make for that great of a saint. -- Avanu (talk) 09:55, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

{e/c}

I disagree [with Johnuniq]. I've seen lots of gratuitous rudeness and smart-mouthing and arrogance. Civil (well-mannered) people don't often allow disagreements to turn them into sarcastic cussers. A better message could be, "We're sorry someone was pushing their POV, but please respond civilly." Yopienso (talk) 09:59, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Fine. But the actual problem is that Wikipedia is now the number one forum for promoting ideas and products, and the old bazaar model that all problems will be solved by the inexhaustible supply of good editors is in danger of being submerged. There is an evolutionary arms race in play: after normal procedures select out those who can quickly be identified as bad, we are left with a group that is resistant to standard cleanup (the civil POV pushers). If we focus on CIVIL, we will all be very happy and nice, but the actual problem will deteriorate, and the encyclopedia will suffer.

My comment above is asserting that if there is an ANI report about a problem user, the discussion in that section needs to focus on the actual problem. If someone is uncivil to the problem user, by all means raise it with them on their talk page, or start a new section at ANI or whatever. But if there is a problem user being discussed, it is not helpful to derail the discussion by raising other issues. There have been many examples where problem users fail to get the message because they regard any objection to someone who was opposing them as support for their problematic behavior (an invalid conclusion, but they cling to any hope). I am not talking about the case currently on everyone's mind, as that is over-the-top. Johnuniq (talk) 11:17, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree that civil POV pushing is a much larger problem than incivility. Incivility is generally easy to spot, civil POV pushing is more difficult. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Avanu, you appear to have spent a lot of recent time at various controversial articles, controversial ANI treads, ANEW etc. You are taking the extreme examples, and generalizing from that. Most articles are uncontentious, most discussions are fruitful, even at ANI. IRWolfie- (talk) 12:27, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I was specifically talking just about AN/I and I did say that a lot of things (70% or more) go through with a good outcome. The problem is the other 30% (or less) that turn into gross messes. -- Avanu (talk) 13:06, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Paid advocacy

"The tale of GettingBookReviews.com, which commissioned 4,531 reviews in its brief existence, is a story of a vast but hidden corner of the Internet, where Potemkin villages bursting with ardor arise overnight."

"Rutherford would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, he would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50. Not just any kind of review will do. They have to be somewhere between enthusiastic and ecstatic. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/best-book-reviews-money-buy-131408538.html?page=all

-- Avanu (talk) 11:45, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

It would be interesting to determine whether any of this affected Wikipedia at all. Since we normally require reliable sources, and none of these would have been published in reliable sources, I doubt we were affected very much. That is, it sounds like this guy was focussed on doing reviews at e-commerce sites, and we wouldn't normally take notice at all of what Amazon customer reviews say.

The entire article is worth reading for a different reason: we need to think more and more about "self-published" books. In the past, it was pretty easy to assume that a self-published book is problematic as a source - if no traditional publisher would publish it, it likely had little merit. But today, I have seen more and more authors choosing to go the self-published route not because a traditional publisher wouldn't publish their book, but because it may make a lot more economic sense, even if (and that's far from assured) sales would be higher in the traditional route. Would you rather make $1 per sale on sales of 10,000 or $5 per sale on sales of 6,000? So it seems to me that, increasingly, traditional publishers are losing out on perfectly good quality works because their services aren't always needed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:44, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

If it's self published other qualities can make it reliable, for example known expertise. It just wouldn't be reliable for exceptional claims. So the sources still get used. A good example would be articles on arxiv. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:53, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

"Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer;"

Also, there is a requirement that the self-published expert already have had other works on the same subject published by third parties. Sometimes this isn't true. Ken Arromdee (talk) 19:58, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:School and university projects

This is an opportune time for editors to become familiar with Wikipedia:School and university projects.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:03, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• … although, strictly speaking, any time is an opportune time for that nowadays. Uncle G (talk) 23:56, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Templates 90% of slow articles

I have reconfirmed that use of large templates is slowing the reformatting, or edit-preview, of major articles, as over 90% of the total delay. For a long edit-preview, divide by 10 to find the non-template speed improvement: article "Israel" with edit-preview of 40 seconds would drop to 4-second edit-preview with no templates. While most of the articles are slowed when having over 70 {Cite_web}, {Cite_news}, {Cite_journal} or {Citation} templates, some articles are slowed more by other large templates. For example, article "Miami" (which has an edit-preview of 18 seconds average) has relatively few citation templates, so other templates account for over 60% of the total template-generated delay in "Miami" where Template:Miami_weatherbox runs almost 4 seconds, even though the typical huge top "{infobox settlement}" runs within only 1 second. I have noticed some other articles where citations were only half the problem, and other large templates delayed the edit-preview beyond the ideal 7-second response. I guess the general message is: all large templates have the potential to slow edit-preview of articles, not just citation templates. Meanwhile, plans to improve the speed of citation templates are still stuck in approval stages, for almost 2 months now. It took a long time to reach the slow edit-preview, and it has taken years to gain no approval for faster templates. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:50, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

• I'll confirm that I had at least a 20-second edit preview. But have you figured out how much of this is due to the size of the templates or the trouble of transcluding them, and how much due to assembling and formatting that very long list of "templates used in this preview" and the protection status of each, view source links, etc.? (I'm not sure if this is a valid test, but putting the whole article in "display:none" style reduced my display time by less than half.^[12]) Maybe that function could be relegated to some specialized Special: page and not included every time you preview an edit? Wnt (talk) 21:03, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Not a valid test. The parser doesn't look ahead and say "well he doesn't want to see it, let's serve up nothing and go for a smoke break". All the same grinding and gnashing happens, and the same content is delivered to your browser. It is your own browser that interprets style directives (you could use local Javascript to turn display: on again), so what you are seeing is the time saved by not asking your own browser to render the page contents. Since all our readers generally do want to see the page, you've sort-of done a reverse (or perverse?) test that shows the time they do have to take. Franamax (talk) 23:43, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
    • D'oh, I shoulda known that! Definitely there in the source. Wnt (talk) 13:24, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
• Repeated large templates are slow, not total templates: The average of article "Outline of Florida" shows only a 1.5-second edit-preview (using button "Show preview"), despite the use of 41 templates, to format almost 20 scroll-screens of page text with 25 images, where almost everything is a wikilink, but still just 1.5 seconds for the edit-preview or reformat of the entire article, positioning 25 images/icons. That article "Outline of Florida" even uses the huge, but efficient Template:Citation/core, but only once with just one {Cite_web}, so the result was a mere 1.5 seconds to reformat. When large templates are used over 70 times per page, then the slow-down becomes more obvious. That is the reasoning behind new Template:Cite_quick, to format simple, common citations 10x-12x times faster than {cite_web} or {cite_news}, as in pop-culture articles which do not use Harvard referencing or author-to-title links. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
  • And this is something we have known (as a community) for years, yet we still have opposition to improvements, often from those who are in blissful ignorance, but sometimes from those who surely should know better. Rich Farmbrough, 01:44, 25 August 2012 (UTC).
    
    • Well, I am thinking since removing citation templates would be a violation of wp:CITEVAR without prior consensus, then changing short cites to use {cite_quick}, in the same format as Citation style 1 of {cite_web}, is the easy alternative. Any short citation could be expanded, for more parameters, by returning to {cite_news} or {cite_journal}, but meanwhile, the major pop-culture articles would reformat, or edit-preview, almost 4x times faster since {cite_quick} is 10x-12x times faster than the others. For popular medical articles, with complex citations, then {Fcite_journal} could be used, as 4-5x faster than {cite_journal} but still support Harvard referencing and other parameters. -Wikid77 02:28, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
      • I've previously commented on the spamming of navboxes to many articles; these in turn become very large navboxes. I suggested "a neutral bright line putting a limit on templates. I think that limiting navboxes to linking 50 articles or less is more than fair, and limiting them to 25 is reasonable." Unfortunately, interest in the problem was solely political. But I'll point out that Template:Miami-Dade County, Florida links to (and is linked by) 100 different communities in Miami-Dade County, and is an example of the sort of template I wanted to see replaced by a list article or Category. Wnt (talk) 13:38, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Where has this nonsense about opposition to improvements come from? Far from there being opposition to improvements, there are quite a few people actively pushing Scribunto which seems to be a distinct improvement. The only significant opposition has been to the templates that Wikid77 made and started using, and that was precisely because they were not improvements. They broke quite a lot of stuff.

      Thanks to M. Starling, Scribunto is now on the test2 server, per the announcement in The Signpost a few days ago. I've set up a citation templates test page with a lot of templates in it there, that exercises a lot of our various citation, and cross-linkage, templates. Scribunto works to the extent that we can actually implement our citation templates in LUA. I have. Look how short Template:cite book is. All of the logic is in the LUA module (which as you can see by the test pages, incorporates a fair fraction of the functionality of the English Wikipedia's {{Citation/core}}) without having templates that transclude templates that transclude templates and closing braces coming out of one's ears. This is the improvement that people are working on, and I've yet to see it (sensibly) opposed.

      If you want something to compare, look at The Beatles#Citations and The Beatles#Sources here versus The Beatles#Citations and The Beatles#Sources on the test2 wiki, which is the same wikitext (albeit that the infobox and a few other templates are missing — I'm just about to do a LUA version of {{Allmusic}} for it.).

      Uncle G (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

      • Excellent work, thanks. That looks very promising (although I think we are still stuck with a mess when interpreting template arguments with problems handling = and | and more?). Has it been possible to estimate actual performance improvements yet? Do you mean T. Starling in above? Johnuniq (talk) 03:32, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
        • M. isn't an initial, and that's not really an interpretation problem.

          Scribunto doesn't change the wikitext syntax. So we'll still have to use 1= and so forth whenever there's an = character in a template argument, as now. What Scribunto changes is the potential implementation of templates, drastically, to one that works more speedily. In our current system, {{cite book}} expands into {{citation/core}}, which then has to be re-parsed and in turn expands into {{citation/make link}} and {{citation/identifier}}, which then have to be re-parsed and in turn expand into {{hide in print}} and {{only in print}}. In the Scribunto version of things, this is the entirety of Template:Cite book:

          <includeonly>{{#invoke:citation|citation|CitationClass=book}}</includeonly><noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>
          

          That's it. There's one level of template expansion. The same goes for infoboxes. In our current scheme, {{infobox radar}} expands to {{infobox}} which after re-parsing in turn expands to other templates such as {{infobox/row}}. Again, the Scribunto equivalent has one level. The Scribunto equivalent of {{infobox country}} is also interesting for other reasons. The template is again one line long:

          <includeonly>{{#invoke:infobox_country|country}}</includeonly><noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>
          

          The Lua module that the infobox implementor has to write is Module:Infobox country. That's not complete, but the missing parts are simply more of the same. See how simple in structure it is! Ask yourself whether you, assuming/pretending that you don't know Lua, could implement the rest of the fields in the infobox that I haven't implemented by just following the pattern of what's already there.

          As for performance improvements, see what I wrote on the Technical Village Pump. United States?action=purge loads in ~10 seconds on the test2 wiki (and it has an infobox template to process now). Compare that to United States?action=purge here. Or just open them up side by side in tabs and see which one completes first. ☺

          Somewhere in United States there's a template that in the current system expands to 28 levels deep ….

          Uncle G (talk) 11:16, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

          • Thanks again, although I have read some of the docs for Scribunto and Lua and understand that standard template syntax is used to invoke a Lua module (I was expressing disappointment that there is no magic way to clean that up due to backwards compatibility requirements). I just tried the purge and got 15 and 35 seconds for test2 and here, respectively. There are a lot of confounding factors such as the time required to purge a similar page with no templates, the hardware used for test2 and for here, and the current workload on each site, so we'll need to see how things work out when implemented here. I agree that a Lua module is much better than MediaWiki template voodoo. Johnuniq (talk) 12:04, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
            • Those and several others. This is why I pointed out on the Pump that these are not (yet) like-for-like comparisons. But one of the things that having this on the test2 wiki gives us is the ability to have like-for-like comparisons. Copy over a hundred or so articles that make heavy uses of citation, infobox, conversion, coördinate, and other templates; Scribble the appropriate templates; and compare and check. This is the whole testing thing that Wikid77 missed out on last time and seems to be missing out on this time. Uncle G (talk) 17:16, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
              • Well, that was the early phase and I did not "miss out" on testing, as I updated several articles in early July, which revisions now work fine. However, beware people falsely claiming "broken articles" when just a few links fail, or the errors were already in the articles, as broken articles before changing citations. Note that "India" has a few broken citations using "coauthors=" rather than last2/last3 for author-title links with {{sfn}}. Those were pre-existing errors in "India" not caused by the Lua script, nor Template:Fcite which works fine. -Wikid77 03:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
                • "Just a few links" being the entire shortened footnotes system, amongst others. More misleading terms here are your classifying template parameters, that you've just decided to not support, as "errors". Again, this is where you are completely wrongheaded. A drop in replacement has to be capable of being dropped in. That means supporting things like coauthors (and indeed coauthor — I've provided both in the Scribbled templates.) because uses of them exist. Ironically, but in demonstration of the point that you simply skip over the testing and checking parts, India has no citation that uses coauthors and hasn't had since July. Fortunately, one of the other articles copied over to the test2 wiki does.

                  To all of M. Wales' talk page watchers: If you have a favourite obscure citation template parameter that you want to ensure will continue to work with Scribbled citation templates, feel free to do as Allen3 (talk · contribs) has done and drop in a test case, copied from an actual current use in an article for preference, at the bottom of Citation templates test. The goal here is to support all of the existing functionality, and more besides, so that we have something ready to drop in when the time comes, as well as so that M. Starling has something akin to real use to profile and debug; rather than to arbitrarily throw away functionality and declare "fast citations". ☺

                  Uncle G (talk) 08:49, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

            • Here's an interesting datum that is a like-for-like test, because it's on the same wiki: I copied India over to the test2 wiki. It turns out that it uses {{citation}} directly, a lot. I hadn't Scribbled that template at the time. On the test2 wiki it took somewhere over 50 seconds for the page to display using the old non-Scribbled template. I Scribbled Template:Citation and that reduced the time for India to approximately 20 seconds. Uncle G (talk) 14:28, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
              • Interesting. I have some questions that I'll ask here rather than inject noise into the VPT discussion. I'm hoping you might ask Tim to provide some info on the 20 seconds: how much of that is Template:Citation, and is there a stand-out bottleneck apart from Citation? Is the Scribunto/Lua in use at test2 running at full speed (or is it running with some kind of debug/profiling code)? This is just my curiosity, but some info added at VPT (or a dedicated page somewhere?) would be interesting. Johnuniq (talk) 01:54, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
                • I have no special access to M. Starling, and if you want to ask xem something it's best done directly rather than through me. I'm one of the people writing Scribbled templates, and articles that use those templates. That puts me in the rôle of Complaining End User Who Wants To Do Unexpected Things And Have Everything Work Just Like In The Doco as far as M. Starling is concerned. ☺

                  But there's a figure for how much time is spent by Lua given in a comment in the generated HTML. I just re-purged India and looked at the figure. It reported 5.797s, out of just under 20s in total by my count, spent in Lua, and that's presumably the total for every Scribbled template, which includes {{citation}}, {{notelist}}, {{infobox country}}, and several others at this stage. (The remaining things to get a proper like-for-like comparison up and running are some missing fields in the country infobox, some CSS generation in citations, a few navboxes and ancillary non-Scribbled templates, and {{convert}}. Conversion might add significant time on. The missing country infobox fields probably won't. They're just a tedious exercise in decoding what multiply nested {{#if}} in the original are supposed to be doing. The non-Scribbled templates are fairly flat in the first place, which is why they don't need to be Scribbled.)

                  As for the other question: I'm guessing, since M. Starling has said that xe's going to profile things, that the test2 server has some form of profiling enabled.

                  Uncle G (talk) 08:49, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

              • One edit-preview of test2.wikipedia "India" ran only 14 seconds with the Lua script Module:Citation, which is comparable to using Template:Fcite, or 5-6x times faster than template-based {Citation} formatting. However, Module:Citation is still being revised, so it might become slower after it is expanded closer to {cite_web} or {citation} operation, with all 9 author names and "et al." formatting. -Wikid77 03:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
                • You're trying to grasp at straws, there. Module:Citation supported "all" 9 author names right from the start, when citation template support was first added to it, long before I even copied India across for testing. What you saw, supports "more than all". Uncle G (talk) 08:49, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• There are no "straws" and again, you misunderstand the full options in the current {cite_web}, which I have studied for years. When I mentioned the 9 author names and "et al." formatting, I was referring to option "display-authors=3" which truncates the listed authors to 3 names. The Lua version in test2.wiki Module:Citation has not supported the parameter "display-authors=3" which works as follows here:

• 1: {{cite_web | title=Web Page | last1=Jones |first=Tim |last2=Hood|first2=Kay
  |last3=Thirder|first3=T. |last4=Forth|first4=Fred}} →
  Result: Jones, Tim; Hood, Kay; Thirder, T.; Forth, Fred. "Web Page". {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
• 2: {{cite_web | title=Web Page | last1=Jones |first=Tim |last2=Hood|first2=Kay
  |last3=Thirder|first3=T. |last4=Forth|first4=Fred |display-authors=3}} →
  Result: Jones, Tim; Hood, Kay; Thirder, T.; et al. "Web Page". {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)

What you imagine as me being "misleading" is me trying to explain all the numerous parameters which the Lua version does not support yet. Remember, there are 23 forks of {cite_web}, as {cite_book}, {cite_journal}, {cite_news}, {cite_video}, {cite_encyclopedia}, {cite_podcast}, {cite_magazine}, {cite_url}, etc. There are many more parameters which must be added to the Lua forks, which will slow the processing even further, compared to the faster templates {Fcite_web} and {Cite_quick}. So, now the problem becomes how to get the Lua version to run even faster. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:14, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Speeding Miami to 6 seconds from 18

By a combination of faster techniques, the full article "Miami" can be improved to edit-preview in 6 seconds, rather than the 18-second reformat of recent months. The article "Miami" has been an interesting example, as a popular page viewed 4,500 times per day, because slow citations are only a fourth of the total reformat time, while other templates cause the majority of slowness. There are 4 techniques which apply here: preformatted template sections ("cached sections"), fewer bottom navboxes, fast-citation templates, and the "efficiency dividend" when running quicker pages:

• Preformatted template sections ("cached sections") - This was one of the tactics discussed last month, where a slow-template section could be run separately, and the generated results would be stored as if "cached" in a subpage. For "Miami", the cached section is {Miami_weatherbox/preformatted} which was developed from running the 4-second Template:Miami_weatherbox and copying the results into a custom-formatted subpage. Because the {weather_box} template is extremely complex (also listing humidex, snow, or humidity), rather than fight to make the complexity faster, the easy bypass is to cache the results into a subpage /preformatted, for instant inclusion in "Miami".
• Fewer navboxes: As typical for popular articles, "Miami" had over 9 bottom navboxes, where 7 were only remotely related to Miami, and are listed now by title-link only, not embedded as navboxes of "107" links each. That shaved about 2 seconds off the total reformat time.
• Fast-citation template {cite_quick}: Because the article was written using mostly {cite_web} or {cite_news} templates, then Template:Cite_quick could be used to format cites 10x-12x faster. This is very typical of pop-culture articles, such as films, celebrities, or news events, and {cite_quick} can shave another 4 seconds off the edit-preview time.
• Efficiency dividend: As noted last month, when a page is streamlined to run much faster, then the overall speed is further quickened by avoiding busy-server delays which affect the slower articles even more. In this case, the dividend is about 1.5 seconds, as if the original 18-second article could have displayed in 16.5 seconds in an "ideal world of no other users" which slow the servers during those dedicated 16.5 seconds.

All together, the total speed improvement of edit-preview becomes:

• 18 seconds - 4 (weatherbox) - 2 (navboxes) - 4 (cites) - 1.5 (dividend) = 6.5 seconds.

Because the busy servers (Monday-Friday) still affect even quick articles, then the 6.5-second edit-preview will occasionally stretch to 7 or 8 seconds, but reformat times of 10 seconds would be rare, and the original 18-second edit-preview would basically be long-gone from "Miami". The only catch is to gain approval to use {cite_quick} in major articles, as part of the wp:CS2 {Cite} template family, as intended. Then, repeat similar changes in other popular articles, and soon, many major large articles could be edited and previewed within a comfortable time period, within about 7 seconds. Q.E.D. -Wikid77 08:57, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. I do prefer your "Smart citations" to a cite fork though. One more suggestion, embed the footnotes in the {{Footnotes}} and make that a subpage too. Rich Farmbrough, 13:57, 25 August 2012 (UTC).

• Cite_web/smart only 4x faster while Cite_quick 12x: The inescapable advantage of {cite_quick} is the 10x-12x faster speed compared to {cite_web/smart} as only 4x faster than {cite_web}. Perhaps there are other speed techniques which could be used to make those templates faster. Meanwhile, for {cite_web/smart}, I think I have used "every trick in the book" to keep it from slowing to only 3x faster. In fact, a {cite_journal/smart} is likely to be only 3x faster because {cite_journal} entries tend to use more parameters, and all of those will slow performance even more. Hence, the tactic for popular medical articles would be to use fast {Fcite_journal} as 5x-6x faster, because that would be almost 2x faster than a proposed {cite_journal/smart}. However, the potential to have a subpage as "article/footnotes/preformatted" is an excellent idea for some of the mega-articles in the top 500 most-viewed articles, such as "United States", to allow it to be edit-previewed as a shorter page, or reformatted with any image size, within a few seconds, rather than over 27 seconds with "Template include size too large". That footnotes tactic is so awesome, it will be like magic when editing "United States" again. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:46, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

With no change in the article wikitext at all, United States on the test2 wiki using Scribunto loads (with a cache purge of course) in 10 seconds. The infobox might slow it down a bit once added; but not, I suspect, by 13 seconds or more. And of course infobox templates are candidates for Scribunto, too. Uncle G (talk) 02:29, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

• With no change in the article wikitext except using {cite_quick}, "United States" reformats here in only 8 seconds, with the main infobox and all other templates still in use. Again, the primary advantage of {cite_quick} is the 10x-12x faster speed compared to {cite_web/smart} as only 4x faster than {cite_web}. However, {cite_web/smart} should be the upgrade version for {cite_web}, for use in the remainder of the 1.1 million cite-web articles which are not viewed, or edited, so often. -Wikid77 14:16, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
  • … which is a misleading way of saying with changes to the wikitext, because of all of the citation fields that your proposals intentionally don't support but that are used in that very article and that would outright lose displayed citation information if one didn't change the wikitext; such as doi= (used in 2 templates), quote= (used in 1 template), edition= (used in 2 templates), and month= (used in 16 templates) for starters. You did learn from your past mistakes and actually make sure that your purported go-faster system wasn't breaking things this time around, ne? Uncle G (talk) 17:00, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I did learn to beware people "crying wolf" when there are already problems with {cite_web}. Do not be fooled into thinking other templates are "not broken" when they also fail to process parameters. However, compare the following:

• {{cite web|title=See which parameters disappear | editor1 = Eddy | article=Parametercheck |Date=1 May 1944}}
• Cite_web result: Eddy (ed.). "See which parameters disappear". {{cite web}}: |article= ignored (help); Missing or empty |url= (help); Unknown parameter |Date= ignored (|date= suggested) (help)
• Fcite_web result: "See which parameters disappear".
  Fcite_web: Found "editor1=" - use "editor=".
  Fcite_web: Found "article=" - use "work=".
  Fcite_web: Found "Date=" - use lowercase "date=".

At least {Fcite_web} notes the incorrect parameters. The goal is to edit-preview faster, to see the results faster, and adjust the parameters. Because {Fcite_web} is faster, it has more time to check for invalid parameters and warn the user. -Wikid77 08:59, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Is anyone's time on Wikipedia, either as an editor or as a passerby reader, so constrained that shaving 12 seconds really makes a difference to anyone? Is this really the life we want to live in where we care about such inane things? Do we not have better ways of improving the encyclopedia instead of taking what works and trying to change it only for the sake of faster loading times? And at the expense of making the site user friendly and constructive.97.85.211.124 (talk) 00:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Everyone's time: Here, the "shaving 12 seconds" is a small example, and many of the problems with major articles are 20-40 seconds longer to edit-preview, or view with imagesize set other than 220px. When the delay reaches 60 seconds, then the entire edit could be lost, although rare, due to wp:Wikimedia Foundation error. Plus, numerous people have been caring about such "inane things" for many decades, in far more detail with split-second timings; see article "Response time (technology)" for more there. When response time is faster, then a template has more time to check the user's text and suggest improvements, since the user will likely see the result within a few seconds, not 18, or 29, or 52 seconds later. -Wikid77 08:59, 27 Aug., revised 02:20, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Speeding other articles

Because there are many large templates in Wikipedia, various articles will be slowed by different large templates, so improving just citation templates, or Template:Weather_box, will not solve all speed problems. Another major template which can slow processing (when used over 300x times) is the shortened-footnote Template:Sfn, which uses footnote function {{#tag:ref|...}} to generate ref-tags in a subtemplate. In articles using measurements, the Template:Convert has been fast enough for most articles, but it runs 30-40 conversions per second, and that might be too slow in large tables of measurements. In rare cases, other conversion templates could be used to format hundreds of numbers, faster, in measurement tables. I guess the main point is to be aware how articles could format, or edit-preview, 10x times faster without large templates; so if an article is running slower than a few seconds, there are likely some templates that could be made faster, to have a faster article. Otherwise, we can consider putting data as hand-formatted into tables without extra templates, when the speed is an issue. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:41, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Incivility

I am uninvolved in this issue, but i cam across Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Gross_incivility_from_two_editors, in particular the comment "fuck of and die you disgusting little heap of shit. Sociopathic scum like you". Thats not a death threat but I would think that is grossly uncivil to a congenial colloborative effort. To make matters worse, at the ANI thread the NPA "puke-brain" is reiterated. An admin seems to be working on it at User_talk:AndyTheGrump#Disappointing, but i thought this could be of interest to you. It would be something to look at in an effort to clean/improve the atmosphere. Disputes are quite normal, but that is not a dispute.Lihaas (talk) 04:15, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I was going to refrain from further comment, but "Thats not a death threat but I would think that is grossly uncivil to a congenial colloborative effort"? Really? Of course it isn't a death threat - nobody has suggested it was. Why do you feel the need to point out that it isn't? And yes, it was grossly uncivil - it was intended to be. Again, nobody - including me - has suggested otherwise. You seem however to have conveniently omitted the context however, where "congenial colloborative effort" was clearly not the objective of the person I directed it at. Instead, we had a 'contributor' insisting that a mass murderer was not a terrorist despite the fact that not only had he been convicted of terrorism, but his own defence lawyer had described him as such (and no, he wasn't saying that Wikipedia shouldn't describe him as a terrorist, he was asserting that he wasn't one). Likewise, he was asserting that the mass murder of 69 individuals - mostly teenagers - wasn't 'an atrocity'. While I clearly shouldn't have blown my top like that, to pretend that this was some sort of 'content dispute' is a gross misrepresentation. Sadly though, yet again the petty amateur bureaucrats of Wikipedia seem intent on burying their heads in the sand, and pretending that all would be right in the world if we were more polite to each other. It doesn't work like that. Wikipedia has a serious (and almost certainly growing) problem with 'contributors' who exploit the 'rules' to their advantage while they spin articles to suit their own obnoxious agendas. In this case the 'contributor' even openly asserted on his own talk page that he "consider[s] Wikipedia to be an intrinsically evil concept and a malevolent entity, a cancer on truth and on legitimate academic studies. Its concept of verifiability is the core of its evil. I am not here because I want to contribute to Wikipedia - I am here because I oppose everything Wikipedia stands for. A good writer does not bury truth because suitable sources are not immediately to hand, a good writer does not promote lies simply because sources exist that present those lies as if they were truth. But I recognise that few people have such high moral standards - or the courage or the knowledge to carry through with them". [13]. No sign of "colloborative effort" there. No sign of anything but someone who doesn't give a damn about anything but his own toxic worldview. We should not be 'collaborating' with such individuals at all. I for one refuse to. So yeah, I said things I shouldn't have, and probably deserve to be blocked for it (frankly, I'm burnt out and don't really care that much either way), but don't try to kid yourselves that blocking one particularly obnoxious long-term troll and one foul-mouthed grump is going to solve the problem. While AN/I and the rest concerns itself with enforcing an entirely bogus 'civility' amongst contributors, a significant proportion of such 'contributors' are filling Wikipedia with hate filled bigotry concerning the rest of the world. As I said at AN/I, this is cognitive dissonance at its most obvious - a petty concern for internal civility combined with an abject refusal to recognise what is going on in our articles. Every article that touches on issues of ethnic or religious conflict for example has its collection of POV-pushers working behind the scenes to spin things their way, and almost all of them soon learn how to exploit a system that 'assumes good faith' even when confronted with self-evident malevolence. Obsessing about 'enforcing the rules' while ignoring how such rules are being exploited plays right into the hands of the bigots - and let's not forget that Anders Behring Breivik, the mass-murderer that was being whitewashed by this person we were supposed to be 'collaborating' with is a great fan of Wikipedia - I'm sure he found it of great use as a source for excuses and 'justifications' for his activities. It there is one thing that Wikipedia doesn't lack for example, it is deranged Islamophobic trolls, out to convince the world that a vast all-encompassing conspiracy is out to conquer the world, enslave our women, murder our children, and in all probability (if they are to be believed) drink our blood. Are we supposed to 'collaborate' with such individuals? I seem to recall that previous 'collaborations' with those pushing similar conspiracy theories didn't work out too well... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:36, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

i fully agree with andy here. wiki is slowly but steadily being filled up with islamophobic editors, giving wikipedia a highly negative media publicity, especially due to the breivik trial (see e.g. [14])-- altetendekrabbe  05:54, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

You, Andy, and a number of others I could name here, are usually uncannily right in these situations about the character and motives of the person you harangue. (I don't know about this instance.) (1) Sometimes you're not. (2) That language and behavior is unnecessary, so on those rare occasions when you're wrong it is an unnecessary gross mistreatment of another editor. (3) Whether you're right or wrong, it always consumes large amounts of other people's time. Show some consideration to the rest of us and take it somewhere other than the article talk page. --175.38.128.99 (talk) 05:57, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not involved in this conflict, just want to point out that "atrocity" does strike me as a POV term. As for "he wasn't saying that Wikipedia shouldn't describe him as a terrorist, he was asserting that he wasn't one", I don't see any evidence that that's the case. His comments on the Anders Breivik talk page were all focused on the use of the term in the article, not in general. I disagree with him on that point - reliable sources call him a terrorist, so it's fine - but rather than debate the issue, it looks like the editors in question quickly resorted to nasty personal attacks. Whatever Meowy's motivations were, telling him to "fuck off and die", among other things, is not in the least justifiable. DoctorKubla (talk) 06:11, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

The guy was an obvious troll, with a block log the length of your arm, and was trying to provoke - unfortunately he provoked two good Wikipedians (who really do care about the quality of the encyclopedia and how it progresses) into using injudicious words. I'm a great supporter of civility, but the context and circumstances matter too - we're not all robotic automatons who can keep emotion completely out of our dealing with others, especially not when they are trolls and are picking on a very sensitive topic to start a fight. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:38, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• Arguing that the murder of 69 people wasn't an atrocity is extreme. Note the editor's own comments here: [15]: " consider Wikipedia to be an intrinsically evil concept and a malevolent entity, a cancer on truth and on legitimate academic studies. Its concept of verifiability is the core of its evil. I am not here because I want to contribute to Wikipedia - I am here because I oppose everything Wikipedia stands for." The incivility was uncalled for and unnecessarily inflamed the situation; I would have suggested filing at ANI instead. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:41, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• • In the old days, I would have just personally blocked the troll on sight, and that would have been the end of that. One of the things that makes wikis work is precisely the ability of the community to tell people to knock off the nonsense or get blocked.
  • If you go back to the disastrous culture of unmoderated Usenet groups, you can see what happens if it is too difficult to block trolls from participation. What happens is that good people reach the end of their good humor and lash out. The social environment degrades to people screaming at each other and it becomes quite hard to tell the good people from the bad. If someone says that they "consider Wikipedia to be an intrinsically evil concept" then the solution is not to get emotional and lash out at them in anger, but to realize that telling them to fuck off is not nearly as satisfying as maintaining a good sense of humor while making them fuck off (with a permanent ban). We have better things to do!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Agree (and better put than what I said). IRWolfie- (talk) 12:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• Yep, me too, and thankfully someone at ANI did quickly indef block the troll - trouble is, they instantly got told "That was just about the worst possible decision to make in this matter" -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:11, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• Well, it was. It suggested that we can't talk stuff out, we have to shut someone up. Drmies (talk) 14:39, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it suggested any such thing. We can both be eternally open to talking stuff out with anyone who is putting forward a remotely reasonable (but perhaps badly mistaken) perspective. But there really is such a thing as trolling, and it is often better to simply cut our losses and not have huge internal drama to get rid of someone who is being patently ridiculous. Not every possible conversation is actually worth having. Calling Wikipedia an "intrinsically evil concept" while claiming that murdering 69 people is not an atrocity is just not worth arguing about. Good judgment requires both a certain amount of patience with the absurd and a willingness to insist on firm limits. Neither "you can't criticize Wikipedia" nor "You can say anything you want no matter how crazy or abusive" is a sensible policy.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:51, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't wish to defend all of Meowy's claims. He may have a (theoretical) point on atrocity, and we can easily discuss what qualities an act must have, what limits must be crossed, before we call something an atrocity, but that's beside the point. (I have my own opinions on Breivik, and they are perfectly conventional--even more so since I became a father again.) I just don't think that it warranted an indefinite block issued so quickly. Meowy's first edit on that talk page was yesterday, and if he were that disruptive we have better mechanisms in place than an indef block, handed out five and a half hours later. We are generally much more conscious of more proper procedures. I will admit that I am inclined to take the now-famous diff with a grain of salt sooner than others (without wanting to argue that the kangaroo comment was not stupid, because it was--and I wish he'd apologize for it), and I will also admit that I think Meowy may have done more good than harm. And in the interest of disclosure: Meowy's talk page should prove that I have confronted him in the past about certain aspects of his behavior. I am not a friend of his or a supporter of all his work--but I do think that the block was too quick, and that he is not just a troll.

Sorry for taking up so much space here; that's not a habit of mine, and I'll drop it right now. Have a great day, Jimbo. Drmies (talk) 15:24, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I have to disagree with you here, Drmies. I would agree that if we were only talking about the Breivik article, an indefinite block would have come too quickly. However, why should someone who openly says that the entire project is "inherently evil" be allowed to stay? That is not someone here to improve the project. People who believe in the project disagree all the time about the best way to do so (and that's a good thing). Disagreeing with the very existence of the project means you should go somewhere else and do something else. LadyofShalott 15:42, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

If I may be so bold, why should editors that violated the very spirit of wikipedia(by running or participating in a mailing list) be allowed to stay here? At which point should the project itself(Sysops, editors, etc) decide that it is better off without a certain editor(s)? --Defensor Ursa 16:30, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it depends on the actions of the user in question. Simply holding the opinion that "the Wikipedia is evil" should not be grounds for blocking or banning, that's straying a bit too close to a Thoughtcrime IMO. Punish the act, not the thought. Tarc (talk) 17:24, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you, Tarc. Plus, LadyofShalott, if the statement re evil stood alone, then your "disagreeing with the very existence" interpretation would be just fine. But the statement was not in a vacuum, the user followed immediately up with explaining that verifiable sources can reflect non-truths, and truths can be without supporting RSs, so then, his statements about "evil", considering his whole context, boil down to an argument against the wisdom in essay WP:Truth, and that is nothing more than a boring rehash of an issue discussed many times, and so shouldn't put anyone up in arms. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 13:53, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

• Meowy's basic claim - "Terrorist" is a pov term and should not be used in Wikipedia articles. - was clearly wrong, though apparently another editor agreed with it,[16] claiming, per radical BLP, that consensus was unnecessary. A transcription-monkey approach, using "terrorist" and "far right" and any other term whenever but only if the sources use it, is most neutral and informative. Nonetheless, it's surprising to see the distortion of articles caused by an overzealous concern for BLP so abruptly and harshly rejected that the person is blocked merely for arguing it. I would see this as setting a bad precedent for blocking people merely because of their opinions on policy, while not necessarily addressing the underlying conflict between accuracy and "being nice to subjects". Wnt (talk) 13:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

  Meowy wasn't blocked just for that. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:32, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the claims that the mass murder wasn't an atrocity (and that atrocity isn't neutral), the hint that the article is a propaganda article and that wikipedia is intrinsically evil are more likely to be a contributing factors. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:37, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I must be missing something - where did Meowy claim that mass murder wasn't an atrocity? The point he appeared to be making was that "atrocity" is an emotive and subjective term which doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article. DoctorKubla (talk) 17:49, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Someone above inferred, quite incorrectly, that Meowy might one of those Islamophobic editors. That's not the case. His view of NPOV is indistinguishable from trolling to me, but he was at least consistent in applying it to Islamist organizations as well; see Talk:Islam4UK#Extremist. I have the impression he (or she) was someone who simply liked to stir up controversies. Tijfo098 (talk) 15:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

An RFC is needed to determine whether WP:CIVIL is a policy any more. It clearly is not enforced evenly, if at all. Serial abusers are given a break because we can't dare be punitive and blocking does no good since they don't care...especially when they are quickly unblocked by sympathetic friends. WP:CIVIL is no longer policy. It's time we accept it and put it in writing. --Onorem♠Dil 18:04, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Moewy wasn't blocked for incivility, they were blocked for not being here to build an encyclopedia and disruption over a period of time, validated by their own words. I declined the unblock request based on this as well. Andy was incivil, but I started talking with him about that the evening before I declined Moewy's unblock request. The longer I have the bit, the more I dislike civility blocks and avoid them when conduct isn't to the level of personal attacks. I've never seen a pure "civility block" achieve much other than a day or two of peace. I subscribe to the idea that there is no justice here, only solutions. While we strive to be as fair as humanly possible, we are not a court of law and at the end of the day the goal is to write an encyclopedia, which means making difficult and painful decisions from time to time, in order to further than goal. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 18:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

And letting serial violators of the "policy" promotes writing an encyclopedia...? I'm waiting to see a single excuse for why comments like "fuck of and die you disgusting little heap of shit. Sociopathic scum like you" are at all useful. People can blow their top on occasion and that's understandable. AtG seems to pride himself on being incivil and flaunting the fact that he won't stay blocked for it. What's fair about letting him abuse other editors that he doesn't agree with? Is WP:CIVIL policy or not? --Onorem♠Dil 18:59, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree on eliminating or scaling back WP:CIVIL. I've even called it "Wikipedia's War on Drugs" in the past, because the more effort is put into enforcing civility, the more uncivil editors become. Wnt (talk) 19:15, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Serial incivility is a problem, and not what I was referring to, singular or occasional incidents. But the reality of the situation is that some people are constantly incivil, and blocking them 24, 48, 72 hours and escalating it more each time, solves nothing. Eventually they get indef blocked, so the real decision isn't about how long of a block, but is "At what point do we simply remove someone from Wikipedia because they are more trouble than they are worth?". Few will phrase it so bluntly and honestly, but the reality is, that is what we often have to consider, and sometimes the straw that breaks the camel's back isn't the largest straw, just the last. This leaves some to question why someone was indef'ed for a single incident (and scream "admin abuse!") when it was for a series of problems. This is why many admins abhor pulling the (necessary) trigger for an editor that is a constant source of moderate problems and a net negative for the project. Andy's comments weren't just uncivil, they were a personal attack, which is why I'm still discussing it at ANI. Had Meowy been an innocent bystander, Andy would already be blocked, but since he garners no sympathy, gaining a consensus is problematic. Above, even Jimmy is less concerned than had Meowy been an innocent bystander. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 19:35, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Andy's comments were uncivil, they were personal attacks, and they were a continuation of years worth of similar behavior. The guy is an asshole. (I'm willing to take my block if you give him his.)

There is no once in a while issue here. AtG continuously makes comments that shouldn't be acceptable if WP:CIVIL was actually a policy. Blocking 2 people shouldn't be a problem. (3 is fine if you want to block me for calling AtG an asshole. I'm fine with that...though think that given the loose interpretation so far, I'm just trying to communicate the way he knows best how to. --Onorem♠Dil 19:40, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Andy frustrates me as well, and if I thought a block would make a difference I would gladly mash the button. I'm not one to block somebody just because they have passed a "line in the sand", but instead I try to consider the totality of the circumstance, and then only if it will actually benefit Wikipedia. Some admins would block you for your comment here, but I would instead just ask you strike it, if only because I'm nicely asking you to. Ask anyone, I'm not the block happy type. You made your point, I do understand your frustration, and I'm not arguing in Andy's defense, just trying to find a solution that benefits Wikipedia the greatest amount. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 19:53, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

There is not a chance in hell that I will strike my comment if his is left unchecked. I don't understand at all why you are making excuses for his blatantly incivil comments. --Onorem♠Dil 19:55, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe if enough people would be willing to 'mash the button' when blatant violations of policies took place, we wouldn't have to worry about situations like this. WP:CIVIL needs to be demoted. There doesn't seem to be another option at this point. --Onorem♠Dil 20:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not going to block you. As for Andy, I've been on that since the moment it hit ANI, my home away from home, but I have a day job as well, so it is difficult to devote every hour here. If you looked around the various places, you would know that. We all do what we think is right. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 22:30, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Jonathan Zhu

Jonathan Zhu is a professor at Dept. of Media & Communication, City University of Hong Kong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qingzhudongge (talk • contribs) 13:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

• Aha! This must be some sort of Mornington Crescent variation. May I play? Erm … I'll go with the Garry Kasparov Defence, I think. Professor Батырева Светлана Гарриевна is head of the Zaya Pandita Museum of Traditional Culture at the Kalmyk Institute of Humanities. We are playing Oslo Variations, where Grumps are wild, right? Uncle G (talk) 15:14, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Yellow only counts above the line. Vyborgskaya. pablo 15:26, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Double. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:35, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
      • Eek. I resign. Carry on. pablo 16:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I assume this brand new editor, who might not know English well, was trying to start a new article in the wrong place. Wnt (talk) 07:11, 29 August 2012 (UTC)