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Suggestion on PROT, NPOV and edit/revert war articles

In most cases, disputed articles are resolved by means of the Talk page. But often they arent. In some cases the article is locked, and development stalls, in other cases there is a valid NPOV point but no progress is made until one or other contributor gives up and goes away, which is fair but not the best version of neutrality (see stale NPOV discussion above).


Ideally the handling of disputed articles should:

  • Where possible not freeze development of the article as a whole (edit wars imply an individual in breach wiki policy, and hence represent a problem with some individual(s), not the article)
  • Not encourage articles to become locked (except in cases of actual vandalism)
  • Not encourage articles to become described as disputed overall if the actual issue is in reality small scale (eg section or word use)
  • Minimise the time that articles are in dispute

A way that might work is to refine the use of tags so that heavy handed measures (NPOV or PROT on a whole article is quite heavy) are much less needed and mostly reserved for dealing with pollicy breach not article disagreement. Compare two articles:

  • In September 11, 2001 attacks the entire article was NPOV'd at one point with the main reason being a debate basically whether "terrorism" was right or not. But that tag arose not because the article as a whole was in dispute, just one term used in it.
  • In the Pursuit_of_Nazi_collaborators article an NPOV tag was added because the title was possibly NPOV, and there was debate what the scope of the article should be. But that labelled the entirety of the article and all facts as disputed, where they actually weren't.
  • In Paraphilia there was an argument that the entire article's approach was not neutral. In such a case a NPOV tag is more appropriate.

In fact, on Paraphilia, I chose {{POVCheck}} and not {{NPOV}}, meaning "This article may need to be reworded to conform to a neutral point of view; however, the neutrality of this article is not necessarily disputed", which was more accurate, so as not to mislead readers of the present article that there was more doubt than was the case. Because I didnt want visitors to be faced with an article that was 70% right and yet be told at the top, "this is all disputed".


What comes across clearly to me is,

  • There need to be some more appropriate tags which are more applicable to smaller scale dispute
  • In case of dispute, use of minimal tags where reasonable are so preferable this should be wiki policy
    • (A minimal tag can be left longer as it doesn't lock or cast doubt on the whole article)
  • The tags applicable to disputed words/sections/articles need to be made much easier to find (maybe a link on the edit page?)
  • Once a disputed aspect of an article is tagged, revert and edit wars on that point are not permitted. Sysops may select what they feel is a fairly balanced wording for the time being, and provided it's tagged as "disputed", the rest is kept to the talk page until agreed.
  • Major tags such as NPOV which affect entire articles should by policy only be appropriate if the entire article or major parts of it are disputed
  • Tages such as PROT should only be needed to prevent vandalism and/or revert/edits against wiki policy, by users who do not respect sysop decision.
    • (But any article content dispute can be resolved as above so PROT shouldn't be as necessary)
  • PROT especially should be used slightly differently. If an article needs protecting from one user, then that user is the person who must be blocked or asked to stick to the talk page, not the article. Only if the article is subject to anarchic major editing from multiple sources should PROT be needed.


Examples of new small scale tags I'd suggest (ok they arent perfect but its an idea someone else could develop upon):

  • "This section is being developed or reviewed. Some statements may not be neutral or may be disputed at present. Please see Talk page before editing"
  • "There is dispute over the usage of the following words, which may not be neutral or may be disputed. Please see the talk page. This article retains the existing words until consensus is reached"
  • "This is a fast changing article and many areas are being developed at a time. Lesser disputes such as posisble individual NPOV words have been left to a side while the article as a whole is developed. These should be discused on the Talk page rather than allowed to override the development of the article as a whole."
  • "This article is subject to regular edit and revert wars, and the administrators of Wikipedia have agreed a wording which they feel comfortable is not unreasonable for the time being. The article is left open for development, but these aspects should not be changed until a better consensus is reached and the matters on the Talk page are resolved."
  • "The following words are not considered neutral by some, and are actively being discussed on the Talk page"


In summary, the changes would be:

  • Specifying that users should wherever possible use the most appropriate tag (not just "NPOV")
  • Encouraging lesser levers of dispute,
  • Requiring proper tagging, not just NPOV for everything, possibly by a "tags help" next to the "editing help" on the edit page
  • Allowing sysops to specify a relatively neutral wording until a better consensus is reached

wiki can keep more articles open and reduce the number where the whole article is marked as disputed, without in any way reducing people's power to contribute individually.

Its a raw suggestion with many holes in right now, but the heart of it - better use of tags disputing a word or section without casting the whole article into doubt, ways to say "yes we disagree on X but lets come back to it" and ways for a sysop to say "use that wording until you get a better consensus", could help free up many locked and stalled articles, allow faster ways to resolve edit wars, and that would benefit everybody.

FT2 21:21, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

I think the above proposal has considerable merit. Paul August 20:55, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Upcoming Arbitration Committee election

Based on some preliminary discussions, a proposal has been formulated for the next Arbitration Committee election, to be held in December. --Michael Snow 04:46, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Contributions from the associate director of ACSH on the ACSH article

For several years now there's been a very low-intensity edit war over on the DDT article over how much funding the American Council on Science and Health gets from industry sources and whether that has an impact on their impartiality. An anonymous user - it seems to have been the same one throughout, the wording he's used is consistent - has kept trying to play down industry connections, and other users have found sources showing they're more significant than he lets on. I finally split out that material into the article American Council on Science and Health so that DDT could remain more stable from now on and the anonymous user came in and made his changes again over there, but this time he announced that he was Jeff Stier (the Associate Director of ACSH, in charge of external affairs among other things). Assuming this is true, how do we handle contributions from "involved" people like this? On the one hand he's got access to a great deal of information, but on the other hand it just gives weight to my perception that he's been rather partisan. Bryan 16:45, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC) (small update: I emailed Jeff Stier to confirm that it is him, and he responded that it was.)

He should be encouraged to provide any and all information that he is willing to(maybe on the Talk page), but should be gently reminded that it is Wikipedia policy for involved people not to directly edit articles on subjects they are involved in. Basically, he should post on the Talk page, not the article. JesseW 01:05, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I dosn't really matter who an editor is. What matters is whether the facts are verifiable, that is published in some reliable source. Paul August 21:10, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Sandbox threat

Do we really need a threat as ... threatening as

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EDIT THIS LINE or ABOVE. YOU COULD BE BLOCKED

in the sandbox, where people are encouraged to experiment, and likely make their first edit on WP? Wouldn't it be just as easy to have a script that replaces the {{sandbox}} template every 10 minutes or so, if it is removed? Just a consideration of not barking at the wrong people. dab 17:35, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Totally agreed. This isn't just biting the newbies, it's chomping their heads off. No one will miss the template too much if it's missing for a few hours. I for one wouldn't ban an anon even for repeated removal of the template.Deco 00:19, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is it possible to create some sort of daemon that will just check the sandbox periodically and restore the notice? If I were programming wiki*, I might allow for registering certain pages as permanently having certain headers (or perhaps allow for a certain number of inviolate lines.) --jpgordon{gab} 01:36, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
That is a great suggestion IRude 09:01, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Another way to do it that would prevent them from editing the header altogether is to protect the main sandbox page and place nothing but two templates on it, {{sandboxheader}} and {{sandbox}}. The first would contain the header message and a link (an external link I guess) to the edit URL for the sandbox template. The idea is similar to the process of the Main Page. Again, though, I think the sandbox header message probably isn't important enough to justify this. Deco 21:58, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
reactions to the notice [1]. :-D — Of course, anyone can replace the notice, so it is almost impossible to tell if the notice is 'official' or has been placed there by a random visitor. At the moment, there is an official-looking notice that the sandbox is colsed, but it was placed there by an anon editor. I am replacing the note with a simple 'please do not edit', since the threat, if it has any effect at all, only dares people to mess with the notice. I like the {{sandboxheader}} proposal, though. this could be the solution. dab 09:07, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have filed a Bugzilla report asking for a sandbox-cleaning enhancement. -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 04:34, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It may be a good time to point out that you can use the substitution template {{subst:sandboxpaste}} to paste in the HTML notice "***** Please do not edit this line. We like people to see the notice. Put any testing content below it. *****" plus the sandbox template also. It makes for easy and fast sandbox maintenance! Dysprosia 05:19, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

GFDL Thoughts

The more I read about the GFDL license the more I think that Wikipedia should be duel licensed with a creative commons license.

After deciding which Creative Commons license to use (probably CC by atribution ) all the new materials added would be CC/GFDL but the old materials would still be GFDL unless people authorized their work to also be CC.

Overtime most of the GFDL only stuff would be replaced by CC/GFDL material. Mozilla Firefox is doing a similiar procedure converting their code from MPL to MPL/GPL/LGPL code 'trilicense'.

Update: I got some interesting information on a couple of project pages that have this same idea. Guide_to_the_CC_dual-license and Wikipedia:Multi-licensing are projects in which users can duel license their own content themselves.

Please sign your posts. We have no idea who you are. The problem is, that there have been thousands of editors who have released their material to the GFDL, who may object to re-releasing them to any other license. It is also impossible to recontact all of those editors to even see IF they agree to that release. That means the dual licensing would have to refer only to items released AFTER a particular point in time, and meaning dual versions of articles and of Wikipedia itself. RickK 07:04, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this is a problem, but over time a large proportion of the GFDL only material could be relicensed or replaced, having, say, half of the 'pedia under a sensible license is better than none! Mark Richards 15:55, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You're not the first person to bring this up. The next problem is that the cvs system that MediaWiki uses isn't accurate enough to tell who contributed what parts of an article when. The historical diff is only a best guess and isn't accurate enough for this use. However, I'm not a coder - maybe we could get a more accurate cvs system? I've been down this same road before - but who knows, perhaps the horse will learn to sing this time.

Also, I believe that attribution-sharealike might be closer to the licensing scheme most Wikipedians would want. The straight attirbution variant does not require that derivative works be released back to the community. An even better system would have one or more required license(s) that submitted work would have to be released under, and then allow the user to specify what additional licenses they wish to release their work under. This would include public domain and granting non-exclusive copyright to the WikiMedia foundation. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom says that the easiest way to do this would be to fork the Wikipedia community and start over with an empty database.

But perhaps the conventional wisdom might be proven wrong even at this late date. Coders? Could we upgrade to a better cvs system? crazyeddie 07:05, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here's a previous discussion on the subject: Wikipedia_talk:Creative_commons_migration crazyeddie 22:52, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For people who are reading this exchange and are bumping up against the copyleft incompatibility problem for the first time, you might want to show your support by dual or multi- licensing your work. To dual-license your work under the CC-by-sa, put this at the top of your userpage: {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} crazyeddie 07:49, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Plagiarism by any other name

A question and a comment:

Question: do we have a concise Wikipedia essay on what plagiarism is and isn't and is there a way to provide an internal link to it? If I deleted a plagiarized passage or entry and wanted to place a helpful note at a User's Talkpage like "please see Wikipedia policy here" or "for a definition of plagiarism, please click here" or some such. Can someone please advise?

Comment: plagiarism is rife in articles about entertainers; for some reason people think it's fine to copy from e.g. the IMDB. I think this is aided by well-meaning responses on the HelpDesk that say things like, "if you retype in your own words, it's fine". Well, no, I don't think it is; we were taught that paraphrasing is still plagiarism.

Quill 23:42, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Paraphrasing sometimes violates copyright, but if a court could reasonably rule that the facts and ideas were duplicated but the selection and arrangement of those facts was not, then it's not plagiarism. The rule should not be to paraphrase but to summarize: talk about what they said in less words and give the source. The line between a copyright workaround and a new work is admittedly fuzzy sometimes, but I think as long as a source is given the two can be compared and our version updated if necessary. As for a project page on plagiarism, that's a great idea; I'm not aware of any such page, but there is plagiarism and Wikipedia: Cite your sources. Deco 00:02, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Ah, yes, but I mean to speak to an ethical rather than a legal issue. Copyvio (legal) and plagiarism (ethical) are not always the same thing. Often go hand in hand, but not always the same.
I would volunteer to help with a plagiarism page.
Quill 00:19, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Ethics are quite a matter of debate, though; I would argue any properly credited statements are ethical, as well as any widely-known ones. Keep in mind that the role of an encyclopedia is quite different from that of a typical paper — there is no implication that any of our text is our own original idea. Also, to establish ethical standards for Wikipedia articles in general would be setting a very flammable sort of policy that I'd be surprised to see adopted, never mind maintained. All that said, I do frown on copying large bodies of text from public domain (or not-so-public domain) sources without any credit, especially since the result is often an obvious contast with other articles. I've only seen this done once, though. Deco 00:41, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
We snag stuff from the 1911 Britannica all the time. And while there is no legal requirement to credit it, there is certainly an ethical requirement, IMO. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:50, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)
At some point, hopefully when enough of the article has been rewritten, perhaps every single paragraph, and maybe the layout changed, we can remove such notices from the article itself (which can remain in the history, or perhaps the talk page. Actually, maybe they should always be just on the talk page). --Improv 04:38, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree, and we do with the {{1911}} template. I should do a hunt sometime for EB pages without it (they're surprisingly easy to find with a few searches for archaic language). Re Improv, I think we should definitely keep the 1911 EB listed eternally as a reference, even if the tag is removed. Deco 06:36, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Absolutely. No matter how far we have evolved the article, it remains a reference we used. Also, when people are using the {{1911}} tag, it should always be in the "References" section of the article, not just hanging there in the body of the text. -- Jmabel | Talk

Thanks for the responses, folks. Okay, that sorts things through WRT the 1911 EB, but how about the other stuff? Deco, I see it all the time because I spend a lot of time on actors and singers and the like. Pages lifted from IMDB, liner notes, websites--sometimes this is listed as a 'reference', sometimes not.

I'll have to do some more thinking about it; can't quite reconcile this "Keep in mind that the role of an encyclopedia is quite different from that of a typical paper — there is no implication that any of our text is our own original idea." with this "By submitting your work you promise you wrote it yourself, or copied it from public domain resources — this does not include most web pages."

I like your idea about a guideline page. Can something be done about this?

Quill 20:09, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

All this reminds me of the cliché - to copy two peoples work is plagiarism, to copy 4 peoples work is research!

Maxx 15:21, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is rife with arguable plagiarism. I find article after article with no sources, but in some areas that I know well it is often very easy to determine the source by noting common errors between Wikipedia and a likely website. There are websites that seem authoritative but are in fact very inaccurate. When I see that article after article on related topics have erroneous details matching a single website and see other close resemblences between those articles and the articles on that website and note that most such articles are created by the same editor, it is obvious what has been happening and where the information has been lifted from. (I am not talking here about one single website or one single editor. This is obviously common practice.) And a normal method to get rid of supposed copyvio is to create a new paraphrased article in place of the copyvio article, still without indicating source. Jallan 16:26, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Maybe info could be added to Wikipedia:Ethics and law, which is only links so far. Maurreen 17:19, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Keeping articles that are being worked on from going through deletion

Looking through VfD, I noticed a case in which a substub, properly marked as a speedie, was actually under continuing work, and this somehow did not become clear before a painful controversy got started. It seems like this could be helped by making the option of working on a user subpage more well known, and changing policy such that stubs, if made by logged in users, are not deleted but moved to user subpages as a first response. Thoughts? JesseW 07:28, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like the situation you describe would normally be averted because VfD voters look at the article and would see that it is being built. Maurreen 17:14, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Isn't there a template that editors can put on articles they're working on that says basically "Under construction"? If this were used more often, articles that really are undergoing edits would be less likely to be tagged for deletion. Joyous 21:03, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
IMHO this is a real problem which causes unnecessary biting of newbies and unnecessary friction between the inclusionist/deletionist factions. But I'm not quite sure what the solution is.
Adding further instructions probably won't help. Templates? Will newbies use a template? I remember having my work cut out just trying to figure out basic Wiki syntax; I don't think I used a template until I'd been editing for weeks. Besides, unless the template has some built-in countdown clock or expiration date, you would end up with situations where people would be reluctant to delete royally-speedy-deletable substubs that hadn't been worked on in weeks, that had an "under construction tag," because you could never be sure that the editor wasn't about to add something fabulous in the next five minutes.
Maybe all new articles could automatically go into a user subpage? That is, the only way to create an article would be via a move from a user subpage or some kind of holding area. Unless it's really obvious how to do that, though, it interferes with the traditional Wikipedian ideal of "zero-threshold editing."
A cruder solution might be to prevent creation of new articles that are less than (say) 250 characters long. I wonder what effect that would actually have? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:47, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Most likely: nitwits inserting 249 bogus characters to bump their new article over the limit. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 12:09, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
If I was working on an article, and I noticed that it had the speedy deletion tag added to it, I would simply remove it. Speedy deletion is for uncontentious deletions, such as obvious trolling and mis-named duplicates, and if I disagree with it, then it is not uncontentious. PhilHibbs 11:29, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
One thing that would be pretty cool, and useful sometimes, would be something akin to a "save draft" function. Especially when working on a new page, sometimes I might do half the write up, and then have to log off for example. (Of course, I could always save it in my email programme, and then copy and paste it the next time around, but still). Maybe drafts of articles under work could be accessible in my personal userspace. (Another short comment; there should be a short link of reference to most used templates etc on the edit page, I always find myself going hunting whenever I want to include math, put up a note for speedy deletion, etc). Hou Shuang 16:33, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You can create a user subpage for rough drafts. Just make a new page called User:Houshuang/rough draft (or whatever clever title makes you happy), and create your new articles there. Write half-finished articles to your heart's content and log off when you like. You can copy & paste the finished article into the real namespace when it's done. Joyous 17:51, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

"Stealers" google-score best than us

Look at all those Wikipedia content stealers which score better than us in Google searches: searching for Embree Trefethen I got several of them :-((( But what can be done ? Nothing. GFDL was the wrong choice, IMO.

At first sight (I haven't checked the links because I don't want them to earn any cent of money from this):

Granted, some add some value by providing additional useful links (last I checked — of course, some of these added links are mere commercials...)

(Sorry for the rant. This is not intended as trolling, but as sharing of my feelings with respect to this.)

--FvdP 21:12, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

it is annoying. I just see them as free backup, though. Anyone with any brains will at once recognize them for what they are, and come to WP anyway. And the others, well, no harm done. Th trouble is fact checking. They blindly multiply google hits for any random fact posted on WP, and when you want to evaluate its merit, they are difficult to filter out. There was a case where I googled for a dubitable term, and some 1400 out of 1800 google hits turned out to be from these 'mirrors'... dab 22:33, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Send in the clones. — Matt 13:25, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I did a Google search on a string "Henry Percy raised a small group of retainers, likely about 200" which occures in Wikipedia on the Battle of "Battle of Shrewsbury" page. Google returns www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/battle_of_shrewsbury and clicking on "repeat the search with the omitted results included." returns 38 pages. Most of the clones tend to have a clear mention of Wikipedia at the bottom of their pages, but these sites:

--Philip Baird Shearer 19:44, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


With Google it's possible to name sites that you don't wish to be included in the search with -site:<site URL>, but to exclude them all is a long string. I keep a copy of a string to exclude Wikipedia clones, amongst others, on my note pad and append it to the search, if required.
-site:encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com -site:www.factmonster.com -site:www.infoplease.com -site:www.encyclopedia.com -site:reference.allrefer.com -site:www.question.com -site:yahooligans.yahoo.com
Maxx 15:36, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Maybe they are employing some form of PageRank stealing? Like an advanced version of a Google bomb? Well, somehow, "thefreedictionary.com" has managed to worm its way to the top... I've never heard of this site until recently. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 22:04, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In fact... They have only been around for a year, plus it doesn't seem they mirrored the Wikipedia until recently. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://thefreedictionary.com --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 22:10, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There was one thing that I thought about for a while, and I do not know the details of the license well enough. Perhaps someone else can help. The "stealers" frequently combine Wikipedia content with advertising bars. Does that constitute a compound document that in itself must again be put under a free license? Some of the ads use advertising slogans, e.g. from ebay "3..2..1.etc." ould that place these slogans under a free license, so that the open source community could adapt and reuse these slogans for their purpose? If that were the consequences of our licence, maybe those who are paying for the ads would no longer want that? And then these stealers would stop? 80.171.66.113 19:32, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(Warning: This is not legal advice.)
It is not legal for another site to republish GFDL content admixed with non-free content such as many advertising banners. To do so exceeds the terms under which the GFDL content is licensed to that other site. This makes it a copyright violation. (Not a "license violation" -- they've stepped outside of licensed conduct and are therefore in violation of perfectly ordinary copyright laws.)
One response would be to contact the ISPs or hosting services and inform them that a customer is pirating copyrighted material. This can be done with various degrees of formality. In the U.S., for instance, a copyright holder can send an OCILLA notification of infringement (aka "DMCA takedown notice"). If the ISP does not remove the material, they take on contributory liability for the copyright infringement. Note that in order to send such a notice, you have to be the copyright holder (or a designated agent thereof) for the infringed work. Wikipedia can't complain, since it is not the copyright holder for most article content -- the authors are; under the GFDL, Wikipedia is just a licensee of the authors of each article.
On the issue of Google ranking, I have to suspect that Wikipedians getting in touch with Google would probably suffice -- in general, Google is Not Amused by search engine spamming. --FOo 06:06, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Style guide

I'd like to encourage wider input at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.

The disagreements concern:

  1. The quote at the beginning of style guide.
  2. Fowler's "good" guidelines.
  3. The expressions "period" and "full stop."
  4. The serial comma.
  5. "U.S."

Thanks. Maurreen 07:54, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Voting rules

What exactly constitutes consensus in voting on a wikipedia article? preliminary deletion got 73% of votes. I would have thought that this was more than enough to let it pass. If there is a set policy regarding this could it be linked to? Barnaby dawson 12:09, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There's a difference between building a consensus and qualified majority voting. For a true consensus, all objections need to be met so that everyone can participate in the outcome. For most decisions here, it seems like we talk about a consensus, but use qualified majorities of 70 or 80%. Filiocht 12:26, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Ah, but what exactly constitutes a vote? Over at Wikipedia talk:Three revert rule enforcement a number of editors are taking the view that making a comment constitutes a vote. Is that really right? jguk 13:06, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The point here is that there ought to be a page clarifying these points. However I have been unable to find one. Anyone know if such a page exists? Barnaby dawson 15:23, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think there is at least one page with at least part of what you're looking for. I'm not sure of the exact name, but it has to do with "surveys" or "polls." One point is that it advises spelling out the rules for the vote beforehand. Maurreen 16:27, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A useful guideline (to spell out in rules beforehand), is to mark your vote in boldface, as in WP:VFD's Keep or Delete, or in WP:FAC's Support or Object. The onus is then on the person commenting to add a few extra apostrophes to make sure their vote is counted. An alternative is to have different sections for Yes or No votes, with a comments in each section counting as Yes or No. This only works with questions that can be stated very clearly in a Yes/No fashion, though -- anything with more than two options, or is receptive to extended "Yes, but..." or "No, except..." answers, only complicates the issue. [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 18:54, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Abuse of speedy deletion

A lot of people feel the current Candidates for Speedy Deletion criteria are too narrow, and they are probably right that something should be done; Just ignoring policy and deleting non-CSD articles is not a solution however. I'd like to make a strong statement here that this is not acceptable. Please sign to indicate that you agree (or give a reason why we shouldn't stick to the speedy deletion rules I suppose). (The reason I want this is to be able to link this statement when people keep CSD-marking and SDing non-candidates defending it as 'standard practice').

Some random examples from the current deletion log, names removed because I don't want to single out any specific editors:

  • 02:04, 3 Dec 2004 ******** deleted Nicholas oliver (content was: 'Captain of Birmingham Eagles Ice Hockey team. Student at the University of birmingham. Born July 5th 1984 in Teaneck, New Jersey. Moved to England ...')
  • 02:04, 3 Dec 2004 ******** deleted Vfxartist (content was: '{{deletebecause|dubious neologism}}vfxartist - short for 'visual fx' artists do special effects for film and tv. tody they use software and computers...')
  • 01:57, 3 Dec 2004 ******** deleted Paul Paquette (fulfills Speedy Deletion criterion 4) (I'd removed a CSD notice from this article earlier and it was definately not a very short article at that time. It might have been blanked but a non-CSD article would still be available in the history which should have been restored)
  • 01:44, 3 Dec 2004 ******** deleted French Absolutism (joke/vanity obviously, plus possibly copyvio)

And the list goes on and on. None of these articles had already previously been deleted, so CSD criterion 5 didn't apply. --fvw*† 02:57, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

04:51, 3 Dec 2004 Mikkalai deleted Paul Paquette (verifiable hoax by repeated hoaxer)
If the anon is in fact posting fake material, it's no abuse of speedy deletion. The article claimed he was an actor and musician, which are not supported by reputable guides to such people. The intentional posting of fraudulent material is vandalism and a candidate for speedy deletion. I defer to Mikkalai's judgment on whether this person is a repeat offender.

French Absolutism was an obvious joke. It was a personal letter from "Heroin Fred" trying to get himself a date. The other two deserve to go, but weren't CSDs. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:03, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The point isn't whether they should be deleted or not, the point is that they are not candidates for speedy deletion under the current policy. If you want to argue the policy needs changing, fine. But blatantly ignoring the policy isn't going to get us anywhere in the long run. --fvw*† 05:23, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
Pure vandalism is a candidate for speedy deletion. The intentional posting of false material is a form of vandalism, and is quite frankly the single worst form of vandalism there is.
As for French Absolutism, it opened with:
You may ask why such a title has come into the Wikipedia Library. Well I say to you it because I need to promote myself.
I am single.
I am French.
And I am hot.
And with all these fine attributes I have yet to fine a woman who favors me.
That's either a newbie test or vandalism, take your pick. It's not worth wasting time over. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:43, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think abuse is far too strong a word. It's just admins interpretting the speedy deletion criteria more liberally than you do. Admins who act like this are the only thing stopping vfd collapsing under its own weight, and as such I find it a bit difficult to be too harsh on them. So long as they don't delete articles that blatantly fall outside the criteria, they're actually doing wikipedia a service, not violating policy. Shane King 05:47, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
Agree with Shane King. Speedy deletion rules can be interpreted somewhat differently by different admins. From what I can see in the Deletion log copy above, i would have considered most of them borderline, and have no problem with them being deleted. -- Chris 73 Talk 06:19, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
Dittoed. Johnleemk | Talk 08:58, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RE the article Alfa Romeo. Throughout this article it is loaded with links to outside references, some of which are no longer valid. We don't want to arbitrarily delete them before asking if this massive use of outside links is acceptable form at Wikipedia? JillandJack 17:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • In this case the links have been added as numbers, not as full links, which I think is a very good way to provide links within an article. It may already be Wikipractice - I'm don't know. Some articles call for a lot of links, esp (as in this case) where an illustration is a constructive part of the article. In this particular instance I feel there are too many of the same type of picture links - several of the police cars from different angles for example. Martin TB 17:20, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I despise the naked number-links. If the image is free, upload it. If you need to refer to an unfree image, create a footnote, where you describe the link (i.e. the user doesn't just have to trust you and follow an unspecified link, but rather you say eg. "see this-or-that article on bbc.co.uk from Aug 2001"). Only link to sites that are relevant and stable (not to random images you found on google that may be gone next month) dab 17:46, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New 'news sources' resource

I've created a new resource at wikipedia:News sources as an alternative to wikipedia:News collections and sources. The rational for its existence is to provide a way of listing news sites that is organised by geographical region and that presents the available links in an unbiased manner. The page uses subpages so that the existence of many links from the same country does not drown out the links we do have from the other countries. I took the links from the existing page of sources as a starting point for this new resource. Once I had finished it became apparent that we are missing links not only to many countries but also to whole continents. All input in encouraged. Barnaby dawson 17:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD

I'm drafting a proposal to formally extend the cases under which an article can be speedily deleted at Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD. I welcome all discussion. I'd like to start the vote by 7 December, so that the two-week vote will end on 21 December, just before the holidays, but that's far from a fixed date. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 21:48, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Page formatting

Hi, can you have a look at the section on Formatting that was added to Talk:CPR_summary. I have a feeling this sort of formatting is not encouraged on Wikipedia, is that correct? Tjwood 17:55, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion, that's the least of your problems. Offering medical advice on Wikipedia seems very dubious. I can't recall any policy off-hand, so I'll have a brief hunt. (Oh, and the formatting looks very non-standard, to my eyes.) [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 20:10, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)
Found this: Wikipedia:Wikipedia medicine standards. I hope the advice is useful. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 20:23, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Proposed method of dealing with schools: name standard

Originally, I was of the mind that schools are not per se notable; that articles about schools should be included here if and only if the school met some sort of notability standard. I've changed my opinion on this for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's like pushing rope; every high school kid is going to want to (a) look up their own school, and (b) make an entry for it if it's not there. Secondly, the fact that every school kid is going to want to look up their own school (as will every alum) in some ways defines the usefulness of these entries: it's information people will naturally seek here, whether we like it or not.

With that in mind, I propose a naming standard for schools. There appear to be only a limited number of names for schools; any school named after an American president, for example, is not going to be unique. I suggest that school articles be always titled (for example) William Howard Taft High School (Woodland Hills, CA), to differentiate it from William Howard Taft High School (Dallas, TX) and so on; a disambiguation page of course would exist. We should make a point of renaming existing American school articles using this standard. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 19:28, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. If we only have one article on a school with a certain name, the renaming shouldn't be necessary, but a standardized way of dealing witht he shared names that do come would help matters. Factitious 05:55, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
How about schools in other countries? Is it not also true that people will want to make pages on their schools in other English-speaking countries? --Smoddy 12:07, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Personally, I'd say we could put the city, province (if applicable), and country (for example: (Winnipeg, MB, Canada) or (London, England)). This standard could even be used for American schools, in the interest of fairness (making the above example William Howard Taft High School (Woodland Hills, CA, USA)) --HBK 16:41, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

It there are two schools with the same name, then the oldest one should be able to claim seniority and keep the page with links to disambiguation pages for the others if neccessary. I do not see why "Rugby School" should be put on a new page called "Rugby School (Rugby, Warwickshire, England, UK)" even if there is one in another country called Rugby School Philip Baird Shearer 18:02, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I would say that in that case there is no question, but do see the recent controversy over Wesleyan University: this is by no means a universally accepted approach. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:49, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
The general rule for disambiguation is to have the shortest possible name that is unambiguous. We don't need descriptive information in title. Thus William Howard Taft High School (Woodland Hills) is better (unless of course there is another Taft H.S. in another Woodland Hills.) The disambiguation page can contain the state and other information. - SimonP 18:13, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
The American standard of two letters for the state after the town/city name is, to me and many other non-Americans, rather ugly. SimonP suggests the best method. violet/riga (t) 01:02, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PDFs

Does Wikipedia have a policy on accepting uploaded PDFs as media to be linked in articles? Rafti Institute has uploaded a quite a few, including some that are original research. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 21:23, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I imagine that it is rarely appropriate, but might occasionally be. Can you provide an example of where this user has done this? -- Jmabel | Talk 22:10, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
For example: Image:Universal_Convective_Pulse_Theory_S.pdf and Image:Required Legal Forms And Aftercare Sheets.pdf. See those pages for wher they are linked in articles, and Rafti's contribs for more. At least one of the opriginal research, I believe, but for the rest I don't know. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 01:15, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I would hope people would not upload PDFs/SWFs/etc. Perhaps we should make an official policy to this effect? --Improv 15:26, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
PDFs are appropriate and useful for WikiReaders (especially if we get any of them "done"), and other materials could be useful as source files to our pngs (svg, pdf, photoshop, etc). I therefore think we should reactivate some formats and keep others open. ✏ Sverdrup 20:12, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Infosecpedia

OK, I've just noticed two edits which parse a [[Infosecpedia:Foo]] tag: [2], [3].

Is there any policy on when or how to use links to external Wikis? — Matt 12:30, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not really happy with those kind of edits, just because the infosecpedia: shortcut is there doesn't mean it's equal to an internal link (cf. google:). Hyperlinking the title of an article to elsewhere is rather bad form too I think, that link should be in "see also", or more realistically, "External links" (even though it has a shortcut instead of an url). --fvw* 13:49, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)
You're right, hyperlinking the title was bad form. I regretted it as I considered it later. --Chris Brown 22:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
In regards to "just because the infosecpedia: shortcut is there doesn't mean it's equal to an internal link (cf. google:)", there is the question of "quality" - which I hadn't questioned because of my expectations of what Infosecpedia will become and how I expect it to be governed similarly to Wikipedia. --Chris Brown 22:45, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Being that I was the one that created the edits of the form [[Infosecpedia:Foo]], I thought I might explain myself. I looked for an applicable policy but found none at the time. (I've since found the possibly applicable Wikipedia:Soft_redirect). I spent some time considering the best way to do the link for a few weeks before submitting Infosecpedia as an interwiki link and before making my two recent edits. The answer I came up with was based more on philosophy than practicality, although I made some practical considerations as well. My reasoning follows:
Philosophical considerations: The core question I asked was: Is Wikipedia more of something with defined border and sharp edges, or more of a way of accomplishing something. Certainly it is managed with defined borders, but how does it naturally fit into the web as a whole or into the web of wikis in particular? If Wikipedia is more of a place and wants to be primarily self contained with some external links, then we should consistently use external links, including for all the WikiMedia projects. However, the web derives part of its usefulness from the ability to create links from one site to another. I viewed interwiki links as an evolution of this usefulness.
Practical considerations: From a very practical standpoint the interwiki mechanism is present, was written with some use in mind, and has some advantages. The form [[Infosecpedia:Foo]] gives a name of a source and a topic, leaving the details of how to get to the source (the url) to the interwiki mechanism, and is easy to use. In contrast, the form [http://www.securitygroup.org/pedia/index.php/Foo Foo] not only encodes the source and topic, but also how to get there. It is cumbersome and, well, lacks the elegance of the interwiki form. Also, in this particular case, the project will be moving from www.securitygroup.org to www.infosecpedia.org in the next month or two. Using interwiki to create cross-linkages between Infosecpedia and Wikipedia means that there is just one adjustment to the interwiki, rather than tracking down and editing of all the Wikipedia articles that link to Infosecpedia. The interwiki form also provides protection from software changes and leaves me free of worry about the ability or inability to do apache rewrites from one hosting company to another. -- (sig won't work, but it's Chris again)
I'll sidestep the philosophical question, but I found this policy: "Don't use external links where we'll want Wikipedia links. Don't put in links like this to external URLs linking text that we will want articles on Wikipedia about. Put external links in an "External links" section at the end of the article. For example, if you're writing an article about Descartes and you know of a great article about rationalism online, don't link the word "rationalism" to that article. Simply wikify the word rationalism, and add an "External Links" section with an external link to the source (perhaps in both articles). — Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles. — Matt 10:08, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image layout/captions

  1. I think I remember seeing a guideline suggesting image captions be in italics, but now can't find it. Am I remembering incorrectly, or has the guideline changed, or am I just not finding the guideline that mentions it?
  2. Similarly, the de facto standard for the placement of the first image in an article is right-aligned, but I can't find that as a documented policy or guideline.
Can anyone help clarify this? Wikipedia:Guide to layout and Wikipedia:Image use policy refer to Wikipedia:Guide to layout, which doesn't explicitly address either issue. Ah, I did finally find Wikipedia:Image markup with HTML, which also doesn't explictly state a preference, but does use italic wikimarkup in its examples, unlike some of the others. Do guidelines exist for either of these issues? Shouldn't they? Niteowlneils 23:07, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
For example, this looks ugly to me[4], and this[5] not much better. Niteowlneils 23:19, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Isn't the caption text formatting to be left to the "new" feature?
After some discussion, the idea to right-align every first image was discarded.
-- User:Docu
Personally I hate the first image being anywhere but on the right - it messes with the TOC and doesn't seem intuitive. I've changed those two articles to (what I think is) a better layout. violet/riga (t) 18:33, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It should be noted that Wikipedia:Image markup with HTML is deprecated and HTML should be avoided if possible. Instead, refer to Wikipedia:Extended image syntax for a discussion of how to add images. There is no need to italicize image captions; it is better to use the default style. —Mike 03:22, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki redirects

Check out intermodal. Oh, wait, you can't. It redirects to wiktionary, which makes editing and viewing the history of the originating article difficult for casual viewers. You have to manually edit the URL.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Wiktionary links, IMO, should be only within an article, not a redirect. yes/no? --Golbez 06:09, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

It should probably be converted to a soft redirect. —AlanBarrett 19:49, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't this page be deleted or redirected to something in wikipedia? We have no content to provide at that title, and actually there is a wiktionary link on every "This page doesn't exist" page. ✏ Sverdrup 20:17, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Multiple Currencies?

I've recently been coming across entries which include a value and the 'equivalent' in other currencies (usually Pound Sterling, Euro, and US Dollar) of the form "The new waterway will cost about £150M (€220M,US$240M)... ". With the recent slide of the USD and rise of the EUR this values will increasingly get out of date, and as there is no template in use to locate or provide these alternatives then updating them manually when an editor discovers them will be the only way, which is unlikely to happen regularly. Without any accuracy they will lose all value.

I believe that we either need to scrap the alternatives, only listing in the local currency, or need to template the location or calculation of such alternatives to ease maintainence.

Comments? --[[User:VampWillow|Vamp:Willow]] 11:43, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Part of a larger problem. Even amounts in a single currency get outdated by inflation, needing an additional amount in "currentcy" to not mislead the reader (though Wikipedia arguably hasn't existed long enough yet for that to be a big problem). Would suggest keeping it down to local currency as much as possible for the short run, new syntax/autolinking of currencies/updated Manual of Style for the long run. JRM 12:21, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

All currency amounts should be associated with a date, for example:

  • "HMS Royal Oak was laid down in 1914 and commissioned in 1916 having cost almost £2.5 million."
  • "The Boeing 707 cost $16 million to develop between 1952 and 1954."

Gdr 15:13, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

  • Concur with Gdr -- always use local currency associated with a date. Let the reader make their own calculations. Perhaps we can start a wikiproject somewhere to make money calculations easier? --Improv 16:02, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • I disagree, if I mention that a person bought a piece of land in 1556 for two crowns I think it is unreasonable for our readers to be expected to track down what that amount means. - SimonP 06:45, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Local currency associated (explicitly or implicitly) with a date should pretty much always be there, but I agree with SimonP that it's not always enough. An example of a way to handle this (from the article Nicolae Ceausescu) is "Ceauşescu's official annual salary was 18000 lei (equivalent to 3,000 U.S. dollars at the official exchange rate)." Note that, in this case we need to say "at the official exchange rate" because the black market rate differed by a factor of 10 or so.

Also tricky is that the local-currency number may be totally unavailable or totally meaningless. For example,

  • Some transactions are dollar-, pound-, or euro-denominated even where those are not the local currency. It is not unusual in contemporary Romania to denominate a contract in U.S. dollars (to get around laws requiring that they use the local currency, a contract may refer to something like "the equivalent in Romanian lei of US$1000"); I'm sure that there are many other countries with similar situations.
  • It would usually be useless to give a number in a currency that was undergoing hyperinflation (where a given number would have a radically different meaning from day to day).

-- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I think that explanations of the changing value of a currency need to go in the article for that currency. We absolutely should not be asking editors to do this in individual articles because (1) any numbers we give will quickly go out of date; (2) it's really hard even for specialists in the field; and (3) no one number can give an adequate impression of change of value (manufactured goods have become cheaper while labour has become more expensive). See [6] for a comparison of several methods of computing the present value of a sum of money in the past. Gdr 14:25, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)
I disagree about the value getting out of date. To take the original example, if I read about a new waterway was built in 1994, and the article says it cost US$240M, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I don't expect someone to go back and update the article next year, to account for inflation. (The US Dollar is my local currency). If the waterway happend to be in Romania, would expect to see that it "...cost XXX million Romanian Lei, which was the equivalent of YYY million US Dollars". That would convey the cost in a way that I (an American) can understand, and it would not need updating over time. 16:39, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
Where it is only inflation then I am less bothered about it; many readers will note the date concerned and be aware of the approximate equivalent value. The issue is that of currency exchange rate fluctation as the actual amount in the original currency may have changed little (or by local inflation) but the equivalent in the other currency(ies) changed wildly. I had got in the habit of thinking UKP1 was roughly equal to USD1.50, currently it is USD1.90 ! --[[User:VampWillow|Vamp:Willow]] 17:08, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I don't quite understand your (Vamp:Willow's) point. If I report that sometime in the past someone in the UK was paid "100,000 pounds (equivalent to 150,000 dollars)" that is still true: those pounds indeed had about the same value (to the person being paid) as would have the given number of dollars. The fact that the exchange rate has changed a lot since then does not really effect the truth of the statement, any more than inflation would have. I know that it is not this simple, but in general things in the UK now cost more (in terms of my dollars) than they used to. That means (that from my point of view) that prices of things in the UK (including both this specific thing, and things in general) have gone up since then. Morris 18:12, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
To the anonymous editor who said above, "I disagree about the value getting out of date. To take the original example, if I read about a new waterway was built in 1994, and the article says it cost US$240M, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me": $1.00 in 1994 converts to $1.24 in 2003, so the original $240M would now be more than $297M (according to the Consumer Price Index method which is quite conservative; other methods generally give larger numbers; see [7]). Gdr 19:07, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)
Sorry about being anonymous. As a new editor, I confused the four tilde and five tilde notations. I am Morris 19:29, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC). On the substance: Any amount of money from ten years ago is "equivalent" to a different amount of money today. The effects of inflation are apparent even if you are only dealing with one currency. I assume that you are not suggesting that all amounts of money should be adjusted to current purchasing power (even assuming that there was an agreed upon method to do so)? A lot of articles mention how much money something cost long ago, and it is AFAIK understood that due to inflation it would cost more today. My point is really that just as I think that those articles are fine, I think that articles that mention the amount of money in two different currencies are also fine (for much the same reason). Morris 19:29, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)
We seem to be agreeing violently here... Gdr 21:35, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)

Stricter Edit Policies

I am sure this must have been mentioned a million times before, but I will post it anyway. Anonymous users should not be able to edit. That would end 99% of vandalism. Moreover, to get an account, people must have a valid ISP assigned email address. This would solve the problem of blocking a range of IPs to block one user. Someone must have been opposed to these changes, because I am sure it must have been mention many times before. OneGuy 17:46, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It has been discussed extensively in the past; see m:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles and related pages. —No-One Jones 00:48, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, discussed but nothing was done about it, apparently. Probably people who can make these changes are either opposed, not interested, or don't think it's an urgent problem. But I am sure most people would agree it's a serious problem. The amount of vandalism is huge. Plus, there are many other problems. 168.209.97.34 apparently is a proxy server for the largest ISP in South Africa. If you block that for vandalism or any other reason, you block many other users too. The solution is very simple. Only users who have accounts with a valid ISP assigned emails should be able to edit. Until this change is made, many good editors would probably think this place is a waste of time and leave OneGuy 16:48, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
In any case, I posted the argument on the talk page there why registration is good m:Talk:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles. I doubt anything would happen though since most people seem to be opposed to the idea OneGuy 18:54, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It has been discussed, and most people think it is a bad idea. Sure, let's have the conversation again, it might be different this time, but people value anons being able to edit, and to be honest, the most troublesome contributors have accounts. Anons are easy to spot. Intrigue 20:10, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I saw the discussion on m:Talk:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles but didn't see the topic of how to deal with consistent trolls and subtle abusers/POV pushers who are not occasional random vandals (which apparently is not a problem). I would like to see a response to the arguments I posted on that talk page OneGuy 20:28, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I started this article Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement. I was not sure if that was the right way for RfC, creating a new article? At any rate, as soon as I posted it, someone voted to "oppose" it. O well, I am not sure if he even read the whole thing before he voted. Apparently most people are going to oppose the idea. I still would like to see more comments here: Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement.

I find myself agreeing a lot with OneGuy these days, but why not. Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree, with ISP mail account requirement being only exception. Anyone with a mail addy should be allowed to register.
My agreeing is because the situation, the way I see it, is that it takes what, 2 minutes to register? And if someone is dedicated enough to take the time and effort to add intelligent input to Wikipedia, there's no way they won't have time to register. Also, even if most vandalism is done by registered users (which I must admit I have seen nothing of, rather the contrary), they are easier to get rid of than anons. To top this off, when I connect via my dial-up at home, I get a totally different IP for every connect. Ergo; if I vandalise anonymously, ban my IP. What happens? Next time I connect, I can keep on destroying wikipedia, as my IP is completely new, while some other sucker, using my old IP, is suddenly banned instead. So what will you do? Ban the entire applicable IP range? Then most of Norway, as a whole, falls out of Wikipedia - even, I suspect, registered users on that IP range. --TVPR 10:11, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User accounts

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that registered user accounts were intended for the use of one individual only, not for a "group." The reason I bring it up is because of the following account: User:Asexual same-sex marriage, on whose user page is the following message:

"We are group of people who are advocates of the asexual same-sex marriage, and we want the marriage between asexual same-sex partners to be recognized by society. Please help asexual same-sex couples to get all legal rights the normal couples (the gay or the different sex ones) have. Our main problem is that our sanctioned platonic love bond is not recognized in most of the states. In the states where our marriage is recognized we are categorized as gay couples, which is not our case as long as we are against sexual relashionships in a same-sex married couple. """thank you."

Now, this smacks of advertising to me (never mind that the user(s) has been making non-NPOV edits to the Same-sex marriage article which reflect his/her/their stated mission.

Anyone?

Exploding Boy 21:26, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know that the issue has ever come up. I'm against it, personally. -- Cyrius|✎ 18:20, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
What, are we going to censor user pages? That's a pretty hopeless wish. Let's face it, people can put all sorts of bollocks on their personal pages—as long as it's not breaking any laws or violating policy like Wikipedia:no personal attacks, what are you going to do? As for advertising: it's not as if they're encouraging you to subscribe to their magazine. They don't even mention a website. It's POV and agenda-pushing for sure, but user pages are not articles—I can think of a lot of user pages that would have to be seriously edited if those were not allowed. (And let's be fair: if this is a "group" of people, I'm the emperor of China—in fact, I shall go off right now to state that on my user page... or maybe not). JRM 20:24, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)

I think the question is more about whether user accounts can be used by more than one person--difficult to police, I know, but worth figuring out, I think. But the question of whether to allow advertising on user pages is also a valid one. And you can't be the emperor of China. The position is taken. Exploding Boy 00:07, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Addition of category: National anthems

Completely fresh at this, but with an idea:

Would it be an idea to make a category for national anthems, listing all of them in the same standard form used in many other categories, ex. Feature X of country Y, Capital X of country Y etc.? Instead of such as now, we're searching for "Ja, vi elsker" or "God save the Queen", one could have a list with "National Anthem of Norway: JVE" and "National Anthem of Great Britain: GSTQ".

Example of what I mean: List_of_capitals_and_larger_cities_by_country

Very sorry if I put things in wrong category, or if I'm just generally being dim. Hi, I'm new here. --TVPR 22:05, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Right, but the listing is very little standardized. Some have the name of the anthem, some have the nationality and some do not. A listing with country as well, as in Category:Capitals - would be a good step to improve categorization standardization. --TVPR 07:50, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • Well, there is List of national anthems, if you want a list. I'm not sure why you would need to do this through the category method as well. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:36, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)
      • Sorry, I didn't come across this - even if I did look. Um, hello, I'm new here :) --TVPR 08:02, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bayesian approach to edits

I think it's easier if we develop a Bayesian Flitering Edit system. The RC patrol can mark edits for a Bayesian filter to show what kind of changes are considered as "spamish" or "trollish"... in our case, "vandalism." Then in the RC changes, have a percentage listing how much of a chance that the article was vandalised by the edit. Factors would include large amounts of missing text, large amounts of added links, and so on, and so forth.

Basically the idea is: we take the approach of vandalism the same approach we take spam. The more users agreeing the specific edit was vandalism, the more our filtering system will understand what edits were vandalism and what edits are not vandalism.

After all, if we can develop Bayesian filters for spam which learn what is wanted and what is not wanted, why not have the same ability for our edits?

Granted, there are some complex technical issues that will need to be addressed, and whether or not we will consider developing a trust network... but I think it is safe to say if we did a rating system, we could base it on a person's access control and whether they are an Admin, Board member, etc.

Or, the system would automatically mark you down if your vote of the edit is against the majority.

Of course, to prevent abuse, we can exclude certain known vandals from preventing from editing, and prevent anonymous people from voting as well.

Additionally, the filtering system would work to our advantage: Both bad and good edits would be marked by the system. This way, our system would have more and more accurate reflection of what is a good edit and what is a bad edit.

-- AllyUnion (talk) 09:24, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

By the way, as suggested by Khendon in IRC, a feed could be done on a separate server of the recent changes. Basically, what would need to be logged is the differences (diff) of the edits. Then all it is marking which "differences" are bad and good. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:47, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Of course, such a system would also help train vandals to commit vandalism that was harder to detect. (It's not at all like spam: if spammers could easily test their messages against your filter, they would soon figure out how to defeat it.) Gdr 15:44, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)

Trademarks

Shouldn't articles that are specific to trademarked names be using the HTML trademark tag in the text? I.e. &reg;, which results in a ®. I've only seen one article thus far (Civilization (board game)) that has actually done this, so I just wondered if this was of concern as a legal issue. Thank you. — RJH 00:10, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think the style guide says that's not needed. Maurreen 05:05, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Medical ethics: mention a pathology's victims?

Should individuals known publicly to have suffered from a pathology be mentioned in the article? How?

At issue is whether Gayle Laverne Grinds should be referenced in the bedsore article. This issue potentially affects a large number of articles. Your comments at Talk:Bedsore would be most welcome. --Pontifex 22:02, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

How to reference a foreign-language wikipedia article

Do we have any standard on how to reference a foreign-language wikipedia article? It seems that no matter what I do, people come through and edit it.

Originally, when indicating (for example) a Spanish-language Wikipedia article as a reference I would refer, for example, to:

...the [[:es:Rosario (Argentina)|corresponding article]] in the Spanish-language Wikipedia...

...which shows as:

...the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia...

After being admonished that this constitutes an unacceptable self-reference (because the interwiki link would break when used elsewhere, I started using:

...the [http:es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosario_(Argentina) corresponding article] in the Spanish-language Wikipedia...

...which shows as:

...the [http:es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosario_(Argentina) corresponding article] in the Spanish-language Wikipedia...

Now someone is going through editing those back to how I had it in the first place. Is there a policy on this? If not, can we please establish one? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:55, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Image deletion policy

Would someone please advise me & the community on image deletion policy; specifically a couple of things:

  1. . Is it policy to delete orphan images - those which are not used in articles?
  2. . What is the policy in this respect as far as the Commons [8] is concerned? Must images on the Commons be linked to articles, or are orphans welcomed there?

I've trawled around wikipedia image & deletion policy, but cannot get a handle on it :( --Tagishsimon (talk)

I think the answer to your first question is generally yes. The only policy quidelines for deletion of images, that I'm aware of is here: Wikipedia talk:Images and media for deletion. Paul August 04:14, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Redirect policy

What is the Wikipedia redirect policy on pages that have been created for simple redirects because of plurals and/or grammarical usage? I have noticed that User:SPUI has been adding a lot of redirects. See Special:Contributions of SPUI, 500 edits per page -- AllyUnion (talk) 15:22, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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