User talk:DGG

Current time: 12:56,   December   23   (UTC)

add new sections at the bottom, not the top                                        ARCHIVES

Barnstars, Awards, etc.

Reminders

Topical Archives:
Deletion & AfD,      Speedy & prod,        NPP & AfC,       COI & paid editors,      BLP,                              Bilateral relations
Notability,               Universities & academic people,       Schools,                       Academic journals,       Books & other publications
Sourcing                Fiction                                                In Popular Culture      Educational Program
Bias, intolerance, and prejudice

General Archives:

2006: Sept-Dec
2007: Jan-Feb , Mar-Apt , M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D 
2008: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2009: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2010: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2011: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2012: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2013: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2014: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2015: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2016: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2017: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2018: J, F, M , A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2019: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2020: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2021: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2022: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D
2023: J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O

Do not add comments here; add new sections at the bottom, not the top

About: your eloquent summary of what does and does not improves this project

Hi DGG, or if I may be so bold, David,
You wrote at WP:AN/I Archive691: <block quote>There is more than one valid way of working here. Some people prefer to create only high quality articles, even though they may do very few of them. Some prefer to create many verifiable articles of clear notability even though they may not be of initially high quality. As this is a communal project, I think every individual person is fully entitled to do whichever they prefer, and the thing to do about people who prefer otherwise than oneself is to let them work their way, while you work yours. The only choice which is not productive is to argue about how to do it, rather than going ahead in the way that one finds suitable.</block quote> Many editors include a statement about their attitudes to editing on their user pages. I am not one of them, that is until I came across what you wrote. I would really like to include this on my user page. While I can add anything at all I like to my user page subject to WP:USER PAGE, I nevertheless ask for your permission to add the quote. OK with you? I'm fine if you decline this.
--Shirt58 (talk) 12:37, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course. DGG ( talk ) 21:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

where is the "like" button? RobLab (talk) 01:42, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure I've seen you reference this essay

WP:TALKINGSOFASTNOBODYCANHEARYOU. Is my memory that faulty? I can't find it, and it's possible the syntax isn't precise. Did you use this a sort of irony? I seem to remember you used the link to represent bullying behaviors. I'm seeing one such user who seems to be wanting to turn the entire AfD process on its head by using such a technique. BusterD (talk) 11:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I have sometimes used pseudo-links like these as a statement for their own sake, without writing an actual essay. I remember saying something like this, but I can't find it. I think this one was TALKINGSOMUCH... -- but I can't find it either. As for the problem, I've commented pretty extensively at AN/I: [1], and will comment at the RfC also, But please don't confuse the reasonable message, with which I am in agreement -- that Deletion Policy is overbalanced towards deletion, and one step towards rebalancing it would be to require some version of WP:BEFORE -- with the unreasonable way it is being over-expressed. DGG ( talk ) 23:23, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, David. I was a debater in school before "talking so fast" became the current style. I feel anything which games the system deserves appropriate response in order to keep the system sound. I appreciate your valid concern about deletion procedures being over-weighted toward one outcome. Thanks for your valuable comments in those forums. Be well. BusterD (talk) 23:37, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I had forgotten that context. And so was I, in college--a very valuable experience, especially in facilitating the sort of intercampus experiences only the athletic teams otherwise gave occasion for. But the stimulus is interesting: if I take a turn at NPP, the amount of junk turns me for a while into a deletionist before I catch myself and stop being so unfriendly to all the newcomers. If I take a look at AfD, the number of unwarranted nominations makes me inclined to give a similarly snappy and unjust response to all of them, with the less than rational thought that if I argue against all of them, maybe there's a chance the good ones will make it. Several good inclusionists have run into trouble here falling into such temptation. DGG ( talk ) 23:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

basic rules about professors

All full professors at major research universities have sufficiently demonstrated that they are recognized experts in their subject to meet WP:PROF,and that WP:PROF is an alternative to WP:GNG. This is not a formal rule, but almost all AfD have had this result, except in fields where people here have doubts about the rigor, such as Education. (Major: in the US, Research Extensive in the Carnegie Classification + schools of similar rank; elsewhere, similar level). The rationale for this is that this is the basis on which people are promoted to such rank at such universities, and their judgment is more reliable than ours.)

For those at lower level institutions, this is not automatic, and the judgment goes by individual cases; the rationale is that in such institutions people are often promoted to this rank based on lesser accomplishments or for other qualities than being a recognized expert in their subject.

For Associate professors, automatic notability is not generally accepted, but is determined case by case. AfD results vary, but imho are usually reasonable. Personally, I think it could be extended to them on similar grounds, but this has not had consensus. ("Associate" = the US rank, and corresponding ranks elsewhere)

For Assistant professors, and corresponding ranks outside the US, it similarly goes case by case, and almost all AfD results have been "not notable". I agree with this.

Additionally, in the humanities most full professors in the highest level universities-- ,-- have written two or more books that have reviews in RSs for notability, and thus meet WP:AUTHOR. In the very highest level universities, this applies to Associate professors also. In other fields, where tenure usually depends on articles, not books, this doesn't work as frequently, but it sometimes does. Similarly, in the fine arts, many people at various academic levels will qualify by WP:CREATIVE.

For that matter, if one argued on the basis of the GNG, we could find for almost anyone who has published one or more important papers that the 2 or more of the papers referencing them contain substantial discussions of their work. This would require examining the actual papers, as the mere fact of being cited does not necessarily or even usually mean there is substantial discussion of the work. If I really tried, I could probably find this for many people even at the post-doctoral level. As this result is contradictory to most people's intuitive feelings on the appropriate contents of an encyclopedia (as distinct from a faculty directory), it shows imo the uselessness of the GNG in this subject. Before the WP:PROF standard became accepted, I did use it when it matched my intuitive view. If we return to GNG-worship, I will go back to using it.

Where the GNG is used here appropriately , is for people at any level whose work happens to strike the fancy of newspaper writers. I don't consider most such people notable as academics, but since the public will read the news accounts and want some objective information, it's reasonable to have the articles here. (I have sometimes objected to isolated news accounts as being based on PR if it seems really counter-intuitive). DGG ( talk ) 17:39, Apr 24. 2012

Admin review

Which brings me to my pother point. When I was a new admin, I half expected someone would be assigned to follow me around for some time, just to make sure I was understanding the rules correctly. Either that didn't happen, or they were very, very quiet. (I'm even more surprised it isn't SOP at OTRS, but that’s a different issue.) I think we should have a more formal review system for new admins. I know there's the ability to check with someone else, but I'd like to see something more formal.

Having made my point, I'm not sure it belongs on the thread at this time, because my suggestion isn't going to help the problems that are being discussed at the moment, so maybe I'll think some more on it, and formalize a proposal later. Maybe after getting some thoughts from people like you.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

You are quite correct--I was oversimplifying. Sensible new admins do only the ones that are totally obvious while they are starting--it must be very discouraging to have people revert your first admin actions, and I've seen that happen. And it is true that I will make a point of checking speedy nominations others have thought it wise to pass by, and AfDs that people don't seem to want to close; I know some others do just the same, which is how we keep long lags from developing. But I had in mind also a few long term admins who actually do decide almost all equivocal cases as delete. To expand on what you have said , in a direction of my own,

I have occasionally checked a new admin's deletions if I think from the RfA there is likely to be some problems, and I suppose others do similarly. But I do not know if any people systematically reviews the admin logs the way people do new pages--if anyone does, I've noticed no sign of it. The only thing I've seen checked systematically is the very long-standing page protections. It might be a good thing to do. The AfD closes are very visible, the prods have been checked by several people before they get to the top of the list, but speedies and blocks and unblocka and protections and unprotections don't get looked at, unless someone suspects a problem. I have sometimes thought of doing it, but I have always stopped, because, to be frank about it, I don't want to see the errors. I can't pass over a clear error I do see, and I am fully aware that some admins use the tools beyond the proper limits. Some of these are my friends, & I can mention it to them from time to time quietly. But for obvious reasons most of the ones I would disagree with are by people I often disagree with, with whom relations are often not all that friendly. I don't want to spend all my time quarreling and navigating sticky situations; though I may get the errors corrected, it is not likely to improve mutual relations. (I am also aware that I too make both errors and borderline interpretations, & I suppose I even sometimes interpret things the way I would like them to be, & if I have any enemies here, I do not really want to encourage them to audit me with the utmost possible rigidity. I expect I could be able to very well support my interpretations, but as Samuel Johnson put it, nobody however conscious of their innocence wants to every day have to defend themselves on a capital charge before a jury.

When I started here, I wondered how a system with a thousand equally powerful admins who could all revert each other could possibly exist. I soon learnt the subtleties of wheel warring--there were some major arb com cases on it during my first year here which pretty much defined the limits. But more important, I also learned that even the more quarrelsome spirits here understood the virtues of mutual forbearance--and that even the most self-sufficient people do not really want to look publicly foolish. Our balance is I think over-inclined to protecting the guilty if they are popular enough, but it is not as bad as it could be, or as it often is in human societies. DGG ( talk ) 03:25, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I smiled at your closing comment. I had the same, thought, although for the project as a whole, rather than just the admin function. I'm more recent to the project because, when I first heard about it, a few years before actually joining, I thought about the model and decided it couldn't possibly work. Oddly, I still feel that way, intellectually. If there were no such thing as Wikipedia, and I heard a proposal to create, my instinct is that it will fail miserably. I actually can't quite put my finger on why it hasn't failed.SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:52, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Deletion review response thank you / Tutoring newbies on how to do online research

I left a thank you for your response — and unrelated question(s) — here. Another thing that maybe we agree on is the importance of knowing how to do research. I really like Wikipedia's Search Engine usage guidelines and tutorial, and have tried to link to them from Wikipedia:Article titles — because I think it's important to research usage when deciding the best article title, best category title, or the most appropriate term to use — but my attempts to link to this have been repeatedly reverted by people who think they own anything related to the MoS. Likewise, for the same reason, I have been unable to add links from Wikipedia:Article titles to the regional MoS guides. The article on category naming conventions also does not explain how to search existing categories or link to the above article on how to use search engines to research the best category title, either. Maybe you have some advice or ideas on this? LittleBen (talk) 13:51, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I discovered in my first year here that there were some parts of Wikipedia where despite my interest in the subject, for one or another reason I was unlikely to be very effective. Prominent among these were the MOS and categorization. I am a little concerned with article titles, and in that field, fundamentally I disagree with you -- I think the best article title should be the clearest and fairest, and counting ghits or the equivalent is usually irrelevant. And to the extent I understand categorization debates the problem there is often finding a sufficiently clear wording to encompass the desired set of article. I think the MOS is a little more rational than it was 4 years ago; if I were doing it, I'd limit to to pure matters of style, which does not include choice between article titles, just such matters as whether to use singular or plurals. But in questions like this , your opinion is as valid as mine, and there is no point in arguing the issue here--neither of us is "right". DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

My main question was aimed at getting your opinion on "Tutoring newbies on how to do online research". You don't seem to have answered this, but maybe this is something that Kudpung is more interested in than you are. My comment on article titles was related to this: there seem to be many people creating new articles without adequately researching if there is an existing article on the subject already. Part of the problem is that Wikipedia Search, by default, only shows if there is an article title that is an exact match to the search term; it does not show if there is a category that matches the search term. If it did, it would be far easier to find related material. It is difficult to work out how to search categories. Terminology (e.g. article titles and category titles) is often inconsistent for this reason. Just one example: There are Web browser engine and List of web browser engines articles, but there are nine Comparison of layout engines (XXX) articles, and the category is Category:Layout engines. I don't understand your reference to counting ghits, and don't understand how my viewpoint disagrees with yours. LittleBen (talk) 02:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, I got another response on the Deletion review thread that pointed me to a discussion here that may interest you. LittleBen (talk) 02:23, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for not covering everything. The WP search function is not the problem; if it does not find an article, it suggests searching for the term. Perhaps the page could be revised to suggest that first, rather than as an alternative to making an article. I think there has been some previous debate on whether it should initially search for the term rather than the article. I also have seen it said that by the standards of other search engines, it could use some sophistication. About 1/3 of people come here from Google etc., and though those search engines rank article titles at the top, they also include articles with the term anywhere. But the Google search engine is, deliberately, getting dumber and dumber; it is no longer possible to use the "+" character as an intersection, and Google Scholar has removed the limit to subject field possibility in advanced search.

Many apparently duplicate articles are created deliberately as a POV fork, others in the mistaken belief that WP includes essays on very specific term-paper type topics. Many are simply naive, as when someone submits a two sentence article on something where we have extensive coverage.

I think teaching people to search properly is a part of research, but the main result of its failure is not the duplicate articles, but the unreferenced articles. Way back when Google was new and exciting, we librarians used to impress the students by showing we could use it more effectively than they could. (The secret is partially cleverness and experience in selecting search terms, but mainly just persistence--something like 90% of users stop at the first page of results--I will if necessary scan through even a few thousand. I have found that people learn by experience better than didactic instruction, provided they are alert enough to pay attention to what experience shows them. Certainly we should do a better job teaching beginners, but the way I think works best is to show them one at a time how to do better. A person learns best when one individual person shows them how to fix their errors and misconceptions, and this is not done by templates. Besides Kudpung & myself, very few NPPatrollers or even admins take the trouble and patience. It's too much for a few people--we need everyone who is able to do it. We progress not by discussing how to work, but by working. DGG ( talk ) 03:38, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we progress not by discussing how to work, but by working. You seem to be better at that (more productive) than I am ;-) But sometimes it's more scalable if we offer others the opportunity of learning how to do the work (not specifically thinking of Tom Sawyer ;-). Thanks and best regards. LittleBen (talk) 04:23, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

FYI - user warnings

[2] As suggested. :) I think our next step is making sure that the code is correct, and then we can start implementing. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:48, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. It was suggested by several people at Wikimania that we quickly make similar changes in level 4 and 4im, and then consider whether to combine levels--that part would need an rfc. The easiest way to go now would probably be to go to three levels, by combining 2/3 , to avoid having to rewrite the level 1 warnings. DGG ( talk ) 21:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Library portal

I just accepted the AfC submission for the Library portal article now in mainspace. Since I noticed in the past that you're a librarian, posting this article here for your perusal, if you have the time or interest in checking it out, improving it, making any corrections, etc. Regards, Northamerica1000^(talk) 05:17, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for referring this to me. As you realised, this required subject knowledge. It's a valid topic, but even after your cleanup, still needed extensive further editing for conciseness and removal or original research; there were obvious indications of the origin of this as an essay or term paper. I did one round; I will do another later. DGG ( talk ) 07:25, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for checking it out, and for the improvements. Northamerica1000^(talk) 08:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Bibliography of Encyclopedias

You are invited to join in a discussion at User talk:Dr. Blofeld#Bibliography of encyclopedias over my plans to develop a comprehensive set of bibliographies of encyclopedias and dictionaries by topic. I hope you see the potential of such a project and understand that while highly ambitious it will be drawn up gradually over time.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:58, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Rising above the mediocre

What you said here was very interesting. "I do not think a community editing project where anyone can edit will ever rise above mediocre quality. Our goal should be to not come below it--above is unreachable. The greater the degree of summarization, the more skilled the writing must be. Even among the scholarly societies, many more are capable of specialized writing than of general introductions."

I would agree personally with that. Summarising a comprehensive subject is difficult, as it involves both a comprehensive knowledge of the subject itself (rare), and good communication skills (less rare, but not frequent). But it surprised me you say that because you seem to be one of the main defenders of the Wikipedia 'ideology', i.e. the idea of 'epistemic egalitarianism', the idea that a 17 year old has as much to contribute as a professor etc. Do you see any conflict between the view you expressed above, and your belief or faith in Wikipedia? Interesting Hestiaea (talk) 08:26, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it by such monumental terms as "faith and belief"; my hope and expectation for Wikipedia is that it will be a good and useful general encyclopedia. Some aspects of it are already very good, and can be excellent: comprehensive scope, up-to-date coverage. Some will be very good, and are quite good already: accuracy, referencing and cross-linking. Some will I hope become good, though they have problems at present: freedom from advertising and bias. Some will never rise above mediocre: the quality of the writing, including their detailed style. Some of all this is characteristic of a large scale community project: comprehensiveness, timeliness, lack or bias, linking. Some are special features of the people gathered here and they way they work: objectivity , accuracy, referencing.

The intention was for WP to be at the level of the average college student. Many 17 year olds are at that level, some considerably younger in fields with no special academic pre-requisites. Certainly the high school and junior high school Wpedians I have known in Wp circles have been working at a mature level. I learned this freedom from agist bias from my parents, who treated their children as rational beings who would learn more if given the opportunity. Here, we give them that chance. Children should be treated as adults as soon as they're ready, when it does not risk their safety. This is a very safe place, compared to others on the web. And it does not affect our own safety, because when there are errors, there are thousands of people to fix them.

As I said elsewhere, there still remains the need for an encyclopedia of higher academic quality. Most high school students would not be able to participate significantly, but neither would most adults. And a great many of those with advanced subject degrees I have known in my career would not have the necessary skill at comprehensive comprehensible writing. Scholars too need to be edited, and complicated works do best with skilled organization. It can be more efficient to have questions settled by editorial ukase. But not always: as you know, I joined WP and Citizendium at the same time, resolved to go with the one that made more progress. DGG ( talk ) 16:18, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! BTW I wasn't aware of your involvement with Citizendium.

I don't altogether agree with your comment about academic quality. I don't think articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy would be suitable for WP. What is needed is well-summarised and well-explained articles on difficult or general subjects that would be accessible to anyone of high school age (15-18) and above. The Wikipedia article on Being and the corresponding SEP article [3] are both unreadable but for different reasons. The WP article, as you will appreciate, is a rambling dog's breakfast of uncited original research (plus some glaring factual errors). The SEP article looks pretty accurate to me but just goes off into the clouds ("Anti-Meinongian First-Order View") once it gets going. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is better for a general audience but is incomplete. Hestiaea (talk) 09:15, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Milking the bull

In working upon this topic, I observed that you had a particular interest in list of proverbial phrases. When I get a moment, I plan to make some bold edits there as it seems to have gone quiet. Just letting you know in advance... Warden (talk) 14:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)~~

we perhaps should talk first. The main thing I think it needs is citations. I could put in a few dozen/hundred quickly. then of course it needs articles on all or most of them--that part I do not want to do. DGG ( talk ) 15:51, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Quick question: Outlines

In my work on public relations I came across this article Outline of public relations, which seems like a massively extended See also section of the PR article. Should I AfD it as a fork? CorporateM (Talk) 15:33, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

It's intended as such, essentially as a table of contents, like Outline of physical science, and many others: see WikiProject Outlines and Portal:Contents/Outlines. They are more systematically arranged than th text format of a general article, which requires reading, not scanning, to find specific topics. They are more article oriented than Portals -- see Portal:Philosophy, but more general than Indexes & Lists such as Index of standards articles or Glossaries, such as Glossary of US mortgage terminology . There's also a combination page type: Portal:Contents/History and events-- click "see in all page types".

It's a good question whether we need all of these systems of organization. We've tried others: a systematic organization based on List of Dewey Decimal classes or Library of Congress Classification or Wikipedia:Outline of Roget's Thesaurus, and yet others have been proposed. I think the overlap more than they ought to, but we'll never get agreement on which to concentrate on. Personally, I very much like the Outline of... structure, and would support it over the others. I believe that's the current tendency, also. Ideally everything would be indexed according to the two library systems also, because they're familiar--not that they're any good--especially LC, which was designed to match the structure of a US university curriculum in the first decade of he 20th century. There is no viable one dimensional way to organize knowledge--the alternative is some sort of Faceted classification, whose construction and use can get really complicated. There's even a totally different approach--to have no classification or indexing of any sort, but rely on free text implemented as we implement the see alsos, and the hyperlinks, as anything anyone thinks related, with no systematic organization. Or the extreme of having everything be a free text search.

Perhaps however you are asking whether every item on that particular outline you mentioned belongs--that's for discussion on its talk page, or whether other things should be added, in which case boldly add them. Or whether the whole outline is biased in some way, in which case, discuss it. Only if it is irretrievably biased or confusing should it be deleted.

Categories are a necessary complement--they are self-populating, but eliminate the possibility of saying anything about the individual items. I use them very heavily for what I do, which is, upon finding a problem article, finding others that are likely to have a similar problem. They should also do very well for finding term paper topics. They will be more effective as subject guides when we implement category intersection in a simply and obvious manner. (And there's the related Series Boxes, those colored boxes at the bottom. I dislike them--they're visually awful, and are used frequently to express or dispute a POV. But they do serve nicely to indicate missing articles.

Quick question, long answer. See chapter 17 of Wikipedia the missing manual for a longer one, oriented towards categories. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC) .

Library resources box

DGG, I and I expect others would appreciate your continued attention at the talk around user:JohnMarkOckerbloom's Template:Library resources box. There is a deletion discussion about this at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_April_30#Template:Library_resources_box. There was an article about this template in The Signpost in March, and some external press in other places.

This seems like a big issue which could set a precedent for how the Wikipedia community interacts with libraries. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:24, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

category intersects

Since you've mentioned wikidata many time, I thought you'd be interested in this: Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection#A_working_category_intersection_today. We could use it as a band-aid while waiting for wikidata to spin up. Also w.r.t your votes - I think that whether we use the proposal i made above, or wikidata, simplifying the categories *beforehand* will actually make things easier. None of the categories i've proposed deleting could not be recreated through an intersect - but for now they serve to ghettoize and are against the guidance for ethnic cats.

Anyway, regardless of what you decide on the CFD votes, I'd really appreciate your input and help on the cat intersect proposal. cheers --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:25, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I have almost always supported ethnic subcategories. People look for articles in these fields, often to find subjects for school papers. I in general agree with maintaining the categories in the meanwhile, but I'm not sure its worth arguing about them for the present, considering the degree of opposition. As I said there is that intersection will remove the entire need for the discussions.What we need most to keep are the categories from which the intersections will be constructed. (Defining and organizing the root data is a harder problem--I find some of the current Wikidata proposals a little too casual. Adding data fields as one thinks of them is not as good as a systematic ontology.) DGG ( talk ) 15:02, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Quick question

I noticed you (and other admins) often tag pages for speedy deletion, even though you can delete them yourselves. Is this out of personal preference for wanting review by another admin or is there some guideline or unspoken rule that calls for review by at least two different people? Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 00:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Most of us think it better that two people see the article. I am capable of mistakes, and I know I occasionally make them, because people are not at all reluctant to tell me--sometimes I will have missed something, or not understood, or just gone too quickly. Even for the utterly obvious, there's the possibility of carelessness or sleepiness, or just frustration at having been seeing so many totally unsatisfactory articles. I doubt anything requiring human judgment can be done at less than 1% error. I've deleted over 12,000 articles over the 7 years I've been doing this. and that would have been 120 wrong deletions, and potentially 120 good editors lost to WP. But with someone else checking, that makes it only 1 or 2 in the whole time.

In fact, I've argued that this should be absolutely required, but there are cases where one must act immediately, and it's been difficult to specify exactly the exceptions. DGG ( talk ) 00:48, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh ok, thanks. I agree with you. I was just curious. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 01:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I appreciate that there are times when you must act immediately, such as WP:ATTACK and WP:OUTING and possibly other situations. Do the admins have a tool that makes it easy for admins to "delete (or WP:REVDELETE) now, and list the page for review by another administrator ASAP" and if they do, to most admins who make "unilateral deletions" use this tool? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:04, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) There is no rule that admins can't delete anything on sight, but tagging and leaving for a second admin to delete is a good, unwritten practice that most seem to observe. Most of us will of course delete blatant COPYVIO, attack, and vandal pages immediately and some other cases of obvious nonsense. However, admins don't actually make many mistakes with their deletions, so 'delete and review later' by another admin would be redundant. I've deleted around 3,000 pages and only restored 20, and those were userfications. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:15, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I define 1% as "many" if one thinks of the cumulative effect over the years. If everyone who had a reasonable case stayed and complained, yes it would work, but most don't. There's also the definition of "error"-- does it mean an article that would pass AfD, or an article that with enough work might possibly pass AfD, an article to which the speedy criteria did not apply, but would end up deleted anyway The 1% is for the first two classes; for the third, it's more like 5%. In any case the error rate will depend on the type of speedys. I tend to look at the ones that have been passed over for a few hours. I only really know about my own errors, and of course my rate may be unusually high because I may be unusually incompetent. Some years ago I did intend to audit speedies--the reactions I received from admins involved in the ones I challenged persuaded me it was not the route to effectiveness here, and tolerating injustice in this was the way to be more useful overall. (There was 1, & only 1, admin who did change their practice in response to my comments.) I think I will decide the same about the G13 AfCs. DGG ( talk ) 20:57, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

SIgns of promotionalism

For anyone watching, there are some internal signs of promotional-style biographies for businessmen that are almost always copyvio as well (besides the obvious giveaway of a statement of how important the company is, and especially a statement of how important their duties were in previous positions in the firm.)

Headings that use <big> instead of our formatting

Placing the education at the end, with a final sentence of about spouse and children.

Not giving the positions in chronological order, and often not including earlier positions except the one just before coming to the firm.

The corresponding signs for academics are slightly different, depending on whether they're done by a central office or by the individual. For senior administrators they characteristically include multiple junior executive positions and in-university awards. For any faculty, if the individual wrote it, it will often includes full details of all publications however minor; if the central office, it will omit most exact titles, especially for journal articles. DGG ( talk ) 01:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Local interest topics again

Hi DGG, a while back I asked you for your position on local interest topics. I think you may have forgotten about it. Could you see if you can find the time to give it another swing? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

As before, the problem is maintaining them free from promotionalism. The more local the organization, the more likely it is that any available sources will be essentially press releases. for example, I've got this problem in my own neighborhood, Boerum Hill: there are a number of interesting creative projects of various genres, as well as some fascinating stores, all with good coverage in the fairly respectable local paper, but that paper will essentially write an article on anything in the general area, and will say more or less what the proprietors tell it. (The paper's political coverage I do trust, and i could use it to justify articles on every city councilman and community board member in the Brooklyn, not to mention the losing candidates, but I don't want to push it against the consensus they aren't notable ) So Iwait until the NYTimes or at least New York covers something in a substantial way--New York may be a bit of a tabloid sometimes, but it isn't a PR outlet. I love local journalism. I even read it when I don't know the area--it shows the way people live, in all their variety. If we could maintain the articles, I might want to do it.

The best hope for this is a local wiki. The attempts at a local wiki in NYC haven't really taken off--there are insufficient people in any one neighborhood who understand, and the ones that exist tend to be dominated by the real estate agents and local attorneys. Or possibly something built around Open Street Maps--that sort of a geographical interface makes sense. Or a combined wiki, Wikipedia Two, still maintaining NPOV and sourcing, but not requiring notability and not all that strict on promotionalism.

actually, I'd like a three way split, WP, the general encyclopedia; WP 2 for local content, and WP+, for academically reviewed material. Citizendium offered promise for that third part, but it 's manner or working drove off too many of the good people. I in fact joined it as one of the original group of expert editors, but I didn't get along with Larry, and if you didn't support him, there was no place for you there. DGG ( talk ) 06:22, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses. Reading what you say, and thinking about my own experiences, the problem here is that local newspapers are reliable on some subjects, but aren't necessarily reliable on all subjects. Because of that, we have no objective measure on how useful inclusion in a local newspaper is as a measure for inclusion in Wikipedia, and some organisations and individuals will take advantage off that to inject their self-promotion in to Wikipedia, so you prefer to rely on other sources that make it easier to draw a clear line. Is that roughly it, or am I just filling in my own perspective? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:50, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I prefer to rely on other methods than using the GNG to make it possible to draw a clear line. Decisions under the GNG come down to the details of what counts as reliable especially with respect to the key words "substantial" and "independent." Depending on what one wants to include or exclude, questions of what is a RS for notability purposes can often be rationally argued either way. But I've learned to work with the GNG, since it is unfortunately still the rule and likely to remain so.

And our key problem now is dealing with promotionalism. It's hard enough to deal with it in articles on major organizations--our standards for what we've accepted before were incredibly lax, and probably 90% of the articles on commercial and non-commercial organizations need to be rewritten. I'm reluctant to start including any thing that would add to the problem. DGG ( talk ) 00:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit description

Thanks for your edit description here, it's much nicer and more informative than the usual form message that gets left. --TKK ^{bark !} 00:32, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Anthologies

G'day DGG,

Thanks for your comment We normally accept inclusion in anthologies as notability [4], which as well as being a welcome contribution to that particular discussion interests me more generally.

I agree we should, but is this documented anywhere? I can't find any explicit mention in guidelines or policies or help pages, but perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places.

Or, are there other notability discussions where inclusion in anthologies has been cited as evidence? I don't lurk on AfD currently (I used to but WP:RM seemed to have a greater need) so I'd have missed them.

Any help appreciated. I'm vaguely thinking of proposing some sort of tweak to notability guidelines to better cover hymnists, and don't want to be reinventing the wheel and/or generating useless instruction creep. Andrewa (talk) 03:55, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

we've routinely used this for poets and writers of short stories, and for short stories themselves-- see for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mouse (short story), where it was used in a negative sense, deleted for not being in anthologies. I don't know we've used it in this context before. There was an explicit guideline once somewhere; I typically have the sort of memory that always remembers if I've seen something, but not necessarily where or when. Actually, I consider this an exceedingly broad criterion, but so is NBOOK, and in consequence NAUTHOR. . DGG ( talk ) 04:54, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I have now come to interpret this as not in standard anthologies, which is much less broad - DGG

Notability

Hi DGG, You've nominated several of my articles for deletion or speedy deletion. I'm always careful to write neutrally and cite everything that I write. Obviously, I think the topics that I choose are notable, but you disagree with me on some points. I find the notability guidelines to be somewhat vague, so if a topic has enough information written about it in newspapers, magazines, or similar media to create a short article, then I go ahead and create one. Is there some other measure or guideline that you're using to determine notability? Are there a certain number of sources that you look for, or does a magazine need a certain amount of circulation? Guidance is appreciated. Thanks, HtownCat (talk) 17:52, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I rather expected to hear from you, and I've delayed nominating further articles until I could see your response. There are two separate but linked problems in articles about organizations, their leaders, and their products: notability and promotionalism:

The basic problem of promotionalism is that WP is addressed to the potential readers, giving them the information they might want to know upon seeing mention of a subject (for example, at the most basic, where is that company and what does the company do?, or which organization is that & what do they advocate? ). A promotional article is addressed to a prospective user or purchaser or supporter: This is what we do, and here is why it is valuable that you buy our products or support our endeavors. Encyclopedia articles are characterised by plain description, promotional ones by praise, or the sort of detail one would need only if one is considering a purchase. Promotional articles are intended to give a favorable image of the company, such as describing its ostensible social purposes or community contributions.

the basic problem of notability is deciding whether something is worth describing in an encyclopedia at all. It doesn't correspond to importance in the world, but to whether it should be included in WP--we can;t after all judge the world, but we must decide what we want to put in our encyclopedia. . In a few cases we go by a general decision--for example, the decision that all named populated places are appropriate for articles. In some others, we go by outside evaluation: for example, that a holder of a distinguished professorship at a major university is notable, or someone chosen to compete in the Olympics. In many cases, there are no such firm standards, and we go by the WP:GNG, the general notability guideline, which requires substantial coverage by multiple independent third party reliable sources. (some people say this is the only real standard, and everything else is just an assumption of what will meet it). the key words there are "substantial" , "independent" , and "reliable." A substantial source is more than a product listing, or a mention of an event taking place, but a significant discussion, such as a full product review. How substantial it must be is of course a matter of judgment, which is decided by consensus at WP:AFD. An independent source is one not derived from the subject--not the subject's web page of product literature, or what its principals write, or the press releases the put out. A reliable source is one using editorial judgment, rather than simply publishing press releases or gossip. Again, these terms are matters of judgement to be decided at consensus.

In all but extreme cases. nobody can predict accurately how consensus will go--I will nominate an article for deletion if I think there is a substantial probability that it will not be considered suitable, --but even after 7 dears of experience at it , sometimes I am wrong, either because I made a misjudgment or because the community wishes to interpret things differently. The community decides, and another administrator judges what the community has decided. Guidelines are necessarily subject to interpretation, and what really matters is how the community decides to interpret them--after all, we make our own rules collectively, and we can decide how we want to use them , and if we want to make exceptions. The best way of learning this is to observe afd discussions on similar topics, to see what arguments succeed, and what the practical standards are.

Some things are deleted immediately, by the concurrence of two administrators, rather than an AfD. One relevant example is blatant promotionalism, which is an article so much devoted to advertising or promoting something that there appears no way to fix it without rewriting. (As an admin, I have the technical ability to do it without concurrence, but I rarely use it unless there is some immediate hazard, such as libel or copyvio) . We also immediately remove articles on people or companies where it seems obvious on the face of it there is no possible indication of any importance or significance, --a much less demanding standard than actual notability,. Again, normally two admins will concur in this. If such deletions are seriously disputed in good faith, most admins will reverse the decision and send the article to AfD for a community opinion.

I said there was a connection between the two: A key reason we have a notability standard is that for most things that are not notable, there is nothing much to say except directory information or promotion. It is critical to WP that it not become a mere directory or a place for advertisement--we want to provide information that people can trust, so we require sources and objectivity and some degree of significance. There are many other places on the web for advertising, and google does very nicely as a web directory.

There are additionally some factors that can affect how people here view an article. We tend to regard an attempt to write simultaneous articles about a borderline notable company, its products, and its executives likely to be an attempt at promotion--it is much better to have one strong article. Also , it is considered possible that someone writing articles about a wide range of barely notable subjects may be doing so as a paid editor. We do not absolutely prohibit this (though many people here would like to do so), but we strongly discourage it, because it is extremely difficult to be objective about what one writes with such a strong conflict of interest. If by any chance you are such an editor, I can explain to you how best to deal with it so as to get the articles accepted--I am one of the relatively few admins here who are willing to assist paid editors who come here openly in good faith and are willing to learn our standards. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 21:29, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your detailed response. If I am not completely sure whether a subject is notable, should I submit it to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation?

I really thought I was careful about keeping promotionalism out of my articles. I would like to improve them, if given the chance. Is there a way that I can edit the deleted articles and then submit them for approval to be posted? I've read something about restoring articles to a userspace, but I'm not sure what the procedure is for that. I absolutely do want to contribute quality articles and nothing that other editors might view as promotional. Thanks for your help. HtownCat (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look next week. You should first check if there are good references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, because otherwise a rewrite is useless. DGG ( talk ) 04:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Library holdings

Hello DGG! Thank you for your note at my talk page, I appreciate the feedback. I will look at those articles you listed this weekend and do some cleanup on them. I'll also try to be more mindful of promotionalism in the future. I'm curious about your technique of judging notability by library holdings, as in the Jedediah Bila AfD - it seems useful especially for pre-internet authors. Do you use Worldcat to find that information? How many libraries do you think are necessary for notability? --Cerebellum (talk) 01:51, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I use WorldCat most of the time. But WorldCat requires interpretation for 5 factors: First, it covers mainly US and Canadian libraries, with a lesser coverage for the UK and Australia and New Zealand, a very scanty coverage of Western Europe, and little else, so it requires careful interpretation when used elsewhere. Second, it covers almost entirely English language books, for in the US only the largest academic libraries buy anything else. Third, it covers current holdings, so what libraries had 50 years ago is not represented, so for older books of shorter spans of interest such as popular fiction it requires correction also. Fourth, how many titles count for a book to be likely notable depends on the type of book-- mainstream novels and important nonfiction are much more represented than esoteric subjects. I go by the experience of having looked for many books of all sorts, and one can do the equivalent by comparison with books known to be notable. (I have sometimes used comparisons to say that a work is or is not a major work in a field) As a fifth factor: editions must be combined to get a true picture, and the way libraries report holdings this is not always easy. As a result I usually report holdings as approximate figures. For major current works in popular interest academic subjects like economics, a notable book would have at least several hundred. For experimental fiction that fits no standard genre, only a few dozen libraries might buy it, but it can be just as important. For fan-oriented books on games, libraries usually buy very little, because they get outdated very quickly. For some of the kinkier sexual topics, libraries don't buy at all. A scattering of small libraries often indicates author gift copies.

The official WP standard is book reviews. But library holding correlate nicely with book reviews, because libraries buy largely on the basis of such reviews, especially for public libraries.

Outside the US, holdings can be gotten from the catalogs listed at WP:Booksources But none have nearly the depth of coverage in their own countries that WorldCat does in the US. -- but there is the very powerful consolidated search facility of Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog at [5]. DGG ( talk ) 03:41, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

WP: Exhibitions

In light of the increase in GLAM projects internationally, I'd like to start a new WikiProject, WP:Exhibitions to help coordinate activities around major museum and gallery exhibitions. If you are interested in the project, please contact me here or on my talk page. I'm hoping to establish guidelines for creating, editing, and tagging articles on major exhibitions and to begin improving articles in this area of Wikipedia. OR drohowa (talk) 19:42, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

See conversation at User talk:OR drohowa#WP:Exhibitions for my convo with JohnBod on this Project. Hoping for more responses also on the various other WikiProjects I posted on asking for comments/support.. OR drohowa (talk) 18:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for the effort you put into the close at WT:MOS#Bird common name capitalisation. There were a lot of words to read and to write. Keep up the good work. SchreiberBike talk 03:57, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. It was a sprawling debate that'd been going on in multiple forums for so long it's hard to get a complete sense of it without a lot of reading. Thanks for putting in the time and thinking it through.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:00, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Hear, hear! A very generous donation of time to get your mind round a long-long-long meandering debate with loads of distractions, and very brave to tackle one where people feel so strongly. I think you did an excellent job. --Stfg (talk) 10:14, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Right, you're off my Xmas card li- As much as I hate the result, I appreciate with the time and effort put in to possibly one of the most detailed closing rationales I have read. Despite apparent appearances to the contrary, I do support the idea of a global Manual of Style and conformity and am content to abide by the decision. Agree with the idea of some sort of bot to enact this. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:28, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I would have preferred a different outcome, but your arguments were really well-done and respectful to all positions. Kudos for you. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:26, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you, DGG. You've put a very contentious issue to rest, and probably for good. As ever, I'm flattered when people think I'm you. --BDD (talk) 16:16, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

A very most excellent example of gentle mop-wielding, though I am sure that some members of the species Gallus domesticus minoris will consider that the end of the Wikipedia is nigh. Guy (Help!) 19:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Ditto, I just wanted to thank you as well although I followed the discussion from a distance (I think it had more than enough active participants). Admins can get a lot of flack but when one takes on settling such a sprawling debate, knowing that no matter what one decides, there will be some very unhappy editors, I can only say thanks. And providing such a thoughtful rationale (rather than a sentence-long decision), is admirable and helps the decision "stick"...ambiguity would have only resulted in further challenges to your decision. Instead, if individuals do want to overturn this decision, they know that the burden of providing evidence resides with those wishing to change the status quo, and there has to be a substantial case to do so. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:14, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I am hoping that you won't need to clarify that the consensus finding doesn't only apply to birds, but you might; there's a (smaller and quieter) camp who want to always capitalize moths/butterflies and dragonflies, and another in favor of doing the same with common names of British (and I think Australian) plants. The debate may have focused on birds, but that focus should be scene as license to capitalize non-bird species common names.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:39, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jews_and_Communism_(2nd_nomination)

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jews_and_Communism_(2nd_nomination). Thanks. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)Template:Z48

the opposition to this and the other parallel "Jews in .." articles that were deleted is so opposite to everything I hold important in the world, including the idea of a NPOV encyclopedia, that I can only with difficulty participate in these discussions. I have elsewhere ascribed it to the desire to hide the significance of Jews in the world to avoid arousing the anti-Semites. It is not possible to logically argue against fear and irrationality. DGG ( talk ) 02:30, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think I did justice to your very acute wake-up comments at the AfD, particularly striking because, in the drift towards uniformity, you took a stand marked by complete independence of judgement. Deeply appreciated. When I read, particularly,

There is no reason why anyone--in particular any Jew --should find anything shameful about the association of Jews and Communism in Russia, except the inability to foresee the future.

I thought of Vasily Grossman's outstanding Life and Fate, which manages, other than the direct horror of the context, to write astonishing vignettes that embrace all the complexities of identities, Kalmuck/Tartar Jewish swept up in the Communist cause, with, among comrades, the various prejudices, ethnic/antisemitic, coming to the surface, only to be talked out. 2% of the officer class of the Soviet forces that effectively won WW2, despite our films and lore, were Jewish. The great vice of superficial eyes is to judge with the facile wisdom of hindsight while ignoring the hard and sometimes tragic options fronting real people in earlier generations (it's true, for me, also of 1948). After the trench warfare attritions and military command's quasi genocidal military tactics in WW1, choosing to be Communist was one of the few ostensibly rational or ethical options left, something events in Italy and Germany in the succeeding decade could only reinforce. Thanks, anyway, and sorry for this soapy intrusion.Nishidani (talk) 16:16, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

You may appreciate in connection with the novel the edition of his wartime notebooks,A Writer at War : a Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova. For another account of the appeal & disappointment of Communism, see the final volume of Victor Klemperer's diary, The Lesser Evil DGG ( talk ) 19:47, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Questionable notability page for WikiProject:Women Artists

Hi! Here you go Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_artists/Notability_concerns. SarahStierch (talk) 19:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Hey!

Hi, David,
It was a pleasure to meet you, face-to-face, and hear your presentation. Are your slides posted on the Wikiconference page? I'm really interested in the stats you shared about the state of AfC in 2007 vs. 2013. I think it's so important to be aware of the changes occurring on Wikipedia as it evolves over time in order to gain an accurate long-term view of where things are headed. Thanks again! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:03, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Review

Hi DGG, if it isn't a bother, could you take a quick look and review - Robert E. Olds, Joseph P. Cotton, Marcus M. Haskell, Osgood T. Hadley and Henry A. Hammel These are my first five article creations, I'm in the process of creating rest of the missing Civil War recipients of the Medal of Honor. There seems to be quite a backlog at New Page Patrol. Regards,  NQ  talk 22:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

1 point: in addition to saying in a general note that the material is copied from the US govt site, it's best to indicate by quotation marks exactly what has been copied--is it just the quotation in the box? then add it in the footnote there. DGG ( talk ) 02:28, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Only the MOH citation is copied verbatim from the Public domain material. The general note added is a template {{ACMH}} . I am not sure there is a parameter to include exactly which portion is copied.  NQ  talk 02:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I will find a way to do it. DGG ( talk ) 02:51, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Detecting copyvio

My approach to copyright is not to rely on google, but to check the person's web site, and any other posssible relevant external link or reference. In particular, many universities use noindex on the web sites, or on the portions of it which is a people directory. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Removing copyvio

The choice of which way to solve problems of copyvio is not purely a question of administrator idiosyncrasy, but involves many factors.

The general principles are found in both WP :COPYRIGHT and WP:Deletion Policy and its subpages. First, Deletion policy is that "Reasons for deletion [are] subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page)" and "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page" Section 3.1 for copyright violations says "remove the violation if possible, or edit the page to replace its entire content with {{subst:copyvio|url=address of copied material}}. For blatant, whole-page copyright violation, you can simply tag it for speedy deletion with {{db-copyvio|url=...}} after checking that there are no non-copyvio versions in the page history." Second, with respect to copyvio, WP:CSD says it applies to "Text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a compatible free license, where there is no non-infringing content on the page worth saving. Only if the history is unsalvageably corrupted should it be deleted in its entirety; earlier versions without infringement should be retained. For equivocal cases which do not meet speedy deletion criteria (such as where there is a dubious assertion of permission, where free-content edits overlie the infringement, or where there is only partial infringement or close paraphrasing), the article or the appropriate section should be blanked with {{subst:Copyvio}}, and the page should be listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. " Third, at WP:COPYVIO, it says "Handling of suspected violations of copyright policy depends on the particulars of a given case" It then says "If you have strong reason to suspect ... some, but not all, of the content of a page appears to be a copyright infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the discussion page, along with the original source, if known. "and " If all of the content [is]... a copyright infringement or removing the problem text is not an option because it would render the article unreadable, if an older non-infringing version of the page exists, you should revert the page to that version. If there is no such older version, you may be able to re-write the page from scratch, but failing that, the page will normally need to be deleted. "Fourth, looking at WPRevision Deletion, one of the permitted uses is for "Blatant copyright violations that can be redacted without removing attribution to non-infringing contributors. If redacting a revision would remove any contributor's attribution, this criterion cannot be used. Best practices for copyrighted text removal can be found at Wikipedia:Copyright problems and should take precedence over this criterion." The word "Blatent" is obviously open to interpretation, but a small paragraph copied from the persons website is not "blatant".

:I interpret this as follows:

I. removing a whole article because a nonessential part is copyright is not supported by policy. None the less, policies have some flexibility, and admins sometimes do that, and I have done something a little like it on occasion, based on the phrase in G12 "when there is no non-infringing content worth saving". If the articles is inherently promotional, I generally delete saying both G11 and G12, and I think of "entirely promotional" in a more more flexible way when there is significant copyvio. For articles, I'll sometimes do the same with A7/G12. For draft where A7 does not apply, and which the person has been repeatedly submitting without improvement, I'll try to find some reason. I will be more flexible in helping those.

II. As a general rule there is no reason to revision-delete, as long as the copyvio text is removed from the current version. It is not even permitted unless the violation was "blatant".

Basic cleanup steps for professors (and much of it applies to all bios)

Basic cleanup steps for professors (and much of it applies to all bios):

1. Remove all "Professor", "Prof.", "Doctor" and "Dr.", Ph.D, or M.D except in the lede sentence or as actual titles of positions or degrees. For every use of first name alone, substitute the last name. For every use of full first and last name, substitute the last name, except in the lede sentence or if needed to avoid confusion.
2. Then, for every use of the name more than once a paragraph at the most, substitute "he" "she" or the equivalent.
3. remove all adjectives of praise: famous, renowned, prestigious, world-wide, transformative, seminal, ground-breaking, etc. referring to either people or institutions or discoveries; even "well-known". In all of these, nothing needs to be substituted.
4. Consider replacing "expert" with "specialist". Replace "across" with "in" or, if documented, "throughhout" Remove all similar jargon. "
5. "best-selling" etc. needs to be justified by specificity and a third party quotation. Just remove all these throughout the entire article, or add a {{Fact}} "First" similarly needs a third party source.
6. Move the most important factor of notability to the very first phrase of the first sentence where nobody can miss it: not "A.B., an expert in something, who has taught at Wherever for 23 years, is the Distinguished Professor of" , to "X, the Distinguished Professor of ... at Wherever, is a specialist in something....
7. Remove complicated sentences of birth place and date to the section of biography. The lede sentence should just have the dates, eg: "(born 1945)"
8. If they have written books and work in the humanities or history or Law, or any field where books are the main factor of notability, remove journal article section entirely. If there's a section on conferences, etc., remove it in all cases.
9. The list of degrees received and dates is critical information. It goes in a section labeled ==Biography==, right after the lede paragraph. If you find it at the end, the article was unmistakably written by a press agent, and will need careful checking for copyvio.
10. In fact, the likelihood of copyvio is so great that I usually prefer to rearrange or alter most of the text.
11. Books need to be sourced to Worldcat, not Amazon or the publisher. Bio facts are sourced to the person's official page at the university. These should all be formatted as references, so there will be a conventional reference list DGG ( talk ) 20:16, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Just noticed this useful list. One comment (in case you've got this chunk of text ready to paste in elsewhere in future): in point 7, about dates, I think the standard format for the lead sentence is "(born 1948)" not "(b. 1948)". Your point 6, about moving the main claim to notability to the very start of the article, is really important - so many poor articles start by telling you the subject's parentage or other irrelevancies so that you have to plod through a lot of verbiage to find any assertion of notability. PamD 14:07, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

fixed, though perhaps even just the date is clear enough for everybody. thanks. (as for 7, press agents writing an academic cv tend not to realise what are the key factors. Hidden in the last paragraph among society memberships, will sometimes be "National Academy of Sciences". DGG ( talk ) 21:06, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

General advice, repeated here so it will be visible:

Please don't be deterred by the bureaucracy here. This is after all a very large enterprise, with thousand of people working independently at the same time with almost no formal coordination, almost no supervision, and very little training. to help deal with it, a number of formal conventions have been established. Unfortunately, the sort of people that like to work here are exactly the sort of people who are not very skilled at drawing up formal conventions or procedures, and the net result is a mass of partially contradictory instructions and rules, some important, some not; some enforced, some not. The response to a rule that has proven impractical is usually to add several supplementary rules, rather that to revise the original, and after 11 years, it produces quite a jumble.

Some of us find it fun to manipulate the rules to get a reasonable result. But the true purpose of working here is to build an encyclopedia, and I will normally try to get to a reasonable result as directly as possible. Some people though insist on their interpretation of the rules regardless of the result, and I have also become rather experienced at countering them in their own frame of reference when necessary. As I'm pretty much an inclusionist on most topics, I tend to concentrate at AfD and AfC.

My advice is to concentrate on providing good sourced articles. If you want to learn process, don't be afraid of making errors. There's no other way to do it, because you need to learn not the letter or the rules, but the way we use the and the accepted boundaries. DGG ( talk ) 17:53, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Kilroy was here —ATinySliver/^ATalkPage 19:44, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Several ongoing discussions could use your input:journals

Hi David, please see Talk:Academic journal#"Usually" peer-reviewed? (triggered by Template talk:Infobox journal#"peer reviewed"), Talk:Predatory open access publishing, and Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources#List of scammy academic journals. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 12:43, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Congrats

Congratulations on your election to the Arbcom, DGG. Well deserved. - NQ (talk) 02:52, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, welcome aboard. NativeForeigner ^Talk 03:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

"a Checkuser, which I am not" - Well, you will be soon. Congrats! Altamel (talk) 05:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Mazel tov! HG | Talk 07:21, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether to congratulate or console you, but I am glad that you were elected. Thank you for volunteering for this difficult, yet critical, work to keep the project running. -- Avi (talk) 07:52, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I came also for congratulations! So far arbitration was (for me at least) a synonym for waste of time, and ideally it shouldn't even be needed, - let's work on that ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

thank you for doing so, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:12, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Well done - highest number of positive votes shows your wide-spread respect. PamD 10:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• It's going to suck you absolutely dry for contributing anywhere else, but I can't think of any one more suited to the task of Arbitrator. Thank you for running for election and thank you in advance for all the good work you will be doing there. Warmest regards, --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:41, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Coming off my wikibreak to say congrats. I'm confident you will do good things. I'm also confident that Kudpung is correct; it will be an all-consuming and thankless task for the next two years, but my impression is that you were ready for a new challenge, and I know you are fully capable of handling it. Farmer Brown 2¢ 12:30, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Congratulations and good luck. You're one of the people on Wikipedia I have always respected greatly, and hope the other great work I've seen you do translates well to ArbCom. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:35, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Take it easy, please. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:33, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Congratulations DGG :) –Davey2010 • (talk) 14:56, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Congratulations DGG .Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 18:13, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Wishing you all the best during your time on ArbCom. Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:26, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
• Another voice to applaud your success in the recent popularity contest. I hope you find your new role satisfying and may it bring you contentment. Dolescum (talk) 16:16, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
• And another - it seems to be less of a nightmare job than in the past, but take it easy. Johnbod (talk) 05:03, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
• So cool. Congratulations. JSFarman (talk) 04:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
• Congrats my friend and mentor. I totally missed the elections or you could totally have counted on me for a Support. Happy HOlidays StarM 01:31, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

If it is permitted, and I know some initiation ceremonies by definition require an oath of secrecy, it might be nice if you can tell us what all is involved in the formal initiation ceremony. John Carter (talk) 00:14, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Where should I aim the magnetic pulse field at to help jump start the Inductor? /silly Hasteur (talk) 00:19, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

• Congratulations and best wishes. - - MrBill3 (talk) 18:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Congrats on winning the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2014. Bearian (talk) 20:41, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Ditto! --EEMIV (talk) 18:31, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Thanks for an amusing article. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:32, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

thanks; but which? DGG ( talk ) 22:52, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Clarification Requested on Copy and Paste Articles

To what degree is it permitted to create an article that is entirely, or very near so, a direct copy and paste from a single source now in the public domain? -Ad Orientem (talk) 02:26, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, it is permitted, but it has to be specified exactly what part is taken from the source, and future edits must keep this distinct. Some of our templates, say "some or all" has been taken from particular source. In my opinion, this is inadequate attribution. Exact quotation marks or some other equally clear indication is needed. There are I believe several thousand articles in this unsatisfactory sate, and as editing continues over the years, the result is very confusing both in terms of attribution and in terms of keeping material up to date and not based upon totally outdated views. This has bothered me since I've come here, but it hasn't bothered enough others to make any progress.

The real problem is not just attribution; the more insidious problem is accuracy. The article you cite on Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (1524 – 1574) shows this. The source, the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia is accurate as a summary for the facts as known at the time, but was never known for balance in its coverage, or for NPOV interpretation, and lacks adequate explanation of what to them was fundamental (That does not mean I do not think highly of it for many purposes--I even own a printed set.) The knowledge of sources, the interpretations of scholars, the interest in particular aspects, will be very different on every topic, no matter how old, from the state of things 100 years ago; even when religious orientation is irrelevant, cultural bias is usually present. (I do not know enough about this particular topic to give a detailed critique, because my own knowledge of the period in France is based primarily upon historical fiction, whose biases can be very similar to that of outdated histories.) DGG ( talk ) 05:44, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that summary. It confirms most of my concerns and adds a couple. I am unsure how much I can correct, but I will work on it a bit and add some tags as needed. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:15, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

== Redlink == Can you peek at my notes about "personal names" linking at the WP:Redlink article. It still is confusing to understand. I am not sure if I am interpreting it correctly. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 07:02, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I am going to take a stab at rewording it. It still reads that we should not have red linked names.

Wikia licensing

Whoa. Surprised I haven't run into a copy/paste from Wikia before (re: Maritz, Inc. v. Cybergold, Inc.). It's really ok for Wikipedia purposes, though? Their licensing default looks to require attribution, which seems a problem unless we're going to put the whole article in quotes and cite Wikia as a source. I understand that's a different issue from a copyvio, but still seems problematic, no? --— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:27, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I think the {{Wikia content}} should work and the docs include some suggestion on how to use the template. Ravensfire (talk) 14:34, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Even if the source is PD there is an attribution problem. In principle everything can be attributed properly by keeping the edit history, but in practice it will soon be unclear to the reader what part comes from where. This confuses the page history of all the EB and Catholic Encyclopedia and similar entries, and confuses it in a worse way, because the original source is out of date almost completely, and it is not easy to tell what may have been added by uptodate sources. (In my opinion adding that material was a serious mistake made in the early days of WP, when the expected level of accuracy for articles was much lower) There needs to be serious work done in rewriting every one of those articles, for there is no topic whatsoever where additional material is not known since then and anything implying a judgement has to be rewritten, Back in the first years of the twentieth century, it was seen as ... or it could be summarized as .....We also have scientific material from 10 or 15 year old US Dept of Agriculture publications, which now has a similar problem.

I personally do not add such material without using quotes. (They should normally have a beginning and quote on each paragraph, with an ending quote on the final one.) But I am not about to take on personally the correction of widespread sloppy practice. DGG ( talk ) 00:01, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Kirkus is no longer an RS?

After seeing your comment that Kirkus is no longer RS, I took a look at the noticeboard and saw this discussion: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_180#Kirkus_Reviews. It's saying that "Kirkus Indie" is paid, but regular Kirkus reviews are not paid. Are you referring to this discussion or something different? WhisperToMe (talk) 16:41, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

yes. as a result of that decision, I no longer trust it for anything at all. I think that's the general view of most librarians I know. DGG (at NYPL) -- reply here 21:01, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I see. Obviously any "Kirkus Indie" review is non-RS. Do you think they are secretly paying for reviews on the "non-Indie" side? If so, how should the community handle this? Does it need to get any substantiation/proof that something untoward is going on? Have librarians written about the issue? WhisperToMe (talk) 22:23, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

no it's more that any publication that takes paid reviews is ipso facto non-reliable on any part of the site. this is similar to the way a newspaper that publishes advertorials tends to forfeit some of its reputation. There are indeed a few well-documetned exceptions: the NYT, WSJ, & Forbes all publish directory information on companies as well as genuine news. (I wonder how many of our articles use their directory information as evidence towards notability , btw.) So I agree this may be too harsh a judgement, but it is none the less the usual impression, which I share. DGG ( talk ) 00:33, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I wonder if a good way to deal with it is to consider Kirkus post-2009 a "less reliable" source. It can still be used, but if a particular book has a lot of different reviews and editors are trying to figure which ones make the cut, then perhaps Kirkus would not be used. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:55, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

yes, that's one reasonable way to look at it. Another is that it adds to notability if there are some there borderline sources also. DGG ( talk ) 17:37, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Great! That works well :) WhisperToMe (talk) 23:08, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

combined <ref> for multiple citations

• WP:Citation overkill#Citation merging
• WP:CITEBUNDLE

FYI --Jeremyb (talk) 20:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I had never noticed it here, but it's a fairly frequent technique in academic writing. I do not see how it is easily compatible with using wikidata for references. There would appear to be two directions: either to make a hack that would be able to parse such references, or deprecate this referencing technique and convert the existing ones manually, which will be easy enough, if someone can figure out how to find them. DGG ( talk ) 00:58, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Any <ref> that has bullets (unordered list), multiple CS1 templates, or multiple bare external links should be suspect. (but if a single CS1 generates multiple external links that's ok. e.g. url && archive-url) Anyway, if there's a discussion started I'd like a pointer to it. Thanks --Jeremyb (talk) 05:57, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I need some assistance, and no longer know how to approach this subject

About a year ago, you were involved with a discussion on Involuntary celibacy, I've always had an issue with this close reflecting the apparent anti-fringing pushing bias rampant on Wikipedia these days. Upon viewing this version of the article I cannot find any guideline violating issues. Tone appears neutral and sources are not only mainstream, but academic. The contentious history regarding the article could only suggest that another DRV is going to be long and difficult. Alone there is nothing I can do, but with help I was hoping to overturn the deletion of the subject. It appears that the NFRINGE noticeboards have become a pool of anti-fringe canvassing whose editors decisions are confirmed and unchangeable prior to any debate. Wikipedia has never been a place where only mainstream views are accepted this in itself is a violation of NPOV we have long sought to establish yet it appears the trend is growing and correlates with the editor drain we have experienced. My gut tells me this article is the first step to changing the environment ... what can we do? Valoem ^{talk contrib} 23:06, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I've asked Coffee to allow the article restored with no bias for immediate renomination instead of DRV. Valoem ^{talk contrib} 23:16, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

There is more than one question here.

As for Fringe, I never liked the way we deal with it, where we insist from the first that it is non-standard and hammer at that repeatedly, We instead ought to present it as fully as necessary for understanding in its own terms, and then say what people think of it. We need to avoid giving any false indication that fringe topics are accepted, but we still need to avoid giving primarily hostile coverage. If presented fairly, people will understand the relevance--that's the basic premise of an encyclopedia. We do not have to slant or censor, even by implication. WhatI particularly dislike is our tendency to try to minimize the coverage of people associated with a movement we disapprove of (or alternatively of maximizing the number of otherwise reputable people involved to a trivial extent for the sake of denigrating the the individuals)

I consider topics such as this unusual, but not fringe. ("Unusual" is the most neutral word I can find.) Outside sex, some political and religious topics are strongly disfavored. Others, equally unusual or far from the mainstream, but that do have a constituency here, resist all tendencies to discuss them with moderation, rather than in a frankly propagandistic manner.

But sex is always the most difficult area. WP has for long as I can remember been rather hostile to some forms of otherwise unexceptional sexual expression. People have a remarkable ability to disdain those forms of sexual expression they do not engage in; there seems to be some human need to assign some sexual practices as acceptable, and others not, presumably in order to reassure oneself that one is oneself doing it "right" rather than being a victim of limitations, and this supposedly tolerant community insists on resisting serious treatment of things that are now but did not used to be considered subjects for open discourse. For example, there's been a surprising amount of difficulty with articles on even widely-used sex toys.

The best way of dealing with such topics is first find as many additional references as possible. All difficult topics of any sort are best done by accumulating such an overwhelming body of references that he even the opponents realize. Tokyogirl79 has done a good job of it, but there's almost certainly still more to be done, especially considering the multiple uses. I think there are quite a range of different consensual and nonconsensual practices here, which have ended up in this one article because of the resistance to covering them individually. I unfortunately do not really have the time to work on it. I recall there was a 1973 book with the title "SM: the last taboo" ISBN 9780818401787, whose title I thought a good quick explanation of the problem in a few words. (the book itself is apparently a short anthology of stories, not likely to a usable reference) This is 40 years later, and everything in popular culture considered, I don't think the taboo really holds. Except, of course, in WP, which, while it should be the location for work on unusual things , is also the home of obsolete prejudices. People get very easily embarrassed about sex. In particular, some parts of the demographic working on WP particularly easily gets embarrassed.

However, I do not think we have an editor drain. We merely have the expected transition from a exciting new project to something which may be still exciting, but is not particularly new. People will naturally stay here for only four or five years. Relatively few make it a career, or a life-long hobby. People try out new things, and then turn to others; our contributor base is always going to be dynamic. What I do hope is that we will come to attract a wider group than the typical post-adolescent white male geeks. DGG ( talk ) 03:52, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the encyclopedia has not increased--and in fact in someways regressed-- in terms of scope. I think removing subjectivity from the closing of AfDs is the optimal method. After the article is restored I assume Tarc is going to AfD it immediately, some input when that happens would be appreciated! Valoem ^{talk contrib} 18:37, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

RFC is up, comments would be appreciated. :) Valoem ^{talk contrib} 20:02, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

 Done

Well said. In particular that the community tends to use FRINGE to rationalize attack pages, rather than merely documenting that their viewpoint is not accepted by mainstream science/medicine, using reliable sources. I'll take a look at your RfC as well Valoem. I also recently noticed that more effort has been spent on Victoria Secret than all of the articles under Category:Feminine hygiene brands combined (with exception to the one I wrote on Playtex). I found this strange, even given the gender gap, because so many women are interested in women's health, so I wonder if it is because people are too embarrassed to contribute. I looked up the Durex page after they did a presentation at a marketing conference. One of the biggest global condom brands and just a stub on it. Marginally notable supermodels and pornstars have more robust pages. CorporateM (Talk) 16:22, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

DGG, I did some research and commented there, however I wonder if you would still oppose the proposed article-title, now that I've shown an abundance of source material that uses the same phrase. CorporateM (Talk) 17:07, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I do not oppose exactly, but I wonder whether it covers all aspects. DGG ( talk ) 20:47, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

"Consensus" and policy

...

The application of all WP policies is decided by consensus, and thus a certain degree of variability is to be expected. In this particular instance, the question is apparently whether African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68) should be moved to Civil Rights Movement. I'm not going to pas judgement on this; no one person decides these things. But I suggest you reconsider whether this move would display too much of an US perspective: WP is international. A reasonable case could probably be made for the move, or against it. My advice here has always been to concentrate on improving page content and not worry too much about page titles. DGG ( talk ) 08:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Isn't the claim, "The application of all WP policies is decided by consensus" a contradiction to the statement, "The principles upon which these policy statements are based are not superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus" from the lede paragraph of Wikipedia:Core content policies that describes the "three principal core content policies: neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research.". Thank you for responding. Mitchumch (talk) 08:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The fundamental principles are not affected, but the application of them is always subject to consensus. Each of the individual policies has extensive talk pages discussing the proper application of them, as every single key word in them is ambiguous to some extent and the exact meaning of every one of them has been disputed . Tens hundreds of thousands of individual applications have been discussed on various WP and article talk pages. If there is disagreement on how to apply a policy, only consensus can resolve it. (And it isn't clear at all that your argument falls under any of the three policies, listed) We have no dictators; even arb com cannot decide on content. If consensus holds against you, you will need to accept it, because that's the way we work here. DGG ( talk ) 16:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

"The fundamental principles are not affected" That's funny considering bias constantly wins over things like basic logic and common sense, effectively making Wikipedia NOT neutral. Bottom line is that if the consensus is biased, the article becomes biased. Sega Genesis for example had a debate on the article name that was obviously skewed in favor of Americans as Americans take up the bulk of the English speaking part of the internet. Don't even get me started on the constant misuse of terms like "CGI" and "traditional animation" that violate all sense of basic logic but again, the consensus appears to be biased. Mattwo7 (talk) 15:24, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Generally speaking several of your policies constantly serve to make Wikipedia everything it's not supposed to be because they allow common sense and basic logic to be completely overridden. Instead of having a policy that disallows requests for semi-protection due to hit and run vandalism, common sense dictates that low-priority articles be automatically semi-protected due to the vast amounts of vandalism from unregistered users on those pages. Just as deductive logic dictates that your reasons for deleting the most recent incarnation of the Zippcast page is bunk due to the vast amounts of low-priority articles with similar problems. This combined with the considerable amount of enemies the site's administration has somehow managed to make even makes me consider the possibility that the constant deletions are a a COI decision. Mattwo7 (talk) 22:08, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

The contributors to WP being human, bias exists, but there are other reasons for disagreement than bias. Most of us no doubt think that those views that consistently go against us are the product of bias, not reason. By whose standard then do we judge? If you wish to say we judge by the facts and the abstract truth, this gets us no further, for it is people who judge those things also. If you wish to say we judge by common sense, common sense is the term we use for our own unprovable prejudices.

You seem to be unhappy about several decisions, most of which have no connection with me. The only one that does is Zipp Cast. If you think an article can be written, use Draft space. DGG ( talk ) 02:16, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Detecting coi editors

...maybe DGG will) tell you about how i (or he, in his case) spot possible conflicted editors and how i (or he) deal with them. Jytdog (talk) 19:45, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

The first step is to realize that most people come to wikipedia with some degree of conflict of interest, to write topics about which the really care. The problem is not to keep the out, the problem is to see that what they do contributes positively to the encyclopedia. People who are firm believers in a cause , for example. can be great problems, because they care so much about something (hat may well be in fact really important) that they recent the writing of NPOV articles. Fans of an artist or sports team can be problems also, inserting all sorts of unjustified material in their praise, worse than a publicist would dare even try. Even for products or companies, there are great fans who want everyone to share the POV--those fixated on particular brand of camera or computer or automobile, or on a restaurant or type of clothing, of great believers in the wonderful work of a doctor or financial advisor or charity.

But the problem here is the people with a commercial interest. The come in all sorts: the owner of a business or professional practice; the press agent in a company, and the persona with a small or moderate knowledge of Wikipedia who advertises their services, or now especially those freelancers who answer advertisements on elance and similar websites, Most of these people do not know how to make a decent article even if they wanted to; but few of them want to--they or their clients will not be satisfied by a NPOV articles in proportion to the size of their business with adequate references--they want a web page here, not seeing us a s different fro mother places for posting advertisements. they do not care about our notability requirements--they all at least hope to be notable some day,and want the public to know about them. I and several others have estimated that at least half our article on commercial and noncommercial organizations and their leaders are the products of this kind of editing. t this point WP is so well known ,that it is hard to imagine an organization anywhere that would not want to have a WP page, and it takes a true understanding of the way in which WP is different, to realize that this is not he way to achieve that.

There is thus no reason to get angry at particular instances. The critical thing to do is to remove the pov articles; assuming we have half million, and if a hundred of us set out to do it for an hot a day, , and supported each other , we could mange to keep up with the inflow and clear up the background in a year or two. We did it for unreferenced bios of living people; we can do it here. If this seems unrealistic, for what is possibly the highest-priority category in terms of unjustified advertising, internet businesses, 4 or 5 people could do it.

In the meantime, we do have to pursue the chains of paid editor, who are responsible for perhaps 10 to 30% of the problem. It's not worth the trouble to work on an individual example. What is worth the double is to look for a group of accounts writing articles in identical format in a particular subject, or an individual account using a similar format for miscellaneous totally unrelated minor articles. In the first place, if the writing similarities are close enough , a SPI can be justify.d In the second, a firm explanation can usually stope them. More of the similarities to be looked for will follow in a day or two. DGG ( talk ) 23:58, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

{thank you guys for helping and guiding me, I really appreciate that and I am taking your WP OUTING very seriously. I worked on some col cases and I believe I handled those cases very well without violating any Wikipedia guidelines even though I was not aware of WP:OUTING. I usually kept my distance when dealing with such cases and never asked them to reveal any personal information other than their affiliation with the entity without asking any further explanation about their nature of work or name. I major in marketing and I can easily spot when someone is trying to promote something and I strongly stand against advertisement in Wikipedia.

we have to take advertisement in Wikipedia more seriously, some marketing courses are now teaching how to edit Wikipedia to promote companies coz they see it as important channel for public relations and product promotion, the only reason why we don't see well-written articles about these companies from new editors is becoz of their inability to navigate through Wikipedia and old web Wikipedia editor is still confusing for most of the people,as Wikipedia becomes more and more user friendly with addition such as visual editor, we will see more advertisement and vandalism .There are off course positive sides to these improvements but we should also focus on negative side too. Nicky mathew (talk) 06:54, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Professional press release writers can and do learn html and the very similar wikicode, and even our peculiar referencing conventions. Their set of expected skills encompasses that. What they have much more difficult in learning is now to write in a different style for different purpose. Their training and experience is in how to write effective press releases and advertisements,and they are lost in an environment which does not accept their well-learned glossy promises, convincing rhetoric, appealing personal claims, vague statement of benefits ,and carefully selected statistics.claims is not wanted, Tbey do not have experience writing where plain neutral presentation is w\excpected, where only a set of narrowly defined reliable sources are accepted, where testimonials and name-dropping are harmful, and where extravert claims are signs of puffery. The best preparation for working in WP is journalism, tho teaching and librarianship and technical writing also do well. can also be successful

So of course , is any intelligent member of the general public-- but unlike professionals, unless the are students who know html, they have great difficulty with our current format. it is these people whom we will be able to better reach when we have a rule workignand non confusing wvisual editor that does not require manual post processing to verify that it; has avoided bloopers. Perhaps we'll get there they year (I seem to remember saying that for several years now.)At theta point, our outreach programs can extent more practically to a much wider range of non traditional editors, many of whom maybe interested in the everyday topics we have such trouble with. and those they may be able to drive out the professionals DGG ( talk ) 08:12, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Blackall and Yaraka Branch Railways

I assume you didn't mean publish Blackall and Yaraka Branch Railways to the Main space? JMHamo (talk) 20:41, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

there's a printed source given. I can't see it, but we should assume good faith that it does cover the material. Checking for copypaste would however require actually locating it. If an article has about at least 60% chance of passing afd, I think it should go in mainspace. Or did I miss something obviously fishy? DGG ( talk ) 21:59, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

The article needs clean-up, categories, more wikilinks etc, just messy. JMHamo (talk) 22:02, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Certainly it does. As you know, there are several schools of thought: one is to get everything right before moving to mainspace; a second is to at least get them cleaned up to a reasonable extent extent before putting them in mainspace, the third is to put them in as soon as they have a decent chance of passing afd. I started out at the first, but then moved to an second, and am now close to the third. The part that takes experience is deciding if there is the basis of a sustainable article, & I try to look at that for as many AfCs as possible. I admit, tho, that this rougher than even my usual standard: I usually at least add article sections; tho adding links is a good exercise for beginners, I usually add enough basic ones to at least give the impression of a WP article. (But there are a great many people who like to add categories. I learned early on that the best thing for me to do about categories, was to let them do it.) I was going too fast here, and you were right to call me on it. DGG ( talk ) 22:19, 4 April 2015 (UTC) .

I subscribe to the get to as near perfection as possible before moving it from Draft school of thought. All too often the article is not found again (especially is there are no categories) and remains indefinitely in a bad state. A bad first impression for any reader coming across it. JMHamo (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

The reason for my style is the experience that slow as it may be to get material improved in mainspace, it is even slower and less likely in Draft. As I understand it, the likelihood of survival in mainspace is the only actual guideline. It's good to do more, and each of us will balance whether we want to work in concentrated way with a small number of articles, or as a preliminary rescue of many. I've always done mostly rescue, with a few each week taken beyond that. I didn't expect it, but I find I like to work at the bottom. DGG ( talk ) 22:39, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For your tireless new page patrolling. Esquivalience t 02:30, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Paid Editing Random Thoughts

In regards to the latest number of undisclosed paid editing issues, I was wondering if the creation of a new WP:CSD criteria is in order. The general idea is that if someone is found to be partaking in undisclosed paid editing, than the articles they have written can be deleted more efficiently. On the grounds that undisclosed paid editors COI prevent the content of the article from being written in a balanced manner. Sort of a Wikipedia:Blow it up and start over speedy for undisclosed paid editing. This would serve to more strongly discourage undisclosed paid editing and reduce the ability of businesses to profit off of the practice.

A rough draft of the deletion criteria could read:

A12: Articles created by an undisclosed paid editor while taking part in undisclosed paid editing where the only substantial content to the page was added by its author.

Is this good, bad, awful, would it destroy Wikipedia? You are a very experienced editor within the deletion process so I'm interested in your thoughts on this idea. Winner 42 Talk to me! 16:20, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

the problem with "undisclosed paid editor" is we have no means of proving someone is unless they confess to it subsequently. And if they do so confess, doesn't this to some extent turn them into a disclosed paid editor? Even confession isn't absolutely reliable because there have been a few verified examples of joe jobss where an upe pretended to be a well known wikipedian. As you know, the prevailing view here is that outing is more important than coi. Personally, I would be prepared to see that be reversed, but I unfortunately don't think it would get consensus, considering the defeat of the recent AfC on a very mild exception to the outing policy. Officially (i.e., in my role as an admin and arb), I will as I have always done apply existing policy, not policy as I would like it to be.

To the best of my knowledge, and as confirmed by opinions of some people with experience in this, there has never been an upe making worthwhile contributions, so they can all be gotten rid of otherwise. Of course, this means if there has been one consistently doing so, we obviously do not know about it. I doubt it, because the amount of junk being submitted now and in the past is so great that it is reasonable to assume any new entry on an organization is very likely to be coi at least, and in most cases also violation of the our Terms of Use; I would also say this about to individuals in some fields. This then raises the question of if they are making consistently good contribution why should we want to get rid of the articles--the same as undetected sockpuppets.

I would go a little further: imo, even for the best declared paid editors, the quality of their paid work is not as high as the volunteer work most of them also do.

The best course of action within existing policy is to have stricter requirements on articles in susceptible subjects, and for more people to participate in the afds. I would certainly propose a formal deletion reason , that borderline notability AND a mainly promotional article is a reason for deletion. (It is now, if we choose to do so, but a formal statement would make it easier to explain). I am saying this with great reluctance--for my first 5 or 6 years here, I devoted as much of my effort as possible into rescuing just those sort of article. DGG ( talk ) 16:57, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts DGG. I don't like the situation either, but the quantity of COI violations that are done on a daily basis is so large (if the quantity of G11s and adv declines at AfC are of any indication) that something needs to be done. I'm just grasping at straws for a solution. Can't we just get Congress to grant the WMF subpoena power or at least file FTC complaints against some of these people. /rant Winner 42 Talk to me! 17:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

In a very few extreme cases, where people or firms have been identified, the WMF has taken some legal or regulatory action. I have some knowledge of whom to speak to and approximately what their parameters are. DGG ( talk ) 20:15, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Referencing systems

Hi David. I created Category:Referencing systems and rearranged or redirected some articles to fit the category. But it strikes me a category like this must already exist, and I thought you would be the best person to ask. Regards Peter Damian (talk) 10:26, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

working on it. See,for example the standard system for the Talmud and system for Chapters and verses of the Bible. DGG ( talk ) 04:08, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Right. It's actually quite a large subject. Thanks. Peter Damian (talk) 08:05, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Not forgetting Surah Peter Damian (talk) 08:08, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I cannot see that anyone has ever written a general WP article on this. I'm not immediately aware of any general discussions in the librarianship literature, but there are many further places to check--I think I recall there are discussions of its use in particular subjects in books on how to do research in history, etc. , DGG ( talk ) 22:04, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Village Capital'

Hi DGG, could you help me remove the advert flagged banner on the Village Capital page? It's been flagged for a while now, and the page seems like it's been improved. I'd love an opinion on whether or not it meets Wikipedia's standards, and if not, what I can do to fix this to remove the banner as soon as possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dahlerbattle (talk • contribs) 14:36, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

as a start, remove the adjectives of praise. the substitute ordinary english for jargon like "across", and decrease the amount of dupllciation. Then I will take another look. DGG ( talk ) 19:04, 16 June 2015 (UTC) Still needed

Wikipedia:Impact factors

This is your promised reminder that it would be helpful to have information about how to use impact factors in a smart way for evaluating sources across multiple disciplines. Wikipedia:Impact factors is a new redirect to Wikipedia:Scholarly journal, which is mostly a notability essay. I think you can safely usurp the redirect, if you don't want to come up with another name. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

This would be really useful for me, if I'm understanding it correctly. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 06:24, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

"Really useful" is exactly my goal.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:43, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

A good reason for deletion

"so promotional that it would need to be rewritten from scratch" is a good reason for deletion.

You rightly owe someone a private thanks, or some form of acknowledgement for their work. Or are you only the whip? :) -- GreenC 13:58, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

You are apparently referring to my comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Canine Companions for Independence (2nd nomination)

if you mean others have used this wording before me, that's very possible, but I've been using it for many years, and I'm not consciously copying anyone.

If you mean it's not a valid reason:

WP:CSD is limited to the reasons specified; any reason the community accepts is good at AfD. See [[WP:Deletion policy]#Reasons for Deletion]], point 14." Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia"

It is obviously a good reason for AfD, since it can even justify speedy G11; it's a restatement of "would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic." from WP:CSD#G11. Similarly the essay WP:TNT has been used repeatedly by others as an argument for many deletions. Whether any particular article in question is actually that bad, is of course subject to a community decision: at AfD if at AfD, at Deletion Review if it was done at speedy. In this case, it is indeed possible that the decision may be against my proposal.

a related deletion rationale I often give is that "an article that is only borderline notable and is also promotional should be deleted ." That only works at AfD, and only if the consensus agrees with it.

WP:CSD is limited to the reasons specified; any reason the community accepts is good at AfD. See [[WP:Deletion policy]#Reasons for Deletion]], point 14." Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia" DGG ( talk ) 15:34, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Academic departments

ThanksHaydertouran (talk) 08:54, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Very few individual academic departments are notable. That's not my personal decision, but the consistent practice of the community. For practical purposes, without going into the rather elaborate Wikipedia jargon, the requirement is world-famous. The basic requirement for inclusion of any organization is coreferences providing substantial coverage from third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements. Very few academic departments can meet this requirement. In addition, a requirement for an article on an academic department (or any organization) is that the article be non-promotional--that it be directed towards what readers of an encycopedia might want to know, not what the organization might want to tell them.

Your department does not meet either part of the requirement. But the primary reason for deletion was not advertising, but rather that it gave no indication whatsoever that it might possibly be important in any sense, let alone world famous. I should have specified that as the reason, and I apologize for any confusion. It was for good measure, very difficult to understand. The title didn't even say what university it was in. The text was written in English that would need to be almost completely rewritten, even if it had been famous. There were no references except to its own site.

I also removed your edit inserting a direct link to your department in place of its name at the university article. We do not include such links. We linkonly to the main university web site. The reader can generally find the web pages of individual departments from there. DGG ( talk ) 16:06, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Afc etc

Hello DGG. I couldn't help but notice your comment on User talk:Timtrent#afc_etc, saying that submissions that are clearly non-notable should be marked as such and that the users should "discourage continuing" writing the article. What do you see as the best approach to dealing with users that submit Afc submissions that clearly do not have a chance of passing? I feel confident in determining notability but I don't want to be too harsh on anybody, especially new users. Many thanks in advance, Aerospeed (Talk) 17:28, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

I typically say: "In order to get an article, you will need references providing substantial coverage from third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements. If you can not find them, an article will not be possible at this time. When you become well-known enough for there to be such references, then it will make sense to try again. " The key word to avoid harshness is When. Almost everyone understands, except some paid editors. For those who do not, I sometimes go to MfD.

And it's crucial to say this as a short personal message, not as part of the boilerplate. People rarely read long boilerplate. I often modify the templated message after it is placed, removing almost all of the surrounding text. I sometimes remove the color also, so it doesn't look like a template. Here's an example I've given up on trying to get the people who program this to improve the messages. Even the custom message template still has too much unnecessary verbiage, DGG ( talk ) 03:20, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Writing articles about academics

I have created a number of articles about academics recently and I wanted to get some advice from you on how to write such articles, what should be included in them, etc. Everymorning talk 17:10, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

forthcoming, probably tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 19:34, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I will get there, probably Saturday. In the meantime, look at Chad Orzel, which I deprodded. A full article in Contemporary Authors is proof of notability -- and that article usually lists books review also)It's available online as part of Gale's Literature Resource Center, available thru most public libraries DGG ( talk ) 04:30, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, the only problem is I don't often edit from a library (unlike yourself, I imagine, since you are a librarian). But I'll keep that in mind the next time I stop by a library. Everymorning talk 02:50, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Most large city libraries have it available to library card holders remotely. You only have to visit once, to get a card. DGG ( talk ) 18:19, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Any word on when that advice is coming? It's been about 3 weeks now. Everymorning (talk) 20:58, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Bypassing AfC

...

This can s perfectly legitimate--if the article is in the end acceptable. I've done it sometimes--the only real reason I go thru the RfC acceptance process is to get the articles in the right category & added to the statistics. The real problem is that PR people do this rather frequently, without improving the article. I have learned for some types of articles before deleting a G13, to see if by any chance the article is in mainspace, and if so, whether it's acceptable. Sometimes it is, and it is the reviewer who was in error, and rather than argue it, the person just bypassed them. Considering the quality of some reviews, I can well understand them.

The fundamental principle to understanding WP procedures is that there is no underlying principle or system. There are multiple ways to do anything, some of them devised by programmers wanting to display their cleverness or take care of every unlikely contingency they could think of. Not all of them had actual editing experience.

As for the article, it's not my field, but it looks fine to me. DGG ( talk ) 22:16, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

DGG: Thank you. Very clear and helpful. FeatherPluma (talk) 00:35, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

For all the abuse you are getting at AfD.

Bearian (talk) 20:46, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

For the last year or two I have been deliberately trying to stretch deletion process a little in both directions, to see if consensus is changing. To keep things responsive, somebody's got to, and better me than someone with a coi. DGG ( talk ) 22:18, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Einstein

See WP:EINSTEIN. Expand, mock or delete as you see fit... Guy (Help!) 14:21, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Guy, I must have quoted it about a hundred times by now! It is almost always very effective at putting an end to absurd arguments for coverage. And if someone doesn;'t get the point, it shows very nicely their total lack of objectivity on the subject. DGG ( talk ) 04:59, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Adding Material to articles only serves to draw the attention of editors who nominate articles for deletion

Hi DGG,

(This is a continuation of similar threads on your talk page in 2012 and 2014). I have been away for a few months, and when I started editing again, I was hoping to be left alone to help build areas that, in my opinion, are sorely lacking.

On 8 August 2015 5 I found a little visited article about a very important organization: Condo Owners Association (Ontario) (which has an article here under the incorrect name) and at 17:10 I started renovating the whole area surrounding Category:Condominium on Wikipedia. According to recent news reports 50% of new home buyers in Toronto are now purchasing condos, and the number of condo owners is staggering, considering how little information exists on Wikipedia on this topic.

As usual, however, it appears that my efforts to build up have attracted the attention of the deletionist faction. By August 9 the article that was getting no attention at all for months, was up for wp:AfD, and instead of continuing my efforts to built this neglected Codominium area, I find myself spending more and more time getting into conflicts with other editors intent on deleting whatever else is associated with this article. I seem to have been unsuccessful in trying to convince another admin that the article that is now getting very little attention at AfD should be moved to its correct official name.

This is very discouraging, and I know that posting this on your talk page will undoubtably bring out more of the same, sigh… Ottawahitech (talk) 07:21, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It might help me if you could specify the articles involved. DGG ( talk ) 07:57, 13 August 2015 (UTC) Thanks for clarifying.; response forthcoming. DGG ( talk ) 21:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I consider it a little too much like a press release, and this will inevitably affect people's attitude towards it. Possibly there might be a little advocacy in some of the other articles also. The last thread is now at [6] DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I belong to a (dying?) minority of editors who like to work on articles that are not yet developed. Unfortunately it appears that my edits only serve to bring those articles to the attention of editors whose mission is to nominate articles for deletion. I have been asked before to provide examples of this phenomenon and thought : Condo Owners Association (Ontario) can be mentioned as one because no one paid attention to it until I started to work on it.

I am worried that my sad conclusion is also shared by others, which means few editors will be working on improving wp:stubs around here. Thanks btw for finding the 2014 thread - I am unable to locate the 2012 one tirled Useless stubs because the Edits by user tool is broken (another sigh...) Ottawahitech (talk) 09:43, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

It also looks like posting a link to an article at Helpdesk is a good way to send existing long-time articles to wp:AfD. See for example Wikipedia:Help_desk#Lynn_Walsh, I think. Ottawahitech (talk) 18:41, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

For those interested, I moved the discussion of this particular point to Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk#Deletion_of_articles_referred_to_in_questions_here. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I have a dual intention here: One is to try to keep everything suitable for an encycopedia. The other to to remove promotionalism. Lately, due to the flood of promotional articles, the second has become more important--even critical. Small variations to the notability standard either way do not fundamentally harm the encycopedia, but accepting articles that are part of a promotional campaign causes great damage. Once we become a vehicle for promotion, we're useless as an encycopedia.

There are several hundred thousand of articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or remove. It will take years, but work on them as I see them.

Normally I send a long standing article to AfD rather than to speedy unless it's utterly outrageous--t will not be deleted unless the consensus agrees with me. I accept the consensus there as the guide in establishing standards. DGG ( talk ) 22:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	Thanks for reverting a Speedy at Make It Cheaper, which obviously deserved to be fully considered. I wish more Administrators were as rational. Yours sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:52, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

A belated note...

It was superb finally getting to meet you! I only got to hear the last bit of your talk but was quite intrigued. I look forward to seeing you and the rest of the NYC crew next time around. All the best — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:40, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

SNIA Long-term Retention Technical Workgroup

Hi DGG,

You have A7-deleted my page about the SNIA Long-term Retention Technical Workgroup (https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=SNIA_Long_Term_Retention_TWG&action=edit&redlink=1). I would like to review the previously existing version of my article and edit with the relevant information. Can you please send me the text from the version I originally submitted?

Thank you.

Phillipviana (talk) 17:13, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Phillipviana, I can not send you the deleted contents until you authorize email, using the Preferences link on your user page. But in any case, the material is entirely copied or closely adapted from various parts of their site. I suggest you try to integrate the appropriate material dealing with this topic on a single WP page. DGG ( talk ) 22:52, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

DGG, thank you. I will come up with new content but would still like to have the previous version. I have confirmed my e-mail a few minutes ago. Please send me the previous version when you have a chance. Thanks. Phillipviana (talk) 16:47, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

DGG, can you please put the version back online? Thanks Phillipviana (talk) 17:24, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

National Book Award

... our WP article on National Book Award explains it: hundreds of books get nominated--any publisher can nominates as many as they please. In the 2013 procedure, each of the 4 categories is winnowed own by a panel to a long list of 10, a short list of 5, and then a winner. The books on the short list are called Finalists, and get a prize; the winner gets a much bigger prize. By analogy with other similar awards, winning is notable, being a finalist contributes to notability, being nominated is not even worth mentioning. If the NBA site lists them as finalists, they're finalists--we usually regard the award site as authoritative. DLB's text is considered reliable--its headlines are, as usual with headlines, summaries & simplifications. Headlines never take precedence over the text, here or anywhere. USA Today, LA Times etc. are dependent on the actual source of data, and less reliable. Neither of them is really a RS for published books. (The LATimes is a RS for film). This is one of the cases where the PS is more reliable than any report of it. What must be avoided is using any statements on Amazon or the publisher's sites as evidence for anything at all; they both often list awards & best seller status in the most positive terms they can concoct. Pre 2013, there was no list of 10, just the short list of finalists and the winner. DGG ( talk ) 17:13, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Essay

I want WP:ALTEXPAND deleted since it's undermaintained and horribly out of date. {{Expand}} was deprecated ages ago, so I doubt anyone's looking for "alternatives" to it anymore. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:38, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

TenPoundHammer (talk · contribs), Perhaps then it should be expanded/updated and retitled; it was good material--we shouldn't lose it. DGG ( talk ) 02:07, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Peter H. Lin

You may want to have a look at this article and to its history. --Randykitty (talk) 20:19, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

citations are 500, 270, 170, 150 ... , so he's notable, even allowing for the very high citation rate in this area. Even tho its an autobiography, what it needs is rewriting. Once upon a time, I would unhesitatingly rewrite all articles like this, but in the last year or so the number that need doing has escalated to the point where I only do it if it is in my area of interest, it is easy to do, and the article is not hopelessly corrupt otherwise. This articles is a summary of his outrageously self-praising website even by the abyssmal standards for such websites, http://www.drpeterlin.com/dr.-lin2.html , but not close enough to be a copyvio. It's not even a competent summary, because it leaves out some of the actual encyclopedic information, such as the dates of his positions, and makes no attempt to select the most important among the publications.

As we have now learned we need to do, I checked some of the refs. That he was clinical advisor to the bill is referenced to the Senator's web site, but isn't stated there. Some of the rest are also ambiguous. It's implied he developed EKOS--he did not, a/c the references--he merely uses it. And a Reuters article referred to in this connection is not an article, but a press release on their site.

For an analogous case, by a known paid editor, see John Wesson Ashford, where I just removed the minor and stuff and unproven claims to be first in something. He , too, has very high citations.

I am holding off going further until I can decide what I want to do in such cases. I don't want to punish notable people for being naive enough to write their own article or use a paid editor, but I equally don't see why they should get priority for rewriting before all the even more notable people whom we are missing. DGG ( talk ) 23:09, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

I was thinking paid editing more than autobio, given the contributors' names (and didn't look into notability myself, as I have no time right now). You're right that it's not egregiously promotional. I removed some of the minor awards. If only those paid editors could get it through their heads that it is far more effective to write a really encyclopedic, neutral article... --Randykitty (talk) 08:41, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

It might be a group of editors. Look at the main editors and the other articles they have edited. All related.

• JeremyKai4077 (talk · contribs) created 9/10/2015
• Garfield4407 (talk · contribs) created 9/9/2015

• John.freeman.2010 (talk · contribs) created 9/8/2015 (also see their talk page about an article that was speedied)
• Also note that JeremyKai4077 and John.freeman.2010 have also the exact same user page.

Possibly some paid editing? At the least this group has a very narrow focus. Ravensfire (talk) 14:54, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I have previously encountered obvious but undeclared paid editing devoted to a particular medical specialty, and to other groups of individuals, or companies in the same field, where I assume it was a PR company specializing in the field or working for a trade association. I have frequently encountered it for people in the same or related company, where it has sometimes not been an outside PR firm, but the employer: sometimes in-house PR staff, but sometimes a department manager or the like acting on his own initiative.

Experience has unfortunately shown that most (but not all) people with experience in PR cannot be taught to write a proper article, because they are so completely oriented to writing advertisements or quasi-adevertisements that they honestly cannot see the difference between that an a proper encycopedia article. Declared paid editors here whom I trust have told me they need to turn down most clients, because the clients even if notable will not accept a NPOV article. DGG ( talk ) 20:02, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Copyvio within WP

... second technical issue at hand is that I was quite serious about needing to edit the individual pages for WP:CWW and WP:Content forking to mention the G12 issue and requirements for the "shadow-bibliography" issue (that is, current requirements to exclude Wikipedia article references in the Bibliography section of articles system-wide throughout Wikipedia, but include the Wikipedia article references on the Talk page or dummy edits). Since I am meticulous about checking and verifying references in Bibliographies and have spent a great deal of time cleaning up dead links and restoring bad ones, then this is an important issue. If the deleted articles were mislabeled as G12 (as you suggest in your comments above), then the deleted pages should be at least re-labeled on the admin-only data base as to your stated preference and reason. If they are G12, then WP:CWW and WP:Content forking need some editing and additions to cover the G12 issue which is currently not mentioned on those two pages. If you need some of the other IP-hopping addresses for the IP-account above, then let me know here and I will try to get them listed for you. MusicAngels (talk) 16:27, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

The G12 deletion in such cases can be applied, but usually the problem is corrected after a warning. As I said, I personally would not have applied G12 in this case, but the action was within the range of administrative discretion, and therefore I cannot say it was mislabeled. As I said above "Anything organized like WP will never be altogether consistent, or even always fair." The actually best way of dealing with the WP references is very simple: to remove the duplicated text and link the name. If you did think it necessary to include the text, in addition to the techniques listed in WP:CWW, there is also available a rather complicated technique, used often in history and geography articles, but relevant here also: WP:Summary style. I don't think anyone mentioned that possibility in the discussion--I am going to add a link to it on WP:CWW

There is no need to edit anything to say not to use WP articles as references--it's part of the Verifiability policy page--see WP:CIRCULAR DGG ( talk ) 16:47, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that was my understanding as well. This is the template that I had already prepared on my Talk page for insertion in the article, but I took one day off last week and the article was deleted without prior notice of closing. I think User:Fogettaboutit was also in agreement with you on this. This is the template as prepared on my Talk page and I was just going to fill in the names already listed in the Lead section of the poetry article. If you are saying that this will work then I am in full agreement with you and User:Fogettaboutit:

{{Copied multi|list=
{{Copied multi/Copied|from=Poet1 |from_oldid=1234567890 |to=Here |diff=http://link/to/diff }}
{{Copied multi/Copied|from=Poet2 |from_oldid=1234567890 |to=Here |diff=http://link/to/diff }}
{{Copied multi/Copied|from=Poet3 |from_oldid=1234567890 |to=Here |diff=http://link/to/diff }}
{{Copied multi/Copied|from=Poet4 |from_oldid=1234567890 |to=Here |diff=http://link/to/diff }}
{{Copied multi/Copied|from=Poet5 |from_oldid=1234567890 |to=Here |diff=http://link/to/diff }}
{{Copied multi/Copied|from=Poet6 |from_oldid=1234567890 |to=Here |diff=http://link/to/diff }}
}} Is that what you are reading as being what User:Fogettaboutit had in mind. MusicAngels (talk) 17:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

At a different level, I have to say that using these copies was not necessarily a good idea in a general article. Too much of them dealt with the biography, and the reader of a general article would want to see about the literature. They would know enough to go to the article about the author for the bios. It would have been, as I just said, the actually best way of dealing with the WP references to remove the duplicated text and link the name. That people didnt like the article affected the action. DGG ( talk ) 18:48, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

In stating that, you do realize that your suggestion is very close to the WP:TNT option if all of those biographical subsections are deleted. Since this is effectively equal to the solution previously put on the table by Drv participants, then I would like to offer to do the WP:TNT from the inside-out myself for the article. If you could restore the article as a Draft article under a new name "Draft:Poetry in the 21st century", then I will remove all of the biography subsections used in their entirety. This will effectively leave only the lead section and the outline structure for the rest to be then rewritten. This was only a "C"-class article anyway, and I would like to move forward with the option you are offering of straightforwardly removing all the WP:CWW biography material used and then rewriting/redrafting it along with WikiProjects as a Draft article. Also, I would mark the Talk page to inform other editors not to apply any WP:Content forking in the new article. MusicAngels (talk) 20:40, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

paid editing deletions

I'm sure you've seen the outcome of this and this. Personally, I relist at least once before closing as no consensus, but this is an admin's prerogative and is not a reflection on the closer. What I'm more concerned with is that while Cunard's efforts to rescue such articles are laudable, such closures possibly deny us of much needed evidence for finding solutions to Orangemoody and other issues concerning blatant paid-for (or indeed any) promotion. Perhaps one could consider employing G13, G11, and G5 more broadly or more vigorously. Thoughts? --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:44, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Cunard is taking the same approach I would have taken 6 years ago. I then argued that the most important thing is to have acceptable content, and how it got there is secondary. I still think that the ideal way of looking at it, if it were not for the current epidemic of paid editing (and the realization that it was there before, also, but we paid insufficient attention to it.) You & I have been assuming a deterrent effect. Cunard has challenged that assumption, and I can't prove him wrong. As you said, its "possibly deny us", but just possibly. Based on some discussions, perhaps what it's most likely to do is discourage pd eds. from giving money-back guarantees, but they will still be able to show portfolios of whatever of their work has not been deleted, including that done before they were detected.

Frankly, I am no longer willing to challenge on the grounds of having been started as paid editing any article that he will rewrite and take responsibility for; I started thinking in the course of the discussion that I am not sure my renoms of those two articles was justified.

G5 has never covered articles started before someone is blocked, or articles with substantial contributions by others. I can see permitting it retrospectively, but the sort of thing we're discussing would require removing the " substantial edits by others" part. I'm not sure I would support that.

G11 of course should be more consistently applied, but I am not sure what wording would make it stronger, as every article on an organization or its product will have some promotional effect., We could add something about "promotional intent", but this is hard to really prove.

I don't see what you propose to do with G13 to make it stronger. I still have my list of 500 or sos articles that shouldn't have been deleted but were because the contributor gave up after improper reviewing.

What we need to concentrate on I think is the notability standard for organizations. Even here, it's hard to think of how to reword it so it doesnt remove the clearly notable--our emphasis on the GNG prevents any rational work on this area. DGG ( talk ) 23:47, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

There is already an extra-strict WP:NSOFT-essay, where three coverage-bursts are needed (not just three publishers). If the details of WP:NCORP-guideline are tweaked, so that three coverage-bursts (not just three published sources) are needed, that might ease some of the not-startup-type burden, since most startups only have one product, they get a coverage burst for their first funding round, a coverage-burst when their beta-product actually ships... and then have to wait around for that third coverage-burst (usually a second successful round of series B funding) prior to getting a dedicated wikipedia-article. In the case of Circle, they got their first burst in Oct&Nov'13, their second burst in Mar&May'14, and their third burst in Sep'14, plus their biggest burst yet in Apr&May of 2015. But if the WP:NCORP-guideline standards were shifted to require three bursts of coverage, spaced several months apart, then Circle (company) would have been a redlink (or more likely a WP:NOTEWORTHY mention under Bitcoin#companies methinks) for all of 2013 and most of 2014. Because they had a famous serial-entrepreneur founder, and got plenty of money early on, it would only have taken them a year of operation to get a wikipedia page... but that is still 12 months of WP:FAILN under the three-coverage-burst-test, used by WP:NSOFT-essay already. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 21:27, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

75.108.94.227 (talk · contribs), I don't think the number of coverage-burts matters--it's rather what gets said. If it's just funding, it doesn't show notability. I agree that a famous founder can be relevant--but if that's all there is, the information should be added to that pindividual's article as part of the list of companies he's funded. DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

IP page creation

Were you aware of this? I wasn't. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:27, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Notability for bib databases

@Randykitty: Hallo David and Randy, I wonder whether either of you has any pointers towards notability criteria for bibliographic databases. Polymer Library, formerly Rapra Abstracts has been PRODded as failing WP:GNG and WP:COMPANY (?). It feels to me like something which ought to have a WP article, but ... any thoughts? You two seem the natural people to ask, and by pinging RK on this page I hope to avoid duplication of any effort! PamD 14:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

• Honestly? Nope, no idea. For the most important databases (like PubMed or the Arts and Humanities Citation Index) sources can be found without too much trouble. For the smaller ones, it's difficult. We have more database articles like this, none of them sufficiently sourced (just dependent sources for non-controversial info). In the present case, things are even more difficult, because "polymer library" is not an unambigous search term and gives many hits, but nothing really about this database. The links in the article don't help in establishing notability (the last one - STN - even seems to be a false positive as this library is not listed in the list of sources). Perhaps somebody from the Chemistry project would know of some sources? Curious what David will have to say about this. --Randykitty (talk) 15:48, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I'll add the refs I have at hand. DGG ( talk ) 21:32, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Sierra Vista Mall

Do you think it's worth pursuing the close of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sierra Vista Mall (3rd nomination) (by contacting the closer or possibly del rev)? The closer's argument is that there is no clear interpretation of what constitutes "local" vs. "regional" coverage (play to the semantics/letter of WP:AUD). I thought the arguments clearly stated how the mall's coverage was still of "local interest" (best evidenced by the fact of how its larger import could be unclear at all). – czar 14:46, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

It rarely hurts to ask the closer, but I generally do not recommend taking a non-consensus close to Deletion Review, and , at Deletion Review, I rarely vote to overturn one unless it is truly perverse. .Just wait a few months and nominate again. But in any case the argument would be that publications serving the San Joaquin Valley are local not likely to have readers outside the valley; publications serving the State of California are regional, being of interest to neighboring states also; A major SF or LA paper read nationally is national. The Oakland Tribune is arguably more than local, and it is certainly outside the Valley, but Tribune Business News is not the Tribune. If one is going to get technical about wording, the rule is that at least one non-local source is needed, which implies that one source is not always enough. In practice, the result of mall decisions depends on how hard they are argued. W

More generally, the majority disputed afd decisions hinge on the exact interpretation of the sourcing rule, and in most such cases a decent argument can be made in either direction. That's why I support going by objective criteria. In the case of malls, size. We have failed several times to get consensus on a general rule. If we did, and it were > 1 million sq ft≈100,000 sq metres, this would be deleted with no argument; if it were 500,000 sq ft it would be kept with no argument. In either case the effort debating it could be used for more important purposes. DGG ( talk ) 15:27, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't think sqft is the proper metric (assuming WP:42 is not enough of a metric already). Malls in the Boston area will be low-sqft, and that goes triple for malls in Hong Kong. By constrast, malls in Dallas or Minnesota (e.g. the Mall of America for a 'famous' example) will naturally have far more sqft, because real estate is cheaper and the dense-packed-mall-layouts are not necessary.

  Something like average-visitors-per-week ... or maybe peak-weekly-visitors-during-the-year to account for the seasonal nature of malls i.e. december 25th ... would be a better metric than sqft, and similarly, annual revenues is a good proxy for visitor-count slash mall-importance. Physically large does not equate well with wiki-notability, but number of people involved (or as a proxy number of dollars changing hands) does a better job methinks. If we do this, I recommend the visitor-count or dollar-count cutoff be low enough that at least one mall per tiny-city-of-population-10k is theoretically able to get a wikipedia article dedicated to the mall -- in the USA there are about 600 such tiny-cities, according to the KGB.[7] Or, actually that brings up another idea, see below. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:14, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

proposal: Businesses of Greater Clovis, California

  Or... now that I think of it... we could just use *that* as the threshold: every city with a population of 10k+ people, such as Charlotte Amalie would be permitted by the hypothetical WP:NSHOPPING wiki-notability guideline to have a safe-from-AfD article called Businesses in Charlotte Amalie. Such a 'listicle' would obviously include the 'major' malls (with WP:UNDUE being calculated based on sqft or visitor-count or most pragmatically revenues-per-annum since that latter figure is often available -- or simply in the usual wiki-fashion by the amount of ink spilled in wiki-reliable sources), as well as other major employers like hospitals/schools/banks, notable tourist traps, oft-reviewed restaurants, and such.

  Obviously, these business-in-XYZ-summary-articles will be a goldmine for linkspam, so if we go thataway, I would suggest beginning with a Businesses in CityName, CountryName guideline that sets a temporary initial threshold of 100k+ population minimum for the associated metro area; we even have an on-wiki list of such areas, and for the USA the total as of ~2008 was roughly 267 such medium-cities of 100k+ people (total of 295 as of July 2014 data). Borderline-notable mall articles and such, could be merged inot the business-of-XYZ articles, with exceptions for Mall of America and other not-borderline-exceptions. This temporary approach would cover about 90% of the states and territories in the USA... California where the Sierra Vista Mall is located tops the list with ~70 cities of 100k+ population in 2014:

• 6+: CA TX FL CO AZ NC IL VA WA MI NJ OH TN
• 4or5: CT GA KS MA MO NY PR AL IN LA NV OK OR PA UT
• 2or3: IA MN SC WI KY NE NM
• one: AK AR DC HI ID MD MS MT ND NH RI SD
• zero: AS DE GM ME NI VI VT WV WY

  Later, if that 100k+plan worked out, we could expand the threshold to include the additional ~~300 tiny-cities in the USA with 10k+ people through 99k people. Most of the states and territories exxcluded by the 100k+ rule, would be included by the 10k+ rule, including Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands which is the capitol and has 18k population nowadays.

  If the scheme *does* work, it could be a good recruiting tool for the type of editor naturally-interested in shopping and tourist attractions (plus editors WP:COI-interested in the retail industry and microeconomics), as I mentioned at the AfD for the mall. Furthermore, this scheme could also be a good way to help decide borderline-notability-questions about startups and such with WP:PRESERVE in mind... rather than a binary question of bangkeep or bangdelete, we would (almost always since I'm proposing a geography-based scheme) have the additional option of merging Circle_(company) into the Businesses in Greater Boston article that was a spinoff from Boston#Economy.

  And in fact, wikipedia already has Greater_Boston#Major_companies as a spinoff-list from Boston#Economy. So my proposal is that we expand that to be a spinoff-article that gives some details about the companies mentioned, then do the same Businesses of Greater CityName thing with 300 or 600 more cities, based on a population threshold of 100k+ or 10k+ respectively. Both thresholds would permit bangmerging Sierra Vista Mall into a broader Businesses of Greater Clovis, California article ... which at population 102k people just makes the upper threshold.

  Anyways, food for thought here mostly. Ping User:Czar, User:Brianhe, User:Widefox, User:Kudpung, and User:CorporateM, who may have comments about this crazy proposal.  ;-)     p.s. Not sure if DGG wants to host a big discussion, here on User:DGG talkspace, please let me know if you'd rather see this taken elsewhere DGG. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:14, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

All I can see is the COI hell that would inevitably result from these sorts of lists (many more anons adding their businesses than caring about an esoteric guideline). More concretely, I don't think a NSHOPPING guideline would ever pass consensus—especially since I think (or hope?) we're moving in the other direction (away from content-specific guidelines) post-OrangeMoody. I'd also say that these types of articles are closer to directories in function (what Wikipedia is not). If any such article was necessary, it would need to extend naturally (in summary style) from the city/town article's "Businesses" section. czar 15:26, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I submit to you that we are already in the COI hell of which you speak.  :-)     Orangemoody was a symptom: the only way even wiki-notable companies like Countly can get their articles approved, is by spending months and months learning all the wiki-policies, or by hiring some kind of wiki-consultant for cold hard cash. Because the COI-handling-facilities are so borked, we are quickly tilting the wiki-culture towards forcing honest disclosed-COI-editors into retirement, which will leave only the dishonest undisclosed bad apples. Agree about avoiding WP:NOTDIR, and agree about extending the Clovis, California#Economy section in summary-style, but disagree that WP:NOTEWORTHY is that hard even for a reasonably tiny business to surmount. The idea here is that the Businesses in Greater Clovis articles will become a place where

• #1) we can put 'quasi-local' organizations like the Sierra Vista Mall, that will be better-watched by the anti-COI-hawks than a dedicated Sierra Vista Mall article possibly could, and
• #2) we can also upmerge borderline-wiki-notable startups like Countly into Businesses of Greater Istanbul (or Greater Long since they have relocated to London nowadays), rather than let them molder in AfC as potential victims.
• There is even the possibility that #3) companies who clearly pass WP:GNG, such as Circle_(company) and the other bitcoin startups, could be down-merged into a paragraph of the appropriate city.

I'm not arguing this idea is a panacea of bliss, there will still be plenty of COI-encumbered clueless wiki-beginners (not all of them IP-anons dern it! ;-) but I think it is a better way to manage things than the hardline approach to handling COI, which I will unfairly mischaracterize as ban-'em-all-and-let-the-great-jimbo-sort-out-the-wiki-bodies. See my argument at the AfD, that the mall-article (and the businesses-of-xyz even more so) could be #4) a recruiting-tool... this is an expansion on that, which will also double as a way to mitigate the COI-encumbrance-problem, by putting all the COI-eggs into one basket, as it were. Whether it is a better idea, than what we are quickly moving towards, remains to be seen, but I do agree it is different from what we are quickly moving towards. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 19:08, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:NOT business listing COI magnet, WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Suggest AfC or some other place is better location for discussing new articles (no idea why I'm pinged). Widefox; talk 16:11, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

There is no way of preventing promotionalism in an encycopedia that permits anonymous editing. There is no way of preventing undisclosed COI editing either, for the same reason. We have been able to detect those we have, because they've not understood editing here well enough to avoid detection--and because all edits on borderline notable subjects of certain types clearly merit investigation. If we lower the standard of notability, it will be all the easier for them.

We are not in great need of people who will write on local subjects; we are not in need of people who will write on barely notable subjects. We are in need of people who can write on the clearly notable subjects that not enough people have been interested in, and the obvious area properly receiving current attention here is our continuing gender bias. But what we need even more are people who can rewrite the existing promotional editing on the clearly notable subjects. Almost all articles on major corporations and nonprofit organizations need complete rewriting. They've been contaminated by PR from various sources: the PR people who have written many of the articles, the volunteers who write like PR editors because they think that's what we want here, and the inevitably PR writing based on the RW sources being PR in the first place.

It's unfortunate that a few honest paid editors have gotten undue suspicion. But, quite frankly, I would very strongly support eliminating all paid editing whatsoever. Their fundamental mission is not really compatible with a NPOV encycopedia.

However, the proposition that we write as volunteers basic factual articles on all clearly notable organizations is a reasonable idea. If we do it, we shouldstart at the top, not see how far we can go to the bottom. DGG ( talk ) 04:58, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Well expressed. The only substitute for the editorial supervision that Wikipedia of necessity lacks is to depend on high quality sources that do have editorial supervision that insists on fact checking, a skeptical attitude toward press releases, and disclosure of COIs. The most reliable of sources are characterized by strict insistence on declaring C.O.I.s, and even the appearance of C.O.I.s, and the use of press releases as no more than sources of questions to ask. The more time spent working on articles written from a source-rich environment (the truly notable), the better our instincts become for working in less information-rich environments. This should be the starting point for pulling out the effects of systemic bias by developing skepticism toward hand-outs and coi claims. (The NYT public editor has just written a piece on two Times published book reviews in which the reviewers assigned had undisclosed COIs).

Wikipedia needs properly sourced articles on corporations—for completeness; the same reason Wikipedia needs any article. But not so much that non-NPOV, poorly sourced articles need be allowed. Wikipedia has accessibility, reliability, and completeness to offer. Completeness is getting out ahead of reliability—this is a perversion of our goals. While it may be admirable to strive for completeness (an impossible goal), reliability back-stopped by adequate cites to WP:RS is existential. —Neonorange (talk) 06:19, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Inherited notability

....

I don't agree with the inherited notability argument above, or that notability can be measured by job title or award. Her notability can be established using the traditional method of evaluating sources, which in my view is the only basis from which notability should be measured. However, I don't question her notability, only whether her publication being nominated for this particular award is significant enough to warrant inclusion in her profile. I wasn't sure what you meant to say in this regard. Is the National Magazine Award known to the public? David King, Ethical Wiki (Talk) 02:19, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

What I think is the correct way to look at inherited notability is that the fact that a person is notable, doesn't mean that everything they do is notable; even a notable person does many less important things. But the way a person becomes notable is by doing important things, so that someone who has done sufficiently important things is notable. The nearest formally recognized analogy here is WP:PROF, where being editor in chief of a major journal is fully sufficient proof of notability. I would extend that to all media. The National Magazine Award certainly wasn't known to me before I looked at this. Based on the information in our article, i would say winning one should certainly be included. For finalist, it needs the recognition of the Nobel or the Booker or the Academy Award. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

General concept of whether there should be an article

...

Basic principle from WP:N--passing the GNG does not guarantee an article if it is more appropriate as a section in another article. And there of many other factors for whether an articles should be made: for example, avoiding the appearance of promotionalism or over-emphasis or just plain COI. The way to avoid these for someone notable for a single accomplishment/book/organization is whether to make the article on the accomplishment/book/organization or the person. (I usually see it for books and authors). If an author has written several notable but not famous books, I usually suggest that author, with sections for the books, which can be expanded if they're highly notable. If an author has one, I usuAlly recommend doing it on the person also, because if one books is successful, they are likely to write others. But if the book is much better known, which a first book may well be, then the book. This is a case where the restaurant is the better known. If you wrote one on the author also, it would duplicate much of the material, because you'd have to explain something about the restaurant. Such duplication looks like promotionalism, & can attract negative attention. If one just linked that part, the article would seem too scanty even if technically justifiable, and thus attract unfavorable attention.

Since there are many people here who can make a negative case against anything, and some who have a prejudice against any particular class of article or subject field, the best thing is to not attract them. I deprecate the GNG altogether--for any disputed article I can argue either way whether any reference is substantially about the subject, whether it is truly independent, whether it is based on PR, whether it is in essence a true 3rd party source. I choose which way to argue based on the result I think will help the encyclopedia (by which I of course mean my vision of what will help the encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 00:51, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

general response on Orangemoody socks

The difficult problem is is how to handle potential articles on the people & companies who have been exploited by the undeclared page editors. Most of the time, the problem does not arise: For orangemoody, 5% at most were likely to be notable ; in previous editing rings, the percentage has ranged from 10% all the way down to zero, depending on the general subject area. Aside from these large rings, there has also been use of undeclared paid editing by actually notable business concerns, sometimes with existing articles--most of the time, they knew very well what they were doing was deceitful, even before the clarification in our terms of service. In any case, I really do not see how anyone can ever have deluded themselves that paying to have an article written about themselves in an encycopedia was ethical, or that any respectable encycopedia would have staff who would accept such payment. True, a great many of those exploited did in perfect honesty not fact realize we were other than an advertising medium; some of the fault for this is in the promotion-ridden commercialized nature of society, but some is in our own lax prior practices.

In those cases where a subject is actually highly notable, I think the only reasonable solution is for someone here to write an article in the ordinary way. In most cases, I would advocate waiting at least 6 or 12 months, to avoid giving the impression that we do not remove paid articles. If someone is borderline notable, it as always will depend if anyone is interested, but my personal inclination is that I have other priorities: the truly notable subjects that are not covered. A practical question is whether the deleted material can be furnished to reliable editors prepared to rewrite. I think this would be subject to discretion, and anyone doing this needs to check that the material is not simply reinserted in altered form. (It would actually be a violation of copyright to do that without giving proper attribution to the paid editor!)

If someone else submits obvious coi material without a declaration of coi, the priority is to check for another member of the ring of sockpuppets, not to see if we can have the article. This is best done by one of the admins at spi; one of the main reasons I became an admin was to check deleted material. For articles written with a coi, deleting is more likely to be needed than rescuing.

...

Several of the checkusers have worked with these in detail, and they're the experts in this in general. But those of us who work with particular types of subjects gain special experience at recognizing problems with them. There have been , and will be, other rings, tho so far some of the Orangemoody techniques are thankfully unique. The attempt at promotional articles will always be a problem , if we retain open editing and anonymous users. The problem intensifies as the RW importance of getting a WP page increases. All we can do is try to reduce a combination of various means to try and reduce the impact. One key step has been taken: the current terms of use, and the general recognition here that they are enforceable policy. There are a variety of other possibilities, and I'd expect everything anyone can think of to be considered. One key change requires no change in written policy, and is a matter of outr individual attitudes: to interpret the notability requirements much more strictly in susceptible fields. There are some areas where we should stop accepting borderline articles if they show signs of promotionalism or promotional intent or possible sockpuppettry. So I argue at AfDs, and the position is often supported. I therefore do not agree with 75.'s efforts at trying to rescue such articles--they are better simply gotten rid of. The time spent in trying to fix them is counterproductive in two ways: it encourages the promotional editors, and it prevents us doing more useful work, such as writing the hundreds of thousands of needed articles on notable people, or maintaining the articles we have already. (I shared 75'a attitude for several years when I first came here, but with the rise in promotionalism my priority is now the opposite, and least in some subjects--including even some of my favorite fields.) The time spent on this article, and one lower down on the page in the last week or so, has made me resolve that I will no longer help promotional editors, unless the subject is so famous I'd write the article myself. DGG ( talk ) 01:28, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth

David, I just wanted to say that you are one of the biggest disappointments of this extremely disappointing ArbCom class. Resign. Carrite (talk) 01:25, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Carrite (talk · contribs): Perhaps you mean that I should have done more. While I have discovered I can not do as much as I intended, I think I'm accomplishing more than if I had left the committee. But if you mean that my effect has been a net negative, I think I have come to understand the problems we are faced with better than you do. DGG ( talk ) 06:13, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Question

Hey Dave, I wanted to know if you've ever been at the edge of retiring or ever thought of it? Considering you've been here for almost ten years as have I, there must've been times you had the impulse of retiring. I ask because I certainly have come and go in that time and although I sincerely appreciate this website and its concept (and I get hooked in periods here and there as I have recently, I always get walled by some eventual drama), the unnecessary and tiring drama simply seems to be unavoidable sometimes. Frankly, I think the fact several people have serious health troubles affects this sometimes especially if it's mental and psychological. Cheers, SwisterTwister talk 05:00, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I never thought I'd say it, but I find that I am considerably more reluctant each day to start editing WP. In general the inevitable frustration of the way this system necessarily works can be dealt with by moving from one area to another, but I may be beginning to feel that I've done as much here as I can. Perhaps the fault is arb com, where the public work is frustrating for we almost never actually solve any problem (at least, nothing we've done this year has helped much), and the private discussions which are the bulk of the actual work are not just frustrating but distinctly unpleasant for me, as I generally find myself in a very small minority--I had not realized the extent of the focus on narrow legalism rather than substance. I only remain on the committee in the hope that the new arbs will be more willing to think in terms of benefit to the encycopedia, not in terms of what people "deserve." Of all the places in WP where IAR has a role, it is most relevant to the work of the committee, which has much greater powers of discretion than any individual admin. I suppose having said this much, I should emphasize that personally, I very much like every one of them whom I know--they're much more human outside the committee. DGG ( talk ) 21:26, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if it is wiki-kosher for arbs to name specific usernames, that they would like as new arbs, but if so, please write up a voterguide, DGG. Or if you prefer, just toss out the names you had in mind, or even, the generic criteria that you are looking for. I too would like to see more IAR on the committee, although I also like the arbcom folks I'm familiar with, present company very much included. But it is a hard and thankless job. ( I will contradict my own flat statement by saying, thanks for doing what you can, it is appreciated.) In particular, nobody wants to do the arbcom thing; it is a huge timesink to run, and like a super-RfA tends to attract mostly new critics and little praise. Even if you "win" you tend to be the focus-point of much angst and many complaints. Point being, DGG, if you are permitted by your wiki-honour to urge people to run, that you think would be good arbs, in whatever fashion, please do so. Same goes for your compadres, if you can ask that they speak out. There are some folks already announcing candidacies at WP:ACE2015/C, but Yunshui just retired, and none of the arbs up for re-election have yet put forth their names. Because it has been such a hard year, this is an important arb-election methinks. Best, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:34, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Precious again

Precious again, your not supporting to lose the valuable admin service of Yngvadottir!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:51, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Happy Easter, Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 March 27, with thanks for your ARCA statement, KISS! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:40, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Wine

	A glass of wine for you
	Thanks for all you do! Heathart (talk) 03:37, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Article cleanup?

Hey DGG, I was wondering about that article cleanup you wanted me to help with. I know you were going to send me an e-mail giving me examples of what needed to be changed, but I don't think I ever got it. I was wondering if you still wanted me to do it or not. It'll likely have to wait until after school lets out, since I remember you saying it was going to be pretty time consuming. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:42, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Ben-Ami Shulman

David- thanks so much for your invaluable help! I look forward to many sessions BEN-AMI SHULMAN (talk) 22:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Old Portage Road (New York)

You saved this from CSD13. After a slight clean up / rename, it's in mainspace at Old Portage Road (New York). FeatherPluma (talk) 21:31, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

FeatherPluma, thanks for picking up on it--all I did was repeatedly decline to delete by G13 in the hope someone would see it. I'd be very interested to know how you spotted it because one of our recurrent problems with AfC is how to get the drafts worked on by other than the original editors. DGG ( talk ) 00:01, 16 November 2015 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 09:11, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I would also be curious to know the answer to how FeatherPluma found this topic. There are three ways to get drafts worked on by people other than the original editors:

1. Attract other long-haul wikipedians to work the AfC queue, by making the work more attractive (tried and failed... long-haul people who wanna work AfC already know where to find it)
2. Change the AfC-submission template, so that as soon as the author clicks 'submit' ... or even before they click submit ... they can see a selection of other articles sitting in the AfC queue, and the usernames of the authors/originators associated with those other AfC articles. The template could explicitly suggest helping other good-faith wikipedians in the queue, by saying something like "Thank you for submitting your article to be reviewed! The queue is currently N days and NNN articles long. While you are waiting, you can help other people in the queue improve *their* articles, if you like -- this would be very WP:NICE of you, and might even speed up the queue." This method is a slight variation on how User:Anne_Delong got started as a wikipedian, so it might even work, although of course there will be some aspect of the blind-leading-the-blind.
3. Something a bit more risky: mainspace anything that ought to be an article, regardless of the current state of the prose and the refs, then undelete it per IAR, when the inevitable insta-deletion occurs (N.B. this method only works if you are a sitting arb with the heft to make your undeletions per WP:ILIKEIT actually stick :-)

User:Kudpung also has put forth the option, of merging NPP with AfC, so as to automagically have the NPP folks help with tagging/rating/patrolling/etc the draftspace articles; whether this counts as "getting the drafts worked on" will partly depend upon the definition of "work" one opts to utilize. Certainly it would bring more *eyeballs* to draftspace generally and the AfC subset thereof specifically. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 23:09, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• There are lots of things that haven't been tried yet. One more thing that could be done to attract people to drafts would be to alter the search engine software so that if someone typed "Son of Foo", and there was no article, but there was "Draft:Son of Foo", then instead of saying "You can start the Son of Foo article, it would say "You can improve Draft:Son of Foo and help it become an article" or some such. Or how about a "Today's abandoned draft for improvement"? And there are more ideas at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts. But if you are going to suggest that editors improve each other's drafts, I would not make it automatic, but have a template that reviewers and Teahouse hosts could selectively drop on the talk pages of editors who appear to have made a good start - maybe to this page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions/List.—Anne Delong (talk) 01:27, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	Thanks for helping me on wikiD New York writing workshop yesterday. Elf-I-D (talk) 21:36, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	You are the best in helping as well as in editing. Kudos! Josu4u (talk) 22:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Appropriate content for a university page

Hi, DGG. I was reading the page of Case Western Reserve University, and it seems to me that it's getting to be more like a promotional webpage than an encyclopedia article. Since you work with a lot of these types of subjects, maybe you can tell me if it's appropriate to include noted alumni in the lead, and a long list of academic rankings. I also don't understand the section called Undergraduate Profile. Am I just getting too fussy?—Anne Delong (talk) 10:42, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Almost all university pages in WP are similar to PR. There are two types: when the whole thing is an integrated PR effort, or -- like here -- where particularly PR-like sections are added to specific parts of an acceptable basic skeleton. And a third type, where either the central PR or the PR forthe individual unitshave tried to write separation pages for everything possible. There was one university which tried to write an article for the expanded quonset hut they used for a placement center. & another for the building where they stored the maintenance equipment. Enthusiastic students can do just as bad, but they do it differently:I;veseen articles for individual floors in a residence hall, and I think once for an individual suite.

It is normal to include the 2 or 3 most famous alumni in the lede--the appropriate standard I think is world famous. That they put the computer entrepreneurs there instead of the Nobel laureates says something about priorities. The academic rankings, alas, are standard. At least they're in the proper location, near the bottom. I did some tinkering, but I've seen worse. If I fixed them all, I could do nothing else. DGG ( talk ) 17:18, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, DGG for taking the time to look at it.—Anne Delong (talk) 06:05, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Women scientists

Hi DGG. In your detailed assessment of the acceptability of the article on Rhonda Patrick, you tell us "There is an unfortunate undercoverage of notable women scientists, and there are thousands of notable ones to include. We should fill this by starting from the most notable." Can you share with us at least a few of the names (or direct us to pertinent sources) as we are currently engaged in a virtual editathon on women in science. It is not unreasonable to expect at least a thousand new start-class articles on women scientists over the next few weeks or months. If you wish, you can add red links to Wikipedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Red/Women science and technology. If not, simply list names here or on my talk page.--Ipigott (talk) 11:09, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree this should be done. I am not sure I have time to do it. I can provide some guidelines for anyone wanting to do it. Note that they apply to women academics in general, not just scientists. I do not make a differentiation here in what I work on & perhaps you might want to consider this also.

(1) anyone who is president of a major college or university is notable. There are some obvious colleges to check here. tho some had male presidents in the past, and a few of the most impt seem to be done already. Checking a few, Simmons hasn't been done.

(2) Anyone in the Institute of Medicine or National Academy of Sciences or NAEngineering is notable. There should be a number in the IOM and NAS at least, who may not yet have been covered.

(3) All people in all distinguished named chairs are always notable. The lists in some appropriate colleges should be checked,

(4) Though it isn't a formal rule, essentially all full professors at a major university have in the past been held notable-- except in some traditionally female-dominated fields such as home economics or education or librarianship. I consider this a major inequity, and an indication of true bias at WP. I'm prepared to defend any article on anyone in such a position. I've lost some of these debates in the past. I hope things have changed. Please let me know of any challenged articles here, because this part is a high priority for me. I'm going to revisit the afds I lost in the past.

(5). There a problem with the first women in X field in Y place. It's fine if X and Y are big enough. The first women chemist in a country, for example. If it's the first women faculty member in synthetic inorganic chemistry in a particular state college, then it's not so obvious.

(6). Academics are easy to screen , because there is a formal internal hierarchy. Grad students are almost never notable, post docs very rarely, asst. professors usually not, associate professors usually not tho I disagree with the consensus here and thing they should be, and full, almost always.

(7)In fields where books show academic notability, WP:AUTHOR can be a very useful & flexible criterion.

I also intend to try to verify the existing red links on that page, & I will leave comments. DGG ( talk ) 18:57, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for these guidelines. I had the impression from your earlier comments that you had some specific names in mind. I see now that I was mistaken. Rather than spending your time on examining the notability of red links, I think it would be much more useful if you could add a few names to the red links on scientists -- or indeed any other of the categories listed under Wikipedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Red/Tasks. Maybe you would even like to create one or two new articles yourself? It would be great if you could join the current editathon with at least one article based on your notability criteria.--Ipigott (talk) 21:52, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

They are not my notability criteria -- they are my advice about what has been found to happen here in hundreds of afd discussions to be notable. The advice, as all my advice, is very conservative: it represents what should be safely notable and not challenged, not what might be possibly found notable in a particular discussion by strength of argument or chance of participation. My advice, not limited to this subject, is that people working on these projects should start out be choosing safe subjects, to avoid having a disappointing first experience. With sufficient experience, one can then try to stretch the boundaries a little -- but if one does that, one should be prepared to lose the argument without getting angry about it, or taking it as a lack of understanding on the part of the other participants. AfD can be unpredictable, and my predictive accuracy is not perfect, even when I know I'm right. When I know I'm testing to see if consensus has changed, I pick a point where I expect to succeed about 2/3 the time. To work here, one has to accept that not everything will go as it ought to.

If the question is what I think WP should include, that's another matter entirely.

Almost since my start here eight years ago, I do not generally write articles I want to, but rather on those which need rescue. As you can see from this page, so many people ask for help with their problems that this is my priority. (And it's where I can be most helpful--I'm not particularly creative, but I do know how to fix things.) At projects such as editathons, what I prefer to do is to check that what people are writing is OK; I do it in person in NYC, and I'll do it here for anyone who asks me. Everyone here works on what they want to, and that is what I've chosen. DGG ( talk ) 06:55, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

New users, drafts, and thanks

I am researching the effect of welcoming new users. Thus there are a lot of User talk: pages I created on my watchlist. It is a little depressing to see so many of them coming through with their drafts being deleted G13 six months after they join - but your messages that drafts have been accepted is a ray of sunshine. Thanks for that!

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC).

Policy change opinion

I believe there should be a sensible balance between deletion and creation of articles which balanced. What is your opinion about requiring an article historically kepted through AfD to undergo a DRV process before renomination as well? Valoem ^{talk contrib} 02:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

excess bureaucracy. It is already well established that there has to be a reasonable time between nominations, and that thistime increases after successive keeps. We haven't been able to mandate specific months or years, but we no longer seethe 6 or 7 times repeated attempts to delete an article we did when I joined. consensus can and does change, and afds are where the action is. What they need for fairer & more consistent decisions is more participation, and that's what we should focus on. If you are referring to Fastwalkers, I don'rt see it was kept by previous afds. The recent one is the first. If you have some other article in mind, what article is that? DGG ( talk ) 06:52, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

It was something I noticed in general not related with Fastwalkers. I believe certain situations which require deleted articles to go through DRV, should apply to kept articles as well. It was a question I pondered when I read Emijrp's sum of human knowledge which calculates that there are at least 104 million notable articles that should exist here, we are at a mere 5 million. The reason is the flaw of human nature inherent in us all. While we are all here to built an encyclopedia we are also here to ensure our views prevail, after all, ego is unavoidable. The degree which we suffer varies. Some people become defensive to the point they refuse to admit a mistake was made, protect their views knowing it is incorrect, find petty reasons to maintain it and then mobbing, as you eloquently put it, occurs. There are those who edit to expressive themselves by content creation and others through content deletion and much like defense and offense in combat, defense (being reactive) has its advantages. If the growth of Wikipedia is to be maintained policy needs to favor content creation and entice new editors.

Right now, policy favors deletion and impends the rate of content creation. It may take a hundred editors to create an article, but only one to delete it. To combat this, policy should be changed to favor inclusion. AfD by nature favors deletion, modifying policies to slightly favor inclusion brings natural balance. Requiring a DRV process for renomiation seems like a sensible start we could avoid situations like OpEdNews where a single editor refuses to admit error and attempts to have content removed perhaps in hopes previous participants are occupied elsewhere.

Another idea is to make AfD closure numerically based. For example, we could require a minimum amount of participation from established editors before discussion is valid. The AfD nominator's opinion should accounted and their vote discounted, after all he is looking for the agreement of others, this prevents articles with little to no discussion from being deleted. This of course should not apply to promotional or vanity articles, but NPOV articles with secondary sources. Fewer the participants means higher probability of missed sources and errors. Perhaps a new close called lack of discussion which defaults to keep could be included and applied to articles which have secondary sources. Of course discretion should be applied in exceptional cases. In the end, numbers don't lie, minimum AfD participation requirements could partially remove human bias and error. Valoem ^{talk contrib} 08:27, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the main/sub-article relationship project

Hi DGG,

Thanks for replying to our page in the Village pump. I've created a Meta:Research page which details the research questions https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Main/sub-article_relationship Of course, you are welcome to take our survey and/or give us feedback! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheetah90 (talk • contribs) 17:14, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

h-index

I wanted to look up some h-indexs for professors on Google Scholar, what is the general recommend level for notability and how would I do this using google scholar? Valoem ^{talk contrib} 21:35, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Look for their name in the form "FM Last", not their full name. The results will be in approximate descending order by the number of citations. Sort out those references that are to web sites, non-academic journals, newspaper articles, and the like. Th h index is the highest number where are that many papers with that least that many citations: r.g., if the counts as typical for a probably not notable biomedical scientist, are:

40, 35, 33, 30, 29, 27, 26, 25, 24, 22, 21, 21, 20, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13,12, 12, 12, 11, 10, 8, 5, ....... their h=16, because there are 16 papers that have been cited 16 times or more. I report these counts saying just that italicized phrase, rather than report it as an index ,because it is clearer in words..

But the h index can be deceptive. Consider another biomedical scientist, almost certainly notable:

190, 180, 170, 60, 30, 10 , 5, 5, 4, 3 .... . For them, the h=6.

But which is the more notable? The h index emphasises doing a great deal of not very important work, over people who do a smaller amont of extremely important work. DGG ( talk ) 23:04, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Button makers

Hey, because of L. Nichols Buttons AfD, I was wondering, "Does Wikipedia actually have any button makers of notability?" I didn't find anything, but I keep thinking that that can't be right! Thanks! --MurderByDeletionism^"bang!" 01:26, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

There should be sources. It was in the NYC garment trade a distinctly separate industry. There are probably sources on historic manufacturers also. But in checking, beware: most of the material I can find on WorldCat is about political pin-on buttons, not buttons fro garments, and most of the rest about buttons for military uniforms. But see: Newberger, Edward Louis. The Button Industry in the United States. Haworth, N.J.: St. Johann Press, 1998. and Jones, W. Unite. The Button Industry. London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1924. DGG ( talk ) 02:22, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

So, then I'm getting that Wikipedia has zero articles on button makers. Correct?! (Except that one currently being deleted, that is!) --MurderByDeletionism^"bang!" 19:32, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

In the NYC trade, the firms were mostly very small; I think it quite possible that none were notable. I have no knowledge elsewhere. Nut has several dozen elevant books listed in addition to the oes I already identified, in particular Jones, Nora Owens, and Edith Mattison Fuoss. Black Glass Buttons. Ypsilanti, Mich: University lithoprinters, 1945. DGG ( talk ) 19:55, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

This is a fascinating and worthwhile topic. While a modern invention such as zippers will tend to have notable manufacturers associated with the project -- see, e.g., the Wikipedia article on the YKK Group -- the button is one of those objects that's long been so familiar that its history is obscure. Important button makers do pop up in conjunction with subjects that are notable for other reasons or as an incidental mention in a larger discussion; for instance, the button makers of Birmingham are mentioned in the article on Matthew Boulton, while the button making industry of Muscatine, Iowa is discussed in the page on that town, and the storied royal button maker Firmin & Sons has its own page, even if buttons get only a brief mention. (For more background on Firmin & buttons, check out its website [8]. However, one could argue that separate pages could be made for companies or regional button-making industries such as these due to their significant historical impact; the Birmingham button makers were recently the subject of a book by economist George Selgin -- Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821; the Arcadia Images of America series has a well-researched book on Muscatine's Pearl Button Industry; and Slate had a nice general overview of other key developments [9] Maybe the folks at The Button Room museum, the National Button Society, or the British Button Society would be interested in buttressing the button history here, assuming they have access to even more research. In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can dig a little deeper on L. Nichols. Fashionethics (talk) 01:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Gonstead technique

What is your opinion with chiropractics coverage? This technique is the third most common in this field. I do agree a chiropractics is a form of quackery, but should be have some coverage on major techniques. I think this passes our GNG guidelines, but some editors deny the use of sources from within the field, what is your opinions on this? Valoem ^{talk contrib} 13:17, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

bias and prejudice, is what I think it. I commented there, though without using those words. DGG ( talk ) 19:43, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Thanks DGG, ideal solution and we keep an emerging editor. Well Done Victuallers (talk) 20:45, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Self citation

I got the impression you may be familiar with the McKinsey Quarterly and I know you are also interested in several related topics (self-citation COI, improving business pages, etc.), so I thought I would bring this RSN post to your attention in case you were interested and/or had an expert contribution to the topic. David King, Ethical Wiki (Talk) 17:02, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I never knew it existed until this moment, but I'll look at the discussion. (I just read some of the articles, which seem excellent; their greatest virtue is clarity.) DGG ( talk ) 19:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The "Articles" tend to focus on McKinsey's recommendations ("China should do XYZ"). This is good information for current or prospective clients to see what type of recommendations they make, but I don't think it is appropriate for Wikipedia and as an involved party in their own recommendations, that's a bit primary. However, if you click "Download the Full Report," those usually have mountains of data deeper into the report about market sizes, global economy, demographics, etc. that I think could be useful in improving core business pages. I don't think it's overly boastful when McKinsey claims in the report to have collected the best available data on the subject - this is what they are known for. David King, Ethical Wiki (Talk) 01:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

subjective criteria and afd

hi david,

I hope this is an appropriate space to ask about how to improve an AfD(if not please let me know !), and also to clarify your viewpoint on what is surely a subjective criteria. in regards to a comment that you made about inclusion in a museum collection being a reasonable criteria for notability. the guidelines here dont make a distinction as to the merit of a particular museum or gallery. suffice to say that i mostly agree with your assessment of the particular institution in question,you fail to back your claim with a reasonable argument. please advise so i can best respond thank you!

I hope this is an appropriate space to ask about how to improve an AfD(if not please let me know !), and also to clarify your viewpoint on what is surely a subjective criteria. in regards to a comment that you made about inclusion in a museum collection being a reasonable criteria for notability. the guidelines here dont make a distinction as to the merit of a particular museum or gallery. suffice to say that i mostly agree with your assessment of the particular institution in question,you fail to back your claim with a reasonable argument. please advise so i can best respond thank you!

	+	

Etidorhpaunderground (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Involuntary celibacy (4th nomination)

... In addition to any particular prejudice against this particular topic, WP can show a remarkable degree of prejudice against some sexual topics. Like many individuals and organizations, WP's willingness to accept such things is in principle very broad, but in practice is limited to what people are familiar or comfortable with. DGG ( talk ) 05:43, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

DGG| DGG]] ( talk ) 05:31, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Redirects becoming articles

Here you are my friend: Special:AbuseFilter/342. Let's look into re-enabling, it'd be good to have the log for review, even if they are mostly constructive. Cheers — MusikAnimal ^talk 20:37, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Turns out the page curation tool already picks up articles that become redirects. Not sure how, but I did some tests, and it works. This means they will appear in Special:NewPagesFeed. Now all we have to do is tackle that 1000+ page backlog :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 05:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Inclusion in a research presentation

Hi DGG. I've been building robust measures of productivity for Wikipedia editors. I'd like to use your edit history as an example when demonstrating the measures. See my write-up of the general measurement strategy here: m:Research:Measuring edit productivity. See my notes on your productivity here: m:Research_talk:Measuring_edit_productivity/Work_log/2016-01-18. TL;DR: It looks like your contributions to Wikipedia have been consistent since 2006. This stands in contrast to the bursty activity of me and Jimbo Wales. You've also contributed several orders of magnitude more productive content than I have (2.5 million vs. 17k "persisting words"). ;)

I'd like to present these graphs and the discussion you see beneath them at the January version of the mw:Wikimedia Research/Showcase tomorrow. Would that be OK? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 18:06, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

EpochFailCertainly you can include it. I note that when I retired from Princeton & LIU as a librarian, I discovered Wikipedia, and after a few months experience, consciously determined to make a consistent almost full-time effort. There are others in similar positions. For some of us in my age group, various life factors have caused periods of inactivity, but that has not happened to me. Anecdotally, I've seen that for some of our members in the 30s to 50s, periods of their activity in WP have coincided with periods of their unemployment. Analogously, it's long been known to librarians that increased library use is seen during periods of economic depression.

I have one question that is not clear from your graphs: is your data coming only from Article space? I ask because I would have thought that more of my activity in recent years has been elsewhere. And I am only 98th in the count of WPedians by number of edits. My rank in that table has risen only very slowly over the years DGG ( talk ) 21:59, 19 January 2016 (UTC) which would confirm your hypothesis that the other highly active editors are also consistently active. DGG ( talk ) 21:59, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, I'm only looking at article space, but I would imagine that your work on drafts would eventually lead toward article space. Generally, measuring productive contribution outside of articles is very difficult, but something that I hope we'll have some good new thoughts about. E.g. productivity on templates may be related to template usage. Talk page productivity would be much more difficult to track, but I imagine that we can at least flag obviously unproductive discussion posts automatically using machine learning and natural language processing.

I haven't done any sort of ranking for Wikipedians by this measure of productivity yet, but when I do, I'll get back to you. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 22:06, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

for Drafts, when I accept an article that needs fixing, sometimes I make my edits on the Draft and then move to mainspace, but equally often I will move to mainspace and fix it there (especially if I want to use visual editor, which I prefer for finding the correct internal links to add) DGG ( talk ) 01:40, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Andréas Christo-Foroux
• Draft:Blood Brothers (novel)
• Draft:Chandraprabha Saikiani
• Draft:Charles Hewett
• Draft:Children's Savings Accounts
• Draft:Clarence D. Martin Jr.
• Draft:Common pool resources
• Draft:Continuing Church of God
• Draft:Council for Opportunity in Education
• Draft:De novo protein synthesis theory of memory formation
• Draft:De Paul School Brahmapur
• Draft:Democratic Left Front of Sri Lanka
• Draft:Derek Cabrera
• Draft:Devere Allen
• Draft:Emery Hyslop-Margison
• Draft:Gary Yannone
• Draft:Gautam Mitra
• Draft:Gemma Calvert
• Draft:General Motors Gen 5 "Small Block"
• Draft:Grégoire Hetzel
• Draft:Health care in Ontario prisons
• Draft:Howard L. Weiner
• Draft:Inqilab Nadirli
• Draft:Japhy Ryder
• Draft:Jason Wakefield
• Draft:Jay Lebow

• Draft:John Rattray
• Draft:Kjell Habbestad
• Draft:Latinist
• Draft:Longyou Caves
• Draft:Malca-Amit
• Draft:Marjorie Schlossman
• Draft:Melanie Jackson
• Draft:Michael M. Oye
• Draft:Morgan Rice
• Draft:Nagdah,Madhubani
• Draft:Newton's Point

• Draft:Noma Copley
• Draft:Sean Gervasi
• Draft:Shaikhan
• Draft:Shin-Tson Wu
• Draft:Steine Depression
• Draft:Summer Bridge Programs
• Draft:Tandis Jenhudson
• Draft:Town Hall Harbor
• Draft:Tungapadu
• Draft:Tynemouth Medal
• Draft:Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)
• Draft:Vidisha Devi
• Draft:William A. Cohen
• [[Draft:Wilmot Gibbes DeSaussu

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Anita Thapar
• Draft:Bigelow Kennard Lamps
• Draft:Bonnie Burnham
• Draft:Brian Jay Jones
• Draft:Channel 24KZ
• Draft:Deborah L. Duvall
• Draft:John Strachan (professor)
• Draft:Lee Yu-Ri
• Draft:Medical Communications Industry
• Draft:Rahul Pandey
• Draft:RESIST
• Draft:Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh
• Draft:Thomas G. McGinn, MD, MPH
• Draft:Williams Art Mafia
• Draft:Wolfgang Luthe

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

It feels odd...

...to be on the opposite side of a discussion from you, but it seems to keep happening recently! So here, have a thumbnail picture of a cup of tea, which apparently has some form of magical reconciliatory power :) Thparkth (talk) 19:45, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

GG| DGG]] ( talk ) 21:57, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Draft prod instead

Ok, it looks like the G13 thing is going like the prior G13 discussions so I say we think up something new. What about a draftprod idea? It's suggested. It's not a speedy but it'll clear MFD through a different process and I think it can cover most people's concerns. Something like "any userspace or draftspace draft of an article that hasn't been edited in six months where the creator hasn't made an edited in the last year can be proposed for deletion if after seven days an admin determines that the draft has no likelihood of becoming an article." Any draft can be obviously removed by anyone and there's MFD then. Just off the top of my head but one year is WP:STALEDRAFT so maybe one year not six months and make this part of the STALE deletion process. I'm not sure where this complexity of 'what is a draft' is coming from but that's the only problem I'm still seeing. It's enough multiple parts here but we can suggest the idea first and then do a separate exceedingly complicated broken up RFC to offer the idea. What do you think? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:20, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Strike this whole idea. It's not necessary. MFD, while not ideal, I think could handle this. I may suggest it again if MFD becomes unmanageable. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:45, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

In figuring out to do , we need to consider the purpose. There are three basic classes of material

1. Material that might significant contribute to a plausible article. In my opinion, this should never be deleted regardless of time, or whether the editor is active. What we need to do with these is to make findable. My main concern with these is to make sure that none of these get deleted. I've been spending half my time on that for a year now, and I would oppose anything that makes this harder.

2. Material that is abandoned but harmless, and will never make an article. There's been a lot of activity here lately--I regard this as a rather low priority. When we do clean up, it's more important to clean up the areas of Draft space and WT:AfC/ , which are joint-use non-private work areas, than Userspace or User talk space, which can accommodate a little harmless junk because it is not in the way. Cleaning up user/Usertalk space is in my mind an extremely low priority. The priority is in removing stuff that is harmful, and fixing what is erroneous or outdated. That probably amounts to at least 1 or 2 million articles.

3.Material that is harmful and shouldn't be here. The main types of that are advertising and copyvio. G11 & G12 is what we need here.

The main use of MfD for Draftspace is removing material that keeps getting resubmitted but will never make an article and isn't bad enough to be called G11.

The current attempt to remove variant incomplete article versions that do not contain harmful material is in my opinion unnecessary. It would be more important to check them to se if there is material there that would be useful in mainspace. DGG ( talk ) 03:40, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists
• Draft:Dwight Hall at Yale
• Draft:Jerry Bostick
• Draft:Madeline A. Cain
• Draft:Meg John Barker
• Draft:OzCon

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:137th New York Volunteer Infantry
• Draft:Blu Dot
• Draft:Bob Wing
• Draft:Bulletin of the Comediantes
• Draft:Countryside biogeography
• Draft:David Yesner
• Draft:Fung Global Institute
• Draft:Glenn Bassett
• Draft:Humber Sloop
• Draft:Kesavan Ravindran
• Draft:LotfAli Haghighi
• Draft:Mickey Keenan
• Draft:Philip Troen
• Draft:Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely
• Draft:Randy Shull
• Draft:Terry Dame
• Draft:Warner Brown
• Draft:Werner Clement

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

A beer for you!

on me…. Padudarrific (talk) 14:48, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Campaign to Keep It an Encyclopedia, not a Business Directory

Can you take a look at these two: Stellar (payment network) and Pure Storage? I don't think they warrant being in an encyclopedia. What's the criteria for a company having an article in Wikipedia? It has to be remarkable in some way, right? Chisme (talk) 17:55, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

not exactly. It has to meet the WP:GNG, as explained further at WP:CORPDEPTH, but any individual case is decided at WP:AFD according to the policy-based consensus of the Wikipedians present. The general view is that the GNG is not met by routine announcements and Press releases, but the interpretation of this is often disputed. I personally sometimes take a stricter requirement for this than does the consensus, and the consensus is what decides.

In the two cases you mention, Pure Storage is on the main board of the NYSE and therefore almost certainly willl be considered notable enough for an article; Stellar seems to have gotten a good deal of technical press about its algorithm, and would almost certainly qualify also. Both articles are however quite promotional , and in need of major improvements.

I see you have been trying to fix articles on some similar companies. I consider AppDynamics borderline; Shyp borderline at best though there is some recent material that might make me think otherwise; I listed Stripe (company) for AfD as not notable; Sidecar was never notable, but it did get some press; I'm going to try to merge it. DGG ( talk ) 22:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for all that. I don't think Wiki should be naive. There is a certain cache about having your company written up in an encyclopedia, but I don't think Wiki should be used that way. Chisme (talk) 05:40, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

My strategy in raising our standard, is that the key step is to deal with the material which clearly does not meet our current standard,and that will clearly be deleted at AfD. In my experience, AfD rather than policy pages is where the action is, because it's how we interpret the rules that makes the actual difference . Removing that raises our average, and we can also proceed with trying to convince the community to raise it further--that is best done by trying to see with a few AfDs just what the consensus is, and how fast it is changing. In arguing, I try to lead a little; in judging, I stay with the mainstream; in giving advice, I try just to say what the current practice is and try to emphasise that it is not I who makes the decisions. DGG ( talk ) 06:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I was at a business meeting in Silicon Valley a couple months ago as part of a freelance PR team. I was the writer. The subject of Wikipedia came up. "Can we get an article for our company?" This kind of thing goes on a lot. Wiki really ought to lay out criteria about when a company or business belongs and when it doesn't. Chisme (talk) 06:39, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes indeed, but Wikipedia goes by consensus, and unfortunately consensus has been to rely primarily on the GNG. I've been trying to convince people of the absurdity and inconsistency of this for 7 years now (my first year here I was naïve enough to believe in it). The way to do it is to argue in that direction at enough AfDs that people accept the idea. Perhaps it will only take a few years more. I'm a librarian--librarians think on that time scale. DGG ( talk ) 09:25, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Camp Colorado, Texas
• Draft:George Macpherson Stalker
• Draft:Indian Institute of Fire Engineering
• Draft:Johan Roos
• Draft:Jonathan A. Foley
• Draft:Shirley House and Park
• Draft:Stone construction in the Middle Ages

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for supporting my RfA

	Brianhe RfA Appreciation award
	Thank you for participating at my RfA. Your support was very much appreciated even if I did get a bit scorched. Brianhe (talk) 07:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

I'll just note that the article Montoya, New Mexico (different from the draft of the same title) has existed since 2013 and has a photo of the Richardson Store, which is listed on the NRHP. So obviously the draft should be deleted, but not the article. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:43, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Condé Nast Johansens

• Draft:Alessandro de Mortara
• Draft:Brazilian crime fiction
• Draft:Calder's set for Socrate
• Draft:CBN Radio
• Draft:Chris Hoofnagle
• Draft:Critical Materials Institute
• Draft:Cycle truck
• Draft:Delrina Corp. v Triolet Systems Inc.
• Draft:Donald Gross
• Draft:Donor Committee for Enterprise Development
• Draft:Dover Engineering Works
• Draft:Edinburgh Instruments
• Draft:Educational Requirements for Teachers in Asia
• Draft:Ellen Berkenblit
• Draft:Ellen Spolsky
• Draft:Elliott Sclar
• Draft:Eytan Avriel
• Draft:Fernando de Córdoba

• Draft:Fred N. Thomas Career Education Center Middle College of Denver
• Draft:Garrett-Jacobs Mansion
• Draft:Geoffrey Philip Wilson
• Draft:Gyorgyi Lantos and Istvan Mate
• Draft:Hammad Riaz
• Draft:Herb Stovel
• Draft:Ilan Sadeh
• Draft:Issa Khalfan Al-Huraimel
• Draft:Kavitaram Shrestha
• Draft:Kudappanamoodu
• Draft:Liisa Ladouceur
• Draft:Luis H. Fajardo
• Draft:M. Heather Carver
• Draft:M. Jude Reyes
• Draft:Mahalingam Thangavelu
• Draft:Malhupura
• Draft:Masod, Betul, Madhya Pradesh
• Draft:Merit Tables
• Draft:National Stroke Association
• Draft:Peelay Pattar
• Draft:Philip Auerswald
• Draft:Pinnacle College
• Draft:Radical Painting
• Draft:Rami El Obeidi
• Draft:Richard G. Newell
• Draft:Robert Brewer Young
• Draft:Rod Connolly
• Draft:Rose Adare
• Draft:Rose Hayden-Smith
• Draft:Sadaoki Furui
• Draft:Satya Pal Singh
• Draft:Shoe hanger
• Draft:Siege of Banu Qurayza
• Draft:Simon Weller
• Draft:Stella Maris Mtwara University College
• Draft:Tallship Koreana
• Draft:Tempo School

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Deleted page Mangold Dangling

Sir, I was looking for a reference to Mangold Dangling, a long-standing game akin to human skittles enjoyed within the engineering community of the Royal Navy; I can see that there was an article which you deleted in 2012 as a hoax. The game exists (I can probably find some reference to it, or even pictures if I look hard enough), but do not wish the page to be deleted if I write a new page. Alternatively, is it possible for the old page to be restored (I do not know the process well enough)? Thanks, Jon F — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.130.70 (talk) 00:53, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I will get to this tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 06:14, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The lightbulb finally went off

In the beginning, I had a bit of a problem latching on to your concerns over "puffery" in the Gabor B. Racz article, but I think your efforts have finally paid off. To better understand the message you were sending me, I studied some of the articles you created and edited. I learn better with a hands-on approach. The first BLPs I reviewed made the lightbulb go on -Carl Joe Williams, Philip Needleman, H. Boyd Woodruff. By the time I got to Theodore Rappaport the light was much brighter and I saw exactly what you were trying to teach me. It appears as though other editors went in to that article and added all kinds of puffery and peacock words that I know you deplore, so I deleted them, and added citations needed templates as needed. Hopefully you will realize that I really am trying to learn to be the "encyclopedic" editor you envision from what your experiences have taught you. Thank you for helping me see the light. Atsme^📞📧 01:09, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Very glad to have the help. But the process of improving articles is never complete. What you did at Rapport was quite good. But consider the need is for proportion: he's a IEEE Fellow, so he's very notable. But he's not a member of the National Academy of Engineering, or any comparable distinction, so he doesn't count as famous. The article is 2 or 3 times the length it should be, and minor material needs to be removed. And it wasn't "various people" who added the puffery, it was one particular promotional editor, with a lot of further tinkering from an ip. Now contrast Woodruff. He is in the NAS, and has received a further --and very exclusive--distinction. The article should be 4 times as long. It needs a more detailed personal bio, and some details about his work and probably a considerable number of other honors. Ditto with Needleman. Williams is OK in proportion, and has been added to appropriately, but needs a little more detail and clarity;

In my own editing, I usually do by successive rounds (tho sometimes i will remove whole sections), and there is so much to work on that I tend to leave an article to work another as soon as I've done the bare essentials. I don't generally recommend that, & I've been criticized for it, but we each have to figure out how we can be most effective. DGG ( talk ) 05:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

DGG, I think the article is where it should be now. With collaboration from Derek R Bullamore, who is a citation fixer deluxe, the references/citations are fixed. I'd like to nominate Theodore Rappaport for GA promotion and would very much appreciate a PR from you as the article's creator if you wouldn't mind? Atsme^📞📧 15:17, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Further good work from both of you. But some more is needed: 1/ a little more bio: place of birth, high school, undergraduate degree, free photo if available 2/the books should be cited to worldcat, not to book dealers. Alternatively the {{isbn}} format template should be used 3/Strictly speaking each individual award needs a reference. But at least the list needs a link to his CV 5/ Many of the citations are a little defective., Press release sources should be minimized. Probably a single link to his cv would replace many of them. 6/the papers selected for citing merely show he worked in a field. They do not show he did significant work in a field. You can fix this by checking citations and listing them. DGG ( talk ) 17:45, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

DGG thank you. If it's ok with you, I'm going to copy your list of what still needs to be done over to the article TP with hopes of recruiting some help. I'm currently helping prepare another article for FA promotion, and as soon as I've completed that chore, I will start back on this one. Atsme^📞📧 22:36, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

IP keeps reverting

DGG - an unregistered IP keeps adding information about the history of wireless technology and promotional company material to Theodore Rappaport which is supposed to be a BLP. It's not unlike attempts to discuss surgical procedures and devices in a BLP about a doctor. There is no way for me to discuss the situation on the IP's talk page because there isn't one, [10]. Suggestions? BLPs fall under DS and I'm certainly not going to edit war with an IP who is proving to be problematic. Atsme^📞📧 04:04, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I did some editing there. And I left a warning. DGG ( talk ) 06:10, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

DGG - they're back and the added call numbers which I deleted thinking that's personal information not unlike adding somebody's phone number, right? I don't know if I should contact oversight or just advise you so you can redact the numbers. I'm concerned about posting the diff here but I think something needs to be done ASAP. Also, can you semi-protect the page so I can finish editing without worrying about personal information being added again? Thanks in advance. Atsme^📞📧 02:33, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Cyber Defense Labs 2

Why are you recommending a draft article that is under development for speedy deletion? Draft_talk:Cyber_Defense_Labs

The entry on Microsoft is unambiguously self promotional, it includes content lifted directly for its investor reaction page. Firehouse (Armor) has an article in the main section that is obvious self promotional Armor, Inc. are you going to delete it for the main encyclopedia?

I'm trying to profile a group of companies that actually defend critical infrastructure, I'm not getting anything out off this. Why recommend for deletion from DRAFT SPACE!!!!! DrSchlagger (talk) 20:51, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:George Kraigher
• Draft:Ghost on Eldridge Street
• Draft:Kane's Method

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Note about professors

The section with this name on your user page may have a problem, or maybe it's just me. I think you may mean "not likely to be notable". I call it a typo, but am not willing to change it on my own, since it reverses the meaning of what you are saying. Lou Sander (talk) 03:08, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

I said "People unfamiliar with the academic world may not realize that even a full professor at a major university is very likely to be notable" and indeed I do think that any full professor at a significant institution is very likely to be notable; I would say further than I think any full professor at a major research university is always notable. And in fact every one of them discussed at WP in the last 5 or 6 years has been found notable, with the exception of those in some special fields about which there is prejudice. Those at institutions less that major research universities, have sometimes been found not notable, but not all that often. DGG ( talk ) 04:19, 9 March 2016 (UTC) Was my wording unclear, or do you disagree? (perhaps there's some lack of clarity in the word "even" -- by which I mean that at ranks of assistant and associate professor, they in fact are not usually considered notable here.) DGG ( talk ) 04:19, 9 March 2016 (UTC) .

It was just me. I misread it, thinking that you said/meant "I thus sometimes delete..." Folks like me might benefit if you said "they thus sometimes delete..." IMHO it would also be clearer if the "even" were deleted. (But I'm just one guy out of the many who would read that paragraph.) Lou Sander (talk) 05:51, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Lou, I will rephrase accordingly.In generaly, the author is not the best guide to whether what he writes will be unambiguously understood. DGG ( talk ) 03:39, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Some baklava for you!

Thanks. Psychiatrick (talk) 06:22, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

request for assistance

Hi DGG. I don’t mean to overtax your patience and goodwill, but I thought since you have contributed to Wikipedia:College and University article advice, you may have a natural interest in college pages. Here I have suggested a draft to replace a poorly-sourced and heavily tagged article. If you do get around to taking a look, it would be greatly appreciated and if not, I understand your time is limited. Thank you very much. Berenice at John Cabot University — Preceding unsigned comment added by Berenice at John Cabot University (talk • contribs) 16:50, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Berenice at John Cabot University, I will try to get to this tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 05:32, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi DGG. This is just a gentle reminder to take a look at the

draft [11].  I would really appreciate it if you could take a look and I welcome any suggestions you may have.

Thanks so much. Berenice at John Cabot University (talk) 15:14, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

I hear you. I won't forget. DGG ( talk ) 04:46, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Charles Maria Weber
• Draft:Chishimba Kambwili
• Draft:Engineer (character)
• Draft:Hollow Fiber Bioreactors
• Draft:Manifestation Internationale d'Art de Québec
• Draft:Mark Graham

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:01, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Request for comments on my first draft

Hello David. I hope this reaches you. This is Kevin and we spoke at last weekend's Art+Feminism Wikipedia-thon at MOMA. You suggested that I notify you once I have a reasonable draft for the new proposed article on the artist Renee Radell. May I kindly request that you take at look at the draft page for Renee Radell? Please let me know what you think, how I might improve the article and whether is has merits for pubication. Thanks much! OtterNYC (talk) 02:32, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Draft:Renée Radell Jytdog (talk) 03:18, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Hull 2017 Page

Hi DGG,

You have deleted the page I created 'Hull UK City of Culture 2017' and I am now unable to recreate it. Please can let me know why you deleted it and how I can reinstate it? I know some referencing still needed to be added but that was what I was planning on working on today!

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ScandalousB1ue (talk • contribs) 09:33, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

It was an advertisement for the festival. and deleted not just by me, but by another administrator also. I have made it a redirect to the city, and you can add a short section there in the Festivals section--perhaps a single paragraph. Do not duplicate the material already at the appropriate section at the article UK City of Culture. And do not add the programme of the festival or puffery such as "The role of Hull 2017 is to galvanise local stakeholders to instil a shared vision for the city in 2018 and beyond" . DGG ( talk ) 16:02, 15 March 2016 (UT

The whole content of the article couldn't be considered to be an advertisement. The Hull UK City of Culture 2017 event is a year-long event that is taking place in 2017 and should be recognised with it's own article on Wikipedia similarly to Leeds and Reading Festivals etc. The entire programme of the festival has not been confirmed as yet but I was planning on updating the page once it was confirmed and I did include part of the programme strands. How do I go about reinstating the page and I will of course remove any promotional text regarding stakeholders etc as you suggest.

A barnstar for you!

	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
	Hi DGG, thank you for replying on my behalf on my talk page during my absence. I'm very grateful for your help! Rollingcontributor (talk) 09:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

business plans

Hi David. I enjoyed our chat yesterday at the NYC meeting. Please remember to give me a call when you care to discuss business plans and how I might provide some help in that area. Cheers, Kevin — Preceding unsigned comment added by OtterNYC (talk • contribs) 16:06, 17 March 2016 (UTC) Sorry I didn't "sign" my last post. Looking forward to hearing from you on my help with business plan reviews. Thanks! OtterNYC (talk) 22:22, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 03:01, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

A+F Nebraska WikiWarrior Editathon - new page creation issues

Hi David -- wanted to follow up with you about some of the new page creation issues that occurred during the recent Art+Feminism WikiWarrior Editathon at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 00:30, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Here's the info pasted below. Draft are not as much of a concern as the rest of these. Thanks for addressing some of this. -- Erika aka 00:38, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Articles created

Alphabetical by first letter

1. Bernice Slote -- ShreyaChoozi (talk) -- Good job, Orphan, NO references notable - DGG
2. Edith Lewis -- Ejrau21 (talk) -- GREAT JOB! notable - DDD
3. Eliza Pickrell Routt -- Haberdasherer (talk) -- too short notability difficult to determine - DGG
4. Karen S Kavanaugh Miller -- Raethomas (talk) -- Proposed deletion, not patrolled
5. Khenmo drolma -- Agraff5 (talk) -- notability issues, no links, orphan notability impossible to determine--DGG
6. LuAnn Wandsnider -- TChau7 (talk) -- Proposed deletion, not patrolled notable, but inadequate article- DGG
7. Lucile F. Aly -- Marisakaytj (talk) -- person is notable. too short, no links, orphan In my opinion prob. notable under WP:PROF but the current article does not show it Still uncited. DGG ( talk ) 23:06, 16 April 2016 (UTC) DGG
8. Maude Radford Warren -- Erin Cheatham (talk) -- notability issues notable, but needs expansion to show it--DGG
9. Nebraska Innocence Project --Dmartinez17 (talk) -- Great start! -- moved from Sandbox Still at AfD-- DGG
10. Tricia Raikes -- Ashlynlee13 (talk) -- notability issues, Conflict of Interest (they are sponsor?) kept at AfD, but I will renominate -- DGG
11. Women's Voices Now -- Kolokotch (talk) -- not even a stub (2 sentences)
12. Ying Lu -- HannaRogoz (talk) -- notability issues decent citation counts, tho mainly for work done as a PHD student--notability uncertain - DGG

DRAFT

1. Draft:Ada College -- Emttycup (talk) -- too short, not patrolled, not enough to review and WP:TOOSOON- DGG
2. Draft:Anita Sarma -- Bdwiles (talk) -- needs work to turn into a stub ) and WP:TOOSOON- DGG
3. Draft:Female Health Foundation -- Rachelsamuelson (talk) -- too short, two paragraphs, not patrolled, not enough to review & Promotional - DGG
4. Draft:Virginia Faulkner -- Cgwillard (talk) -- Submission declined, possible copyvio / copying, needs work (prob. notable, deserves further work - DGG)

I hope to get to each of these one by one over the coming week. DGG ( talk ) 00:13, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Chemicals

Well this closed keep saying that it is "chemically notable." You never dealt with what I said - that the only reason people care about that chemical is its potential use as a drug. Never responded to that. And I find that to be just disrespectful. And with this "keep" based on your argument - which seemed to me to almost willfully ignore that key thing (the use of the chemical as a potential drug) - you have just shut down an effort I was about to undertake to clean up a particularly filthy part of Wikipedia - a whole slew of articles about putative "nootropic" compounds that people write shitty Wikipedia articles about as part of their online community - they make these chemicals or buy them from reagent companies and actually take them. I will walk away from that effort now. I just wrote this out of protest; I am not really looking for a response to let you know I am upset, but you can of course reply if you like. Perhaps there was some larger issue at stake for you as well. But still, your not responding to the core of my argument was frustrating for me. Jytdog (talk) 16:58, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

There are, as you say, quite a number of such articles, and most of them need editing. I would gladly work with you in improving this content if we could agree on the principles that apply. 1) All chemical compounds that have been not just reported once but discussed further are notable, and the discussions need not necessarily be in scientific articles. 2) MEDRS is irrelevant to the chemical portion of articles on actual or potential therapies. 3)MEDRS refers to claims that something is a therapy, not that something might be a possible therapy. Decent sources are still needed, but secondary reviews in the sense of MEDRS are not required. 4)What I would suggest does need cutting is the detail in many articles on the phase I trials, and possibly some of detail on the phase II trials 5) I see no reason to avoid covering substances in illicit use. This is an important application of NOT CENSORED (I would in fact think just the opposite, that we have an obligation to do so.) The "larger issue at stake" for me is indeed NOT CENSORED, and I consider it as a basic policy that over-rides any guideline, and that we only even consider conflicts when they are to other equally basic policies such as BLP or NOT INDISCRIMINATE (and, to some extent, the less basic parts of WP:NOT, such as NOT TABLOID and NOT NEWS) DGG ( talk ) 00:10, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Here is where I feel like you didn't read what I wrote. I didn't argue with you on the chemistry thing at all - not even at the AfD. I agree that primary sources are OK for chemistry - that is a "predictable art" as they say in patent law. The place where you and I really part ways, is the "possible use"/"potential therapies" aspect, which comes down to biology. "Possible" is how garbage happens in Wikipedia. "Possible" is what altmed shills, pharma drug rep shills, people trying to boost the stock of biotech companies, and nootropic knuckleheads, blah blah use to try to wedge garbage into Wikipedia. "Possible" is how almost every search result here happens. Garbage. It is not a matter of NOT CENSORED it is a matter of "accepted knowledge". In the biological sciences, a research paper is absolutely not accepted knowledge. The primary scientific literature in all sciences but especially in biology is where scientists talk to each other as they grope toward understanding. That is why reviews are particularly important for biological content in WP. They give us the best indication of what is "accepted knowledge" at any given time. On top of that, there are literally hundreds of research papers discussing, say, "potential" diagnostics for Alzheimers. Hundreds. How in the world do we decide which of those to discuss in Wikipedia? Should we rely on which university PR office does the best job shilling theirs? Ugh.

Related to that are issues of WEIGHT. By relying on secondary sources to guide us in discussions about weight (which is the letter and spirt of NPOV), we don't talk about every phase I trial of every drug or every potential therapeutic. The literature guides us, not personal preferences or external interests. It is essential for helping us keep the tidal wave of promotional garbage out of WP about health. And there is so, so much.

If you would be willing, I would be happy to talk - to listen actually - to try to hear the deeper logic under what you are saying. Because right now I don't get it at all, and what you are saying has terrible consequences for many, many articles, in my view. And I hope you would be willing to listen to me. Jytdog (talk) 02:22, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

From my userpage, written many years ago:

I have "an extremely strong opinion that the uninhibited free play of ideas is essential to a free society and to humanity in general. (I basically follow J.S. Mill in this.) ... I take pride in being what some call a First Amendment Absolutist, and I mean it in the literal sense. We are responsible for presenting information accurately and honestly, not for what people will do with it. The way to prevent them from interpreting it wrong, is to present it better, not to conceal it. If anyone thinks I have deviated from that position, I'd like to be told, so I can correct myself."

I am consequently very dubious about using MEDRS and related guidelines, such as FRINGE. They are needed because of the continuing assault against honest judgment by superstition and commercialism, but they should be used narrowly to clarify what is the accepted status of what is presented as knowledge. We must not use them to avoid covering a subject in all its aspects. The fundamental assumption behind the creation of a crowd-sourced encyclopedia is that all people are able to judge, if they are given information. They are even able to judge what is reliable information, if the background and the principles of judging are explained properly. It is then their individual responsibility to decide; it is not ours. Those of us who understand science do not have the right to decide which information to give: if we both know science and know how to present it, we will be understood correctly. That is the true meaning of WP:EXPERT. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

all i can say to that, is you are in great company with every tinfoil-hat wearing nut job who comes to Wikipedia. I can't believe you of all people play the "censorship" card. My god. Here is where, in my view, your perspective on this is not just a little, but profoundly unwikipedian. We are not a community of experts. We are a community of nobodies. It is not for you or me to judge that primary source over this one. We rely on the published literature to adjudicate as much as we can. That is what happens in reviews; which are essential for adjudicating the biomedical literature. The Wikipedia world you depict is a Mad Max one where anonymous editors duel based on their putative expertise. I don't want to edit in that Wikipedia, and I don't. Jytdog (talk) 05:18, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I also said on my user page, that among my biases was a

"distaste for quack anything: medicine, science, psychology, social science ... I often vote to keep articles on these subjects, because the advocates of orthodoxy here sometimes seem to be even less reasonable than the quacks--and because I think the best way to expose quacks is to let them state their views plainly." DGG ( talk ) 05:32, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I am not saying you believe in quackery. I am saying that you are standing with the quacks. I have neither the time nor desire to debate with woo-pushers in Wikipedia. Applying high sourcing standards - what OR, NPOV, and VERIFY call us to do when we edit at our best - not only drives high quality content but provides a way to very quickly shunt aside woo-pushers' efforts to make Wikipedia into a Madmax world (both in content and in endless talk page battles) - and likewise helps us keep pharma reps from pumping up content about their drugs. Everybody wins when MEDRS is applied consistently to content about health, including - and especially including - "possible" applications of X. Everybody loses when we lower sourcing quality (including the content that is not generated when having endless debates with people trying push content based on low-quality sources). It is not about censorship at all. That is orthogonal to the heart of the issue. Jytdog (talk) 05:43, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

so, so many edits like this, every day here. Reverting that is not censorship. It just isn't. ack. Jytdog (talk) 06:24, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

What caused me to write that essay was my experience in working on the article on Intelligent Design. The people defending the ID side of things were defending it very weakly,not being aware of the sophistication of some of the modern proponents. I attempted to present these , in the classic model of WP:Writing for the enemy; arguments which are not at all that easy to refute with the usual high school-level of biology. I was accused of being a wolf in sheep's clothing, hypocritically pretending to be an proponent of science. Being new here, I decided it was hopeless and left the topic, and have not followed the argument since.

There are nonetheless several things I think we agree on: the necessity that you have just mentioned of writing good positive content, the overemphasis of early clinical trials (personally, I would attack first the problem of the notability of drug development firms that have never brought a product to stage III). I have learned in WP that people with quite different perspectives can nonetheless accomplish a good deal by simply working where their interests intersect, without necessarily ever coming to terms with the differences. DGG ( talk ) 08:07, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I am completely with you on the ID thing. I made the effort to try to edit neutrally on the acupuncture article, which is a battleground between woo-pushers and woo-fighters and the resulting article is crappy. Acupuncture and some other alt med methods have actually become mainstream to help manage (help manage) otherwise unmanageable conditions, like cancer pain. Some of that is just ugly pandering by the medical establishment to make money, but some of it is evidence based; there is now decent evidence discussed in reviews and textbooks that some alt med methods help where standard medicine doesn't (mostly pain or nausea, where one would expect a placebo effect to play a big role....) but it is what it is. So no argument with that effort.

Anyway, I know that you have adjusted your thoughts about NOTABILITY in light of the promotional pressure that WP is under; in my view raising source quality accomplishes the same goal in articles that already exist, and should also be taken into account in deletion debates. That was why I was especially curious to see how you would respond on the AfD on this drug candidate. Anyway, I hear you desiring to move this to concrete discussion about actual content... I will suggest some things later today. Thanks for putting up with me. Jytdog (talk) 21:11, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

business plans follow up

Hello David. You must be terribly busy. Kindly recall our conversation about business plans last week at the NYC Chapter meeting. I am eager to be helpful on this as you see fit. I would also like to follow through with you on the Renee Radell draft if that is still the best approach. Please let me know if you are receiving my messages. All the best, Kevin OtterNYC (talk) 17:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC) Nice to hear from you David. I was hoping you would reach out. You may have noticed that I had some suggestions from Jytdog about my draft (draft:Renee Radell) and he made a talk page for it. He thinks it has notability so if there is anything I can do to further the process, please advise. I could probably add some online links to some of the sources, since I have seen online archives at a few of the major publications. And, as you may remember, I have the hard copies of the original art reviews. Also, would like to connect on the business plan concepts we discussed a couple of weeks ago. You have my number and happy to provide it again if you send me an e-mail at ktrgeneral@gmail.com. Looking forward to our conversation. I will be working at home all weekend so feel free to call. Cheers, Kevin OtterNYC (talk) 03:32, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Need some advise about finding a source

Medical articles are not my strength and I usually deal in history, pop culture, computer science and general sciences and whatever I come across. I do not sign in as I do not wish to ever see my watchlist again. It has cost me thousands of hours of life and lost me income. I am having trouble finding a review article (they are preferred but not required) that Jyt is asking for but can find plenty of other non-reactionary doctors and researchers opinions on the subject along with text books that have included the primary research results. Do I use a Request for Comment to draw in other eyes for a deeper source search or some other method? So the article is Talk:Diphenhydramine and you can see the edit history for current discussion. Thankyou for your advise. 97.85.173.38 (talk) 00:45, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

If you want to add strong content about anything in WP, but especially about health, you need a strong source. You want WP to say that this drug causes dementia, so you need a very strong source. I would have been happy to help you but you chose to argue with me. I am glad you are asking someone for help. That is a good thing. Jytdog (talk) 00:54, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I didn't say cause, and the source doesn't say that either I said "greatly increase the risk of developing". That wording is too strong and should be modified to "associated with a higher risk of dementia". And you started combativeness with weasel words and implications that I have no experience. Jytdog, this seems a bit stalkerish to come here to this page and insert yourself into this discussion. I didn't request your help here. 97.85.173.38 (talk) 01:03, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

jytdog did not come here in the expectation I'd endorse his position--there's some rather frank back-and-forth between the two of us a little above.

I'm quite a skeptic regarding the literature. I know it's been estimated most individual medical research papers are wrong. What I don't think MEDRS adequately recognizes that so are most critical reviews and consensus statements--this is very easy to prove: look at the last 30 or 40 yrs of consensus statements on diet, or blood pressure, or lipids, or anti-depresives. There is rarely reason to expect the current consensus will be better than prior ones. And medical textbooks have a unique style of writing: they typically include in their references everything , not just the material the authors think actually correct. I therefore think that MEDRS should be used in a more restricted manner, and that information based on multiple primary sources do have to be considered. I see no reason why medicine should be different from other fields, where a fair statement might be that no sources are wholly reliable, and , if used appropriately, no sources utterly useless. Mechanical rules for inclusion do not do justice with the very wide spectrum of reliability in almost any subject. What the spirit of MEDRS should be used for , is to a/eliminate the totally idiosyncratic reports, b/distinguish downright quackery c/ lead to proper use of qualifiers in wording. (That said, I think that wording alone cannot clarify adequately; I don't even pay attention to judgements not accompanied by actual numbers, and no numbers purporting to show probability without sample sizes and with an explicit basis for how the sample was taken. What is needed is numerical literacy--which fortunately can be found even among those who do not actually have training in formal mathematics. And wording alone is helpless against the tendency of people to interpret what read according to what they want to believe. what they want

Responses to pharmaceuticals, and in particular psychoactive pharmaceuticals have a tremendous variation. I'm not a physician, but in my experience good physicians in practice recognize this. Everyone has anecdotal reports, so there's no point adding my own to WP.

As for the actual issue, I think a compromise wording can be found. But that's what I usually say. DGG ( talk ) 01:46, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

AfD

...

As for my actual opinion of the article, and my view that the efforts for exclusion of articles about nonstandard medicine of even the most absurd variety is an example of bias and prejudice and failure of NPOV. see the AfD. The best way of showing the true nature of this particular topic is to let its adherents speak for themselves. I didn't believe how ridiculous it was from the heavily censored WP article, under I read their own descriptions. Censorship is counterproductive, here and everywhere. QG, you wish people to read only what will do them good. This is paternalism and directly opposed to the spirit of NPOV and free inquiry. If you wish to express your biases ( a bias which in this case I happen to share quite firmly), it should not be on WP. To make clear my position on the subject, I and most other science editors left Citizendium in large part because those in charge they were insisting that Chiropractic was a valid branch of medicine. Fortunately, at WP nobody is in charge, and I will help defeat all attempts to use it even for the most wholesome promotionalism and propaganda. DGG ( talk ) 20:56, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES compromise

Hi,

I've seen in a few places you've mentioned WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES (or the idea behind its practical use) as "the compromise". It sounds like there's some backstory there that I don't have.

To me, just seeing that description, it seems like the opposite of a compromise. In other words, who is it a compromise between? If it's between those who want to apply WP:N to school articles and those who do not -- or between those who believe sources always exist for schools and those who do not -- then it seems to fall squarely on one side. A huge number of AfD debates could go either way depending on participation and tenacity, but we don't say "this side is always right from now on" without there actually being consensus for a guideline to that effect doesn't sit right. Am I missing something? Maybe what I'm missing is just all the drama that led to the rule in the first place -- that if I went through that I, too, would breathe a sigh of relief even if a sort of IAR guideline-not-guideline was required? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:49, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

User_talk:Rhododendrites, it is a compromise between those who wanted all schools to be notable, primary schools included, and those who wanted to limit even secondary schools by whether or not there were practically findable references to meet the GNG guideline. Back in the days before the compromise when I was new here (2006-2008) , I and a few others routinely defended every elementary school article, on the basis that it was significant to the community, and that if one had access to the local sources, one could always find references significantly discussing the planning and construction and zoning of the school. Additionally, quite a few of even the primary schools had two or more notable alumni and these would usually lead to coverage also. the arguments over whether the references were substantial were dependent mainly on how hard people argued, and there were at that time some really radical broad inclusionists way beyond anything contemplated nowadays, who were willing to argue very hard indeed. There were, correspondingly, some very radical deletionists (or more exactly, narrow-inclusion proponents), who at times were defining substantial to mean that the subject had to be the main point of the reference, and unless two entire substantial magazine articles or books were written about a subject, we shouldn't cover it. The effort needed for arguing about a single school could mean hours of work for half a dozen people. AfD decisions those days were really erratic.

At that time, I felt WP should be very comprehensive with respect to local notability, partly because of the readers, partly because it was a good place for beginning writers. I changed my mind about this over the last few years, because too many local institution, both non-=profit and business, were being used for promotion, and I came to realize as I became more involved with paid editing problems, that this factor was the most important. (Schools are very easy to remove promotion from, without the need for actual rewriting, and the amount of vandalism there used to be ton those articles is much less with the edit filter.)

You see, Notability is deliberately not a policy, because we can really set the dividing line anywhere we please. We make the encyclopedia , we make the rules, we can include in it what ever there is consensus for. This is a new kind of encyclopedia , and we're not limited by what used to be the limits of paper,or the convention that an encyclopedia was mainly an academic reference. It doesn't much matter if we have articles on relatively trivial subjects, as long as we can keep out the really dangerous content, which is promotionalism and POV writing.

I do feel that using the GNG for a dividing line is absurd--it was a really stupid guideline in the first place, because it made inclusion depend upon the practical availability of certain particular kinds of references to the sort of writers we have. We are limited by Verifiability, and that gives an unavoidable bias in some areas, but we shouldn't add to it. I have always thought any rational meaning of notability is a function of the subject, not of the references.

I also feel that consistency matters: people should be able to predict what they are likely to find in the encyclopedia, both what type of subject, and what type of coverage. This is very difficult to achieve with our method of decision making, but fortunately the range of variation is smaller than it used to be. One of the reasons it matters is to give a impression that the encyclopedia is prepared by serious people who know what they're doing. There are other practical compromises of this sort. One is PROF, which as applied means we cover all full professors (Though rank is not part of the formal guideline, the decisions in practice follow the full vs. associate line very closely.) I think this is the wrong cut-off, and it should include all tenured faculty at universities, including the Associate professors. I could give along argument why, and in my early years here I gave a great many. I usually lost, however, and I decided it was more practical to make sure we did cover the notable full professors at least. And in practice we reached agreement on that, and consequently AfDs on researchers are quite predictable--and quite rare. In other fields too: I would include many more academic journals than we do, but again, I thought better to accept a median position where we predictably kept the ones in major indexes.

It is better to have a clean compromise rule than to argue. This goes at least for everything that is not a fundamental moral principle. The only policy here I consider truly of that nature is NOT CENSORED. DGG ( talk ) 05:15, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

In short, Rhododendrites, notability for schools was in fact an idea originally seeded by our founder. Over the years, and even longer than the 7 years I've been a coordinator of the WP:WPSCH, this principle has been loosely applied as documented at OUTCOMES. There have been a geat many debates on the subject and even near-vandalism scale attempts to batch delete school articles through AfD. Neverteless, while not one single one of the debates reached a consensus one way or another, at AfD High Schools continue to be retained and non notable Primary Schools are redirected to their school district article or locality. In the meantime, as this is now supported by literally thousands of such closures, we can assume a tacit consensus for the current practice. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:36, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to go into detail. I indeed misread what the "compromise" is/was between. This is a more well reasoned way of framing the position than I've seen lately, when arguments have been dominated by demands that tradition take precedence over notability guidelines without going much further than that. I see granting ~"inherent notability" to a subject as a huge deal -- and if there is consensus for it to be so, then it's crucial it exist in the form of a policy or guideline rather than as informal understanding or tradition (I'm sure we could get into a number of discussions about the merits and problems with rules vs. traditions in the context of Wikipedia...).

While some who were part of the conversations leading to the compromise (and others) take it for granted, many others (myself included) take for granted that notability applies to every article unless modified, qualified, or exempted through some other policy or guideline -- because that's how it works for almost everything else (I can't think of an exemption as broad as secondary schools that is likewise uncodified somewhere). I agree that it's important for notability to remain a guideline. There's too much variability, too much subjectivity, too many other guidelines that modify it, and too great a need for judgment in exceptional cases. But providing a broad, [practically] beyond discussion exemption is just the sort of thing guidelines like the subject-specific criteria are there for.

Having read a great number of arguments on the subject now, I think I'm sufficiently persuaded to fall on the "support" side of adding it to a guideline should it be proposed, but until that happens I still see it as highly problematic to point to a descriptive essay to shut down discussion, asking for it to be treated as a prescriptive guideline. That's why I appreciate your rationale here, because it's not simply presented as WP:OUTCOMES -- a collection of noted trends that perpetuate themselves by their being wielded as an absolute rule.

In other words, your points are well taken. The problem is WP:OUTCOMES. I can't imagine those who support the notability of schools find it an ideal representation of consensus on the subject, either. I feel like I get the compromise, but if good will among the community was part of the reason for it, I think that the further we get from the date of that agreement, the more conflict and confusion the present arrangement will generate. Based on the above, I'd suggest you be one of those involved in drafting whatever RfC would address the problem? (Adding high schools to the gazetteer function of Wikipedia or WP:ORG seems the most straightforward rather than a whole new guideline).

Anyway, this is a longer followup message than I intended and I feel like I'm repeating myself a bit so I'll end there. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:50, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

The declining of these G13s

Hi DGG. I wanted to know why you removed the deletion nomination of Draft:De Paul School Brahmapur, Draft:GMERS Medical College and Draft:Government Engineering College Bharatpur. Please expand on what you believe what "notability" is. If there are no reliable sources available for the schools, obviously they aren't notable. Writing "it's the top school in ____" doesn't prove notability, either. I could go ahead and edit something like Steve Jobs and write "He was a good at fishing" but if it doesn't have a reference proving it's real, it doesn't matter whether he was the best at fishing or the absolute worst. I agree with one the essay on schools, where it says:

“ Individual schools are not inherently encyclopedic and there is nothing to distinguish insignificant schools like this one from thousands of nearly identical schools around the world. WP:NOT states "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia." ”

I'd like to know what you follow for the notability guidelines on schools. I don't mean to be rude, and you have been here longer than me, but don't remove a CSD G13 from an article which obviously doesn't have any future, unless you, yourself, edit it and fix it. Draft:De Paul School Brahmapur was last edited on 14 April 2013‎, just under 3 years ago. Draft:GMERS Medical College was last edited on 8 August 2015‎ or 29 May 2013‎, depending on what you define an edit being; either way it's been at least 11 months since the last edit. Draft:Government Engineering College Bharatpur was last edited on 2 January 2015‎, a year and a few months ago.

Thanks for reading all this, I hope I didn't come across harsh at all, I'd just like to know your reasoning. I'll be waiting for a response, I'm watching your talk page so no need to ping me (not stopping you, though). Anarchyte (work | talk) 10:43, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

• there are several questions here. For the reason why I think all high schools, and most certainly all colleges should be treated as notable ( see my response to Rhododendrites, a little above. Basically, it's to avoid arguing each of them. Similarly I would treat essentially all elementary schools as non-notable-- again, to avoid arguing each one of them.

Second, under G13, the draft is deleted only if nobody is working on it, but we normally define that as nobody being willing to work on it. I am willing to work on school articles, so I removed the G13. And in fact I added some material to all three of them today, though not much, and removed the puffery, as I always do from any article I work on. I do have a rather long list of drafts to work on, but I eventually get to them, or someone else does. But even at MfD, we normally do not drafts if they have any plausible possibility of making an article, unless they are harmful in some such way as being significantly promotional, or if multiple attempts to make an article have failed.

Since in the last five years very few high school or college articles has every been deleted on grounds of notability, I would even be justified in moving them to article space, since the criterion is merely that the article is likely to pass AfD. But I did not do that, because I like most of us at AfC do not move such weak drafts to article space. DGG ( talk ) 00:30, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Some dim sum for you!

Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. North America1000 08:27, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

An Invitation

As one of the most respected editors I know I hope you can take some time to join an important discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention about possibly finding a way to salvage Single-purpose editors and transforming them into positive WP collaborators in the general mainspace. I'm sure you run in to many of them as you wander around WP. I'm also sure that every now and then one of the SPA editors rises above the crowd and seems worthy of more of your time and effort. Your personal insight and experience would be appreciated. WP:WER has a declared mission to retain editors but we have become a relative ghost town (and I may be one of the few ghosts left in town) and User:Robert's idea may be just the boost the Project needs to revitalize. It's an opportunity for the Project to actually do something beyond handing out awards. I think Dennis Brown would like it. Please comment. Buster Seven Talk 14:28, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

commented there;will keep an eye on the discussion DGG ( talk ) 22:25, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

European Graduate School

Hi DGG. I noticed you have been active in the AfD lately. I've proposed a new section to replace the former "accreditation" section on the Talk page, here. I think the proposal threads the needle of the various perspectives, including yours. Would you please have a look and comment there? thx. Jytdog (talk) 07:58, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

A suite of dubious for-profit college articles

Hi David. If you have time, could you take a look at my comments at Talk:London College of Contemporary Arts#Serious notability issues? It's a for-profit unaccredited college and one of a whole suite of problematic promotional articles on institutions in the LSBF Group, of which it is a part. They all need eyes. And possibly redirects or AfDs? London College of Contemporary Arts was already deleted at this AfD in 2013 and recreated a few months later. I have no idea what the original one looked like. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 19:34, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

the most practical course is to merge to an article on the overall firm. I hope someone other than myself will do it. DGG ( talk ) 03:06, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

London School of Business and Finance and all its pomps and works

Hi David. Just a heads-up that I have begun clean up of this article following the London College of Contemporary Arts discussion. The details are at Talk:London School of Business and Finance. As I imagine my revisions will not escape the notice of the owner's brand managers, you might want to put it on watch. In the end, I also created a separate article on the owner, Global University Systems, which you might also want to put on watch. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 09:51, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

10:04:41, 16 May 2016 review of submission by Gillkay

• Gillkay (talk · contribs)
  • Draft:The Institute For Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Thanks DGG for reveiwing my draft. I have done a bit of wikipedia editing in the past, but this is my first article, which hopefully excuses my wordy style. I have edited the draft according to your suggestions. If I resubmit will it go to you? My first version was edited by CookieMonster755 and I thought when I submitted my second draft it would go back to him unless I requested otherwise (which I didn't). I don't really mind either way, but it would make sense that if I make changes according to a reveiwer's advice, that reveiwer would be the one to see if I had solved the problems.Gillkay (talk) 10:04, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Gillkay, WP has very little organization, Whoever wants to & has the necessary experience can review a draft; it usually goes at random--most people simply take the oldest one in the queue, some, like myself, look for specific types of articles (I specialize in academic people and organizations, and certain types of businesses & certain types of problem articles) I also, as in this case, look at any submission another reviewer asks me to check. This does indeed mean that you may get conflicting directions in successive reviews, but it increases the odds that at least one of the reviews will be correct. The purpose of reviewing is only to screen out or get improved the articles that are unlikely to be accepted by the community after they are brought to article status; accepting an article when reviewing means nothing more than that the reviewer is of the opinion that the article is quite likely to be kept if brought to an WP:AFD discussion; unfortunately once more, the results of AfD discussions are not necessarily consistent or even always reasonable. Just like anyone can write articles, anyone can comment in a discussion. But the principle of WP is that it is not written (or controlled) by experts. The error rate in reviewing is very high--I would estimate that at least 10% of both the acceptances and rejections are simply wrong; in addition, at least 20% of the reviews seem to concentrate on the wrong issues. Some of the most experienced reviewers, including myself, try to check on ones other people have reviewed, especially when we think a particular reviewer is not doing it right, and then we try to explain to the reviewer. If someone persists in doing things seriously wrong, they can be barred from reviewing. At present, most of the really problematic reviewers have been dealt with. Most of the wrongly accepted articles do get removed at AfD; the wrongly rejected ones where the disappointed authors go away and are lost to us are the real problems. There is still some cleanup needed, but I will deal with it later today or tomorrow. You don't actually need to resubmit it DGG ( talk ) 16:00, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) DGG, Thank you for the wonderful explanation! CookieMonster755 ^{📞 ✉ ✓} 17:45, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining DGG. Learning gradually how this all works. Do I understand right that you can see my changes and will be telling me in a day or so about other changes I need to make?Gillkay (talk) 08:42, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

could you please help me with the African Library Project page?

Hi, a while ago you helped with making the African Library Project page more neutral. I made some changes. Then someone else suggested some specific changes, and I requested those edits, but no one has made them. I know you are a volunteer, and I appreciate that, but I am feeling a bit stuck, since it has been a long time. And just as a reminder, I am on the board so can't make the edits myself. Thanks very much. DeborahWC (talk) 20:16, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

{U:DeborahWC}}, I'll try to get there. DGG ( talk ) 05:11, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Thank you for your help and guidance with the new article Nade Haley and for all you do here. Your time and experience is appreciated. Netherzone (talk) 14:51, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

North American Invasive Species Network

Hello DGG -

I noticed that the Bot known as HasteurBot has slated North American Invasive Species Network, in the Articles for Creation queue, for G-13 deletion. Personally, I think this article is worth saving and intend to move it out into the mainspace so it doesn't get deleted.

I am thinking this is somehow a notable organization after perusing their website. The work they are doing is profound.

FYI, I discovered this by accident because I saw a G-13 section on your talk page via my watchlist, and was curious as to what G13 is.

Anyway, from prior experience I know that you can be helpful and flexible when it comes to notability if the subject seems to warrant meriting inclusion. So, if you wish to help in any way it would be much appreciated. Also, if this doesn't work, and the page has to be deleted - well, at least I tried.--- Steve Quinn (talk) 03:06, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Third opinion request

Greetings DGG: I'm writing to request a third opinion about commentary at this AfD discussion. I'm not asking you to !vote in the discussion, but I'd be interested in receiving your viewpoints inre the commentary there about source searching. Thanks again for all of your contributions to Wikipedia, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:24, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

The discussion has now closed, but the question referred to the use of deletion rationals that do not include a literature search, where you and Voceditenore were arguing, essentially ( that it was necessary to follow WP:BEFORE, rather that use rationales like obviously not notable. Of course I basically agree--I've been suggesting for 8 years now that WP:BEFORE be made policy in discussing notability. But there are many caveats. Key ones include:

1. This applies to the overall process of nominating an article, not each individual argument. In a typical discussion some people will concentrate on the number or quality of sources, others on additional factors.
2. There are other reasons for deletion besides notability -- promotionalism, blp, NOT DIRECTORY, NOT TABLOID, not being a distinct topic from other articles, inherent POV of the topic, etc... In each of these there's the possibility that a literature search may enable us to correct the article, but sometimes the other factors are so strong as to make it unlikely. This is often true for some types of arguments: Borderline notability combined with clear promotionalism is good reason for deletion. Not meeting the special notability standards are good reasons for deletions. Even those can be overcome by really good discoverable sources, but for these types of articles there's no presumption that sources will exist if.
3. Some subjects are inherently unlikely to have accessible sources. As a matter of form I could do a literature search for saints in Eastern religions, but I know from experience that it is extraordinarily unlikely that there will be any that I am capable of finding. There are similarly unlikely to be sources for a scientist who is still a graduate student, or who has published very little. Exceptions exist, but only rarely. DGG ( talk ) 00:13, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed reply, which is appreciated. Yes, a variety of various factors can come into play at AfD. I was just concerned because it appears that you are perhaps mentoring a user in some manner who participated in that discussion, in which they ping you to various AfD discussions. I've politely pointed out WP:NEXIST to the user before, but they seem to just ignore it. As such, I figured it would be prudent to bring the matter to your attention. Thanks again for your input here, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:38, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

NY entomology journals

Hi, could you perhaps have a look at Talk:Entomologica Americana (New York Entomological Society)? Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 13:26, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

AfD concerns

Hi! I'm reaching out to you because I know you work well with many people involved with AfD. I am concerned about the lack of WP:BEFORE going on at these AfD discussions ([12], [13], [14]) and others. The thread that seems to tie these together is that they are genre writers or foreign actors/writers. Is there anyway you can intervene and help the nom understand WP:BEFORE? I don't mind improving articles brought to AfD, but there's a lot of pressure involved when it's at AfD instead of just being tagged. Anyway, thank you in advance! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 01:19, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

As I just said to the editor "Please in nominating authors and professors for deletion, remember to consider first if they may meet WP:AUTHOR and WP:PROF. It's very easy to use WorldCat to check for the importance of published books. " It is not really enough in these cases to do a cursory search of relevant databases. BEFORE is not a magic formula, but has to be used with clear understanding of where information is likely to be found. And then, if one finds some indication of importance, that should be followed up before nominating.

That said, I too sometimes make guesses, tho I would have to admit that it's an unfortunate shortcut, and I try to avoid the temptation to make them in unfamiliar fields. In the instances here, there does seem to have been a string of wrong guesses. DGG ( talk ) 04:20, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Megalibrarygirl and DGG, i sometimes get annoyed at the number of afds that end up as 'keep' as the subject is notable, especially as WP:AFD encourages nominators to carry out a number of checks before nominating. but as i was informed here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Willcox, WP:BURDEN states "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and is satisfied by providing a citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution", or in these cases, the article creator should have included approriate references, although we also have WP:CONTN ie. "Article content does not determine notability", it can all be very confusing. kitten stalker - meowr! Coolabahapple (talk) 08:27, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree it can be confusing, Coolabahapple. DGG is right that not all searches are equal. Sometimes I don't find evidence of notability until I hit the right database. And it can be a guessing game where you have to balance a lot of factors. Perhaps itvwouk d help to continue to hold dialogue. I think it's very important for Wikipedia editors to be able to talk to one another. Sometimes AfD becomes a battleground. But we don't have to agree to start tslking and understanding each other. I appreciate your time here and I'll check my email shortly. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:04, 31 May 2016 (UTC)\

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Thank you for your help and guidance with the new article CareOnGo and for all you do here. Your time and experience is appreciated. Gamernight (talk) 09:29, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

World War I songs

Thank you for interacting with the new editors that are working on the World War I songs, World War I era composers and lyricists, and related topics. This is one of the weaker topic areas for Wikipedia and your assistance in helping out is appreciated. If you'd like to see the list we are working from, please check out: Wikipedia:GLAM/Pritzker#Songs TeriEmbrey (talk) 19:37, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Template:TerryEmbrey, I'm glad to see it's a fairly selective list, not, as I feared, a list of every song that was published. Based on my general experience with a variety of topics, the safest way to cover a field like this is not to go down a list alphabetically or at random, but start with the ones most likely to be notable. In general, I'd advise you to first do articles on the people before the songs--it's relatively easy to write and document a biography, especially if you can find an obit. And I'd really suggest using Draft space until you get enough references to be impressive. DGG ( talk ) 02:24, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)@TeriEmbrey: Pinging correct spelling. PamD 04:26, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

comment

Thank you for replying, thank you for being an ArbCom member. I doubt I'll ever summon the courage, yes courage, to serve as an admin, much less an Arb, so there's that. A hero of mine just died, and life is short. Bless you, and yours, always. Jusdafax 05:11, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

About Sustained Dialogue Institute

DGG, I will be declining your WP:A7 on that article as soon as soon as I click on savepage. Surely it would least amount to a WP:REDIRECT? Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 11:54, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure out what to do with the pair of articles, Sustained Dialogue Institute and Sustained Dialogue Campus Network. Together they represent a promotional campaign. If we had one, and could write it non promotionaly .it might make sense to have it on the Institute, but the one on the Network is the much more substantial article. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Notable and encyclopedic ?

Hi DGG.

I refer to your comment [15].

While I did think on balance Gregory Levey was worth keeping, just, the point about an argument for deleting the other articles was exactly the point I was making. I suspect we are in furious agreement ?

Aoziwe (talk) 13:50, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Aoziwe, we are probably in agreement generally; No matter where we draw the line, there will be disputes about what side of the border something falls, and there are always some articles at afD which could reasonably go either way. Even werewe to make fixed rules, such as $ of revenue, there will still be cases where it would be reasonable to make an exception.

But we may not be in agreement about the relative importance of the different areas. The rule I go by. is that where there are good WPedians working on very detailed articles in a field I have no interest in, I see no reason to disturb them; what I ask is that they let others write detailed articles in fields that concern them,--in, particular, I of course mean fields that interest me. This especially holds with fields where the decisions are made in a rational and reproducible fashion. So for professional athletes, including jockeys , there are fairly good clear and widely accepted criteria; for asteroids also there are good criteria that call for listifying 99% of them; for music groups there's a very widely accepted simple standard of placement on accepted lists that I can accept as rational , even though I'd have placed the necessary level as higher. The problems come when we move from objective criteria like "fully professional team" to the GNG, where most sources can be considered as either substantial & reliable or as more notices and promotional depending on whether or not one wants to delete the article DGG ( talk ) 02:25, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Food for my thoughts. Aoziwe (talk) 13:33, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Not notable: Malls

I came across Brunswick Square (East Brunswick, New Jersey) during pages patrol. Looking for sources, there are trivial local news stories about a fire, needing an artist, and so on [16]. There is nothing notable there.

The article references do not appear to be related to the article. The first ref is broken anyway, but is supposed to be connected to "The International Council of Shopping Centers: New Brunswick". And one ref is supposed to be the list of stores at the mall, but it goes here: [17] (its a mix of page 404 and a link to a store). That ref would be really trivial anyway if it worked.

However, my biggest concern is the large template at the bottom of the page entitled: "Shopping malls in the New York metropolitan area". I believe the template is entitled: "New York City Malls", and yes here it is [18]. I count 89 malls - I might be off by a couple, but there it is. What can be done about this? The thing is, this shows that a number of people have no idea what Wikipedia is supposed to be. Steve Quinn (talk) 05:49, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

The NY Metropolitan Area has 24 million people. I think the number of malls reasonable. Certainly for the ones in NYC proper, all those listed are clearly notable, except perhaps one, that I just nominated for deletion. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bricktown Center at Charleston If anything, the listing is conservative; O can think of at least one or two more. In the suburbs, I only know a few of the possible regions, so there are probably a few borderline one. As for this particular one, if you think it not notable, list it for afd.

Afds on malls have been toatally inconsistent. Some ears ago I tried to establish a basic standard of 1 million sq ft, (100,0000 sq. meters) for the ordinary type of suburban mall (downtown city ones are harder to specify---they are normally more compact. The proposal was rejected. I think the best way forward is to look for chains of malls, and see if we can combine them. Malls sometimes do define an areas--after all, perhaps the original purpose of a city was to have a protected market square. DGG ( talk ) 06:36, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

• OK thanks - this was very helpful. Before this, I did not know the notability standards for malls. --- Steve Quinn (talk) 02:43, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
	For your recent contribution to the mailing list - nicely done. S Philbrick(Talk) 15:07, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

20:12:39, 1 July 2016 review of submission by Brenda haines

• Brenda haines (talk · contribs)
  • Draft:4imprint plc (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Hello, DGG. First, let me say how incredibly helpful the detailed responses have been on your talk page. Thank you for taking such time and care in helping all of us improve our submissions and generally making Wikipedia a stronger tool.

My colleague, Leah, has been working on the 4imprint, PLC, article. (In the interest of full disclosure: Leah and I work together and the article we are referencing is for a client. I realize that automatically poses a question about neutrality, so I want to be completely transparent about that.) We are genuinely interested in editing the article to make it a high-quality submission. Based on the feedback my colleague has received to date, we recognize the need to make significant edits to the article to meet the notability requirements and that it may not be possible at all. I've read your talk page description of notability and it has helped me understand in greater detail the chief issue we are facing here. My questions related to this are:

Is it possible for trade industry publications to be considered reliable, independent sources? Or, must the sources be mainstream media sources/scientific journals/research publications in order to qualify? (We currently use several trade industry sources in the article, which is what prompts my question.)

Likewise, can local media sources (e.g.: those that cover our geographic region) contribute to the requirement for "substantial" coverage? Or, by their definition are they unable to do so? For example, if a subject is covered substantially in a local newspaper story with a modest circulation, does that source generally add to or detract from the subject's notability?

If sources are used in another Wikipedia article on a company in the same industry, can we deduce they would be considered reliable and independent in another article? Or, do you use other factors to determine whether the source is considered reliable and independent in different articles? With gratitude for your guidance, Brenda ( User:Brenda haines 20:12, July 1, 2016‎)

Brenda haines, there is no simple clear answer. Each article is considered individually, and the standards to be applied are interpreted by the participants in the particular discussion. And just as anyone can contribute to WP, anyone can join in a discussion. The net result is considerable variability , with particularly great inconsistency in some fields, such as organizations--and most particularly the one relevant here, commercial organizations.

The reliability of sources is discussed at the Reliable sources noticeboard, WP:RSN, and, as is typical for WP, the information is found in the very extensive and unorganized archives of that page. As compared with discussions of an individual article, the discussions here tend to be more focussed and usually attract expert participation.

The suitability of trade journals for showing notability depends on the journal,and on the article. A long objective discussion of a company, or a major product review, can sometimes count, especially in a journal of known importance and objectivity. But most articles in trade journals are not written in this manner,but as announcements of celebrations. Similarly for local magazines and newspapers. Almost all such magazines rely on routinely covering everything in their area, and are not written as objective independent discussions. For both, we are particularly dubious about interviews with the ceo, which normally are just a platform for giving the person an opportunity to say what they like about heir company. This is especially true for local business magazines. This is also true of local editions of major national news sources. There is a difference between , say, a national story in CBS and a story in a local affiliate of CBS; I am particularly doubtful when I find something that was from a local affiliate is cited as just "CBS". Even the NYTimes coverage of local NYC businesses especially in its local editions is more uncritical than its coverage of national ones.

Do not go too much by other articles. There are several hundred thousand articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or remove. And even now, many articles get in that would be deleted if more carefully examined. In particular, most of our articles on firms involved in any manner in advertising or publicity are considerable problems.

But an equally important problem with your article is not the sourcing or the notability: it's the promotionalism. (Our current system does not make it easy to specify the very common circumstance that the two problems usually go together. One useful definition of promotionalism is that a promotional article is written to say what the company wants to say, whereas an encyclopedia articles is written to tell the reader what the general reader might want to know.

Promotional articles for non-notable companies are marked by an inclusion of minor awards: this usually indicates there are no major ones. Promotional articles focus of funding of the company, rather than what it has actually accomplished. They include many minor notices, trying to list everything they can find to make the company look more important. They tend to focus on rapid growth or future plans, rather than attained importance. It is much better to list only what is major. This is especially important for charities. There is no point in listing the minor charities all companies do in their communities. Similar for routine good practices, such as employee relations, or now-routine environmental standards.

as you will have realized, these requirements are much harder to meet for specialized b-to-b companies such as yours. There simply are not as good source as there are for consumer product companies, or those in fields with general interest, such as electronics or aviation.

In your particular case, there might be notability: there usually is for companies on the London stock exchange, and firms with a half-billion USD revenue are very often notable. In your case, you have a good source for market share in your field. That is not a formal criterion, tho it is one I would like to see us use more. (You need to indicate the relevant geographic area--I gather it's in the US.) There are some technical factors also that would make a better impression. See the technique for using multiple occurrences of the same reference is WP:REFBEGIN, and enclose urls in [ ] not < > -- < > is indeed the print standard, but it doesn't render properly in Wikipedia. Avoid using the name of the company repetitively in the article. I like "the firm" (not the Firm) once each paragraph and the rest of the time "it" or "they". Avoid using adjectives of praise or importance; avoid using jargoion like "in order to grow the business"

As you know, I am not all that happy doing work other people are paid for. But I am interested in helping people learn how to use WP effectively, and WP articles are a specialized form that people need to learn, for there is no type of business writing that really matches. People learn to write to achieve a purpose, but writing for general information is a very difficult purpose to do well, because there is no obvious focus. And, as you've said, what I write here is seen by others also. Let me know when to see the next version: I judge the usefulness of my approach by how much articles get improved. DGG ( talk ) 03:16, 2 July 2016 (UTC) DGG, thank your for answering my questions and providing additional insights and references. That context is very helpful. I will the materials you've cited and work on revisions... with the goal of submitting an improved version for your review. Brenda Brenda haines (talk) 17:34, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Article A. Barkhudar

Hello DGG,

Some time ago you commented on my article - A. Barkhudar. I tried to follow the comments, also applied for WP:DCM permission(I wrote a letter again and still waiting), but still rejected. It would be important to hear your opinion concerning the improvements. If there is a need I can reason about all the changes and tries to address your comments. Thank you in advance, hope to hear from you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nairabarkhudaryan (talk • contribs) 13:36, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Nairabarkhudaryan (talk · contribs), I made a comment there explaining what is needed. I appreciate your efforts, and I will see what I can do myself to deal with the formatting--it may be easier to do it than to explain it. I may need to ask you for help with the Armenian test. Please give me a few days to get to it. DGG ( talk ) 15:08, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Barbera Coffee Company

You salted the talk page but not the article page? Regards, for (;;) (talk) 06:13, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

thanks for notifying me. I'll fix it. DGG ( talk ) 09

26, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing. for (;;) (talk) 12:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Could you please help me with this? I spent considerable time working on the page for Barbera Coffee Company. While I recognize that some of the content might have been the same as previously posted content, I never saw the page, nor did I have any knowledge about it having been discussed and removed previously.

I researched the material and made every effort to meet Wikipedia's requirements for notability. If you research, as I have already requested elsewhere, you would find that I'm not a highly active editor on this platform. I find it very confusing to work in. However, I am a serious writer, who would never waste your time if I could help it.

It begins to feel like Wikipedia editors are not willing to allow this company a page on Wikipedia because someone who came before me didn't know what they were doing--possibly the company themselves, especially as English isn't their first language. Could I please be given access to the previous discussion, so I can know how to resolve the issues and advise Barbera Coffee Company on how to meet your demands and that of other Wikipedia editors (if there are any).Writingasaghost (talk) 17:39, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I realize now, after some help from the help desk, that I broke a major rule when I failed to create a use page with the proper attribution for paid work. I wish someone would have told me this in the beginning when issues arose with the page. I've been floundering like an idiot.

I have rectified the failure to reveal the COI, now that I'm aware of the COI issue. If I read this over six years ago, I had forgotten it. Could I at least get the page back to draft status?Writingasaghost (talk) 05:26, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Writingasaghost, I will take a look, but it may take another week or two. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Belmond Eagle Island Lodge

Hi DGG

I notice that you have redirected my page about Belmond Eagle Island Lodge. I would like the chance to improve it, Please could you let me know why you believe it will 'inevitably be deleted' so I can make the appropriate updates to enable to page to be reinstated.

Thanks PurpleSpiderSpider (talk) 12:25, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I will get back to you on this by tomorrow DGG ( talk ) 12:56, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I am editing this page today, I reinstated it in order to edit it. Please do not remove just yet - allow me time to complete the revisions. Many thanks PurpleSpiderSpider (talk) 14:47, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Draft:Judith Donovan

Dear Graeme,

I have seen that Judith Donovan’s profile has been described as too promotional. She is an outstanding businesswoman, awarded a CBE (one of the highest Queen’s Honours) and has brought about real change and benefits to small businesses, especially in rural areas. We feel the public would expect her to be on Wikipedia?

Is there any way you could accept the profile if we were to edit with your guidance?

We would welcome your advice With thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonnyross00 (talk • contribs) 12:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I'lll get back to you tomorrow on this. DGG ( talk ) 12:54, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Johnyross00, I see her career on Google, and CBE is in fact considered notability, (but not OBE or MBE.) but I cannot find the draft article or the deleted article on Wikipedia. Were you the author? If I cannot find it to restore, I'll write a sketch myself. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I will get there. I haven't forgotten. DGG ( talk ) 19:35, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

I still intend to do this DGG ( talk ) 00:46, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Oil Nut Bay (and Notability in General)

Posted in 1 edit, this article is blatantly obviously created as a comissioned work and authored by someone with a perfect in-depth knowledge of article creation. I don't know what to do about it - f indeed anything can be done, but it's the kind of article that makes me want to give up volunteering my time and intelligence for Wikipedia. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

We're not helpless. I just listed it for G11. DGG ( talk ) 03:53, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Just declined, so I listed it at AfD. If it does stay in, maybe we are helpless under current rules for what canbe investigated regarding COI. DGG ( talk ) 09:50, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I declined the speedy; It may well be a paid editor, but the article isn't unduly spammy, "editor is suspiciously familiar with Wikipedia" isn't a deletion criterion much as some would like it to be, and the notability standards for hotels & resorts on Wikipedia are historically extremely low. I find it hard to imagine any reason anyone would want to pay an editor to create this; I would hope that people looking to buy multi-million dollar houses on private islands aren't basing their decisions on Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 09:57, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

This sort of thing is a matter of judgment (which is why I think we might indeed need a way of investigating) I do agree with you about our standards for hotels, which except for the most famous, seem entirely inconsistent. DGG ( talk ) 10:02, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You can hope, Iridescent, but I did not join Wikipediand spend literally thousands of hours on it to rub shoulders with this kind of obvious spam. We need to establish a clear policy to condemn this sort of thing, otherwise it will be the 'but other stiff like it exists' defense. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:04, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

As you may remember from my getting my fingers burned last time I tried to clean up resortspam (I was accused of "being on a deletion spree" for daring to suggest this might not be notable, and some guy called DGG declined my deletion request for this piece of obvious spam) I have no love for substubs about resorts, but this is a very poor one to choose as a test case. Virgin Gorda only has a population of about 4000, so the construction of this resort is almost certainly the island's largest employer, and once it opens it will probably be the largest populated settlement on the island, since each of those 88 houses and all the shops are also going to require a support staff and if the resort is only accessible by helicopter or ship they're presumably all going to be living in barracks onsite. Thus, either the scheme will succeed and the article will need to be re-created as an article on a significant population centre, or it will fail and undoubtedly be notable as a high-profile ghost town and spectacular bankruptcy. The existing stub isn't unduly spammy and doesn't have any element of "we're great"; if we're going to make "creator has a potential conflict of interest" into a deletion criterion, we'd be deleting half of Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 10:21, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

That was in 2010. My attitude has changed with the growth of paid editing. I'm willing to sacrifice complete coverage to prevent it, because it's a danger to the very purpose of writing a NPOV encyclopedia, and a great discouragement to the volunteers we need to be attracting to survive at all. I don't think WP or any community project can really have static rules. For example, the need for accuracy is much higher now that journalists and other people whom we once relied on now use us as a resource. DGG ( talk ) 22:27, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Are you suggesting DGG that I was paid to start those London hotel stubs? The question is Iridescent, is are there enough sources to validate having those articles. And in most cases, actually, yes, they could be expanded into half decent entries. They should have been start as proper articles initially, I agree, but I think hotels typically get a hard time on wikipedia. There's a huge number of missing notable ones. Me personally, I prefer historic architecturally notable luxury hotels, not generic branches of popular chains, but at the time I felt like I was doing something useful to filling in a gaping hole in wiki's coverage of London hotels, so make no excuses for acting in good faith in starting them. Can San Domenico House be expanded into a better article? Chances are, yes, it could quite easily be expanded into something half credible. So why doesn't anybody do it? By all means, take a load of them to AFD and see how they fare. A quick look in google books tells me that San Domenico House is likely notable.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:42, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

As I think you realize, the editor who thought it was spam was someone else. What I think is spam, and therefore suggested deletion, is Oil Nut Bay, which was written by a spa. I was explaining why in the past I might not have even bothered deleting such articles. I agree with you, Dr. Blofeld, that most luxury hotels are probably notable. But many of the current articles being written on such subjects are almost certainly paid editing. Opinion varies on whether we should fix them or delete them, and my attitude has switched to the second solution, for the same reason we usually delete articles by banned editors--as the only practical way to discourage the practice.

More generally, I've said many times that to try to distinguish by guessing from the nature of the article and the edit history is very rough work, and would be done much more precisely if we were able to know is suspicious instances who the editor actually is. How this can be done without compromising some of our basic principles is a very difficult question. DGG ( talk ) 21:03, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

The problem we have is that companies and hotels/resort owners don't "own" articles on their subjects. Obviously we need stronger protection against shoddy COI editing and promotional spam as an encyclopedia, but if some PR operative of a firm is trying to get their mits on an article, or start it, I just disagree with the principle that just because the firm and PR are interested in having an article on their subject we must delete or block it at all costs to completely stamp out paid editing and people using wikipedia for commercial gain . There are really a lot of notable firms which are started by PR operatives or CEOs themselves which if started by any neutral editor would never get deleted or be seen as a problem. And the issue is that thse people don't own the articles. Anybody can blast a puff piece written by one of them to smithereens and write it neutrally from scratch and put it on a watchlist. Over time wikipedia is going to increasingly attract the promotional types who just don't get what wikipedia is about. So while I respect your traditionalist view of what an encyclopedia should contain, I don't agree that we should block all article subjects which might have self-interest from companies. What matters is that the article subjects are notable and neutral/reliable. If articles meets GNG and can be written neutrally and sources to reliable publications we should keep them and nurture them. What we really need is a (paid) department of full-time foundation employees here whose job it is to parole company articles, block out the spam from PR operatives and paid editors and edit them neutrally, retaining the articles for the good of knowledge, not because some CEO wants it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:16, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Opinion, obviously, varies. My own view is that the proportion of decent articles from such sources is so extremely low, that on balance we would improve WP by eliminating altogether if we could find an effective way to do so. But as we have not yet found a way, we have to remove on other grounds. Personally, I do make exceptions if the subject is highly notable and the article is truly satisfactory (which happens one time in a thousand) or the subject is highly notable a& it can be quickly fixed and someone is interested in doing so (one in a hundred) can be quickly fixed & someone is interested in doing it, but otherwise I will use whatever deletion process fits the circumstances. Additionally there is a difference between declared and undeclared COI. Undeclared COI , especially if paid editing, is a violation of the TOU, and according to WMF policy we are all responsible for enforcing it. We do not yet have this as a speedy criterion, possibly because of the difficulty in determining just who is violating it under existing practice. As any reason that has consensus is valid at AfD, and we need just convincing evidence not actual certainty, I would be considering using it as a reason; I know others have, and as a closing admin to accept a consensus to do so. As a first step, I would support retroactive deletion of articles started by blocked coi editors if G4 would be otherwise applicable except they had not yet been blocked. 5 or 6 Years ago I would have supported your view on this, but I think that the proportion of commercial promotionalism was not yet so high, and we had not yet realized the danger. (The key promotionalism problem then was ideological promotionalism)

I am, however, not someone who has a traditionalist view of the encyclopedia. I am very willing to find whatever reason we can to reasonably extend the boundaries for what we cover, to the extent we can write verifiable and useful articles. I am much more willing to do this in areas whichcan be relatively free from promotionalism. DGG ( talk ) 01:57, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

DGG, where are you getting Undeclared COI , especially if paid editing, is a violation of the TOU, and according to WMF policy we are all responsible for enforcing it from? This is not and never has been the case, and it's worrying to see that a sitting Arbcom member appears to think that it is. While undisclosed paid editing is forbidden, neither Wikipedia nor the WMF has ever had a policy against editing with a conflict of interest, and whenever such a thing has been proposed it's been shot down; even the relatively weak guidance at WP:Conflict of interest isn't and never has been Wikipedia policy. (WP:Comment on content, not on the contributor, on the other hand, is a formal Wikipedia policy, which you appear to be wilfully disregarding.) The exact wording of the relevant part of the TOU is These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation., and is explicitly and carefully worded to only relate to people being specifically paid to edit Wikipedia.

In the unlikely event that we did bring in a ban on all undeclared COI editing, Wikipedia would disintegrate into open chaos, given that it would mean bulk deletion of entire sections of the project. (As concrete examples, any article on an educational institution will have been written at least in part by attendees and alumni of that institution; virtually every article on an extant military unit has almost certainly been written at least in part by serving members of that unit; any article on a company has probably been edited at least in part by employees and customers of that company, since in most cases they're the only ones with enough on an interest to do the necessary research.) Much as Jimbo may like it to be otherwise, there is no obligation for employees of the article subject to disclose their affiliations unless they're editing Wikipedia as part of their job, and unless a paid editor admits to it or you can find a paper trail on Elance for the commission being offered and accepted, it's virtually impossible to prove that someone is writing in work time, rather than just writing about their place of work. ‑ Iridescent 14:13, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

From Wiki: (Overview, paragraph 2:

The community – the network of users who are constantly building and using the various sites or Projects – are the principal means through which the goals of the mission are achieved. The community contributes to and helps govern our sites. The community undertakes the critical function of creating and enforcing policies for the specific Project editions...

I interpret this as saying that enforcement responsibility here is the responsibility of enWP, and that out policies must be compatible with the TOU. With respect to paid editing, there's also a statement that and one WP's policies may vary if the variation is approved: we have not (or at least not yet) chosen to do so. Therefore, our Deletion Policy must be interpreted to include at least the restrictions made by the TOU.

The problem, as you correctly state, is how we are to do this. In the absence of specific targeted rules, we do this by enforcing the existing policies and guidelines in such a way as to produce the necessary result. Fortunately, our existing rules are so close to the TOU that this does not usually have to be stated explicitly in a deletion discussion; in those cases where they are inadequate, either we have to guess or we can take no action. In my opinion, since any valid reason is cause for deletion, and NOT ADVOCACY is basic policy, we should at least delete such articles if we reasonably think they have been contributed in violation of the TOU, unless we choose to make an exception, though I would much prefer if there were a more precise method. I continue to think that the community would do well to have some more effective way of directly enforcing them which is compatible with outing policy, and various suggestions have been made. I would support most of them.

As for the college and university articles, some have been written by attendees and alumni--a sort of COI that is not paid editing and which we could deal without most of the university articles have been written by university PR staff in the same style they use for their page in a college guide, and they need to be rewritten. There are indeed other such examples. But since we can not trust any paid editing to be NPOV, you seem to be suggesting we maintain biased articles to maintain our size. DGG ( talk ) 05:00, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you

I appreciate your feedback on my paid work, I've been trying my best to walk the tight rope of neutrality and making the client happy. I'm proud of my non-paid work and I want to ensure that the paid work reflects the same pride and adherence to guidelines. There are quite a few who've balked at the fact that I always reveal my paid status, I've been asked to vote "keep" on like 10-15 AFDs so far and I always tell them that it'd be a waste of money for me to state "Keep - And I was paid to vote". If the client wants to pursue the Born Warriors article in the future I would probably suggest a total rewrite. So thank you I appreciate the feedback.  MPJ-DK  12:22, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Prolific Sock farm products

Hi DGG. FYI, see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Slew of articles from a prolific sock farm. The farm was just discovered today. I've made a list of all the "articles" they've created and posted them at COIN, as I don't have time to go through them myself. Pinging also Kudpung and Orangemike. How utterly demoralising, sigh. Voceditenore (talk) 17:06, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I see it's also being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Undisclosed Paid Editing Farm (re banning the farm and nuking the products). Voceditenore (talk) 17:16, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

deletions are underway; but expect to find more of them as we check further.

but this should not surprise you--1/as we improve WP, it increases in importance and people want their professional and business activities to be in it. 2/most of the are not suitable for articles without compromising nOT DIRECTORY and NPOV 3/most people and businesses cannot write their own well enough to get them kept 4/quite a few people think they have the skills to do such articles and offer these services 5/we cannot accurately detect paid contributions with compromising Privacy.

What it comes down to is a choice between NPOV and Privacy, and almost everyone at WP values Privacy higher. There is no solution if this remains the case. DGG ( talk ) 15:54, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi DGG. I wasn't surprised at all, just fed up. But on the bright side, there seems to be a growing consensus for nuking the articles in situations like this rather than wasting everyone's time with AfDs. Of course, most of these people don't get caught red-handed socking as this farm did. I suppose one small step people can take is to check obvious paid articles and look at the contributions of the creator and those who have edited the same articles or supplied images. See, for example User talk:Seostrategists and User talk:Kkc knight, who uploaded the image at Josh Roush and voted "Keep" in the AfD and who created London & Country Mortgages (subsequently taken over by Seostrategists), although I doubt if there's enough to bring an SPI. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 07:09, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Bring one and see. I think it's enough. Maybe this is a good time for me to finally try using checkuser. DGG ( talk ) 19:49, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

UTRS Account Request

I confirm that I have requested an account on the UTRS tool. DGG ( talk )

Hey DGG, I haven't seen an account request on the UTRS tool from you.--v/r - TP 07:55, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

({U|TParis}}, just tried again DGG ( talk ) 19:46, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Great, I've activated your account. Thanks for volunteering.--v/r - TP 20:12, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

A pointer

WP:AN/CXT. All the best—S Marshall T/C 20:34, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Thoughts on the Daniel Romanovsky discussion

Greetings David. I was actually going to make a comment about this subject and ask your opinion on your talk page, prior to your posting. I was mulling it over for the last 24 hours at least. I was (and am) very interested in your thoughts about how the current guidance in academic notability with regard personalities in the humanities could be made more flexible. You will probably disagree, but I believe them to be overly-rigid at this time. I am interested in a new discussion on the appropriate venue that may begin a new dialogue, and new thinking to this aspect of notability as the project currently sees it. I hope I have not made a fool of myself by defending the keep, in my response to your posting. I am trying to interpret the guidance as I see it, with a dash of common sense. I am fairly new to the fascinating topic of AfD and would like to become more engaged in it. I hugely respect your vast experience and insight both in this subject area and in the totality of the project. I must admit though, that I do believe the subject does have good grounds for relisting at least. Regards, Simon. Irondome (talk) 02:05, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

we go by the publications. The key criterion #1, impact, Academic impact in the 20th/21st century is almost always by publications in any field except some of the applied sciences. The current WP standard in practice is essentially the extent of publications that would qualify for a full professorship at a major university. (Myself, I'd just go by the professorship on the grounds that the university is a better judge than we are, but that's not the consensus). (Myself again, a little more radically, I'd support the lower standard of associate professorship, but again, this is definitely not the consensus). The requirements for even associate professorship in a first class research university is two academic books by major publishers known to do peer review--either university presses or the few relevant commercial publishers. Nothing else matters, except that at least the 2nd books should not be based on the thesis. but show an independent line of research capable of attracting graduate students and other faculty. At 2nd rate research universities this has been watered down in recent years to one academic book, and three substantial research articles in major journals. That's not our standard, that's the standard of the field.

there are a number special considerations:

1/the creative arts, but our standard makes special provision for them.

2/people in some humanistic specialties where publications other than books count: the most common one that causes problems here is archeology.

3/people working in research institutes of some sort, who publish in other than academic book or journal format. These can be hard to judge; often we end up using the GNG instead of PROF here.  :::4/people in geographic areas that do not fully participate in the US-WEuropean academic system--these can be almost impossible to judge here, as almost nobody has the expertise.

5/people in disadvantaged groups whose actual output is less than would be merited by their actual quality of work--there is no consensus about how much to take this into account. My own view is to take this only slightly into account for 2000+, increasingly more in earlier generations. What happens in any given case depends upon who appears and how hard they fight.

6/people in what are considered here to be weird. These are usually judged nonnotable unless there's a lobby overwhelming the discussion.

7/people in fields not considered rigorous here: education, home economics, library science, etc --fields that often are heavily populated by women at least in past generations. We've been very dismissive in the past, less so now.

8/there's an alternative that sometimes applies : some people who publish relatively non-scholarly books can be foudn notable by WP:AUTHOR.

Actually, the real problem has been the opposite of what you seem to think. People in the humanities can be dealt with quite easily, because they publish books, and the criteria for books & authors is very flexible and exceedingly broad. The difficulty has been with scientists. It took years here to get WP:PROF and citation analysis accepted as a basis for notability. At one point I started saying I might argue on the basis that if someone was cited at all, each citation would be a RS for N. (and the argument would then be on whether each of them had substantial criticism or discussion, which can be a very long argument--if there are 10 papers with 10 refs, each of 100 referring papers would need to be examined in detail.) The net result would be to extend notability down into the assistant professor category. I like to think that this ended the matter, for the people who thought only famous scientists were notable then accepted WP:PROF as a compromise.

It is a very poor idea to take one particular case where the rules don't show notability for someone that you want an article on, and use that as a basis for changing the rule. Argue rather that the particular case should be an exception. WP:IAR is fundamental policy and therefore can over-ride anything that might be provided by any notability guideline. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

I really appreciate your detailed and informative response DGG, and the brief history of the matter, and the advice at the end of the post. I will take it all very much on board. Thanks for taking the time. Simon Irondome (talk) 11:48, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)I wonder if point #5 ("people in disadvantaged groups whose actual output is less than would be merited by their actual quality of work") may apply to Romanovski? The 1980s weren't the 1950s, but studying Holocaust in the Soviet Union at that time was definitely a career limiting move. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:31, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

This actually occurred to me, but it's not the usual meaning. But there's a limit to how far we can stretch. It would have to be someone who's almost notable, and I don't think he's anywhere near it. DGG ( talk ) 20:38, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

NewPages tesr

• DGG, All three pages show up at Special:NewPages as well as Special:NewPagesFeed. [19] [20] - NQ (talk) 19:21, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

DGG ( talk ) 20:24, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Set namespace to "all" in the box to show pages originally created as "Draft:" or "User:". - NQ (talk) 21:28, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

aha! I didn't realize it was the original namespace that mattered! thanks. DGG ( talk ) 22:13, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

NQ,Kudpung But the normal way of searching in NPP is just article space. I know that's the way I always use, and I suspect its's the way most people do also--Looking at the conventional NP feed with the filter set to "all", I see not just user pages but a great deal of clutter from categories, user talk pages, article talk pages, files, etc. As there is no way of saying "user + article", the unnecessary material cannot be removed. (compare with the flexible namespace choices in the Search function.) Using the Article Curation new pages feed, I see there is no "all" setting -- one can select either mainspace, or user, but , again, not the combination. We should be able to do much better than this.

And, looking at these , I see that article space drafts is a truly horrible morass, and I am beginning to think we should insist that all drafts go in Draft space. DGG ( talk ) 05:04, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Anthony Charles Robinson

In this edit to Anthony Charles Robinson, you tagged the article for speedy deletion as G11: "Unambiguous advertising or promotion". I shouldn't have to remind you that WP:CSD is for pages with no practical chance of surviving discussion. Equally, you surely must be aware of what G11 says?

• This applies to pages that are exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to conform with Wikipedia:NOTFORPROMOTION. If a subject is notable and the content could plausibly be replaced with text that complies with neutral point of view, this is preferable to deletion. Note: Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. However, "promotion" does not necessarily mean commercial promotion: anything can be promoted, including a person, a non-commercial organization, a point of view, etc.

Are you trying to assert that either (1) the subject is not notable; or (2) that the content could not be plausibly replaced with neutral content? The subject is clearly notable, given the number of articles about him and the awards he's received - not least an OBE. Even if the content were exclusively promotional (which it isn't), with 32 references about him, a monkey with a typewriter could transform it into a neutral article.

I am astonished that an editor of your experience and inclusionist tendencies should make such a fundamental mistake, particularly with the first efforts of a new editor. I see you haven't even noted the CSD nomination in your log yet, so if there is another agenda at play here, I think you should be upfront about it. --RexxS (talk) 13:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

A bio based mainly on very minor awards & trivial references is promotional; there is no reason for it except to advertise his speaking career--in fact, quite a few of the paid editors use thie trick of adding a great many not very convincing references. To analyze the G11, let's say he were notable, for example it his award were higher than the OBE, It would need to be fundamentally rewritten because almost all the content is trivial awards , & sourced to local notices about his speeches. The potential G11s that should not be tagged are those that do not need to be fundamentally rewritten and can be easily fixed are, for example, where it's just a matter of adjectives, or a specific section that can be removed. Sot notable or not I do consider it a reasonable G11.

Now, G11 is not an exact criterion, and can be interpreted in many ways. The check on the tagger's interpretation is that I don't delete the articles myself, and anyone else can remove the G11. Even if the speedy tag stays there for more than a day, I take it to mean no other admin is comfortable deleting it, & remove the tag. It is true that I have usually been interpreting G11 more broadly in a sort of desperate response to the increasing promotional editing; it is possible that it has been too broad, and I must look to analyze the results of my CSDs. I'm always re-analyzing something or other from my logs, but this month I'm doing my deletion log, to see which recreations are reasonable and which not. I suppose I should check CSDs next. I like everyone else can drift in interpretation, which is why I do regularly look back. And if I do go too far, I;m glad when someone tells me., so I thank you. I will probably AfD as not notable, but not immediately. DGG ( talk ) 15:25, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

The "new editor" who created this gem, also produced Arthur Charles Evans, which has the same whiff of undisclosed paid editing. Similarly deceptively sourced. Once you look at the sources, like the Robinson article, most evaporate (dead links, trivial mentions, blogs, etc). --Randykitty (talk) 16:46, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

At least Evans is notable , because he has the CBE. DGG ( talk ) 16:53, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

The whole point of having criteria beyond the WP:GNG is that folks who have, for example, received significant awards are very likely to have press coverage and it becomes a short-circuit for the notability debate. It's not a question of how many awards are given out; it's a question of whether receiving that award would most likely imply significant coverage. Now the OBE is "a well-known and significant award or honour", but you may feel it doesn't guarantee that someone will have received coverage. OK, but even leaving aside the OBE, Robinson has significant coverage in an article in The Guardian - that's not a passing mention - and a whole article on him in the The Press (York), which isn't just some local rag, it covers a large chunk of Yorkshire and has a circulation of 25,000 (that's half the circulation of something like the The Washington Times for comparison). Having read the earlier parts of your talk page, I can appreciate your concerns over paid editing - and personally I'd see it banned if I could - but I'd hate for us to get so paranoid about the problem that we start to catch good-faith editors in the net. Now, I have no clue whether LazyLilac is a paid editor, but I can't see an easy way to determine that, and if there is significant coverage in independent sources, we're probably best off just making sure that the content stays neutral, IMHO, as I'd rather "ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer", don't you agree? --RexxS (talk) 19:00, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

• (talk page watcher) Interesting statements by LazyLilac at TeaHouse hereI am a freelance virtual assistant, so I am not his employee and the copywriter has been editing the text and I have been updating it on here, he doesn't know how to create pages on Wikipedia, so yes it's just me doing the editing on here. Time to delete and salt? PamD 21:05, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

@RexxS:@Randykitty: for info. PamD 21:09, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

first step is to take it to AfD and get it deleted. Iff it gets sufficiently edited, it is possible that it might pass, despite the paid editing. DGG ( talk ) 21:33, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thanks, PamD, that clarifies things quite a lot. I'm not sure that's quite enough to block LazyLilac for TOU abuse, but she/he ought to have worked out what COI means by now. As for salting, I think we'd need to run the article through AfD first, and I still think it's more likely to be kept than deleted, given the press coverage. --RexxS (talk) 21:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: for info, as the editor who moved the draft into mainspace. PamD 21:49, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Comment: Interesting that none of the Teahouse hosts seem to have picked up on what looks like a declaration of paid editing! PamD 21:52, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Paid editing goes to the editor, not the article, which stands on its own merits. Montanabw^(talk) 08:13, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Montanabw, as I understand it personally, while declared paid editing certainly is judged article by article; undeclared page editing does go by the editor, just as other TOU violations like sockpuppettry. I certainly will ban undeclared page editors until they declare, though so far I have used the related reason of advertising-only account. The question of whether we should remove all contributions of detected undeclared paid editors is still open, but in some cases we have done just that, when the nature of the editing is reasonably certain-just as we do with sockpuppettry. DGG ( talk ) 13:29, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I have sympathy with your intent, DGG, but we don't actually "revert on sight" the contributions of sockpuppets, per se. That draconian step is at present reserved for those evading site bans, as it has been agreed that the loss of possibly useful content is outweighed by the message sent to the ban evader that their contributions are not welcome. Nevertheless, I feel that the same message would also be appropriate to send to paid editors deliberately evading TOU. It would really best be agreed via community debate and consensus, rather than one person taking up the campaign, but if you felt up to raising it at VPP, for example, please ping me and I'd be happy to support you there. --RexxS (talk) 14:37, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, we ban them first. but we ban on the basis of convincing behavioral and editing evidence, as well as CU. UPE are a little more difficult, because there are a surprising number of good faith new editors who write promotional articles, because that's what they mostly see here in some areas, and they think it's what we want. As discussions at various places have shown, it is quite hard to be sure, unless it's obvious or omitted. But we can and do block people who persist in writing promotional articles, after a warning, and at present the TOU are best used as a supplemental argument--it seems to sound more official. It is rather rare for a paid editor write anything else, though it does happen.

In my personal opinion, the only real reason for trying to identify a UPE is when we reasonably suspect a ring or an extensive commercial operation. DGG ( talk ) 17:21, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

• Follow up. The book was, as I feared, kept at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anthony Charles Robinson. I just leaned it up a little, but the essential lack of notability remains. I think it's worth a renom. DGG ( talk ) 08:19, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Infobox organization

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Infobox organization. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

John Travis (physician) - Neutrality of tone

Hi DGG - I saw that you had placed an alert on the John Travis (physician) page regarding the tone, indicating that it came across more like a news release. I'd like to try to rectify this and can see parts that might be at fault, such as the 'Work on parenting' section. However, I wished to check which areas you felt were causing issues?Fbell74 (talk) 06:31, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

You are right that the parenting section is altogether inappropriate, as almost all of it is not about his own work. Asides from that , take a closer look at the section on wellness, and the claims to be first or among the first. the claims here contradict the discussion in the WP articles on the subject.

Beyond those generalities, you are writing as a paid editor for the subject. It is my position that anyone doing so should know in advance how to do it properly, That is, if it can be done, for it seems that almost nobody can make satisfactory article with that degree of conflict of interest. I am always glad to give volunteer editors as much help as necessary, even to the point of personally rewriting articles if the subjects are notable, but I cannot be expected to do extensive work for free, but for which someone else will be paid. DGG ( talk ) 03:35, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you - the pointers help and I'll work on those accordingly. Of course, free assistance wouldn't be expected when the contributions aren't of a voluntary nature. I appreciate any help, in light of this.Fbell74 (talk) 03:39, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi DGG - I think I've tackled the areas that were causing issues with the neutrality of tone, mainly by removing some details that might be seen as promotional and also paring down the content to focus on the subject (rather than connected parties). I haven't forgotten what you said about not doing extensive work in this kind of situation. I wondered if you might take a look though, as you had raised the alert originally? I appreciate you're probably quite busy with other Wikipedia work Fbell74 (talk) 05:55, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi DGG - you're probably inundated with other work on Wikipedia. When you have a moment perhaps you can take a look at the article? I haven't made additional changes to it, since the time you were looking at rewriting it. However, if it's easier I can have a go again, with regards to the areas you highlighted in the recent posts on the Talk page Fbell74 (talk) 05:20, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Fbell74 I looked again. I decided to reorganize much further, and I have done so--see my comments on the talk page, which is where this should be continued. Basically, I removed material sourced only to his own site or a blog. I removed claims for first and one of the first. These need good third party documentation, and in any case "one of the first" has no specific meaning.

The connected contributor tag should remain on all paid articles where the paid editor wrote a substantial amount of the material. . I will remove the press release tag after its been sufficiently improved. The problem with paid editing is that a paid editor is typically not willing to make sufficiently radical improvements, because their client would not actually approve of an appropriately length NPOV article--they normally want the article because they want publicity, and this is an inherent conflict with the fundamental policy WP:NOT.

Here's my problem. It is easier for me to rewrite this than to coach someone else how to do it. Six years ago I would routinely rewrite, but I no longer am willing to do work for which other people are being paid. In this case I'm so much involved already that I'm making an exception. (Ideally, a promotional article should be removed, but in practice there's sometimes a choice between rewriting it and having it stay promotional) Most other other editors working with paid articles have no conflict--they simply won't work with a paid editor at all, and generally think that the only solution is to eliminate paid editing entirely. Unfortunately, in a system with anonymous editing permitted, this would simply drive it underground. So an argument can be made for helping the ones who declare, to encourage the undeclared ones to follow the TOU also. DGG ( talk ) 06:17, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

For your assistance with the recent research mess that I bought to ANI.

Stuartyeates (talk) 10:19, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thank you for the temporary restore

Filmfan655321 (talk) 12:05, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

AFC redux

Rather than clog up ANI, I'd like to offer some responses to your last post there, specifically the Some things can never be done section: (continued in AfC NPP archive)

Draft:Centro Universitário da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Hi DGG. You commented that this is a notable subject. I tried to find some substantiation, but I haven't had success. There's an article in the Portuguese Wikipedia (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_Universit%C3%A1rio_da_Cidade_do_Rio_de_Janeiro) but none of the references there seem appropriate from what I can figure out. I am not going to work on it any more. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:42, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

All universities are notable, and that's what this is. We can get the necessary details from their web site for the specifics, but w do need an outside source that it isn't imaginary--and, in thiscase, provides some needed NPOV The observatoriodaimprensa is about the head of the university; http://sindipetroalse.org.br has a section about him . "O Grupo Delfin" about 2/3 of the way down; ltimosegundo.ig.com.br is about this university, in para 5; Agência Brasil. is about the withdrawal of its autonomy; http://portal.mec.gov.br is about the withdrawal of its government accreditation

the enWP article mentions none of the last two items, so some work is needed, DGG ( talk ) 00:07, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Sumeeti Mittal

Hi there, I saw you had reviewed my article on Sumeeti Mittal and shared comments on the same. Could we discuss the issues raised by you. 07:13, 17 August 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noopur Anand (talk • contribs)

now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sumeeti Mittal DGG ( talk ) 00:47, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

COI & POV Flags On An Article

Hi there, I came across an article Richard B. Hollis that you have contributed to in the past. The article now has COI & POV flags on it. It appears that since the flags have been added, the article has been edited and refined. As a new user I wanted to help clean up the article, but do not know where to start. Since you have vast knowledge of the wiki world and have worked on the article in the past, I was hoping you can take a look at this article and see what needs to be cleaned up before removing the flags. I am just trying to learn the ins and outs of Wiki! Thank you!

Ventanas144 (talk) 17:53, 17 August 2016 (UTC)Ventanas144

first thing I have to ask, is whether you by any chance have a conflict of interest, financial or otherwise. If so, please see WP:COI for out guidelines on how o contribute. And if financial in any way, you will need to declare it: see our Terms of Use, particularly with respect to paid contributions without disclosure

second, I need to tell you, that if you are the same person as any other editor who has worked n the article earlier. such as the editor who worked on it earlier his week, you must choose one single account and use it only.

With a COI, the way to add material is is as follows: Add the material to the article's talk page, not the article page itself, and place a {{request edit}} tag on the talk page, after your suggestion. (include the double curly braces on each side)

As for the article, we need dates and exact permissions for the various firms. We also should not be describing their products unless he persona;ly had a role in developing them, and there are goodthird party references for this. Is the patent in his name? Did he sponsor the project within the firm, or did he just invent the improvements himself.

I know I originally accepted the article, but I need to examine it again to see if he actually meets the notability standard--most of the references seem to be aboutthe firms. DGG ( talk ) 20:31, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I cleaned up the sourcing and content so that it is about him and is neutral, in my view. I think it OK and meets notability now. I also removed the POV tag. Jytdog (talk) 01:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I think I can a little more. DGG ( talk ) 13:39, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Sumeeti Mital

Hi there, I saw you had reviewed my article on Sumeeti Mittal and shared comments on the same. Could we discuss the issues raised by you. 07:13, 17 August 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noopur Anand (talk • contribs)

now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sumeeti Mittal DGG ( talk ) 00:47, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: New Page Reviewer user right

A discussion is taking place to request that New Page Patrollers be suitably experienced for patrolling new pages. Your comments at New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right are welcome. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:14, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Marc Straus

Please feel free to continue deleting the trivia and other cruft. I'm a trained scientist, and this man annoys me so much I'm not sure I could be objective. Narky Blert (talk) 01:02, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

JIC you haven't put this article on your watchlist - Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Marc Straus. Narky Blert (talk) 00:39, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

ANI discussion notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is User:SwisterTwister. Thank you. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:00, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Guidance Barnstar
		Thank you for taking the time to share your experience and perspective on the AfD process, particularly here. Reading it was so illuminating for me on questions like how best to navigate the discussion process, and the context for policy on nominating for deletion. Greatly appreciated. Innisfree987 (talk) 19:47, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Article deletion - MX1 (media)

Hi DGG. You deleted the article, MX1 (Media), on August 1 citing “Article about a company, corporation or organization, which does not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject)”. I did not create this article but did make some contribution to it a few days before deletion. Yesterday I went to add some more to it and found it not there (!) I do believe that MX1 is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia (not least because the company is the result of the merger of two companies which are themselves each the subject of an article) and it was partly to demonstrate this that I was going to add more material to the article.

So, what do I do now? Can you restore the article so I can flesh it out, and so make it more worthy of inclusion? Or should I start from scratch with a new page and new content? Or should I move the article for one of the merged companies from which MX1 is formed to a new title MX1 (media) and add MX1 content to that? Whichever is the solution, could you give me an idea of your criteria for significance of a company so I can make sure a ‘new’ article meets these? Thanks Satbuff (talk) 12:00, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Satbuff, I think the best approach is to consider it a rebranding of SES, taken place as a result of its acquisition of the much smaller company RR media. This is normally the way we handle such situations. The problem with the new article is that at this opint the sources are mere notices describing the acquisition--because, I'd venture, there is nothing much else to say yet.

You might want to take a look at the SES page overall--it would give a less promotional appearance by removal of adjectives and similar rewording. The RR page is much worse, and if you want to attempt to to fix that, please do. (I should mention I'm aware of the the COI discussion on your usertalk, and I recognize that you are a good faith editor.) ' DGG ( talk ) 21:59, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, DGG, for your (unexpectedly) speedy response and apologies for my (sadly) slow reply (- not had a lot of time for Wikipedia recently)! I think you may be confusing SES S.A. with SES Platform Services? The latter is the one rebranded and is owned by the former - SES Platform Services has acquired, and merged with, RR Media and the merged company rebranded as MX1; SES S.A. is unchanged. So, are you suggesting that I move (rename) SES Platform Services to MX1? That makes sense to me, and it would get around the problem you mention of ‘not a lot to say yet’ on the new company.

Incidentally, on the SES S.A. page, I have actually done considerable work to address the ‘reads like an advert’ (and other) template notices placed there in December 2015 and was considering removing them - but your remarks clearly demonstrate I have not got there yet! Satbuff (talk) 12:58, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of CAWST

Could you clarify why the page CAWST was marked for speedy deletion and not other company history pages like WaterAid and Charity water? If the definition of notability is based on solely on the subset of knowledge and awareness from people in developed countries then yes CAWST may not be known as much as other louder organizations. But CAWST has had 15 years of impact and is changing the water and sanitation sector impacting millions in developing countries. Please advise on the best way to capture this appropriately as an encyclopedia article. Thank you. Oliviermills (talk) 13:30, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Oliviermills, considering that essentially your only edits have been in connection with this organization and the devices it promotes, it is very possible that you have some degree of conflict of interest. If so, please see our rules, WP:COI, including our Terms of Use, particularly with respect to paid contributions without disclosure . This disclosure is not optional. It ids very difficult for those with a COI to write without promotionalism. And note that by "promotionalism" we include the promotion of any cause at all, however meritorious-- we do not differentiate in this respect between commercial and non-commercial organizations.

The way Wikipedia judges importance is not merit, but the availability of references--specifically, references providing substantial coverage from third-party independent reliable sources, not press releases or mere announcements. Essentially all references in all versions of this article from from the firm;s own web site or related pages. If you have them, rewrite the article in Draft space. Avoid promotionalism , and avoid any copying from theorganizations website or other pre-existing material.

The other two articles you mention are interesting examples of how not to write an article: they are highly promotional, designed to appeal to prospective supporters or donors, giving the information that the organization might want to say abiut itself. That's what press releases do, and organization web pages. But encyclopedias tell the general reader what they might want to know about an organization they've heard of. There are several hundred thousand articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or remove, and I have added these to the list. DGG ( talk ) 04:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

WorldCat library holdings

In an AfD where you nominated Andrew Peterson, you stated as part of your rationale that - WorldCat shows holdings of between 80 and 150 libraries - and later commented - Worldcat shows a total of less then 80 holdings for all of them together, however my search at WorldCat yielded a different result: 587 library holdings. Seems like a big difference. Nonetheless, I guess my point is moot now that the article has been deleted.-- Isaidnoway (talk) 18:46, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

there is usually some discrepancy in the counts when you go book by book, and when you go to the authorioverview record , but this is the hsarpest one I have seen--and it goes in the opposite direction--usually the author summary record one is smaller. I will reanalyze and get back to you, If I have made an error & it affects what I would say, I'll consider how to deal with the problem. DGG ( talk ) 00:06, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

FORM Holdings

There is a huge CSD backlog which I an slowly working thru. Could you please look at FORM Holdings. It's obviously a comisioned work but in spite of the plethora of sources it's only claim is that it's lised on a stock exchange but I'm not sure if that accords automatic notability. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:30, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

only for he most impt exchanges. We recognize NYSE and London as implying notability , provided their the major boards, not the subsidiary ones. We do not recognize NASDAQ as implying notability , altho many companies there especially technology companies, are quite notable. (notice I am now usually saing "imply" notability instead of the official "presume")

If people patrol properly, there will inevitably be an increased CSD background. We can't limit ourselves to reforming just one aspect of the system. DGG ( talk ) 18:11, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank You!

David - Just a quick Saturday morning thanks for your thoughtful and helpful feedback! Appreciate it.

Djelky (talk) 18:03, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Please explain your tag of advert on WASH

You have added the tag of "advert" on this page: WASH. Can you please explain on the talk page why? Please point out which statements you object to. I did quite a bit of writing for that article, so I would appreciate your feedback, rather than just being lumped with the tag "advert". Thanks a lot. EvMsmile (talk) 11:44, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I changed it to the milder newsrelease. I consider it in large part advocacy for the importance of the issue. I agree completely about the importance of this, but WP does not do addvocacy, regardless of the worthiness of the cause. DGG ( talk ) 13:20, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Readers contributions

Hello, just heads up that a conversation around readers contributions is happening here and it might be of interest to you. Thanks!--Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Farwestern development region,Kanchanpur district

Could you take a look at Farwestern development region,Kanchanpur district? It has a misleading title as it's about a student. Non-notable to me, but I've been wrong before. Cotton2 (talk) 00:58, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

it's apparently a naive attempt at a personal wiki page. I left my usual message in such cases: We're not Facebook. DGG ( talk ) 05:22, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

The Smiley Company new stub

Greets DGG. I created a new stub Draft:The Smiley Company 2, but couldn't move it to The Smiley Company due to page protection. Could you take a peek? Cheers -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 10:26, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Milstein pages inquiry

Hi DGG, it's been awhile. Hope you're doing well. I am writing today on behalf of Adam Milstein, a client of my company Beutler Ink (in partnership with another PR firm, coincidentally named Miller Ink). My focus is two pages: Adam Milstein and Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation. I have not yet posted on either talk page, but I have disclosed my interest by adding the {{connected contributor}} template to both.

In July you were briefly active on both articles. It looks to me like you undid some promotional edits by an SPA, and appropriately so in my opinion. After restoring each entry, you then also added the {{news release}} tags. What I'd like to find out, on Mr. Milstein's behalf, is what you think should be done in each case so these warning tags are no longer necessary. With your input, it would be my intention to prepare updates to these pages to be guideline-compliant. Please let me know what you think. Thanks, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 14:59, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

I shall take a look. I was planning to look at related pages also. One of the things that concerns me is duplication among articles. DGG ( talk ) 16:36, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the quick reply. I haven't looked closely at the duplication issue, though that does sound like it would require rectifying. Please let me know what else you see, and I can start working on improvements. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 21:12, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

"Risher believes that ..." is a phrasethat always bothers me. And I;d integrate the awards section. DGG ( talk ) 04:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi DGG, I'm afraid I'm confused by your response. On neither the Adam Milstein nor the Milstein Foundation page is there any occurrence of the word "Risher", nor is there any awards section. Would you please look again and let me know what you find? Thanks, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 17:57, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Help with a draft

Hi DGG!

Could you help me with a draft that I wrote? Its the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Majestic_Hotel_Group and it was declined because "This submission's references do not adequately show the subject's notability. Wikipedia requires significant coverage about the subject in reliable sources". However, on my references, I put well known newspapers such as La Vanguardia and El Mundo and also Review Pro, a company present worldwide. So why these sources are not reliable? Which type of source should I use ? Or the draft was declined because the references were not written in the right way? I sent a message to the person that declined the draft a few days ago but since I havent got a reply and I saw you replying a comment , so thatºs why Im writing to you now. Thanks in advance!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Revmchris (talk • contribs) 09:58, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

The reviewer in question has been barred from AfC and has not edited simce 29 August. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:38, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Revmchris. The part of the firm which is important is the original property, the Majestic Hotel in Barcelona. You need to rewrite the article to emphasize that. Since the hotel dates from 1918, there should be good references available. The rest of the properties belong in a separate section called something like Other properties. DGG ( talk ) 06:02, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your help! :D I've just resubmit the draft. Can you have a loook on it ? Thanks again! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Revmchris (talk • contribs) 15:55, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi DGG!! I've just seen your comment /advice regarding the page (either have a page concerning the group or just the Majestic Hotel Group). But why only one page, if one is regadirng the hotel and the other, the group? It wouldnt be the first case since Wikipedia has the following pages abou hotels that belong to a chain : Trump International Hotel and Tower (Honolulu) <ref>[21], Mercure Hotel Canberra <ref>[22], Shangri-La Hotel (Dubai) <ref>[23], Grand Hyatt Cannes Hôtel Martinez <ref>[24] and the Dubai Marriot Harbour Hotel &Suites <ref>[25].

Thanks a lot in advance.

Revmchris (talk) 14:20, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Please assist

Hi DGG, I'm writing as you've assisted in the revision history of the article located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metapress. In my opinion, this was incorrectly nominated for deletion a few days ago. Please review the current conversation, and add to the discussion if possible. Potentially I need to add more references? There are many more that I could add. I truly believe this is a useful, descriptive, and appropriate page for continued inclusion. Please let me know what you think. Thank you! Mark54ems

• Hi DGG. Please see the revised version of the Metapress article, as well as my last comment on it's articles for deletion page. Looking forward to your opinions, now that I've clarified more about the topic. Thanks! Mark54ems

Notability of business people?

Hi DGG. If you have time, I'd appreciate your input at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeffrey Storey where some interesting issues have been raised about the notability of business people. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 12:03, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that David, your input was very helpful, and pretty much what my instincts are. You're so right about the distortions of blindly following GNG, primarily because PR agencies can generate mountains of "press coverage" for utterly inconsequential people, businesses, and (yet to be completed) projects. this discussion was a prime example. The article was eventually deleted, but not without some stubborn resistance. Voceditenore (talk) 07:33, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Inquiry again re: Adam Milstein + Foundation

Hi DGG, I'm creating a new section since I think another reply on the above thread is too likely to be lost. As I asked then, I'd like your input on what you believe would need to be fixed on the pages Adam Milstein and Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation before the {{news release}} tags can be removed. Your initial reply concerned a different page than the either of the two I'm asking about. Please let me know what your concerns are about these two linked pages, and I can begin working on improvements. However, if you are too busy, I may seek another opinion from a volunteer editor next week. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 20:01, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

the main problem remainsduplication: the Campus Maccabees section is the same in both articles! And there's still promotional wording and promotional sourcing. In the foundation article, article:: 1/section 4 is sourced only to two PR sources. 2/Wording like "to submit personal videos letting the world see the positive things coming out of Israel" is advocacy; this or very similar phrases are used several times. The only reason I haven't fixed this is that since they are your clients, I want to leave it up to you to decide which article to put the duplicated material in--they could actually go either place, since though listed as independent, it's essentially his private foundation, as is shown by the fact that both he and it claim credit for the same things. If there is not major improvement I'm going to propose a merge on that basis to the article on him.

By the way, are any of the following accounts your firm or their contractors: User:Therowervz; User:MBurg1952, User:Leah757, User:70.161.231.157; User:Jewishsarah? None of them seem to have a declaration on their user page, which as you know is required. DGG ( talk ) 01:12, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate the more detailed response. But first, absolutely no way is my firm in any way associated with those accounts. I have seen them in the edit history, and I certainly see why you are curious about them, but I don't know anything about them. We've started working with Mr. Milstein in just the past couple of weeks, and my inquiries with you are the extent of our on-wiki efforts so far. I'll begin working on better sourcing and separation of topics. As for a merge, I haven't looked into it and do not have an opinion about that, either. As I start working on it, I expect I'll have some thoughts about that. Also: another editor has made a number of changes to the Milstein biography as of this weekend, and has removed the tag from that page, so you may want to have a look at that. Anyway, more from me soon. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 19:28, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi there, I hope you don't mind me putting this comment here rather than starting a new thread. It's OK if you don't see it immediately, since I don't really have an update except to say that my firm's involvement has been put on hold. We may resume in the future, but I can't say with certainty. In the meantime, I don't have an opinion about what is best for these pages. I will let you know if that changes for us. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

David R. Paolo

Hey DGG, how are you doing? I have seen you around AfD opposing promotion on Wikipedia. I need your opinion on something. I came across this article that seemed promotional to me. I looked the guy up and found that he is not a saint as his article contend. Naturally, I add a few statements about him in the article, but someone keeps removing anything negative that I add. Someone is actively trying to keep the article very positive. On top of that, the guy is hardly notable. He hasn't had received so much press coverage, no major awards - was once finalist for EY, but I don't know if that makes him notable. I am inclined to taking on AfD, but I need your opinion on this first. Check the history.Susana Hodge (talk) 10:23, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

working on it. DGG ( talk ) 05:10, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

still lthinking... DGG ( talk ) 02:59, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Idle talk centre

A neutral, centralised discussion area is being currently created for the idle talk where only those who are truly actively concerned with improvements to the way new pages are handled at both AfC and NPP can sign up for the action. A link will shortly be posted. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:47, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

• A dedicated venue for combined discussion about NPP & AfC where a work group is also proposed has been created. See: Wikipedia:The future of NPP and AfC --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:51, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

New York Times disproving notability

I'm trying to comprehend your statement "The NYT article is a fairly good explanation of that; far from proving the notability of the company, it disproves it."[26] But no matter how many ways I twist my brain, I am unable understand what you are trying to say, nor am I able to put your statement into any valid context relatable to wikipedia policies or guidelines. Could you explain your reasoning when you typed that statement? Thanks! -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 06:01, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

The material in that article shows the company is not yet notable. Sometimes a newspaper -- even a very good newspaper -- covers something because of some human interest hook, or because it's a typical example--as, to take an example, the instances selected for coverage in the articles in the NYT Neediest Cases Fund drive. Such coverage is not notability. Here, it overs the firm, and the coverage is directed to saying how completely un-notable the company is, except for the human interest in its founder, along with similar insignificant companies serving similarly as hobbies by wealthy young people. The only meaning of notability in a WP context is what is suitable to be in the encyclopedia. If there's coverage in good sources showing it is not suitable, then it is not notable., just as much as if there were no coverage at all . The GNG is a useful general rule, but has to be used with judgment about what is actually in the source. DGG ( talk ) 06:32, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

(For any talk page stalkers, we're discussing this NYT ref[27] and its coverage of the company Appboy) - Thanks DGG, that helps me understand your reasoning a bit more. My first reaction is that your argument is based on WP:Original Research, ie: your personal view of what is the meaning of the text published in the New York Times. I welcome further discussion on this issue in general, might even be essay-worthy. Cheers! -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 08:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

We can't use OR in writing an article. We certainly can and do in evaluating a source.We evaluate using a source by examining it, not taking it for granted that the headline describes the content. A great deal of our evaluation of sources as RS for content and the more stringent RS for notability or RS for negative content on BLPs is done by OR, and claimed expertise. and sometimes by pure opinion. Or, as in this case, a claim to take a common sense view after reading the source carefully. DGG ( talk ) 15:31, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Do you see this as a failure/weak point of the GNG policy? -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 16:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

It's a strength. To see the importance of being able to discuss sources in detail see the voluminous archives of the talk p for WP:RS and the RS noticeboard. The GNG if applied without qualifiers would produce truly absurd results. We deal with it by arguing about whether the references are "substantial" "third-party" "independent"and "reliable" and, to be frank, for many disputed cases I could probably make an equally good argument about these criteria in either direction, depending upon what result I wanted to achieve. Other people of course do this also, and the net result is we accept or reject whatever the consensus wants to do for whatever reason which need not be actually stated.

Personally, I consider the entire GNG criterion a failure of notability policy. Notability should be decided on objective criteria. The most important reason we haven't done this is the disputes we would have on just what the criteria are to be. DGG ( talk ) 16:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Rohit Khattar

Hi DGG, Please tell which references are to be removed from page of Rohit Khattar. The page doesn't need to be deleted.

You could retain own ref to prove he owns a film company, and one to prove he owns a restaurant, but what you need is to find some actual reliable non-trivial sources. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rohit Khattar. DGG ( talk ) 09:41, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, DGG. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection") is a new level of page protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibited editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas.

In July and August 2016, a request for comment established consensus for community use of the new protection level. Administrators are authorized to apply extended confirmed protection to combat any form of disruption (e.g. vandalism, sock puppetry, edit warring, etc.) on any topic, subject to the following conditions:

• Extended confirmed protection may only be used in cases where semi-protection has proven ineffective. It should not be used as a first resort.
• A bot will post a notification at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard of each use. MusikBot currently does this by updating a report, which is transcluded onto the noticeboard.

Please review the protection policy carefully before using this new level of protection on pages. Thank you.
This message was sent to the administrators' mass message list. To opt-out of future messages, please remove yourself from the list. 17:49, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Amnesia before AFD

I think that WP:AMNESIA could be applied to AFD, and should be encouraged as a "best practice" when participating in AFD discussions. Would you agree? -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 10:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Worldcat holdings

Hi, I wonder if you could help determine if this would considered a notable author? Ronald Smelser. Are there any tips or guidelines on how to evaluate such holdings in general? I've seen holdings mentioned at several AfDs but I'm not sure how to apply them. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:24, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) Hello K.e.coffman, happening to look, he is certainly notable in that the numbers exceed 8,000 and the largest book of which is at 861 libraries (imaginably, reviews will exist and those would ultimately help of course); usually the best convincing ones are going to be at least 1,000 as that's sufficient to suggest major; it also then varies by what the highest held book is, and whether he was the primary or at least secondary, and also whether that said book is a majorly published and major book, in that case, the person would be notable, yes. Also, closely related, there are some that may still be notable by a special case, for example, one author may have 860 library holdings, and they only published one book, but that one of them is held at, say, 850 libraries, that would be sufficient for notability, especially if reviews exist. Cheers, SwisterTwister talk 04:57, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

K.e.coffman, SwisterTwister, it is not quite that simple. An arbitrary figure makes no sense whatsoever, )(any more than there is a single arbitrary figure for h-index.) Library holdings of books are very field dependent, and very language , date, * country dependent.

First, field dependency: In esoteric fields with a small number of people working, such as notably archeology or linguistics, some aspects of academic religion, even 50 or 60 holdings of a book is quite significant. In other academic fields, such as the study of mainstream literary figures, 300 of so would be needed. I can think of not academic field whatsoever where 800 copies would be needed to indicate notability of the book or the author. In popular non-fiction or fiction, the genre has to be considered--some fields can have very high holdings, such as science fiction or mysteries, or childrens fiction series, or bios about people in popular culture or current politics or about how to succeed in business or current vogues in spirituality-in many of these it would take several hundred to be even mildly significant. But remember that WorldCat figures measure only books in libraries some of these fields, including radical literature or alternate sexuality are rarely held in libraries, even now and almost never before the 21st century.

Second, date: popular and childrens fiction of earlier generations is very rarely kept by public libraries. They concentrate almost entirely upon what people are likely to ask for, which is what has been published in the last few years, and discard them when they no longer circulate--Even important popular or childrens fictions from the first half of the 20th century will have very low library holding.

But the most important variable is country. WorldCat includes essentially all academic and most public libraries in the United States, with somewhat less intense coverage of those in Canada, and only the major ones in the UK. Elsewhere there is a sprinkling of public libraries is Australia/New Zealand, and a few major university of national libraries elsewhere, but essentially no public libraries. A few European countries have good national listings, but I am not familiar with using them. Elsewhere in the world there is for all practical purposes nothing accessible. Therefor even UK fiction is represented less than US, and the most popular childrens book in Italy may have a few dozen WorldCat holdings at most, and one published in India in Hindi, essentially none.

This is relatively little problem in evaluating academic work, as the general rule is that we consider notability under WP:PROF as international (tho this is unfair to fields that are inherently national, such as political science or agriculture of a particular country) . For publicculture in the usual sense, it's critical.

There are also peculiarities in publishing practices,and in WorldCat: Books published in e-book packages are often bought by libraries as a package, just as e-journals are, and even high holdings may indicate little. Worldcat is erratic in combining forms of authors names, even for Western authors. Some books are published in multiple editions or versions, and Worldcat does not do well in combining them.(and earlier eds. of many sorts or works are routinely discarded by libraries) Worldcat counts from the individual book pages and those from the author summaries are often widely divergent even up to ±50, for reasons I do not understand . Libraries in the past have rarely bought textbooks; nowadays if they do, they almost never keep the older eds. So for this genre,they may be a drastic undercount or overcount. I would be very reluctant to sum up holdings of different books in worldcat as a number because of these anomalies. Doing it right for a major author is a research project.

There is a very sensitive bibliographic technique which can be used in some cases:comparing the book with others in the field. (These needs to be done with great care, not just relying on LC subject headings, which, by and large, are much more erratic than even WP categories) .But I have used this to show, for example that a particular dictionary of a very minor language is the most widely held one in that subject. I'll do this sort of analysis on request if i thin it important enough.

And, as Swister Twister mentioned, there is the question of publisher. For academics, only the university presses and the academic societies and the few specialist commercial publishers count at all (this is not just a recent phenomenon--its been true from the 18th century on at least). For popular works, only established publishers count, but there can be confusion with the multiple imprints of major houses, which usually do count, and with the very few fields whee self publishing may occasionally be significant, such as sci-fi.

There is another trick: if you look up the author search page in WorldCat eg. [28] (not the author summary page, eg. [29] at the very end, aftre the books and the journal articles he wrote in JStor and Muse journals --which are the only ones WorldCat sually analyses for articles--, are the book reviews of his books, at least those in the Jsstor and Muse journals

Now, the case you brought up, Ronald Smelser, has multiple books with extremely high counts even considering that the Nazi era is a widely populr topic in modern history. , mostly from academic publishers of importance. There is no question whatsoever that he is notable. Had he even one such book with such high counts, he probably would be, but WP:PROF usually requires two, which is the standard of the highest quality research universities for tenure. This is not the same as showing that his views are widely accepted--that requires other sources. That we have no article on him is incredible. His book The Myth of the Eastern Frontpublished by Cambridge University Press. is a major work, and worth an article. Based on the article, the question is whether his view is the academic consensus. It can not be determined solely fro the reviews, but by other major publication on the subject. (It is not uncommon for reviews in the humanities to be written by other specialists in the field , who are necessarily owe's rivals) But it is certainly enough to qualify him as an expert, if not necessarily the expert. DGG ( talk ) 14:27, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Samir Becic - recreation review?

Hi DGG,

First, thanks for all your hard work on Wikipedia. You'll probably never get enough praise for all that you do. My question is regarding the curious case of one Samir Becic, who does meet Wikipedia's notability criteria but has one heck of a deletion history.

The deletion history log is here: [30]

There appear to be multiple deletions as late as January 2015. However they all rely on a 2012 deletion vote, which was valid, when the subject was on the margin of notability.

No conflicts. Thoughts on lifting the admin template so I can take a shot at a reasonable page? DavidWestT (talk) 22:42, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

What additional references do you have? Just tell me the 2 or 3 strongest. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Full profile / feature pieces SINCE the latest deletion vote down the line:

[31] (Houston Chronicle) [32] (Houston Chronicle) [33] (Christian Post) [34] Novovrijeme [35] HuffPo [36] (KHOU local Houston news) [37] (ABC)

[38] (SF Gate)

[39] (Undefeated Magazine)

There are a bunch of brief mentions from LAT, NYT and so on. Part of the issue is that he's a journalist, really:

- focus.de (biggest German digital daily: weekly columnist, main health expert) - 89.3 KSBJ Radio Station (weekly appearances) - Health and Fitness Sports Magazine (contributing writer) - More Magazine (contributing writer) - Men's Journal (journalist) - NBC's Channel 2, "Behind the Headlines" - WB39 News -Fox 26 "Tips for Houston" - Radio 96.5, "The Roula and Ryan Show" - Sunny 99.1 with Dana Tyson - 104.1 with Sam Malone

DGG, let me know what you're thinking? DavidWestT (talk) 21:40, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

give me another day or two. DGG ( talk ) 02:16, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

DavidWestTSorry for the delay. You need to ask Missvain, who was the admin that protected it. But what I would recommend, is that you first make as good an article as you can in Draft space. Omit minor material. Thne ask for restoration. If it's declined ,ask me to look again. DGG ( talk ) 02:37, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

NPP & AfC reforms

David, I realise you are totally overloaded with Wikipedia work, and understand that you won't have time to join the work group, but as your comments are some of the most valuable concerning these critical issues, your input on the polls at Wikipedia talk:The future of NPP and AfC/To do would be most appreciated. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:01, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

But I will join the work group-- . I;m getting discouraged by my current efforts at deleting promotional articles b he resistance from several editors who think that unimportant, and will even go to the lengths of gratifying the COI promotional editors by rewriting their work even when the subject is not particularly important. The significance of NOT DIRECTORY has escaped them, and they'd rather increase our size than our quality. This goes in cycles, and at the moment they seem to be winning. DGG ( talk ) 04:35, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) and of course it is not our job here to ignore notable topics, or to even go so far as to call a notable topic "not particularly important". We go by what independent reliable sources have to say, we don't let our own personal views interfere. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 06:58, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

There are degrees of notability. Even WP:GNG is clear that a article having moderate notability does not necessarily justify an article if , for example, it can be combined as part of a more comprehensive article. Determining the degree of notability is very much our job. There are many important topics in missing from WP; in what order shall we work on them? Obviously we're limited by what people are willing to do, but for those of us able to work on a range of topics rather than having some particular interest, which article should we choose? Personally, I think those submitted by promotional and paid editors go to the bottom of the pile, because we want to discourage, not encourage e such editing. But many different choice are compatible with building an encyclopedia like ours. DGG ( talk ) 17:37, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• 1Wiki8Q5G7FviTHBac3dx8HhdNYwDVstR, There is one area where we can let our own personal views interfere - at least mine, and that is that I won't lift a finger to help a paid spammer increase his fees and ultimately the turnover of his company or client on the back of my tens of thousands of hours of voluntary work on Wikipedia. No run-of-the-mill company of any kind is so important for an encyclopedia that it has to be included, with or without sources. It's not our job, we're, well, unpaid volunteers, and we choose what we are prepared to do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:05, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Yup, we all get to pick and choose what areas of wikipedia we want to contribute to. Personal views like you describe above are an absolutely valid reason to not contribute in a certain area. Just like personal views that notability is the prime factor, and neutrality concerning 'how the sausage was made', is an absolutely valid reason to contribute in a certain area. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 20:24, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Draft essay: AFD and promotionalism

Another friendly challenge: Help edit an essay on Wikipedia:AFD and promotionalism. First step, do we agree on the wording for what to debate in this essay? Currently is: "Proposed: During Articles for deletion debates, a Delete !vote based on a complaint of promotionalism is valid." -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 11:28, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

It does not make sense to get into multiple debates with on the same general topic. We have to pick one place. As far as I am concerned, this page is good because it is very widely watched. As a preliminary, a question such as 'Proposed: During Articles for deletion debates, a Delete !vote based on a complaint of promotionalism is valid." is not precise enough for a debate. It depends on the meaning of valid--I suppose you mean acceptable as one of the reasons for makig the decision, not as something that trumps all other arguemnts. It is explicit from WP:AFD and WP:NOT that any violation of WP:NOT is suficient to delete an article, not just notability or promotionalism--and any argment based on any such provision is therefore to the point, as distinct from ILIKEIT.

I think you mean more precisely the strength that should be given to such an argument. Even that is hard to answer in the abstract. It obviously depends on the degree of promotionalism. If promotional, it also depends on whether someone is prepared to rewrite the article & fix the problems. It depends on whether the article is satisfactory in other aspects. Andd despite what you say above, if the article is fixable I think it does depends on whether the article is worth fixing. We are limited in editors, and in their time, and by their interests.

I propose a somewhat different question. . Small variations to the notability standard either way do not harm the encyclopedia as much as accepting articles that are part of a promotional campaign. DGG ( talk ) 17:31, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

The 'either way' seems imprecise. Shouldn't the proposal take a stance one way or the other: for the variation to keep, OR the variation to delete. For example, I'm going to venture that we agree that an article should NOT get a variation towards keep based simply on the fact that the article is NOT part of a promotional campaign. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 21:43, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Wiki8...........................]] (talk) 20:31, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

yes, but a non promotional article should if there is an chance at all of notability be moved to draft space for possible improvement; and, if not, the contributor given assistance in finding a better topic.

Let me try some other wordings: what I meant was that being a little deletionist or inclusionist does not matter as much as promotionalism does. It's ok to be somewhat inclusionist or somewhat deletionist and reject promotionalism entirely; it is not ok to be either somewhat inclusionist or somewhat deletionist and accept promotionalism. You are, for example, considerably more inclusionist than I about companies, and I probably more than you about academics, and I consider that fine, & it's something we should be willing to compromise about; but you are willing to accept promotionalism, and I do consider that wrong, and I think it something I would not compromise about.

Worded another way: the decision to keep or delete an article depends first upon promotionalism , and only if not promotional, about notability. I could word it in a single direction: An article should be rejected if it is promotional (regardless of notability ), and it should be rejected if it is not notable (regardless of promotionalism). I consider all these statements more of less equivalent. DGG ( talk ) 22:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I think we're getting close to agreeing on the proposed wording to debate. Lemme ponder a little bit and get back to you soon. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 05:59, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Another rewording: there are two positions I could support,and I've gone back and forth between them:

1. Any article edited by a promotional editor should always be deleted. This is the only way to discourge people from using the WP for advertising. If the subject is actually important, someone elsew ill create an article. Rescuing it sends the message that if your write an unacceptable article about yourself, someone will very possibly fix it for you, and therefore you might as well try to advertise here. It furthermore sends the message that if you you hire someone to write an article and they take money for doing this, and they write the usual unacceptable article such peoplewrite, then someone will fix it for you free,, while the guy who wrote the bad article gets the money. DGG ( talk ) 21:22, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

The wording "Any article edited by a promotional editor should always be deleted" is good, and should allow for a clear debate on that proposal vs. what I would call neutrality on how the sausage is made. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 21:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I had not finished. I said there were two positions I could support. The second is

2. Promotional articles should always be deleted, unless they are very clearly about an undoubtedly notable subject, and some responsible WPedian is prepared to take responsibility for rewriting them. This would normally be done by moving the article to Draft space. This has the advantage of getting articles about the clearly notable subjects and increasing our coverage, while removing promotionalism and discouraging the bulk of the promotional editors, who are rarely writing about unambiguously notable subjects. DGG ( talk ) 21:22, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

oops! my bad. This one would need some rewording to keep us focused. Perhaps something like Articles with promotional issues should always be deleted if those issues are not fixed by the closing of an AFD discussion. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 21:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

as an alternative, you mean, to always be deleted. But I think everyone would agree on that. The question where we disagree is whether we should even allow them to be fixed unless the subject is very notable. DGG ( talk ) 21:35, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

would it be fair to say the general question is: "Promotionalism Overrides Notability" vs. "Notability Overrides Promotionalism". Where Promotionalism meaning an article with promotional content issues. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 13:44, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Patrolling

Have you seen this graph made for us by the WMF? No way could anybody properly patrol anyway near that many articles in one day. I dread to think of the actual quality of all those patrolls and it's too ate t check them all. At that rate, no wonder all the other patrollers backed off - they hardly got a look in. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:52, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

It depends a little if one concentrates on only the most obvious-- or -- as I do-- primarily on the ones other people don't want to handle. But as far as I can tell all these were unselected, and of course it's far too many at a time. Myself, if I do more than 20 or soata time, I get a little careless; I've seen other people do properly 100 or 200 a day, but 1200 is ridiculous. Other large backlogs have had similar problems--and, in my opinion, also some WP contests where volume is a factor. DGG ( talk ) 03:34, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

• Kudpung, re-examining this, I am unsure whether the count includes automatic patrols--when we edit a page, it generally marks the page patrolled as well. That certainly seems to be the case for many of the recent ones. DGG ( talk ) 18:04, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Thanks David. All appreciation and for guidance. Light2021 (talk) 20:46, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Why did you delete Alpha Academic?

Wikipedia: Credible claim of significance states that speedy deletion can be applied to any article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant, with the exception of educational institutions. Given that Alpha Academic is an educational institution, why did you delete the page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.64.158 (talk) 21:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

because , as the article said, "its "core business is proprietary trading and electronic market making, " DGG ( talk ) 03:22, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of FIRST Steamworks

Hi, I believe you have deleted the page FIRST Steamworks under an improper deletion criteria. A7 states that an "Article about a website, blog, web forum, webcomic, podcast, browser game, or similar web content, which does not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject" can be speedily deleted. However, FIRST Steamworks is the 2017 FIRST Robotics Competition game. It is not virtual and is ran by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) out of New Hampshire. This is a worldwide high school robotics competition recognized by many high school leagues as an official varsity sport. The organization's website is firstinspires.org, and Wikipedia has articles on all past games for all of the organization's competitions (including FRC, FTC, FLL, and FLL Junior), as well as the organization itself.

The article is currently a stub because information about the game is released in stages, starting with the teaser trailer on September 20th and culminating with the game overview released on January 7, 2017. Previous articles such as last year's game, FIRST Stronghold, were also stubs until the game overview and were allowed to exist as stubs on Wikipedia with a similar amount of content for a similar timeperiod, slowly added to as the game is revealed. Check for yourself under history for the entry on Stronghold. Many people added to the page and I was able to remove the stub tag back in January of last year. It is now a full article.

This is a high school sport played with real robots in event centers across the country, not a virtual browser-based game. Lots of people feel strongly about it. I do try to avoid questionable contributions, and this is not one of them. Can you bring it back, please? Thanks! Your work is appreciated. Wywyit (talk) 04:04, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

It seems the wrong box was accidentally checked--it should have been deleted as Organized event with no indication of significance. That the main competition is notable is not an indication that any one year's will be, and there were no references except its own site. When you've got some third party references, it might be time to re-create it. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Blag Magazine

Hello. I noticed that you listed BLAG Magazine in the CSD log [40], but I can't find the speedy delete tag in the article's revision history. I guess I am interested because I was going to tag it for speedy delete. But if you already did, well then I will consider other options.Steve Quinn (talk) 04:09, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello again. Well I found a couple of sources that might indicate this is barely notable --> [41], [42]. However, if there isn't much else, then I might take it to AfD. I will keep trying to see what is available. Steve Quinn (talk) 04:30, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

The history is a little confusing. I encountered it, I think on New Pages, and decided to nominate it for deletion as G11. Unfortunately, I clicked the wrong button and deleted it instead of just nominating it. I therefore restored it, and renominated it properly. It was subsequently cleaned up a little over the next few hours, but without much change in the basic content. Seraphimblade was the admin who then deleted it as G11.

It might be notable. But the content is so unambiguously promotional that I think you;d really need to start over. e.g. "BLAG Magazine eschews advertising, instead producing branded-content for companies like ... Sally and Sarah take pride in creating "bespoke, dynamic and campaign-worthy" content for companies, which allows for BLAG's creative independence and unique style to remain intact without editorial compromise. " It wasn't deleted for lack of notability=--I think it's notable myself., there are other refs, but I think they tend to be advertorials, but it's the area of modern culture where that's not unusual. There's not much potentially usable material in the deleted article--I think you'd do better to start over. But if you want a copy, ask Seraphimblade DGG ( talk ) 23:30, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@Steve Quinn: I spoke to the editor who was writing it regarding the problems. I'd tend to agree with DGG there wasn't really anything to salvage. It looks like that original editor has started a draft at Draft:BLAG Magazine, so you might consider giving them some help and advice there. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:37, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

DGG and @Seraphimblade: thanks very much. And, I think the article draft space is probably the best place for it right now. Steve Quinn (talk) 03:39, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society

Hi Dave! It appears that you have removed the SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society. I understand that text could have benefited from some revisions to avoid copy right complications. I was wondering if you can roll-back the page so I can revise the text. 21:49, 7 October 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bmajlesara (talk • contribs)

Bmajlesara, the entire contents of the article consists word for word of the "abstract " on the publication's web page. You can find it there. But in addition to being copyvio, it was essentially promotional, and you'd do much better to forget about trying to revise it and start over. There are surely reviews of this important publication to use for sources. DGG ( talk ) 23:03, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks DGG. So, I can recreate the page? Bmajlesara (talk) 23:07, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

you can and you should. DGG ( talk ) 23:08, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

• Just a quick note DGG, there are issues of an undisclosed COI here and probable meatpuppetry. The publication is tied to an author who has apparently been trying to add himself to Wikipedia for most of the past year, so I'd recommend that if they do try to recreate the page it should be through AfC at most. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:25, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Cacti (Software)

I am trying to determine why exactly the Cacti (Software) page was deleted. You listed it as 'G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion' but it seems anything but that. From what I can determine, G11 is traditionally used for Spam articles. This page is not Unambiguous advertising or promotion anymore than any page about any other piece of software is. Its been here for 10 years and have several dozen other pages linking to it. It could probably use some revisions in a few places, but it does not appear to be G11 worthy. Cigamit (talk) 00:08, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

The page was mistakenly deleted in trying to fix up a large batch of over-hasty deletion nominations by an inexperienced user. I've restored it. I have considerable doubts if the current sourcing shows it is notable, but that's another matter. DGG ( talk ) 03:24, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Page patrolling

SwisterTwister has patrolled 219 pages today in just over two hours. This is absolutely not humanly possible. There are instances where he has patrolled at a rate of 7 a minute - that's just blind button mashing. I don't care what our backlog is, no one has time to verify the quality of his edits so he has to stop. I'm going now to tell him to limit his patrolling and AfC reviewing to a total of 50 patrolls/reviews in any 24 hours or I'll block him without further warning and we can hold the ANI debate afterwards to unblock him on condition that he limit his daily reviewing to 50 articles. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:24, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @Kudpung: http://tools.wmflabs.org/nppdash/patrollerinfo/result.php?user=SwisterTwister may be helpful here? It's not yet finished (new features planned) but it at least lists the latest 500 pages patrolled by a user -- samtar ^{talk or stalk} 09:34, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I will note about 75% of these are by the same user who largely started then at the same time, see the patrol logs for yourself. SwisterTwister talk 16:16, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

SwisterTwister, am I right that the ed. in question is apparently Prof tpms, with relation to his series of articles on Indian villages and related topics? It is indeed possible to go quite quickly in dealing with these, but I think I would either have indicated for each article or , much better, suggested to him on his user talk page that the articles would have been greatly improved by adding a map, by linking to the articles for nearby towns mentioned, by using inline citations which he has done only sporadically, and by omitting adjectives like "beautiful". All these are common faults of such articles; his are definitely among the better ones of their type, and the editor should be encouraged to do even better. I'm not sure I would have gone into this for an individual article, since they are fundamentally acceptable, but wereI to notice such a large number on the subject--as you did notice--then it's appropriate to contact the editor. NPP does not have to be entirely routine--it can be made much more interesting by following up on important things, such as encouraging promising editors, rather than by aiming for quick cleanup.

I've done a quick check otherwise of some of the more recent. . Not counting the villages, I've looked at about 15: 10 I would have done just the same, 5 differently. Some of the differences are inconsequential, but: for Muhammad Suleman Shaikh, I tagged it for G11. that can be a matter of judgment and I may be wrong, but I would at the very least have tagged as promotional. For Centro Nacional Autónomo de Cinematografía, I added tags for primary sources,insufficient references,and expand Spanish. For Project networks I would have done more, though we have no real standard procedure for this sort of an article: it's basically a term paper. The tag for "essay" is not appropriate, as its message is meant for an opinion essay, which this is not. I added tags for inline refs, additional refs, and tone. I also added a tag for copypaste from an unknown source. It may indeed have been the contributor's own school essay, but this cannot be assumed. More help must be given here,--at least a superficial check for ca source for a copy source, and an appropriate message to the editor about our style. He's never even been welcomed. Of course, doing this right takes time, as that is Kudpung's point. I think you should deal with the suggestions on these articles. (If you were a new reviewer, I'd do this personally now; but you have fully enough experience and skill here to handle it properly by yourself) And then, I think you should go back over the previous article you reviewed and try to see if there is more to be done for each of them.--I'd recommend that you do it before patrolling additional ones. I know you mean to do this right, so her's the time and place to start. DGG ( talk ) 19:02, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Cyan (cat)

Hi. I've recreated this redirect as I had previously declined a speedy on it. Cyan is a character (and is a cat) in the Free Collars Kingdom thing, and I considered this to be a valid redirect (as a few other of Neelix's have been when I looked at them). After I declined PatientZero's X1 (and explained my reason on his/her talk page), it was replaced by an IP. You might have a reason that I can't see, or possibly not noticed that I'd declined previously. Peridon (talk) 18:22, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

you seem to be correct DGG ( talk ) 18:34, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Susan E. Eaton

Hi, DGG I have added book reviews Draft:Susan E. Eaton.Seden4m (talk) 18:33, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Seden4m -- yes, it's better. But these are academic books, so there should be academic reviews available. The simplest way to find them is to use Book Review Index, available in any academic library and some large public libraries. But I've accepted it as is for now. I may revise it a little. DGG ( talk ) 19:31, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Request for some etiquette advice

Hello DGG. I'm contacting you out of the blue hoping for some advice (at your convenience), concerning an ongoing RfC you commented on about two months ago (and in a related arbitration dispute).

My question isn't about your opinion on the RfC itself, actually, but rather your analysis on the bold use of a guideline to re-assert the deletion leading to the RfC. Since we agree on some content points, I'm aware asking your advice might be misconstrued as "canvassing," but that's not at all my intent - just more a question of etiquette, if you don't mind? I can't help but notice you seem very knowledgable on matters of neutrality and the manual of style, so I have a hard time imagining any advice you might give being dismissed for being biased (and if I've crossed a line with this comment, don't hesitate to let me know so I can attempt amends somehow.).

To the question: I've read WP:BLPREQUESTRESTORE several times, and it seems to absolutely support a comment an editor recently made in the side arbitration discussion (that in short, the term under contention should remain out of the lead until consensus clearly supports its addition):

"To ensure that material about living people is written neutrally to a high standard, and based on high-quality reliable sources, the burden of proof is on those who wish to retain, restore, or undelete the disputed material. When material about living persons has been deleted on good-faith BLP objections, any editor wishing to add, restore, or undelete it must ensure it complies with Wikipedia's content policies. If it is to be restored without significant change, consensus must be obtained first. Material that has been repaired to address concerns should be judged on a case-by-case basis."

I absolutely believe my arguments are "good-faith BLP objections," and so I would feel correct again deleting the term myself. That said, though, the topic is contentious, and I'd rather not sully my account's repute by doing something that will get me accused of bias or improper POV pushing. To give you context, while I have plenty of hours conversing in RfCs, I've never closed one or led one myself before this, and so I regret my personal experience here is limited. So in a nutshell, would it be wrong of me (i.e. incredibly rude, as the creator of a contentius ongoing RfC), to use that guideline as my rationale for again asserting my deletion until consensus is met? Thank you in advance. Yvarta (talk) 19:37, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I am primarily concerned about content, not procedure; I am concerned about having orderly procedure only so we can deal with content more effectively. I am concerned about the effect of guidelines, not their wording; I am concerned about wording only to the extent it clarifies the intent. I think a considerable part of our guidelines are worded too starkly, omitting the necessary nuance that is needed to lead to effective application of their spirit and purpose, and I think this is particularly true of the BLP guidelines, which were instituted in essentially a moral panic.

As an admin, and as an arb, I follow the rules, but I interpret them to achieve the best we can to equitable and rational solutions, a goal that usually involves some degree of compromise--sometimes, even compromise with injustice.

I can't see any other approach as rational, because Wikipedia rules are not a unified code compiled by experts, but a hodge-podge of empirical attempts at dealing with questions as the arise, and therefore comprise a maze of contradictions. But, we do have one fundament rule to justify my approach to problems: IAR. Without it, I would not attempt to do anything substantial here except as a writer or copyeditor.

Keep to the basics: close in the way that you think will yield the best result for WP. I've already said what I think it to be. DGG ( talk ) 21:17, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful advice, DGG. I typically just approach guidelines as set in stone, but as you point out, it would be absurd to assume every case study fits every guideline's wording to a T, or that some interpretation isn't required in many cases. I will consider how to approach the issue in the way that most benefits the project overall, and best meshes with the guidelines' intent. Best, Yvarta (talk) 21:56, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 10 October

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair page, your edit caused a URL error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:17, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Draft:University of Transport and Communications

When I was about to start a stub on the University of Transport and Communications (as any independent degree-awarding institution is generally kept as per Wikipedia:Common outcomes) I found that Draft:University of Transport and Communications existed. Does that draft read promotionally? If not, may I just move it into the article space? WhisperToMe (talk) 11:45, 11 October 2016 (UTC) WhisperToMe, the draft is not promotional , but it has no references whatsoever; If you have any, add them and move it to mainspace. (you can also add them and then submit the article, but the AfC process is so cumbersome I ofter bypass it; it is not required to use it. DGG ( talk ) 15:28, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Edward Cornelius Humphrey

Hi. Why did you move this user sandbox into main namespace? The subject doesn't seem to pass any notability criteria and the primary author has an apparent conflict of interest. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:21, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I see what you did. I guess the question now is how did you think the subject is notable? Was this out-of-process move just to fix your earlier mistake? Chris Troutman (talk) 14:26, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

checking my archives--I'll get back to you tomorrow. DGG ( talk ) 15:28, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. You can put your response on the AfD. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:37, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

That's what I was probably going to suggest. It didn't quite qualify for G4 or A7, but that doesn't mean it will pass AfD. DGG ( talk ) 15:39, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Rodeway Inn and Suites, Fort Lauderdale Airport and Port Everglades Cruise Port

Are you sure that was about an organisation? It seemed to be about the facilities themselves to me. Adam9007 (talk) 21:01, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

A hotel is a business as well as a building. Some of the worst promotionalism was removed after I tagged it. Just as an exercise, I'm going to restore and clean it, though there will not be much left. Let's see if the promotionalism returns. DGG ( talk ) 22:57, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I get a whiff of puppetry here. There's this article, about a Choice Hotels franchisee, written by an account which had been inactive for over a year. And last week, Richchoice (obvious COI username) created Ascend Hotel Collection & Cambria Hotels & Suites two other Choice franchises. The sudden flurry of activity on Choice Hotels topics, the similarity in username structure (Common English nickname + brand name?), the promotional tone of the articles... it all seems too coincidental, yet not concrete enough to raise an SPI. Cabayi (talk) 06:58, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

what you need for a spi, is to check for identical peculiarities in wording and so on. It might help also to run a careful check for copyvio on the current version of Econo Lodge before it is either cleaned or redirected or, most likely, deleted. DGG ( talk ) 16:58, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Speedy deletion comments

Hi. May I respectfully suggest that you do not attempt to use CSD criteria to delete a 10-year old article (as you did with Conrad Fort Lauderdale)? I appreciate there is no time limit applicable to speedy deletion, but I don't believe that process was ever intended to apply in cases like this. It is for clear-cut uncontroversial deletions which are never going to be suitable for an encyclopedia; A 10-year old article with 100+ revisions is unlikely to be in this category. In this instance you applied G11, but I'm fairly sure that some of those revisions are not "exclusively promotional" and could form the basis for a suitable article. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:30, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

It is often possible, but there was no version that was both current and omitted advertising. It is also possible to stubbify to stubbify, but then my experience has been that the promotionalism just gets re-added. I tried constructing a version, and lets see what happens. Though extensively worked on by an editor writing in a promotional manner, the original editor was a responsible WPedian, so you may be basically right. DGG ( talk ) 22:51, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Haiti–United States relations

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Haiti–United States relations. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 12

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Jeffrey Satinover, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:03, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Question on news release tag

Hi, DGG, for Paul T. P. Wong's biographical page, you added the "news release" tag a week ago. In response, I have attempted changing or deleting some wording that may have a promotional tone. Can you give any further guidance on which sentences/sections are promotional? Thanks. Evelyn Mak (talk) 18:34, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

for academics, we usually mention only their 4 or 5 most cited papers, including the number of citations from Google Scholar or the like. We include only major awards. We don't describe the accomplishments of their children.

I have also tagged your other articles as advertisements, as all of them seem designed to promote Wong's theory. Unless you revise them to include criticism, remove promotional praises, remove therapeutic claims that do not have sources that meet the requirements of WP:MEDRS , and remove connections with earlier theories depending only on Wong's works (or change them into statements like :Wong considers that...), I am likely to list them for deletion as promotional.

It is also promotional to make redirects from unlikely search terms that have not been used as alternative names.

As this set of interwoven articles is ythe onlytopic you have worked on, it is reasonablethat I ask you whether it is possible that you might have some connection with the subject. If you're just a fan, and have no business, professional , or employment connection, you might want to declare it, but you need not be specific. If however there is any financial conenction, please see our Terms of Use, particularly with respect to paid contributions without disclosure , which require that the specific connection be described. In such circumstances, you would also be well advised to write articles on the subject in Draft space. DGG ( talk ) 18:54, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

@DGG - What do I need to do to create a Wikipedia friendly page at https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Ascend_Hotel_Collection&redirect=no ? I'm so confused why it keeps getting deleted/redirected. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dickalan (talk • contribs) 20:30, 12 October 2016 (UTC)