User talk:DGG

“ I am very gratified to have learned that so many people seem to like me, but even more gratified that they understand and like (or at least tolerate) the work I'm trying to do. ” —  at my RfA

Topical Archives: Deletion reform, Speedies, Notability , IPC & Fiction, WP:Academic things & people, Journals
Sourcing
General Archives: Sept-Dec06, Jan-Feb07, Mar-Apr07, May07, Jun07, Jul 7, Aug07, Sep07, Oct 07; Nov 07, Dec07, Jan08, Feb08, Mar08, Apr08, May08, Jun08, Jul08, Aug08, Sep08, Oct08, Nov08, Dec08, Jan09, Feb09, Mar09,

(some still current material from these pages is below:) :

Please post messages at the bottom of the page - I will reply on this page, unless you ask otherwise

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If your article is in danger of deletion, possibly some of the following messages may be of help to you:

• If you can fix the article, I'd advise you to do so very quickly, before it gets nominated for regular deletion
• We're an encyclopedia, not a social networking site. You have to become famous first, then someone will write an article about you. In the meantime, there's lots of things to do here -- so welcome.
• An article must have 3rd party independent reliable published sources, print or online (but not blogs or press releases)
• To use material from your web site, you must release the content under a GFDL license, which permits reuse and modification of the material by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and is not revokable.
• For articles about a commercial or non-commercial organization, see our Business FAQ (a wonderful page written by Durova, from whom I learned a lot of my approach to people writing articles with COI.

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You please help me

Hi dear DGG, some people want to delete my account, my account is everything to me, could you help defend me before might delete me. Thanks--Standforder (talk) 20:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The notability problem in a nutshell

Though it remains in the policy, there are now many exceptions to: If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. - quoted from WP:V (There are a number of areas where this is true, but primary among the one that concerns us here is fiction.) There are several ambiguities: the first is the meaning of the plural of sources, for it is accepted and elswhere stated that ones sufficiently reliable third party source is sufficient. Second, there are many cases where it is clear that first party sources such as official documents from government sources are sufficient to show the notability of the agencies concerned. Third, we routinely accept the probability that there will be such sources. Fourth, the sources for writing an article are not in the least limited to third party sources, for the primary source of the work itself is accepted as sufficient and in fact usually the best source for content. Fifth, and crucial here, is the distinction between "topic" and "article"-- a key argument above is whether a spin offarticle on a character is to be judged as a separate article. The sixth is the lack of a requirement that the third party source be substantial. DGG (talk)

SPARC

←I am a little confused by what happened to this page SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Corporation you changed to a redirect yesterday --I see the speedy for the redirect but I did not notice the speedy or other deletion process for the original. In any case i want to recreate it as it is one of the things I know about & I'm sure i could do a proper article whatever may have been wrong with the first--If you're an admin could you restore it to my user space for the purpose? DGG 00:25, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The SPARC mess was confusing, I'll give you that. :) Someone — I don't know who — moved the SPARC article to the silly title SPARC - Scalable Processor ARChitecture, and created the new silly-titled page SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Corporation. Someone else sensibly requested that SPARC - Scalable Processor ARChitecture be moved back to SPARC. I'm not actually an admin, so my contribution to the mess was limited to moving SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Corporation to Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Corporation, and proposing it for speedy deletion since its only content was a link to the organization's Web site. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Scholarly_Publishing_and_Academic_Resources_Corporation for the entire text of the page.) Since then, somebody else has speedy-deleted Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Corporation (per my suggestion), and SPARC has been moved back to its rightful place.

If you would like to create an article about the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Corporation, then Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Corporation is the right place to do it. As long as you can find something encyclopedic to say about it, I wouldn't worry about the fact that a previous page on the topic has been deleted. --Quuxplusone 02:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC) (dp)

Actual usage of the European Library by librarians?

Hello DGG. Please see my my question for you over on WP:COI/N, regarding the European Library. EdJohnston 21:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC). You asked me about it sometime back, and I've been noticing announcements that it is finally now becoming actually useful; union lists are not used until they have almost as much content as the national ones. It's like OSX, it was obviously going to be universal , but wise people didn't switch over for a while. I waited for 10.4. DGG 20:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Librarian stuff

Hi DGG, I recognize your username from around the wiki (recently at some Afds I'm watching). I see you're an admin and a librarian, and that you've contributed to similar discussions in the past, so I'd like to point out the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Unusual university spam. I think it's about time we developed a clear policy about this sort of thing. As an established wikipedian and wannabe librarian, I've taken a great interest in this debate. Thanks for considering it! Latr, Katr 02:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your thoughtful reply. There seems to be a lot of hostility and misunderstanding around this issue, so I hope we can reach a satisfactory conclusion. If I go for my MLIS, I'll do the UW's distance-learning program, since I don't really want to move to Seattle. It sounds like a lot of fun, but I have to do my research and determine if the extra money I would be making would be worth the extra debt I'd be taking on! Latr, Katr 16:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S. There is a similar thread that I moved just below the one in which you responded that you might want to check out. I'm taking everything related to that off my watchlist, as I seem to have unknowingly created some hostility between myself and one of the editors involved. If you would, please keep me posted if any new policies or guidelines are developed out of this. Thanks! Latr, Katr 17:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC) (dp)

Please please help on Ronn Torossian page, Mosmof and 1 other user have taken it, and the 5W PR page hostage. Can you bring some balance as you have before. (Binyaminyigal (talk) 10:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC))

sampling deletions

I've replied on my talk page. SamBC 06:04, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Printing

No, I think it was an honest mistake - my edit summary was meant to be taken literally, not as minatory (perhaps not the best phrasing). He is on the warpath again at Four Great Inventions of ancient China but I don't worry too much about that. There's absolutely no chance of me going for admin. Keep up the good work at AfD etc, & I'm still waiting for the Master of the Playing Cards expansion. Johnbod 03:06, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

AfD notification proposal

Hi DGG. You do not need to change policy to have people notified about AfD. You might want to contact the developer of User:Android Mouse Bot 2 to see if s/he can create an Android Mouse Bot 3 to post the AfD notifications using stats from Wikipedia Page History Statistics. If you check out my contributions, you'll see that I am in the process of manually using Wikipedia Page History Statistics to add AfD warnings to those AfDs listed at the bottom of the August 13th AfD list. I also add {{Welcome!|-- [[User_talk:Jreferee|Jreferee]]}} to their talk page if they are new. I utilize Microsoft Word to assist me in all this. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 16:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Another thing that happens is the article itself sometimes is not tag for deletion even though the article is listed at AfD. See this, for example. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 17:48, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Notification of proposal: Guideline/policy governing lists

Given your participation in recent AfDs involving lists, and given your track record for neutrality and diplomacy, I'd appreciate your input on the following:

Wikipedia: Village pump (policy)#Proposal to make a policy or guideline for lists

Thank you in advance for any thoughts you may have on the topic. Sidatio 16:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

FYI, this conversation has moved to User:Sidatio/Conversations/On list guidelines. I look forward to your continued input in order to reach a consensus on the issue! Sidatio 00:43, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Content policy analysis

Wikipedia:Relevance of content/Content policy analysis: let's try to synchronize our views on this subject so that our continuing work on it can be more effective.--Father Goose 23:26, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Has this account been compromised?

Evidence: You just agreed with me. This is unprecendented. Please relinquish control of this account to the real DGG immediately. Someguy1221 00:24, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

if you'll look at my deletion log, you'll see my dark side shows itself itself every day, generally when I start editing. After I get that expressed, I go on in the way you normally think of me. DGG (talk) 01:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Not only did he agree with me earlier today, he even voted 'Delete' on an AfD (admittedly on one of Billy's articles, but even so...). I agree this pattern of events is most peculiar and warrants a full investigation. — iridescent 01:20, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

LCC

The LCC subpages have been imported into Wikisource, where they can be expanded without the restraints of Wikipedia. I have asked for comment regarding the sub-pages at Talk:Library of Congress Classification#sub_pages. John Vandenberg (talk) 12:15, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Request you look at User:Abd/AfD: formula for conflict

I've written an essay on the AfD problem in an attempt to delineate the issues and possibly to address them. I'd very much appreciate any comment you have time to give. Others who notice this are also welcome to comment and/or edit the essay. --Abd (talk) 03:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:AN post about you

Sorry on behalf of all involved for not notifying you, that was a terrible oversight on all of our parts. If it helps, the conversation, as you likely read, focused not on you but rather on Zscout's block of the editor(vandal?) who complained about you. Good luck with your vandals...--CastAStone/^/(talk) 17:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this [1] as I was out of town and off line. Bearian (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Ha

Ever been accused of being a deletionist before?--Kubigula (talk) 06:15, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

See [2]. And once or twice before. Makes my day each time, as the saying goes. DGG (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

"Hive mentality"? That's a good one. I'll have to remember that. 0:) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 06:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

That is priceless. Both the accusation and the phrase. You must be doing something right, David. Thanks Kubigula, that made my day also. — Becksguy (talk) 01:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Molecular biology ---> library

Hi DGG, I've been aware of your presence on Wikipedia for some time, but I just now took the time to read your userpage. I find it remarkable that you transitioned from being a molecular biologist to being a librarian. Have you already documented this change of heart somewhere on-wiki? If not, do you think you could? (Even in talkspace, of course.) This doesn't really merit a reply unless you have free time, but I would love to know more.

Thanks, Antelan ^talk 07:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC) Just send me an email or enable yours. DGG (talk) 17:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Your upcoming presentation to fellow librarians

Please keep us updated on this. And, if there's a digital component, you can place a copy online at meta:Presentations/en. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 01:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

See User:DGG/LG. This is of course just a sketch. When I gave it, and as I will give it, there's no formal online component--it's a live demo based on the current pages in Wikipedia. DGG (talk) 03:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Amateur computer club invite

Here is where I read about it. Maybe Mark remembers more. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

question

After waiting a while, I just would like to ask you, wether you have seen my question there. Regards, —αἰτίας •discussion• 19:05, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

commented there. DGG (talk) 19:23, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Re: question

I don't think it's a bad idea - although I'm sure it'll be gamed by people seeking to exercise superiority over other admins. As with all things, the ethos in question applies only with a good dash of reason; I sure wouldn't want people overturning BLP or OTRS deletions on me without consulting me first. :-) east.718 at 21:08, January 22, 2008

I think a cat might be a good idea, to complement "administrators willing to make difficult blocks" and all the others - but can't think of anything succint enough at the moment. "Administrators willing to be reverted" sends the wrong message to me - got any ideas? east.718 at 19:48, January 23, 2008

I just saw "This admin encourages other admins to be bold in reverting his admin actions." at User_talk:BovlbDGG (talk) 22:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Cal Nichols, & Barnes Reports

I removed the reports because I could find no mention or quote in any independent news organization or other website other than self-added directories--no membership in related associations, identification of authors, presentations or papers, networking--for 100+ reports that are sold via payloadz. Is this a distributor or some sort of a compiler? Flowanda | Talk 06:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

They are I think a well-established market research organization,--but in any I may remember wrong, and will check on both parts of it tomorrow. DGG (talk) 06:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amadou Cisse (student)

As far as murders go, Cisse was more notable than average. But the deleted article cited a full-length article in the New York Times—for a Chicago murder. I doubt this new source would convince any who favored deletition.

Moreover, I'm also a bit of a deletionist myself, and I primarily created the page because of apparent user demand for it. I would support a DRV though. Cool Hand Luke 23:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I shall do as I usually do, wait for someone else to open it and then support overturn & relist. I don't like feeling isolated more than the inevitable. Your comments in the AfD already made clear that you had a neutral attitude, just as I would have expected. DGG (talk) 23:19, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I just don't see the urgency in deleting non-BLP, non-promotional articles which are on the cusp of notability. The event is certainly noteworthy enough to get coverage somewhere on Wikipedia; deleting it and saying "no merge target exists" is a recipe for wasted efforts that clashes with my eventualist outlook. If I revive it, I'll let you know. Cool Hand Luke 23:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, good people of all tendencies can usually agree on practical action and the merits of compromise positions. DGG (talk) 23:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for your compliments on my posts at expert withdrawal! They are very much appreciated! LinaMishima (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Well said

		The Wiki Wiffle Bat
		For the most clear-headed statement I've read on Wikipedia in a long time, I award you a wifflebat in thanks. Nealparr (talk to me) 06:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding [3], well said. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 06:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Silent Generation

Hey there, just giving you a heads up, I reverted your last edit on Silent Generation, because, as you will see, I was sourcing it at that moment (as well as some expansion). As far as all those lists of names go, though, not sure what to do about those. I think it important to have them there, but not sure how to source them...if you clink on the links, you see that they are from that era. Not sure if all are notable enough, though. If you have any thoughts, I'd appreciate it. Cheers,Cbradshaw (talk) 06:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted to add, I just saw your comment on the List of Generations page, so I didn't want you to think I was ignoring your comments, esp, re: List of celebs. Incidentally, I didn't add the names, only tried to give them cultural context. As I said above, I am not familiar with all the names. Actually, now that I have researched the topic a bit more, I think the list is even more important, as they are "stars" of a generally quiet generation. When your talking in such a broad topic as a Generation, I don't know how a person can strictly fulfill every characteristic ascribed to it. Look forward to hearing from you. Cbradshaw (talk) 06:39, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

There has long been consensus on the various pages for the S&H generations, that there is no basis for putting these people into the generational categories there because it is not a specific characteristic to be born in a particular 20 year period, and that if he mentions them in his book this is not sufficient, since that would be excessively detailed content. In fact, the pages for generations given only in his book were deleted, by consensus at AfD and elsewhere.

In contrast, if you intend to put them in as characteristic of the generation in its more general applicability, you will have to show that they have been generally considered characteristic of the generation specifically in reliable sources, other than his book, which is considered not to be generally accepted by historians. I call to your attention that blogs and the like are not acceptable sources for this either. There would still be no basis for such a list-0-they should be mentioned in the text, individually sourced for each characteristic person. DGG (talk) 13:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Msg for you on WP:FLAG-PROF talk page

Hello again, {{BASEPAGENAME}} ... please see [[User_talk:The_Bipolar_Anon-IP_Gnome/Flag-prof#example_of_using_FLAG-BIO_..._message_for_User:DGG|this message I left for you]] on another talk page regarding my [[User:The Bipolar Anon-IP Gnome/Flag-bio|WP:FLAG-BIO]] protocol, as well as [[User_talk:The_Bipolar_Anon-IP_Gnome/Flag-prof#difficulties|my replies to your comments]] ... Happy Editing! — 72.75.72.63 (talk · contribs) _{22:09, 8 February 2008 (UTC)}

User:DGG/LG

In December I gave a presentation to librarians in Pittsburgh area. Would you like me to send you my presentation slides? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

After a day of fighting with my email and then Wikimedia, I finally gave up and uploaded a file to rapidshare. At least it works :) Download. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 06:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Spam

Thanks. As I've said it wasn't the first removal that's the problem, it's the ongoing attitude after I try and discuss it with him. For example look at Oliver Hazard Perry Morton, nobody could possibly say that isn't a tremendous addition to the article. Links to university held document archives aren't really spam in any sense of the word providing the link is relevant to the article, they aren't promoting anything and don't fail any part of WP:EL from what I can see. The Indiana archive only has a small set of archives from what I can see, so it's not like there would ever have been hundreds of links. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 20:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)_

Useful resource Gen Y

David,

Peter Sheahan is a recognised expert on Generation Y. He consults globally to organizations including News Corporation and Google. His Generation Y DVD series on managing and retaining Generation Y is an extremely useful tool for organizations struggling to attract and retain the best Generation Y talent. How can a useful resource be classified as spam? My understanding is that most patrons of Wikipedia use it only as a reference for further research.

Please reply on to my talk page Samuel Michael Carter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Samuel Michael Carter (talk • contribs) 05:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

replied there; the work is self-published. DGG (talk) 16:25, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

magazines...

...and creative works in general cannot be deleted under speedy A7, per WP:CSD In any case, I think Railfan and Railroad might be one of the two leading magazines in its subject. did you check that? Please do not use speedy when not strictly within the specifications.'

Magazines are businesses, not creative works, and therefore fall squarely under {{db-corp}} guidelines -- which also explicitly refer to articles which make no assertion of notability, which this article doesn't. Your vague recollection doesn't qualify either as an assertion of notability nor a reliable source. Please do not wikilawyer about obvious failures of speedy standards and specifications. --Calton | Talk 16:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree it will quite possibly be deleted at afd, unless I or someone finds more material. Relative rank is capable of objective determination via Ulrich's. But as for speedy, WP:CSD: "A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. " if you want to change the rules, discuss it there. I think you will find the consensus is clear about magazines. A book publisher is a company. A book is not. A record distributor is a company. A recording is not. A series of recordings is not. A boxed set of recordings is not. A magazine publisher is a company. A magazine is not. Speedy is not stretchable. What you call wikilawering I call following the rules. " There is no consensus to speedily delete articles of types not specifically listed in A7 under that criterion." DGG (talk) 16:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Noticeboards, noticeboards, noticeboards!

I think I remember you chiming in when the No Original Research noticeboard was created as it being just an extra page to watch. We've now got the Fringe Theories, Fiction, NOR, and NPOV. I'm wondering if we're not spreading ourselves too thin over too many boards. Any ideas? MBisanz ^talk 03:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

We also have COI, and BLP, and RS, and the duplicative pair (ANB and AN/I), and BONB, and a number of similarly functioning pages, such as WT:SPAM, CP and its family, the various VPs and RfCs, WQA if it survives, the widely ignored RM and PM, and those I dont even know about). And the XfDs, the Ref Desks and the Help Desks, and AIV, 3RR and their relatives. And the talk pages for every policy and guideline prominent and obscure. And user talk pages where interesting stuff tends to be found. I organize what I do with bookmarks: I've got a group I call WPck (wikipedia check), and how far I get down the list of 30 or so 51, now that I've actually counted-- each day is variable--but I've never gotten to the bottom. Some in my opinion in practice tend to serve for POV pushing, such as BLP and FRINGE. (At some I agree more with the trend--like RS, so I don't call it POV pushing)

I forgot the talklists and IRC. I prefer to forget about IRC, and I wish I could really forget about the talklists.

But look at it in a positive way--it's forum shopping which keeps there from being any one WP:LOC.DGG (talk) 04:43, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Def going on my best of list. MBisanz ^talk 17:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Namecheck

Don't know if you've already been alerted to this? Go and search the text for DGG. Kudos! Kim Dent-Brown ^(Talk) 17:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion reform study group

Moved to User talk:DGG/Deletion reform -- please continue there. DGG (talk) 05:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You are famous

(Kim Dent-Brown mentioned this above, a little cryptically, on 29 February 2008)
See here, if you have not seen it already.--Filll (talk) 23:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice ! --Hu12 (talk) 00:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

No fair! I want my own newspaper article mention. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 00:59, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Just vandalize the Signpost.--Father Goose (talk) 10:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations

You were mentioned in a book review here Congratulations on it and id like to give you a barnstar but i belive you are the first editor to recive the honor of being in a book review. so id like you to make one........ get back to work now Rankun (talk) 22:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't let all this fame go to your head DGG :) --Pixelface (talk) 08:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Fame

seen your NY Book Review usernamecheck? Near the bottom. Johnbod (talk) 18:08, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Old news I see! Why are they online a three weerks before the publication date, i wonder? Better than another barnstar anyway. I'm incredibly patient too, & hope to see something on the Master of the Playing Cards one day! Johnbod (talk) 20:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: User:Jbmurray/Madness

(Copied over from my talk page:) DGG, many thanks for your comment. I'm glad that my text may be useful for the NYC meet. I'd be pleased to have any feedback or reactions that come out of that. And I do now indeed intend to publish a version of the essay somewhere. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

A3 to Prod ?

Do you really think it is necessary to {{Prod}} for process? Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 17:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I think it necessary to follow the speedy criteria as written. Anything else leads to chaos Some people will delete appropriately, others not. The purpose of process is to prevent misuse, at the cost of going slightly slower. Of all WP process, I think PROD is the cleverest compromise. DGG (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Church of Google

Hi David - Please look at this AfD close Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Church of Google (3rd nomination) and some other conversation links User talk:The Placebo Effect#The Church of Google and User talk:Becksguy#Re:Church of Google, and offer some advise, if you would. Do you agree that the closing did not follow consensus as established in the AfD, or not. And do you advise a DRV or not. I think that every item in the nomination and all the delete arguments were successfully answered and refuted. The closer did not take my complied list within the AfD into account, a list that was in far better shape than the article references and that had been pruned and shaped based on input during the deletion discussion. — Becksguy (talk) 01:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I second Becksguy's concerns. Wikipedia may not be a democracy, but that one was clearly a no consensus at worst. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 01:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I thought, LGRdC. No consensus at worst. — Becksguy (talk) 01:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

A very surprising closing. A good admin, who merely made a mistake. Can't figure out why he simply didn't choose to correct it.DGG (talk) 02:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, what are you all saying? He just applied wikipedia's notability rules, after all wikipedia is not a WP:DEMOCRACY. Vote counting and claiming consensus are not substitutes for following policies that have had huge amount of community consensus thrown at them for a long period of time until they adquired their current shape.

Also, notice the very first paragraph from Wikipedia:Deletion_policy consists of a single sentence: "The Wikipedia deletion policy describes how pages which do not meet the relevant content criteria are identified and removed from Wikipedia.". On the deletion discussion section, this gets hammered upon "Here, (on the nomination debates) editors who wish to participate can give their opinion on what should be done with the page. These processes are not decided through a head count, so participants are encouraged to explain their opinion and refer to policy.". A bit later, it talks about consensus, but then it links to Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators#Rough_consensus where it says "Consensus is not determined by counting heads, but by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any). Arguments that contradict policy, are based on opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted" (the word "not" is emphasized on the policy page, I didn't add any emphasis).

I'm afraid that the consensus on a nomination for deletion is about how the article complies with deletion criteria or not, and not about wether many people thought that it would be OK to keep the page. In this case, the article failed notability criteria, so it was a clear delete, and the admin acted correctly. Going to deletion review without providing additional sources would be gaming the system by faking victimism: "the bad admin deleted my page against consensus". No, he deleted the page following wikipedia policies, and he would have acted wrongly if he had done otherwise, and he would have failed his duty as admin.

Finally, if you think that these policies are wrong and that there are better ways to decide deletion, then you should go to the policies talk pages and suggest improvements. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The whole "democracy" versus "consensus" thing is actually somewhat contradictory. You cannot have consensus without some kind of majority of support. Thus, if a majority of editors want to keep an article on a website billed as the one that anyone can edit and the sum total of human knowledge, we should not appeal to some minority or narrow viewpoint of the project. That is just illogical and inconsistent with what "consensus" actually means. More editors believe the article merits inclusion. Thus, the consensus of the community is that the article be kept. Those advocating inclusion tend to actually work on improving the article. Those voting to delete did what to help the article? Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 03:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletion decisions don't use "consensus" in the sense you seem to give to the term, they use rough consensus, which I quoted on my comment, and which says clearly that some arguments, the ones going against policies among others, "are frequently discounted". Please see my quotes and read the linked page before trying to say again that "consensus" is on your side on a deletion debate, since wikipedia policies say that it's not, and admins know it. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• Enric, I think you misunderstand the proper, limited, role of administrators. We do not judge articles, just evaluate the results of a discussions. We do not decide if an article meets notability criteria, we decide if the consensus at the article thinks it did. Our discretion is just to disregard irrelevant arguments, such as I like it. When I became an admin, I was asked to promise I would not close on the basis of what I personally thought notable; it had not occurred to be that I would ever want to do so, for I would surely be reversed at Deletion Review. Let's continue this there. DGG (talk) 04:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

(Damn, I'm technically away, but I couldn't resist answering here) Yeah, that's what I meant, but I disagree on how the consensus is interpreted. He just judged the weight of the arguments behind the votes and decided not to take many of the votes into account because they were not valid keep reasons according to deletion policies, or based on false assumptions about the last nomination debate. He also decided the consensus by looking at the strenght of the remaining arguments, and not at the head count, just like the policies say. Let's make this clear (time to abuse the bolding again) Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators#Rough_consensus says that Wikipedia policy, (which requires WP:V, WP:OR, WP:COPYVIO, WP:NPOV) is not negotiable. The admin claimed that the article was in breach of the notability policy, and arguments from editors didn't convince him that this was not true, so he had to decide a delete. That's why I say that he appears to have acted correctly. Head count can not superseed policy. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Holy crap. The "non-negotiable" mutation is spreading. Well, thank goodness Wikipedia:consensus is policy, and Wikipeida:non negotiable does not even have a page. Said paragraph has been taken out and shot. --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:11, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

lol, Kim, please don't take this that I am going to tell you as an insult. How about if I tell you that you haven't actually read WP:CONSENSUS, because the you would have noticed that in the exceptions section it says exactly what I have been saying here. I quote "Consensus decisions in specific cases are not expected to override consensus on a wider scale very quickly - for instance, a local debate on a WikiProject does not override the larger consensus behind a policy or guideline".

As you see, a small consensus on a deletion nomination is just not going to override a policy or a guideline just like that. Saying that a certain idea has the consensus necessary to override a policy is an obvious fallacy, since if you actually had all that consensus then you could just go to the policy page and request that the policy be changed to acommodate the consensus.

If you look at WP:PILLARS you will also see that consensus is part of the "code of conduct" pillar, while verifiability is part of the "encyclopedia". As a rule of thumb, I consider that any user saying that a part of one pillar can override a part of another pillar is probably wrong. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

perhaps this discussion would be more productive elsewhere. its not as if we were likely to settle it between us. I'll end this thread by summarizing my general views on the most general issues: The difficult questions at Wikipedia are where policies appear to conflict. Though these conflicts could be regarded as productive of discord, I see them more as leading to flexibility. It is multiple discussions on detail that change consensus. Policy is explanatory of what we agree to do at WP, not forced on us from above. DGG (talk) 02:07, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, you are right, I got carried away trying to "win" the argument. Thanks for reacting so well and fairly. I guess we can go over these issues sometime on the future on some DRV, and they I'll watch my words more and try to be more respectful --Enric Naval (talk) 12:05, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Communist Propaganda AfD

I do think you have missed the point a bit on this one. Did you read my entire !vote? "not a notable scholarly subject, because nothing (or vanishingly little) has been written about what is common to propaganda from various communist countries, parties and communist organisations." I happen to be fairly certain that such sources do not exist - except, maybe, in long-discredited John Birch Society pamphlets. More to the point, none have been produced.

As I said, "Propaganda in the Soviet Union"/"by the Soviet Union" are perfectly acceptable articles, and not under discussion. Please note that the Western propaganda redirect sends us to the Chomsky theory of propaganda in advanced capitalist societies, which makes precisely the above sort of argument - that there is a common thread to the propaganda output in these societies. Note also that it is presented there as a theory, as well. Were any similar theories to be found in reliable sources about propaganda from societies and parties as diverse as Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, the Communist Party of South Africa, the Shining Path, and the Socialist Unity Centre of India, or even any sources that claimed to make that connection, as the Chomsky theory does for other equally diverse societies and organisations, the situation would be different. Otherwise we are left with people using "communist propaganda" as shorthand for particular, different, communist parties. Jumbling them together would be unacceptable synthesis, and get anyone who did so a failing grade in most undergraduate courses.

I was particularly disappointed and dismayed. because if one of our most experienced commenters on deletion debates does not see the danger of "articles titled with weakly-defined referents, which are then used as soapboxes for whatever form of original research people with a bunch of different POVs turn up with a single Google search on the title phrase", then we are indeed in trouble, and it explains the losing battle some of us are fighting trying to keep advocacy swill of various flavours out of the mainspace.

Could you perhaps revisit your vote? --Relata refero (disp.) 08:28, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

replied on the AfD page: the subjects overlap.

I'm now going to be heretical--I think the best way to deal with some issues is a policy change to permit ideological forking in articles. I think we do it implicitly in some cases already, and that we might as well do it explicitly. Otherwise we end up with uncomfortable attempts at synthesis which if they ever reach a compromise, do it by reducing an article to meaninglessness. Instead of subheadings "criticism" we should have "X views on" and "Y views on." But I'm certainly not arguing the afd on that basis, for such is not the current policy. DGG (talk) 14:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

As I spelled out there, I still think you're wrong :)

Anyway, I'm actually thinking very hard about what you just threw out up there. If we can't keep our mainspace free, perhaps we can keep certain articles free. Hmmm. --Relata refero (disp.) 15:34, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Polyglycoplex

It first appeared in the Calgary paper, which isn't some small-town outfit with a circulation 200; it serves a city of around 500K. If they thought it was notable enough, & if a second paper, the local here (the Star-Phoenix) picked it up (for a city pop 200K), thought it was, I would have thought that would do it. Me? I thought a new way of reducing obesity without evident health hazard was of sufficient interest people might just want to know. And given the number of pages about obscure stuff that have slim chance of even making a major newspaper, I'd say it passes. Of course, I am a bit biased, having created the page, but I'd never have bothered if I didn't think there were people like me who might find it interesting, or valuable. Trekphiler (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Beyond the book mentioned on the page, I'm completely at sea. I'd never heard of it before, & I'm completely unqualified to comment. A quick google comes up 15300, led by CTV, which is probably just a reprint, & a bunch of hits for Slim Styles "diet food". Trekphiler (talk) 03:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

You've been invoked

In the New York Review of Books, no less: Nicholson Baker mentions you as a "patient librarian". Cheers! Her Pegship (tis herself) 03:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Funny that among librarians I am considered to have a noticeable lack of patience -- guess it depends on the surrounding environment. (smile) DGG (talk) 03:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

St. Patrick's Purgatory

Thanks for looking at this. I just chanced on the article.

I found the article unclear as to what "St. Patrick's Purgatory" IS. Is it the name of the pilgrimage? Is it the final destination of the pilgrimage? It is the area where the pilgrimage takes place? (I suppose it could be all three.)

It was when I got to the part about pilgrims being allowed only black tea or coffee and dry toast that I thought maybe it was an April First article.

The bit about an account of the pilgrimage being contained in McCarthy's Bar was what pushed me to ask for another opinion. (That and some other hoax edits I found yesterday.)

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 13:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The name is used primarily for the actual area, not just the pilgrimage. The article does have some elements that are either jocular or derived from a tourist brochure. I'll check on them. DGG (talk) 14:28, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

"Webisodes" and the like

Nice to see we can occasionally agree on something! --Orange Mike | Talk 17:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Challenge Award - fame at last?

Have you seen the mention you got in Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Science/Newsletter/May 2008? :-) Carcharoth (talk) 23:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I was just about to mention this. Thanks for starting Gunther Stent!--ragesoss (talk) 00:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Since he was my advisor, I sort of felt guilt not having done it.DGG (talk) 00:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: question

Yes, it's intended to cover all areas, not just homeopathy. Kirill ^(prof) 02:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I had asked Kirill, speaking of the board proposed at ArbCom in the decision on Homeopathy:

--is the expert board in the Homeopathy case meant to deal only with homeopathy? I'm a little puzzled how you can find a board of experts capable of making decisions on all subjects. But at least the decision should say one way or the other.DGG (talk) 01:11, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

(this refers to:

The [Arbitration] Committee shall convene a Sourcing Adjudication Board, consisting of credentialed subject-matter experts insofar as is reasonable, which shall be tasked with examining complaints regarding the inappropriate use of sources on Wikipedia. The Board shall issue findings, directly to the Committee, regarding all questions of source usage, including, but not limited to, the following:

1. Whether an editor has engaged in misrepresentation of sources or their content.
2. Whether an editor has used unreliable or inappropriate sources.
3. Whether an editor has otherwise substantially violated any portion of the sourcing policies and guidelines.

The Board's findings shall not be subject to appeal except to the Board itself. The precise manner in which the Board will be selected and conduct its operations will be determined, with appropriate community participation, no later than one month after the closure of this case.

I have been startled and alarmed at the reply, and have answered him briefly:

you say it is intended to cover all subjects--I think that's a total perversion of the spirit of wikipedia, and I sincerely hope the community is persuaded to reverse you and take back the power. What you are essentially proposing to do is establish a small board of censors with a veto power over the contents of all articles. For it does affect all the content--the sourcing is in practice what determines what content is included. You are in one moment totally reversing the basic power structure here--after years of saying that arb com will not involve itself with content, and that this remains something that needs consensus, you are adopting for the demands of a single case the total opposite, calling for the selection of a small body to do the same, and with the most drastic penalties over anyone who departs from it, and no power of appeal from it. Well, I hope we will consider ourselves left with at least the power to abolish it. Before doing something like this, you need a general discussion with the community. I'm surprised at you.

I can not see how any small group can possibly take such responsibilities and prepare to discharge them honestly. There's nowhere where a small commission has that sort of universal power across all subjects--there are always a large number of editors, divided into subject committees. The only role of the ultimate editor-in-chief or board exercising this function, is to appoint them, and to decide the differences between the different groups.

Even in the organization of Citizendium, this power is delegated to what, even in their small organization, is over a hundred experts, grouped into several dozen disciplinary committees, and a fairly large board to resolve difficulties between them.

I am preparing a longer rebuttal. I am truly surprised at you--I can not believe you have thought out the implications. DGG (talk) 03:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you're quite correct here; it's perfectly normal, in my experience, for charges of academic dishonesty to be heard before (or appealed to) a single, cross-disciplinary group. The proposed SAB is essentially intended to be a Wikipedia parallel to such proceedings (minus the imposition of sanctions, which will continue to be done by the Committee based on the recommendations of the SAB); it's not meant to be a body for deciding content, in other words, but a body for ruling on whether some editor has been intellectually dishonest in their use of sources. Kirill ^(prof) 04:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

If its intended with that narrow a purpose, you might want to reword it accordingly, for that's not how it reads to me. Authority to examine "complaints regarding the use of sources in Wikipedia" is alarmingly broad. And the 3 numbered circumstances in where it is proposed to be used are quite expansive. They cover a great deal more than dishonesty. At the very least the phrase should be added "when they arise in matters that are before the Arb Com."-- you may think that's implied, but if something can be misinterpreted, so it will be. Anyway, do you think that in the academic world charges of dishonesty are handled all that well in general? The questions that arise in the homeopathy article need a knowledge of how the medical literature work, and others will deal with other questions. To the extent I understand them its not a question of being dishonest, but a question of whether something is being used in somewhat beyond what the source indicates--essentially a matter of proper weight. DGG (talk) 04:34, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, perhaps. But, as the remedy says, "The precise manner in which the Board will... conduct its operations will be determined with appropriate community participation". The remedy is a general statement of intent, not an exhaustive policy regarding how the SAB will operate in practice; that's still to be developed. Kirill ^(prof) 13:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:FLAG-PROF and WP:FLAG-BIO

Hello again, DGG ...

I have trimmed WP:FLAG-PROF, and pointed to WP:FLAG-BIO as the "One True Copy" of the verbosity ... I plan to prune the others (WP:FLAG-FICT, WP:FLAG-INC, etc.), but thought I'd get some feedback first ... WP:FLAG-BIO also has the {{Articleissues}} boilerplate and a few others (like CATs), and I really don't want to duplicate all of that ... I'm trying to make the WP:FLAG-xyz protocols the "bare bones" copy&paste stencils, with the "elaborations" restricted to WP:FLAG-BIO as the "starting place" for most users ... feedback, please. :-)

Happy Editing! — 72.75.78.69 (talk · contribs) _{21:12, 25 May 2008 (UTC)}

P.S.: Krocodylus (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has made me question the need for a WP:FLAG-MOVIES (see discussion page :-) —72.75.78.69 (talk) 21:18, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

feedback coming tomorrow. DGG (talk) 21:23, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Kewl! I've updated & rearranged Template:Flag-templates to show the "unimplemented" protocols in RED, indicating that they have not been created yet, and put WP:FLAG-BIO as the first one in the table, since it has the verbiage that I'm pruning from all the others ... I also added {{Prod}} to the table for the Guidelines that are not eligible for WP:CSD#A7. —72.75.78.69 (talk) 21:45, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I've started rewording the main one. But db-a7 cannot be used for schools, so remove that from the table--they need prod. You also need to separate out the three different possibilities of no assertion of notability, no references to prove notability, and spam. Additionally, the term vanity is very strongly depreciated---people find it insulting. DGG (talk) 16:15, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Fortunately, I entered IT in the 70s, and embraced "egoless programming" ... I'm pretty laid-back about changes, and have no illusions that I "own" these templates or protocols, so any changes to "soften" or bring them more in line with WP:CONSENSUS is fine by me ... I suggest that you use WP:PROF as the "master", and I'll replicate the changes. :-) Happy Editing! — 72.75.78.69 (talk · contribs) _{16:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)}

I also learned programming that way--and I too use it as the model for here--it is the only practical way for large scale projects like this. DGG (talk) 17:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've modified {{Flag-templates}} to replace the {{db}} with N/A for the ineligible ones ... more pre-epiphany thinking, I guess. :-) — 72.75.78.69 (talk) 18:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

CDS Global page update, 27 May 2008

The latest version of the CDS Global page includes information regarding "volume of business" and "market share," with external references. Please examine and provide comment. Thanks again for your input. Donny Scott (talk) 20:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Herndon article

Haha...yeah I was preparing to do that since yesterday anyway:-P. I'll go ahead and tag it for expert/other contributions. I just couldn't stand looking at that soapbox any longer...Always good to hear from you:-). Cquan ^{(after the beep...)} 19:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey...the soapbox is back at J. Marvin Herndon. I smell an edit war if I go and revert it now. Got a take on the subject? Thanks. Cquan ^{(after the beep...)} 03:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

J.M. Hayes

There was absolutely no assertion of notability. I'm an author; non-self-published. Do I get an article? No. Nothing in this article gives him any qualifications per WP:CREATIVE. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 17:58, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

My interpretation of WP:CSD#A7 is that there need only be a reasonable assertion of notability. I did not see that in the above article. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 17:59, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

that someone has published four books is cause to think that person might reasonably be notable. Speedy is not AfD. As the article would almost certainly fail afd, I'm not going to take it to deletion review, unless i find some references. But I am going to discuss this at WT:CSD. If you are misinterpreting the meaning this way, it is time to change the language. I've moved it to User:DGG/Hayes for the purpose of discussion. DGG (talk) 18:34, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

How is publishing four books cause to infer notability? Multiple publications is a direct assertion of notability? I really would like to see that opinion here on Wikipedia; if it's here, I'll change my interpretation of WP:CREATIVE. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 18:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Found two reviews for Plains Crazy mentioned at Amazon.com: one form Publishers Weekly and one from Booklist. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 18:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, that makes him quite possibly actually notable, thanks. They are both selective. OK to restore to mainspace? Thanks for you cooperation. DGG (talk) 18:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

"Selective"? Yeah, go ahead; but we need to include an assertion of notability vis a vie reputable reviewed works" or something that makes another CSD tagging much less valid. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 18:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

of course I'll add an explanation, but I did start a discussion at WT:CSD--for this is a poster boy of an indication of why we need less restrictive language. Nothing should be speedied that might be keepable--at least that's what I think. I seriously do appreciate your help. DGG (talk) 18:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Superiority Complex?

Instead of going around Wp tagging pages as "may be not notable" in some sort of superior way, why not put some effort in and improve the articles yourself? Albatross2147 (talk) 02:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

there are 2000 articles a day submitted to Wikipedia. About 1/2 are totally unacceptable. Of the other 1/2, probably about 200 need major improvements. I try to fix up one or two a day. "may not be notable" means that someone has some reason to doubt it. I will add such a tag if , for example, another editor has placed a tag for deletion as hopelessly non-notable, and I don't think its quite as bad as that. But what article or discussion are you referring to--we usually don't work in the same areas, so I'm a little puzzled? DGG (talk) 02:25, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

AH-HA!!! You're obviously one of them-there evialllllll deletionists, DGG! --Orange Mike | Talk 21:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

And see above , the section "Ha." That's why I haven;t archived this: I want to display my credentials. DGG (talk) 21:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikigender

Dear DGB, thanks for your advice added on my talk page.

For your information, I do precise that I am allowed to edit some articles. It's just what I did by adding some biliographical references to the Maryse Marpsat page that I have created a month ago. But I am not allowed to write the web-link leading to the OECD Wikigender site. This site is only an information sharing platform on gender equity which was officially launched by the OECD Development Centre on 7 March 2008 on the occasion of International Women's Day. If you are sufficiently curious, you can get its web-link in my contribution page (at the date of 11 march 2008), and if you follow it, you would observe that it is difficult to say that this information is a kind of SPAM.

It's one of the reasons justifying my protest. Now, I would like to know whether I'm "definitely blocked" or not. Mr or Mrs Hu12 don't give me any answer, neither to my protest nor to your comment. What can I do? How to get any answer? Wanda007 (talk) 17:08, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

replied on your talk page. You are not blocked. The link is blocked, I think quite wrongly, as an example of what I call "spam paranoia" DGG (talk) 21:57, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Does "spam paranoia" include abuse of Wikipedia's electronic messaging system? Additionaly French administrator (fr:Utilisateur:Like_tears_in_rain) even posted on her french talk page "Your additions of external links were not a good idea. While I understand that you want to publicize the site, the only place on a relevant page would suffice, making it five times gives the impression of spam.". --Hu12 (talk) 05:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want to know, I emailed the ed. in question to ask point-blank what I do not like to ask openly on Wikipedia, whether the person had used other accounts. I consider this a highly appropriate question, and I always ask this before getting involved in helping someone in a situation like this--if they have in fact used other accounts deliberately, I am very reluctant to defend them. Questions regarding possible sock puppetry are often inquired about confidentially. For the record, it was denied (I do not think I am breaking confidentiality in saying this) and I am prepared to help the user further to edit within the rule and to put in links appropriately.

As for the links, I think they were added in good faith. I agree they were added over-enthusiastically. I have not examined that site in detail about appropriateness. Obviously there can be different opinions on that. I take the French admin's opinion seriously. You and I have disagreed about this sort of thing several times. The community has often supported me. If they think the links are wrong this time, then they will not be added. I have been wrong about various things before, and I have sometimes been in the situation where the community does not agree with what i continue to think the right view. In such cases I do what I have always done, which is follow the community in what I actually do. There are some rules I think wrong, that I enforce nonetheless, and there are some things I think should be prohibited that aren't, and I don't try to act against people doing them.

I agree with our linking policy, but I think the enforcement is sometimes over-harsh, both with respect to the links and the individuals. Too many usable links are on the spam blacklist and if one of them catches my attention, I sometimes try to do something about it if I think I will have support, though I do not have time to do as much of this as I would like. I spend more time removing them; about 200 of my watched pages are for possible spam, and yesterday I removed about a dozen links of that sort. I also blocked someone earlier this week for persistently adding unsuitable links, but that was after multiple warnings. DGG (talk) 16:42, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Category:Flagged articles

Hello again ...

Would you please take a look at User talk:Matthewedwards#Category:Flagged articles, and then add your comments on the cats I have created to compliment the templates?

Happy Editing! — 151.200.237.53 (talk · contribs) _{07:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)}

Category:Flagged editors

Hello again ... {{Flag-editor}} now has an optional assist parameter that makes a friendly offer to help, for those thus inclined, instead of defaulting with making the offer. :-) — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 15:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

getting there! I'll check the details later. Next goal, perhaps: making it shorter while still making it friendly. and maybe copyvio should be different --if it's clear it should be db-copyvio, if not, suspected copyvio already has the template "copypaste". DGG (talk) 17:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I realized that, but the point is, "I don't have time to check right now, but it's suspicious, so I'll flag it with this generic tag" ... maybe Some Other Editor will check it out in the mean time, and decide that it's {{Db-copyvio}}-able. :-) — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 04:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

For example, Liliam Cuenca González (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) was part of a WP:COI/N and WP:COPYVIO that led to a site being blocked and removed by a bot as WP:LINKSPAM ... it's all the sins in one (unfortunately repeated) case, but it certainly can be improved if editors are aware of the situation ... hence Category:Flagged articles. — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 04:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

)

Current project

Your third suggestion: I like. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:42, 2 June 2008 (UTC) P.S. As this is out of the blue, I am referring to the section on your userpage. "A good faith request by any established editor is sufficient for any administrator, whether or not the deleting administrator, to undelete an article deleted under speedy, except for BLP and copyvio. This should be automatic, and need not involve Deletion Review. it is polite to ask the original administrator first, but not necessary, and, even if s/he refuses, any administrator can undelete it without it being considered wheel warring. The article would normally be immediately sent for AfD. By definition, if an established editor disagrees, it is not uncontroversial and needs community involvement. "

Yes, that's the one. I think it would actually save a lot of drama and free up some wasted time for creators, onlookers & DRV contributors. It might increase the load at AfD, but I'm inclined to think not that much. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

)

WP:Lectures

Hiya David, I see you were scheduled to give a lecture on sourcing in mid-May...did you give the lecture, and is there a "transcript" somewhere, or perhaps you've done an essay on the topic? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 11:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I dont think it has been transcribed yet, but the outline is at User:DGG/LR DGG (talk) 14:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

H.O.P.E. speech

Hey, DGG. This is volt4ire from the NYC meetup. Pharos mentioned that you would be a good person to help (or at least steer me in the right direction) in doing a pro-inclusionist speech. Any suggestions for speakers, arguments, debating-points, etc.? Thanks! volt4ire 02:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

do you think they will want to hear about specific details at Wikipedia? rather, I would aim it at the general roles of web 2.0 information sources, then specialize it to encyclopedias, then us, then to specific problems if people want to hear about them. DGG (talk) 03:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I think volt4ire's original idea was for some sort of inclusionist vs. deletionist "debate", and I had recommended you an an inclusionist (I couldn't think of a New York-area deletionist at that moment). Which is an interesting idea, because of all the inside baseball at Wikipedia, the notability issue seems to attract the most outside interest (several articles in Slate, for example).

Which is not to say that this is necessarily what we should do. But I do imagine at a conference like H.O.P.E., we should avoid basic explanations of web 2.0, and focus somewhat more on the issues that are particular to us.--Pharos (talk) 01:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

BTW, see Wikipedia talk:Meetup/NYC#H.O.P.E. Conference panel (maybe we should shift this conversation there).--Pharos (talk) 01:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Social Science Research Resources Network

Restored. Go to work on it. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Fringe

In Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee, you wrote but situations of a single person with a completely far fringe view are dealt with fairly well already. There are cases where a real-world minority- or fringe-view is overrepresented on Wikipedia. There are also cases where a majority- or wikipedia-majority-view silences a minority view or reduces their weight well below their real-world due weight. This can happen by one side outmaneuvering the other into a behavior violation or by simply driving them away from the project in frustration. I don't think there is a good solution, other than to have affected articles watched by people who are informed about the article's subject matter but with no emotional stake in the article. This tends to happen more on articles on political or social topics, where way too many editors have a personal agenda, and on articles about people, places, or groups, where fanboys may succeed in turning the article into a virtual press release. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:07, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

as I said there, I think that dueling by taunting each other into unacceptable actions is not a really rational approach. . Perhaps it survives because the people who have been here a while tend to know just how far they can safely go & some of them have gotten quite good at it. But perhaps also it works because the people who are for good or less good reasons committed to an agenda with a zeal and devotion and purpose which transcend rational argument tend to be rather easy to lose proportion and descend into unacceptable actions. There is nothing wrong with zealotry when one is right, but it has to be pursued elsewhere--those who care more about their cause than objective editing encyclopedia are a danger to the encyclopedia.

Unfortunately, the attempt to deal with it otherwise tend to amount to an appeal to authority, which does not do much better--one can find authorities for almost anything. And so one argues about the relative merits of the authorities. People both in the right and wrong of it (as if w could tell) are equally likely to what to prevent their opponents from making a fair case. What is necessary is a way to determine what objective editing is, and enforce it. My current thoughts are mandatory mediation with enforceable remedies--not by subject experts necessarily, but by people with common sense and proven impartiality.DGG (talk) 03:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Spread of printing ==> Spread of the printing press

Hi! Some months ago I moved Spread of printing to Spread of the printing press as per the discussion on the talk page (that you contributed to). But in this last week the user Gun Powder Ma has reverted this move twice. I've asked him to justify his move on the talk page, but so far no response. I wonder if you could give your opinion on the talk page before I undo his revert. Thanks lk (talk) 07:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think spread of printing is the better title. The printing press is a machine. The operation of using it is printing. Are we concerned primarily with the existence of the machine, or its use? Your comments about Asian printing are however correct, so the title could better be changed to the spread of the european tradition of printing or some synonymous phrase. I will comment there at greater length. I have long been unhappy with the use of "Printing Press" as a convenient term for the system of producing printed books that developed in western europe. DGG (talk) 08:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your point. However, I think 'printing press' makes a nice shorthand for early western style printing and related technologies. Consider, one naturally speaks of the spread of gunpowder, not the spread of shooting guns; and the influence of television, not the influence of watching at home, pre-programmed studio shows transmitted through a radio network. I think 'spread of printing' is a misnomer, as it naturally calls up the earliest printed works from ancient China. regards lk (talk) 08:51, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

National Research Libraries Alliance

I've stumbled upon an article about the National Research Libraries Alliance. Are you familiar with this? Do you think it deserves an article? Thanks, Zagalejo^^^ 04:14, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

yes there are problem--I will follow up. These library consortia sometimes are just a purchasing arrangement, Sometimes have other roles & are important. We need some standardized way of dealing with them From the available ghits, it indicates this is just a non-notable purchasing arrangement, but my memory is they also do significant lobbying. I will check and go ahead accordingly. DGG (talk)

OK, thanks for the reply. Zagalejo^^^ 16:36, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

UMN Primate Research

Hey, Sorry about that. I have gotten side tracked with life. I still do intend to add more and I have a little bit written on my computer. Carniv (talk) 20:02, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I'm going to wait a couple of more days to see if you comment on the page and if you don't, I'm going to put the quotes back in.Carniv (talk) 18:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

AfD essay

Greetings, David. I have been playing around recently with the idea of writing an essay on an aspect of AfD you might be interested in. The idea behind the essay (stub version here) is that it would be admirable for inclusionists/eventualists who argue that articles could be improved to an acceptable level to take immediate steps in bringing that article up to scratch. Per this comment, I imagine that you are sympathetic to the notion. Would you be interested in collaborating on the essay or throwing around a few ideas on the subject? Sincerely, Skomorokh 11:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I hope you do not mean "immediate"--I dont see it in your proposal. --it is many times easier to nominate for deletion than to fix. I fix articles at Afd, yes, but i can only do 1 or 2 a week or so properly (I usually do another 2 or 3, but some of those fixes are minimal & dont really meet my standards for a decent article.) In that week, usually 1000 are nominated, of which probably 200 of the deleted ones could be fixed, and perhaps the same number of the ones that get kept need majpr improvements. But Wikipedia is too large to require fixing to save articles--many articles will not be worked on for long periods,--this is very unfortunate, but until we have more people prepared to work on the less widely interesting topics, it will remain the case. One thing we'll need to get them, is to not delete articles that they might be interested in. them. Incomplete articles are inevitable in a wiki like this.

Lets try to generalize this--that people who nominate for deletion must demonstrate they did at least a minimal search, documenting where they looked.

Maybe it should be a how-to, not an exhortation.

Try a longer draft & I'll look in more detail. DGG (talk) 02:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

NLP

You might consider looking at the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neuro-linguistic programming.--Filll (talk | wpc) 11:53, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

sorry I missed it. I have long felt a considerable degree of sympathy with the noms views, and am delighted to find that others agree at least in part. Of course, as you and others said, deleting the whole batch is ridiculous, but I would certainly hope for a certain amount of condensation. I'll leave it to others t pick out the worst duplications, but I'll support the merges. Dealing with fringe social science is very much harder than science, because the boundaries are not as clear. I think there is real social science, and am convinced that this subject is far outside it, but it's not as easy to make a convincing argument. DGG (talk) 18:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I happened to see this, I came here for another reason, and I'm under voluntary restriction, but .... I assume this won't be controversial and that it will be welcome. I became aware of and studied NLP for a few years (through reading and practice, not with an NLP practitioner.) Structure of Magic and Bandler and Grinder's study of how well-known therapists actually did their work, as distinct from the generally very unscientific theories they often formulated as rationalizations, were pioneering efforts in the field. I wouldn't call it science, exactly, it's more like engineering. There is no doubt that the subject is notable and that there is plenty of reliable source. If it is presented as science, it's problematic, but, then again, lots of stuff is presented as science that actually is very poorly understood, there are peer-reviewed journals in the field of psychiatry and psychotherapy, filled with articles that are basically informed speculation. And, by the way, the techniques worked, and still work, many of them. But it's a very difficult field to do controlled research in. The hot place right now, as far as my own experience would suggest, is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which is still quite mysterious as to how it works, but it does work, any my own experience confirms that, and I see it working with others. It works, spectacularly, with PTSD, where traditional therapeutic techniques have be very ineffective, but ... it's brief, unknown mechanism, and could destabilize a whole industry. Current treatment for PTSD without using EMDR might involve a visit a week, at upwards of $100 per visit, for years. EMDR has been known to dramatically reverse PTSD symptoms in one session, the original clinical trials did that. But I haven't followed recent research in the field. The connection with NLP? Well, NLP was largely rooted, when used for therapy, in the inner resources for change that already exist in the patient, and the EMDR techniques are similar in awakening those resources. Whether or not bilateral stimulation is important (other forms of BL stim are now used, perhaps more commonly than eye movement) is controversial, and it's entirely possible that any other hypnotic technique would work, in the hands of a skilled practitioner. Skilled at what? At developing rapport and trust. (Remember the stereotypical hypnotic induction, the hypnotist holding up a pendulum, or moving a finger back and forth in front of the subject?). --Abd (talk) 23:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Please dlete the old Worldview page... I inserted the text into the main and removed any duplicated content but it still needs to be massaged into the main article, see: Talk:Neuro-linguistic_programming#proposed_merge_of_Worldview_and_working_model_of_neuro-linguistic_programming

AsI understand GFDL, it has to be kept as a redirect to preserve the edit history. I'll make that change. DGG (talk) 03:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Consistency

BIO has become very nebulous, especially because one can interpret "significant coverage" and NOT NEWS to produce any result whatsoever for many of the articles you have in mind. We need to make up our mind abut what depth of local figures we intend to cover. We need to make up our mind about whether to cover the central figures of human interest stories. And then stick to it, whatever the decision is. You and I would probably disagree on one or both of these in general, I at least would much rather accept almost any stable compromise rather than fight each of them from over-general principles. DGG (talk) 16:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

We'd probably be closer together than you might think. Yes, the community as a whole does need to thrash out local notability-- something that a narrow constructionist can rely on but which would allow some flexibility. Any standard, even one I loathe, would be better than none. As you say, any result is possible the way things are. A dice roll would be less stressful and do as well. This is why I avoid AFD. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 14:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Stress

as with any democratic type of process, it works better if the good people stay in. The way I avoid stress is by commenting once or twice, and then not looking back--either my arguments is accepted, or not,and then on to the next. I generally do not look back to see what the result is, or I would get too often angry, or at least disappointed. Not that it's a game for me, but that I can be effective only by keeping detached. DGG (talk) 16:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

CSD vs. AfD

The articles in question don't fall under "local chapters" - that was a slightly different yet related item. The articles concerned consisted of two lines, (name and address), and external link to a page where the name appears in a list of related groups, and/or a link to a dead or non-informative homepage. That does indeed give no indication of importance (no sources), unless something being called "Grand" implies importance (which it shouldn't). I am certain that I had to start 4 AfDs that I really didn't need to because of baseless claims of supposed notability "because of the name" or "because this other thing (which also had no independent sources and thus didn't assert its notability) was important."

I also discovered that some of the articles were informationally wrong, and referred to entirely different groups than what the sources were pointed at. Yet I'm the one supposedly "gaming the system" and with a "personal bias" because I don't think we should have articles that remain unsourced for months at a time with no editorial changes and no reliable sources. MSJapan (talk) 17:31, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

MSJ - the CSD system is not meant for questionable cases, which is what you've been doing. JASpencer (talk) 18:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

If an article is wrong, fix it.

If it is downright vandalism, and the vandalism would be unquestionably clear to anyone even if they knew nothing whatever about the subject, tag it for speedy

If it is downright vandalism, but the vandalism would not be immediately clear to anyone ignorant of the subject ,list it at Prod or AfD

if the article is unsourced, try to source it. The proposal that articles that remain unsourced can be deleted for that reason alone, even at AfD, has been repeatedly and decisively rejected by the community. If you want to challenge it , try the Village Pump. If you nominate for speedy on that reason it is disruptive, because you are deliberately going against established policy and instead following what you think the policy ought to be.

If for a particular article, you think either the facts or the notability is unsourcable, nominated for Prod or AfD. It helps to have a good reason, like the result of a search, because if others can source it, they will probably consider that you have made a careless nomination.

For the minimum requirements to keep an incomplete article, see WP:STUB. Again, by repeated decision of the community , it does not have to be sourced.

It is considered unsuitable and a violation of WP:BITE to nominate within a few minutes after it has been written an incomplete article for not indicating any nobility -- instead place a notability tag. If after a few days it indicates no notability whatever, then place a speedy tag. If it indicated anything that any reasonable person could think might possibly indicate notability, use Prod or AfD--se below for the advantages of doing it that way.

If however, it contains too little content to tell what the subject is even about, it can be nominated for speedy as empty.

The amount of work involved in trying to recover from an improper deletion , or argue about a questionable speedy, is even worse than the tedious mechanism of Afd. Therefore, if you think there will be any opposition, use AfD. It has the additional advantage that the article can be prevented from re-creation. This is especially valuable if someone is deliberately creating bad articles. DGG (talk) 19:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

(This does not imply any view of mine on any of the articles or on the topic. I !vote to delete a lot of things at AfD, and I might well !vote to delete the articles in question. And I do a lot of speedy. We need speedy, and I have no hesitation in using it when it is unquestionable.) But there's no point arguing individual article deletions on personal talk pages. that's what Afd is for. DGG (talk) 20:18, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

yes, I understood that. DGG (talk) 20:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Question as to your comment at JASpencer's talk page... that "If there is any reason to think the article's deletion would be challenged, even for inappropriate reasons, it is necessary to use AfD."... doesn't that negate the entire concept of speedy deletes? Your approach would allow one disruptive editor to "exempt" an entire topic area from speedy deletes... all because he thinks that anything to do with the topic is notable. Blueboar (talk) 21:52, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I misworded it there, and have corrected it to even for reasons which would not save the article at AfD. Objectiions that are clearly disruptive should of course be ignored, objections based on good faith are another mater entirely. When I encounter disruptive addition of articles I have no hesitation to warn or even block the person involved. But some of the afd criteria are matters of judgment, and if in any reasonable doubt, I prefer the community's judgment to my own. DGG (talk) 22:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you... that does clarify things significantly. Blueboar (talk) 23:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

And thanks, I am always grateful when people point out if I've gotten something wrong, or worded it too broadly. I know I will make mistakes, and I must rely on others to correct them.. DGG (talk) 04:30, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Michael Birawer

We edit conflicted on this speedy delete, saying exactly the same thing (both declining the speedy). Good to know I'm still in line with your thinking every once and a while :-). I'll get in contact with the article creator shortly and see if I can't help him/her out. Keeper ǀ 76 21:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I think we'd agree with each other 95% of the time, with almost all the others being matters that we both would consider equivocal. Obviously the remaining few are the ones that stick out. All we can really do there is stay polite and let other people judge. If I've pushed you too hard on any of them I apologize, and I certainly never intend to let an argument on one thing carry over onto another. You might be interested in some of my recent comments today at WT:CSD. DGG (talk) 22:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I was hoping we agreed more like 99% of the time :-). I read your comments at wt:csd, very well worded. I support them. I personally, with rare exception anyway, have never "speedy deleted" something that was untagged. Probably because I don't do "new page patrol" and rely on others to patrol properly. I wish there was an easy tool to see my ratio of "agree with patroller" versus "remove tag". I think I'm about 1 of 5 that I "decline" for one reason or another, maybe but hopefully not more like 1 of 10 (I spend a lot of time at C:CSD). In the last few months, I think the "speedy taggers" have gotten more careful and less bold, which is a good thing. I attribute it to this: Many "speedy taggers" are doing NPP because they foresee an RFA in their near future. It is well known (and appropriate) that if an editor is sloppy as a speedy tagger, they will be sloppy as a speedy deleter, therefore those taggers with "aspirations" of "finishing the job", which seems to be all of them, are reluctant to tag borderline articles. Encouraging, in an ironic sense. Anyway, I'm not an article builder, never pretended to be one, I'm no good at it. I've asked another editor, who I know to be an excellent article rescuer, to take a look at this specific article that you and I both agree isn't speediable. Seeing as this particular artist lives (purportedly) about 5 miles from my home, I don't quite feel right about doing much more than copyediting myself. Thanks for your input and insight. See you 'round, Keeper ǀ 76 22:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Ecclesiastes 12:12

"the assertion that someone has written a non-self published book book in any subject is a clear assertion of importance" - oh, dear Lord, that makes my heart break just to read! I'm an author, book reviewer, bookseller and long-time member of the National Writers Union; do you have any idea how many new books come out every year, even when you screen out the self-publishers? Most of us harmless Grub Street hacks will never be notable; and certainly most of my one- to three-book friends are not, nor would they assert themselves to be. This concept, if accepted, would open up the gates to endless floods of vanispamcruftisement! I cannot accede to your request. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC) (yes, Dave, I know you're a librarian [weren't you a Wombat at one time?]; but librarians aren't subjected to as much of the petty end of the spectrum as booksellers and reviewers are, and see less of the dross and more of the substance)

I never said it was enough to be notable, just avoid speedy, at least in the case of an apparently significant book, and certainly in this case when supported also by published articles. Speedy is deliberately worded very loosely to permit any good faith assertion of notability to pass and be judged by the community. I agree most of the people who have written a single book wouldn't pass notability, but the point is that this is most of the people -- some would, and no one admin should be able to judge that for the same reason we don't speedy books themselves at afd. someone in the field at least should have the opportunity to check for reviews and citations and library holdings and sport things by recognition that need further checking. As for librarians, we get junk enough but of a different sort. I'm not sure I catch the reference to wombats? I invite you to find a suitable wording for what counts as passing speedy, but in this case, since there was material besides the book, I am probably going to Deletion Review, not to support the article particularly, but to establish that your standard of "indication of importance" is too high. DGG (talk) 18:10, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Obviously we disagree. Ah, well; certainly not the first time! (As to the wombats, that's a Stumpers-L reference.) --Orange Mike | Talk 18:52, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

DGG - I completely support your position. The point here is not to have an exercise in the use of rhetorics but to operate on the basis of evidence and community feedback to make sure Wikipedia remains true to its purpose of providing useful information written by open and transparent consensus [4]. I'm disappointed to see Orange Mike continue to ignore the feedback from the community. I hope it's not the case for other articles he's been reviewing. Were you able to take the "Deletion Review" action you mentioned?

Alex Omelchenko (talk) 04:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

PSTS Policy & Guidelines Proposal

Since you have been actively involved in past discussion, please review, contribute, or comment on this proposed PSTS Policy & Guidelines--SaraNoon (talk) 19:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Matthias Kuhle

Please point me to the bit in the above article that indicates importance/significance. It looks like a massive COI attempt at somesort of self-promotion to me and all I see is resume/C.V. stuff with some books he may have supposedly written. Jasynnash2 (talk) 15:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

saying one is has a position such a significant executive in a major orqanization or professor at a major university or anything of the sort is an assertion or indication of notability enough to pass speedy. Almost any good faith assertion will do--read WP:CSD and the discussions on its talk page. The bar is much lower than WP:N. Given his publications, it's probably going to pass afd,though I have not checked how widely he's cited, which will be the determining factor. You can verify the books at WorldCat. You can do at least a preliminary check at Google scholar--and see the comment I left at the author's talk page. We do not delete for COI!! DGG (talk) 15:43, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay let me make sure I understand the above. Saying you are the CEO/Chairman of the Board/etc counts as an assertion of notability? Just that? Saying you are a professor at "a major university" automatically counts as an assertion of notability? Forgive me if that makes no sense to me. After looking more deeply into things (including the idential article that existed with a misspelled first name) I did find some stuff that mentioned the name (but, couldn't read any of it). I've got no plans to take to AfD. I'm just trying to find somesort of consistency from the admins on these things. Is it oaky to ask you (and the other admins) to be like really really specific in edit summaries and such on stuff like this? Jasynnash2 (talk) 16:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

two levels: example 1/ Saying someone is president or chairman of the board at a notable company if it can be shown from the company web site is actual notability,and even if it has not yet been shown, that's only reason to find the reference, not delete the article via speedy or any other process. Most people , not quite all, agree on this, but most such articles are kept at AfD. Further, saying one is chairman of the board at any company that anyone might possibly think notable is an assertion of notability. Saying one is a corporate officer in a lesser position or a lesser company is usually not enough for actual notability except for major officers of really major companies {e.g. CTO of Apple is notable) but that too whether or not actually notable is an assertion of notability enough to defeat a speedy, and almost all admin agree. example 2/ saying someone is a full professor at a major research university is almost always enough for actual notability, and is trivial to verify, althugh not the literal standard of WP::PROF, because almost always enough recgnition of importance in the field can be found, and has been confirmed for almost all cases brought to AfD in the absence of special circumstances; saying someone is professor at any university or college is an assertion of notability--it may or may not be enough to pass AfD, even when verified--it depends on rank, nature of the school, and accomplishments nut it passes speedy. I point out that whether someone has written books is trivial to verify.

The principle is that speedy is only for articles that beyond any reasonable question are not notable. Anything that might, if true, give rise to a good faith debate, is not a speedy--whether about notability or anything else. Even copyvio-- Unquestionable copyvio is a speedy -- probable copyvio is a suspected copyright violation, not a speedy, and can be blanked, but not deleted. Purely promotional articles which cannot reasonable be rewritten are speedy; if it might be possible to rewrite them, they are not, and require afd. "No context" unclear enough enough to literally make it impossible to figure out what the article is about is a speedy, dubious context is an afd. And so forth for all the criteria.

This is not an extreme position. Many, probably about half, of admins say that speedy is not for any article for which there is any good faith doubt at all, even if it is not reasonable in terms of WP standards. I have proposed limiting it to those with a reasonable doubt, and this did not obtain consensus. As it stands, the wording of CSD holds: unquestionable, not even reasonable question.

True, some admins are ignoring the plain language of WP:CSD, and speedy deleting articles that assert but don't support notability, or that they think will not likely pass AfD. Unfortunately, at present if carried to deletion review, the current attitude is that such deletions are sometimes supported if it appears really unlikely. This is an artifact of the limited number of people who bother to show up at deletion review. When 1000 active admins, and no policy on precedent, many decisions will inevitably be wrong. Just find me any group of a selected 1000 people who agree on anything! Humans don't work that way. Admins as a body are not totally consistent, and though we should work towards getting them more consistent, experience shows we won't get all that far. Only a project directed from above with the equivalent of a supreme court can be consistent. If you want consistency, you need a dictator. There are such projects, such as Conservapedia.

The reason behind the principle, is that no one person, admin or otherwise, is qualified to decide on notability if the matter can be disputed, only the community. Similarly , no one admin is qualified to decide on blocking if it is disputable--any other admin can reverse it, and force a discussion at AN/I to see what the community thinks--not just the community of admins, but the entire community, for anyone can give an opinion there. analogously, bureaucrat is a position of very high trust, but no bureaucrat can individually promote a person to admin--it take a community decision at RfAdmin. Arbitrator is a position of the greatest trust we can give, but they too decide as a committee. DGG (talk) 20:05, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

archiving

I no longer remember how it was done but if someone knows or wants to talk to the bot operator, look at what's done for the museums project. In archiving it creates an index which includes topic and which archive it's in. I don't know if it can be done retroactively. TravellingCari 12:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at documentation, though I can change the names of the archives, the indexing is done as it makes the archive. I would have to remerge everything. What happened of course, is that a/I never imagined at the first they would get so large b/I started with topical archives, and this takes more maintenance than Ive actually done, and , of course 3/ there have been some very long postings here, not all by me,some interesting enough that I want to keep visible. Expect slow improvement. till and maybe a new normal system in January 09 DGG (talk) 14:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

1. Indexes, what indexes?
2. At User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo there is a pointer to User:HBC Archive Indexerbot. I think this is the bot alluded to above by Travellingcari, currently used by WP:MUSEUM. EdJohnston (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Google Search Results

Hello - I created a page on the Ambassador of the UAE Yousef Al Otaiba. At the beginning, it showed up on the top 10 of any google search of the Ambassador's name. Then, all of a sudden, it disappeared. Do you know if it's something that I did with the page that made it not appear AT ALL in any Google search? If not, any idea what it is, or how to make it show up on Google searches of "Yousef Al Otaiba"? Any insight you could have would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. Uaeinfo75 (talk) 18:20, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

curious. There's nothing i see that should have caused it--it's not even a name problem, because they list his father. I suggest you take a look at some comparable articles for other Ambassadors and see what you find. And try Yahoo and some other search engines also. Then I suggest asking at the Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Of course, what Google does is known to be impenetrable from outside, and, after all, our purpose is not to provide a feed of articles to them. Still it's curious. We did change some talk pages so they would not be indexed, but it should absolutely not have affected articles.DGG (talk) 18:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Fictional (?) book

One of the good example showing how this project is failing is that instead of trying to find out the truth about the book (as you've tried), involved editors are using it to prove bad faith on part of others (see second para). Sad, isn't it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

well, all students learn that it's asking for trouble to add refs relying only on listings on the web but without seeing them. But I'm not perfect here myself.  :) DGG (talk) 03:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Back in 2005 and earlier, it was fairly common to see editors misunderstand what the reference section is for and add stuff that now we all know should be under external links of further reading there. Inline cites helped a lot; before I - just like many, many others - used to lump everything under references, whether we used it or not... it's nice to see how our standards of quality improved. If only that improvement would involve civility and good faith... :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

User:TTN

I understand your frustration, but you really need to stop your ad hominem attacks on him on every AfD he does. It doesn't make you look any better than him, and it also makes you as viable as engaging in WP:POINT as much as he is. If you have a clear problem, initiate a request for comment; maybe ArbCom (you probably know there was already a second look at his conduct, in which they decided no action needed to be taken) will take a third look at his conduct or change Wikipedia's policy on AfDs.

I'm not trying to oppose your takes on things or ride you or like that; we have certainly both agreed on some articles from time to time. I also certainly agree that he is a tad heavy on bringing articles to AfD without exercising other options, but there are other venues for that — AfD, I believe, is not one of them. However, fighting fire with fire doesn't help the situation, either. That's all I want to say. Thank you, MuZemike (talk) 23:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

You are probably right that it's overkill, and that I have called sufficient attention to it, and could advantageously use less detail. (My reason for repeating something on every article is that in the past, those articles on which people have not bothered to add keep comments have gotten deleted). Additionally, I have refrained from the temptation to respond with an identical rationale to his identical rationales, and have reworked each one specifically for the particular situation. I havent even given the same !vote -- some keep, some merge, some redirect. One even delete. They are not ad hominem. I consider what he is doing disruptive, and I am talking about that, not him. I have said nothing about motivation except repeating what he has said himself. I am willing to work with him or anyone in effecting merges and other improvements in these articles.

And I thank you for letting me know the bad effect I am apparently having. It's good to have outside critiques. DGG (talk) 23:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion

Articles must establish their notability and verifiability clearly and objectively. If someone is creating an article, it is just as in adequate to write the first paragraph of what may become a ten paragraph article as it is to create an article containing nothing more than the reiteration of its title and then reject claims that the subject is not notable. Editors who cannot or will not create articles with substantiating references from the start must be ready to have these articles deleted, or they should create them as userfied articles. Patrollers of the new articles page cannot be expected to check the HTML of all the nonsense articles they see to verify whether or not references were indeed placed and it is only the lack of a reflist markup that keeps them from being revealed. While your intentions may be excellent, your position is essentially defenseless. I therefore respectfully reject your your comments and ask that you instead direct your efforts at informing new editors that new articles must establish their own merit prior to them figuring out how to use Wikipedia, or they risk speedy deletion of what appears to be nonsense, unverified un-notable refuse, hoaxes and vandalism. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 13:58, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, articles must establish their notability and verifiability clearly and objectively to be kept, but they merely have to give some indication of it to pass speedy. Please reread WP:CSD and WP:STUB The first policy that you suggest, that an article must have references to be kept at speedy,. has been suggested from time to time, but repeatedly rejected. If you want to propose it, try the WT:CSD page But first read it's very long archives. That an article must be complete or even tenable at the first edit is also not policy, though I do warn people that they would do well not to make too fragmentary a start, because some admins are a little trigger-happy. What I said on your talk page, that it is not appropriate to speedy an in process article the first few minutes of its existence, is standard practice. You are not currently prevented from placing such a tag, but if you do, be aware that I and others will criticize you for it. What I am saying is not my eccentric way of doing things, but standard here. Please read or reread WP:BITE and WP:Deletion Policy.If an article can be improved by normal editing, it is not a candidate for speedy.

However, we do have a way to accomplish the sort of challenge to an article you have in mind. That is the WP:PROD process. You might want to consider it in the cases of patently incomplete articles.

I know you've been here about one year longer than I have, but I don't think what you have been suggesting has ever been the policy. And I notice your top userbox, so I think we might have some common ground after all. We do have common interests. Perhaps we will meet at one of the NYC meetups. DGG (talk) 16:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Your Comments on my Talk Page

Originally, I started deleting comments on my talk page from rude people that disagreed with some of my outspoken positions. Just don't need to keep reading negative nonsense from people that can't take alturnative or unpopular views.

But with respect to AfD comments, I generally don't see the point of repeating what the nominator has written if it is the same as my thoughts on the issue, which is what "as per nom" means. Do you disagree? Which AfD that I've voted on are you interested in? Perhaps I can expand my comments. But again, if my thoughts are the same as the nominator's, what's the point in a word-for-word copy since "as per nom" says the same thing?

prod

"unreferenced" is not a reason for deletion. Unreferenced and unnotable, maybe."tried but could not find any sources for notability" much more convincing--when you say something like that, I'd probably accept your view. But of the 2 you marked unreferenced, one seems to have had a ref . tho not a good one Blaqstarr--I didnt check further, and the other Esa Maldita Costilla, is probably notable given the performers involved. DGG (talk) 07:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess our standards differ. Stifle (talk) 08:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Great Work

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		DGG you are one the best Wikipedians .I have came across despite differences in standards and even opinion you have been a true gentleman,helpful,kind and very good human being. Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 22:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 October 19#Comparison_of_web_based_file_managers

You raise an excellent point there. I seem to be averaging a DRV on one of my closures every second day (although the majority are being endorsed). The recent phenomenon of DRVs when one isn't satisfied with the result, but dressed up as "certain arguments weren't addressed, so the admin should have closed it my way" is worrisome, not least because a DRV would have been even more certain if the debate had been closed the other way. This is liable to put good admins off closing AFDs because of a perceived stigma in having your decision posted at DRV, especially when users decline to discuss matters with the closer first as the DRV instructions twice require (a matter about which we have repeatedly butted heads). Where can we go from here? Stifle (talk) 13:43, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I've moved this down, in case you missed it. Stifle (talk) 08:12, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

still working on an adequate response.DGG (talk) 12:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Fiction Survey 2008

DGG, in today's ANI thread that Masem brought against me, you said "Constructive would be a discussion of what was actually wanted." In June I suggested to Masem a series of fill-in-the-blank questions we could ask the community. On October 14, 2008, I turned those questions into a survey in my userspace. On October 22, 2008, I solicited input at the proposals section of the village pump. Do you think such a survey would be potentially constructive? I would appreciate any feedback you may have at WT:FICT, or on the talk page of the survey. You're also free to edit the survey itself if you would like if you think any improvements should be made. Thank you. --Pixelface (talk) 00:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I shall take a look, but what would help most of anything you could do at this stage is to promise to stop reverting policy pages. Doing that sort of thing will lead to a deteriorating situation, not just for you, but more generally. DGG (talk) 03:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

My general feelings about this is to use a combination article for all non-principal characters except for truly major or classic fiction. For those who thing WP:N meaningful in this context, individual ones in such a list need not be Notable--there is no such requirement for indiviual items of article content. WP:OR and WP:V do not apply, a suitable descriptive content can come from the fiction itself. As for keeping a separate article for such characters, at this point in discussion it does not really make sense until there are significant real sources. Let's work towards a compromise on these. I am reluctant to consider every character in every show individually here at AfD or other venue, if we can get a general rule. What gets a combination article, what a separate one, is basically just a matter of organization. To call it notability is a misunderstanding of what WP:N ought to be used for. The idea of a "separate article" being a big deal one way or another for closely related topics is very PRINTY, and not appropriate for Wikipedia. DGG (talk) 18:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Refining AfD outcomes

Hi. I read your comments at the AfD and DRV of List of Who Framed Roger Rabbit characters. In particular, I noticed your suggestion to alter AfD/DPR. I started a discussion WT:AFD#Merge outcome, based in part on my interpretation of your comments and concerns. Flatscan (talk) 23:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding at the discussion. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

54]] (T C) 12:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

episodes and chapters

(from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elementary School Musical (which was kept after the nomination was withdrawn)

Just a final comment. episodes are usually not like chapters! Chapters can not stand alone, in any sense whatsoever; they're basically pauses. Episodes in contrast are written to have some degree of internal closure, to be viewable by themselves--you won't know the background, you won't appreciate the motivations, but you will know at least the resolution or deliberate non-resolution of the particular incident. Look at the descriptions--this is almost always the case. In most good books, if you skip a chapter, you usually miss something necessary to understand the action and as things go on, you get more and more confused. Episodes are usually written with enough hooks backwards to explain the continuity. They more resemble & I think derive from the structure of comic books, which is why there is such an easy translation between those media. (There are of course other possibilities--the structure of those 19th century novels published as weekly chapters usually do not stand alone--they are not true episodes. ) The traditional form they most closely resemble is connected short stories. My favorite example is Wodehouse, with stories using the same repeated characters. Thats why we almost never have articles on individual chapters of novels--there are very few where it would make the least sense, even if a particular chapter is famous for its particular artistry or complexity of development. DGG (talk) 22:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Nova Publishers

I was checking some references in Kondratiev wave and ran into Nova and wondered "who would ever publish that?" After a little checking on google I got to our Nova Publishers article. The talk page is informative, if a bit long. The article itself is pretty uninformative. I would personally include the Stanford web page in our article - "reliable source" really does depend on the context, though perhaps not in our rules. Smallbones (talk) 23:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at it again--and probably post something on the website. Assuming the article is a reliable source, and the key fact that would make it so is the comment from the editor of the Haworth journal, the question is whether a two journal sample is representative. Every commercial publisher has at least a few low quality journals. So it would need to be used carefully. I'll comment further there in a few days. DGG (talk) 05:17, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Pedram Hamrah

Hi, I've been editing an article on Pedram Hamrah (possibly an autobio, but I am not sure about that). At first I put a notability tag on it, later I removed it again as I thought notability was sufficiently established. Now I start doubting again: Hamrah is instructor at Harvard and is also listed as postdoctoral fellow with another lab there, and that seems pretty junior for being notable. I would appreciate if you could have a quick look at the article and let me know what you think. Thanks! --Crusio (talk) 11:10, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: [5] he is listed as a current postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Reza Dana, who is the senior author on some of Hamrah's most widely cited papers. --Crusio (talk) 11:22, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

People nowadays stay as postdocs for longer and longer times, and it is possible that they may do sufficient important work there to become notable as an authority in their field--I am aware of some people who might be considered such. He's in such a group of permanent postdocs, often called associated researchers. Normally, someone at his level, 12 years past his boards, would have a regular faculty position, but possibly he'd rather stay at Harvard than have one elsewhere. One has to go then by the publications -- he's about the level where one would expect of an excellent assistant professor in the subject-- 20 peer reviewed papers in Scopus, citation counts 80, 77, 73, 47, 43, all in first-rate journals. Even in medical science, where citation counts are high, this is pretty good. The next step is to see just who is citing him & what they say about his work. This can best be evaluated by someone who knows the actual subject. I'd concentrate on the spammier ones. I think spam is more the danger to our credibility than people of borderline notability. DGG (talk) 16:58, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely right! Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 17:13, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art

I will be in Brooklyn on 2/7/09. Bearian (talk) 18:19, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

we should make sure to find each other.DGG (talk) 02:30, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

User:TTN

Since you have had repeated experience with this user's AFDs like, I thought I'd contact you. This user's AFD behavior is appaling especially how he refuses to bundle nominations in the same universe for which he uses identical reasonings. He also continually fails to consider the option to merge or redirect without intervention of deletion and makes no evident efforts to look for sources himself (there's a difference between unverified and unverifiable), instead preferring to force the issue by nominating for AFD (which causes a 5-day deadline for improvement) and which is specifically considered to be improper.

The articles in question might well require care, merging or even deletion, but the way he goes about it is unneccesarily terse and bitey.

I think it's time to launch an RFC. Would you consider helping gather evidence and supporting it? - Mgm|^(talk) 15:27, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Before you start, you might consider seeing how the RfC/U on Gavin.collins goes first, since different facets of the same issue are involved.DGG (talk) 17:37, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

The Librarian franchise

Hey, because you are a real life librarian and because you do work on fictional subjects here, I thought you should be aware of this series (it's no Indiana Jones, but decent enough, I guess). Regards, --A Nobody^{My talk} 17:14, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The Librarian franchise

Hey, because you are a real life librarian and because you do work on fictional subjects here, I thought you should be aware of this series (it's no Indiana Jones, but decent enough, I guess). Regards, --A Nobody^{My talk} 17:14, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

An offer of help, other inclusionists, and suggestions

Your name came up prominently at Talk:Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia#Prominent inclusionists? I was wondering:

1. How I can help?
2. If there are other inclusionists you can suggest I talk to, or if there are any groups you belong too.
3. Any suggestions about how I can help form policy to be more inclusive.

Thank you, Inclusionist (talk) 00:31, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

the best way of helping attain a better and more inclusive encyclopedia is by finding sources for worthy articles that do not have them, especially those immediately under attack. I see you are already a member of the WP:Article Rescue Squadron. You can also look for articles in areas of interest to you that might be challenged in Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup or at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles. This can be done most effectively after learning carefully the rules for proper sourcing given at WP:Reliable sources and the talk page and noticeboard associated with it. We already have a considerable amount of discussion, and it is practical work that is needed more. It is easier to talk about why articles should be kept, than to do the work to keep them. And when you do participate in Afds, never do so without a good argument that the majority of people will accept; weak arguments are counterproductive. Remember that by any rational standard most of the articles there should indeed be deleted. I find a good way to keep perspective is to a do a little WP:New page patrol, and to see and identify all the junk that really must be kept out of the encyclopedia. If you want to help policy become more inclusive, first think carefully about just what you want to have included and why it would enhance rather than diminish the encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 01:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zabat

A friendly question on your !vote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zabat. Could you clue me in as to why you think AfD is the wrong venue to discuss this deletion? Just trying to figure out what you're seeing that I'm missing. Thanks!--Fabrictramp | talk to me 01:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The discussion of what to do with the article does not belong on afd. To nominate for deletion is an assertion that neither a merge nor a redirect would be suitable. If one wants to delete, and it would appear that it might be, one should present some argument directed to that, but no such argument is presented or claimed. In fact, the exact opposite is said in the nomination "does not deserve any separate coverage" (my italics) Thus, its the proposal for a merge--and a merge would make sense for the article in my opinion also--I agree with TTN there and would support such a merge in a discussion--as I have frequently told him in similar cases. But merges on this topic are at least potentially controversial. and need discussion, if only to determine how much to merge. The discussion of these would properly take place on the article talk page (or the talk p of the article proposed to merge to, or a workgroup.) Certainly it has often been argued that a merge or a redirect is not suitable, either because the content is already merged, or that it is too trivial for even a redirect--but no such assertion was made. Please take a look at the nominators talk page, to see his frank exposition of his intentions and plans for removing such articles by any device whatsoever, no matter how ill suited--and his current pursuit of the method of removal by redirects without prior discussion or consensus or the attempt to gain such--actions for which he had previously received a topic ban. DGG (talk) 02:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I didn't get that out of it, but in rereading it, I can see that interpretation. (And just reinforces my opinion that we need a central, well visited place to discuss controversial redirects.)--Fabrictramp | talk to me 15:54, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Again, it was for edit warring over such redirects. WP:BRD is still perfectly fine to utilize. I really don't know how everyone gets so confused over it. TTN (talk) 02:33, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you like BRD. I take it you wont mind if all of them are R'd. Remember my willingness to support you in good merges if you need support, for ones you ask about first. DGG (talk) 02:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

If they're reverted, they'll just be put up for deletion, which I feel to be the only way to effectively deal with articles that don't need to be merged. TTN (talk) 02:52, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Not sure how a "no consensus" close somehow translates into a go ahead and "redirect" (see [6], [7], and [8]) without gaining consensus for such action on the article's talk page after the AfD closed. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 03:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

DGG, don't take this the wrong way...but are you actually reading the articles and voting on their merits as stand alone subjects or just voting because it's TTN? The above statement you made there, as much as I'd like to assume good faith, seems to imply it's just because "it's him" and he didn't clear it with you first. [Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lying Bastard This AfD seems to support that too], in which the source cited was actually a very brief mention of a ship in a genre where such ships are commonplace.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 11:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

in general, about 90% of the articles proposed for deletion by TTN are indeed articles with serious problems, about which something should be done. In some cases, its merely a rewrite to encyclopedic standards; in mot cases, its a merge of some amount of the content; sometimes, if the content is already there sufficiently, its a redirect. Occasionally the subject is so utterly minor there shouldn't even be a redirect--and when I see one such, i normally do go and !vote delete. But In general, when I say keep and discuss merge elsewhere, or the like, i do not mean that the article should be kept in its current form. I mean just what I say, that afd is not the place, and that the first step is to not delete the article, and the second is to discuss how to merge it. As I mention above, I am perfectly willing to help support good merge proposals if hey run into opposition. I've usually not been asked, because the proposals that run into opposition are usually not good proposals, but proposals eliminating most or all of the content, which i would rarely support. That in my opinion is probably why TTN has to go to afd for them, because he is trying to enforce under threat of deletion what he would not be able to get consensus for if presented straight-out.

for the batch of articles on these fictional weapons, I think the articles are , as they stand, inappropriate for Wikipedia as separate articles, and I usually remember to say as much every time. They are fairly well done, but as written out in full, they belong on a specialized wiki. But some sort of summary of them on a suitable combination page seems to me suitable for Wikipedia. And that's what I mean by my comments there.

the reason I try to comment on every one is because if people do not bother to comment, it appears like the deletion proposal has consensus. It is wrong to swamp process and hope people get tired of reply. It is much easier to give a list of a dozen common things frequently wrong with articles, without specifics, than give an adequate defense against each. I find doing so an utter nuisance. There are better ways of doing this, but they require compromise. . The proof to me that the nominator(s) will presently not accept compromise is, that when they do get merged to list articles, the lists are then nominated for deletion. If they are merged then to the main article, that part of the content is removed. Obviously there is a basic disagreement about how much detail on fictional content is appropriate in wp. Either one side will drive the other out, or we can compromise. I do not expect to totally like whatever the compromise will be, but I don't expect to. I have yet to see from those wanting to cut back on such content a willingness to negotiate a compromise in good faith. DGG (talk) 04:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

What do you make of all of these nominations for articles in actually different states (some have sources, some do not, yet they all get the same no sources claim) and with different degrees of notability (some are more notable than others and yet they all are commented on as if their notability is equal) all having the exact same wording in the nominations? Do you think the individual merits of these articles are being considered when articles with different degrees of sourcing and notability get the same copy and paste nomination "rationale"? The best is the whole "no current assertion for future improvement of the article"; anything that is not a hoax can be improved. Do we need someone to say (assert) somewhere that he/she will improve an article explicitly or is it generally understood that Wikipedia is a work in progress and thus pretty much all articles are expected to be improved over time? Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 03:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Corps

To quote your own line above, things should be sourced!! Small stubs that are not sourced merely make WP look bad and should be either fixed or deleted. (User Buckshot06)

Is this apropos of something in particular? Things should be sourced. Until they are, the stubs should be kept so someone can fix them. Small stubs have multiple purposes: they provide at least a minimal amount of information, they indicate the structure of the articles on the subject, they provide a place for newcomers to work. The great virtue of Wikipedia is that is covers a very great range of things, even though it does not cover most of them very well. Only a top-down edited or directed work can have uniformly good coverage. At least here, if stubs bother you, you can fix it yourself by expanding the article. Don't complain that other's haven't done so--they could equally complain that you haven't. DGG (talk) 18:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Speedy keep

Hi DGG. You may be surprised to see me championing anything regarding "keep" !votes, but you might find this discussion about this AfD discussion interesting. My conclusion is that WP:Speedy keep might do well to have at least one non-bad faith / non-nominator-generated reason, such as WP:SNOW. Thoughts? Bongomatic 18:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I have elsewhere commented just now [9] that the reason for speedy keep should be a "clearly mistaken nomination": or something of the sort, without implying anything about good faith. Except in extreme circumstances, we can't really judge people's motivations, and they are not necessarily relevant. for example, I readily admit that the motivation of one of my principal opponents in some recent discussions is their good faith and honest and forthright desire to reduce the Wikipedia coverage of fiction, which they in all honesty think excessive. That they are totally wrong and will destroy one of the key positive features of Wikipedia does not affect their good faith.

SNOW is a different matter, and I think we use it altogether too rapidly, because we should give a chance for people to say things that we might not have thought of at first. I think it would be a good idea if almost all afds ran a full 5 days =120 hours.

As for engadget, it closed before I had a chance to comment. I think the nomination was about was wrong as a nomination can be, and showed some inability to understand either the article, or a temporary lapse in understanding our guidelines. I think the nominator sometimes does interpret our guidelins in a way that i would not, but that at most is a persistent error, or non-standard viewpoint. Bad faith in a deletion nomination would be if someone wanted to delete the article of a competitor, or about an organisation that espoused a different ideology, or an article written by an opponent here or in the RW, or to make a POINT irrelevant to the merits of the article, or to do deliberate harm to the encyclopedia, or out of purely reckless vandalism. None of these were present here that i know of. DGG (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to reach a consensus (or at least spark further discussion) at Wikipedia talk:Guide to deletion#Summary up to now. Feel like weighing in? Bongomatic 02:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Transformers

We seriously need a policy that explains exactly when, where and how much primary sourcing is acceptable or for that matter how much plot detail is too much (that would deal with this whole drama immediately). That said: the main issue with the articles is that they were based entirely on primary sources. If you can improve on those, by all means do. I think undoing the merge would be very unproductive. Try referencing material and merging it along until the time it becomes to large and needs its own entry so you can split off because of space concerns. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I have sometimes been tempted to actually edit these articles, but have usually had the sense to refrain--it would be an interesting experiment in using general skills to work on a subject concerning which I am totally ignorant--except for what I've learned by watching these articles. An editor in its real world meaning, after all, is supposed to be able to do just that. (The most I've done is condense some plot summaries here and there, while hoping that I'm not accidentally leaving out the key part that the naive original editor failed to emphasize.) This leads to a reasonable question, which is why then do I care about these articles at all? Two reasons: An encyclopedia is supposed to be encyclopedic and cover more than any one persons interests--keeping in mind the range of people who use Wikipedia. But the reason I even get to this topic at all, is because I discovered attempts to try to delete the relatively detailed articles on the classic fiction and sci-fi I really do care about (some of what I call classics, to be sure, is what some other people think as junk.)

almost as you say, though, we need a guideline (I doubt we will ever have the greater consensus needed for policy). In the meantime, let's not pretend we already have one, and its the one we individually want. I doubt we ever will have even a guideline, unless we compromise. I appreciate being given advice about what will satisfy some opponents, but I think some will not accept articles on fictional details regardless of sourcing. They just don't think it's worthy of an encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 01:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Appreciation

Just a note of gratitude for the fine work you do, as exemplified in your post at WP:EL#Shmoop, and many many elsewheres. You deserve a herd of barnstars, and much emulation. Thanks, repeatedly. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Camp Rising Sun

The article contains a lot of unverifiable information and the sources you provided don't seem to be publically available, which makes the chance of someone cleaning it up pretty small. Would you mind taking those sources and writing a nice stub yourself? - Mgm|^(talk) 18:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC) Sources I gave show enough to show notability. and there is no requirement for sources to be free--lots of people have access to those sites in libraries.. But yes, I'll download them and edit the article somewhat.DGG (talk) 18:09, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

A true CSD survey

Well, I've gone through a number of CSD nominations from the past month and found about 40 that I thought might pose interesting questions on how people perform CSD's. Basically, I'm asking people to review the article in question and answering the question, "how would you handle this" with one of four options:

1. Agree with criteria for deletion. 2. Disagree with criteria for deletion, but would delete the article under another criteria. 3. Disagree with the criteria for deletion, but this is a situation where IAR applies. 4. Disagree with speedily deleting the article.

To see the surveys, go to this page. I'm hoping to get a good mix of people to participate in the surveys---people who agree with my interpretation of CSD and people who have different views. I'll post the results in a couple of weeks after getting a decent return.---Balloonman ^PoppaBalloon 07:26, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

you forgot to say where. DGG (talk) 21:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Ooops, looks like I forgot to include the link, I've added it now in case somebody sees if from here.---Balloonman ^PoppaBalloon 23:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Your my hero

I am so impressed with your work on wikipedia. Your thoughtful contributions have been showing up everywhere. The way you carry yourself in conversations is inspiring. It is no wonder that Colonel Warden recently called you a "model of intelligent and discriminating inclusionism...quite influential in forming policy". Thank you. travb (talk) 01:28, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

New articles Septimus Heap (character) and Jenna Heap

Hi DGG, We have created these articles with real world notability, reviews and development. I would like you to please give your comments on the articles and rate these articles. "Legolas" (talk) 06:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ludwig Carl Christian Koch

You might want to take another look at the afd, and redo your WorldCat search. Don't count on full names being used there. DGG (talk) 20:24, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I did, and also checked other sources. As you probably noticed, I changed my vote to a keep. Thanks.--Eric Yurken (talk) 16:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric Yurken (talk • contribs)

Egyptian Yoga

If you know someone who might be familiar with this subject or wouldn't mind having a look I would appreciate it. I nominated the article for deletion, but the creator has been working hard on improving it. I'm still concerned the sources seem to be what's being promoted and the notability of the subject itself hasn't been established with good sources. It almost seems more like an article about the author of the sources than Egyptian Yoga. I'd be happy to have a neutral perspective. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

when I have so little interest I cannot force myself to actually read the article, I think it wiser not to comment. DGG (talk) 19:58, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

DGG was inducted into The Hall of The Greats

On December 30, 2008, User:DGG was inducted into

The Hall of The Greats
This portrait of Randy Couture was dedicated in his honor.
David Shankbone.

much appreciated. I understand the significance. DGG (talk) 21:11, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you are our prize fighter against deletionists, a blood sport that rivals mixed martial arts. Not to mention all the work you do on sources, improvements, references, the list goes on and on and on.... Thank you, DGG The Great. --David Shankbone 20:31, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Alexander Dictionary of English Idioms

Alexander Dictionary of English Idioms has been tagged for speedy deletion as promotional. It may have been deleted by the time you read this message. I can't find references for it, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places. --Eastmain (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I think its a minor publication of their language school, unknown otherwise, and accordingly I've speedy deleted it as promotional for the school. DGG (talk) 00:17, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Christian Forums

First, thanks for sticking up for the CF page back on the deletion review. It doesn't look like it's going to survive this round, BUT I think we can make it work if some reliable, third-party sources are found. I've put together a template of potential sources for this on my user page, if you're interested. What I need are some candidates, and then the article should be a go for re-launch. toll_booth (talk) 03:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I do not have the opportunity to work on this, but when you think you have enough sources, rewrite the article on a subpage and I will have a look at it. DGG (talk) 05:23, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Classical guitar pedagogy

When you deleted Classical guitar pedagogy, you missed deleting Talk:Classical guitar pedagogy. I'm also not convinced it fits the criteria for a speedy G7 delete, since while TheRationalGuitarist has been the principal editor for the past year, the article did exist prior to that and had edits from others, as I recall. As I mention on the talk page, I didn't touch the prodding of the article when I restored the content from TheRationalGuitarist's replacing it with a link to his blog since I didn't have an opinion on deleting the article as such, I just didn't feel it was appropriate for an editor to essentially blank an article because he wanted to take back his words. - Fordan (talk) 14:50, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I apparently missed the early history of the article and I have restored the whole. I'm removing the prod; it seems there is a decent version to revert to, and I will revert to it. Some of the later material may be usable, and I leave that to the editors interested. But my leaving the talk page was deliberate--i often do leave it for a while to serve as an explanation. I will explain there what I'm doing. DGG (talk) 19:47, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see what you think of this idea

At your convenience, please take a look at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Committees#Content authority: a different approach. It may address some of the objections you voiced earlier on that page. -- Noroton (talk) 05:49, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Sourcing question

Hello David, hope your holidays were pleasant. Question: is it acceptable to use the background-of-the-invention section of patents listed in Free Patents Online ([10]) as a source? These are often exceptionally concise and well-written summaries of current technological issues, which is useful. (Example: [11]) Presumably the background section of granted patents is vetted by US patent attorneys. Thought you would know what the official WP stance is. Best wishes, Novickas (talk) 15:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

There is no official stance on this, and I would suggest asking at the RS noticeboard, and making sure the chemistry Wikiproject knows about the discussion. My preliminary thoughts are as follows:

1. . We are talking about US patents only. But the degree of review of US patents varies at different time periods. The degree of review in other countries varies.
2. . There is invariably a very long publication delay.
3. . In chemistry and biochemistry, which is what I know best, patents are accepted as references, are fully covered by Chemical Abstracts, are used as publication in curriculum vitae, and are often the sole source of information on compounds. But, as Crane's classic Guide to the Chemical literature says " Statements in the technical journal literature can more safely be presumed to be based on experiment or experience." , and, "patents are continually issued on subject matter the real nature of which is not understood" and "scientific theory or understanding may have little or nothing to do with a case" As I understand it, what is vetted is the claims.
4. . What can be claimed in the body of the patent is subject to technical rules, and it is in the interests of the patentee to claim as much as possible. General statements about classes of compounds, as distinct from actual descriptions of specific ones, are purely hypothetical.
5. . But you are talking about the introduction only. It is in the interest of the patentee to try to pretend that as much as possible of his work is novel. The examiner usually is supposed to try to to limit this,with respect to material directly bearing on the novelty of the claim, but to a much lesser extent on the general knowledge of the subject. The final text is a process of negotiation. Much patent litigation subsequently hinges on whether all the literature was in fact disclosed. In the introduction to a scientific paper, however, though one wants to show the originality of one's work, one also wants to demonstrate how thoroughly one understands the literature,and how much of the previous less well understood material one's own work explains--so one generally tries to say as much as possible, and a reviewer will both try to find what one has neglected to find as evidence of ones possible lack of competence, and try to cut back the overgeneralities.

In short, I think one could use the information there, but I would never quote such a source as proof that there is no work beyond what it says there. (if you ask this elsewhere, feel free to copy this as a start) DGG (talk) 16:36, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Will think this over, thanks. It can be discouraging, you know, the search for one or two online references that state the obvious, in lieu of bits from seven or nine refs to make up one concise statement. The single refs are awfully handy when you're short on time but want to create a reasonable stub. What I had in mind is only the "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION - 1. Field of Invention" section. In this instance [12], the statement "Crude shale oil differs from crude petroleum because, in addition to saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbons, it contains hydrocarbons, both saturated and unsaturated, in chemical and/or physical combination with a substantial amount of nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen when compared to the elemental levels of petroleum crude. It is because of this property that crude shale oil requires additional treating when shale oil is refined by conventional petroleum refining techniques and procedures." Very limited, and would seem to be stating the obvious; a basic justification of the need for a patent. (The field-of-invention section seems to always follow claims - that ordering kind of undermines its credibility). "Description of the prior art", on the other hand, is clearly open to contention. A search of "freepatentsonline.com site:wikipedia.org" shows that the site is mostly being used here to support claims rather than to supply background info; that's why I was worried that it would be challenged as unreliable. Don't know if, or how often, these are challenged; I would think that, barring major breakthroughs, that section would be OK. Thanks again. Novickas (talk) 02:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I do not disagree with you, but it'll be one more thing to keep defending, & then people will try to use entire patents for even the wildest fringe that was ever patented. But for material like this , the really good source is Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. Pity it isn't free, for it's in my opinion the best encyclopedia every made in any subject at all. BTW, the reason for the sequence of parts in a patent is that patent abstracts usually include only the claims, as the key section. DGG (talk) 05:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've decided against trying it; as you say, it could be a slippery slope. Still seems a shame in some ways - the writing is so good nowadays - compares well to the newer SEC filings. I have access to Kirk-Othmer at work. Their intended audience, tho, is some levels above ours. Compare, for instance, the above patent application to KO's oil shale abstract: "Production costs for crude shale oil are generally much higher than those for conventional crude oil, in part because of the high concentrations of heteroatoms in the crude shale oil." [13] Heteroatoms would need to be glossed in a (Good or FA) WP article, while the patent application explicitly states the problematic atoms. Its US-centrism is also a little off-putting: "Several commercial oil shale operations exist, but these are all outside of the United States" - what's with the "but"? and "Shale oil asphalt is the most promising of these products" - ignores world crude oil prices and energy independence issues. Those items aside, I'll probably resort to KO at some point. Can't argue with its gravitas and prose. Novickas (talk) 13:43, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed extremists are the problem

Per mailing list...

I think you are right the 1% loud mouthed people are disrupting the system so much, it prevents us as a community to reach in any sort of agreement. Such an agreement would significantly hamper the activity of the 1%.

To address this I think a few things need to be done. This is more of a chain reaction.

• I demand to see proof of consensus behind the mass removals. The community should also demand to see the evidence of such a consensus. I am wary of polls and votes on this issue as in the past the 1% has "outvoted" the community as no one is interested in the drama over unimportant articles. People reserve their "drama credits" over possible future disputes they care about.
• After the above step community would need to ban or restrict people who do not act responsively and disrupt the site with their "bold" mass actions. Mass reverts, mass deletions, mass nominations and mass actions of any sort are problematic unless there is consensus behind it.
• After the two steps above, the general issue should be addressed and community should decide how to handle unimportant articles such as the ones on TV episodes, character and video games.
• Lastly the consensus by the community would need to be enforced.

However to achieve all that we need to prod the community to act on the first item somehow. I doubt arbcom will be useful at all so this should either be a community prod or a Jimbo prod. Jimbo himself told me that he wasn't too happy with whats happening but he explicitly tried to avoid saying anything definitive. I guess maybe a community request for a Jimbo prod may start the actual discussion.

For example Jimbo could "demand to see" a consensus to mass remove articles (like how TTN and others are doing) and that would start the chain reaction. After all if they indeed have consensus behind their actions it shouldn't be too hard to prove it. If enough people ask Jimbo, I am sure he would be more compelled to prod the community.

-- Cat ^chi? 01:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: Computers & Math Journal

Thank you DGG for salvaging that entry. First & foremost, I'm totally un-connected to the journal or business. I had found useful articles there, and am impressed by their international cast of editors. I'll work on improving that per your guidance. EJohn59 (talk) 06:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

Something else to consider

What do you think about IC 5357 and the half dozen or so stubs like it? Are all galaxies notable - there's likely to be "billions and billions" of them per Carl Sagan - even if we can never write more thant what's in that article - which is basically where to look for the place from the Earth? Are all stars- "billions and billions" of them in each galaxy, most likewise without much more than their location to be said for them? Are all asteroids or other balls of ice and rock out there (or down here)? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 21:41, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

What do I think? i think we should add the same information for each of the few million others that have been catalogued. Though for convenience, we ought to group them together in articles. The notability=article equation is part of the problem. There are 2 qys: should Wikipedia cover something, and, separately, how should it be arranged. I have, for example, no objection in the least to group episodes together, as long as a reasonable amount of information is included for each, including the actors, timing, and main plot lines from beginning to end. I think we could have coverage on every street in a city; most of them would be in groups. It would be easier to do than to argue about which ones to include.

The real reason to restrict notability is to main the encyclopedia free from promotion and advertising. As this doesn't affect galaxies, we don't have the problem there. the real point is to stop arguing about arrangement and subdivision, and start writing content.

Personally, i think it would be a good idea to build a stub on every possible notable subject, and encourage people to fill them in. Where would I start? every noun and verb in wiktionary, that there is more than one reference for. DGG (talk) 22:02, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

This made me chuckle - we worry about both ends of the scale don't we? "are hamlets notable?" at the one and then "are galaxies notable" at the other. :-) --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

A quick question

If an AfD closes as redirect, does the article get deleted and then redirected or is it just redirected with the history inact? Gracias. ChildofMidnight (talk) 03:14, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

the article is redirected, in most cases. There are times when the previous history of the article is such that we delete and make a new redirect, and that should when needed be specified in the closing. . Note that if the article is merged, then the GFDL requires that the history not be deleted, and after whatever content needs to be merged is merged, then the remainder is edited to be a redirect, but cannot be deleted. At least thats how I interpret the procedure. DGG (talk) 03:17, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Please excuse my jumping in here. DGG's interpretation matches what I've found in documentation. Per WP:Guide to deletion#Shorthands (scroll down to Redirect), history deletion must be explicitly recommended, such as in cases of copyvio or BLP. Flatscan (talk) 05:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Computers & Math Journal (your sec#118)

Dear DGG,

I now agree that the page should be deleted. After I looked at the Elsevier page, I see all kinds of controversies, incl. whole editorial Bd resigning in protest, and also boycotts by renowned libs at places like Harvard, Stanford & Duke. Until Elsevier cleans up its act, all their journals are tainted. So please go ahead and delete. Thanks. EJohn59 (talk) 00:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

I am sorry, but I do not accept that. If their journals have problems, then we discuss the problems in the articles. If this particular journal as problems, cited references to them should get added to the article. Any journal in the top half of JCR in the subject is certainly notable; by my standards, any JCR title is, and according to some, all peer reviewed journals with any real publication history, though I personally do not go that far. WP is the encyclopedia of the good and the bad alike. Elsevier publishes some junk, has has done quite a number of stupid things, and so have most publishers. It also publishes some of the very best journals in the world, such as Journal of financial economics, and Cell. DGG (talk) 01:01, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

James B. Lockhart III

Hi DGG

Wondering what to do about the above-captioned page. As you can see, one or more editors from the IP range 141.156.72.xxx have made numerous changes to the page. Here is the diff showing them all. This IP range appears to be registered to HUD.

The edits are disruptive not only to the substance (removing relevant, well-sourced, NPOV information, replacing it with redundant recitations of the subject's official bio--political spin and all), but also in form (removing internal links and citations).

What is the appropriate way to deal with this sort of thing?

Thanks, Bongomatic 15:50, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I have semi-protected against anonymous editors, you should now inform the BLP message board WP:BLPN. (or I can do it for you if you ask me to--I may also inform WP:AN/I]].) If someone wants to carry this further, they can do so. Many people watch that board. Thanks for noticing & reverting. I'll watchlist it also. DGG (talk). 17:04, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I will do what's required at BLP message board a little later (new process for me so don't want to do it in a rush). By the way, I didn't just revert, I added sources and material! I don't only delete things! Bongomatic 23:31, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

request for input

here when you have some time (concerns a proposal to Verifiability policy) Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:32, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

AfD incivility

Dear DGG, I am not sure what to make of this, but calling another editor an "idiot" doesn't seem right and seems to just escalate things. Not sure if both editors should be warned or what? Thoughts? Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 21:52, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not quixotic enough to take on patrolling AfD for incivility. As for what was said, I've used the same rhetorical tricks trav used, and people sometimes do resent it. DGG (talk) 22:41, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, i see they have settled the matter between them, as is usually the case. People say angry things, and then apologize--and we let most disputes get dealt with just that way. DGG (talk) 23:09, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, take care! --A Nobody^{My talk} 00:09, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Johnpatriots

Why did you give this user a single warning after he wrote just two how-to articles? Seems a little bit harsh. Especially since Blueboy96 blocked him afterwards. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:23, 17 January 2009 (UTC) First, there were three articles, one created deliberately with the same contents as an article that had been afd'd. (& I think there was another under a different user name) Second, he declared his intention of continuing indefinitely. A self-declared vandal. I see the block led him to think better of it and ask for deletion of his user page. I think if you consider it unwarranted, your real issue is with Blueboy. I considered blocking myself, but I don't like to block while the afd is ongoing, no matter how defiant the user. DGG (talk) 23:35, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Article on Teji Bachchan

You placed a message on my talk page regarding the notability of this article. But i found no edits by you on this article. I think you placed that message in error. Plz clarify. Quality check 05:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

She is the wife of a notable person, and the mother of another. that does not make her notable. DGG (talk) 06:07, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

verifiability and context

I appreciate your recent comment - would you mind proposing wording you would find acceptable? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

User Conduct RfC Vs. Dicklyon

I have taken the action of filing a user conduct RfC against Dicklyon based on his past and recent behavior. If you want to make your POV on this matter known please do. Users are needed to certify that the events as I presented them are factual, and they have to certify that outside help has been sought to address the issue. I have written this to every involved user in the mediation. Since Dick has proven that he will ignore any mediated arrangement when it suits him. The community must impose one on him. The proper venue for that is a user conduct RfC, not mediation. The proposed sanctions banning for editing any of the name space of the articles listed in the mediation, and from the user pages of any user who wishes to not have to deal with his mess any more. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Dicklyon. Thankyou and have a nice day :-) --Hfarmer (talk) 19:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Teji Bachchan

Hi DGG. I wasn't sure how to handle this one. I can see why you think this meets CSD A7. Clearly you can make the argument that she is only famous because of her son and family, but the article does make some attempts at individual notability. Perhaps it would be best if this went to AfD. Regards -- Samir 20:00, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure--should be interesting to see the discussion. DGG (talk) 02:35, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Blended librarianship

Actually, there's probably an article to be had of some sort somewhere. I had a look around when cybrarian came up for deletion. There did seem to be a passing fad in the 1990s and early 2000s that all of this new fangled World Wide Web jiggery-pokery was going to completely change the job of a librarian and make it all sexy and new and dot-something. There's also an interesting study by Linda Marion in the Association of College and Research Libraries National Conference 2001 proceedings that concludes that there's no identifiable job category of digital librarian. So it's definitely something that has been researched, even if it was found to be nonexistent as a result. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 00:37, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

cybrarian is now standard; digital librarian was just become standard in 01 with an ambiguity between a person who was concerned with the use of (prebuilt) electronic resources (like myself) or a person who was concerned with the production (and secondarily the use) of digital collections; It has become much more widespread in the subsequent 8 years, though usually with the second meaning. The true evidence is job advertisements, (though I filled out just yesterday yet another survey on what people called themselves). Blended librarian is an utterly unsuccessful neologism which seems to have been used by one person only, &I regard the wp article as essentially promotional. DGG (talk) 02:14, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Laura's List: Books for Women

Thanks for the note. I AfDed. Honestly, I think it could possibly be salvaged if it's notable. To me, that's the if. It was enough to avoid a speedy on A7, which we agree on, but I'm not sure it will pass WP:ORG. At 1:30 AM, I'm not looking too hard into it. On another note, me on the keep-ish side and you on the delete-ish side, that has to be a record :) Hope all is well by you. StarM 06:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Although I tend to be inclusionist with respect to notability, I am deletionist with respect to spam, so much so that my feeling of what can get rescued depends on how much its worth rescuing. Having the encyclopedia contain content borderline for notability does not really hurt our credibility; having it look promotional destroys the trust in our basic objectivity. (And I never really understood why you thought you were a deletionist.) DGG (talk) 16:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I never really thought I was deletionist - it's the rep I got. I've found myself far more toward erring on the side of keep/merge/re-direct when it comes to close AfDs and or denying speedies, though I don't enjoy the CSD backlog as much. I agree that spam hurts objectivity, and there's no doubt the author has a COI, but I don't think it's teribly spammy. Writing about a likely n-n group? yep. Spamming to promote it? I think I missed that -- but it was this side of midnight. If you want to speedy close as spam, I won't object and based on the !votes, no one else will either - I just thought discussion wouldn't hurt. Hope you're staying warm! StarM 17:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

followup

Hello DGG, hope the NYC meetup went well, and apologies that I was unable to attend. Were you able to speak about the issue regarding the teacher, and if so, how did it go? I'd very much be interested in hearing the conclusions that were drawn and the discussion that took place, if any. GlassCobra 03:21, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

No, but I did mention it elsewhere; opinion was it was something teachers might well be tempted to do. I'll post a short comment somewhere more appropriate. Having said this I might as well say now that this was a question of a teacher deliberately introducing errors into a Wikipedia page in order to trap any of the students who used that page for an assignment. It's clear the teacher hadn't realized the possible general public effect of introducing misinformation even for a short while. People--even people more regularly here--don't seem to have generally caught up with the fact that we now have a greater responsibility to be accurate than any of us originally realized. Wikipedia may have intended to be just a quick & convenient supplemental resource that nobody in their right mind would use without checking, but it's become more than that. There's no easy solution, but we at least need to become much less tolerant to people here to play games with us. And we need a much more systematic way to correct both long=-standing and newly-introduced errors. No good print encyclopedia would go this long with a completely rechecked new edition. DGG (talk) 03:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Good idea on modifying the section header; didn't mean to bring attention where it shouldn't be. Is there further discussion of this anywhere on-wiki? I'd very much like to get involved. GlassCobra 03:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

discussing what? the immediate instance has been dealt with by discussion with the individual, the way I at least consider optimal. the question of how to advise teachers not to do this, t we already have a clear policy that introducing error is vandalism, but we could repeat it in a few more places. The general question of revision and accuracy, I think should take 2nd place to the flagged revisions discussion. (& that was discussed at the meetup in relation to BLP, & the discussion will be posted) Not that I think flagged revisions is necessarily the answer--I doubt the enWP is up to the overhead involved, but I think it would be worth at least a limited test, for how else will we really find out? DGG (talk) 04:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Midge and Bob Pinciotti

You can imagine as I did the research and wrote my long "comment" at the AfD, I was smiling. I hated being so verbose (me??), but felt it was important to put the discussion into context. Sure the article, and the others, could benefit from sourcing and format tweaks, but that's a mater for cleanup, and not deletion. Best, Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 04:43, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Having once written it, it can be referred to for all the future discussion we will unfortunately have. DGG (talk) 05:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Gwen Grayson

Pleased to have the advice. I want to work through the WP:WWF backlog as quickly as possible which means making quick judgements, hoping that I will improve as I go along. I have in the past often suggested a merge instead of deletion, and have voted to keep articles when I could see that sources might appear, so will have another look in this case. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I did check the notability guidelines for film (nothing relevant said about characters) and for fiction. For fiction one of the criteria is: "Real-world coverage: Significant, real-world information must exist on the subject, beyond what is revealed in the plot of the fictional work." That doesn't seem to be present at the moment, but of course it may turn up now the article is flagged for rescue. Also, I assumed that AfD could result in a redirect, but now I think that perhaps I must always tag for merge instead unless I think a redirect is not needed. I've been reading and re-reading the deletion policy and everything associated, but more guidance would be appreciated. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

As you may have noticed, the guidelines for fictional characters are bitterly disputed at present: I'll give here a summary of what i think is the status, not the way I'd really want it, but the effective status, trying to be fair about the different views. I do not consider separate real world coverage necessary for major characters, and neither do many people at afd. As a result, some articles have been kept without it, and some deleted because they do not have it. Guidelines often lag behind AfD results; an afd must end somehow, but a significant minority who disagree prevents the revision or establishment of a guideline. In practice it depends to a good deal on the recognition of how important the character is.

There are no agreed guidelines whatsoever for the degree of notability for characters in a combination article on "characters of X... ", and the argument that they do not need to be individually notable is usually accepted. Minor characters normally go in a list. A list of characters can be combined with the main article, & size is accepted as a significant consideration in this decision.

Obviously any character with a list or combination entry needs a redirect from their name. Very minor characters (in a film or video, usually characters without dialog who have no particular role in the action; in a game, non-playable characters with purely decorative background roles & no significance to the actual play) do not even need to be listed or given a redirect.

As a side issue, there is no requirement that the source for information about anything direct and factual in fiction be as secondary source, not the fiction itself, though this is needed for matters of opinion and is disputed with respect to notability.

as another side issue, sourcing in this field is difficult because lack of indexing and access; there is no rule that n article must be sourced in any particular time, and requiring it to be done in the 5 days of an afd does not take account of the nature of the material.

Now, in practice, people asking for deletion of character articles for major characters want one or both of two things: Either they are asking for deletion because they hope to agree on merge as a compromise, while knowing or thinking that they might not get a merge decision at the proper place -- the main article talk page. Alternatively or additionally, they want the least possible coverage of fiction, and only reluctantly accept the idea that they might have to merge, and would rather have no separate mention of characters at all.

Myself, I care about content primarily, and only secondarily about how things are connected into articles. I, in common with most of the editors in the field, and almost all our users, want rather full coverage of fiction, though not actually exhaustive to the degree of a fan wiki, where anything that can be written about is considered appropriate. Therefore I want separate articles for major characters because I have learned that otherwise the content gets reduced. Those who want minimal coverage of fiction tend to go about it as follows: first step is reduction is a combination article; second is to a list; third is to a redirect to a paragraph giving the characters in general; fourth is to say that the characters that matter are adequately discussed in the paragraph on the plot (by that time, the plot too has been whittled down to a paragraph); fifth, to eliminate the redirect because the main article now no longer includes the name, and finally to remove the plot paragraph also as nonencyclopedic. Simultaneously, coverage of the production & distribution and reception will be being deleted as trivia.

What we need, though, is not just content on characters, but good content on characters (and other elements). The present content is either excessively over-exuberant, or reduced to a meaningless teaser. In many cases of either form, they are probably copyviols. this is what we need to work on: quality, not dividing up vs. combining bad material, but improving it. DGG (talk) 20:46, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain. I'm not sure that I fully understand though. I would have thought that the priority would be to cover the works of art themselves rather than all the characters in them. Obviously I can see the point in some cases, e.g Juliet Capulet has a significant academic literature even separate from that on [[Romeo and Juliet]. Even Lewis from Inspector Morse is worth an article because there was a spin-off series on that character. But if the line is not drawn at the point where there are independent sources, then where is it to be drawn? Excuse me for being naive about this, but I haven't worked much on fiction articles. I know there are very active communities working in these fields, but if I am going to make real inroads into the wikification backlog I have to be familiar with the notability threshold in every area. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:43, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

you are correct about priorities. But Wikipedia is not an organized project: it is open to everyone to write about whatever they wish to write about. People tend to write in detail about the details of their favorite things. There's no way of directing it. I personally came here mainly to increase the coverage of some of the less-intensely covered academic topics here, and the only way to accomplish this is to try to recruit others who have similar interests. I became interested in Wikipedia coverage of fiction upon seeing the afd for major characters in Tolstoy and other classic writers--many of which were lost. I soon realized that the way of defending articles on what interested me, was to defend similar articles on everyone's individual hobbies, and to say that no topic however obscure was unworthy of detailed coverage if people were willing to write the articles and material was available--material from any source that there is reason to think accurate, including the blogs that reliable people use for communication in that interest group, and even one's examination of the fundamental works themselves.

There is no inherent advantages in either lumping or dividing articles; the point is content. But experience has shown that often the only way to preserve content on many subjects is to have a separate article, because even easier than deleting an article, is the removal of content. This is especially prevalent in fiction, where there are a number of people who want minimal coverage of fiction in Wikipedia as a matter of maintaining what they think is the fundamental serious purpose of the encyclopedia. They will therefore use the excuse of organization to remove content: the sequence I gave in my last reply is not hyperbola or rhetoric, but plain description of what routinely happens, sometimes on a massive scale. Any of the many Wikipedia procedural devices will be used for this purposes in a variety of ingenious manners. The best defense against this is to maintain the integrity of articles. We can have whatever rules we choose to have, in order to accomplish the fundamental purpose of an encyclopedia--we are not constrained to write an encyclopedia to fit some particular set of rules. To get the appropriate content, we adopt whatever rules we need.

Now, there can be disagreement over whether n encyclopedia like Wikipedia should included detailed coverage of fiction. my view is I that the various forms of fiction are one of the central arts of our civilization, and high in the interests and expectations of the public who make up our audience. Perhaps those who think otherwise want to limit to the subjects of academic study, but even so they have lost contact with it. in 1300 it probably would not have been considered respectable for a general encyclopedia to include English literature at all; in 1600, not English popular drama; in 1800, not novels. In 1900, not musical theater; 1920, not film; 1950, not comics; 1960,not television, 1980, not computer games. We could have a fiction-free fork of the encyclopedia , but who would prefer to use it? DGG (talk) 03:10, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again for spelling it out so clearly. Count me in the pro-fiction camp, and pro popular culture too. I suppose I still do think some rigour is useful, having spent time removing the in-universe tone from Ashley Thomas (the least interesting soap opera character ever) only to realise there are notability guidelines for soap opera characters. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journal of Black Psychology

Discussion about a journal, contributors have mentioned library use, made me think your knowledge/opinion could be valuable. Regards, Guest9999 (talk) 23:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of the actual AFD, I find it frankly bonkers that people are citing Wikipedia:Notability_(media)#Newspapers.2C_magazines_and_journals this. Leaving aside the fact that it's an essay, it seems to based on journal as in "periodical you'd find in the supermarket" not "Peer Reviewed journal". --Cameron Scott (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

actually, factors 3 and 4 are probably the main considerations for academic journals. And in some cases 2, and perhaps 5, suitably interpreted to mean the citations involved in factor 4 are to be interpreted according to their niche.. What do you think is wrong with this?DGG (talk) 01:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

That's it's an essay on mass media not scholarly discourse - some of the criteria might fit by accident but that seems to be luck not intent. Do we not have an explicit notability criteria for PR material? --Cameron Scott (talk) 01:10, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I would then advocate saying that those are the basic conditions for all journals, with an explanation that they can be shown by impact factor, wide holdings in appropriate libraries, and presence in major indexes-- and making it a guideline--at least for that part -- I have not looked at the rest. DGG (talk) 01:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Indonesian project

I think the starter of the list under discussion is currently blocked for adding copyrighted material. I think there is a very very serious issue that is beyond afd stuff here - do we encourage english challenged eds to add lists that are never followed up - the problem is the id project as a whole has zilch interest in WP:RS - whereas en project - we have. The issues are all intertwined and complicated - and ultimately the Indonesian project on en will end up a vast list of defended lists of red links, and stubs with no WP:RS - and the few active WP Indonesia en eds will eventually pull out after 'universal' afd decisions will end up keeping stuff that only encourages the wrong sort of editing. But Hey its only wikipedia :) - we gotta keep that in perspective always - cheers SatuSuro 01:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the starter of the list under discussion is currently blocked for adding copyrighted material. I think there is a very very serious issue that is beyond afd stuff here - do we encourage english challenged eds to add lists that are never followed up - the problem is the id project as a whole has zilch interest in WP:RS - whereas en project - we have. The issues are all intertwined and complicated - and ultimately the Indonesian project on en will end up a vast list of defended lists of red links, and stubs with no WP:RS - and the few active WP Indonesia en eds will eventually pull out after 'universal' afd decisions keep stuff that only encourages the wrong sort of editing. Hey its only wikipedia :) - cheers SatuSuro 01:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that how to handle these is an problem. I have perhaps a slightly greater interest & occasional involvement than you'd expect of a person without relevant personal background with the people from this area, because I frequently am on WP at a time when people from the south asian and south-east asian time zones are active. So i see a lot of the material that they add on New Pages etc. I'm aware that among the good work is some material like this. Another way is to simply delete red links, leaving whatever little is left. I've drastically pruned some articles from other countries that way, though it takes watching afterwards. Let me revisit the discussion--where was it again? DGG (talk) 01:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The Indonesia project noticeboard I admonish those who are left (not many) over the issue of the bloody red link lists - but nah alexbot [Recent Indonesian changes|changes] are not worthy of visiting regularly if you value your sanity! (they are on my user page :) SatuSuro 04:51, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

As i am hardly capable of reforming matters myself, and as it sounds like the two of us could not do it by ourselves either, I shall follow your lead in how to deal with this. DGG (talk) 01:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Amanda Riska

An article that you have been involved in editing, Amanda Riska, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amanda Riska. Thank you. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk 06:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Thomas D. Brock

User:MPerel and I are going to be working on bringing Thomas D. Brock to GA in the next 1-2 weeks. You are of course, welcome to help out if you are interested, or simply monitor our progress. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 09:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I will keep an eye out, but just go right ahead. DGG (talk) 23:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Gary Spatz

I see you've declined a speedy deletion request on Gary Spatz twice. I honestly don't see the claim of importance you're seeing -- could you please clue me in before I !vote on the AfD? Thanks!--Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:07, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I see they were two years apart. As for the article, I am not sure he is notable. I am sure that saying one is a coach to famous actors is an indication of at least minimal possible notability, which is enough to pass speedy. Speedy and AfD are two very different standards. AfD is indeed the right place to discuss,so thanks for notifying me. DGG (talk) 23:19, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm well aware of the different standards for speedy and AfD, I just wasn't seeing the claim of importance that avoids a speedy. Now I do -- gracias!--Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:42, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

my apology--I am so used to needing to explain everything, that I do it automatically even when I should have realized it was unnecessary. DGG (talk) 23:45, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Re:Bielski

Forgive me, I lost track of how you got involved in this issue. Do you mean Aron Bielski? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:47, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

of course I do. I saw the AfD. And long ago, it was you yourself who invited me to the discussion of Polish related topics here. But why on earth should you have even asked "how I got involved"? I consider that a highly improper question, though I answer it anyway. DGG (talk) 01:26, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

BLP issues

I consider this a much more urgent case; unfortunately, it seems that when a living person is also a Wikipedian, nobody gives a damn that they are harassed, stalked and lied about :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:46, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Harassment is worthy of attention, & I commented, but I do not see the BLP violation. I hope you are not trying to tell me that we should not deal with a clear case of inserting negative material contrary to the BLP policy, because there are other serious problems in Wikipedia also. DGG (talk) 18:30, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

David, I care to disagree with the part of your comment from above relating to what I’m being put through at WP:RS/N. The anonymous, repeated insinuations of improprieties on my part, on the pages of Wikipedia, are equally damaging to my reputation as an artist. Therefore, they are also a violation of WP:BLP, because the burden of evidence rests on the shoulders of the hidden user who's questioning my already confirmed track record. --Poeticbent talk 20:14, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I commented at the BLPN that the attacks on the article seemed unreasonable, & the latest attack particularly unreasonable.. I consider that helpful, as coming from someone not at all involved previously, and I do not see why you think otherwise. Were you hoping for something stronger? This is not my field; I consider my comment analogous & supportive to what Pietrus said most recently at RS/N, (17:50 on the 24th) acknowledging also that it was not his subject field. I'm perfectly willing to semiprotect the article, but it's less usual to semiprotect a talk page, and I'd want consensus on doing that. At this point, the insinuations are so much out of line that they harm the party making them. To allege that artwork signed by the last name is not that of the artist of the last name claiming it, who is known to work in that field, when there is no other person by that name prominent in the field, does indeed need some very strong evidence, so much so s to cast doubt on the motives of the attack. I commented to that at WP:RSN, as I had only commented elsewhere. DGG (talk) 00:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Please be assured, your comment left at BLPN is much appreciated and of course, very helpful. Even more so, the next comment you left at WP:RS/N which is right to the point and indeed, also very well informed. When I said that I disagreed (above), I meant only that in my opinion, questioning my sincerity with unreasonable demands while casting a shroud of doubt upon the entire list of references to the very last item, is a violation of one of the basic principles of BLP contrary to what you said above initially, about not seeing it that way. At first, I expressed my willingness to wait and see at WP:RS/N. However, the anon has returned only with even more unreasonable demands inspired by his/her ulterior motives. The demands have nothing to do with the article, and everything to do with my work in Wikipedia. I think that my request to block that IP indefinitely would not be unreasonable under the circumstances. --Poeticbent talk 01:56, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

given that it is apparently a dynamic ip, I do not see how it would help. It would just continue from another ip. It would be better to semiprotect the article and the talk page as a first step. I have done that. DGG (talk) 02:22, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. --Poeticbent talk 04:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Copyright

• Salmonella vaccines

I'm inclined to believe that Brs1762 (talk · contribs) is the "B R SINGH" mentioned in the article, and that the article is in fact xyr own work in xyr own words. I'm also inclined to believe that it is a mis-placed dissertation, from its structure. It seems a shame to delete it, given how little of the subject of vaccines, which is clearly a large one, is covered in our articles on Salmonella and Salmonellosis. Uncle G (talk) 16:49, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I am inclined to think the same, but that does not necessarily mean he holds the copyright to it. It is in any case far from a usable article, just like most academic writing. There=have been several other cases of people putting their online textbooks onto Wikipedia, and being able to demonstrate they did own the copyright. We have sometimes kept them, though i do not regard them as really satisfactory either. I see you have begun a cleanup, but I think it takes a much more extensive rewriting. You certainly have the right to remove the prod, and I will do some abridgment beyond that if necessary, but I do not have much time to spend on it, given the problems with fiction and some of the BLP problems mentioned above. . (There's a dilemma: If I do this after you I'll have eliminated some of your work on some sections; if I do it before you, I may remove some sections you could rescue.) But have you considered his edit summary: "specifically for animal use", which indicates an unbalanced treatment, and that is confirmed in the introduction to section 2 "for veterinary use". What will you do with section 2--it is a reasonable essay, but clearly OR by our standards.

It will be much harder to clean up his other articles, as they do not contain the actual references. I think they need to get directed to wikibooks.

among the nonencyclopedic factors: Referencing--the main concepts are assumed,and only the really minor details given citations. Tone--an interpretive tone is used, not a descriptive Generalizations--very broad generalizations, given with authority. Emphasis and detail--check section 3 for example, with experimental details that are appropriate in a textbook for illustration (and selected in good part from his own work)

How do we deal with it--Do we want to try to explain this all to him and ask him to rewrite? If so, I will write from my academic address, which tends to help in such cases. DGG (talk) 17:39, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

McNair Ingenuity Research

FYI: I've started the discussion on the merge proposal that you've tagged on McNair Ingenuity Research - you can find it on Talk:Ian McNair. A side issue: the prod on a handful of related articles has expired. B.Wind (talk) 18:32, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

if I missed deleting any of them,, let me know. DGG (talk) 19:32, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Richard Tylman

Please do not make threats on my talk page. I made a valid hypothesis regarding the work of artists - and asked for reliable third-party corroboration of a claim by Poeticbent. There is little wrong with that and I wasn't making insinuations (I'm not the anonymous guy pestering him after all (our IP addresses will tell you that) - it was valid commentary on article content in order to improve it by finding proper corroboration for claims. Your threats should not work to hinder the sourcing process. Thank you. Malick78 (talk) 08:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

nonsense, to put it mildly. you have requesting proof that an advertisement signed by the individual include his first hame as well as his last name, even though there is no other artist with even the approximate field with the same last name, and then further prove that he actually did the work, even though he may have signed it. These extraordinary conditions are first of all disruptive if one does not take them seriously; if one does, it amounts amount to such a violation of customary practice as to be a BLP violation, in the absence of any evidence on your part that such a thing occurred. You can also be blocked to prevent that continuing. There is some reason to believe that this is in retaliation for comments of that subject {as a wikipedian) at another unrelated page in Wikipedia, in which case it amounts to harassment . You can be blocked for that as well--some of us would think it the most serious of all. If you continue this line, I will ask some other administrator to end the disruption, the blp violation, and the harassment (in order to keep it from being personal between us).DGG (talk) 13:56, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

• I'm confused. Are you accusing me of being the anon user harassing Poeticbent? If so you are wrong - I'm not the one. If you are saying instead that I'm retaliating for his AFD of an article of mine, then please look here - where I copyedited an article for Poetic back in September after the AFD took place. He even thanked me for it:)
• The fact is regarding the present incident that I happened across a report of Poetic's problem on the BLP page and recognising his name took a look. Then I gave an honest opinion - that third-party sources would be best. No pursuit of him, no harassing, just me giving an opinion according to the facts as I saw them. You are overreacting here. I've made thousands of edits to WP and written around 80 new pages with over 30dyk's. Hopefully you'll be able to assume good faith and see that my overall intentions are good on WP.
• Lastly, just because I questioned your right to accuse me of defamation (when I was only talking about somebody hypothetically) doesn't give you the right to accuse me of being disruptive. I have the right to counter an accusation surely, don't I? If it'd make you happy, I'll leave the discussion of Tylman to others from now on, but a less belligerent attitude from you would be appreciated too. Thanks. Malick78 (talk) 14:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

First, I'd like to make one thing clear user Malick78. Your comment left at BLP/N [14] is tendentious, mean-spirited and misinformed, very much along the lines of the anonymous attacks I've been subjected to in the past, forgive the connection. I did not fail to mention anything of importance at the article talk page contrary to your accusations. I was trying to protect my right for privacy. You cannot stretch WP:AGF to your favor infinitely while constantly badgering other Wikipedians with your rants at the same time. --Poeticbent talk 17:14, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

::if anyone wishes to fight with me, this page is the place; if anyone wishes to fight with someone else, please do it elsewhere. DGG (talk) 19:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Man Who Would Be Queen#Mediator

Hello. Please see the above link regarding the mediator for Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/The Man Who Would Be Queen. Regards, Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 10:33, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Updated Brüel & Kjær wiki

I have now edited the article about Brüel & Kjær: I have added more sources and references and shortened the company history. This should resolve any copyright and adversitory issues. Will you please review the page for me. Thank you. Kasper Broue (talk) 11:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC) You must formally send the license to Wikipedia according to WP:COPYRIGHT or our Business FAQ . You ust give us more thn permission to use it, you must release it under a GFDL license, as explained there. DGG (talk) 22:44, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Is it alright now ?

- I have now received a GFDL license from the author of an article I have gathered some information from, for my Brüel & Kjær article. I have forwarded the mail with the GFDL to Permissions [permissions@wikimedia.org] and received an email in return, with the following message: [Ticket#2009012710014069] Permission to use material for Brüel & Kjær article. Thank you for your mail. - I have also linked more of the contehnt in the article to other websites and posted internal Wikipedia links, where available.

Since these two points of critique have now been fixed, can I expect to get the 'error templates' at the top of the article removed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCel_%26_Kj%C3%A6r

Thank you! Kasper Broue (talk) 12:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Errol Sawyer article

Hi David,

I need help with the editing of the Errol Sawyer photographer article as it is threatened to be deleted at this moment by a certain Mbinebri. Errol Sawyer had already a dispute for months with him about his presence in the Christie Brinkley article. Sawyer discovered Brinkley in Paris but was not mentioned in the last New York Magazine article, September 2008. When Michael Gross interviewed Brinkley about her discovery in his book "Models: The ugly business of beautiful women", William and Morrow, Inc. New York, 1995, she said:
”I lived in a chambre de bonne with no telephone or bathrooms. It was so charming. The toilet was two flights down; the telephone was about a block and a half away. I had a little dog, and he had distemper. So I went to the phone to call the vet, and this guy, Errol Sawyer, this kind of loud, crazy black American photographer, said: “Oh, there you are! I spotted you one day at the telephone office, and I was hoping I would see you again because I’ve got a job, and the clients are looking for a girl just like you. Would you be interested? This is my address. I don’t have a telephone but you can just drop by" — And I went by, and he said: "Can you run home and put on something nice?” Christie is not very flattering for Sawyer but at least she says that he was the one who discovered her and introduced her later on with his pictures to John Casablancas of Elite Model Management in Paris. One page further in the same book of Michael Gross, Christie says: "In the meantime Mike Reinhardt went back to New York and told Eileen Ford about me." In the late seventies Christie went with her husband Jean-Francois Aillaux, after he got out of the army, back to New York and joined Eileen Ford Model Agency.
Mbinebri also takes out all the time "African" in front of -American photographer Errol Sawyer in the Brinkley article and he added that Patrick Demarchelier introduced her to Eileen Ford which is not true.
Now that Errol Sawyer has his own article in Wikipedia since one week, Mbinebri is doing everything to destroy it and have it deleted as he says himself that Errol Sawyer should not even be in. He also takes away the link from Christie to Errol Sawyer. He only wants to discuss on his own talk page but if you go to the discussion page in the Errol Sawyer article you can read some sentences of him too.
Can you please read the Errol Sawyer article l and give me good instructions for editing and also for deleting the tags? Can you maybe do this for me? The article was created by Decker but I edited further as I am an academic who studied art-history and architecture/building engineering at the Technical University in Holland. I am a guest professor in architectonic and urban design at TUD. Yes I am also Errol Sawyer's wife and agent and so honest to say so. A lot of people just go to the computer of a friend and edit. I cannot deal with people who tell me to come down from my high horse like Mbinebri
Thank you for your time and understanding,

Mathilde Fischer (talk) 15:00, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

what you need now is proof of the purchase (for the collections) by the various museum collections listed. DGG (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

But David, did you look at the present state of the article of Errol Sawyer with all the tags? This Mbinebri is not even looking at museum purchases, I am afraid. But I will try to get the proof of the purchases anyway. That will take some time. More than one week and then the article is deleted already!

Don't you have other suggestions for getting away the tags and the fact that Mbinebri took away "African" again in front of American photographer in the Brinkley article?

Mathilde Fischer (talk) 23:05, 26 January 2009 (UTC) Mathilde Fischer (talk) 23:05, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

the standard for Wikipedia is whether the notability is recognized by the general world, not the intrinsic quality of the artist. The only solid things to go on, are multiple works in permanent collections of major museums, or full-scale reviews of individual shows in major publications. The museum part can often ly be documented by the sites for the museums. We also need firm publication information for books, to show they are not brochures for shows. For the article in Pf--we need information about reputation of the journal, and the length of the review, and the status of the reviewer. The relevant issue does not seem to be on line. The length of the review is critical--if it's just a mention it will not count for much. The only thing to fight for at the moment is the retention of the article--if it stays, then it will be worthwhile to discuss the tagging. I do not consider that discovering Brinkley is significant notability. I cn help defend it, and others will comment, but we need clearer evidence. DGG (talk) 23:30, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I really appreciate your help. I wrote already to MFAH and Schomburg Library and I hope to hear from them soon. I am still looking for the right person to write at the Bibilotheque Nationale in Paris. We saw already Errol Sawyer on line in the archive of MFAH a while ago so it is a question of time. I understand your approach. The book covers that are pasted in the article are not yet published. I worked for 2 years on the dummies and we are looking for publishers right now. Do they need to have another name? It is allowed to paste pictures in articles in Wikipedia. PF (Professionele Fotografie) magazine is a very respected magazine in Holland and you can find it on line. In the archive you find: Errol Sawyer, 2001 and the author Herman Hoeneveld but you cannot see the actual article itself. This is mentioned in the references in the article of Errol. The article in PF contained one page A4 of text and 7 pictures of Errol on 7 A4 pages. In total 8 A4 pages. Herman Hoeneveld was a very respectable writer who unfortunately passed away. You can find a lot of info about him on the Internet but he does not have his own website or is mentioned in the Wikipedia. Do you want me to scan the article in order to put it in the Wiki? As the Wikipedia is an International Encyclopedia, I don't understand the tag that all references should be in english. I wish we did not even have to mention Christie Brinkley at all but the book of Michael Gross seemed to be an important prove of Errol's existence before you came with the idea of the museum collections. On top of that she insults Errol. She for sure attracks strange fans and visitors. Do you also have a normal e-mail address I can write too because I am afraid to take too much space in your user talk. In Holland it is 1.30 in the morning and I take a break of the Wiki obsession. I will write you as soon I hear from the musea. Let's hope we can save the article. It was already deleted once before. Thank again for your good advise. Mathilde Fischer (talk) 00:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

1. For the books that have not yet been published, say so. Change the article immediately & do that.
2. for the PF article say in parentheses in the footnote: 1full p of text and 7 illustrations on 7 full pages. It would not hurt to count the words approximately. Add this now. The article is under copyright and can not be put in the Wp in tact. A scan in such a way as to show the layout with the pages as a thumbnail, just maybe, but you certainly can make such a scan & put that on the talk p. at least temporarily.
3. It is not true that all refs have to be in English, but it is true that English references are preferred when available. As a general rule, both the best references regardless of language, and the best references that happen to be in English should be used.
4. You can email me from the link at the top left of this page, the one that says "Email this user" . But do not worry about space--when the matter is handled it will be archived.
5. If the article should be deleted, I will move it to user space for you to work on further. DGG (talk) 01:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

In the interest of seeing a worthwhile article pass the AfD (assuming it does, which is of course no guarantee), I'll offer my opinion here that looking for proofs-of-purchase for an artwork or two is a waste of time. It'll only be original research and probably won't be enough to satisfy WP:CREATIVE. The main issue here is the lack of reliable secondary sources to establish the notability of Sawyer or any of his works (and this is the ultimate criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia). As someone who once had a great passion for photography, and still do to some degree, I know there are a number of photography-oriented magazines, and if Sawyer truly is notable, he would surely have been featured at some point in at least one of them. A single interview in Popular Photography would probably provide everything needed to wipe this extended melodrama from Wikipedia. Otherwise, it only strengthens my view that Sawyer is likely non-notable to see it's taking such lengths to try and scrape together a valid assertion of notability.  Mbinebri  ^{talk ←} 01:45, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It is not "proofs of purchase" it is rather "proof of being in the permanent collection" , which is one of the key requirements of BIO (creative professionals). I have had no particular trouble in demonstrating it from museum websites in the US. " is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums" -- from the page you cite. DGG (talk) 02:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

and, FWIW, I see no reason at all to assume that every notable photographer gets an article in PP, a magazine for amateurs. The Dutch journal cited seems , in fact, much more professional, and I would count its reviews very much more seriously. DGG (talk) 02:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Take your pick of which magazine it is, but for a notable career that has spanned decades, articles and interviews from magazines would certainly exist. I would think a photog's agent would save them if they did. I must have missed this Dutch journal mentioned. Which reference in the article is it exactly?

As for being able to verify works in U.S. museums by their websites, surely the same can be done for museums abroad to verify any claims. Has someone checked?  Mbinebri  ^{talk ←} 02:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

My experience is that it is very much harder for most non-US museums, but possibly worth the effort.DGG (talk) 16:20, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Vincent van Gogh could never have come into Wikipedia. That is for sure. A lot of serious genuine and very good artists did not have a lot of publicity during their life time. In Errol Sawyer's case the reason is very simple. Read it in his activism chapter. I changed the titles of the book covers, I put external links to the collection of MFAH but they only have 2 pictures. Schomburg has 40 pictures but they are very slow, it seems. We are waiting for a response of Bibliotheque Nationale Paris and V & A in UK. I also put a link to the collector Eric Franck who bought about 20 pictures in 1998. He is the brother of the widow of Henri Cartier-Bresson. I regret that Robert Earls Sawyer's quotation is out but maybe we can do something about that too in the future. He was a genuine and very important artist. The first black playwright to perform at Miami Beach, Florida; the first black playwright who wrote a black soap opera etc. [15]. In Holland they made a television program "Spoorloos" about the search after Errol's father of 30 minutes and it was very well received. You see and hear an actor talking about his performance in his play "Breadwinner" and you see his grave and family, his obituary, posters of his plays etc. Do you think I should mention this television program too in Errol's wiki? You can watch it on Internet too but I never did it. We have a dvd of it.
I just noticed that Mnibri took African out again in front of -American photographer. Obama describes himself as African-American or black too.
As soon as I have more result, I will let you know. thank you very much for your patience. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathilde Fischer (talk • contribs) 14:39, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I just added the link to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. They have in total 37 pictures of Errol Sawyer. But at La Bibliotheque Nationale you still have to fill in the information: Sawyer, Errol, before you see a result. Do you think that this might cause a problem for people who have problems with reading? You should know how much problems I have with my students when I want them to go to the library to read books. They all just want to browse on the Internet. I also have 2 tifs of the image of the screen of La Bibliotheque de Paris saying that Errol Sawyer has 37 pictures and and one with Errol Sawyer has 1 picture. Do you think I have to attach these too? We are still waiting for more info of the Schomburg Library, which has 40 pictures.
Now I am going to scan the PF article. Amazing that Mbineri did not read this. It is a very prestigious magazine for Professional (Professionele NL) Photography (Fotografie NL) and Herman Hoeneveld was such a respected man. In fact Mbineri owes me an apology.
You know, David, I thought that it would make people really happy to read the article of Errol Sawyer in Wikipedia. He is such a good role model for all black children. But now I am very sad and disappointed because I realize that there is still so much hatred and jealousy in this world. (especially in the Fashion World) By the way, Errol Sawyer refused to cooperate with E-Entertainment when they suggested to fly out to Amsterdam, in 2006, to interview him about his discovery of Christie Brinkley because he does not like hagiographies. So he could have been (more) famous.. Maybe that is not what he is looking for. Respect and recognition as an artist? Yes.
How far are we away from being deleted right now?
Mathilde Fischer (talk) 23:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

If it is deleted, I will help you trim it down on your user space to something that is probably supportable. One of the curious things about Wikipedia is that no decision is ever final. DGG (talk) 02:14, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you , David. how come I can still edit it? Is it already in my user space?Mathilde Fischer (talk) 02:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Blocking policy

Hi DGG. I came across this incident which seems to be a bizarre way of responding to an allegation of sockpuppetry. Can you have a quick look and see if this is appropriate? It seems (again, it's hard for me to understand the sequence of events) that on the basis of this AIV, Daniel Case put an indefinite block on Sweet Autumn Misery--no checkuser, no additional discussion. Is this (a) an accurate understanding of what happened; and if so (b) within guidelines for administrators? I'm no fan of vandalism or sockpuppetry, but neither am I a fan of arbitrary exercise of power. Bongomatic 01:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Daniel Case has been here much longer than I have, and is a member of the Arbitration committee. He knows a great deal more about blocking policy and sockpuppets than I do. Why not ask him? DGG (talk) 01:29, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Aron Bielski BLP

Thanks very much for your note. Yes it has been resolved at least for the time being, in that the passage on his arrest has been removed. However, now there is a move afoot to reinstate a lengthy external links section devoted entirely to his arrest. Stetsonharry (talk) 02:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

it has been removed. Gwen and I have both commented. DGG (talk) 04:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I saw, thanks! I'm surprised it became so protracted. Stetsonharry (talk) 15:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I imagine the notability issue is resolved by now. By the way, if you have any opinion on the neutrality of Defiance (2008 film), I'd appreciate it. I see a neutrality issue but others disagree. The whole Aron Bielski issue flowed out of that article. Stetsonharry (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

yes indeed. Almost the entire discussion should have been at the article on the Bielski Group. One of the characteristics of zealots in all fields (I have hitherto been involved with such here primarily in pseudoscience) is the attempt to spread controversy over as many related articles as possible. The article on the film is the more prominent, which presumably explains why most of the discussion is taking place there. DGG (talk) 21:18, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Question regarding recent deletion

Hi, I hope I'm using this page correctly. You recently deleted an article I put up titled "Open World Program." You noted that it was because I did not mention "significance." In fact, the program is the only exchange program in the US that is a part of the US legislative branch. My question is, would that be considered significant enough for the post to stay up? This is my source (a translation of an article originally published in Russian): http://www.openworld.gov/article/print.php?id=16&lang=1. If you have a moment, please let me know if the new statement (and its source) would be valid for "publication" on wikipedia. I'm quite new to this site and I don't want my article to be nominated for automatic deletion. I look forward to your response. Thank you!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brandeey (talk • contribs) 17:45, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The article deleted read only "Open World is a program that brings Russian professionals on week-long interactive, educational exchanges to the United States. All information is derived from Open World's website: www.openworld.gov". But I see I should not have assumed that was all that could be written. I've restored a somewhat more sustainable version of that. Now go expand it properly, quickly, making sure the first version you put in is fuller and contains some actual references to 3rd party independent reliable published sources, (but not press releases or just its own web site). don't rely on that one article--there should be something more. As a guide for how to write such articles, see our Business FAQ (which also applies to non-profit organisations)--the advice is equally good whether or not you have COI, so don';t be put off by that. DGG (talk) 21:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

A centralised discussion which may interest you

Hi. You may be interested in a centralised discussion on the subject of "lists of unusual things" to be found here. SP-KP (talk) 17:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Acral Lick Granuloma treatment deletion

I am new to adding content to Wikipedia, so if I made a mistake, sorry. The content of my article are my own words and are not a copyright violation. The same content minus specific references to products can be found on my website at www.dogleggs.com at http://dogleggs.com/files/granuloma_treatment.cfm. Do I need to add some tag that provides the proper release of this content? What are the next steps? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jhgross (talk • contribs) 00:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC) Please see our Business FAQ . To use content from our web site, you must release it to us under a GFDL license according to WP:COPYRIGHT, which permits anyone to reuse and modify it for any purpose, even commercial. If you are certain you ant to do that, the Copyright page explains how to do it. However, consider whether it might not be better to do a considerably revisedand somewhat shortened version, that would avoid the problem entirely. DGG (talk) 01:08, 28 January 2009 (UTC)