Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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Pokémon Card Game - Copyright

How much of a Pokémon Card can be included. I want to use a picture of the card and its text, to discuss battle strategies on wikibooks. How much can I use? Gerard Foley 01:08, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

IANAL, and you might want to take this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fair use. That said, it will depend heavily on factors like:

1. How hi-res a picture?
2. Are you only quoting material relevant to what you are writing?
3. How large is your derivative work compared to the copyrighted material you are using?

In any event, be extremely clear about acknowledging copyright. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Here is an example page. Comments? Gerard Foley 02:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Addressing the Hierarchy Trap, an informal proposal

Here's something new. Listen:

Statement of the problem

There are people who are long-timers, excellent and productive editors, and experts in a difficult and import field. These people are very important to Wikipedia.

It goes along with that these people are often the types who do not suffer fools gladly. Some might have a tendency to be a bit crusty, even abrupt, and so forth.

Therefore, these people would make poor administrators.

BUT -- as it stands now, the only way to "rise up" and get formal recognition in Wikipedia is to become an administrator. Recognition of one's value is satisfying for most of us. Nothing wrong with that – it’s healthy, human, and good.

Also, these experienced, valuable people might want to have a strong ability to protect erudite work from people who don't meet their expectations of suitability, which are often high due to their meatspace experience of working with other highly qualified people. (Nothing wrong with that, either.)

Therefore, for one or both of these reasons, some of these people want to become administrators. Some of them are administrators. Which might be a problem.

Obviously, we want administrators to be decisive and effective at protecting the encyclopedia, but I don't think we want my-way-or-the-highway types as administrators. (For one thing, those types often create more problems than they solve. I've seen this in meatspace, and I bet you have too.)

Administrators need emotional intelligence, people skills, communication skills, patience, the ability get things done crisply and efficiently while working through process. Listening, considering, negotiating, deciding, explaining, that sort of thing.

Almost the opposite of the skills that a focused, erudite, scholar who

What to do?

A proposal

Well, in meatspace, they have Management Track and Technical Track, right? I know, I know... meatspace. Still, they have had to deal with issues like this.

Anyway, what about the creation of a new category of user: Senior Editor.

I know I will probably be immediately attacked and consumed by a host of white blood cells for suggesting this, but before I dissolve into a mass of protoplasm let me state the case.

• Let's face it, there are people who are de facto Senior Editors, and these people de facto get more respect and leeway than new people, like it or not. This is just human and organizational nature.
• I one is anti-hierarchical or has an anarchist bent, one should welcome the existence of "tribal elders" who have moral but not coercive authority.
• On the other hand, if one is pro-hierarchical, one should welcome the formal co-option into the hierarchy of major contributors.
• And if one is just pro-encyclopedia, recognition of people who are major contributors can’t be bad.
• Step 3: PROFIT!!!So its win-win

So what would it MEAN? I’m not sure.. I can feel the antibodies eating me already, must hurry...

• Maybe... for starters, they have a little symbol appended to their sig, or something (strictly enforced that no-one else can use). So one knows with whom one is dealing.
• Maybe... immunity from 3RR enforcement? On articles in area of expertise, anyway?
• Maybe... I dunno… access to a special board where they can get speedy admin support?
• Maybe... some limited sysop privileges (if the software supports this), such as partial protection of pages (subject of course to review) or whatever?
• I dunno... what else?

It should be REAL hard to get this status, harder than getting admin status, with a real vetting process… maybe something like:

• Minimum one year (maybe should be two years)
• Some minimum number of edits, such as 2500 or even 5000, but not too high, edit count can be misleading.
• "Major useful contributor" to articles on... I don’t know what word to use, vacademic topics" or something... I’m just thinking, expert on Medieval Turkish Literature, not expert on Morning Cartoon Shows Of The 1990’s, not that that’s not valuable too, I’m just saying. "Major useful contributor", that could be quantified somehow... lines of text in major articles, I dunno, something…
• Plus of course voting and all like admins.
• Plus, after clearing backlog, number admitted to this status should be really low, like just a very few each month…

Urgh… antibodies... I can feel the hate... must... finish... anyway if Senior Editor sounds too pompous it could be Lord High Tutnum or whatever... …urk... glurg... just... a... thought... gahkrggg... Herostratus 17:33, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• Your solution to the hierarchy trap is to create a new step in the hierarchy? :) Talrias (t | e | c) 17:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

• Yes. Herostratus 01:41, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• My gut instinct was to say no, but that's a shotgun response. I'm like this for most things I haven't thought about, but you've established credibility with your anticipation of opposition. I'll at least offer you the technical side.

This would be easy to difficult to implement: at the very least, you create a new user group that has absolutely no extra permissions. Part of the problem is that getting turned into this "Senior Editor": only Beaurucrats have the ability to grant user groups, and that adds more load on them.

I believe this is the main problem with your proposal: it seeks to grant a title without associated priviledges, and perhaps that is too much trouble just for "reputation". Rollback for certain users would be nice, but I think that got shot down a while ago. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 01:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• An interesting proposal but, within the present system, it seems to offer nothing except for recognition. If the cap fits, the individual becomes an admin. If not, let the editors work quietly (or not, depending on temperament) to protect their "turf". Among the others working in the same field, there will be an informal recognition and peers may rally round if a newcommer disturbs the equilibrium. If you could change the culture here, you would be able to offer limited or full protection for pages that have achieved a maximal standard of accuracy. I suppose a senior editor role might administer this new system, deciding when pages deserve the protection and hearing argument from editors on proposals for amendments or insertions. But the chances of such a system being adopted are remote. David91 05:33, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• In the context of the recent war that started over userboxes, and spread to other theatres of negative interaction, I suggested that several Wikipedians could benefit by reading The Mythical Man Month to understand challenges of learning management of large projects that have lots of objectives, and how many diverse people can get the job done by effectively utilizing the skills of the different contributors, and using communications wisely, to avoid too many people talking at each other ineffectively. Here is another place with participants who could also benefit from this perspective, since I am not convinced there is clear understanding of the hierarchical alternatives. User:AlMac|^(talk) 10:11, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• So do we get the exclusive right to wear Imperial purple on state occasions? I don't think the formal idea of a senior editor is all that useful, because expertise is always in a subject-matter area. For example, I'm certainly more qualified than a random editor to write about Yiddish theatre, or Grunge rock, or Jorge Luis Borges, but I'm not particularly qualified to write about fundamental particles or the Norwegian language. I do think that it might be useful to come up with a more formal way of recognizing subject-matter expertise, but I don't see an easy way to do it. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Yeah, maybe you're right... yes, purple, at Wikigatherings... actually, I was thinking, seriously, of a little graphic that attaches to one's sig... although graphics in sigs are not recommended. Could just be "S.E." or something, but how to police? Also could be (say) "S.E., History", but that's awfully broad, yet probably as narrow as you could easily get... I dunno... I don't really see an easy way to do it, either.Herostratus 06:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
• It doesn't look like this going anywhere, and probably it shouldn't... I don't think it would be probably be a great idea to propose a policy like this in a vacuum... perhaps in the context of an overall consideration of the role of "informal moral authority" in the context of a Wiki like this, and whether there ought to be or can be a way for the community to reinforce such informal moral authority... I will consider this at length and perhaps someday get a group together to work up some thoughts on that... thanks to all for your input! Herostratus 19:26, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

shooting first before asking questions (blocks)

I've noticed that several fellow administrators have been blocking accounts without solid evidence of them being vandals. I mean, blocking names like "I will vandalize Wikipedia on wheels" is acceptable. But for accounts with less obvious names (such as "WheelsGoRound324"), I think that it is better to give them the benefit of the doubt. For example, a recent vandal has been defacing Australia-related articles under Australian-themed names. As a result, several administrators have responded by blocking new users with similar-themed names. While the blocks may have been legit, innocent users could have been caught in the crossfire. It is definitely possible that a legit Australian contributor decided to register at the wrong moment.

There is also a similar issue with impostors. For example, we have an administrator named Angela (talk · contribs). However, Angela is a very common given name. Are we going to automatically block all users who have "Angela" in their name?

I don't think that we should be so trigger-happy. Unless the usernames have bad-faith characteristics, we should not block them on sight.

I'd like to hear other users' thoughts on this. --Ixfd64 04:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• If you ask me, only offensive usernames should be banned on sight. There's just too much window for error if you do it any other way. --82.7.125.142 14:02, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Blocked users can edit their own talk pages. One who is accidentally blocked can object there. --Wikiacc ¶ 20:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

• My User:RefBot got blocked two times without good reason. Blocks were complicated by admins who chose to use blocks despite their being incommunicado. That doesn't seem like good self-administration.
  1. Once (by User:Curps who has no email) within minutes of creation on suspicion of being an impostor, although it had by then copied its definition from the supposed victim (my User:SEWilcoBot) and deleted that section of text from the supposed victim's home page (tinkering with victim's home page seems like an odd way for an impostor to not be noticed). Of course, I had no links yet to RefBot to confirm my ownership because the account's page was still being set up. Blocking admin requested confirmation of ownership, despite having no email address and having triggered the autoblocker which blocked all my normal access. User_talk:SEWilco#Blocked
  2. RefBot got blocked (by User:David Gerard) with a message of "operating it to try to game the AC ruling" and log reason "(username created only to evade arbcom ruling)", both of which the blocker recognizes are not valid reasons because "Conditions are per person, not per username." Gerard apparently left on vacation, leaving the account on indefinite block; which doesn't matter because it's idle during a rewrite and I can use my other accounts until he gets back. User_talk:SEWilco#Blocked_with_poorly_defined_explanation User_talk:SEWilco#RefBot_blocked_erroneously Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive58#User:William_M._Connolley_14

  - (SEWilco 02:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC))

• By the way, there is currently a large ongoing discussion about a similar issue. You can view the discussion on the talk page of the administrators' noticeboard. --Ixfd64 17:54, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

"United States" or "U.S." in Category titles

NOTE: I've copied this discussion over to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(categories)#.22United_States.22_or_.22U.S..22_in_Category_titles for continuing discussion with some category experts. Semiconscious · talk 01:16, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I've proposed changing the category title Category:United_States presidential candidates to Category:U.S. presidential candidates (see proposal here). It looks like there's an opinion on the "Categories for deletion" page against changing. That's fine with me. But we need some consistency.

What I'm looking for is a consistent standard for Category titles when the name of the country starts the title. This isn't about Articles, Templates, or content (although it's not unrelated). If you look at Category:U.S. presidential elections you'll see both used.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) says to use "United States" when in a list of countries or when using "…of the United States" or "…in the United States." But what I'm talking about is when "United States" starts the category name, such as Category:United States presidential candidates, or the like. Surf around near Category:United States presidential candidates and see what I mean.

—Mark Adler (markles) 13:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

This debate is done and dusted. Abbreviations are deprecated and converting U.S. to United States in category names is one of the speedy correction criteria on categories for deletion.

There is no reason to have abbreviations in article, category, etc. titles. Avoiding ambiguity is the goal of an encyclopedia, and claiming "everyone knows what 'US' means" (which you are not necessarily doing, but would be the only rational counterargument) is americocentric. I could just as easily say "everyone should understand 'CAR' is the Central African Republic. Semiconscious · talk 10:02, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Semiconscious; this has been clearly hammered out and established already, and the example category is clearly an artifact. Avoid abbreviations. siafu 21:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Semiconscious too. Also note, if you put Category:U.S. presidential elections into a notional Category:Presidential elections by country it immediately becomes part of a list of Presedential elections by country, therefore it should not be abbreviated. Categories are just a technical way of displaying lists. Steve block talk 21:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Anonymity

Is there an explanation somewhere in a policy or guideline page on an editor's "right" (for lack of a better term) to remain anonymous? A group of editors, including me, is being attacked by another editor (who has chosen to reveal his true identity) as "cowards" for not providing our real names, credentials, etc. android79 13:52, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Check out the section on Usernames about real names vs. pseudonyms - I think that's what you want. Essentially, you're free to do so, though some people may complain based on personal preference. -- nae'blis _(talk) 21:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

How do you know its his true identity? Anyway, that's crazy... I'd never do that. The last thing I need is some disgruntled editor with a gun knocking on my door... Herostratus 06:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Changes on his personal website coincided with comments left on talk pages. Thanks for the tip, Nae'blis. That's not worded as strongly as I had hoped, but it least it's policy. android79 07:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Editors should not be expected to share their credentials, because the information put forth should verifiable elsewhere. Shouldn't they? We should not be expected to find search out the bio of an author to determine the veracity of an article. Freekee 04:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

First of all, calling another editor a coward is clearly a violation of Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Simply ignore it and try to focus on the substance of the debate itself - not the people in the debate. (My general rule of thumb is to always address the issue rasied and not the person who raised it). Secondly, all personal information that is volunteered is unverifiable, and therefore mostly irrelevant. If I said I was actually an alien who had hacked into NASA's deep space network and was using that to contribute to wikipedia, would you have a way to disprove me? :-) --Bachrach44 16:33, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

How about: Sectioning off of/possible banning of Fictional Universe articles

Information is, in general, good. But not all of it is really valuable.

And I, like many people, enjoy some computer/video games/science fiction/fantasy stories/worlds. But think about this: How much do articles like "Star Forge," "Luccia," or "Sarah Kerrigan" really add to our knowledge of the world?

I propose that there should be a separate "Fictional Universes" wiki. We know that games/movies like Star Wars, Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings have influenced world pop culture, and that they often have huge amounts of detail, but with the goal of Wikipedia being useful knowledge, too much information about those things begins to seem frivolous.

Put another way, I don't think Wikipedia needs to be a competitor to Gamefaqs, or starwars.com, or battle.net.

I just think that Wikipedia, assuming it is an encyclopedia, might be best limited to at least real information about completely real things.

Please criticize/respond. --Zaorish 21:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

• I am strongly opposed to this idea. First of all, we are an encyclopedia- and, as such, we need to contain encyclopediac information. Time and the Rani is perfectly encyclopediac. Second, anything that factions Wikipedia, as a community or an encylcopedia is a very, very, bad thing. So, again, I'm strongly opposed to this idea.--Sean|Black 22:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
• I support the idea to move this to a separate wiki. The information should not be lost, but it would be excellent to move it elsewhere. --Improv 22:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Ummm no. Mememory alpha is worrying enough. The articles are not doing any harm and tend to be fairly accuret. As long as thier minor characters lists don't suddenly tern into lots of stubs I don't see a problem.Geni 23:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I tend to adopt a mergist approach to these -- fewer larger articels are better than more smaller articles, particualrly stubs. I especially oppose the creation of stubs for minor fictional characters, adn will merge these with the appropriate article on the larger work. But fictional works are often of significant cultural importance and there is no simple way to draw the line between thsoe that are and those that are not. I do wish WP:FICT was more rigourously followed, however. DES ^(talk) 23:08, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Where would Sherlock Holmes, Horatio Hornblower, Elizabeth Bennet, Tarzan, and Sam Spade go? Dsmdgold 23:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I hate to discount you so lightly, but this is a perennial proposal and the subject of endless contention. See Wikipedia:Fancruft for example. This isn't changing overnight, and I personally favour the status quo. My policy is, if I see a topic about a fictional entity that is too obscure, I merge it with related entities into a summary/list article such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time characters. For what it's worth, I think Sarah Kerrigan is an excellent article consolidating plot information from diverse primary sources across many games (perhaps overdoing it a bit on the links). She may not be as notable as Link or Mario, but I hate to see good content obliterated. Deco 23:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

There is no problem with covering the subject matter of fictional characters on Wikipedia. The problem is instead how they are covered. It is mostly done with very little context—no attempt to firmly tie everything that is said to be true about the character to the works of fiction in which they are depicted. See Radioactive_Man_(Marvel_Comics) for an example of this flaw; excepting the word "fictional" in the intro sentence and the infobox details, the article is written as if the subject were real. No reference is made in the article text to a single writer, artist, or even comic book issue or title. See also the "character history" of Spider-Man, which starts with summarizing a plot about his parents having been spies that was not written until after over thirty years of publication history. These articles merely paraphrase fiction rather than describe it, and appear to be written from a fan perspective rather than a cultural historian.

Compare those with Captain Marvel, a recent featured article, or Superman. Both summarize the history of the characters in the real world, revealing the "facts" of fiction according to that framework. We need a very clear set of guidelines to make sure all articles about fictional characters are written in this manner. Postdlf 23:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that's a problem, but that's what {{sofixit}} is for.--Sean|Black 23:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I think both fiction-oriented and real-world-oriented presentation orders are each appropriate in different circumstances, sometimes both in one article. Summarization of the plot of a fictional work in chronological order is an integral part of many articles on books, movies, and other fictional works. On the other hand, an article should never exclusively summarize the fiction, but should also talk about the entity's history, practical aspects of its creation (e.g. influence on gameplay), and cultural impact. Deco 23:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I just think that Wikipedia, assuming it is an encyclopedia, might be best limited to at least real information about completely real things. Someone better tell Brittanica that their article on Hamlet ain't encyclopedic. And I can't wait for the deletion wheel war on Jesus. android79 23:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: the interest in "fiction-oriented" presentation, I think the chronology we should be most concerned with is real-world. A story written later but "taking place" earlier should be described as such, but the publication order should dictate the structure of the article; fictional canons are not our concern, but instead how the character has been used at different times. A true history of the character will only get obscured if the present bleeds into the past. Why should a recent story lead the info given about a character that has a much older body of work depicting him? Summarizing the plot in an article about a book is necessary and appropriate. But in an article about a murder mystery novel, for example, you wouldn't start the summary by describing who done it and how even though the murder is what happens first in fictional chronology, if the book reveals the murderer's identity last. The order in which things are revealed to the audience, whether within one work or across a series, is of utmost importance.

But the lack of real-world context is not only a problem of academic integrity, but an issue of copyright infringement. Both of the major comic book companies, as well as the Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi franchises have officially published numerous encyclopedia-style books about their characters and associated fictional universes. I suspect that many of the cruftiest, context-less articles are mere paraphrases of these (or of video game manuals, role-playing games, etc.). Even those that aren't are still doing more than merely reporting facts—they are simply summarizing fiction without transforming it or adding new information to it. This arguably makes these articles mere derivative works of the original fiction.

This is a systemic problem probably because the ones most driven to write about certain fictional characters are fans who are mostly concerned with "knowing" the complete and "true" story of the fictional universe. We need a guideline page (something like Wikipedia:Writing about fictional characters) that sets out the principles I've described above, with an accompanying template that will label and categorize an article about fictional characters as lacking that context (the trick is finding the right concise language). We have Template:Fiction, but it needs to be made clear that inserting a "this character is fictional" disclaimer in the introductory sentence of a ten paragraph article is not enough. I lack the time to solve this problem on my own, but I will definitely assist anyone else who wishes to contribute to solving it. Postdlf 00:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I would favor soemthing of the sort Postdif suggests here. DES ^(talk) 00:31, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

User:Uncle G/Describe this universe might be a worthwhile starting point. —Charles P. (Mirv) 14:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the examples of good and bad writing that Uncle G used make it clear that he's getting at the same point that I am. Postdlf 15:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

We do have the ability to create interwiki links to many, many other wiki projects, like those over at Wikicities (I'd like to see these become more transparent, but excepting MΑ and Wookiepedia, there's not much completeness over there). I'd like to see some of the cruft trimmed, true (and am working on it with The Wheel of Time series), but if it helps our regular editors to do a [Star Wars]] article or three before jumping back into quantum physics, it does little harm. -- nae'blis _(talk) 00:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I'm impressed that this 'perennial proposal' caused so much controversy. Looking over the responses, it seems that Consolidation of those articles might be best--ie, an article about "Star Wars," then maybe an article on "Minor Star Wars Characters" and not an article about every single Jedi and their favorite ice cream flavor. In the future I'll try to generally put this into practice, by suggesting merges.

It's true, assuming Wikipedia has unlimited space, then articles about fictional universes could/should indeed be unlimited, because there is no harm in posting them. I was just taking into account the fact that Wikipedia is nonprofit and that more space/server power costs significant amounts of money.

And obviously Jesus and Sherlock Holmes are more important than something like Star Forge. Your argument, friends android and Dsmdgold, is something called reductio ad absurdum.

Postdlf: Your idea on a new fictional character template could be valuable, to put fictional concepts/characters in their cultural context before delving into obscure details.

And thank you all for your (generally) well-reasoned responses. ; 3 --Zaorish 14:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm checking back. I found this article: StarCraft Secret Missions. It's literally a /verbatim/ transcript of a few levels from a computer game. I personally would move to delete it. Any objections? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.216.217.174 (talk • contribs)

What an awful article. The text forgets that it's describing a video game and instead tells a story. I can't even tell who the player is supposed to be, what the player controls, what events are mere contingencies, or what events are actually experienced in game play versus read about or seen in movies. This is not an article. Postdlf 15:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose such an idea. Fictional universes are an important part of our culture. I would possibly support the merge/removal of fictional stubs, but content which can make a decent article should be kept. -- Astrokey44|talk 15:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree. Wikipedia is not paper and to make restrictions of this sort on content would, IMO, open the door for further content restrictions to the point where Wikipedia will become nothing but a bunch of articles on nuclear physics and Shakespeare (and even then, banning an article on, say Mr. Spock means you'd have to ban articles on Shakespeare's characters, right?) and that's not what this place is about. I've already seen some people grumbling about banning articles based on film and TV shows, for example. I've nothing against guidelines, but creating a separate wiki for this would be a mistake. The priority should be on improving articles if substandard ones arise. 23skidoo 15:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• Two points:
  1. Wikipedia is not infinite, but we are specifically advised by WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia not to worry about space limitations. Our concern should always be only on the encyclopedic nature of the topic and the quality of the article.
  2. I think the real problem is not so much that there are all these fictional-universe articles, it's that so many Wikipedia editors lavish so much attention on them rather than the more mundane topics like "Gary, Indiana" or "Container Security Initiative". But there are many dimensions of perceived imbalance in Wikipedia, like "not enough people articles" or "too many stubs" or "not enough cleanup being done" or "too much focus on the manual of style". We must remember that the whole project operates on the assumption that a worldwide community of freelance editors will eventually get around to working on any perceived deficiencies — and do them justice as well. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • • As a sub-point to this one, I thought I should mention that although Wikipedia's space is unlimited a lot of people still think that the effort spent on editing stuff is zero-sum - ie, that if someone spends an hour working on a Star Trek article, then that's an hour they didn't spend working on something of "real importance." I think this is not the case, personally, and eliminating the "unimportant" articles would have the opposite effect; people who come here to tinker around with Star Trek articles and every once in a while toss something useful into one of the real science articles would just leave altogether. They almost certainly wouldn't turn all the energy they spend refining articles on their favourite fictions toward topics they aren't interested in, these are all volunteers here. Bryan 16:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Strongly Oppose this idea, but also empathise. I think a compromise is good. A lot of Fictional Universe articles and all their linked sub-articles have too many sub-articles. For instance, you probably don't need a sub-article for a character that appeared once on a show. Or in Stargate Atlantis, for instance, you probably don't need an article for the minor few-episodes character Bob (Wraith). So scrap the stubs and unneeded articles, but certainly keep the main bulk. Fiction like Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and so on are massive cultural influences and have shaped both our history and television/cinema's history. And to be honest, I feel that most of the articles under these are concise whilst being detailed, informative, without POV or fancruft, and ultimately also useful. -- Alfakim --  talk  16:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

This proposal is hopelessly bad, IMO. But if it does make any progress towards being implemented, by some chance, I insist that we also include sports-related articles under its umbrella. There are thousands of articles in Wikipedia about trivial unimportant sportsmen who play trivial unimportant games that have nothing to do with curing cancer or military battles or whatever it is that're supposed to be "serious" subjects. Since I have no interest in sport, there's obviously no value in having articles about it and it's just a waste of everyone's time writing them. (The preceeding opinion is only a semi-parody :) Bryan 16:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Templates are always a good idea, though. --Happylobster 18:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, deja vu all over again.  :) I well remember the contretemps at Talk:Mithril, lo these over three years ago.  :) User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:09, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• Ultra-extreme oppose This is an incredably bad idea. Here is why:
  • Some articles provide practical information, like where to watch TV shows, or backround info to unconfuse new fans. An example of this is: List of Stargate SG-1 episodes
  • Many fictional articles are about classics and are naturaly part of history.
  • Many are so largely know, like Harry Potter that it would be stupid not to have an article on them.
  • Fictional articles on video games act as a guide for players to do better in the game.
  • The whole reason I contribute to wikipedia is that wikipedias vision is having all of humankinds knowlage in one place is an achiveable goal, which I try to work towards. If we start exporting info, this goal will be lost, and many users who follow this vision will stop contributing. Tobyk777 01:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose - I disagree with the idea that we should delete articles on fictional places / concepts / characters &c. I do however agree that it should be clear in the opening paragraph that the subject is fictional and what particular fictional universe it relates to. As for having lots of stub articles, surely this was why the Wikipedia:Fiction guideline was written? -- Lochaber 15:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
• I generally agree with what User:Sean Black said above. Articles on fiction need to be presented in that context. They exist in a fictional universe but were created by someone real and the article needs to convey that connection to reality. These fiction articles on popular culture draw in a lot of potential editors who can (theoretically) practice their wiki-skills on these and satisfy their fanboy urges before moving on to real-world articles. Also, as User:Nae'blis mentioned above there are wikis dedicated to each show, like Wookieepedia and StargateWiki. --maclean25 05:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

As part of this (perennial) discussion, I'd just like to briefly discuss a retort to the classic Wikipedia is Not Paper argument. It is true that we have an unlimited capacity for topics, and I frankly don't buy the "articles use resources" argument (the total sum of all articles ever deleted is unlikely to exceed a few megabytes in disk space and network bandwidth). However, topics on obscure fictional entities can be disruptive for several reasons:

• Each article must independently establish the context of the universe, leading to a great deal of redundant content which is difficult to maintain.
• These articles can be very difficult to expand. In the real world we can always derive new information about real people, places, and things. In fiction, we know only what the creator tells us; if a character appears in only one chapter of a book, it's quite unlikely that after proper summarization we'll be able to say more than a paragraph about the character, ever. Articles this short are not particularly useful, spending more time establishing context than describing the subject.
• Attempting to learn about the universe as a whole involves a difficult, unorganized navigation between many small articles, each different in its style and assumptions, that can frustrate readers.

This is why I recommend that groups of related articles about obscure fictional entities be merged into a single summary or list article, or into a "parent" article: the context need only be established once, all together they have enough detail to fill out an article, relationships can be established between entities by direct reference instead of cumbersome links, and the order of presentation can be controlled for maximum brevity and clarity. In fact, I recommend this approach for any group of strongly related small articles - if one of them later outgrows the list article, it can easily be moved back out, as occurred for example with Agahnim. Deco 05:21, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of using sub-pages, e.g., Stargate/Daniel Jackson instead of Daniel Jackson, and having big colorful templates at the top of all the fiction-based articles clearly indicating that they are fiction-based with the name of the source work (book, show, etc.) and genre, to aid the many clueless wikisurfers out there. James S. 10:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Subpages in the main namespace were deprecated long ago, and with good cause. Should Daniel Jackson be a subpage of Stargate, or a subpage of Fictional character, or a subpage of Michael Shanks? As a subpage it can only be under one of these, and I hate to imagine the many pointless and time-consuming arguments all over Wikipedia about which articles should be subpages of which other articles. This is the sort of thing that categories are for instead. Bryan 20:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose: I've heard this argument many times and I always have a few unanswered questions.
  • I never understand why people want to move this information to other wikis. Why not have it here? It still uses 'resources' if it is hosted on a separate wiki. Considering how articles should have their sources cited, most of the information that is available on Wikipedia is indeed available elsewhere. Instead of having a (mostly) pointless article about Still Sick... Urine Trouble (which was the first article forthcoming from the Random Article link), why not just tell our browsers to go to another site? Is that not what hosting on another wiki would do? I thought that one of the goals of Wikipedia was to consolidate knowledge so that people do not have to search around on multiple websites.
  • If you do move such information to another wiki, what's to stop users from recreating the articles? Would a "crime" that be treated as innocent ignorance (we do, after all, encourage new users to try the wiki out) or as something more serious, like vandalism? I'm sure those editors will want to return after they receive a friendly warning not to edit "like that" again.
  • As well, I've never understood why fictional information is targeted. Why not also move everything that is mathematical to another math-related wiki, as Bryan has said? Or sports? Where do we stop? Where do we draw the line? Before we can decide exactly what constitutes "irrelevant and over-obsessive fancruft" and what is "actual fact belonging in an encyclopedia", we should not remove anything.
  • I’m also worried about estranging users by moving/removing information. Certainly there are those who only contribute to fiction-based articles such as these, but others help out in other areas as well. I'm proof of that, for I've touched up a Jedi article or two while also restructuring the ringette article at the same time (not yet done, btw). What message are we sending to potential editors if the "global encyclopedia" does not allow information of one of their many preferred subjects?
  • However, I do have to agree with what others have said before me about quality. There are certainly articles that are unwikied, unclear and unintelligent. Every article that fits that description should be deleted. Some articles do not have enough information to justify their existence and that is the nature of fiction: we can only document what the creator gives us. I still would like to see articles of high quality created and maintained, and some of these fiction-based stubs have merit. While a few/some/most articles should definitely be merged and combined, others have potential and should be expanded upon, not banned. Maybe we cansystematically check every What Links Here section as potential critera for what can be merged? Take the HoloNet article, for example (a Star Wars one; I followed links for a stub, trolling for an example to use here). I initially thought that it could be merged into a larger article, but with twelve "real" (i.e. non-user) articles citing it, I don't think that moving it/removing it would be a simple task, especially if you consider all the articles that a major sweep would entail.
  • In short, I don't see the point of moving/removing articles resulting from fictional universes. Moving them still uses resources, while removing them detracts from Wikipedia's main goals. Both need clear and precise guidelines; else, everything will eventually be sectioned off into other wikis or even deleted entirely. And both moving to another wiki or deletion will alienate editors who bear knowledge; a precious commodity. I vote that we keep all articles derived from fictional universes. –Aeolien 04:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Seriously Very Strongly Absolutely Agree and am Willing to Killl People to Make it Happen. I say we get rid of all the fictitious crap in Wikipedia. Dumb fictitious stories and twerps who write nothing but crap they make up, based only some-what on the truth. Who needs any of it? I know I could've done without it during my life-time... *ahem* Sorry, the urge to comment was overwhelming. Heavy dose of sarcasm. 203.173.22.63 08:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose: Many have rebutted the motion in general terms, Let me answer the direct question asked by the original poster of this topic.

How much do articles like "Star Forge," "Luccia," or "Sarah Kerrigan" really add to our knowledge of the world?

• • When I hear or read one of these terms and I have no idea what it is, so I look them up in wikipedia. It tells me first off that they are Fictional devices or characters. The some basics about them so I can understand the reference to the character location or item without having read the original fiction. If I am then interested in this particular fiction it then gives me the reference (i.e. the original books/games/movies/etc) where I can see/learn experinece more about this fictional item/character and/or location.
  • It is true that anyone particular article on a fictional thing is not likely to be relevent to any particular person. But by the same token almost all articles on fictional things will be relevant to some person at some point when they come across something which they may or may not realise is a reference to a fictional thing.

Waza 04:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This is the worst idea ever strongly oppose -- Truth is, we don't even know if Moses is real -- should we get rid of the article? After all, he's probably just a character in some really old book. What about god? Just because these ideas may be fictional doesn't mean they shouldn't be included. Same goes for all of these other notable works of fiction as well -- I love that Wikipedia has an article on chewbacca and pikachu. -Quasipalm 04:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Calm down already

Ok, all you ultra-extreme Wikipedians out there, if you didn't read what I wrote about 4 or 5 posts before, you've sold me already. I agree, in compromise, that, instead of the title of this topic, I will try to destroy articles that are just plot summaries and to consolidate/redirect small, obscure articles about fictional things into bigger ones. Moreover, I never doubted from the beginning that popular fictional universes are important things...the example articles I complained about are about specific plot elements of fictional universes. --Zaorish 14:41, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

..Now if I could just figure out HOW to nominate that bad StarCraft Secret Missions article for deletion...

Wikipedia as its own source

What is the policy about using Wikipedia itself as a cited source for a Wikipedia article? I vaguely remember reading a policy or guideline that mentions this but I can't for the life of me find it again. Reyk 06:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

For obvious reasons, this isn't allowed. However, other Wikipedia articles may help you find an external source for the info you wish to add, jguk 12:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Re. "For obvious reasons, this isn't allowed." - true, but some nuance:

• See Wikipedia:Citing sources#'''(DELETED SECTION)'''
• Every time one uses these handy things called "double square brackets" ([[...]]), inevitably one additionally supports an article with sources that are in another article.
• Some wikipedians contend that the "For obvious reasons, this isn't allowed" doesn't apply in the case of lists, hence two complicated guideline proposals (wikipedia:Lists in Wikipedia and wikipedia:Lists in Wikipedia/Alternative version) - unnecessary in the case one wouldn't first assume an "exception" w.r.t. lists, see Wikipedia talk:Lists in Wikipedia/Alternative version

--Francis Schonken 12:48, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

A list is an article in the main namespace. There are no special rules about lists. Indeed, as lists tend to contain an awful lot of information (namely that each and every entry meets the list inclusion criteria), having direct sources on the list page is very, very important, jguk 12:58, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

With the growing popularity of Wikipedia, such a circular reference may happen by accident, in an indirect way; for instance, if a questionable fact, unsourced, makes it into Wikipedia, people on other sites might start citing it, causing it to spread all over the place and eventually wind up on sites that in turn get cited back here when an editor insists the original mention of the "fact" get a citation. Also, a "Google test" of the notability of someone/something might turn up the various mirror sites of Wikipedia, distorting the result. *Dan T.* 13:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

This is true. I always do google tests with searches that include "-wikipedia" to reduce although not eliminate this effect. DES ^(talk) 19:19, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

The List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people uses Wikipedia as a source. Its criteria has been that entries must have reference to their orientation in their biographical articles. That is a logical (and mostly non-controversial) criteria. -Will Beback 22:10, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

But the key in that case, is the bio article contains a reliable 3rd party source (or it better have). That's not us using Wikipedia as a source. That's us moving the location of a source. It's no different then a paper book, which lists its sources on a page other then the one the fact is claimed on. It's not using the "endnotes as the source". It's just putting it on another page, to avoid clutter. --Rob 22:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people is presently not OK with wikipedia guidelines/policies, hence, not surprisingly, *problematic* (it has a dispute notice for I don't know how long)
• List of gay, lesbian or bisexual composers conforms to present wikipedia guidelines/policies, hence, not surprisingly: not problematic.

See also discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and series boxes#Lists and references --Francis Schonken 08:13, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is that realistically, NO ONE (outside of perhaps elemantary school), including within wikipedia, should be citing wikipedia as a source given the nature of how it is written. I find it somewhat distateful when I see it cited in legitamate news sources, considering they could have just as easily used the article to direct their research and cited peer reviewed work instead.

Either way, although citing of wikipedia articles is not appropriate (not only because the articles are written somewhat unverifiably, but also because their contents are subject to change), it speaks highly of our project here when the information between articles is consistent. If two articles present conflicting information, it indicates that someone is not doing their research, namely us. So, feel free to use information you find within the wikipedia, but prepared to find an alternate citation. Shaggorama 10:26, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

...but no beating around the bush: using double square brackets ([[...]]) is not a technique with which to make a Wikipedia article compliant to WP:V/WP:CITE,

even if the article in which you use the double square brackets is a List;

nor

even if the content of the target article (that is the Wikipedia article to which the term between double square brackets directs) is amply supported by external sources cited in that target article.

--Francis Schonken 10:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Concerns over personal attack templates

I am concerned about templates surviving TfD that appear to contrast with established policy. In particular, I feel that these templates are Poisoning the well when it comes for how we treat our fellow wikipedians. There are circumstances where knowing too much about one's neighbours politicises how one deals with them. This is, to an extent, unavoidable in society, but wearing signs of hate as badges on our shoulders takes what is a small problem that we can usually deal with into the realm of being damaging to the community. Already, there have been signs of people refusing to help each other because they are on different ends of a political spectrum -- this seems likely to get worse if this trend continues. Some people cry that this is an attack on their first amendment rights (if they're American, anyhow), but that doesn't apply here because Wikipedia is not the U.S. government -- it is a community that has always self-regulated, and more importantly it is an encyclopedia with a goal of producing encyclopedic content. We have a tradition of respecting a certain amount of autonomy on userpages, but never absolute autonomy. We might imagine, for example, templates with little swastikas saying "this user hates jews". I am not saying that such a thing would be morally equivalent to this template against scientology, but rather that we should aim to minimise that aspect of ourselves, at least on Wikipedia, so we can make a better encyclopedia. The spirit of NPOV does not mean that we cannot have strong views and still be wikipedians, but rather that we should not wear signs of our views like badges, strive not to have our views be immediately obvious in what we edit and how we argue, and fully express ourselves in other places (Myspace? Personal webpage?) where it is more appropriate and less divisive. --Improv 20:29, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I do agree with some of what you've said in principle, but the problem is, there's no way to stop self identification. Even if the templates were deleted, what's to stop someone from adding "I dislike scientology" to the text on their userpage? Or making their own userbox without a template? (I've done that in a few places on my user page). It may be a slight risk to self identify (alienating other editors who disagree with you), but it's a risk we can't stop people from taking. --Bachrach44 16:43, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

NPOV statement

Where did Jimbo originally post his statement about NPOV? Bensaccount 21:24, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

The oldest place I found it is here [1] (the April 16, 2001 version of NeutralPointOfView) --Cam 21:17, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I believe it was on the Nupedia mailing list, of which no records can be found. [[Sam Korn]] 21:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC)שם ערך#

Access to Nupedia-l archives is available here. --Cam 21:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, it's really hard to track this stuff down. I am writing a brief history section for Wikipedia:NPOV, would you mind checking it when I am done? Bensaccount 22:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Community Panel proposal - Wikipedia:Community Panel

Recently, I've written a proposal outlining a new decision-making body which I termed the Wikipedia Community Panel, made up of 20 elected representatives of the Wikipedia community. My idea was that it would, amongst other things, replace the arbcom, work on policy and collaborate with the Wikimedia Foundation board, thus providing a better integration between the Wikimedia board and the community and circumventing the current somewhat bureaucratic arrangement of the arbcom. The proposal, which is rather embryonic, is at Wikipedia:Community Panel; I would greatly appreciate feedback on it, and if possible other people interested in the concept to work on it - or, of course, to lay it to rest as a terrible idea! Thank you, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 23:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Musical Genre Mayham... Any Ideas?

After reading and placing my view in the Goth-punk AFD, I began to think, and search. Wikipedia has thousands of music genres, including such gems as Desert Rock and Stoner Metal, G-Funk and Melodic Death Metal, and those are just out of the Genre project Boxe. Now I might be inherently biased and simplistic, being as the 3100 or so songs on my PC are broken down into 21 Genres (only 3 of which are subgenres of Rock), but this seems like Overkill to me, we have genres that describe 5 bands, or worse, 5 albums! I don't know much about policy pages, so I don't know where to put this, but I think we should adpt some sort of clear Music Genre Policy... before we end up with Post-Grunge Melodic Death Metal Rock describing Coheed and Cambria. Please respond... somewhere (Maybe on the Talk:Music genre page. Thanks Y'all Makenji-san 00:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Administrator vocabulary: a non-block "block"

Administrators seem to need a new word for an action which is being called a "block" which does not resemble the Wikipedia:Blocking policy meaning of "block". See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#SEWilco blocked from commenting on William M. Connolley. (SEWilco 04:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

Retouched pictures

Currently a debate about the use of digital alteration, retouching and photo manipulation is taking place on Wikipedia_talk:Featured_picture_candidates. Are there any Wikipedia policoes which I just cannot find or has this issue simply not been dealt with? In the courde of the discussion I proposed a new template {{RetouchedPicture}} Please check its talk page for a short policy draft.

This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications: Recolored Empire State Building to match my shirt.

The template is a rip-off of {{FeaturedPicture}} and similarly puts all tagged pictures in a new category (to be created) listing all retouched pictures. Any comments are appreciated. --Dschwen 12:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Commons might be better suited for this kind of labeling. I posted on the commons village pump. --Dschwen 12:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Requests for rollback privileges

Hi everyone,

The proposed Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges, which would give just the rollback privilege to suitable editors who requested it, has received a great amount of support with very few objections. Because of this, I would like to have it become official policy and procedure. The technical side which would make this possible is currently under development. When it is ready, I believe that there is sufficient consensus for it to be implemented immediately. I'd like to invite everyone to read through the proposed mechanism and the discussion on the talk page and if they have any worries or comments about this proposal to make them! Thanks! Talrias (t | e | c) 16:01, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

A poll, perhaps? — Dan | talk 16:09, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Probably best to get comments first, not that I think the current idea is at all bad, but the talk page has at least a few objections that should probably be hammered out. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:16, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed - most of the discussion on that page is of the "me too" type. The interesting idea of allowing rollbacks by default (maybe perhaps once a threshold of edits has been met) and thus preventing yet more instruction creep has received quite little discussion. Thanks/wangi 16:25, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

A fair comment - this is being discussed at the moment with both pro- and con- arguments being put forwards. If you've got any particular thoughts on this issue please add them! :) Talrias (t | e | c) 21:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

WP:WEB recently rewritten

The old inclusion guidelines at WP:WEB (including the old WP:COMIC) were tossed out about a week ago and rewritten entirely, primarily to match up with WP:V but also be less specific (webcomics no longer have their own guidelines). None of the usual participants in the discussion have objected but comments are always welcome. Nifboy 18:23, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add that an article on a web site should itself provide the evidence that the site meets the three proposed criteria. This might save a lot of time on AfD. - Liberatore(T) 19:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Ignore all rules

WP:IAR has turned into a long policy gob for reasons that I only partially understand. The main issues are:

• IAR is an awful title for the concept it expresses, and it should have been changed long ago.
• There is claimed to be an "IAR cult" which religiously believes that rules are made to be broken. More generally, there definitely are people who misuse IAR because of what it appears to state.
• The current IAR page is mainly explaining that you cannot, in fact, ignore all rules.
• IAR is very important to Wikipedia and does not deserve to be in its current state (IMHO).

I proposed a general solution on the talk page:

1. Rewrite IAR, as shown here: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules/temp
2. For the user guideline (stated in the Five Pillars, essentially the heart of IAR), link to Wikipedia:Wikipedia has too many rules which I have written.
3. For the policy statement (intended to defuse the IAR cult) move the current page to Wikipedia:Product over process.

The talk page is generally a mess. I haven't gained consensus for this just by attracting the passersby, so please comment either here or there. Ashibaka tock 01:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Ignore all rules can be very subtle to employ. I'm not sure about your changes. It might make it hard to employ ignore all rules correctly when it's actually needed. (which unfortunately still all too often. :-/ ). In fact, that's a common problem when trying to write guidelines upfront, instead of letting them work themselves out naturally. Hmmm. Kim Bruning 02:03, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

As a general rule if you are in a situtation where you are worried about exact wording of IARs you should not be ignoreing rules.Geni 02:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The current page (which discusses when breaking rules is acceptable) would be preserved, except it would be moved to a new name, where it might even evolve into an official policy instead of an "important page" since it won't have to talk about literally ignoring all rules anymore. That would be nice, eh? Ashibaka tock 02:21, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, and the risks are far outweighed by the short-term benefits: let's fill in the cracks as the need arises. We can move the existing policy to Wikipedia:Jurisprudence constante --- Charles Stewart 02:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

If nobody else has anything to say I would like to ask an admin to make the two moves described above... Ashibaka tock Save our rectangular corners! 02:13, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I definitely think a clarification has been needed for a long time. This is a step in the right direction, in my opinion. Superm401 | Talk 03:19, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Strange bibliography

Can someone have a look in Foiba? There is a strange bibliography. Is it correct to analyze the political membership or the ideology of an author (particularly if these are supposed)? In Italy and for italian people this is ILLEGAL! in Italy there is a law about the privacy that specify who anybody can declare the ideology or the political membership if this is supposed. I would let you this information before my modification to restore a normal bibliography. --Ilario 13:31, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

It was me that wrote that bybliography that way, after seeing many neo-fascist publications intermingled with other historical research. Some authors can be traced to extreme-right environments, which have been very vocal in the issue, and are therefore likely to be biased. I wanted that to be clear to a reader, without censoring any reference. It is furthermore patently false that there is any law in Italy (nor relevant since the servers are in the US, to my best knowledge) that prohibits to evaluate the political stance of the authors of references; even if it were a privacy breach (which it is not), a link is provided for each allegation to the material I based my conclusions on: according to Italian law, only the first "squealer" is punishable. --Orzetto 16:01, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

This does not seem to be standard practice on Wiki, and I would suggest that labelling authors as having a particular POV is NPOV. The better route is to include a separate element within the body of the text evaluating the source material in a way that meets the NPOV standard. Balanced critique is fine but this looks like an editor who simply has a problem with the politics of those authors. David91 07:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry for indenting on your behalf ;-) The theme of "Foibe" has been a very hot topic in Italy for the extreme right. This produced a lot of propaganda material, and my effort was to "sort out" what was propaganda from the rest. I would like to stress that I did not label as "filo-fascist" all those books that are more denouncing of the Foibe, such as Sgorlon's or Bartoli's, but only those that could immediately be traced to the extreme right (such as Settimo Sigillo publishing, authors engaged in hardline fascist political parties, or with a war-crime record in those areas).

Personally I think I have seen a number of reference sections structured as "Sources in favor of X", "Sources biased against Y" and so on. If I understand you correctly, you would prefer not to place these sources in a "ghetto", and maintain a short critique beside the reference. Like:

The truth about Mickey Mouse, by Donald Duck. Donald Duck is considered to bear a significant grudge to Mickey Mouse, and his paper may be biased. He presented no references for his claims. His main argument is that M. Mouse may bring back the Bubonic plague.

(I would also add links to back up the claims in the critique, of course).

Re-reading your entry I think I misunderstood—You would prefer a section on "source credibility" or "POV of available sources"? Anyway, if you feel like editing the article in a way you think would be better to maintain users informed on what they read and the article NPOV, you are very welcome. --Orzetto 18:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

My question is simple... If a book is POV it MUST BE CANCELLED. If I mark a book with my PERSONAL OPINION I AM MORE POV THAN BOOK. Ask to my question with a simple answer. --Ilario 21:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

logically clear contradict policy

fair-use image such as logos, tag describes "by non-profit" and "only for wikipedia" uses...but wikipedia don't allow non-commercial images and only for wikipedia use images...it is contradiction, I think... -- WonYong (talk) 01:13, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

This is a logo of a corporation, sports team, or other organization, and is protected by copyright and/or trademark. It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of logos to illustrate the corporation, sports team, or organization in question on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement. Certain commercial use of this image may also be trademark infringement. See Wikipedia:Fair use and Wikipedia:Logos. Use of the logo here does not imply endorsement of the organization by Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation, nor does it imply endorsement of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation by the organization.

non-free

{{copyrighted}} - "permission is given for use on Wikipedia only", and does not include third parties.

This image is not licensed under the GFDL. It is under a non-commercial-use only licence.
	If this image was uploaded after May 19, 2005, it will soon be deleted without further warning.[2] Older images with this template will be considered for deletion.

That's right, we don't allow images under those non-free licences. Buuut we do allow very limited use of images which we aren't entitiled to use under their own licences, but which we believe we are entitled to use (theoretically even against the copyright owner's express wishes) under the doctrine of fair use. But for something to be used under fair use on Wikipedia it has to pass some pretty stringent requirements, listed at WP:FAIR. So, for example, you could use a publicity photo of Oprah Winfrey (release by her) to illustrate the Oprah Winfrey article, but you couldn't use it to illustrate dress or millionaire. Note that many other wikipedias, such as the German language one, don't allow fair use images at all (as they feel it carries too many headaches for the project and for those who reuse the wikipedia distributions. Even here fair use is (or really should be) discouraged for all but the barest essentials. The english wikipedia has, unfortunately, been very slack about actually enforcing the fair-use restrictions, and really lots of images tagged as fair use are nothing but copyvios. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

And an image used on wikipedia as fair use may or may not be similarly usable by a site re-using wikipedia content, depending on the circumstances, hence the language of the template. DES ^(talk) 01:48, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I thought that the very idea of wikipedia was that content could be reused without worrying about copyright or licences. For example, one could reuse text and images from a Wikipedia article on a web site, as long as it is released under a GNU license (in the case of a web site, that would be the GFDL, though for say, a piece of software, it would be a different one). --82.7.125.142 16:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Actualy it would have to be the GFDL in every such case, there is no provision for including content under other GNU licneses, unless particular content has been multi-licensed. And yes, that is the ideal, but in the case of images used under fair use the ideal is compromised, as the alternative is often not to have images perfectly legal for wikipedia to use and very useful for our readers. Where to draw the line is a not fully settled issue. Mind you, for most mirrors, if it is legit fair use on wikipedia, it should be legit fair use on the mirror, IMO -- but each reuser must asses such issues individually. DES ^(talk) 22:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Lawfully citing copyrighted images

Why wikipedia need public domain or free use images?

I know that image as quotaion is not needed public domain.

If I make a article, a thesis or a paper, I can quote copyrited images for my articles. It is not copyright infringement. and I need not to allow copyrighter's permission. and I can publish them as GFDL license, also.

but...why wikipedia need "Free license" images for quotation? any other purpose?

All auther, reporter in the world use any copyrited iamges for quotation, freely. why only wikipedia is restricted for quotation? why need a free license image?

I don't understand... -- WonYong (talk) 04:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

At wikipedia, iamge "itself" is not important...image "as quitation" is inportant. but... why need image itself free license? -- WonYong (talk) 04:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Allow me to contextualize Mr. WonYong's entry. Mr. WonYong is stirring controversy in the korean language wikipedia, claiming that we should disregard GFDL since South Korean copyright law allows for free citation within the realm of non-profit news reporting, criticism, research and education [4] I have been telling him that simultaneous application of South Korean copyright law and GFDL (technically, the application of South Korean copyright law over GFDL) is against Wikipedia's very foundations (and the spirit of the FSF generally), and could get Wikimedia Foundation into trouble, because it would open up Wikipedia's content for illegal subsequent for-profit use locally illegal forms of subsequent for-profit use. However, he ignored various users' warnings, created a Wikipedia namespace document regarding "citations" all on his own, and started uploading a mixture of Fair Use and plain copyright images to the korean language wikipedia. (South Korea has no Fair Use equivalent, thus its use was prohibited in korean language wikipedia by consensus sometime in its beginnings). He also claims that including a copyrighted photography in a wikipedia document is "citing it". Atm we have a lively ongoing debate at the Korean Language Village Pump, sections 13-17. He also posted under section 18 a korean language translation of what he wrote here under the current subsection, which is how I came to know about this. Sooooo basically he wants Wikipedia to stop using GFDL. Go figure. Regards, --Yonghokim 05:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

free citation within the realm of non-profit news reporting, criticism, research and education?? non-profit(X) -- WonYong (talk) 06:05, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll grant there may exist for-profit news reporting or education. Then I shall point out that GFDL may allow any kind of commercial use as long as it abides by the GFDL, which results illegal under said SK law. --Yonghokim 06:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Yonghokim, I think you are not "south" korean...my english is not good. I worry about your supplement...is that comment is negative? or positive to me? -- WonYong (talk) 06:15, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

What are the images in question. Zach ^{(Smack Back) Fair use policy} 06:19, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

He uploaded en:Image:Doctor-hwang-early2000.PNG at ko:Image:Doctor-hwang-2000.png. WonYong's home-made license tag reads as follows:

This work is a copyrighted photography from a media or similar source about a person, product or event. The act of using this image in a Wikipedia document that describes the person, product or event in question is considered citation according to South Korean copyright law and is considered to not be an infringement to copyright rights. According to the copyright law, no permission from the author is needed for citations. (ko:Template:quote)

--Yonghokim 06:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Delete it. Reuters says at http://today.reuters.com/Copyright.aspx "All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world." We do not allow non-commercial images, so it will be deleted. If he uploads, block him. Zach ^{(Smack Back) Fair use policy} 06:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Korea copyright law allow (image) "citation" (such as US fair use) and reuters legal notirication is not importnat. it is korean copyright law.

"citation by korean copyright law" need 5 element.

1. quoted object has been publiched publicly by someone.

2. to quote fot journal, paper, thesis, education, etc.

3. citation for main content. (citation=main(X))

4. to follow fair custom.

5. notify source

and of course, I can also quote copyrighted image. It is korean fair use. it is the citaion right. -- WonYong (talk) 10:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Your interpretation of Fair Use is mistaken. Fair Use allows for use, that is, you can print/use a photograph all by itself, and treat it as an independent object, as long as it abides by Fair Use. As an indicator of this, the US Fair Use has no clause whatsoever that says "the use itself cannot be considerably longer or equal to the original material", because, indeed, you are using the entire original material.

.

The disputed South Korean Copyright Law Article 25 states that you may cite works, and clause #3, ("citation needs to be smaller in comparison to the original source itself, and also the main text in which the citation is being used"). This is obviously an attempt to define the notion of a citation in its technicality. I can't find it right now, but the equivalent of this in US law or customary law is the practice of allowing verbatim quoting capped at 5% of the original text for academic purposes. (e.g. when you write a scholarly paper)

.

In korean language, there is another word for "use" (사용), which has a broader connotation - the SK law would have said "사용" if it aimed to be the equivalent of Fair Use. In other words, there is no South Korean equivalent of the Fair Use clause. You claim that uploading a copyrighted image to the korean lang wikipedia and then using it in a GFDL document constitutes "a quotation" of the image in question. I find your understanding to be tragically misoriented. --Yonghokim 16:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The Reuters legal notice is very important since they made the damn image. They make their business by selling news photos, and they cannot have people like us taking their photos, putting it on Wikipedia where people can get it for free, instead of buying them from Reuters or the AP. And since this image was made very recently, people are still trying to pay for this image to use in print and television media, so if we apply the US fair use rules, we will fail and this image will be seen as a copyright violation. Zach ^{(Smack Back) Fair use policy} 19:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

One last post of his to KLVP might shed some light to Mr. WonYong's degree of legal understanding to this whole issue (he's been bugging KLVP for two weeks now on this issue):

(User:WonYong, in response to User:Truelight's question, who had asked if "uploading" an image could really be the equivalent of "citing" it) There is no reason to make a big fuzz about copyright. ... All around the world, citations for the media, even commercial media, is legal and freely allowed. But the korean language wikipedia's copyright policy is so stiff.. and I did my research, and found out that it's actually because no one in the korean lang wikipedia is knowledgeable about copyright law! They know nothing about GFDL! This is outrageous, but understandable because it's got such a small user base. It's against common sense that you can't use the logo of Samsung in an article that describes Samsung Corportation. People rant about GFDL, FAir Use, SK CRL, US CRL but these laws are not related at all to the issue. This is about common sense. No one is actually opposing [usage of copyrighted materials] under a reasonable basis. Now I've got this huge task of making everyone else understand [that GFDL, Fair Use etc have nothing to do with this question]. They are just being stubborn. I mean, at first I thought they actually had grounds for opposing [the usage of copyrighted material] WonYong (talk) 2006년 1월 15일 (일) 15:27 (KST) korean original (see bottom). (all emphases - bold and italics - are Yongho's)

--Yonghokim 06:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

This is a discussion that should more properly be contained to the South Korean Wikipedia, but I should note that the Wikipedia servers are located in and so under the legal jurisdiction of the United States and the state of Florida. Their international activities may make them subject to other jurisdictions, but they absolutely must abide by U.S. copyright law. Generally we try to choose policies of what content to accept based on what would be likely to be legally accepted in a large number of nations in which Wikipedia is available - don't imagine that just because the material is written in a South Korean language that it is not available or useful in other nations. Deco 21:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia servers are not limited to Florida. They can also be found in Amsterdam and Seoul. Jacoplane 05:48, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

If this is so, that only creates more restrictions on our content, as we have the same content stored and distributed at each location, and so it must obey the laws of all three countries (not to mention any other countries that end up having jurisdiction over us; see LICRA vs. Yahoo!). Deco 06:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedians also can't be certain that the laws of their home jurisdiction, if outside the U.S., would be applied to any potential copyright lawsuit aimed directly at them. The physical location of the servers as well as the nationality of the copyright owner would factor into that determination. There's certainly a risk that a copyright owner could sue a South Korean Wikipedian in the U.S. under U.S. law, and then have that judgment enforced in South Korean courts. I'm not familiar with what conflict of laws principles South Korean law uses, but if you're not either, why risk it? Postdlf 23:02, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I pointed that why? wikipedia block to "proper quote"? why wiki need free license image to quote? GFDL? it is no proper reason. All authers of the world have a right to quote. (of course image,text, etc) Why wiki block that right? I don't understand. GFDL is no relevant. quote right is all auther's right. only wiki restrict that right. All authers have a right to quote images. It is absolute right. Any restrictions can't to that right. Only wiki resctrict. It is serious problem. -- WonYong (talk) 23:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

You said, "All authers of the world have a right to quote. (of course image,text, etc)" That's just not true. FreplySpang (talk) 00:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Why? specificully? -- WonYong (talk) 05:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

In the United States, and I believe in all the countries of the Berne Convention, authors who want to publish works that use copyrighted prose (above a certain length), any copyrighted images, or any copyrighted poetry must get permission from the copyright holder. If they do not get this permission, they can be sued. Maybe South Korean copyright law has some kind of exception, I don't know, but United States copyright law certainly does not. FreplySpang (talk) 05:34, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Marking articles for deletion

Can we please make an exeption to the anonymous article creation limitations for the Wikipedia: Articles for deletion page? It's completely ridiculous that you can't even mark an article for deletion without going through articles for creation (not to mention ironic), when you're not actually making a proper article, and all you're effectively doing is editing an existing one by letting people vote on whether or not it should go. --16:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I brought this up at Wikipedia talk:Guide to deletion#Anons making nomination (before reading this here). A simple fix is tell anons wishing to make nominations, that they should create an account. It seems there's a higher percent of bad anon nominations, then bad new articles. --Rob 19:13, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Warning boxes are getting out of hand

Recently, we're seeing more and more "warning boxes" on articles telling us that an article is biased, incomplete, needs cleanup, doesn't cite references and other things like that. Unlike the "stub" template in the old days, which came at the bottom of the page and was relatively unobtrusive, these new templates are flashy, colorful, and the reader cannot miss them. Is this really wise?

Just as an example, take a look at Joss Stone, a "Random Article" I just came across. For three months now, everyone that comes to this article gets a "this article does not cite its references or sources" message right in the face. Why? How is this article different from the 90% of the Wikipedia articles which don't cite sources, or from other encyclopedias which don't cite sources? Are some of the facts listed on this page accused of being false? which facts? why? This big-shiny warning sign doesn't explain any of this to the reader; The talk page doesn't explain which citations are missing. Any reader getting to this article will seriously doubt all its content, even if just a single fact is questionable. And for three months, people have been editing that page but nobody dared remove that sign, in case it's there for an important reason (which again, nobody knows).

And this is unfortunately not a single example. I see this situation more and more. People going to articles which are not worse than the average wikipedia article, and sticking a "cleanup" tag on them, which often causes people to avoid reading and editing this "unclean" page, instead of what this tag intented them to do (and again, hardly anyone dares remove those tags). People come to a page on a controversial issue of figure that has been running find for a few years (with various arguments cropping now and again on the talk page) - and stick a "NPOV" tag on that page, when in fact nothing has changed. And again, people are afraid to remove those tags, in fear of being blaimed of hiding controversy instead of fixing them. So important articles get that big shiny colorful warning message on top of them, basically telling all readers "don't trust the crap written here. Wikipedia is crap - go find a better encyclopedia". I don't understand why we're insisting to send this message to our readers.

I think that the vast majority of these warning messages should appear on the talk page, if anywhere, not on the article. They *should* be followed by rationale and discussion. If messages appear on the articles, they should be like those stub messages: small, unobtrusive and at the bottom of articles.

Nyh 23:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

My personal rule of thumb is that any "good" article (e.g. Joss Stone) should not have any of these kind of templates for the reasons you give, any concerns should be made on the talk page. However "bad" articles (e.g. pretty much every article in Category:Articles that need to be wikified) should definately be tagged for 2 extremely important reasons; (1) So visitors to Wikipedia don't think they are the accepted standard (2) The articles can then be very easily found and improved to the state of a "good" article. Martin 23:29, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

There simply aren't enough people going to these articles and fixing them. And even fewer people who give articles the loving attention they need to grow. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 00:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that there aren't enough people fixing them, but at least they eventually get fixed/expanded/deleted, if they are not tagged they just float around forever never being improved (after a recent datadump trawl I identifed 1000s of articles that were months old and ranged from simply terrible to speedy deletes to copyvios). Martin 00:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Do people actually rewrite articles because they've seen them on lists?Freekee 04:13, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes! admittedly I havent much recently, but I used to work through the wikify category and deadend pages all the time. Martin 09:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

People going to articles which are not worse than the average wikipedia article, and sticking a "cleanup" tag on them This isn't an argument to stop using tags, it's an argument that the average Wikipedia article needs to be cleaned up. Instead of complaining about the tag, fix the page. If you don't want to fix the page, stop whining about it. DreamGuy 03:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

You completely missed my argument. First of all, I am fixing pages all the time, but I don't need a big shiny message box on the top to tell me that a page sucks, I can see it for myself. Secondly, much of the time, it isn't at all clear why this tag is there, and after which fix am I "supposed" or "allowed" to remove it (after I correct one false fact, did I get rid of the dispute or not? How should I know that if the person who put the tag didn't bother to explain is action? After what amount of editing can I call the article "clean"? and so on). Lastly, tags and categories are indeed great for having a way to find pages to work on, and I gave a good example: the stub categories. But, I don't see why these messages need to be so obtrusive - large, colorful and on the top of pages, or why they can't be moved to the talk page (which perspective editors will view anyway). Nyh 08:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Another example I ran across by random: Development stage is a relatively good article. Someone wrote a very short and unnecessary article Release to manufacturing, and it has been suggested (3 weeks ago) to merge them both. This is all great, but my complaint is: why is the merge suggestion so prominent on the top of the good Development stage article? Wouldn't it have been enough to have a small notice on the bottom of the page? Wouldn't it have been even better if the notice was on the talk page? In fact, the notice already links to the talk page, but as you'll notice the talk page doesn't mention this merge suggestion at all. Unfortunately, again, this is not an isolated example. I see these messages abused all the time. Nyh 09:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with you, Nyh. I find it irritating that people will slap cleanup notices on any half-decent article, and then not even raise their concerns on the Talk page. You'd think the least they could do would be explain what they saw the problems as, if they couldn't fix it themselves. I find the solution is... be bold and remove the cleanup notice, inviting anyone who still has a problem to explain on the Talk page. It nearly never happens. pfctdayelise 03:00, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

"Download high resolution version" on fair use images

First of all apologies if this has been discussed before, I could not find it elsewhere. It seems very contrary to me that on certain fair use images, a link with the text "Download high resolution version" should be displayed. This would appear to contradict the fair use image templates, which state "It is believed that the use of low-resolution images' of X...". I therefore propose that the link text on the images be changed to "Download higher resolution version", or a similar message that does not imply that the image is in fact breaking the fair use laws under which it is hosted. Mushin^talk 01:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

i'd say if a fair use image displays that link it almost certainly means its in violation of our fair use guidelines and should probablly (much as the archivist in me hates to say it) be downscaled and the original removed. Plugwash 01:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

If that's the case then all images displaying that are not actually low-resolution (I'm not sure of the actual definition used for that?) should be downsized as you say. And anyway, for a book cover, DVD cover, etc we don't need higher resolution images, regardless of their legality. Mushin^talk 01:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I imagine that (once worse fair-use deviances are resolved) there will probably be a programme converting fair-use images to their screen-ready size, as used in their article. As you say, we don't need higher resolution, and our fair-use claims are strengthened a lot when we're not using or presenting more than we need. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:35, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

How low is low? I think this seems a good idea but we may want to try to pick nice dimensions that scale well (scaling a 250 to a 240 can be icky... picked as an example, why would you actually do that!) multiples of 60 are nice for that. ++Lar: t/c 02:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, WP:FAIR says "The amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible" (my emphasis). From that I would argue that if you intended to present a fair-use PR photo of say Evangeline Lilly at 300 pixels wide on the screen, the image stored by wikipedia should be 300 pixels wide. Given that interpretation in mind, I've started cropping the (very few) fairuse images I upload to maximise the utility we get from our few pixels - for example, the image I uploaded for Peter Mullan is dramatically cropped from a larger publicity image. Now I'm not saying that my interpretation of this is policy now, and the legal responsibility of figuring out what is and isn't fair use (supposedly) lies with the uploader (so really it's up to you), but I think a mass downscaling of fairuse images is likely to happen at some point, and I'd recommend "crop intelligently now, lest you be automatically downscaled later". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:48, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Legal issues aside, to say we don't need high-res versions of any image is shortsighted. We're building an encyclopedia, not a website, and those images will have many uses down the line for print versions of Wikipedia, editing, and so on. This is why we have a policy of retaining the highest possible resolution version allowed by law. Deco 06:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Besides, even if we don't count the printing, the images used are likely to grow as the next generation of displays gets higher resolution. Remember when 640x480 was common? It is not so long ago. Also, some images capture high-value details - eg. various labels and texts - that are legible only when checking the larger version. And you never know when such detail contains something crucial for somebody. --Shaddack 06:34, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. If someone decides to make a printed copy of a Wikipedia article (or the entire Wikipedia), using these images continues to be fair use - even if printed at the finest resolution the printer has to offer. Fair use is about the purpose of use, not about the format used to store the material. Wikipedia should make sure that users understand that while Wikipedia's license allows them to copy whole articles, once you start taking only parts of articles, you lose some of the rights - and in particular, you can't take a "fair-use" labeled image out of Wikipedia and do anything which is not "fair use" with it - regardless of the image's resolution. Nyh 08:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

So what are the highest possible resolutions allowed by law? (I asked this in my second question). In any case, my original point has been somewhat sidetracked in favour of a discussion on the actual reoslution on images stored by wikipedia. To reiterate my proposal, that "the link text on the images be changed to "Download higher resolution version", or a similar message that does not imply that the image is in fact breaking the fair use laws under which it is hosted". The resolution of the images hosted is of course, as you have pointed out, dependent on the media used and the current standards. But the point is that the current wording of this message is contradictary to the wording of the fair use agreement. Mushin^talk 10:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

There is no law placing a particular limit on the resolution of an image used under a fair use claim. Indeed it is not clear that in most or all cases a lower-resolution image will have a batter fair-use claim than a higher-res image will. The reasonign is that a lower-res image is less of a "Replacement for the original" which is an important factor in determing wither a use is fair use, but when a low-res image in fact serves as a replacement the high-res woudl be no more of a violation, and if other factors make the low-res image accceptable, they might also apply to the high-res version. It is very much a case-by-case and so image-by-image matter, as far as the law goes. Wikipedia can, of course, chose to have a policy that places an upper limit on the size or resolution of images used under a fair use claim, but no law currently requires us to do anything of the sort. DES ^(talk) 20:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

This is an accurate assessment, to my knowledge. Deco 03:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)

The new guideline proposal (which I announced here already some time ago) is progressing well, except for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#"(book)" qualifier outside disambiguation from other Wikipedia articles, for which we're waiting for the WP:RM vote result at:

This didn't attract really much attention yet, in view of the direction the books naming conventions guideline would take. --Francis Schonken 09:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Sources and links to foreign-language material

We're having a tussle at Sheikh Khaz'al over the treatment of a 19th-early 20th century Arab ruler in what is now the Iranian province of Khuzestan. One editor is citing works in Farsi, and adding links to articles in Farsi. I find this extremely frustrating, because I don't read Farsi. The only source I have for this historical figure is an unpublished dissertation (U. of Chicago, 1974) that I ordered via a dissertation order service. I trust my source; the other editor COULD get it, if he wished. He reads English. I'm blocked from his sources. I rather suspect that they're highly biased against Sheikh Khaz'al, but I can't be sure.

I assume that since this is the English Wikipedia, editors should argue from English-language sources. But I'd like to hear if there is some policy on this matter, or some way of resolving arguments re sources in foreign languages. Zora 09:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources in languages other than English that gives some guidance re. the topic you mention. Please report back here (or on the talk page of that guideline) if that isn't enough to get your issue solved. At least the English translation of the Farsi quotes should be added, but that isn't the only recommendation in that guideline. --Francis Schonken 09:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Referring to English-language sources for further reading, when they are available and reasonably good, is one thing, but having to rely entirely on English sources would force editors to use outdated and low-quality sources, disregard recent research, and in effect completely disallow writing on many important historical and literary topics. I can understand your problem in this case, but what is needed is not a ban on non-English sources, which would seriously cripple Wikipedia, but competent and trusted reviewers or review committees for various languages to check the references in controversial cases. Tupsharru 10:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, folks. The guideline helps. I'm afraid that both I and the other editor have been lax in providing quotes, page numbers, etc. I can make sure that my contributions are meticulously sourced, and ask him to do the same, giving the cites in both Farsi and English. I think this is enough to go forward. Zora 10:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Well said, Tupsharru. I volunteer for Dutch and German to check references. Andries 22:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Ehum, having apparently come up with the idea (although I would be very surprised if I was really the first person to think about it), I guess I cannot avoid giving a promise to help checking Swedish references. But I have no intention to make it a full-time job, and you will still need somebody else to check my Swedish references... :) Tupsharru 22:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

May I upload a short audio clip from a movie?

In the movie Garden State, one of the characters speaks a phrase which is purported to be in the Klingon language. (See Talk:References_to_Star_Trek#Garden_State.) I do not know Klingon, but am interested in finding out whether the phrase really is Klingon, and if so, what it means. May I upload a 5-second audio clip of the phrase from the movie, and link to it from the aforementioned Talk page, so that someone who understands Klingon may be able to answer the question? --Lph 18:54, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Since this would be for the purpose of analysis and comment and is a very short excerpt of the film, i think it would be acceptable as Fair use. Be sure to tag it as {{fairusein}} or anothe fair use tag. DES ^(talk) 19:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I suggest it wouldn't be an option. Your intended use is for discussion on a talk page, not in an article (I thought it was Wiki policy to only have fair use media, if used in articles). I think fair use only applies to use of media in an article. Further, I question any fair use of sounds in Wikipedia, with the way thing stand. Images might be fair use, if and only if they're used *inline* within the article. A link to a stand-alone image, wouldn't be fair use, IMO. If you had an audio version of an article, and included a sound sample, I could see the fair use applicability in some cases (but that's not relevant here). --Rob 19:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

A link to a sound clip, in an article where it is relevant would IMO need to pass precisely the same tests as a fair use image, no more and no less. There is nothing in the policy that bans fair-use claims on sound recordings. Such a clip might well be linked to from a apragraph in the articel which discusses the passage mentioned. At that point, a link from a talk page would be appropraite, IMO. it is common to find inline links (but not display links) to images used under fair use from talk apges, and AFAIK no policy is violated by doing so. DES ^(talk) 20:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like the intended purpose is to conduct original research. We should not be creating analysis or commentary, only summarizing the notable analysis and commentary of others. -Will Beback 20:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Consulting knowledgable users, to determine if a claim is accurate, does not sound like original researh to me, or at least it need not be. If anyone responds that the phrase in question is indeed in Klingon that person should cite a source which would allow soemone else to verify this. If a phrase from a docuewmted were posted with the question "Is this in polish" I don't see that that would be "original research", in any meaningful sense. But if there is a question about uploadign the clip to wikipedia, uplaod to a free hosting provideer, adn merely cite the link on an appropriate wikipedia page. This would be undesireable for the article, which ought to be permenant/long-term, but would be good enough for a talk page discussion, IMO. DES ^(talk) 22:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Are policies descriptive or prescriptive?

That is, are policies supposed to be rules that should be followed (even if in general, they aren't), or descriptions of rules that most people do follow. My case in point:

• Wikipedia:Verifiability: No one follows the standards this page insists upon. It implies that every fact on every page ought to be sourced. No one does this. I doubt more than a dozen pages on the whole Wikipedia are up to this standard. Hence, this is a prescriptive rule: It documents what people should do, rather than what they actually do.

However, other policies seem to attempt to simply describe what most people do do, rather than what they 'should' do. I don't have a particularly good example of this, other than an argument over whether or not wp:auto should take this direction. Any advice, anyone? Stevage 21:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Did you mean WP:AUTO ?? ++Lar: t/c 21:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

It's a two-way street. Policies are intended to be prescriptive, but if a policy is not being followed, that's often evidence that it needs to be revised to make it more practical. Some informational pages are descriptive, but the primary purpose of policy in my eyes is to settle disputes: if two people conflict on how to do something, they can often defer to policy for the preferred way. Deco 21:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

List of people

Why do we have articles that are just list of people Hen-Henz and suchlike? Are the just lists of all people mentioned in Wikipedia? What is their purpose?Skittle 21:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

See Talk:List of people by name/Whole list. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Expanded rollback access

This is a very straightforward policy suggestion that would expand rollback access to all non-IP users. It is similar to the recent "Requests for rollback privileges", but I see this as far preferable, in large part because it avoids the creation of a new and unnecessary bureaucracy. Sarge Baldy 22:17, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think that creating a new talk page for discussion on this issue will have the unfortunate effect of duplicating a lot of discussion, seeing as this idea has been proposed and debated on the RFR talk page - see Wikipedia talk:Requests for rollback privileges#Support concept, oppose procedure. I suggest, if the RFR proposal fails due to this reason, then this policy should be floated. Talrias (t | e | c) 22:47, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense to me. Sarge Baldy 22:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Who's Who?

During a recent AfD I came across an attempt to use one of the many "Who's Who" directories and registries as a proof of notability of an individual, to argue for the inclusion of his biography in Wikipedia. Doing some research I found that, for example :

• "Man of the Year - 2005, American Biographical Institute, Raleigh, N.C."

... but then found scam reports about this "award": [5], [6], [7]

• "America's Registry of Outstanding Professionals, 2003-2004"

.. but then read similar scam reports about this "registry": [8]

• "The Contemporary Who's Who of Professionals"

... but could not find any such thing anywhere, besides mentions alongside of one of the scams above.

In summary, it seems that anybody can get into a "Who's Who" or get a "Man of the Year" award. Listings on these directories includes bowling coaches, gym teachers, undertakers, administrative assistants, landscapers and school nurses. There are more than 100,000 entries in "Who's Who in America.", for example.

It seems that the Who's Who publication's aren't too picky about who gets into their books. John Fox Sullivan, a member of a "Who's Who in America" board of advisors, told Forbes, "The reality is, I don't do anything." So there are a lot of self-nominated people who haven't really accomplished much. Nearly everyone who is nominated gets into the book. Read the Forbes article debunking the whole thing: "The Hall of Lame"

I would suggest adding some wording to Wikipedia:Vanity_guidelines and Wikipedia:Notability (people) to alert the community about this. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 23:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

"Who's Who" should also be viewed critically as a source, since it appears to simply print the entry of the submitter without substantial fact-checking. -Will Beback 23:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

That is exactly my point. I will try and add some wording to Wikipedia:Notability (people) to reflect this. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 01:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Draft poll for naming convention of television content

There has never been a naming convention for television programming on Wikipedia so there are articles currently named:

• Television or TV? Century City (television), Hunter (TV), Miracles (tv)
• include TV? The Boondocks (television series), Lost (TV series), Beauty and the Beast (series)
• Show type? The Chair (game show), Joey (sitcom), Martha (tv program)
• Show/show? Charlie Rose (show), Los Luchadores (Tv Show)
• ??? Academic Challenge (national)
• Network? Bullseye (CNBC), It Takes a Thief (Discovery Channel), The Late Late Show (CBS)
• Country of origin? A Current Affair (US) and A Current Affair (Australia), Blind Date (US television) and Blind Date (UK television), Big Brother (USA TV series) and Big Brother (UK TV series)

Please help out by adding comments to the proposed poll and voting on January 24 through February 15 2006. There have been two previous polls [9], [10], which failed to reach a consensus and proved to be divisive. Make your opinion heard and fix this issue! Leave comments at the poll's talk page. If you are interested in some previous comments see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television) and Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. Two draft naming conventions also exist Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)/draft

Thanks for your input and votes --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 23:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Sports teams that have moved with multiple articles

Recently I have come across a number of sports teams articles. A number of teams have changed cities over the years, with some having separate articles per city and others having each city in the same article. Some like the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants (baseball) just redirect to the modern day team name Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, etc. Others like the Minnesota North Stars, Montreal Expos and Hartford Whalers have their own article with a mention of the new team name in the lead. Furthermore, the Anaheim Angels article mentions the current naming dispute and then has an link to the real team article (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). There are many more example too, that fit in either of the first two examples. Has a consensus been reached? In many of these articles, there is at least some discussion, and often heavy debate about if the articles being merged together or not. If there hasn't been a consensus, maybe it is time to set up a guideline so people have an idea on how this should be handled. I have my own beliefs as to which format I'd like to see it in, but more importantly, I'd like to see a uniform standard with regards to multiple sports page articles for the same team. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 00:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

And Decatur Staleys redirects to Chicago Bears... -- DS1953 ^talk 19:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• Its not just sport teams, it also affects US broadcast articles and many other establishments. I think that both options are correct in certain cases. Many editors have wanted to merge America West Airlines out of existence since the corporate merger was announced. The fact that the airline will continue flying into 2007 does not seem to matter. Vegaswikian 18:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I do think sports teams are a little different than corporate mergers, since in the former case they carry with them the history and usually the team name (except for the city delimiter). In corporate mergers, the sense of the old company is often gone entirely. With the conversion of Marshall Field's into Macy's by Federated Department Stores, it would seem almost silly to redirect someone looking for information on Marshall Field's to an article on Macy's. Once the name is gone from a going business, someone looking for Marshall Field's is clearly looking for information on Field's, not Macy's. That is probably less true in sports teams where it is a continuous history of one organization rather than an amalgamation of separate histories lost in a larger entity. -- DS1953 ^talk 19:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly the problem I have with this. The teams usually are still owned by the same person, have all of the same players and quite often keep the same team mascott, the only change being the city they play in. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 22:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Admin accountability poll

This is a gauge of community opinion on admin accountability, RFA, power abuse, and deopping. Not a policy proposal. Opinions welcome. Radiant_>|< 18:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Blocking over fair-use image disputes

The community's input would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Blocking_over_fair-use_image_disputes. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Defining vandalism

I would like to get input on discussion of what vandalism is at the end of Wikipedia talk:Vandalism. Two items are when is the removal information vandalism, and whether hoaxes are vandalism. See section Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Throwing out everything with the bathwater and Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Propose to list Hoax as example of vandalism. --Rob 22:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

What is vandalism? "I know it when I revert it". --Carnildo 01:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Vandalism - Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia. What exactly is ambiguous about that? I would say it clearly encompasses hoaxes, and removal of information that's made in bad faith. Of course, we assume good faith, unless the user makes it absolutely beyond question that they're acting in bad faith. Removal of information that a user really feels should not be in an encyclopedia is never vandalism, because that's a good faith edit, though it may be misguided in the extreme. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Policy on songs

Is it acceptable to post detailed musical analysis, a lá Symphony_No._9_(Beethoven) (although perhaps even more detail: that link is more of an overview) of songs like Candle_In_The_Wind, or even individual songs on their album pages, perhaps?

I suggest it is acceptable, because of the growing number of people studying popular music students who may have to write similar things on similar pieces.

And I'm also a bit of pedant who thinks that that sort of thing should be on the internet and gets a slight kick out of writing them.

• Actually musical analysis is exactly what most song articles need. The only problem is that it shouldn't be original research, but if you stick to uncontroversial statements that no musician would disagree with you should be fine. Kappa 00:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

• I'd agree with Kappa but also add that analysis beyond the blindingly obvious and unarguable is acceptable, providing any subjective interpretation is from a cited, knowledgeable source. A statement that begins "von Karajan described Beethoven's 9th Symphony as..." is the sort of thing that could be useful. Reporting on analyses made by reputable music scholars and well-known composers and musicians is preferred over original research and analysis. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Why can't we be like the other Wikipedias?

I've always been rather skeptical about the article creation restrictions (especially the ones that actually apply to registered users that have been registered under X days), but having recently realized that the English Wikipedia is the only one with these rather controversial restrictions, I'm starting to question whether it would be a good idea to remove these restrictions.

The strangest thing for me, is that the restrictions on creating new articles were actually introduces after someone vandalized an existing article. I'm sorry, but this makes no sense to me at all, especially since creating an account actually makes it harder to trace a vandal than if they simply use their IP address.

Please can someone reconsider this policy, I'm sure many would appreciate it. --82.7.125.142 22:23, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

There is considerable opposition to this policy, but Jimbo is our benevolent dictator, and if he wants to try a disruptive experiment, well, he can. I'm sure the statistics will in the end demonstrate its ineffectiveness. (someone is measuring this stuff, right?) Deco 23:43, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I was given the impression by another post on this topic that this restriction was just imposed by some sysop. As far as I was concerned it doesn't even have a page, so I've always wondered if this could really be called policy. --82.7.125.142 23:46, 18 January 2006 (UTC)