Wikipedia talk:Reference desk

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Where did the symbols go ?

When editing, I used to get a choice of symbols to choose from at the bottom, like the degree sign. They are now gone. What happened and how do I get them back ? StuRat (talk) 01:23, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

They're still there when I go to edit mode. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I have noticed that WP is still loading slowly at night in the Eastern US, and that a lot of time only a part of a page will load, leaving out options one normally expects. μηδείς (talk) 03:43, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

That doesn't appear to be the issue in my case, as the rest of the page loads OK. StuRat (talk) 22:11, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

User:Sagittarian Milky Way

After he posted a request for legal advice about child pornography, he posted a second request, which he admitted was one for legal advice, asking for the opinion of what I assume he means to be aliens. I removed that question and have filed an ANI report. μηδείς (talk) 03:42, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

A facetious reference to "people" as we are the only known humanoids. All living things were originally called creatures per Genesis 1-2 (which I don't believe). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:12, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Asking where the boundaries of the law are, is a request for legal advice. Laws about the internet vary widely from place to place. But here's some non-legal yet practical advice: If you want to be absolutely sure not to break any internet-related laws, there's a foolproof solution - don't user the internet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:46, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

The question about jihadist websites needs to be answerable on Wikipedia. I just saw a news item about "Al Qaeda Magazine" today [1] and was thinking I ought to track it down and describe for Wikipedia what they had in mind to blow up, just on account of folks not wanting to be standing there if for no other reason. Since it's part of our research we need to be able to answer it, just like copyright questions. Making censorship secret is admittedly an integral part of its evolution, but that is all the more reason to oppose that. Wnt (talk) 03:39, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

It may need to be answered, but unless someone else has already answered it, it's not our place to do so. If the OP is seriously concerned about the issue, he should contact an attorney knowledgeable on the subject rather than depending on the advice of strangers on the internet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

"Our research" as in WP:OR? "Have to"? As in WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS? μηδείς (talk) 04:07, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

As in: if Wikipedia didn't answer basic copyright questions, we'd be lucky it existed at all. These other questions are no different in character. Wnt (talk) 11:02, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Copyright issues are an entirely different ball game from questions of "is it legal to go to a given website?" Check what happened to Pete Townsend before you make any assumptions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:09, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't get your point. If you're claiming copyright issues are less serious, ask Aaron Swartz. Or, well, not. The point is, Wikipedia editors should be ready to help each other stay out of sword range of the orcs. Wnt (talk) 23:37, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Copyrights are also important. That's why Wikipedia's philosophy is, "If in doubt, assume it's copyrighted." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:58, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

The point is, we don't tell users "we can't help you figure out if something is copyrighted, but if you think it might be, don't post it, and don't ask us." Wnt (talk) 08:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, copyrighted material is not allowed here at all unless a valid fair-use case can be made. There are also articles and guidelines about copyright. But it's a slippery issue. That being said, getting the copyright wrong is unlikely to result in injury or death, so it's not a good comparison with medical advice. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:33, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Note this was the thread about jihadist websites. Though as with medical advice, no doubt there is a small chance of somehow facilitating death, offset by a much larger chance of preventing it. Just not as much in either direction. Wnt (talk) 18:21, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Legal or Medical advice

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Legal or Medical advice that may be of interest.

It concerns requests for legal or medical advice posted to one of the reference desks.

I am posting this here because of a potential conflict between the talk page guidelines and reference desk guidelines --Guy Macon (talk) 06:00, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

And I went there and remove the potential conflict between it and WP:RD/G which is the right place for such stuff and already covers it. Dmcq (talk) 09:04, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Without opening up a duplicate thread here, let me just mention that not everyone agrees with Dmcq's interpretation of Wikipedia policy. Also, as a general rule, when you see a neutrally-worded announcement of a discussion on another page, it isn't helpful to attempt to make the same argument you made on that other page on the page with the announcement. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:52, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

• As long as someone is pushing on this, let me point out the thread I just stumbled across on Reddit: [2] - right now being cheered on their front page as "Redditor identifies severe condition and potentially saves a life." Fear not, this is not something Wikipedia will ever be accused of doing. We will proudly say we removed or shut down questions and answers like these, keeping profit safely in the hands of those licensed to receive it. We'll never know how many we sacrificed to the deity of medical ethics and profit, which are one and inseparable. Aren't we just special. Wnt (talk) 03:27, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  • If another site is willing to post medical advice, that's their funeral. Wikipedia need not fall into that tar pit. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:48, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
    • Which simply makes Wikipedia an irrelevant player in this area. By not getting involved, we're not preventing any harm, instead we're causing more harm. Similarly, if you don't give first aid because you think that you may make mistakes and instead let others do this, you are likely contributing to more harm because there is then one person less available to give first aid to people who need it. It's not good to not face difficult problems, to just walk away and look in the other direction so that you can pretend that there isn't a problem just to make you feel better about this. Count Iblis (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
      • Your first sentence is the bottom line. There is no one on Wikipedia who is qualified to give medical or legal advice to strangers on the internet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:06, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

• While I object to the liberal application of "no medical advice" and "no legal advice" to justify deletions, hattings, and scoldings as a general rule -- as medicine and law are not actually off-limits topics -- I agree that the refdesk shouldn't provide advice. I mean, it's not just the refdesk; Wikipedia has a great big disclaimer for legal purposes that it does not do so and it's pretty explicitly stated in the refdesk guidelines. So yes, Wikipedia is an irrelevant player in this area. It's not that we might make mistakes; it's that we WILL make mistakes (I mean seriously, look at many of the jokey and incompetent but confident answers to non-medical questions we get!) and that leaves not you but WMF open to legal issues, with potential negative impact on the project. I say stop removing the questions as questions and only remove advice itself. We can answers questions about medicine and law without giving advice, and can inform people why that's the case. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  16:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• If someone asks for professional advice, we're not allowed to give it. Hence the question will go unanswered. And hence the question itself need not be kept there. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:36, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• Could you tell me exactly what part of WP:TPOC allows that? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:43, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• I assume you're talking to Rhodo and his idea about deleting others' posts. Yes, if he thinks mere hatting is controversial, he should try selectively deleting posts and then watch for the consequent firestorm. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:50, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• Perhaps I am misunderstanding. Rhododendrites wrote "I say stop removing the questions", you replied with "the question itself need not be kept". That sounds a lot like you saying we should remove the questions. Could you clarify? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

• Well, you could keep it, but what's the point, when there is no possible answer? (Aside from "Go see a doctor"). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

The point is that the response saying we can't provide advice is the answer. It should remain there, if for nothing else to remind other readers not to bother asking such questions. It's no different, really, from some question about the history of China for which there are no known sources. The best we might be able to do is say "Sorry, nobody seems to know". Same as us refusing to answer homework questions. The OP is just as much left in the dark in those cases as they are with the question seeking medical/legal advice, but nobody suggests we remove those questions or our responses to them. We have given the appropriate response in all three cases, and the record should show that. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:33, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

TL;DR version of my previous post for clarity: We can't offer legal or medical advice. It's not just a refdesk thing it's a Wikimedia thing. We can offer information about legal and medical topics, though. In either case, don't remove the question or hat it. Respond, maybe even with some short template response, informing them the refdesk is not for such advice. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:06, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Might I suggest that someone edit the reference desk guidelines to make the above more clear? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Talk pages are for discussing improvements to the content of the associated page. We shouldn't be giving people any advice about anything to people on them never mind legal or medical advice. It is true there is an explicit rule about legal and medical advice but that doesn't mean we are okay giving other advice on talk pages rather than trying to improve the associated article. The reference desks are the place for people to ask for any advice.

As to medical or legal advice I wouldn't mind a little loosening up of the rules on the reference desks to allow only answers that strictly followed the guidelines here, i.e. that excluded all own ideas and apocryphal tales and only pointed at Wikipedia articles or peer reviewed articles or a nationally regarded place that deals with a problem as well as advice to go to a doctor or lawyer. My take on it is we should also apply the same sort of standards about say building advice or electrical maintenance where a person could easily kill or injure themselves. Dmcq (talk) 08:18, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be a tightening up rather than a loosening up? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:22, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure of your reasoning, loosening would allow more which is what I was talking about. On the other hand as far as tightening goes, for the legal and medical advice I don't think we should try and distinguish between personal advice and questions about a disease or legal issue. That would get rid of the silly business about trying to determine which type a question is. If we just treated all obviously dangerous questions as well as legal and medical ones as requiring strictly no original research I think it would remove a lot of hot air on this talk page. Dmcq (talk) 08:27, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

That's certainly a slippery slope. What's the right answer to "I have these symptoms. What is my disease?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:34, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

A pointer to where to get help is the right answer. We would be engaging in original research to go any further and original research is what I was saying we should not go in for on any dangerous questions. Dmcq (talk) 10:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

No, that's the wrong answer - because it compels you to first do a diagnosis, which we're not supposed to be doing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what diagnosis you're talking about. Telling a person to go to a doctor or lawyer or ring up some nationally approved center is not a diagnosis. Diagnosis is original research. If however they say they suffer from migrane we could also point them at migrane Dmcq (talk) 23:41, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

If they ask for more info on a medical topic, you could point them to that topic. If they ask how they should fix their problem, there is no article you can point them to. That's when you point them to a doctor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

(ec)It would be a change from "no professional advice allowed at all" to "professional advice allowed only under a rigid set of conditions." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ — Preceding undated comment added 08:28, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

As to obviously dangerous if I started talking about making an explosive in a ceramic dish on dry ice and stirring with a wooden spoon surely that sort of thing shouldn't really be allowed as original research on the reference desks? Dmcq (talk) 08:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

That sounds risky, yes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The leading cause of accidental deaths is not due to people taking on board medical advice from their family members or friends (and we all get get exposed to that frequently, so this is not a trivial statement), rather it is due to accidents in and around the home (people falling from ladders, mistakes in electric work leading to electrocution etc. etc.). We don't refrain from giving people advice on how to do plumbing work, how to repair their cars etc. on the Ref Desks. Society actually assumes that it's normal for people to not always ask professionals to do these sorts of tasks. Society also assumes that it s normal for people to give medical advice to each other, parents to that all the time to their children. Count Iblis (talk) 17:57, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be tighter rules on giving "how-to" information. As far as it being "normal" to give people medical advice, there's a key difference: The parents see their kids frequently. How many of the requesters on the ref desks has anyone here met face-to-face? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:14, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Changing the rules so that it would be ok to give medical advice is not something that could be decided here. It would necessarily involve WMF which has explicitly stated Wikipedia is not for that (and the entity that would be involved in any legal issues arising from mistakes). It sounds like the three remaining questions, then, are: (1) whether advice, broadly construed, is [in]appropriate for the refdesk; (2) to what extent can medical and legal subjects be discussed in an informational or factual manner (i.e. not advice); (3) whether questions requesting disallowed advice (whatever type that may be) should be removed, hatted, or responded to/left alone.

My own perspective: (1) "Advice" is far too blurry a semantic category to make a general rule about. (2) To the extent already described at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines/Medical_advice. (3) The burden of this rule should be on the ones answering questions to keep it in the ream of fact and information. It's advice itself that should be removed and users cautioned, not questions that ask for advice. A question in which someone asks for advice should be responded to with something between "we can't give advice here" and a helpful answer that is not itself advice (e.g. Q: "I have an earache, what should I do?" A: "For treatment advice please consult your local doctor. We cannot give medical advice here. For general information about earaches, you may want to see earache and this article from webmd."). So remove medical advice itself (again, as described at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines/Medical_advice), but leave the questions. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  19:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

User:Rhododendrites hits the nail on the head. I would add that, not only is not removing the question a very good idea, it is also required by WP:TPOC. Alas, it looks like I am going to have to waste everybody's time with an RfC to demonstrate that there is an overwhelming consensus against deleting another editor's perfectly harmless question just because someone might give them medical advice rather than Rhododendrites' helpful and allowable "We cannot give medical advice here. Please consult a doctor. For general information about [ example ], you may want to see our [ example ] article."

(TL;DR) 

Allowed: "We cannot give medical advice here. Please consult a doctor. For general
information about [ example ], you may want to see our example ] article."

Against policy: deleting or editing the question.

--Guy Macon (talk) 23:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Go and raise an RfC then and this can be decided or you will waste even more of people's time. Dmcq (talk) 10:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

• We've already got a disclaimer, a statement in the top-of-page guidelines, and a template to use when we remove material, and a template to notify the OP whose material's been removed. Why are we discussing adding to this? μηδείς (talk) 23:54, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• Oh, I don't know... perhaps it is because you keep violating WP:TPOC? (Which, as has been explained to you before, overrides the guideline and templates you cited) I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Who else besides you thinks the talk page guideline overrides the reference desk guideline? Dmcq (talk) 10:07, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

What on the refdesk guideline contradicts what Guy has been saying? I've referred only to the refdesk guidelines. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  14:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

You know, I never bothered to confirm Medeis' oft-repeated claim that the local guideline allows the deletions, editing, and hatting. I rejected that argument out of hand because the argument that the local guidelines trump WP:TPOC ignores WP:LOCALCON. I just looked and saw contradictory information. The wording in the header at the top of the page says "We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice" whereas Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines says "Don't edit others' questions or answers ...except to fix formatting errors that interfere with readability (like a leading space or unclosed markup tags)" and "When removing or redacting someone else's posting, the usual talk page guidelines apply" (wikilink in original). But then it says "For removing a question seeking for medical advice..." which is a direct contradiction to the earlier "the usual talk page guidelines apply". Nowhere in the talk page guidelines is any hint that you are allowed to delete a reference desk question. WP:TPOC (which trumps any local guideline) lists all the situations where you can edit someone else's comment, and "because we are not allowed to answer" is not on the list. --17:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy Macon (talk • contribs) 17:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The ref desks are not really talk pages, although they're kind of structured that way. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Raise an RfC and lets see if anybody else besides you thinks the talk page guidelines override the reference desk ones. Dmcq (talk) 23:36, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. An RfC that applies equally to all would be wonderful. μηδείς (talk) 03:19, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Removed claimed 'attempt to drive hits' hat

I removed this nonsense unsigned hat [3]. As I remarked there, there hasn't even been a valid link for a while. So there's little chance it would contribute to any improvement in search engine rankings and in any case, there's even less chance a hat will stop that. And there's zero evidence that the question was anything but a genuine query by someone somewhat unfamiliar with a sadly all too familiar practice on the internet. And frankly if anyone actually believes that someone would be bother asking on the RD just to drive a tiny number of hits from people who may visit it based on the question here to a site which intended to get mass visits from search engine hits, and even go as far as bothering to ask a follow up question highly critical of the site where they concurrently removed change the link to make it not recognised by MediaWiki, they're even less experienced with the way things work on the internet than the questioner. Nil Einne (talk) 05:30, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

What a shock. The unsigned hat was by User:Medeis.[4]] See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive832#Disruptive editing of the reference desks. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning that Wikipedia labels all outgoing links with the "rel='nofollow'" attribute which causes search engines to NOT increase the page rank of outside websites just because Wikipedia links to them. That means that it is entirely pointless for people to mention their own websites here just in order to get higher search engine rankings...it simply doesn't work. Sadly, this point is not sufficiently well-known or well-understood by the evil linkspammers out there.

So, while we may not wish to have our pages littered with linkspam, we can at least take comfort in the knowledge that the evil spammer doesn't have anything to gain from doing it.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:25, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah I forgot that all external links are no followed. And you're right that spammers (and similar) do stupid stuff.

But while I don't think you intended to suggest otherwise, I should point out for the benefit of other readers that stuff spammers do at least normally makes sort of sense from their flawed view. For example, a link spammer may add links to a place that no follows link, most likely because they don't know or don't understand what no follow is, or possibly because they are hoping search engines still give some priority even to no follow links in page ranking algorithms.

Similarly 5 shillers may suddenly appear on forum and talk about how wondorous a store or product is, with completely new accounts, when their comments of the product or store make little sense or suggest someone who's used them, with bad English (even if all purportedly come from English speaking countries) and with the near certainty from the forums history these shillers are going to be picked up by regulars and the store or product will gain a poorer reputation from the shilling, not a positive one.

This sort of spamming is understandable. What's far less understandable as I mentioned is someone is going to come here (from a US IP address which has asked a few other questions) and ask what's the purpose of a site intended to get mass hits from search engines, initially including a link. When they are told it's for making money via advertising, the same person who asked the question intentionally disables the link (so even if it wasn't no followed, it's not going to help anything but for people who visit it directly based on the question) and asks a further critical question. Even for a stupid spammer, there's little chance they're going to see this as a useful proposition.

Now that it's been confirmed that μηδείς is indeed the hatter, I can assume their comment in reply to the question was intended to further justify the hat. But even taking it in to account, there's still no justification for the hat. In fact the comment seems to contradict the hat. While the hat seems to imply that they believed the person who asked the question was attempting to drive hits to the website (which as I've said isn't particularly believeable), the comment seems to imply that they believe the question can't be answered with references.

For starters, we've established except in the case of extreme soapboxing or otherwise totally inappropriate questions, we don't close question just because they're difficult to answer with references. (And I think we've also established that it's a bad idea for μηδείς to close questions for this reason point blank considering their extremely poor record.)

Secondly, the claim no references could be provided is questionable. In particular, it wouldn't surprise me if references could be found for the second/followup question namely why websites do this, perhaps even with some info on how much money they make. Even if these references don't mention this website in particular, there's little evidence the OP required info on this particular website for their second/followup question.

In fact, it's even possible some lower quality non RS references may exist for the first question in blogs and forums or others. And it's possible WHOIS data and similar may reveal the company behind this does it enough that there's details on them even if no discussion relating to this particular website.

All in all, there's no reason to hat this question based on the unsupported assertation that no references could be provided. And while it's probably unlikely anyone is going to bother, and I'm not even sure if the OP/IP cares, we don't close questions just because it's unlikely anyone is going to bother to answer or comment any more. In fact that go against the purpose of hatting. (In exceptional cases, you may close but not hat a discussion if you believe it contained relevant points but any further comments will be offtopic discussion not answers and you want to stop that. And in some cases a completely offtopic subdiscussion may be hatted. But none of this is relevant here.)

Nil Einne (talk) 09:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if μηδείς is ever going to explain their rationale but I visited the advert site in question and found the final nail in the coffin to any theory the OP was trying to spam the site here. As mention in the RD thread, the page duplicates content from the Ubuntu forum. (For those who don't want to visit a site like that, the particular question that's on the linked page is from here [5] as per the site itself.)

That question (both in the Ubuntu forums and on the advert site) mentions Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 January 20#How to find out if this tower has an OS? (well before it was archived), where the question asker says they initially asked for help. Visiting the question in the archive shows a similar IP was the one asking.

Logically the IP/OP came across a duplicate of their question on the site in question when searching and was wondering why it was there hence their original question. They receive an answer which is probably sufficient for them, although may be interested in any further info if anyone cares to provide it. All perfectly ordinary until μηδείς shows up and randomly decides to hat their question and the response.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I have again removed the hat after my removal was reverted by μηδείς with the claim it was made 'per talk' [6], despite the fact there was zero explaination or support on this talk page.

I did expect this hatting was done by μηδείς but since I could not be sure without checking and couldn't be bothered checking, I did not not say who since it ultimately did not matter.

In fairness, μηδείς did finally sign the hat but in this case, it actually would have been better for them to offer an explaination here (or even there) that makes sense rather than worrying so much about correcting their earlier failure to sign. (Or to put it a different way, if you made 2 mistakes, it's normally more important you correct the bigger one than the smaller one. If you failed to sign your hat and failed to offer any explaination that makes sense, the bigger mistake is obviously hatting without a reason that makes sense.)

I have asked μηδείς to stop using misleading edit summaries as this is the second time in recent weeks I have come across them justifying an action with the talk page despite the fact there was little actual justification from the talk page.

The other time they had at least commented here but their edit summary claimed it was 'consensus at talk', yet as I pointed out here Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 105#The Return of User:Great Time, the claim was equally unjustified with only 2 other comments one somewhat supportive, another (me) suggesting the rationale for the removal was flawed.

Nil Einne (talk) 08:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Classic WP:OWNERSHIP pattern. This is an ongoing problem, and the solution is simple; give Medeis a topic ban against editing or modifying other people's comments. No deleting, no hatting, no modifying in any way.-- just leave them alone. Let the dozens of other editors watching those pages handle that. Fire the self-appointed "censor of the reference desks" for doing a lousy job of deciding what to censor. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:07, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Support that proposal 100%. This user's unilateral actions have gone on long enough. --Viennese Waltz 11:10, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Could they at very least not go and fight the reinstatement by another editor here thanks whatever about the original hatting. That at least would cut down considerably on the rate of wastage of disk bytes devoted to these talk page archives about these hattings. Dmcq (talk) 10:41, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

They were told the hat was removed because it was unsigned. Now that is is signed, is there some new problem? Or did the signature never actually have anything to do with it? μηδείς (talk) 03:17, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes. You did four things wrong.

• You hatted something that should not have been hatted.[7]
• You failed to sign the hatting, making it difficult to figure out who did it.
• You used a revert to re-apply the hat after it was removed.[8] See WP:BRD and WP:TALKDONTREVERT.
• Your revert had a misleading edit summary.

I hpoe this helps... --Guy Macon (talk) 03:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Documenting this diff [9] for any future discussion of hatting and closing behaviour, and constructive responses to disagreement. 86.157.148.65 (talk) 14:07, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Removed Comments

Can someone help me to understand why my comments have been removed? I put them back in, and saw them there, but they disappeared again. Did I do something wrong? 128.199.254.146 (talk) 17:13, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Someone removed them for being a personal attack. You basically said "wow, you screwed this person up" without any explanation of why or even who you were talking to. - Purplewowies (talk) 19:22, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The comments were removed by Medeis. I hope everyone was sitting down for that shocking reveal. Matt Deres (talk) 01:22, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm shocked, shocked to find that deleting others' comments is going on in here!

Is anyone up for editing the reference desk guidelines to specify that a personal attack should only be removed by someone other than the target? What is worse than letting one person be judge, jury, and executioner? Letting one person be victim, arresting officer, judge, jury, and executioner. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:13, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Right. Removing a personal attack against oneself is a tantamount to executing someone. Get a sense of proportion here. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 04:54, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

The theoretical alternative would be, instead of deleing, bring it here and ask someone else to delete it. That would be productive, ja? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:01, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

After 10+ years here, I'm still unsure of the rules around deleting stuff (other than one's own posts or parts thereof). When is it OK? When is it not OK? What other steps should be taken first?

We seem to just discuss individual cases, without ever coming to any kind of decision about what general principles should govern all deletions or desired deletions, i.e. something against which we can assess and decide appropriate action in each case that arises. Could we possibly work towards that? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

As a minimum standard of behavior that everyone is required to follow "If the change to another editor's comment is specifically listed at WP:TPOC it is allowed, otherwise it is forbidden" is all anyone really needs to know. Anyone can suggest common-sense additional guidelines that are more restrictive than WP:TPOC (example: to avoid any perception of bias, let someone else decide whether something is a personal attack against you), but we are all free to reject such suggestions. We could even, by consensus, agree on more restrictive rules and put them in the reference desk guidelines. It doesn't work the other way though; if the change to another editor's comment is not one specifically listed as being allowed at WP:TPOC it is forbidden. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:06, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Editors have the right to remove personal attacks against themselves. In this specific case, the IP/OP's comment was strictly an attack, with no useful information in it. There's no reason to keep it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:00, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

That was on a reference desk not a talk page. There is a specific reference desk guideline that personal attacks may be replaced by [Personal attack removed. ~~~~]. The poster should not have been left in the dark by a complete removal. By the way I think putting square brackets in there is asking for trouble if someone wants to link personal attack to the policy. Dmcq (talk) 13:42, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs is right. Editors have the right to remove personal attacks against themselves. WP:TPOC (Which overrides the reference desk guidelines if there is a conflict -- see WP:LOCALCON) does not place any limits on who can remove a personal attack. That being said, what is allowed is not always what is wise. It is nearly impossible to be unbiased in that situation and it is really easy to confuse strong disagreement with personal attacks when they are pointed at you, so wisdom dictates letting someone else make that decision. But that's just my advice. The actual rule is still "If the change to another editor's comment is specifically listed at WP:TPOC it is allowed, otherwise it is forbidden". --Guy Macon (talk) 14:59, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, he didn't change the IP/OP's comment, he simply zapped it, yes? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:16, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

"The basic rule—with some specific exceptions outlined below—is that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission." -- WP:TPOC (Emphasis added) --Guy Macon (talk) 16:23, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

You don't need "permission" from an obvious troll to get rid of their garbage. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:28, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

This is true, but the boy who cried wolf also didn't need permission to get the villager's help in dealing with wolves. After uncountable number of bad, inappropriate removals and hattings, people stop trusting Medeis's judgement when it comes to hatting or deleting material. That she gets one right after uncountable numbers of wrong ones is why we're having this discussion. Even a blind dog hits the tree once in a while. Had Medeis not had a reputation for bad closures, we wouldn't be here discussing this. THAT is the lesson to take from this. --Jayron32 18:14, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

The politics of this situation (I barely come to the ref desk enough to notice it/REALLY understand what's happened) are precisely why I only made mention of the actions and not the editors. To me, I also wasn't sure how much I considered the action a personal attack... but I tend to take things from a really patient standpoint (not to mention that in the past I've missed obvious things like people threatening me IRL here), so I didn't question it because of that, either (especially since the comment really did not add any information, either). - Purplewowies (talk) 20:10, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

What to do?

According to some theorists on this page, this goofy edit should be allowed to stand (because it was posted by a poor li'l innocent IP), and the registered users who've zapped it should be reprimanded. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:19, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Can you find a valid reason for deleting that in WP:TPOC? I sure can. This "theorist" is just asking you to follow WP:TPOC and refrain from deletions that WP:TPOC doesn't allow. Examples of things that it does allow are irrelevant. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:59, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Please cite the specific part of WP:TPOC that the poster violated. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

"Removing harmful posts, including ... trolling and vandalism."

Now it is your turn. Please cite the specific part of WP:TPOC that someone who posts a good-faith non-harmful medical question violated. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Questions asking for medical or legal advice are subject to removal. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:37, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I just went to WP:TPG (Which WP:TPOC is a section of) and searched for the word "medical". that word isn't in that document. So again I ask you, please cite the specific part of WP:TPOC that allows removal of a good-faith, non-harmful medical question. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

These guidelines, while not linked from TPOC, have been in place for at least 7+ years explaining how to handle medical advice. The fact that it isn't linked from TPOC does not mean it has not existed as a consensus document for all that time. The page, however, was a split from an earlier page which had roughly the same content, so probably since 2006 or so the removal of medical advice at the reference desks has been standard practice. It's going to take more than "It doesn't exist on this one page I want it to, so it hasn't been policy/guidelines for all that time."--Jayron32 17:19, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Claim_that_talk_page_guidelines_override_reference_desk_ones is coming to the conclusion that the reference desk guideline takes precedence over the talk page guidelines for reference desk matters so all the business about TPOC isn't all that relevant. However there does seem to be a desire that things like that be hatted rather than removed. One person is even adamant they should just have an archive marker around them, as if any nutter would take ta blind bit of notice of that on these desks. Dmcq (talk) 17:26, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Nicely put. My suggestion to archive the sections without hatting them is to provide clear visibility as to why they've been archived, with an archiving closure comment. Too many times discussions are just hatted (or removed) with no explanation at all. How is anyone supposed to learn anything from that? (P.S. Most of the nutters are those who "answer" the questions, or more likely, answer a question they think they know the answer to which may or may not relate to the original question in any way, shape or form...) The Rambling Man (talk) 18:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) is coming to the conclusion that the reference desk guideline takes precedence over the talk page guidelines? That's an interesting conclusion, seeing as there are a whopping one oppose and two support !votes so far. Yes, there has been a local consensus for many years, but WP:LOCALCON is quite specific: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale". If you want the reference desk guideline to takes precedence over the talk page guidelines, you have to change WP:LOCALCON first. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Part B of "Proposal A re Ref Desk and talk page guidelines" gives primacy to the reference desk guideline in dealing with the reference desk. Two supports and oner oppose (you). "Proposal B Declare Ref Desk to be a rootin' tootin' talk page" (basically what you say) Two disagrees. So 4 against you and just yourself for.

As to WP:LOCALCON it says "Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community.". There is no local consensus for the official guidelines. All guidelines have consensus on a wider scale. WP:POLCON is the appropriate policy about disagreements in policies and guidelines. Dmcq (talk) 22:30, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Talk page guidelines versus reference page ones

I have raised the problem about talk page guidelines versus reference desk ones at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Claim_that_talk_page_guidelines_override_reference_desk_ones. Dmcq (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

And by the way the reference desk guidelines do not say things can be silently deleted either, just replaced by something saying why the legal or medical question or personal attack were removed. Dmcq (talk) 00:25, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

talk, you have been around long enough to know that it isn't helpful to purposely split a discussion across talk pages. Please keep the discussion centralized in one place -- the place that you yourself chose. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:03, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

The discussion there is not about that unless you are now explicitly saying the reference desk guideline says one can silently removed queries and answers However the discussion was inspired by your sticking in your TPOC business again in the section above which implied that. How about you just stop going around misquoting policy and guidelines? Dmcq (talk) 10:40, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

How about you stop accusing me of misquoting policy and guidelines when I have done no such thing? As to your other comments, no, I am NOT going to split a discussion across talk pages, and I advise others here to avoid replies that do so as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

question re: a recent one

@Medeis: - Where on WP:ATTACK does it say to close this? I cannot see anything like that. Nor do I see a personal attack. Looks like the user is asking about how to go about giving a magazine a piece of his/her mind, which is a valid question. Otherwise you could interpret the post as "why would this not have mentioned these things." Either way, no hat. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  23:23, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I am curious, Rhododendrites, what you would think if I went to the reference desk to ask people how best to let you know (actual name and personal contact information deleted) that you have made a mistake as a professional ethicist in showing no concern for this private person under the policies of WP:BLP and WP:ATTACK? Would I be justified in stating as fact that you have made a mistake? Inviting others to take action over it off wiki? This is wrong on the grounds of at least three policies. As for the thread, the objectively answerable questions are still in place. No one has "censored" anything. Nothing was deleted, just hidden from searchable view. μηδείς (talk) 23:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The more of these I see, the more I am convinced that Medeis has decided ahead of time that there is a quota of questions that must be hatted every day, and then comes up with rationales for doing so ex post facto. Seriously Medeis. We have been saying for years. STOP. CLOSING. QUESTIONS. Leave it to someone else to do so. If you don't like a question, Medeis, don't answer it. But your judgement is fantastically flawed. Occasionally, once in a while, you get one right, but your false-positive rate on these is abysmal to the point of silliness. Just stop. --Jayron32 23:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Jayron. StuRat (talk) 00:52, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I also agree. Medeis needs to stop the disruptive behavior. 128.199.254.146 (talk) 01:10, 2 April 2014 (UTC)