Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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Abuse of speedy deletion

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

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

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

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

Agree. Dpbsmith (talk) 03:05, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

04:51, 3 Dec 2004 Mikkalai deleted Paul Paquette (verifiable hoax by repeated hoaxer)

If the anon is in fact posting fake material, it's no abuse of speedy deletion. The article claimed he was an actor and musician, which are not supported by reputable guides to such people. The intentional posting of fraudulent material is vandalism and a candidate for speedy deletion. I defer to Mikkalai's judgment on whether this person is a repeat offender.

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

The point isn't whether they should be deleted or not, the point is that they are not candidates for speedy deletion under the current policy. If you want to argue the policy needs changing, fine. But blatantly ignoring the policy isn't going to get us anywhere in the long run. --fvw *† 05:23, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Pure vandalism is a candidate for speedy deletion. The intentional posting of false material is a form of vandalism, and is quite frankly the single worst form of vandalism there is.

As for French Absolutism, it opened with:

You may ask why such a title has come into the Wikipedia Library. Well I say to you it because I need to promote myself.

I am single.

I am French.

And I am hot.

And with all these fine attributes I have yet to fine a woman who favors me.

That's either a newbie test or vandalism, take your pick. It's not worth wasting time over. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:43, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think abuse is far too strong a word. It's just admins interpretting the speedy deletion criteria more liberally than you do. Admins who act like this are the only thing stopping vfd collapsing under its own weight, and as such I find it a bit difficult to be too harsh on them. So long as they don't delete articles that blatantly fall outside the criteria, they're actually doing wikipedia a service, not violating policy. Shane King 05:47, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Agree with Shane King. Speedy deletion rules can be interpreted somewhat differently by different admins. From what I can see in the Deletion log copy above, i would have considered most of them borderline, and have no problem with them being deleted. -- Chris 73 Talk 06:19, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Dittoed. Johnleemk | Talk 08:58, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Fvw. I don't think admins "misinterpret" the criteria. I think they stretch them to fit their own opinions when they think they can get away with it. The speedy deletion cases are pretty clear. I entirely disagree with Shane. VfD is not "collapsing under its own weight". It would be in far better shape if deletionists stopped trolling it by listing schools and "fancruft" and worked to create consensus on the broader issues connected with those subjects. I think we should censure the admins who indulge in unilateralist behaviour and not encourage it. Admins should not be encouraged to work off their own initiative or to invent policy on the fly. Dr Zen 07:02, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Proposed method of dealing with schools: name standard

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

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

Sounds good to me. If we only have one article on a school with a certain name, the renaming shouldn't be necessary, but a standardized way of dealing witht he shared names that do come would help matters. Factitious 05:55, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

How about schools in other countries? Is it not also true that people will want to make pages on their schools in other English-speaking countries? --Smoddy 12:07, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I'd say we could put the city, province (if applicable), and country (for example: (Winnipeg, MB, Canada) or (London, England)). This standard could even be used for American schools, in the interest of fairness (making the above example William Howard Taft High School (Woodland Hills, CA, USA)) --HBK 16:41, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

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

I would say that in that case there is no question, but do see the recent controversy over Wesleyan University: this is by no means a universally accepted approach. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:49, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

The general rule for disambiguation is to have the shortest possible name that is unambiguous. We don't need descriptive information in title. Thus William Howard Taft High School (Woodland Hills) is better (unless of course there is another Taft H.S. in another Woodland Hills.) The disambiguation page can contain the state and other information. - SimonP 18:13, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

The American standard of two letters for the state after the town/city name is, to me and many other non-Americans, rather ugly. SimonP suggests the best method. violet/riga (t) 01:02, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

- Aesthetic judgement noted. So what? Regardless, "Woodland Hills" by itself is insufficient information, since there are several of them; should editors creating an article be required to go check to make sure there are no other Taft High Schools in places called Woodland Hills? Or wouldn't it be simpler to have the standard be unambiguous from the outset? --jpgordon ∇∆∇∆ 19:08, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pre-emptive disambiguation is in general discouraged and I would not support a proposal to require including disambiguating details by default. What would be helpful is to have guidelines for how to disambiguate schools when it is needed. I also very much dislike using two-letter postal codes as disambiguators (and I'm an American), as they are meaningless (or even confusing) to people unfamiliar with the system (e.g., someone recently commented elsewhere that they thought MN was Maine). First step would be to include the city or school district name. In the rare cases where there are two cities with the same name having schools with the same name (and that someone has created articles for them on Wikipedia and they survive VfD), then they can be further disambiguated by adding the state or province or country name as needed. So, William Howard Taft High School (Woodland Hills) is just fine until there is a need to further disambiguate, and in that case, I'd favor [[William Howard Taft High School (Woodland Hills, California). older≠wiser 19:37, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Using the full name for a state seems fine to me. In this case, ambiguities are almost certain, but disambiguating only when necessary isn't insane either. But let's face it, many school names will need disambiguation instantaneously. There are probably as many "Robert E. Lee High School"s as there are Southern towns, and various other famous people (Thomas Edison, Thomas Jefferson, etc.) probably have over 10,000 high schools named after each of them. Dwheeler 03:36, 2004 Dec 19 (UTC)

PDFs

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

I imagine that it is rarely appropriate, but might occasionally be. Can you provide an example of where this user has done this? -- Jmabel | Talk 22:10, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

For example: Image:Universal_Convective_Pulse_Theory_S.pdf and Image:Required Legal Forms And Aftercare Sheets.pdf. See those pages for wher they are linked in articles, and Rafti's contribs for more. At least one of the opriginal research, I believe, but for the rest I don't know. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 01:15, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would hope people would not upload PDFs/SWFs/etc. Perhaps we should make an official policy to this effect? --Improv 15:26, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PDFs are appropriate and useful for WikiReaders (especially if we get any of them "done"), and other materials could be useful as source files to our pngs (svg, pdf, photoshop, etc). I therefore think we should reactivate some formats and keep others open. ✏ Sverdrup 20:12, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd prefer alternatives where reasonable, but I can imagine that they'd sometimes be better than the alternatives. PDFs scale well, are supported on essentially all OSs, there are two main open source implementations (for those who prefer OSS), and there's a publicly-available spec describing the format. It's not a publicly-controlled standard, but it's certainly possible to do worse. Ideally it should be in "archival PDF" format, whenever that finally gets standardized; I believe that's a format that's intended for libraries etc. who need their material to last for centuries. Dwheeler 23:19, 2004 Dec 17 (UTC)

Medical ethics: mention a pathology's victims?

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

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

In my opinion, it would be better to include the description (and link) of the medical problem to the article about the person unless they are particulary famous or notorious precedents on the treatment or something like that - Skysmith 09:37, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How to reference a foreign-language wikipedia article

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

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

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

...which shows as:

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

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

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

...which shows as:

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

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

I think the right choice is to use the http form and the description "article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia encyclopedia - to make it clear that this article may not be in a Wikipedia. I think the interlanguage links should only be used in discussion pages and automatic inter-language links. If this is not policy, it should be. JesseW 05:49, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Articles on first names

Do we want articles on common first names? Where should the disambiguation pages for first names go? Are hybrid disambiguation articles ok? Comments welcome at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. Rmhermen 21:26, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

I would like articles like that, describing how names in different languages are similar, and the origins of names. This is kind of a middle-ground between dictionary and encylopedia, but since it would have historical context, I'd say that puts it in encyclopedic territory. What do you mean about disambiguation for first names? --Golbez 22:31, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see why we are trying to make a special case out of first names. Looking at the example of William it is clearly an encyclopedia article. The confusion seems to be that people have used firstname articles as disambigs when in fact they really should be articles. Wikipedia is for the end user, not for the convience of editors. Stbalbach 04:10, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

William is not an encyclopedia article, it is just a very good dict. def. Much of its present content should be moved to Wiktionary, and the rest made more like John. - SimonP 05:44, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

William is not an encyclopedia article .. Based on what criteria? What if I wanted to jazz up the article to featured article status?
made more like John .. IMO the John article is confusing. Editors put info across 2 places, it is not clear where to put new info (as evidenced by the current article) -- it is neither a disambiguation page, or a real article.

I still don't see why we make special exceptions for names. Just use name(disambiguation) its very clear and follows the same procedure as everything else. Stbalbach 03:08, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For older discussion on this, see VFD/Precedents#Are_all_first_names_valid_topics_for_articles --Key45 00:21, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

External link policy

What is the policy for external links? For example, what if a linked site is purely vicious invective. I am thinking of the Counterpunch link on Tom Lantos. It seems perfectly reasonable to summarize those criticisms raised in this link which are legitimate in the body of the article along with a summary of what Congressman Lantos has accomplished, but I am uncomfortable with a stub which links to an article that is nothing more than a vicious attack.

In this particular case, I don't think a blind reference like this is much use to anyone. On the other hand, the Counterpunch article contains a lot of useful leads for further research on Lantos. I'd usually be inclined either to just put something like this on the talk page or to be overt in our article about the accusations in the Counterpunch article. Putting the link in the body of the article with no indication that it is an attack piece seems wrong to me. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:39, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Linking to death videos

An issue has arisen at Kenneth Bigley, the British hostage in Iraq who was beheaded, about whether it's appropriate to provide links to the video showing his death. I feel it's not appropriate (a) because I regard it as the worst kind of pornography, (b) because the killers wanted it to be shown widely and we shouldn't assist them, and (c) one of the websites hosting it apparently shows bestiality videos, so we'd be helping readers to find them too. Is there a Wikipedia policy that covers this, or has a consensus been reached about it? Slim 06:09, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

(a) Wikipedia isn't using this video as an example of pornography (who the hell gets their jollies from this kind of thing anyway?); we shouldn't remove a link simply because 0.01% of readers might find it titillating. (b) Why should Wikipedia take a side either way? (c) As unpleasant as bestiality might seem to you or I, I'm also pretty uncomfortable with the idea of Wikipedia boycotting links to one part of a site because some people disagree with the sexual practices depicted in another part. Why should Wikipedia policy take a moral stand against bestiality? — Matt Crypto 09:02, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Matt--I generally agree with your points in principle, but a) I don't think Slim was using the term "pornography" to mean sexual content, but rather m-w.com's third def "the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction <the pornography of violence>", and b) in this particular case, of the three links provided in the article, the first (the only one linked) gets 'account terminated due to TOS violations', the second gets a 'domain cannot be found' error, and the third (after much navigation) shows a three-minute video, starting with Bigley pleading for his life, then a LONG rant that English-only speakers can't understand, then the "beheading" happens off camera. What's the point? 3:11 of my life wasted, with nothing gained--didn't learn anything, didn't see anything of note, didn't hear anything informative. Wikipedia shouldn't censor or take sides, but we shouldn't provide links that indirectly take people to things of no value. Niteowlneils 18:32, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Automated posting on user talk pages

I started a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Spam about the use of bots to mass-post on user talk pages. My hope is that it can result in a policy one way or the other. PRiis 01:21, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sound sample fair use for language article?

(Copied from Wikipedia talk:Fair use since this may be a better place to ask...) I've been working on fleshing out the article on the Samogitian language, and I would like to include a recorded example of the spoken language. I have some (copyrighted) folklore recordings of native speakers singing, telling stories, etc. If I take a short (~15 seconds) excerpt of one story and credit it appropriately, is this fair use? The key, I think, is that the content of the story is not important to the article. --Theodore Kloba 20:20, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

I think that should be very OK. Maurreen 03:58, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've included it in the article under Audio sample. What do you think of my method of crediting it? Is there a better way? When linking as [[Media:Example.ogg]], the link just plays the sample. The only way I could link to the file's credits was by linking as [[Image:Example.ogg]]. --Theodore Kloba 22:23, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

The latter is better, if you're that concerned. Placing image tags on an article is bad form. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 06:56, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

Chronovisor - are such articles encyclopedic?

Browsing the Category:Time I stumbled upon this little article - Chronovisor. It made me think of what is the wikipedian standard on inclusion of articles on alleged phenomena/devices/etc.

It's clear that an article on a fictional object such as One Ring is warranted and generally non-controversial, unless it's really on some obscure item (the 5th Ring of Dwarves), when it becomes an example of fancruft.

Articles on real objects that are subject of unfounded claims such as Shroud of Turin are also warranted, especially when a large number of people have some beliefs (no matter how crazy) about these.

It's also clear that even articles on alleged (but not real) phenomena such as Bermuda Triangle are warranted when they have a large amount of influence on culture, society, even science.

But what about articles about trivial items such as this Chronovisor? Obviously, it could not work, almost surely it never even existed (although if it did, it would be very interesting evidence of idiocy of Catholic scientists) and it's not like it even has a strong following of conspiracy theorists.

What do you think? Paranoid 21:22, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Someone might imaginably look up the term, so a debunking article seems in order. The present one is a bit understated in this respect. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:26, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Politically motivated entry(ies?) in Russian

I happened to stumble upon Russian entry on "Latvia" (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%8F).

It is a short entry, providing with relatively little information and, unlike English version, contains only one additional link, that is "Latvian Legionaries of Waffen SS" http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D1%88%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%8B_Waffen_SS

No doubt that even Germany between 1933 and 1945, if taken neutrally, had something else in addition to Hitler, nazies, ss, gestapo etc, worth mentioning would for examle be victims, devastation, war refugees etc, not even mentioning a usual eastern-european country of the year 2004, not fighting in World War II anymore.

The problem seems to be that there's political argument between modern Russian leadership, in particular Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Latvia over the history and interpretation of history of Latvia in 2 World War. This is why Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued its official opinion on those Latvian-related units which fought with the Germans against Soviet Union in form of waffen ss, which has similarity of attitude with the entry in question. (http://www.ln.mid.ru/Bl.nsf/arh/ACC381543BF4F1D7C3256E5B003561F1?OpenDocument).

I would like to draw attention to the estimates of international organizations such as Freedom House and Reporteurs sans frontiers who, in their annual estmates, in recent years gave Russian media very low index, putting it essentially close to the level of media of some of worst dictatorships, thus siting absence of media freedom. Together with the fact that official Kremlin and its security services have launched a controlled media campaign against Latvia, this implies that Russian sources-based information in Wikipedia's Russian page on Latvia, emphasizing "latvian waffen ss" could be politically motivated and one-sided. As now, it seems to be based on USSR sources and no mentioning of the opinion of western countries (or Latvia) is provided. For example, US Commission of Refugees issued an opinion in 1950s that baltic waffen ss members, who, in fact, fought against USSR in front combat units, cannot be considered "criminal" or nazies, therefore undermining any special meaning that the Russians attach to artifitial entry on "latvian waffen ss units". At least such an entry should have a note that the opinion given is not shared in Lavia.

I think, while it largely corresponds to the believes of most of population of modern Russia, as one-sided and propaganda-influenced information, it should not be part of Wikipedia.

Please communicate this to the persons responsible for management,

Best Regards

Raul Nugis

Estonia

PS: I hope it is understood that as though now it is justified to consider Wikipedia to large extent as a product of information stored elsewhere, in future, it could be considered as actually souce of information in itself. That's why, if somebody puts his or her distorted or one-sided information in Wikipedia, later, provided this person is dishonest or disoriented, he or she can further facilitate his or her claims citing Wikipedia's entries and using Wikipedia's authority and trust of its users, which it will perhaps have.

The Russian Wikipedia runs largely separately from the English Wikipedia. Complaining to us isn't likely to have much effect. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:39, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's also one of the few major ones not interwiki'd from Wikipedia:Village Pump. I'll call Drbug's attention to this. Drbug, could you please indicate here when you've seen this, and maybe start a Russian equivalent of the Village Pump, or just provide the interwiki link on Wikipedia:Village Pump if there already is one? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:12, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Whoever deletes this image please explain

File:Beef noodle soup food stand.jpg

The picture is reverted but I still do not see any explaination. -- Toytoy 14:42, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Whoever deletes this image please explain. I altered much about this image that I can easily claim fair use or derivated work. The useful information in this picture is ALL ADDED BY ME. The background is only A BACKGROUND. -- Toytoy 12:35, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

This picture was published in the Republic of China. According to the Article 65 of the Copyright Act of ROC, my alteration of it is very likely a justifiable case of fair use. And as the derivative work's creator, I can claim copyright of this brand new picture. The Article 65 ( http://db.lawbank.com.tw/eng/FLAW/FLAWDAT10.asp?lsid=FL011264 ) reads:

Article 65

Fair use of a work shall not constitute infringement on economic rights in the work.

In determining whether the exploitation of a work complies with the provisions of Articles 44 through 63, or other conditions of fair use, all circumstances shall be taken into account, and in particular the following facts shall be noted as the basis for determination:

The purposes and nature of the exploitation, including whether such exploitation is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.
The nature of the work.
The amount and substantiality of the portion exploited in relation to the work as a whole.
Effect of the exploitation on the work's current and potential market value.

Where the copyright owner organization and the exploiter organization have formed an agreement on the scope of the fair use of a work, it may be taken as reference in the determination referred to in the preceding paragraph.

In the course of forming an agreement referred to in the preceding paragraph, advice may be sought from the specialized agency in charge of copyright matters.

Revert my image. -- Toytoy 12:58, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

In fact, the four factors are exact replica of the 17 U.S.C. § 107 which reads:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

In the making of this image, I was transforming an obscure and nearly meaningless low-resolution image into a meaningful and useful illustration of three different kinds of beef-related Chinese food items. I can easily stand in a court of law and win. -- Toytoy 13:20, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

It's a derived work, so the original copyright still applies. Original copyright statement is "Contents may be free reproduced outside Taiwan; please credit Travel in Taiwan." Geographical limitation of free distribution is not acceptable, and the fair use claim is weak. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:42, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Inappropriate capitalisation

Is it Wikipedia policy to capitalise headwords in the body of articles as a matter of course? For example, the names of animals often seem to have initial capitals in Wikipedia where they would not normally.

I have just removed an initial capital from the entry for "cyclist", which began:

A Cyclist is...

The capital "C" is completely unnecessary here.

I ask because I often refer to Wikipedia when contributing to Wiktionary, and it is irritating not to be able to know whether a capitalised word is actually a proper noun or really just a common noun.

In my opinion, capitals should only be used in Wikipedia where appropriate, that is, at the beginning of sentences and in proper nouns.

Thanks for any useful feedback.

— Paul G 15:17, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Correct. Animals are the exception, however; it has for some reason been decided that their names should have initial capitals. I disagree with this, but it's at least consistent within that set of articles. Fredrik | talk 16:03, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Adding donation appeals to pages

I've noticed that an anonymous user has added donation appeals to the Bobbie Jo Stinnett page and the Bobbie Jo Stinnett/Temp page. Is there an official policy on things like this? Should they be removed or just copyedited. Evil Monkey → Talk 20:08, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Certainly that can be considered advertising. Fredrik | talk 20:15, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've removed it. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:17, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Publishing contact details in articles

Does Wikipedia have a policy on whether/when it's acceptable to post somebody's contact details in an article?

I ask because an anon recently added to the William Schnoebelen article "You can contact him via e-mail at [address]." The address given does appear in two places on the web, but it's not clear that Schnoebelen intends it to be used as a general public contact address (his site offers a different contact address). Further, Schnoebelen is a very controversial figure; posting the guy's email address and encouraging people to contact him would seem to invite abusive behaviour, IMHO. Is there a standard policy on this sort of thing? --Calair 23:21, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No firm policy, but a strong pattern of not doing this. If he has an official site, we should link to that. If it has contact info, then it's there at one remove. If he lacks an official site with contact info, then he probably doesn't want to publish his contact info. This gets down to a reasonable respect for this kind of privacy even for the notable and notorious. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:05, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Censorship and wikipedia

I understand that by introducing this topic yet again (not by me, but as a topic) that I am pouring salt on a few open sores, but I feel I must find a place to discuss it. Wikipedia has a problem in several articles concerning the inclusion of nude, obscene, or vulgar images. An example is Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse where there is actually a censored version of the article. However, at this location there is an attempt to delete the censored article. Shouldn't Wikipedia attempt to protect users who want to use its resources but have moral or ethical sensibilities to such material? For example, Nude celebrities on the internet actually contains links to pornographic websites. Is this really necessary? There are of course, many more examples (such as male circumcision, which carries no warning label). At the very least, I propose that pages with possibly offensive pictures contain warnings at the top, as a matter of Wikipedia policy. I am not advocating their complete censorship (although it might be best), but shouldn't we make our materials available to everyone? What about underage users (like myself, I'm 17) and the legal aspects of such actions. More importantly, what about school children? Sexuality is a common topic of research among teens, do we want them to come across obscene images as well as objective information? I'd like other user's opinions on this please.--naryathegreat 04:52, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the concern expressed by naryathegreat. I would like to recommend wikipedia to the librarian in my son's school (he is in fifth grade, and found some of the articles on History of Greece very useful for his research on the origin of democracy) but I hesitate for exactly that reason. Morris 05:40, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

Might I direct you both to the discussion on clitoris (be warned that the page carries a graphic picture), which has continued for some time? Most editors are of the belief that any means of protecting those who might be offended or children from graphic images, including specific warnings, would be censorship, and they disapprove of it, but some are in favour of a more inclusive attitude. Narya, you'll note that the hardline editors believe that by visiting male circumcision you should expect to see a picture and consequently need not be warned.Dr Zen 05:45, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This comes back to question of defining obscene and objectionable. Now I know that your questions are about pictures but lets look at articles for a moment. I note that you have written some articles about WWII. Now there are some people out there who would find it obscene to talk about a period of human history where people were slaughtered. Should we put a warning at the top of the Holocaust article? How about the Battle of the Somme? Evil Monkey → Talk 06:32, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC). PS A somewhat similar discussion happened over having an article about Japanese video games on the front page

You are just coming up with an excuse for irrational behavior. We all have about the same guidelines concerning what is "obscene". You can say that you don't want people to take it that far, but what you really mean is that you have no reasonable objection to the proposal. The articles on World War II don't have graphic pictures or links to pornographic websites either (at least, the ones I've been on).--User:naryathegreat (t) 21:39, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

Several articles on WW2 do have graphic pictures, disturbing descriptions of things (when I was younger, and first heard about some of the things done in the Holocaust, I had nightmares for weeks), and other content that sensitive people might have issues with. I see no reason to single out something tittilating when other topics that might disturb are retained. It all should be kept. Note, however, that there is (or was?) a proposal to implement PICS-sensitivity (and/or other related automatic content-management) in Mediawiki, so if your browser supports that, you wouldn't see it but the rest of us who don't have it set would. This seems like a decent way to go. Please see here for more details. --Improv 22:48, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We're publishing an encyclopedia, not a television program, not a school textbook and not a treatise on morality. If a photograph adds something to an article, it should be present. If not, it should not be. If it is present and may likely cause offence to some people then it should be well within expectations. So an article labelled "Carrot" should not contain pictures of disturbing things that are not connected with carrots, whereas someone reading an article labelled "Suicide bomber" could reasonably expect to find pictures of macerated people, given the subject matter. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:42, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The articles on World War II don't have graphic pictures: Image:Mass Grave Bergen Belsen May 1945.jpg. Okay not exactly on World War II but my point is that everyone jumps up and down when we see pictures of the 'naughty bits' (something that we all have a see on and daily basis) but would you be willing to support a policy that only 18 year olds could see this picture. Evil Monkey → Talk 04:08, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

Train station articles?

I was fixing up some of the articles on the "orphans" page. I happened to notice that there is this category [[Category:7-Flushing Train stations]] with 22 short articles, each for a station on one line of the New York City subway system. The first thing I notice is that many don't bother to mention that the stations are in New York City (I happen to know, as I live here), some of them don't actually mention that they are about train stations, although one might infer that from the mention of tracks. (The articles are all written from the point of view of a New York resident, who knows where Queens is, but just needs to know the exact layout of a subway station). Should they be fixed up (with some boilerplate, about "this is a station in New York City's Public Transit...) or should they all be listed on the VFD page as being beyond any appropriate level of detail, or nothing? Morris 05:36, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

Personally I feel that train stations are not particularly encyclopaedic subjects, but I accept that many either disagree or don't care, and I'm not that bothered. If you want to do so, fixing all the articles with a boilerplate of your own making would be a great service. Be bold! List them for deletion only if you are convinced they should go though, because there are lots of similar articles about other stations.Dr Zen 05:47, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As lord protector of the 108 Washington Metro subway articles, I say that train stations, even subway stations, are useful articles. Maybe check out some of the articles linked off List of Washington Metro stations for some ideas. --Golbez 07:14, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

I actually share the philosophy of inclusionism (and would never imagine bothering articles which have a lord protector (:-)). I think that I will sometime try to improve the New York Subway articles to the (approximate) level of quality of the Washington articles. Morris 13:49, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

Heh. :) Well, some time ago someone left me a note on my talk page, alarmed that a train station article had been successfully VfD'd, so I look out for those now. And I simply liked being called lord protector, since those make up a full 1/8 of my watch list. :) My notion (and keep in mind, these were the first articles I made, so I was still a newbie here) was to kind of create a wiki train system, as you can see with the tables at the bottom of each article; get to Union Street, click on to the Amtrak link, follow Amtrak stations up to New York, then pop out there to read New York related articles. More suited for WikiTravel? Maybe. But I'm not screwing with anyone's namespace. :) --Golbez 19:06, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

That's a nice idea.Dr Zen 03:06, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Undeleting selected revisions

crossposted to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
Sysops now have the ability to undelete selected revisions of a deleted article. Please see Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops for explanation of this feature (what I've figured out by playing with it) and Wikipedia talk:Undeletion policy for some questions on its use. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 13:18, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User pages without users

What's policy on pages in the User: namespace that don't have a corresponding user? Are these speedyable, or painfully-slow-VfDable, or what?

The specific case I have in mind is User:Gabriel Kent, which seems to have been created shortly after Gabriel Kent went through VfD (discussion here). I rather suspect it's identical to the deleted page, though of course I can't be sure since I can't see it. While I don't think the resume's any more appropriate in userspace than WP proper (let alone in non-user userspace), I wouldn't bother to bring it up except that anons have been redirecting Gabriel Kent there. —Korath ^会話 00:59, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I called it a CSD under the "recreation of deleted content" bit. As there was no user, it wasn't a user page. It was just in the user namespace. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:59, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Probably not the intent of the policy, but yes, it is a valid reading of the policy. It doesn't address the bigger issue though, I often see anons create pages in User: without the associated user (like this one). I wouldn't mind seeing them becoming speediable actually, it'll prevent crud buildup (usually these pages are written (badly) once and then forgotten about unlike real user pages) and avoid new users being confused by there already being a user page for their fresh account. --fvw * 18:01, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

New naming convention on government departments and so on.

Perhaps as dry as you could possibly get (I'm sure the taxonomic geeks might take issue with that ;)), but something I'm hoping to nail down a decent consensus on. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government departments and ministers). Fire/ignore away. -- The Tom 04:34, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Categories and languages on the French Wikipedia

Hello. I've had this doubt for quite a while now, and this is the best way I could find to discuss about it. It does concern the French Wikipedia, I know, but since I'm not a member from that version, and since I do not speak French either, perhaps I could talk about this here.

On the few times I've been to the French Wikipedia, I noticed their policy on dealing with categories and languages on articles is to add their tags in the beginning of the page. While I'm not aware of everything about styles regarding this and different Wikipedias, I do think that's a very bad habit. Adding those tags to the beginning of each article adds a good share of unnecessary spaces there, which, in my opinion, makes those pages look strange. That's why I always move those tags to the bottom in the English Wikipedia, and it looks like that's the style we've addopted here.

I Once edited an article on the French Wikipedia, moving languages and categories tags to the bottom of the page, among with other small edits. Well, that was promptly reverted by someone else, easy like that. That member labeled what I did as "vandalism" (yes, I understood that). I don't keep rancor or anything, but I'd just like to know why that happens, and if it really should be that way. Why they have such a preference. Wouldn't it be better if they just did it like we do? I'm not asking for the whole stuff to be changed (also because that would be damn hard to do, manually), though I do think it would be better to keep those tags at the bottom.

Anyhow, I'd just like to hear your opinion.

Thank you.--Kaonashi 19:20, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For my two penny's worth, I'd say what the French Wikipedia do is up to them. Whilst the difference may be a little annoying and confusing, it is not our place to dictate what they should do. The English Wikipedia, though it was the first, is in no way superior to any others. Perhaps it would be better for us if they put their tags at the bottom. Maybe it would be better for them if we put our tags at the top. I think we just have to have some leniency and allow for the differences - just like in real life (does Wikipedia count as real life?) Smoddy | Talk 20:16, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. However, I never stated we're superior, or that our standards should be everybody else's standards. I just wanted to understand why they do that, or most importantly, why my action was seen as vandalism. I am allowing differences. That's exactly what I did when I accepted my edit being reverted. I guess it's just a point of view, after all. To me that drops the article's aesthetics way down, but that's just my opinion. I created this discussion here because perhaps I was missing something on this. It's all I wanted to know.--Kaonashi 20:31, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Given the current functionality of the MediaWiki software (it still seems to be in 1.4), that seems nuts, as interwikis and cats add white space instead of being ignored. I assume some smarter handling these and other white space issues are in the pipeline somewhere, but I don't they're seen as a priority. (FWIW, from a bit of looking with Babelfish, they don't seem to have any placement preference documented for either interwikis or cats--the fr: equivalent to Wikipedia:How to edit a page (which recommends the bottom) is much shorter and doesn't say one way or the other. One interesting diff, is that they are sticking with the 'singular always' rules for cats, unlike en:) Niteowlneils 01:51, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia biases

I am not clear where this belongs, so I am reposting it from the Proposals page:

I think Wikipedia needs a general disclaimer on all Palestine/Israel-related issues, like The majority of the editors on Israel-Palestine issues have a strong bias and all readers are requested to make independent conclusions, cross-check information themselves and ~~best of all, avoid reading these pages for authoritative information~~ very importantly, not take offense at the presentation of historical facts on these pages. This will stop the more conscientious editors from stressing over every moronic agenda-based edit that mutates Wikipedia every few moments and focus on articles they can actually make progress on. -- Simonides 01:24, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Isn't this the policy for every Wikipedia page. Nobody around here claims that you should use Wikipedia for any primary research and only use it as a starting point. And you would probably need to add disclaimers to Abortion, MPAA, RIAA, SCO v Linux etc. Evil Monkey → Talk 01:42, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

This is a good idea, as almost every Israeli/Palestinian article seems to have a permanent NPOV warning. - SimonP 03:57, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Commas in between [person name] and 'Jr'

Can't find anything on the naming convention pages whether there should be a comma between a last name and 'Jr.' in the article/page title, and current usage/precedent doesn't seem to help much, EG Joseph Pulitzer Jr. but Ed Begley, Jr.; William Usery Jr. but Martin Luther King, Jr. (I'm assuming constructions like Whitney Moore Jr. Young were caused by scripts that (I assume) created Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics/Biographies Y.)

Anyone know if there's a preferred standard that I'm not finding? Any similar policies/guidelines to extrapolate from? Other comments or suggestions? Niteowlneils 01:51, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Removing copyvio notice question

The article on The Six Million Dollar Man contained a trivia item (which I did not contribute, I should note) which turned out to be a cut-and-paste of a trivia item from IMDb. Back in November someone placed a copyvio tag on the page. About 5 minutes later I spotted this and rewrote the trivia item on the temp page so that it was no longer a copyvio (I also made factual corrections since the original IMDb trivia item was erroneous anyway). It's my understanding the copyvio notice was to have been removed by an admin within a week, but it's been more than a month. Is there a penalty for going ahead and removing the copyvio notice and replacing the offending material so we can lose the ugly (and no longer necessary) copyvio notice in the middle of the article? Cheers 23skidoo 02:41, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It was apparently either not listed on the copyright problems page or was lost. Its listing was restored on December 12. I'll take care of it right now. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:57, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Um, now that I read the "rewritten" section, I see that the first (of 2) sentences is still almost identical to the original copied material. Yuck. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:00, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how, as the stuff regarding Lee Majors was part of an original addition I put in there. The fact the crash shown is real is not a copyvio as it is a well-known piece of trivia regarding the show. I just checked the IMDb and the trivia items are no longer identical. I rewrote it top to bottom. The first few words of the sentence are similar, that's all.23skidoo 04:50, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

privacy policy

I think Wikipedia should follow web standards and post a privacy policy link on its main page, that points to a page saying exactly what info Wikipedia is maintaining about users, and what it does with browser cookies. Obviously it keeps detailed records of edits. That's fine. What I'd like to know is more about ordinary browsing without editing. Specifically:

How long are access logs retained?
If a user is logged in (personal ID stored in a cookie), is that cookie included in the access logs, so the logs show what articles the person has been reading?
Who has access to the logs?
Can Wikipedia's maintainers state that they've never gotten any PATRIOT Act orders to reveal anyone's browsing history? (If they /have/ gotten such orders, they may not be allowed to say so, but if they haven't gotten such orders, they can say they haven't). So an answer like "no comment" can be interpreted as "yes".

Thanks.