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Proposal to remove the dictum prohibiting the linking of individual years from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

The issue of whether to wiki-link individual years (and year-related items, e.g. "18th century", "1980s," etc) has recently come to a head.

On the one hand, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) specifically prohibits linking individual years except in cases of "relevance."

On the other hand, it is nonetheless an enormously common practice which seems to have widespread support among editors.

Bobblewik (talk · contribs) has mass de-linked wikilinked years in literally thousands of articles over the past week or so [1], to the point where he has been blocked by an admin for running an unauthorized bot. [2]

Proponents of this effort claim that these efforts have consensus support. However, it seems plausible that "consensus support" in this case means consensus among the people who regularly read Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and related pages, which may or may not overlap significantly with the number of people who would otherwise have an opinion on this topic.

Thus I bring the question here, where it might be seen with more eyes.

I see no harm whatsoever in wikilinking individual years (and year-related items), regardless of their specific relevance to the article at hand. Quite the contrary, I feel that such links provide great exploratory benefit for those (like myself) who routinely click on them. I find such links edifying and educational, which seems to be a reasonable goal for an encyclopedia. Since the removal of such linking is being justified by a specific dictum in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) which prohibits such linking, I hereby propose that this prohibition be removed.

All the best.
Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 13:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hear hear. About time someone dealt with this (now, if only someone could mass rollback Bobblewik's contributions for the last month). Ambi 13:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think everyone agrees that linking dates when relevant or for date preference reasons is absolutely fine. So the issue is linking all dates. I believe that this is bad for a few reasons

Excessive amounts of blue links make the text more difficult to read.
The links are misleading. I know experienced editors don't think they are misleading, but people new to wikipedia often do, I know I did when I was new, and I have seen new users (normally IPs) remove date links and leave an edit summary along the lines of "Links were to wrong page" or similar.
Excessive links to largely irrelevent pages dilutes the overall quality of links in general, making it difficult to know when a link is to a directly relevant article

Thanks. (p.s. Bobblewiki was not using a bot) Martin 13:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I quite agree with Martin's comments. The year links are mostly irrelevant. If you want to explore Wikipedia, use the Random article link in the navigation box -- that allows you to wander through articles with about the same degree of relevance from one to the next as the year links. older≠wiser 14:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that linking all dates (except when they recur in the article) is actually fine and kind of useful. It helps provide even more information when one is on a date page and clicks "what links here" -- finding things to add in that way becomes pretty easy without any centralised effort, and even while overlinking makes things more difficult, I don't think that dates are typically packed together enough for that to be a factor for dates alone. --Improv 14:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Martin. 98% of the time, the only thing a year link does is clutter up an article and make it less readable. I think the style guide is correct, and if editors are ignoring it in favor of linking every occurrence of a year, we should work to undo it. Overwikilinking is a bad thing. We shouldn't encourage it. If we really want to wikilink every year, we need a technical solution that allows invisible links so that articles don't look hideously stupid when all words are linked. But until that happens, I strongly oppose this proposal. Nandesuka 14:51, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What qualifies as "overlinking" is very obviously a matter of personal aesthetic preference. No one is suggesting that every word be linked. A few people are suggesting that linking individual years does not qualify as "overlinking," and does not look "hideously stupid." Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 15:09, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Are you suggesting that all years be linked or only the first mention of a year? It seems that linking the first one is standard practice, and I'm surprised at the opposition. Sometimes people reapply the wikify tag if the years aren't linked. Wikify tags are sometimes even added specifically because a long list of years is unlinked. I don't click on the years and don't think they're very useful, though. I don't care much which way it is, but I think we should be consistent and not link and delink the years over and over again with different editors. I think that the delinking should stop until the issue is decided definitively. -- Kjkolb 15:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I personally adhere to the "link once, leave repeat instances in the same article unlinked" philosophy, but that's true for all of my links, not just years and year-related links. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 16:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, IMHO, all years could and should be linked on first mention. While I agree it's messy, in an article about 1899 - or something that took place in 1899 - to have "1899" wikilinked on every mention, I think leaving 1899 wikilinked at first, and not on subsequent mentions, looks good. It helps break apart and structure long blocks of texts somewhat, too, especially if there are hardly any wikilinks inside it. I do suppose it comes very much down to personal preference, though, but you've got my take on the situation. I'm very much in favour of getting rid of said dictum.--TVPR 16:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is a contention that date link clutter is harmful. If so, it is a very marginal harm. On the other hand they do provide an article with context, even if that is a very marginal benefit. On the whole, this seems like a wash to me and so whether or not to keep them should be left to the discretion of the article's contributors. As such, I would be happy to see the explicit "simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a strong reason for doing so" go away. This is especially true as it seems to be encouraging a campaign to systematically remove such links with little regard to whether an article's primary contributors find them useful. Dragons flight 15:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I largely agree with Martin, with some qualification. I think that there is more justification in linking to 1917 in an article than to 2004, even if neither link is directly relevant to the article. A link to an older date may be helpful simply to put the event into perspective. Also, the discussion at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) should probably point out that links to dates can be made more relevant by linking to a more narrow subset. For example, linking to [[2004 in music|2004]] in a discussion on an album released in that year makes more sense to me than simply bracketing the date. I think the problem is that a large number of editors routinely link all dates, including ones like [[January]], [[2003]] and every occurrence of a particular year in an article. That makes it questionable whether even links to single years are intentional or just due to some editor's misunderstanding of the function of wiki date formatting. Having said all that, I think that that the current language is a little too restrictive and I would change it as follows: "So unless there is ~~a special~~ some relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. This is an important point: simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a ~~strong~~ reason for doing so." -- DS1953 ^talk 16:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I support this proposal. In my experience, most dates are "high value" (especially where month and day are included). The first use of all years, decades, and centuries should be linked. The major problem is the "assisted" scripted "AutoWikiBrowser" program that "suggests" removing most of the dates. Folks assume (incorrectly) that the program is accurate and approve the edits without thinking. The program is broken. A recent instance didn't add any links for day mon year or month day, year (both were needed), but unlinked 1947 and 1967 (and many others) for Israel! That's Not Useful! --William Allen Simpson 16:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a debate about how it is done, please dont confuse the issue. And the program is not broken, it's not even specifically designed for this task as you seem to suggest. Martin 17:34, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I quite like this proposal, but I wonder if the paragraph could also be ammended to reiterate that date links should only be for the first time it shows in an article, and that these are entirely fine if relevent, and that they should ideally link to a subgroup of that date as mentioned earlier. LambaJan 19:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the mass-unlinking of dates in an uncoditional or nearly-unconditional manner is a good idea. Further, I support the idea of clarifying or relaxing the "prohibition" against wikilinking years. The Manual of Style should basically say that not all years need to be linked, but some should because stuff happened then. The details of judgment should be left up to article editors. Demi ^T/_C 19:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that all dates should be links. Many times if you do click, you get totally irrelevent stuff. I'm particularly thinking about a biography where we're talking about how the person was elected on this date in 2002, and did something else in 2003, and ... It really (in my view) clutters things up to have all of the years in blue. I don't object to links if the editor considers them relevent, but the current policy sounds right to me. Morris 19:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the proposal. — Dan | talk 20:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I fully support this proposal, and also, I have yet to see a proper argument for how having wikilinked dates make the page more difficult to read. Could someone who feels this way demonstrate how exactly it makes the page harder to read? Talrias (t | e | c) 20:33, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One example of an article with too much markup is John Doar (US government official involved in civil rights momement). I know that this is a matter of opinion, but I agree with Nandesuka (below); a lot of the wiki links in that article (including the dates) do not lead the reader to anything related. Morris 22:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not harder to read, but a little distracting. Personally, I don't like wikilinking years, but I've always done as it seems everyone else does :-). I think that makes me neutral...! Dan100 (Talk) 20:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd describe it as: a link is an implicit suggestion that the linked page is relevant to what you're reading in more than just a tangential way. Part of editing is deciding what should not be included, as well as decided what should be. Nandesuka 21:44, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly oppose this proposal. I agree with most of martian's comments above, and i intend to continue removing such links. I also strongly suppor the creation of an alternate form of wiki-markup for date preferences, so that all dates could be unliked, except for the very few where a link is actually relevant. DES ^(talk) 21:56, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can you clarify your declaration to "continue removing such links?" This seems to be an exceptionally "in your face" statement. Surely there is no harm done in waiting a week or two for this discussion to shake itself out? The wikilinked years will still be there should the consensus clearly indicate that wikilinked years must go. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 12:35, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support. -- User:Docu

Oppose change to MoS. Linking relevant dates is very desirable; linking all dates is unnecessary and could be considered as introduction of non-encyclopedic content (related to the notion of "lists of otherwise unrelated items"). User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 18:29, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think the popular misconception that date linking is essential is an unintended consequence of the date preferences mechanism. We pay a high price for date preferences and very little benefit. We are not eliminating ambiguity because almost all date formats used by editors are unambiguous (e.g. December 25 and 25 December). Furthermore, the date preferences mechanism does not operate for a lot of readers i.e. those without an account, and those with an account but no preference set. I think the current Manual of Style is fine. However, some editors have said that there are some specific and auditable constraints that they would like to add to the Manual. For example, dates in image captions must be linked, or dates of birth and death must be linked, or weekly events must be linked. I oppose such such constraints but if they were in the Manual by consent, I will follow them. Until then, I regard such links as silly. Bobblewik 19:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see many people saying that date linking is harmless and should not, therefore, be prohibited nor unconditionally expunged. I see no one claiming that date linking is essential. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 19:36, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. There's no reason to totally prohibit linking of years, so Support a relaxation of the MoS in this context (also note that it's guideline, always has been, so if I decide to link a few years, it doesn't really matter).--Sean|Black 19:45, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The current guidlines specifically do not unconditionally prohibit date linking at all, that is a misleading exaggeration. Martin 19:53, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I know that, but Bobblewik seems to think that it does. Like, I said, I don't think it does any harm.--Sean|Black 19:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You misrepresent what I think. Bobblewik 20:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support --Revolución (talk) 21:47, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain There is no absolute prohibition on linking to years or months, some time ago I thought that linking all years was a good thing, however Bobblewick's aproach to delink months and years on sight is one I agree with at the moment. It is possible tht a less obtrusive linking and displaying mechanism for dates would change my view. Rich Farmbrough. 15:42, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If there is no absolute prohibition against linked years and months, then there is zero justification for Bobblewik and DESeigel going around to articles they otherwise have no interest in merely to delink the dates. Certainly not to thousands of such articles over the course of a week. Ξxtreme Unction|_{yakkity yak} 13:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I think that's implicit in my discussion, above, but I wanted to be clear. Nandesuka 15:47, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I'd like to see the MoS changed to suggest when it is appropriate instead of saying "never". I agree that it usually isn't appropriate to link to a year, but didn't like seeing articles I had just authored get visited by the assisted editor. ++Lar: t/c 23:14, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The MoS does say that! Martin 23:22, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well then I sort of wish that Bobblewik hadn't visited the brand new articles I worked on when he did. Some of the dates links were good ones, in my view. Still support revision of the MoS, and less automated editing of dates till this is clarified. ++Lar: t/c

Oppose making this change to the MoS. There is no blanket prohibition to linking years when relevant. I believe that most of the years I see linked add nothing to understanding the article. I get irritated when someone comes along and links every occurrence of every year in an article I've just finished working on. I also think it's distracting to see years of publication all linked in a discography or bibliography. Now, I don't go looking for year links to unlink, but I do remove them if I notice someone has just linked every year in an article, or if I think the year links are distracting in the context. -- 65.8.6.97 19:59, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly oppose linking to dates in every article, whether it be on the first occassion or not. Say there is an article on a popular muisc album released in 2004 and 2004 is linked to the article '2004'. What could anyone possibly gain from this link, except perhaps some confusion? In some cases it can help but for the vast majority its pointless and can be confusing. --SaltyWater 00:47, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support. First occurrence to be linked, only. User:Noisy | Talk 00:50, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is another thing that editors should take care of on a case by case basis. If too many things are linked in an article, leave the incidental years unlinked. If an average amount of things are linked, either way is fine, leave it how the original writer had it. —siro χ o 12:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; the logic of whether to link something is clear: link only things that are relevant to the article. In most cases, a link to a year links to a page that is largely irrelevant to the context of the article. I support leaving WP:MOSDATE as is, since it reflects this logic (it does not say that linking years is prohibited.) I would however support a slight change of wording (explaining when exactly years should be linked). - Liberatore(T) 16:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, but be reasonable. Years should be like other articles. Discouraging over-linking is good and should be made clear in the MoS. If an editor thinks that the year article provides some important background for the article that they are working on, however, link to it. Otherwise don't. Jkelly 16:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose changing the MoS. I am convinced that year links are normally useless, and if it weren't for the date preferences thing, it would never have become normal to link them. Stephen Turner (Talk) 17:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Wikipedia is way, way overlinked as it is. I find it extremely annoying to follow a link and find nothing that adds or extends the article I was reading. I used to link individual years myself, simply because it seemed to be the norm, but I never checked policy. I commend Bobblewik for bringing this up. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for all the very good reasons already given. - SoM 18:37, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strict support: I do not think MOS needs to be saying "link 'em all" nor "link few." I think that we should link them at the editors' discretion. The question should be "is it useful?" If an editor believes that it is, then we are the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Geogre 19:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support I think linking dates to the ' year in subject ' eg [[1987 in music|1987]] in an article related to music, gives the reader a link that provides extra context. --Alf ^melmac 18:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So how do you combat PoV-pushers?

I'd like to here from as many people as possible on this - what have people found to be the most successful tactics against users are trying to promote certain points of view within articles over others? Dan100 (Talk) 20:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WOW! You find those quite a bit on most of the religious pages. A particularly long example of one editor pushing a POV is on Talk:Bahá'í Faith. If you go there you'll find 3 or 4 archives worth of discussion and a good example of a learning curve. At first the editors argued and frequently went off topic. Then they started turning to the manual of style for reference. Then, more recently, they started bringing in outside editiors and administrators who's claim to be neutral rests on their belonging to another religion.

These seem to help, and the nice thing about outsiders is they bring a fresh perspective. And if there's a particularly difficult edit to make because of a POV pusher, then it's really nice when the outsider just goes ahead and makes it because they are free of rediculous accusations of underhanded behavior (the ad hominum logical fallacy). LambaJan 22:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It helps a lot to be rigourous about citation oneself, and insist on the same from others. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:54, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps my question is - what do you do when you have been doing that, but they carry on regardless? Dan100 (Talk) 09:39, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't figured that out yet. lol.

Yes, Jmabel. That very much helps.

In that last example, one editor recently asked "Is there anyplace to take this for arbitration?" but nobody followed up on that. It can be very difficult because, as I'm sure you know from your situation, one person can become an army and (best case scenerio) cause the other editors of a topic to be less productive in adding quality articles because they're too busy protecting one part of it from POV. LambaJan 20:29, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just found a template that may be helpful, depending on your situation: Template:Protected. LambaJan 02:43, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The template only tells part of the story. Admins can protect pages to prevent editing, but admins are reluctant to protect pages except to allow a cooling off period, because it goes against the "wikispirit". Rich Farmbrough. 15:45, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The unhelpful answer is that Wikipedia proceeds by "conversion, not coercion" (for the most part) and you must convince the POV pusher. There's no other real way. If they will engage on the talk page (or their own), and if you can get other editors who are obviously not in complete agreement with, sometimes that will convince them. Never just revert, at least not more than once. Rewrite their material, never remove it completely. Respect their point of view; the rewrite may tone it down, may qualify it, may introduce opposing material, but what their main point was should not be obliterated and should still be clearly stated. Find sources FOR them: if they write "George W. Bush is widely regarded as dumb" change that to "Left-wing columnist Molly Ivins wrote 'George W. Bush is not the smartest guy to come along in over 200 years.'" That retains the point that was being made but takes the spin off it by qualifying it as a) an opinion, b) by a non-neutral source. If they've written ten paragraphs of POV in a fifteen-paragraph article, boil it down to a single paragraph. Oh, and do make a point of pointing out the Wikipedia policies on verifiability, neutrality, and citing sources, as many new contributors have not read them, and, believe it or not, if you can get them to read them it sometimes does change their behavior.

The key is to prove to them that they are not confronting a pack of censors determined to obliterate controversial opinions, or anything like that. You must retain their material, but keep it in proportion, etc.

No, it doesn't always work. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been concerned by this for a while now. All our current methods for dealing with POV-pushers are rooted in a basic assumption of good faith. However, this simply does not - and cannot - apply to all POV-pushers. Some people are here specifically for the purpose of pushing their POV, and will resort to any means necessary. Recently, it has been brought to my attention that one particularly prolific POV-pusher may be getting paid to edit wikipedia. How do we deal with cases like that? -- Nikodemos (f.k.a. Mihnea) 09:10, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CSD: Could blatant advertising be added?

Sometimes, you get blatant advertising, but as it isn't in CSD, it has to go through 7 days of AfD. Can we just put this up for speedy? Sceptr e ^(Talk) 15:41, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Others, including me, have proposed it before, but the concern was that articles that are merely enthusiastic or biased towards the person or company will be deleted. However, blatant spam or advertising would have no encyclopedic content whatsoever, not just biased content. I think that the criteria should be based on whether there is anything in the article that can be salvaged in a rewrite. -- Kjkolb 16:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Which is generally more likely to be discovered in Afd, not speedy. I think this one is never going to be on Csd, for that one reason - and it is a valid one, however annoying watching adverts go by on Afd can be. OTOH if policy changes, and it can be Csd'd, I will not complain because IMHO the articles will eventually be written if the topic is worthy. KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:44, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anon user still creating new pages

The following discussion is copied from Jimbo's talk page. Please continue the discussion here:

I'm not sure where to put this, but I'll try here. We have an anon user going round creating new short-stub articles on cricketers on talk pages - as the article page does not exist he cannot create them in the main article namespace. (This user also goes round adding spurious claims that various people are vegans and various non-cricketers have played cricket - so it's all rather odd as to why he doesn't create an account, join WP:Cricket and cut out the vandalism.) Could the functionality that doesn't allow anons to create articles be extended so that they can't create talk pages (or at least can't create talk pages where the article does not exist)? jguk 12:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of anons point out errors by posting on talk pages, they probably wouldn't bother signing up and are likely too timid to edit the main page. Kappa 14:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not on the talk pages of articles that don't yet exist, they don't! jguk 18:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that anonymous users should not be allowed to create talk pages for non-existent articles. --Tantalum T e lluride 18:36, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As do I, however I agree with Kappa that they SHOULD be able to create talk pages about already existing articles. However, this seems like a lot of work for the devs, for what seems to be a small problem. -Greg Asche (talk) 20:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Maybe we should ask one of them how much work it would require. I'll be right back. --Tantalum T e lluride 23:39, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked a developer to comment[3]. --Tantalum T e lluride 00:06, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this really such a large problem that it requires a software change? Where's the fire?;) —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 01:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've noticed only one talk page without an accompanying article recently. Then again, I haven't done much RC patrol lately, either. So... I don't know. I guess this isn't much of a problem at the present time. --Tantalum T e lluride 02:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen this user before and it is always the 210.55.x.x range. He tends to changes names in articles and prefers to changes the names people are married to. In the history I saw a couple of Talk pages being created about cricket players as well which I marked for speedy delete and they got deleted as per request. So my advice is to speedy delete them, because the other contributions are a form of vandalism, so I am sceptical about the content of those cricket players as well. The reason for the user being anonymous is probably the vandalism since it's a dynamic IP address so a week later you'll see him return with another IP. KittenKlub 11:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A few more facts might be useful:

The user concerned is known as Vegan vandal, although not all his edits are vandalism, and not all his vandalism is about vegans. His IP address changes several times a day.
The cricket articles he creates are ungrammatical sub-stubs, however they are verifiably true and not vandalism, and they do helpfully put the cricketer into categories according to the teams he's played for. There are usually a few new articles a day. Look for new pages at Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:Stephen_Turner/CricketersTalk to find them.
I think we all agree that anonymous users should be able to create new talk pages. The question is whether they should be able to create talk pages of articles that don't yet exist.

Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a problem, but this seems to be attacking it with a hammer. Is there evidence of this going on from more than one user? Can we create a special page instead that hunts for article talk pages without articles? -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

birth_place in infobox

If person was born in a place that back then was in country X, but is now in country Y, what should be written in infobox? A currently geographical place (for instance: Alexandria, Egypt) or historical geographical place (for instance: Alexandria, Roman Empire)? Of course, the article clarifies this matter, the article says that the person was born in Alexandria which, back then, was part of Roman Empire, and is now in Egypt. But, what about infoboxes which should present short but accurate info? Infobox for Pope Adrian VI says "birthplace=Utrecht, Netherlands", and article clarifies that back then it was "Low German-speaking part (whose inhabitants considered themselves to be part of the German nation) of the Holy Roman Empire". On the other case, Nikola Tesla article says "Smiljan, Gospić, Austrian Empire (now Croatia)". To be frank, this sounds a bit funny to me because Austrian Empire does not exist, but I'm not the one to deliver guidelines :-) Therefore I ask, which style of the two should be followed? Currently geographical place or historical geographical place? --Dijxtra 16:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can not say he was born in a nation or city that did not exist at the time. But you can say something like 'born in Judea (modern day Israel)'. A more modern example would be 'born in Czechoslovakia, in what is now the Czech Republic. --mav 19:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that too long for a infobox? So, Pope Adrian VI article should be fixed? --Dijxtra 19:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the case of Adrian, "Netherlands" is defendable as that can be seen as a descriptive term ("Low countries"). However, as Utrecht was more or less an independent state then, a simple "birthplace=Utrecht" suffices for the infobox. Especially because more complete info is given in the article. Note that his place of death was already given as "Rome" only. Eugene van der Pijll 10:56, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think that including both is a good idea, but if we have to be more brief, saying "historical Czeckoslovakia" would be better than saying Czech Republic (because it establishes the historical context better). --Improv 01:40, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... but, wouldn't it be better to have precise geographical location in infobox, and to establish the context in the article? Do you think that this (what ever we find appropriate in this discussion) should be made into a guideline, to make infoboxes uniform? --Dijxtra 10:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, wait and see if Template:Infobox Biography survives this TfD vote before struggling with the issue. User:Noisy | Talk 11:40, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, thing is, not all articles use the template explicitly. Nikola Tesla article has just a bunch of code, not the infobox template as such. So I think this matter needs to be discussed and cleared. BTW, hasn't it survived one TfD vote before? Just curious... --Dijxtra 15:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it makes the most sense to give the name of the country or place the person was born, with the name it had at the time that person was born, link to a reference for that place, and skip the "present day" add-on. The trouble with all of these "present day", "currently", "modern day", "which is now", etc, type of phrases, is that they all have to be located and changed every time some country changes its name or borders. In my edits in this encyclopedia, I assume it's going to be around and still read, and still useful, 200 years from now (assuming humanity isn't wiped out by some natural or man-made disaster). If it can be written in a way that won't need to be changed later, as opposed to a way that almost certainly will change, then I think it should be. Aumakua 05:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's why we're here :-) To update wikipedia on change of borders or country names. Which does not happen so often, right? I mean, every current prime minister or president has word "current" in his infobox... --Dijxtra 09:39, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IMO this is a good reason not to use an infobox. this kind of complex situation can be better described in article text than in any infobox. DES ^(talk) 00:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that you can pipe a link. For example [[İstanbul|Constantinople]] (not the best example, because there really is an article called Constantinople, but I'm sure you get the point). - Jmabel | Talk 07:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pokémon Card Game - Copyright

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

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

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

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

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

Addressing the Hierarchy Trap, an informal proposal

Here's something new. Listen:

Statement of the problem

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

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

Therefore, these people would make poor administrators.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What to do?

A proposal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments

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

Yes. Herostratus 01:41, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

shooting first before asking questions (blocks)

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

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

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

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

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

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

My User:RefBot got blocked two times without good reason. Blocks were complicated by admins who chose to use blocks despite their being incommunicado. That doesn't seem like good self-administration.
1. Once (by User:Curps who has no email) within minutes of creation on suspicion of being an impostor, although it had by then copied its definition from the supposed victim (my User:SEWilcoBot) and deleted that section of text from the supposed victim's home page (tinkering with victim's home page seems like an odd way for an impostor to not be noticed). Of course, I had no links yet to RefBot to confirm my ownership because the account's page was still being set up. Blocking admin requested confirmation of ownership, despite having no email address and having triggered the autoblocker which blocked all my normal access. User_talk:SEWilco#Blocked
2. RefBot got blocked (by User:David Gerard) with a message of "operating it to try to game the AC ruling" and log reason "(username created only to evade arbcom ruling)", both of which the blocker recognizes are not valid reasons because "Conditions are per person, not per username." Gerard apparently left on vacation, leaving the account on indefinite block; which doesn't matter because it's idle during a rewrite and I can use my other accounts until he gets back. User_talk:SEWilco#Blocked_with_poorly_defined_explanation User_talk:SEWilco#RefBot_blocked_erroneously Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive58#User:William_M._Connolley_14
- (SEWilco 02:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

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

MP3s

How come they're not allowed for audio on Wikipedia? --82.7.125.142 13:54, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The encoding/decoding algorithms governing MP3s are patented (in the US and other countries that recognize software patents), and the licensing terms essentially mean there can never be such a thing as a legal open source MP3 player/recorder while those patents remain in force. In what is essentially a showing of solidarity, Wikipedia made a decision to avoid using an audio format that did not play well with the open source software community. Might I suggest you have a look at Ogg Vorbis? Dragons flight 14:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I myself prefer Ogg Vorbis. The compression is better and of course, like you said, it's open source and not covered by the MPEG patent. The problem is that few programs currently have the ability to record Ogg Vorbis, and I have no conversion utility to convert MP3 file. --82.7.125.142 14:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Media#Audio has some suggestions, though I have never tried to use them myself. Dragons flight 14:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You should not have to record an Ogg Vorbis file. Simply record a WAV file and convert it to Ogg Vorbis (or MP3 if that's what you want) later. --cesarb 15:46, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymous bots with no information?

(I've also posted this at Wikipedia talk:Bots) At the moment User:70.193.215.124 is making robot-like interlink edits, and getting a few wrong, but there is no information on what bot is running in the edit summary. The User page and talk page are empty, so I assume it's a user not-logged in. However is it good policy that robot edits can occur with insufficient information in the edit summary? In this case I want to alert the bot that it's sometimes messing up the interlink order. -Wikibob 14:25, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Something in bot interfaces sometimes causes anon edits by a logged-in bot. If the edits seem to be regular in timing it is more likely to be an anon bot. If the edits have very irregular timing it is more likely the quirk is involved, or a bot with manual approval from a human not trying to process stuff quickly. (SEWilco 03:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

"U.S." and "UK"

I was noticing in the article Filibuster that it uses the spellings "U.S." and "UK" consistently. It seems to me that common U.S. practice is to use "U.S." and "U.K." while common UK practice today is to use "UK" and "US", although there certainly are exceptions both ways; I don't think there are many people anywhere who would mix "U.S." and "UK".

The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (with its subsidiary article on spelling) is generally neutral on the question of British vs. American English, but (1) disapproves of mixing styles within an article. This makes sense. It also says (2) that British spelling should be used for articles on British topics and American spelling for articles on American topics. This also makes sense.

But what about article sections: if one section of a longer article is about American practices and another about British practices, as here? If policy 2 is extended to sections, policy 1 is violated for the article. But if it isn't, then all contributors to one section who are from the relevant country will have to write in the other national version of English, and will likely have trouble getting it right.

On the specific subject of "U.S." or "US", the Manual of Style (3) mandates the form "U.S." because it is useful to have a single form and that is the one most commonly used in that country. It does not say anything, that I can see, about "U.K." or "UK" (or any other acronyms / abbreviations / initialisms commonly written both with and without periods / full stops). If it is argued that the same reasons apply, policy 3 should logically be extended to prefer "UK"; but then this would violate policy 1 in articles like the one in question where both abbreviations are used.

If there is an existing style policy that addresses these conflicting pressures, please point me at it. If not, should there be? For myself, I'd rather see "US" and "UK" everywhere, but as that's already against policy, forget that; I'll just say that I do not advocate any particular choices on the issues raised here; I only suggest that they might be desirable.

66.96.28.244 01:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any problem with continuing with this inconsistency. 62.31.55.223 04:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WP:BIO

The current guidelines for inclusion set the audience at 5,000 (for book or actors alike, it appears.) The feeling is that this is much much too low. There's discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#Total_audience_of_5.2C000_or_more, and even a straw poll. But polls are evil, so don't take part in that. - brenneman ^(t)^(c) 00:11, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymity

Is there an explanation somewhere in a policy or guideline page on an editor's "right" (for lack of a better term) to remain anonymous? A group of editors, including me, is being attacked by another editor (who has chosen to reveal his true identity) as "cowards" for not providing our real names, credentials, etc. android 79 13:52, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

Changes on his personal website coincided with comments left on talk pages. Thanks for the tip, Nae'blis. That's not worded as strongly as I had hoped, but it least it's policy. android 79 07:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Limited administrators

I have created this policy proposal because of my recent observations about admin and community issues. Increasing vandalism and increasing admin disputes are not good. In any case I just want to let users know I've created this and maybe more discussion can go on there. Basically to summarize: some "limited admins" would have power to delete within 3 days, rollback, and would be encouraged to participate on admin noticeboards and the like. gren グレン ^? 13:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated deletion/restoration

The template Template:User GWB has been speedily deleted 4 times (3 of which by Tony Sidaway), and restored 3 (by different people each time). This should not happen, becuase there is an ongoing discussion, with > 70% of votes from more than 70 users voting keep at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion. Check out the log here. I hope something will be done about this. I hope this is where to bring up this issue, because I couldn't think of anywhere else to.

Shardsofmetal ^{[ Talk | Contribs ]} 17:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I brought the mater up at WP:ANI, wher ethere has been more of a discussion. the next obvious stage is an RfC, but I frankly don't see any point to that -- Tony has read pleanty of comment on this, and he knows what the views of those who thought this action improper are. DES ^(talk) 20:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Attack templates

There is a discussion starting at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Attack templates about the possibility of adding templates that serve no purpose but to disparage an individual, group of people, or ethnic/religious/racial group to the criteria for speedy deletion. -- SCZenz 20:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Video game screenshots

Are screenshots of video games OK to use in articles or is there a copyright issue? --Revolución (talk) 21:27, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Generally these fall under Fair use and so need a proper justifiction. a screen shot of the game in an articel about the game, will usually qualify. DES ^(talk) 23:09, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just think that Wikipedia, assuming it is an encyclopedia, might be best limited to at least real information about completely real things. Someone better tell Brittanica that their article on Hamlet ain't encyclopedic. And I can't wait for the deletion wheel war on Jesus. android 79 23:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calm down already

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

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

Pages in MediaWiki namespace

I believe that many Wikipedians are not aware of the secret society... the MediaWiki namespace. Even though all these pages are, by default, only editable by Sysops, many of the issues in these pages, including especially MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice, should recieve more attention from users. I invite people to contribute to discussions on these talk pages, which usually affect the site globally though only being discussed by a minority of those who know about them. Thank you. (More admin accountability on changes to the .css pages would be nice too). — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 00:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia as its own source

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

nor

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

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

Concerns over personal attack templates

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

NPOV statement

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

Community Panel proposal - Wikipedia:Community Panel

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

Musical Genre Mayham... Any Ideas?

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

Administrator vocabulary: a non-block "block"

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

Retouched pictures

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

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

Requests for rollback privileges

Hi everyone,

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

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

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

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

WP:WEB recently rewritten

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

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

Ignore all rules

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

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

I proposed a general solution on the talk page:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strange bibliography

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

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

logically clear contradict policy

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

This is a logo of a corporation, sports team, or other organization, and is protected by copyright and/or trademark. It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of logos to illustrate the corporation, sports team, or organization in question on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement. Certain commercial use of this image may also be trademark infringement. See Wikipedia:Fair use and Wikipedia:Logos.

Use of the logo here does not imply endorsement of the organization by Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation, nor does it imply endorsement of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation by the organization.

non-free

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

This image is not licensed under the GFDL. It is under a non-commercial-use only* licence.*
	If this image was uploaded after May 19, 2005, it will soon be deleted without further warning.[4] Older images with this template will be considered for deletion.

Creative Commons License	This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 2.0 License. For the purposes of Wikipedia, this is a non-free license.
	If this image was uploaded after May 19, 2005, it will soon be deleted without further warning. [5] Older images with this template will be considered for deletion.

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

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

Lawfully citing copyrighted images

Why wikipedia need public domain or free use images?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allow me to contextualize Mr. WonYong's entry. Mr. WonYong is stirring controversy in the korean language wikipedia, claiming that we should disregard GFDL since South Korean copyright law allows for free citation within the realm of ~~non-profit~~ news reporting, criticism, research and education [6] I have been telling him that simultaneous application of South Korean copyright law and GFDL (technically, the application of South Korean copyright law over GFDL) is against Wikipedia's very foundations (and the spirit of the FSF generally), and could get Wikimedia Foundation into trouble, because it would open up Wikipedia's content for ~~illegal subsequent for-profit use~~ locally illegal forms of subsequent for-profit use. However, he ignored various users' warnings, created a Wikipedia namespace document regarding "citations" all on his own, and started uploading a mixture of Fair Use and plain copyright images to the korean language wikipedia. (South Korea has no Fair Use equivalent, thus its use was prohibited in korean language wikipedia by consensus sometime in its beginnings). He also claims that including a copyrighted photography in a wikipedia document is "citing it". Atm we have a lively ongoing debate at the Korean Language Village Pump, sections 13-17. He also posted under section 18 a korean language translation of what he wrote here under the current subsection, which is how I came to know about this. Sooooo basically he wants Wikipedia to stop using GFDL. Go figure. Regards, --Yonghokim 05:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"citation by korean copyright law" need 5 element.

1. quoted object has been publiched publicly by someone.

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

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

4. to follow fair custom.

5. notify source

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

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

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

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

Marking articles for deletion

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