Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 35

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Style of Ref desk header

The current style of the left side of the header is:

How to ask a question

  • Do not ask difficult questions. Have mercy on our volunteers.
  • Put a question mark after the question. This way we will know where the question ends.
  • Have faith. The Wikioracle knows all.
After reading the above, you may
ask a new question by clicking here.

How to answer a question

  • Wash your mouth first. Keep the reference desk clean.
  • Don't answer questions while drunk. You know what happened last time you did.

Often questioners don't use the "button" ask a new question by clicking here, but apparently use the "edit this page" tab, causing avoidable edit conflicts. I wonder if that may be because the "button" is not prominent enough. My attempts to produce something more prominent have led me to the following design:

How to ask a question

  • Do not ask difficult questions. Have mercy on our volunteers.
  • Put a question mark after the question. This way we will know where the question ends.
  • Have faith. The Wikioracle knows all.

How to answer a question

  • Wash your mouth first. Keep the reference desk clean.
  • Don't answer questions while drunk. You know what happened last time you did.

What does everybody think? Is this an improvement? If so, are there suggestions for further fine-tuning?  --LambiamTalk 20:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

On my browser (IE6, I'm at work, I can't help it), your two boxes overlap, so it's not an improvement. --LarryMac | Talk 20:58, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Which two boxes?  --LambiamTalk 21:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

"After reading the above," is overlapped by "ask a new question by clicking here." Other than for what appears to be a placement problem, which I don't know how to fix, the instructions are fine. I rather like the rest of the changes, too, facetious or not, especially "Don't ask questions while you are drunk". You might want to consider adding one about not trying to answer while drunk either, with the same "you know what happened the last time" reminder. Bielle

I think it is an error in the implementation of the rendering engine of IE. There should be a single box containing two non-overlapping lines of blue text, together forming a single link. Unfortunately, I've no idea how to code around such bugs.  --LambiamTalk 23:31, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Oh, no doubt it's a problem with the browser. I'm sure it looks OK in Firefox, although I forgot to check last night. Unfortunately, we IE6 is still fairly dominant; I don't know how to fix it either :-( --LarryMac | Talk 13:42, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I dislike the BIG SIZE OF THE LETTERS. It makes the page look amateur. A.Z. 02:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Which browser are you using? For me (using Firefox), the x-height of the big letters is 9 pixels against 7 pixels for the main text, an increase of 30%, which is not excessive. It is the same size as the "How to ask a question" text in the current header; does that look amateurish too to you?  --LambiamTalk 04:47, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't really know why it looks amateurish, then. I just thought it was because of the size. I completely disagree with the recommendation for questions to have a question mark and for questions not to be difficult! With all due respect for whoever invented this (and I really don't know who was it), it is quite limiting, strange, instruction creep, and appears to me as rather a manifestation of a psichological problem such as being obsessed with being able to have full control and knowledge of things, as if they couldn't accept the fact that there are questions that don't have a question mark, and there are questions that simply can't be properly "answered", unlike a mathematical question. A.Z. 03:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
A.Z., those phrases about question marks etc. are placeholders that Lambiam put there to represent the real instructions. They are just jokes. --mglg(talk) 04:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Damn it... This is like the third time that I read Lambiam's jokes as if they were serious stuff. I remember one time when he claimed to be an expert in logic and said that this was why he knew about appeal to authority more than other people. A.Z. 04:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Yea, he got me at first, too. StuRat 04:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Firefox look of proposed change
Firefox look of proposed change

Thanks for the laugh A.Z.- you should've read the warnings on replying too, though. Anyway, I like it. It makes it much easier to see, and also helps draw attention to the rules, without being intrusive, and without sticking out like a sore thumb. -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 04:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I thought all warnings were real, including those on replying. A.Z. 04:35, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
So is there anybody out there who knows HTML, has access to both Firefox and IE(6?), and can fix the code so that it looks good with both? To the right is a thumbnail of a screenshot showing how this looks to me using Firefox.  --LambiamTalk 08:22, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I tried looking at it in IE6 using IE4linux, I see the problem. Is it just IE4linux though, or does IE6 make webpages look freaking horrible? Everything on wikipedia was bolded and pixely and nasty... It's still readable though. It just has the lower line of "ask a new question, click here". I don't think a tiny glitch like that should stop us from making a better template- especially considering if it really bugs anyone, there's about a million and a half different other web browsers they could use.

Easy way to access unanswered reference desk questions?

Is there a way to click and find reference desk questions that are currently waiting to be answered?

Currently there is no such thing. Conceivably, a bot could regularly run and maintain a list of postings without responses – but a criterion for detecting this must be a complicated heuristic, prone to misclassification.  --Lambiam 14:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
There's nothing to prevent a human from flagging unanswered questions with an invisible comment (e.g., <!-- UNANSWERED -->) as a matter of routine maintenance. The first person who answers it can remove it. The initial flagging could also be semi-automated the same way the question header is semi-automated for questioners who add questions using the input form.
Sure, it would take a little extra programming and effort, but then it's no more complicated than all the other "volunteer" work people do for WP. Nevertheless, it still may never happen; not because it is complicated, but because it's probably not glamorous enough to ensure consistent compliance ... the very reason why so many WP articles are unreferenced. dr.ef.tymac 14:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm thinking of doing some additional RD indexing in conjunction with the new archiving bot I'm about to deploy, and just this morning it occurred to me that answered/unanswered would be another useful bit of information to log in the index. Watch this space... —Steve Summit (talk) 23:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Placement of "Ask a new question" button.

A simple suggestion, put this button at the top and bottom of each page (if possible), so people will see it. When confronted with pages of rules, they are likely to skip reading them and not see the button down below. StuRat 23:55, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. Removing the rules altogether would be good as well. A.Z. 02:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
They aint rules, they are advice to help people use the desk appropriately. Rockpocket 03:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Some of them sure quack like rules, for example "Do not request medical or legal advice. Ask a doctor or lawyer instead." StuRat 14:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
I suggest that people who have advice to give write essays and link to them from the reference desk front page. A.Z. 23:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Could people reading this give their opinion? A.Z. 18:25, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Rockpocket, could you give your opinion about taking the advice out of the pages and putting it into essays? A.Z. 23:16, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Don't you ever take a break? You don't seem happy unless you're trying to change the status quo (in this case get rid of guidelines). By the way, advice placed in a prominent postion is a good thing because, as we see time and time again, there are many people that need it. It's a shame it has to be that way. David D. (Talk) 15:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia is all about changing the status quo. Don't you all (I only indirectly, because I prefer talk pages) contribute to articles in order to bring information to every human being on the planet, and don't you do that because you believe this will somehow change the status quo in a good way?
It's good, however, that you did realize that I'm happy with trying to change the status quo. In fact, I'm happy with merely discussing the status quo and discussing how appropriate it is and how good it would be if it were changed. When I do find out that it would be better to change it, then I'll get even happier if I achieve said change.
I don't think I should take a break from debating the status quo any more than you should take a break from editing articles. A.Z. 15:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
But it's practically all you do. David D. (Talk) 17:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I guess I'm focusing on something I like. A.Z. 20:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

whassup?

Why is there that little icon in the upper right-hand corner of this page? I can see it's a link to Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/style change, but are people who haven't heard of that topic really supposed to realize that if they are interested in it, the ⊕ icon is the thing to click on? —Steve Summit (talk) 11:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I just clicked it to see what it is, and now it's a convenient shortcut to that discussion. I guess that's the point --frotht 16:24, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
A long way back I used Image:Mspaintvista.png, unforntunatly it's a fairuse image, so it had to be removed. Feel free to pick another image, preferably one with a transparent background, the template is stored at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/color--VectorPotentialTalk 16:27, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Okay, but my question was not "What is it for and where does it go?" (which I eventually figured out), but rather, "How is someone who doesn't already know what it's for supposed to recognize it for what it is?" —Steve Summit (talk) 00:34, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
They could just click it to see what it is, but I guess a short subtitle would be useful. A.Z. 20:59, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
There is text that becomes visible when you mouse over the icon, however I think I may add an actual always visible caption--VectorPotentialTalk 18:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Speaking of which I've just completely revamped Wikipedia:Reference desk/color and added it to Wikipedia:Reference desk/RD header. If it clashes with anything in anyone's browsers, please let me know. --VectorPotentialTalk 19:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I made the text smaller and put it on just two lines. How can we actually "Help Out"? By proposing more colour schemes?  --LambiamTalk 20:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Hopefully, if the page generates enough traffic there will be enough opinions that we can build an effective consensus on the color of the page. If it doesn't generate any traffic, then we can always keep everything gray--VectorPotentialTalk 20:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really 100% sure what I want the page to be. It's just based on a subset of the style change page that froth created. Hopefully if enough people visit it the page will develop into something a little more user friendly --VectorPotentialTalk 20:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk/style_change/header

Could someone give this a once over? It looks just right in firefox, but I just checked IE 7 and it looks a bit off.--VectorPotentialTalk 20:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot (talk · contribs)

As some of you may have noticed, RefDeskBot has been behaving a little erratically lately, and Martin is on wikibreak. I've just finished cleaning up the last week's unarchived posts on the help desk, if someone could do the same for the entertainment reference desk, that would be incredibly helpful. Thanks to everyone who has been helping out with this--VectorPotentialTalk 17:02, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

For some bizarre reason it's taken away the 21 June date on the Humanities Desk, not the QAs, just the date, leaving an odd message (1. REDIRECT etc. etc.) between items 1.13 and 1.14. June 20 now has a massive 29 items! I tried to edit the missing date back in, but clearly lack the necessary technical skill. Clio the Muse 02:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
It's OK. I managed to make the alteration! Clio the Muse 02:48, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Mea culpa. In my defense, I have been misled by a statement made by the bot's owner; see above at #On linking to reference desk sections.  --LambiamTalk 06:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The only reason that the redirect problem would occur is if the bot was, for some reason, unable to save the page. I'm becoming slowly less busy, but am quite occupied until Sunday evening now (maybe Monday evening in fact). Once I have a spare moment, I'll check that everything's working as it should. Lambiam: Has the problem you note there happened before? I'm quite sure that the bot would have simply replaced the page text, given the basis upon which it works (taking this from rusty memory :)). Martinp23 08:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I see the diff above. Very strange, my apologies, will be fixed. Martinp23 08:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot deleted the header from the Entertainment Desk, apparently because it had a fragment of a transclusion included: [1]. I fixed it. StuRat 03:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. A.Z. 03:38, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Stu. It seems that June 13–1817 were lost in the process, though. --mglg(talk) 04:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Lost ? I'd assumed they had been archived and the bot was dropping their transclusions because they were over 1 week old. You're right, the archived versions don't seem to be here: [2]. StuRat 04:28, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Can you put the deleted days back on the Entertainment Ref Desk ? I would, but my computer is acting up at the moment and probably can't handle that. (Archiving them properly would be even better, but I realize that's a lot to ask.) StuRat 04:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
RefDeskBot failed to archive the entertainment desk for almost a week, because of this there were too many days on the desk when the bot resumed archiving that page, this confused the bot and caused it to mangle the header. The solution is for someone to restore all the missing archives, and restore the correct number of days to the desk.--VectorPotentialTalk 19:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Entertainment Desk history messed up ?

I only see one entry for July 25th, despite seeing several edit summaries for the day on the actual page. Why are these edits missing from the history ? StuRat 23:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Signature timestamps are displayed according to UTC while edit history timestamps are displayed according to the timezone you've specified in your user preferences. If you're west of Greenwich, edits may show the 25th in signatures but the 24th in edit histories. Also, see the transcluded archive histories[3]—eric 03:09, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that's it, there are missing entries in the history. For example, there is no trace of this contribution of mine:
And while we're on the topic of Elton John, don't forget Empty Garden, his tribute to John Lennon: [2]. StuRat 03:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
That edit was to the Entertainment desk's 22nd archive page[4]. The UTC timestamp is 03:10 on the 25th, but it shows as the 24th in the edit history for North American TZs. I think maybe the reason you noticed is because that desk has not had much traffic recently, currently there is only one question which has not already been archived—the rest are now transcluded on the page. I guess this is just one of the disadvantages of the archive and transclude system, it's more difficult to read the edit histories, but i haven't been able to find any edits which are actually "missing".—eric 16:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_13, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_14, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_15, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_16 & Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2007_June_17 are all literally missing, as they were never archived by RefDeskBot in the first place--VectorPotentialTalk 12:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
They've all been restored--VectorPotentialTalk 20:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Impossible to get to earlier questions

I wanted to look at a question and answers of an earlier date than the few days displayed. Yet I cannot see how to get to them. Would anyone agree that this needs correcting? I've no idea how to make such changes myself. Thanks—Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.2.214.17 (talk • contribs)

We already have an extensive set of archives--VectorPotentialTalk 12:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Misc desk being trolled

Recent contrib of 212.115.41.40. Please don't feed him. --LarryMac | Talk 14:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot (talk · contribs)

Didn't run last night, probably due to high database lag. It would be helpful if someone could complete last night's archive before RefDeskBot runs again tonight--VectorPotentialTalk 19:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Done.  --LambiamTalk 16:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, let's just hope that after two nights of inactivity RefDeskBot comes back online--VectorPotentialTalk 18:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
It's obviously on strike, like the Post Office here in England! Clio the Muse 02:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

English Language Reference Desk

Should we include a link somewhere to Wikiversity's English Language Reference Desk, which specializes in answering questions specifically relating to English? At any rate, the Wikiversity ELang desk is around, for anyone interested. The Jade Knight 00:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Since it seems so inactive, I don't see a good reason to link to it. Friday (talk) 00:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikiversity in general "seems so inactive". They're active (and questions get answered fairly promptly), but Wikiversity just doesn't draw the same crowd of questioners that Wikipedia does. Maybe in a few years… anyway, the Reference Desk is there, and is being used when people stumble across it. I just figured it might be a good place for people looking specifically for English Language help to go. The Jade Knight 13:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't see "inactivity" as a reason not to link to it. It could be a reason to link to it, as this would increase activity. A.Z. 18:22, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not here to increase the traffic of other websites, nor to improve the functioning of other websites. Wikipedia is here to be an encyclopedia, and the reference desks are here to make the encyclopedia work better :) Skittle 00:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Re.: Coast To Coast Question :

The question was a legit question. Why was it removed ? It indicated that a Debate between two opposing sides will take place, where it can be placed, was NOT "trolling" at all. The debate is between JC, a fundamentalist preacher and Oscar, who is alleged to be some kind of demon. Both called the show last night and indicated that there will be a bloody debate. What is the criteria on here for "trolling" ? 205.240.144.225 04:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

The question [5] was removed [6] because it was no question at all. It seemed designed merely to stir up debate, or drum up publicity for the radio show. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:51, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
And, for what it's worth, this similar question is also pretty dubious. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Archiving

Can I ask those of you who are knowledgeable in such matters if the automatic archiving is likely to come back any time soon? The Humanities Desk is getting horribly long! Clio the Muse 23:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

How about when the Ref Desk talk page is going to get an archive? Anyone? - AMP'd 23:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Y Done A.Z. 00:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Done what?  --LambiamTalk 09:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I think he meant he done archived this talk page.[7] —Steve Summit (talk) 12:17, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I've taken over (again) manually archiving the Computing reference desk. In case it's helpful, this is how I do it. --cesarb 01:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh! Cool! I didn't know about those top-header templates. Thanks. (You wouldn't believe what I've been using instead...) —Steve Summit (talk) 05:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Next to Template:Archive header for the daily archive pages there is also Template:Archive header monthly for creating the monthly archive pages, such as Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/July 2007. For the Help Desk, also (not) archived by RefDeskBot, use Template:HD Archive header and Template:HD Archive header monthly instead.  --LambiamTalk 10:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
The header templates have a tendency to produce "Error: invalid time". I'm afraid I don't quite understand what's going on there.  --LambiamTalk 06:47, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
You're probably missing the year parameter, which was added to the template a number of months ago, but never added to the template documentation. Just add 2007 in the last slot of the template, like so.. <noinclude>{{subst:Archive header|14|June|Entertainment|2007}}</noinclude>. All 4 templates require the year parameter to be tacked onto the end otherwise they'll produce "Error: invalid time"--VectorPotentialTalk 12:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't look like we'll be getting RefDeskBot back any time soon--VectorPotentialTalk 22:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I have a new one half-finished. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I hope it will be more robust than its predecessor. Ideally, an archiving bot should produce a simple human-readable log of its actions, doing a verification of each step, so that we can easily see whether something went wrong. Also, ideally, it should do the job even if it runs completely irregularly (sometimes every hour, sometimes every three days) and may occasionally be rudely interrupted anywhere in the process. It should be resistant against edit conflicts, database locks, server crashes, and such. The procedures for determining where the page headers end and the daily postings start and for extracting the contents of the thread headings both leave some room for improvements.  --LambiamTalk 06:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't have time for a full description this morning, but my plan (and this is the part that's already written) is to do the splitting based primarily on level-2 thread headings and the ~~~~ timestamps embedded within threads, looking at the level-1 date headings only as a backup. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:44, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
There is, of course, the problem of questioners not signing, as in this first question of the day, and sometimes – although more rarely – not even supplying a heading. If there is no date header at the split, one should be inserted, and it would be confusing if there can be more than one date header for a given day.  --LambiamTalk 16:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Y Done I have just finished archiving all the desks. Entertainment wasnt archived since June 26! Now I'll start on updating the month archive indices... — Shinhan < talk > 13:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work. In case you want to be appointed to the coveted position of Official Reference Desk Archivalist, a subtle hint will suffice.  --Lambiam 15:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, Shinhan A.Z. 01:35, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Help Needed

Is energy material? I couldn't find the direct answer to the question in the article. -PatPeter 17:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

See your question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Help_Needed David D. (Talk) 19:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Guys is "ignourant" ever used in old English? Or...

favourite, olde, and withe? I am in a discussion about language on Youtube here. -PatPeter 17:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have accidentally asked your questions on the page for talking about the reference desks. You will get much better results if you choose an appropriate page on the Reference desks themselves. For example, this question probably belongs under "Language". Skittle 18:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

See you question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Guys_is_.22ignourant.22_ever_used_in_old_English.3F_Or... David D. (Talk) 19:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

broken/missing shortcut boxes

I just noticed that the little box that says "Shortcut: WP:RD/M" at the top of the Miscellaneous desk renders awkwardly on top of the "Choose a topic" list in the upper right-hand corner (at least, in Firefox). And this made me realize that that box has gone missing from the other desks. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:35, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 34#Shortcut_boxes. I couldn't figure out how to keep the shortcut boxes from being eaten by the archiving bot. So I quit :-( ~ hydnjo talk 22:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh! Well, that's not a problem now -- there's a brand-new archiving bot (written by yours truly), and I don't think it'll touch the header boilerplate, and even if it does, I can fix it. So plop those boxes back in, and make 'em look good if you can and are willing to, and I'll worry about preserving them under archiving. --Steve Summit (talk) 22:49, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
OK done (for now). Small point but in the second section down, the date headers are actually "Level-0". ~ hydnjo talk 23:17, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
That was quick! Thanks. And I can already see that the new bot isn't going to touch those.
Re your small point: Huh. I've always just counted the equals signs, so that = header = is "level 1", == header == is "level 2", etc. Who invented that borken 0-based nomenclature? :-) --Steve Summit (talk) 23:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm just extrapolating downward from the nomenclature on the Wikipedia:Cheatsheet. The guardians of that page have resisted past attempts to actually list level-0 as a fact of header life. ~ hydnjo talk 23:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
See [8] and [9] - probably an uptight "C programmer" oops, admin, Oh well!  ;-) ~ hydnjo talk 23:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Reference desk recent changes

This page seems to be a page with recent changes to the reference desk. Is it really? Wasn't the lack of such a page the main problem with creating individual pages for each question? I don't know how this page works, though, and whether it would continue working if we splitted the reference desks into many pages. A.Z. 01:31, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

There's an explanation here. I think this could be used as a watchlist, so we could create a page for each question. A.Z. 23:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

new archiving bot deployed

The new refdesk archiving bot is (mostly) ready. Those with experience in these matters, please help me out by double-checking its first few edits. So far I've used it on just the Science, Humanities, and Miscellaneous desks, for July 14. (And as you'll see, there've been a few glitches, which I've corrected by hand.) —Steve Summit (talk) 04:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there are two more things I need help on. I'll have more to say later (for whose who are curious) about how the new bot works, but there are two important points:

  1. The new bot does not insert the daily level-one date headers. For now, those will still have to be inserted manually, by volunteers. Please do.
  2. The new bot does not depend on the daily level-one date headers, either. (That's why there's less incentive for it to automatically insert them.) The new bot looks primarily at signatures, and only secondarily at date headers. But this means that it is important for most questions to be signed. If you see an unsigned question, please check the history, figure out who posted it, and insert an {{unsigned2}} template incorporating the user (or IP address) and the date posted. Also, if there are questions without proper level-2 section headers, please add those, too. I thank you, the bot thanks you, and your fellow RD readers thank you, too! —Steve Summit (talk) 04:50, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Is Scsbot (talk · contribs) going to also run on the help desk?--VectorPotentialTalk 16:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I hadn't thought about it. If the requirements are more or less the same, it ought to be able to. --Steve Summit (talk) 16:24, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
It's the same system, only it uses {{HD Archive header}} & {{HD Archive header monthly}} instead of {{Archive header}} {{Archive header monthly}}. There are a few other differences, but probably not enough to give your bot any trouble. The only thing is the help desk has a much greater number of unsigned posts, so if your bot is only able to determine the day based on signatures, there may be a few problems--VectorPotentialTalk 16:30, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, for various reasons, teaching it about the Help Desk ended up being a bitch and a half. But I think it's working now. (I'll have to wait until tomorrow night to see if it can still do the Reference Desks okay after being ripped to shreds.) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
All end of July 17 questions are now time/date stamped and July 18 headers are in place. ~ hydnjo talk 00:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, hydnjo.
In answer to VectorPotential's question (and to put hydnjo at ease so he doesn't think he has to meticulously do this every night):
The bot finds the first timestamp it can in each section. This might be the questioner's, or one of the answerer's. And the answerer's might be a day later, but that's not the end of the world.
After determining a date for each section, the bot next attempts to find the first and last section for the date it's trying to archive. (Because I wrote it generally, it doesn't assume it's always archiving from the beginning of a desk's current chronology. That is, if I wanted it to, I could have it archive July 16 while leaving July 15 in place.)
Next, the bot looks to see if, in between the tentative first and last sections it identified, there are sections with some other date. If so, it then experiments with using one or both of the bracketing "official" date headers instead, to see if that gives it a better ratio of sections with the correct date among those contiguously archived.
The bottom line is that if most sections have reasonable dates, the bot will probably make a decent choice of what to archive even if it doesn't have any "official" date headers available to it at all. If there are date headers (and if they're accurately placed) so much the better.
--Steve Summit (talk) 00:48, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes there are no questions asked - the bot wont self-destruct will it? ~ hydnjo talk 00:55, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, yeah, it will, but computers are cheap, and I can use a new one. :-)
Seriously, if the bot finds no sections to archive for the requested date, it's designed to gracefully exit without doing anything. It occurs to me now, though, that this means the date header for the quiet day will be left behind. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:31, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
As it should be (left behind) to quell the anxiety that something went wrong. When this has happened in the past I've added a "No questions today" post again to acknowledge the situation. ~ hydnjo talk 14:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Removed Repeated Question

Re: Language RD, question of User:JDitto

I know it is generally taboo to delete other people's comments, but I can think no reason why anyone would have wished to post a question twice on the same page. I ASG that it was a simple mistake, and deleted it.martianlostinspace 21:19, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like he hit Save page twice by accident. --VectorPotentialTalk 21:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

header template rename

Unless there are objections, I'm going to be renaming Template:Archive header and Template:Archive header monthly to Template:RD Archive header and Template:RD Archive header monthly. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:32, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

How come?--VectorPotentialTalk 11:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
The RD Archives are not the only archives that have such headers. For the Help Desk we have Template:HD Archive header and Template:HD Archive header monthly. This makes the system more orthogonal.  --Lambiam 14:12, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Y Done Although I think it's a good idea to leave the redirects in place--VectorPotentialTalk 17:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

move = sysops

I'm thinking it might be a good idea if all the desks were move protected.--VectorPotentialTalk 18:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Why, did a non-administrator move the desks recently? A.Z. 22:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and the problem isn't that they moved it, in so much as they moved it abusively. Considering the persistence of said user, I'm anticipating further abuse from the same source. --VectorPotentialTalk 19:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I think we should wait for more abuse before protecting pages. A.Z. 21:26, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
They have been move protected. Rockpocket 22:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Rockpocket. A.Z., why would we wait for more pagemove abuse? Do you like to have beans up your nose? Is there any conceivable reason why any editor would want or need to rename any of the Ref Desks? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:22, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not able to conceive them right now, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Even if they don't, I just think protecting pages is a drastic measure. I prefer to know that I could move them, if it became needed. A.Z. 22:29, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, scratch that, because it doesn't appear that they are move protected. I checked yesterday and was sure they were protected, but a quick check again today seems that they are not, and I don't appear to be able to protect them myself. Could another admin check and see if they can? Rockpocket 22:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Turns out there is a technical gremlin at the moment, and the workaround involves edit protecting the page for a short time. I would rather not do that to such a busy page unless there is an urgent need. When it is sorted out I'll move protect the appropriate pages, or else I'll wait until a quiet period (late pm Pacific time) and do it then. Rockpocket 04:31, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Hopefully this doesn't become another Willy On Wheels. 63.224.202.235 22:37, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Simplify archive header templates?

The archive header templates contain the following code:

"The page you are currently viewing is {{#ifexist:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/{{{3|Example}}}/{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#time:Y F j|{{{2|August}}} {{{1|20}}}+10 days}}|an archive page|a [[Wikipedia:Transclusion|transcluded]] archive page",

whose sole purpose is to switch from "a transcluded archive page" to "an archive page" when the archived day is no longer transcluded in the current RD section page (or HD page). Are readers actually expected to pay attention to the distinction? The 10-day criterion is not robust, as it is not coupled to the actual cessation of transclusion. Will any harm be done if we simplify this to:

"The page you are currently viewing is an archive page"?

 --Lambiam 19:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I was kinda wondering about that, too. The potential utility to the reader is quite (perhaps vanishingly) small, and it's reduced even further if the information is not accurate. Furthermore, I expect we'll see some tinkering with the archive intervals in the near future, with perhaps different intervals for different desks, so having a value hardwired into the template like that becomes less and less workable.
(Don't get me wrong, it was a nice hack!) --Steve Summit (talk) 21:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thread removed

This one. User:24.147.86.187 actually gave a serious answer to the first "joke", but when the original poster added another sample, I removed the whole thread anyway. Hope no one minds. ---Sluzzelin talk 02:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Unsigned questions

Whereas the date headers are being added manually (for now) it would be more helpful if those folks adding the {{unsigned}} template used the {{unsigned2}} template instead as suggested by Steve Summit above. Don't forget to convert the "Page history" time to UTC and to change the date if that correction crosses the midnight hour. Thanks, ~ hydnjo talk 23:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please do use {unsigned2}, but I wouldn't worry too much about tinkering with the time and date. If you're using default settings, the page-history lists display UTC times anyway. And the new archiving bot is already somewhat approximate about date boundaries, so if you should happen to retroactively add a signature that's off by a day, and even if it does end up being one the bot looks at in trying to determine a day boundary, it's not going to cause the bot to be any more inaccurate than it's already being all by itself (and that I, for one, am quite comfortable with it being). —Steve Summit (talk) 03:30, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I use {{subst:unsigned-r|08:08, 21 July 2007 (UTC)|123.456.789.012}}, which produces:
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 123.456.789.012 (talk • contribs) 08:08, 21 July 2007 (UTC) – Please sign your posts!
Advantages: you don't have to reorder the TIME and USER parameters when you copy them from the history or diff, and the template produces an exhortation to sign one's posts (with a link to how to do that).  --Lambiam 08:08, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
{unsigned2} also has the parameters reversed for that same convenience. (Me, I prefer it without the exhortation -- chacun à son goût.) —Steve Summit (talk) 11:45, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Somewhat OT but anyone heard anything about Hagerman or the bot? Or does anyone know if someone's working on a replacement? Nil Einne 15:50, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Black people-God's Joke

I deleted this question, with apologies to A.Z. who answered it seriously. No teenager in America who writes as literately as this one did can possibly not be aware of either his father's opinions (if truly stated) or of society's views on racism. Sometimes polite, well-written questions are still trolling. If someone really thinks this was a true questuion, then perhaps taking the question and its reply to the User's as yet unused discussion page might be the bext place for it. I thought it was trash. Bielle 21:35, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it seemed like trolling. I'm not sure, however, that there are no American teenagers capable of honestly having written the post. A.Z. 21:53, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
It is not that there are no teenagers in America who might have had a similar experience to the one described, but I doubt very much (and admit to a bias for the power of education) that teenager would write so carefully of the experience, while still managing to get a hateful word, spelled out in full, on the Ref Desk page some three times. I can't be certain of this, of course, but I would bet a considerable part of the family fortune (1 gold Queen Victoria pound coin, a first edition of Brown's Self-Interpreting Bible and a print of Whistler's Mother done on black velvet) on being right. Bielle 22:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Not only that but whatever problems exist in the US related to racism, I'm pretty sure no congressperson would get away with publicly using such offensive words and calling black people unequal Nil Einne

Good move on this, Bielle. It's patently obvious what the intention was, just as it is equally obvious that this is no 'teenager'. The whole thing is transparent and disingenuous. Some of the language, moreover, reminds me of the character of Amon Göth in Schindler's List. Clio the Muse 22:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Clio, everything is patently obvious to you. You have claimed before to be able to recognize intelligence when you see it, and there has been one time when you said a proposal was "nonsensical!" and you agreed with Jack that it was nonsensical, only for him to respond one minute later that he actually supported the proposal. There has been one instance when you called a proposal ludicrous, only to admit later that you might not quite understand the proposal. A.Z. 22:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
A.Z., why the random attack on Clio? Scratch that—I don't want to invite a further discussion or a rant. Try to stay on topic, and don't pick fights or take shots. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:29, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Not an attack, not a fight, don't really know what's a shot. It was just criticism, for the benefit of Clio, other users, and Wikipedia. I won't stop that. A.Z. 22:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I crossed my attempt at constructive criticism now, since no-one seems to have learned anything from it. A.Z. 00:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Now I have uncrossed it because I don't think that the fact that no-one learned anything from it justifies it being crossed. A.Z. 00:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Curiously, the poster's IP address is registered to a pharmaceutical company in Nanjing.  --Lambiam 22:23, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Good call, Bielle. It was an obvious troll, albeit better written than the usual we see around here. If it comes back, kill it with fire. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:29, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
That is curious, Lambiam. Is the company a US/UK/Aus/Can/ branch with a bored ex-pat at the keyboard, I wonder? And thank you, Clio the Muse and TenOfAllTrades, but I am better with venom than with fire. Bielle 22:40, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
And I can manage both! Clio the Muse 22:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Could simply be an open proxy. Servers in developing countries don't tend to be very well set up or monitored sadly and open proxies in developing countries are not an uncommon occurence. Using an open proxy is not that hard, many script kiddies can do it, finding one that isn't blocked is perhaps more difficult but don't really require a great deal of knowledge, just luck and time Nil Einne 12:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't necessarily even have to be in a developing country. I've found and blocked at least one open proxy with a .mil hostname. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
This may be superfluous, but I also want to commend Bielle for this action. Even if the initial "hunch" about the underlying facts was not 100% accurate (who knows) the action taken reflected sagacity, a proper balancing of competing interests, and good judgment. dr.ef.tymac 23:14, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I liked that she acknowledged (by the way I always search this word in Google before I use it, since I never learned how to properly speel it); anyway, as I was saying, I liked that she acknowledged my serious answer and my good faith. A.Z. 23:47, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, good dr.ef.tymac; you are very kind. Never worry about an appearance of a superfluous number of specific compliments. For most of the world, compliments are thin on the ground, and thus a modest profusion from time to time helps to offset the general void. Bielle 00:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

OK kids, it's gettin' late so go to bed now, ya heah? - hydnjo talk 03:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC) Never-mind, knock yourselves out! - hydnjo talk 04:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

removed two dubious questions

Were here and here; removed here and here. --Steve Summit (talk) 22:22, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The latter now being discussed on my talk page, perhaps to and now returned to the RD. --Steve Summit (talk) 22:41, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

April Fool Heading

Could someone please explain to me what is going on here? Clio the Muse 22:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Now gone, I see. Thanks, whoever! Clio the Muse 23:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Shortcut boxes

Ummm, any ideas about displaying the shortcut box so that it doesn't get swept away during archiving? - hydnjo talk 00:55, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

The only "swept away" problem I've noticed is that it gets pushed down "below the fold" by the RD boilerplate text (that is, by the expansion of {{Wikipedia:Reference desk/headercfg}}). The archiver certainly isn't sweeping them away! (Or did it by mistake, and I ditn'd notice?) —Steve Summit (talk) 00:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, maybe I'm missing something here. This is what I'm talking about. Yet if you go to WP:RD/C you'll not find (I think) the shortcut box that I added at 23:05, on 17 July 2007. Help me if I'm missing something here but as I see it it's the same problem as (way) before; the shortcut box lasts only as long as the archiving of the date that the shortcut was installed. - hydnjo talk 01:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
The old archiver might have had trouble with shortcut boxes, but the current archiver doesn't touch them: see e.g. here and here. The shortcut box at the computing desk was deleted (not by the archiver) on July 27. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Ouch! I apologize for not being more thorough before raising this non-issue; I only looked at the computer desk and made this mistake. Thanks Steve for doing the research that I should have done and thanks for the restoration. _ hydnjo talk 14:26, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome! (No problem.) --Steve Summit (talk) 17:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Even if it was a problem, just incorporate it into the template at the top.martianlostinspace 17:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

NIMH battery question deleted

See [10]. Yes, there was some soapboxing in the questioner's post, but it is a technical question, and answers to it would have been interesting, and the "soap" is answerable by reference to factual sources and is not just a matter of opinion. Was there a patent which was sold? Factual Q and A. Is a battery with certain specs available in Europe by not the US? Again can be answered based on facts. What am I missing here? Edison 02:24, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, first of all, it was a new section for an old question -- the old question is still present. Second, it had the "wall of text" appearance, was on a subject that's a common trope of conspiracy theorists, and was posted by a user with a username that corresponded to the subject matter. I said to myself, here's a pattern I've seen before.
But if you want to restore it and respond to it, be my guest. --Trovatore 03:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with Trovatore. I also reverted the addition, and asked the user not to use Wikipedia as a soapbox. S/he could have rephrased the "query" better, but instead re-added it. -- Flyguy649 talk contribs 04:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I suppose this is the original question, from an IP address [11]. Perhaps a link to that in the comment deleting the question would have headed off my find it necessary to raise the question here. It looks like the original question was answered appropriately. (How does one link to a section (question) in an article(or a set of Ref desk questions)? I too often see links which go to a very long page of coments or questions and answers, and it should be possible to link directly to the question of interest. Edison 00:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
In fairness, the poster of the question (who is really User:TripleBatteryLife seems to run a business whose claim is to have some gadget that will triple the lifespan of batteries (check out the link on his user page). So it's rather unlikely that this was really a genuine question - the guy claims to be a total expert on batteries (although IMHO, his science is a little shakey) - so why ask the question? So it's much more likely that this is a troll of some kind. His random claims for the beliefs of others (he accused me of believing in time travel and a variety of other weird shit on the 'Creationism' thread) have been the subject of long discussions elsewhere over the past few days - and he's VERY upset at being "censored". SteveBaker 02:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


NIMH is one of those ambiguous acronyms. Edison 18:52, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Purpose of the desk (help)

The reference desk process helps the growth and refinement of Wikipedia by identifying areas that may need improvement. If an article that could answer a question is lacking the relevant information, look for a way to work the information into the article. This provides a lasting value to the project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#Looking_for_an_article_.231

--Savedthat 05:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes...? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I think Savedthat is asking for someone to create the article. Whenever a question prompts a volunteer to notice a particular lack of information on the encyclopedia and add the missing info to article space, this is a cause for celebration. WP:RDAC is one attempt to bundle and encourage these efforts. WP:REQUEST is another place where you can ask for missing articles. (Simply repeating the question won't create the article as if by magic, the "look for a way to work the information into the article" is directed at every user here, including the questioner. :-) ) ---Sluzzelin talk 18:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

RefDesk in the Media

Wikipedia as a whole has been discussed and critiqued a great deal in the media. I'm just wondering if anyone is aware of any media attention or critique focusing on the RefDesk in particular. Serinmort 04:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Not that I am aware of. Though I seem to recall that a question addressed at the desk led to an error being corrected in the New York Times, when a regular contacted them. Also, I believe one of our regulars may be being interviewed for an article in the near future, so perhaps that will lead to some media discussion. Rockpocket 05:10, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Really, who is it? A.Z. 05:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
The person may prefer to remain anonymous, so I'll leave it to them to identify themselves should they wish to. Rockpocket 05:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
OK. A.Z. 06:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, the approach is on my 'public space', Rockpocket, but I thank you for your consideration. The said 'interview' has now been done, incidentally. Clio the Muse 06:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, it was Clio the Muse. She had been my second guess, right after Rockpocket himself. A.Z. 06:10, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Would it be appropriate to ask just where and when would the article be available to the public? I'd really be interested in reading it! Serinmort 18:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
It was for a French periodical by the name of L'Histoire. I have no idea if they will use what I wrote or not, or when they will use it. It's really no big deal. Clio the Muse 22:32, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
The magazine has an article: L'Histoire. A.Z. 23:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Word association and the purposes of the reference desk

And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually
And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually

I think that the reference desk is comparable to the game at Wikipedia talk:Sandbox/Word Association. When I read the arguments to keep the game when it was nominated for deletion, I thought they could be used to save the reference desk as well, should someone suggest its deletion. A.Z. 04:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The various deletion discussions are indeed interesting. One of the things that has preserved the Word Association game is that it is in the sandbox, where a bit of silliness is expected. Another is that it seems to genuinely aid building of the encyclopedia, unlike the other games and variants which were deleted. On top of this, note that later deletion discussions only emerged after the game started sprawling over many pages. It became too big. Many of those pages were deleted. Skittle 20:27, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
I think that the fact that it helps building the encyclopedia is what saved the reference desk so far. I hope it will never be moved to the sandbox. A.Z. 22:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
OMG! Salvation is us. - hydnjo talk 22:42, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't get it, despite the links. A.Z. 23:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
This might be a good opportunity to note that I have been recording exactly how the Ref Desk has contributed to the encyclopedia, here. I suggest we direct anyone who asks what good the Desk does there in future. Much of the content and translation into articlespace has been the good work of Clio and Ghirla. I urge anyone who significantly improves an article in response to a question, or even as a subsequence of reading a question, to add the appropriate templates to the question and talkpage. That way I can keep track of what the Ref Desk has contributed. Alternatively, feel free to drop me a note on my talkpage. Rockpocket 07:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
At this point there's no question in my mind that (a) the [1] primary purpose of the Reference Desk is to improve the encyclopedia, and (b) it's working quite well at this, but also (c) the side benefits of [2] helping people and [3] enjoying ourselves are working well as well. So it's a win-win-win situation, and I don't imagine any attempt to eliminate the Reference Desks (if anyone was silly enough to try) would get very far. But having actual, concrete documentation of the articles which have been improved is a very nice ace in the hole, so it's great that the RDAC folks are doing what they're doing. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The Hebrew link

It should be דלפק ייעוץ & not דלפק יעוץ. Please fix it. GOER 17:38, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. By the way, the link is actually in the template Wikipedia:Reference desk/RD header which is not protected. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:17, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, that wasn't correct. The hebrew equivalent of the Reference desk is he:ויקיפדיה:הכה את המומחה, where he:ויקיפדיה:דלפק ייעוץ is the equivalent of the Help desk. I fixed it to the correct destination. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:26, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Correcting archives

Following a query on my talk page, I just corrected my own answer to my own question in the archives! See here. I feel like I'm caught in some recursive storyline here... Seriously, is correcting the archives like that the normal thing to do? Carcharoth 14:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with continuining to edit threads after they have been archived. In fact, that was a great idea. Now we have more than five days to address the questions! A.Z. 02:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Seconded. I pretty regularly add to archived threads. The additions probably won't be seen by the original poster (or perhaps by anybody), so if they're frivolous they're not worth it, but if they substantially improve the completeness of correctness of an archived answer, then swell! (And see below.) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:56, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I think they're gonna be seen from now on. If the archives are alive, they get more interesting! A.Z. 03:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
What do you mean by "from now on"? Has something just changed? —Steve Summit (talk) 03:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
This section brought our attention to the fact that you people are editing the archives. I had no idea that people were doing that, and I guess I wasn't the only one. A.Z. 03:12, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay. (But who's "us people", and who are y'all?) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Carcharoth and you are you people so far, but I think there are more of you, editing the archives. Me and others are all talk page regulars. A.Z. 03:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I edit the archives too although I've never gone that far back yet. And I agree there's nothing wrong, provided you don't change something especially in such a way that makes other comment confusing. Simply adding a response or saying ooops I was wrong is fine. As we sometimes direct question askers to the archives, it's probably going to be occasinally useful at least 10:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Highlights?

I've been reading some of the reference desks again, and have been remembering how great they are! :-) I know the archives are available to read through, but is there a "highlights" area anywhere? Carcharoth 16:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I think people could make their own list of favorite discussions. There are people that are listing articles that have been improved because of reference desk discussions, as seen a few sections above. A.Z. 02:48, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I have several ideas for indexing and rating our archived answers. I'm not sure when I'll get around to implementing them, but if people are interested, suggestions and encouragement would help. :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I wish to hear more, Steve, and I like Carcharoth's idea of a highlights page. I once sandboxed something like this myself, but it has only one entry. I'm interested in the indexing perspectives - it would be great if there were a way to synergize this with transferring the useful archived information into the encyclopedia - the pay-off would justify the possibly tremendous efforts a topical indexing would consume. (But then, what do I know, see also another editor's thoughts on a comprehensive index). What kind of rating were you thinking about? Anything beyond binary "highlights" or useful vs not useful? ---Sluzzelin talk 05:47, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
What I was thinking of doing was building a little web tool which interested RD regulars could use to capture some statistics about our archived entries. The web tool would present an entry and make it very quick&easy to provide:
  1. a rating on the quality of the answer (from 0 = we didn't answer it at all, to 5 = one of our best, stellar answers)
  2. a list of keywords on the actual topic(s) discussed
  3. a list of Wikipedia articles created or significantly improved as a result of the discussion
  4. (maybe) a list of existing Wikipedia articles which already answered the question adequately well
From these answers, along with information mechanically derived from each entry, I could create a little database of every answered Reference Desk question ever, useful for searching and other kinds of data analysis. Ideally, the categorization process would be so quick that, with a handful of interested volunteers putting in not too much work at the task, we could process not only new entries going forward but, in time, all of our historical archives as well.
#2 might not be necessary; there are those who say that explicitly-supplied keywords are more or less useless for searching.
#3 is of course already being collected in various ad-hoc ways.
—Steve Summit (talk) 05:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Ref desk archiving bot

The new Ref desk archiving bot (a function of User:Scsbot, see also the previous thread) I deployed a month ago seems to be working well. So far I've been manually double-checking all of its edits, which is considerably easier than actually making the edits, but is still timeconsuming. So I think I'll stop doing that now. I mention this not to fish for compliments for the work I've done so far, but just to say that if, going forward, you notice an error the bot seems to have made, please do let me know, because I might otherwise be completely unaware of it. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you a lot for your dedication to the reference desk, and for taking the time to deploy a whole new bot for us! A.Z. 03:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Geez, can't you READ? He said he WASN'T fishing for compliments! Some people...  :-)
--Anonymous, and very much in jest, August 16, 03:39 (UTC).
When you cross a post like that, people think that it was the author who crossed it. I have uncrossed it then. A.Z. 03:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Right-o. --Anon, August 16, 04:26 (UTC).

urinal etiquette

I just noticed that the whole "urinal etiquette" thread got removed. I thought it was pretty silly, too, and I probably would have deleted the question myself if I'd noticed it before it got so many answers. But it did get a lot of answers, so apparently plenty of people thought it was interesting, and if so, one of you might like to restore it. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Y Done Thank you. A.Z. 03:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
It is quite interesting, by the way. I didn't know that chatting at the urinal was seen as unproper for men in other places/cultures. Where I live it's common. A.Z. 03:53, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree - a reasonable question, asked in a reasonable way, with an interesting and enlightening set of responses. Replies were based on personal experience, but this will generally be the case with any question about etiquette, custom or usage. No good reason for deletion. Gandalf61 12:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

new signing bot available

I just noticed that there's a new talk-page-comment-signing bot, SineBot, filling in for or replacing the defunct HagermanBot. (See discussion here.) It's in beta, but do we want to think about asking it to monitor the RD's too? —Steve Summit (talk) 01:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I do. A.Z. 01:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
You mean you support using it to sign the pages? Nil Einne 10:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Ironically I came here because I just noticed it too and wanted to recommend it. I support using it to monitor the RD, will help out Scsbot amongst other things Nil Einne 10:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


Medical advice

Violation of "No Medical Advice" guidelines.

We are seeing about daily violation of the "Don't ask for medical advice" - which is somewhat understandable because our questioners don't always read the guidelines. But more disturbingly, I'm seeing at least daily medical advice being dispensed by respondants - even from experienced people who are fully aware of the guidelines. That's not acceptable - and sooner or later it's going to wind up getting someone into a lot of trouble.

The scenario that worries me is when someone asks for advice (like today - someone reports having blurry vision) - and someone says (as today) "Do you have a history of migraines? There is something called a migraine aura, which can affect vision." - this is a medical diagnosis - pure and simple. He's asking the patient for further symptoms and suggesting a cause.

What happens if this guy now says "Oh - OK so this is just something minor relating to a migrane." and thinks nothing more of it - then in a month from now goes blind - or drops dead from some terrible brain disease? Well, his life insurance will be called upon to pay out a couple of million dollars (maybe) - and they'll be looking for someone to recover some of that cost from. If they happen to find out that the unfortunate victim asked about blurry vision on Wikipedia - and was given some terrible advice - they are going to seek redress. The Wikimedia foundation will point to the "No Medical Advice" guideline - and the pile of legal grief is going to fall right into the lap of one of our respondants. Since they are definitely offering a diagnosis of a specific condition - they are practicing medicine. Since it's pretty much certain the respondant doesn't have a medical license - they are guilty of practicing medicine without a license - and will likely get sued for a big chunk of change.

Even something as benign as practicing podiatry without a license can land you in jail for six months.

This is potentially a very serious matter - and I think we have to start taking it seriously.

I would like someone with admin privilages to start handing out formal warnings and 24 hour wiki-bans for people who offend more than once.

Comments please. SteveBaker 03:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I was the one you quote correctly as saying “Do you have a history of migraines? There is something called a migraine aura, which can affect vision.” (You can use my name next time you quote me. I won’t mind.) As a matter of fact the migraines were brought up by another user before me. My post was not a medical diagnoses, but was an addition of two links, migraines and migraine aura, which I added for clarification of the previous statement. Also I went on to say, “A really bad migraine while your driving could be bad. You might want to think about having someone else drive you.” I wanted to make sure the user did not endanger himself or others by driving to the doctor by himself. Migraines are potentially very serious when operating a car, and warning the user of this could potential save his life. However, I agree, my comment “Do you have a history of migraines?” was inappropriate and carless. It has been replaced. Thanks for your concern Steve. --S.dedalus 04:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
These concerns are as old as the reference desk, go through the archives, read what one of our few professional MDs had to say here, which problems TenOfAllTrades identified even regarding professional advice here , or Brad Patrick's response here. Nothing wrong with pointing this out, or "warning" people occasionally, I guess, but calling for a ban (I assume you meant a block) won't change anything and looks like it's intended as a punishment, which isn't what blocks are for. ---Sluzzelin talk 04:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
In the case mentioned by SteveBaker, the original poster said that he would see a doctor anyway. They were just curious about what that could be. But I agree that killing someone could be dangerous for the respondant because he could go to jail, and I agree that blocks should not be used for punishment. A.Z. 06:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Reminders of the "no medical advice" guideline on the RDs are fine. Polite notes on user's talk pages are fine. 24 block for someone who gives a couple of responses that some admin chooses to interpret as medical advice is over the top. Gandalf61 09:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The question, though, is how long we will give intelligent editors the "Stop, or I'll say 'Stop' again!" treatment before we acknowledge that their behaviour isn't going to be changed by polite requests? Unless someone is obstinately giving conspicuously bad advice, I probably wouldn't endorse a block after a single warning—such a poster means to be helpful, even though their actions are unwise. At some point, though, we have to stand behind our policies. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. The number of "Please don't give medical advice" posts is approaching one per day - people very often say things like "I know we aren't allowed to give medical advice but...<medical advice>...and go see a doctor." It's only a matter of time until this hurts someone - or maybe even gets someone killed. That's bad enough - you may argue that anyone who takes medical advice here deserves everything they get - but when that happens, the negative press for Wikipedia will be ASTRONOMICAL - and one hapless individual is going to get sued and maybe even serve jail time. Wikipedia needs to protect itself against these kinds of thing. Insurance companies are very happy to sue people to try to recover their outlay when someone gets hurt. If they see a pattern of Wikipedia not actually enforcing it's own rules, then the Foundation itself could be in trouble. If we handed out a couple of 24 hour bans (which is truly a very minor punishment) will focus people's attention on the seriousness of the issue. S.dedalus admits an inappropriate post (and I bet I've done something similar on at least one occasion in the past) - we've had people arguing about the correctness of the rule and insisting that they DO have the right to post medical advice. We need something that makes everyone sit up and pay attention to the problem. We'd only have to hand out a 24 hour ban a couple of times and this problem would stop overnight. It's worth it. SteveBaker 15:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Um, Steve, before we get too worked up over the lawsuit possibility, are you qualified to be giving this kind of legal advice? —Steve Summit (talk) 16:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Say I met someone at a party, told him about my blurry vision, and he replied "I'm not a doctor, but...", going on to express his opinion of a possible cause. If I were to take his advice and then suffer some ill as a result, what would my chances be of succeeding in a civil suit against him? What would the chances be of his being convicted of practicing medicine without a license? And if the answers to both those questions are "slim" and "none" (as I suspect - but do not know - that they are), how is the situation on Wikipedia any different? - Eron Talk 16:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

The answer is, in my opinion, authority. Since the question was asked on a "reference desk" linked from the main page of a huge online encyclopedia, this makes it look like the person answering the question should be taken seriously, which is wrong. Asking something here is like asking something to a complete stranger at a party, but the respondant's lawyer would have to convince the judge of that. A.Z. 17:34, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Definition of advice: "an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct, etc...." (italics added; Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary). Our advice to this poster is simple and universal: "see your doctor", which the poster has done. Speculating as to what might have caused the problem without telling him/her what to do, is not "giving medical advice", in my opinion.--Eriastrum 18:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
This isn't a "reference desk" linked to from a huge encyclopedia, it's a website. On the internet. Made by anonymous posters (unless like me you disclose your identity). Do you really think someone would be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license for giving unintentionally (or intentionally!) harmful medical advice on some other obscure forum? How is this any different? I think the potential for negative publicity is miniscule- people will think exactly what they should.. "I pay out the wazoo for real doctors to look at me, I obey the rules of society, and if someone wants to cut some corners it's their fault for believing some guy on the internet about a serious medical condition" --frotht 01:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's totally impossible that someone be prosecuted for giving medical advice on some obscure forum. It's totally unpredictable to me what the publicity would be, and what people would think of Wikipedia, and what the press would write, if something bad happened to someone because of advice given here.
But when I said above that the difference was authority I wasn't answering Eron's question anyway. Instead of thinking about the chances to succeed in a suit, which was what the question was about, I thought about the chances of someone taking the medical advice of a total stranger seriously. In fact, I have crossed that post now. Sorry about the misunderstanding. A.Z. 03:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just returned after a wikibreak and I noticed this discussion. If one of us gives out inappropriate medical advice, and the questioner acts on it, to their detriment or even death, the 3 main issues are (a) the damage/death itself, (b) the lawsuit that would follow, and (c) the bad publicity we would attract. (b) and (c) are direct consequences of (a), and cannot occur without (a) happening first. Seems to me that by far the most important principle we should be adhering to is "do no harm" - that is, don't give out potentially damaging advice in the first place. Lawsuits and bad publicity are serious concerns, but they rate very low in my personal worldview compared with doing actual physical damage to people. The risk of this happening may be small, but one case is one too many, and what if it was your friend or brother at the receiving end? I favour a very firm policy on this issue. A lot of general medical questions are ok to answer, but anything that could be taken as advice on how to deal with a specific medical condition should be avoided. We can't expect questioners to abide by the rules if we violate our own rules. -- JackofOz 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I think I agree that it's more important to care about someone dying than to care about bad publicity. Do I? It might be possible that bad publicity to Wikipedia eventually causes more harm to mankind than one questioner's death... Fewer people contributing could cause information not to be free and the children in Africa wouldn't have their free encyclopedia. I don't know, but I do care about people getting hurt and dying. That's included in my personal worldview as a serious concern, and I want to make that clear.
I need to clarify something about my reply to Eron: I thought that he was imagining a situation (a suit) in which it would be questioned whether the dead person took the advice seriously and whether it was the advice that caused the person to die. He was actually just asking whether someone could possibly succeed in a civil suit against someone who you met a at a party and gave you some medical opinion even though they weren't a deoctor, and how this would be different from asking something at the reference desk. A.Z. 04:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Worst Medical Advice ever

This example comes to us from Wikiversity. It's a small Wikimedia project and it's much newer than the English Wikipedia. Consequently, it's a lot more like the Wild West at times than the university it aspires to be. Because of the low traffic, their Help Desk deals with all questions, so it's an interesting mix of Wikiversity and general knowledge requests for assistance.

By sheer coincidence, I saw the following example of medical advice mere moments before I read this thread. Names have been redacted. From Wikiversity:Help desk#Intracranial pressure:

My EEG revealed a slightly high intracranial pressure. However IMHO after downing the pressure to normal I will a bit more passive and slow. Does it make much sense? --(name removed)
I believe that doctors, upon finding something "abnormal" (outside the typical range), often decide, incorrectly, that they need to correct it. If this condition has been with you all your life, your body may have adapted to it and may actually function better with that pressure. It may adjust to the new pressure, or it may not, only time will tell. --(name removed)[12]

The original poster clearly has no idea what intracranial pressure is, nor what it might mean for it to be slightly elevated. He seems to have the idea that a higher intracranial pressure will let him think faster and be more alert (do the thoughts get squeezed out faster?).

The response fails to provide any useful information about what the original poster's condition is or what it means, and offers the advice that the difference is probably meaningless and doesn't need correction. The responder opines that doctors are generally inclined to overdiagnose and over-treat, and that their medical recommendations are often useless. The original poster may well take these comments as implicit advice to experiment with stopping any medication he is taking.

This is a superb cautionary example of the worst sort of advice that we're desperately trying to avoid here on Wikipedia. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a slippery slope: As sympathetic as I am to the concerns voiced here, and as much as I have protested against inappropriate claims that border on professional advice, there are serious problems when you start talking about bans. Who gets to set up the "WP board of professional responsibility" that will be in charge of handing out the bans in specific instances, once the line has been crossed?
Who will be responsible for the widespread CYA that becomes necessary when a WP user is harmed because she detrimentally relied on the "ban system" to keep out bad advice, but nevertheless gets some, because it either "slipped through the cracks" or the ban on a "repeat offender" has expired and they are back to their old tricks?
Once you set up a formal system of "professional review and censure" (which you can bet is how the ban system would be "spun" if it ever went to litigation) you are setting up the entirety of Wikipedia for those instances when the system of review fails, and you are directly undermining the authority of the various disclaimers that are supposed to be the authoritative mechanism for preventing detrimental reliance on crappy advice here on WP.
Community disapproval should be enough. Post your personal disapproval right at the end of the question, or on the user talk page of the offending user. Once you set up any kind of "standardized substantive review" of quasi-professional advice, you're injecting your own "professional standards" as well, which defeats the very purpose you purport to serve. dr.ef.tymac 16:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
(This is in response to the entire thread, but I'm just placing here under dr.ef.tymac's post): If you believe someone's post constitutes medical advice and poses a clear and present danger to Wikipedia (or to the person who posted it), then you must remove it immediately. This shouldn't stop you from going to the "perpetrator's" talk page and explaining your speedy removal, gracefully and emphasizing the assumption of good faith. If the user then still reverts your revert or disagrees, you can take it to this talk page. Only when it becomes clear that the same editor is repeatedly and frequently adding dangerous medical advice, despite having being told not to, to spite us, to make a point, to prove his independent or relativist grass-root stance, or for whatever useless reason, only then does it become disruption, and only then can we even start talking about preventive blocks. Punitive blocks have no place on Wikipedia, in my opinion. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm wondering though, Dreftymac, how you would draw a distinction between removing medical advice (which policy says doesn't belong on Wikipedia) and removing libellous material from articles and talk pages (which policy says doesn't belong on Wikipedia).
In the latter case, editors regularly remove defamatory content without batting an eye, and we warn – and if necessary, block – the involved editors if they persist. I don't there's any reason that we should be more aggressive in protecting our readers' reputations and professional wellbeing than in protecting their actual physical health.
Recall how WP:BLP arose out of the Seigenthaler debacle. Wikipedia got a black eye from a few POV pushers and our own lax enforcement of WP:RS, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV. Was all the criticism fair? Were the media entirely balanced and reasonable in their coverage? Of course not; it's not the nature of the media. Did Wikipedia get dragged through the mud? Yep.
Do you think that we'll look better or worse when someone, despite our disclaimers, takes medical advice from the Ref Desk that turns out badly? Do you think the press will treat Wikipedia kindly, or will the editorialists knives come out? Don't you expect comparisons and parallels – fair or not – to be drawn to the Seigenthaler mess? Even though our disclaimers may cover Wikipedia's collective ass from a legal standpoint, there would be tremendous harm to Wikipedia's reputation—and there are costs to Wikipedia associated with defending even a frivolous lawsuit. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Good point, TenOfAllTrades, but there is a meaningful distinction. As you know, the Seigenthaler scenario involved false and defamatory statements. Yes, the press coverage was unfavorable, and we definitely want to work together to prevent anything approaching a repeat of that unfortunate outcome, but "unsubstantiated factual assertions" are dramatically different from "professional advice that falls below a requisite standard of care".
  • WP is in the business of putting out publicly-available "facts" that are capable of release under GFDL (though, technically, even the accuracy of those are disclaimed -- even though we all acknowledge that false information is inimical to the interests of this project -- and even the WP disclaimer itself admits you may be able to find *some* accurate information in WP).
  • WP is not, however, in the business of putting out "professional advice" under any circumstances. This is true regardless of whether the professional advice is either "good" or "bad"; either "competent" or "negligent"; either "auspicious" or "unconscionable". Nowhere in the WP disclaimer will you find an admission that "WP might contain useful professional advice that you can rely on."
"Bad" medical advice is against the interests of this project, but so is "Good" medical advice.
Technically, none of it should be here. In fact, technically advice such as "you should seek medical assistance and stop asking medical questions on WP" could be classified as "professional advice".
Don't get me wrong, if you apply your individual expertise and professional training to sniff out crappy RefDesk posts that would otherwise not have been detected, your individual efforts should be supported and encouraged. Such efforts, however, are a function of individual effort, and not a function of WP community review.
As far as press coverage goes, I suspect detrimental reliance on bad medical advice really would not garner much attention, because anyone who uses an "encyclopedia" for self-diagnosis and treatment would probably be unsympathetic and subject to ridicule.
If the name changes to "WikiHospital, the free Hospital where anyone can practice medicine" ... that would be different. dr.ef.tymac 10:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me you're missing the point. While I'm not too supportive of bans myself, we aren't AFAIK proposing a ban for 'bad medical advice' Instead, what's being proposed is a ban for people who violate a putative policy on giving any professional advice. No one is going to review whether the advice is good or bad. It's irrelevant. It's really IMHO the same as the way we enforce most wikipedia policies. It doesn't matter for example whether what you are trying to add to wikipedia is the truth. If it's unreferenced particularly in a BLP it goes. If you keep adding it, you get banned. Even if it later turns out you had some secret information and what you were adding was the truth, it doesn't matter. We don't have to investigate whether or not what someone is adding is 'the truth'. We don't even have to investigate whether it's referencable. If you keep adding unreferenced info, you get banned. Also, I think you're quite wrong about the press coverage that may result altho I can't be bothered discussing it further Nil Einne 21:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
One problem is, the so-called "bad" advice gets all the attention, because that's what people respond to emotionally (look at the header of this thread). There are lots of "professional advice" type posts that apparently don't even get noticed at all here on the Reference Desk, because people do not seem to complain about them. [13][14][15][16]
Conjecture: this kind of proposal pretty much guarantees that the "bans" will be applied disproportionately to "apparent medical quackery" ... and the majority of other kinds of potentially dubious "professional advice" content will continue to fly "under the radar". Perhaps people are happy with that kind of outcome though. To me, it seems unbalanced.
It seems there are multiple ways of looking at this, but no way of objectively applying a non-arbitrary standard that provides a neutral "safe harbor" ... such as you have with WP:RS and WP:V. dr.ef.tymac 04:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Template proposal

My idea is that a template should be used for the first and second violations. (Just like any other infraction of policy.) I quickly created this template for the purpose. Any thoughts? --S.dedalus 21:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I think templates are a bad idea. A.Z. 22:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
That is possible. Why do you think so? --S.dedalus 22:09, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I think that someone leaving a template on your talk page may make you feel bad. It's too unpersonal and it makes it look like you're a vandal. A.Z. 22:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Templates are currently used for everything from improper humor to "Biting" newcomers and Not using edit summary. Although a personal message is often better, we cannot expect every Wikipedian to come up with a properly worded message of their own. This template would not be required; for those who do not wish to use it, it can simply act as a guide to the necessary tone in the personalized warning message. --S.dedalus 22:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps (at least) two templates would be best—one for the first warning, one for subsequent ones. It's the same way we approach vandalism warnings; offer the carrot first, and only use the stick if necessary. The first time around, it's worth assuming good faith, and offering a courteous and polite explanation of why offering medical advice is both forbidden by policy and a bad idea in general: "Thank you for trying to be helpful, but please don't offer any more medical advice. Giving medical advice on the Ref Desk can have negative consequences foo, bar, and flibble. Please see our policy at somelink for details. If you are unsure about what constitutes medical advice, feel free to ask on WT:RD. Your cooperation is appreciated."
The second template would be more along the lines of "Please stop offering medical advice on the Ref Desk, per linktopolicy. Your account may be blocked..."
We want to encourage voluntary compliance as much as possible, and we want to be sure the first template – however impersonal – is at least friendly and courteous. These people are almost always trying to help, even if they're going about it badly. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that is my thought as well. So you think this would be a second level template?
I would have created the other template at the same time if I’d had the time. If no one else wishes to do it, I will create the second and third ones latter today. --S.dedalus 22:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here’s a first warning template. What do you think? --S.dedalus 06:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a fairly low-volume problem, and can usually be resolved without a templates - templates usually come across as fairly patronising, and always come across as impersonal. Neil ム 09:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. See WP:TEMPLAR, just an essay, apparently a controversial one at that, but it reflects my feelings. You don't have to write everything from scratch, and can cut and paste parts of a standardized warning about giving medical advice, including reasons and links to policies. I believe what looks like a form letter from the authorities, an automated post, or a yellow card has the potential to unnecessarily dramatize and antagonize good faith editors. This can really make all the difference - we've all seen the same users react quite differently depending on how the message was delivered. ---Sluzzelin talk 09:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Vehement disapproval: Folks, with full respect to those proposing templates (and possibly systematic bans), this is a *huge* slippery slope, and I would be astonished if the Foundation gave express approval for something like this if it ever gained traction and became common RefDesk practice. Remember, professional advice of *any* sort is out of bounds for Wikipedia. Regardless of whether it is "good" or "bad".

Are we prepared to equally warn and ban contributors who consistently give "good" advice as well? Are we prepared to determine which contributors can be trusted to determine which posts constitute "advice" in the first place?

Yes, I know the template proposal was just a draft, so please don't take this as premature criticism, but language like this should make your hair stand on end:

   If you are unsure about what constitutes medical advice, feel free to ask on WT:RD

Please, people, give this whole thing some very serious consideration. Stuff like this is red-hot, and is precisely the kind of thing that can land the entire Reference Desk on MfD. Let's not give the anti-RefDesk faction any more ammo than they already have. If you see some persistent refdesk quackery; why not just handle it with the usual tools? Wikipedia:Tendentious editing, Wikipedia:Disruptive editing etc. dr.ef.tymac 11:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Er, I'm not sure what you're arguing here. For what it's worth, yes, we would absolutely bar 'good' advice as well. I think we're all on the same page here—there is wide consensus that we don't want anyone to be giving any sort of professional advice on the Ref Desks. (It is agreed that the only 'good' medical advice we can offer is 'Go see your doctor or pharmacist'.) We're only discussing medical advice here because a) it seems to be the most commmon type of armchair advice we see, and b) it is the type of advice that's most capable of going spectacularly wrong.
The few editors on the Ref Desk who actually hold proper medical degrees already know (and have commented to this effect)
The 'ask on WT:RD' is meant to serve two purposes, and neither is to encourage people to verify their advice. Rather, some people have trouble distinguishing between the questions that seek medical advice and the questions that simply ask a question about a topic related to medicine. In other words, given the two questions
  1. What is intracranial pressure?
  2. My doctor said I have high intracranial pressure, what should I do about it?
We can answer the first question with links to the appropriate articles; we shouldn't touch the second with a ten-foot pole. If an editor has been warned not to give medical advice, I'd prefer to see them come to the talk page and ask first if it is appropriate to answer other questions.
The other thing is that encouraging those editors to start on the talk page any time they're not sure will keep both the medical advice and any subsequent edit warring off the main Desk. (In a few cases, there have been editors who have been too zealous in enforcing the 'no medical advice' rule, and they have removed answers to question #1 and not just question #2; prior talk page discussion saves us from some of those disputes.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Correct - the answer to those two questions would be:
  1. See Intracranial pressure.
  2. Ask your doctor.
It probably should be pointed out all of the above also applies to legal advice. Neil ム 12:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarifying opposition to proposed "anti-professional-advice" template

TenOfAllTrades said: The few editors on the Ref Desk who actually hold proper medical degrees already know that they can't give advice here ... (we need to) communicate this concept to the remaining completely unqualified editors who 'just want to help' .

This is *precisely* the problem (which I explain in detail below). Also, I'm glad that Neil interjected his point about legal advice as well, because I've seen a few out-of-bounds whoppers from that category also; (and I've even contested some of them [on the RefDesk, and elsewhere within WP]) and clearly, this discussion pertains to professional specializations of all kinds, not just medicine.

(Note: Considering the scope of the issues, let us take this out of the "medical" profession, and simply call a WP contributor with professional credentials "Accredited", and let's call a WP contributor without credentials "NonAccredited".)

Problem 1: WP (as far as I know) maintains *zero* safeguards for verifying whether or not someone is actually "Accredited" if they claim to be. This is understandable, because under no circumstance is professional advice within the scope of Wikipedia's responsibility to begin with. Also, without abolishing anonymous accounts, any such verification would be bogus and unenforceable anyway.

Problem 2: This proposed system simply provides no net benefit. To understand why, let us consider how things would play out if WP established "professional warning templates" allowing "scoldings" (and eventual bans) for people who violated the "no professional advice" disclaimer.

  NonAccredited Answerer Accredited Answerer
NonAccredited Scolder Blind leading the blind. He multiplieth words without knowledge.
Accredited Scolder Professional spanking. A house divided.
  • Blind leading the blind: In this scenario, the "professional warning template" adds *zero* benefit, because neither is a professional in the relevant field anyway, and any apparent abuses can be handled by the already-existing WP safeguards (e.g., Wikipedia:Tendentious editing).
  • Words without knowledge: In this scenario, the "professional warning template" is actually a detriment, because there's nothing to stop the "Cliff Clavin" alums from using their bogus "credentials" to attack (and potentially ban) people who actually know what they are talking about.
  • A house divided: In this scenario, the "professional warning template" again adds *zero* benefit, because all you've done is acknowledge that two "Accredited" users disagree on whether something constituted professional misconduct, and those kinds of debates add *nothing* to WP. In fact, you could also put this in the "detriment" column, because it might give onlookers the mistaken belief that professional debates actually have a place here within WP.
  • Professional spanking: This is the only category where one might derive a benefit from the "professional warning template" system. And even here, it is riddled with problems:
    • 1) We still have not solved Problem 1 indicated above, people can easily "game" this;
    • 2) The professional "standard of care" may not be the same in all relevant jurisdictions; a "spanking" that is appropriate in the U.S.A. may not be appropriate in Ghana;
    • 3) You confuse onlookers by making it look like WP has a retinue of professional "overseers" who protect the reference desks from bad information, as I've already mentioned, this undermines the very purpose of the disclaimers;
    • 4) You set up bias favoring clever answerers who can cloak "advice" in terms that do not show up on the "radar".
    • 5) You mislead good-faith users into assuming that the "scolder" is asserting his authority or credentials in a given profession, where such assertions are inherently unreliable.

Yes, you've said that this applies to "medical advice" because so much of it has been seen, and it is an immediate problem. The fact is, the mere act of seeing something entails a certain degree of professional judgment, and there is *plenty* of *crap* on the reference desk and WP in general that goes uncommented simply because no lawyer, accountant, physician, psychiatrist, risk manager or financial planner ever saw fit to speak up about it, or never saw it to begin with. This is another reason why this is not just a "medical" issue, and why this system (although a laudable idea with good motivations) seems totally unworkable and ill-advised. dr.ef.tymac 14:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused. In general, one doesn't need to be a medical professional to identify cases where medical advice is being given. (There's a fair working guideline at Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines/Medical advice#What constitutes medical advice?.) Further, one doesn't need to be able to tell good advice from bad, because we're removing all advice.
I don't quite understand the 'accredited answerer' and 'accredited scolder' bits in your table above; we're not in the business (nor are we proposing to start) of giving medical (or legal) professionals some sort of special veto over medical (or legal) advice, or special permission for them (and them alone) to violate our policies on medical (and legal) advice. In any case, as I've noted before, no genuine medical or legal professional would give advice in a forum such as this.
As for the templates, if you would prefer to leave detailed, personalized messages for editors telling them to stop giving medical (or legal) advice on the Ref Desk, you're welcome to. However, it's sometimes useful to have comprehensive, thorough, ready-to-use boilerplate templates when one has to deal with a situation on a regular basis. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
There are some problems with the analysis in your previous response, but the biggest one is your qualifying statement: "In general". Wikipedia already has a "general" mechanism for officially specifying its duties and obligations regarding professional advice, it is the disclaimer.
Once you start attaching "specific boilerplate" to "specific posts" on the reference desk, your qualifying statement "in general" no longer applies, because you are creating an "official looking" response to individual messages. WP is not in the business of case-by-case professional review.
TenOfAllTrades said: one doesn't need to be a medical professional to identify cases where medical advice is being given
Response 1.1: As I and others have mentioned already this is not just an issue of medical advice it applies to *all kinds* of professional advice.
Response 1.2: Ironically, this is actually true, but for reasons you may not anticipate. Sometimes, not even a medical professional is well-placed to precisely determine what constitutes "medical advice" in every case. For example, who do you think has a better handle on this issue: 1) an intern just out of medical school; or 2) a medical malpractice attorney with fifteen years of experience; or 3) even a medical malpractice insurance salesman with fifteen years of experience? Sometimes the line between "medical advice" and "general information" is *not* obvious. Subtle differences in wording can have a major influence.
TenOfAllTrades said: one doesn't need to be able to tell good advice from bad, because we're removing *all* advice
Respectfully TenOf, I'm really quite surprised if you really think removing *all* professional advice is even possible let alone advisable. As I've mentioned a few times now, the minute you purport to "scrub" the RefDesk clean of all professional advice (and not just medical advice, because medical advice is not the only problem) you set up an even more compelling case for "detrimental reliance" for any advice that happens to "fall through the cracks" ... and the cracks are huge. I don't really have the time now, but if you'd like I can give you specific links to reference desk posts that arguably fall within the bounds of "inappropriate professional advice", some of which *never* gets commented on at all.
TenOfAllTrades said: no genuine medical or legal professional would give advice in a forum such as this
Response 2.1: This is begging the question, because sometimes it *requires* the assessment of a professional to determine what constitutes "professional advice" in the first place.
Response 2.2: This is an unsubstantiated factual assertion that I am pretty certain you are not in a position to verify. Remove the qualifying word "genuine" (and all "wiggle-room" that it gives) and I'll guarantee that you cannot verify it. Indeed, it's directly contradicted by the very reference in Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines/Medical advice, that you just cited to me.
TenOfAllTrades said: However, it's sometimes useful to have comprehensive, thorough, ready-to-use boilerplate templates when one has to deal with a situation on a regular basis.
That boilerplate already exists, it's live, ready-to-use, and it's directly linkable. It's also been written, reviewed, and critiqued by licensed attorneys: Wikipedia:General_disclaimer, Wikipedia:Medical_disclaimer, Wikipedia:Legal_disclaimer.
TenOfAllTrades said: don't quite understand the 'accredited answerer' and 'accredited scolder' bits in your table above
The basic point is this, if there is no "rule" for who can "scold" (and potentially ban) a specific individual and a specific message for giving "unauthorized professional advice" (something that cannot be substantiated or checked against a reliable source, which is what WP is supposed to care about) then what you are essentially saying is a 16 year old sophomore can template anyone with this kind of "specific and official-looking" warning.
If you consider the words without knowledge scenario I mentioned above, this could amount to a direct accusation of professional malpractice by someone who has no clue of what such an accusation actually entails.
If you are trying to ensure that no licensed practitioner would have the nerve to post *any response* in this forum (let alone professional advice). Your proposal would be an excellent way to do it, and also an excellent way to ensure that a bunch of legal, medical, financial and other "tricky" questions get no answers at all, except by the Cliff Clavin alums; the very scenario supposedly prevented by this idea. dr.ef.tymac 17:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

What problem we are attempting to solve

Actually, we're trying to be sure that such questions receive no answer at all, beyond a referral to a qualified professional. I advocate a two-pronged approach of removing such advice where it appears, and warning (and blocking, if necessary) editors who insist on offering it. What do you think we should be doing? I genuinely can't tell what your proposed strategy is for dealing with medical advice. Since you bring up the 'detrimental reliance' argument, are you suggesting that we never remove medical advice or block the editors who offer it?
As for there being no "rule" about who can "scold", we don't need one. We don't have one for who can use other warning templates or enforce other policies on Wikipedia. Anyone can revert the addition of libel to articles, whether they are a lawyer with experience in defamation suits or not. As with other warning and disciplinary processes on Wikipedia, an editor who misuses those processes will himself be censured by his colleagues. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC) (extended 17:54, 20 August 2007 (UTC)).
Yes I am pretty sure I understand the attempt ... but what I'm suggesting is that "solving this problem" may be more complicated than others seem to acknowledge here. For example, should *you* have been warned for giving the answer you gave here? Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Can_I_get_a_good_reference.3F? If no, why not? If yes, why? ... and what guidance is offered by the current "consensus" guideline at Wikipedia:Reference desk/guidelines/Medical advice? If the answer is "none" then why are we imprecisely distinguishing the various issues related to "medical" and "legal" advice?
As far as what *I* would propose, I'd start by avoiding any claim that the reference desk talk page is a "good place to go" to determine what meets the definition of "medical advice" (or any kind of professional advice, for that matter).
There is a huge difference between:
  • Defin1: "stuff that is likely to be removed from WP RefDesk as 'medical advice' (or legal advice), pursuant to RefDesk guidelines and RefDesk consensus"; and
  • Defin2: "stuff that is likely to get an individual in legal trouble for violation of UPL, or practice of medicine without a license"
Perhaps our level of disagreement is actually very small. Perhaps I've misunderstood, so let me ask you. Are you o.k. with my assertion that any "warning templates" must absolutely clearly, unambiguously and *directly* state that RefDesk guidelines have *nothing to do* with determinations based on medical and legal expertise?
If so, then you and I may indeed have very little disagreement, if any, and it's all just a matter of making the issues *absolutely clear* to avoid totally inappropriate interpretations. dr.ef.tymac 18:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
While I can't speak for everyone here, I've been operating under the assumption that we've been discussing the former and not the latter. You are correct judgements about the latter would require the advice of a competent (legal or medical) malpractice lawyer. It is likely that everything that falls under the latter is encompassed by the former—our definitions are likely to be more conservative, erring on the side of caution where we cannot expect our editors to make legal jdugements. I would be appalled and aghast at any template that actually said (or implied) "Don't say that, it's medical malpractice" or "You may be engaging in the unauthorized practice of law". TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps, then, you can understand at least some basis for my opposition, because as far as I have seen, there hasn't been *any* clear indication that people recognize the two principles could even be considered different concepts, let alone that definition "Defin1" has been the working definition. This seems like a very very terrible thing to trust to basic assumptions, especially since some contributors may not even know the difference.
Also, that still leaves out the question of who "defines" this "reference-desk-only" standard, or how such a standard could possibly be defined without confusing people into thinking the WP reference-desk is "sharing turf" with the various Boards of Medical Examiners of the world. dr.ef.tymac 19:50, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

←(unindenting) From what I've seen, editors here tend to enforce policies and guidelines as they are written on Wikipedia. I don't recall ever seeing an experienced editor refer to 'malpractice' in criticising a response on the Ref Desk; editors refer to our internal guidelines barring medical advice. Whether it's because we're too lazy to go to outside governing bodies or because we have a subtle and nuanced understanding of the limits of our experience, authority, and expertise, the effect is the same. We use our internal, conservative definition of medical advice (essentially anything that offers a diagnosis, a prognosis, or a suggested treatment). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:45, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't doubt your assessment of current WP practices, but what I do doubt is whether this important distinction will be clear enough to all participants, especially when new practices are incrementally introduced that blur the singular authority of the Wikipedia:General disclaimers.
I also doubt whether the definition is always as "conservative" as one might like to think. For example, I've seen at least a few instances where law students (I've reason to believe that's what they were) gave responses that they might not be inclined to give as practicing attorneys. I would not doubt that the same is true for current and aspiring students of *many* professional fields.
I also think it is not necessary to utter the word "malpractice" in order to unfavorably "smear" a contributor with professional experience who may answer on the Ref Desk from time to time. The potential and likelihood of unfavorable interpretations only increases when "warning templates" and other "official looking" texts start getting used as a substitute for individual communication (IMO). Unless, of course, we are just talking about linking to the General Disclaimer, and diligently reminding Questioners to be familiar with it. dr.ef.tymac 03:31, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Follow-up: Minor note, I am also sure you recognize that: 1) malpractice; 2) practice without a license; and 3) intent to establish a "professional-client relationship" are all distinct issues, the conflation of which could also lead to confusion and cause an unfair "smearing" of a qualified contributor. These distinctions also seem too important to leave to assumptions based on current WP Ref Desk convention. dr.ef.tymac 03:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not about the nature of the rule - it's about enforcement.

There are two separate problems being discussed here:

  • Should there be a 'no medical advice' rule - and what should it say?
  • What do we do when someone infringes on the rule?

The first question should be moot. It has been discussed fully in the past - and the rule we have is the result of some kind of consensus. As such, I'm not interested in discussing it further. The second question is the problem at hand. Even though I posted a strong warning on the thread (Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Odd_vision_problem), people are STILL offering medical diagnoses in response to the guy with the blurry vision - we now have astigmatism, kerataconus and cataracts - as well as migranes. My warning didn't even slow them down. This isn't about correctness of advice given or the qualifications of the respondants or the verifiability of what they say or what the OP will or will not do in response to the advice. It's about enforcement of a rule when a clear breach has occurred.

If a simple warning would work - that would be perfect - but it plainly doesn't - just look at the thread and you'll see. So do you abandon a rule because it's unenforcable by a simple "Please don't do that"? No! If you did then we'd be allowing linkspam and all sorts of other nastiness that carries on despite warnings. When a rule is broken, we take action of some kind. So how do you escalate the warning to the point where people will pay attention? I guess some sort of stern warning in a big red templated box would be a reasonable escalation - it would certainly wake people up to the problem and would be more noticable. Asking people not to do it on their talk: pages might help - but if they ignore the complaint in-thread, why would they pay more attention on their talk: pages? I think handing out a 24 hour ban to repeat offenders would be OK - it's not a serious punishment - but it's something that clearly screams "THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR HERE".

But no matter what, we just need SOMETHING to make our respondants follow the rules here.

What sort of consensus can we get here? How about everyone answer with one of the following options, escalating from minimum to maximum action. Let's see what the highest level of action we have that pretty much everyone can agree on:

When someone offers medical or legal advice in contravention to the ref desk rules we should:

  1. Do nothing.
  2. Put a complaint into the thread then do nothing more. (This is current practice)
  3. Put a complaint into the thread and into their talk page, then do nothing more.
  4. Do the above repeatedly but do not escalate.
  5. Put a templated ("big red box") complaint into the thread, then do nothing more.
  6. Do one of the above - then consider some kind of 24 hour Wikiban for re-offenders.

SteveBaker 17:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Revised list: (with modified numbering for easier cross-referencing and changes)

  • 1. Do nothing.
  • 2.1 Put a complaint into the thread then do nothing more.
  • 2.2 Put a complaint into the thread with a link to the relevant disclaimer.
  • 2.3 Put a complaint into the thread with a link to relevant disclaimer and copy the message to the user talk page.
  • 3. Do any combination of items under (2), and if the problem persists provide a user-page link to Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing.
  • 4. Do any combination of (2) and (3) and if no change results, give the user one last opportunity to explain why the content was not inappropriate, and if the explanation is not satisfactory, Follow the procedures enumerated under Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing#Dealing_with_disruptive_editors.
  • 5. Put a templated ("big red box") complaint into the thread, then do nothing more.
  • 6. Do one of the above - then consider some kind of 24 hour Wikiban for re-offenders.

One basic point to reiterate, there should be no need to directly accuse contributors with "official looking" templates that imply or assert a breach of "real-world" professional standards. WP is not a State Bar Association nor a Board of Medical Examiners. Any "official warning template" should give absolutely no hint or suggestion that it is. dr.ef.tymac 18:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

♠ Why not change the emphasis from "punishing" the respondent to eliminating the question? It seems a much simpler task to identify a question that seeks professional advice than to assess the apporpriateness of the various answers. Any editor can delete a question, leaving a simple Edit Summary: "Request for Professional Advice is inapporpriate on the Ref Desk; see guidelines" or something similar. (Some encouragement, by way of the immediate removal of any current question seeking professional advice by this community involved in this discussion, would be helful.) If someone has already started to reply to such a question, the answer gets purged with the question. If there is disagreement about the nature of the question, that can be hashed out here on the Discussion page. Perhaps the text in the Edit Summary also needs to appear on the page where the question first appeared, just to keep the questioner informed. Change the focus. Help the editors who might not understand the ramifications of answering ; don't punish them for trying to provide an answer. Bielle 19:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Contrary to the subheading, this discussion seems to be, in part, a proposal for the creation of one or more policies. Therefore I propose that further discussion should be moved to WP:VPP so that it is more visible to the general Wikipedia community. Of dr.ef.tymac “Revised list” proposals 4, 5, and 6 would require some kind of policy or guideline in my opinion. --S.dedalus 21:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Bielle expresses it well. It's about damage control. Just like with violations of WP:BLP, the immediate reaction (putting out the flames) is to remove the damaging posts from the desk. The long-term and sustainable measure (prevention) should be educating the careless and ignorant and discouraging their behavior. Polite explanations can work wonderfully here, while waving the big stick may ignite a whole new type of flaming (check November's archives, for instance.). The stick is a last resort, when assumption of good faith is spent, and the same editor's behavior has become disruptive. ---Sluzzelin talk 10:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Crazy desks

I've spent all night in another CSSing frenzy trying to get the RD header to look right. I'm trying to force the bottom of the (new) Contribute box to be flush with the bottom of the fat left column if the left column juts down farther. I had it perfectly laid out (I think it's this diff, but it's impossible to tell without making it live) but when I added "height:100%" to the Contribute box, it wouldn't take up the rest of the very available empty space at the bottom of its perfectly sized container. So the container is flush, but of course it's invisible so that's not much good :) Anyway with the firefox DOM Inspector I verified that the space is in fact free, and belongs to the direct parent of the contribute link box, and that absolutely no margin settings or anything are interfering. But "height:100%" has no effect.. so I chalk it up to a bug in gecko, since this is pretty easy, obvious stuff that's just not working. It's been reverted to its original, more elegant table-based code.

So yeah, that's what was going on if you happened to load a ref desk and the header was in bloody pieces all over the floor.

As always, the header is barf in IE. Use firefox please! And websites always look better windowed, I use a 1100 pixel wide window out of a 1400 pixel screen.

Frustrated with the layout, I just decided to document it, so.. there you go --frotht 04:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

How do you propose I alter the IT policies of a 30,000+ employee corporation so that they'll let me use Firefox at work? --LarryMac | Talk 13:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
It's not my fault that internet explorer is non standards complaint. I didn't make it for firefox, I made it per web standards, which firefox follows. It still works fine in IE, but missing is my beautiful perfect-pixel precision. And what are you doing posting on the ref desk at work anyway? :) --frotht 13:39, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
It's ummmm, research. Yeah, that's the ticket. The desks look fine in IE6, and I do appreciate the time you've spent working on all this. Perhaps I'm just bitter because Slashdot (once again) mucked up their main page so that it barely works with IE. Maybe I'll just go "work" from home today. --LarryMac | Talk 13:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Good lord you're right about slashdot in IE. Remember thiiis? :) I don't get the polls though. Lucky that you mentioned it now so that I had the opportunity to see my political views reigning supreme in this week/month/year/forever's poll --frotht 20:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

"shortcuts" box

These really look terrible! They're way off to the side and cause too much whitespace between the header and the table of contents. I removed them before but someone put them back- can I get some opinions?

Note that something will have to be done in any case about the whitespace. The RD header actually is meant to be called like:

{{Wikipedia:Reference desk/headercfg}}
__TOC__

or

{{Wikipedia:Reference desk/headercfg}}
=August Whatever=

with no spaces at all in between- the header puts a line of whitespace in automatically as part of the container page, and the table of contents creates line breaks around it anyway. But in addition to those 2, two more are manually added at the top of each RD! I can't remove them because my internet connection times out when I try to save an entire RD page, so can someone else remove all of that whitespace? --frotht 04:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Even worse

My browser (Safari) and my preference (Classic) are and have been for some time now disallowing proper rendering at the upper right corner at all of the desks and this talk (color wheel overlaps). I bring this up at this time for the obvious reason; is there an end to this or is it to be perpetual? Thanks to Froth for initiating this bitching opportunity! Oh, and BTW, I plead guilty for those awful shortcut boxes. Please improve at will. - hydnjo talk 04:42, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I changed the size of the color wheel to the standard "icon up there" size and took off the text (I wasn't the one who came up with that thing! :o), is that better? I'll take a look at the shortcut boxes in a second --frotht 04:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Much better (the color wheel problem) - thanks Bri - hydnjo talk 04:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
OK all shortcut boxes have been fixed up. I tried my best to get the shortcut link floated on the left side of the ref desk title bar, but it just wasn't happening so I moved it up to be positioned absolutely on the upper right. Looks good in firefox for all viewing font sizes and resolutions, looks all right in IE. How's safari? I hope my fingangling to get rid of whitespace doesn't affect archiving.. --frotht 06:03, 24 August 2007 (UTC)