Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 4

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[edit] Chess game

If any pair of you have the acumen to challenge Tparker393 and myself, please see User:Sarsaparilla/Team game. Alternately, if you want to take this to Wiki, name the specific url you've copied the page to. Thanks, Sarsaparilla (talk) 00:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that the Coffee lounge of Esperanza was a venue for such games, and was subsequently deleted. - BanyanTree 02:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if it was the same thing but there was also a Wikipedia:Chess championship which seemingly never finished before it got deleted from the main space and archived. In any case, I'm pretty sure it had died it's own course a long while before then with certain games not finishing Nil Einne (talk) 14:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
We should've had a rule that allowed people to lose if they ran out of time. Sarsaparilla (talk) 05:15, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Articles about etiquette

Many of the articles about customs and/or etiquette come across as unreferenced how-to guides. How-to guides, because they explain the reader how to behave in a specific culture, country or surrounding. See for instance Etiquette in Africa, Church etiquette, Concert etiquette, Customs and etiquette in Hawaii, Customs and etiquette of Japan, Dance etiquette, Disability etiquette, Dutch customs and etiquette, Etiquette in Asia, Etiquette in Australia and New Zealand, Etiquette in Canada and the United States, Etiquette in Europe, Etiquette in Latin America, Etiquette in the Middle East, Fork etiquette, Golf etiquette, Etiquette of Indian dining, Islamic toilet etiquette, Worldwide etiquette and Social conduct in Ghana. Some of the information in Dutch customs and etiquette also gave me the feeling that I was reading about another country than my own; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Netherlands#Is this my country?. The same might be said about the other articles, I don't know. I don't want to cause any disruption to the project, so before deciding on whether or not to send these articles to AFD, I would like to ask other Wikipedians how they feel about these articles. AecisBrievenbus 00:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree the articles appear to have major problems with referencing, with tone and style and are mostly more suited for a travel guide (although I believe wikitravel is CC so we can't transwiki until and unless the harmonisation is complete). There may be some salvagable stuff but definitely most of them should probably just be AFDed. A rather classic sentence I came across "These distinctions are far beyond the scope of this article. When in doubt, avoid characterizing people according to a cultural identity. Make inquiries regarding identity carefully (if at all) and with consideration about how close a relationship you have with the person being questioned." from worldwide etiquette; the article itself BTW basically just tells you things vary a lot from country to country, something which may be perfectly acceptable in one country may be taboo in another country (no kidding?) Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
There is also the Tipping article which has a large section on the tipping customs of many countries. I have just made a comment on that article's talk page that it probably would be better on Wikitravel. I would support AFD for these types of articles. Barrylb (talk) 16:59, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
The Wikitravel license is not actually compatible: From [1]

"Our copyright policy is easier for users, but more stringent for contributors than Wikipedia's. We use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license rather than the GNU Free Documentation License to keep our content free. Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 is a lot more appropriate for small pieces of content. See Why Wikitravel isn't GFDL for details. This means that in general articles from Wikipedia cannot be copied into Wikitravel. It's a violation of the GFDL to relicense GFDL content. Unless you are the sole author of the article -- that is, if you hold the original copyright, and can thus relicense your own work -- please don't copy articles from Wikipedia. This may seem like a hassle, but it's actually not all that bad. Most content from Wikipedia is not actually appropriate for Wikitravel." but "We use WikiPedia:InterWiki links to link to Wikipedia. You can see how to make these work on our links to Wikipedia page. You can use templates or Interwiki links to link from Wikipedia; You can see how on links from Wikipedia."DGG (talk) 17:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Overly high standards for new articles?

It seems apparent from anecdotal evidence that new articles are being scrutinized more closely than before, and have greater likelihood of being speedied than in the past (especially on CSD 1 or 7 grounds). As a result, stubs with potential for expansion are squashed before they get the chance. Could this explain the slowdown in Wikipedia's growth, particularly in terms of number of new articles, which has shifted from an exponential pattern to a linear one? Sarsaparilla 15:30, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you quantify the claim that new articles are being speedied more frequently than in the past? Corvus cornixtalk 19:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure how. It just seemed so from a comparison of my own experience today vs. 3 years ago. Back then, speedy was pretty much only used for blatant nonsense, prod didn't exist, and AfD was used in most cases when deletion was desired; and there wasn't a lot of policing of stubs/substubs for context/assertion of notability; I think I remember only one case back then when it happened to me, versus like a dozen or two in the past few months. Sarsaparilla 00:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps you're more aware of what's going on around wikipedia now than then, as compared to just the articles you were interested in; hence the perception? But I wouldn't be surprised at more speedy-deleting now than three years ago; even then, there was still a strong desire to help wikipedia grow. Now, I don't think people care much if we're 1.5 million or 1.7 million articles or whatever - so they're more likely to deletion-ist on us. That's just a guess, however. - DavidWBrooks 00:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. Jimbo said something awhile ago to the effect of, For the sake of encouraging contributors, we should let someone post an article about their non-notable high school even though we would look at it differently if they set up a bot to post 10,000 articles about non-notable high schools. Now, I think that we are much more likely to apply the rules uniformly, and I think it's beneficial to do so. However, my concern is with the tendency to require an article to meet an overly high standard just in order to avoid deletion. Which is better, to have no article, or to have a somewhat ugly sub-stub hanging around for awhile, that will later become a beautiful swan? Sarsaparilla 04:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
You are looking for an example. Try this Westerwald Pottery. Surfing through requested articles I saw a request. A fairly simple topic to write a stub- I have a house full of the stuff. At 14:21 I posted a stub with links back to German Wikipedia- where there is a article on the ceramic museum that is the world centre, and links to the english wikipedia on the geographic area. My tea break over I went back to some heavy duty work. At 14:36 in comes someone who tags it as lacking sources. A bot kicks in at 16:24. I noticed this when I posted a image 19 days later. But if it had been 19 mins it would have been too long for some folk. There are several issues here, if my source less stub had been causing the other guy such distress for a whole 900 seconds, perhaps he could have followed some of the links and extracted the source from de:wiki- or even used a search engine using the keywords I had identified to find a source and add it. The articles notability is proven by the fact it was requested. ClemRutter 10:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
It is not just for new articles.A policy rethink is really needed -and soon, as I think this is likely to get worse. From what I have seen over the last year or so, most of the |deletionists only joined WP after the bulk of the main articles had been written; so have no experience of the work that goes into researching and preparation, creating and expanding a new articles. Instead, their modus operandi is getting other editors to 'jump' by threatening and removing text that doesn't meet their standards of 'perfection' without doing any taxing work themselves. To make matters worse ( and other friends have mentioned this to me in regard to areas of WP that I don't frequent) they almost always have a very poor (and sometimes a 'popularist' but often badly inaccurate) understanding of the subject. This, as must be becoming apparent to long time contributors means that valuable editing time is in fact now being squandered by lengthy debates on the talk pages, many which are now grown to be as long, or longer, than many of the articles themselves.
Also, whilst it is often helpful to have a complete novice to the subject, look over an article for the reason that a fresh pair of eyes can often spot oversights, etc., but their appears to be a growing problem that the new editors, more and more, lack the critical thinking skills to enable them to understand the answers to their comments on talk pages and leads other editors to near utter despair as they try and seek a resolution to a barrage of badly constructed augments put forward to try and prove a point (PhD's can also have some funny ideas about subjects outside their immediate field but at least they can quickly and productively follow a logical explanation that clarifies a matter). As knowledgeable editors tends to lead busy productive lives they can ill afford to constantly watch over and defend every article they are helping to expand, where as the poorer editors appear to have nothing else in their lives and so can wreak havoc on articles by placing irrevocable time limits for citations, deletions, etc., and can maintain this interference 24/7.
Moreover, there are some editors (that appear to be mainly students) that take a stance, as if to say: “I am not going away until you spoon feed me on every single aspect of this article I don't understand otherwise I am going to change it to read in a way that 'feels' right to me and my preconception”. Is there any subtle way to point out that: if they clearly don't understand the the subject of the article they are trying to edit then they should not be editing it at all (!!!) -regardless of the anyone can edit policy.
We need to get back to adding and polishing the content rather than have most of our time wasted on the talk pages by people who actions help achieve overall a negative contribution to WP.
As more knowledgeable editors give up and leave (read any of the 'why I left Wikipedia' essays) these problems are bound to keep growing and growing. --Aspro 15:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Aspro. This - Arthur Douglas Merriman - was speedied when it was a little stub, fortunately we were able to resuscitate it and help it grow into a big strong article. How many others were strangled at birth? DuncanHill 16:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Yup – and I've used this example before, but legality of the Vietnam War was originally speedied under WP:CSD #1 or #7 (can't remember which, and can't find out because it's been deleted!) I think we badly need to better define "context" and/or remove CSD #1 and #7 as speedy deletion criteria and require those articles to go to AfD, as we used to do. Sarsaparilla 16:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah, here it is: User_talk:Stayman_Apple#Legality_of_the_Vietnam_War Sarsaparilla (talk) 23:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
From the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/10/11/dlwiki11.xml
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, created a stub entitled Mzoli's Meats.
It was deleted in 22 minutes in a unilateral action by Chad Horohoe, a 19-year-old Wikipedia administrator who goes by the name ^demon.
The two weeks of furious debate that followed was summarised by user Kelly Martin, who said: "The Wikipedia that Jimbo [Wales] originally created takes short stubs like the one he created and turns them into articles; stubs should only be deleted when there is no reasonable hope that they will ever cease to be stubs. Unfortunately, in the past few years Wikipedia has changed; it now takes short stubs and throws them in the trash can, and excoriates those who have the temerity to create them. This stub is being saved only because it was created by Jimbo."
Mzoli's Meats now has an extensive entry and is unlikely to be deleted.--Aspro 18:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I love that article. It sums up my experience pretty well. So, shall we add a sentence to the CSD policy stating, "Stubs should only be deleted when there is no reasonable hope that they will ever cease to be stubs"? Are there any other ideas for reforming this process? Sarsaparilla 21:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I like the sound of that - I think also (and I am not sure how this could be achieved) that some admins might benefit from an introduction to the {{expand}} tag.DuncanHill (talk) 21:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
One also gets the situation where an admin speedies an article without tagging it first, or having the common courtesy of explaining what they are doing to the original good-faith creator of the article. Not healthy, in my opinion. DuncanHill 20:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I've been a Wikipedia editor since 2003. In my experience, there has never been a time when people were not asserting that too many articles were being speedied, that standards were too high, that deletionism was rampant, and that new contributors were being discouraged.

As nearly as I can tell, policy on deletion has, in fact, tightened. For example, CSD 1 is much narrower than it once was, and "completely idiosyncratic non-topic" is no longer a valid reason for deletion. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I think a type of editor or admin who only patrols new pages, rather than write any themselves, has developed. They seem to measure their effectiveness in the number of new pages they can nuke from orbit and although they get rid of a lot of nonsense their occasionally overzealous efforts must be VERY offputting to new users especially.

I've had articles on people who won the George Cross deleted (Arthur Douglas Merriman mentioned above) for not asserting notability - and I wasn't informed of their deletion either. Messages from tag happy editors telling me that Royal Navy ships, first class cricketers or novels by major writers are not notable can get tiresome after a while. Wikipedia policy clearly states that articles often start in bad shape. What editors who don't write don't understand is that articles are often built and saved bit by bit over the course of a few days, often by people who are also busy doing other things. Cutting and pasting tags for categories, references etc can't all be done in one go. Jumping on such articles straight away is highly 'uncivil' yet it's the irritated comments of the contributing editor who has to explain, for instance, what the George Cross is when a link already exists in the piece, which then get demonised.

To take another example The Cornelius Quartet was put up for AfD half an hour after the first word was written, leading only to a virtually unanimous keep at AfD but wasting time which could have been better spent on improving such articles. Two editors asked me on my talk page to stop creating 'stub articles'. These were on books written by Michael Moorcock, a major British fantasy writer. They were referenced, wikified and categorised but because these editors thought them 'stubs' they said they should be deleted and that I shouldn't write any more. The WHOLE POINT about Wikipedia is that articles evolve and improve gradually with the input of lots of people, the increasing idea that articles should leap into life fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus is not only impractical but it goes against the whole ethos of the project and the one thing - collaboration between strangers over time - which has made it a success. How many new editors have been warned in this way and taken that 'welcome' as their ticket out of here?

As the excellent Aspro pointed out above, a lot of featured articles started off as two line stubs and blossomed to their current status over several years with hundreds or thousands of edits, I fear that process is being nipped in the bud now. There are some who, because they don't write or contribute to articles themselves, seem entirely ignorant of how Wikipedia works. They can trot out the alphabet soup of policies, even if they don't understand why they're there, but have no feel for how things grow in practise. If every article which didn't immediately meet every standard was binned at birth, Wikipedia would now have precisely no articles at all. It's like pulling up every sprouting acorn they stumble upon in the forest because it hasn't reached the 1 metre Wikipedia standard for tree.

Obviously a lot of rubbish gets added every day which has to be culled, but self proclaimed 'new page patrollers' really should be encouraged strongly to TALK to an editor who's started an article which doesn't seem to them very good. Instead of slapping automated tags on everything, they should take a few minutes to leave a friendly note or even, gasp, try to improve it themselves with a quick google. This is much more likely to get a decent reaction and lead to the improvements in articles we all wish to see. Brusque automated messages left by patrollers working on auto pilot themselves indiscriminately machine gunning down everything they haven't heard of themselves doesn't help. The slow down in Wikipedia's growth is a real issue. There are still a lot of articles on more obscure topics to be written, but if anything beyond what might be learned in an American grade school gets beheaded at birth, they aren't going to get written, especially by intimidated new contributors.

If I could change one thing I'd make it an unofficial rule that every new editor has to create three pages, to the satisfaction of other editors, before they're allowed to tag things for deletion or sources or anything else. That way they'd know what it took to build an article and be able to offer advice to new editors about what to do because they'd actually done it themselves. Sadly all too many of the people at Request for Adminship for example lack even this experience. It's a sad rule of thumb that the people who tag the most articles are those who know LEAST about the subjects involved. The level of ignorance of some of the enthusiasts is quite frightening sometimes. If some of the patrollers spent a bit of time reading wikipedia in an effort to actually learn something new, they'd be better off as well as the project. Nick mallory (talk) 23:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to point everyone to my short essay Wikipedia:Give an article a chance, which is very relevant to this discussion. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 00:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Another example is The Felice Brothers, which was nominated for speedy deletion twice, then prodded, then the prodder decided to take the article to AfD. A newbie editor has since expanded the article, and it will probably survive the AfD. The nominations occurred even though an article about the band in The Guardian is the very first Google News hit. There is far more chance of a stub being improved than a sourced and well-formatted article being created in one edit. And even when I end up rewriting an article from scratch, the original not-so-great article helps me by providing a base to work from and search terms for research. Bláthnaid 00:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Where is this discussion going? Is anyone reading this? Wikipolicy and procedures defeat me- so how does one make this known to the great and the good- or have they been deleted because they lack notable source?ClemRutter (talk) 10:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Presumably this discussion will eventually get refactored to someplace like Wikipedia talk:Give an article a chance. Sarsaparilla (talk) 13:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
in the past we have had suggestions that there be a pause in Speedy deletions for everything that was not clearly nonsense, copyvio or BLP. . they have typically foundered on the difficulty of distinguishing what is in fact nonsense, which would lead to the same argument as now. I suggest the following practical suggestions.
1. continue re-examining the criteria for speedy to see if they can be worded more precisely. It may not sound like this would help those who ignore them anyway, but it will, for it will provide a clearer ground for convincing them of their error.
2. Monitoring CSD., Anyone can remove a speedy--it does not have to be an admin. (anyone but the author of the article). Once it has been removed, it cannot be replaced.
3. questioning all deletions that appear clearly invalid. The first step is to ask the deleting admin for a copy of the article. If he will not supply one, all admins will who list themselves in Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. If you think it really unjustified, ask the deleting admin to restore, and if not, take it to deletion review. Every single time where you think there really is a good case--don't bring ones that are technically invalid speedies but hopeless otherwise.
4. Those of us who are admins can of course directly monitor deleted articles. I gave my desire to do so as one of the reasons fro wanting adminship, and it was almost unanimously accepted. Of course, I also had to demonstrate that i did know what ought to be deleted and was willing to delete them--and I do--I delete about one dozen articles a day personally.
5. A speedy-deleted article can be recreated if in good faith even without deletion review. Just make clear in the edit summary and the talk page that it is an improved article and meets the objections raised. And make sure it really does meet them.
6. Use the tag {{underconstruction}}. It gives a week if used in good faith.
7. when patrolling articles, use WP:PROD whenever possible, and notify the author. This gives a decent chance of improvement. If it can not be improved in the 5 days, it leads to rapid deletion, as is generally appropriate.
8. show you know the difference between good and bad by helping spot the great amount of absolutely impossible articles that still exist in wikipedia.
9. (and most important) -- when you come across an article you can help, help it. DGG (talk) 00:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Some good suggestions by DGG, but in relation to (2) - removing a speedy and providing a valid reason for removal does not seem to stop some admins from going ahead and deleting anyway. Some admins also speedy articles without tagging them first, or having the ordinary decency to inform the original good-faith contributor of what has been done or their reasons for doing it. DuncanHill (talk) 01:06, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
In case they remove it anyway, proceed to step 3.
Admins who speedy immediately should be watched more carefully. Remember that for things like attack pages it's a necessary thing to have available. But I have supported and would support changing the rules so it would be an exception. We have about 1,400 active admins. there is never a problem getting someone else to look at an article. DGG (talk) 01:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
1400 activeadmins, and 58 who say they will provide copies of deleted articles! Great ratio! DuncanHill (talk) 01:16, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I think it was Jeffrey Gustafson who likened newpage patrolling to "standing knee-deep in vomit while people are hurling feces at you." I tried newpages for a while and just couldn't put up with (a) the absolute torrent of nonsense combined with (b) the unyielding expectation that every single unreferenced one-line stub with no evidence of its notability must be painstakingly scrutinized to ensure it isn't a diamond in the rough. Yes, admins shouldn't delete articles that are clearly in progress. But it's arrogant to demand that admins thoroughly and meticulously investigate every trivial stub, when the author can't be bothered to write more than a five-word sentence. It says that the author's time has value, while the admin's time doesn't. Raymond Arritt (talk) 01:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Deleting without any checks or informing the creator doesn't show a great attitude either - authors' time is just as valuable as admins' time, no more, no less. And in my not-too-far-off experience, some admins, when the general question of speedying is raised, react with groundless denigration of an editor's contributions, based on that admins inability to understand what a deletion log shews or to read threads. BTW, I haven't the faintest idea who Jeffrey Gustafson is. Is he someone I should have heard of? DuncanHill (talk) 02:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Lack of notability is not grounds for speedy. Sarsaparilla (talk) 05:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I've put a polite note on the Admins' Noticeboard, asking for admins to consider adding themselves to the Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles, as I think that this is a valuable service which is of benefit to the whole community - by helping editors have the time to work articles up to a better standard, it can reduce the stress and arguments about deletions. DuncanHill (talk) 03:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

After skimming through this one point I wanted to make. While it's true that having an article you've spent some time on may be off-putting to new editors, having an article you've worked a lot on deleted is probably much more off putting. And remember it's not just these editors who's time is effectively wasted (when it could be better spent improving something which isn't going to be deleted). It's every editor who works on it. This is one of the reasons why it's not necessarily always a good idea to let an article stay so it can 'grow'. If the article probably should never be on wikipedia (at least as things stand now) then letting it grow is probably the worst idea, giving it a quick and painless death is best. Further, having an article which shouldn't be on wikipedia risks misleading and misinforming reader and also may give them a bad impression of wikipedia. Of course obviously some stuff which shouldn't be deleted is going to be deleted, getting the balance right is the difficult part and I'm not saying we have it right at that moment, just pointing out that speedy deleting an article is not alwyas going to have a net negative effect on editors Nil Einne (talk) 16:35, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts from a disillusioned Wikipedian

[edit] The Politics of Wikipedia

When I discovered Wikipedia a few years ago, I almost immediately become enthralled. I got so into it after a while that I decided to "be bold" and contribute.

Over the course of the past year I've become rather discouraged as I've discovered that just like any big corporation, Wikipedia has it's share of "bigwig Pinheads" as well.

Common sense is thrown out the window here far to often.

Unless you happen to "have the right connections", then being a Wikipeian can't amount to much more than correcting spelling errors and punctuation.

Start a new article on what common sense dictates should, be a "notable" subject and the wikiclique will deem it "not notable" (while not applying the same standards to other similar articles). I guess it's about who you know. :(

After that, your optons are arbitration. And you know what? Most people have better things to do with their lives than jump through (what seem to any rational person to be) needlessly unnecessary "hoops" to get anything corrected here.

And if all this weren't bad enough, I come across this and this today.

What is wrong with this place? I thought Wikipedia was supposed to be "open"? --angrykeyboarder (a/k/a:Scott) (talk) 04:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't assume that just because a new article was not deemed notable it is due to some 'clique'. Maybe your article was not notable! Barrylb (talk) 05:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
The article in question was a poorly written PR piece with a lot of personal pronouns hyping the website. I would have speedied it and left the author a welcome template and spam warning. Rklawton (talk) 19:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman. This explains some of what you have encountered. -- llywrch (talk) 04:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese copyright

This just occurred to me. Since China censors Wikipedia, can we infringe any copyrighted materials in China? A sort of counterattack, retaliation. If the answer is affirmative, that's would be a bonanza in, well, everything we have here. -- Taku (talk) 09:23, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Because, clearly, angering the Chinese government is a good idea to get Wikipedia back in China. LegitimateSock (talk) 23:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I propose that it is against the best interests and core principles of Wikipedia to suck up to governments that like censoring things. Jtrainor (talk) 06:47, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I think the core principle of Wikipedia is that we behave well and respect copyright and NPOV, regardless of what others do. Once we start taking revenge, what will distinguish us form the evil-doers? I will not steal my friend's copyright, nor will I steal that of my enemy--even if I could do so with impunity. Our reaction to censors is to shame them with our example. Perhaps some day they will not be the enemy. DGG (talk) 06:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Other then what DGG has already said, this simply won't work because copyrights from China are recognised in the US and they could still easily sue the WMF for copyright violation if they so desire. There are some countries whose copyrights are not recognised in the US but Jimbo and the most users agree we should still respect these copyrights. Besides that, if China's resources are mostly propaganda, why the heck would they be of any use to us? Nil Einne (talk) 14:33, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, regardless of how well China respects US coyright, by (enforced law) you have to respect theirs here. I suggest you take this up with your Congressman/local representative ; ) Joshdboz (talk) 22:37, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question About Criticism Sections

Why do some articles have a separate section for criticisms? I've seen such sections make up a considerable bulk of the article.

I think that criticisms should be worked into the article. The current practice not only represents bad style but gives off the appearance of a POV -- no matter how correct that section's content may be. A well written article should not need a separate section for criticisms.

Just my 2¢, for whatever that's worth.

DeeKenn (talk) 16:08, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

You're not the only one WP:CRITICISM. Fortunately many editors recognise the problem and these sections are starting to disappear. Definitately they are relatively rare on FAs nowadays I think. Of course then we get complaints about the lack of sections but anyway... Nil Einne (talk) 16:39, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I knew I couldn't have been the only one -- seldom is there ever a completely unique idea. I do like this one suggestion:

The appropriate way to structure criticism may depend on the style of the article. In articles on people, places, things, etc., it can be very useful to integrate criticism into the article.

I have seen the exact opposite on entries for software, for example. When editing in the future I will keep this suggestion in mind. DeeKenn (talk) 17:26, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) Where criticism is over a few points, weaving it into the article makes the most sense to me. However, consider an example, Instant-runoff voting. There are active political campaigns in the United States, and there is an advocacy organization which decided to heavily promote IRV. Now, among election methods experts -- it's claimed -- IRV doesn't have a good reputation as an election method; further, IRV is being promoted, sometimes, with standard political arguments, i.e., whatever the promoters can think up that sounds reasonable and can be communicated in a sound bite. Nothing special about this, it's the norm in policits....

However, now, consider the impact on the article. For a substantial time, the Instant-runoff voting article was very difficult for ordinary editors to improve in any way that incorporated criticism. A combination of a sock puppet and an anonymous IP editor would revert the changes (it's not important here that this *actually* happened, but it did, the record can be found by reviewing History for the article and its Talk page). However, even after the sock and IP editor were blocked, it was still difficult to incorporate criticism into the article, it would be {WP:RS]'d to death (even if it was simply an attributed statement clearly made by its source), or, if the source could not be impeached, it would be claimed that it was "confusing," "too much detail," even though the text without the detail clearly (to this observer familiar with the arguments and the politics) would leave an incorrect or imbalanced impression on a reader. In fact, these claims were *designed* by political consultants to do exactly that: modify shallowly informed opinion, with only a few words.

Never mind whether my view of this particular situation is correct, please consider the *principles* involved. Brief statements, POV, designed to have a political effect, are ideal for Pro and Con sections. If each statement is presented alone, without exploration, it can do its work; particularly if counterarguments are complex, requiring some learning.

There are three basic ways I know to deal with this situation.

(1) Preface the Pro and Con section with commentary and warning that these are arguments being made, that they may be factually incorrect or misleading. This has been done in the Instant-runoff voting article, as an interim solution, plus:

(2) Start a Controversies article. There appeared a general consensus of editors that deeper examination of Controversies was appropriate, and that this might allow the main article to settle, with ultimately, perhaps, only a few major controversies remaining detailed in the main article. This was done, and it's linked from the main article. That article was immediately proposed for deletion, but it survived that and has begun to mature. It still has quite a way to go, but editors only have so much time.... The format used in that article I will describe below.

(3) Incorporate the controversies in the text of the article and deal with them one at a time, presenting all notable POVs.

It should be noted that all text in all articles should be NPOV. Points of View must always be attributed as opinions or claims, not as fact (except in the sense that it is a fact that someone expresses a certain opinion). Because, in the Pro and Con section, the text "According to so-and-so" seriously cluttered the article, making it difficult to read without adding any necessary meaning, the Pro and Con section currently clearly marks off the opinions and arguments as such, as a block, and the attributions are in references that source the opinion. In one case (originally it was in all), there is no source, but that's because the argument is obvious and is well-known. (Instant-runoff does not allow the public to more closely examine the two front-runners, as with a regular runoff.) Ultimately, it should also have a source, i.e., someone who, in a reasonably notable way, presents the argument, proving it is not a straw man argument (there was one of those, before) or merely the invention of a Wikipedia editor doing original research.

The Instant-runoff voting controversies article categorizes arguments and claims into Pro and Con on the basis of the primary usage of the argument: Is it being used to promote the method, or to discourage its use in favor of the status quo or some other reform? Then each argument is examined, with claims as claims and fact as fact, keeping it clear which is which. That is, claims and counterclaims on the particular point are stated in juxtaposition with fact considered relevant. (We are not using the threaded formatting, though that could be possible, but rather we are using a more encyclopedic style, i.e, its a mini-article on each particular argument). While, as I said, there is a long way to go, there has been a remarkable lack of conflict between the editors on the article, whereas these same editors frequently teetered on the edge of edit wars with the main article. Apparently, having the space to explore each controversy in detail has, so far, allowed a deeper consensus to emerge about what could be said that was true and balanced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 18:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your post. The example you provided isn't a valid comparison to what I'm writing about, though.
As noted in the quote I provided above, articles about people, places, and things (not ideas, e.g.) are where criticism sections should not exist. Taking my prior example of software articles, look here: Outlook Express. This piece of software was Microsoft's default newsgroup and email client for many, many years and that's the best we can come up with?
My "complaint" is more about those articles which meet the criteria for your third option. DeeKenn (talk) 06:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A little help please

I have been editing in Wikipedia and I keep getting these broken line blocks that won't go away. How do I get rid of them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.35.41.38 (talk) 07:54, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing that your referring to something like this:
Text that appears with broken lines around it because there is a space as the first character of the line
Is that correct? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:41, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


Yes. Thank you very much. Your a godsend! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.35.41.38 (talk) 04:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Text also appears like that when they're between <pre>Text goes here</pre> tags, like this: 
Text goes here
— Wenli (reply here) 04:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Estonian Air

User:Aabits removes SVG logo from this article. --<Flrntalk> 11:16, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

You should try discussing this with him/her on either his/her talk page or the article talk page and if he/she doesn't respond you might want to bring this up in the administrators noticeboard for a possible block for disruptive behaviour Nil Einne (talk) 13:24, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map

Is there an "empty" map of the world with nation boundaries, which can be used to color with various colors according to some stats? Rune X2 (talk) 13:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at the "Maps" section of this index; it has at least one link to free map resources that I think would meet your needs. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Blank maps Harryboyles 15:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Momma's/Mamm's boy/girl

I'm doing some research and can find several web sites that seem to contain a definition of momma's/mamma's boy but not momma's/mamma's girl although there are a huge number of sites that reference momma's/mamma's girl, there seems to be no place that tries to define it. Can anyone help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.139.212 (talk) 04:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Please ask at the reference desk. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fourth Register Article

Cadde Metz's fourth recent article on Wikipedia Truth, anonymity and the Wikipedia Way Joshdboz (talk) 21:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Blocked anonymous per country

Hi. I have analyzed logging-dump for blocks to anonymous users, and these are the results (complete list).

First ones:

United States   145482
United Kingdom  26182
Canada  16677
Australia       14702
Germany         5487
Korea, Republic of      4150
New Zealand     2741
China   2535
Brazil  2504
India   2417
  • 256,245 blocks to anonymous users from December 2004 to October 2007.
  • 256,146 blocks have been located, 99 unknown procedence.

Congratulations to United States X) --Emijrp (talk) 10:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

United States is the most blocked because it does the most of anonymous edits. I'm thinking to check how many anonymous edits do each country, and then divide per blocks. But some countries offer anonymous proxies and they are blocked very fast, so the results of edits/blocks canbe biased. --Emijrp (talk) 10:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
If you divide 500,000 blocks during a three year period into about 1,000 active admins, it looks like the average active admin has done about 500 blocks. Obviously, a few have done many thousands of blocks, and many have done almost no blocks, but that's still a large average. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 17:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, 500,000 blocks are a lot of vandals. --Emijrp (talk) 20:17, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm gonna take a flyer here and guess that if you put a graph of national population of english speakers in each nation, it would look exactly like that graph. The US wins because the US population is larger.... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

U.S. wins? It seems like you mean loses unless one supports more vandalism! Archtransit (talk) 19:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly:

United States  145482 / 301139947  = 1/2070
United Kingdom  26182 /  60776238  = 1/2321
Canada          16677 /  33390141  = 1/2002
Australia       14702 /  20434176  = 1/1389
New Zealand      2741 /   4115771  = 1/1502

Either Australians and New Zealanders vandalize substantially more than Brits, or the admins watching articles which antipodians edit are more trigger happy. Also, considering that at least a quarter of Germans speak English, their ratio would be ~ 1:3700, but of course German vandals also get to vandalize the German Wikipedia. Zocky | picture popups 14:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. What about weighting it for internet connectivity rather than for total population. New Zealanders may just have more access to the internet than UK or US, and that is skewing their results. The large South Korean vandalism may be largely due to the fact that the Republic of Korea provides universal internet access for all of its people, for example. I would like to see the figures compared to the # of internet users, and those figures (at least in the primary English speaking nations) may balance out more... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Maybe there are a lot of open proxies in New Zealand? -- Avocado (talk) 19:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
A few quick guesses here (compared to the US, don't know much about the UK although a lot of what I say about NZ probably applies to Australia)... 1) Very few New Zealanders have static IPs, indeed we still have a very high proportion of modem users. These vandals could receive multiple blocks much more easily then those from the US I suspect (remember even if you have a dynamic IP which is changed everytime you connect, not everyone has the technical knowhow to understand this kind of stuff). 2) Most New Zealanders university students probably predominantly access the internet from home. Unlike in the US where university (college) provided internet access appears to be common in dorms this is virtually unheard of New Zealand AFAIK and in fact I think the percentage of students at dorms (as opposed to flatting, living at home etc) is probably a lot lower then in the US. Some may access the internet from campus but even this is probably a lot less common in New Zealand then the US because of the extremely high data charges. University IPs are of course probably much less likely to be blocked for occasional vandalism because they are often shared and it's considered disruptive. 3) Another possibility (although this is mostly speculatory) is that some of the users from New Zealand who were blocked were blocked for vandalising New Zealand related articles. Given the relatively small number of NZ related articles and the probably smaller pool of editors who watch them and the relatively lower edit history I suspect persistant vandals are more likely to be noticed then they would with a US related article of similar importance to the US as the other article was to NZ. 4) Having said all that, given the level of tagging here, it wouldn't surprise me if we had more vandals per head of population Nil Einne (talk) 14:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Google's Knol (googlepedia)

Hi,

I just wish to know if we could have a discussion here about Google's upcoming online encyclopaedia called Knol, and how we expect to face the challenge posed by it. Thanks. Amit@Talk 09:25, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I guess yoou aren't talking about Googlepedia or [2]? Nil Einne (talk) 13:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
No, he/she is talking about this [3]. Don't see why it's a "challenge" though - when it comes to information, the more the merrier! If they create something that's better than wikipedia, and wikipedia withers and dies as a result, then so much the better. If not, that's fine, too. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, good point. 59.161.77.84 (talk) 16:53, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Excellent analysis. If Google pays an expert to write first class articles about the overlooked African conflicts I procrastinate over, I'll be overjoyed. - BanyanTree 05:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) Wikipedia went the way it went, Knol is taking a different approach, no less legitimate. Some encyclopedias have attributed articles. The Wikipedia model actually makes it difficult to get experts to write; my experience with experts is that they often have a quite negative opinion of Wikipedia because they can write an article, based on their specialist knowledge, and it is, of course, deleted as "original research" or hacked up by people who know far less about the topic. It can take a long time for articles to settle such that they do, in fact, represent a consensus of experts. There are articles here that have been around for years and still haven't reached that point.

The problem, of course, with experts writing articles, is that an expert may still have have a POV bias. An encyclopedia that has expert-signed articles also has, typically, some kind of peer review. Knol, if I'm correct, will, indeed, have such. Thus it may become possible to read an article written by someone knowledgeable, (or by anyone relying on sources of whatever quality), determine the status of peer review of it, and conclude that this new article is or is not a reliable source. If it is possible to conclude, through some defined and reasonable process, that the article has passed peer review, it *might* become a reliable source for Wikipedia! This could allow very rapid appearance of new topics on Wikipedia that are currently kept out by the lack of peer-reviewed publication, even when the community of interest has already settled on some consensus position. Whether or not this would be legitimate would depend on the details of the Knol process. --Abd (talk) 21:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

(See also knol. -- Taku (talk) 06:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC))

Alright, thank you all guys... seems like I got worked up over nothing, hehe Amit@Talk 14:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) about how many people set a date preference. It would be interesting to compare the number of registered versus non-registered users.

I can find the number of registered users. But can anyone help me find data for the number of non-registered users? Lightmouse (talk) 23:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Non-registered users can't set a date preference. Corvus cornixtalk 19:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I know. That is why the registered/unregistered ratio would be useful to the debate. Can anybody answer the question:
  • How many unregistered users are there? Lightmouse (talk) 21:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • That's an impossible number to estimate, since unregistered users can read without leaving any traces that they've even been here. Corvus cornixtalk 22:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Darn; I was going to guess 42. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
You mean 42. Corvus cornixtalk 23:26, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Let me rephrase the question:

  • How many unregistered editors are there?

Lightmouse (talk) 10:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

    • Some useful (and not-so-useful statistics): there are up to 6.6 billion unregistered readers, and using IPv4, up to 4.3 billion unregistered editors (not all of whom have yet edited/read Wikipedia). This graph shows the total number of requests daily; the number of MediaWiki (black) requests is the software rendering pages or giving out information from the mw:API; the other colors are people retrieving page content. GracenotesT § 16:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I would say your best bet would be to look through Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies, since there is no mechanism to track unregistered users. The same ip-address may be used by several people and the same person in turn may use several different ip-addess. -- Taku (talk) 10:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia.txt

Hi! After a few weeks of processing the april'07 HTML dump I finaly have a full version of wikipedia in .txt format.

Its 1.6 million articles are about 6 GB (1 GB compressed with 7z) and it works! I have put it on my mp3 player that runs rockbox (although I think a lot of players today can display .txt files) so I now have wikipedia on the go for my 6 months trip. I guess it would work on laptops, PDA's, etc too.

I would like to upload the compressed file to share but I don't know where to. I have a very bad internet connection so I don't know how I can upload it (it keeps disconnecting). I guess I would have to compress it as 50 or 100 MB files for an easier upload. How many would you recommend? Do you know where I could upload these?

The log for the conversion is on my subpage User:Keria/wikipediatxt.

Any comments and suggestions are welcome. Keria (talk) 21:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

PS: feel free to move this if it wasn't posted at the appropriate location. Thank you.

Ok I found where to upload the file Special:Upload (although there seems to be some confusion is this for all files or images only?), how would I go about uploading a series of 7z compressed files? each individualy? What is the copyright status of a stripped down, converted version of WP? There should be a more convenient place to upload the files such as they stay close to the dumps? Thanks. Keria (talk) 23:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Was there some reason why you (or others) wouldn't want to just download Wikipedia as a set of web pages? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh! I didn't know it was there! How many articles does it contain? Keria (talk) 19:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe there is a version with every single Wikipedia article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Of course there is also http://download.wikimedia.org/ . — Dan | talk 16:04, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question RE: Blocked indef / Banned users

If a user is banned, or indefinitely blocked (and there is absolutely no chance the user will become unblocked), are their subpages (talk page archives, sandbox, etc..) going to be deleted? - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Not usually, as far as I've observed. Those pages are quite useful if the banned user returns under a sockpuppet, as non-admins can refresh their memories on why the ban was implemented They are also useful if someone wishes to raise questions about the implementation of the ban in the first place. - BanyanTree 04:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I wonder whether such subpages should be protected? I confess that it is tempting to edit there in a nyah-nyaah mode, as it were. Rhinoracer (talk) 09:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)