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Black_swan_theory

This article seems to be of somewhat dubious notability, and appears very walled-gardeny with some of its others. I was wondering what others' thoughts on it were. TallNapoleon (talk) 03:01, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks reasonable enough, taking the cited refs at face value, although probably of limited interest. What specific issue can this noticeboard help you with? Jclemens (talk) 03:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Don't see why the article stands apart from The Black Swan (Taleb book); all the article's content is directly related to the book. After merger, the Non-philosophical epistemological approach section needs to be retitled and cleaned up. Abecedare (talk) 03:53, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't think notability is an issue. Unless these are false positives, a Google search on "Back Swan Theory" gives me dozens of reliable sources. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm, I am not questioning the notability per se. But as far as I see, all the reliable references discuss the theory in reference with Taleb's book, which would suggest that all the content can be contained in that article, with Black swan theory being a redirect. Do you think there is anything in this article that would be outside the scope of The Black Swan (Taleb book) ?
By the way, the The Black Swan (Taleb book) should mention Taleb's article The Black Swan: Why Don’t We Learn that We Don’t Learn?" which was a 2003 precursor to his 2007 book. Abecedare (talk) 04:21, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Images used on 2005 Texas vs. Texas A&M football game

Time line:

  • 3 April 2009: I post to Talk:2005 Texas vs. Texas A&M football game asking opinions on why we have two images showing the band at halftime on the article in sections regarding the 2nd and 3rd quarters. The images are not discussed anywhere in the article. [1]
  • 7 July 2009: Three months later, having no response from anyone on the subject, I remove the images [2] citing the talk page and lack of relevance to the article. I post on the talk page regarding this action. [3]
  • 7 July 2009: ~4 hours later, User:BQZip01, a frequent contributor on Texas A&M related articles, reverts the removal [4], saying it's part of the game, and notes [5] on the talk page they are part of the day's festivities and thus relevant.
  • 7 July 2009: I note on the talk page the lack of relevance of the images again [6].

This will not make headway without input from other editors. BQZ and I are guaranteed to disagree on the point, and it's 50% vs 50% here. Input from others appreciated. Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 19:49, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

  • Considering that I never placed the images there in the first place, the ratios are currently 67% support (myself and the person who inserted the images) to 33% against (Hammersoft) (2 to 1 in support). I too welcome any constructive input on the matter. — BQZip01 — talk 22:20, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Those images don't fit the text; they are of halftime, yet halftime is not discussed in the article. A photo of 2nd quarter should appear in that section—the same with a photo of 3rd quarter. Binksternet (talk) 15:10, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

All I Want Is Everything (album)

Just wanted some administrator advice on what should be done about the "Confirmed tracks" section of this page (The album is has not been released yet and no official track listing is available yet). My opinion is that encyclopedic information should only contain tracks that are known to be on this new album and confirmed by relevant or reliable sources (I'm the one who added the editor's comment about including sources for "confirmed" tracks). Someone recently added a few tracks with the note that they are "rumored" to be on the new release. I don't want to delete them without getting some advice on what should and shouldn't be listed on upcoming albums without official track listings. Thanks! --WillMak050389 03:25, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

  • Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Anything that appears on any articles needs to be verifiable by reliable sources. "Rumors" are not reliable sources. Whatever official sources there are for the content of the future release are quite usable. Rumors are not. Content based on rumors needs to be removed. You're acting in the right. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

DreamHost dispute

There's been a discussion going on for a while now on DreamHost (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) among several editors with varying perspectives on the company. Some of them treat any addition of company services as advertising, and do their best to present DreamHost in a bad light. There are also those who have a diametrically opposite view, and various others (like me (or so I like to think)) who fall between those extremes. I was hoping to open an arbitration case to rule on peoples' behavior, but that looks like it's going to fall through. One of the declining arbs pointed me over here for help with the content issues. Could somebody with no connection to either party, preferably someone who doesn't know anything about DreamHost, and really preferably somebody who doesn't know anything about their competitors, either, read through the history and give opinions on what should and shouldn't be in there? I know that's a particularly thankless job, but without trying to add stuff and seeing if it gets reverted, I'm not sure how else to proceed. Thanks!--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:02, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I tried, but I have to echo FT2's comments on the talk page. Even after reading the entire thread, I still don't understand the dispute. – iridescent 20:13, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Webcite

WebCite, a popular on-demand web archiving service referenced by Wikipedia over 20,000 times, went down for a server upgrade on June 24th. WebCite is currently "on-line" but a few things were broken in the upgrade and it is currently not working properly - for example, returning error messages or blank pages for most previous archives. ThaddeusB has been in contact with Gunther Eysenbach throughout the process and would like to assure the community that efforts are underway to fix the broken links. In the mean time, please do not remove, or otherwise attempt to fix, "broken links" to webcitation.org. See this discussion for more information. --Blargh29 (talk) 05:23, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Consensus and the merger of Bristol Indymedia into Indymedia

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This is going nowhere. The same issue is already being argued about across multiple noticeboards, and a now-active RfC is underway at the article's talk page, so there is no point leaving this open. Let's quit arguing about the past and focus on improving the article, through participation at the RfC. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

An AFD for Bristol Indymedia ended without consensus to delete ([7]), but several users expressed the view that the article should be merged into Indymedia. Quoting several of those suggestions, I raised the merger at Talk:Bristol Indymedia#Merge into Indymedia. user:Snigbrook, user:Hans Adler, and user:S_Marshall endorsed merge and redirect in the AFD; I joined the chorus at the talk page link just given. The general feeling is that if the subject has any claim on notability at all, the article is a tiny notability tail wagging a huge dog of an article, and thus masssively fails (among other things) WP:UNDUE.

Nearly three weeks after proposing the merger on the talk page and placing templates and the donor and recipient article, during which time I have listed the issue at WP:3O (dif) and WP:RFC (dif), the only user to express opposition the merger is user:Jezhotwells (dif). It seems reasonable to think that anyone who wanted to express an opinion has had more than enough notice and therefore opportunity to do so, and that their silence amounts to consent, or at least indifference.

Although there is a lone dissenting voice, WP:NOTUNANIMITY says that unanimity is not a prerequisite of consensus. I'd like to ask for additional input here on whether, in this situation, we have consensus to go ahead with the merger? - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 19:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I would figure that you are all within your rights to merge. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 20:07, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I'd agree. If someone really objects they can always unmerge them, but there seems to be clear consensus for a merge. – iridescent 20:11, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. Re an objecting user unmerging, it seems forseeable that user:Jezhotwells may well unmerge them, given his expressed opposition to the merger. If we're saying that consensus appears to favor the merger, I merge the articles, and he reverts/unmerges them, what should I do? - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 20:27, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Honest opinion (and definitely not Wikipedia orthodoxy): leave it. It's a virtually zero-traffic article, and not worth edit-warring over. There were enough people arguing to keep it that a valid case can be made for keeping it, so it's not like a restoration would be overwhelmingly perverse. – iridescent 20:31, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Simon Dodd placed a merge template on 24 June - 2 weeks and three days ago. There is an open RfC on this [8] since 6 July, 5 days ago. Two editors have commented on the merger proposal at Talk:Bristol_Indymedia#Merge_into_Indymedia, myself and Simon Dodd - that is not consensus. Jezhotwells (talk) 23:42, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Two editors on the talk page, plus the editors who commented in support of merger at the RFC, plus the silence of the commumnity after reasonable notice. Whether this constitutes consensus is precisely the question I asked on this noticeboard, above, and the answer was yes.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 23:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Merge it already, and Jezhotwells, stop trying to toss out an anchor; you don't have enough to filibuster this. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 01:18, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Apparently he did have enough to filibuster it, because he's reverted twice, I can't do so again without being sanctioned for edit warring (if past experience is anything to go by), and no one at ANI will lift a finger to help, or do anything apart from vague incantations of the value of "more time." You've got to hand it to him, Jez's ability to stonewall without an admin rebuking him is something to behold.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 03:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree, I commented there and I'll remerge again actually, I'll wait a few more days to see if someone can bring a solid source and then re-merge again, I think that Rjnag's advice at ANI is quite sensible. I notice that Shell is also objecting, but he's not providng either actual coverage of the website outside of the server seizure or passing mentions in newspapers. Merges can't be stuck for weeks or months without a really good reason. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
A more solid source for what? Also, please note that Shell did exactly what I wish more editors would do: she actually looked at the sources cited by Jez, and that lead to the natural result: she recanted her opposition.[9] If I could find an appropriate use award for clearsightedness and intellectual honesty, Shell would get it, but for now kudos will have to do. (This isn't sarcasm, I'm truly impressed - her willingness to review evidence and reconsider seems a rare commodity at WP.)
So I'm left with the question: I was told at ANI that we just had to wait longer. How much longer do we have to wait? I think that consensus is clear, and the only thing waiting will accomplish is to allow Jez to canvas up an army of opposition. I would strongly encourage other users to to as Enric said and revert Jez's edit again, unless or until someone gives a convincing timeframe for how many more weeks this article should be allowed to mock our policies.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 05:18, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
There have been some merge requests go up to a year with no one touching them. 3 weeks is a short time in Wikipedia. There is no set limit to merge an article, it is when someone gets around to it. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:28, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I "g[ot] around to it," but you chose to conspire with Jez to circumvent WP:NOTUNANIMITY and to forestall the merger, based purely on personal animus, so far as I can tell. When I questioned your closing of the debate (and even though the closest thing we have to an applicable policy, WP:NAC, forbids your conduct), you threatened to raise my conduct at ANI. When I called your bluff (I told you that I welcomed ANI scrutiny of your conduct tonight, which was true: I don't back down to presumptuous little bullies like you), you "pussied out," as the kids say, no doubt realizing that a spotlight shone on the stage illuminates all the players. Accordingly, I have very little interest in your opinion on this topic, or any other for that matter.
All must concede that unless unaminity is required for consensus, which WP:CON expressly rejects, there must be a reasonable period after the expiry of which the community's consent is inferred if they have not weighed in. That is why, for example, AFDs typically wait seven days before deleting, rather than waiting for every single Wikipedian to weigh in. wikipedia accepts the principle that, after notice and a reasonable period of time to object has been given, the assent or indifference of those members of the community who remain silence is inferred. Three weeks is more than enough. The community's assent or indifference is implied. Those members of the community who have looked, such as Shell, have realized that the evidence supporting this article is diaphonous at best, and supported the merger. The only opposition is from Jez, although, as I said above, I have little doubt that he will now canvas up a small army of sock puppets and sympathetic users to oppose the merger. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 05:49, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, but I didn't "pussy out" as you put it, I have told you to essentially bring it. I also have "conspired" with anyone. Which is called paranoia in many psychological circles. Now, if you are going to make this a back and forth and hurl personal attacks, I can close this thread as well. Wikipedia and its many boards are not your "bitching post". Now, get around that. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

(out) Both of you guys need to stop. This is becoming more about picking a fight than about dealing with the article, and that's not what Wikipedia is for. I'll leave this thread open for now in the hopes that you will get it back on track, but if this back-and-forth continues I won't hesitate to archive it (and to consider attempts to continue the discussion at other noticeboards—unless they are actually relevant to the article—to be forum shopping). This kind of fighting does no one any good.
Simon, you in particular need to cool yourself down. It's only been several days since you took me to ANI over using a swear word, so your calling another editor a "presumptuous little bully" and a "pussy" [10] is quite a double standard.
I think the take-away message here is clear:

  1. Don't merge, redirect, or delete an article without consensus
  2. Consensus from the past AfD and other discussions is unclear at best
  3. Thus, the article shouldn't be merged yet. Don't make any definitive moves until a real consensus is reached.

The current "consensus" to be found in the AfDs that have happened is nothing more than table scraps. The consensus you could get from a wider discussion (RfC or posting at a relevant WikiProject) would be a feast. Why fight over table scraps when you can wait for the feast? rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 06:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I have formatted the RfC correctly using a neutral statement, which was omitted by the original requesting editor. It is now listed and I have informed the relevant projects for both articles and those who took part in the AfD discussion. Jezhotwells (talk) 10:17, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
A RfC lasts 30 days. Consider that a soft time limit to decide the merger. (actually, count it as 30 days from today since it wasn't still properly formatted, and since it was now when it was good advertised) I know that it's a pain to wait, but it's a reasonable compromise to get some more opinions (and sources :P ), and it will be difficult to justify waiting more time after a full RfC. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:31, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I can't understand why people keep suggesting that the consensus rests solely on what was said at AFD, even though I must have explained a million times now that it isn't. The consensus is the product of what was said at AFD and what has and hasn't been said since the merger was proposed. See ¶2 of what I said above - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 17:41, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:172 at 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

This user has returned from a long term break. Given the length of his blocklog, we might expected he has considered some of his previous mistakes and/or problems; however, it seems he started editing in a rather unacceptable manner.

In 1993 Russian constitutional crisis he is engaging in blind reverts to vastly inferior previous versions both in terms of sourcing (when I first started contributing to the article, the biggest problem turned out to be lack of references). Now, without any particular comments, this user appeared and just unilaterally erased my and other people's work, with the blatantly subjective claim that 'the article has deteriorated' in the meantime. After I reverted an made some additions today, he returned again, and not waiting for any consensus as to his arguments at talk, again reverted to the previous version, which he has apparently unilaterally decided to be some 'definitive version'. Though he after went on to re-add some of the text that he had deleted with his revert, he still managed (among other things) to delete my today's work of adding this paragraph in his ultimate version. Though I admit that the article has got large by now and might perhaps warrant splitting (as is the case in ru.wiki), I find User:172's actions totally unacceptable, as they

  1. are disruptive (removing totally valid and neutral things, e.g. statistics I added to the economics section)
  2. he failed to bring any rationale for so radical removal of references, footnotes and sources. let alone seeking some sort of consensus
  3. are clogging up the page history due to pointless reverts to old versions apparently from 2007 or 2008
  4. show complete disrespect to other people's discussions, changes and work during 2008-2009, when the account 172 was dormant.

His reverts are obviously blind and disrespectful to others' contributions, so that, curiously enough, he has even managed to delete with in his version some categories, (e.g. [[Category:Protests]), section See also (

-

-

-

- - , all External links and further reading:

-

-

(Please compare the diff)

This is not the way a collaborative project works. User 172 does not own this page.

--Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 19:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I deleted your recent new paragraph by accident. I apologize. I did not notice it. I have restored it, after cleaning up some of the writing. [11]. 172 | Talk 20:01, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I think Miacek is being unnecessarily nasty here. A quick review of the page history and the article discussion page will show that I am working in good faith to salvage any useful recent contributions. As I tried addressing some of Miacek's concerns, I discovered that he and another were accusing me of being a communist. [12] The reference to my block log is also a bit ridiculous. Please review the log and notice that all blocks in question from a few years ago were overturned. 172 | Talk 19:46, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The typical example of you 'salvaging any useful contributions' (needless to say, what is useful is only for you to decide, yes?) is how your reverting spree treated my today's additions:

In my version the section ====Ninth session of the CPD====

read linke this (today, I added first ever inline refs to this):

By the time of the ninth Congress, the legislative branch was dominated by the hard-line Russian Unity bloc[1], that included representatives of the CPRF, faction Fatherland (radical communists, retired military personnel, other deputies of socialist orientation[2][3]), Agrarian Union, faction 'Russia', led by Sergey Baburin [4] [5]. Together with more 'centrist' groups (e.g. 'Change' (Смена)), the Yeltsin supporters ('Democratic Russia', 'Radical democrats') were clearly left in the minority.

The ninth congress, which opened on 26 March, began with an extraordinary session of the Congress of People's Deputies taking up discussions of emergency measures to defend the constitution, including impeachment of President Yeltsin. Yeltsin conceded that he had made mistakes and reached out to swing voters in parliament. Yeltsin publicly swore he would not obey a congressional decision against him during impeachment. On 28 March the vote to impeach him failed; votes for impeachment falling 72 short of the 689 votes needed for a 2/3 majority.

You just managed to revert to a version lot of your own prose with no sources whatsoever:

The ninth congress, which opened on March 26, began with an extraordinary session of the Congress of People's Deputies taking up discussions of emergency measures to defend the constitution, including impeachment of President Yeltsin. Yeltsin conceded that he had made mistakes and reached out to swing voters in parliament. Yeltsin narrowly survived an impeachment vote on March 28, votes for impeachment falling 72 short of the 689 votes needed for a 2/3 majority.

If you want to clean up or condense, pls start with unsourced content, not sourced content. --Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 19:56, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Both editors should be aware of the ability to create a sandbox of the article (At Talk:1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis/sandbox), where you can make your possibly disputed edits without interruption. Once you are done, you can submit the sandbox to the talk page for discussion and potential implementation into the article. I think it should be established that you also do not own the page Miacek, and that even users that may have a history of being a black sheep in the past are valid users with valid opinions. That said, the dispute shouldn't make the article into war grounds. Make your compromises in a sandbox. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Floydian, thank you for your input. I hope that you are not implying that I have a history of being a black sheep. That is not true whatsoever. I have worked extensively with, and gained the respect of some of Wikipedia's most respected editors and arbitrators over the years. Look through my user talk page, and notice the respected editors soliciting my input on scores of occasions over the years. Yes, some of my actions have been controversial. But sometimes taking bold action is necessary to effect progress. 172 | Talk 20:01, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
I meant that part in the general sense of wikipedia. Wasn't referring to you specifically. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 08:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Obviously I don't own the page, I've ran into many disputes during the past months and I've had to make compromises. As for your draft suggestion, I agree with you on conditions that
  1. we take the newest version before 172's unilateral reverts as the basis: revision of this page, as edited by Klondek (talk | contribs) at 09:42, 9 July 2009. permalink: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis&oldid=301161019. This way, we ensure the work that has been done during user:172's absence won't just get erased because he doesn't like it
  2. as for editing the draft, I recommend initially prefererably curtailing unsourced passages + adding new sources.

Thus, I am open for coöperation with other users. --Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 20:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Then let's please return to the article talk page, instead of posting complaints and accusing people of being communists. Please notice that I have been Please notice that I have addressed many of your concerns, and restored a lot of old content after the rewrite. I look forward to working with you on adding/restoring additional content. 172 | Talk 20:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

User:GODstrings, User:colinwilson62, User:Bandcorrection

Background

These three users are SPA's for The Australian Pink Floyd Show article. One has claimed to be a member of the band and would also fall under COI regardless of the truthiness of that claim. One user is deinitely a member of the band, bass player colinwilson62.

Edit history of APFS

This shows a comparison between now and a version from May 23, 2009. Almost exactly 100 edits have occured since then. As you can see, nothing has really changed.

Disputed content

I myself have violated 3RR in reversing changes made by these three users. The changes all involve two items:

  1. The removal of the image File:The_Australian_Pink_Floyd_Show_en_Barcelona.jpg, which is a confirmed cc-by-2.0 image that is suitable for the article at hand.
  2. The removal of principal member Ian Cattell's official website, which contains numerous photos, videos, audio, tour dates, and other information specific to The Australian Pink Floyd Show. This is acceptable under wikiproject music's MOS, MUSTARD, as it provides information that is useful to the reader, but inappropriate to place directly on the wikipedia article. See here

Resolve

I have tried placing a comment on the talk page explaining the re-addition of that content, but it is removed regardless with the exact same arguments. I have tried leaving comments on the editor's talk pages (Two of them, not GODstrings), only to have them erased of ignored. I have the feeling that these three accounts are used by the same person. Regardless though, their edits are destructive and insistent, and something should be done. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 21:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia also states that it isn't protocol to post 'personal' peoples band sites on band websites. Almost every band member and employee of TAPFS have personal sites.It wouldn't be appropriate to list them all. All band members are happy with this and have NO wish to have their own sites posted. Mr Cattell's site also Is there to find other suitable employers for his talents. All employees of the band are freelance,and use TAPFS videos with permission to help further their own careers. These sites have no relevance in managements view to post such links on wikipedia. We have created this page using wikipedia guidelines,and would like it to remain as such. -- GODstrings (Talk) 21:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

You have basically admitted to a conflict of interests by claiming your affiliation with the band. Other members sites are not relevant in their content (Hence why Ian Cattell is the only member linked to from the official band site, aside from the sax player who runs a charitable organization), and are not included as such. Regardless of the purpose Mr. Cattell had in mind for his site, it contains content that is extremely useful to a reader of that article. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 21:49, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Personally, I don't see the need for the link. As long as it includes the link to the band's website, that should contain any tour dates etc that are relevant; there's no real need for links to the individual band members sites as well, especially if the band members don't want them to be there. Tool contains a link to the band website but not www.maynardjameskeenan.com, which seems a pretty sensible arrangement; if we had a separate article on Ian Cattell, that would be the place for a link to his personal site. – iridescent 23:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
If this is decided on that principal, I will personally go through every band article and remove all the links to any members of those bands, regardless if those members have an article of their own (For those links should by that logic only be in the article of that person). The band members have made no claims about their sites, that is an original research claim by one of these users.
4. External pages that include significant information that could not be placed on Wikipedia (e.g., copyrighted content that is not posted in violation of copyright law) should be linked to:
5. external pages containing information that could be incorporated into the Wikipedia article (posted on the talk page); or
6. respected databases of relevant information, where there is a significant quantity of information that is inappropriate for incorporation into Wikipedia.
This may include such pages as fansites, provided that they are an established organization or a recognized fan community and are clearly more informative and more useful than most fansites. For example:
a fansite that includes an exhaustive database of tour dates and setlists;
a rights holder-approved lyrics site;
a large repository of relevant images;
a large repository of other trivia that may not be appropriate for Wikipedia; and
forums or other community pages, only if such pages are unusually established and recognized institutions with an important focus.

This not only qualifies it, but begs it to be there. Individual opinion on whether it qualifies or not is meaningless when a policy that has consensus specifically lays out the conditions. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 00:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

This continues to escalate with several "new users" creating accounts solely to remove the link. While perhaps one, or maybe two are unique users, I cannot deny this vandalism as a coincidence. At the very least, ample discussion is needed, and I will continue to keep the picture/link in the article (As that was the original state of the article before this began) until at least a few established editors give their opinion. I myself still stand by the notion that it, unlike other band members sites, contains media material which is all relevent to the article, and not just to the specific member. It meets severa of the points mentioned under #6 of MUSTARD. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 07:48, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Edit: After performing a quick search of "*band member name* official site" on Google, no member besides Ian Cattell has any sort of verifiable official website. The band member argument can be thrown aside now in favour of simply arguing that its an official fan site with lots of relevent content. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 08:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I have to disagree with you 'floydian' I've stated in other places that the only reason Ian Cattell has a link to his site from the main aussie site is that only band members can have band bios.Ian isn't such and is purely an employee of the band on a contractual basis.There are a LOT of employees of tapfs who have their own websites,including one would mean the door would be open for ALL of them to have thier links in place.This would make for a lengthy external links page,something which wikipedia state is unnecessary themselves.I also agree the place for a link for Ian's site would be on his own personal wikipedia page were he to create one.External links on the bands site in my and others opinions should be for band related links only.Not certain members from the band.I hear your argument about Ian's site being relevant,but then so are all the other sole members sites.They use the band to be a vehicle for thier own work,and that's why I don't think it's necessary to have a link from the bands page on wikipedia.From discussing this with people invloved and close to the band they agree.I suggest as I did before that you contact Colin Wilson/Jason Sawford directly from the main band website to clarify this further.(Tapgsozfan (talk) 08:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)) Further apologies for posting this in the wrong place before this!(Tapgsozfan (talk) 08:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC))

As I mentioned though, having the band members - or a forum in which the band members actively participate - make decision on how their own articles should be presented violates WP:COI -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 08:30, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
This argument looks like band management/owner deciding that Cattell should not be featured more strongly than other band members, for self-serving reasons such as not wanting Cattell to get some kind of star billing (and more money) and not wanting Cattell to have job offers from other bands. If Cattell came here to say "get that damn URL off the article" then we would likely respect his wishes, per WP:BLPEDIT. That doesn't appear to be the case here. I see no reason why a Cattell's website should be removed.
About the image: if the band owns the image and Cattell published it without their authority, it should be taken down. If Cattell published it with proper authority, it's okay to keep. Binksternet (talk) 17:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
It's an image from flickr. Most likely taken by a fan watching a show. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 18:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
In that case it should stay up. No reason for the edit war. Binksternet (talk) 19:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

There are other band members with their own personal websites.Maybe you weren't sure what to google?These do feature videos of the band etc.The same videos and links/tour dates etc can be found on the main Aussie Floyd site.Therefore why the necessity to repeat info and add excess to the external links section which is something wikipedia states they don't want to be the case? The only additional info is regards to his previous band-which of course has no relevance to Aussie Floyd. The 'star' thing isn't the issue here.The issue is simply that the page should be about the band and not about any individual therein IMO(Tapgsozfan (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2009 (UTC))

Could you please post a list of the main band members official sites here? I simply googled "{band member name} official site", and "{band member name}" and got zero results for any verifiably official page. Showing a list of official sites (Blog entries and social network sites are not verifiable) may very well make your case if they all contain practically the same content. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Section break

I do not wish to enter into any edit war but I will offer my opinion here if it helps. I am not attached to my opinion but it is what I think..for what it is worth. I can confirm that Steve Mac has a website that contains much interesting archival material about TAPFS but you will not find it under the name 'Steve Mac'. I do not wish to post urls here because I don't know where you will post them. Carl Brunsdon and Jamie Humphries have websites. Amy Smith, Ola Bienkowska,Jacquie Williams, Bianca Glynn, Emily Jollands, Bobby Harrison, Mike Kidson all have myspace pages that contain TAPFS material, some of it substantial. Bryan Kolupski, the animator has a website-his url can be found on the aussiefloyd website. Also Ian Cattels website address can be found on the official website.Colin Wilson's wife has her own website devoted to her photographs and it contains many TAPFS photos
Cattell's website is, in my opinion , a very good website about Ian Cattell. It features many photos of TAPFS, primarily pictures of the man himself-but it really is about I.C not TAPFS in particular. The photos and information on the website is not substantially different from the photos and information you can get on the official site.
Given the amount of material about TAPFS on the web I really don't think that I.Cs site offers anything substantially different from the other sites mentioned and does not particularly merit an inclusion if it means other sites are to be excluded.
Given that WP:MUSTARD (see external links section) guidelines that advise one to use external links sparingly, I don't think the link is really neccesary especially if it is going to cause problems and an unending edit war.
There is another website www.tributehub.com that is a very good fansite (managed independantly of the band and not influenced by any band member's opinions) that contains much useful information about the band but because it is a fansite it invariably gets deleted by some over zealous editor because of some policy about fansites..yet it leads to links and photos and articles about all sorts of TAPFS related stuff. Either we have links about TAPFS in particular or we have an inclusionist policy of adding everything under the sun and have a list a mile long.-But you well know that some deletionist will come along and trim it! If we have IC's website and nobody else's site then it gives the impression that somehow I.C is the main contact, the main representative of the show and that simply is not the case and could be misleading.It needs to be all or nothing and in this case 'all' is simply not going to be maintainable
Anyway, that's my 10 cents worthGodfinger (talk) 19:26, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
And a well written 10 cents it is (Although not posting the links because of "where I might post them" does not make a strong case to their existance and their notability. This isn't the tabloids.). Personally I think a fansite would be a hundred times better than band member links (Official sites beg for facts to be pulled from them, but are self-published sources), and should be included if it does indeed contain substantial content relevant to the band (A premise which WP:MUSTARD also notes), replacing the Ian Cattell and Myspace links. What I dislike is this fansite making decisions as to what they want the article to contain, and sending over member after member to make the changes on their behalf under the notion that anybody can edit wikipedia to what they please despite the ongoing dispute and discussion concerning this. As I have mentioned on user and talk pages, I will keep the link in until Friday at the minimum so that a decision can be reached on this. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 23:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Totally agree with godfingers contribution to this ongoing debate.I too have been observing this 'editing war' and have myself been removing what I consider to be an unnecessary link.The wiki page for tapfs is a good one.I don't see the need to add an individuals link.I too am aware of many people in the band having their own websites which of course have mass content about the band.However they contain nothing 'extra' to the main fan site.If you allow one link to an individuals page to stand,then you have to allow them all that will of course be added in time by others who stumble upon them.This will lead to great repetition and would set a standard for not deleting any of them as it would be unfair to' pick and choose' which individuals you allow to remain on the wiki page for the band.Cattell's site from what I've seen gives nothing more than the main band site.In fact as godfinger mentioned the pictures on his site are primarily of the man himself (which of course you would expect on a sole persons webpage)The only differences are videos from his previous band.These have no relevance to tapfs.Yes of course Cattell's site has references to tapfs.That's the vehicle he's using to 'sell' himself to future employees.I feel if this is allowed to stand then the page will be filled with lots of repetition and that will complicate,and make the page difficult to sieve through.
I've also been accused of coming from a 'fansite' and being told to edit this page.This simply is NOT the case.In fact as I've stated on my own talk page to -floydian- I've seen no reference of this debate on any of the fan sites.I don't feel it's nice to be accused of vandalising a page of a band I enjoy to watch/listen too.I'm simply a member of the public who in turn likes this band and all things floyd related.I'm fully aware of wikipedia policies,and the link is from what i've read, and interpreted them to be against wikipedia policy of adding unnecessary links.Unnecessary in my opinion from the reasons stated above.I've used wikipedia as a reference site for many years and enjoyed trawling through and reading the information therein.I haven't however felt the need to jump in and edit lots of things,that doesn't make me a 'newcomer' to the site.It seems there are lots of misconceptions regarding this and too many presumptions being made with nothing to validate claims.
That's my 10 cents worth(Floydfever22 (talk) 08:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC))
Thank you for posting an opinion here. As I've mentioned half a dozen times, I was reverting the page because this is where things were being discussed. I don't really care what the fate of the link is. I would like to see it switched to tribute hub (And the myspace link removed because myspace is unprofessional) to be honest. What I do care about is when I step into an edit war to stop it, and at least 5 new users create accounts specifically to continue it on in their favour. Wikipedia is a public encyclopedia, but if we allowed ourself to be the result of a brute force editing war, then I couldn't imagine what the pages on genitalia or sex would be like. Please check the history for APFS and you will see how many times I said to give your opinion on the talk page or here. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:36, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Section Break 2

Floydian wrote above : " Regardless of the purpose Mr. Cattell had in mind for his site, it contains content that is extremely useful to a reader of that article. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 21:49, 11 July 2009 (UTC) "

I disagree.Comparison of the photos in the official site (in the photos album entitled "USA 2008-Bryan Kolupski") and the photos in Mr Cattell's site do not substantially differ in the portrayal of the show. In fact, apart from some extra photos of I.C himself and some information about his other Project, there appears to me some duplication of photos. This is because the photos of Mr Cattell in his website are mainly from the 2008 North American tour, some of them possibly taken by the same photographer. See for yourself :

http://iancattell.net/photo/index.htm

http://www.aussiefloyd.com

So I would like to know what is it about the I.C site that is 'useful' to the reader about TAPFS as opposed to Ian Cattell in particular?

And does the I.C site provide anything more 'useful' than the following sites (this not an exhaustive list) :


http://www.youtube.com/tapfs http://www.myspace.com/jamiehumphries

http://www.myspace.com/olabienkowskasession

http://www.bk1productions.com

http://www.myspace.com/regroovemusic

http://www.regroovemusic.co.uk/gallery.html

http://www.myspace.com/biancaantoinette

http://www.jamiehumphries.com/

http://www.buckscountydrumco.com/Artists/index.html

http://www.el-vato.com/bios.htm

Personally, I don't think so.

The current lock on the site, which may extend to two weeks or more only serves to increase the traffic on Mr Cattell's site. I have no doubt that this is what was intended when it was first placed on the website several weeks ago by an editor in North America.(unregistered user 24.58.191.72 on May 14,2009) This editor, or some other editor entered into this edit war with colinwilson62 but did not explain the reasons for insisting that the link remain. It is possible that the link was placed by Mr Cattell or by a close associate in order to increase traffic and self promotion and in so doing also entered into an edit war using several SPAs and so violating WP:COI and possibly WP:SPAM. At least Colinwilson62 gave reasons for his edits , (and registered his own name!)in the edit summary but the other editor/s did not even attempt to communicate or justify the inclusion- a very unwikipedean form of behaviour.It is my opinion that colinwilson62 rightfully reverted the edits since WP:EL discourages links to personal websites. The edit war actually began after colinwilson62 was reverted without explanation.So it is my contention that because the current page is locked , it unfairly penalises an editor who initially acted within wikipedian guidelines.It may be argued that there are exceptions to the rule in accordance with WP:MUSTARD but this I believe that this 'exception' has not been clearly demonstrated to my satisfaction for the reasons given above. So I suggest that previous page to the current one be locked and this discussion can continue until consensus is reached. Godfinger (talk) 14:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I will contact the admin who locked it. Please keep in mind though that Colin Wilson should not be participating in the editing of an article of a band which he is in (At least the style of the article. Fan sites and participants are encouraged to add reliably sourced content). -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 18:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Firstly I didn't feel the need to justify my reasons for editing on this discussion at that moment In time.I edited only a handful of times and gave reasons for such.Also I've read the talk page for the bands page and found more discussions that I believe should be posted here for all to read in context with the contents of this talk page.

The page has been locked until friday to assist with this. Users are welcome to make their opinions heard here, but are encouraged to do so at the content noticeboard entry. If there continues to be no consensus as now, I'm going to ask that the lock be extended an additional week. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 22:56, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

And if there is no consensus after a further week? Godfinger (talk) 00:10, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
If it makes it to this Friday without any change, I will list it in more places to get more editors to take a look. It's pretty obvious that this decision needs to be made by someone with no connection with this article. Both you and I and the entire Aussy Floyd Show fan base are too strung into this article (Myself as the original creator and you as a major contributor) to be able to make an unbiased decision.
Should nothing come after a second week, then I'll contact an admin and see what the next step should be. Most likely the article will be semi-protected to keep SLA's from changing things, and the link left in as it was before the edit war began until there is enough of a discussion to warrant changing that. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 00:26, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Of course the link was there before the 'edit war' began.It was this very link that caused the so called edit war shortly after It was placed there by someone as many people seem to be trying to enforce wikipedias policy about external links.I also agree that Colinwilson62 edited correctly and fairly in lines with guidelines,and as godfinger mentions gave reasons for doing so.From what I've read on the notice board it's clear there seems to be a consensus from people posting about the unnecessary link and stating reasons as to why it's unnecessary..It appears to me you're having the page locked for another week as people don't agree with you.Your latter reply almost states that If people continue to disagree with you then you'll make sure no one can change it anyway.Hardly a democracy on fair and equal editing of wikipedias pages.
It would appear since you posted this on the band talk page that an agreement for now has been reached to revert the page back without the link and continue discussion.This seems the only sensible solution.I also agree with you Floydian that a link to the fan site would much more advantageous to readers of the wiki page than any individual site.Surely this would be the best outcome overall?(Floydfever22 (talk) 20:20, 15 July 2009 (UTC))

(<-Outdent) I'm a tapfs fan (as my username gives away) I've been following this debate and Indeed myself entered the so called edit war briefly (May 2009) Since reading and learning of this discussion I've done a little digging.It would appear the IP address that originally posted the link (as godfinger posted above) was from the very same area that I.C lives In.This would intimate that I.C posted the link himself to his own site.I also have good grounds for suggesting the user Andersoncouncil42 was also I.C who undid all the editing removing the link with no explanation.Floydian has stated that colinwilson62 was wrong to edit the site being in the show himself,surely the same goes for I.C adding the link to promote himself on the back of the band wiki page?I agree with godfinger that at least colinwilson62 didn't hide his identity and also justified the edits.Also another user reversed the edits made by colinwilson62.This username I know to belong to a close associate of I.C,again a conflict of interest issue!For me this whole debate is turning into a double standard.Floydian/godfinger/floydfever have all agreed in principal to adding the link for tributehub and removing the I.C link.The sooner the better in my opinion.As godfinger/floydfever22 put-this too is my 10 cents worth on what swiftly needs sorting out.I think the wikipedia band page should have been locked to a state prior to the link to I.C's personal page being added,which in turn caused the edit war as floydfever22 rightly posted above(Tapfsfan1 (talk) 21:28, 15 July 2009 (UTC))

I left a message on Smashville (The protecting admin for this dispute), seen here User_talk:Smashville#Australian_Pink_Floyd_Show to remove the link from the locked version, and to possibly change it (now or on Friday) to semi-protected to help avoid this issue in the immediate future. Down the road it will expire and if the page remains stable it will remain unlocked. Tribute hub seems to be accepted as a replacement by everyone. Any thoughts on the myspace page? Keep, remove? -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 22:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree that tributehub would be a good replacement. It used to be on the site several weeks ago but it was removed by an established editor. As for the myspace link there does seem to be an aversion to myspace links here at Wikpedia-I'm not sure of the reasons.I'm not sure if 'unprofessional' is a good enough reason-I don't think it's unprofessional myself as many professional musicians have myspace accounts. However I am fairly neutral about it's removal-but I will add that it does provide links to the myspace sites of other band members and people involved so it has some value to the trainspotters who want to find out more about individuals if they so desire without having to list them here and risk having them edited out!.Godfinger (talk) 22:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Regardless of that editors decision (Based on WP:EL instead of WP:MUSTARD), we are gaining a broader consensus than one editor here. My issue with myspace is the trouble proving that it is indeed officially managed, and not just a fan page acting on the bands behalf. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 23:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Ah yes..but if tributehub is not managed by the band, then why does the myspace need to be managed by the band?Godfinger (talk) 23:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad about the message to Smashville and the semi-locking of the page prior to IC's link being added.Hopefully things will settle and we can get back to normal service lol.I did note that the whole edit war thing actually ceased on June 2nd before it was placed back again by yourself I believe.

I've just been looking at the bands myspace page.To be honest I'm not a fan of social networking sites being added as links unless they contain substantially different relevant material from any main webpage the band has.It would appear their myspace page contains nothing extra.However looking at the tributehub site this does contain lots of different information.For example pictures taken by fans of the band rather than just the bands official photos.Links to various youtube videos that differ from videos on the main site etc.Another huge plus is the sharing of information on this site by what would appear to be 'fans in the know'.This Includes upcoming tour dates for the USA yet to appear on aussiefloyd.com.My vote would be for the removal of bands myspace and addition of tributehub.I feel all bases would then be covered and avoid unnecessary repetition of information.What are your thoughts Floydian?(Tapfsfan1 (talk) 23:16, 15 July 2009 (UTC))

I posted my last at around the same time as Godfinger.I'd like to reply.For me Myspace is purely a page that has photos/comments/friends list etc.It doesn't contain anything near like what a 'forum fan site' does.I also agree with Floydian on the fact you can never tell who's behind a myspace page.Anyone could create one on any persons/band behalf with or without their knowledge.The fan site may not be managed officially by the band,but it does contain many members that share a common love of floyd/tapfs.Thus providing lots more information that can be substantiated unlike any myspace/facebook page.(Tapfsfan1 (talk) 23:23, 15 July 2009 (UTC))

User:Wikireader41's violation of wp:3rr in Kanwar Pal Singh Gill

User:Wikireader41 has violated wp:3rr by reverting Kanwar Pal Singh Gill four times in one single day. Please see revert 1, revert 2, revert 3 and revert 4 eventhough he was warned by another editor.

This should be posted to the edit warring noticeboard rather than the content noticeboard. If I'm reading the history correctly, there isn't a 3rr violation (four edits spaced across c.28 hours), but we have often been told that 3RR is simply one measure of the underlying sin, viz. edit warring. That reasoning can't justify not acting on a 3rr violation unless it also justifies acting in the absence of a 3rrv, strictly construed; there must be symmetry. Repost at the right noticeboard and I would think some kind of action will issue. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 17:09, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! I have followed your kind advice. It has been posted in the edit warring noticeboard.--99.51.223.161 (talk) 07:39, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Palin on Letterman

There is a bit of an ongoing kerfuffle regarding whether Palin's appearance on Letterman was notable or not, going on in Late Show with David Letterman. I'd love to get more eyes on this.Datacharge (talk) 03:04, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Help with fair use rationale for File:Save Freedom of Speech.png

Resolved

File:Save Freedom of Speech.png needs a rationale for its use in Four Freedoms (where it has been used since 2004) and Norman Rockwell. I'm not familiar enough with the topic area to write one myself, and I requested on those articles' talk pages a month ago for editors there to handle it. Please help, don't let the image be deleted on a technicality. Anomie⚔ 17:36, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to Modernist! (Even though my request here probably had nothing to do with Modernist's work) Anomie⚔ 18:23, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Serrapeptase is a mess

See also: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive531 § Author attempting to replace wikipedia articles with extracts from his book, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive552 § Robertredfern, Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009 April 5 § Serratiopeptidase, and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive188 § Appeal from merger of "Serratio peptidase" into "Serratiopeptidase"

I haven't tried this board before. This article is a mess -- big markup problems, layout problems, and content, with a company being accused of illegal activities with no evidence. This is far outside my field of interest although it ended up on my watch list for reasons I no longer recall. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 11:33, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

  • It looks like User:Robertredfern is a WP:SPA devoted to pushing a POV related to that enzyme; in this case, they seem to have taken [13] as a starting point. Anomie⚔ 12:00, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
    • While I was doing other things in RL, the editor has been given an indef block for disruption - I hadn't noticed that he'd removed a redirect from Serratiopeptidase, just another name for the same thing, and turned it into an article as well. Dougweller (talk) 13:47, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Explanation-based learning

If anyone wants to check out this series of edits [14] I would appreciate it. The sources are offline and a couple of them seem to have been written by Samuelsson, Christer whose name is quite similar to the editor that made them. They may be perfectly legitimate edits, and I think an expert is welcome to work on the article, but I don't know enough about the topic to review their quality or to assess their appropriateness. ChildofMidnight (talk) 16:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm no subject expert, either, but the editor seems to be balancing his text with liberal cites from work by others. He's not really pushing his own participation. Somebody, however, needs to tell him how to employ an mdash instead of three hyphens in a row. o_O ... Binksternet (talk) 19:25, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The above page cites no references and is far from being up to any academic standard. Could someone either edit this page or remove it. In its present state all it serves to do is detract from the authenticity and quality that Wiki. has fought so hard to establish.

Citations

I wasn't really sure what noticeboard to put this on, so I decided to add it here. I was drafting up an article at User:NuclearWarfare/William Thompson Lusk. One of my major sources is a book that is a collection of Lusk's speeches and letters throughout the years, and is known as War Letters of William Thompson Lusk. I am not using the Lusk's words though, but rather the words of four of Lusk's contemporaries whose speeches can be found in the introduction to the book. My question then, is how do I cite these. I have been using the {{Harvnb}} template, so would I just use {{Harvnb|Lusk|1911 |p=26}}? If so, that seems wrong to me; Lusk didn't actually write the words on page 26; Henry C. Coe did. So, any help regarding this matter, either here, on the article talk page, or even as an example edit to the article would be much appreciated. NW (Talk) 04:42, 28 July 2009 (UTC) c

Yes, that's what you would use. Lusk 1911, p. 26 means you are citing the work authored by Lusk in 1911, not that Lusk necessarily said those things himself. If you want to be extra clear, you can mention who said things in the sentence, such as "Henry C. Coe said that Lusk thought ice cream was really delicious.[ref]Lusk 1911, p. 26[/ref]". Or something like "Lusk thought ice cream was really delicious.[ref]See remarks by Henry C. Coe, in Lusk 1911, p. 26[/ref]".Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:49, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Long-term edit war between two users

Alright, so I'm basically at the end of my rope here. I've mentioned this in bits and pieces around places like ANI, but it never really panned out. I initially got involved in this edit war by giving a third opinion on Talk:Asmahan. The two editors, Arab Cowboy (talk · contribs) and Supreme Deliciousness (talk · contribs) have been fighting on that article and a number of others. The battle has gone on back and forth for at least six weeks now. It's spread to a number of other articles that they're both active on. At one point a random new account showed up and there was a sockpuppet allegation (which turned out to be false) but it's degraded into personal attacks and edit wars that never cease. Both of them have been blocked at least once, and one has been blocked a second time for edit warring. There's another editor that's become involved as a result of asking for help on Wikiprojects and such, but even that seems to be less helpful now. One editor reported another on WP:AN3 and they got into a little battle there, but that request is still pending. I'm just really unsure of how to proceed from here, and how to put this issue to rest. Any help is more than appreciated. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 19:29, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

At its root it's a fight over content in the Asmahan article, but the actions of the warring editors spilling over into other articles should have alerted someone at ANI. To me, it looks like Supreme Deliciousness has a point of view to push. Binksternet (talk) 23:33, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I posted on ANI, but it got only one response. A thread on AN went unanswered. There were a few other threads on ANI where the two editors attacked each other, and while one thread mostly turned into AC pointing fingers at admins, the other also only got one response. It's true that Supreme Deliciousness has a POV to push, I think, but Arab Cowboy does as well - it just happens to be in the opposite direction. I'm just not sure where to go at this point, since most people seem unwilling to touch the issue. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 00:48, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


Binksternet, I have followed the mediation process so far which was to talk at the talkpage and mediator helping us with the changes we wanted to make then ad it to the page, Arab Cowboy started on the 26th to change the whole article without going through the talkpage. Several texts I had added to the article and was clearly sourced was deleted, and the mediator has now allowed this to happen without doing anything, if there was any kind of justice at wikipedia, this would never have happened. Arab Cowboy have also deleted info on other pages that goes against what the sources are saying: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soad_Hosny&diff=304471380&oldid=304034948 The only point of view I'm pushing is the truth, what the sources are saying. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 12:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

That poor singer! The Asmahan page appears to me to be the battleground between people who want to talk more about opposing political views than the power of her music. Binksternet (talk) 13:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Sfan00 IMG's script assisted bulk PROD'ding of old pictures

User:Sfan00 IMG has been going on a tear of apparently applying various tags, including proposed deletion tags, to a number of older uploaded images. (His contributions) This came to my attention when a number of images that I had uploaded in 2003 and 2004 were tagged for proposed deletion by him. E.g. File:Mourning.jpg, a nineteenth century ad for mourning clothes; and File:Fonece.jpg, a nineteenth century image from Oahspe. His script assisted edits and especially his proposed deletions seem to me to be working more mischief than good.

He is retroactively applying current sourcing standards to five year old uploads of obviously public domain material from anonymous commercial artists, or whose actual source would be obvious to a human editor who checked their usage in context. To my memory, none of the requirements he is using to tag older uploads were in place before 2007 at the earliest. Demanding that sources be cited for five and six year old uploads to retroactively comply with standards required of new ones strikes me as inherently unreasonable.

He is tagging images for deletion in bulk, when a cursory examination of context would reveal that it would be impossible for the image to be under copyright. E.g. File:Liliuokalani.jpeg[15], a photo of Liliuokalani, d. 1917. He has tagged large numbers of user created maps for proposed deletion. (E.g. File:WalesFlintshireTrad.png[16]). And this last problem illustrates what may be the most serious issue with this scripted campaign.

The highlighted maps of England, Scotland, and Wales were the work of User:Morwen, last active in 2007. He's proposed deletions for snapshots of orange harvests, the obvious products of the uploader, taken by User:Belizian, who was also last active in 2007. Even if demands for "sources" for the uploader's own work are reasonable, scripted proposing the older work of inactive editors for automatic deletion within seven days strikes me as likely to work serious harm.

I have asked that editor to stop, and a glimpse of his talk page will disclose several incredulous comments, of varying degrees of civility, about his scripted editing and proposed deletions. The scripted taggings, ignoring the actual content of the images he proposes for deletion, seem to be continuing. If this campaign continues, I fear it's going to create an mess that's going to have to be undone by human hands. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

This is one of those rare instances where taking it to ANI is a good thing. I assume we all remember what happened last time this came up. Best to (a) nip it in the bud or (b) get a consensus that it's acceptable before things get messy. – iridescent 19:29, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
For starters, I wasn't aware of a policy against 'retroactive' enforcement on wiki.
Secondly, recent matters at Commons have impressed the need for clear sourcing.
Thirdly, If it was obvious from an image that it was the uploaders work, it would

not have got tagged... Perhaps you can provide additional examples where it's clear on the upload page that it's the uploaders works and tagged in error? I will review the examples you mention though. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:31, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

OK; of the last three you've marked for deletion, File:London Guildhall Corp of London.jpg clearly shows its source and attribution status; File:Irwinkiss.gif dates from 1896; File:Irwin postcard.jpg dates from 1904. Since that's a 100% mistagging rate, I'm really not inclined to look any further. – iridescent 19:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
First example, reffered to PUI, because the underlying terms of the source site appears to have changed, I'd originally tagged this for commons back in February ... Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:41, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Right, the complaints here do to a certain extent show a lack of understanding of our sourcing policy, though I am by no means fully endorsing Sfan's actions. To take Smerdis's example- File:Liliuokalani.jpeg claims to be published pre-1924, but a source would be required to verify that. The mere fact it was created then does not mean it was published. Was it published in a newspaper? Also, just because these were uploaded a long time ago, does not mean that they are allowed to break current policy. Is it acceptable for articles to be unsourced, because they were created before sourcing was the "in thing"? Of course not. As for "even if demands for "sources" for the uploader's own work are reasonable, scripted proposing the older work of inactive editors for automatic deletion within seven days strikes me as likely to work serious harm." Well, no. If the images are not compliant with policy, and can not easily be fixed, they should be tagged for deletion. As such, as long as Sfan's tagging is accurate, the method should not be an issue. As for the London Guildhall image mentioned by Iridescent, the link does not lead to the image or a page containing it, and the source website certainly does not seem to freely license its content. Without reviewing the article, the PD claim of the Irwin image was also unverified. This is not as black and white as it seems- there is a legitimate problem with images uploaded a long time ago potentially not meeting current usage policies. J Milburn (talk) 19:55, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Can't speak for the others, but regarding the Guildhall one here is the agreement between User:Secretlondon and the Corporation of London (from pre-OTRS days), releasing the images into copyleft status, which is linked from the image page. Their picture library is now subscription-only, but a check through the internet archives confirms that the picture used was indeed one of those on the site at this time and hence covered by this agreement. – iridescent 20:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
And this is exactly the kind of information that should be on the image page. I'd like to think I'm fairly good on our image policies, and it looked non-free to me. J Milburn (talk) 20:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
You're missing the point – this was on the image page ("See Wikipedia:Pictures from cityoflondon.gov.uk for terms"). – iridescent 20:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
So it was. Seems I'm not as good with images as I thought. J Milburn (talk) 20:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
And that's the problem with these mechanical edits. They don't assume good faith from editors who may or may not be around any more. The Liliuokalani image was tagged by its uploader as a 19th century portrait, apparently from some sort of official source, which would appear to at least presumptively indicate that it meets policy even if the editor is no longer around or doesn't remember where it was found. The Guildhall image met policy; the only issue is that it did not contain a template that did not exist when it was uploaded. At minimum, proposed deletion is too potentially disruptive and drastic. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 20:49, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, what alternative would you suggest? J Milburn (talk) 20:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
First, to do no harm: if it seems apparent that an image dates from before the 20th century, do not tag it at all, regardless of what templates it might not contain. Second, if there's a way to deal with these matters short of proposing images for speedy deletion, it ought to be resorted to, at least first. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 20:59, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I'm asking what that method could be. As I say, I consider Sfan's actions to be ill-considered, but I can't support leaving images lying around that are not policy-compliant, no matter how long ago they were uploaded. J Milburn (talk) 21:27, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
How about Possibly unfree images, non-free content review, or a similar noticeboard? These should deal correctly with the cases where the image is actually more policy-compliant than the tagger thinks. rspεεr (talk) 08:26, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I suppose that's it in a nutshell. The images in question all seem to me to be obviously published, obviously public domain, and complied with all policies then in place, and in all likelihood all policies now in place. What seemed to provoke the bulk tagging was the absence of templates that did not exist when the images were uploaded. My chief concern here as always is the preservation of potentially useful content. It would appear for the moment that the problem has been solved. Sfan00 IMG has made himself a Template:May be uploader to attach to apparently self-created images, and rather than proposing deletions left and right, is now adding templates asking who is the author of bird calls. This, I can live with, although perhaps User:God should be notified. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 22:34, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Whatever he is doing, be it manually or a bot, it should stop, it clearly isn't accomplishing what it should. Worse yet, it is saying images that clearly are sourced are not. For instance, it tagged this image File:Eli whitney illustration.3.jpg as unsourced when *two places* on the description page clearly identify the source. If he is marking files that were uploaded long ago and by editors that possibly don't log in anymore as unsourced he had better be 100% sure that they do, in fact, need to be deleted. From what I have seen the process he is using is nowhere near reliable and needs to stop. Lorax (talk) 23:40, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

One would think it would be better to use the resources/energy to move these public domain images to Commons, rather than tagging them for deletion. But I guess one doing the work would have to actually look at the images to make sure they are public domain... - ALLST✰R▼echo wuz here 02:35, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Commons has tighter meta-data requriements, some images that I moved got apparently nuked

for nothing more than not explicitly stating sources/authors which would/should have been obvious.

If you check my contributions since January you will note a LOT of images tagged for commons. Because duplicates get removed, images actually transfferd is not recorded. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:01, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


This is clearly the work of a bot, or at least some program that allows him to quickly edit these images without actually spending the time to read/look at every one. This I think is a huge problem. It tagged an image of mine for deletion that was easyly identifiable as a work I likely created File:N&i-butane.png, and hes moved on to just automated tagging things now instead of proposing for deletion. Is User:Sfan00_IMG an admin, and if not why is he running bulk automated editing bots/software that likely can cause alot of headache/work/problems for the real admins? — raeky (talk | edits) 05:43, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

In fairness, tools like WP:TWINKLE are available for all registered users. It does seem, though, that all it was set to look for was the absence of templates, and that the images were not looked at, much less the text on the page or their use in articles, before the various proposals for deletion were added. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 11:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, New strategy, is to use {{May be uploader}} and {{AddInfoForCommonsMove}} on stuff

that might be self-created/published by uploaders. Cleanup assistance appreciated. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:01, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Similarly, Sfan objected to File:JoeMabel1.jpg, which I uploaded in 2003 and clearly tagged as a self-portrait. I have now added {{information}} at his request (and even submitted for OTRS before I saw the discussion here about that being unnecessary), but the status of this image should have been clear in the first place. The threat of deletion seemed to me to be quite excessive. And what would happen in a similar case if I were no longer involved in Wikipedia?

Before I spotted this discussion, I had already commented at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Permissions on old images. - Jmabel | Talk 18:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I feel it's essentially and technically vandalism; this calls for admin intervention stat.--Elvey (talk) 01:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh boy. User is reportedly a sock with an AN/I history. --Elvey (talk) 01:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Elvey, comments like those two are not helpful. J Milburn (talk) 20:59, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
Seems like a helpful thing I can do for the project is to identify a massive history of unhelpful activity (while avoiding PAs) and elicit appropriate admin action. Done.--Elvey (talk) 21:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I notified the admin that addressed this user's action 6 months ago, the user, and opened an AN/I entry, on admin advice. So this can be considered addressed. --Elvey (talk) 21:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

As this is now at the incidents noticeboard, you believe it is resolved? What on Earth are you talking about? On another note, accusing long term good faith contributors of being vandals, as well as getting over excited as they use alternative accounts for different tasks, is very rarely going to be helpful. J Milburn (talk) 21:54, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
What are you talking about? I was talking about this thread, not the topic that this thread is about, which was subsequently addressed at AN/I.--Elvey (talk) 07:09, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

In particular, I am concerned that he is either not actually reading the pages in question, or is extending almost no assumption of good faith. For example, he tagged an image of mine that was clearly described as my self-portrait (which I use on my user page), but which predated any standard form for describing images. In this case, he even insisted on my filing OTRS to certify that this was my own work. - Jmabel | Talk 19:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Jmabel, I think your comment would do better at the AN/I thread. It's open if you'd like to make it there.--Elvey (talk) 07:09, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I hate words

Is this enough to revert a portion of someone's edit? When another editor has copy edited your writing to replace your term with one that you absolutely loathe for style, brilliance, or just arbitrary hatred of certain words for overuse or...on and on...

I had an English teacher who forbade her students to use "strive" or any form of the word because of its overuse, particularly for the benefit of young folks. I similarly hate the word "opine" because it sounds stupid and intentionally presumptuous. When I taught elementary students, I did not allow the use of "things" and "stuff", but that was mainly to get them to use a precise vocabulary. Are writers permitted to enforce love for words and hatred for them as well? --Moni3 (talk) 14:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

You can certainly rephrase statements, but waging wars on certain words would probably be seen not very favourably. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Yes, of course. Words are our friends, and we shouldn't force them to be in places where they're not comfortable just because we're too lazy to find the perfect guest. Many of the words I detest are used commonly here on wikipedia, and always make my flesh creep when I see them; "recuse", "redact", and "moot" spring immediately to mind. They just feel so pompous. --Malleus Fatuorum 15:27, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I suppose it depends whether you're enforcing widely-shared norms or idiosyncratic preferences. I enforce Strunk & White's warning that a sentence should not start with "however" used in the sense of "nevertheless" ([17]) whenever I encounter it. I think it's ugly and ungainly - but in that preference, I have the support of various authorities, not the least of which is Justice Scalia ([18]) and Fowler's heirs. But I'm not going to enforce other preferences that are more idiosyncratic. When I write contributions, I'll write them my way, and when I see a particularly ugly phrasing, I might well change it. Nevertheless, while I might prefer and use ceteris paribus, I wouldn't substitute it for "all else being equal" in an existing passage. Even when something is ugly enough that I might change it, it would have to be a particularly acute case to justify an edit war over it if other users were insistent.
Quite obviously, correcting outright misuse of words (with an eye on Malleus' comment above, the common malapropism "mute point"--for "moot point"--should always be corrected on sight) is always acceptable. But you're talking about style, not error; on that, I've given my general thoughts on the topic, but it might be helpful if you could point to some specifics, though.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 15:32, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, I have pointed out in peer, GA or FA reviews that I hate "opine" for example. I don't feel I have the right to demand it be changed because its use is accurate, but it very much seems like the rest of the sentence is going along fine, and someone cracked a thesaurus to pretty up the sentence or avoid plagiarism by hammering in "opine" instead of "thought" "offered" "stated" "said" or anything, really. As writers love words, they should feel just as strongly about words and phrases that should not be used. Some words to some folks are like rakes across chalkboards. I have only a few words that I refuse to use. I construct a few articles here and there and the majority of my words are deliberately chosen (the rest are fragments of half-thoughts that got disrupted...ahem). When someone comes along after me and cleans up some shaky prose, replacing an accurate word with a rake-chalkboard one, what reason do I have to revert that single change? --Moni3 (talk) 15:39, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
When I get these, I revert based on "disruption of the sentence's flow" or "the replacement of X to Y introduces overly formal prose" or "that word is too weak for what is meant" or similar reasons.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:56, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I may say this through slightly gritted teeth, but we are writing an encyclopaedia for everyone who can read English, so there is at least an implication that for the sake of clarity we should use plain English where we can. Even if that means we foreswear some of our more interesting words. ϢereSpielChequers 15:50, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
... like one I came across yesterday, "gubernatorial". WTF, that should be on a banned word list. --Malleus Fatuorum 16:33, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Indeed. That word is thrown around by the constant 24-hour news in the US, because we're so lucky to have governor races every 4 years and not all of them take place in the same year. With 50 states, there seems to be daily need on multiple news channels to impress millions of people who aren't watching by hefting around a word like "gubernatorial". I've used it too. --Moni3 (talk) 16:37, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Enjoying this thread so far..! Just this morning I took out an "opined", so the timing couldn't be better. Regarding the dumbing down of the encyclopedia, I think the complexity and accessibility of the subject matter will help determine if a 50-cent word suits the needs of the reader more precisely than a couple of nickel words strung together. Each case should be judged on its own merits. Binksternet (talk) 18:15, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Part of the trouble is though that once someone's paid out for that 50-cent word they want to get their money's worth out of it—for some reason when writing that i was just reminded of another of those wikipedia words I love to hate, "garnered". At the risk of upsetting 90% of editors I'll also add that I think that Americans in particular have a mysterious tendency to use over-complicated language where simpler and more direct equivalents exist. In what possible way in which alternate universe is "prior to" preferable to "before", for instance? --Malleus Fatuorum 18:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I never understood the protest against "prior" but since I've been writing articles it's pretty clear it's verboten. Maybe it's an American/British thing. I have no problems with "garner" either, but I get it mixed up with "garnish" and one day I'm going to use it to mean a sprig of parsley on a restaurant plate. At any rate, it must be love, Malleus. Well, in that fraternity that articles writers belong to... --Moni3 (talk) 18:41, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Thank you Moni. You can't begin to imagine how happy that's made me; one less of those damned "gubernatorial"s for the unwary non-American to trip over. --Malleus Fatuorum 18:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
That, to me, exemplifies the danger with enforcing wholly idiosyncratic language preferences. I don't mean to single you out, Malleus, but here we have a word that has been with us in its current usage since the early 18th century, and that lacks any stock alternative (so we'd have to coin a barbarous neologism to replace it). And it is objected to - proposed, perhaps with tongue in cheek, to be banned - in the same breath as another barbarous neologism, "WTF," is deployed. We should be wary of a user's desire to substitute mere personal proclivity for traditional usage. Orwell's luminescent Politics and the English language should be mandatory reading for all wikipedians. I do, however, strongly agree with your later indictment of overcomplicated language, something that many lawyers seem enamored of - use of "the aforesaid" when "that" or "those" would suffice, for instance. But if we could at least expunge the worst mistakes ("cite to" for "cite" is a personal bugbear), I would suffer the mere stylistic differences!- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 15:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


<=Some of the finest American pomposity in language is employed in official reports and announcements by U.S. government folk such as police officers, soldiers and bureaucrats, who seem to prefer the thin authority and reportorial distance of larger words than the immediacy and grit of familiar ones. We get "the perpetrator" for "that little shit" and "exited the vehicle" for "jumped from his car", and we all can see that the "suspect" caught red-handed is pretty much beyond the suspicion stage. It's not possible to "not see" when "fail to observe" is shining so brightly as the perfect example of officialese. "Traveling at a high rate of speed" somehow beats "going fast" when choosing words to impress. Binksternet (talk) 19:47, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Military and police tend to use "individuals" instead of "people" or men or women, as in "the two individuals were apprehended exiting the building with funds in their possession" instead of "two men left the bank with stolen money". --Moni3 (talk) 19:51, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
The infuriating thing about that tendency, I find, is that it expends more syllables without any gain in precision. That is bad enough, but insult is added to injury by the inescapable feeling that such formal language is used over plain language because the user believes it to be more precise. It isn't. You give the example of "the two individuals were apprehended exiting the building with funds in their possession," and point out that it could just as well be rendered "two men left the bank with stolen money." True, but it would be even better - more precise and no less terse - to say "Smith and Jones left the bank with stolen money." Similarly, Binksternet offers the example of "exited the vehicle" - that's not awful, but it's imprecise. There are a lot of ways to exit a vehicle. Did he get out? Fall out? Jump out? Did he flee the vehicle? Those descriptions tell us much more about the act of exiting the vehicle, detail that may be relevant. Tackling the description in plain english rather than stultified officialese improves clarity, because it can imply (and when it doesn't, will lead the writer to add) useful information buried under bland stock abstractions. Judge Posner wrote a scathing indictment of this sort of thing about fifteen years ago, Judges' Writing Styles (And Do They Matter?), 62 U Chi L Rev 1421 (1995).- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 15:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:America's Best Dance Crew

This is rather silly but frustrating as obviously people are playing games with me. I added some content to this template and it was removed without explanation so I reverted and simply asked for an explanation for the removal and now various IP's are constantly removing that same content without explanation (obviously they're either deliberately mocking me or haven't learned how to read the talk page or the edit history). Should I ask for semi-protection of the page or just WP:Get over it? because obviously dispute resolution is going nowhere, noone is willing to talk. -- Ϫ 01:41, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

You could ask for page protection against new and anonymous users: Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Cheers! Binksternet (talk) 03:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Nasreyes95 constant edits involving false information and changing of sourced information.

User:Nasreyes95 has only be active for a short while but his/her edits have already caused issues. In June 2009 he was warned several times and blocked for a short period of time for a number issues including vandalism and creating in appropriate pages. On the 30, July 2009 the automated bot reverted edits made to Doll Domination as they constituted vandalism and/or link-spamming. Also at this time the user blanked out the article mention deleting all content from the page.

Also on July 30 the user was issued a warning by myself about falsifying chart positions. he had replaced charts with postions that could not be verified. On August 1, 2009 I looked through the revision history of Doll Dominationto find that the user had again changed chart positions and added unsourced information to the article. The bot had previously warned the user about using WP:edit summary but these were absent from recent edits. Between myself and two other intuitive editors the article has been restored.

In short i believe that User:Nasreyes95's purpose on wikipedia is to edit articles in a deflamatory or unhelpful way. Although it is not my decision to make about whether he/she adds value to wikipedia i do believe that this user is a classic case of WP:IDHT and WP:disruptive i request that this user is banned indefinately from editing because so far none of their edits have proved of value and user has failed to respond to discussion.

As a final note i wish to make administrators aware that the user had copied information directly from Doll Domination and pasted it into a new article titled To Those Who Wait, the article serves no purpose and is the perfect example for why i believe action needs to be taken regarding this user's actions. (i have nominated the article for speedy deletion). (Lil-unique1 (talk) 18:41, 1 August 2009 (UTC))

Reliable sources tutorial?

Myself and some other editors have been looking for what sources we have that actually step editors through how to find sources, we seem to have similar beginnings on how to add sources once they've been found. Any leads or anyone interested in drafting something? My hunch is we need a two-or-more-tiered approach (i) The Moni3 read high-quality sources from honest-to-God libraries and write from there, (ii) the Google til you drop method and (iii) any others. -- Banjeboi 04:08, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

My approach is to get access to fee-based services--I use ProQuest and EBSCOHost through my local community college and employer, respectively--on top of what Google can find for me. Call it the "Google plus" version, if you will. Jclemens (talk) 07:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Don't forget http://books.google.com/ and http://www.archive.org/index.php or more specifically, http://www.archive.org/details/texts ...I get a lot of solid book refs from these. Binksternet (talk) 10:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Mario Lopez

Hello, just noticed this. does not seems to be a valid edit. However, I am not knowledgeable enough about Mario Lopez to judge if it is vandalism. Requesting Admin assistance. --Jyothis (talk) 23:53, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks like routine vandalism, someone else has reverted it and I am warning the editor - a new account and their first and only edit. Dougweller (talk) 09:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Doug. --Jyothis (talk) 13:01, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

List of goaltenders who have scored a goal in an NHL game

I apologize if this is the wrong place for this particular problem, but I couldn't find a more specific one. I have tried recently, through wikilinks in templates and searching, to access the article List of goaltenders who have scored a goal in an NHL game. Although a preview of the article appears in my browser window through a popup, clicking through to it results in a blank white screen with the words "Override this function." in plain text at the top. I was only able to read the article by going through a redirect, specifically List of goaltenders who have scored a goal in a National Hockey League game. I don't know if I'm the only one this is affecting, or if it is a symptom of a wider technical problem, however, I felt it should be made known. --BlueSquadronRaven 04:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

See T22081, apparently it has to do with some sort of software update. Anomie⚔ 10:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Use of cleanup templates at the top of articles

Most of us are familiar with the maintenance templates at the top of articles. I am seeking feedback on the degree to which the community believes that these templates are useful and viable. Recently, a new wikiproject, called CiterSquad, has been expressly formed to add the {{unreferenced}} tag to the top of thousands of articles after a cursory review of the article. (And in fact, it's often very cursory, considering the "long tail" of Wikipedia articles that hardly have any content in the first place.) A BOT was first used to algorithmically identify which articles had no references. The bot added a hidden category to each article that it found lacking references. One of the compromises that the "dissenters" to this bot task (and the wikiproject) thought they had reached was that the hidden category would be used instead of the "unreferenced" template. The wikiproject, however, is now doing what the bot could have done, by removing the hidden category and adding the template. Please see the recent contributions of the active members of that wikiproject for the results of these edits in the aggregate. A normal result is an article whose deficiencies are already obvious (at least in the sense of how much it says about the topic, I mean) that looks like this: [19][20][21][22].

Does the "content community" believe that anything useful is accomplished by this? Questions to consider are:

  • Is the reader served by templates, or only editors? What assumptions do you make about the reader in assuming they are, or are not, served by these templates?
  • If these templates are primarily of interest to editors, why don't we mark the articles in a less intrusive way? What assumptions do you make about the degree to which templates actually encourage someone to do something they would not have done anyway?
  • Is a misunderstanding of the WP:V policy leading to the belief that mass-tagging articles that have no references is an appropriate edit? The policy stress "verifiability", meaning "the ability to be verified" is important--not that citations be splashed after random facts. (Does the reader "verify" random facts? What assumptions are you making? See question 1.)

As you can probably tell, my own position is that this project is the logical, and awful, outcome of a misguided application of policy that has gradually seen more and more articles randomly templated, instead of improved. I am very surprised that Wikipedia has arrived at a point where there is no outrage that people are editing this way. (See the talk page of the wikiproject for some viewpoints.) Outriggr (talk) 02:04, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The solution seems to me to be that those who don't like "ugly" tags at the top of articles can dispute the factual nature of the tag. I do this fairly regularly, when someone has gone hog wild with 5-6 tags when really only 1-2 are relevant (e.g., one article probably doesn't need both {{in-universe}} and {{fansite}}), and challenge editors desiring to readd the tags to articulate an actionable fix for the problem on talk. Alternatively, if a tag is accurate, but an editor would like to remove it, the problem can be fixed. While often a brief effort should result in {{unreferenced}} being replaced with {{primarysources}} or {{refimprove}}, as is my usual custom, I perceive no requirement for an editor removing one no-longer-accurate tag to replace it with a milder tag. Jclemens (talk) 02:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Over-tagging articles is rather unhelpful so I regularly trim down to the top two relevant ones. While I find many tags annoying I also see a need for some of them. Having stated all that ... the vast majority - 99 percent? - could be tagged but I also don't see that as actually helping anything. -- Banjeboi 04:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
Tags such as those serve more purpose than cleanup (although that that alone is good enough to warrant them IMO), they identify the problems of the article for everyone to see, not just the experts), and drive people (both logged in and IPs) to fix what's wrong with the articles.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I think part of the concern this is addressing is the mass tagging of hundreds/thousands of articles when those categories are already quite clogged. Is it really helpful to have every article in some clean-up cat or should we focus on the worst offenders and dig from there? -- Banjeboi 20:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I support BOTH adding sources AND adding verifiability-related citation tags to articles that need improvement. I frequently add citations to articles I work on, and also on those I stumble upon that are in my area of interest or expertise. These actions however are orthogonal to other actions that I also choose to take to tag unreferenced material. WP:Verifiability is not optional. Policy is unambiguous, it is up to the editor who wants to retain material in Wikipedia to get it cited with verifiable sources; it is NOT WP policy that every editor who stumbles upon significant unreferenced material must stop their lives and endeavor to improve THAT particular article, nor ignore that the article has no sources. So I tag it and move on. It seems to me to be a simple courtesy to flag it for a month or two to see if "the community" cares enough about an article to fix it before material is deleted for being unsourced. N2e (talk) 23:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is disputing the sourcing is a good thing. The only issue here seems to be the wholesale adding of clean-up tags to thousands of articles without actually working to add the sources. We already have hundreds of articles with these tags and nearly every one of our nearly three million articles could have a tag. I guess this just seems unneeded and disruptive. -- Banjeboi 20:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

PRODUCER and ICTYoda and their fake sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ICTYoda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/PRODUCER

RELATING to the article Karađorđevo http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kara%C4%91or%C4%91evo_agreement&diff=306809367&oldid=306809213 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kara%C4%91or%C4%91evo_agreement&diff=306636454&oldid=306636441

the section testimonies.

The statements of each witness diferr.Some of them were present but most of them were not (Marković , Okun ,Ashdown, Zimmerman...)

I have tried to sort it by the crtiteria of presence in the meeting but PRODUCER and ICTYoda are simply reverting it.

and they constantly push this statement

Croat politicians who worked with Franjo Tuđman such as counselors Dušan Bilandžić[10][11][12] and Hrvoje Šarinić,[13][14][15][16] and former prime minister of Croatia Stjepan Mesić[17] have confirmed the story.--Añtó| Àntó (talk) 16:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

rorschach inkblot test...

I apologize if I post this on the wrong place, but I think this is the most apropriate one... And again, I apologize if there isn't any problem, but is it acceptable to post the pictures of the test and most common answers? I only ask if this isn't irregular(?) for it is prohibited to do both by the council of psychologists of my country... Thanks

You want this discussion. – iridescent 23:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Great Ziggurat of Ur

Somebody has changed the page's name from "Great Ziggurat of Ur" to "Ziggurat of Ur" before a discussion about such a move has taken place. A proper debate and a concensus must be attained first. Izzedine (talk) 09:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Anyone interested should look at the history of the article and the talk page. Dougweller (talk) 09:42, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Are you trying to insult their intelligence? Izzedine (talk) 10:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Looks to me like there was a clear consensus, with sources supporting the move, and I see no reason to undo it based on that. From what I can see, the OP is the sole supporter of the old title, and appears to do so for purely nationalistic reasons. --Jayron32 21:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Plasma Applications

The above (currently replaced by the copyvio boilerplate until OTRS permissions are achieved) is a bit puzzling to me. On the surface, it looks like a legitimate article. Many references however link to [23], which pretty much offers solutions for every single subheader. Also noteworthy, plasmaapplications.net is a redirect on the above domain. Legitimate article or cleverly disguised advertisment? I'd appreciate some experienced eyes on the matter. Posting here because NPOV or SPAM noticeboards seem more "loaded" than this may warrant. Thanks, MLauba (talk) 13:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

  • Moot now that the article has been deleted :) MLauba (talk) 17:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Burger King & Burger King products

I was advised that this discussion was more appropriate for this discussion board by another editor on the ANI board so I have copied and pasted thie locus of the discussion from there. I have left everything intact so to simplify the matter and not reiterate the details, as well as expanding on the basics of the dispute.

Locus of dispute, or action in dispute
Involved parties
Description of the dispute and the main evidence

This is a content/3R dispute that I would like to have a third party look at. RaseaC deleted a section in the BK products article article regarding the iconography BK uses in labeling its products and advertising, which I disagreed with and restored. He then deleted it again and I restored it requesting that she not delete it again and discuss it on the talk page before continuing. He then deleted it again and started a discussion. I replied to him stated my reasoning, implying his behavior was consistent with edit warring and requesting she restore the information until such time that consensus could be reached. He refused, claiming that he had consensus based on a previous discussion regarding an unrelated issue involving fair use and that he was in the right. The basic disagreement here is that I believe since Burger King uses these symbols and markings in its advertisements, on its web pages and on its uniforms it is appropriate for inclusion while he thinks this is not an important subject that does not warrant inclusion.

The Burger King article involves the lead, which includes a summary of the legal issues section of the article. My reasoning is because it is done in summary style this section is properly included, specifically per the lead section of the summary style guidelines summary style and news style can help make a concise intro that works stand-alone (my emphasis on stand-alone). His belief is that the lead shouldn't include this information because no other article does.

Could an uninvolved person look into this for me please?

--Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 20:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments by other involved parties (Please include diffs to substantiate your claims)

The previous discussion mentioned was related, as two other editors clearly stated doubts that there was encyclopedic merit, hence, as far as I'm concerned, a consensus. I'll be back in a few minutes when he opens an ARI on the other page he owns.RaseaC (talk) 20:28, 8 August 2009 (UTC) Don't sweat about the gender thing. My response to the Burger King page was that there is no need for such an indepth paragraph regarding such a mundane issue, and I couldn't really find any basis for such from a handful of other similar pages, though reading through my response on the talk will clear that up. Not sure where the personal attack was, but it probably did happen, people often complain about my behaviour, but then we've got more important issues. RaseaC (talk) 20:43, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

In response to Jeremy's additions;
  • The icon informaion is simply unencyclopedic and there is no presidence for inclusion. Furthermore, comments from other editors agree that there is not encyclopedic merit for this information.
  • The Burger King article lead was, admittedly, summarised; but to the extent that it essentially asid 'BK gets in trouble from time to time' and THAT is not particularly notable. As stated in the article discussion, I would be happy if there was a noteworthy, landmark case noted, but there is no such case and therefore no such reason for inclusion, as fellow editors agree.
I believe that this does not need administrator attention at this time, but simply adressing in the respective talk pages, as I have attempted; to draw appropriate discussion, as it has done. RaseaC (talk) 22:36, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Flirt (album)

I wonder if we can have some intervention regarding whether or not this article should be redirected to the artist's page. My concerns are that there is no confirmed track-lisitng, no confirmed release date, no confirmation from the artist of the title anymore (its been so long since it was supposed to come out that everything will have changed) and no confirmed cover-art or single. Plus the article is a stub. Some users are intent on keeping it open just because under a different name the album had one or two singles. But can i remind admin that a similar discussion was opened regarding Her Name is Nicole which led to the article being deleted as it just didnt supply enough fact to warrant its own page despite the artist having to charted songs.

You can find the on-going discussion here: Talk:Flirt (album)#Article Revert. i ask for intervention because despite 3 editors (including myself) giving clear arguments for not keeping the article open there is at least one user who insists otherwise and without administrator intervention i feel that the issue might linger without resolution.

(Lil-unique1 (talk) 20:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC))

Victor Child

I'm a little worried about Victor Child (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I cannot find a single online source to verify this person's existence. I've tried all sorts of combinations of searches, including dates, variations of Victor, searching on Google books, news and web... nothing whatsoever. Perhaps my search skills are not as great as others though, and I know Google isn't everything, so I'd appreciate it if anyone manages to find anything. Thanks, Majorly talk 23:40, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

He probably isn't notable, but I'll ask User:Freshacconci, arts editor and Canadian. Johnbod (talk) 23:50, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
I found one reference to Child: (The Globe and Mail (Canada) February 18, 1984 Saturday Past laughs and lampoons Goblin dished out satire and humor typical of 1920s BYLINE: PETER HARRIS; GAM) in passing. His name is in a list

The Great Gatsby is no more authentic than The Beautiful and the Damned, but then it does not need to be, for it has naught to do with realism. Neither is The Great Gatsby sentimental. It is, in a word - romantic. Among the contributing cartoonists were Lou Skuce, Victor Child, Marjorie Jones, Bryant Fryer, Hy Moyer, Jack McLaren, and Jimmie Frise, then making a name for himself with a weekly newspaper feature called Life's Little Comedies, but destined to create a Canadian institution called Birdseye Center.'

That's all I could find on Lexis Nexis. I'm not in Canada, but perhaps someone should get hold of old copies of the Toronto Telegram. --Moni3 (talk) 23:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Hmm. Probably not notable, I found passing references like [24], but probably not that useful. -- Ϫ 00:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Johnbod nudged me out of my slumber to take a look at this. I'm not certain how notable this is. He was a working illustrator and seems to have associated with a number of notable people, but beyond that it's a bit of a blur. Since the Toronto Telegram folded in '71, finding old copies may be tricky. I'm not sure it's really worth the effort to go searching through microfiche in an old library basement for old newspapers, but I can look through some Canada-specific academic databases and see what I can find. The most interesting thing in his bio is the exhibition "face-off" between the traditionalists and the moderns, but since the latter "won", it really isn't saying much about Childs overall. But he had some exhibitions and there might be more info out there. freshacconci talktalk 00:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Emmy bad

I've got concerns about 75.5.239.210 (talk · contribs) going around to TV show and actor articles removing Emmy award-nominated and Golden Globe winner and related content. An admin should have a look at this. Seems about a hundred articles have been hit now since the IP started editing yesterday (my time - 2 days ago UTC time). -    allstar▼echo    04:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Another user has since brought this issue up at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#75.5.239.210 -    allstar▼echo    08:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Bedok Green Secondary School

Bedok Green Secondary School (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The school has written to Wikimedia's OTRS system (ticket #2009080510018503) and contends that the section regarding discipline is inappropriate. I tend to agree with this, based off the fact that there seems to be a significant amount of misrepresentation of the sources used, however I would like more input from the community to see whether my views on this issue are reflective of consensus.

Regards,
Daniel (talk) 10:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Go ahead and remove it. I would tend to agree that the current analysis in the discipline section represents a clear novel synthesis in the sense that it makes an analysis of the schools discipline practices from the written codes; without reliable sources to indicate that the school actually enforces its rules as described in the article. At best, a sentance or two which states, in non-judgemental terms, that the school follows the code of discipline as described in the documents which are linked seems fine, without going into unecessary detail about which aspects of the code students may or may not like. The redlinked talk page means no one has bothered to dicuss this before; I would leave a note on the talk page explaining why you are doing what you are doing, citing the relavent policies WP:NPOV and WP:OR especially WP:SYNTHESIS. The OTRS ticket is a nice heads up, but it is irrelevent to the issue at hand, since the article is clearly in violation of core guidelines and policies as it reads now. --Jayron32 18:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Baby P

The court order that applies to Death of Baby P expires in 10 mins, at 23:59 GMT. Sources are already available, so it would be good to have details added soon afterwards. John Vandenberg (chat) 23:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The big question is whether biogs for the people convicted are warranted. Redirects may be the best solution. John Vandenberg (chat) 00:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
EchetusXe (talk · contribs) has added some redirects[25]. --John Vandenberg (chat) 00:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Should this be added to Template:In the news? --John Vandenberg (chat) 00:21, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Gates mugshot and arrest photo, in or out?

There has been a lot of discussion over these pictures in or out, an editor has started a head count of opinions at the [Gates talkpage] This is an important decision for the Wikipedia, please come there and leave your opinion. Off2riorob (talk) 1:35 am, Today (UTC+1)

How is this important for Wikipedia as a whole? --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 00:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
I think it is, important to how or what the wiki wants to be or become, But that is my opinion. I added it here as it is after all disputed content, so I thought that people here might like to pass an opinion. I have posted the same comment in three or four locations (noticeboards} as I felt that people should get chance to pass their opinion. Off2riorob (talk) 01:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Michael Salvatori and permastubs

In dealing with the people involved in the Halo video game franchise, I've been working intermittently on de-stubbing various related creative peoples (Joseph Staten, Luke Smith (writer), et al.) However I and the rest of WP:HALO have hit a sort of stumbling block in Michael Salvatori. As his article will attest, he's definitely a notable figure. The problem is that the information in the article right now is basically all the info we can have on him. His writing partner Martin O'Donnell is the one who does the interviews and appearances, and thus everything we know comes from O'Donnell interviews. I've scoured print databases and every nook of the web, but I think it's a safe bet to say that it's going to be a permastub.

So my question is what does everyone think should be done with it? It's a pretty low traffic article so I don't think there are too many WP:BLP concerns in that regard, but merging isn't a good fit either; his production company, TotalAudio, isn't really notable and wouldn't be much larger of an article, so creating that article and merging Salvatori there wouldn't actually solve problems. There's no other good article to shunt him too, either, as he's done work outside of Halo. (I AfD'd it once, but the people who showed up said to keep it.) Thoughts on what to do with this? --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 02:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

No harm in having a permastub. Not all articles have the potential to became FAs or GAs, but that doesn't mean they don't have a place on Wikipedia. You could probably find a list of things he worked on and create a section called "List of compositions" or "List of games he worked on" or something.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 20:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Baffling new "article"

I do not know if Increase Your Immunity From Swine Flu belongs here as an article, as a part of another article, if it should be here at all, or if it needs to be moved to a better title. I am totally baffled about this strange entry for an encyclopedia. Please help. Jesse Viviano (talk) 10:25, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks like someone has already taken care of it. Jclemens (talk) 15:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Well content-wise, I can't really say, but if you see similar articles in the future you can consult WP:NOTGUIDE for guidance on these issues. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:58, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Recent Deletion On Wiki Talk Page Josip Broz Tito

Dear reader just recently my thoughts on talkpage Tito have been deleted and it seems it’s going to stay that way. Since I am faced with the fact that my opinions are being suppressed and then eventually will be blocked, I’ve decided to put this out there so these events may be known to the wider wiki community.

The article in question is Josip Broz Tito (the former Dictator of Yugoslavia- East Europe). He was commander of the partisan forces during world war 2 and later a Stalinistic style dictator of the former Yugoslavia. The Wikipedic article is biased and does not mention crimes (Bleiburg massacre & foibe massacres)) against humanity that were committed under his leadership. I registered that this should be part of the article and as a result I have been deleted. One writer was very abusive and deleted my writings on talk back pages. His name is DIREKTOR. He was supported by Ruhrfisch ><>°° I would like to quote some of the Direktor’s statements regarding this article just to inform you of what we are dealing with here.

“Find yourself another one of your crappy "forums" to talk about your presumptions. Just forget about this, Luigi/Brunodam, you're not annoying anyone - you're just turning out amusing. I think I'll file a checkuser in an hour or so, you'd better believe it when I say I'll delete everything you wrote if you're a sock. --DIREKTOR (TALK) 15:49, 5 August 2009 (UTC)”

These events are not some conspiracy. They have been part of the western media since the break up of the former Yugoslavia. They have been presented as TV documentaries, on talk back shows and in general writings in England, other parts of Europe and USA, Australia and other parts of the free world. They are backed by eye witness accounts by people who were actually caught up in these events.

The Croatian government is addressing these issues with investigations and financial reimbursement is being given to the victims. These are facts and should be present in the article and not deleted when someone points them out. These actions mirror the attitude of the regime that I am trying to expose.

The Josip Broz Tito article is a dangerous biased piece of writing. It would fit perfectly in any article of the old the Yugoslavia or the old Soviet Union propaganda machine (Cult of personality). Why is it there? The only answer it seems is that Wikipedia has some writers of extreme views (Stalin Style) who don’t tolerate being questioned.

Regards Sir Floyd203.161.104.34 (talk) 03:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

  • Without expressing any view on the merits of the dispute, it is exceptionally poor form for a user to delete someone else's comments on an article's talk page without a compelling reason. See WP:TPO ("The basic rule is: Do not strike out or delete the comments of other editors without their permission"). WP:NOTFORUM is not such a reason. user:DIREKTOR's actions in deleting your comment were poor form.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 03:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I think you'll find NOT#FORUM is policy, which is why it is actually one of the compelling reasons detailed in the TPO guideline - "Deleting material not relevant to improving the article". MickMacNee (talk) 04:10, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Nothing in NOTFORUM overrides TPO and permits the removal of a user's comment from their talk page. Even if it did, that authorization could only follow from a violation of the closest thing to on-point language: "talk pages exist for the purpose of discussing how to improve articles; they are not mere general discussion pages about the subject of the article." The discussion that was deleted may be off-base, but it can certainly be understood as trying to improve the article by identifying a perceived bias in the article. Whether that bias is there or not is irrelevant: if the user seems to be advancing it in good faith, their argument should be met or ignored, not deleted. That said, if the debate degenerates into personal attacks, that is a reason to remove another user's comments (and I've removed one of Floyd's for that reason), but only those comments that violate WP:NPA. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 13:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Everything in NOT#FORUM overrides TPO, that is why one is a policy, and one is a guideline. Civil and apparently good faith requests about rejected theories or claims are routinely removed from hundreds of articles, Barack Obama being a prime example. To challenge this particular case, the onus is on you to prove the deleter violated NOT#FORUM by concluding this was not a realistic attempt to imporve the article, because he quite obviously believes it wasn't. If that's the case, then it is a matter for ANI, but I doubt it is. MickMacNee (talk) 13:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
There are all sorts of laws that tell people not to do something without implying a cause of action for a third party to tackle someone who breaks that law. Wikipedia isn't a legal system, but the same concept applies here. NOTFORUM tells editors what to do and not to do in their own comments and contributions. It also delineates a category of article-space material that should be removed. It does not, however, authorize you to police other editor's talk page comments and remove those that you don't think measure up. If it did so, I might agree that it trumps TPO - but it doesn't. NOTFORUM doesn't authorize you to remove talkpage comments violating it, and TPO has a general rule forbidding it; there is no incompatibility between those rules, and both can be followed.
With that said, I of course recognize that TPO makes exceptions to its general rule, and one of them incorporates a version of NOTFORUM's rule: it allows deletion of comments (even discussions) that are irrelevant to improving the article. But as WP:EXCEPTIONS and common sense make clear, the exception must be understood in the context of the rule. The rule is, don't delete other people's comments. When you see a comment criticizing and/or proposing to change wording in an article that you like, there is an understandable temptation to make a snap judgment that the change would make the article worse. (A fortiori if it's a passage you wrote: WP:OWN can only go so far toward suppressing the instinctive attachment of writers to their own writing!) If the change proposed would make the article worse, then it wouldn't improve the article, so the comment must be irrelevant to improving the article. So I can delete it, right? By that tortured chain of reasoning, the exception swallows the rule. That won't do. To preserve both the exception and the rule, they must be understood to protect good-faith comments seeking improvement from deletion by other editors, even if those editors think the changes proposed are stupid. DIREKTOR evidently thinks that Floyd's concerns are ill-taken and his proposed changes stupid. They may well be. But that doesn't authorize DIREKTOR (or anyone else) to delete Floyd's remarks so long as they can be understood to be a good-faith effort to improve the article. If the discussion degenerates into a slanging match, TPO authorizes deletion of comments that are personal attacks. If the discussion wanders too far afield into a general discussion of Tito rather than one focused on the article, TPO authorizes deletion of comments. It does not allow (in fact forbids) removal of comments simply because DIREKTOR suspects Floyd of being a sock or disapproves of his proposed changes.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 14:46, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
You're right that deleting someone's comments because you disapprove of the proposed changes is not allowed. However I don't think Mick has suggested that. He's simply pointed out that deleting off topic comments (even ones made in 'good faith') is relatively normal and uncontroversial Nil Einne (talk) 14:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Articles about various castes and ethnic groups

Articles about various castes and ethnic groups tend to be created and maintained by writers belonging to that particular ethnic group/caste. This gives rise to problems of blatant self glorification and glossing over unpleasant facts etc. For e.g. the article about Nair caste of Kerala contains writing eulogising the Nairs with information based on obscure sources. Some claim that Nairs are Shudras but that info is glossed over and writers here claim that Nairs are Kshatriyas. Fantastic claims such as Nairs are Scythians in origin are also highlighted. Whether these claims are backed up by reputed sources have to be cross verified by wiki experts.

Nairs are very important group in Kerala and article about them should be of good standard and contain unbiased information written in good English. This kind of problem also exist with article on another important caste of Kerala, the Ezhavas where facts such as prohibition on them entering temples and other unpleasant facts are not highlighted. Ezhavas & Nairs both claim that Thacholi Othenan and other characters of Vadakkan Pattukal belong to their respective caste. Almost all other social groups in Kerala try to give a gloss over their background and cover up any shortcomings. Writers are trying to use Wikipedia as a propaganda platform

I am sure this kind of problems may exist with articles about various other groups where biased information for or against tends to easily creep in. The concerned people may take necessary steps to ensure the articles are of the best possible quality.

Sarvagyana guru (talk) 07:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, ethnic conflicts of this nature exist exist and have existed for a long time before the internet was even invented. We are unlikely to solve them here. If you have a specific problem with a specific article, you may find it helpful to tag the article with an appropriate cleanup tag, such as {{POV}}, AND simultaneously start a thread on the article's talk page explaining your concerns. However, it can easily feel like you are King Cnut ordering the tides to stop coming in; looking at the near nonstop back-and-forth over issues such as Macedonia and Ireland here at Wikipedia, merely noting the existance of the problem isn't likely to stop it. But it is a start, and if it generates positive discussion, then it is a small victory. --Jayron32 03:08, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
  1. ^ http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=26903
  2. ^ http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=29621
  3. ^ http://www.panorama.ru/gazeta/p32frac.html
  4. ^ http://www.zavtra.ru/cgi//veil//data/zavtra/98/239/21.html
  5. ^ http://www.scilla.ru/works/partii07/kprf.html
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