Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 103

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USAmerican psuado history and bias

Again we have USAmericans altering factual information and replacing it with the fake history that USAmericans are taught in the article History of the London Underground we have the fake clain that the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel in New York City, opened in 1844 is somehow relevent to the underground railway and it is somehow the first it is not in reaql history or to people educated outside the USA the Wapping Tunnel in reality proceded it, how can we educate the USAmerican of real facts and prevent them from altering real facts and inserting their agena on this "encyclopedia" of course I am aware the encyclopedias in the USa probably do cotain lies such as this but wikipedia needs to contain real facts not agtendas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.163.45 (talk) 10:44, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

RFC regarding signature images in biographies

I've started an RFC over at Stephen King's bio. As it involves BLP issues it might be of interest to editors who monitor PUMP/POLICY. Thanks. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 02:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Adding content farms to the spam blacklist

Many Wikipedia articles link to mere content farms. Hundreds link to wisegeek.com alone. (For agreement on the worthlessness of wisegeek.com, see this discussion in a WP:RSN archive.) The links are worthless; yet readers who are less alert (or whose English is weaker) may not realize this, and may be taken in by them, and they are therefore detrimental.

Removing these links seems like whack-a-mole. What I'd regard as an obvious solution is to choose a content farm, remove the links to it, and add it to the spam blacklist. Links to it will not be added thereafter.

However, there's an obvious problem with this:

  1. Wikipedia:Spam-blacklisting makes it clear that the spam blacklist is for sites that have been spammed (and indeed as only a last resort even for these). But:
  2. It's not at all obvious that links to wisegeek.com (as an example) have been spammed: most, perhaps all, were instead probably added
    • by people unable to distinguish between good and bad sources;
    • by people too lazy to distinguish between good and bad sources;
    • by people desperate to cite any "sourcing", no matter how bad, for assertions for which RS cannot be found.

I therefore (A) tentatively propose that Wikipedia:Spam-blacklisting should be rewritten to allow the addition of content farms, while I (B) invite suggestions of better ways to deal with the problem.

(I brought this up here at WP:RSN -- probably soon to be part of archive 142 or archive 143 -- and am about to link from there to here.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC) slightly rephrased 09:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know about the current practice, but I agree that we should be able to add content farms to the spam blacklist. Hans Adler 11:02, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
We already blacklisted examiner.com due to persistent spamming from the authors of the articles (they can get money for views). --Enric Naval (talk) 11:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Aha! So examiner.com was spammed. Well then, there we have an essential part of the justification for adding it to the spam list. But I've no particular reason to think that wisegeek.com (among many others) is spammed, no desire to spend hours of my limited lifespan looking to see whether it has been spammed, and no reason to think that links to it would be of any value even if it could be shown that they were all added with the most innocent of motives. ¶ My hunch is that unspammed but irritating junk sites have at times been discreetly added to the spam list even with no evidence of spam, but "don't ask, don't tell" isn't very satisfactory. -- Hoary (talk) 13:12, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
We could argue that by spamming Google, content farms are indirectly spamming Wikipedia. Also, if it is true that the authors for content farms are paid by success, then that would have results indistinguishable from a sustained crowd-sourced spam attack. But it would be cleaner to just say we can put content farms on the spam list once they are too troublesome to remove by hand. Hans Adler 13:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Oh but there are a fair number of content farms. Look at the fragrant array of "sources" lending credibility (ha ha) to the article Johann Theodor Jablonski. (Well, one of the sources is OK.) Should I identify each website as worthless, chase up the other references to this, delete these, and then remember to check every month or so thereafter that nobody has added new references to it? I'd rather the lot were deleted and then a measure put in place to prevent addition. ¶ Of course I'm not deluding myself that this practice would end the use of junk sources. Junk sources will afflict WP for ever. But let's try to reduce the problem, even if we can't end it. -- Hoary (talk) 13:45, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
It is clear that there are WP:RS issues with self-published essays and such. However, blacklisting those sites is a bridge too far. For example, an editor can link to a bad reference on a talk page and ask if anybody has a better source for X. Or take something they say to the Refdesk. The spam blacklist is already at risk for being abused in other ways. Wnt (talk) 03:09, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
It's true that links to bad references can be legimately posted on talk pages and to the reference desk, and that the inability to post them there would cause some irritation. But one can (I believe) always type something like "www.stupider.com/dumb_essay.html" and let the reader copy this and paste it where needed. ¶ I'm not suggesting that links to all unreliable sources, or to all junk, should be prevented via the blacklist. WP takes a dim view of "WorldNetDaily", for example; but I wouldn't attempt to put wnd.com on the list, if only because what is written on wnd.com can at times itself be of some interest. Thus my (tentative proposal) would be to limit the addition to content farms. It's hard (though admittedly not impossible) for me to imagine that a page on wisegeek.com could generate informed interest, for example, more than the most fleeting mention in a newspaper article. (As I view Google News, it has just eight hits for "wisegeek", none of them impressive.) ¶ I realize that spammed websites and non-spammed content farms would make an incomprehensible combination, that such a combination for a single blacklist could easily lead to the addition of various other kinds of websites, and that such additions could be counterproductive; and this is why I'm now tending to favor a second, separate list, one for wide-ranging content farms only. (I'm smugly assuming that an additional en:WP-specific blacklist is technically possible, and that some altruistic person would do the technical work involved.) ¶ Meanwhile, I have a couple of questions for Wnt or anyone who agrees with him/her. Many pages link to wisegeek.com. (True, many of these are talk pages. But many are articles.) Does this concern you? If it does concern you, what do you think should be done about it? -- Hoary (talk) 08:46, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
First, is there an existing way to filter the list to just the links in article space? If not, we should get one, because it will help people go over the list for articles they are interested in editing. After that, the answer is to patrol the links one by one, replacing with better content when available. Nonetheless, Wisegeek says it has about 200 contributors, apparently paid, so there's some kind of editorial process to it. Therefore it is not quite a blog/Usenet level source, not something that absolutely needs to be exterminated on sight, though of course usually its articles will be rehashing sources better reached directly. Wnt (talk) 18:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the ability to block certain domains in certain namespaces only would be very convenient. I have no idea about the technical (im)possibilities. I could try to educate myself, but then I might easily misunderstand something elementary. I think that Psychonaut would have a much better idea, and have therefore just now invited him/her/them here. ¶ On the quality of Wisegeek: The website tells us about the article creation process here. A couple of tasty quotes:
  • wiseGEEK writers are asked to write at least five articles per week, or 20 articles a month, on average.
  • We pay writers per article. Current rates range from $10 to $14 depending on the article topic.
I've just clicked on "What is a morpheme?" As far as it goes, it's not so bad (though parts are oddly hazy). It's not surprising that it doesn't mention, say, templatic morphology (whereby the words of Semitic languages have a kind of consonant skeleton, around which the vowels vary with tense, etc) and that it instead sticks to English. What is extraordinary is that it doesn't mention compounds ("blackbird", "pickpocket", etc): very common in English (and every other language I can think of) and utterly basic to morphology. The article is "Written By: A. B. Kelsey | Edited By: O. Wallace". There's no link for either Kelsey or Wallace, and neither name appears within this page, which is the only one I can find that writes up (some) contributors. I agree that most links to blogs should be eliminated; but really, many blogs command far more respect than this. (To continue with linguistics for a moment: I'd certainly consider claims made for the linguistics-related blogs of people with doctorates in linguistics who teach linguistics at properly accredited universities.) -- Hoary (talk) 05:02, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
First a response to your technical questions. As far as I can tell the SpamBlacklist extension does not allow you to restrict the filtering to certain namespaces. You could always file a request for enhancement, though given that the extension was developed specifically to combat spammed links, and because spammers don't often care about namespaces, the developers may not see this as a particularly useful enhancement, and may therefore reject it or give it low priority. If links to content farms tend to be added not by spammers but rather by new users unaware of their unreliability, perhaps the XLinkBot RevertList would be a better place to submit these, at least for the time being.
Now, as to whether to blacklist non-spammed links to content farms at all (setting aside for a moment the mechanism by which this is achieved, and the namespaces to which the restrictions would apply), how do you propose to define "content farm" in such a way that the policy can be fairly and consistently applied? Or would the administrators responsible for maintaining the list simply do so on a case-by-case basis? Also, are there any conceivable situations in which a user may legitimately link to a content farm? I ask because there are other types of sources that we don't generally accept as reliable, but which we do not automatically filter. For example, blogs aren't usually permitted as reliable sources, but past suggestions to blacklist entire blog domains such as blogspot.com and blogger.com have been shot down with the argument that this would cause too much collateral damage. —Psychonaut (talk) 21:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for commenting. Well, if a prevention of addition of domain names to certain namespaces only is neither currently possible nor likely to interest the people who'd have to do the work to make it possible, then it sounds like a no-no. Granted that addition of a given domain name to an article is most unlikely to be helpful but that addition of it to a talk page might be, I still don't see what's so dreadful about the copy/pasting of "http://"-shorn URLs. (Example: I see from utter-bollocks.biz/cold_fusion.html that blah blah.) Is this technically/psychologically too demanding for many (potential) contributors? On the assumption that it is not too demanding, I'd happily block a number of domains whose web pages can I think be legitimately discussed. ¶ I completely agree that blogger.* -- perhaps blogger.com for you, but after IP-sniffing autoconverted to blogger.jp for me, and presumably converted likewise around the world -- and wordpress.com and the like should not be added to a list of autoblocked domains, even while I'd guess that the great majority of links people try to add to them are worthless. That's because a number (even if only a small minority) of the links to them are worthwhile. With content farms, I wonder. Yes, I can imagine that a page in a content farm could itself become notable. Let's say . . . somebody kills somebody in an unusual way, is arrested, and the cops find a print-out of some page from a content farm that describes the method. But this is far-fetched. ¶ The question how do you propose to define "content farm" in such a way that the policy can be fairly and consistently applied? is an excellent one. I can't immediately give a good answer. I think that I could sketch a definition; no doubt it would then get some heavy (and deserved) bruising from others, but something might survive. ¶ I must confess that I'm only dimly familiar with XLinkBot. Its use might be suitable and adequate. I've invited the éminence grise to the discussion here. -- Hoary (talk) 02:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Scandals?

Category:Political scandals and all the sub-cats. Is this a correct term? Could a bot change them all to 'political controversies'? If not then it would be a huge pain to go through all of them. We just cleaned a few of the Canadian ones that contained biography articles, company articles, highways, islands, etc. Should they be re-named 'articles containing political controversy' Someone mentioned that 'scandal' is the tabloid term for controversy. Which wikipedia term is correct? Some articles do have scandal in the title while others have terms like fiasco, controversy, boondogle, Reverse Ferret, etc.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:46, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Categories named "Articles containing..." or things like that are usually for behind-the-scenes maintenance, not for content. So you need to pick a straightforward term, like "Political scandals" or "Political incidents" or whatever you think best.
Cats are not 'defining' items. Exact descriptions belong in the articles, not on the category names. Otherwise, we'd end up with names like "Category:Political scandals, incidents, controversies, fiascoes, boondoggles, and things given a name ending in -gate by the media", which obviously nobody wants.
The purpose is to group together pages that readers interested in <name of category> might be looking for or interested in. For example, if I'm really a Martian, but readers believe that I'm from California, or editors like you believe that readers who are interested in people from California might be interested in a page about me, then you should list me under Category:People from California (if I were notable, which of course I'm not). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm of the feeling that it would be incorrect to name Watergate anything but a scandal. (The article is even titled "Watergate scandal"!) Additionally, consider the fact that the main page is named political scandal. That is not to say that the category does not need cleaning, naturally. --Izno (talk) 02:53, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
"Watergate scandal" could be renamed something like, oh, let's say "Watergate criminal enterprise". (No, I'm not suggesting this.) "Scandal" has been trivialized. (People have nipples. Janet Jackson momentarily revealed one of hers. That was, we were told, a "scandal". Zzzz.) But "controversy"? Nations that claim to be democratic have two or more political parties. Other than in nations whose veneer of democracy is the least convincing, these parties disagree on much, if not most. Where newspapers are at least moderately free, every day's edition shows political disagreements. That which is disagreed over is thereby controversial. So "political controversy", despite being a trisyllabic and slightly impressive-sounding word, means little: every slightly democratic nation has thousands per decade. Even if the "scandal" in "political scandal" also means next to nothing, the collocation "political scandal" isn't yet entirely humdrum and says something that "political controversy" does not. (Of course, autocracies have political scandals too: try this, aka "China Ferrari sex orgy death crash") -- Hoary (talk) 02:41, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
We do what the preponderance of reliable sources do. If everyone out there (pointing at the rest of the universe that isn't Wikipedia) calls something a scandal, then we in here (pointing at Wikipedia) have no reason not to do the same. --Jayron32 02:56, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

sahaja yoga and in general: articles on religion

Hi,

I don't know wether I'm posting this at the right place, but I felt angry after reading two articles and googling around a bit and I didn't feel like editing. First of all, English is not my first language and second: I guess it's not a good idea to edit or contribute to a talk page when angry. I'm not a wiki editor anyway. However, I do feel I have a point so I guess the village pump is the place to leave something like a rant.

Like a lot of people nowadays, I use wikipedia as a source of information a lot, especially on topics I don't want to spend weeks or longer doing research on. I know a bit how it works, so I know not all information on wikipedia is always accurate. I do get the impression that articles on various religions, cults, sects, New Religious Movements etc. quite often are written and/or edited by people who actually belong to the group which is written about, so I won't get any objective information at all. In the past I was looking for sociological theories about the historical witch hunts and all the time I got trapped into articles which were used by Wiccans to shed their light on history. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Wiccans and it seems like these things have been improved or corrected by now. Now I read Dutch, English and German and compare different articles, so I might confuse some wiki's in different languages. Now I have also read quite some stuff about Scientology and about the history of Scientology on Wikipedia. The whole story seems to have resulted in a load of good and critical information about the CoS on wikipedia (well, at least on the English wiki, the Dutch one definitely is a different story). My compliments to the people who did all that! But I'm afraid it doesn't all stop with CoS...

However: the articles about Sahaja Yoga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahaja_Yoga , and it's founder, [[1]], seem like a load of crap to me. This is most definitely not neutral information, this is a complete eulogy, to a certain level it might be promotion according wiki-guidlines. For instance in the part "Cult allegations and refutations", there is stated:

A 2008 court case in Brussels has ruled that Sahaja Yoga had been wrongly labelled as a cult by a Belgian state authority and awarded the group compensation.

Further on is stated:

In 2008 the Belgian newspapers De Morgen,[155] De Standaard[156] and Le Soir reported that the Court of First Instance of Brussels ordered the Belgian state to pay 1,500 Euros compensation to Sahaja Yoga for wrongly labelling the movement as a sect (cult). The Centre of Information and Opinion on Harmful Sectarian Organizations (CIAOSN/IACSSO) had given an unfavourable report on the meditation movement which was found to be unobjective and had resulted in the movement being defamed. The state appealed.

Now I felt I wanted to get a bit deeper into this and I found the actual court verdict from this appeal, which is quite nasty for Sahaja Yoga and it's late founder. You can find it on the site of the Belgian state organization IACSSO, both in Dutch and in French and it dates from 12-4-2011. You can find it here:

http://www.iacsso.be/actualiteit.htm

in Dutch there's this scan: http://www.iacsso.be/110412-hof_van_beroep_te_brussel-2008-AR-889.pdf

in French there's this one: http://www.iacsso.be/110412-cour_d%27appel_de_bruxelles-2008-AR-889.pdf.

The point is: the Belgian organization never did say that Sahaja Yoga was a destructive cult or anything like that. However, it did point out some things which this Court of Appeal found justifiable remarks, even according the ECHM. The French scan looks better than the Dutch one and I can recommend anyone interested in this subject to read this verdict carefully! As far as I get it, the Belgian Court of Appeal stated that a state organization may rightfully say that the founder of Sahaja Yoga did make anti semitic and thus xenophobic and racist remarks in her writings. And there is more, Sahaja Yoga lost the case completely! I'm amazed that the Belgian press didn't put any attention on this verdict (at least so it seems, they were probably too busy with other matters at the time). As far as I understand this verdict stands as long as there is no higher appeal (Cassatie) but didn't find any information on such an appeal. Did Sahaja give up? I would understand that, when I read this verdict. Now this verdict is almost two years old and hardly anyone noticed, even when a scan in two languages was put on the internet! I guess the writers and editors of the two wiki articles missed this one as well ... or didn't they want to know?

Another thing is: one organization which is given as a source in the wiki articles is "Human Rights Without Frontiers International" - this seems to me a bit shady small NGO - apart from it's own website there's not much mention of it on the internet. Is this actually a genuine human rights organization or a Brussels lobby group? Where do they get their money from?

One more quote: In 1995, Nirmala Srivastava was awarded an honorary doctorate in Cognitive and Parapsychological Sciences by the Ecological University of Bucharest, Romania.

Now that sounds like bogus to me and it's just supported with one dead link. Can someone find a reliable source for this honorary doctorate? I can't find anything about it, apart from Sahaja-sites. Anyway, there's a lot more like this.

Now I understand it's not possible to put a sign on articles like this, saying: "WARNING! Joining this New Religious Movement might be dangerous for your mental and physical health, your children might be put in some dodgy school in another country and you may not see them again for years, your marriage might get ruined or you might get put in some arranged marriage, if you suffer from epilepsy or when you are gay you might get labeled as 'possessed by an evil spirit' and it's founder is known for her anti semitic ideas and was a complete homophobe who stated she could cure homosexuality with yoga, just tell them you're HIV-positive and they won't even allow you to meditate with them". But that is just my opinion. Yes, I am biased! This whole thing is complete Mumbo Jumbo to me! They are most definitely not up front with their agenda! You have to dig really a bit deeper on the internet to find this out. And it's another good reason why I shouldn't edit those articles...

I'm afraid there's more examples of things like this on wikipedia and I don't have a clear proposal how to avoid them. But could somebody please have a closer look at those articles, maybe? I'd love to read something more neutral! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xochopili (talk • contribs) 02:57, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Somewhere like Portal talk:Religion might be a better place for these comments (more likely to be seen by editors who may address any problems) - and, of course, there's the talk pages of the specific articles. P.S. Your English is much better than many WP contributors! DexDor (talk) 11:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

--- Thanks for the compliment and the advise. I've posted it here: [[2]]

grt, Xochipili — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xochopili (talk • contribs) 15:27, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

If a group were problematic, I think that the best defense is credible knowledge about them, something that a well written Wikipedia article imparts. (more than an opinion/warning written by one editor) And something which is as problematic as you indicate will have sourced criticism and content on the problematic areas to include. North8000 (talk) 13:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

wikipedia is full of ERRORS, spreading rumors and lies! controlled by chinese communist party. it is so obvious.

marginally coherent rant.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

if you are not controlled by chinese communist spies or being supported by the chinese communist government, why are you doing communist propaganda for them? and "protecting" Bo Guagua's article for "vandalism", even though everything which were deleted were based on the truth!

1. you don't know what nationality bo guagua is, did you ask him to show you his passport? and how do you know that he doesn't have another country's passport? but on your Bo Guagua page, you listed him as "chinese" as if you have verified that he indeed has a chinese passport.

2. you are promoting for his fake award! the British Chinese Youth Federation (BCYF http://www.bcyf.org.uk/) which gave him the award has already ceased operation. and if you go this fake award web site, "http://www.gbvcchina.co.uk/", click on "english", you will see that this UK award does not even have an english page!

3. the sponsors for this fake award were all from the chinese communist party! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CC6B:6B90:B5D5:B9DB:D33C:8DE (talk) 00:49, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Chinese communist spies are vandalizing communist son's article again! and i challenge you to show me which part of his fake reard section was NOT true.

Bo Guagua got vandalized once again, everything about his FAKE award were added which were based on Chinese news reports by well-established newspapers and magazines. the admins deleted everything about his FAKE AWARD, and are protecting the vandalized page once again. is your web site controlled by communist lovers?

the citizenship of chinese communist criminal Bo Xilai's son Bo Guagua is unknown, how can you say that his has a chinese nationality? did you see his passport or you checked his current immigration status with the home land security in the usa?

if not, how can you state that he is still a chinese citizen? you have no proof!

also, the entire section of the following was deleted by your chinese communist spies on this site. i chanllege you to list anything here that is not the truth. and everything can verified according the links. why did your stupid admins delete all of them then protect the article? what is the purpose? are you here to spread lies and rumors, and promoting for the chinese communist criminal?

EF∙Royal Cornell 2009 Big Ben Award and Ten Outstanding Chinese Young Persons Selection in the UK Charity Ceremony

According to Taiwan Apple Daily newspaper, the award he won was entirely fake.[1]

On May 9th of 2009, a charity organisation registered in UK - British Chinese Youth Federation (BCYF http://www.bcyf.org.uk/) which the web site stopped operating after this award was given. The address registered for this organization was in a ghetto in London. The owner is Yinya Li (李引亞, English name: Jonsson Li) from city of Fuzhou of Fujian province,[2] gave Bo Guagua an award during the first annual "EF∙Royal Cornell 2009 Big Ben Award and Ten Outstanding Chinese Young Persons Selection in the UK Charity Ceremony (TOCYP-UK)".[3] at Le Meridien Hotel Piccadilly in London. No one from the UK government or any UK royals were present during this ceremony, but Chinese Consul Jin Shihong and his wife, the director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London - Hu Baozhu, representatives from the Malaysian Embassy, the Taipei Representative Office and Singapore attended the ceremony.[4]

The five judges were: Lord Tom Pendry, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London - Hu Baozhu, Chairman of 48 Group Club Stephen Perry,[5] Dr Xiaojiu Zhu who doesn't have a law degree who was hired as a legal counsel and to provide notary service for BCYF. She finished her biological education in the USA, then moved to the UK to work for a solicitor who immigrated from New Zealand to the UK. [6] and the owner of BCYF - Yinya Li.[7]

The official sponsors include: the Chinese embassy in the UK, All China Youth Federation (http://www.qinglian.org) under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, China Central Television, Phoenix Television and a free Chinese newspaper called 倫敦時報 (The London Times) not to be confused with the actual The London Times. The sponsoring media was Jonsson Li Publishing House (「歐金出版局（倫敦）」) whose owner is the same person of this award. [8][9]。

Marco Fu was also given the award, even though he lives in Hong Kong, and is a Canadian permanent resident.[10] Daniel Jacoel who was the chairman of the 48 Group Club Young Icebreakers,[11] was also given an award.

Let Me Be Me [12] performed during the event. This event was only widely reported by news media in mainland China. Most mainland Chinese were given the impression that he won the award that was given by the UK government.[13]

After 2009, British Chinese Youth Federation second web site (http://www.bcyf.org.uk) has ceased to operate. Their first web site ukbcyf.org expired. The web site of second annual EF∙Royal Cornell Big Ben Awards for the Top Ten Outstanding Young Chinese in the UK was moved to a web site based in China.[14] Meanwhile, Big Ben Award Corporation started to offer awards to Chinese all over the world. Its English page is still empty. Their Chinese page "Contact Us" has no name, phone number or email address listed.[15] Both web sites are registered to Yinya Li. The current address for "Big Ben Award Corporation" is located in a dental office in London.[16][17][18]。 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:cc6b:6b90:2d68:299c:8c07:b726 (talk) 12:29, 9 February 2013‎

  • Can anyone remember whose sock drawer the above IPV6 editor fits in. A few months back this guy was running around with his "Communist spies have taken over Wikipedia" mularky, but I can't seem to place him. Anyone? --Jayron32 05:48, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
This may be a little bit of a stretch and he hasn't been heard from in years, but could it be this guy? If nothing else, the focus on the PRC, the lowercase typing, and the accusations against Wikipedia are similar. szyslak (t) 07:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, my opinion of the CCP is no higher than his, but from a quick look, if the Bo Guagua article is biased in favor of the CCP, then the truth must be genuinely astonishing. --Trovatore (talk) 07:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Webcite to stop accepting submissions unless donation goal met

WebCite is running a donation drive, and claim that they will stop accepting submissions after 2013 if they don't reach their goal ($50k). (Note they won't shut down, just not add more)

Given how much we as the en.wiki use this for archiving web pages, this might be a problem if they don't reach it. Two things come to mind: is there a possible replacement for the service, and is this something that we may persuade the foundation to help fund?

It may be a non-problem if the fundraising goal is hit. --MASEM (t) 17:03, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

See here for more information and a link to Meta about taking it over. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 17:08, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) See discussion at meta:WebCite (linked in {{Centralized discussion}}) and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#a heads-up -- webcitation.org may go dark. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:10, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment This needs to go up as a Watchlist Notice. Our citations are part of our critical infrastructure. They are the basis for valid content and critically important to our readers. Without them, our content is no more valid than any random website on the net. This conversation needs to put on a Watchlist Notice in order to get input from the wider community. Can some knowledgeable Admin please set up a Watchlist Notice? Thanks in advance. 64.40.54.47 (talk) 10:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
And, of course, this only impacts our on-line citations... citations to hard copy will not be affected. Blueboar (talk) 18:02, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Are interlanguage links unnecessary now?

Have the interlanguage links been made redundant by the introduction of Wikidata? They all seem to appear to the left of the article even if they're deleted from the wikicode (at least in previews). Can they be removed from the code now?--eh bien mon prince (talk) 01:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

If they still don't exist in the wikicode, how will Wikidata know about the interlanguage links? Will we need to go to wikidata to create them from now on? That wouldn't make any sense. In addition, how will we address issues in the future where interlanguage links are incorrect? Ryan Vesey 02:14, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
IL links can be edited normally. All Wikidata does is store all of them in the same place. And there shouldn't be incorrect links anymore due to that. Yes, you will need to go to Wikidata to create/edit them. There are a few exceptions of course. --Izno (talk) 03:46, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
That's incredibly annoying, where can I find out more about this? Will they be creating a way to modify Wikidata by proxy from Wikipedia? Ryan Vesey 03:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm glad I'm not the only one that's confused. I asked some questions this morning at WP:HD#Wikidata. There is some information at WP:AN#Wikidata deployed to the English Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Biddulph (talk • contribs) 03:59, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
... and the answer to your specific question on how to edit the Wikidata is that there is a link labelled "Edit links" at the bottom of the list of language links. Interestingly, if I use this page (VPP) as an example that link doesn't find a relevant Wikidata page, but for most pages with iw links it will lead you to the relevant Wikidata page. - David Biddulph (talk) 06:11, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T46985
Something seems to be broken with the non-mainspace links, but for mainspace articles it should work as long as the item exists. I'm told that a JavaScript tool will be installed locally to allow links to be added, but it (as well as much of the Wikidata site) is under construction. --Rschen7754 06:19, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Reported to bugzilla. Thanks, Legoktm (talk) 06:31, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T46228
There is an additional problem that the Wikidata edit function doesn't work in IE8, though it does in IE9. Apparently a bug cure is awaiting deployment. - David Biddulph (talk) 10:53, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
@Ryan: The whole point of wikidata is a central database, as opposed to having langlinks split up across all projects, and then using an army of bots to transfer them from project to project. Legoktm (talk) 06:33, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
I didn't realize how easy it would be to modify. I just picked a random article and checked the page [3]. I was under the impression that you'd have to dive into some data dump like thing to modify things. This should solve a ton of problems where we have articles with an incorrect interlanguage links that bots edit war to restore. Ryan Vesey 15:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
To go back to the original question, can the interlanguage links on wikipedia (those like [[fr:Example]]) be removed now?--eh bien mon prince (talk) 14:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, if and only if the Wikidata item exists. If not, its advised you create it yourself using some of the scripts available on Wikidata (d:WD:Tools). Its possible that an interwiki bot may revert you, however we've messaged all bot owners, who have 24h to update their scripts. Legoktm (talk) 15:00, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
However, it would be good not just removing them all in once, contaminating the watchlists, but doing it gradually, when one edits an article for whatever purpose, also to remove the interwiki links.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:35, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
As above, there's no urgent need to remove them, so you may as well leave them be unless you're doing some other tidying up, and they'll get removed in time. One important caveat is that the FA/GA link templates are not yet included in Wikidata, so these need to be left in place even if the interwikis themselves are removed. Andrew Gray (talk) 15:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I made a start of a description page for Wikipedia at WP:Wikidata. People are welcome to improve it! --Izno (talk) 16:19, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Subpages don't appear to be disabled

I just created Test/test.

But Wikipedia:Subpages says that subpages are disabled in the main namespace.

I was about to update the Wikipedia:Tip of the day/February 19 ("When to use subpages"), which states that they are disabled. But when I tried to create a subpage, it worked.

What is going on? The Transhumanist 04:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you see any note below the title like on Talk:9/11? If not, then there is no subpage, but rather a title with a slash in it. Chris857 (talk) 04:32, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Didn't think of looking for the back link. Thank you. The Transhumanist 05:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Subpages are enabled in every namespace but the article namespace. --Izno (talk) 04:57, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Probably a dumb question, but why can't we have subpages in the article namespace? That would help avoid awkwardly titled forks and articles that are de facto subpages already (filmographies, list of television series episodes, etc.). Evanh2008 (talk|contribs) 05:06, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
They're cumbersome (they can result in super long titles). And awkward when an article could have two parents, but back links to just one. The Transhumanist 05:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
WP:Subpages should give you the background. --Izno (talk) 13:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

It is a sub page but it isn't really a sub page. It isn't disabled so that we can have titles with slashes in them. If you make a real sub page it will be deleted. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 12:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

More to the point, I think: it is disabled so that we can have titles with slashes in them (without the pages with those titles being treated as subpages). As noted above, in the Talk: space this isn't corrected, so Talk:9/11 is treated as a subpage of Talk:9. Victor Yus (talk) 12:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

One of the absolutely genial ideas of Wikipedia was the flat article name space. It saves people from the temptation of organizing articles into trees. Articles should be linked by wikilinks, and each should stand on its own; no topic should be declared "sub-topic" of another.
Facts, things, people, and ideas do not have a tree structure. Our compulsion to hammer them into trees may be the best proof yet that Darwin was right... 8-) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 23:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback request for comments scheduled to end Thursday, February 21

Hi. This is just a gentle reminder that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Article feedback is scheduled to wrap up on Thursday, February 21. Any and all editors are encouraged to participate in the discussion. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Do "plot summaries" get a pass from WP:Verifiability core policy?

I was not previously aware that a plot summary for a fictional work, described on Wikipedia, has a special dispensation and need not follow standard Wikipedia policy on verifiability and original research. I was so informed by an editor on this matter about a month ago, on the Talk page here: Talk:The_Sword_of_Shannara#Sources_for_claims_in_the_plot_summaries.

Once that editor gained consensus support for that position, I backed away and accepted that as the consensus for that particular article, with respect to plot summaries. That was about a month ago. It seemed a bit odd, but I did not follow up to see about WP policy for plot summaries in general. But now, I'd like to see about that concept more generally.

My question here is broader: Is it really the case that there is a WP guideline or WP policy somewhere that documents this as a general policy for plot summaries? Something that says Wikipedia editors may freely write plot summaries for fictional works without regard to WP:V, WP:OR and WP:RS? If so, can someone please point me to that policy or guideline. Thanks. N2e (talk) 00:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Plot summaries is simply the worst areas on Wikipedia by far - So bad there have been news article written about them over the years. For some odd reason they are ok with OR in them.Moxy (talk) 00:50, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
We don't accept OR in plot summaries, and that's never been the case. Yes, they are "unsourced" but the assumption on plot summaries is that the work itself is the source required for WP:V. If one can find sources beyond the work to support the plot summary, that would be great to add them too. It is also not a bad idea to drop "placeholder" references to the primary work to help guide where actions are taking place if the work is long enough, but these are far from required.
That said, as outlined at WP:WAF plot summaries must not attempt intepretion or synthesis from the primary work. If a character's motive is not clear, we can't fill in that gap in writing it. We can summarize appropriately, but that's it. If one sees synthesis - in other words what is not easily apparent from a causal first read of the work - that needs to be marked and tagged and removed appropriately. --MASEM (t) 00:54, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Plot summaries most definitely do need to pass WP:Verifiability and WP:NOR. A proper plot summary will stick to purely descriptive (non-OR) statements that are verifiable by the work itself (thus passing both policies). It is important to note the difference between plot summary and plot analysis (or analytical commentary about the plot). Analysis needs to be supported by a secondary source. It is also important to note information can be verifiable without actually having a source cited in the article. In the case of plot summaries, we can assume that the citation is to the work itself, and therefor there is no need to actually include a citation in the article. Blueboar (talk) 01:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Plot summaries can be nightmares in numerous ways; generally (especially with less-known literature), the book is the only possible source for much of the information. Content writing standards, of course, always apply, no matter the subject. dci | TALK 01:38, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually, if what you say is true than plot summaries get a dispensation from WP:V standards for inline citation. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:05, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm basically echoing what Blueboar said above. dci | TALK 02:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
WP:V doesn't require an inline citation for everything, and never has. See WP:MINREF for the actual minimum requirements. WP:V requires that it must be possible for a sufficiently motivated and sufficiently resourced editor to provide a citation if necessary. It does not require that any be added except in three specific, defined instances (and BLP adds a fourth instance). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
For everything? No, and that's not what was said. The Policy standards for inline citation are laid out in WP:unsourced in WP:V. Where the dispensation comes in is that apparently, it is a priori rule that there is nothing likely to be challenged in plots, which is not how we treat any other text. That's fine (and apparently its felt there is good reason for that), but it's not like it's riskless, because with other text we ask editors to be aware of the likely to be challenged and to inline cite (so they focus on getting detail right) but the plot writer writes under the assumption that no cite is needed blowing past all that. (And one just hopes that does not turn into people arguing it can't be challenged and settled in the normal way). Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:34, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
There is no such rule or dispensation. "Likely to be challenged" is defined by the editors' best judgment about whether there is a >50% (i.e., "likely", using any standard dictionary definition) chance of someone actually challenging it. Basic plot summaries are, according to our collective experience, distinctly unlikely to be challenged. Complex plot summaries sometimes are challenged, and contentious plot summaries fairly often are challenged. So what matters is exactly what you write for your plot summary, not simply the fact that it's a plot summary. If you summarize Goldilocks and the Three Bears in a way that is easily recognizable to anyone who's read the fairy tale, then you should not think it likely to have your summary challenged—just like if you type equally obvious statements into other articles, like "Heart disease is a disease that affects the heart" or "Lions are a kind of mammal". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
You just announced a specific rule for this particular kind of text: "Basic plot summaries are, according to our collective experience, distinctly unlikely to be challenged." When we summarize any other text, there is no such a priori assumption for a specific source material. So, summarizing plots is different (according to our collective experience) you say. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:11, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
The cited "rule" is not specific to plot summaries. Read the essay Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue. While it's not policy, it states the reasons why editors sometimes turn a blind eye towards strict interpretations of WP:V (mainly to avoid disruptive, POINTy edit wars and to keep over-citing and over-tagging away). Those reasons apply to all cases where common sense indicates that direct inline citation is not needed. Another case would be explanations written by Wikipedians that reflect facts in a field of study that not necessarily can be found in sources word by word (nor "assertion by assertion"), but there's editorial judgement that they still correctly describe the general knowledge. In such cases, only outstanding assertions are likely to be challenged. Diego (talk) 12:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
That's not analogous because the summarizer of a plot does not "fill in gaps" left by the author of the source text. If they did, the summarizer would be making up the plot and not summarizing it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:52, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
That's not a "rule", Alan. That's a statement of fact. If the facts were to change (i.e., we started seeing a lot of people adding {{fact}} tags to simple plot summaries), then we would start citing the plot summaries inline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I think the issue is that a plot summary should be of the same nature as a statement like "the sky is blue". Many articles need a plot summary, and it is not feasible to restrict them to fully verified text, although the text shold be verifiable in principle, and should follow normal rules regarding things like WP:DUE. An unusual claim in a plot summary should be removed, and there should be an explanation or reference to justify reinclusion. If the level of referencing wanted for article text were required for plot summaries, we would either have very few summaries, or we would have a lot of copyvios where a published review had been plagiarised. Johnuniq (talk) 02:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

A plot summary (which has only "descriptive statements", and not "interpretation", in the language of WP:NOR), can be cited to the work in question. There is no exception about the requirement for citations - if someone really complains, then we can just add a citation to the work itself, which is acceptable as a primary source for purely descriptive statements. Now, in practice, the source is so obvious that people may not bother adding the citation, but if anyone wants to be fussy it can be added very easily. It would be silly to remove a descriptive plot summary merely because no source was cited - just add the source... — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:14, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

What happens when someone says a plot summary is wrong and there is a disagreement? In the non plot case, a citation would be the way to settle it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:19, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Do the same thing you would do it the obvious citation was added: read the book or watch the movie and find out. This is no different than what would happen if people disagreed about whether a non-plot citation was accurate. The key point is that that citation itself is not what verifies correctness - it is the act of checking the citation that verifies it. A citation is only the means to verification, it does not verify anything by its mere presence. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:23, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
No. In a normal citation we require a page number, so we definitely do not say, oh somewhere in that book it says that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:28, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Right, but the prerequisite for having any credibility when editing an article about a book or movie is... reading the book or watching the movie. If you haven't done that you are in no position to "challenge" the plot summary in the first place. If you still think that something is not in the book after reading it, raise it for discussion on the talk page of the article. The first step in source based research is the RTFS: read the source first. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:31, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, if it wasn't clear, we're talking about a disagreement between people who have read the book. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:39, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that is not what I was thinking of. If someone has read the book, and they didn't see something, they should ask on the talk page (as part of AGF) and then, if nobody can satisfy their doubt, they should remove the claim from the article after a reasonable wait (at least a few days). So for things that are uncontroversial - because everyone who reads the book agrees - we don't force citations to be added. But if someone reads the book and can't find a claim, then they are justified in asking about it. The same is true even for claims that do have a citation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
And do remember that if there's ambiguity and parts open to interpretation, one can simply give a little more detail to explain that something is ambiguous. For instance, if the fate of Character X is left ambiguous, once could say something along the lines of "the book does not clarify the fate of character X, only stating her pack was found three days later" (and if a reliable source puts the evidence together and reaches a conclusion, you could cite that source for more information). Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

There is no required format for citations. If I write that the final scene in Mystery Movie X reveals that the butler did it, that is a citation. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

If you think a plot summary is inaccurate, it is perfectly acceptable to rewrite it... to make it more accurate. If someone objects... or reverts your rewrite, go to the talk page and discuss it. Challenge the accuracy of the plot summary on the talk page. You can say something like... "Our plot summary says the Butler did it... but I read the book, and on page 345 it actually says that the maid did it... did I miss something? Is our plot summary accurate? Could someone give me the page in the book where it says that the butler did it?" Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

As the editor who kicked off this active conversation a half-day ago, I'm still interested in two specific questions:

  • Is there a WP guideline or WP policy re WP:V/WP:RS/WP:NoOriginalResearch and plot summaries? Is there somewhere that documents what I read as the general view of the commenters above: for plot summaries, it is "okay to assume the source is the book/film/work" as a general policy, and no citation is generally required, etc.? And furthermore, it is okay for the Original Research to be done by the readers of the book or the viewers of the film, who then come over, as Wikipedia editors, to write the plot summary on Wikipedia? And perhaps that, as one commenter stated above, it would then not be acceptable for any Wikipedia editor who has not read the book (or seen the film, etc.) to request a citation since only the small circle of fans for that work can have a say in what Wikipedia has to say about that particular plot summary.
  • When a dispute arises on a Talk page of a particular fictional work related to Verifiability/OriginalResearch issues, where would be the place to request comment, where one might find a mix of WP editors who perhaps have opinions on both sides of the verifiability debate, but to help bring in other editors who are not merely fans of the particular fictional work in question.

— Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:41, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

    • It's been long in practice but I know I couldn't find any policy that I can point to that says "the work is implicitly the source for plot summary". But very few question that.
    • I think you're confusing "lack of sourcing" for "original research", in general. Summarizing any source without introducing OR is standard practice for all editing, writing a plot summary is no different. The argument that only a small number of editors that have read the work can have a say exists for any topic where the source may be difficult to get but still available (meeting WP:V). Verifiability is met as long as the work has been published.
    • If the talk page of an article about the work cannot resolve the summary issues, standard dispute process resolution steps should be taken. But the talk page should always be the first step. --MASEM (t) 15:58, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
  • "Is there a WP guideline or WP policy re WP:V/WP:RS/WP:NoOriginalResearch and plot summaries? Is there somewhere that documents what I read as the general view of the commenters above: for plot summaries" The guideline for film (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Film#Plot) states;

Since films are primary sources in their articles, basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable without reference to an outside source.

I don't know the others off the top of my head, but there was one guideline that said the infobox for the article was to be considered the citation for the plot section, or something like that. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Since the episode is the primary source and the infobox provides details about it, citing the episode explicitly in the plot summary's section is not necessary.

Hope that helps. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 17:57, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
That said if you find something that is either does not meet the criteria or being directly mentioned in the work of fiction or not directly stated but extremely obvious (saying that two characters are fighting due to the fact that they are both trying to punch each other in the face) then it would be a could very well be a case or original research and it may need to be removed. However, it would be best not to go too far and start removing the painfully obvious. The best approach would be after seeing the work in question asking yourself it there plausible concerns regarding the accuracy of the summary, if not it would be best to leave it alone--174.93.160.57 (talk) 00:30, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Do away with Harvard referencing

I understand that "establishing a house citation style" is listed at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals; however, I believe my proposal does not necessarily involve the establishment of a house citation style. The overwhelming majority of articles in Wikipedia use some form of footnote citation style. This still allows a wide degree of variations. I would like to propose that we commit to some form of linked footnotes. Those articles that currently use parenthetical citations can be modified as editors come across them. Ryan Vesey 03:15, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Have you discussed this with the WikiProjects that primarily use Harvard referencing? If not, it seems a bit premature to bring it here. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 21:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)-
Can someone point me to an article or WikiProject that uses Harvard referencing? I've been searching but have been unable to find one. Ryan Vesey 21:23, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Take you pick from Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Harvard_citation. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Am I entirely confused as to what Harvard citations are? I assumed Harvard citations and parenthetical citations were the same thing. I checked two articles from the list you gave me Albert Einstein and Anadyr River and neither used parenthetical citations. Ryan Vesey 03:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
See Parenthetical referencing. It is the likes of {Smith 1936) and (Jones 2001) in the text. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Sharply oppose. The great merit of Harvard referencing is that explanatory notes become clearly and automatically distinguished from citation notes. Footnote citation has a mechanism for making the distinction (using "note 1" instead of "1" as the superscript), but unfortunately, people don't use it enough. With Harvard, the distinction is clear and automatic — every footnote is explanatory and all citations are parenthetical. --Trovatore (talk) 21:09, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Strong oppose. Harvard referencing is by far the best and most readable citation style. Exclusive use of footnote referencing is just sloppy editing. I am not going to stop using it even if this proposal is passed. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Harvard referencing are not that bad = its the list defining refs that cause us so many problems. Every day a group of us look at Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting and try to fix all the problrms - oh look Karl Marx there again for the 100 time,,, get rid of this crap format,Moxy (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
List defining refs are a separate issue. I have struggled with them myself. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Sharply oppose I find Harvard referencing an efficient method. — Maile (talk) 21:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
WP:REFTOOLBAR is even more efficient. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • oppose Harvard is a well-defined and well-used style.
As to List-defined references, that feature was not added just for the hell of it; it was requested multiple times. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
What does my proposal have to do with List-defined references? Ryan Vesey 21:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Harvard citations are familiar to many new editors and and can be used without learning a bunch of arcane Wikipedia markup. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:28, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
WP:REFTOOLBAR is even easier to use. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong support for getting rid of the Harvard referencing BUT lets do it in conjunction with tidying up all the referencing styles. Some work may be happening behind the scenes already? Another ting, should we use the new Wikidata initiative for all of our ISBN, doi, PMID, etc data? BTW, as a general use encyclopedia I feel that Harvard referencing should not be used. It is good for academia but not for general consumption. And please realise that this is 21st century internet, not 19th century dead tree format. And another thing, doing the mouse hover over the ref link now brings up the ref in full (or highlights the entry in the reflist). It makes Harvard referencing completely redundant. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
    Redundant? Not at all. The most important merit of Harvard is the extremely clear distinction between citations and explanatory notes. If we were to make a prescriptive change to citation styles, the best one we could do is: Never never never mix citations and explanatory notes. Each must have its own section, and it must be obvious to the reader which is which without having to go down to the notes sections themselves. --Trovatore (talk) 04:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
We can, and do, that without the old school Harvard system. BTW, I agree on separating notes and refs (I assume you mean notes like this change I had done: [4]) -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
We can, but Harvard makes it clearer, because superscripts are used for only one purpose rather than two. --Trovatore (talk) 04:37, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
True, but we could standardise the superscripts so that the notes are alphabetical and refs are numerical. I think that is a system sometimes used. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:40, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is often the best choice for newbies who are creating their first articles, because it doesn't involve complex wiki markup.
    Also, Ryan, I see a proposal above to "do this", but not a single explicit reason why it would be desirable to do this. Do you have one? Is the statement of fact that ~70% of articles use ref tags for some purpose (another ~25% are tagged as unsourced, the last time I checked) supposed to be the reason?
    I just went through a dispiriting discussion at Breast cancer awareness a little while ago, in which people asserted that changing from parens to SFNs would magically show them which phrases were supported by the cited sources, and which were ideas discussed in the immediately preceding paragraphs that could then be called "unverifiable" and removed (because readers can't possibly remember something if you've just spent an entire, fully cited section talking about it). I didn't hear any good reason for the change there, just some nonsense and a good dose of IDONTLIKEIT. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
It is true that newbies may find it easier to use Harvard referencing but it is easy for newbies to use plain text instead of wiki markup as well. Old hand editors are forever cleaning up after newbies so why not clean up the refs? We are in desperate need of standardisation for referencing and we should use that which is now widely used - i.e. not Harvard. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
'Why are we in desperate need of standardization? You seem to be a big fan of standardization (I'm remembering the flap over {{maths rating}}) but my opinion in general is that standardization is overrated. Why is your preference better than mine? --Trovatore (talk) 05:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Not so much your standard or my standard but the standard of whatever the community decides which should be one that gives the best Reader Experience. Also, if we have standardisation all editors know exactly what to do instead of the current system where every corner of WP has its own style and whoa betide someone who comes in and changes it. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:49, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
You misunderstand — my preference is against standardization, rather than for a particular standard. --Trovatore (talk) 05:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Oh. Sorry. So now I have to ask you: Why? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Because different subject areas are best suited to different styles. Wikipedia is many things to many people (essay). There's not much point in putting expository notes in a Pokemon article, so the advantage of Harvard refs is lost there. But in highly technical articles, they're very useful. --Trovatore (talk) 06:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree that WP is many things to many people but that does not mean we have to use Harvard refs. They are archaic and not needed in the Wikipedia page format. As alluded by yoy technical articles are written differently, i.e we can actually mention the name and date of the ref in the sentence itself. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Who says they're archaic? --Trovatore (talk) 06:18, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
They are like sooo 19th century... Old school... (according to Wikipedia - Harvard referencing) -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:22, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
The only relevant thing I see in that article is that they date to the 19th century. That strikes me as having very little to do with whether they're outdated now. What does it even mean for a citation method to be outdated? --Trovatore (talk) 06:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't mean to say that I reject something because it is old but as I mentioned in my !vote above Harvard refs are archaic because they are fine for paper format but not in the super dooper, whiz bang Wikipedia pages. We've got hyperlinks to the refs from the article, we have got info on mouse hover, we've got highlighting of refs o mouse hover. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't see that mouse hover is particularly relevant. It shows you the note. So? That's much more useful for explanatory notes than it is for cites. --Trovatore (talk) 07:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
It is better because it shows the complete ref rather than just the author surname and date. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
The only time you need the complete ref is when you actually want to look it up (either to check that the ref says what the article claims it does, or to find out more). If you're already going to go to that much trouble, clicking the Harvard link to get to the actual spot on the page is negligible overhead. --Trovatore (talk) 07:13, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Question: I am a little confused by the heading. Is "Harvard referencing" meant to include "ref=harv" in combination with templates like {{sfn}}? --Boson (talk) 11:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
"Harvard" is anything that results in (Smith 2001, page 13) appearing in the text and the full citation being placed in the ref section. They might or might not be wikilinked. In the simplest version, you just type it out, with no wikilinks.
Shortened footnotes, technically speaking, gives you one of those little blue superscripted numbers, but contrary to assertions above that it gives you the full citation on mouse hover, in the short cite system (which might be created with the sfn template, minus the ref=harv attribute, or might just be typed out like any other citation, except for being much shorter, as seen at Breast_cancer#cite_note-Olson102-112), you only see the short cite (that is, Smith 2001, page 13.) on mouse hover. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Strongly indifferent. The Rule should be: "Use whatever citation style you think is best for the article (but don't fight with other editors about it); feel free to change the style of existing citations (but don't waste your time doing so)." All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:11, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Different referencing styles have different features and faults, and I'm not sure the proposal considers those issues.
An article might refer to thirty different sources, or an article might make ten references each to three different sources. Harvard referencing isn't very good in the former because it may introduce a useless level of indirection without any benefit, but it can shine in the latter where the indirection is present to avoid repetition. Look at the many-to-one referencing at FA pi; many of the footnotes consist of just Harvard references with varying page numbers.
In some situations, the identity of the source is significant and should not be buried in a footnote (even if a mouseover would reveal the footnote). Court opinions use parenthetical references because the reader wants to know which source made the statement because that concerns credibility. When fields involve opinion, the speaker is important -- especially when the views are opposing.
Sometimes the speaker is so important that he is mentioned in the text, and Harvard reference templates work well there. See Akaike information criterion that uses Harvard references in both inline text and footnotes.
This matter is a style issue. Does it really matter whether a reference appears in parentheses or a footnote? Both methods suggest skipping over the text if one is not interested in the details. Harvard parenthetical referencing can avoid a level of indirection.
Many articles have a tortured/nonstandard/mixed footnote style. An example is Monty Hall problem. They don't bother me. I do not need to see such articles edited (and possibly broken) to gain a slightly more consistent style. I'm happy that the ref info is there.
If there were one true way to do references, then choosing a house style would be easy.
Glrx (talk) 18:59, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Example If anyone wishes to see how Harvard Referencing looks in an biographical article, go to Thomas Pynchon. Angryapathy (talk) 19:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. If anything, I'd prefer to standardize on using harvard referencing. But barring that, the reasons given for doing away with harvard referencing are thoroughly unconvincing. older ≠ wiser 19:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

pagerank wikipedia search

Does wikipedia's search consider link structure (e.g. page rank) in its ranked list? If yes: Is the link structure internal to just Wiki pages or is influenced by external in-links or out-links? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.121.125.137 (talk) 09:46, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is dying. Does anyone care?

Wikipedia is dying. That should be obvious to anyone who has been around for a few years.
 Does anyone really care?
 Until 2005 or so, the number of editors was growing exponentially. Starting 2006, it has been falling exponentially. Experienced editors are leaving, and Wikipedia somehow became unable to recruit new ones.
 There may be many causes for this situation, but some of them are well known. A couple of years ago, with great fanfare, the Foundation hired a "usability study". It was too limited in time and methods to properly diagnose the causes of the disease; but it did show, very clearly, one of the most obvious: the forbidding complexity of wikisource wiki code.
 Believe it or not, when Wikipedia was created, the Founders opted for an original markup language because HTML was thought to be too hard to edit. Thus wikisource wiki code used only straight quotes and apostrophes, and very simple markup, easy to master and type (''...'' instead of <it>...</it>, [[...]] instead of <a>...</a>, ==...= instead of <h2>...</h2>, and so on), Frills were capitals sins; editors were supposed to work on contents rather than form.
 Ten years later, the people in charge of Wikipedia (including the Foudation) seem to have forgotten that stroke of genius. Little by little, rule by rule, template by template, wikisource wiki code has become much harder to edit than straight HTML. Today even a veteran editor cannot write three articles without violating some obscure rule (like linking to a disamb, or using hyphen for en-dash), or being immediately criticized (often by a robot) for not following this or that recommended style, or being invited to add some random bell or whistle. There are many articles that not even a veteran editor will know how to edit an article, because it uses obscure undocumented templates or other weird markup devices. And so on, and on, and on, and on...
 Inded, this was the main conclusion of the usability study: many readers who clicked "Edit" for the first time were scared away by the cryptic mess that they saw.
 And what has the Foundation done about it?

Nothing.

Nothing. Zilch. Nihil. Nada.

In the wake of that study, not a single bit of complexity has been removed. Not a single rule has been relaxed. Not a single navbox, template, or editorial tag has been deleted, or made less onoxious. Not a single form-over-substance robot has been switched off. Not one of the many useless scaffolds that have been erected without due thought - stub tags, sorting tags, categories, wikiprojects, article grading - have been junked. Not a single improvement was done to the editing interface, to the wikisyntax, or to the talk pages.
 The only response to that study was to add another ill-though, useless, time-wasting and screen-wasting trinket, the "feedback tool"; which, in spite of overwhelming disapproval by editors, does not look like it is ever going to be junked.

Why?

All the best, hopefully, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:12, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  • I have the same general opinion of the issue at hand, though I would have probably expressed it with less vitriol. I have discussed it at length with some Foundation Employees. I have been told in the past that they are working on a WYSIWYG editor. I agree that it is the biggest barrier to entry for new users, and that the article feedback tool is essentially redundant to the article talk page and was largely a waste of effort and resources, though of course the Foundation disagrees vehemently on that point. Let's just say that as far as has been told to me over a couple of beers is that the Foundation is aware of the need of a more user friendly WYSIWYG editor, though they believe that it is less of a problem than you or I do. However, I don't think the "Wikipedia is Dying" trope is necessarily true: Wikipedia has plateaued for several reasons, mainly because a) much of the easy stuff has been done already, so there's less really interesting stuff for new editors to do and b) the early growth years in membership aren't likely sustainable. Wikipedia can't grow at that rate indefinitely, and some leveling off is expected at some point. I think Wikipedia isn't dying, it's just matured to the point where nearly everyone who is likely to join Wikipedia as an active editor has already done so. The next challenge is involving editors who have a lower overall interest level, and that requires a change in focus from Wikipedia's early growth years. A WYSIWYG editor built in to the interface should help that a lot, as the technical aspects of writing can be daunting for new editors. It's gotten better, baby steps have been made in that direction (the reftools integrated into the edit window are a HUGE improvement, and categories work much better than they used to) but there needs to be more effort made in that direction. --Jayron32 05:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
"...as far as has been told to me over a couple of beers is that the Foundation is aware of the need of a more user friendly WYSIWYG editor" - there's no need to make it sound secret and speculative, the prototype has been available since December :-)
Special:Preferences > Editing > tick "Enable VisualEditor". It's limited to some pages and can;t handle some complex features yet, but there's a concerted push to get it up and running, and has been since last summer.
As to who's to blame for this, it's true that the Foundation hasn't taken drastic steps to cut down on the complexity of templates ... but neither has the community. It we want to address the issue of pages that are a deterrent to a new user, we can't simply blame someone else for not making it better; we need to think about why we have this feature creep, why editors choose to incorporate this material, etc. The only thing mentioned above that was a centralised project was AFT - everything else, stubs, templates, dash-fights, wikiprojects, grading - it all came from the community, from us, for good or for ill. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Admittedly, those beers are several months old. It's good to see progress in that direction. --Jayron32 19:01, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I slightly agree that wikipedia is facing some problems, I have not been here for very long but in my short span I have seen experienced editors leaving Wikiedia for good. The reason is not the wikisource but disputes which cannot be avoided. However I agree that wiki mark-up language might be the reason why there might be lesser number of new editors.--sarvajna (talk) 06:22, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • The Wikimedia Foundation is actually attempting to do something about the declining editor retention rate and signup rate, though in my opinion it's not enough. The issue lays with the editors and the policies that are used to deal with problematic editor. Like the economic scale of output model, Wikipedia has reached its "optimum scale" in terms of the number of new editors that are joining and Wikipedia's retention rate. Similarly, Wikipedia, like any other company that's surpassed the optimal scale, currently has too much red tape - the process of removing problematic editors other than vandals and sockpuppets is simply too lengthy for anyone to endure, hence it's probably easier and simplier for editors who encounter rogue, overzealous and problematic editors to just simply give up at times. Of course this brings up the concept of WP:DIVA, however occasionally, and probably now often, one can simply lose faith in Wikipedia's ability to handle complex issues involving editors that are widely considered problematic in a manner that at least from a superficial level doesn't appear to conflict with policies or guidelines - POV pushers, deliberate guideline misinterpreters and the likes. YuMaNuMa Contrib 12:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the author of this piece makes a good point about instruction creep scaring new editors off. Killing that disambiguation notification bot would be a move in the right direction (or make the notifications voluntary by sign up, not sign out). filelakeshoe (talk) 12:42, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    • I like the disambiguation notification bot - it seems to be something that's actually genuinely helpful towards article improvement. What have you got against it? Victor Yus (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
      • WP:CREEP. As the OP points out, new users are intimidated by how complicated editing Wikipedia is and throwing automated messages on new users' talk pages is intimidating - same problem with the "uncategorised bot" on Commons. I have nothing against the bot as an opt-in process, but I don't think it should automatically run on all users. filelakeshoe (talk) 12:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
    • I think the bot is useful, but why does it have to notify users of its actions on the talk page? That seems rather silly. I can understand the logic of allowing the user to double-check the bots actions to make sure it didn't make a mistake, but I think a vigilant editor probably already has the article on his/her watch list anyway, nullifying the point. And new editors are just going to see it as a useless waste of time. WTF? (talk) 18:57, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
      • Your comment doesn't make sense to me, because, at least if I recall correctly, the disambiguation notification bot doesn't actually do the disambiguations, that typically requires human input. See, for example, User_talk:Joe_Decker/Archive_9#Disambiguation_link_notification_for_December_29. More or less, you can ask the editor who'd know what was intended: "Did you mean X, or Y?" If new editors are really put off by such questions in the abstract, then either we need to kill the bot entirely or realize that the editors involved are such hothouse flowers that they will never be able to manage working in a collaborative environment. Neither feels particularly appealing ot me. If the problem is more a matter of how that question is communicated, then perhaps there is a more constructive way forward. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
        • I would prefer if the bot added {{disambiguation needed}} to the article rather than messages to user talk space - that way more people see it, it gets fixed quicker. filelakeshoe (talk) 12:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
          • Not necessarily - new users might not notice or understand that sort of thing on their watchlist (or use their watchlist at all), and it might be that no-one else (or no-one who cares) is actively watching the article. I don't see why anyone should find these messages intimidating - they don't attack you, they just give you a hint as to how you might change what you've written so as to better achieve your purpose. It might also help you avoid the same mistake in future (I may eventually learn that morphology is ambiguous...) Victor Yus (talk) 14:02, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Is there really a disease? From 2001 to 2005, there were still easy articles to make. At one point, United States was a single paragraph, and we didn't have articles on every modern famous person. So the barrier to entry was very low - I myself made dozens of articles on speedways, governors, subway station, provinces, etc. But then we ran out of easy articles and easy edits to make. Now, unless you want to fix a typo (not very glamorous), pimp your pet cause, or share increasingly obscure information (yes, this person was the vice premier of kerpleckistan for 25 minutes in 1881 during the Monsoon Coup), there's less and less reason to show up. And there's nothing that can really be done about this, we're a victim of our own success. But I do agree - if we made wikimarkup simpler, people would be at least more likely to fix typos. --Golbez (talk) 13:43, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Golbez has a point. It is not uncommon for new editors to discover that there is already an article on the topic he/she was interested in writing. Thus there is less incentive for them to become involved in the project. Sure, we still have the task of improving those articles ... but that task is not as fun as writing new articles. It is less of a draw.
The fact is, Wikipedia is not dying... it is simply moving to a new phase of its existence... one that is less appealing to the average Joe, and will not attract a lot of participants. We are shifting from "building" an encyclopedia, to improving the one we already have. In this new phase, we can not measure success by the quantity of editors ... we need to measure success by the quality of the edits made by those of us who are still around. Blueboar (talk) 14:11, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Moving to a new phase of its existence doesn't mean that it's not going in the wrong direction. The problem as I see it is that the kind of people who were drawn to the project out of the desire to add vast swaths of new content are no longer coming to Wikipedia, because the content has indeed plateaued. However, as the new content tasks diminish, the less glamorous maintenance tasks continue to increase. Writing a new article on an interesting subject is a lot more fun and engaging than fending off the constant efforts of vandals, or even fixing common spelling mistakes and grammar errors, and we are not bringing in very many people who are interested in doing maintenance. At that point, we need new strategies to attract and motivate editors. bd2412 T 14:54, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • A number of these points are discussed on Observations on Wikipedia Behaviour. It's true that the easy stuff has been done, most of the basic articles exist, and while there is a lot of work to do, it requires experience with being able to research sources, write good English, debate articulately, and interact with others. The barrier to entry has risen, and the user interface hasn't caught up. In an ideal world, you'd create an article, the software would ask you for sources up front, you'd realise you haven't got any, and ask the help desk. Instead, you create the article, within 2 minutes somebody whacks a great big red template on the front of it and hectors you about some policy. (Example from today). Being slightly facetious, though, I would say the best way to get the WMF to implement a nicer user interface is to pay them to do so. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 14:42, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    I'd say the barrier to entry is extreme. In addition to the non-WYSIWYG editor, WP is the only website I've seen where everyone else's content is submitted to you to be edited!
    You've then got the obscure rule structure.
    Perhaps worst of all, with most pages already written, POV pushing has become much more prominent, with editors treating it as a game, driving away anyone who threatens their ownership of an article through hostility, misquoting rules and calling for bans with all their meat/sockpuppets. WykiP (talk) 21:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
The "observations on Wikipedia behaviour" essay actually reflects many of the problems of the existing culture on this site - not least of which is the extremely condescending tone adopted in the essay and the dismissiveness of criticism as disruptive rather than potentially constructive or pertinent. FiachraByrne (talk) 12:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that the reality falls in between "the sky is falling" and "since the sky isn't falling, the status quo should not be questioned or changed" folks. It has plateaued out. North8000 (talk) 16:57, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  • Observation It's bizarre that this complaint is phrased as being about the markup language. I am not aware that the markup language has changed at all in the 7.5 years I've been editing Wikipedia, though no doubt there have been hundreds if not thousands of obscure little bugfixes. There is some validity in the complaint that policies, guidelines, and procedures have gotten more complicated (that's the hyphen-v-endash thing), but this has nothing whatsoever to do with markup or a WYSIWYG editor. --Trovatore (talk) 17:45, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
the fucking obsession that so many editors have to put everything in tables with their coding that takes a doctorate to make work right. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 10:30, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Markup has become more difficult in the sense that the expected lavel of mastery of complex features has risen, so that for example citation templates and the like is now almost a requirement which it wasn't in 2005.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    I just don't think that's markup issue. That's an instruction-creep issue. In any case, in theory, you're supposed to be able to dump the citation information into the article in whatever format, and wait for the gnomes to come clean it up. --Trovatore (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    The issue, as much as anything, is what people see when they click "Edit" for the first time. These days, it's horrifically offputting on an average article (ooh that looks complicated, I'm bound break something, and I don't know how I'm supposed to do stuff, never mind), in a way it just wasn't 10 years ago. The idea of "anyone can edit" originally was "anyone can click Edit and dive in" - and that's just no as true as it was originally. A properly working Visual Editor will help, but really it's at least 5 years overdue. Rd232 talk 18:28, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    I'm more than a little skeptical that a visual editor can be kept synched with templates and such. Templates are supposed to be changeable by consensus at any time; an editor is supposed to work with the core software. How can an editor possibly be kept up to date? Would it become a barrier to changing formats when people want to? I suppose a visual editor could have a boilerplate interface that somewhat facilitates entry of "fields" in templates that have them, but I doubt it would be hugely easier to use than the text markup. (Think about the little "Signature and timestamp" widget at the top of the edit window — when was the last time you used that, instead of typing four tildes?) --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    Dreamweaver certainly could handle the equivalent of templates, but I wouldn't objet to a big shift in how we store and manage article data if that's what it took to make it easier for everyone to edit. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    I can't quite visualize what such a shift would look like. Can you say more about what you mean? --Trovatore (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Over complicated formats like WP:LDR should be eliminated.Moxy (talk) 18:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I think this is actually at one of the cruxes of the problem, but I don't think it's as easily solved. (a) References are important in WP:V and WP:BLP policy and should continue to be. (b) Any way you represent references is hard for new editors to assimilate. (c) The way wikitext handles them is particularly challenging. I'm not ready to throw out (a), and it may always be in conflict with (b), but at least we could use technology to improve the situation with (c). --j⚛e deckertalk 19:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't use it myself because of my own idiosyncratic writing style (I like to bundle citations) but list defined references are a great solution to the problem of writing clutter.FiachraByrne (talk) 11:25, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that what has made more and more of Wikipedia inaccessible to newer and medium-experienced editors is the proliferation of templates. Making it worse, each template is only about half documented (people who develop software items never like to do the last 2/3rds of the job which is documentation and instructions, including updating when they make changes.) North8000 (talk) 18:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  • The OP seems a bit harsh. The powers-that-be are working on a WYSIWYG editor, and I think they even had a prototype last time I looked. On a related note, sometimes when the foundation proposes a change to WP (Pending Changes; Article Feedback Tool), the community reacts with hostility, so perhaps the Foundation is a bit gun-shy? As for the number of new editors/articles declining: that is a natural evolution in the lifespan of the project. The nature of edits & improvements are gradually changing from lots-of-new-stuff, to improving consistency & quality of existing stuff. --Noleander (talk) 18:45, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
By "gun shy" do you mean "ignore input and don't ask anymore and do it anyway" like pending changes and feedback tool? Or do you mean no longer thinking about some changes that would actually be useful. "Pending changes" reminds me of the liquid metal robot in Terminator 2....I keep thinking "we thought we killed it but it returned....what do we have to do to really kill it?" North8000 (talk) 19:10, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
:-) Yeah, probably a bit of both :-) --Noleander (talk) 19:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Following an initial suggestion from the WMF in, hrm, 2008(?), Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions was developed for enwiki after a lengthy community discussion, and coded to those specifications before being deployed. After this, there was lengthy community debate in which it was honestly very difficult to determine what the answer was, and we pulled it; after more community discussion, a limited form was reenabled. I'm not sure this can really be described as "don't ask and do it anyway"! (For more background, see the 2012 RFC to turn it back on, which has a decent summary at the top). Andrew Gray (talk) 20:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • One would also imagine that the Pedia has competition from other (niche) wiki's that did not exist before; so, those editors who are more attracted to those other niches spend their time there. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Just imagine a newer editor running into "pending changes" seeing their edit mysteriously disappear into no-man's land. North8000 (talk) 19:20, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I would, but I'm busy trying to imagine what a nonspecific VPP discussion does about it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I've certainly seen incidents where I've had discussions, sometimes quite strong ones, where editors here just do not comprehend that other people would rather edit a niche wiki, be it on wikia or self hosted, than come here. Their brains just seem to explode. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Wikipedia is failing and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is succeeding.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:35, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
of
WIKIPEDIA,
which died on the Internet
on
12, Feburary 2013,
Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing
friends and acquaintances
R.I.P.
N.B.—The body will be cremated and the
ashes taken to 4chan. Hasteur (talk) 22:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The reality is that 90% of the problems are things that are under the (headless horsemen in this respect) "control" of the groupthink that runs the English Wikipedia. So Wikimedia can't fix most of them. It would take some leadership in the English wikipedia to fix it. And by "leadership: I don't mean imposing ideas on people, I mean taking them where they want to go. North8000 (talk) 03:18, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

  • One thing that could probably be done quite easily, and without any help from WM, is to rewrite the instructions (including policies, guidelines, help pages, etc.) to make them clear and helpful to potential editors rather than the largely unfathomable and offputting trainwrecks that they tend to be. Experience shows, however, that there is huge resistance to any changes to these pages, among a certain group of established editors who don't seem to regard incomprehensibility as a problem even when it's pointed out. Victor Yus (talk) 09:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I find policies and guidelines are just something you need to learn like riding a bike or driving a car. You can read all the instruction manuals in the world, but the only way you'll really understand how things work is by getting involved and screwing up. And that's where Wikipedia falls down - I get really annoyed when newcomers, who've never had to deal with our policies, say "I like it!" at AfDs in good faith, and some snot nosed punk cries "OMG! WTF! Get lost, clueless meatpuppets!" Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:06, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a vicious, nasty place. It doesn't know that, and it doesn't understand why. You just gave one small good example. Actually, your meatpuppet example covers 2-3 of the ways that it is vicious. North8000 (talk) 10:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree with User:North8000 & User:Victor. There should be some attempt to centralise and coordinate the various and often contradictory policy documents into a coherent text. Likewise, I'd favour a simplification of the interminable levels of "process" which are supposed to police content and behaviour (having participated in a couple I'd also add that RFC/U can be particularly destructive opportunity for slandering and bullying editors). Aside from the vitriol and gameplaying that complex & often frankly incoherent levels of policy and process can facilitate, navigating that landscape is extremely difficult and takes a huge investment of time. That level of difficulty means that editors who are correct on content issues can be at a disadvantage to editors who have sufficient mastery of policy and process which they may use (willfully or not) to uphold erroneous positions. I also think that there should be a greater emphasis on policing edit quality rather than editor behaviour, but that would entail favouring expertise (if experts could be recruited); this might be especially useful in areas of ongoing conflict (Israel/Palestine; Falkland Islands/Maldives disupte; Race and Intelligence; etc.). FiachraByrne (talk) 11:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, the level of complexity currently governing interaction on Wikipedia suggests the over-riding importance of retaining productive (knowledgeable, non-tribal and non-gameplaying) longterm editors (be they content writers, wikignomes, bot operators, etc.). For a new editor to gain a comparable level of expertise on the operation of wikipedia (technical, political, social, writing norms, etc) could take a year or more. FiachraByrne (talk) 11:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I think that FiachraByrne hit the nail on the head the best of anybody so far. Both with respect to objectives and problems. On "retention objectives" I would add editors with expertise. North8000 (talk) 11:56, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
(ec) I have to say that I've only survived this long on Wikipedia because I can take criticism on the chin and just laugh when people tell me to fuck off to my face. On a number of occasions, other people have seen on-wiki conversations I've had and said things to the effect of "You gave a much better response than I did - I'd have told them to get stuffed and left". On the other side of the coin though, once you have got some experience with writing good articles and making good calls at AfD, it is very easy to get complacent and assume cluenessness without even thinking about it - this experience I had this week made me feel a right chump for reverting an edit by one of my favourite musicians. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
In looking at the dynamics of how (English) Wikipedia works, I have concluded that 1,000,000 words in forums will not cause it to be fixed. But I have also concluded that 5 (but 20 would be better) experienced editors actively working together could make immense transformations (like move any mountain) if they acted well. I'd be willing to try to organize something like that if some folks are interested. (???) North8000 (talk) 12:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
To organize what exactly?--Ymblanter (talk) 12:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Get >= 5 experienced or understanding people together, decide on what changes are needed to make Wikipedia less vicious, and then go to the places that the changes are needed and make them / get them made. North8000 (talk) 12:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Isn't that what that editor retention project is about? There are probably other "reform" projects too. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
This one would hopefully have a difference....the "W" option. (W = "Works") North8000 (talk) 14:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I may not be the best person to judge as once, a long time ago, I used to be a computer programmer, but is Wikipedia syntax really so difficult? There is always some hurdle to be overcome for new users of anything. If people are interested enough they will persevere. The two or three times I have tried to use Facebook I have found it utterly baffling, and yet millions, maybe billions of people apparently successfully use it every day. One thing that would help a lot, and for a lot less effort than a full WYSIWYG (do people still use that word) editor is colour coding in the edit window. I saw that proposed, and possibly even partially implemented, years ago, so why hasn't it been rolled out yet? 86.167.124.138 (talk) 14:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not dying

The notion that the number of editors needs to continually grow is not supportable. The truth is that probably the vast majority of articles get written once, receive fairly minor updates, and then mostly have to protected from vandalism and be subjected to maintenance when categories change or other mechanical updates need to be applied. The supply of people to write about things does eventually exceed the supply of things to write about, and it's not terribly surprising that we may have reached that point.

Likewise, I don't see the markup as being that big of an impediment. Most articles I see that have big markup issues also lack any kind of references and are like as not to be written in a style foreign to every other encyclopedia, and plenty of them get deleted because they do not address notable subjects or indeed sometimes cannot be puzzled out at all.

The places where Wikipedia may be "dying" are the perpetual political battlegrounds and the places that require subject expertise which may not intersect with the will to contribute, or which is driven away by well- or ill-meaning amateurs. These are both issues whose solution may and often does involve less participation, not more. Mangoe (talk) 14:17, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

How does this "dying" manifest in terms of the product (Wikipedia itself) as opposed to the labour force currently in use (editors)? Like the car industry, we've replaced a lot of tedious manual tasks with automated processes that make such a large labour force unnecessary. Continuing the literary conceit, what we need these days is more specialists to make expert contributions - in our case to enhance the quality of the articles that have been created during the days of mass participation. That said, I welcome each and every potential editor. --Dweller (talk) 14:21, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

  • I agree. Wikipedia at this stage will progress not by increasing the quantity of its contributors but their quality, and by focusing on improving those areas that are underdeveloped due to systemic bias. Wikipedia should do more to attract expert editors and specifically in areas that are poorly covered. Whether Randy in Boise is dissapointed in wikipedia when someone reverts his skeleton theory is less important for the continued progress of wikipedia towards becoming not only a repository of large amounts of knowledge - but also an encyclopedia where the overall quality of coverage is not solely a function of what topics are of particular interest to male, socially dysfunctional American kids. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
(ec)So the question becomes... what can we do to attract such expert editors. and the specialists who can cover poorly covered areas? Blueboar (talk) 15:13, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I would suggest soliciting review articles from experts directly, like other encyclopedias do. However, because the wikiformat requires subsequent editing by others which most experts are unlikely to be comfortable with, probably what we should do would be to host the articles on an external site (e.g. commons or wikiquote or some such), where they will remain in their original form, but make sure that they are released in a form so that we can incorporate the text directly in to articles with attribution to the off-site text. The only requirement would be that the off-site repository be considered a reliable source and that they be released with no restrictions on reproduction. In that way we will be able to get good coverage and experts are less likely to be offended or disheartened by the editing process or to become engaged in disputes. I think many experts would be willing to do this since it will bring some prestige and visibility to them to have text cited freqeuently within the wikipedia article on their topic of expertise. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:31, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
This AfD is a good example of me getting annoyed with systematic bias and the general air of "If I can't prove notability, nobody can". Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, AfDs like the one you point to can be annoying for the editors working on the article, but they are nothing new (we have had similar AfDs since the early days of Wikipedia). More importantly, they actually serve a useful purpose... The article was woefully under-sourced. Bringing the article to AfD highlighted that fact, and forced editors to look for sources in order to justify keeping the article... these sources can now be used to improve the article. In other words... such AfDs, as annoying as they might be in the short term, result in improving the article in the long term, and thus improving Wikipedia. Blueboar (talk) 16:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I take your point, but I think the cleanup happened despite the nominator, who made no edits other than the AfD nomination, and seemed more content on shouting "No sources! No sources! No sources!" a lot. Hey ho. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I've seen similar: Some one nominated an article for deletion as non-notable and containing many BLP violations. (This was the mayor of a major Australian city.) One Google search found the top five search results were newspaper articles substantially about the person, and that the person was dead. The subject was notable and the article was not a BLP violation. Often, people do a 2 weeks on Google news that shows up as the default and call it a day. No effort is made beyond that. Articles about Indonesians or Norwegians? Why should Indonesian and Norwegian newspapers be looked at? (And then if loads of sources are found, the newspapers are often belittled as minor and not usable for notability, even if the newspaper is the leading national newspaper in the country.) There really should be a check box that certifies a person nominating for AfD on any notability grounds has done a comprehensive search of sources before making the nomination. --LauraHale (talk) 17:20, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
This is correct, I intervene into AfD discussions on articles related to Russia on a regular basis. For instance, on the last occasion the article was AfDed because it stayed unsourced for five years. I managed to expand it using Russian language sources, and it is now on its way to be closed as keep. However, I can not do it for all articles, and there are many topics I am not competent or just not interested in.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Even with well-meaning editors, articles about subjects whose only sourcing comes from non-English sources represent an enormous difficulty for the encyclopedia, and even more so for cases where automated translation is not available (e.g., Urdu) or is pathetically, unusably bad (e.g., Thai.) The community and the Foundation have both made it clear that they are not, in the long run, comfortable with the prospect of indefinitely unsourced or poorly sourced biographies, and the spot that we're in, between the language issues and the biography issues is not an entirely comfortable one. The only thing that makes it better is the work of knowledgable editors competent in those languages being willing to go improve the articles before they're proposed for deletion, or to monitor and work on those that are nominated. (Which I've seen you do, thank you.) Yes, we need to address indefensible nominations, but those are, in my experience, a small fraction of this larger problem. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia is vicious and hostile to newer expert editors. I have been through that myself in areas where I write the sources that others are citing. I've also mentored some new expert editors who were about to bail. So how 'bout we start with stopping the beatings before we worry about getting more people to beat up? North8000 (talk) 15:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
In what way is Wikipedia "vicious and hostile"? Blueboar (talk) 16:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I once was overruled by two other editors who did not want to listen to what I was saying about my expert area (I am a full professor in a major university). The things I was referring to are textbook material. Then I just unwatched the page and walked out, since I obviously have more interesting things to do than quarreling with the people with little understanding of the research field. A vast majority (over 99%) of my edits are not related to my expert area.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Isn't Wikipedia sort of like your school job?..... Except (minor difference) you work for free and any two students can overrule you and any three students can get you banned from that classroom. That's all a part of the plan to retain expert editors. North8000 (talk) 19:35, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I left an article in a wreckage state in disgust in a field where I author sources that other people are citing. A really creepy person was following me around Wikipedia and fighting (vis wiki-lawyering) just for the sake of fighting. North8000 (talk) 18:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Way #1 In many arguments, the aggressive anti-social person wins, if they are wiki-saavy. This is a product that the rules (if taken rigorously) are more stringent than the reality of how things work, and the every person in Wikipedia is given a badge and a gun, and switch from reality to rigorousnesses if it serves a POV or pissing war. North8000 (talk) 18:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
That strikes me as a fairly odd argument since you seem to be suggesting that having fewer strict rules would make it easier for easy-going experts with little wiki-knowledge to stand up to aggressive anti-social people with no knowledge of the topic. I don't see how that would work. I think you are confusing two separate problems. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't think I was clear enough on what my core point was. When a policy is unrealistic to the point where the accepted practice and need is to technically violate it, you have a problem, everybody is vulnerable to getting smacked. And the remedy is simply to have the policies match the accepted norm.North8000 (talk) 03:03, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Way #2 In the real world a civic minded person who rallies to support causes is called a model, high-minded citizen. When they come to Wikipedia and do the same thing, they are called a meatpuppet. North8000 (talk) 18:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that allowing canvassing would make POV wars more easy to handle?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
That's 2-3 questions and 1 implied premise in one. But on one of the them the answer is simple. Get rid of the awful word "meatpuppet"North8000 (talk) 18:26, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Way #3 It takes a few thousand edits before a person half understands how Wikipedia really works, and that it is an alternate universe compared to the real world. For example, that Albert Einstein couldn't write about relativity in Wikipedia unless they cited a work, but a grade school kid could if the cited a source. It takes them a while to learn this; until then they will try to operate like in the real world and and get beat up big time as a misbehaving editor.North8000 (talk) 18:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
This only works up to a point. I think the only time I've technically breached 3RR was when an IP kept adding unsourced stuff about someone being an alleged murder accomplice, and didn't understand why I kept reverting him. He wouldn't have understood WP:BLP, so I just pleaded with him to stop. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 19:52, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is structured so that gang warfare almost always wins, if the gang members are wiki-savvy. North8000 (talk) 18:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Way #4 Another example of the police state situation where the norm requires violating the rules and anybody can use that against you. If you make 2 edits anywhere on an article in one day you are violating 1 RR, and 4 edits anywhere on an article in on day you are violating 3RR. This is because nearly every edit is technically a "revert" even if it is to 5 year old material. North8000 (talk) 18:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Way #5 Rightly so you can't put material in from your expertise, but there is a persistent urban legend that any application of expertise (such as to leave out erroneous material) is illegitimate. North8000 (talk) 18:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Way #6 There are rules in Wikipedia against calling somebody a bad word, but not against making false and baseless accusations against them. So that is a common tactic. And a great way to beat them up with immunity. North8000 (talk) 18:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Way #7 Until you get very very very experienced, wiki-lawyering will always win against you. North8000 (talk) 18:48, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I echo User:North8000's sentiment 100%. I don't know how widespread POV-pushing Wiki-savvy editors are, but they WP:OWN most protoscience articles.
I have little idea what can be done about it, but the first step is admitting there's a problem. WykiP (talk) 00:23, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Blueboar said above that "So the question becomes... what can we do to attract such expert editors. and the specialists who can cover poorly covered areas?" I have a few answers at the moment: 1) start walking around Universities introducing professors to Wikipedia, and seeing if they might contribute or competently run a WP:AFSE. I've had two Skype meetings today, one with a graduate level class, and other with a Ph.D. in education (or something like that) at a big University. 2) Start academic journals/publishing, centered around productive Wikiprojects. O and maybe 3) this. 4) Institutional ambassadors/Wikimedians in residence. Such as this: college kids are looking for internships, why not start managing a volunteer internship program at a local, big-city newspaper to help a) Wikipedia improve and b) the publication get cited on Wikipedia, and c) claim credit for doing public outreach/eduction, instead of letting newspaper articles go to archives and forgotten. Or maybe a bright undergraduate could get an assignment from a local government agency, company, or organization to improve a Wikipedia article about an important concept that relates to the organization. A student or volunteer or intern or worker at CARE (relief agency) might get maternal health up to GA status. That kind of stuff. Biosthmors (talk) 19:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I know we have WP:Ambassadors to Universities. Let's have them to organizations and institutions without prejudice, as long as it is done in the open then experienced Wikipedians can monitor things for neutrality. Biosthmors (talk) 19:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

A metaphor

The construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System involved tens of thousands of people. An entire highway had to be built just to get the project started, then over 800 miles of pipe was laid across some very wild, inhospitable territory. Thirty-two people dies working on it.

Today the company that built and maintains the pipeline employs less than a thousand people. Why? Because the company was created for one sole purpose, to build a pipeline. The main part of that was done in 1977 and most of those workers went back home and found new jobs.

Semi-common bumper sticker in Alaska: "Lord, give me another pipeline, I promise I won't piss it away this time."

The wiki-pipe is laid. The pumping stations are running. Large, new discoveries of wiki-oil are unlikely.

</end metaphor>

A core group will always be needed to keep things running smoothly and some turnover is natural and desirable, but the days of needing thousands upon thousands of users solely to create content are basically over. There are certainly vast quantities of content in need of improvement, but there are at least stubs on just about anything you can think of, to the point where we're covering sandwich shops and small town mayors.

We should be less concerned with sheer numbers of new users and more concerned with the diversity of new recruits and the ability of the community to retain valued content contributors. En.Wikipedia is still largely white males from the "developed world". The content we don't have is the content that people not fitting that description are more likely to write. Things are being done at the Foundation level to encourage such persons, but I don't know how well we, as a community are doing at it. Rather than having "is the sky falling or isn't it" discussion about sheer numbers of users or successful RFAs we should be addressing these issues. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:01, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I like it toom but disagree with it. Yes the common ones are build but its easy to find tens of thousands that are needed. Wikipedia's converage of topics related to India and China are extremely weak even though these 2 civilizations have been around for thousands of years and and between them have 2/5ths of the worlds population. There are hundreds of Medal of Honor recipients still, tens of thousands of plants and animals, etc. Not to mention all the edits that need to be done to existing articles. So I don't agree that we are running out of content to create or edit. I think the problems lie in how we treat those that are doing it. 108.28.162.125 (talk) 14:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
It's only fair that participants in this discussion know that IP 108...125 is User:Kumioko Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:51, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I like this analogy very much, but interpret it completely differently. When the pipeline was done, it was an FA class article and only minor tweeks were needed to keep it updated. On Wikipedia, every article is a pipeline. It takes tens, sometimes hundreds of people to get an article to FA class.
  • It needs people to reseach it
  • It needs people expand it
  • It needs people add references
  • It needs people organize it
  • It needs people to format it to MOS standards
  • It needs people to write high quality prose
Every FA class article has hudreds if not thosands of man-hours put in to it. And every Wikipedia article needs to get to FA class. This cannot be done by a small group of people. Getting 4 million articles to FA class is going to take a lot of people. If there is only a small group working on that, then the goal won't be reached for thousands of years. And in a thousand years there won't be just 4 million articles. This type of massive undertaking can only be done by large groups of people and the more the project expands, the more people are needed to make a decent encyclopedia. If we continue to have a dwindling number of editors, then our quality will be as poor as it is now, with only a fraction of a percent of FA class articles and 99%+ of low quality articles. Here's the basic question;
  • How many man-hours of effort will it take to get 4 million articles to FA class?
This question puts everything in to perspective. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 10:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
You would also have to get all those people to buy into FA process and issues and review. Which seems unlikely, unless you find a huge group of people that think pretty much the same about all that and indoctrinate them into it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:42, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, I did a very rough calculation and reworked a familiar table from WP:1.0. I listed the experience required to work n a class of article and the number of hours it would take to get that article to the next class. This tells us how much work we need by the differnt experience levels.

Quality Articles Effort to next class Total Experience required
FA 4,363
FL 1,788
A 1,157
GA 17,604 50 hrs. 880,200 hrs. 300 hrs.
B 85,496 50 hrs. 4,274,800 hrs. 200 hrs.
C 139,077 15 hrs. 2,086,155 hrs. 100 hrs.
Start 936,324 10 hrs. 9,363,240 hrs. 10 hrs.
Stub 2,264,053 1 hr. 2,264,053 hrs. 1 hr.
List 109,715
Assessed 3,559,577
Unassessed 479,893
Total 4,039,470

This is a very rough calculation and is completely inaccurate. But it gives a rough idea of how many people we need to be working on the project and the different levels of experience required to work at each level. I think this shows that we could easily use the efforts of 50,000 new users. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 11:34, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

50,000 volunteers who all think the same about those things? Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
50,000 inexperienced users to work on stub articles to get them to at least start class. Almost anything done to stub is an improvement (except outright vandalism). It would seem to be a worthy goal to at least have any article over a year old to be at least start class. In my humble opinion anyway. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 13:05, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Just adding, I think having 2+ million stub articles is kind of a disgrace for a project that's been around for more than 10 years. Just my opinion. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 13:10, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Seems reasonable but they would actually need to be experienced enough to know what is a stub and what a start is and have the topic/knowledge skills to source, etc., and then it only get harder and more conflicted as you go up the (somewhat arbitrary?) ladder. At present, it's not uncommon to run across articles and think (how was that graded? and does it matter?) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:17, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a volunteer organization, and volunteers will only contribute to articles on topics that interest them. This is why popular topics now have relatively solid articles while less popular topics are still in the stub stage... with the popular topics, lots of people were interested in the topic and cared enough about it to add information, find sources, work on language, etc. With less popular topics, few people are interested, and few really care enough about them to research and improve the article.
So... simply recruiting lots of new editors is not going to be enough to solve the perma-stub issue. Most of the recruits will quickly go to the articles on the popular topics (which are now relatively complete) and say... "hmmm, nothing for me to do here"... and leave.
We need to find a way to recruit editors who are actually interested in working on obscure (less interesting) topics (since these are the articles that most need improvement)... either that or we need to recruit editors who are willing to be assigned articles to research and edit (which is unlikely). Blueboar (talk) 15:14, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, many of the articles on difficult (technical, scholarly, legal etc) topics have plateaud out and we need experts that can develop them further. North8000 (talk) 15:23, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
True. Although there does seem to be a subset that are intent on creating an article and running it up that flag pole/gauntlet to its top. Which, is nice for them and generally for the pedia, if that floats their boat. The Project drives for a particular article also got some play, at one point. I wonder if anyone has studied the successes/failures of the Project drives. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:35, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually, already finding people who speak languages and are able to search for sources in these languages would be a good achievement. My estimate is that the activities here I am involved with, at least with the current pace, will be sufficient to keep me busy for the rest of my life.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:38, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I would not assume that there are this many stubs. A very quick, small sample of the Maryland articles showed that those I looked at were all at least start class, with one borderline stub. Possibly the message here is that nobody wants to go and assess a few million articles. Mangoe (talk) 15:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Some estimates I did a while back suggests that conservatively at least 25% of stubs should be rated higher (and probably a nontrivial fraction of start). Part of the issue is that there's no easy way to date ratings - so it's not apparent when they go obsolete - and most people's workflow doesn't extend to updating them. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that this illustrates two of my pet peeves.....it seems that the only time we take a hard look at the status quo, the only lens/objective we use is quantity of editors. And the second is that only two choices are:

  1. The sky is falling
  2. The status quo is just fine

With no choice for the in-between reality. I tend to think that the problem is that it has plateaud out, with the two biggest problems being:

  • The articles requiring expertise to take to the next level often aren't progressing
  • The contentious articles are in permanent junk-article status

North8000 (talk) 17:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Just to throw another example in the mix, you'd have thought there wouldn't be that much work to do on Pink Floyd anymore, what with that article, and several others, reaching FA and GA status. But then I was presented with this list and noticed there was actually a substantial amount of work to be done, just most of it's tricky and requires offline sources, which requires more determination and interest. I might buy or borrow a book to read, and use it for sourcing on here if it's reliable, but I'm not sure I'd specifically go out and do that for a topic I didn't have great interest to start with. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:28, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Yup... There is still a lot of work for editors to do... the question is, is anyone willing to do it? I think so... but a lot of what needs to be done is difficult and somewhat boring, and this means we do need to accept that Wikipedia will not attract the kind of numbers we used to get. Blueboar (talk) 18:32, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, the point here is that this sort of work doesn't create content. Mangoe (talk) 20:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Why do you think so? Usually, it does. Very few people dig out off-line sources and sources in foreign language just to add them to the articles, usually they expand articles as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant to respond to earlier remarks. Sure, some big topics can continue to accrue info. But the stats on assessment don't show that. If the reason that we appear to have so many stubs is because most of them actually would assess out higher, we don't get more content by fixing that. And I have to wonder how attractive it is to new editors to slog through a list of articles simply to assess them. Mangoe (talk) 22:02, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia - "The encyclopedia where anyone can assess articles and do other background administrative tasks!" that will get them signing up in droves! Blueboar (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Well, it seems that there are at least a dozen people who do care. And another dozen who say that they don't care because everything is fine and there is nothing to care about. 8-(. Some random comments:
  • "All important inventions have been invented and now we need only systematize what we know." I gather that was the opinion of a famous Roman engineer two millennia ago. The claim that "Wikipedia is naturally slowing down because has matured" is flatly denied by the 2.2 million stubs and millions of red links. In some area like biology and chemistry the scope for new articles is nearly infinite, and there are millions of people who could contribute new articles on topics that they care about and are not covered yet. Why aren't they doing so?
  • It seems that a major cause of the problem is precisely the refusal, by many of the "people in charge", to acknowledge that the problem exists. Perhaps because they are afraid that the cause may turn out to be what they have been doing all along?
  • It is undeniable that editing wiki code now is much less pleasant today than it was 8 years ago. The basic syntax did not change, but the templates, rules, and the standard article format have become forbidding. For example, the rule against linking to a disamb forces the editor to check every link he types; and then turn any one that happens to be a disamb into a pipe. So a sentence that before could be written in 5 seconds may now take 10 minutes -- to an experienced editor. And that is just one tiny example in a thousand problems.
  • To an editor, it makes no difference whether a feature is implemented as a template or in the low-level engines; it is all "wikisource syntax" to him. So every new template effectively adds complexity to the wiki source. I have seen hundreds of templates, and can think of only one that is actually good: the {{chem}} template for chemical formulas. Over 99% of the templates out there certainly do far more harm than good, and should be deleted. Templates should be created only by the Wikimedia foundation, and only when really, really needed (say, a new one every five years).
  • Obviously it is much easier to create a new template than to get rid of it once it has been used in a hundred articles. Therefore, under the current "self-policing" policy, templates will only keep proliferating, no matter how harmful they are. The same goes for most other features, including "wikipedia policies" and style rules.
  • Beware of tools that will make life easier only for the editors who use them. For example, there is a robo-vandal out there that turns plain <ref>...</ref> citations into <ref>{{cite...}}</ref> templates. That replacement only makes a messy wikisource even messier, with no benefit whatsoever to the reader. Yet the person driving that robot seem unable to understand the harm he is doing to wikipedia; presumably because he has a nice tool interface, that does not show him the mess he is creating. So, will that wysiwyg editor be used by absolutely everybody? Will it produce clean readable wikisource, or will it turn it into absolutely uneditable machine code (like Inkscape does to SVG files)?
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 23:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, one more thing:
  • The article assessment mechanism may be also part of the problem. For one thing, it does not actually improve Wikipedia, and does not actually increase the total amount of editor-hours that get contributed to the project; all it can do is to redistribute that scarce resource among articles. Is that a good thing? I suspect that it tends to concentrate the work on the articles that least need it, instead of encouraging people to fill the "holes" by starting new articles. Moreover, its definition of what is a "good article" seems to include length as the main criterion. That is having a terrible effect on Wikipedia; it encourages people to write lengthy and messy all-in-one monographs or book chapters instead of many short and clear single-topic encyclopedia articles. And yet even the Featured Articles are often very poor by the standards of journals. The assessment machinery seems to be yet another "feature" of Wikipedia that lost sight of the project's ultimate goal and exists only for the sake of old-time editors. Has anyone bothered to check whether there is any correlation between the assessed quality of an article and its usefulness to readers? Or which articles would yield the best return (usefulness to readers) on investment (editing work)? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:46, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
User:Ritchie333/How newbies see templates Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 00:21, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Making a list

Did we ever make that list of all the discussions like this over the years? If so, can someone give me the link? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia WILL not die

Wikipedia is NOT dying and there has been too much time and money spent on it to let it die. Also, it is an increasingly valuable resource to let it die. There are many problems that need sorting out and the editing interface issues pointed out in the original posting is but one of the minor ones. BTW, there is a WYSIWYG editor being worked on apparently. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 09:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Time and money has no bearing on the death of a thing. Plenty of things have died after large amounts of time and money have been invested. All around the pedia things are falling apart. Increased vandals, decreasing editors, decreasing RFA's, WikiProjects being abandoned, stress levels rising due to the increased workload on the reduced workforce. Arbcom getting more and more power by the minute, etc. The reason I agree that Wikipedia is dying is 2 fold: A lack of strategic vision for the project and a failure by the community to do the right thing too often.
On the first, we as editors and the foundation itself just let the pedia meander along with no vision of where it should go or how it should get their.
The second is really more critical. We run off veteran editors over petty issues like telling them they can't be trusted after years of faithful service and potential for years more. We run off new editors because they didn't instantly learn the thousands of rules and they make a mistake, so we indefinately block them. Even worse, in cases where we don't agree we can't simply undo it and give the editor another chance. This more often turns a good faith editor into a vandal. Its nearly impossible to do a dozen edits these days without someone complaining about something and meaningful or not we are forced to cater to it until we get so frustrated we either give up editing or explode on the editor who wouldn't listen to reason in the first place. Largely because anything goes. Over standardization is a bad thing, but standardizing some things is not. There is also the discouraging elitist attitude between many of the admins and the non admin editors. This is just a short list, there are plenty more. But I concur with the original poster, Wikipedia is dying and I for one unfortunately feel like no one or too few have the political will or the influence to do whats right or what needs to be done. Those that do won't including Jimbo who has even said lately that he will be relinquishing his powers. Personally I think he sees the writing on the wall and is trying to distance himself from Wikipedia before it implodes. Leaving now gives him some deniability (it was doing fine before I left, its not my fault). 108.28.162.125 (talk) 13:49, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree wholeheartedly with 108.28.162.125 (talk · contribs). Wikipedia's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness—it's a volunteer run project. Without volunteers, it doesn't run—and we've been losing volunteers for years. The chart I posted above shows that there's a lot of work to be done before we are a high-quality encyclopedia. We've just scratched the surface. Who is going to improve our articles? Of course the answer is volunteers, but we are running out of them. That is a problem we need to fix if we ever want to be a quality encyclopedia. 64.40.54.59 (talk) 18:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
BTW, the WYSIWYG editor that everybody mentions is mw:VisualEditor in case anybody is curious. 64.40.54.59 (talk) 18:09, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't know whether Wikipedia is dying, though it does seem grinding to a halt. The machinery of Wikipedia has become clogged by a terminally dysfunction admin system. Very few editors actually build content on Wikipedia these days, and the ones that do are largely invisible and demoralised. Wikipedia is now a playground for self promotional users who make minuscule content contributions, and are here to control others.
A functional admin system would have one core goal: to support and facilitate the work of content building. Wikipedia does the opposite. It doesn't take long before able new content builders realize the only perceived value they have on Wikipedia is as fodder for the above control group. A well known group of hard line blocking admins are allowed to function as front line shock troops. This group leaves a trail of wreckage in their wake with their indefinite blocks and indifference to the humiliation and pain they are responsible for. The damage this group does to Wikipedia goes far beyond the effects on the editors they directly attack. Spectators are chilled all round Wikipedia, and the real damage can only be guessed at.
One of the most dysfuction myths being used to dismantle Wikipedia is the quixotic idea that users who pass a RfA have "the trust of the community". There is a very small, self selecting group who are responsible for most of the votes at RfAs. Users who pass a RfA have only the trust of this group, which includes few real content builders. There is no voice on Wikipedia, or on pages like this, for content builders. Unless this can be turned round, there is no future for Wikipedia. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:51, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree that the admins and some high edit count editors are responsible for chasing others away. I have had first hand experience of the irrational behaviour of admins. I tried to give it all up because the politics made it al too hard but I see WP as being too important to let the behaviour of the few ruin something that is useful to the many. As for WP grinding to a halt, I don't agree. The graph to the right (from 2011 admittedly - will try and get an update) shows that the number of days between every 10 million edits is about constant. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
By "grinding to a halt" I was referring to improvements in the real content of Wikipedia. Your graph indicated nothing about the quality of the edits. There is little sign that the hectoring, promenading and dramas being played out on the notice boards are diminishing. --Epipelagic (talk) 03:24, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Yep. Point taken. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Another metaphor

I am not in agreement with Jorge on many of his statements, but I do feel that Wikipedia is not going in the right direction. However, I believe that greater editorial control, combined with a more welcoming user interface and less convoluted and more centralized governance, as well as active steps to engage new editors, will both allow us to attract quality editors to our site and retain experienced ones (reaching out on social media, ie with Facebook "Like" buttons designed for user privacy, will also help in this regard). However, let me bring up a quote (see levée en masse:

"From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old lint into linen; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic." At the present time we have too many proverbial old men on Wikipedia, on both sides; one group, as mentioned earlier, is the self-selecting group which constantly argues about issues on policies which have little relation to the work of the average editor; another group of old men is those like Jorge Stolfi, who genuinely petition for the cause of the encyclopedia rather than for individual gain in an online community. (As I stated, I do not endorse many of Stolfi's specific proposals, but feel that he is genuinely trying to help and admire him for that.) But without the proverbial young and married men, the women, and the children, the efforts of the old men would be useless. With that, I believe that Wikipedians, in addition to doing genuine policy reform, should try to cast off the roles of old men to the greatest extent possible and take the roles of the others. Old men are necessary insofar as they are catalysts for improvement; however, the remainder of the population is the one which actually does the work. If those groups which chronically argue and contribute to our downward spiral should instead focus on adding, improving, and maintaining content, our fall into the black hole will be averted. But at some point, we'll reach the event horizon if we don't act, and it's getting harder by the minute to escape from it. Wer900 • talk 05:24, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

What Wikipedia works on the most

Using the numbers from Special:Statistics, we can determine where the writing efforts of Wikipedians are used the most.

Quality Number Percent of all pages
FA 4,371 0.015%
FL 1,790 0.006%
A 1,159 0.004%
GA 17,685 0.060%
B 85,671 0.291%
C 139,453 0.473%
Start 938,704 3.184%
Stub 2,271,070 7.704%
List 110,002 0.373%
Unassessed 480,047 1.628%
Non-article Pages 25,430,343 86.262%
Total Pages 29,480,295 100.000%

Ahhh. 86% on non-article space. That sounds about right. 64.40.54.132 (talk) 18:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

If it's calculated by the amount of text changed/added/subtracted, then it makes perfect sense, when one consider how small the large majority of edits are -- hell not to many edits will be even as long as this comment. Ah I see, that's just NUMBER OF PAGES. Nothing to do with number of edits. As described below, there's absolutely nothing weird about that number. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:19, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Er, that's number of pages, rather than number of edits. And your interpretation is skewed by a lack of understanding of what those numbers actually mean. First, every article on Wikipedia potentially has an associated talk page, on which editors discuss and debate how to improve that article. On some small articles the talk page will be tiny or nonexistent, but most articles have them. Any article that has been 'rated' (featured, good, start, class B, whatever) will have a talk page where the rating template appears. In other words, if Wikipedia were all articles and nothing else, it would only show up as 50% 'articles'—because each article would have a talk page that falls into your 'non-article pages' category.
Second, more extensive or contentious articles often have extensive associated talk page discussion, to the point where older talk page discussion is moved off onto one or more archive pages. The contents of these archives are all directly aimed at improving the articles, but fall into the 'non-article pages' category. For instance, Cancer (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has one page of talk, plus five pages of talk archives. United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has one page of active talk and forty-five pages of talk archives. As articles receive more attention and more discussion and more improvement, their associated discussion pages swell and multiply—again increasing the number of 'non-article pages' that nevertheless directly contribute to directly building the encyclopedia.
Third, the 'non-article pages' count includes all redirect pages. Our article on cancer, for instance, has more than forty different redirects pointing to it, including things like malignant neoplasm, cancerous, cancer (disease), invasive cancer, and so forth.
Fourth, templates all fall into 'non-article pages'. At the bottom of our article on cancer, there are two navigational templates that help our readers find more information: Template:Tumors and Template:Carcinogen.
Put all those pieces together, and what do you get? For cancer, we have one article, six pages of talk and associated archives, more than forty redirects, and at least a couple of templates. In other words, 98% of the pages in question would fall into your 'non-article pages' category, but all of those pages and edits are actually directly aimed at improving the article and how it fits into the encyclopedia as a whole. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the statistics! However the analysis is not that simple. There are also *many* edits to article pages that do not add any real contents (like adding tags and categories, enforcing minute style rules, etc.). I would bet that the percentage of such edits is now quite high. It would be nice to look into a sample of a 100 random edits and tabulate those. I will try to do that... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, I looked at 186 consecutive edits in the "Recent Changes" list, spanning about 2 minutes.

Here is the tabulation BY NAME SPACE: 

 +-----+----------------+-----+------
! Tag ! Space          ! Num ! Bytes
+-----+----------------+-----+------
| Art | Article:       | 130 | 20856
| ATk | ArticleTalk:   |  15 |  2045
| Cat | Category:      |   5 |    12
| Ptl | Portal:        |   1 |   215
| Tmp | Template:      |   7 |  5033
| UTk | UserTalk:      |   7 |  3883
| Usr | User:          |  12 | 21738
| WTk | WikipediaTalk: |   5 |   590
| Wik | Wikipedia:     |   4 |  2437
+-----+----------------+-----+------
|     | TOTAL          | 186 | 56809
+-----+----------------+-----+------
It may not look so bad: - 130 out of 186 edits in Article space. But I looked at what exactly were those edits, here is the breakdown BY TYPE OF EDIT:
+-----+-----------------+-----+------
! Tag ! Edit type       ! Num ! Bytes
+-----+-----------------+-----+------
| V3  | ArticEdit/Val=3 |   5 |  3156
| V2  | ArticEdit/Val=2 |  32 | 11633
| V1  | ArticEdit/Val=1 |  34 |  2371
| V0  | ArticEdit/Val=0 |  26 |  4403
| Bg  | BugReport       |   1 |   704
| Rb  | RobotNote       |   1 |  1232
| Bu  | Bureaucracy     |  13 |  2691
| Ca  | Category        |   7 |    81
| De  | Deletionism     |   1 |  1535
| Di  | LinkDisamb      |  10 |   396
| Ec  | EditorConflict  |   4 |  1855
| Er  | EditorErrors    |   8 |    98
| Nv  | Navbox          |   8 |   335
| St  | StubTags        |   4 |    74
| Tg  | Tags            |   2 |   905
| Tp  | Template        |   1 |  4747
| Us  | UserSpace       |   6 | 17354
| Uv  | UndoVandalism   |  11 |  2928
| Va  | Vandalism       |   2 |   129
| Wp  | Wikiproject     |  10 |   182
+-----+-----------------+-----+------
|     | TOTAL           | 186 | 56809
+-----+-----------------+-----+------
I will try to explain this table better tomorrow. Briefly, "ArticEdit/Val=3" is an edit to the article proper, that adds about one paragraph of useful nontrivial information; "ArticEdit/Val=2" adds just a little (a name in a list, a line in paragraph; "ArticEdit/Val=1" adds no information but fixes spelling or grammar of a few words; "ArticEdit/Val=0" is purely cosmetic (spaces, ref format, etc.) "Bureaucracy" is page protection/unprotection, tag removal, etc; "Category" is category frobnication; "LinkDisamb" is disambiguation of wikilinks; "EditorConflict" is complaints between editors; EditorErrors is users who tried to edit but failed because they did not know the syntax; "Navbox" is fixing navboxes or adding them to pages; "StubTags" is replacement of a stub tag by another; "UserSpace" is users editing their own pages; "UndoVandalism" is obvious; "Wikiproject" is edits to Wikiproject templates on Talk pages.
I counted as "ArticEdit/Val=n" any edits in users' sandboxes and the like that looked like edits to a draft of a future article.
There were no substantial contributions of new information (that would have been "ArticEdit/Val=4" or more). All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 08:02, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Ok, some comments on these numbers:
  • The survey is not scientifically sound, of course: the variance is very large so one should take at least 10x as many samples scattered over one or two weeks. That's for homework.
  • I was pleasantly surprised to see five "Value 3" edits (adding/fixing a line or two of real contents) and 32 "Value 2" edits (adding/fixing a single name or number). I was expecting even less content editing and more "Value 1" (spelling/wording), "Value 0" (formatting/looks), and other non-article edits. However, it still the case that, in that sample, 80% of the edits did not contribute a single bit of information to Wikipedia.
  • On the other hand, I was disappointed and scared by the lack of any higher-value edits (such as adding a paragraph or more on some aspect of the topic that was not curently covered by the article). The five edits that I counted as "Value 3" were:
  • The 32 "Value 2" edits above (added/fixed a single significant word, table entry or number) include two edits to ArticleTalk pages that discussed article contents (rather than formatting or policies) and two edits by users who were obviously working on drafts in their sandboxes. The other 28 "Value 2" edits break down as follows: Movie/TV trivia (3), Sports trivia (3), Album trivia (3), Modern books (3), Obscure lists (3), Fictional character (1), Living politician (1), Papal candidate (1), Miscellaneous (10).
  • The 34 "Value 1" article edits above break down as follows: Edits to unimportant names or dates, not backed by references, that may actually be "Value 2" but may also be vandalism/errors (5); Inappropriate additions such as opinions, spam-links, adverts, and personnel listings (9); minor spelling, grammar, and wording fixes, not always for the better (18), Non-helpful contributions to content discussions in Article Talk (2).
  • The 26 "Value 0" article edits break down as follows: Fiddling with markup and spacing (5), Pointless replacement or reordering of words/data (6), Changes to field names in tables and infoboxes (3), Fixing errors in markup and template calls (3), Superfluous or invisible observations (2), Replacing external links by specialized link-producing templates (2), Policy and formatting discussions in Talk pages (2), Pointless sectioning (1), Robot adding "title=" field to web refs (1), Un-piping wikilinks (1).
  • Of the 186 edits, 31 (17%) were exclusively related to Wikipedia features that, as far as I can tell, have zero or negative value: WikiProjects (10), Navboxes (8), Categories (7), Stub tags (4), and Article-side editorial tags (2). Furthermore, even if these features were useful, almost all of those 31 edits were quite silly. The 10 WikiProject-related edits updated the "importance" field in the Project template of the Talk page of individual soccer players, often from blank to "low". Five of the seven Category edits were due to a category "Bla bla World War One" having been renamed "Bla bla World War I". Six of the eight Navbox-related edits added a "collapsible" option to various navboxes related to South Africa. And all four stub-related edits changed a generic "bio-stub" tag into "colombia-footy-bio-stub", "India-royalty-stub", etc..
  • But the number I found most surprising and worrisome was the "EditorErrors" (8). One was just a typo. The other seven were:
    • Two novice editors tried to fake section headers with boldface instead of ==...==. That's puzzling because the latter is so easy to understand. But perhaps they clicked the Section Edit button, and therefore got an edit window without any example of ==...== that they could have learned from.
    • Two novice editors tried to edit infoboxes, but messed up the brackets and other syntax.
    • One editor tried to update a logo image in an infobox, but replaced it with a non-existent image name. The original image name was something like "Blabla logo color.jpg", with spaces instead of underscores. He replaced it with something like "Blaba logo 2013.jpg". Maybe he thought that the image would be updated automagically?
    • One editor tried to improve the looks of the text by adding two spaces of indentation to each paragraph. You can guess what happened.
    • One editor added a line at the bottom of the article, "THIS ARTICLE WAS LAST EDITED ON ...".
So, in less than 2 minutes we had half a dozen frustrated novice editors....
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:02, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
As long as your attitude is that making Wikipedia articles clearer, better written, or easier to navigate is somehow lacking in value, I'm afraid it's difficult to take you seriously. It's like saying that the only value of librarians is in buying books. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Fixing typos and grammar errors does have value; but small compared to adding information and improving clarity on a larger scale (reorganizing material across sections and articles, condensing, expanding, etc.). We have 2 million stubs, perhaps another 2 million bad articles, millions of red links, and uncountably many missing articles; Wikipedia should try convince people to work on those gaps rather than on formatting.
Navboxes, categories, stub tags and WikiProject templates have no value precisely because they do not make articles clearer or easier to find, directly or indirectly. Yes, categories are important for physical libraries: because a physical book cannot be in two shelves at the same time, shelves can be 50 yards apart, there is no tool to find books by contents, and there is no way to connect pages of different books. But all 6 million Wikipedia articles are instantly accessible to any reader, can be searched by title or by contents, and can be connected in any way one may wish by wikilinks.
My claim is that the alleged (and so far undemonstrated) utility of categories and navboxes can be (and already is) provided at much smaller cost, and much more effectively, by proper use of wikilinks in ordinary articles. Is there any evidence to the contrary?
All the best,
These are interesting statistics, but we should bear in mind that "effort" is not equivalent to "number of edits". I would expect most edits to be trivial (as found), simply because the same amount of effort can produce many more trivial edits than substantial ones, so the former are going to dominate, even if roughly similar numbers of editors are putting their efforts into the two kinds (and especially if trivial edits are being made by automated means). And since both kinds of edit (if done well) contribute to improving Wikipedia, I don't see any cause for concern. Victor Yus (talk) 18:17, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • It does not bother me that there are many small positive edits, such as fixing typos. My gripe is that 60-70% of the edits seems to be purely wasted effort. Wikipedia makes content-oriented editors feel like they must work on bureaucratic tasks, e.g. by updating navboxes and adding categories whenever they create a new article on some topic. But those things are time-consuming, difficult, and boring. No wonder those editors are leaving... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I need to challenge several of your claims. Nav boxes (and templates in general) serve a key and important role. Categories are one of the most important features Wikipedia has. There are several improvements on my wishlist but for finding related information categories are critical. I and I know others use the category system daily. Werieth (talk) 19:03, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Obviously there are hundreds if not thousands of editors who think so. But is it true? Are the readers using the category system at all? Are any editors using it for any purpose other than maintaining it? Ditto for navboxes. I would love to see such statistics. (Unfortunately I do not see how I could get them myself.) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Anecdotal evidence isn't much, I know, but I have just today come back from a meeting with a group of historians who, unexpectedly, broke into praise at the mention of footer and sidebar navigational boxes! As to categories, I've definitely observed them being used "in the wild" by readers; they may not be our most-used feature, but they're a useful one for a set of readers. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree with Jorge Stolfi. The value of Wikipedia is in the information it contains. Ease of reading, navigation, etc. are also important, but those things support the information. Without the information, those things have no value. We have 2 million stubs that are easy to navigate, easy to read, well catagorized, but they provide very little useful information to our readers. Improving the information in the 2 million stubs would seem to be far more important than their ease of navigation. 64.40.54.86 (talk) 13:20, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

noindex

I think that user talk pages are automatically noindex but user pages aren't. Assuming that is correct can someone tell me why? RJFJR (talk) 14:26, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that the noindex is for privacy on the user talk page. On the other hand many users like having their userpage in google.84.106.26.81 (talk) 11:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
My guess is that this would be a better question for the VPT boys. As I recall, the User Talk space is noindexed by the software, automagically. Other pages, such as Talk pages for BLPs, are noindexed by template. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 13:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Ampersands should be used between the names of two writers in episode lists of TV shows based on the credits.

I think it would be more appopriate if episode lists of TV shows had ampersands between writing duos since that's how it looks in the credits. If it's alright with most television episode lists, why shouldn't it be alright with the list of Cheers episodes? --StewieBaby05 (talk) 20:16, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Manual of Style says normally to use the word "and" but "ampersands may be used with consistency and discretion in tables, infoboxes, and similar contexts where space is limited" and elsewhere "ampersands (&) should only be used in small spaces such as tables and infoboxes, but, preferably, should be avoided even there".[5][6] Thincat (talk) 22:42, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
I think the question as asked is already provided here [credit system]. JohnClarknew (talk) 21:44, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Need help

[7] - why delete the article because of small errors? There is a whole category Category:Russian words and phrases. [8] and [9] - complete destruction of the contribution???? Vyacheslav84 (talk) 09:57, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

That would be a question to ask the editor who added the PROD. In any event, you have removed the prod, as you are permitted to. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:00, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
"Utterly unintelligible" likely refers to the prose, which is very difficult to follow, although I would not go so far as to say it is complete jibberish. --j⚛e deckertalk 22:50, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yoruba

I seem to remember hearing about a covert batch of edits concerning Category:Yoruba. I checked a couple BLP articles in Category:Yoruba people that don't have RS stating they fit the category. Are they trying to create a new nation and populate it within Wikipedias only?--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:51, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Substitution no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Substitution (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

This was a vandalism edit and has been reverted. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:50, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Create a "Warning-Biased Media" tag

This goes to the heart of a WP weakness, as I see it, of the assumption that there are reliable media sources (i.e. NY Times, Telegraph, Washington Post, etc.) and unreliable (TMZ, Daily Mail, National Enquirer, etc.). There are instances where the entire media landscape stands together in different groups creating a biased view of a subject, and the current Christopher Dorner article and talk page has become a catalyst of what I'm talking about. I'd like to see a leading tag created, which specifically says "WARNING-BIASED MEDIA". I don't think any template or tag says that, specifically, at present. All media references to Christopher Dorner hold a strong point of view, which obviously runs afoul of our NPOV policy, and there are editors who exercise their right to select only the references that support their own biased POV, and we need to bring that to the attention of our readers. Is one free to create and use such a tag? JohnClarknew (talk) 23:26, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Therein lies a problem. I'd place the Daily Mail as reasonably reliable - compared with The Sun, which you don't mention. (Disclaimer: I only read either when I can't find a Metro on a train I'm on, but there's one of them lying there. I like the Metro's cartoons. I don't believe in buying newspapers... I do look at the front page of the Daily Express on news-stands to see what the weather isn't going to be.) Who is going to populate the list of biased press that this tag will warn against? Peridon (talk) 23:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting this tag for partial lists of what's reliable reporting and what's not. Most all pages have that. No, I'm proposing this for the instances where ALL the press is exhibiting bias, either one way or the other. Dorner fills that bill. JohnClarknew (talk) 00:13, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
How about {{tinfoilhat}}? Resolute 01:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • How and who decides if an article by a reliable source is biased? In the hypothetical event "ALL the press is exhibiting bias", so there is not a single reliable source, to support any other facts then are listed. In which case the only source defining this bias would run clearly have problems with WP:COI or WP:SPECULATION. 11:32, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Having a bias does not necessarily equate to being unreliable. A lot depends on what the news outlet is reporting on. As an example, CBS News is known for its Liberal political bias, while Fox News is known for its Conservative political bias... However, in both cases, the outlet's bias tends to only affect its reporting on political topics. Political bias is unlikely to affect reporting on non-political news (reports about a blizzard in Colorado, for example, are unlikely to be influenced by one's political bias). Blueboar (talk) 13:10, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • If all the sources for an article are biased, in one editor's opinion, then placing the proposed tag would be nothing more than an expression of the editor's opinion. You can't prove, without violating WP:OR that a source is biased except by citing other sources that say so, or that express an incompatible view. If there are no such opposing sources, you can't justify placement of the proposed tag Jc3s5h (talk) 13:36, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • As far as WP:NPOV is concerned, it's also important to note that the proscribed POV is that of the Wikipedia article writer. There's no concept of a universal neutral against which we have to compare all sources. For example, there's bias in the concept that a mass shooting is tragic, but we're not duty bound to present it objectively and to show the silver lining. To achieve neutrality we have to compare sources against one another. WP:NPOV stands for the idea that we have to neutrally present the (frequently) biased views of the reliable sources and this means proportionate coverage of all notable viewpoints. -Thibbs (talk) 14:20, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • This proposal is incompatible with core wikipedia policies WP:OR, WP:NPOV and WP:V - and aims to solve a problem that is already entirely resolveable by standard editing procedures. If an article is based on sources with one bias and we know this because there are other reliable sources that points this out or that has another pov then we simply add the NPOV tag to the article and start a discussion about how to include a wider range of viewpoints. If however all available sources share a single viewpoint, then there is no basis for evaluating the article as biased short of using subjective evaluations of editors (OR).·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:55, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Imagine if this was our policy. Scientologists, Neo-Nazis, Creationists, etc. will all try to tag articles with "biased media". Not good. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:06, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

You've made my point. Thanks! All of those examples you make would be tagged, not by THEM, but by unbiased editors such as US. And the subject of such a tagged page would not be permitted to tag other pages. They'd be identified as POVs and therefore unreliable. Would this be new policy? Yes. But that's what this discussion page is all about, isn't it? JohnClarknew (talk) 17:18, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
@John, You are either make a poor joke, or you so missed the point so far, that you will never get it. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 18:13, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
There is already a guideline against the subject of the article editing his own article. See WP:COI. There are also tags that can be used to identify articles where POV is a problem. See Wikipedia:Cleanup templates#Neutrality and factual accuracy. Your original complaint that we need to create a tag to identify articles where all the RSes are biased and only some of the editors know The Truth is contrary to policy, though. See WP:VNT. -Thibbs (talk) 17:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
To answer your points: This is not about individual BLPers, but about groups and organizations. (Dorner doesn't count - he's dead and can't do it.) I do not think that your current policy cites do it. This could be fine-tuned. For example, anonymous contributors could not do it. This is not about problem pages with unreliable facts and untruths, but about heated controversial pages with reliable true facts. If there was a tag edit war, it could go to a committee for a decision to keep or not. JohnClarknew (talk) 18:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
A group/organization can't make an edit. Individual editors make edits. And if they are affiliated with a biased group or organization then they cannot edit the article according to the WP:COI guideline. Anonymous contributors are able to edit articles unless the article is protected. This sometimes happens for controversial pages where anonymous editors are causing disruption. If your intention is to warn readers that all reliable sources are incorrect and that it is your personal theory of the case or the theory of other non-reliable persons that is The Truth, then you're talking about something that is contrary to policy. If you're interested in warning readers that the material is presented in the page has a POV slant to it then the above-linked neutrality-related tags are appropriate. If you're interested in warning editors that the material in the article is controversial in nature then you might consider tagging the talk page with Template:Controversial. Tag-related edit wars are already sanctionable under WP:EDITWAR, but they don't lead to deletion of articles. That's a matter for WP:AfD. Anyway I can't imagine a situation requiring the creation of a new tag beyond those already in use unless it's to champion the counter-policy notion that The Truth is different than what the reliable sources claim. -Thibbs (talk) 18:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
There are many "truths". They are not lies, but slants. Perhaps all agreed controversial subjects should be protected. Anyway, seeing that nobody chooses to understand what I'm getting at, why do you say one can tag only the talk page with Template:Controversial? I'd like to tag the Dorner article with it. Any reason I cannot? JohnClarknew (talk) 19:18, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't think it makes sense to protect all controversial subjects unless they are subject to ongoing disruption. Protection decreases the ability of an article to develop and IP editors are often helpful rather than harmful. If the editing gets to be disruptive then a request for protection can be made and it can even be made permanent if the disruption presents a serious ongoing problem even after attempts to temporarily protect it are made.
Regarding the "Controversial" template's restriction to talk pages, see the "Usage" subsection which states "To use this template, add [it] to an article’s talk page" (emphasis in the original). Is there any reason why you aren't interested in using one of these neutrality-related templates instead? They are designed to be introduced to article space. -Thibbs (talk) 19:28, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
OK, I'll think about which one. Gotta go out now. Thanks for being helpful. JohnClarknew (talk) 19:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Those jumbled up bar code things used by smart phones

Please replace that by the correct name (or leave it if you like it...) - I don't use a smart phone and can't remember what they're called. OK. What is Wikipedia policy on the inclusion of these things in articles? Is there a policy? Should there be a policy? If there isn't, I would suggest we make one banning them. Their function is to get people to visit a particular site or download some app or other, and I regard that as spamming when used here. There is no justification I can see for their inclusion in Wikipedia articles. Peridon (talk) 19:28, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

QR Code. Has there been any instance where this was a problem? Chris857 (talk) 19:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Depending on the context I suspect that decorating an article using images consisting principally or entirely of QR codes would run afoul of one provision or another of WP:NOT (particularly WP:NOTADVERT)—but as Chris asks, is this a real or a hypothetical problem? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:51, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
I've seen one so far (article was deleted for not indicating significance). With the proliferation of them all around on adverts and signs, it's only a matter of time before they creep in here. Yes, they will tend to go with the advertising, but they could be added instead of external links. Peridon (talk) 20:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Apart from the spam angle, another concern is that they don't indicate where they lead to. At least with a link you can see an address. Peridon (talk) 20:32, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like the system is working so far, then. Why anyone would put a QR code in an article instead of just having a regular functional link, I know not. (Well, okay, WP:BEANS might suggest that they're doing it as a crazy hack to get around the spam blacklist—but who fires up their smartphone to take a picture of their laptop screen just to follow a mystery link?)
There's probably something in WP:EL that encourages clear, unambiguous descriptions of the targets of any external links (please, no mystery meat navigation!); obviously a bare QR code fails that test. Linking to content using QR codes would also run afoul of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility.
For what it's worth, I can't find any instances of this popping up on WP:AN or its subpages, or in the spam blacklist discussions, so – at least so far – this doesn't appear to be a popular spam vector. From a policy standpoint, I think we're already pretty well covered by what we have in place; spam is spam is spam, and we're not shy about scrubbing it, regardless of whether it's pictures, text, or barcodes. If you come across a QR code in the future, feel free to a) immediately replace it with an equivalent, non-mystery-meat external link, or b) delete it entirely, if its target fails to meet the usual WP:EL criteria, or if its target is obfuscated using a URL-shortening service or somesuch other nonsense. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:45, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
As my private phone is a Motorola V8 and my business phone a cheap and cheerful ( 8-[ ) Nokia, it would be a bit hard to do the replacing... I think I'll just remove (if I don't delete completely anyway). This may have been a one off - time will tell. Peridon (talk) 21:09, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Just a minute. Looking for a hat. Ah! There it is. Now with my security hat on, I urge caution to anyone following potential spam QR-codes. Simply don't --Senra (talk) 21:19, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Community consultation: Remit of the Ombudsman Commission

The Ombudsman Commission would like to consult the community on their opinions about the remit of the Commission. Please see this notice. Feel free to cross-post this notice to any appropriate noticeboard. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 15:13, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

New speedy deletion criterion for redirects

It has been proposed that redirects and soft-redirects to non-English wikis be eligible for speedy deletion under a proposed new criterion R4. Please contribute to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#R4 proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 17:18, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Remove WP:DEFINING

WP:DEFINING as a part of the guideline Wikipedia:Overcategorization does not comply with actual practice. Articles are routinely added to categories because the category is applicable to the subject, not because the subject is defined by the category. Very few people are defined by their year of birth or the university they graduated from; however, these categories are beneficial and are used in practice. I propose removing the section of the guideline, and replacing it with the current practice. Articles are placed into any category that is applicable to the subject of the article. Ryan Vesey 00:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it is a useful rule... but could use a clearer statement as to what it means. Blueboar (talk) 03:47, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Isn't it more a case of actual practice does not always comply with WP:OC ?, but doesn't that apply to any rule ? Sure, WP:DEFINING should be improved (many discussions at WP:CFD revolve around differing interpretations of it) and exceptions such as year of birth (which is, in effect, a sort of maintenance category) should be allowed. However changing guidance to allow articles to be placed into any category that anyone thinks is applicable would lead to articles in far too many categories and far too many articles in categories - reducing the usefulness of categories. It would also increase the amount of adding/removal of categories on pages causing more watchlist "noise". Example: There is sometimes disagreement between newbie editors who want to add an article to (their) "of country" category (because the subject has some connection with that country) and the members of the relevant wikiproject who want to restrict the categorization to defining characteristics (this is a recent example) - removing WP:DEFINING would make things worse. DexDor (talk) 04:08, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Can you suggest an improved wording for WP:DEFINING that would (a) be consistent with the Eagle Scout situation below; and also (b) satisfy your concern about "far too many categories/articles"? There must be some improvement to the wording we could make that recognizes the reality of what happens in WP. --Noleander (talk) 04:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
How about this for a solution: Improve the wording to make it clear that "definingness" applies to the existence of the category; not to whether individual articles belong in the category. Those are two distinct concepts. WP:DEFINING is already written to apply only to the existence of categories, so it is good to go there. Maybe we could simply add a sentence that says "Whether or not an article belongs in a category does not require that the category's attribute define the topic of the article, instead the requirement is that reliable sources must clearly, uniformly, and unambiguously state that the topic of the article has the attribute." --Noleander (talk) 04:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm not too keen on that - does it makes things clearer? DexDor (talk) 11:04, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Sure, it addresses the Eagle Scout example. The way DEFINING is written now is a bit ambiguous: it suggests to some editors that a person/thing cannot be put into a category unless the category's attribute defines the person/thing. In fact, it is standard practice to put people/things in a (otherwise valid) category even if the attribute is fairly incidental. Example: senator A is an Eagle Scout, yet that fact has never played any significant role in A's life. Would you agree that that represents a potentially confusing aspect of DEFINING? --Noleander (talk) 15:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
We categorize articles not people. An article should only be in Category:Scouting if it tells you something significant about Scouting. An article about a senator that mentions he was a Scout (as were millions of others) doesn't tell you much about scouting. An article that explains why someone didn't join an organisation might actually tell you more about that organisation than an article saying someone was a member. However, the Eagle Scout category doesn't lead to a lot of overcategorization and (unlike some categories) is unlikely to be used instead of the correct category. DexDor (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree that it should be removed or modified. I recall a major discussion about a year ago about whether person X should be included in Category:Eagle Scouts. Person X was, by no means, "defined" by being an Eagle Scout. Indeed, that category contains scores of persons that are not defined by being a scout. That category is simply an index of every person (who has a WP article) that was an eagle scout. The existence of WP:DEFINING made it really hard to argue that person X should remain in the category. The problem is not just in WP:DEFINING: the primary WP:Categorization guideline also contains similar guidance: "A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession". Therefore, by all means, the requirement that the category be "defining" needs to be removed or modified. --Noleander (talk) 04:14, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that's what is meant. I think the point is, Category:Eagle Scouts should include only Eagle Scouts, not things related to Eagle Scouts. For example, you wouldn't include someone who had achieved only the rank of Life Scout, on the grounds that it's a related concept. You wouldn't include merit badge on the grounds that you need lots of merit badges to become an Eagle Scout. The wording is less than ideal, but the point is important. --Trovatore (talk) 20:01, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
In practice, the way we categorize articles about individual (unique) things is a bit different from the way we categorize articles about concepts; WP:DEFINING can't be significantly improved unless this is considered. Maybe something like the following would be help:

Articles about individual people and (unique) items (John Smith, BBC, RMS Titanic ...) should be categorized by the characteristic(s) that makes the person/item notable (e.g. a person may be notable as an actor) and by biographical characteristics (in particular the year of birth/establishment/construction). Articles about other subjects (e.g. concepts) should be categorized by what the subject is a subset of - for example the subject of warships is part of the subjects of naval warfare and ships.

Most WP articles are already categorized as per the above guidance. Many articles also have other categories (e.g. "alumni of" or Eagle Scouts); the above guidance could be extended to allow such categorization in limited cases where it would not cause lots of categories to be added to an article (see [10] for an example of what we don't want).DexDor (talk)
Categories do take policing. If adding a category to an article amounts to overcategorization, it can be removed from the article, or switched to a more appropriate cat. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
@DexDor: To clarify your proposal: you're saying wording could be added to DEFINING to say something like:

Generally, an article about a person/thing may be placed in a category only if the attribute of the category plays a role in what makes the person/thing notable (that is, the attribute is significant in the history/definition of the person/thing). However, a person/thing may be included in a category which is not directly related to its notability provided that (a) it does not cause the person/thing to belong to an excessive number of categories, and (b) reliable sources clearly, uniformly, and unambiguously state that person/thing has the attribute.

Is that an accurate restatement of your point immediately above about Eagle Scouts? --Noleander (talk) 16:05, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
No. An article can (in fact should) be categorized in every category for which it meets the inclusion criteria (subject to rules like not being in 2 cats one of which is a parent of the other). The category structure should be designed so that most articles don't have an excessive number of categories - for example we don't have "people alive in <year>" categories. WP:OC (which includes WP:DEFINING) is about deciding what categories we (don't) have. Your text says that decisions to avoid OC are made at the article level which is incorrect. DexDor (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Let's step back to the beginning: Do you agree that there has been confusion in the past in situations like Eagle Scout category, where editor A says "person X cannot be in the ES category because their membership in the scouts was not 'defining' ... they just happened to be in the Scouts"; and editor B says "Yes, X can be in the category because they were a Scout". I've seen that kinds of confusion lots of times. Do you think the guideline wording could be improved so editors A and B have clearer guidance for that kind of situation? --Noleander (talk) 17:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Note that WP:Categorization of people#General considerations clarifies the debate to some extent... It says that (with the exception of certain limited "standard biographical details") we should categorize people only by characteristics that make the person notable. This connects the categorization directly to the individual. It means that since some people are notable for being Eagle Scouts, and others are not, we are going to categorize some people as Eagle Scouts and not categorize others. To my mind, what needs to happen is this: If a person is notable for being a scout (and thus categorized as such), this fact should be clear in the article, and supported by sources. The sources need to do more than just mention in passing that the person was an Eagle Scout... the sources should discuss how being an Eagle Scout had an impact on the the person's life (or, I suppose, how the person had an impact on Eagle Scouting). Unfortunately, a lot of people are not aware that the COP guideline exists, and that it says this... so they add categories that are inappropriate... not connected to the person's notabliity. The only way to fix this is to do a better job of policing the category... going through the category, article by article, and determining if the categorization is appropriate or not. Blueboar (talk) 18:30, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I think even more than any problems we have with WP:DEFINING, the section you quote above in WP:Categorization of people#General considerations ("Categorize by those characteristics that make the person notable") is seriously contrary to practice as well as a bad idea (and when you said that "a lot of people are not aware that the COP guideline exists", that's really just another way of saying that "the COP guideline does not actually represent practice"). The example given there ("For example, a film actor who holds a law degree should be categorized as a film actor, but not as a lawyer unless his or her legal career was notable in its own right.") makes this clear.

We have never omitted people that qualify for a category just because that category is not why we personally think they have been the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable sources. Doing so would punch arbitrary holes in category content that readers will be unable to figure out the meaning of, seriously hindering navigation and creating more disagreements than it would solve.

More evidence that this section is completely confused is the fact that occupation is a "standard biographical detail," especially when we're talking about a licensed profession such as law; many people might also consider participation in scouting to be a "standard biographical detail", so the division that section is trying to establish doesn't even mean anything and just leads to arguments and subjective decisions. All at the expense of a categorization system that is supposed to be predictable and factual rather than subjective and selective. So no, we should not categorize only some people who were Eagle Scouts but not others, nor only some people who were lawyers but not others. postdlf (talk) 19:09, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Who's "we"... You might not have removed a category from an article due to the cat not being "what makes the person notable", but others (including me) have done so... frequently. I suppose a lot depends on which category we are talking about, and how controversial it is. Category:Eagle Scouts may not be the best example here... as it is not that controversial. I doubt many object to it being applied to an article, so it suffers from neglect. Other categories are much more likely to be removed when misapplied or over applied. Blueboar (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
If the category is "controversial" or "sensitive" (as the category guideline you cite to above calls it), that's a very different question, as it is when a category is "misapplied" (i.e., factually inapplicable). But yes, I would consider it contrary to consensus and a bad idea to prune mundane categories of articles that factually belong in them, and that's what this discussion here so far also seems to represent, and so far you haven't presented a good reason for doing so (nor responded to my several points as to why it is a bad idea). Especially considering that many categories would be considered "standard biographical details", and thus even omitted from the "only if it's why they're notable" standard from the guideline you are citing for it.

But it's difficult to discuss these things meaningfully in the abstract (part of why broad, abstract rules tend to be useless and counterproductive in many instances as a substitute for case-by-case judgment), and it's possible that I would even agree with you regarding many of your category removals even though I don't agree with the principle you are now offering in support. Re: the specific, concrete case before us, I think that if Category:Eagle Scouts exists, it should contain every person verified to have been an Eagle Scout. If for 99.9% of those it is completely trivial to the point that it's questionable whether it's even worth it to mention in their articles, then maybe that should instead lead us to question whether the category should exist at all, or ask if there is a better way to rename the category so as to target the .1% for whom it is significant without opening the door to everyone else. postdlf (talk) 20:05, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the sentiments Postdlf is expressing. I'm not interested in prescribing how editors should categorize; But I do want to describe the current practices in WP. When a new editor asks us "person X has attribute A, but it is not very important, can I put them in category A?", we should have a guideline that we can point them to that is consistent with what the WP community does now. Right now the guidelines are not consistent with long-standing community practices demonstrated in categories like Category:Eagle Scouts. --Noleander (talk) 02:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Given that WP contains many categories like Category:Eagle Scouts that the community has decided do not need to meet the Defining requirement (that is, anyone who is an Scout can be in the category, even if that did not make them notable) what guidance can we give to future editors to let them know when this is permissible? I don't think it is wise to just ignore this dilemma, or else the arguments & debates will repeat weekly, for years to come. Let me toss out a few options (I'm not endorsing any of these):

  1. The Defining requirement may be bypassed if the categorization is not controversial
  2. The Defining requirement may be bypassed only for biographical articles, and only if the categorization is not controversial
  3. The Defining requirement may be bypassed for membership categories (clubs, alumni, scouts, groups, etc)
  4. The Defining requirement may be bypassed if it does not cause the person/thing article to belong to an excessive number of categories
  5. The Defining requirement may be bypassed if it does not cause the category to contain an excessive number of articles
  6. ... others? ...

Can we agree that one or more of the above are exceptions to the Defining requirement that have been accepted by the WP community? Or, can someone propose what they think is a statement of when the WP community bypasses the Defining requirement. --Noleander (talk) 02:42, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know whether or how the current guidelines regarding defining categories should be changed, but I don't think the place of birth for Pauline Anna Milder-Hauptmann (Constantinople) or Willy Clément and Renato Capecchi (Cairo) is of any value for categorising these people. Does Erich Kästner's compulsory military service for 1 1/2 years when he was 18 make him a member of Category:German military personnel of World War I? Of course not. Any changes in the guidelines which would support such categorisations will only dilute the navigational advantages of categories. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:53, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
If a new editor asked you for guidance on how to tell the difference between categories where any person (with a WP article) can be included (Category:Eagle Scouts, Category:Louisiana State University alumni, etc) and categories where the membership must be "defining" (Category:German military personnel of World War I, Category:Anarchist writers, etc) .. what would you tell that editor? --Noleander (talk) 10:01, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Good question. The answer is to look at the text on the category (which ideally will say something like "This category is for ...") to see if that specifies the inclusion criteria. If not, go to the category's parent(s). For example Category:People by occupation says "This category classifies people by their notable occupations:...". So if an article about a politician says he was a (non-notable) paper-boy as a teenager then his article shouldn't be in Category:Newspaper people. DexDor (talk) 20:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Why wouldn't Erich Kästner be placed in Category:German military personnel of World War I? It is not "People primarily known as German military personnel of World War I." Kästner did, in fact, serve in the German military during WWI, which his article not only mentions but even discusses at length, to the extent of using it to explain his later pacifist views and even lifelong health problems. And military service should be a pretty obvious "standard biographical detail" that shouldn't require any further analysis other than "does this verifiably apply?" I think we have some major problems if editors feel themselves free to second guess the applicability of such straightforward categories, on the basis of nothing more than "I don't personally think it really matters to the subject..." It's as if people are trying to treat categories as more than simple indexing tools, as if the only people who would belong in a category are those who would be mentioned in the article that defines the category. postdlf (talk) 21:54, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
I would not call military service a "standard biographical detail"... it isn't something that happens to most people. That said, there are people who are notable for being in the military during a particular war... and it does sound like this is the case with Erich Kastner. On the other hand, I don't think that is the case with Alfred Alexander (That article does not even mention that Alexander was in the military, much less in it during WW I). The category could certainly have a clearer inclusion criteria. Blueboar (talk) 22:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
What could be more clear criteria for "German military personnel of World War I" than "personnel who served in the German military during World War I"? If an article does not even mention a category's fact, feel free to remove it (though the Alfred Alexander article actually does mention that he received the Iron Cross for his service during WWI, albeit with a cite needed tag, but if verifiable certainly significant). But if inclusion is verifiable, again I'm not seeing any solid reason for not including an article in that category. Categories aren't simply useful for finding people who are notable because of X, but instead for finding people about whom X is true. One might as well say the deaths by year categories should only include only people notable for dying in that year, as to exclude from a military service category anyone who is notable for other reasons than serving in the military. postdlf (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
If you look at a Category:Bartenders you find a mixture of articles about people who are notable as bartenders and articles where it barely gets mentioned (example). There are probably hundreds of other articles that mention the person did a bit of bartending (e.g. while at uni); that so few of those articles are in the cat shows that the "categorize only by notable occupation" rule is working pretty well. The rule is a bit blunt, but as editors we can apply some discretion in how strictly we enforce it. Articles about people contain lots of facts (raised on a farm, bullied at school ...), but we don't categorize by every fact. DexDor (talk) 23:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Vanity categories?

I think a sub-issue here is what I will call "vanity categories"... ie categories created by members of an organization - more for the purpose of promoting their org (by demonstrating how many famous people are members) and less to aid editors in finding related articles. WP:DEFINING is a useful tool for minimizing such categories. Blueboar (talk) 19:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, but how does that observation specifically impact WP categorization guidelines? Take the two examples above: Category:Eagle Scouts and Category:Louisiana State University alumni. Are you suggesting that (a) Those should be eliminated? (b) That they should be pruned to leave only persons that are notable because they are members of that group? or (c) those categories are okay as-is (with any WP-notable person included)? --Noleander (talk) 20:22, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Re (a) You could take the cats to CFD, but take a look at the DRV in 2007 and Wikipedia:Systemic bias#The "average Wikipedian". Re (b) Not if the articles satisfy the inclusion criteria of the category - you'd need to get that changed first. DexDor (talk) 20:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I would go with (b)... I suspect that there will be at least some people who are notable for their involvement in each group (those who founded the groups, for example... or those who were prominent leaders in the groups). I would say the cat is absolutely appropriate for these people. So... my call would be that the cats should be kept, but pruned back. Shift the criteria for inclusion from "mere membership" to "significant involvement". This shifts the cat from being a simple vanity category (ooh... look at all the prominent people who were members of this group!) to something more appropriate (ah... these people are important in relation to the group.) Blueboar (talk) 20:58, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Okay, so option (a) has been tried and failed (and common sense says those categories will never get deleted). Considering option (b): Given that this issue has come up many times before, and given that those example categories have always ended up using the "mere membership" rule, do you think there is any chance at all that the WP community would now approve pruning those categories to "significant involvement" (which would, I guess, remove 80% to 99% of the articles from the category)? --Noleander (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
It probably depends on the specific category in question. With Category:Eagle Scouts I would expect some push back from those who are emotionally tied to the vanity category (such as Eagle Scouts or former Eagle Scouts), but I think the community at large might accept a redefinition of the inclusion criteria once the concept and rational was explained to them. I am less sure about Category:Louisiana State University alumni (where a person went to school boarders on being "standard biographical information" along the lines of year of birth/death... so I would expect a much harder job of gaining a community consensus on that one). Blueboar (talk) 21:31, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

To look at it from another angle, someone may have played a violin in high school, and even still have it as a hobby (and this a verifiable confirmed thing). But if they are known as an actor, a politician, or a reporter, being a violinist doesn't matter one iota to the reason they are on WP. Some thing, it's probably unlikely that them having been an Eagle Scout is relevant, and for many people what college they went to isn't really either, though I would certainly never take the later out of an article anymore than I would birth/death dates. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It is useful to note that stuff like the Eagle Scout category is an accomplishment that is earned and not something given out to anybody. Note that only 2% of all scouts in the BSA earn that achievement and takes several years of hard work to get there. Then again, I don't see a problem with Category:United States Marines either, which is also an achievement to be called a U.S. Marine. Many categories of this nature really do define the very life of the people involved. That James Carville (to pick on some particular person here) was a Marine is something useful to note (mentioned and sourced in the WP article) and can be used for searching purposes as well. His role as a Marine, however, is not the reason why James Carville is notable. Should this category be removed from this article? I am suggesting it shouldn't and furthermore has value improving Wikipedia simply by having this category exist. Frankly, I think it is neat to see a list of notable Marines, Eagle Scouts, or alumni of some university and have Wikipedia automatically create those lists through the use of categories like this. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:21, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

There seem to be two schools of thought here: (1) the alumni/EagleScout-type categories include too many articles, and should be pruned to be consistent with the DEFINING guideline; vs (2) the alumni/EagleScout-type categories can include any person, and DEFINING should be augmented to mention this possibility (or already permits it). Personally I dont have a preference one way or another, but the fact is that we've presently got a dysfunctional situation where we have scores, perhaps hundreds of categories that are technically in violation of DEFINING (or, some might say DEFINING permits such categories but it is just worded in a very confusing manner). I wonder if an RFC should be initiated to formally try to pick on path or another? --Noleander (talk) 04:12, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I doubt an RFC would actually clarify things. I think you are correct in saying that there are two schools of thought here... and my guess is that the community will be as equally divided on the issue as those of us who have commented so far. I suspect an RFC will simply confirm that there is "No Consensus". Still, it might we worth it just to confirm my suspicion. Blueboar (talk) 15:16, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, my gut feeling is that the community is split .. but is it 50/50 or 80/20? Or maybe consensus could be achieved if the proposal said "Retain DEFINING for all categories except for the following exceptions: blah, blah"? I seem to recall that you (Blueboar) invested a lot of time in a policy-based RfC recently ... I'm more inclined to work on articles than waste spend my time on an RfC that may have strong passions on all sides :-) But, I may try it. --Noleander (talk) 16:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I think people are missing the true issue involved in the Eagle Scout category. The vast majority of people who are in Boy Scouts of America do not make the rank of eagle. Thus we do not have a category for everyone who was ever a boy scout, we have a more limited category for those who become eagle scouts. In a way by limiting it to people who made a certain rank we have limited it to those who have been proactively connected with and involved in the organization.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I have had enough people attack me for removing people from categories that there is no in-text mention of them fitting the definition that I think defining is hardly the issue. I also figured that if the connection is not notable enough to mention in the text of the article it can not be categorized.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
The Eagle Scout category was just an example, so its special characteristics ("only a few scouts become ESs") is not too important here. The primary issue in this discussion is: "Should the wording in DEFINING be changed to clarify when people/things can be put in a category when the person/thing just happens to have the attribute (that is, when the attribute does not contribute to the person/thing's notability)". Alumni categories are other categories that are subject to this issue. --Noleander (talk) 20:04, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I actually think we are going for too narrow a view on defining. What we should categorize is what defines a person. This is why we categorize by year of death and birth, and clearly why we categorize by place where they recived their education. The place they recived their education has a defining effect on them. Diet choices though are ephemeral, and we should not categorize by those. The category that makes sense to have but I have seen most overused are political party categories. These should be limited to office holders, candidates for office, party activists and maybe a few other people who have clearly identified with a political party. However from what I have seen lots of actors have been put in such categories, often with nothing in the article on the actor even hinting that the connection is true, let alone something that the person did anything about.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Draft RfC

Based on the points raised during the above discussion, I'm preparing an RfC to clarify the WP:DEFINING guideline. The draft RfC is here. Any suggestions on the draft would be appreciated, so it is in good shape when it is published. Please post any comments in the talk page of the draft RfC, not here, so everything is co-located. Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 16:37, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

An RfC on this topic has been created here. Please comment at the RfC if you are interested in WP:DEFINING. Cheers. --Noleander (talk) 00:57, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

User's manuals, spare part catalogues and brochures as sources

Hi! I am working on an article about a quite rare vehicle model from early 1960s. A large part of the information I have is in the user's manual, spare part catalogue and sales brochures - I have got scanned views from an enthusiast who has collected all the available information. But are these valid sources which can be used in Wikipedia? I assume there is no problem with the user's manual and spare parts catalogue as they can be regarded as normal books, but how about the brochures? They rarely contain any info about the printing date and place etc. --Gwafton (talk) 12:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You should probably ask this at WP:RSN (our Reliable Sources Noticeboard) rather than here at the Village Pump. One thing they will tell you is that reliability depends on context... in other words, we can not really answer your question without knowing the exact context in which you wish to use these sources. What statements are you trying to make?... what information are you trying to convey? etc. Blueboar (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your reply. The started article is here: User:Gwafton/Sisu K-44 (I will keep it as a user page until it is complete enough for Wikipedia). A large part of the technical data is from the manufacturer's brochures, manual and spare part catalogue. What comes to general technical data, as dimensions, weights etc., I can't imagine a more reliable source than the producer. I don't see any problem with the reliability but the question is are brochures appropriate for sources? It is difficult to give any specific info for identifying them. The only info I can type there is the title of the brochure, the publisher (=the producer) and maybe some estimate for the year of printing. The problem is that it is difficult to anyone to check a such source. --Gwafton (talk) 22:08, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
That will generally be considered an acceptable but self-published source. You can use that just like you would use a website from the manufacturer or an advertisement they ran that said the same thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Ok, thank you for your help. --Gwafton (talk) 10:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Having to rely on user's manuals, spare part catalogues and brochures suggests that the topic may not be sufficiently notable for Wikipedia. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:19, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Here are many articles about prototype vehicles for which spare part catalogues, brochures and user's manuals were never even printed. Based on that it would need strong arguments to justify why serial produced vehicle models would not be notable. --Gwafton (talk) 10:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
If notability has been established through other means, but catalogs and brochures are being used to fill in details that can't be found in other sources, I fail to see the problem here. I agree that the brochures and such are not sufficient by themselves to establish notability, but that isn't the question being asked. As mentioned above, such information is equivalent to getting details from a manufacturer's official website. While it certainly is biased information, it is considered a primary source and certainly can be used on Wikipedia... within constraints of other primary sources of information. --Robert Horning (talk) 14:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I managed to solve the source issue by kind help of a person who hosts a website dedicated for Sisu vehicles - he has put the brochures visible to anyone (just to tell in case someone is concerned: the copyright is expired). Regarding notability, I became curious - can someone give me an example of a vehicle model that is not notable in terms of Wikipedia guidelines? --Gwafton (talk) 22:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
As the originator of an article about a vehicle that never went into production (but was influential), I'd have been very happy to see a handbook or a brochure... I'd consider handbooks as better than brochures - brochures are designed to sell things, but handbooks are for when you've bought the damned thing. I am concerned about the copyright - how is it expired when the vehicle was in production only 50 years ago? Does Finland have a different expiry time to the most of the rest of us, or have these things been officially released into the public domain? Peridon (talk) 19:13, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
The copyright is more loose for older non-artistic material in Finland. If there is artistic creativity involved, the copyright remains 70 years after death of the author but technical descriptions (even drawings!) don't have copyright at all. Lists and tables have a copyright period of 15 years or maybe even just 10 years. I had a discussion about this in the Finnish Village Pump's Copyright Section and was surprised that technical drawings and descriptions are not protected. --Gwafton (talk) 23:59, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to revise WP:NSONG

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived: On going discussion at Wikipedia Notability, two contributors here discussing if a second discusion is appropriate. Answer = no. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:27, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I propose that the Wikipedia:Notability (music) guideline WP:NSONG be revised to read:

  • Note3: A cover of a song that rises to notability for an independent article should normally be treated in a standalone prose article having the cover song topic as the main topic of that article. A cover of a song that does not rise to notability for an independent article should redirect to another relevant prose article, such as for the songwriter, a prominent album or for the artist who prominently performed the cover song.

This is an issue that I have been dealing with in a variety of places for a few weeks (since this post) to understand how and why they encyclopedia is where is its regarding cover songs and what to propose to address it. What I propose is above and does not alter WP:NSONG other than to makes WP:NSONG clear on this long term issue. It neutrally treats cover song topics under the same standards as all other topics within Wikipedia to allow editors to make content decision regarding cover song topics. As for the how and why understanding, I previously posted on Jimbo Wales talk page to see whether anyone knew why Wikipedia had no standalone cover song articles. From a talk page merge discussion, reading posts, and other discussions, I've come to better understand how and a possible reason why. A reason may be money, which I will get to in bit. The how appears to be accomplished by keeping cover song merge discussions out of AfD and behind the scenes where regular editors are not likely to come across them. For at least the past several years, detailed prose in cover song articles have been merged, moved, or otherwise redirected the into Lists of cover songs of X essentially without using AfD. Of course, the big question is why try to limit these particular prose articles to list articles instead of other prose articles. Lists are merely an arrangement of items that, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists, cannot bring out the rich details that come with prose writing if MoS List is followed. Using lists for cover song prose information did not make any sense when viewed in light of how Wikipedia normally develops prose articles. An answer may be in follow the money. It turns out that artist can use existing songs they don't own or control without permission to create a cover song so long as the pay the original song owner a compulsory fee. The question of the extent to which a work is a cover song, an adaptation, or derivative copyright work, or new copyright work centers on the creativity added to that work and determination affects the cover song licensing fee (more new creativity from the cover song artist, smaller song license fee, less new creativity from the cover song artist, more song licensing fee). Next: Wikipedia's influence on external cover song compulsory licensing negotiations.

Original song owners are grouped and collectively represented by large organizations whereas cover song artists usually are by themselves. If Wikipedia had standalone cover song articles, those Wikipedia articles would bring out evidence of creativity of the cover song artist in away that primarily attributes that creative effort to the cover song artist, giving cover song artists written, detailed Wikipedia vetted and published evidence of their creativity that could be used to help lower the compulsory song use fee. If, like other topics, cover song topics were developed in a parent prose article on the cover song artist or album originating the cover song, that once again would bring out detailed Wikipedia vetted and published evidence of creativity of the cover song artist in away that primarily attributes that creative effort to the cover song artist, helping out the cover song artist and disfavoring the original song copyright holding company in the compulsory song use fee negotiations.

Working over the past several years to ensure that songs with multiple notable covers are normally covered by Wikipedia in list articles does two things for the external copyright license negotiations. First, unlike Wikipedia prose articles, Wikipedia list articles discourage detailed prose in favor of a line item format. For the copyright royalty license fee determination, that means Wikipedia will publish less evidence of the creativity of the cover song artists for the cover song artists to use during cover song licensing fee negotiations, which favors the original song owner company. Of course, that leaves the encyclopedia's existing cover song prose coverage in the poor quality that I previously mentioned in other post, but that would be a secondary concern to copyright holding organizations interested in obtaining and maximizing cover song licensing fees. Second, to the extent Wikipedia writers detail the creative elements of a cover song artists, having that information in the same list article makes it appear that Wikipedia attributes that creative effort primarily to the original song creators (I have seen posts claiming that cover songs are the same song as the original, with no detailed explanation on what is meant by "the same" other than the cover and original having the same copyright license holder and writers). This again favors the company having the licensing rights to original song in cover song licensing fee negotiations.

At of this request, there is a request at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music)#WP:SONGCOVER that has the effect of requiring cover song prose to originate in or merge be merge into Lists of cover song articles and normally be retained in that list. This will alter WP:NSONG current approach to determining when a standalone article is appropriate and use of artist prose article or album prose articles for merging and as a way to grow and WP:SPINOUT prose information on cover songs. OP and the other editors posting there and the other discussion I've been in have a genuine belief that normally limiting Wikipedia's detailed prose coverage of cover songs to List of cover songs instead of prose articles helps the project. Although they believe that it is helping the encyclopedia, I am of the opinion that it does not. Above all, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and we are here to publish representative surveys of the reliable source literature as a primary aim, not take sides on external money issue. Also, like all other topics, cover song topics normally should originate in a prose article, such as in the cover song artist article, album article for the cover song, or in a standalone prose article, not in a list article as that proposal effectively requests. The above opinion is based on my working in different areas of Wikipedia and feedback. My interest in this is to be part of publishing an encyclopedia. I'm posting here to reach editors with broad experience with Wikipedia. Wikipedia cannot stop secondary, external effects its articles have on money issues outside Wikipedia. We can only focus on Wikipedia's aim of producing a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia. This proposal works to remove the bias some have against cover songs being treated in a standalone article and provides a neutral standard against which editors can make decisions as to how to treat cover songs within Wikipedia. Moreover, this request does not prevent Lists of cover songs of X from being created. Rather, it clarifies their secondary role in supplements an article's prose content rather. I believe that this proposal favoring prose articles over list articles for cover songs will result in improving encyclopedia's cover song prose coverage. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 15:51, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

  • There cannot be two discussions on the same matter, and as the editor has already pointed out there is already a discussion on this very point at Notability (Music). I suggest this request is removed with an impartial notice placed here to guide people who wish to enter into the first and ongoing discussion. --Richhoncho (talk) 20:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I am not sure what the issue even is here. No one (to my knowledge) is forcing cover songs to be incorporated into lists if there are adequate sources to write prose about the cover; just that the prose would typically be in the same article as other versions of the song. I believe I agree with Richhoncho about 2 discussions, although I am not certain they are the same. If there is a suggestion here that cover songs must be merely included in lists, that is a problem, but I don't see that as an issue raised in the Notability (Music) discussion. Rlendog (talk) 20:24, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
  • The proposal at Notability music is to add "Songs with multiple notable covers are normally covered in a joint article" to WP:NSONG, whereas this counter proposal is "A cover of a song that rises to notability for an independent article should normally be treated in a standalone prose article." The two proposals are diametrically opposed. --Richhoncho (talk) 20:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Text about a first cover song, a second cover song, a third cover song, etc. in the same article is a list of cover songs in a list article. Some of the these list cover song articles have more than a list of 30 versions! See Heart and Soul (1938 song), for example. As for songs with multiple notable covers are normally covered in a joint article - joining text about a first cover song, a second cover song, a third cover song, ..., a thirtieth cover song etc. in the same article again is a list of cover songs in a list article. See WP:LIST. The above request is not about a list article. If an editor wants to join cover songs together in a list article that uses text to describe each list entry, this request does not prevent that effort as I noted above. Rather, the above request a cover of a song being treated in a standalone prose article having the cover song topic as the main topic of that article and, if needed, be merged into another relevant prose article, such as for the songwriter, a prominent album or for the artist who prominently performed the cover song. Treating a cover songs in a standalone prose article having the cover song topic as the main topic will allow full treatment of the topic that cannot be achieved when joined in a list of cover songs article. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 02:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • You know that's not what you mean. However, the basic premise is still the same, two discussions about the same Notability Guideline, WP:NSONG, at the same time is disruptive, unnecessary and pointy. --Richhoncho (talk) 07:24, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Policy on participants from American Idol, Pop Idol, DSDS, etc

  • Somewhere on Wikipedia, I'm assuming it's a Music WikiProject, have decided that just showing up on the Idol shows isn't enough for notability. My arguement is that even though it's a music competition, it's still a notable television show. Therefore, participants from the Top 10 or 12 or whatever the number is in the final stage should be considered notable. Kingjeff (talk) 19:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Considering the furore that erupts about how the 'artists' are selected (and assuming that the same happens at American Idol (I misread 'Idol' as 'Idiot' when passing on my way to somewhere else - probably a reflection on me...) and similar shows, I wouldn't regard it as being an automatic pass to notability. As I see it, it's an artificially constructed drama-ridden zone populated by so-called celebrities and wannabes. Some of the wannabes achieve notability - Jedward off X Factor (I think) for instance (mainly for that idiotic hair style). Some have their 15 minutes fame and disappear into small town pantomime, etc, (if there's a trace of talent) or just disappear. I would tend to class appearance on these shows with BLP1E - if there's something else as well, fair enough, and if not, leave sleeping wannabes to lie. Peridon (talk) 21:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
    • You're getting off track by importing your personal feelings about these TV series into the subject. The only thing that should matter is what coverage the contestants receive apart from the routine coverage of a show's results. Typically it's enough to cover contest show finalists within articles on the show's season as a whole, with stand-alone articles for those that have received extra media attention and/or have post-show accomplishments and coverage. I also wouldn't equivocate all contest shows together; they vary widely in prominence, ratings, and method of contestant selection. Also, please leave poor BLP1E out of it, as it is intended for those who do not seek fame but rather find themselves in the midst of the news. Perhaps more importantly, it refers to "one event", not "one thing of any kind". Future generations will have no idea what "event" means. postdlf (talk) 22:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting USING BLP1E here - just that this 'fame' is probably very temporary. If they gain coverage elsewhere that's worth something (not like The Sun's slavish front page 'coverage' of every little incident and spat), then they merit an article. Finishing in the top three, probably there'll be enough coverage for a short article (not a blow-by-blow account from primary school to date). Winning, yes, I concede that even reliable newspapers will have coverage. But how do you draw a line to say which of these shows confer notability and which don't? If you don't draw the line, you'll not be able to exclude Place 27 of the Eliza Tonks Memorial High School Idol, televised by WT-CRAP in Deadwood Flats, Porpoise Heights and Springville Fields. Peridon (talk) 22:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • The principle of of notablity is that notability "ain't about your fifteen minutes of fame". I would say there was nothing inherent in being a finalist in such a competition that meant anything more than that. One to take on a case-by-case basis, I think. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I know it should not be about "your fifteen minutes of fame." Which is why I would like to limit notability to the last rounds of the show and not include anybody eliminated in the auditions and recall stages. As for looking on a case-by-case basis, what exactly would we be looking for? Kingjeff (talk) 22:26, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Just a quick note. WP:MUSICBIO has 12 criteria that always need to be considered for contestants on major TV singing competition shows. Of course, there will always be some contestants each season on these shows that will eventually pass the notability test under at least a few of the 12 criteria. But #12 by itself would perhaps qualify all of the finalists, even if they are eliminated very quickly. It says: "Has been a featured subject of a substantial broadcast segment across a national radio or TV network." Good luck in your discussion. 76.189.111.199 (talk) 22:35, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • You guys are all completely missing the point of WP:N. Bolding this so it doesn't get lost: Notability is not about what a person does. It is about what is written about a person. That is it. We don't judge someone notable enough for Wikipedia based on their accomplishments. We judge their notability based on the amount of source text about their lives, regardless of what they have or have not done. --Jayron32 22:47, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Which is largely what I'm saying. Certain things do get a free ticket (or appear to) - railway stations seem to, and high schools (unless that's been changed again - I've given up trying to keep up with that). If there's enough reliable coverage, then notability is shown. I'm against giving a free ticket to talent show failures. Are you going to have articles about the people who go on Jeremy Kyle's show? Very widely watched programme. Programme gets plenty of coverage. But the people on it? No, unless they ARE covered in RS, in which case they are notable anyway. Peridon (talk) 23:00, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Jayron... as always, thanks for your great input. In this case, though, the OP asked a very specific question: Are all contestants on American Idol who make the finals (which is typically the top 11 to 13) automatically notable? I thought it was an interesting question because with every new season of this show, and similar shows, there are always new articles quickly created for various finalists, followed by article deletions and AfD debates. It's the same pattern every season on here when it comes to shows like American Idol. Haha. So how would #12 of WP:MUSICBIO apply to the notability of these contestants (assuming each of them is covered in numerous reliable sources, which is typically the case)? 76.189.111.199 (talk) 23:08, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Being in the Top 10, 11 or 12 may or may not make them notable. But I think anyone eliminated before the final stage should automatically be considered not notable. But it would be good to have some kind of guideline or policy that states what should be considered notable. Kingjeff (talk) 01:39, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Peridon, your Jeremy Kyle Show question is a good one. But I think this is much different because on shows like American Idol, the finalists are on week after week, sometimes multiple times a week, and each contestant is featured on their own. So each finalist is in the solo spotlight on a major TV network program week after week (until they're eliminated, of course). And of course my assumption is that all the finalists will receive coverage in many reliable sources. At least until they get dumped. :P 76.189.111.199 (talk) 23:16, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Jayron, you have indeed said what the guideline says, but the General notability guideline based on sources, is only one of the ways of showing notability, and WP:N has never said otherwise. To be sure, it's the usual way. WP:N also is very specific that the availability of sources is not determinative--even though we may have sources to meet the GNG, we may still decide from other considerations whether or not to write the article.Additionally, and in practice more important, the requirement is for substantial independent reliable sources, and in general all arguments are based upon the way to interpret each of those three words. Especially in the field of popular entertainment their meaning is not the least obvious.
And this affects only whether or not we should have the article. WP:N says nothing whatever about article contents. We do not include content in proportion to the sources; we include content in proportion to its /ed importance, provided the content can be justified by references from reliable sources according to WP:V. Remember, this is WP, where we make the guidelines ourself by consensus, and we can make them whatever the consensus wants to.
Normally we don't care very much about the subjects personal lives, tho articles about entertainers are a partial exception. Wjat we do care about is what they have done. Notability has to be about something--otherwise we run afoul of the policies at WP:NOT, such as NOT DIRECTORY, NOT NEWS, and so on. DGG ( talk ) 01:46, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Proposal for RfA conduct clarification

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#RfC: Proposal for RfA conduct clarification (amendments to editnotice and addition to Template:RfA). -- Trevj (talk) 06:11, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Deprecation of disproportionate usage of "initialism" on Wikipedia

Following recent decisions regarding removal of the word "initialism"

I would like to gauge consensus on the next logical (to me) step, i.e. deprecating wide use of the term "initialism" in Wikipedia articles.

Please note that I don't seek its complete removal. I acknowledge the existence of the term, and I consider its coverage in the current version of the Acronym article adequate.

Here is a summary of the rationale (see discussions linked above for details and supporting evidence)

  • There is no universally accepted definition of "initialism". While it's true that some reliable sources define it in contrast to "acronym" (describing the latter as being pronounced as words instead of single letters), some others define it as a synonym of "acronym".
  • Most reliable sources use "acronym" for both concepts. The term is therefore receiving WP:UNDUE attention on our site.
  • There exist plenty other cases that are neither pronounced as a word or pronounced as letters (e.g. JPEG), or cases whose pronunciation varies according to the speaker (e.g. IRA). There is no term describing these cases, which makes the alleged distinction between "acronym" and "initialism" even more confusing.
  • Per WP:JARGON, we should "not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader, when more common alternatives will do". Saying that AOL is "commonly pronounced as an initialism" is unnecessarily obscure to most readers. It sounds pretentious and elitist. Introducing LGBT and LGB as initialisms is superfluous and disruptive to the average reader.

If people agree that we should limit our use of "initialism" to specialised linguistic contexts (such as in the current version of the Acronym article) I volunteer to go around and convert the excessive occurrences. Thanks. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:06, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I have advertised this at Talk:Acronym and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Linguistics. Let me know if it would be appropriate to open an RFC. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:08, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I really don't see the problem. Constructions of the form "X and Y" where X and Y are synonyms or otherwise closely related notions are widespread for various reasons that ultimately boil down to instant recognisability. Sometimes, as in the case of "odds and end", "pots and pans", "nuts and bolts" they become idiomatic, almost like a single word. That's known as Siamese twins (linguistics). But one can also make them up on the spot, and this is a good one. "Acronym" is a well known technical term, but not everyone knows it and for those who don't, etymology won't help. "Initialism" is less well known and maybe more ambiguous, but in context you have a good chance of guessing what it means even if you have never seen it. "Acronym and/or initialism" roughly means "acronym in a wide sense" and inherits the advantages of both individual words. The use of such combinations is a matter of good style, especially when writing for a diverse audience. E.g. when the German dialects and local speech forms were unified to a single Standard German language, many such Siamese twins were formed because they significantly enhanced and improved the odds and chances that a farmer or peasant from somewhere all up in the South or a sailor or seaman from somewhere all down at the sea coast comprehended and understood at least minimally one of the two terms and alternative words. Hans Adler 14:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Note, this proposal is not about WP:AND or its applications. It's about the overuse of "initialism" in Wikipedia articles, instead of the much more common term "acronym". 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:53, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm coming at this from a background of having had some linguistics instruction, so it's hard for me to see the terms as equivalent. It seems to me that there is a useful distinction being made that goes beyond jargon. In the same way that we utilize IPA (which is specialized knowledge akin to jargon) to tell people how words are pronounced, it is within our purview to indicate to readers whether one of these is pronounced as it is spelled or as a series of letters. Thus, to me, this proposal seems to be arguing for making the indication of pronunciation that much harder for no reason except that we might accidentally teach someone a new word.
I understand that reliable sources differ on whether they view acronym and initialism as synonymous (and that is the only difference, it seems, in the definitions of initialism), but we can choose to mark that distinction and to maintain it across Wikipedia articles. It's not as though doing so would violate WP:NPOV any more than not doing so would.
At the same time, I'm fine with considering initialisms a subcategory of acronym so that the former term is used more frequently when the distinction is needed in the same way that tabby and cat are. I'm not sure if that categorization is represented in relevant literature. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 16:00, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. The discussions referenced above have already chosen *not* to mark such distinction in their respective contexts (notably, in the Acronym article), unless use of "initialism" is strictly required, for instance in order to explain the nomenclature of the concept. Hence my request to extend this decision to the whole site, following the same logic. Where there is a need to explain how an acronym is pronounced (and I would argue that in the case of LGBT no such need exists), indeed either IPA (an international standard in very wide use in reference works) or a short inline explanation (e.g. "pronounced as a string of letters", which is only 6 characters longer and is exactly the explanation readers eventually get to if they follow the initialism hyperlink) would be preferable. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 16:25, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually, the discussions at WT:TITLE and Talk:Acronym were explicitly about WP:AND, not about marking the distinction between acronyms and initialisms. One user even explicitly stated that their support of the move was only about the title, saying "We need not be so imprecise in the body of the article."
Like I said, I'm fine with using acronym as the more general term, which would probably be consistent with most of the initialism>acronym changes you'd like to make. But I'm not behind completely eliminating proper usage of initialism just because it's jargon or because it's possible to use it as a synonym for acronym. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 21:28, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Cool, thanks. Just to be clear, could you please give examples of what would be OK to change (and how) and what should stay as it is? (You can choose from this list.)
Also, are you suggesting that we take the view that initialisms are a subset of acronyms? This way out did not occur to me, but if so we should state it very clearly, and possibly find sources for it. If we are not fairly prescriptive on this, the same people who hold the view that acronyms and initialisms are disjoint sets, and that it's useful for WP articles to use them as such, are liable to change the occurrences back, for consistency. Also, if we take the subset view, the phrase "acronyms and initialisms" would lose any meaning, so it would be effectively banned from WP, which I'm definitely OK with. 219.78.114.21 (talk) 01:55, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry about the delay. I'm not sure about examples of when we should keep "initialism." Instances would probably be pretty rare. As to your second question, I am indeed suggesting that we may want to consider initialisms to be a subcategory of acronyms, though as I said above I'm not sure how representative that view is. Looking in google books for the phrase "initialism is an acronym" turns up five sources and "initialisms are acronyms" turns up three. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 19:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointers. As I predicted, some editors argue that initialisms are not acronyms, further arguing that the distinction has nothing to do with pronunciation(!) I think the bottom line is that for every reference one can find that <X> is an initialism, I can find 100 that say that it's an acronym. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 11:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said that "the distinction has nothing to do with pronunciation". I was clearly referring to a rather nonsensical edit summary0 XML is not an acronym. It is an initialism. Also, "initialism" is not a subset of "acronym". They are both distinct subsets of "abbreviation". "Acronym" is derived from the Old English nama, which comes from the Greek onyma and the Latin nomen, all of which mean "a single word used as a name" --Guy Macon (talk) 21:19, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Can you calm down please? I am not putting words in your mouth, I am quoting you. Your edit comment says "Pronunciation has nothing to do with it". Perhaps I misinterpreted what "it" is. Can you tell us what your definition of initialism is please? Many of us here are under the impression (perhaps based on the acronym article) that when the distinction is made, it hinges on whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word, or as a string of letters. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:37, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Imagine that you ran into an edit that changed "'big' and 'large' are synonyms" into "'big' and 'large' are homonyms" with the nonsensical edit summary "Pronunciation is obvious, no need for WP:JARGON"[11]
Now imagine that you reverted the edit[12] with the edit summary "Pronunciation has nothing to do with it. 'big' and 'large' are not homonyms"
Imagine that you later saw someone quoting the above in support of the claim "as I predicted, some editors argue that synonyms are not homonyms, further arguing that the distinction has nothing to do with pronunciation(!)",[13] later going on to say " I am not putting words in your mouth, I am quoting you."[14]
The above is an example of putting words in someone's mouth. It is paraphrasing, not quoting. It takes the argument "'big' and 'large' are not homonyms" combined with an observation that the "pronunciation is obvious" edit comment is completely irrelevant, transmogrifies it into an argument about what distinguishes synonyms and homonyms that was never made, and stuffs the argument in the mouth of someone who never made it. This is a classic straw man argument. Free clue: if what you write contains words not found in the original, you are not quoting. The next time you "quote" me, please cut and paste my actual words and put quotation marks around them. Don't interpret and call it a quote. --Guy Macon (talk)
OK, I am not interested in continuing this. I apologise if you felt like I was putting words in your mouth. 219.78.114.18 (talk) 01:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually, a plain reading of your edit summary does indeed suggest that you don't believe that the difference between initialisms and acronyms is one of pronunciation. Your outrage suggests that this is incorrect, but you haven't clarified what you actually meant. In addition, your synonym/homonym example is apples-oranges because no one would argue that the distinction between those has anything to do with pronunciation, while everyone else here has acknowledged that pronunciation is the very thing that the acronym/initialism contrast centers on. Importantly, your misplaced outrage at the anon's plain reading has prompted you to ignore the simple question designed to understand where you're coming from. I'll repeat it: how do you define initialism? — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:43, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
So, it seems, you do not agree that part of the definition of homonyms is that they share the same pronunciation. Aren't straw men fun? But of course we must always remember that straw men need something to build them out of, so if your opponent isn't providing enough material to misinterpret, try accusing him of ignore a simple question designed to understand where he is coming from.

Abbreviation: any shortened form of a word or phrase.
There are several types of abbreviations. They include:

Acronym (a type of abbreviation):
A word formed from the initial parts (letters OR syllables OR arbitrary parts) of a name.
Example: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

Initialism (a type of abbreviation):
A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter being pronounced separately.
Example: "PBS" (Public Broadcasting System).
The difference between an acronym and an initialism is that an acronym forms a new word, while an initialism does not. So "NATO" is an acronym. But "UK" is an initialism. Unless, of course there exist a significant number of people who say UK as a single syllable that rhymes with "duck", or NATO as a four syllable phrase.

Contraction (a type of abbreviation):
Removing part of a word, often replacing it with an apostrophe (I'm / I am) and sometimes other changes (won't / will not).

Truncation (always a type of clipping, sometimes a type of abbreviation):
An abbreviation of a word consisting only of the first part of the word. Example: Mic. (pronounced like "Mike") for Microphone.
--Guy Macon (talk) 11:26, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 14:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't believe that any uses of the word initialism should be removed in favor of the technically incorrect, or at least less precise (depending on which dictionary you consult) word acronym. We aren't introducing these words for the purpose of showing off our vocabulary or teaching the words; we're trying to write with suitable precision and on the assumption that our readers have a decent education, even to the extent of including the occasional word with four or more syllables.
This is no more "jargon" than our decision to have an article about Motor vehicle collisions rather than "car wrecks" (as if trucks were never involved in collisions). I wouldn't insist that you use the longer word yourself, but I do not believe that we should be reverting other people's accurate choice of terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
As per the above, it is not technically incorrect to say that initialisms are acronyms, based on both the definitions available in reliable sources, and on usage in reliable sources.
Motor vehicle collisions strikes me as another violation of WP:COMMONNAME. Luckily, that redirects to the less pompous traffic collision. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 11:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
As for your "less precise" remark, I find that there is nothing less precise and more confusing than using a term that has no universally accepted definition, the ones available being incompatible with each other. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 12:16, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

There is a very simple distinction that editors can follow: if the string of letters is pronounced as a word, call it an acronym (e.g. NASA). If it is pronounced a separate letters, call it an initialism (e.g. EU, USA). The acronym article has an explanation of this. As it says, some people call the latter type "acronyms" as well. But there is nothing wrong with calling them initialisms, and if we do then everyone can agree that the usage is correct. Many people learn this distinction in school, so it is not some sort of advanced jargon. Personally, I don't think there is any reason to try to discourage the use of the term "initialism". — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:07, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, there are cases that are neither pronounced as a word or pronounced as letters (e.g. JPEG), or cases whose pronunciation varies according to the speaker (e.g. IRA). Therefore, the distinction you are proposing is not as simple as you portray, and it's what led to the invention of such monsters as "pseudo-blends" in the List of acronyms.
I also doubt that so many people learn that distinction in school, again based on the number of sources defining "initialism" in other ways, and based on the number of reliable sources referring to what you propose to call "initialisms" as "acronyms". 219.73.120.206 (talk) 13:51, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
If you read the list of acronyms lede, they would call JPEG an initialism and UNIFEM a "pseudo-blend". They use the latter term for things like "MAOI" where the "A" is not an intial. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
JPEG is also an initialism, which is the catch-all term for abbreviations made from initials. It is true that some sources call initialisms "acronyms", but that does not mean there is something wrong with calling them "initialisms". Even if some sources call "EU" for "European Union" an "acronym", if we call it an "initialism" nobody will mind. People who think that "acronym" and "initialism" are synonymous will be satisfied, and so will people who think they are different. Only people who have a pet peeve for the word "initialism" will worry about it, and I don't give much weight to linguistic pet peeves. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:02, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't find the there's-no-common-definition argument convincing. It is a misleading characterization that implies there are a multitude of meanings possible when one says initialism. In reality, the only dispute is whether it has a separate meaning from acronym; when it does, the meaning is unambiguous. When you think about it, this means that it is actually acronym with the inherent ambiguity.
Considering initialisms to be a type of acronym will actually keep us from needing to do a purge the other way (replacing acronym with initialism) and will also help with circumstances where an abbreviation can be either or where it's not clear. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 14:16, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Agreed. One thing though. You say that the meaning of initialism is well-defined and it is only its relationship with acronym that is ambiguous. However, so far I have heard various (stand-alone) definitions that are incompatible, such as the one that Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language gives (anything made from initials, which would therefore include "laser" and "sonar"), and the one at List of acronyms (anything made from initials pronounced as letters, with the additional "wholly or partly" unsourced cop-out). 219.73.120.206 (talk) 14:56, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, it seems like CEEL (as well as the Google books that show up when one searches for "acronyms are initialisms" or "acronym is an initialism") sees acronyms as a subtype of initialism. That kind of puts a wrench in things, doesn't it? — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 16:59, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
I told you it's a mess :-) 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:58, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
"JPEG is also an initialism, which is the catch-all term for abbreviations made from initials." According to which source, sorry if I missed it? 219.73.120.206 (talk) 14:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Found it, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, per acronym, thanks. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 14:49, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
It is true that some sources call initialisms "acronyms", but that does not mean there is something wrong with calling them "initialisms". - It's not just "some" sources, it's "most". Big difference there, which supports invoking WP:JARGON. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 15:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
I just looked up "acronym" and "initialism" in the OED. Under "initialism" it indicates that the word is "contrasted with acronym". Under "acronym" it has two definitions:
1. A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately; an initialism
2. A word formed from the initial letters of other words or (occas.) from the initial parts of syllables taken from other words, the whole being pronounced as a single word (such as NATO, RADA).
Then I looked at the American Heritage Dictionary, which has "usage notes". Here is their note about "acronym":
"In strict usage, the term acronym refers to a word made from the initial letters or parts of other words, such as sonar from so(und) na(vigation and) r(anging). The distinguishing feature of an acronym is that it is pronounced as if it were a single word, in the manner of NATO and NASA. Acronyms are often distinguished from initialisms like FBI and NIH, whose individual letters are pronounced as separate syllables. While observing this distinction has some virtue in precision, it may be lost on many people, for whom the term acronym refers to both kinds of abbreviations."
So I think it is perfectly consistent with reliable sources for us to use the word "initialism". — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:20, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
We need to distinguish between reliably sourced definitions and reliably sourced usage. According to definitions available, it is equally perfectly consistent for us to use acronym instead of initialism, with the difference that most people will not have to look up its definition, because it reflects common usage. "A number of commentators (as Copperud 1970, Janis 1984, Howard 1984) believe that acronyms can be differentiated from other abbreviations in being pronounceable as words. Dictionaries, however, do not make this distinction because writers in general do not". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:43, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
The sources I cited are the Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary - both dictionaries that do make the distinction you are claiming dictionaires do not make. It is true that some people do not make the distinction, but since they don't, they would also accept "initialism" as correct. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:57, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I see it more like, some dictionaries make the distinction, but most writers don't, and therefore quite likely most readers are aware of the meaning of acronym, but not initialism, let alone the difference between the two, which is apparently very much a matter of opinion. Therefore, using initialism is unnecessarily obscure and confusing to readers, while avoiding it is not such a big deal, really. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 01:11, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
By the way, this is to say nothing of the number of dictionaries that do not even mention initialism, but they do explain what an acronym is. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 05:23, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Strong Procedural Objection
Re: "Let me know if it would be appropriate to open an RFC", I have a concern about the claimed "recent decisions" above. The three "decisions" listed were:

  1. Removing "Acronym and Initialism" as an example[15] with "Laurel and Hardy" and "Supply and demand" suggested as replacements. The RfC was shut down and the "decision" made by one editor, presumably because an RfC is not needed to change an example to an equivalent example. No "decision" concerning whether to use the term acronym in place of initialism was made here. The only "decision" was which example to use.
  2. A proposed move of "Acronym and initialism" to "Acronym".[16] The result was two supports and one oppose, with one of the supports specifically saying that the usage is imprecise and thus OK in a title but not in the body of the article. This should have either been closed with no consensus or relisted to get more input. In particular the closing summary ("The result of the move request was: Move per WP:COMMONNAME") does not reflect any consensus found in the RfC. It was the closing admin making the decision rather than reporting what the consensus was.
  3. A proposed move of List of acronyms and initialisms to List of acronyms.[17] This one got three supports and one oppose, which I consider to be a (weak) consensus. Then again, I would have voted support simply because the titles of "list of" articles should match the title of what they are listing. In other words, if you want to change the title of "Elephant" to "Woozle", I would oppose that change, but if the change was made I would support changing "List of Elephants" to "List of Woozles" to match.

Given the fact that two of the above three examples are being falsely characterized as "decisions" and the fact that the title of this section ("Deprecation of disproportionate usage of 'initialism' on Wikipedia") is not neutral and purely descriptive, I don't have a lot of confidence that another RfC will be fairly evaluated.

WP:COMMONNAME specifically says that "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." To take the most famous example,[18] Wikipedia rather famously uses "Portmanteau" and "List of portmanteaus" instead of "Blend" and "List of Blends" Nobody denies that Portmanteau is rarely used outside of Wikipedia, but we use it anyway. The reason? All alternatives are inaccurate. Likewise, "Acronym" is an inaccurate replacement for "Initialism". --Guy Macon (talk) 19:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought on Wikipedia we didn't count votes, but arguments based on policy and reliable sources (as opposed to emotional attachment and anecdotes). The discussions above were properly advertised, with no canvassing and with powerful arguments made against initialism. I don't think I deserve to be called a liar when I say that decisions have been made. Sorry if you didn't like the outcome. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:23, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
As I stated, I liked the outcome in two out the three. Nonetheless, you did mischaracterize what it was that was decided. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:28, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Actually lots of people use Portmanteau, so I see no reason to claim it is somehow wikipedia specific. On this issue, JPEG is clearly not an initialism, becase you pronounce PEG as "peg" not as the letters. My general understanding though is that "acronym" is widely seen as any word made up from a set of first letters, regardless of whether it is pronounced. That may not be how some linguistic purists use the term, but it is how most people use the term, and so it would follow common name. I think "initialism" is linguistic jargon imposed on us, and should be discoraged from use in most cases, and so generally think this is a good proposal.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:01, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
    • You have it backwards. JPEG is an initialism because it is made of the initials of the Joint Photographic Experts Group. An acronym is an initialism pronounced as a word; an initialism need not be pronounced in any particular way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:06, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
      • Doesn't this JPEG debate (and the fact that the JPEG article says "acronym") illustrate my point that the use of initialism is inherently ambiguous and confusing to editors, let alone to readers? 220.246.156.35 (talk) 15:39, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
        • Not really. Edits like [19] are good, because they clarify the text. But changing "the initialism IBM" to "the acronym IBM" is not an improvement to the article, since it doesn't clarify anything. If there is real confusion, the solution is to use "abbreviation" instead of "initialism" or "acronym". — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:25, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

It's clear from this discussion that the IP editor is hopping between IP addresses. He or she is using some of them for discussion here and others to make the change that is still being discussed here, e.g. [20] [21] which were made from different IP addresses. . — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm gauging how the changes are received, and I'm happy to report most occurrences are not being reverted - and I'm editing as an IP, therefore presumably subject to stricter control. It seems that you are implying that I am operating by stealth, but I'm not and I thought I was pretty open about this, reporting some partial results above. Are you saying that I should stop this and wait for some resolution of this discussion? 220.246.156.35 (talk) 15:39, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I personally don't feel that your test-case implementation is being done in bad faith, and it does seem to have helped get at least one more participant in the discussion. However, some people might feel like it's too close to deliberate disruptiveness. Perhaps a compromise would be to link to this ongoing discussion in the edit summary, something like "changing initialism to acronym per WP:JARGON; feel free to revert and/or discuss at ongoing attempt at consensus-building." — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 16:00, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I thought about it, but then wouldn't that effectively attract only people who strongly oppose the proposal, which seems to already have happened by the way? In other words, it would be some perverse form of WP:CANVASSing. I'd rather stop doing that for now, if that's what people prefer. (Incidentally, I started doing it before this section was even created.) 220.246.156.35 (talk) 16:22, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I tried to word it in a way to be neutral to that, but that sort of bias is probably unavoidable no matter what you do. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
You're not editing as "an IP" - you're editing as at least a dozen IPs. That makes it much more difficult for people to see how many edits are being made, because the contributions are split among numerous IP "accounts". — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:09, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
The IP hopping combined with the comment "I'm gauging how the changes are received, and I'm happy to report most occurrences are not being reverted." brings up the question of whether the IP hopping is being done with the express purpose of making it difficult for anyone to find and revert the places where "initialism" has been replaced with "acronym". --Guy Macon (talk) 23:44, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Sure. 219.78.114.18 (talk) 00:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Restricted proposal: "pronounced as initialism"

Let's try to break this down a little.

Would people agree that replacing "pronounced as initialism" with "pronounced as a string of letters" is a good change? 219.78.114.18 (talk) 00:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I would support that edit - "NASA" is also an initialism, but not pronounced as a sequence of letters, so whoever wrote the text originally was confused. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, are you talking about one edit in particular? I am talking about a whole class of edits. 219.78.114.18 (talk) 02:17, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Ah, no ignore me. I understand what you mean. 219.73.123.246 (talk) 12:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
No, because "initialism" is a perfectly fine word that does not need to be replaced. We don't replace "aircraft" with "machine that flies" or "noun" with "word that denotes a person, place, thing, or idea" There is no valid reason to replace a perfectly valid word. I was going to suggest that the suggested replacement might be OK on the simple English Wikipedia, but that Wikipedia uses "initialism" as well.[22] --Guy Macon (talk) 08:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
"Initialism" is a "perfectly fine word" in a world where
  1. Its definition is on every respectable English dictionary
  2. The various definitions are consistent and compatible
  3. Most reliable sources use it consistently
  4. There does not exist another word that is overwhelmingly frequently used in its stead, in reliable sources
  5. Discussions among experts (let alone average readers) on its definition, its usage and its relationship with the aforementioned commonly-used alternative word does not continuously generate confusion, like in this section
Now, I must ask again. To which definition of "initialism" do you subscribe to? Me, I agree with those linguists who "do not recognize a sharp distinction between acronyms and initialisms, but use the former term for both" [23][24][25][26]. Carl has a different opinion. He believes that initialism "is the catch-all term for abbreviations made from initials". He has the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language to back that up, and possibly other sources. Perhaps you trust the Oxford Dictionary online, which defines initialism as "an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately (e.g. BBC)"? 219.73.123.246 (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I would not support such a change. Avoiding initialism because acronym would work fine is one thing (assuming, of course, that initialisms are a type of acronym, which is not agreed upon by everyone), but deliberately avoiding initialism because it might be a new word for readers is something I'm against. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:16, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Not only because it might be a new word for readers, but because it's very likely to be a new word for readers and WP:JARGON applies, plus in this case you are liable to confuse readers who do know the word, but do not attach to it the same meaning as the person who wrote the original phrase. (Yeah, in this case the substitution with acronym would not work.) 219.73.123.246 (talk) 15:57, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Does WP:JARGON apply? Let's break it down:
  • Minimize jargon, or at least explain it. Minimize is not the same thing as completely eliminate.
  • Avoid excessive wikilinking (linking within Wikipedia) as a substitute for parenthetic explanations... In this case, it would require only one additional wikilink. That's not particularly excessive.
  • Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader, when more common alternatives will do. Usage of initialism in these cases is not to teach them to the reader (that's just a happy byproduct). In the case of initialism, there is no common alternative. The phrase "pronounced as a string of letters" could be considered a concise explanation, but that doesn't make it the preferred form.
Jargon is a necessary byproduct of encyclopedic writing so WP:JARGON does not apply to every case of it. WP:JARGON is designed to, in the interest of readability, avoid overuse of it. If you can admit, as you have above, that initialism would be appropriate were its definition more secure, then the issue isn't actually readability and WP:JARGON doesn't apply like you'd like it to. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 16:41, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
"Minimize" means avoid it if possible. Here it's possible. Also note that I have said from the start that I acknowledge the existence of the word "initialism" and I am not seeking to eliminate its usage completely, only to limit it... or minimize it.
"Excessive wikilinking" - your reasoning would apply to every single instance of wikilinking. I think you misunderstood what was meant; "excessive" there does not mean "in great numbers", but something like "extreme".
"Common alternative" - this does not apply to this example, but to the cases where one could use acronym instead of initialism, like most reliable sources do.
"initialism would be appropriate were its definition more secure" - Sorry, where did I say that? I see that as a necessary condition, but not sufficient. Most reliable sources not using "acronym" instead would also need to apply before I considered "initialism" as appropriate (in most cases). 219.73.123.246 (talk) 17:12, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
"...use acronym instead of initialism, like most reliable sources do." [citation needed] --Guy Macon (talk) 17:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I got from your "'Initialism' is a 'perfectly fine word' in a world where" list that you were saying it was about sourced meaning, not about readability. In addition, throughout this discussion you seem to have assumed that a variable definition of a specialist term would harm readability, but I'm not so sure that's the case. Is this what you believe?
It seems from your proposals that you would like to completely eliminate the use of (which differs from reference to) initialism in Wikipedia articles. When you said you don't want to completely remove it, you cite the acronym article, where the term is mentioned. So it seems that your minimization would quarantine it out of normal usage; that's basically the same as eliminating it. If there are examples where the term initialism would still be used under your proposed deprecation, what are they?
I think that, each time you say that WP:JARGON applies, you are assuming what you should be proving. The decision we are working towards is to determine whether WP:JARGON applies. It's up for debate whether wikilinking the first instance of initialism in any article that uses it is "extreme" (I don't think it's extreme), as well as whether acronym is a sufficient alternative to initialism (others here think it is not). — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 18:12, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
See next section (but also above, really) for sources about WP:JARGON.
As for where to use it, I would not oppose using it where it was proven that reliable sources prefer it over "acronym", or where the term itself is discussed, but necessarily clarifying what is meant, like I did here. 220.246.135.131 (talk) 23:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
So you're saying that, on a case-by-case basis, a particular abbreviation could be called an acronym or an initialism depending on what reliable sources say about that particular abbreviation? That approach is akin to the policy regarding original synthesis, though it is carried to an absurdity IMHO. The unspoken caveat to WP:SYNTH is that the synthesized conclusion should be one that requires sourcing. When a commonsense conclusion (XML is an initialism) is drawn from two sourced statements (an initialism is pronounced as a string of letters and XML is pronounced as a string of letters), WP:SYNTH doesn't really apply. Moreover, it seems that, because there isn't a unified agreement on the distinction of initialism from acronymm, that we must make a decision that goes across Wikipedia for the sake of internal consistency, regardless what sources say about a particular abbreviation. In a sense, it's a sort of stylistic issue; we need to make a choice so our readers' experience is more predictable.
The Feb 13 edit you point to is a good one, btw, though as I hope is clear now I don't think sourcing explicitly using the term initialism should be prerequisite to such an edit (which I think is what you are arguing). — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 03:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for keeping listening. Let me try and clarify a few things, apologies for the confusion.
Case-by-case: I agree it sucks and it's riduculous. I would definitely prefer a nice, short, simple, unequivocal guideline that everybody agrees on and it's easy to apply. That's what I am still hoping to achieve with this proposal. However, as a compromise with people who somehow still seem to be under the impression that initialism is robustly supported by a wide usage in reliable sources, I can offer to not object to describing a word as an initialism if the number of reliable sources that support that is comparable to the number of reliable sources that support alternative descriptions (tipically acronym). Since I am confident that such occurrences will be very rare, I can settle for that. The way I see it, we would be basically trading some stylistic consistency for some WP:FLAT.
Note however that this would only take care of stuff like articles saying (tipically in the lede), "XYZ is an initialism that blah blah" vs "XYZ is an acronym that blah blah", and I don't think it should cover generic occurrences like in my Feb 13 edit, simply because it is likely to be part of a delicate linguistic/stylistic explanation that would be totally messed up by the ambiguity and readability issues I keep highlighting. We need to find other arrangements for those. Hopefully we can start from that Feb 13 example to build a consensus on this second class of edits. Maybe I should come up with a list of other concrete case studies, along with some categorization, so it's easier to reason about them.
Readability/accessibility for readers is an absolutely central concern of mine in this proposal, closely linked to the goal not making Wikipedia unnecessarily read like Nerdopedia. That's why I keep bringing up WP:JARGON. The reason why you cannot see this in the "perfectly fine word" list is that I think it follows directly from #4, which is a good proxy for it, except better mearurable. 219.73.104.198 (talk) 15:18, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I have to ask... why do we need a guideline about this? Wikipedia has too many "rules" as it is. Surely the issue of whether to call "XYZ" an acronym or an initialism (or some other term) is best settled through discussion and consensus at the individual article level. Blueboar (talk) 16:21, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, but I thought it efficient instead of having the same conversation hundreds of times, we'd have a centralised one and simply point to the consensus in the edit comments. 219.73.104.198 (talk) 16:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Agree but disagree. Agree that initialism is a wacky little wiki word that does not have the super precise meaning that some wish to ascribe to it, but I also disagree that something "pronounced as a string of letters" is pronouced the same as something pronounced as a sequence of letters. When you string letters together, you get words. 68.174.97.122 (talk) 02:57, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Good point about string vs. sequence. The reason we want a central place to point people to is the same reason we need WP:ENGVAR. Editors that correct UK/US spelling and people who want to replace "Initialism" with "Acronym" tend to do so on a lot of articles at once. Addressing this on one article talk page is playing Whac-A-Mole. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:14, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

First use of "initialism"

From the Oxford English Dictionary under the entry for "Initialize": 1899 R. Thoma in N. & Q. 9th Ser. III 103/1 "In my 'Handbook' I gave an initialism of Mr. Watt's, 'P.P.C.R.'" --Guy Macon (talk) 08:36, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, what is your point? This fact was already part of the acronym article, so I already knew that. Actually, it states, "The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common." 219.73.123.246 (talk) 09:17, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
The fact that is has been in usage for 114 years and in general usage for 48 years sheds doubt on your "it's very likely to be a new word for readers" claim. Do you have a reference establishing that, or is your evidence anecdotal and based upon your own experience? I was certainly taught the difference at a young age.
Initialism has the advantage over Acronym that the meanig can easily be figured out by anyone familiar with "initials" and "-ism", which is pretty much everybody. If the argument is that the precise definition is not well known, this is true of many common English words. Most people cannot tell you the difference between a Berth, Dock, Groyne, Jetty, Landing, Mole, Mooring, Pier, Quay, Slip, and Wharf -- and indeed most people don't even see the problem with the song "Sittin' on The Dock of the Bay" -- but that does not mean we should avoid using the correct terms. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Our acronym article already contains a reference for "the term acronym is widely used to refer to any abbreviation formed from initial letters", and I have already linked it above.
If that is not enough, we can easily compare the results from Google books for each disputed term. Let's try for JPEG. "JPEG is an acronym" gives me 239 results. "JPEG is an initialism", 1 result. You want XML? "XML is an acronym", 102 results. "XML is an initialism", 1 result.
Like it or not, these sources are saying that the earth is WP:FLAT, and so we must report it. 220.246.135.131 (talk) 23:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Long story short

You're not going to get a consensus, let alone a policy decision, which deprecates the correct use of the word "initialism" simply because people have taken to using "acronym" as a catch-all (or simply because they may not have heard of it outside of Wikipedia, c.f. our OTT use of "portmanteau") any more than you're going to get consensus that we should leave greengrocers' apostrophes around simply because the majority of the world's native English speakers are apparently unable to get a basic rule of grammar right. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:10, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

... And before anyone goes stating that we already have some sort of "initialism is deprecated" consensus, the move requests that are being used as evidence here are some of the weakest closes I've seen in a long time. I'd be extremely concerned if they were being used to justify any wider moves, such as mass article edits. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree that we will not get a consensus to depreciate the use of the word "initialism"... but neither are we going to get a consensus (let alone a policy decision) to promote the use of the word "initialism". The fact is, the issue of what terms we should use to describe an article's subject can only be determined on an article by article basis... by looking at how our sources describe the specific subject of the article. If the sources use the term "acronym", so should we... if the sources use the term "initialism", so should we... and if the sources are mixed in their usage, then we should reflect that mix by using both terms. Blueboar (talk) 13:54, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
"any more than you're going to get consensus that we should leave greengrocers' apostrophes around simply because the majority of the world's native English speakers are apparently unable to get a basic rule of grammar right" - Yet another man of straw, and uncalled-for sarcasm. The initialism question is a completely different story, because there is not one "correct" thing to do. Portmanteau is also different, and even if it weren't, two wrongs don't make a right. You have contributed yet another non-argument disagreement without answering the open questions or offering an alternative way forward to a problem that you may not be interested in, but a problem nontheless. Not sure why you even bothered. 219.73.105.49 (talk) 15:47, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Thumperward's comments were not a straw-man argument, nor were they sarcastic, nor were they irrelevant, nor were they non-answers or non-arguments. They were perfectly valid reasons why we should not do what you want us to do. Ad hominems are a poor substitute for reasoned discourse. More light and less heat, please. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
The idea of using sources to determine whether to use initialism or acronym strikes me as a poor solution. As I believe I said above, it seems like this is a stylistic issue (much like our use of IPA for pronunciation) that doesn't really depend on stringent sourcing and, as an encyclopedia, we want to provide consistency to our readers; if we use the same word to mean different things depending on article or subject, we fail in that regard. Thumperward is right that the anon's proposal is not going to get a consensus, but this doesn't mean that we can't have a consensus about the issue.
Am I correct in surmising that most other people here agree that a distinction between initialism and acronym is appropriate in general Wikipedia articles? — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 03:16, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
What would be the value of a consensus based on emotional attachment as opposed to the policy points raised above?
What would be the significance of a consensus to use a term, if reached by people who cannot even agree on its meaning?
What is the credibility of people claiming that XML is an initialism, asking rudely for evidence to the contrary, and crawling under a rock when such evidence is brought out (quoting reliable sources, not greengrocers' signs)? 218.188.93.139 (talk) 06:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
So now people who believe that the two terms are distinct are emotionally attached? I suppose that means that all of the counterpoints brought up are really just rationalizations to keep us from crying over a pint of rocky road. You've been more-or-less polite through all this, don't slip up now. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 14:42, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, I can't find any actual disagreement among this conversation's participants as to the meaning of initialism, other than the anon, of course. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 14:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Re: "as opposed to the policy points raised above", Wikipedia policy does not say what you think it does. WP:COMMONNAME specifically says that "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." --Guy Macon (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
COMMONNAME does not really apply to article space, so I don't understand why it's relevant to this proposal. That said, ambiguous most positively does apply to "initialism", and I don't see how anything can be ambiguous and accurate. 219.79.73.25 (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Can someone please summarize the counterpoints?
One cannot expect civility to go one-way indefinitely.
There's been lots of disagreement and confusion throughout, I'm surprised you missed it. The most obvious one was between Carl and Guy over the "Restricted proposal". Guy thinks that acronyms and initialisms are disjoint sets, and so sees no problem with the expression, "pronounced as initialism". Carl on the other hand thinks that all acronyms are initialisms, and therefore the same expression makes no sense to him. 219.79.74.116 (talk) 15:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Re: "Guy thinks that acronyms and initialisms are disjoint sets", That is my opinion, but there is also a good argument for acronym being a subset of initialism and both being a subset of abbreviation. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
My point exactly. 219.79.73.25 (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Also before your "other than the anon" goes on record to mean that I'm the only person disliking the disproportionate usage of "initialism" on WP, I'd like to point out that so do John Pack Lambert (above) as well as other editors who commented on the move proposals linked at the top of this section. 219.79.74.116 (talk) 16:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
See WP:BAIT.
Nobody, not even JPL nor anyone in the other discussions, denies that the terms are distinct. That is not the same thing as accepting your proposal, though it seems that you have missed that distinction from my previous post. The distinction between Carl and Guy is pretty minimal and there's enough in common to work toward a consensus (you don't determine consensus by where people start out from). Given Carl's citation of the AHD and OED that would contradict his position as you've summarized it, I suspect he doesn't actually believe what you think he believes or that he's as confident/firm as I was regarding initialisms being a subset of acronyms. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 17:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, have I ever said that the two terms are identical? Of course they are not, they are spelled differently, they have different histories, and some of the dictionaries (that do mention initialism) provide a different definition(s).
The proposal is about limiting the use of a word that does more harm than good.
JPL "generally think[s] this is a good proposal". To me, that sounds supportive of "I'm the only person disliking the disproportionate usage of "initialism" on WP", if not that he supports the proposal. Would you disagree?
Same goes for Nohat's "nothing would delight me more than to downplay the significance of the rarely-used (outside of Wikipedia) term 'initialism'" and BDD's "[initialism is] linguistic jargon".
Carl has stated his belief (sometimes I feel we talking about religion here) thus, "An acronym is an initialism pronounced as a word; an initialism need not be pronounced in any particular way". I don't see much room for interpretation there, and even Guy now says that the definition of initialism is a matter of opinion. 219.79.73.25 (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
This subsection began with Thumperward saying that we're not going to get a consensus your way, i.e. deprecating the use of initialism.
I then suggested we could still find a consensus about how to use initialism
You said that the participants in this discussion "cannot even agree on its meaning"
When I pointed out that there is no substantive disagreement on the meaning of initialism in the discussion, you've pointed to the people who agree with your proposal. But the stance on your proposal is neutral to the definition one has of initialism. You are thus equivocating in ways that muddle the conversation. There's a similar equivocation when I said that you don't see the terms as discrete and you have taken the absurd stance that I must mean that you see them as phonologically and etymologically identical. From context, it should be clear that I am talking about semantic meaning, not phonological structure or etymological history. You're not an idiot, so I'm not sure what purpose this tactic serves.
Pointing out ways in which people differ in the semantics of initialism ignores the substantial core that we all have in common with it. There's so much in common that, not only is it hard to even see how these minor differences would manifest in editing practices, but it's also false to say that we "cannot" come to agreement on such differences when we haven't set out to do so. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 00:06, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
What can I say, maybe I am an idiot! :)
My reading of your "most other people here agree that a distinction between initialism and acronym is appropriate in general Wikipedia articles" was different. I thought that not seeing a consensus towards not using initialism, you were looking to seal a consensus on using it, a reference to which consensus would trump WP:V, WP:JARGON etc in future debates about inclusion of initialism.
Well, I thought, thanks but no thanks. I reserve my right to tell people insisting on writing in a WP article "<XYZ> is an initialism" that reliable sources overwhelmingly point to another term, and no bully is then going to point me to a consensus which is essentially built on WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT (still waiting for that summary).
If, on the other hand, as you more recently clarified, you just want to find an agreement about one unique meaning for the term, so that it can be applied consistently to WP articles, then I think it's a noble cause, and good luck to you getting people to agree, but I'm only marginally interested because "initialism" would still read as gibberish to most of us uneducated masses, and as a minor further point it would be still confusing to those few who are educated, but were told that initialism actually carries another meaning. 219.79.74.254 (talk) 12:57, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
I have referenced this proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#On_the_applicability_of_WP:JARGON 219.79.74.254 (talk) 13:26, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I said "most other people here agree that a distinction between initialism and acronym is appropriate in general Wikipedia articles" and I also said "I can't find any actual disagreement among this conversation's participants as to the meaning of initialism." What comes between them is your claim that we can't even find agreement on the term's meaning. I hope I've been clear now that those are not the same claim (you are correct that the first claim was an effort at starting a different consensus than what you'd like), so finding a few people who don't fit the criteria of "most other people here" in regards to support of the proposal doesn't undermine either claim.
It's your business if you want to portray yourself as a victim because we are insisting on disagreeing with your policy proposal. And if you want to link to a whole slew of Wikipedia policy pages and essays to characterize us as irrational, close-minded bullies, it only speaks to how desperate you have become. Maybe other people would succumb to such emotional manipulation (dear god! Me? A bully? I'll try extra hard to be nice!), but I've been in enough relationships to spot it and I've gotta say that it has the rhetorically opposite effect on me.
Let me repeat Thumperward's statement: anon, you are not going to get what you want. I'm trying to start an alternate consensus based on the current attention about the issue of using the term under question and you are getting in the way of this by sidetracking the conversation. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:14, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't trying to undermine any claim, but I was worried that a consensus in that direction would trump policy in *future* conversations with *other* people who would bully whomever brings evidence (which there is plenty) that acronym is much more widely used than initialism outside of Wikipedia.
Like I said, good luck with your consensus. 219.79.91.119 (talk) 23:29, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Also, I don't care about myself, but in the future please don't refer to unregistered users as "anonymous", because they are not. 219.79.91.119 (talk) 23:44, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Concerns about consensus trumping policy are only valid if the policy in question actually exists and there are no legitimate questions about interpretation. I am seeing a lot of claims about alleged policies. References to specific wording of specific policies? Not so much. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
For reference (and sorry if this has already been noted somewhere here), there was a related discussion some years back on Wikitionary at wikt:Talk:initialism. -- Trevj (talk) 08:19, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Alternate proposal: semi-status quo

All right, here's my radical idea: we treat acronyms and initialisms as separate and as subsets of abbreviations. We wouldn't systematically remove initialism from articles, but case-by-case replacement with abbreviation would be all right, given discussion at a given article. Abbreviation would also be useful for situations where it's not clear whether the pronunciation is as an initialism or as an acronym. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 16:14, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Citations on linked pages

I asked a question over at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2013 February 22#Citations on linked pages (I figured that there was a clear policy but could not find it), and the conversation became one about a fundamental disagreement about how to interpret our citation policy. If I had realized that was going to happen I would have started here. Should I start another discussion here? Move the discussion from the help desk? Stay there even if it isn't really the right place? I don't want to be perceived as changing venues to get the answer I like -- I really do want an authoritative answer on what our policy is so I can follow it. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:16, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

It is not spelled out in policy... but the general consensus is that information that appears on multiple pages needs a citation on every page where the information is repeated. So... if some bit of information is cited at article X, and that information is repeated in article Y, the citation at article X should also be repeated at article Y. Blueboar (talk) 22:40, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
FYI... There has been a lot of input about this matter at the help desk, where Guy brought the matter about 24 hours ago. The feeback given here by Blueboar essentially matches that given by all five editors who have replied so far at the help desk. --76.189.111.199 (talk) 06:24, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
So we should:
I strongly suspect that if I were to start mass-tagging "list of" pages with Citation needed tags, I would be told that doing that is against policy. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:55, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I haven't seen any of the six editors (here and at the help desk) advising to start mass-tagging various "list" pages. The issue is really about if an editor challenges a particular listing (by adding a cn tag). All six editors who have responded so far have said to add a citation to the tagged listing, even if it's sourced somewhere else on Wikipedia. While there are no policies of which I'm aware that say mass-tagging is a violation, it is unnecessary to do that unless you are sincerely questioning the validity of all the listings you are tagging. And if an editor were to claim that it is "against policy", they of course would be unable to provide a link to such policy if it does not exist. ;) In any case, this entire matter started (at the help desk) with a very specific question by Guy: Does content with a cn tag in one article need to be sourced if it's already sourced in another article? The answer given by everyone so far has been yes. --76.189.111.199 (talk) 07:56, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
Well if at this point Guy were to start mass cn-tagging then I think he'd pretty clearly be violating WP:POINT. It's not a policy violation, but it wouldn't be acceptable behavior on his part. In general though, all requests for citations should be honored and all unsourced information should be sourced or removed. The four lists that have been brought up twice now are of course in very poor shape and definitely do need further sourcing as suggested. The point here is that the reader should be able to easily verify any and every claim that is made, and not be required to navigate through the related pages until he finds the only once-listed source. Consider what happens when an article corresponding to a list entry is modified and the source is deleted. It's not a good idea to interpret WP:V so creatively. -Thibbs (talk) 08:46, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
The talk of mass-tagging is, of course, a "what if I..." thought experiment. Of course I wouldn't disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point. Besides, N2e is already mass-tagging large numbers of "list-of" articles. Do we really need two editors doing that?
I do reserve the right to climb the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man though... --Guy Macon (talk) 12:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
If N2e is being disruptive then that's an issue unto itself. Certainly it's possible to use well-intentioned rules to disrupt, but that doesn't mean that the rules are at fault. I've seen people hauled before AN/I for nominating too many GAs or for awarding too many Barnstars. But in neither of those cases was the solution to put a cap on how many of these actions can be performed. You might consider dispute resolution with N2e if you think he is being disruptive. -Thibbs (talk) 14:41, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
No need for that. It is pretty clear that we are both making good-faith efforts to improve the encyclopedia, but do not agree on how to apply WP:CIRCULAR. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, I'm going to disagree with the five editors at the help desk. If it's cited at the linked article, then it's cited. If you, personally, want to take the time and bother to copy it back, IMO you are welcome to it, but adding a citeneeded tag is silly. It's cited. It's just a click away. KillerChihuahua 09:41, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
100 percent wrong information to be giving out - if a list says Ted bundy killed 27 people and the article gets updated and now say only 26 because of new evidence what are we to do ... So our solution (written in policy) is we add references with assecsdates to list - so that our readers can see why there is a discrepancy the date of info is clear - thus one will assume one number is not wrong just out date.Moxy (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
What information is wrong to be giving out? Did you put your post in the right place? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I posted. KillerChihuahua 04:01, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I would like to point out a pattern of behavior that I have observed.
I noticed it in this edit where N2e mass-tagged every claim, making it clear in the edit summary that he realized that there were sources -- just not on that page -- and claiming that "we need to get sources for a lot of the additional claims, beyond the mere article link".
N2e has been doing this sort of mass-tagging for a while, and there is usually a rather interesting followup activity. Example (one of many):N2e
cn tagged this article and then later came back and
removed the claims he had previously tagged and added a bunch more cn tags, then later
did it again, and then
again, leaving 17 new cn tags behind for his next round of content deletion. N2e does this a lot, and again and again cites WP:CIRCULAR to anyone who opposes the tagging or the deletions despite WP:CIRCULAR not saying anything one way or the other about this issue. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I think it's a bit of a stretch to use WP:CIRCULAR in this context unless someone is specifically using Wikipedia or a scraper as a citation. A bluelink is not a citation. In this sense I also disagree with KillerChihuahua's idea that if a citation is only a click away then it's cited. How hard is it to migrate a one-click-away source to the list article? It makes no sense to scatter an article's references across more than one article. This dramatically increases the difficulty of maintaining the list because both pages are separately handled and the sources could be lost in the bluelinked article without the bluelinking article ever knowing about it. WP:SAL clearly demonstrates that stand-alone lists are articles in the same sense that non-list articles are. They are subject to the same verifiability rules. If list articles are allows to use citations from other articles without citing them then this is true for all articles. -Thibbs (talk) 14:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
That was not my assertion. My assertion was that tagging such an item is silly. The cite is one click away. Add the damn cite, don't add citeneeded. It's the same amount of work, except one improves and the other tackyfies the article. I hope this has clarified the misunderstanding. KillerChihuahua 04:03, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
OK, I understand how you feel about it but it is a valid kind of cleanup operation. I agree that it's not the best case scenario, but if it results in a well-sourced article then it's a success. If the challenged material can't be sourced then it didn't belong on Wikipedia in the first place. -Thibbs (talk) 04:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • At the bare minimum, every redlink in these types of lists should be cited, and it seems reasonable as such they can be tagged and after a reasonable time deleted if no-one can provide a source.Nigel Ish (talk) 10:20, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
    • I strongly agree. I would also say that if clicking the link to the other page does not bring you to a source for the claim, both pages should be tagged with cn, and if the other page doesn't even make the claim, the "list of" page should be tagged with cn. IMO, the only cases where a citation is not required are those cases where [A] the citation is a link away and [B] the page with the link but no citation is a "list of" or disambiguation page. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:50, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
      • Erm. Common sense should prevail here. Firstly, whilst tag bombing is indeed disruptive, consider using {{Refimprove}} on the whole article then raising the specific concerns on the article's talk-page; much less uncivil. Secondly, examine some of Wikipedia's best work, such as our featured lists. You can then model your behaviour accordingly --Senra (talk) 13:53, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
      • There is no reason to treat "list of" articles any differently than normal articles. It's certainly not of benefit to the reader to see a list without any sources when sources are readily available. Using Nigel Ish's "bare minimum" is certainly an excellent practical measure and it's one I've used many times myself, but it's not the end of it. Any material whose verifiability has been challenged must include an inline citation that directly supports the material. That's pretty unambiguous in my view. So if an editor tags a list entry or even several list entries as needing citations then they have been challenged and they need citations regardless of whether they have a bluelink. Special exceptions are also clearly laid out. For example with disambiguation pages, Wikipedia:DAB#References provides an explicit exception to the sourcing rules. No such exception can be found in WP:SAL which goes out of its way to say that WP:V applies to list articles exactly the same as it does to all articles. -Thibbs (talk) 14:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
        • Well let me amend that. WP:SAL does suggest here that "sky-is-blue" claims generally don't need citations unless challenged in good faith. In other words if they don't meet WP:MINREF then they don't need to be cited. A goodfaith cn-tag challenge immediately elevates the matter into MINREF territory, though. -Thibbs (talk) 14:59, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
          • What bothers me is adding large numbers cn tags, waiting a few months, and then deleting the tagged material when the citation is just a click away. Red links? Tag and delete. No citation on the linked page? Tag and delete. But in those cases where there is a citation just a link away, why not follow the link and add the citation rather than cn tagging it? --Guy Macon (talk) 18:44, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
            • The trouble with these cases where there is a bluelink, is that in many cases information in the source article is not cited (lots of articles don't have precise citations). Even where information is cited, unless an editor can check what the source actually says, then we are in WP:Circular territory - i.e. relying on another Wikipedia article as a reference. Editors should not cite information to references they havn't checked - see WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. This is why the onus must be on people who add the suspect information.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:09, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
            • The act of cn-tagging, waiting for a few months, and then removing material that still remains uncited for those months is a kind of cleanup effort. List articles are often magnets for new editors who don't understand about Wikipedia's verifiability policies and who want to add original research. Unmaintained or improperly maintained lists are actually a huge referencing problem here in my experience. Obviously in an ideal world the editor adding the cn-tag should make at least a cursory effort to find the information himself, but there's nothing to require it. This is at the root of the inclusionist vs. deletionist argument as well. Some editors will spend most of their time improving, expanding, and creating articles and other editors will spend most of their time looking for poorly-written and unmaintained articles and nominating them for deletion or stripping them down to their bare verifiable core. I think that part of the process of assimilation into Wikipedia is coming to terms with the idea that both kinds of editors are valuable. I can tell you it took me quite a while to arrive at that conclusion. -Thibbs (talk) 19:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Again, contrary to Guy's implication, the guidance being given is not to start adding "large number of cn tags". IMO, that point is nothing more than a distraction. And let's be clear... a blue link is not a proper citation, so alluding to as if it is ("when the citation is a just a click away") is invalid and misleading. Even though unintentional, I believe that disregarding or discounting WP:CIRCULAR is, quite frankly, on the verge of being disruptive. It is simply wrong, and illogical, to believe that it is acceptable to essentially require a reader to go to another article to find a source for cn-tagged content in the article they're currently reading. It not only violates policy, but there's no guarantee that the source, or even the article, will still be there. I honestly do not understand why this discussion has been going on for days when the feeback has been amazingly consistent: If a good faith cn tag is present, source it. This all started with a simple question: Do I need to cite content if it's already cited in another article (which is blue-linked)? It was a good and fair question. But it has been answered yes many times by experienced editors, including multiple administrators. The overwhelming response has been clear: if someone adds a cn tag to content, add the source and move on. I think that constitutes consensus. Numerous relevant and foundational policies relating to verification have been cited here and at the help desk. And WP:MINREF is straightforward: You must use an inline citation (not a wikilink) whenever content is challenged, per WP:VERIFY. And to be clear, citation requirements for lists are no different than for articles. As WP:VERIFY makes clear, "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable" (emphasis added). While I certainly appreciate Guy's passion for editing and commend him for his willingness to use discussion instead of edit-warring, I think there must come a point where we can reasonably conclude that consensus has been reached. --76.189.111.199 (talk) 20:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

This is very simple "take the time and fix the problems you see" if it cant be resolved remove it.Moxy (talk) 20:08, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
76.189.111.199, Please don't make claims about consensus that are not supported by the facts. While it is true that a significant number of participants in this discussion think that there should be citations on both pages, there is close to zero support for your assertion that having a citation on the bluelinked page only is, in your words, "disregarding or discounting WP:CIRCULAR". Whether or not there should be citations on both pages, WP:CIRCULAR does not say what you think it says. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:56, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I think any implications that N2e has disruptively edited,[27] now or previously, are highly inappropriate in this forum. I don't know him and had never even heard his name prior to this issue, but I do see that he's been editing for seven years and has never received a block. While it wouldn't surprise me if he (or any other long-time editor) has had some battles with other editors, his squeaky-clean block record over such a long period is, for me, a reliable indication of his intentions. So if someone wants to question his integrity, this is not the proper place to do it. 76.189.111.199 (talk) 20:44, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I implied no such thing. Yes, I did point out that N2e is using these cn tags as part of a two-step process of removing content, but I never implied that removing content that he believes -- rightly or wrongly -- to be unsourced is "misbehavior". It isn't, and this discussion is simply about what Wikipedia policy is and is not. If I was trying to address user misbehavior, I would have gone to ANI or RFC/U. I am trying to address a question of policy, which is why I came here. BTW, I also have a seven-year editing history with no blocks. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:56, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Guy, other editors can simply read your comments about N2e's editing and decide for themselves what you were or were not implying. Please note that Thibbs also alluded to the same point when he replied to your comment by saying, "If N2e is being disruptive then that's an issue unto itself".[28] I am confident that any reasonable person will agree that beginning a comment with, "I would like to point out a pattern of behavior that I have observed" and then adding statements such as "N2e has been doing this sort of mass-tagging for a while" and "N2e does this a lot, and again and again cites WP:CIRCULAR to anyone who opposes the tagging or the deletions despite WP:CIRCULAR not saying anything one way or the other about this issue", plus your use of excessive bolding, can easily be perceived as an implication, or even a direct claim, of disruptive editing. So while you say you never implied "misbeahvior", your comment was actually prefaced by the term "pattern of behavior" and followed with comments about how you object to that behavior. Therefore, I stand by my assessment. And while I fully realize that you also have an equally long history with no blocks (for which you should be highly commended), there was no need for me to point it out because it was N2e, not you, whose editing behavior was being questioned. Finally, regarding your statement, "Please don't make claims about consensus that are not supported by the facts", I truly hope you will re-read the comments here and at the help desk to reevaluate the many relevant facts, policies, and guidelines that have been presented to you by a lot of experienced and knowledgeable editors. I'm not sure how many more editors will need to tell you essentially the same things before you will accept it, but I have a strong suspicion that you fully realize what the overwhelming thinking and protocol is on this matter. ;) I do respect your passion, but sometimes you just need to move on. In any case, I wish you the best of luck in your editing and thank you for your efforts to improve the project. 76.189.111.199 (talk) 05:06, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
To directly answer Guy's question about adding "citation needed tags" to all those lists. No, you should not add citation needed tags. What you should do is copy the citations from the articles into the list article. If the problem is that the information at a list article needs to be sourced, Fix the problem by adding sources... since you know that a citation exists for the information, and all it will take is a quick cut and paste from one article to another... so add the necessary citations yourself rather than tagging in an attempt to make someone else do it.
Furthermore, it may not be necessary to add a separate citation for each and every item on a list. For example, it may be that most of the items listed can be cited to one or two sources... rather than repeating those citations over and over again, try to craft a short introductory paragraph where you can cite the relevant sources ... This would mean that the only items you would have to cite specifically in the list text are any odd men out (ie items that are not mentioned in those, already cited, sources). There are options. Be creative and resolve the issue. Blueboar (talk) 17:10, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
So you are saying that information in list-type articles cannot be challenged?Nigel Ish (talk) 17:16, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
No that is not what I am saying... unsourced information in lists can certainly be challenged. However, in the scenario being presented, the information is not what is actually being challenged. The original question here was premised on the assumption that the challenger knows the information is not only accurate but that it is supported (by a citation) in another article. So what is being challenged is not the actual information that appears on the list, but the lack of citations at the list article. That sort of challenge has a remedy... cut and paste the citations. Blueboar (talk) 17:32, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
At the real risk of extending this already overly long thread, I must object. I take issue with @BlueBoar's "What you should do is copy the citations from the articles into the list article". We cannot assume another editor (or editors) source is correct. It might even be a dead-link. We must properly check such sources and if we cannot, for example it is a book source which we don't have personal access to, we shouldn't just copy it --Senra (talk) 18:40, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Having just said that, if we "copied the citations from the articles into the list articles" and then made it clear in an edit summary or talk-page post that we have AGF on the source(s) we just copied, I guess that would be fine --Senra (talk) 18:48, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Senra, I just wanted to clarify about what I'm confident Blueboar meant. When he said to copy-and-paste the source from the other article, I'm sure he assumed that it goes without saying that we must also make sure that the source verifies the content to which it's being attached. Dodger67 (Roger) made the point more precisely in the help desk discussion when he said, "The simplest way to solve it would be to simply copy the cite - after you've verified that it does in fact support the claim."[29] Blueboar can of course correct me if I'm misinterpreting his intentions. For the record, I do not agree with your follow-up comment that says that simply invoking AGF in an edit summary is acceptable. I think it's vital that we always make sure the sources we are personally adding do in fact verify the content, even if they're being used for the same content somewhere else. A simple "I believe you" (AGF) just isn't good enough. In any case, I think both of you really have the exact same thinking on this particular issue and that you were simply trying to be nice when you made the AGF addendum. ;) I'd suggest that you simply strike the AGF comment. --76.189.111.199 (talk) 20:42, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Senra, thanks for striking.[30]. And I enjoyed your edit summary. I knew you were just being nice. ;) --76.189.111.199 (talk) 21:55, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Consensus

Let me summarize where I think the consensus here is heading.

I was wrong in thinking that standalone lists don't need citations if the bluelinked pages they link to do. This is not explicitly spelled out in any policy, but is implied in WP:V and is supported by an overwhelming consensus that information that appears on multiple pages needs a citation on every page where the information is repeated.

N2e was and still is entirely correct in tagging and later deleting list items that are redlinked, where the bluelinks don't repeat the claim, or where the bluelinks repeat the claim without a citation. In the case where the bluelinks repeat the claim without a citation, both articles should be tagged.

In the case where the list item doesn't have a citation but the bluelinked article does, editors should not tag the list item, but rather should cut and paste the citation from the bluelinked article to the list item. CN tagging and later deleting material when you know where to find the citation and can easily cut and paste it violates our WP:PRESERVE policy.

Instead of adding dozens of Wikipedia:Citation needed tags, editors should consider using Template:Unreferenced section, Template:Unreferenced, or Template:Refimprove. See WP:OVERTAGGING and WP:TAGBOMB.

WP:CIRCULAR clearly does not apply to this situation -- a bluelink is not a citation, and a citation doesn't become a self-referential citation to Wikipedia itself just because it is at the other end of a bluelink. WP:UNSOURCED does apply -- a bluelink is not a citation, and therefore the existence of a bluelink does not in itself source a claim.

The following policies and essays are relevant:

Wikipedia:Verifiability#Burden of evidence: "When tagging or removing material for not having an inline citation, please state your concern that there may not be a published reliable source for the content, and therefore it may not be verifiable. If instead you think the material is erifiable, try to provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag it."

Wikipedia:Tagging pages for problems#Over-tagging: "It is best to provide the fewest number of the most specific possible tags. Placing too many tags on an article is "tag-bombing", disruptive, [and] results in confusion and discouragement more often than it results in improving the encyclopedia. ... It is very rare that more than two or three tags are needed, even on the worst articles. Adding more tags usually results in all of them being ignored."

Wikipedia:Tag bombing: "Tag bombing is the addition of multiple tags to an article or adding one tag to multiple articles. Adding tags to articles should be accompanied by sufficient reasoning on the tagged article's talk page (or in a "reason" parameter where one exists) to explain why the tags are needed."

Wikipedia:Responsible tagging: "When a responsible tagging reviewer sees a problem with a Wikipedia article, he clearly labels the problem with the appropriate tag. As needed he then leaves information clarifying what should be done on the talk page. ... If you are going to put a tag on an article that proclaims it as seriously faulty, you should leave an explanation on the talk page of that article, even though the reasons seem plainly obvious to you. ... A responsible tagger would read each page before applying any tags, and then leave on the talk page a message that shows that he indeed read the page, honestly believes it applies, and is not acting under a whim."

Comments? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:35, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

It spelled out in policy - MOS WP:Source list - "Lists, whether they are embedded lists or stand-alone lists, are encyclopedic content as are paragraphs and articles, and they are equally subject to Wikipedia's content policies such as Verifiability - ensure that each item to be included on the list is adequately referenced ",Moxy (talk) 19:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

No, it is not spelled out in the policy you referenced. It is not spelled out that "adequately referenced" is not satisfied by the bluelink. Implied? yes. Supported by overwhelming consensus? Yes. Explicitly spelled out? No. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:00, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean then - I see the policy saying - if something is on a list it has to be referenced on that list and that the list itself should be neutral to begin with. Perhaps a rewording would help?Moxy (talk) 23:58, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Would you be so kind as to quote the exact wording where you see "it has to be referenced on that list" explicitly spelled out in the policy you referenced? I only see "it has to be referenced" with "on that list" implied (and of course supported by overwhelming consensus).
As for rewording, I do see that others have read it the way I did at first (see above for details) but I have only seen this in direct response to a particular situation (CN tagging rather than adding a cite when you know that there is a citation at the end of a bluelink, then mistakenly invoking WP:CIRCULAR when someone disagrees) that I don't see any need for a rewording. It would be better to just stop doing those two things. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
(in bold above already) It has to be reworded if its not clear to all - cant have confusion on the matter. Wikipedia:Featured list criteria intro to what a basic list has is a good start. Note how at List of Canadian Victoria Cross recipients ever entry has a reference on that page - even if its the same ref from the main pages.Moxy (talk) 05:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
It appears to be clear to everyone but you that [A] there is no confusion on the matter after studying our policy. [B] everyone agrees that our policy is pretty much what I wrote in the "Consensus" section above [C] it is not explicitly spelled out in the portion you quoted in bold, and [D] there is no need for any rewording, because "the policy is clear even though this particular situation is not explicitly spelled out" is a valid concept. We do not need to explicitly spell what happens in every situation if the policy is clear, which it is, and everyone agrees on the policy, which we do. --Guy Macon (talk)
  • I think you've got it pretty clearly spelled out, Guy. The only thing I'd quibble over is whether it is acceptable to tag without migrating the ref from the bluelink. But I definitely agree that if the tagging editor knows of the existence of a ref and chooses to cn tag it rather than migrating it then he's not helping very much and if it results in the loss of verifiable material (note: verifiable, not verified) then it is potentially harmful. And if the reason for cn-tagging rather than migrating is to remove material you disagree with then that's clear disruption. -Thibbs (talk) 19:49, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I think that we should be less concerned with upsetting the delicate sensibilities of editors who cannot be bothered to provide proper sourcing for articles and more concerned with making sure lists, just like other articles are properly sourced. This allergy against telling other editors what the problems are with an article is extremely damaging to the encyclopedia. If nothing can be tagged or questioned, like some of the editors here seem to think, then nothing will ever be improved. Often it is only the potential that content may be removed that prompts improvements to list articles and avoids the sort of very poor condition lists that resulted in this discussion being started.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:35, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
I call your WP:NEEDSMOARDRAMA and raise you WP:PRESERVE. (smile) --Guy Macon (talk) 21:00, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Nigel is yet another editor with a very long history (6+ years) with no blocks. Although perhaps I would have chosen a different tone to convey the same message, I am very impressed with all of you who have edited for many years without any sanctions. I have heard some editors say that a record like that signifies weakness, but I firmly believe it represents great strength. So thank you to Guy, Nigel, N2e, and all the other longtime editors with empty block logs, for setting such a good example. Having said all that... Guy, if you see a cn tag, add a reliable source! :P --76.189.111.199 (talk) 00:18, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
That is indeed good advice, and I will do that to the specific links we are discussing after this discussion closes (I didn't want to muddy the water). That being said, N2e does a lot of CN tagging followed by deletion, and most of the times he is entirely correct (redlinks, etc.). Rather than me follow him around and adding links in the cases where the consensus is that he should add a citation rather than a CN tag (see above for details) I am hoping that he will agree to do that himself in those cases. That way everybody wins. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
We should be clear, though, that whether N2e should add the refs himself or not is a matter of preference and not policy. I think there is a consensus that if not adding the refs is a matter of pure laziness, obstinacy, or sneaky POV then indeed the tagging editor should be adding them himself instead of cn-tagging, but if these cn-tags are part of a normal cleanup effort by an editor who may not have been aware of the source when he placed the tag, then they are at least permissible. -Thibbs (talk) 03:58, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Makes sense to me. Thanks for the clarification. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I fully concur with Thibbs. Although editors should add a ref they know exists rather than cn-tagging, they are under no obligation to do so. And regarding Guy's reference to following N2e around, that of course would be a very bad idea. I hope everyone has a great week. :) --76.189.111.199 (talk) 06:37, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Inappropriate link. WP:WIKIHOUNDING specificly says "Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles. In fact, such practices are recommended both for Recent changes patrol and WikiProject Spam." If (and this is a big if) N2e decides to continue adding CN tags where he knows there are citations at the end of a bluelink I could (if I had the time and interest) follow him around and add citations. That isn't Wikihounding, because replacing a CN tag with a citation cannot possibly be "creating irritation, annoyance or distress to the other editor" In fact, if I replaced every CN tag N2e ever placed with a good citation, he would no doubt thank me.
Also, this is the third time you have responded to a hypothetical argument as if it were some sort of threat. Examining the logical consequences of a policy is a standard method of arguing a point. For example, if you say "we should allow anyone to set fire to a house if the house is really, really ugly" I am allowed to ask "so it's OK for me to burn down your house if I decide it is ugly?" Such a reply does not require a "Arson is a bad idea" response, because it is a hypothetical "what if" comment, not a threat. (Also, I don't know or care who you are or where you live, whereas with a minute or so of searching you would know both of those things about me). I am glad that you hope I have a great week, but I must say that my week would be improved if you assumed good faith on my part. I you think I made a threat, you can just ask me what I meant. I won't lie. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:20, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. --76.189.111.199 (talk) 09:02, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
A Lady surely, not a Gentleman? Not Guy, obviously. Queen Gertrude! --Senra (talk) 21:37, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Guy is a, er, guy. Therefore, I obviously was not going to refer to him as a lady. 76.189.111.199 (talk) 23:48, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Our resident IP drama seeker got the meaning completely wrong by misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "protest" as it was used in Shakespeare's day, so why not get the gender wrong as well? At this point, I am just happy that I am not being accused of being Wired... --Guy Macon (talk) 23:00, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Guy, I fully understand Shakespeare's meaning of the word, but I have no doubt whatsoever that you understood I was referring to the very common, modern (mis)interpretation. In any case, it was intended simply as a humorous retort to your extremely long, defensive response (admit it :)) to a simple comment meant in good fun ("And regarding Guy's reference to following N2e around, that of course would be a very bad idea"). Clearly, I did not say, or even think, you were a stalker. I only said it would be a bad idea. But you opened the door wide with that comment, so I simply poked a little fun at you because it appeared we were at a point of friendly resolution in this matter with the links. Perhaps I should have used a smiley face. In any case, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. 76.189.111.199 (talk) 07:24, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Round 2

Guy, sorry to be late to the discussion.
  1. I do not think that you were "wrong in thinking that standalone lists don't need citations if the bluelinked pages they link to do." IMHO you were right; 'and it depends on cases. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but uncontroversial claims do not require that such ironclad cases be built. List articles containing only bluelinks, are, IMHO, unextraordinary claims, especially in every case where the bluelinked article supports the item's membership in the list article.
  2. Editors who assert that citations are required in every article, even lists for the same claim are engaging in a kind of dead-trees print-based thinking: that any random Wikipedia article, printed out, should contain all citations for every claim made in that article, because presumably it cannot be assumed that the reader can look up linked articles. IMHO this is lazy "I want my term paper done for me by Wikipedia editors, all citations included." IMHO this "print" notion is not based on fact, it is not our problem, and it does not actually have precedent in dead-trees publishing. Print encyclopedias encourage and expect the reader of a referencing article to refer to the topic article for citation support; they did not duplicate citations everywhere. Wikipedia is an online resource, and "chasing" citations tends to be a single-click action; if a reader got the referring article online, they can trivially get the linked article online. It is the purpose of reference materials to present authoritative text supported by reliable sources once, so that updates need only be done in one place, and so synchronization of content is not required.
  3. Requiring citation duplication is busy-work, and is unencyclopedic on the face of it, and, yes, in my opinion, not rational.
  4. Over the years, insistence on sourcing for claims made in articles has grown:
    None (operating on the presumption of good faith of the article author)
    Lackadaisical (hey, let's cite sources, that's more encyclopedic)
    Strong (per Jimmy Wales)
    Crypto-strong (wild, deletionistic enforcement, including deleting articles lacking sourcing, though sources exist but are not cited)
    And now, completely, obsessively over the top: replicating citations all over the encyclopedia, cluttering sentences and lists, even if the bluelinked topic article/section supports the claim well.
  5. I strongly advocate the "reference" approach: facts are expounded, explained, supported in citations in one place (article), and bluelinked (referred to, or "referenced") everywhere else. I therefore strongly oppose needless, cluttering replication of citations where claims are properly supported in their base topic article/section.
  6. You wrote, "This is not explicitly spelled out in any policy, but is implied in WP:V and is supported by an overwhelming consensus that information that appears on multiple pages needs a citation on every page where the information is repeated." IMHO it's not spelled out anywhere because it's not policy, because consensus has never risen to support it in either guideline or policy. "Overwhelming" local consensus is interesting, but is not definitive. Only a true WP:RFC can settle this fairly: don't be buffaloed. --Lexein (talk) 00:30, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! The bit about "so that updates need only be done in one place, and so synchronization of content is not required" has been in the back of my mind, but I didn't want to open up a can of worms. A man who wears two watches never knows what time it is. I have had several responses claiming that it is indeed explicitly spelled out in a policy, but they all went silent when asked to quote the exact wording where it is explicitly spelled out. Good point about local consensus. I always go along with Wikipedia policies whether I agree with them or not, but a local consensus isn't a policy -- even though I almost always follow local consensus where I cannot find a policy. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
What you have to look at is how people are interpreting the policies and guides they read overall (The rules are principles). We have to focus on the actual point of Wikipedia (to make all knowledge available to all). Note how I did not say just Wikipedia knowledge but all knowledge. We have to think of our readers over anything else and make accessibility to knowledge as unhindered as possible - focus on the readers over what editors think is best for layout and/or editing easy. So lets looks at 2 very different lists List of best-selling music artists vs List of districts of Nepal. One contains lots of facts and one is just a list with no statements - as a reader (not editor) would you not find it easier to be-able to look up the the fact by way of the references on the list or have to go searching for them somewhere in the main article. Accessibility is a major concern - I myself have MS and can tell you its much easier to not surf through many articles to derive serviceable information for the references I am seeking. Do what is best for the reader - as in easy accessibility to knowledge outside Wikipedia as well as inside the site.Moxy (talk) 07:28, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Actually, I find the way List of districts of Nepal is set up to be far more useful than List of best-selling music artists. I cannot think of any plausible scenario where anyone would want to know that Andrea Bocelli first charted in 1994 and that ABBA are from Sweden at the same time. The one you like seems like an overly busy example of information overload to me. Then again, I would have the exact same opinion if you removed all the citations from the music list and added citations to the Nepal list.
Let me try a little experiment: population of Kaski District vs. Parsa District (using stopwatch)? 12 seconds. How many charted records does Aretha Franklin have vs. Gloria Estefan? Three minutes to find the number for Aretha, gave up after five minutes for Gloria. That's because some Wikipedia editor decided that the release year of Gloria Estefan's first charted record is super important but that the total number of Gloria Estefan's charted records isn't important at all. That's the problem with trying to cram a bunch of info into what should be an index: you always guess wrong. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
This is good - gal to see your evaluating the situation and making an informed decision. I may not agree with your assessment, but what we need all to do is use editorial discretion. You seem to be on the right path just use common sense and all should work out just fine.Moxy (talk) 17:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh boy, let me address Lexein's comment point by point:

  • 1. Indeed, WP:EXCEPTIONAL spells out the need for multiple high-quality sources for surprising, important, out of character, counter-interest, counter-mainstream, and conspiracy-related claims for which primary or self-published sources are the only support. But it's a far stretch to say that because exceptional claims require exceptional sources, unexceptional claims don't require any.
  • 2. There is nothing "dead-trees" related about requiring that sources used in an article are presented in the same article. In fact it's quite the opposite. The "dead-trees" approach would be to refer readers to a central set of refs in, say, the "endnotes" page of a paper encyclopedia. The modern paperless way recognizes that referential links are fragile. Unlike the paper-based encyclopedia which is physically bound into a single unit, the articles making up Wikipedia and indeed the webpages making up the internet are only usable as reference provided that the group claiming the reference checks back every so often to ensure that the target is still viable.
  • 3. Isn't all editing busy-work? This is a volunteer-based endeavor, but there are rules. If you find that adding sources makes you too busy then you're free to leave this part of the job to other volunteers. But the need for sources is clearly spelled out in the policy and guidelines and so the downside is that your unsourced information may be removed if the next editor can't verify it.
  • 4. Assumption of goodfaith relates to editorial behavior, not content. The two are quite distinct. We don't have to have goodfaith that all sources are accurate and, let's face it, having goodfaith in unsourced Wikipedia material is naive to a fault.
    As you point out in "Lackadaisical", sources are encyclopedic.
    The Crypto-strong era you've described was never acceptable behavior as it has always been contrary to policy here at Wikipedia (unless you're speaking of a lack of non-reliable sources).
    As explained above, the obsessive use of sources is both encyclopedic and necessary in a post-paper era when book-bindings don't hold the information in a single unit.
  • 5. The novel idea of a central authority for sources that are transcluded by reference through the use of bluelinks is completely unsupported by policy or consensus, and for good reason. If such a system were the proper way of conducting article-writing here, then we would be setting up chains of invisible reference rendering the capacity for the reader to verify the material extremely difficult and expanding the difficulty of the job of the editor by orders of magnitude as explained above. This is not a nicely-bound paper volume where we can just flip to the ever-present "endnotes" page. Duplication of links makes eminent good sense here because the pages that make up this encyclopedia are "looseleaf". They are independent of one another. One can be deleted or moved without any disruption to the encyclopedia. Disruption would be manifest if we used the kind of citation by oblique reference you've championed. Every time a page was altered, the other pages that use that page as a source would ahve to also be altered correspondingly. Again, it would increase the editors' workload exponentially.
  • 6. You're wrong. The exact policy is spelled out in WP:V. Consider the following sentence: "All quotations and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material. Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed" (emphasis added). Is there any reasonable ambiguity here? What does it mean to have an inline citation? Is it acceptable if it's cited inline anywhere on Wikipedia? What if it's only cited inline on a third-party website or in a paper-copy book? Clearly the word "inline" refers to the line that has been challenged. It's nonsense to claim that there is no policy in support of citing claims within their own articles. If you don't find any language specifically stating this obvious fact then the reason is most likely to do with the fact that nobody who wrote the policy could have ever imagine someone would try to weasel around the words in this way. The need for a citation in line with the disputed claim is unambiguously a part of the official consensus-based policy. The guidelines are even more directly on point. Look at the Manual of Style for Lists - Citing sources. There's no way to even weasel about there. It's an airtight requirement that challenged claims anywhere in articlespace must have a proper citation. And bluelinks simply are not citations.

I hope that covers all the main points. -Thibbs (talk) 20:37, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd also like to second Lexein's proposal of filing "a true WP:RFC" if anyone is still doubtful, though. This is actually a rather important topic and true clarity would be much better than walking away from thinking that the sourcing requirements are nothing more than local consensus. -Thibbs (talk) 22:12, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Thibbs, you've missed my most explicitly-stated point: lists are uncontroversial claims, especially if the bluelinked items are well supported in their topic articles. Further, you exaggerate a lot, and I think you should strikethrough the worst of it. Your attempt to crowbar that sourcing policy quote about challenged material to apply to every bluelink is horribly pointy and undue; such crazed obsessive overuse was never intended by any of the authors of that policy. Ridiculous! Your rhetorical fear of chains of bluelinks is entirely unfounded and silly on its face; that's not what I was talking about, and you know it. I really don't feel like bothering with the rest. It's exhausting, because what you've written borders on bad faith, and no, I don't like it one bit. I never said bluelinks are citations: they link to the topic articles where the citations are expected/required to be. There's nothing airtight here except, apparently, your closeminded thinking on this topic. You won't win: there will never be an inline-ref-per-word-or-phrase required at Wikipedia, or a blanket requirement for inline refs for every entry in uncontroversial lists. --Lexein (talk) 00:00, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
List membership does not represent an intrinsically uncontroversial claim. Uncontroversial claims on lists do not need to be sourced, but as soon as a claim on a list is challenged then it is no longer uncontroversial. See WP:MINREF (which is linked from WP:SAL). And I don't think it's ridiculous in the least to be concerned about the decoupling of source from claim as you've argued in favor of. For any offense I've given you I apologize, but I don't think I was exaggerating and I absolutely assume good faith in your intentions. I'm not sure what to make of your invocation of WP:POINT (which is a behavior guideline) and WP:UNDUE (which is a content policy), and I can't see how either of them have anything to do with my comments, but let me assure you that I'm not here to win. This isn't a battle or a game, it's a serious discussion. And I do encourage you to pursue RfC if you disagree with my interpretations of the policy. My views are demonstrably part of the majority view. -Thibbs (talk) 00:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Thibbs, I will be even clearer than I was before: to require extra inline citations to "cover" a bluelink in a list is a de facto assumption of bad faith. It is an assumption of bad faith that the bluelinked article does not adequately source its content with respect to the item's presence in the list. Your negative characterization of "decoupling" aside, your presumption of challengeability is void. There is no presumption that a claim is likely to be challenged, especially (IMHO) if the claim is already adequately sourced in the bluelinked topic article. You may try to wrap yourself in some sort of assumption of consensus, but I only see you here, misreading carefully worded policies (ignoring modifiers) hammered out over years, in order to clutter articles and lists with needless, and redundant, inline citations, where topic articles already adequately source claims referred to (bluelinked) elsewhere. I think we're seeing the dawn of a new kind of content/citation absolutism, right here, designed to ultimately replicate content and inline citations everywhere, rather than simply refer by using bluelinks; I'll call it what it is: "replicationism" or "duplicationism". Just how much needless, redundant visual clutter are you demanding that readers put up with? --Lexein (talk) 00:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
This idea that requiring sources to be on the same page as the claims which they bolster is a de facto assumption of badfaith in the editor adding the entry is simply preposterous. I do agree with you that there is no presumption that a claim is likely to be challenged, but if you carefully read the original question you'll discover that in this case an actual challenge was made in the form of a cn-tag. And in cases where actual challenges have been made, then I'm afraid my "replicant" nature compels me to insist that the citations should appear inline with the challenged claim and not inline with a claim made in a different article. I'm not misreading the carefully worded policies but, again, if you'd like to persist with this then I invite you to file an RfC so we can find out how everyone else interprets these carefully worded policies. -Thibbs (talk) 01:25, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
What[Citation needed] bothers[Citation needed] me[Citation needed] is[Citation needed] the[Citation needed] implied[Citation needed] claim[Citation needed] that[Citation needed] any[Citation needed] number[Citation needed] of[Citation needed] Citation[Citation needed] Needed[Citation needed] tags[Citation needed] on[Citation needed] any[Citation needed] number[Citation needed] of[Citation needed] articles[Citation needed] meets[Citation needed] the[Citation needed] "as[Citation needed] soon[Citation needed] as[Citation needed] a[Citation needed] claim[Citation needed] is[Citation needed] tagged/challenged[Citation needed] then[Citation needed] it[Citation needed] is[Citation needed] no[Citation needed] longer[Citation needed] uncontroversial"[Citation needed] criteria.[Citation needed] If[Citation needed] I[Citation needed] see[Citation needed] someone[Citation needed] tagging[Citation needed] everything[Citation needed] in[Citation needed] an[Citation needed] article[Citation needed] and[Citation needed] then[Citation needed] moving[Citation needed] on[Citation needed], mass-tagging[Citation needed] a[Citation needed] bunch[Citation needed] of[Citation needed] articles[Citation needed] at[Citation needed] a[Citation needed] rate[Citation needed] of[Citation needed] one[Citation needed] every[Citation needed] five[Citation needed] minutes[Citation needed], that[Citation needed] does[Citation needed] not[Citation needed] convince[Citation needed] me[Citation needed] that[Citation needed] everything[Citation needed] so[Citation needed] tagged[Citation needed] is[Citation needed], by[Citation needed] definition,[Citation needed] controversial.[Citation needed] --[ Guy Macon ] ([ talk ]) 23:24, 28 February 2013 (UTC) [Citation needed]
For those who might wish to read the above: What bothers me is the implied claim that any number of Citation Needed tags on any number of articles meets the "as soon as a claim is tagged/challenged then it is no longer uncontroversial" criteria. If I see someone tagging everything in an article and then moving on, mass-tagging a bunch of articles at a rate of one every five minutes, that does not convince me that everything so tagged is, by definition, controversial. (edited by Thibbs (talk) 23:44, 28 February 2013 (UTC))
You have a point there. What you produced above would be a good example of a WP:POINT violation. In normal practice, cn-tags are placed after unverified sentences or key parts of unverified sentences, not after the word "on" or "a", for example. For lists it is appropriate to tag list entries once per unverified entry. Thus, for "List of Kenyans" we would cn-tag the unverified bluelink "Barack Hussein Obama" only once after the word "Obama", and not after each word in his name. This example also illustrates why verification within the list is essential. Given the history of this controversial topic, I can easily conceive of a situation in which the main article on "Barack Obama" was locked down for weeks while a large RfC was underway to determine if Obama was a Hawaiian or a Kenyan. If the main article was locked with him listed as a Kenyan according to some potentially RS source, then the person constructing the "List of Kenyans" might think it was OK to add him to the list without reffing the matter. After the RfC had concluded and it was determined that Obama was not in fact a Kenyan then unless the RfC participants knew of the existence of the List of Kenyans, or unless the creator of the list of Kenyans had also put the main articles for all purported Kenyans on his watchlist, the error would remain until a third party happened to wander into the list article and noticed that the main article (via the bluelink) didn't support the claim. Who knows how long this unverified claim would persist until then. -Thibbs (talk) 23:44, 28 February 2013 (UTC) PS - Apologies in advance if this is a politically sensitive topic for anyone. It was just a quick example and not intended as anything more. -Thibbs (talk) 23:51, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
My silly example aside, is there a substantive difference between cn-tagging the unverified bluelink "Barack Hussein Obama" and cn-tagging the every unverified bluelink on "list of Kenyans" -- and then doing the same on "List of Freedonians" and "List of Elbonians"? The former feels like a legitimate challenged claim, while the latter feels like a misuse of the "as soon as a claim is tagged/challenged then it is no longer uncontroversial" rule. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:05, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Well yes, if someone is being disruptive by placing excessive cn-tags then he can't hide behind WP:V. If an editor is trying to make the point that an entire list is full of unverified items and he wants to cull them then I might recommend placing a general refimprove banner at the top and posting his intention to cull the unverified list items on the talk page. I don't want to definitively say that it's never appropriate to cn-tag all unverified list members even when there are a lot of them, because sometimes it's necessary to make individual challenges to each item, but often there are better ways of going about performing maintenance. It's a case-by-case question where the person doing the mass tagging runs the risk of getting sanctioned for disruption. -Thibbs (talk) 00:10, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
The edit which started this discussion was this edit to List of production battery electric vehicles (and the user's history says that in two months the cn tags will become deletions...) My position was that tagging and then deleting when you know that there is a citation -- just not ob the list page -- is disruptive and violates WP:PRESERVE. Some here agree with me , but many do not. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
When I read your initial question at the Help Desk, my understanding was that you were asking whether a bluelinked list member whose citation supporting the claim appeared only on the linked page was sufficient as-is, or whether it needed to be cited in the list article as well. As a general matter (i.e. notwithstanding obviously appropriate list members), the answer to this question is that the citations for list members must appear in the list article as well. I agree that tagging and deleting when you know that there is a proper citation is poor form and that it is destructive and quite probably disruptive within the meaning intended by WP:POINT. The threshold for content inclusion on Wikipedia is verifiability, not verification. So if you know that a good citation exists and yet you remove a claim based on nothing more than the fact that it wasn't in fact cited, then you have made an error of judgment. All of this is premised on the idea that you know that there is a citation, though. If not, then you are free to tag and remove with much more latitude. But this should not be interpreted to mean that contested list items need not be sourced if they bluelink to an article that is sourced. In other words you can't infer constructive knowledge here. These are two very different issues. -Thibbs (talk) 00:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Also, for what it's worth, and per your edit summary, as I said above, I think it's a stretch to invoke WP:CIRCULAR in this matter. Circular refs are cases where actual citations are used that point to Wikipedia or a clone/scraper. When we're talking about citation by reference via bluelinks then no actual citation is occurring. Bluelinks aren't citations so in my view, WP:CIRCULAR is misapplied here. WP:V is all that needs to be invoked. -Thibbs (talk) 00:54, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
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  9. ^ "18大將開除薄熙來黨籍". 2012年08月17日. Retrieved 2012年09月28日. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
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  18. ^ "18大將開除薄熙來黨籍". 2012年08月17日. Retrieved 2012年09月28日. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
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