Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 106

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 100←Archive 104Archive 105Archive 106Archive 107Archive 108→Archive 110

Have we agreed to sign hattings?

Hello, I just chided someone for not signing a hatting on the science desk. I'm pretty sure that we have agreed here in the past that that is best practice, but I couldn't find anything conclusive with a quick search (perhaps I'm misremembering...) Can anyone find the appropriate thread, or perhaps we should discuss this again? All I'm asking for is something like the example below. Thanks for any links to previous conversations, or new input. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:10, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm closing this because it is bad. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:10, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This is some bad thread.
Can we all talk like this from now on? (+)H3N-Protein\Chemist-CO2(-) 16:39, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

For more information on hats: List of headgear.

There was discussion here Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 92#Shouldn't we sign when we hat something?. Also some brief mention here Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 101#wholesale deletion, Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 102#Quasi 3-Revert Rule and Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 102#Reference Desk inquiries. I didn't see anything else from 84 onwards. Most discussions related to 'sign' in the 84-88 period (and a few elsewhere) were about modifying posts or whether to notify people when deleting their signed posts. And then there was that kerfuffle over the unsigned awarding of stars. Oh and the WickWack (who seems to be back now) saga.
I also noticed from Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 104#Personal attacks etc removed. that if you read Template:Hidden archive top/doc, it actuall encourages you to sign particularly when you don't use the default statement. Template:Collapse top/doc doesn't but I think most people use Hat (hence why we calling it hatting) and it's probably the best thing to use for these sort of closings. And I think the idea of signing hats is well supported in most discussion like pages besides the RD hence why it's in the docs (and I don't see any reason for a unique practice for the RD in these regards, as with most things).
But personally I'm with Monty and Jayron32 in archive 92 here. Yes signing hats is best practice. (Actually signing of the hat, not simply leaving a message inside the thread which sometimes doesn't make it clear you are hatting.) If someone repeatedly fails to sign hats it may be worth having a word with them. But generally speaking, if you don't dispute a hat, there's probably no need to worry about it just because it's not signed. Particularly if the reason for hatting was given even if unsigned or it's obvious.
Nil Einne (talk) 23:37, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Ah, thanks User:Nil Einne. I just wanted to make sure I had at least a vague consensus/precedent to stand on. I don't see how signing costs anything, and I believe it increases transparency and accountability. I will continue to follow and recommend this practice. SemanticMantis (talk) 01:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have the analogues of AFD and PROD for hatting. E.g. you can think of the following. If I think a tread should be hatted, a proposed hatting template will be placed on top of the thread and a bot will then automatically hat the thread in, say, 24 hours unless an objection is made on the relevant "proposed hatting page". In the latter case, the discussion will run its course on that page and a decision will be made by an Admin. Count Iblis (talk) 17:55, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

  • It's been agreed that a controversial hatting should be signed with a comment, and that deletions should be noted with a remark at talk. It's never been decided that a hatting requires a signature within the top hat line itself. And uncontroversial things like deleting repeated posts by banned users have normally been accepted with just an edit summary. There is certainly no need to introduce some special protection against hatting as Le Compte Diable, who reserves the right to ignore everything including BLP, is suggesting. μηδείς (talk) 01:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Problem is, deciding what is "uncontroversial" is itself controversial and subjective. But thanks for the input. I will continue to encourage that all hats/closures be signed. SemanticMantis (talk) 01:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
I see no problem. Hattings of blocked users or of BLP violations or the like require nothing more than edit summaries. Hattings of other threads should indeed be signed with a comment within the thread. There's never been any discussion of, and is no requirement that any hat be signed in the hat line itself. No other page requires this. This would assume that hats are somehow by their nature suspect, and makes the issue personal, rather than procedural. No such hat-line signature is required on any other page of the project. There's nothing that makes the ref desk above the guidelines of any other section of wikipedia. If anything, the ref desks are subject to all the presumed requirements of any other page. μηδείς (talk) 03:50, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
AFAIK giving the reason as a closing statement which as part of hat is indeed the norm in most discussions when a reason is needed. Giving a reason somewhere in the discussion is not, probably as it somewhat goes against the purpose of hatting and goes against the design of the template. Signing the closing statement when you give one is perhaps less common (after a bit more checking and thinking my statement above may be slightly wrong), but as I mentioned above is considered best practice even by the documentation for hats itself.
So there's no reason it should not be done when people have asked (and you yourself said in several of the discussions I linked to we had agreed to it). Hattings are probably the rarer form of closing anyway, in mocst places I've seen Template:archive top/doc tend to be much more commonly used and the closing statements for these are definitely signed.
Having said that, as I said above I don't think the lack of signing is a big deal in itself if the hatting is uncontroversial. (Probably why in most pages people let it slide even when guidelines recommend signing any closing statement.) The problem is that too many of your hattings are controversial hence why it becomes a problem.
Nil Einne (talk) 10:00, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Where the hell do you get off ending that with a gratuitous attack on me, Nil? Neither I nor my own hats are the topic of discussion here. Your rudeness on this page is unbecoming, like your warning to the readership that Bugs and I were back (armed and dangerous, I guess?) as if we had ever really been banned in the first place. Please stick to the issue, and if you can't, maybe you should find something else to address. μηδείς (talk) 21:07, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Please see WP:SIGNHAT, and note that neither ban/block evasion nor BLP violations should be hatted -- they should be removed (Wikipedia:Ban#Edits_by_and_on_behalf_of_banned_editors , WP:BLPTALK) NE Ent 10:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
There are some issues like the Justin B. one that are borderline. I support hatting them and bringing them here for discussion rather than deleting them outright, unless there's a clear reason to do so. In that case, a signed comment inside the hat seems fine to me. As I said above, signing on the hat bar itself makes the editor the issue, when it should be the closed edit that's the issue. μηδείς (talk) 21:07, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Whoever does the hatting, that fact is visible in the history, and if it's somehow controversial, then it could be reverted and discussed here, as per the BRD axiom. Maybe they should be signed, but no one should be pilloried for failing to sign. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:06, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
P.S. In case it's not clear from my above answer, when closing discussions you should generally be acting as a neutral third party i.e. not WP:INVOLVED. This means it's generally bad form to close discussions you have been part of (except in a few cases like where you started a diversion from someone else's question which is now distracting from the discussion in which case it might be better to use cot instead of hat anyway). And it's exceptionally bad form to close a discussion which you just answered, effectively trying to say you should have the last word. This is one reason why there's usually no need and it's not the norm to give a reason in reply, and instead you should be giving any signed reason in the closing statement. On the odd case you do need a rationale longer than suitable for the hat, you should mention you gave this rationale in the closing statement. Nil Einne (talk) 11:59, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Should we delete the harassment-only 54 socks when they turn up? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:46, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

All hats should be signed, if not the editor doing the hatting shouldn't be doing the hatting – editors wishing to hat anonymously give the impression they wish to engage in censorship without scrutiny or recourse. Queries relating to vandals or sock puppets or range blocks should be addressed to WP:ANI, it's not the remit of the contributors at the reference desk to determine whether editors need to be banned from Wikipedia. Editors from IPs are not sock puppets not sock puppeteers as they do not pretend to be someone else, using sock puppet in this context is a misnomer. IPs can be range blocked, but that's an admin task, editors pretending they have a remit to ban IP edits are incorrect and risk sanctions themselves, please report disruption at ANI so it can be expertly handled. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:50, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, according to policy, sockpuppets like the IP54 fembots should be deleted on sight. I'd favor also commenting here on talk to maintain the ongoing record we have of these proxy provocateurs. μηδείς (talk) 22:25, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Even if the IP series in question is not a logged-out registered user, it looks like Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia#Not being here to build an encyclopedia would apply. The 54's never do any actual article improvement. Their sole purpose is harassment. So it would seem that deletion on-sight would be justified. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:43, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Logged out is one thing. Amazon corporate proxies is another. It's almost like a sysop was trying to hide his tracks. Not that that could ever happen μηδείς (talk) 23:04, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Oh, yeh, the infamous "undertow" case. The lesson a bad-faith editor would learn from that is to edit as an IP rather than as some other registered user. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:36, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
From day one I've been fairly certain that the 54's are, in fact, a logged out registered user. Whether it be an admin or just a lowly editor like you or me, it is also astute enough to know that checkusers won't investigate IP's. That loophole allows the IP to keep getting away with it, and unwittingly encouraged by respected users here who want to AGF even when it's a harassment-only user. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:12, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
If we have credible evidence, based on IP address ranges and behavioral patterns, that an edit is due to a blocked or banned editor, then I believe the edit can be deleted on sight, and the originating IP address perhaps temporarily blocked.
Otherwise, we should treat the edit the same way we do any edit from any editor.
But we should do one thing or the other. To instead just carp about the edits here strikes me as quite unproductive. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
If you can find any evidence that the 54 sockfarm is here for any reason other than harassment, let us know. (Known entries shown below.) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:36, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
54.242.221.254 (talk · contribs) Dec 17, 2013
54.224.35.46 (talk · contribs) Dec 28-29, 2013
54.224.206.154 (talk · contribs) Dec 31, 2013
54.224.53.210 (talk · contribs) Jan 4, 2014
54.204.117.139 (talk · contribs) Jan 6, 2014
54.196.70.85 (talk · contribs) Jan 19, 2014
54.226.217.226 (talk · contribs) Jan 28, 2014
54.204.179.139 (talk · contribs) Jan 29, 2014
54.205.7.57 (talk · contribs) Feb 28, 2014
54.80.71.128 (talk · contribs) Mar 3, 2014
54.197.5.217 (talk · contribs) Mar 4, 2014
Bugs, let's make a deal. Some time ago I decided to put up with you, even though I find you exceedingly annoying and mostly unproductive. I'm not calling for you to be blocked or banned, I'm not starting RFC's or AN/I threads on you. It's pretty clear (based on various other RFC's and AN/I threads that have taken place) that you're very good at keeping your obnoxious behavior just barely on the right side of actionable; I don't believe the community is ever going to successfully sanction you. I ignore you as much as I can; by replying to you in this thread at all I am breaking a promise I made to myself.
Now, in the same vein, can you please grow some skin a tenth as thick as that you expect all your victims to have, and just ignore 54.*.*.*? Thank you. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:21, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Why Limit it to 54.x.x.x, this sysop could probably IP hop to all sorts of IP addresses? 200.150.65.173 (talk) 7:37 pm, 6 March 2014, last Thursday (1 day ago) (UTC−5)
Why Limit it to 54.x.x.x, this sysop could probably IP hop to all sorts of IP addresses? 54.205.248.26 (talk) 7:39 pm, 6 March 2014, last Thursday (1 day ago) (UTC−5)
Why Limit it to 54.x.x.x, this sysop could probably IP hop to all sorts of IP addresses?190.94.217.129 (talk) 7:47 pm, 6 March 2014, last Thursday (1 day ago) (UTC−5)
Note: I've blocked 190.94.217.129 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) and 200.150.65.173 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) for six months as open proxies. 190.94.217.129 was previously blocked with no visible contributions,[1] so I'm guessing other contributions from it have been oversighted. The 54.xxx are more of a problem to block, but I'm going to try (again) to get someone who's clever with filters to take a look at possible range blocks. I do agree that the 54 posts are all related, though their claim above to be a sysop suggests to me, if anything, that they're not. They seem to my non-expert eye to be two users, as they all geolocate to either Ashburn, Virginia or Washington, Seattle. But what do I know, maybe one person could achieve that through the Amazon ISP..? Anyway, as long as the edits are of a similar kind, they're IMO perfectly OK to delete on sight. Bishonen | talk 11:08, 8 March 2014 (UTC).
Yee-hah! Thank you. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:18, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Wow, I think I'll take a hiatus from posting points of discussion here. Lots of latent resentment and off-topic bickering seem to be the end result many talk page posts in recent weeks :-/ I honestly only wanted some discussion of hatting policy; and WP:SIGNHAT seems to cover it quite specifically. Thanks to those who gave on-topic input. SemanticMantis (talk) 01:12, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
    • There's always a lot of off-topic discussion here, something I hope an RFC will soon address, although I am prohibited from completing it. One or two editors who tend to attempt to own the place, yet are being steadily called out for it as the threads here show. It won't be long before the balance tips too far. The Rambling Man (talk) 02:08, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
      • Don't worry, on CNN Stephen Cohen made similar comments about the crisis in Ukraine. WWIII will break out before the conflict here on the Ref Desk would have a chance to cause problems. Count Iblis (talk) 14:28, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

What is the other side of the argument re: WP:SIGNHAT? Isn't this justification to simply undo any unsigned hat? --— Rhododendrites talk |  22:48, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think lack of signing is grounds for removal on its own, I just think that signing is functional and polite. It adds transparency and accountability to what is often an unnecessarily opaque procedure (i.e. if I ever hat anything, I won't force readers to sort through edit histories to figure out who did it.) SemanticMantis (talk) 22:42, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/March_2014

Does anyone know why the March 7 archives show up as red links? Am I doing something wrong? Bielle (talk) 02:13, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

There've been problems with the archiving process -- or, more specifically, the ability of the archiving bot to talk to Wikipedia's servers using my home network -- for the past week or so. An experiment I did last night left things temporarily in worse shape than usual for an interval, although all should be fixed now. You must have visited during the window before I fixed things. See these two threads at the Village Pump for more details. —Steve Summit (talk) 10:34, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Steve. Bielle (talk) 23:35, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

BLP/hatting

Since people still aren't signing their hattings, I can't say for sure who did this but I have a feeling I know who did. In any case, please remember that most of the time, it's just stupid to hat a BLP violation as was done here [4] until I fixed it by removing those comments. This suggests you don't understand either WP:BLP or the purpose of Template:hat. If a BLP violation has occured, the correct course of action is to delete or at least ask the person who made the comment to redact the parts which violate BLP. The only reason to hat something relating to BLP on the RD I can think of would be if you think something will encourage a BLP violation but isn't one itself. If that's the case, you should make that clear in the edit summary. If your edit summary is unclear and you don't sign it, there's no way anyone can know what the heck you were trying to do so expect them to take action accordingly. As I mentioned in my comment, I have no strong feeling on whether a BLP violation has occured (although it does seem to be getting into a questionable area), I simply saw 2 silly hats and took action accordingly. Nil Einne (talk) 20:15, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Hard to tell who you're hinting it, but I think the ones you cited were done by Jack.[5][6] If an editor fails to sign a hat, the history still has it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:21, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Nil Einne, your opening sentence is rather ill-considered and finger-pointy, particularly given that the very topic of signing hats is discussed in the thread right above and has noticeably failed to come to any kind of consensus in relation to whether signing them is required or not. Also, if you can't say for sure who did what on Wikipedia, your knowledge of how history pages work could do with a boost. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 00:30, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Hats are routinely anonymously conducted and routinely include false and incorrect information in the closing message. It's time to stop this kind of behaviour, it's not a collegiate attitude, it smacks of "us and them", it generates an atmosphere where some editors believe they are better than others. In short, it doesn't function correctly. I see no reason why a useful "concluding comment" and an {{archive top}} and {{archive bottom}} can't be applied, so editors, IPs etc can read why and be directed to notices such as our medical disclaimer, that help them understand the way the ref desks "work" here better. Right now, there's still the continually misguided advice that some posts are contrary to "policy" which is entirely fallacious, and misguides editors, many of whom will be first time visitors to Wikipedia, looking for guidance, only to be smacked down with deceit and lies about policy-infraction. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:05, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

'Bible codes' questions

We have seen repeated requests for speculation regarding so-called 'bible codes' in recent days. Seeing the latest blatant attempt to use the desk as a forum, I deleted it, and left a note on the contributor's talk page. Sadly, the question has been restored. I'd be interested to see what others think should be done regarding this. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:47, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

WWJD. What Would Jimbo Do? According to the anagram server, he "would doom with jab". I take that to mean we shouldn't just bowl over every question about the code, but pick away at the purely speculative responses. Same goes for any topic. It's a bit of a batshit subject, but codes and facts about them (even if we'd call them "coincidence")do exist. Just gotta be careful assigning meaning. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:50, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
So are you saying we should blame God for creating the codes? HiLo48 (talk) 09:59, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
I think we always need to be careful about preserving a balance between naivete/gullibility on the one hand and intellectual arrogance on the other. Any topic that isn't straight-down-the-line pure science is prone to being subject to either attitude. I've seen plenty of both on the ref desks over the past decade. OPs tend to be in the first camp, respondents in the latter, but it's by no means clear cut. There is plenty of other room for views that are not at either extreme. But that's by the by. Our role is to provide references, where they exist. It's not to debate issues with OPs, and it certainly isn't to deny the existence of stuff we don't happen to personally agree with. Sure, some OPs come here with an obvious intention to have a debate, and we should definitely cut them off at the pass. But sometimes, all they do is ask a reasonable question, and others then turn it into a debate. Well, whoever breaks the "no debating" rule should be given short shrift. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 11:20, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
What I'm saying is when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
I'm mainly saying that because a pyramid told me to multiply 13 * 13 * 13, and that's what Google gives, but it's still true. We're here to teach, assume good faith, and hope we help. Let us not multiply 13 * 3 (as one more familiar with how math works might), lest we end at "He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction." Don't bite the newbs. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:24, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
If we find a Bible code like 'Satan Rules OK' perhaps we can get God to go pfffft out of existence then? If that had a detectable effect it would move all this into the realm of science. :) Dmcq (talk) 11:37, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Not as simple as science. Sticking with the Corinthians, know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:52, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
That's 1 Corinthians 3:16. If you're more into MJK than KJV, 13/16 is (sort of) the time signature of Schism, which also speaks of the temple.
I've done the math enough to know the dangers of our second guessing.
Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our communication. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:09, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Speaking of math, Schism is from an album with the title track Lateralus. It has a basis in the Fibonacci sequence, introduced 800 years before they won the Grammy. The line with 13 syllables is "As below, so above and beyond, I imagine". See? Science.
Also, inverting the golden ratio gets you dividing the Trinity between two "supposed lovers/brothers" in Schism, or .666, rounded to .67. Schism peaked at #67 on the Billboard charts. Note the number is enclosed in a perfect circle, which brings me back to this inverted 13 bytes, which really got the whole thing rolling. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:47, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The key question, at least in terms of an article, is not whether there's material published on the subject, but whether there is unbiased commentary on it. In terms of the ref desk, the OP seems to be taking certain things as a given. So the choices are (1) box it up as Andy did; (2) find some sources and explain to the OP why he's wrong, as per the WWJD comment; or (3) advise the OP to find a "fan forum" on the subject. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:54, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense Count Iblis (talk) 19:11, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Cute diagram, but it's perhaps the quintessential demonstration of what I meant by "intellectual arrogance". I'm not saying I believe in any of the individual things mentioned there - but my beliefs, whatever they are, are irrelevant. As are any of yours or any of anyone else's here. It is NOT our place to be saying "Oh, that subject belongs in the Bollocks box and we are therefore entitled to pour scorn on it, and by extension on you and other gullibles". If asked, it is our place to provide published information about the topic, if we're interested enough to get involved in the question at all. If you don't want to help, get out of the way. If you want to have a discussion about the merits or demerits of particular topics, have it elsewhere, as we constantly advise our dear users to do. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 00:22, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
You forgot to list hard-core atheism, which is based on faith as surely as religion is. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:35, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Did he? Or does trusting your own eyes also require you to ignore the science behind 5 Mind-Blowing Ways Your Senses Lie to You Every Day? The scary part is there's a lot more than five. Fear isn't rational, though, so it's cool. And yes. Yes, he did. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:42, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
He apparently also forgot to read the fine print about Wikipedia's rules on non-free images. "Fear isn't rational"? So if a tiger is galloping your way, you stand there and go, "Wow, check it out, a man-eater. But I'm not afraid, so everything should turn out well." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:03, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
No, you very quickly weigh the pros and cons of being eaten, then you make a (probably selfish) decision. The kinds of fear I'm talking about are the one that makes you run in circles, screaming, attracting another tiger, and the kind that makes you avoid racetracks for the galloping, or sweat when you eat Frosted Flakes. A little caution is different. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:09, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
You need to be more specific with your terms, then. "Fear" covers a lot of ground. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:22, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Give me some credit for using "trusting" instead of "believing", "require" instead of "involve" and "ignore" instead of "overlook". The perception bit was the main point, the fear was more an afterthought. But for clarity's sake, fearing you'll lose touch with reality without an apparent reason you would is irrational. And clunky. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
I fear you've totally lost me now. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:35, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Sorry. Would you mind terribly if I just left you there? I think we've gone deep enough. I've stricken the throwaway sentence, lest anyone else wander down this path. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:42, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Well you can go and wonder about Xenu or Chhinnamasta or the Holy Spirit but I've better things to do with my time and I see no reason to go in universe as it were for questions like this one. However if we do have some sort of answer and they're not putting in questions at too high a rate we should just try and point to a relevant Wikipedia article or other reference and try and answer them. More that that if they say 'do you think' we should rephrase as a question about whether there is a documented opinion rather than just saying we don't give an opinion. Dmcq (talk) 01:08, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
We're not supposed to use a copyrighted image in Wikipedia:: space. NE Ent 23:56, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Good catch. I converted it to a link, as per the standard approach. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:06, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
  • The question has been asked again, and I have deleted it [7]. The issue is not really plausibility, in which I agree with Jack, but user behavior. If someone asked five times in four days for legal advice we wouldn't necessarily delete the questions as nonsense, but we still wouldn't tolerate the multiple posts. μηδείς (talk) 19:32, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Quite right too. I just had a look and there's some sites which will allow you to look up various of these things and you an even download your own software to do searches. To see the sort of rubbish this gives I tried out divinecoders.com for 'SATAN' [8] in Genesis including one at index 613 with an ELS of 342. Did you realize that 342 converted to base 7 is 666? I hope I've not just started some new nutter business. ;-) They should be directed to go off to those sites which cater for people like that. Dmcq (talk) 09:36, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Do any of us happen to know the best site for it? Anyway, if anyone asks about Mozilla, tell them to type "about:mozilla" into the Firefox address bar. Just learned that existed. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:49, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't know, the bible code article doesn't give one and I think is quite right in not doing so. I guess their best bet is to do a Google of 'Bible code' with an extra word like 'software' or 'search', or 'forum' to find like minded people

Where did the symbols go ?

When editing, I used to get a choice of symbols to choose from at the bottom, like the degree sign. They are now gone. What happened and how do I get them back ? StuRat (talk) 01:23, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

They're still there when I go to edit mode. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 03:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
I have noticed that WP is still loading slowly at night in the Eastern US, and that a lot of time only a part of a page will load, leaving out options one normally expects. μηδείς (talk) 03:43, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
That doesn't appear to be the issue in my case, as the rest of the page loads OK. StuRat (talk) 22:11, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

User:Sagittarian Milky Way

After he posted a request for legal advice about child pornography, he posted a second request, which he admitted was one for legal advice, asking for the opinion of what I assume he means to be aliens. I removed that question and have filed an ANI report. μηδείς (talk) 03:42, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

A facetious reference to "people" as we are the only known humanoids. All living things were originally called creatures per Genesis 1-2 (which I don't believe). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:12, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Asking where the boundaries of the law are, is a request for legal advice. Laws about the internet vary widely from place to place. But here's some non-legal yet practical advice: If you want to be absolutely sure not to break any internet-related laws, there's a foolproof solution - don't user the internet. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:46, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
The question about jihadist websites needs to be answerable on Wikipedia. I just saw a news item about "Al Qaeda Magazine" today [9] and was thinking I ought to track it down and describe for Wikipedia what they had in mind to blow up, just on account of folks not wanting to be standing there if for no other reason. Since it's part of our research we need to be able to answer it, just like copyright questions. Making censorship secret is admittedly an integral part of its evolution, but that is all the more reason to oppose that. Wnt (talk) 03:39, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
It may need to be answered, but unless someone else has already answered it, it's not our place to do so. If the OP is seriously concerned about the issue, he should contact an attorney knowledgeable on the subject rather than depending on the advice of strangers on the internet. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
"Our research" as in WP:OR? "Have to"? As in WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS? μηδείς (talk) 04:07, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
As in: if Wikipedia didn't answer basic copyright questions, we'd be lucky it existed at all. These other questions are no different in character. Wnt (talk) 11:02, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
Copyright issues are an entirely different ball game from questions of "is it legal to go to a given website?" Check what happened to Pete Townsend before you make any assumptions. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:09, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't get your point. If you're claiming copyright issues are less serious, ask Aaron Swartz. Or, well, not. The point is, Wikipedia editors should be ready to help each other stay out of sword range of the orcs. Wnt (talk) 23:37, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
Copyrights are also important. That's why Wikipedia's philosophy is, "If in doubt, assume it's copyrighted." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:58, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
The point is, we don't tell users "we can't help you figure out if something is copyrighted, but if you think it might be, don't post it, and don't ask us." Wnt (talk) 08:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Actually, copyrighted material is not allowed here at all unless a valid fair-use case can be made. There are also articles and guidelines about copyright. But it's a slippery issue. That being said, getting the copyright wrong is unlikely to result in injury or death, so it's not a good comparison with medical advice. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:33, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Note this was the thread about jihadist websites. Though as with medical advice, no doubt there is a small chance of somehow facilitating death, offset by a much larger chance of preventing it. Just not as much in either direction. Wnt (talk) 18:21, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Legal or Medical advice that may be of interest.

It concerns requests for legal or medical advice posted to one of the reference desks.

I am posting this here because of a potential conflict between the talk page guidelines and reference desk guidelines --Guy Macon (talk) 06:00, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

And I went there and remove the potential conflict between it and WP:RD/G which is the right place for such stuff and already covers it. Dmcq (talk) 09:04, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Without opening up a duplicate thread here, let me just mention that not everyone agrees with Dmcq's interpretation of Wikipedia policy. Also, as a general rule, when you see a neutrally-worded announcement of a discussion on another page, it isn't helpful to attempt to make the same argument you made on that other page on the page with the announcement. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:52, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  • As long as someone is pushing on this, let me point out the thread I just stumbled across on Reddit: [10] - right now being cheered on their front page as "Redditor identifies severe condition and potentially saves a life." Fear not, this is not something Wikipedia will ever be accused of doing. We will proudly say we removed or shut down questions and answers like these, keeping profit safely in the hands of those licensed to receive it. We'll never know how many we sacrificed to the deity of medical ethics and profit, which are one and inseparable. Aren't we just special. Wnt (talk) 03:27, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
    • If another site is willing to post medical advice, that's their funeral. Wikipedia need not fall into that tar pit. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:48, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
      • Which simply makes Wikipedia an irrelevant player in this area. By not getting involved, we're not preventing any harm, instead we're causing more harm. Similarly, if you don't give first aid because you think that you may make mistakes and instead let others do this, you are likely contributing to more harm because there is then one person less available to give first aid to people who need it. It's not good to not face difficult problems, to just walk away and look in the other direction so that you can pretend that there isn't a problem just to make you feel better about this. Count Iblis (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
  • While I object to the liberal application of "no medical advice" and "no legal advice" to justify deletions, hattings, and scoldings as a general rule -- as medicine and law are not actually off-limits topics -- I agree that the refdesk shouldn't provide advice. I mean, it's not just the refdesk; Wikipedia has a great big disclaimer for legal purposes that it does not do so and it's pretty explicitly stated in the refdesk guidelines. So yes, Wikipedia is an irrelevant player in this area. It's not that we might make mistakes; it's that we WILL make mistakes (I mean seriously, look at many of the jokey and incompetent but confident answers to non-medical questions we get!) and that leaves not you but WMF open to legal issues, with potential negative impact on the project. I say stop removing the questions as questions and only remove advice itself. We can answers questions about medicine and law without giving advice, and can inform people why that's the case. --— Rhododendrites talk |  16:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Perhaps I am misunderstanding. Rhododendrites wrote "I say stop removing the questions", you replied with "the question itself need not be kept". That sounds a lot like you saying we should remove the questions. Could you clarify? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:22, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
The point is that the response saying we can't provide advice is the answer. It should remain there, if for nothing else to remind other readers not to bother asking such questions. It's no different, really, from some question about the history of China for which there are no known sources. The best we might be able to do is say "Sorry, nobody seems to know". Same as us refusing to answer homework questions. The OP is just as much left in the dark in those cases as they are with the question seeking medical/legal advice, but nobody suggests we remove those questions or our responses to them. We have given the appropriate response in all three cases, and the record should show that. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 00:33, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

TL;DR version of my previous post for clarity: We can't offer legal or medical advice. It's not just a refdesk thing it's a Wikimedia thing. We can offer information about legal and medical topics, though. In either case, don't remove the question or hat it. Respond, maybe even with some short template response, informing them the refdesk is not for such advice. --— Rhododendrites talk |  01:06, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Might I suggest that someone edit the reference desk guidelines to make the above more clear? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Talk pages are for discussing improvements to the content of the associated page. We shouldn't be giving people any advice about anything to people on them never mind legal or medical advice. It is true there is an explicit rule about legal and medical advice but that doesn't mean we are okay giving other advice on talk pages rather than trying to improve the associated article. The reference desks are the place for people to ask for any advice.
As to medical or legal advice I wouldn't mind a little loosening up of the rules on the reference desks to allow only answers that strictly followed the guidelines here, i.e. that excluded all own ideas and apocryphal tales and only pointed at Wikipedia articles or peer reviewed articles or a nationally regarded place that deals with a problem as well as advice to go to a doctor or lawyer. My take on it is we should also apply the same sort of standards about say building advice or electrical maintenance where a person could easily kill or injure themselves. Dmcq (talk) 08:18, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Wouldn't that be a tightening up rather than a loosening up? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 08:22, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure of your reasoning, loosening would allow more which is what I was talking about. On the other hand as far as tightening goes, for the legal and medical advice I don't think we should try and distinguish between personal advice and questions about a disease or legal issue. That would get rid of the silly business about trying to determine which type a question is. If we just treated all obviously dangerous questions as well as legal and medical ones as requiring strictly no original research I think it would remove a lot of hot air on this talk page. Dmcq (talk) 08:27, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
That's certainly a slippery slope. What's the right answer to "I have these symptoms. What is my disease?" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:34, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
A pointer to where to get help is the right answer. We would be engaging in original research to go any further and original research is what I was saying we should not go in for on any dangerous questions. Dmcq (talk) 10:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
No, that's the wrong answer - because it compels you to first do a diagnosis, which we're not supposed to be doing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure what diagnosis you're talking about. Telling a person to go to a doctor or lawyer or ring up some nationally approved center is not a diagnosis. Diagnosis is original research. If however they say they suffer from migrane we could also point them at migrane Dmcq (talk) 23:41, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
If they ask for more info on a medical topic, you could point them to that topic. If they ask how they should fix their problem, there is no article you can point them to. That's when you point them to a doctor. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
(ec)It would be a change from "no professional advice allowed at all" to "professional advice allowed only under a rigid set of conditions." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ — Preceding undated comment added 08:28, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
As to obviously dangerous if I started talking about making an explosive in a ceramic dish on dry ice and stirring with a wooden spoon surely that sort of thing shouldn't really be allowed as original research on the reference desks? Dmcq (talk) 08:35, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
That sounds risky, yes. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The leading cause of accidental deaths is not due to people taking on board medical advice from their family members or friends (and we all get get exposed to that frequently, so this is not a trivial statement), rather it is due to accidents in and around the home (people falling from ladders, mistakes in electric work leading to electrocution etc. etc.). We don't refrain from giving people advice on how to do plumbing work, how to repair their cars etc. on the Ref Desks. Society actually assumes that it's normal for people to not always ask professionals to do these sorts of tasks. Society also assumes that it s normal for people to give medical advice to each other, parents to that all the time to their children. Count Iblis (talk) 17:57, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps there should be tighter rules on giving "how-to" information. As far as it being "normal" to give people medical advice, there's a key difference: The parents see their kids frequently. How many of the requesters on the ref desks has anyone here met face-to-face? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:14, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Changing the rules so that it would be ok to give medical advice is not something that could be decided here. It would necessarily involve WMF which has explicitly stated Wikipedia is not for that (and the entity that would be involved in any legal issues arising from mistakes). It sounds like the three remaining questions, then, are: (1) whether advice, broadly construed, is [in]appropriate for the refdesk; (2) to what extent can medical and legal subjects be discussed in an informational or factual manner (i.e. not advice); (3) whether questions requesting disallowed advice (whatever type that may be) should be removed, hatted, or responded to/left alone.
My own perspective: (1) "Advice" is far too blurry a semantic category to make a general rule about. (2) To the extent already described at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines/Medical_advice. (3) The burden of this rule should be on the ones answering questions to keep it in the ream of fact and information. It's advice itself that should be removed and users cautioned, not questions that ask for advice. A question in which someone asks for advice should be responded to with something between "we can't give advice here" and a helpful answer that is not itself advice (e.g. Q: "I have an earache, what should I do?" A: "For treatment advice please consult your local doctor. We cannot give medical advice here. For general information about earaches, you may want to see earache and this article from webmd."). So remove medical advice itself (again, as described at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines/Medical_advice), but leave the questions. --— Rhododendrites talk |  19:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
User:Rhododendrites hits the nail on the head. I would add that, not only is not removing the question a very good idea, it is also required by WP:TPOC. Alas, it looks like I am going to have to waste everybody's time with an RfC to demonstrate that there is an overwhelming consensus against deleting another editor's perfectly harmless question just because someone might give them medical advice rather than Rhododendrites' helpful and allowable "We cannot give medical advice here. Please consult a doctor. For general information about [ example ], you may want to see our [ example ] article."
(TL;DR) 
Allowed: "We cannot give medical advice here. Please consult a doctor. For general
information about [ example ], you may want to see our example ] article."
Against policy: deleting or editing the question.
--Guy Macon (talk) 23:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Go and raise an RfC then and this can be decided or you will waste even more of people's time. Dmcq (talk) 10:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
  • We've already got a disclaimer, a statement in the top-of-page guidelines, and a template to use when we remove material, and a template to notify the OP whose material's been removed. Why are we discussing adding to this? μηδείς (talk) 23:54, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Who else besides you thinks the talk page guideline overrides the reference desk guideline? Dmcq (talk) 10:07, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
What on the refdesk guideline contradicts what Guy has been saying? I've referred only to the refdesk guidelines. --— Rhododendrites talk |  14:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
You know, I never bothered to confirm Medeis' oft-repeated claim that the local guideline allows the deletions, editing, and hatting. I rejected that argument out of hand because the argument that the local guidelines trump WP:TPOC ignores WP:LOCALCON. I just looked and saw contradictory information. The wording in the header at the top of the page says "We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice" whereas Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines says "Don't edit others' questions or answers ...except to fix formatting errors that interfere with readability (like a leading space or unclosed markup tags)" and "When removing or redacting someone else's posting, the usual talk page guidelines apply" (wikilink in original). But then it says "For removing a question seeking for medical advice..." which is a direct contradiction to the earlier "the usual talk page guidelines apply". Nowhere in the talk page guidelines is any hint that you are allowed to delete a reference desk question. WP:TPOC (which trumps any local guideline) lists all the situations where you can edit someone else's comment, and "because we are not allowed to answer" is not on the list. --17:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy Macon (talk • contribs) 17:27, 25 March 2014
The ref desks are not really talk pages, although they're kind of structured that way. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Raise an RfC and lets see if anybody else besides you thinks the talk page guidelines override the reference desk ones. Dmcq (talk) 23:36, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Agreed. An RfC that applies equally to all would be wonderful. μηδείς (talk) 03:19, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Removed claimed 'attempt to drive hits' hat

I removed this nonsense unsigned hat [11]. As I remarked there, there hasn't even been a valid link for a while. So there's little chance it would contribute to any improvement in search engine rankings and in any case, there's even less chance a hat will stop that. And there's zero evidence that the question was anything but a genuine query by someone somewhat unfamiliar with a sadly all too familiar practice on the internet. And frankly if anyone actually believes that someone would be bother asking on the RD just to drive a tiny number of hits from people who may visit it based on the question here to a site which intended to get mass visits from search engine hits, and even go as far as bothering to ask a follow up question highly critical of the site where they concurrently removed change the link to make it not recognised by MediaWiki, they're even less experienced with the way things work on the internet than the questioner. Nil Einne (talk) 05:30, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

What a shock. The unsigned hat was by User:Medeis.[12]] See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive832#Disruptive editing of the reference desks. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
It's worth mentioning that Wikipedia labels all outgoing links with the "rel='nofollow'" attribute which causes search engines to NOT increase the page rank of outside websites just because Wikipedia links to them. That means that it is entirely pointless for people to mention their own websites here just in order to get higher search engine rankings...it simply doesn't work. Sadly, this point is not sufficiently well-known or well-understood by the evil linkspammers out there.
So, while we may not wish to have our pages littered with linkspam, we can at least take comfort in the knowledge that the evil spammer doesn't have anything to gain from doing it.
SteveBaker (talk) 00:25, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Yeah I forgot that all external links are no followed. And you're right that spammers (and similar) do stupid stuff.
But while I don't think you intended to suggest otherwise, I should point out for the benefit of other readers that stuff spammers do at least normally makes sort of sense from their flawed view. For example, a link spammer may add links to a place that no follows link, most likely because they don't know or don't understand what no follow is, or possibly because they are hoping search engines still give some priority even to no follow links in page ranking algorithms.
Similarly 5 shillers may suddenly appear on forum and talk about how wondorous a store or product is, with completely new accounts, when their comments of the product or store make little sense or suggest someone who's used them, with bad English (even if all purportedly come from English speaking countries) and with the near certainty from the forums history these shillers are going to be picked up by regulars and the store or product will gain a poorer reputation from the shilling, not a positive one.
This sort of spamming is understandable. What's far less understandable as I mentioned is someone is going to come here (from a US IP address which has asked a few other questions) and ask what's the purpose of a site intended to get mass hits from search engines, initially including a link. When they are told it's for making money via advertising, the same person who asked the question intentionally disables the link (so even if it wasn't no followed, it's not going to help anything but for people who visit it directly based on the question) and asks a further critical question. Even for a stupid spammer, there's little chance they're going to see this as a useful proposition.
Now that it's been confirmed that μηδείς is indeed the hatter, I can assume their comment in reply to the question was intended to further justify the hat. But even taking it in to account, there's still no justification for the hat. In fact the comment seems to contradict the hat. While the hat seems to imply that they believed the person who asked the question was attempting to drive hits to the website (which as I've said isn't particularly believeable), the comment seems to imply that they believe the question can't be answered with references.
For starters, we've established except in the case of extreme soapboxing or otherwise totally inappropriate questions, we don't close question just because they're difficult to answer with references. (And I think we've also established that it's a bad idea for μηδείς to close questions for this reason point blank considering their extremely poor record.)
Secondly, the claim no references could be provided is questionable. In particular, it wouldn't surprise me if references could be found for the second/followup question namely why websites do this, perhaps even with some info on how much money they make. Even if these references don't mention this website in particular, there's little evidence the OP required info on this particular website for their second/followup question.
In fact, it's even possible some lower quality non RS references may exist for the first question in blogs and forums or others. And it's possible WHOIS data and similar may reveal the company behind this does it enough that there's details on them even if no discussion relating to this particular website.
All in all, there's no reason to hat this question based on the unsupported assertation that no references could be provided. And while it's probably unlikely anyone is going to bother, and I'm not even sure if the OP/IP cares, we don't close questions just because it's unlikely anyone is going to bother to answer or comment any more. In fact that go against the purpose of hatting. (In exceptional cases, you may close but not hat a discussion if you believe it contained relevant points but any further comments will be offtopic discussion not answers and you want to stop that. And in some cases a completely offtopic subdiscussion may be hatted. But none of this is relevant here.)
Nil Einne (talk) 09:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't know if μηδείς is ever going to explain their rationale but I visited the advert site in question and found the final nail in the coffin to any theory the OP was trying to spam the site here. As mention in the RD thread, the page duplicates content from the Ubuntu forum. (For those who don't want to visit a site like that, the particular question that's on the linked page is from here [13] as per the site itself.)
That question (both in the Ubuntu forums and on the advert site) mentions Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 January 20#How to find out if this tower has an OS? (well before it was archived), where the question asker says they initially asked for help. Visiting the question in the archive shows a similar IP was the one asking.
Logically the IP/OP came across a duplicate of their question on the site in question when searching and was wondering why it was there hence their original question. They receive an answer which is probably sufficient for them, although may be interested in any further info if anyone cares to provide it. All perfectly ordinary until μηδείς shows up and randomly decides to hat their question and the response.
Nil Einne (talk) 13:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
I have again removed the hat after my removal was reverted by μηδείς with the claim it was made 'per talk' [14], despite the fact there was zero explaination or support on this talk page.
I did expect this hatting was done by μηδείς but since I could not be sure without checking and couldn't be bothered checking, I did not not say who since it ultimately did not matter.
In fairness, μηδείς did finally sign the hat but in this case, it actually would have been better for them to offer an explaination here (or even there) that makes sense rather than worrying so much about correcting their earlier failure to sign. (Or to put it a different way, if you made 2 mistakes, it's normally more important you correct the bigger one than the smaller one. If you failed to sign your hat and failed to offer any explaination that makes sense, the bigger mistake is obviously hatting without a reason that makes sense.)
I have asked μηδείς to stop using misleading edit summaries as this is the second time in recent weeks I have come across them justifying an action with the talk page despite the fact there was little actual justification from the talk page.
The other time they had at least commented here but their edit summary claimed it was 'consensus at talk', yet as I pointed out here Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 105#The Return of User:Great Time, the claim was equally unjustified with only 2 other comments one somewhat supportive, another (me) suggesting the rationale for the removal was flawed.
Nil Einne (talk) 08:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Classic WP:OWNERSHIP pattern. This is an ongoing problem, and the solution is simple; give Medeis a topic ban against editing or modifying other people's comments. No deleting, no hatting, no modifying in any way.-- just leave them alone. Let the dozens of other editors watching those pages handle that. Fire the self-appointed "censor of the reference desks" for doing a lousy job of deciding what to censor. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:07, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Support that proposal 100%. This user's unilateral actions have gone on long enough. --Viennese Waltz 11:10, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
Could they at very least not go and fight the reinstatement by another editor here thanks whatever about the original hatting. That at least would cut down considerably on the rate of wastage of disk bytes devoted to these talk page archives about these hattings. Dmcq (talk) 10:41, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
They were told the hat was removed because it was unsigned. Now that is is signed, is there some new problem? Or did the signature never actually have anything to do with it? μηδείς (talk) 03:17, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes. You did four things wrong.
  • You hatted something that should not have been hatted.[15]
  • You failed to sign the hatting, making it difficult to figure out who did it.
  • You used a revert to re-apply the hat after it was removed.[16] See WP:BRD and WP:TALKDONTREVERT.
  • Your revert had a misleading edit summary.
I hpoe this helps... --Guy Macon (talk) 03:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Documenting this diff [17] for any future discussion of hatting and closing behaviour, and constructive responses to disagreement. 86.157.148.65 (talk) 14:07, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Talk page guidelines versus reference page ones

I have raised the problem about talk page guidelines versus reference desk ones at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Claim_that_talk_page_guidelines_override_reference_desk_ones. Dmcq (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

And by the way the reference desk guidelines do not say things can be silently deleted either, just replaced by something saying why the legal or medical question or personal attack were removed. Dmcq (talk) 00:25, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
talk, you have been around long enough to know that it isn't helpful to purposely split a discussion across talk pages. Please keep the discussion centralized in one place -- the place that you yourself chose. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:03, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
The discussion there is not about that unless you are now explicitly saying the reference desk guideline says one can silently removed queries and answers However the discussion was inspired by your sticking in your TPOC business again in the section above which implied that. How about you just stop going around misquoting policy and guidelines? Dmcq (talk) 10:40, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
How about you stop accusing me of misquoting policy and guidelines when I have done no such thing? As to your other comments, no, I am NOT going to split a discussion across talk pages, and I advise others here to avoid replies that do so as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:54, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Removed Comments

Can someone help me to understand why my comments have been removed? I put them back in, and saw them there, but they disappeared again. Did I do something wrong? 128.199.254.146 (talk) 17:13, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Someone removed them for being a personal attack. You basically said "wow, you screwed this person up" without any explanation of why or even who you were talking to. - Purplewowies (talk) 19:22, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
The comments were removed by Medeis. I hope everyone was sitting down for that shocking reveal. Matt Deres (talk) 01:22, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm shocked, shocked to find that deleting others' comments is going on in here!
Is anyone up for editing the reference desk guidelines to specify that a personal attack should only be removed by someone other than the target? What is worse than letting one person be judge, jury, and executioner? Letting one person be victim, arresting officer, judge, jury, and executioner. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:13, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Right. Removing a personal attack against oneself is a tantamount to executing someone. Get a sense of proportion here. --jpgordon::==( o ) 04:54, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
The theoretical alternative would be, instead of deleing, bring it here and ask someone else to delete it. That would be productive, ja? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:01, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
After 10+ years here, I'm still unsure of the rules around deleting stuff (other than one's own posts or parts thereof). When is it OK? When is it not OK? What other steps should be taken first?
We seem to just discuss individual cases, without ever coming to any kind of decision about what general principles should govern all deletions or desired deletions, i.e. something against which we can assess and decide appropriate action in each case that arises. Could we possibly work towards that? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 09:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
As a minimum standard of behavior that everyone is required to follow "If the change to another editor's comment is specifically listed at WP:TPOC it is allowed, otherwise it is forbidden" is all anyone really needs to know. Anyone can suggest common-sense additional guidelines that are more restrictive than WP:TPOC (example: to avoid any perception of bias, let someone else decide whether something is a personal attack against you), but we are all free to reject such suggestions. We could even, by consensus, agree on more restrictive rules and put them in the reference desk guidelines. It doesn't work the other way though; if the change to another editor's comment is not one specifically listed as being allowed at WP:TPOC it is forbidden. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:06, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Editors have the right to remove personal attacks against themselves. In this specific case, the IP/OP's comment was strictly an attack, with no useful information in it. There's no reason to keep it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:00, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
That was on a reference desk not a talk page. There is a specific reference desk guideline that personal attacks may be replaced by [Personal attack removed. ~~~~]. The poster should not have been left in the dark by a complete removal. By the way I think putting square brackets in there is asking for trouble if someone wants to link personal attack to the policy. Dmcq (talk) 13:42, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Baseball Bugs is right. Editors have the right to remove personal attacks against themselves. WP:TPOC (Which overrides the reference desk guidelines if there is a conflict -- see WP:LOCALCON) does not place any limits on who can remove a personal attack. That being said, what is allowed is not always what is wise. It is nearly impossible to be unbiased in that situation and it is really easy to confuse strong disagreement with personal attacks when they are pointed at you, so wisdom dictates letting someone else make that decision. But that's just my advice. The actual rule is still "If the change to another editor's comment is specifically listed at WP:TPOC it is allowed, otherwise it is forbidden". --Guy Macon (talk) 14:59, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Actually, he didn't change the IP/OP's comment, he simply zapped it, yes? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:16, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
"The basic rule—with some specific exceptions outlined below—is that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission." -- WP:TPOC (Emphasis added) --Guy Macon (talk) 16:23, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
You don't need "permission" from an obvious troll to get rid of their garbage. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:28, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
This is true, but the boy who cried wolf also didn't need permission to get the villager's help in dealing with wolves. After uncountable number of bad, inappropriate removals and hattings, people stop trusting Medeis's judgement when it comes to hatting or deleting material. That she gets one right after uncountable numbers of wrong ones is why we're having this discussion. Even a blind dog hits the tree once in a while. Had Medeis not had a reputation for bad closures, we wouldn't be here discussing this. THAT is the lesson to take from this. --Jayron32 18:14, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

The politics of this situation (I barely come to the ref desk enough to notice it/REALLY understand what's happened) are precisely why I only made mention of the actions and not the editors. To me, I also wasn't sure how much I considered the action a personal attack... but I tend to take things from a really patient standpoint (not to mention that in the past I've missed obvious things like people threatening me IRL here), so I didn't question it because of that, either (especially since the comment really did not add any information, either). - Purplewowies (talk) 20:10, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

What to do?

According to some theorists on this page, this goofy edit should be allowed to stand (because it was posted by a poor li'l innocent IP), and the registered users who've zapped it should be reprimanded. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:19, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Can you find a valid reason for deleting that in WP:TPOC? I sure can. This "theorist" is just asking you to follow WP:TPOC and refrain from deletions that WP:TPOC doesn't allow. Examples of things that it does allow are irrelevant. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:59, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Please cite the specific part of WP:TPOC that the poster violated. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
"Removing harmful posts, including ... trolling and vandalism."
Now it is your turn. Please cite the specific part of WP:TPOC that someone who posts a good-faith non-harmful medical question violated. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Questions asking for medical or legal advice are subject to removal. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:37, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
I just went to WP:TPG (Which WP:TPOC is a section of) and searched for the word "medical". that word isn't in that document. So again I ask you, please cite the specific part of WP:TPOC that allows removal of a good-faith, non-harmful medical question. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
These guidelines, while not linked from TPOC, have been in place for at least 7+ years explaining how to handle medical advice. The fact that it isn't linked from TPOC does not mean it has not existed as a consensus document for all that time. The page, however, was a split from an earlier page which had roughly the same content, so probably since 2006 or so the removal of medical advice at the reference desks has been standard practice. It's going to take more than "It doesn't exist on this one page I want it to, so it hasn't been policy/guidelines for all that time."--Jayron32 17:19, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
The discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Claim_that_talk_page_guidelines_override_reference_desk_ones is coming to the conclusion that the reference desk guideline takes precedence over the talk page guidelines for reference desk matters so all the business about TPOC isn't all that relevant. However there does seem to be a desire that things like that be hatted rather than removed. One person is even adamant they should just have an archive marker around them, as if any nutter would take ta blind bit of notice of that on these desks. Dmcq (talk) 17:26, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Nicely put. My suggestion to archive the sections without hatting them is to provide clear visibility as to why they've been archived, with an archiving closure comment. Too many times discussions are just hatted (or removed) with no explanation at all. How is anyone supposed to learn anything from that? (P.S. Most of the nutters are those who "answer" the questions, or more likely, answer a question they think they know the answer to which may or may not relate to the original question in any way, shape or form...) The Rambling Man (talk) 18:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) is coming to the conclusion that the reference desk guideline takes precedence over the talk page guidelines? That's an interesting conclusion, seeing as there are a whopping one oppose and two support !votes so far. Yes, there has been a local consensus for many years, but WP:LOCALCON is quite specific: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale". If you want the reference desk guideline to takes precedence over the talk page guidelines, you have to change WP:LOCALCON first. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Part B of "Proposal A re Ref Desk and talk page guidelines" gives primacy to the reference desk guideline in dealing with the reference desk. Two supports and oner oppose (you). "Proposal B Declare Ref Desk to be a rootin' tootin' talk page" (basically what you say) Two disagrees. So 4 against you and just yourself for.
As to WP:LOCALCON it says "Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community.". There is no local consensus for the official guidelines. All guidelines have consensus on a wider scale. WP:POLCON is the appropriate policy about disagreements in policies and guidelines. Dmcq (talk) 22:30, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

RfC on Talk page change affecting here

An RfC has been set up at Wikipedia_talk:Talk_page_guidelines#Talk_page_guidelines_versus_reference_page_ones on the business which was discussed at WP:VPP#Claim that talk page guidelines override reference desk ones. Basically the question of whether the talk page guideline always takes precedence or whether the reference desk is a separate sort of thing that can make its own guidelines and just default to the talk page guidelines. Dmcq (talk) 23:03, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

question re: a recent one

@Medeis: - Where on WP:ATTACK does it say to close this? I cannot see anything like that. Nor do I see a personal attack. Looks like the user is asking about how to go about giving a magazine a piece of his/her mind, which is a valid question. Otherwise you could interpret the post as "why would this not have mentioned these things." Either way, no hat. --— Rhododendrites talk |  23:23, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I am curious, Rhododendrites, what you would think if I went to the reference desk to ask people how best to let you know (actual name and personal contact information deleted) that you have made a mistake as a professional ethicist in showing no concern for this private person under the policies of WP:BLP and WP:ATTACK? Would I be justified in stating as fact that you have made a mistake? Inviting others to take action over it off wiki? This is wrong on the grounds of at least three policies. As for the thread, the objectively answerable questions are still in place. No one has "censored" anything. Nothing was deleted, just hidden from searchable view. μηδείς (talk) 23:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
The more of these I see, the more I am convinced that Medeis has decided ahead of time that there is a quota of questions that must be hatted every day, and then comes up with rationales for doing so ex post facto. Seriously Medeis. We have been saying for years. STOP. CLOSING. QUESTIONS. Leave it to someone else to do so. If you don't like a question, Medeis, don't answer it. But your judgement is fantastically flawed. Occasionally, once in a while, you get one right, but your false-positive rate on these is abysmal to the point of silliness. Just stop. --Jayron32 23:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Jayron. StuRat (talk) 00:52, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
I also agree. Medeis needs to stop the disruptive behavior. 128.199.254.146 (talk) 01:10, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
The above is solely a troll, and by the rules citation Guy Macon gave earlier, his comments here should be deleted. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
I agree also, and I would be opening a thread on the Administrators' noticeboard to propose an enforceable editing restriction per WP:CBAN if I had more idle time. --Modocc (talk) 01:47, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Also agreeing. But we've asked before for behavior to be changed, and had no results. I sometimes wonder if Medeis just likes negative attention, much like my nephew who acts out when he's bored. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:12, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
I am not knowledgeable about the topic itself, but it seems to me at face value that this item is inappropriate for the Reference Desk and that it was correctly deleted. The interpretation that it is a real question seeking a factual answer seems somewhat improbable to me. 86.128.2.156 (talk) 02:25, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
@Medeis: - You completely ignored the very first part of my question. Where on WP:ATTACK does it say to close such a thread? But to respond to your non-answer, if I published something in Wired and someone disagreed with it, not only would I not care about someone claiming factual inaccuracies on the Wikipedia refdesk, I would expect it. Because I wrote it for Wired. On a relatively controversial issue. For Wired. You have thousands of threads to hat on talk pages throughout Wikipedia if that's your standard. But this isn't even the article space and you aren't even disagreeing with this user. So again, what part of WP:ATTACK says to hat this. What are these other policies that say "if someone says an author of a well-known source is wrong, it must be hatted?" I've unhatted it for the time being, since I can't see any reason to hide it. --— Rhododendrites talk |  03:24, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Had the OP simply asked, "How do I contact so-and-so?", I doubt Medeis would have seen any need to hat it. But the way the OP asked was aggressive and insulting to the "so-and-so" in question. So it's potentially a BLP issue, and it's reasonable to argue that it should be boxed up. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:26, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
No, it's not even close to a BLP issue. See below. --— Rhododendrites talk |  05:29, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Let's go ahead and break this down

This is the controversial post:

Re http://www.wired.com/2014/03/clean-coal/ what is the best way to tell Charles C. Mann (twitter) that he forgot to look for [13] and [14] before going to press with "0 alternatives to coal in the industrial steel-making process," from China?

Also, does anyone have a current update for the graph at http://www.kobelco.co.jp/english/engineering/products/dri/dri01.html beyond 2005 please?

Furthermore could someone please start the simple:Sabatier reaction article from Sabatier reaction and look up the research from former Secretary of Energy Chu's company scrubbing CO2 from flue exaust? Thanks in advance. 114.84.141.82 (talk) 00:29, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Three questions posed. The latter two were not hatted as evidently innocuous: This isn't the right place to request an article be created, yes, and we can tell the user that. It's exactly the right place to ask for updated information about the graph, though. That only leaves "what is the best way to tell Charles C. Mann (twitter) that he forgot to look for [13] and [14] before going to press with [quote]."

There was an article published in the April 2014 issue of Wired Magazine, reproduced on its website that this user read. In the article is says "0 [digit in large font] alternatives to coal in the industrial steel-making process." The user felt he/she had evidence contradicting this. He/she then came to the refdesk mentioning the article and the evidence. User asks the best way to tell the author of the piece. So it does seem that the user is implying the author is mistaken. Maybe even that the author should have done more homework before writing the article. But that's the extent of it. There's not even a whiff of a personal attack or BLP issue here. It's a user expressing disagreement with the author of an article on a relatively controversial subject in one of the most popular magazines in the United States. There's certainly no rule against disagreeing with a source, especially when linking to other sources that agree with you. That's a fundamental part of how Wikipedia works. The snarkiest part is the section heading, "Wired can't figure out clean steel," but that doesn't even mention the author! To say there was a BLP issue, that it turned this into an attack page, or that the user was being aggressive and insulting and therefore the question must be hidden is just incorrect. --— Rhododendrites talk |  05:29, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree with that. Thanks for removing the hat. Let's hope there's no edit war over hatting like another recent one. Dmcq (talk) 08:53, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Hear, hear. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:10, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
The second question is a legit RD question; it's best in a situation simply to dismiss the others in response and then focus on what we can work with. Wnt (talk) 22:01, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Excellent example of a good thread

I'd just like to note that this thread is a truly excellent example of what the desks should and can be.

Editors:

  • did proper research, and provided a reference
  • were polite and supportive
  • added to the wikimedia project

Well done to all involved. 85.255.234.198 (talk) 22:46, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Right on. It's very refreshing to see positive feedback here. We should be talking about the good stuff just as much as the other stuff that gets most of the limelight. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:35, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Vandalism

The wildly-hopping IP vandal is back, dumping garbage at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment. This note is just an FYI that the IPs' posts are pure vandalism and thus are subject to repeated reversion without regard to the 3-revert rule. Or, a friendly admin could protect the page for another day or two. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

61.164.211.155 (talk · contribs) 128.199.254.146 (talk · contribs)
It looks like they had the same IP address for about two weeks, before their dynamic IP cycled on. That's hardly "wildly IP-hopping", and is pretty easy to cope with. It also looks, from the pattern, like they possibly are a named editor who logged out to make these comments: ironically, I doubt much would have come of the comments if they had remained logged in to make them. Sure, some of us would think a little less of them, whoever they are, but I doubt their comments would have been deleted. I guess it would have made any "feuds" that are going on more obvious, though?
The most interesting thing to do would probably be to put a two-week block on the most recent IP address, including blocking logged-in users on that IP address, and then see who vanishes for two weeks. 86.146.28.229 (talk) 10:19, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Well μηδείς was clearly saying they are entirely ignorant of a particularly subset of things unrelated to the behaviour many find troubling. The way the IP turned that around was mildly funny but it's the sort of comment which is IMO always unhelpful. To be fair, I partially agree with 86 that if they had an account, it may have been less likely their comment would have been removed but don't think that's intrinsicly wrong (possible evading scrutiny and all that). For that matter the editor shouldn't be suprised considering their target.
FWIW, I'm personally tolerant of editors commenting on other editors behaviour (even if others feel it's the sort of stuff best left for talk pages) provided it doesn't detract from the thread too much, but it also depends on the comment. I've defended and will continue to defend people pointing out an editor may not be sincere, or other stuff about an editor or their behaviour which may be directly relevant to the discussion but not obvious to participants.
Criticism of another editors behaviour as part of a wider reply is more questionable but I do it myself on occasion (including just recently). The 'wider reply' usually means people let it slide.
Replies which are solely criticism of another editor and which come across as personal attacks rather than criticism or behaviour, are taking it a bit too far and that's basically what this is.
Nil Einne (talk) 14:05, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
The IP which has been here for 2 weeks is assigned to Digital Ocean in Singapore but seems to be a server IP for inslash.com who as per this page, appear to be some sort Singapore node for a Thai open proxy [18].
The other IP is a dialup internet connection in China (which has been reported as a spam source). It could be the second IP is also an open proxy of some sort but it seems a little odd for a dialup internet connection, the spam reports may just be someone using the connection spamming. So it could very well be that the dialup IP is the editors real IP.
In any event, it's clearly not a simple case of dynamic IPs. And for this and other reasons, I'm not convinced this is the same editor who was causing problems recently. That editor seems to be asking apparently legitimate questions about tanks and magnetism at the moment Special:Contributions/86.6.96.72 and has hopefully at least temporarily given up on the trolling copyvio nonsense.
(I didn't mention this before but particularly with the discovery of the forum, I'm not even 100% sure it genuinely is open proxies or whatever. It could have been meatpuppets. Although some details like the VPN possibility and the fact that there seem to be similiarities in the edit summaries do seem to point to one editor.)
In addition it's worth remembering that while open proxies may be blocked at any time, using them isn't actually forbidden. In this particular case, based on the information available, it's easily possible the editor behind the open proxy uses it to get around government imposed firewall restriction a clearly legitimate use.
Although since this doesn't stop any open proxy they used being blocked, if they're going to use open proxy without an account, they would be advised to be on their best behaviour. Particularly since evidence of abuse may not be a requirement for a block on their open proxy.
BTW I concur with the removal although with only 2 IPs I don't see any reason for protection. And BB has been here for long enough that they should know this isn't really vandalism.
Nil Einne (talk) 14:06, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Whether it's strictly "vandalism" or not, it's still a garbage edit. And since there was no recurrence, I concur that protection is probably not needed at this time. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:56, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Although, note that another single-use IP saw fit to post his garbage entry here, just to get it posted someplace. Bye-bye, troll. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:01, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
This [19] and this [20] is blatant trolling, to be deleted on sight, but we could avoid feeding them per wp:deny like this in the future by not posting countermeasures here unless it becomes necessary because the regulars and administrators are either objecting for some valid reason to the deletions, or, which is even less likely, are simply not paying attention over the span of a few hours or days. -Modocc (talk) 18:24, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I could delete it on sight without comment - and then someone would yell about it here. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:18, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Most of us understand when it's in our best interest not to comment and would rebuke those that don't get it when it comes to reducing disruption caused by trolls. -Modocc (talk) 23:00, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Ha. Would that that were true. But next time I'll just zap it without comment, and if somebody yelps about it, YOU can explain it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:44, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Modocc, There's a history of Bugs disagreeing with the majority here on what consists "obvious" trolling. (And vice-versa) There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that and being cautious with deletions. We can't get angry at Bugs when he boldly deletes stuff and when he exercises caution! (After all, Drama feeds trolls much more than a dry, boring mention.) 74.113.53.42 (talk) 18:48, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Suggested changes for medical advice section

I've added some suggested changes for the medical advice stuff. People should probably comment there. Here is the link: Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice IBE (talk) 05:29, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Proposals to modify refdesk guidelines on matters of removing and/or hatting controversial questions

This stems from the talk page guidelines vs. ref desk guidelines thread at the Village Pump which seems to be winding down (as well as from a number of other threads that went unresolved).

As far as I can tell, most people think it's less than ideal to have two guidelines that disagree explicitly claim applicability to the refdesk while disagreeing with each other (WP:TPG and WP:RDG). Since I haven't seen anybody call for the deletion of the refdesk guidelines, regardless of the extent to which TPG applies, I have to assume there is also a belief the refdesk guidelines are important guides for clarifying "what are considered appropriate responses" (quote taken from the guidelines). So let's address what seems to be the most controversial matter: what to do with inappropriate questions and/or answers.

These debates have been ongoing for quite a while. In an effort to make the consensus as crystal clear as possible, I've broken the issue down into 3 separate, simplified proposals. I hope others will have the patience for this. :)

Questions that are left open for another time/thread include any potential changes to how/when answers are removed or hatted, the definition of "professional advice" beyond legal and medical, and whether the medical advice guideline should be folded back into the guidelines. --— Rhododendrites talk |  15:23, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Per Nil Einne below, wouldn't it be simpler just to WP:RFCU Medeis already? NE Ent 17:40, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Personally I think considering the number of times they've been asked to stop a well craft AN would be work but I'm lazy to do one at the current time and may not be the best person for it anyway. I should BTW apologise. I actually opposed the topic ban for all 3 in the last major ANI. I don't regret it for TRM or BB but I do for Medeis. I thought they were finally showing signs of improvement but I was seriously wrong. (Or maybe they were and had a major relapse, I don't really know or care at this point.) Of course it's unlikely me supporting would have made a different but hey. Nil Einne (talk) 18:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
RFCU is worse than useless if you don't have clarity on what the guidelines are and should be. We should not have Talk page guidelines affecting the reference desk (except for this talk page). We just need to have good RD guidelines. Two sets of bad guidelines DO NOT add up to one good set. Wnt (talk) 21:59, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Proposal concerning question deletion

Proposal: Change the reference desk guidelines to explicitly forbid the removal of any question without replacing it with a message of explanation on the reference desk page. For example, [Personal attack removed. ~~~~]. Explanations on the talk page or in edit summaries are appreciated, but not sufficient without a message in the place of the question.

  • Support, with modifications. We should be able to remove duplicate posts on the same desk, one right after the other, without notifying anyone. Same for obvious vandalism, like "Bob is a fag !". StuRat (talk) 17:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose sorry but this is just a bad idea as worded. I've removed several of User:μηδείς's dumb hats recently, but the fact one person is all too willing to randomly hat stuff but we haven't got round to topic banning them is no reason to have such a poor guideline. There needs to be the freedom to remove clearly unwanted crap (which is supported by several significant policies and priniciples like WP:DFTT and WP:EVASION depending on the specific case. Let's not forget the misc desk is currently semi protected because of some inane troll who keeps posting non question fantasy stories. (And if you're going to say your guideline doesn't apply because these aren't really questions, I hope you see the problem with that.) I've remove these 2 or 3 times myself, and I know from the history so have several other editors. There's been no discussion here, or no sign of these removals other than in the edit log (and perhaps some block requests, protection requests or whatever) and nor should there be. Yes WP:IAR and all that but we should also be careful not to craft guidelines which suggest a practice not supported by anything. Nil Einne (talk) 17:37, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose just a perfect opportunity for some editors to especially bite IP editors or those who aren't up to speed with "the rules", as we have all-to-often seen lately. We do not remove anything unless it constitutes a personal attack etc. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:43, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Comment - @Nil Einne: @The Rambling Man: - I think my meaning didn't come across here. I didn't intend for this to be a proposal on whether or not it is OK to remove content SO LONG AS you leave a message. I wanted this to be indifferent to whether or not policy does or does not allow content removal for this or that purpose. The current guidelines permit removing content and it seems pretty certain that personal attacks will be subject to removal even if other aspects of the guidelines change. So, since some removal is unavoidable, let's make it clear that IF there is a situation that removal is allowed, you may not simply remove it without leaving a message in its place. That's all. --— Rhododendrites talk |  19:05, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Comment @Rhododendrites: but that's precisely my point. It's exceptionally dumb that we would have to leave anything when removing certain stuff and this is not supported by any guideline or practice anywhere else. In fact, if we look at the recent RDM case, the troll posted the same nonsense many times before the page was semi protected. Although I can't recall if they used 'undo' or simply added the content afresh, a naïve intepretation would suggest we need to leave a comment on the RDM every time presuming they did add their comment afresh (which some people do) which is exceptionally silly.
    Even with a less naïve intepretation, it's still pointless to leave a comment and clutter up the desk every time the troll decides to post some new trolling. While you're not Guy Macon, since you also seem to be calling for us to be more consistent with practice elsewhere, I'm not sure why you're advocating something which is not done anywhere else (and for good reason). (Edit: Given the controversy I didn't bring up WP:TPOC before but remember what you're proposing is an additional requirement to that as well.)
    BTW to re-emphasise what Guy Macon, me and NE Ent have said, even if you think these guidelines are beneficial, there's no point introducing them just to deal with μηδείς. It's already clear many of μηδείς's actions are against community consensus and this has also been made clear to them time and time again.
    The reason why nothing has happened yet is because no proposal to restrict them because of their refusal to abide by community consensus has been successful yet. Pointing to a new set of guidelines is not necessarily and not likely to help achieve action against them. And the history makes it clear it's not likely to result in them changing their behaviour either.
    What is needed is for someone to find the diffs and evidence demonstration how they've acted against community consensus despite repeated requests not to. If you feel the evidence isn't strong enough, then I guess an RFC/U. Either way new guidelines aren't some magical cure all.
    And since μηδείς is the biggest problem by far in terms of this specific proposal (the med/legal advice is a bit more complicated and long running), there's little point trying to compose new guidelines when it's not clear how much a problem there really is and what we should do about it because the situation is confused by an editor who repeatedly acts against what community consensus does exist.
    Nil Einne (talk) 05:41, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
    @Nil Einne: - I agree with you and with StuRat above that duplicates could be specified as an exception. I disagree that trolling is bad enough to clutter up any of the desks. If that becomes the case, we can deal with it, but "trolling" is one of those terms that has been abused when removing things in the past. Though the problem is largely Medeis, the fact remains that the guidelines do allow for or lack specificity about some content removal behavior despite consensus, so why not change what the guidelines say to conform with consensus on how to treat these kinds of questions? But I agree that this one of the three proposals is the one probably best covered by existing precedent/guidelines such that dealing with one user's interpretation could be dealt with without codification. --— Rhododendrites talk |  15:26, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
    @Rhododendrites: I don't quite understand what you're saying. I don't think the guidelines say anything at the moment that disagrees with consensus. The fact that μηδείς thinks their behaviour is supported by the guidelines, when nearly everyone else disagrees doesn't change this fact. They do lack specificity, I would suggest this is partly my design since wikipedia guidelines and policies are never intended to be that specific. Whether they are specific enough or not, well I'm not going to comment. And to be blunt, I still don't see how you can say trolling doesn't clutter up the desk on occasion when we just got round with dealing with that copyvioing troll. Nil Einne (talk) 15:25, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
  • We need to fix our little problem first. On the face of it, this is a great addition. Alas, we have a problem with one user (and a couple of enablers) who will without a doubt interpret this to mean "I can delete anything I want as long as I leave a note" Yes, I know that it doesn't say that, but that won't stop the bad behavior. Obce we fix our problem with our self-appointed censor, I would favor this proposal. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:59, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose - There's already a template available for replacement of requests for professional advice. This proposal is redundant. Just use the template. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:34, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Support -- Adds transparency and accountability to the ref desks. We usually don't get so much disruptive action here that too many removal notices would be a problem. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:37, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. Leaving a placeholder is just good sense. I'm not saying I want editors keelhauled if they toss out some trolling and forget to mention it, but the practice per policy should be to leave a note. Wnt (talk) 21:57, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Proposal concerning removal of questions on the basis of asking for medical/legal advice

Proposal: Change the reference desk guidelines to explicitly forbid the removal of questions on the sole basis of asking for medical/legal advice. Inform the user of our policy of not providing medical/legal advice, suggest contacting a professional, and, if possible, respond with general, fact-based information as you would if the same question were not framed in terms of advice.

Rationale: The reference desk guidelines say they are for clarifying "what are considered appropriate responses." It furthermore explains that people asking questions at the reference desk may be new to Wikipedia. Currently the guidelines state that "I have a persistent cough. Can that be caused by heartburn?" and "Is heartburn a common cause of a persistent cough?" should be treated differently, with the latter answered factually, without giving advice, and the former simply removed. As these guidelines are to clarify responses, the burden should be on the answerer to refrain from providing advice. The questions above can be handled in much the same way, to the same benefit of he or she who asked it. Note that this proposal has no bearing on how answers which provide medical/legal advice are dealt with, which, if considered problematic can be the subject of a separate proposal--but not part of this one.

  • Mild support as much as I dislike hats, particularly from those who offer no rationale for doing so nor sign them, this is preferable. At least new and inexperienced visitors to the ref desks will get to see why their questions have been disregarded. It's worth noting that the traffic for new questions at the RDs is really low, something like three or four a day, so it's not like this sort of thing is happening dozens of times a day. I thought the RDs were designed to help those who visited, not just bite them, especially those editing from IPs who seem to be treated like dirt by some. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:45, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose Comment. This is trying to address the symptom, not the problem. The guidelines should only permit removal or modification of any posts by others under severely restricted circumstances, and no general category advice should be included. Rather address why the guidelines could be interpreted to be so anti advice-seeking questions; they should only address *guidelines* on responses. For clarity, the guidelines should forbid removal of questions on this basis, but there should not be any specific guideline as proposed here. —Quondum 18:02, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
    Having looked more closely at the guidelines on medical/legal advice, I am of the opinion that this disagreement about their application is a consequence of a senseless guideline. It is pointless for me to get involved in this debate when I consider the guideline to be fundamentally flawed. —Quondum 01:42, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Strong support. These questions tend to be from new editors, and seeing your question silently disappear while other people's questions get answered can be discouraging. Also, deletion removes a great opportunity to help the user without giving medical advice. for example, if someone asks
"I just found out that I have cancer of the ceruminous gland. what should I do?"
we can respond with
"We cannot offer medical advice, please consult with your doctor. You may be interested in Wikipedia's articles on cancer and Ceruminous adenocarcinoma."
This is a far more helpful than deletion (or hatting, for that matter), all without offering medical advice. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:17, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
I think that directing people with medical questions to Wikipedia articles is a terrible idea. 86.130.66.29 (talk) 01:32, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Sending someone to an article equates to making a diagnosis, which we are forbidden to do. The answer to "What should I do?" is SEE A DOCTOR. And use the template, as I said in the previous section. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:37, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Support Compared to removal, this is the gentler and more delicate approach. Most editors are up to speed on what constitutes medical advice and what doesn't, and can easily avoid giving unprofessional advice. Editors disagree on details, but most have a moderate and reasonable approach as to what we can and cannot answer. It is not medical "advice" when you link to an article; it is merely information. There is no diagnosis, because we are not assuming they necessarily have that condition. Our advice, such as it is, is always to see a professional. A link gives them something to read so they can ask more informed questions of their doctor. It also shows them by example what we are about, that is, we show them the reference desk style directly. That seems better than hitting them with our rules, which can only serve to annoy. IBE (talk) 03:17, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Support -- this correctly puts the burden of "no medical advice" on our respondents, where it should be. I disagree entirely with Bugs above -- posting a link to a WP article is medical information, not medical advice. Anyone confused by the distinction should look at medical advice. If a respondent messes up and gives medical advice, we can remove that response. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:40, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
Generally speaking, vehemently agree that the burden is ideally on respondents. Slightly disagree with the specific point, on one count. If a medical question gets out of hand, people can start giving advice, and others have to delete it, wasting time. Therefore, a problem could emerge that we leave it to respondents, but they go a bit crazy, and others have to mop things up. We avoid giving medical advice to avoid causing harm, because we are not qualified or accountable for what we say. Leaving it to respondents to work this out can cause problems, and trying to remedy them causes at least as much friction among the different editors. However, in agreement with SemanticMantis, this doesn't seem to be a huge problem of late. So the conclusion seems good, but the reasoning needs to be taken with a note of caution. Just my 2 cents. IBE (talk) 16:09, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand. It will inevitably lead to disagreements about what is/is not advice, yes, but that also happens with questions. But a question can yield all sorts of answers, some of which are advice and some of which are not. An answer, however, is a mistake regardless of the question being asked. Advice is a kind of answer, and it's advice that's disallowed Wikipedia-wide. Outside of the refdesk guidelines there exists no rule about "Wikipedia does not contain questions that may be construed as asking for medical advice." But I'm not so sure you're disagreeing with any of that. The issue is that we're trading one form of problem for another? I see two key differences: (1) Those responding are typically more experienced with Wikipedia than those asking the questions (taken as an average), and there are in fact a smaller group of people who contribute a disproportionate percentage of the answers (a power law expected in this kind of context). So putting the burden on the more experienced folk would likely result in fewer instances that need "mopping up." (2) It's better [in my opinion] for two experienced users to talk it out on the talk page than for a new user to have his/her question removed/hatted when they were confused about how it's supposed to work in the first place. We know that while there's gray area, there's also a pretty clear area considered "advice" and a pretty clear area considered "not advice" and how the two are to be handled. --— Rhododendrites talk |  18:21, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
The disagreement, such as it is, is slight. The problem I've seen in the past is that the situation simply escalates. It can go something like this. A question tends towards asking for advice, an answer tends towards giving it, and someone goes a tiny bit far in one direction, and someone hats/removes their specific answer, or some arbitrary portion of the thread. Then the hattee is irritated at the hatter, and may remove the hat or hat other stuff, and people get irritated. Experience doesn't help if the rules get ignored or exploited anyway. The "mopping up" bit comes from lots of these smaller problems causing friction. The ill-feeling and frustration are not smaller for the smallness of the disagreement. The level of feeling is possibly the same or higher, because people feel they are being treated inconsistently and hence unfairly. The frustrations may even be in proportion to the length of the discussion, not the size of the factual disagreement. Hatting the question in the first instance can be designed to stop things from getting out of hand. Nevertheless, the reverse has been more of a problem of late, individual editors overdoing things to assert themselves, and they become very irritating for all of us. Hence I strongly agree with these changes, and will try to make them work. IBE (talk) 03:47, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I do think there's a chance of replacing one problem (advice-seeking questions) with another (advice answers). But my perspective is that it's better to have the respondents take responsibility for their answers than to have questioners be blocked/removed/confused.
It is maddening to me that a question like "My mom has X disease, what should we do?" is removed, when we could easily say "Seek professional advice...(disclaimer boilerplate, whateve), and here is a page from the Mayo clinic on X, which is also known as Y." This is especially regressive and punitive against uninformed people (who we are supposedly here to help right?). Anyone who carefully reads our instructions would just post "can you show me some refs for disease X?" -- but that is cold comfort, as such people willing to play this game can probably find refs on their own, and we are only discriminating against those who need our help the most.
I think having a "we cannot give advice this is only information" template for responders to use on these advice-seeking questions would help keep our respondents away from the gray areas. Anyway, this straw poll seems to be showing some support, I look forward to participating if @It's Been Emotional:, @Rhododendrites:, or anyone else wants to move these ideas forward to actually change our policies. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:35, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I am willing, since I think the consensus is there. I agree it is maddening, and I have seen it done needlessly, even stupidly, many times. I suggest, given that there is some reasonable disagreement from various well-intentioned editors (not the few who continually push or exploit the rules), adopting a somewhat incremental approach. It might be good to allow full removal of questions if a large number of answers tends towards giving advice, and causing friction. Something like "Removal or hatting of questions on the sole basis of requesting professional advice is discouraged. It should only be used if the discussion involves several editors giving advice in reply, or if it produces excessive friction among editors over what is and is not (an attempt at) professional advice." IBE (talk) 10:03, 9 April 2014 (UTC)


  • Comment I think such questions should be hatted rather than replaced by a template so others can easily check the decision is correct but it is obvious that answers should not be given and won't be read. For medical questions in particular it is difficult to stop people giving 'helpful' answers. Yes of course we should say some boilerplate thing like see a professional. Dmcq (talk) 16:49, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Requests for medical advice need to be replaced with the {{rd-deleted}} template. It doesn't work to just hat those questions, because the questions then wind up getting responded to with medical advice inside the hat. And it doesn't work to just give links to articles in lieu of giving medical advice, because the OP rarely if ever has a condition that's already been diagnosed by a doctor, so it isn't possible to give a link to an article about the medical condition the OP has without making an educated guess as to which medical condition matches with the presented symptoms. Making that educated guess is exactly what making a diagnosis is. Making a diagnosis is giving medical advice. Red Act (talk) 03:59, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I believe your second-last statement is somewhat extreme, "making that educated guess is exactly what making a diagnosis is." It is not exactly the same. The diagnosis is the same educated guess by a professional who wants it to be taken as advice, or an amateur who wants it to sound authoritative. Providing a link does not say, "my educated guess is that you have this." It says "This may be consistent with this, and at any rate you will be better informed when you see your doctor." The reason for the policy on medical advice is to avoid causing harm, and we avoid this by offering links without making judgements like "I think you have this." This is easy to do. I have highlighted above the risk of escalation, with people spiralling into arguments, but this is a separate risk. IBE (talk) 09:46, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. It's not nice to deal with the posters this way. And if we legitimize "general" answers per below (i.e. hey yeah, we have an article on that) then our response is a lot better than nothing. Wnt (talk) 21:55, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose why has this not been listed as an RfC? It simply has no validity otherwise. We already have a template to post when such questions are removed. Is there an RfD for that? It's longstanding consensus that deletions require a posting here. They can be argued and reversed. Any decision based on a local discussion is simply revertible. Please post an RfC to get actual community opinion on this. μηδείς (talk) 22:28, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Please feel free to post an RfC yourself, if you think it is needed on procedural grounds. Your statement "It simply has no validity otherwise" clearly implies that you have a procedural problem, so please feel free to fix it. IBE (talk) 10:05, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Proposal concerning hatting of questions on the basis of asking for medical/legal advice

Proposal: Change the reference desk guidelines to explicitly forbid the hatting of questions on the sole basis of asking for medical/legal advice. Inform the user of our policy of not providing medical/legal advice, suggest contacting a professional, and, if possible, respond with general, fact-based information as you would if the same question were not framed in terms of advice.

Rationale: An extension of the previous proposal on removing questions asking for advice. Likewise, this proposal has no bearing on how answers which provide medical/legal advice are dealt with, which, if considered problematic can be the subject of a separate proposal--but not part of this one.

  • Oppose. Hatting is appropriate, but the hatter should be required to list their name and reason for hatting. If others disagree, we can ignore the hatting or unhat it. StuRat (talk) 17:26, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Support if those who continually seek to banish such discussions cannot be convinced one way or another to openly explain their rationale for closure and sign it in such a way that new editors or IPs can understand the sequence of events. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:46, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Good idea, except that the "explicitly forbid" bit is too strong. I don't recommend trying for explicit or strict rules here, since they get applied indiscriminately, and a good faith error gives a stickler a chance to cause trouble. I've seen it too many times. A milder version would be ok. IBE (talk) 03:29, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose People can always see the question by clicking the hide/show on the right. If the question is shown people just start giving their answers. What's the point of displaying a question one shouldn't answer? At the moment all that can be done is tell them to go and see a professional. If more could be done then this question could be profitably revisited. Dmcq (talk) 16:38, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Support "Hatting" is a silly practice and we might as well get rid of it, though as said above a specific prohibition might be going too far - the point is, there shouldn't be a policy for doing so. Wnt (talk) 21:53, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

General discussion

It appears that several editors have expressed concerns about specific incidents, not general trends. Is all of this necessary? The Rambling Man (talk) 16:17, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

You mean as in someone who reinstates their hatting and argues when others think the question is a perfectly ordinary one that can be answered okay and remove their hatting? Dmcq (talk) 16:54, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't and can't pick out specific editors. It just seems clear from the various discussions that this appears to be a "sledgehammer to crack a walnut" approach. Deal with the problem, not the symptoms. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:30, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
I agree. The real problem here isn't going to be solved by multiplying rules.
It will just add an additional layer of complexity that the small number of problem editors will be able to hide behind next time their behavior comes up at ANI. APL (talk)
See Jonathan Wild and Brian Haw. Tevildo (talk) 07:35, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Necessary, perhaps not. Valuable, I think so. Troublesome editors may be only a catalyst here. Discouraging hatting or deletion when there is another solution is worth a try. It is a solution I have been trying for a long time with medical questions, simply directing people to an article. I have almost never hatted or removed in the first instance, even if I have put the template on my user page (that was just in case I needed it). On the other hand, dealing with about 2 problem editors would be of inestimable value to the project, but the whole point with troublesome people is that they don't care who they annoy, and don't blush very easily. That's exactly what makes them troublesome. I am always happy to be involved in trying to handle them using more direct means. One of the said troublemakers recently caused me to take a 3 month wikibreak, because I was so sick of his skirmishing. Even so, I can't see a solution unless people are willing to admit to themselves that trying to deal with these few problem editors is not a personal attack, but a consensus that we are sick of certain people. Then they can be gradually rebuked, disciplined, sanctioned, shunned, and perhaps eventually removed. I still think the suggestion at hand is a very good one, and I have been following it informally for as long as I've been on Wikipedia. I don't think it gives problem editors more to hide behind, simply because there are a million rules already, and this adds just one. It is their attitude of hiding behind the rules that needs to be recognised for what it is, and systematically choked. IBE (talk) 12:50, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Why don't you file an RFC and name names and diffs of behavioural shortcomings? There appear to be plenty. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
If you look at my talk page, you will see a link down the bottom that shows I have attempted in my own way to start a gentle push in this direction. The plan is to work slowly and incrementally, and rise like the tide against these people. Individual rushed actions become like the choppy sea, and only rock our own boats. Gradually rising and overwhelming them will work. I do have a file collecting diffs of behavioural shortcomings, but it is extremely short, because I mainly come here to contribute to the ref desk, and anything related to conflict is best kept as a marginal activity. IBE (talk) 03:23, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
More than relevant - I knew I wasn't exactly alone. The admin ruling was a warning, which is a good start. IBE (talk) 03:23, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

More

There's really no need for new rules. Just enforce the existing rules. Specifically, that requests for professional advice are subject to removal. It would be better to use the template than to just zap it. But the real problem is not the removal - the problem is a select few who don't like the rules and insist upon bending or breaking them, and continue to argue against the existing rules. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:05, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Evolution is in the bible

I just completely deleted this rant,[21] mainly because it uses the reference desk purely as a soapbox, without even pretending to ask a question. I think just hatting the thing would inadequately deny the opportunity to soapbox. Red Act (talk) 21:40, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Good deletion. But be prepared to have certain editors attack you for being so mean to poor little good-faith IP's. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:01, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
It really looks like you're trying to pick a fight here. But I'll AGF on your second sentence. Actually, I think I need to read up on WP:AGF, because when you use the term I often have no idea what you mean. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:20, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
No, I'm just making fun of the double-standard employed by some editors here, where drive-by IP's are kissed up to and registered users are treated like garbage. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:31, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
And it might surprise you to learn that I always assume good faith, until the given editor betrays that good faith. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:57, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't even think that's really a rant or soapbox. It looks to me a lot like the same nonsense we've been getting from an IP in the past few days, mostly in the RDM. See e.g. [22] which they tried to post lots of times. While that is another religion related one, they've posted other nonsense like the time one Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 March 30#need help on this or stuff relating somehow to magic mushrooms (one of these was in an article and has now been deleted).
In fact even their spirituality ones don't seem to have a consistent philosphy other than abject nonsense, see [23] as another example. (Well I think they often claim to have been molested and seem to mention snakes a lot.) In [24] they seem to suggest they enjoy making up stories which is perhaps one of the few true things they've said. Although as I suggested before, from their posts, perhaps the magic mushrooms bit isn't either ;-).
While there's nothing wrong with posting here about removals, as I said in the discussion above, editors should feel free to remove this nonsense without any further comment if they desire. Unfortunately the editor does have a tendency to try and try again and they seem to have a ready supply of IP address (some US, some Korean and perhaps others) sometimes resulting in a desk being protected.
Since their posts are mostly much nonsense not to mention lacking in any question, it's unlikely anyone is going to waste much time trying to answer them (the time one seems to have been an exception) so we could just allow their nonsense to stay hoping they leave us alone. But I get the feeling we would end up with a lot of clutter.
Nil Einne (talk) 06:12, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I'd have thought removing the text of the question and replacing by a link to Wikipedia is not a soapbox would be better than completely deleting without any notice. Dmcq (talk) 08:33, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
  • It recently reappeared on science desk, I just closed it with a note. It is entirely possible the person was just confused and re-posting to overcome a presumed glitch. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:27, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
And another IP quickly reverted my edit. I will re-revert once, and them I'm out of this game. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I've protected the page for a very short period of time in the hopes that they will get bored and go away. When they tell people to "fuq off" it means they have no desire to be cooperative. Any admin who thinks that this person is being appropriate can unprotect this. --Jayron32 19:42, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I've been meditating on AGF. My assumption was wrong in this case, but all I lost was about two minutes of ref desking, which I would have been doing anyway :) SemanticMantis (talk) 19:47, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
AGF doesn't mean we allow disruption while maintaining the assumption of good faith. He may mean well. But it's still disruptive and must be stopped. The protection and assumption that the original poster had good faith in their posting are not mutually exclusive. Doing somthing in good faith doesn't mean what you are doing is good in outcome. --Jayron32 19:49, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
There's no harm in assuming good faith. Bad-faith editors will usually make their intentions known eventually. In this case, with some novel spelling. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:52, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
But there's no soapboxing. There's just some boring troll who as I said, doesn't even have a consistent philosphy. If you want to leave the 5-10 headers the boring troll has post to the various desks in the past 2 or 3 weeks then I'm not going to stop you but don't expect others to follow. I'm presuming you mean on a per non question basis and are not planning to leave a header for every time they repost their boring trolling until they either give up or the page is briefly protected. Nil Einne (talk) 01:28, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
  • In the interest of fairness, I have restored the original header and left a note to carry on discussion here regarding the thread. --Jayron32 19:54, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm not going to argue with the deletion of "questions" that don't have a question apparent. Archimedes Plutonium, or whoever this is, can post his model somewhere else. But let's not go overboard - it's better to lift the ban early and be unpleasantly surprised than to have it semi-protected for weeks and months at the cost of driving away new users. Wnt (talk) 20:14, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
It looks like it's expiring tomorrow. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:17, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I set it for six hours, which means it should be expiring at about 1:40ish UTC. --Jayron32 01:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I just deleted it from Miscellaneous. If I should have hatted instead, sorry. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:25, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I think rapid deletion without even commenting on it is the best approach. Don't feed the troll. HiLo48 (talk) 23:32, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I second that e-motion. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:05, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Ditto; best response is zero acknowledgement. Snow (talk) 01:35, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
He's at it on the misc desk now. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Possible copyvio

This stuff isn't that important now that I found evidence for the copyvio but perhaps the diffs and IP list will help people appreciate how widespread this has been Nil Einne (talk) 04:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

In case there remains confusion, here are the multiple removals of their questions I could find (they seem to have started around 30/3). I included the removals rather than the additions for several reasons including the fact these would include all closures etc that happened in between, I also included some closures when these are second or third closures after they were reverted. [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35]

[36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

[45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58]

Having read these more closely, perhaps I was a little unfair in saying they couldn't be consistent. If we ignore the time thing, their posts largely seem to consist of a life story where they mention being molested, having children etc and something to do with evil and good bacteria which are somehow related to the creator who may be related to Jesus, Mary, the bible, evolution, Merlin, gold, whales and eating meat somehow. There's some degree of overlap between the life story and bacteria since the life story also mentions bacteria, gold, whales and Excalibur. (These two are also linked by the IP 86.6.96.72 which also links to the time question.)

BTW, if you look at the contribution history, the main IP as I hinted in the collapsed section is Special:Contributions/86.6.96.72. Once people started reverting they moved on to IP hopping to a wide diversity of IP (beyond the US and South Korean, I've now seen Brazilian and Swedish) but have came back to this main IP on occasion making me think they're using open proxies, a VPN or whatever. A possibly incomplete list of IPs:

Special:Contributions/46.59.122.14 Special:Contributions/71.230.208.244 Special:Contributions/119.205.190.155 Special:Contributions/221.187.95.57 Special:Contributions/77.247.90.28 Special:Contributions/178.140.64.67 Special:Contributions/36.72.177.45 Special:Contributions/178.4.68.107 Special:Contributions/118.0.12.109 Special:Contributions/61.255.3.120

Special:Contributions/114.160.71.150 Special:Contributions/201.94.220.219 Special:Contributions/119.198.93.151 Special:Contributions/211.211.203.120

Special:Contributions/14.39.170.53 Special:Contributions/75.89.73.120 Special:Contributions/121.87.17.251 Special:Contributions/14.36.173.38 Special:Contributions/176.194.246.172 Special:Contributions/171.6.196.99

Some of these IPs show up here [59], such lists are generally fairly unreliable but the evidence here suggests they may be correct. Note that as part of the reversions, the IP has often made coherent comments like 'fuq you' mentioned earlier, 'you removed my question', look again (when someone said they removed the post as it had no question) and other stuff. So there's no question the person behind the IP is aware the removals are intentional.

Since I first saw these over a week ago, I continually got the feeling that we were missing part of the story and the IP didn't make these up themselves (particularly since the formatting suggests it may have been written somewhere else perhaps with fixed lines) but somehow could never find it until now. [60] This was posted on 29 March 06:02PM CDT i.e. 11:02PM UTC. Note this also includes the time stuff.

Which leads to another problem since the first sign of this on wikipedia I'm aware of is [61] 30 March 00:21 UTC. From what I can tell, Pastebin has no clear contributor copyright policy, definitely I see no indication contributors release their work under a CC-BY-SA compatible licence. Nor is there any indication in the original work it was released under such a licence, which amongst other things, would require they consent to any form of redistribution even commercial and derivatives of their work, provided these comply with their licence. They didn't even ask people to share it that I saw

And we have no way of knowing that it's the same person as whoever is behind the IP. Personally I think there are good reasons to think that the person behind the IP saw the story on pastebin and thought they would have some fun with it. So for us to keep it here could easily be a copyvio. Note that even if the content has been released under such a licence, if it's one that requires attribution this clearly has not been followed. (Technically this even applies to the subject lines but they're perhaps too minor to worry about.)

While I can say for sure it's the same person (the magic mushroom link now seems spurious), I just noticed that this [62] was also deleted as a copyvio.

For this reason I've removed the time 'question', the only bit of this I believe has been preserved. [63] I have provided a link to the pastebin and kept all the replies.

So even if anyone really still thinks we should generally preserve stuff like this and hat it or whatever, there's a clear cut policy reason here not to do so. In other words, whatever people may think of the person who wrote the original pastebin, they still deserve to have their copyright respected. (Not to mention there are BLP problems for part of this story even more so if it's not posted here by the writer.)

Nil Einne (talk) 04:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm actually perhaps the magic mushroom link isn't as spurious as I thought [64]. While I'm not sure of the timezone used on that forum particularly since it does weird things depending on who's visiting, I can't help thinking that our IP friend is a regular in that forum and saw the link there then decided to bring it here. Nil Einne (talk) 04:50, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Heh, I remember diagnosing shrooms some time back, in response to a post mentioning "the apple of knowledge". Alas, the redactions make it impossible for me to search in any easy way for which. Wnt (talk) 19:29, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
It seems unlikely the person's who's posting this's behaviour is caused primarily by the magic mushrooms cnsidering their coherent trolling behaviour, although they be active in the community (but I guess either they have better control or they have a different outlet). The person who actually wrote this crap our troll was copying, well no comment. Nil Einne (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

The self-answering user from Ohio

This evening has seen a curious thread [65] on the Humanities desk, from an IPv4 user who seems to be based in Columbus, Ohio. Although it's the first contribution from that particular address, a very similar pattern was followed by two threads last week - [66] one here on Language and one on Miscellaneous which has been revdel'ed - which followed the same pattern and related to users' usernames and identities. Those also came from an IPv4 address in Columbus. What exactly is going on here? AlexTiefling (talk) 21:50, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Someone having a rant, essentially. I suggest one of two approaches: (a) place a Resolved sticker on it but do not otherwise engage him in any way whatsoever; or (b) delete it on the grounds of not being a good faith editor. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:26, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Refdesk stats

User:Rhododendrites/refdesk stats

After APL pointed to the Wikipedia Page History Statistics tool in the above thread about a "drop off in questions", I was curious. So I went through the data and compiled some tables in my userspace (they would be a bit much here):

  • Edits by month/year at each desk for 2013 and 2014
  • Total edits on each desk in January-April 2013 and 2014
  • Average monthly edits in 2014 (so far) vs. average monthly edits in 2013

Where applicable, I color-coded comparable figures for increases and decreases (e.g. 01/2014 vs. 01/2013, Jan-Apr total edits in 2014 vs. Jan-Apr total edits in 2013, and 2014 monthly average so far vs. 2013 monthly average).

Also:

  • Top 15 contributors for each desk
  • A list of the 19 contributors with 2000+ edits total across all desks

Conclusions: It does appear that there has been a drop in edits generally. Comparing January-April 2013 to January-April 2014, edits fell on all desks but Language, which saw a small increase. The Science and Humanities desks saw the biggest drops, at -39% and -34%, respectively, when comparing the first four months of 2014 and 2013. When comparing the average number of edits per month in 2014 (January-April) to the average number of edits per month in 2013 (January-December), the numbers are less dramatic but still noticeably less. However, regardless of whether or not people are posting more or less, it seems awfully difficult to draw from this data any kind of causal argument. I compiled it just out of curiosity and don't think anyone should use it for anything other than getting a better sense of the refdesk ecosystem. --— Rhododendrites talk |  21:47, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Consider that the reference desk has existed for well over a decade at this point. As a result, it's a bit hard to project a trend of any kind from only two years worth of data. The original reference desk had an edit history going all the way back to 2002 (possibly 2001), but that page has essentially been lost to history, so it would really be impossible to obtain any meaningful statistics on the desks prior to about 2005. Also, the translcuded archives may have complicated things as well. I suspect that 2013 vs 2014 is just too small a sampling size to draw a statistically valid conclusion. Depending on how much data mining you feel like doing, perhaps 2005 to 2013 would be the most informative. (+)H3N-Protein\Chemist-CO2(-) 11:17, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Historically, there have been a number of attempts at compiling this sort of data. See (WT:RD/Archive 3, WT:RD/Archive 5, WT:RD/Archive 34, WT:RD/Archive 35, WT:RD/Archive 80). I suspect all of these results could be consolidated onto a single master data set without too much difficultly. (+)H3N-Protein\Chemist-CO2(-) 11:35, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks! And to think I've at times considered posting less, lest I be seen as talking too much! A few years ago when I first became active here, there was a talk thread where someone compiled an average number of references per post, per user. Based off of memory, some of our top posters are also top citers, but some of our top posters rarely cite sources... not trying to single anyone out, just a reminder that we should strive for quality of responses, where "quality" on a ref desk is largely correlated with references provided. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:35, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Reading further into Protein Chemist's links, another trend emerges (to my eye): very few people among our current "regulars" were active on this talk page, even just a few years ago. I know we have some "old timers" still present, but what does it say about our community that few respondents seem to stay around and active over a 5 year period? Just a rhetorical question, and perhaps food for thought. SemanticMantis (talk) 23:09, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News here?

Hi all. See User talk:JackofOz#Tech News and User talk:JackofOz#Tech News: 2014-16. I've been asked by IP 86.146.28.229 if I'd be so kind as to post an edition of Tech News here on his behalf, as the page is temporarily protected and he wants the news to be timely.

Firstly, does anyone have a problem with me doing this as a one-off?

Secondly, the IP is suggesting that such bulletins be regularly posted here for the information of editors. Do we agree that this is a suitable place for them? This is a page for discussing the Reference Desks.

Rather than posting the full details, a link (e.g. [67]) would be more efficient, but may still be out of place.

Cheers. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 19:09, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

What is the justification of posting them here? Is there something on there specifically about the desks? If there is, I seem to have missed it. I have no problem with you posting a one-off question about it, but at first blush I don't really see the point of posting that stuff here. Matt Deres (talk) 03:21, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Might it have something to do with the recent complaint, on a ref desk, about Wikipedia changing its layout without asking the general readership about it? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:57, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Maybe but I sort of doubt it. The editor made no such reference when he approached me. I'm thinking it's well-intentioned but this isn't a bulletin board for all manner of news that may happen to interest individual ref deskers. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 05:14, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
In any case, I don't see the harm in posting them. Or is it possible to provide a link? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:04, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
See my original post, last sentence. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:09, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
OK, yes, but more specifically, I think there should be an icon for it on the ref desk main page - along with handy links to things that get cited frequently here, such as Wiktionary, Wikiquotes, Commons, etc. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:52, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't have any grand objections, but I'm still struggling with the propose of this. What need is being filled? Why tech news rather than a link to ANI (where half our debates on this page end up anyway) or FPC or CENT? In general I'm in favour of making discussions and news easier to find; this just seems like an odd place to start. I'm fully prepared to admit that I could easily be missing something obvious here. Matt Deres (talk) 12:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

This week's tech news

[68] I'm quite happy not to post this every week, if it doesn't suit people. I've just posted a link here, which always takes you to the most recent version. The idea was to post the contents on this page, and delete it when posting the next week's unless there were comments that needed archiving.

My thinking was that it's a weekly thing, whose contents are posted in several places such as the WP:Village Pump. We are all urged to inform other editors of its contents, and the details of recent technical problems and upcoming changes seem useful to editors on the reference desks because (although the help desk is the proper place for such questions) we get relatively frequent questions about these things.

If people didn't want a regular posting of the contents, the link I included here might be useful at the top of this page (not the user-facing page, I don't think, since it's really not a general resource). 86.146.28.229 (talk) 21:33, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Drop off in questions

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed the precipitous drop off in the number of questions at the Misc. Desk? In January, we had an average of 3-4 questions a day (estimating, didn't actually do the maths) but lately we've had just a single question per day and there were no new questions at all on the 14th. Any idea what has caused this? Dismas|(talk) 00:26, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Maybe Medeis just deleted them all ... (ducks...)--Jayron32 01:44, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
I've noticed the drop off too. Anecdotally, I remember being up near 5-6 questions at least per day on the busier pages. No real explanation for why or if this is a concern going forward. Calidum 02:14, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
I have noticed the general decline. Moreover, I have noticed the departure of many good editors, because we aren't "weeding our garden". Check out Mr.98's comment in this discussion, beginning with "The questions, and answers, on this desk have gotten increasingly less interesting over time." This is why we are losing people, especially several of the most educated contributors. IBE (talk) 02:58, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Look at the recent edit history of the page. 80,000 bytes over 6 days have just been archived, a huge amount of text, 13,000 per day. And a huge swath of comments starting with IP 140 and ending with Alex Tiefling were rev deleted--take that up with the admin who did it if you have a problem. This is simply a statistical blip, one that happens every year at this time. It certainly has nothing to do with BLP violations being hatted. μηδείς (talk) 03:27, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
I actually noticed the revdeletion a few days ago and rechecking confirms my belief that a small amount (about -1100 bytes) were deleted in the revdeletion, and the only thing deleted was a question by 140 and followups by you to the question. While the edit history for a few other responses to other questions is hidden, I'm fairly sure the responses themselves were not. Also, if I'm not misunderstanding the logs, the revdeletion used suppression so I don't think further discussion on that issue is necessary. Nil Einne (talk) 15:43, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
It could be useful to run some kind of analysis of the number of questions on each ref desk per month over some extended period of time, say 3 years, to see whether there really is a significant change over time, and also to see if there is seasonal variation. For example, it's springtime in America, and after a rough winter it's time to relieve the "cabin fever", i.e. to spend more time outide and less time inside. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:04, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

A lot of this relates to the unhelpful manner in which many questions are "answered" (or removed etc) and/or how they quickly descend into banter and in-jokes. As IBE notes, the pages have really dropped in quality and are becoming a Wikipedia joke. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:27, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Extinction_(psychology). 86.146.28.229 (talk) 13:48, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Understood, Rambling Man, but we also need to look at the positives. We have retained many highly qualified contributors, people like Adam Bishop and Marco polo, and these are just a couple whose replies I notice a lot for their erudition. There are many good contributors, so like I say, we can deal with this. IBE (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
This isn't the first lull I've noticed on the misc desk and I'm sure it won't be the last. So I do agree with μηδείς that this is likely partly a blip. If you don't believe me, a check of the archive pages will also show similar lulls. Consider March 19 to March 22 Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/March 2014. Yet you also see many dates there with lots of questions.
I'm not saying there hasn't been a drop off in questions, I think there has but it's been a long term slide and is best represented by the average number of questions per day over a long period rather than the occasionally lull. (Although the lull does perhaps partially demonstrate the problem. I looked at several months in 2009 - 2011 and the best lull I could find was 3 days of 2 questions per day followed by lots of questions before and after.)
The drop off may be fairly acute in the misc desk but I think also the humanities and science desk have suffered. It will be very difficult to prove any particular reason and I strongly suspect multiple factors are at play. In other words, while we should deal with the problems we have, I don't think making the argument that we should deal with them because the drop of is an indication of the damage these problems are causing is a sound argument.
Still statistics would at least provide a starting point if we do want to discuss the drop. It shouldn't be that hard because of the helpful index pages that scsbot generates (although a small number of them may be broken) but my coding skills are very limited.
Nil Einne (talk) 16:16, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Sure, probably random variation, with a dose of springtime in the USA as Bugs suggests. On the flip side, isn't final exam season quickly approaching in USA highschools and universities? I'd expect we'd get some boost from that... :Anyway, it never hurts to remind ourselves to be on our best behavior here, e.g. WP:AGF, WP:BITE, etc. People only come here if they expect to actually be helped, and I think there is some truth to TRM's comments above: people get put off if we just use their questions as a jumping-off point to try to show off, speculate, and bicker with each other. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:38, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Subjectively, the desks seem more hostile and unfriendly than they used to be. It feels like a battleground rather than a learning environment. When I first came here the vibe was "Ask a question about anything! If you make a mistake we'll help you fix it". Now it's more like "Post a question I find interesting which is perfectly wiki-formatted or I'll assume you are a troll and make fun of you, then get you blocked." Obviously those are exaggerations and there are still lots of helpful people here giving great answers to the questions. It just feels to me like the vibe changed a lot and maybe others noticed it too and decided not to participate anymore. 82.44.76.14 (talk) 17:23, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

According to this tool, edits are in minor decline (The tool only goes back 50,000 edits, and I don't feel like figuring out another way to do this. So no data before 2012.)

  • March 2012 - 1841
  • March 2013 - 1181
  • March 2014 - 1054

(As a point of interest, the top posters are StuRat, Medeis, Bugs, and SineBot.) APL (talk) 21:27, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

If Sinebot is a large contributor, that means there are still plenty of new users asking questions. Now, is that all desks, or just the Misc desk? If it's all, is there a way to separate them out by desk? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:47, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
That's just misc. Those are from stats starting 50,000 edits ago on 2011-06-09.
I don't know an easy way to do all the desks together. APL (talk) 21:55, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't want to see all desks together anyway. I want to see them separately, to see if it's just misc or if it's a larger trend. Keep in mind, users might be getting smarter about categories, and might not be using misc as much. But we can't tell unless we can compare with the trends on the other desks. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:00, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Aside from slaking one's curiosity, where would this research get us? Is there a concern that "they" might shut us down if they perceive we're not of much interest to the world anymore? If so, would we feel compelled to go out into the hyways and bighways and tout for new Ref Desk questions? Maybe pay people to ask questions? Seriously, our focus should not be on the fluctuations in questions, but on keeping the Ref Desk a welcoming and non-bitey place (remember, first impressions not only count, they last forever) where quality assistance is provided to all comers (with the usual caveats). As for the caveats, we seem to be much more caught up in the eternal arguments about medical/legal issues, trolling, hatting, deleting and so on, than on the meat of the questions and the rich gravy we can collectively pour on. Let us return to the feasting tables forthwith. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:25, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
We have some editors blaming a "hostile environment" for a reduction in questions. Should we let that accusation stand without any actual evidence, or should we ignore it and just continue to try to keep to the straight and narrow? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:43, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Just let it go, Bugsy. Whether it can be backed up with evidence or not would make not a jot of difference to the number of questions we get. Unless the plan is to single out certain individuals. In which case, if serious infractions are indeed occurring, let those editors be named with evidence, and let us deal with specific matters. If you go to the police and say that there are too many murders happening these days, they're not going to give you the time of day. But tell them about a particular murder that's happened within their jurisdiction, and they'll sit up and take notice. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 23:43, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Even forgetting the non-evidenced accusations, wouldn't it be interesting to see what the trends are in the various ref desks? We can't rule out that people are getting smarter about how to find things in Wikipedia and are less likely to ask. Or at least that they might be more inclined to ask at a more specific desk. For example, I can recall a time when the entertainment desk was little-used. It seems to have picked up over time. And it would also be interesting to see if there is, in fact, a seasonal trend. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:08, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
Jack, there's plenty of documentation both here and at various ANI postings that name names. You know that. Several regular contributors have become less active or left the ref desks as a result of the actions of a few other editors here. You can find their comments in the ANI archives too. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:49, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
Jack, it's worth pointing out that hostility on Wikipedia in general is why I don't do much article editing anymore; and hostility on the ref desks is one reason I've cut back on my work on the ref desks also (that, along with not having a lot of free time lately). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:22, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, that's a completely different matter. Not that it will change anything, but it might help to address the OP's question. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 04:56, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
Precisely. It's a question that, ironically enough, could have been posted on the Misc desk. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:08, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
No, then I would have moved it to the talk page. μηδείς (talk) 17:47, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
See, you can laugh at yourself. The first step to correct a problem is to recognize it. I feel we've had a breakthrough here! --Jayron32 18:53, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
No, I find this endless, evidentially unsupported bullshit tiresome, your present comments patronizing, and unworthy of an admin, and this entire thread a waste of time, except to point out, as Bugs has below, that the language desk is not suffering and that the Bitch... I mean the Talk Desk is a growth industry. I am simply surprised that we have no comments by IP 54 yet. Of course we do have a temporary block of proxies. Forgive me if I refuse to hold a grudge over any of this. μηδείς (talk) 21:46, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
That's ok. It's actually funnier if you weren't joking. APL (talk) 04:44, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
It's fun to laugh at yourself. It's the tonic tried and true. It's fun to look at yourself as other people do. How's your sense of humor? There's a rumor laughter's on its way. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:29, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
I ran the stats for the other desks. Math and Computing (which I almost never visit, FYI), as with Misc, are trending a decline in number of edits per month. Likewise with Humanities and Science. Entertainment has been fairly steady, just a slight decline over time. Language is trending upward. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:08, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
I should mention that Jack and I are in the top 5 of total edits on the Language desk, but Medeis is far and away the heaviest contributor to the Language desk... the one desk that's trending upward. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:15, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Increases to the language desk have resulted from the foreign-language IP who asked four or five questions a day about the correct usage of English. Nothing more than that. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:15, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, a more useful metric might be "Number of unique questioners in each week" or something like that. A single fanatical questioner can easily skew the statistics wildly. SteveBaker (talk) 01:13, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

moving questions to wikivoyage

@Medeis: - I'm down with the idea of moving obviously misplaced questions to the appropriate refdesk, but does this not apply to the Wikivoyage:Tourist Office? I suppose it is a separate project so that might make sense, but this thread on the Humanities desk just seems to fall so squarely under the other heading. --— Rhododendrites talk |  03:41, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Please go stalk someone else. The question I moved, according to longstanding practice, had nothing to do with language, everything to do with Humanities. I provided a link to the new location and I let the user know on his talk page in case he objected and wanted the question moved back. You come here to pointily suggest I remove a perfectly valid request for references and that I register for another project that doesn't even interest me? I have posted this question on behalf of a valued contributor well known to this board--at least to users who've been here since last year--but who asks not to be named for quite compelling reasons. For someone interested in conflict resolution you sure are provocative. μηδείς (talk) 04:25, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps I should have asked on your user talk page. I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm not saying at all that you shouldn't have moved a particular thread. I wasn't keeping track and don't know which question was even moved. I'm ok with the idea of moving obviously misplaced questions. But I did see the message that you had moved it, and I feel like I've seen that before (and I've seen others do so), which is why I thought it odd that you would be posting something so clearly under the domain of another desk. My presumption, apparently correct, was that despite the Tourist Office being listed as under the refdesk umbrella at Wikipedia:Reference desk, its position on a sister site must mean it's not appropriate to move a question there. PS: You don't have to re-register to use sister sites thanks to unified login. --— Rhododendrites talk |  05:39, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes the question would have been much more welcome on my talk page. Here, and couched in a tit for ta comparison with the lang > hum move, it smacks of inquistion, rather than either advice or a benign question. I may be an ornery broad, but I don't think you'll find I'm a Gorgon. μηδείς (talk) 20:10, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Greetings from Wikivoyage! We often get questions that relate more closely to content on WP than VOY; I'm sure we'd be happy to move future ones across to here if you thought some reciprocal agreement might be useful? --Nicholasjf21 (talk) 11:03, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself, that sounds reasonable. But people can get picky about having their questions moved without explicit consent, so perhaps the best thing for a respondent to do is to just suggest the poster also ask at the ref desks or VOY, and include a link. We don't really care for posting the same question at multiple places within the ref desks, but I see no problem with having the same or similar questions at Wikivoyage and the ref desks. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:43, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
The obvious solution is to remove that separate voyage thing from the ref desk page altogether. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:21, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Heaven forfend we actually direct people with questions to the place they are most likely to get answers. Powers T 17:38, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Or that we stop hassling editors for posting to the "wrong" desk. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:19, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Bugs has a point, though. To a random editor coming across the Ref Desk for the first time, it looks very much like Travel is just another of the various sub-desks we run here. Until they read the disclaimer underneath (Desk administered by Sister Project Wikivoyage (External Link)) . Which means it is not part of the Ref Desks after all, and is not even part of Wikipedia. We could also include Wiktionary and Wikiquote in that page, if helpfulness is our only concern here. So why is Travel the only special guest? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 00:02, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
If you look at the discussion that prompted the link to Wikivoyage, Wikiquote and Wiktionary were approached but no one from those projects' reference desks responded. If they wanted links, I can't imagine we'd say no, but we shouldn't force it on them either. Powers T 14:16, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for that. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 11:09, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
There is absolutely no problem with telling our OP that they might get a good answer at some other site. If someone wants to know how to stangle the reciprocating thnarl bearing on their 1932 AutoMeister convertible - then directing them to the owner's club site makes a lot of sense. Hence, I think there is no problem with suggesting that our OP's might get a good answer at our sister project. The difficulty here isn't in doing that - it's that the question is deleted from here and posted there. That's wrong on many levels. SteveBaker (talk) 01:18, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

"Do Jews have some African/Black DNA?"

Can I ask why the heck this obnoxious example of trolling via offensive racial stereotypes has been permitted to stand on the science reference desk? Has there been a policy change all of a sudden, or have I logged into Metapedia by mistake? AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't know WP:AGF was suspended here. --Jayron32 20:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Question can be answered with references, regardless of intent. I think our responses there are pretty good. Not feeding trolls, but perhaps informing one... Come to think of it, maybe I should post Afro#Similar_styles_internationally there for reference. I don't think it's necessarily racist or trolling to notice that some Jewish people and some African people can grow that hairstyle. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:11, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
The examples of specific features in the question do get rather wildly racist, and my first thought was that maybe the Toronto racist troll was back, in which case I probably would have deleted the question on sight. However, the IP 68.8.106.52 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) actually geolocates to San Diego, not Toronto, so it at least doesn't fit any repeating problematic user that I recognize. Red Act (talk) 22:23, 22 April 2014 (UTC)OR
I read it as more a question from a poorly informed person who hadn't thought mush about the issue themselves. So, ignorance, rather than bigotry. HiLo48 (talk) 23:18, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Like there's a difference? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:38, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I believe what Andy means is that a troll is merely exploiting the common editor's sensitivities by posing as a bigot or by intentionally phrasing questions in a potentially offensive way, which reflects his idiocy but not necessarily his ideology (yes, SemanticMantis, it is not necessarily racist or trolling to notice common hairstyles, but what about the giant penises ("according to a funny book about true stereotypes")?)
Nevertheless, I applaud the approach of assuming good faith (and ignorance) and of giving educational responses and believe that the "wicked son" too can receive an answer (Pessach just being over, and with acknowledgment of Deborahjay having pointed this out to me in a strikingly similar context years ago).
To answer your question, Andy, I did see the question and my trollometer did register somewhere, but I decided to leave it because a) there were potentially educative replies and b) I rarely remove stuff, if only to counter all the unnecessary hatting and removals we've been seeing these past months/years. We're all volunteers and you too can remove/hat if you feel so strongly about it. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:53, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Sure. And what I meant was that bigotry is a product of ignorance. Ignorance by itself is not necessarily bigotry, though. Someone might wonder about a stereotype without being certifiably bigoted. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:24, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
That answers your own question above. We learn quickly around here. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 01:16, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Ignorance can be cured. Stupidity is permanent. HiLo48 (talk) 01:22, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Late to the party (apologies, still posting from Work in my lunchtime while my home PC is up the spout), but can I point out that Jews (who include some of my forebears and in-laws), Arabs and others speak Semitic languages that, uncontroversially, came out of Africa much more recently than Homo Sapiens' original spread, so it seems to me reasonable for someone to wonder if Semites have some relatively recent African genetic heritage as well as the cultural one (language being culturally transmitted). I agree the OP's tone was ambiguous, but concur with Jayron that AGF applies: cluelessness is best corrected by supplying clues. [Cue ad hominem attack on my IP status, despite my being a regular here for 7 or 8 years.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 12:57, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Why should they? There's no indication of trolling on your part. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk/Archive_106&oldid=1074645051"