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List of Rock Band Tracks

There has been a group of deletion nominations for articles related to 2009 in downloadable songs for the Rock Band series, and it seems to be that the consensus of opinion is against deletion on the grounds that they are sourced and useful. However, a closer examination of the articles suggest that the sources for these articles are questionable, such that the commentary is derived from fan sites and press releases, whilst the coverage itself is fairly thin and lacking substance beyond product descriptions of the tracks and release dates.
This sort of product guide is very common on fan sites; users of the Rock Band video games would clearly find them useful and the game publishers and distributers find it very useful to promote their product via a stream of press releases and announcements which the fans can used to stitch together in guides and FAQs. However, what seems to be lacking is independent and reliable commentary about these tracks: who chose them, why were they chosen and what impact they have had other than achieving sales targets of MTV Music and EA Entertainment.
In the face of heavy bombardment, how is possible to distinguish between a notable topic on this cultural phenomenon from an article topic that fails WP:NOT#GUIDE? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Common sense. No serious editor would want such notable and verifiable information deleted. Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 13:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Those familiar with these games know that (and as best sourced in Cultural impact of the Guitar Hero series) that with modern music games, the inclusion of songs within these games in general leads to a brief (or long) burst of popularity, and more recently, there are promotions tying traditional music releases to the inclusion of songs within the games (e.g. the next Pearl Jam album will have its tracks near-immediately available for the game). Thus, tracking when and how the songs were released for the game is part of the encyclopedic coverage - maybe not on its own, but when tied with other data by other researchers. It is not synthesis of the type we avoid - we are allowed to put together multiple official (in this case, the posts from rockband.com are from official company representatives) and reliable sources to make the larger lists as long as we aren't modifying the data in any fashion nor trying to advance a point (what point?) - we're not even doing "2+2=4" type additions. Further, I will point out that the corresponding Guitar Hero song lists are nearly all featured (I'm working on 5) and they see those as acceptable supporting articles from the individual game articles - this would be the same here. I do agree that there's a point where GUIDE could be crossed - for example, if we included pricing information or the like. But no commercial position is being advanced here. --MASEM (t) 14:12, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that WT:NOT is a good venue for this discussion. The Tv schedule discussion occurred over my strenuous objections by dint of the sheer number of participants. I don't see this as analogous. Protonk (talk) 18:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
In answer to Masem, they do look like "2+2=4" type additions in terms of subject matter to me. Many of the soungs in say 2009 in downloadable songs for the Rock Band series are notable in their own right, like Roy Orbison's Oh, Pretty Woman, or a notable as part of an album, such as Lenny Kravitz's Are You Gonna Go My Way. However, there is no evidence (as yet) that any particualr song or bundle of songs has become notable by reason of being released through the Rock Band video games. These articles seem to rely on inherited notability for their inclusion, as the topics don't provide evidence of notabilty for their topic per se.
Although you rightly say this may change in the future, Rock Band is essentially one of many non-notable distribution channels (like music sold for broadcast in lifts and hotel lobbies) that is yet to the the subject of significant coverage. Details of relesase date, genre and artist reads like a topic that fails WP:NOT#GUIDE to me, and if price information was added, these articles would definetly fail WP:SPAM. Given the cultural impact of the game, I think your argument that the release of a particular song may well have a brief (or long) burst of popularity is right, but I think this is has to be evidenced by commentary from reliable and independent sources. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:25, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
If price information were added to a lot of notable articles about commercial products, it would be spam. Just because something could be turned into spam doesn't make it a poor article. (No comment yet on the other arguments.) -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 11:42, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Gavin is overlooking the fact that the articles in question are in fact subarticles related to the main articles on the Rock Band games. They are reference lists analagous to a discography for an artist or a track listing for a recording, and as such are entirely appropriate, even desirable, for inclusion in a set of article on to the overall topic. The only reason they are not merged into the main articles, in fact, is the size of the lists would make readability of the merged articles an issue.
Also, even if you assume an individual entry in a list isn't notable enough for its own article, it doesn't follow that the list itself as a whole isn't notable or useful as a reference tool. This is certainly a case where the list is useful as a reference in part because it is a complete list and not abridged to only include a handful of selected entries based on the amount of independent coverage of those particular items.
Finally I'll point out that this entire discussion is most likely best left to the specific AFDs in question, since its relevance to shaping policy on WP:NOT would seem to be lacking. Unless Gavin is claiming that the results of those AFDs is somehow going to shape or alter future WP:NOT policy, why even discuss these AFDs on this particular talk page? Leave it to the talk pages of the articles and AFDs Gavin is disputing. Dugwiki (talk) 16:15, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. You are saying that the discographies are necessarily sub-articles of the main one, right? And that SIZE prevents a literal merger. Then you say that individual entries on the list need not be notable for the list to be. Then you say that the best path is to discuss these at Afd. Is that a good reading? (I'm not trying to be snarky or anything, just making sure I got this right). Protonk (talk) 17:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Yep, I'd say you're reading what I said right.  :) Of course I'm just expressing my opinion, so feel free to agree or disagree with any of those points. Dugwiki (talk) 20:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
One clarification on discographies and track listings. Usually a track listing is part of the main article for the album or movie or video game in question. In this case, though, the track listing is very, very large, which means it's more convenient to the reader to split the listing off into a subarticle. Dugwiki (talk) 20:11, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't think these are track listings are based on anything other than press releases from the distributor. As far as I can see, these discographies don't support the main article at all - the fact that the game Rock Band plays music is more or less a feature of such a game, and this level of detail does not add any more context to the main article in the same way a track list for Lenny Kravitz's Are You Gonna Go My Way does. I think what Dugwiki is trying to imply is that these discographies should have their own standalone articles because they inherit notability from the game, rather than from the artists who wrote or performed them, or the original albums in which they feature. I don't agree that these dispgraphies inherit notability from the game at all as notability came to these tracks through other distribution channels (like single or album sales which gave rise to reviews and other commentary). I don't think they can inherit notability upwards, downwards or by way of other position that you fancy. The only reason I can think why they have been created as some sort of product guide, because that was the purpose behind the press releases that are their source. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
No, I'm saying that the reason the tracklists have standalone articles is because they're too large to fit comfortably in the main article. If the lists were smaller they'd be included there with essentially no debate. And if your argument is that the lists aren't important to the main articles on Rock Band then you are incorrect. In fact, differences in the song lists between, for example, the various Rock Band and Guitar Hero games is a critical factor in comparing the games. Discussing a music game without including the information about what music is included or available in the game would be a disservice to the article. It would be very much like having an article on a record set without listing the song tracks included in the set. Dugwiki (talk) 21:35, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
And I still don't see what this has to do with the WP:NOT page. If the complaint is something specific to Rock Band, why are we discussing it here and not the Rock band related pages? Dugwiki (talk) 21:38, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I don't think these tracklistings would be featured in the article Rock Band as that would result in undue weight being given to relatively trivial detail - what would be the point? The reason why they are being discussed here is that their inclusion, and articles like them, runs contrary to WP:NOT#DIR. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:51, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

<outdent>Actually, this shouldn't be discussed here, unless you're talking about a change to WP:NOT. This isn't the WP:NOT noticeboard. This discussion is merely a discussion about a particular proposed application of WP:NOT, and it should be discussed on the talk page of the article. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 22:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Not a "how-to"

It seems the only times I ever hear that there is a guideline saying Wikipedia is not a how-to manual are in edit summaries like this one where the identification of the article as a how-to article is idiotic. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Considering two of the article's three titled sections begin with "How to", I think concerns about tone and style are warranted. Powers T 14:24, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
I find only two such sections. There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:40, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
The article in question's main problem is having no sources, not the how-to part. Angryapathy (talk) 14:29, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
One source is cited. I think more should be there. But it's certainly not a "how to" article. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:38, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
...and what about the article about the '60s comedy movie How to Murder Your Wife? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:38, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
What about it? Powers T 03:01, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Transwiki to Wikiversity

Regarding this edit, are we recommending now "Original research should be transwikied" to Wikiversity? All original research or just some? It's a couple of hours before the end of the month, so I'll leave this edit out for purposes of the monthly diff at Update. - Dank (push to talk) 21:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikiversity isn't for publishing original research at all. It's for interactive learning. Abductive (reasoning) 22:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Wikiversity has several purposes, one of which is a repository for original research. I am an active Wikiversity user and conduct original research over there, and I'm not the only one. I think you misunderstand. --AFriedman (talk) 07:18, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggested merger

I wanted to start a discussion about possibly merging Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary (back?) into this document. I'm not at all set on doing the merger (but I am willing to do the work), however I wanted to discuss the possibility of going forward with it. I recently changed that document to be a guideline (which may or may not stick, we'll see), and it's obviously a spinout from this document. The thing is, after really reading the whole thing I'm left wondering why WP:NAD needs to be a completely separate document. I don't see anyhting that is particularly compelling in current document that isn't already listed in the section on this page. The only real difference that I see is that WP:NAD is (extremely) verbose. The section on this page is nicely succinct, and is therefore more accessible and easier to interpret. If I've missed something important in WP:NAD however, I'm certainly willing to hear about it.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:58, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a rotten idea because this policy is long and breaking out the details of the policy onto different policy pages is only sensible.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:25, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
The question that I'm raising though is this: why is it so long at WP:NAD? The section here documents the idea and the general details perfectly. When I read through the entirety of WP:NAD there are a couple of severe problems that I see. The first issue is that it's extremely verbose, to the point of rambling (it appears to be mostly "bloat", to me). More seriously though, WP:NAD as a separate document seems to be suffering from a form of coatracking. I should probably also state that if a merger were carried out, it would likely be a good idea to add a few points from the current WP:NAD document into the section here.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 23:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Coatrack? So, what is a policy that is part of wikipedia is not really talking about then?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 23:27, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
The coatrack issue was specifically referring to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, which ranges around the dictionary issue to talk about genealogy, WP:NOTGUIDE, and sprinkles in discussions about Wikipedia:Notability throughout. All of those issues are important, but they should be confined to the areas that they are intended to be covered in. Forking such guidance out into other policy or guideline documents leads to issues with maintainability, if nothing else.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 23:33, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
The genealogical dictionary is just one paragraph, and that's the only mention of notability I can see. A coatrack is when the article is supposed to be about one thing, but really spends almost the whole article talking about something else. I ask again, what, exactly are you claiming the whole policy is 'really' about?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 23:44, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
I said "similar to" coatracking (the actual quote is obviously "a form of", but the meaning is intended to be the same). Can we stay on point, please? Here, I'll strike the comment since it's not central to the issue regardless.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 23:57, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, OK, but I thought this was a central issue because you you said it was a severe problem along with claims that it is 'rambling'. It seems to me that the policy is precise and divisive and to the point about the differences between dictionaries and encyclopedias. Which bits exactly in your opinion, other than the single paragraph that covers genealogical dictionaries are severely 'rambling' and not to the point in your view?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk)
I'm simply trying to stick to the core idea of possibly performing a merger, so I'd rather drop the coatracking erm... "dispute", in favor of focusing on content.
The most basic question that I'm presenting is simple: why use a whole page to restate what is already stated here in 3 bullet points? I assume that those bullet points would be fattened slightly by a merger, but all of the content would at least be here, in one central location. Accessability is an issue that I see, for some. Aside from those of us who really take the time to become invested in these documents, who really wants to sit down and try to absorb two "walls of text" instead of just one (WP:TL;DR springs immediately to mind here)? There would also be no need to restate the issues regarding WP:NOTGUIDE, for example.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 00:31, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
So really, your call for merger is a cynical call for deletion of the entire policy page, deletion of the oldest and one of the most important policies in the entire wikipedia?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 01:31, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
Uh... no.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 01:39, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
That's what a merger is, it's where you move stuff into another article, and then put a redirect. That's also a delete of the article in everything but name. If that's not what you want to do, then I will remove the merge flag, because that's not what it's for.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 01:46, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
Redirect != delete. How about we stay away from hyperbole and escalation and stick to discussing the issue itself, OK?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 01:50, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

<outdent/>

This seems to be a really bad idea, and impractical anyway. Among other show-stopping problems the only policy for what constitutes a definition suitable for an encyclopedia article is in the Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy article, and it does not seem that it would be suitable for merging across; it would not fit in the WP:NOT which is simply about what the wikipedia isn't, whereas WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary is able to define what an encyclopedia is because it has more space. If the policy was merged then the policy article would be gone entirely, and there would be no definition of an encyclopedic definition anywhere.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
There's also other issues about how nouns and adjectives and so forth are treated, but they're much less important than the criticality of encyclopedia articles actually being encyclopedia articles that define what they're about.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
The other show stopping issue is that WP:NOT is essentially too big already, and merging in other articles can only make it even bigger.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
OK, I do hear what you're saying, I just can't reconcile it with... well, reality (yes, that's hyperbole, but keep reading because I explain it). When I read both documents; and I have read both completely, at least twice now, just today; I just don't see much to distinguish WP:NAD from WP:NOT. They cover the same material, with a slightly skewed focus at WP:NAD. I'm entirely willing to be convinced that I'm missing something fundamental, but you should talk to me and attempt to do some actual convincing.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 02:24, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
It's already been proven to me that you're unlikely to be reasonable, and so I have no interest in persuading 'Ohm's law' of anything. It's a spectacularly ill-conceived idea of deleting the very oldest policy in the wikipedia and it is flawed at every level. The summary of the policy at WP:NOT is not the policy at WP:NAD.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:29, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
With all due respect, today, you unilaterally delisted it, raised me on WP:ANI on spurious grounds, now you've made a assinine call for deletion of an entire core policy. Really, this will not do. You seem to have, at best, only the most tenuous grasp on reality.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
The oldest policy on Wikipedia is actually WP:IAR, not this or WP:NAD (although this seem to be a close second). Aside from that though, I don't see how age is directly relevant to anything relating to this discussion. A merger of WP:NAD actually accomplishes more to reinforce the core position espoused by both documents then having them exist separately.
Anyway, you can continue to claim that my starting an ANI discussion about you was spurious, but you're validating that decision (of which I was extremely uncertain of, initially) with each of these types of posts. I heartily welcome outside views myself, do you?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 03:03, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Not a good idea. Considering the ridiculous levels of confusion that exist over just how much a good dictionary entry might contain, the expanded page is necessary to provide clear examples of what is a dictionary entry and what is an encyclopedia entry. Powers T 13:17, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Not to be flip or anything, but is this theoretical or based in experience?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm afraid it's based on quite a lot of experience. Powers T 02:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
This discussion is overlapping fairly severely with Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary#Change to guideline. Since I personally think that simply changing WP:NAD to a supporting guideline is the better move, I think that I'll limit my replies to there.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 00:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I support keeping WP:NAD separate (do not merge). We need clear policies/guidelines with examples and discussion so that we do not have to rehash tired arguments over settled matters (bearing in mind that consensus can change, so documentation can be updated when required). Merging would only make sense if a large amount of material is deleted, which would be most unhelpful. Johnuniq (talk) 01:20, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems as though the suggestion to merge WP:NAD into WP:NOT would do two things: remove significant portions of WP:NAD and elongate WP:NOT. If very little will be added to WP:NOT, than WP:NAD will be pretty much deleted. So it seems that the suggestion is to delete WP:NAD and leave all policy on dictionary entries up to the section in WP:NOT. If you have a problem with the verbose nature of WP:NAD, then work with editors there to cut it down. It seems like you are skipping a step by trying to merge it here. I say keep WP:NAD; a more detailed policy helps reduce arguments over dictionary articles. Angryapathy (talk) 07:37, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

To repeat what I wrote in the other thread, I support re-categorizing WP:NAD as a guideline (because that is what it is in format and intent, just like all the other many guidelines that are linked/summarized at this page), and hence object to it being merged here. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:38, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the analysis of the situaton put forward by Angryapathy. The creation of the policy Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary must have been done for reason; simply destroying the consensus that developed in the past seems to me to be short sighted. Having been through long discussions regarding the status of WP:NOT#PLOT, and participated in the creation of Wikipedia:Plot-only description of fictional works as a forum for discussing it as a policy, I would not like to have to go through the same thing with WP:NOT#DICT when we already have a perfectly good policy page to support it. The Rubicon has been crossed, so unless you have a proposal to ammend Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, then I second the proposal to leave it as policy. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
It was never really a policy, it was only marked as a policy because {{policy}} was the only categorization\tag available at the time. It's essentially been grandfathered in as a "policy", and ever since guidelines have been around there's been a slow burn dispute about marking it appropriately. Characterizing marking that document as a guideline as a "change" is a gross mischaracterization of the situation.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 08:21, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Compromise

WP:NOTDIC is one of the oldest pages on Wikipedia (2001), pre-dating policy and even the Wikipedia namespace. It's been marked as policy for a long time. IMO, it's a well-written and important page. OTOH, as discussed at WT:NOTDIC, not a lot of people are reading or watchlisting the page, and WP:NOTDICTIONARY points to a section here at WP:NOT, not WP:NOTDIC. WP:NOTDICTIONARY is generally the link given when people want to make the point. A policy page is supposed to be the page you go to when you have a question about the topic; if it's the second page you go to, that's not supposed to be a policy page. How would this work? Keep WP:NOTDIC as a policy page, move the text that's currently in the WP:NOTDICTIONARY section of WP:NOT over to WP:NOTDIC (leaving a link to that page), invite participation and tweaks at WP:NOTDIC, and then make a proposal on WP:VPP to upgrade the page to Category:Wikipedia content policies and see if it will fly. - Dank (push to talk) 13:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, back up. What exactly is the problem you're trying to solve?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
I mean, this is just summary style. We would prefer all of the policy to be in WP:NOT, but we just don't have the space for that. Is summary style wrong?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
None of the pages in the 4 main policy subcats (see WP:Update/1#Category news) read like summary-style spinoffs. In WP:NOTDIC, we have a page marked as policy that people aren't generally watching, reading or linking to ... they generally link to the WP:NOTDICTIONARY section of WP:NOT instead. If the page is going to claim to be the authority on the subject, then it should be the authority on the subject; it should be the page that people read and edit and argue over and link to on that subject. We can probably succeed in making it the authority by redirecting the relevant shortcuts from WP:NOT to WP:NOTDIC, moving all the relevant text from WP:NOT to WP:NOTDIC, encouraging people to link to and to edit the page, and by putting it in the content policy subcat. - Dank (push to talk) 16:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
The same problem occurs with NPOV as well. Perhaps we should not have any shortcuts into the middle of WP:NOT, where there is a policy that supercedes that summary, and point them instead to the actual policy.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
That makes sense, do you have some text in mind that should be moved to a different policy page? - Dank (push to talk) 17:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
No, nothing particularly, I previously tried hard to reconcile the two (as best you can with a summary).- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
If I might, why not just change WP:NOTDICTIONARY to link to WP:NOTDIC, and have the section here link over to it? It's useful to summarise here, but there's no reason to have a shortcut to the summary beyond WP:NOT#DICTIONARY.
I'd also argue that WP:PLOT should go to WP:WAF, though WP:NOTPLOT should probably stay here for the moment.
(I will admit to some doubts about WP:NOTPLOT as a link: It's a misleading summary of the content, since, of course, we're never going to throw out all plot summaries. But it's probably good enoough for now. WP:NOTONLYPLOT would be better, though.) Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 18:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
I think it makes sense. If we get a little more buy-in, then we'll action it.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
  • This is a good idea, and something that I thought about myself. The only reason that I was against going in this direction is WP:CREEP, essentially. There's simply no need for WP:NAD to be elevated to policy when it functions perfectly well as a guideline supporting the policy that everyone already uses and is comfortable with. Simply changing the redirects is not going to get people to cite WP:NOTDIC rather then simply citing WP:NOT. It's better then doing nothing though.
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 23:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Democratic Wiki

Sorry if this is the wrong place to put this Does anyone know of a democratic wiki community, with less totalitarianism? --Matthew Bauer (talk) 22:33, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Is your unhappiness based on an individual incident, or are you having problems in multiple places?
See List of wikis for other endeavours. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:22, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
The subject of totalitarianism, cabal, intrigue, elitism, and other wiki-conspiracy and political theories, is widely rumored to be undercover at the discussions behind consensus. Consensus is a big challenge, and an interesting one, in life. Wikipedia is a big pond, a very big pond. They have little fiduciary, democracy, or socialism as a cultural policy. But they are not totalitarian because almost every time, the bad guys lose arbitration, and the good guys win arbitration. There so much evidence! CpiralCpiral 06:32, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:PLOT

Unlike everything else on this page, there is no justification given, and it's essentially a manual of style thing. May I suggest changing this to something more general, like:

Articles lacking independent sources: While reliable primary sources may sometimes be appropriate sources to describe a subject, Wikipedia requires proof of the subject's independent notability, which can only come through putting the subject in a wider perspective. This includes articles consisting solely of a plot summary, biographies sourced solely to the subject's own site, and so on.


Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 14:44, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a start of a reasonable balance. I know one issue (maybe not brought up in the previous RFC) was that some felt PLOT was specifically discriminating against fiction, but really the use of just primary sources is true for any published work or topic. I wonder if this can also work in how much info comes from the primary vs the secondary (eg the "concise" term we had before). Take a bio article that has 95% of the info from an autobiography and a few smatterings from secondary sources - would that be considered appropriate? --MASEM (t) 14:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Not to me. I've always argued that the bulk of an article needs to come from independent sources. A few tidbits from secondary sources doesn't justify large amounts of material from primary sources, whether those primary sources are autobiographies, plots of fictional works, official artist sites, censuses, or whatever. Articles should be about what secondary sources have found to be important to discuss, with only enough material from primary sources to make the statements from those secondary sources clear.—Kww(talk) 17:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
I mostly agree (but, having seen how badly secondary sources can handle plot summaries, am a little hesitant to ever suggest they should be taken solely from secondary sources), but WP:NOT isn't the place for best practice considerations - it's for things which are never acceptable, even if the article was created 3 days ago. As such, I think we need to be more liberal here, but link to best practice advice such as yours. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 17:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
I think this approach recognizes that a properly developed fiction article will have a plot summary (likely unsourced, at best sourced to the primary) but filled with sufficient secondary sources that it is not a problem. On the other hand, if you have an article that is 95% of plot (or in the autobiography) and one line that says "oh here's the notable aspect", it's questionable if this is sufficiently drawing from secondary sources. (And just as I write this I think we want to swap "independent" with "secondary", or at least "avoid a majority of primary sources") as it's still possible to compile a full article from independent sources but still be describing the work in a primary manner when we're looking for secondary coverage. --MASEM (t) 18:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Independent is a key and crucial point. How much the author, publisher, network PR flack, and other paid sources discuss something is irrelevant.—Kww(talk) 22:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Three points on the majority issue:

  1. Lists and the like might reasonably use primary sources. If you want a list of who won the Nobel Prize in each category every year, I don't think it unreasonable to use the Nobel Prize academy for most of your sourcing, with a paragraph at the top describing the Nobel Prizes.
  2. Sub-articles might reasonably contain a lot of primary material to put discussion of it in context. For instance, if I wanted to do an article on the sources for the Odyssey, I might need to summarise the Odyssey in some detail to cover all the aspects scholars discuss, and I might need to give summaries of the material used to help show the connection scholars tie between it and the Odyssey.
  3. If you can only have one thing in a new or poorly-developed article on a primary source, I'd probably say that a summary of the primary source is the most useful element.

WP:NOT is blanket prohibitions, we need to take a little bit of care to think through consequences. If we agree the three points above are valid, and that articles of the types I mention are wanted on Wikipedia, we need to make sure we don't prohibit them here.

THAT said, whatever we do, we should link to somewhere stating best practice, which generally is majority secondary sources. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 19:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, a suggested change:

Articles lacking independent sources: While reliable primary sources may sometimes be appropriate sources to describe a subject, Wikipedia requires proof of the subject's independent notability, which can only come through putting the subject in a wider perspective. This includes articles consisting solely of a plot summary, biographies sourced solely to the subject's own site, and so on. A well-developed article should usually have a majority of its content developed from sources independent of its subject.

Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 19:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to argue with what you seem to take for granted: the last, and generally least important thing to add to an article is a plot summary. A plot summary is only required if it is necessary to understand comments and statements made by outside sources. With no outside sources, there is no need for a plot description, because there is no need for an article to exist at all.—Kww(talk) 22:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, let's just try and sidestep this debate and see if we can come up with something both of us can agree to. Do you accept my point that, in some articles, such as lists of Nobel prize winners, using primarily a primary source is acceptable, and that therefore, we can't ban articles with majority primary sources out of hand? Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 11:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I think trying to move this in a broader direction is the right thing to do. One nit about the proposal: Shouldn't "This includes..." read "This precludes..."? Vassyana (talk) 09:24, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I believe that to meet these concerns, we just need to avoid saying "article" outright and say "The coverage of a topic should mostly consist of coverage from independent sources", as "coverage of a topic" thus implies its principle article, any appropriate spinouts and lists/tabls that support it. Thus, a list of Oscars using only the pages from the Academy would be fine, because our main coverage of the award will certainly have third-party sources to describe its history and impact. --MASEM (t) 14:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
That works. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 20:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, one more gotcha to consider. Going in this route is duplicating advice given in WP:V about articles relying on third-party sources. That's not to say that WP:V is the source of this advice, only that this may be the opportunity affirm and expand that point. --MASEM (t) 14:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, we can list common types of things from first-party sources, which does, of course, include plot summaries. I don't think it's a problem that this list of blanket prohibitions duplicates prohibitions elsewhere.
Should we mention that articles with too many primary sources should be edited to use more third-party ones, whether by expansion or rewriting? Possibly followed by "if sufficient independent sources are unlikely to exist, not just for one aspect, but for the subject as a whole, this article should not be on wikipedia." Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 20:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Regarding wikipedia's "Not a Forum" policy

I think wikipedia should have a forum part on the actual website, so people will not use "useless" pages for forum like talks.Dudeaga (talk) 02:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

An example of a "useless"? I can only guess: user sub-pages created for multiple-user, wiki-oriented crowd-skirting purposes? No... that would not a forum make. Hmm. What do you mean?CpiralCpiral 05:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I think he/she's being quite clear. Basically, he/she thinks wikipedia should have a forum on the actual website. 124.182.160.196 (talk) 16:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
LiquidThreads will solve that, once deployed. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:06, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

RfC at WP:Civil

A Request for Comment has been posted at WP:Civil concerning reversion using the one-line Edit Summary. It is suggested that such summaries that employ WP:Soap require a Talk page back-up that provides specific indication to the contributing author of just what it is that makes the reverting editor believe WP:Soap is applicable. Please take a look and comment. Brews ohare (talk) 22:36, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

"A plot summary is sometimes appropriate..."

Let's get an issue we can deal with quickly out of the way:


WP:PLOT currently has the statement "A concise plot summary is sometimes appropriate as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work."

Given that WP:PLOT has dubious consensus to exist at all, and that said discussions concentrated on it seeming to discriminate against plot summaries, there cannot be any consensus for a version containing a snide dismissal of plot summaries.

This should be changed to "usually appropriate", at the very least. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 16:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Poll

This poll attempts to seek a temporary consensus to change "sometimes" to "usually". It is not intended to block further discussion of WP:PLOT in future, but this compromise does much to defuse the more heated points of the debate.

Collapsing discussion which is a different issue
    • I think it may be possible to make a consensus, but that doesn't mean I'm happy to accept its continual drift back towards anti-plot rhetoric. A while ago, we worked very hard to make a consensus version I was willing to get behind. It's now been replaced with one attacking plot that, so far as I can tell, never came up in any of these discussions. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 11:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
You don't have to be happy to accept anything, and your claim that it never came up in plot discussions is false, as you directly participated. Is this a case of selective memory when facts don't support what you want to believe? DreamGuy (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
What a really, really bad anaology, on many different levels. I suggest you strike it. Ikip (talk) 16:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
What I see from Shoemaker's Holiday is an unwillingness to accept consensus. Here he calls Wikipedia's evolution "its continual drift back towards anti-plot rhetoric". There's no drift, and if there was, that would be the new consensus. Had Shoemaker's Holiday said, "I propose the following change to the wording of WP:PLOT because that seems it would make WP:PLOT better reflect what consensus says constitutes a GA," the change would be uncontroversial. Instead Shoemaker's Holiday comes in saying "WP:PLOT, it sucks and should have been removed, I'm seeking a "temporary consensus" to make this small change. This means Shoemaker's Holiday plans to continue to attack WP:PLOT. Abductive (reasoning) 17:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
If you want to know what my opinions are of what would be my ideal long-term version, look one section up. There's no need to claim a sinister long-term plot (heh) on my part, I've made it very clear what I think would be a long-term solution, but know full well that months of refinements will be needed first. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 17:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
It's not sinister, but the problem is that you refuse to get over the fact that consensus has permanently changed to the current WP:PLOT. If you would restrict your requests to, for example, what I said about GAs above without the anti-consensus rhetoric, we could get reasonable amendments made. Even Gavin is ok with the change, btw. Abductive (reasoning) 18:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
What I see here is there is strong consensus against your view point, so you are claiming that you are supported by some non-apparent consensus in order to attack someone. This is highly inappropriate and a severe disrespect for WP:CONSENSUS. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Severe? I'm not arguing about the minor change, I'm pointing out that a user is adding rhetoric to his request that is unnecessary and inflammatory, much as you have just done. There is consensus on that too. Abductive (reasoning) 18:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
None of my statements reflect your claims and your accusations are incivil. Consensus is clearly against you, and your statements do not reflect what is in the interest of the community nor what they want. Your attacks are just further proof of your disrespect. I will ask you to refrain in making such comments in the future. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I know you're having a bad day, and I forgive you. I think you are not understanding my point; one should not not call for "temporary consensus" and say that the current wording of a policy is "dubious" when asking for a change. Abductive (reasoning) 05:32, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
A bad day? No, I had quite a good day. The above statement is indicative of the rest of your posting which is almost pure nonsense. I think the above statement is proof enough that you are not here to discuss but to disrupt. Please stop. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
None of us on or own (or even in groups) can claim to be for or against the consensus, so drop this line of argument, because it is little more than attempt to undermine an editor whilst ignoring the validity of his argument. I for one am not in favour of a watering down of the existing wording and I respect where Abuductive is coming from on this issue. Plot only artices are never appropriate. Any hint that they are usually appropriate is a misrepresentation of this policy. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 20:43, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • This seems reasonable and accurate. It's worth pointing out that I take a fairly hardline position on notability and original research as a general rule, and have expressed great dismay over the generally dismal state of fiction articles (and the related lacking application of policy) in this context. Regardless of the conflict in wikiphilosophy that I may have with some proponents of this change and opponents of this section, I do not think it can be reasonably disputed that the proposed change is an accuarate and policy-compliant revision. Opposing this change because of the broader disputes over the area seems a bit unhelpful to me. Vassyana (talk) 09:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support it's usually required for GA/FA status. Verbal chat 09:22, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, first off, if there's conflict between what people participating at GA/FA want and policy, policy should always prevail. But arguing that the term "usually" should be used and talking about GA/FA status ignores the reality that many topics about fiction will never attain that status because there's so little of any encyclopedic value to say about them in the first place. I would agree that a good plot summary (meaning concise, no synthesis, as part of larger look at work) would be required for GA/FA, but this policy covers all articles, not just those. DreamGuy (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support, with amdendment: A concise plot summary is usually appropriate, but only as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work.
    I think this compromise solution meets the concerns raised by Abductive. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • The whole point of WP:NOTPLOT is that it's anti-plot summaries if the summaries are not part of a larger coverage of fictional work. You seem to be acting out of some distorted view of what this policy is for. DreamGuy (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The claim that the plot section shouldn't be here at all is completely false, and Shoemaker's Holiday intends this move to gut existing standards (as seen in comment to Gavin directly above). In fact his edit comments recently on other articles shows that he is willing to ignore this policy completely and pretend it doesn't exist. "Usually" seems to be a demand that most articles need plot summaries when many articles more on the stub side and lesser important works have no notable plot details worth mentioning in an encyclopedia. I would support Gavin's ammendment as a compromise, though. DreamGuy (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support per the excellent argument of themfromspace, "I can't imagine a fiction-related article achiving FA status without a plot summary." Ikip (talk) 16:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support if we say concise plot summary or otherwise emphasize the importance of out-of-universe impact per WP:FICT. We need to give context, but sometimes plot summaries veer into derivative work status without any actually encyclopedic coverage. - 2/0 (cont.) 16:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose both "sometimes" and "usually". Characterizing the frequency with which something may be appropriate is not useful policy: each article stands on its own. Whether information is germane in one article is not determined by examining the proportion of other articles that contain similar information, but by discerning whether it contributes to treating the subject at hand in an encyclopedic manner. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support Plot summaries are important for FAs and to the encyclopedia as a whole. The current wording is not conducive to encyclopedia writing in any form. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support without amendment. While it looks like a reasonable compromise, it would interfere with the creation of stubs consisting of plot summaries pending further research. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:32, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support w/ Gavin's amendment, which I think is completely reasonable and neatly avoids the "you need plot summary for an FA" non-problem. Protonk (talk) 18:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. Perhaps policy should say "Wikipedia is not a media review." Newspaper and magazine reviews of novels, films, and other fictional content rarely give away the full plot because most of their audience reads the review in order to decide whether to enjoy the fiction as an entertainment. That is fundamentally different from encyclopedic coverage where the most important audience is the one that comes to the encyclopedia as a starting point for further research. Students who must write a term paper about Hamlet will not be distressed by the "spoiler" that Hamlet dies if they've done their homework and read the play or know what "tragedy" means. The Iliad would not be a comprehensive article if it withheld that Achilles dies and The Odyssey would be a puddle if it didn't state clearly that Odysseus returns home to his family. It would be just as silly to add suspense to the Wright Brothers article by failing to state they made the airplane fly. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an entertainment. Durova320 18:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I think this misses the point a bit. Spoilers and suspense aren't related to WP:NOT#PLOT. The problem is that the plot should not be the focus of an article because it is a relatively unimportant aspect of the from an encyclopedic standpoint. I could write an entire article on the CSI franchise, for example, dicussing how important it has been to CBS, how the demographic appeal of the series has lead to the proliferation of the franchise, the international distribution, etc., something like CSI (franchise), without discussing a single plot point. That's the coverage that belongs in Wikipedia. Episode recaps, like Cool Change (CSI), for example, are completely irrelevant to an encyclopedia. They are more or less on the lines of what I would expect from WikiCliffsNotes, and are the kind of article WP:NOT#PLOT is intended to prohibit. —Kww(talk) 02:32, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • But doesn't that example slant the discussion a bit? Consider the W.S. Gilbert play Randall's Thumb, which is mostly a plot summary because the plot is most of what is available about the work. That article recently ran on the main page at DYK and nobody challenged it because Victorian theatre and a notable playwright are generally acknowledged as more highbrow than [insert any television series name here]. The underdeveloped Hill Street Blues article barely conveys how its groundbreaking use of overlapping story arcs has influenced television series writing structure for more than a quarter of a century. Yes, terrible unreferenced and unencyclopedic articles do exist that are long plot summaries and nothing else; those deserve improvement or deletion. But to deprecate plot as an encyclopedic element of fiction? I can't quite agree with that as a principle. Durova321 03:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support with Gavin's amendment:In contrast to SarekOfVulcan, I prefer this simply because it does prohibit the creation of plot-only stubs. Any version of WP:NOT#PLOT that didn't prevent plot-only articles wouldn't serve the purpose.—Kww(talk) 18:40, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • You seem to assume that PLOT was brought in to prohibit the creation of plot-only stubs. On what do you base that assertion? From memory, my mind was more towards guiding editors to add more encyclopedic content rather than to prohibit anything. I'm fairly sure on that point because I'm not a prohibitionist. I'd appreciate your recollection though, it may aid mine. I don't care that plot-articles might hang around, but I do care that articles might get reverted away from an encyclopedic tone to wards a plot tone. That's the more important point, and the point PLOT was aiming at. Hiding T 19:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I think avoiding the accumulation of plot-only permastubs is equally important. Infobox+plot is a page in a TV guide, not in an encyclopedia. If there's legitimate reason to believe that the article can grow, there's probably not much reason to rush around deleting it. If it is just a typical TV episode article that will never grow beyond a TV guide page, there's no reason to keep the TV guide page around. If something happens to make a more extensive article appropriate, the infobox can alway be reconstructed from the list.—Kww(talk) 04:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree that permastubs should likely be merged elsewhere, but I disagree that this policy should be used to prohibit them. Of course we want the information added, so that it can be sifted and mined for gold. Let's not talk about prohibiting editors from doing anything, but instead talk about ways of improving content already added by editing it appropriately through merging and copy-editing. Hiding T 11:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • More to the point, every phrase in NOT, just like every policy and guideline, should only be applied to an article once it has had time to be expanded. That is, CSD/NPP filter out stuff on the creation end, but once it's past that (give or take false positives), we need appropriate time to allow articles to grow before screaming "that fails!" at them. How much time, that's always for debate, but I'd say at least a month. Thus, yes, TV episodes, etc will be created with only plot and info box, but over time they can be merged back to more appropriate lists if they fail to expand beyond their plot. --MASEM (t) 14:32, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Kww's "Any version of WP:NOT#PLOT that didn't prevent plot-only articles wouldn't serve the purpose" is totally unrealistic. What % of FAs and GAs on fiction-like topics started as plot summaries or equivalent? Plot-only articles are the seed from which GAs and FAs grow. --Philcha (talk) 07:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support if discussing a fictional work, if you don't explain the plot, then you're leaving out atleast half the information related to the importance of the subject (ie. the content that caused its controversy or popularity or whatever) It's like discussing Romeo and Juliet without ever explaining that it's a tragic love story, or MacBeth without explaining guilt and revenge. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 03:33, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I support this change with Gavin's proposed addition - that plot coverage is appropriate as part of balanced coverage. I don't want to encourage plot-only permastubs. Karanacs (talk) 14:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support "Usually" - Articles on fictional topics not containing some sort of plot summary are the exception, not the rule (indeed, I find it hard to think of a situation where the plot is not worth any mention whatsoever); the fact that some plot summaries are poorly done is an orthogonal issue. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support - That always was a weird thing to say that didn't reflect consensus. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:54, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. There are so many culture rackets these days, where the people who write in the literary pages of the newspapers churn out favourable reviews of each other's work, that it's often better to shape articles around the plot summary until you get some meaningful commentary. Ottre 02:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose, though I would support changing "sometimes appropriate" to "usually inappropriate". There may be a few cases where a plot summary is appropriate, but I can't think of one off the top of my head at the moment. Most articles about books, movies, and the like would be greatly improved by removing their plot summary. +Angr 06:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support—obviously. An article about a work of fiction cannot be complete without a plot summary. I would also extend this provision to articles about songs, but that might be more debatable. —Ynhockey (Talk) 06:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support "usually" for the reasons above.filceolaire (talk) 18:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support, works that don't need a plot summary probably don't need it because they have no plot, which is the exception not the rule. And no amendments. Gavin's amendment seems to be a backdoor to delete any plot details in spinoff articles not directly about the work itself, so meh to that (articles that were soley "Plot of X" were deleted long ago). SnowFire (talk) 22:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. Plot summary is usually necessary. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support changing "sometimes appropriate" to "usually appropriate". I doubt an article on a work of fiction would make it to FA without a plot summary, and my print encyclopedia has a plot summary of each of Shakespeare's plays, and those of other playwrights. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:51, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support changing "sometimes appropriate" to "usually appropriate". Support even more the amdendment: "A concise plot summary is usually appropriate, but only as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work."--M4gnum0n (talk) 13:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support because that is in fact the consensus policy almost always applied to articles, and almost always the consensus at discussions of them. The use of "sometimes" , however it may have been intended, is in fact not supported by the community. If policies are descriptive, the proposed wording is closer, though if we are to discuss what the policy ought to be in a prescriptive way, I would prefer "almost always" or even "always". I cannot see how any encyclopedic description of fiction can omit the plot. DGG ( talk ) 20:34, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
    • We do have a number of articles on lost works, where there simply isn't material for a plot summary, and, likewise, some on things without anything that can be considered a coherent plot. I'd prefer the stronger language, but, as can be seen, there's enough problems on this page that a small step that at least got rid of the attack on plot summaries seemed a better option than being bogged down in useless debate that led to the attack remaining. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 210 FCs served 21:03, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I recognize that there may be some exceptional works without the possibility of a plot summary, but even so we usually have some idea of their contents. There are, for example, songs without words, but we can still describe them. We can deal with such rare exceptions with common sense and IAR.
      • I think that what DGG is saying that if one looks at the overall consensus, including what is considered a GA, an FA, what happens to plot-only articles (they get nominated for deletion, and sometimes deleted), and what happens to articles that are well written with many editors' input, is that we get wonderful articles with a concise plot summary. This is the consensus, and the policy page reflects this consensus rather than creates or influences it. Arguing over this page is silly, because whatever it says it will not alter what happens in mainspace. Abductive (reasoning) 21:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Not quite. I think the word adequate much better describes my position than concise; and in many cases the plot will be sufficiently complicated--or even sufficiently written about--that there should be a separate article on it as part of the broader overall Wikipedia coverage of the fiction. (I accept either as a reason why there can be a separate article if the work is important). The more important thing is to have adequate, not over-concise or over-detailed summary; it is secondary where we put it. The usual reason I now defend any separate separate article that can be at all justified, is that in practice the plot is gradually reduced to minimal if we do not have them. DGG ( talk ) 14:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose, there may be situations when being concise is detrimental to the article and adding more information makes the article better. By replacing "sometimes" by "usually" one might be led to think this should be anything more than a rough rule of thumb. Better to be vague and let the each article be discussed for or against it on its own merits.Chhe (talk) 02:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. It is simply appropriate to include a plot summary of a fictional work as part of the article on that work. Indeed, probably most of the readers of Wikipedia who look up a fictional work primarily want to see the plot summary. -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:43, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support I would expect any article on a work of fiction to tell me what happens in it. Reywas92Talk 22:34, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support I'm not particularly happy with the blurb before the poll, but on this issue, plot summaries should be part of GAs, let alone FAs.--Peter cohen (talk) 19:26, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Use of WP:Soap in one-line Edit Summaries

The proposal at One-line Edit Summaries found few supporters, as many felt that any mandatory requirement upon the one-line Edit summary was onerous. However, a modification of WP:Civil was made suggesting that on-line edit summaries be explicit. I have imported a version of the text added to WP:Civil modified somewhat to apply to this guideline. Brews ohare (talk) 15:06, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

This type of advice doesn't belong on WP:NOT. There's nothing in the concept that can be used to qualify the statement "WP is not a (something)". This is not to say that the advice shouldn't be elsewhere, but it doesn't fit in this policy. --MASEM (t) 15:11, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Not promotion

What link do I use to let someone know that they should not be promoting a web site by adding external links? I have noticed a few cases where a newish editor doesn't do much except add a small number of links to some favorite site, and WP:LINKSPAM and WP:NOTDIR don't seem appropriate (because it's small scale, and per WP:BITE). Often, the editor is clearly promoting their site, and I would like to gently say that Wikipedia is not used for promotion, but WP:PROMOTION is wrong. Any suggestions? Should the WP:PROMOTION text have a sentence added? Johnuniq (talk) 02:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

if the user may be connected with those sites, WP:COI. Otherwise, point them to general advice of WP:EL. --MASEM (t) 02:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be large-scale to be linkspam, nor do I see how it's WP:BITE-y to point that out. Powers T 15:11, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, but I've done a bit of linkspam reversion and it's not easy to get the balance right. Often it's clear that the user is only here to promote a web site, but even then I've seen resistance from other editors saying that linkspam warnings and edit summaries are bitey. How about this specific case where links to one site are added: [1], [2], [3]. The point is that the site may be useful, and the editor may make useful contibutions, so I don't want to say "linkspam", but I would like to say "promotion", as in the addition of links with a view to promote a web site. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 22:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
If none of those cut it, you may have to customize a message that references a few relevant guidelines. We probably can't have a shortcut for every possible violation of our general precepts. Powers T 22:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes – that is exactly what I did, and my message is the reason that I am here because I could not link to any policy/guideline except WP:EL, which is a very long and imprecise tool. What I would like would be some words added to WP:PROMOTION (or maybe a new point) along the lines that Wikipedia should not be used to promote a website (of course there are many other things that should be not promoted, but promoting websites is a very popular pastime). I cannot find anything to link to other than the unhelpful mess of WP:EL or the very bitey WP:LINKSPAM. Johnuniq (talk) 03:27, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
I often refer people to our FAQ about businesses & other organisations. It covers most of the related problems as well. DGG ( talk ) 16:02, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, but the link is WP:BFAQ (WP:BF goes to WP:AGF). WP:BFAQ looks very much like what I had in mind. Johnuniq (talk) 04:22, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

"WP:NOTNEWS"?

Because Wikipedia can be ubdated at a moment's notice, it then follows that as soon as a noteworhty event occurs, an article will be made of it, which is subsequently put up for deletion under WP:NOTNEWS. If we are "not news", shouldn't we be able to update articles on the news and have them free from being put up for deletion? Or perhaps I'm wrong, and I've completely blurred the line between news and articles. Maybe someone can explain this. --Delta1989 (talk) 00:09, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

  • It completely depends on whether they're notable events or not. From WP:NOT - "News coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, but not all events warrant an encyclopedia article of their own.". The reason this is specified in WP:NOT is that certain news events, whilst not noteworthy on their own right, can still generate news reports which may be taken to be substantial coverage. However, most news items belong on WikiNews - only genuinely notable events should have their own article here. Black Kite 15:45, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Textbooks and annotated texts

"...specifically those intended to inform rather than to instruct..."

What is the difference between inform versus instruct? The example in this article was removed: http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Normal_force&oldid=320231161 , which in my opinion makes the information harder to understand.   Thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 23:43, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I've done some revision of that article, but I agree that NOTTEXTBOOK is a bit over-broad: examples can occasionally be useful to show how a concept works, and some articles - especially on mathematics - pretty much need to explain how to do the task in question in order to effectively explain the concept itself. Perhaps we should consider tweaking that line. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 213 FCs served 14:04, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
FWIW, I support the modifications you've made the normal force article. I support an example of applications or a practical example of how normal forces exist in everyday objects. I do have a problem with examples of doing math problems to solve for the normal force however. Perhaps that's what needs to be differentiated. Wizard191 (talk) 17:07, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
>I do have a problem with examples of doing math problems to solve for the normal force however.
Why is that? Can you see how working on some math makes the topic easier to understand for the newbs? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 20:18, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't deny that it can help someone learn how to do a math problem, but that's scope creep for an encyclopedia. That's the job of a textbook or teacher, not an encyclopedia. Unfortunately Wikipedia can't do everything if its going to remain useful and readable. Wizard191 (talk) 20:27, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
Its makes the article more useful, more readable and helps someone understand the topic. What do others think? Would be good to survey 10 newbs who are researching the topic and find out whether they prefer with example or without. I'd be very surprised if they didn't prefer it with an example.   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:13, 18 October 2009 (UTC)


Similar to my original question:

"The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter."

If you are presenting facts isn't that teaching the subject matter? What is the diffference?   Thx, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:22, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Essentially, yes, but not in the same manner is intentionally instructing. The article on Algebra, for example, is more focused on the history and application of algebra then how to actually perform it. No instruction takes place, yet you learn. --King Öomie 13:11, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Good answer.   :-)   Thanks! Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:50, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
*Wikibow*. --King Öomie 17:24, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

opinions please. Is this an indiscriminated list, or a valid list of examples?

[4] My edit was deleted by an editor who claimed it was an indiscriminate. I'd like a second opinion please. Is listing what parts of various notable movies and television shows had an exact example of the article's subject in them, count as indiscriminate? Dream Focus 17:24, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

  • I'd say as written it was probably not the best choice for the article (though converting it prose, adding sources, and reducing the number of examples would probably be fine). But I don't think WP:NOT applies here. I'd say it should go to the talk page and maybe to an appropriate notice board if there isn't anyone else there to discuss it. In other words, this is an editorial dispute about what works best, not a WP:NOT thing (in my opinion, I'm curious what others will think). Hobit (talk) 19:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
    • That page is now deleted, & the link will not work. It was recreated with expansion as Human disguise, G4'd , and brought to Deletion Review on Oct 21 [5]]. I didn't comment on the original articles, but I looked at your list, and I do not think at all that it meets indiscriminate. A list with material limited to that in articles on notable Wikipedia subjects is not indiscriminate, but discriminating. Indiscriminate would have been a list of every such disguise in any film or video whatsoever, however unimportant--you had less than a dozen well-selected examples, such as the rather obvious Men in Black. However, I think the version that should be recreated is the one now at deletion review, and I suggest you try there, at least to get it userified. DGG ( talk ) 00:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Can an article be just a bibliography?

I don't see anything in WP:NOT to specifically prevent a Wikipedia article from being purely a bibliography. And yet, my first reaction was that it seems like a bibliography isn't an encyclopedia article, in the same way that a dictionary definition or a directory entry isn't. At any rate, since this policy doesn't disallow bibliographies I thought I'd ask here rather than nominate it for deletion. The article that prompted my concern is Holocaust (resources). --Sancho Mandoval (talk) 16:45, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I would think if it were a standalone topic, no, that would not be good. But this article is a compendium listing for a rather large subset of articles, and I really can't see the harm or the like about it, particularly if it is linked from all the other Holocaust-related articles. However, there's also something to be said that we're not a web directory, and in the same regard, we need to be careful on these types of lists. This could go either way. If there is a problem, I can see the article being reworked as "Media coverage of the Holocaust" or something, describing the notable books and works that have resulted. --MASEM (t) 13:57, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
The article in question seems to be more of a "further reading" section that has developed into its own article. Angryapathy (talk) 14:07, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I would agree that Holocaust (resources) is not really suitable as a standalone article. It looks more like a linkfarm to me, as bald references to books, websites and related articles which would usually feature in a categroy is an unnecessary duplication of content. I have noted a similar problem with the article Accountancy which used to contain lots of bald links to related topics and websites. I deleted them all, since bald links on their own simply cluttered the article without adding any commentary, context or analysis relating to the article topic. Forgive the cosmetic reference, but as a rule of thumb when it comes to standalone references, links and bibliography, Bald is bad. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Related discussion: Talk:Phage_monographs --Cybercobra (talk) 17:34, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

  1. It would be ideal if we err on the side of "Move to wikiproject subpage", rather than deleting whole articles, or large subsections. Preserve for later usage, if they're found to be unsuitable for mainspace.
  2. See Category:Bibliographies by author (like a split-out discography List, and not a relevant part of this discussion),
    and Category:Bibliographies by subject (the primary set of examples for this discussion). -- Quiddity (talk) 17:59, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Okay, thanks, especially Quiddity. I suppose there's more precedent for this than I'd realized. --Sancho Mandoval (talk) 18:05, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
The precedent is very shaky. Most of the members of Category:Bibliographies by subject seem to be original research. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:39, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Compiling sources for building the encyclopedia is a necessary and required amount of original research that we allow. --MASEM (t) 14:00, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I think not, as deciding which subject category each book fits into is a matter of personal opinion. Lists or bibliographies by subject are little more than collections of random stuff, and should be avoided. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:23, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree. A definitive list of a particular author's works is one thing; a listing of a subset of an unknown number of works on a particular topic is edging into indiscrimination in my book. Powers T 14:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
What's the difference between this, then, and say, if there was 50kb of article on top of it, referencing those sources?
I think if all the sources are those that are used common to all the groupings of the articles on that subject (on the individual article pages), it's less of a problem - its a global reference list pulled from sources actually used by the WP articles. But if there are sources being pulled in that are not being used in any of those pages, then you're getting to link farm territory. --MASEM (t) 15:03, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
It's kind of lucky we have a consensus making model which will allow us to define a bibliography on a given subject. Also, not all of these things are like each other, see for example Hamlet (bibliographies). Hiding T 15:18, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Selecting items for a bibliography is not OR, any nore than selectingthe content for any other type of article is. We normally choose the more significant examples, and people can challenge that item by item if they like. We can do OR to determine what the content of an article ought to be--we do this all the time in talk pages--though we cannot present OR in the article itself. . DGG ( talk ) 18:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Why is it so in the first place...

This whole page lists what is canon, but nowhere is there written why (=for what purpose) it aims to be encyclopedic and not a compendium of all knowledge worth knowing. I am aware that the sister projects, which are often linked (albeit quite small and hidden), may contain the unencyclopedic information, but why the decentralization in the first place? Pros: adds on wikias and neater (more targeted). Cons: less information (to be honest, nobody actually transfer how-tos to wikibooks before deleting them), information is written twice or more, edit wars between pedantic bureaucrats etc. --Squidonius (talk) 16:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

  • Wikipedia was originally thought of as a way of drafting encyclopedia articles for another project, nupedia. So the idea of the encyclopedia pre-dates the idea of the wiki-method of article creation. The encyclopedia idea is hot-wired into the creation. See Wikipedia, and more especially History of Wikipedia#Formulation of the concept. The idea was to create encyclopedia articles for nupedia, which would place ads next to the articles. The latter stage never quite came off the way it was initially envisioned, and Wikipedia seems to have become more popular than any of the commercial mirrors. You're kind of asking the wrong question, or perhaps you're kind of prompting a different answer. Hiding T 15:25, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I believe wikipedia would server its customers better if it didn't create artificial boundaries and moved from encyclopedia mentality to knowledge base. Jimmy Wales are you o.k. with this?   :-)   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:09, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:INDISCRIMINATE. The criteria for inclusion prevent Wikipedia from become a useless mashing of information. --King Öomie 19:18, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Are you saying you like the artificial boundaries? Is someone suggesting it should become useless? Are you agreeing that not allowing examples, dictionary terms, how-to's, etc.. makes wikipedia more useful? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:25, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Rules aren't just there to restrict us in what we can do. They also serve as inspiration. Few pupils will be able to write something reasonable when just asked to "Write an essay!" Ask them to "Write an essay about the most interesting experience in your life!" and you will get much better results. It's a strength of Wikipedia that it's focused on an encyclopedia, not a weakness. There are sister projects for writing dictionaries, or books. And there are other projects like Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive. There is no need for Wikipedia to do all these things at the same time, and in fact trying to do so might well destroy Wikipedia. The English language Wikipedia has already reached a monstrous size in terms of content and contributors. It's not clear how long it can continue to grow without some kind of restructuring, e.g. by spawning off special-purpose encyclopedias. Hans Adler 19:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
It can maintain the encyclopedia focus. Need is one thing, what is best for users is another. We should ask what is best, rather than what is needed. I'm not in favor of worrying that the sky might fall, by worring about what might happen. It clear to me that the monstrous size is an advantage and I don't see significant issues with it getting bigger. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
You're free to your opinion, but this is an encyclopedia, and it's going to stay an encyclopedia. I'm not a fan of progress for the sake of progress. If this site expands to include a bunch of random garbage, we'll have even less credibility than we currently do- and you can forget ever being usable as a reliable source in the academic community. --King Öomie 19:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
No one is suggesting it become a site that includes a bunch of random garbage. No one suggest that measures to insure credibility be lessened. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Not explicitly. They are, however, inextricable from the concept of having a site you can just add anything to. See Uncyclopedia. --King Öomie 20:03, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) In this case, the term "artificial boundary" is a nonsense term. It's a website with rules- by the same criteria, WP:U and WP:VAND are "artificial boundaries" between you and doing whatever you want. The inclusion criteria allow this to remain a useful ENCYCLOPEDIA. As opposed to a dictionary, a how-to manual, or some other WP:OR-fest. I could see absorbing Wiktionary, but not ask.com, or yahoo answers, or facebook... all the other crap people want Wikipedia to be. --King Öomie 19:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: Any content added must be very verifiable and very noteworthy. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 20:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't really see what the issue is here. There are no artificial boundaries that I am aware of. This project has standards that attempt to ensure that content is worthwhile, reliable, neutral (not favoring one point of view over another), etc. There isn't anything artificial about Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines, including What Wikipedia is not. Boundaries? Yes. Artificial? No. Problem? I don't see one. Of course we are concerned about what is best for our readers, not just what they "need". And volunteers here donate lots of hours trying to deliver useful information to readers. This discussion seems to be wandering aimlessly because there is no concrete proposal to discuss, just a loaded question based on a false premise. Finell (Talk) 22:04, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Towards a concrete proposal, is there something we can do to make it more seamless with Wiktionary? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:12, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Here is an example where wiktionary seems to be inside of wikipedia: pedant . Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:44, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

To answer the original question about "why" what do you think about adding something like the following to the intro?

Keeping this scope helps wikipedia maintain its focus on wp:verifiability and wp:notable and consequently a reputation of credibility.

Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 00:58, 21 October 2009 (UTC)


I think what Daniel.Cardenas plans to add is good although I would add that it is there in the first place for historical reasons, which it is (truth before reputation). say:

It does not explain why the no How-tos policy which are directly verifiable and are applied knowledge (which in the 21st century is considered par with theoretical: Engineering is as important as science, but it was not so when 3 centuries ago they started making encyclopaedias) hence notable, and word definition, which is both verifiable and notable.
On a tragico-comical side of things: the fact wikipedia is split into multitude of sub-par wikias complies with itslef (Wikipedia:Splitting)!
I think the sister-project/wikia interlinking is very poor and may require improving:

  • I find wiktionary links too hidden
  • links to pages which have longer articles in wikias are at the bottom as external links!
  • links to jimbo-independant wiki pages which fill the gaps in policy are shun (as are unreliable) --Squidonius (talk) 13:07, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with this addition. "verifiability" and "notability" are different concepts, with different purposes, both purposes being not directly related to WP:NOT. Take the rule "not a dictionary". The opposite, "is a dictionary", has no conflict with WP:V and WP:NOTE whatsoever. The same is in many other cases, such as "repository", "memorial", "journal"... I am not even saying that the wording is poor: WP:V and WP:NOTE is not the focus of wikipedia; they are the core principles: WP:V is the only criteria for truth (unlike expert-authorship encyclopedias, where verification is based on experts' authority), while WP:NOTE is to separate random trivia from things that many would like to know.

As it occurs to me now, WP:NOT must be restructured to reflect major sources of content-related "NOT" in "WP":

  • Major content policies, such as WP:V & WP:NOTE;
  • Basic decisions that other sister projects suit better to hold particular info. Eg. wiktionary is best suited for dicdefs, with translations, lists, categories, etymological connections, etc.
  • Whatever else.

This will shed more light on the logic under the decisions what to exclude. I will find a spare minute and come with a concrete suggestion (if someone else does not beat me to it). - Altenmann >t 17:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Talking of Wiktionary, we could use some deeply considered feedback at the ever-ongoing debate, currently (summarized?) at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary#Copasetic example. I think Angr explains it best, but I'm wondering what the wider-consensus is. Much thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikiversity

The only discussion I know of about September's addition of "transwiki OR to Wikiversity" is at Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not/Archive_31#Transwiki_to_Wikiversity. AFAIK, Wikiversity doesn't want all of Wikipedia's OR transwikied there. Anyone mind if I revert that edit? - Dank (push to talk) 06:47, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

  • Why don't you think Wikiversity wants Wikipedia's OR? I am very active on Wikiversity, which was created in part as a repository for original research that would not be accepted on Wikipedia. Wikiversity is a much younger project than Wikipedia and two of its goals are to gain what content it can, and to be better connected to Wikipedia through links such as this. When I see a valuable article outside the scope of Wikipedia, I strongly feel transwiki is the most appropriate option. See, for example, Letter to the Falashas, an article that was nominated for deletion but resolved as an article that should be transwikied to Wikisource. So I don't think you should have deleted the text. --AFriedman (talk) 07:13, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
    • The word "valuable" wasn't in the text I deleted, and even if you insert it, the problem is that everyone thinks their own OR is valuable, so this would create a lot of extra work for little gain. Still, I've asked at Wikiversity for their input. - Dank (push to talk) 14:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikiversity hasn't been checking OR for value and I don't think that's been a problem as of now. We have more than enough space to go around and OR doesn't tend to disrupt maintainer time or pages that are not about OR. Online communities of researchers don't really filter the researchers for their value, either. If we gain the expertise on WV and we need or want to, it should certainly be possible to introduce some type of rating system for OR just as we've got rating systems here. However, OR tends to be in good faith and it's very important this Foundation has a wiki for the purpose, especially if OR is ending up on Wikipedia by mistake. --AFriedman (talk) 16:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I responded at the Wikiversity link, I'll copy it here:
Okay, the two categories that are most likely to contain the pages we're talking about here are new promotional pages for speedy deletion and New non-notable pages for speedy deletion. We delete a lot of those every day. Original research sometimes shows up on established pages, but it's not as much and harder to find. Please let us know at Wikipedia_talk:What Wikipedia is not if you see pages that you like. If you can give us a clear enough idea what it is we should be looking for, then we can take the conversation further. - Dank (push to talk) 16:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Text that attempts to create an original synthesis of information about an established topic, even if imperfectly referenced, could perhaps be used to start or continue an essay on Wikiversity. A specific example of this may be the section about whether Aaron ben Moses ben Asher belonged to Karaite Judaism and the possible implications of this in understanding the historical influence of Karaite Judaism. Similar text is found in both the ben Asher biography article and the article about Karaite Judaism.
  • Pages that seem to be educational materials, rather than encyclopedic articles, are some of the materials explicitly welcomed in Wikiversity.
  • Text that seems explicitly written to perform "original research" are also explicitly welcomed in Wikiversity. My own Wikiversity Userpage (there is a link to it from my Wikipedia userpage) is a fairly extreme example of explicit original research. --AFriedman (talk) 17:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Okay, for these kinds of pages, you might also want to search current and past WP:AfD pages for "original research" or "WP:OR", and the Incubator is another place to look. If there are enough volunteers who want to do this and who can agree on how to do it, great. If not, one of the important principles about Wikipedia policy is that policy pages are supposed to describe what actually happens, not what we want to happen; see WT:POLICY, which is very active this month. - Dank (push to talk) 18:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

In general, there is not enough communication and linkage between Wikipedia and its sister projects. This is not only my opinion--it is one of Wikimedia Foundation's top priorities for what to improve about the projects. Many of Wikipedia's sister projects have been hurt by the lack of information about them in Wikipedia, a statement that seems supported by a previous comment that seemed to misunderstand Wikiversity's scope. When I changed the Wikipedia page about what it is not, I was describing what my own editorial policy is. I would like to know why more editors aren't aware of the transwiki option, if such is the case, and what to do about that. --AFriedman (talk) 19:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The relationship between en.wikipedia and the WMF is a happy, bigamous marriage. (I'll explain more in one of my Signpost columns.) En.Wikipedians are willing to live with WMF constraints, within reason, and the WMF learned a long time ago that consensus on Wikipedia isn't something that can be "managed" in a top-down way (not even by Wikipedians). Yes, the WMF would like to see En.Wikipedia sharing more of its power and prestige with sibling projects, but it's not going to happen by royal decree or by an arbitrary change to a policy page, you're going to have to woo us. If you want to do that, I'd suggest getting Wikiversity people to help us at CAT:CSD, WP:AfD and the WP:INCUBATOR; that's where you'll find this OR you're looking for that we can't use but maybe you guys can. If you guys work on building a relationship with Wikipedians, I think your efforts will be reciprocated. - Dank (push to talk) 14:56, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, most of the Custodians (=sysops) at WV are very much "part timers", and as far as I know I'm currently the only Custodian who is also an admin here (and I'm very much a part timer during the growing season...farming takes precedence).
If any admins on WP would be interested in getting tools on WV (especially Special:Import, which comes with the other ones), just let us know and I or someone else will "mentor" you (we do RfA a bit differently). Just make a request on v:WV:RFC and we can set you up.
The more important issue is to make sure that the contributors adding the content don't feel alienated or banished to a ghetto... let them know that their contributions are welcomed and appreciated, but they simply added them to the wrong part of the Wikimedia project. Transwiki to WV shouldn't be a scarlet letter. --SB_Johnny | talk 15:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi SB. I appreciate that you do fabulous work at Wikiversity, but this invitation doesn't give us what we need. Which contributions, exactly, do you guys want? Even if we know what you want, will we be able to get general agreement in places where the nuts and bolts of deletion are discussed (such as individual RFAs, WP:AfD and WT:CSD) on your suggested guidelines? And even if we can get a clear description and general agreement, who's going to train the taggers and/or admins, deal with disputes involving interpretation, and handle the increased workload? If people from Wikiversity want to jump in, participate in discussions, and help do the work to make it happen, I'll be happy to participate in the discussions. - Dank (push to talk) 19:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if it was already mentioned, but some effort to connect/move OR research from WP to WV was already discussed at v:Wikiversity:What shall we do with Wikipedia? So maybe this could be a starting point? --Gbaor (talk) 14:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
The last date stamp on the page is June 2008, but sure. - Dank (push to talk) 14:36, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Just a comment on the date stamp: I began as a Wikipedian, then moved to WV. And this is entirely different experience. The community is relatively small (very small compared to WP active members) and it is very much in the process of evolution. This is also related to "part timer" editors, mentioned by SB_Johnny. The page mentioned is one example from many good ideas on WV, unfortunatelly often burried in the hidden corners of the site. --Gbaor (talk) 16:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Not a bureaucracy

I tend to look things up on Wikipedia about as much as any other typical denizen of the web, and every time I do, I check the talk page out of curiosity. The claim in this article that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy seems to me like little but wishful thinking. The way this encyclopedia is managed is with an incredibly complex system of rules. Even though the rules were created by "community consensus," isn't it true that, due to the nature of requiring a consensus among a giant group, higher-ranked users are given much more consideration in this consensus? Don't get me wrong, I'm not here just to criticize. This is pretty much a necessity for a project this large to have any degree of cohesiveness. But very little that is said in the "not a bureaucracy" section is true in practice. 149.175.167.210 (talk) 03:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I just reread WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY, and I can't see the problem. You are right that "higher-ranked" users are given much more consideration; that's because "rank" in Wikipedia is basically measured by an editor's ability to convince other editors. In this sense a lot of admins rank much higher than most users with even more rights (i.e. the so-called "bureaucrats" and oversighters), often a non-admin will rank higher in this sense than an admin, or a relatively new but active user will rank higher than an even more active user who has been around for ages. Such a pecking order arises naturally, and has nothing to do with bureaucracy.
This rule is a statement of intent: We don't want to be a bureaucracy. It's important to remind ourselves of this fact because there are good reasons why we are always in danger of becoming one. E.g. the following scenario seems to be quite common:
New editor X appears at the article on widgets and tries to insert "original research". (According to him, widgets are really an alien technology that is secretly in the possession of the US government.) Other editors try to keep this nonsense out of the article. But how? We don't ban users for believing in nonsense. It's not likely that we can convince X that he is wrong. So we have to find a formal reason why the "information" cannot be included in the article, e.g. WP:RS and WP:BURDEN. Without this formal reason even admins would not be able to do anything to keep the article in a sane state. But X absolutely believes he is right (see WP:TRUTH); to him his "evidence" is so convincing that the only reason someone can't follow him is that they are stupid or part of the conspiracy to cover up this powerful technology. So for him the fact that the others eventually "win" (aliens remain unmentioned in widget (economics) and he gets a topic ban) is proof that Wikipedia is a bureaucracy and values arcane details of process over truth.
It's unlikely, but X may become a more or less constructive editor on other topics. But he has learned the lesson that Wikipedia is a bureaucracy, and will try to spread it. Whenever he gets into an argument with other editors he will argue on a purely formal level, because he "knows" that nobody actually cares about the quality of the encyclopedia; only the rules count.
There is also another class of editors who are completely unable to write an encylopedic article on their own, assume that that's also true for everybody else, and come to the conclusion that the encyclopedia emerges magically from lots of tiny ants just following the rules. They tend to get angry when an expert argues the quality/correctness of an article rather than the rules. E.g. they will insist that a number such as 1,554,347 (number of inhabitants of Y City in 2005) must not be rounded because we have no rules telling us to do so, and how. They are not worried at all that this number gives the illusion of an impossible precision (the same number of inhabitants throughout the year???) They will claim that it's "original research" to round the number to 1,554,000, since you could just as well round to 1,554,300 or 1.6 million.
But once an argument with one of these people gets more exposure, the more "high-ranking" users will appear and WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY will be applied. Hans Adler 09:44, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Very nice, thanks. I hope you save this somewhere. Johnuniq (talk) 11:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

But very little that is said in the "not a bureaucracy" section is true in practice - Yes that's correct. Wikipedia is a bit odd in that because something is written down on a policy or guideline page it is presumed to be true, so your attempts to get people to realise this is likely trying to talk down cult members - it's very difficult. I've never had the patiences for it. You are best off accepting that this is a bureaucracy and simply (virtually) nodding when people tell you it isn't. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:58, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I can see where Wikipedia is seen as a bureaucracy. People make rules, and thus are followed. What WP different than a bureaucracy is that rules can be ignored. There are many things that the rules do not cover, and even if a topic is not covered in the guidelines/policies, people are hesitant to add a new rule to the guidelines. I've seen many policy suggestions vetoed through consensus, that for all intents and purposes is a rule most people follow, because the addition of that rule borders on WP:CREEP. I've learned over time that the "holes" in the guidelines can be filled in by common sense/consensus. And even when an article seems to violate a policy, that policy can be overridden if the "rule breaking" helps the article. So does WP have a bureaucratic system? Yes. But it isn't anarchy, either. We are probably closer to bureaucracy than anarchy, but you don't always have to follow the rules. Angryapathy (talk) 13:22, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The thing is that the policy doesn't actually say it's not a bureaucracy; it says something more like that it's not a kafkaesque bureaucracy where unless you've filled in form 283 subsection 53.b correctly you can't do something. The wikipedia is to a certain extent a bureaucracy, it's just not that kind of bureaucracy.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:13, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Make shortcuts to section headers instead of specific points

As the title suggests, I would like to propose that the shortcuts link to their section header, instead of the specific point that they refer to. Reason: When a user clicks a shortcut, he is basically thrown into the middle of the page, with little context what page he is on. For new users, we would want them to first see the "Wikipedia is not a ..." and only then read the specific point. Thoughts? Rami R 11:28, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

So no one opposes me changing the shortcuts locations? Rami R 15:31, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Moving the "<span id..." into the subsection headers? I'd agree with that.
Examples: Currently WP:NOTPAPER works correctly, but WP:NOTMEMORIAL works incorrectly (links to point #4, instead of the heading). -- Quiddity (talk) 18:37, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Exactly what I meant. I'll enact this suggestion later today, unless someone objects. Rami R 10:52, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Done. Rami R 12:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Application of IINFO in FAs

I'm currently involved in a discussion with another user (see Talk:Inchon (film)) and the issue of the level of detail in the article Battlefield Earth (film) came up. This currently enjoys featured article status but to me the article has too much detail considering that the movie is chiefly notable for its connection to Scientology and for it being a critical and box office flop. For example, the "Critical reception" section is more that 2 screen pages long and seems to include a quote from everyone who reviewed the movie, notable or not. My interpretation of IINFO in this case, and I think this is how MOS:FILM interprets it, is that a sampling of reviews to indicate the general trend is sufficient and using 2 pages to say that most critics didn't like it is excessive and unencyclopedic. Normally when someone tries to use the WP:Other stuff exists argument it's easy to refute by pointing to that link. But in this case I'm getting "Other stuff exists in a FA" which is more difficult. So the issue I'm trying to get at is whether it's just me or is IINFO not being applied as it should be in this case. And more generally, are the guidelines in IINFO being taken into account sufficiently when FA status is being considered?--RDBury (talk) 16:17, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

If I had to guess, I'd say that the Battlefield Earth "Reception" section has probably expanded a bit since it was promoted to FA status. It could stand to be pared down a bit to reduce redundancy. Barring that, though, the level of detail on the Inchon article appears comparable, except in the lead (which is far too long). But that's just from a cursory review. Powers T 17:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

merge dictionary

I think it is a shame that people come here for knowledge and instead get confused. For example if I want to know what sown is, I find a page about a worthless to most people user group. Would be better if we had a page that explained the common meaning. What do you think? Thx, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 20:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

So do you go to the library, go to the encyclopedias, take out the "S" volume, and complain when it doesn't have an entry for "sown"? Or do you just go straight for the dictionary? If the latter, then you need to visit http://en.wiktionary.org Powers T 14:23, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Don't live in the past, invent a better future. When you want to know what sown means, ask your computer and your computer should tell you without you having to figure out what category it is in. People will look first in an encyclopedia who don't know what it means and be dissapointed. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 15:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Who looks in an encyclopedia to find out a definition? Seriously? Who goes to Britannica to find out the past participle of "sow"? Powers T 16:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Your assuming people know what sow or sown means. People want to go to one place to understand what a word means. The people that I'm familiar with turn to wikipedia more often than not. People who want to know what something means want to go to one place. They do not want to have to hunt around and guess whether the best place is an encyclopedia topic or dictionary term. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:03, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not assuming anything. If you want to know what a word means you use a dictionary. No guessing involved. If you go to the dictionary and find out that "sown" is a tense of "sow", and you decide you want to read about farming, you then go to the encyclopedia. Powers T 23:59, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Do you believe people think that way or should think that way? Or do you believe people who want to know what something means first go to wikipedia? Where would you go if you wanted to know what myocardial means? Some evidence lies in the number of pages viewed in the dictionary versus wikipedia. As you probably know, there is no comparison. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 03:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
That's not evidence at all. Just one way in which the two are different are the number of pages an encyclopedia user might visit in one session. Another way is that there are a lot of dictionaries online, but very few encyclopedias. If I want to know what "myocardial" means, I'd type it into Google and click the convenient "[definition]" link that goes right to answers.com. (Speaking of which, it sounds like answers.com is the solution you're looking for.) Powers T 13:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
If you want to know what a word means you need to go to a dictionary. Always.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
If you want to know about a topic then that's what the encyclopedia does. Encyclopedia articles are not about a word.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
If people want to know what epigenetics means, would they go to a dictionary or wikipedia? I want to know about the topic sown. Why isn't it in wikipedia? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:08, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
"What it means" = dictionary.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Sown = past participle of 'sowing'. As it turns out it's not also the past participle of, say, 'sewing'; otherwise there would need to be two or more different articles on it. That's another reason why it's a bad idea; very often a single dictionary-like encyclopedia article would need two different sets of material that may overlap with other articles as well.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately merging doesn't work at all well. In an encyclopedia things with different names that mean the same thing are found in the same article, whereas in a dictionary, they end up in different articles. You can't put the same thing in a merged article and in a separate article; that's just unnecessary duplication, in some cases you would duplicate exactly the same thing dozens of times, and it becomes impossible to correct and update all the duplicates. Dictionaries and encyclopedias are radically different even though at first glance they look similar.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Solution seams simple. Just use wikipedia conventions. Primary topic and primary meaning come to mind. I don't suggest a complete merge. Just allow definitions in wikipedia using wikipedia rules, including notability and verifiable. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
It's even easier than that. We keep the encyclopedia articles in the encyclopedia, and the word articles are kept in the wiktionary.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
How about this solution- create an "article" for sown, or whatever word you want, but make it a redirect that sends you to the wiktionary entry. That way if you come to wikipedia looking for something you can be sent to the right place in one quick swoop without any further hard effort on the part of the reader.Camelbinky (talk) 21:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
You're talking about One million five hundred thousand redirects that would have to be maintained and added to. --King Öomie 13:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

When constructing a list it can be helpful to readers to include external links for listed items, especially if there is not yet a Wikipedia page for that item. Is there a consensus to allow modification of the WP:LINKFARM policy as follows?

Wikipedia is neither a mirror nor a repository of links, images, or media files. Wikipedia articles are not:

  1. Mere collections of external links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate. See Wikipedia:External links for some guidelines. (Exception: WP:Lists, which may contain external links for items on which there is not yet a Wikipedia article, in compliance with other WP:List policies.)
  2. Mere collections of internal links, except for disambiguation pages when an article title is ambiguous, and for lists to assist with article organisation and navigation; for these, please follow the guidelines outlined at Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists#Lead and selection criteria.

Here is an example of a List (in progress) with links. Here is the same list without links. Scroll down in each; it seems that the former list (with external links) is much more useful to Wikipedia readers than the latter. Thanks for your input! DaleMurphy (talk) 19:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If there is any reasonable chance that the item on the list might be notable, the link is appropriate, but it should be given as a reference, sinec it presumably is the source of information. DGG ( talk ) 04:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
No, a reference is appropriate. A link to the home page of whatever is being discussed isn't. Otherwise it's still directory-style linkspam by definition. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
I would advice against adding external links to those lists. Many of these lists become large spamholes where not-notable instances get included, and the lists turn into internet directories. It is not only a violation of WP:NOT#LINKFARM, but also one of WP:NOT#DIRECTORY. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

This page and the other

Shouldn't WP:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia be a policy, and this a guideline? Seems strange to promote the negative page at the expense of the positive one. Or even better, can't we combine both pages under the title WP:What Wikipedia is? (Which currently redirects to the five pillars.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:06, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

All right, just reminded myself that WP:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia isn't much else than a summary of this page. So basically I'm proposing renaming this page by removing the "not", and adding a bit more positive information about what Wikipedia is at the start.--Kotniski (talk) 14:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
This page basically spells out, for the most part, what is excluded from WP as it is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Thus, it is necessarily negative, because of that implication. That's not to say that we should consider a "what WP is" but when you get there, you start getting into what the definitions of "encyclopedic" are, which vary drastically and the like, my guess as to why we've never had a "what WP is" page outside of the basic definition: we can all agree as to where there are non-fuzzy lines as to what WP is not, but there's not similar lines for what WP is on the other side. --MASEM (t) 14:17, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I guess that makes sense, though it might be worth at least trying to think of more positive things we can say. (Perhaps we could start with that Sanger quote that was being advertised at WP:Policies and guidelines quite recently, about what Wikipedia aims to be - I'll try and fish it out.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Agree too -- it's more useful in some ways (and easier) to set out widely agreed lines on what Wikipedia is not, than to try and create the fuzzy lines of what it is. FT2 (Talk | email) 13:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The conflict between WP:LIST and WP:NOTDIRECTORY

Looking at the discussions on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of wineries and vineyards in Maine, there seems to be a conflict between the wording of WP:NOTDIRECTORY and the claims that articles like List of wineries in Ohio and future articles List of pizza shops in New York have a place in wikipedia under the "informational" clause of WP:LIST. If this AfD sets precedent for their inclusion, the wording of WP:NOTDIRECTORY should be clarified to reflect this acceptability of directory style articles. Otherwise this policy is not reflecting apparent community consensus. AgneCheese/Wine 07:50, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

A single AfD does not constitute "apparent community consensus". Deor (talk) 11:59, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
There is a real question over the concept of not directory, and including in a list people or companies that are sub-notable but not totally unsubstantial. We've never really come to terms with the problem of what to do with items of content of this sort that are not worth a discrete article. My current thought about the solution is there needs to be a WikipediaSupplement (perhaps better called WikipediaLocal) to deal with these, and it might take the bottom tier of barely " notable " Wikipedia articles also about local people and things, and thus be simultaneously inclusionist and deletionist--it will be a much simpler argument deciding between the two, than deciding just in or out. Everyone will be happy. DGG ( talk ) 04:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
But what about the example List of pizza shops in New York, or even List of pizza shops in Some Very Minor Town? Such a list (if current) might be very helpful for someone wanting a pizza, or someone researching the distribution of pizza shops. But should it be part of Wikipedia? Johnuniq (talk) 07:36, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Such a discussion is currently going on at the German Wikipedia, which is a bit more on the deletionist side compared to us. I haven't found the locus of the discussion on the wiki, if it even exists, but there was a lot about it in blogs and the media. There was a proposal the split Wikipedia into an Encyclopedia Galactica and a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I think this makes sense, and so does your more limited proposal. Hans Adler 10:25, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Although it was apparently too late to head off the inevitable no consensus close there, our guidelines are quite clear on the inclusion criteria for list articles, which precludes them from being used for directory content of otherwise marginal notability. Contrary to the above assertion that we have "never really come to terms with the problem of what to do with items of content of this sort that are not worth a discrete article", we actually have - it is to be removed from the enyclopedia. Lists which contain nothing but such content will thus end up being deleted anyway. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

There are informative discussions about this topic at Wikipedia_talk:Featured_list_criteria#"Removing red link hate as a FAC requirement" sync and Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Notability_of_lists currently. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:30, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:LIST, lists are encyclopedia articles, and as encyclopedia articles this policy applies to them just as it does to our other articles. Sure, we can have list entries on Wikipedia that are useful, but many of them run afowl of what Wikipedia is not. Some, such as List of Chinese people, are so indiscriminate and directory-like as to be both out-of place and not helpful! I would like to see a conscious effort to remove the indiscriminate and nonhelpful lists to bolster our collection of list articles as a whole. ThemFromSpace 21:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
If it's list of notable pizza shops, yes; if it's list of all of them , no---google does very nicely for that. That's one of the reasons we decided not to be a directory, List of Chinese people, btw, is not the least indiscriminate, since it is limited to those notable with Wikipedia articles. A true list of all of them would be a directory, & beyond our capacities in any event, a list of those with articles here is a navigational device & should be seen and judged as one. DGG ( talk ) 00:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding making WP a battleground

An essay has been drafted that concerns the treatment of a minority group proposing an addition to a Main page that is not favored by the majority of editors contributing to the article. Please comment. Brews ohare (talk) 18:12, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a reliable source.

I had an idea, since I need somewhere more specific I could link the {{Circular-ref}} tag (a tag for marking citations in articles to Wikipedia itself), and that this would be a good thing to say about Wikipedia itself, I think we should add this:

Wikipedia is not a reliable source

Although Wikipedia articles are required to cite reliable and verifiable third-party sources, Wikipedia articles themselves should not be considered reliable sources, as it is a tertiary source, and editors of wikis are often not "trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand" as required by the policy. In addition, this also means that articles cannot simply cite other Wikipedia articles as sources, as they run afoul of this, the self-published sources policy, and potentially could be considered a self-reference to the Wikipedia project.

Something like this could be good. ViperSnake151  Talk  20:31, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

this can be taken much too far. If we put a birthdate in a list of people, we need not go beyond the linked Wikipedia article, where it will be sourced. One point of sourcing detailed articles is to use their material--the concept behind WP:Summary style. DGG ( talk ) 04:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be already covered in the policies related to verification. I don't think it also need to be in WP:NOT. In response to DGG, I would not trust a Wikipedia article as a source for a birthday, I have seen us get the birthday wrong too many times. In my experience when a fact is taken from another article for use in a list it is more often that not lacking a source. Chillum 04:35, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

"more often than not" that would imply most of our dates in such lists are wrong, which I think may be a little exaggerated. The place to fix the ones that are obviously, is in the articles upon which the lists depend. DGG ( talk ) 22:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I would agree with this. It's important to get this out in the open, although it is implied by WP:RS and WP:V. My only concern is with articles specifically about Wikipedia. I would think that Wikipedia would be a reliable primary source in this exception, but never as a third-party source. ThemFromSpace 04:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to adjust this a bit:

Although Wikipedia articles are required to cite reliable and verifiable third-party sources, there is still no guarantee that Wikipedia articles themselves can be considered as accurate and reliable as the works they were compiled from.

To editors, this also means that when citing sources in a Wikipedia article, in most cases you cannot cite Wikipedia itself to support a statement, you must use the original source if any to cite the statement. However of course, Wikipedia may need to be cited on pages involving Wikipedia itself in select cases.

Would this be better? ViperSnake151  Talk  20:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

This is covered at WP:V under WP:CIRCULAR. Something along these lines might be added to WP:RS, but it would be off-topic here. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a Research Seminar University

In the course of dealing with a problem editor, I've come to realize that he/she is bringing the norms of a graduate research seminar into Wikipedia. In a graduate seminar the student is expected to:

  • Prefer primary sources to secondary sources
  • Challenge the interpretation of secondary sources by providing one's own interpretation of primary sources
  • Challenge the alternative interpretations presented by other members of the seminar

Each of these norms conflicts with Wikipedia Policies: (WP:PRIMARY, WP:NOR, and WP:CIVIL). I'd like comments / additions / criticism before drafting something on this for the policy. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I think this situation is covered under WP:NOTGUIDE, that we don't present info at the level of strong-familirity with the topic. --MASEM (t) 16:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Good thought; WP:NOTGUIDE addresses the issue of strong familiarity but I don't think it addresses the issue I raised here. I was more concerned with how a preference for primary vs secondary sources, for original research, and for the aggressive presentation of one's own point of view comes out of the graduate research seminar ethos. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
That doesn't strike me as peculiar to graduate seminars. Though the focus on originality is different, the traits you describe much more accurately fit generalized POV pushing. Protonk (talk) 19:49, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Agree, but in graduate seminars we're taught that it's a good thing that is expected of the best students (although with the qualification that it should be done in a civil manner); in Wikipedia it's always a bad thing.
I think expressing this difference between Wikipedia and another form of discussion would be useful here. Returning to the opening issue, do other editors think this concept expresses an important enough perspective to be put in this policy somewhere? SteveMcCluskey (talk) 22:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Your concerns are basically part of our policy, just split among several pages, but most importantly, WP:V and WP:OR. The short anwer: we are not the first publisher of original thoughts, and thus, that approach to a thesis would never be appropriate. --MASEM (t) 23:29, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Only sometimes. Originality is one priority for scholarship, but context is another. If someone wrote a paper on a particular subject without citing and interpreting prior germane research, that would be "a bad thing". And masem is right, the problem you are describing is already covered across a number of guidelines and policies. Protonk (talk) 23:49, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't agree that the coverage makes my point, but I'll drop it. Thanks for the comments. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 04:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Why not draft something along these lines anyway, even if it doesn't get included within this page? A guide to academics and scholars on editing Wikipedia would be useful. Fences&Windows 16:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it is either helpful or necessary to single out academics as needing a special guide on how to edit Wikipedia. Our policies, guidelines, and essays should not, by singling out a particular group for special instruction, implicitly assume that any individual or group is inherently more or less able to make good edits. Guidelines for good editing should be universal. Locke9k (talk) 21:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Academics have certain norms, assumptions and ways of working that are not the same as other newbie editors, e.g. see Conceptions and Misconceptions Academics Hold About Wikipedia, Academics’ Views On and Uses of Wikipedia. I'm not suggesting making policies or official guidelines that only apply to academics; how can a guide to editing for particular subsets of new editors be harmful? Fences&Windows 22:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Because it presumes that an entire group of editors faces the same issues regardless of their actual editing history. I understand that you are not proposing rules that apply only to academics, but you are proposing statements targeted to academics. I simply do not agree that stereotyping academics as all having "certain norms, assumptions and ways of working" (side note: I am not implying that your intent here is to stereotype, merely that that would be the effect of what you are proposing). We have a massive amount of guidance for new editors here on Wikipedia. Why not simply direct all new editors to this guidance? There is no reason to presume that an entire group of new editors all need the same type of help, simply because of the nature of their career. My perception is that almost every new editor needs to almost entirely retrain their writing style to make it appropriate for Wikipedia, because it is so unique. Locke9k (talk) 22:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

My! I thought I was done with this ;-)

OK, the point I was trying to get about is the difficulty experienced academics (or maybe just those who have gone through some level of advanced academic training) have in assimilating the very different standards of Wikipedia. I keep coming across things in articles and think, gee, if I took some time to do a little digging into the primary sources I could straighten out this article — WRONG! That's prohibited on Wikipedia.

Writing an encyclopedia article is a lot like putting together a lecture for beginning students, with the exception that you can't do what we often do in our lectures, emphasize our own favorite take on a topic or incorporate our own interpretation of the primary sources. Learning to follow Wikipedia's norms takes time.

Maybe I'll put this together into a short essay on Wikipedia for Academics. Does anyone have any ideas about where it might belong? Maybe a section "Wikipedia is not a Research University" really does belong here. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 04:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I did it; I put together a draft here. Further comments and edits are welcome. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 04:26, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't believe that you have accurately described in a general way what "budding academics" are taught in "graduate seminars". You have provided no references to support your extremely broad description of academics. My recommendation is to consider your own advice; unless you can provide reliable in support of your claims, then the factual claims made in your essay constitute original research and have no place here. It it true that the purpose of essays on Wikipedia is to provide subjective advice, but when making factual claims such essays should still follow the spirit of WP:Verifiability. Otherwise, the essay is setting a bad example rather than describing a good one. Locke9k (talk) 15:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
I don't think the RS angle is particularly helpful here. But I agree that the four points in the draft aren't as universally valid as they are presented. As a mathematician I would say that for me the third point is arguably valid, although formulated in a very odd way, and the other three are simply wrong in my field. Yet like other mathematicians I do have the problem that SteveMcCluskey is trying to describe. To me this indicates that there is something wrong with the choice of the four points. They don't seem to isolate the real reasons.
Moreover, there seems to be a strong (silent) consensus among the members of WikiProject Mathematics that a certain amount of original research is tolerated in those articles that are edited only by professionals. Only a few similiarly technical, articles can't be relaxed in the same way because they are on popular topics that attract laypeople. This obviousl affects the quality of discourse. Hans Adler 16:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Hans probably put his finger on it. He's a mathematician, Locke9k is an engineer, while I'm a historian. In history seminars we presented papers while the other members of the seminar commented on them to find their good points, suggest improvements, and identify their bad points; that was the nature of the game in history (and probably in other related disciplines). I remember having half a dozen of my friends pick apart what I'd presented; while knowing that they'd be on the receiving end at our next meeting.
Perhaps, since the sciences carry out collaborative research projects where the criticism is internal to the project, while historians, philosophers, literary critics and the like work alone where the criticism emerges only when the results are near final form, things go differently in the different fields. But then the work of mathematicians is as isolated as that of historians....
If I do put this up somewhere, I'll certainly have to deal with disciplinary differences. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

News and events

WP:NOTNEWS currently says "See also: Wikipedia:News articles". This is an essay that was a former proposal. Wikipedia:Notability (events) has just been promoted to a guideline, so I would suggest that this should be referred to rather than the essay. Fences&Windows 16:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I want to make this change

Now reads:

  • "On the other hand, street prices are trivia that can vary widely from place to place and over time."

Change to:

  • "On the other hand, street prices change too rapidly and vary from place to place to be useful in an encyclopedia."

Anyone object? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Not I. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I dont object on the condition that I hope you are right that "street prices change too rapidly". Actually I hope you are wrong, because I like the price at which I buy my weed and dont want it to go up. :0)Camelbinky (talk) 02:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
I object because it adds no substance, and removes the important assumption that trivia is to be discouraged. ThemFromSpace 07:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Indeed. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposed edit to NOTNEWS

WP:NOT#NEWS Currently starts out: "Wikipedia considers the historical notability of persons and events. News coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, but not all events warrant an encyclopedia article of their own. Routine news coverage of such things as ...". I propose striking the first one-and-a-half or two sentences, so that the paragraph begins: Not all events warrant ...

  • historical is extremely subjective, and does not contribute anything useful beyond what is contained in notability. It is also redundant given the wikilinked usage of notability.
  • To launch this sub-sub-section of a POLICY off the notability GUIDELINE, is circular. It becomes ironically so when this sub-sub-section is later used to trump the very guideline that it appears (via the first sentence) to be taking as it's startng point. References to notability, as a guideline, should be secondary to the key message of this policy.
  • The first part of the second sentence is waffle. It might belong further down the paragraph, but not near the top.
  • not all events warrant an article is stating the obvious. (might be okay with an added adjective, but the third sentence is a good starting point, with examples)

Given the reference level to this part of the policy, even though I see it as an edit that does not actually affect the meaning of the section, I think it would be useful to gather other editors feelings, even just a quick support or oppose. --Jaymax (talk) 23:23, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

in my opinion, most of the content-related parts of NOT are an attempt to rationalize things that are not rational if dealt with by the N guideline. I'm glad you see it also. The problem you refer to in the 2nd point can';t be dealt with properly except by rewriting the whole policy/guideline on inclusion from scratch, and this will not happen, because everyone will worry about their own special interests.
But the actual difficulty with your proposal is the word "historical" it has been widely used in AfD discussions but to argue that something should be kept because it will be historical, or alternatively the opposite. I am not quite sure of the effect this will have. DGG ( talk ) 04:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree that the word historical is too subjective in this context and should be removed.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm going to WP:BOLDly remove the first sentence and see who screams at me :) Jaymax (talk) 02:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Looks like it was me. This is a key distinction on Wikipedia, which is also implied by WP:NTEMP. I'd oppose it's removal. I may be a traditionalist here, but notability has to be lasting and because of that it makes historical impact. I think some editors may be confusing the terms "historical" and "historic". "Historical" is a much more objective term than "historic". Historical only means that something lasts a long time, while historic says it is of importance. Being historic goes along with notability and is inappropriate to be mentioned in a section about news. Being historical is the opposite of being temporary, and as such it is a key point in defining that we aren't the news. ThemFromSpace 04:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
My evil plot to drag in a dissenting view worked then :-) This dictionary at least doesn't support your definition of 'historical' (the wiktionary entry is too brief to be useful, but also defines the word as meaning 'of the past'); BUT I concur that what you are saying is the likely intent of the word. Can we replace historical with permanent or enduring perhaps? (being antonyms of temporary) Jaymax (talk) 05:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm fine with enduring. It's a good word choice. ThemFromSpace 12:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Another point: "What Wikipedia is not" should equally apply to articles, and article content. Notability (the guideline referenced in the first sentence) applies explicitly to topics (articles), but not article content. However, it is not appropriate to add news events on celebrities to their articles, (or pick an alternative non-BLP equivalent) unless the significance of those events is enduring. How can we tweak NOT#NEWS to remove any implication that it is talking about articles any more than article content? ‒ Jaymax✍ 07:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Because this sentence as written has really bad structure and grammar, I've chosen it as my next target. I propose to substitute "Routine news coverage of such things as announcements, sports, and tabloid journalism are not sufficient basis for an article. " with "For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for coverage in the encyclopedia." ‒ Jaymax✍ 00:03, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Some rough proposed words for any comment that might be forthcoming. I think this includes all the concepts that NOT#NEWS seeks to convey, but with more breadth and generality. Biggest change is saying that unless someone is ALREADY notable (doesn't mean already has an article), content about that person should be limited to content about the event.

News reports. Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. News coverage can be useful source material for Wikipedia topics, but not all newsworthy events warrant inclusion. For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for the event to be included in the encyclopedia. While incorporating information on breaking news is sometimes appropriate, it should not be emphasized or otherwise treated differently from other information. See also: Wikipedia:Notability (events). While some newsworthy events are notable, involved individuals are often not. Unless an individual is notable prior to the event, content should be limited in proportion to their involvement. See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons for more details. Current news topics not suitable for Wikipedia may be suitable for our sister project Wikinews.
‒ Jaymax✍ 15:51, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Next proposed change: "News coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, but not all newsworthy events warrant an encyclopedia article of their own." becomes "While news coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics,most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion." ‒ Jaymax✍ 22:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a directory

The wording needs to reflect the fact that to all intents and purposes Wikipedia now is a directory, at least of certain classes of subject. For example, we have articles on individual trading cards, second level amateur ice hockey teams, schools, skyscrapers, shopping malls and other classes of content which are sourced from directories and news clippings but where the subject is not and probably never will be the subject of non-trivial independent coverage as a distinct entity. This is an inevitable source of friction. Guy (Help!) 23:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

First off it does not say we are not a directory, it says "Wikipedia is not a directory of everything that exists or has existed", which is still true. I would also say that instead of expanding our scope to subjects of dubious notability, we should instead seek to make these article's meet our inclusion criteria or delete them. Chillum 23:37, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. ThemFromSpace 23:52, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Directories have the goal of being all-encompassing, while we don't. If every subject in a particular class happens to be notable then we may take on an appearance of a directory for that class of subjects, but our methods of inclusion differ from directories. We don't include subjects because we are a directory, but because they are each individually notable. Having an article on one subject does not allow us to create an article on a similar subject if the second subject is not independently notable. That's a difference between an encyclopedia and a directory. ThemFromSpace 23:52, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
I feel that we already have problems caused by some editors focusing on categorising rather than writing/caring for articles. It seems they want to build an ontology rather than an encyclopedia. This leads to problems if we need to merge two closely related topics in order to get a decent, maintainable article. If they are about different kinds of things (e.g. Leeds, which is about both a settlement and a metropolitan district, since ordinary language doesn't distinguish between the two) these directory builders tend to get very angry. We shouldn't encourage that. Hans Adler 01:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

A question about WP:CRYSTAL

A member of my "home" WikiProject, WP:CYCLING, has been routinely over the last few weeks and months reverting updates to cyclist biographies stating they will ride for a certain new team in 2010 by claiming WP:CRYSTAL. These cyclists have signed new contracts, and these are sourced, verifiable facts, so I don't see how CRYSTAL should apply. Another sport I follow is baseball, and I don't see that Chone Figgins and Rich Harden are still members of the LA Angels or the Chicago Cubs, so why is it wp:crystal to give the new team of Christopher Sutton (cyclist)? Nosleep (Talk · Contribs) 06:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Sourced announcements of confirmed, future affiliations is certainly not a violation of CRYSTAL. In this case, CRYSTAL would be presuming a first-basemen for a baseball team will continue to play first base for the next x years when only next year's line up is known. --MASEM (t) 06:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
I disagree - just because there is a high possibility that something will happen, does not make it a certainty. In any case, a bald announcement that a particular cyclist will be in a team confers no notability on its own.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
The notability guidelines are concerning entire article topics, not parts of articles. See WP:NNC.
It is not a violation of crystal to write that a rider has a contract to ride with a certain team. It is the same as saying a treaty will extend for x years. Or a book released on x future date. If an event occurs that breaks the contract/treaty/shipping-date, the article can be updated accordingly. -- Quiddity (talk) 10:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I would advise the member to, rather than revert, modify "will ride for team X in 2010" to "has signed to ride for team X in 2010" (or whatever is context equivalent - more accurate and not disruptive (note this is about WP:CRYSTAL, which is not part of the notability guidelines, and applies to content as much as topics) ‒ Jaymax✍ 10:28, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. Stick with facts ("has signed") rather than speculation about the future ("will ride") where possible. If it's not possible, it probably is a CRYSTAL problem. Hobit (talk) 16:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Signpost Policy Report

Response by Tony Sidaway

"What Wikipedia is not" is Wikipedia's way of combatting the downside of the Wiki medium. If somebody gets carried away with the fluidity of the medium, and looks like turning Wikipedia into something else, he's likely to be reminded that what he's doing isn't compatible with what we're here for: to produce an encyclopedia.

Responses by Father Goose

Although this is not specific to WP:NOT, it's something I've been wanting to say for a while: Editing policy is like playing basketball with lots of elbowing, and no basketball.

Responses by next user
Responses by next user
Responses by next user

A summary of your comments on our What Wikipedia is not policy will be featured in one of the upcoming Policy Reports in the Signpost. If it helps, monthly changes to this page are available at WP:Update/1/Content policy changes, July 2009 to December 2009. Any question you want to tackle would be fine, including: Can you summarize the page? How has the page changed over the last few months? Did the changes involve some compromising or negotiation? Would the page work better if it were shorter (or longer)? Is this page "enforced" in some useful and consistent way? Was this page shaped more by people's reactions to day-to-day issues or by exceptional cases, for instance at ArbCom? Does the policy document reality, or present ideal goals for content, or something in between? Does this page contradict or overlap other policies or guidelines?

A paradox of modern democracies is that voters generally have a low opinion of national politicians, but tend to trust and re-elect their own representatives. I think the same thing goes on with policy pages ... some people[who?] distrust policy pages in general but like the pages that they keep up with. The weekly Policy Report aims to let people look at policy pages through the eyes of the people who work on the page. - Dank (push to talk) 15:28, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

"A complete exposition of all possible details"

The first, technical, problem, this item is misplaces into the group "Wikipedia is not a directory". "Possible details" are not a subject of directories. The statements like "X Rat kissed her first girlfriend only twice" in article X Rat or "The word "spoon" was used 475 times in War and Peace" in article spoon, are not a matter of a directory.

The second objection is the immediate conflict with "Wikipedia is not paper". AFAIU, the idea is to exclude the trivia as in my example.

Therefore I suggest:

  1. to rewrite the headline of the rule to better address the notability and relevance of details covered.
  2. to move it into "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" section.

- Altenmann >t 18:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

proposed modification to NOTCENSORED

just because I've run across this issue several times in the last week... I suggest we make a slight change in wording to the fourth line of the second paragraph so that it reads: "Discussion of potentially objectionable content should not focus specifically on its offensiveness but on whether any offense it might give is justified by its usefulness to the article." mostly I'm trying to narrow the window a bit - the old wording "...on whether it is appropriate to include in a given article" leaves too large a loophole for those who want to include shocking images that are technically appropriate to an article but not at all necessary to the article. This wording tries to force a balance between the potential for offense and the usefulness of the picture in the article, allowing disturbing images that are on-point to be used, but excluding disturbing images that don't add sufficient value. --Ludwigs2 04:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

What criteria do you use to determine whether, "any offense [the content] might give is justified by its usefulness to the article"?—RJH (talk) 19:51, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure there are specific criteria, though of course there are no specific criteria for "is appropriate to include", either. both are judgement calls; the only real difference is that the first asks for judgment solely about whether the content is appropriate, whereas the second ask for a judgement whether the content is sufficiently useful to offset its unpleasantness. --Ludwigs2 20:07, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
I think what I'm asking is how that would differ from the normal criteria on when to include, say, an image? (Per Wikipedia:Images#Image choice and placement.) Presumably you want a tighter criteria for inclusion, so does it need to be, say, absolutely essential for the completeness of the article? I don't mean to be argumentative here; it's just that the word 'judgement' can be open to broad interpretation and could create rancorous discussions.—RJH (talk) 19:09, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
well, for example, there was a recent dispute on vomiting where an editor had included a picture of actual vomit in the lede (I think it's been removed now, but you can check through the history). Now, the general kind of argument made under the current version of the policy runs as follows:
  • An acknowledgement that the picture is offensive to some.
  • A note that a picture of vomit is appropriate to the topic of vomiting.
  • A claim that appropriate pictures cannot be removed just because they are offensive to some, per (a somewhat limited interpretation of) NOTCENSORED.
what this wording would do would be to give other editors a policy option where they can say "Yes, the image is appropriate to the topic, but what use does it actually serve?", arguing in the above case that a picture of a pile of vomit does not really serve an encyclopedic use that would offset its offensiveness. and of course, if the first editor came back with a set of pictures of different kinds of vomit, as part of an explanation (say) of how one might diagnose illnesses by looking at vomit, then that would provide a use which would offset the offensiveness of the images. The wording removes NOTCENSORED as a reason in its own right for retaining an image, and forces it to be part of a larger discussion about page content.
I'll note that the same effect can be achieved by using the last paragraph of NOTCENSORED, but it involves a fairly torturous discussion of logic (the implications of if and only if are lost on a lot of people, particularly when they have their eye focused on a goal). this would just make it easier. --Ludwigs2 20:21, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer it if the "if and only if" clause was removed and we clarify that we should treat offensive images just like any other images. The way the first sentence of the last paragraph is worded, it reads more like "don't use it unless it's absolutely super duper necessary", instead of "use common sense, and be judicious, like you would with inoffensive images". Because when we treat offensive content differently because it's offensive, we fall into the role of the censor, which we should never do. Sceptre (talk) 04:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep. Perhaps we should focus on the inverse -- "Potentially offensive images should not be removed if doing so would be detrimental to the article". There's no way to proof the section against controversy-seeking or prudish wikilawyers, but at least we can limit ourselves to only saying what we mean to say: don't remove it just because you don't like it. It's up to those who are editing the article to decide upon its appropriateness to the topic.--Father Goose (talk) 06:18, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

At this stage I do not have a specific suggestion, but I offer another example where NOTCENSORED was used by some editors, I believe, inappropriately. I stumbled into an edit war at Echinocactus polycephalus concerning whether an offensive term should be used (nigger-head cactus). There is a discussion of the issues at Talk:Echinocactus polycephalus. I was on the losing side in the debate, but I have no problem with that, nor with the way some editors on the other side proceeded. However, I was highly irritated by the suggestion from some that an obsolete and offensive term had to be used because fifty years ago it was used, and NOTCENSORED. In general, I would strongly oppose any attempt to remove terminology that some find offensive (and the cartoons must stay in Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy). However, when discussing the scholarly article for a cactus, I would like NOTCENSORED to make it clear that while we do not remove material simply because some find it offensive, we also do not keep material simply because some find it offensive (we are not here to fight censorship). Material should be kept on merits, but it is hard to find wording that gives the correct balance between being reasonable and being censorious. Johnuniq (talk) 07:35, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I attempted a bit of a sandbox rewrite of the last paragraph, until finally realizing that we don't need it at all. It repeats what is already said in the paragraph immediately before it, and says it the wrong way. Simply removing it will "fix" the policy as much as we can hope for: [6].--Father Goose (talk) 10:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I would generally object. If we err on the side of a few extra shocking images nothing really bad happens. If we err on the side of censorship we could lose thousands of articles which are offensive to some people. I think we have occasional problems in both directions and are balanced. That's hard to get right and I wouldn't want to mess with it. jbolden1517Talk 14:10, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if it would help to put potentially offensive images inside an expandable table/template that is closed by default, then add a warning caption underneath? I understand that the expandable table feature won't work on every browser, but it's the choice of the viewer whether to enable that functionality.—RJH (talk) 15:58, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
If the content is useful to improve the encyclopedia value of the article we should use it, otherwise we should not. I don't think we should be hiding or bowdlerising potentially offensive content. We are an encyclopedia first and foremost, any concerns about offending people need to be secondary to that goal. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 18:09, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
There is such a thing as making an article "office safe" for casual viewing at work. Just sticking with a dogmatic approach isn't helpful.—RJH (talk) 18:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) weird - for some reason I missed all this discussion in my watchlist.

at any rate, I've just been having this discussion (protractedly) over at talk:goatse.cx. to summarize that mass of text, it seems to me that NOTCENSORED is not intended as an equivalent to free speech arguments. instead, it is intended to preserve material with encyclopedic value against removal by people who find it distasteful. really, the question we have here lies between these two views:

  • view 1: Wikipedia should preserve offensive material from being removed for reasons of offensiveness, except in obvious cases of inappropriateness.
  • view 2: Wikipedia should avoid offensive material except in cases where that material is required for its encyclopedic value.

To my mind, the second (more conservative) version is closer to the spirit of maintaining wikipedia as a respectable encyclopedia than the first (more free-speech-like) view. Erring on the side of removing a few shocking images (to address DarkBlue's concern) is probably better, since that 'error' will only occur on images of such marginal encyclopedic value that there's really no sense offending people by including them regardless. the third paragraph (whose deletion I just reverted for discussion) is much closer to the second (more conservative) view - I think it should be expanded upon, not deleted. --Ludwigs2 18:23, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand your goal, but I'm not sure that it fixes the underlying problem: who defines "offensive"? I have a hard time seeing any offensiveness in File:Mormon garments.jpg or File:Maome.jpg, but I can promise you that many of the people that find them offensive would consider them to be equivalent to goatse.cx. Focusing on whether the offense is justified by the usefulness doesn't seem fundamentally different from "whether it is appropriate to include".—Kww(talk) 18:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
that's never a matter for definition - it's a matter for discussion. The way I see it, if someone comes along and says "I find this image of mormon garments offensive because...", then other editors should be able to say "I understand why you are offended, but this image is needed because it shows X". If there really is a valid reason for using the image, then the discussion can move on to discussing more acceptable alternates; if there isn't an identifiable, valid reason for using the image, then I suggest that the complaint (however weak) is good enough to justify removing the image. again, why insult someone (no matter how paltry their reasons for being insulted) when there's no reasonable value added by the image. --Ludwigs2 18:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Ludwigs, as one of the proponents of keeping the image in question at goatse, I'd like to modify the first view you outlined. Images should only be included if doing so increases the reader's understanding of the article's subject, and only removed if they fail to do so, or there are copyright issues. That's it. In my mind, offensiveness should play no part in the decision. We should not be saying "Yes, it is usefull in x amount, but it is offensive in y amount, and y>x, so delete" or any variation thereof. As with any image, the criteria for inclusion of an offensive image should only reflect the image's utility. I would support modifying the relevant section here to reflect that. Throwaway85 (talk) 19:58, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Look, I understand your PoV, but I can't quite accept it. It is a fact that certain images (and other material) offend people, and this fact needs to be accommodated. it's incredibly uncivil to brush someone off with a note that we simply refuse to consider the fact that they are offended, and if we adopt that attitude it will always lead to protracted ugliness. If we are going to do things that offend people (which WP inevitably will), we need to be able to tell them that we are offending them for good reason. trying to brush the offense under the rug is just going to make people angry and insulted, and is a really bad idea in terms of consensus and harmonious editing. --Ludwigs2 20:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
It's not my contention that we brush off people's potential offense, merely that we not take it into considerationg when determining an article's encyclopedic value. See Nigger for more info. The title itself is offensive to most people, but we have an article anyways because to omit it would be unencyclopedic. The same holds true of individual images or blocks of text. We can't exclude them simply because they're offensive. We must judge them based solely upon whether they improve the article. Throwaway85 (talk) 20:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is suggesting the kind of kneejerk exclusions you're talking about. as I keep saying there should be a balance between the offensiveness of an entry and the value it adds to the encyclopedia. Nigger has a clear historical presence that makes it's inclusion necessary; this is not necessarily true of every content item that anyone might add to wikipedia. I'm having a hard time believing that you'd seriously advocate a blanket prohibition on any and all discussions of offensiveness with respect to item inclusion; that runs against every core policy that calls for consensus on matters of content. can you make that suggestion less draconian, please? --Ludwigs2 20:43, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Not really, no. The particular sensibilities of any hypothetical reader should not play any part whatsoever in whether we include something in an article or not. The only criteria should be whether an inclusion improves the article, and if there is another, better way to do so. Throwaway85 (talk) 20:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
eeeyuck. not to go all reductio ad hitlerum on you, but I'm contemplating what might happen to all sorts of articles on WWII, the holocaust, Nazis and White Power movements if people took that comment at face value. there is no essential contradiction between encyclopedic accuracy and human sensitivity, and I see no point in asserting such a contradiction as a matter of policy. --Ludwigs2 23:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I assert no such contradiction. I merely argue that our job is to build an encyclopedia, not protect people's sensitities. Where those two come into conflict, we build the encyclopedia, and ignore those who may be offended. Throwaway85 (talk) 01:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED editing break

Not being censored is about maintaining a neutral point of view. "Being offensive" is no reason to not include something, inclusion decisions should be strictly based on our editorial standards and not the potential to offend. If an article is about genocide we should show historical images of that genocide even if it incredibly troubling to some people, if an article is about a company that makes nerve gas then such a picture might constitute undue weight. Either way this should be a content decision and not based of our reader's reaction to potentially shocking images.

I think the community made its position on this sort of thing very clear in the "Depiction of Muhammad" controversy where it was decided to use our standard editorial practice of showing relevant verifiable historical images even though it offending hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of Wikipedia editors. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 01:17, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how we could have a good Holocaust article without a number of pictures that are really quite disturbing. Millions of people were starved, gassed, shot, burnt. That is, horrifically, the precise subject of the article. White Power doesn't necessarily need pictures of lynchings, Ku Klux Klan more plausibly does, and there's no way to justify not having them in lynching. Since our Adolf Hitler article has a Holocaust subsection, there's justification for putting a picture of its victims there, as they are the face of the Holocaust. Editorial discretion (and consensus formed on the basis of it) is ultimately the only good means of determining what goes where. The "badness" of an image should not be taken into account. If it's a disquieting subject, a disquieting picture is usually going to be editorially justifiable, and removing it just because it's unpleasant is generally not going to be editorially justifiable.--Father Goose (talk) 04:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

well, (just as an aside) you may be forgetting that there's a fairly extensive scholarly literature from the early National Socialist years - and I do mean scholarly; pre-war Germany had one of the best university systems in Europe - that outlined theories about the inherent inferiority or even bestiality of Jews and other semites, Africans, women, and etc. This could easily be entered as a section in an article entitled, say, Scientific arguments in support of the Holocaust, with diagrams and charts that demonstrate the physiological and behavioral shortcomings of those groups, and the section would be retained because "Wikipedia does not remove material that some people might find offensive". and maybe that would be an acceptable thing, I don't know; all I'm saying is that not all offensive material is neutral material included over the objections of people who are excessively emotional and insufficiently reasonable.
to the real point, though - I'm beginning to get deeply curious about why this idea is consistently misrepresented every time I make it. so let me try to clarify it one more time, with bullet points for emphasis:
  • Disturbing pictures are appropriate when they are informational - I never said otherwise, yet people keep putting those words in my mouth
  • NOTCENSORED is about neutrality - obviously, I never said otherwise, yet people keep putting those words in my mouth
  • what I said was that offensiveness is clearly an issue to be considered. it may be third priority, but if someone is offended by something we ought to take whatever measures we can take to reduce that offense within the boundaries of producing a good encyclopedia.
you know, when people walk onto a plane, some of them sling their bags around carelessly and some of them watch what they are doing and try not to hit people. both groups get their bags stowed, but I think we'd all agree that the first group are jerks. Now I don't think any of us want Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia of jerks, but not-being-a-jerk means not offending people callously and senselessly. Therefore, some kind of policy recognition that (a) we don't use offensive material without real need and (b) we give due consideration to minimizing any offense we need to do would be in order. --Ludwigs2 06:32, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Ludwig, I can see where you're coming from, but I just don't think the audience's potential offense should factor into our decisions as to what to include in an article. We simply cannot tailor the project to those who might take offense at its contents. It sets an ugly precedent, and runs contrary to our stated goals. Throwaway85 (talk) 08:41, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I think we'd be starting off down the wrong road if we asked those judging the appropriateness of content to consider the offence it might cause. It may be pictures of private parts in one context, depictions of prophets in a second, bodily functions in one article and people with bare heads in another. The offence isn't important, the encyclopedic value is. So we don't go out of our way to offend people, because that's juvenile, but nor do we go out of our way not to offend people. That's why we have a content disclaimer. --TS 11:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

@Throwaway and Tony: I am frustrated with your responses, because I feel as though you simply didn't read what I said. I would like to ask each of you to please read the third bullet point in what I wrote above and respond to it directly, because you seem to have ignored me completely so that you could complain about something that I'm not even saying. That seems to be a major Wikipedia pastime, granted, but I am hanging on to wp:AGF that this is an honest oversight and not a stupid rhetorical tactic, so please help me out here. thanks. --Ludwigs2 17:27, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I know you're saying is "offensiveness is clearly an issue to be considered. it may be third priority, but if someone is offended by something we ought to take whatever measures we can take to reduce that offense within the boundaries of producing a good encyclopedia." I'm simply saying that I completely disagree with the notion and I find it to be contrary to our mission as a serious encyclopedia. That may be frustrating, but there it is. Adding a daft picture of a bit of vomit on the ground makes the article worse, not better, because it's a useless and uninformative picture. --TS 17:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree. I've read your argument, Ludwig, but I disagree with you entirely. People's potential offense should play no part whatsoever in the article creation and improvement process. It is not a third priority, or any sort of priority. Our only goal should be creating a good encyclopedia. That means we don't try to offend people, and we don't try not to offend them. Throwaway85 (talk) 18:13, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you both for acknowledging the point. I believe your disagreement is confused and narrow-sighted (not to mention out of touch with what actually happens on almost every talk page on wikipedia), but now we are in a position where we can address those (IMO) misunderstandings directly. --Ludwigs2 18:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Ludwigs2, your concern is appreciated, but the history of wikipedia shows that what TS and Throwaway85 say is sufficient. For example, a couple of years ago, lots of jerks took great efforts to put the pics of their penises into various wikipedia articles related (and not so related) to sex and biology and then claiming wp:NOTCENSORED. This was combatted by consistent application of the main rule: the main purpose of wikipedia, rather than by adding a separate clause "do not put your penis into wikipedia" to wp:NOTCENSORED. - Altenmann >t 19:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Look, I'm not going to argue this endlessly (partly because I recognize that I'm arguing from disciplinary understandings that most people don't have access to), but I do wish people would keep away from straw-man arguments. placing a picture of one's penis in an article clearly violates a number of policies beyond being merely offensive. this is a subtle point I'm trying to make, and not one that concerns these kinds of over-the-top examples.
Placing a picture of something which is disussed in an article does not clearly violate basic policies. Clearly you haven't been there. It is not a strawman, it is an example of a case of similar controversy, successfully handled. - Altenmann >t 21:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
let me craft a more realistic problem, so you can see what I mean. let's say that sometime in the future - after the death of Bill Clinton, to avoid BLP issues - someone turns up a nude picture of the ex-president (remember the body-studies they did at Harvard back when he was a student?) and tries to enter it in on various pages about Bill Clinton. Assume it satisfies wp:V and other core points. Now, there is limited informational value in a nude picture of Clinton, since the picture would have been taken long before the gubernatorial and presidential years for which he is notable, but there will be strong political motivations for including such a picture as a back-handed attack at liberal democrats everywhere. what do we do with this? opponents will argue that the picture adds little informational value, and is demeaning to a president of the United States and insulting to the people of the US as a whole; proponents will say that in fact the picture does add information and that wikipedia doesn't care about the other arguments. The upshot (under current ideation) would be that Wikipedia becomes a tool for political mudslinging and anti-American snarkiness, without much in the way of informational gain. Now I'm not really trying to dictate whether such a picture should or shouldn't be shown; I'm trying to say that it is wrong to short-circuit every discussion on such matters with a mindless, uncompromising "we don't consider such things" boilerplate. That makes wikipedia (as I said before) an encyclopedia of jerks, and it is just going to cause an endless stream of unpleasant arguments that could be resolved with more civil, nuanced discussions.
Obviously you haven't been here during these multipenis debates. Your Clinton example is exactly the case of type successfully handled on strictly encyclopedic grounds. Your hypothetical case must be considered strictly withing the context of a particular photo and particular article, since I genuinely fail to see why a naked body must be demeaning. After all, there are plenty of published naked baby photos of future very serious people. What is more, I may readily think of another hypothetical example where the photo of naked Clinton would be quite encyclopedic. Just the same, your Holocaust example is quite faulty. There is an ancient say in many languages which basically reads "you must know your enemy". Therefore a detailed article about Nazi theoretical foundations of Holocaust is highly welcome. Of course, it must be balance, NPOV, and all, but Nazi charts are not offensive per se, if wikipedia says that they are manipulated, false, and misleading, just like this pic. - Altenmann >t 00:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Ah, me, this argument is doomed to go in circles. The funny thing is, everything that I'm asking for is already incorporated in practice, even though most people don't to seem realize it. the moment you say "Of course, it must be balanced, NPOV, and all..." you are invoking a set of considerations that go beyond simple informational value to (yes) take into account things like the potential of offense. The problem is that in practice a whole slew of unspoken biases rear their heads: we choose how harsh we care to be on a given side of a topic based on our degree of respect for it, and it seems perfectly normal for us to do that. you can see that on just about any contentious page you care to look at. I just wish we could muster up some of that desire to temper and balance views that might offend victims of the holocaust to use with other people who are offended by wikipedia's actions. but I guess I'm just going to have to accept the fact that wikipedia will sometimes be an encyclopedia of jerks. I'm tired of arguing with people who are dead set on maintaining that as the norm. --Ludwigs2 04:17, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
If we do what you're suggesting naturally, then what's the point in codifying it? It seems the process works just fine as is. No need to introduce institution creep. Throwaway85 (talk) 04:38, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
because (as I said) doing it 'naturally' ('unconsciously' is a better word) means applying it in haphazard way that institutionalizes certain biases. in non-jargon terms, we are all (always) much more circumspect about issues we identify with than issues we don't. If I were to write something in an article that suggested that Nazis were evil bastards someone would probably tone it down, but the sentiment would probably stick because most westerners (at some level) think it's probably true. If I were to write something equivalently nasty about Jews in an article, it would be reverted, fought over, edited, counter-cited, and eventually removed or reduced to the minimal presence it could be given in the article. The sentiment would not stick, because at some level most westerners would think that it's not true. it's even worse with images because your typical wikipedia editor is a jaded, web-savvy, over-educated person who just doesn't identify with (say) your average blue-collar family-oriented semi-religious person who doesn't want his or her children (or him or her self) exposed to offensive material. now I agree, there's a certain extent to which you have to say to such people tough: this isn't obscene, it's informative, but I suspect (with good reason) that many editors simply leave it at tough because they just don't identify with such readers and just don't care to cut them any slack at all. that little bit of excess strikes me as wrong. --Ludwigs2 05:09, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
It seems that nobody's behaved in the way you suggested, at least not in regards to the goatse article that this is really about. We said "no, we're WP:NOTCENSORED". That's an explanation right there. Once again, our job is not to worry about our reader's sensibilities, it's to create a good encyclopedia. Many creationists, for example, might be outraged that we treat evolution as a scientific fact here on wikipedia. We don't dumb it down, or equivocate, however, we simply present the subject as it is. We are here to inform, not to coddle. We don't hide any "offensive" claims in a collapsable infobox, we put it right out there for everyone to see. If they don't like it, tough. We can't say that there are certain sensibilities we are willing to offend and others that we aren't. We simply ignore the entire issue, and build the best, most informative encyclopedia that we can. That process of self-improvement will necessarily clear the project of images and phrases that don't improve their respective articles. If they do improve the articles, I don't care what the picture or phrase is, it stays unless and until someone comes up with something better. Throwaway85 (talk) 05:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
okiedokie...
  1. this is an issue I began talking about long before I heard about that article. I've seen this same problem manifest (in order of extremity) on pseudoscience articles, on creationism-type articles, on Alt-Med articles, on political articles, on normal religious articles, and even (wonder of wonders) on math articles. don't make an abiding interest of mine into a concern of your favorite little shock-fest.
  2. many people behave this way, on goatse and in the other articles you mention. most every article on wikipedia that deals with creationism has a constant stream of editors (for years now) who complain. some small percentage of them (less than 5%, I'd guess) actually want creationism and evolution put on the same level, while the remainder are simply insulted by what they see as a rude, biased, and heavy-handed treatment of the subject. on goatse there are three or four editors who mount a stringent, absolutist, 'go suck eggs' defense of the image on the NOTCENSORED platform - It took me two days of high-pressured semi-tendentious editing to get you guys to express something that even came close to a valid reason for using the picture (not a good reason, mind you, but I'll take what I can get), and when I pushed you on that reason you all went right back to the 'go suck eggs' defense
  3. I'm not asking you to dumb things down, equivocate, or coddle (and I think it's fairly pretentious of you to put it in those terms - you're not that smart my friend, and other people aren't that dumb). I'm asking you to take people's feelings into consideration, to the extent that that's possible without compromising the encyclopedia. That means that if you have an image (like the one at goatse) that will sicken large numbers of people without adding a whole lot of value to the article or the encyclopedia, then you ought to at least consider finding some alternate. the attitude that people who are sickened by the image can just go suck eggs is coarse to begin with; combine it with the minimal encyclopedic value of the image and it's just downright rude.
  4. I'm really not interested in this whole 'brainy tough guy' routine. you can ignore whatever and whomever you want, and you can sneer at the sniveling masses whose 'feelings' get 'hurt', and you can wallow in self-righteous intellectualism until the cows come home. that's your business. but don't ask me to approve of it, because I don't and I won't; as far as I'm concerned you are just contributing (unintentionally, I'm sure) to making Wikipedia an encyclopedia of jerks. --Ludwigs2 06:20, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I find it mildly ironic that you choose to mount what you see as a campaign for civility and respect with such a rude tone. You've been told by several editors now that your beliefs do not reflect those of the majority. Deal with it, and stop insulting editors who disagree with you. Throwaway85 (talk) 06:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm sorry, did I offend you? speaking of irony...
I'm not concerned with the beliefs of the majority. I'm concerned with consensus, and with consonance with Wikipedia's core principles, and with the correct framing of policy. If you keep misrepresenting my position I will keep correcting you, and I will be just as harsh as I need to be to make the correction stick (and not one iota more). If you don't want to have a discussion that works towards consensus, that's fine, but then I suggest that we stop the conversation now. --Ludwigs2 08:13, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
That's probably a good idea. I don't think anything productive is coming from this conversation. As a complete and utter tangent, why on Earth does an encyclopedia have built-in emoticons? Throwaway85 (talk) 08:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't know - I found that template at one point and it tickled me, so I expanded it. they are useful for talk discussions, but I do check the links periodically to make sure no one's using them in article space. --Ludwigs2 08:46, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
One of the five pillars of Wikipedia is civility, and telling someone who is offended by something that you are simply not going to consider their viewpoint under any circumstances hardly satisfies the phrase: "Editors should always endeavor to treat each other with consideration and respect". I would hope we would do a little better than that. --Ludwigs2 20:35, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
We did consider it. We did not say that your suggestion is stupid. We are merely saying that we don't think we need extra bureaucracy to successfully address your valid concern. - Altenmann >t 21:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. Saying we disagree with you and do not want to implement your suggestion is not uncivil. I think your idea is a very bad one. That's not uncivil, it's simply frank. Throwaway85 (talk) 22:17, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't think it's uncivil, I just think it's unenlightened. <shrug> --Ludwigs2 04:17, 6 January 2010 (UTC)


Continuing discussion of NOTCENSORED

Ludwigs2, do you think the picture at Autofellatio should be removed? -GTBacchus(talk) 23:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

lol - not particularly, though I'd have no objection if the consensus went that way. that's just plain silly.
What makes the image at Goatse.cx more offensive than the one at Autofellatio? They're gonna gross out a lot of the same people. ("Gross out" is pretty much what we mean by "offend" in the case of Goatse, no?) -GTBacchus(talk) 07:22, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
you asked for my personal opinion. I don't find that image nearly as problematic, and so I wouldn't begin any discussion about its place in the encyclopedia. again, this is a consensus process I'm arguing for; iron-clad rules have nothing to do with it.
please let me make myself clear. I am not complaining about the picture (not in this thread, at least). I am complaining about unreasoning, anti-consensus manner in which many editors use NOTCENSORED. --Ludwigs2 07:57, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm sure as heck not talking about iron-clad rules, and I don't care which discussion is which. I was just trying to get a better sense of where you're coming from, in general and/or in particular. I think I've got that now, although I'm still not sure why one image is "offensive" to your mind, and the other one not. What's the difference? (I don't care if that question is stupid.)

I don't really like to talk about guidelines in the abstract, because that seems to suggest a top-down model that I think is wrong for Wikipedia. Guidelines are just reflections of what happens most of the time in specific cases, each of which is decided on merits. At least that's the model I use to think about policy here. IAR and all, right? -GTBacchus(talk) 08:02, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it's mostly that the second one makes me laugh - it looks cartoonish, as opposed to the first which looks fetishistic in a deeply perverted sort of way (which is, I imagine, its original intent). I suspect that would be a common assessment (that you'd find that most people would come to tolerate the second before they came to tolerate the first) but I'm not about to do a survey to find out for sure.
I mostly see policy in hermeneutic terms: policy needs to be grounded in concrete practices, but it needs to be abstract as well - it should lay out 'best practices' that an idealized version of wikipedia would follow, so that people caught in the muck of daily issues can see what it is they are supposed to be aspiring to. so, you use concrete problems to make abstract policy, then use abstract policy to guide you though other concrete problems (which may in turn refine the abstractions some more). might be a bit much to ask for, I suppose... --Ludwigs2 09:02, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
No, I think that's pretty close to how I think of it. I am just extremely suspicious of cases where the top-down model leads to conflict. In those cases, I think the first (and last) step is to say "what would we do here if there were no applicable 'rule'?" A situation in which a rule seems to lead to the wrong answer is to be evaluated on merits, and then the 'rule' might or might not be worth changing afterward. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:26, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
can't argue with that. --Ludwigs2 18:45, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
  • The existing wording here is fine and appears to reflect actual practice. It leaves the decision of "whether it is appropriate to include in a given article" up to the editors of the article, which is as it should be. In contentious cases, WP:3RD or other methods of bringing in disinterested, presumably-neutral editors are available.
    In general, if actual practice starts veering from policy, or if you start getting a lot of push-back in actual, non-hypothetical discussions saying "the policy doesn't work in this case" then we should update the policy to reflect actual or desired practice. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:37, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ludwigs2. As a simple example, if I counted correctly there are currently 13 depictions of Jesus in the article Jesus. Most of them are purely ornamental and simply shouldn't be there. The ideas of an artist many centuries later about what Jesus looked like are pertinent to the reception of Jesus, but not to Jesus himself. Thus a minor point (in this particular article) gets way too much weight with the large number of images. Most of the depictions by artists many centuries later of significant events in Jesus' life as reported in the bible are severely misleading. If I went to that article trying to reduce the number of pictures some people would disagree with me, but at least we would get a reasonable discussion.

The article Muhammad has just under 10 pictures that are purely ornamental in a similar way, including 6 pictures that show Muhammad himself with more or less detail. I am sure that if I started a similar discussion at that article, the pictures of Muhammad would be defended as absolutely necessary because they are offensive, and there would be no chance of reasonable discussion about the pertinence of these pictures. Apparently some people think that depictions of Muhammad must be plastered all over the article (as opposed to having just one or two in a section that discusses the fact that historically Muslims did depict him) to make it absolutely clear that Wikipedia is a western project and Muslims are not welcome.

It's similar with defecation (a picture from below of a woman in the act of producing a turd was quickly removed and the idiot who added it and tried to defend it quickly blocked) and autofellatio (apparently the picture must be at the top of the article, because otherwise someone who simply wants to look up what the word means might fail to see it and be offended). It's clear that Wikipedia's editorship is quite happy about respecting taboos related to defecation to extent it makes sense in an encyclopedia, while quite a few people feel a need to break sexual taboos as strongly as possible.

As Ludwigs2 said, there are similar problems in the pseudoscience area. E.g. some people act as if they find it extremely important that such articles are full of expressions of contempt of the subject. Of course the only thing this achieves (in the case of Muhammad and pseudoscience) is that some people will not read our articles because they are offended. I am not talking about Muslims not reading Muhammad because there is a picture of Muhammad there. I am talking about those Muslims who don't read Muhammad because we go out of our way to offend some Muslims more than can be justified by encyclopedic concerns. I am not talking about suppressing the complete invalidation of pseudoscience. I am talking about writing such articles so as to make it clear that people who believe such nonsense are morons and that we don't mind if they stop reading an article after the second sentence because they are deeply offended. Hans Adler 19:42, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

That may be, but none of what you've just said requires anything more than our usual drive to improve articles to fix. We don't need to be creating new policies or changing old ones when the problems you describe can be dealt with through existing procedures. Throwaway85 (talk) 19:56, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me that the problems Hans addresses are rather cultural than policy-based. It's true that some editors will fiercely defend explicit sexual images, beyond seeming reasonableness, but I think this is entirely a reaction to the fact that many people wish to equate sex = offensive, and lots of us perceive that as pathological. I'm not saying that's a valid argument so much as unpacking the psychology at work. If it seems that there are puritanical censors erring on the side of removing anything they perceive as "naughty", then there will be people quick to argue against that mindset - whether it's present in a particular case or not. I'm not suggesting any particular solution here; just observing. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Bacchus, I think you have a point there - there are a number of editors I've run across who use wikipedia as a tool for social engineering (trying to break through people's sexual mores, trying to publicly vilify topics they think are wrong or stupid, etc, and etc.). in many cases policy becomes a tool for them doing that, rather than a tool for preventing that. I sincerely doubt that's the proper goal of a dedicated encyclopedia.
Throwaway: I think we can all see how ell that particular belief has worked out. it reminds me a bit of marginal economics ("yes, things are bad now, but if we wait long enough the market will make things right" - and 400 years later...) --Ludwigs2 20:19, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
It very likely goes both ways. Just as there are those who think all nudity is offensive, there are those who think any censorship is offensive. My point is simply that we can deal with this simply by trying to build the best encyclopedia we can and not worrying about what may or may not be offensive to certain individuals or groups. Throwaway85 (talk) 20:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
e.g. if we refuse to acknowledge the problem, the problem no longer exists? please... --Ludwigs2 20:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
But that's not always what happens in practice. It worked at defecation and Virgin Killer, it's a borderline situation at autofellatio, and breaks down completely at Muhammad. In those situations where a large number of editors disapproves of a taboo, it is broken as strongly as possible for reasons that have nothing to do with encyclopedicity and actually hurt the quality of the encyclopedia. It also makes those who could profit most from the articles in question, because they present views they are not usually exposed to, much less likely to actually read them. Hans Adler 20:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree that inconsistent adherence to policy is a major issue, as is variable motivation to stick solely to improving the project. I simply fail to see how changing a policy would solve that. At the end of the day, we have tools such as RfCs set up to get feedback from the community, and that feedback is usually very good. We must operate on the assumption that the majority of editors here are dedicated to improving the project, and will put personal feelings aside in order to do so. If we can't make that assumption, then the system breaks down. Personally, there are many things on-wiki that I don't think belong (penis size in infoboxes of gay porn actors strikes me as a big one). My objection to them is not moral, however. I am not offended by them, I just think they don't contribute anything to the project. It is through the normal channels of article improvement that they might get removed. If they don't, well, that's tough, and I'll move on to something else. Throwaway85 (talk) 20:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
again, all I'm asking for here is some recognition in policy that commonly held judgments (even those judgments that are based on apparently emotional or moral grounds) be acknowledged and incorporated into consensus discussions as valid concerns. I'm not trying to dictate actual discussion outcomes, I'm just trying to prevent policies such as this one from being used as tools to unilaterally and dogmatically kill consensus discussions wherever some editor(s) decide they want to push a particular bit of offensive content through over all objections. can you not see the value in that? --Ludwigs2 20:54, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Changing the wording to make inclusion more difficult won't change those behaviours, but simply shift them to a new subset of people. It's very difficult for anyone to unilaterally kill consensus, and we already have WP:IAR for when a policy gets in the way of improving the project. I just don't see how making inclusion more difficult will solve any of the behavioural issues you bring up. As for your concern about commonly held judgements, they regularly get taken into account. We still, however, must strive simply to build a good encyclopedia. I think we have similar concerns here, but we have different ideas on how to solve them. I think the core concept of improving the project will necessarily fix any problems there may be with it. You seem to think a modification of policy is necessary. What, in particular, do you see as being an issue that is unsolveable by the simple drive to improve? Throwaway85 (talk) 21:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
again, I'm not trying to solve behavioral issues. I'm trying to open a door for consensus discussions (a door that is currently slammed shut in a lot of people's faces)
with respect to your reliance on 'a drive to improve' as a panacea... it's an unfortunate fact that the substance of the word 'improve' differs dramatically from editor to editor. There are many deeply religious editors who think wikipedia would be 'improved' by removing all offensive pictures and other editors who think that wikipedia would be 'improved' by including the most graphic pictures possible, everywhere. many people have good intentions that lead them in bad directions; that's the nature of the human beast. The only way wikipedia is actually improved as an encyclopedia is by creating consensus around 'the encyclopedic-ness' of content, so that editors are at least minimally satisfied that the article is a good and balanced representation of the topic. Your argument seems to be that we never need to create consensus about the use of potentially offensive material; that it can be used without limitations so long as it satisfies some minimal criteria of 'appropriateness'. that strikes me as an incorrect approach to editing.
just out of curiosity, I wonder what people's reactions would be if I tried to add a tasteful image of Christ and Mary making love to the article on Jesus (related to gnostic beliefs that they were husband and wife). I'm almost tempted to try it to see how far NOTCENSORED would get me in that case; but that would probably be a bit too pointy. --Ludwigs2 22:54, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I'm suggesting that our usual critieria for inclusion, that is, that an image improves the reader's understanding of the article, combined with our usual criteria for editting, that is that the edit improves the article, basically ensures that baseless additions like you describe would be removed. If a picture adds something to an article that words cannot, and the majority of editors feel it is appropriate, then we keep it. Your Christ and Mary (Magdelene, I presumem because otherwise--ewww) example doesn't count, because there is nothing gained by including such a picture that cannot be summed up in the words "Gnostics believe Christ and Mary Magdelene were married". Like I've said before, we don't go out of our way to offend. We simply make the most informative articles we can. Throwaway85 (talk) 01:05, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
but this is exactly the problem. look at what happened over at goatse: some editors object to the image on offensiveness grounds. other editors say that the image 'adds information' to the article, and so it can't be removed per policy. however, when asked what the image adds, the best they come up with is that it is a matter of 'visual identification' (which seems to mean nothing more than that it's a picture), and won't address the issue beyond that. so basically, editors shadowdance their way into a claim that the picture adds value, and then leverage NOTCENSORED to stifle any discussion of the matter. I mean really - if the picture were not offensive it would be easy for me to argue that it adds nothing to the article and get it removed; why should it be more difficult for me to remove an offensive picture than a non-offensive one?
and to go back to the Christ and Mary (yes Magdalene) sex-scene example, I could easily argue that it does add value because it depicts a notable theme in gnostic Christian literature - visual identification, right? - and so it cannot be removed, per NOTCENSORED. There's no reason even to discuss it. Heck, I could probably even get a live-model version in, if I can find people to pose. why limit it to mere drawings? see what I mean? --Ludwigs2 01:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
That's not at all what we were saying. We were saying goatse.cx is, in essence, hello.jpg, and that the picture is notorious enough that it warrants inclusion. A goatse article without hello.jpg would be significantly less informative. Furthermore, it is not more difficult to remove an offensive picture, it is just as difficult, and that's the way it should be. Throwaway85 (talk) 03:57, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
an opinion I disagree with, but which we never got around to discussing because you kept claiming I was speaking from wp:IDONTLIKEIT and invoking NOTCENSORED. go back and read the discussion. --Ludwigs2 05:04, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I did, and that's 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Perhaps you'd like to share in my joy and reread the discussion yourself. I mentioned IDONTLIKEIT once after stating my argument above. The only arguments I made after that were those directly relating to this policy, and your interesting interpretation thereof. Reading that page was an exercise in frustration. I saw you arguing nonstop (and rudely, I might add) against 5 editors who were all telling you basically the same thing, with the occasional editor dropping by to throw in their two cents. At some point you have to recognize the feedback you've received, and that your actions in no way contribute to "consensus building". Throwaway85 (talk) 05:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

sorry, you were all saying the same things, none of which actually related to what I was saying - I can't remember who repeated each point how many times. sorry about your ten minutes, but would you have really put it to any good use regardless? --Ludwigs2 05:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
...
 
 
 
maybe.
Throwaway85 (talk) 05:49, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Before seeing something written into policy, I like to see it carried out effectively in practice. Ludwigs2, are there articles where you'd say we basically get it right, and take the sensibilities of readers into consideration without sacrificing quality and informativeness? -GTBacchus(talk) 21:01, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
well, just for a quick (maybe not the best, but it will do for the moment) example read Talk:Fellatio#One_picture_removed. The discussion here has a nice mix of perspectives (from a couple of people who think the whole idea of pictures is offensive to one guy that wants to use a photo of what I suspect is his own junk). the editors do a reasonably good job of balancing the fact that some people find the images offensive with the encyclopedic needs of the article (though it would be nicer if they were more explicit about it), and end up with a set of (dare I say tasteful?) drawings that are tightly tied in with their respective sections (one lead drawing, a historcal drawing for the history section, a rip from the Kama Sutra for the religious section, a ceramic that depicts fellatio for the 'ingestion of semen' section). Note that the only time NOTCENSORED is raised in the discussion is by an editor who is worried it will turn things into an edit war. The rest of the arguments on the page have some nice discussions of racial and gender sensitivity as well. I'll look around a bit (later) and see if I can find some better examples. --Ludwigs2 22:29, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Personally, I think we have it right when we accept whatever will significantly help the article. An illustration of the subject of the article will always help the article. A totally peripheral image only loosely related does not help, whether or not in may be shocking. There is a ground in between where we need to use discretion. A clear statement that they are to be used discreetly and with judgment might have helped some recent conflicts. It might also help to have a clear statement that they are never to be used in lede sections unless there is no practical alternative (e.g. an article about the image itself), Using our liberties fully and responsibly preserves them--using them for the purpose of provocation arouses hostility towards them. DGG ( talk ) 19:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
In regards to not using the image in the lede, what would you say about, for example, Genital warts? Throwaway85 (talk) 20:07, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
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