User:Jéské Couriano/Common -en-help questions and their answers

Drafts

Why won't you review my article?

It's channel practise to not review article drafts on request. While we will assess sources, tone, etc. we will not actually review the draft upon request. Individual helpers who are active reviewers may do so on their own volition, but not at the request of a helpee.

Why don’t you accept IMDb as a source? They vet their material and everything!

Regardless of its vetting processes, the Internet Movie Database is still a wiki. Wikis are by default unusable as sources because they're user-generated content, and IMDb's vetting isn’t enough to stop hoaxes or rumours from being accepted as fact. In addition, consensus at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard has repeatedly affirmed IMDb’s unsuitability as a source.

Why don't you accept citations to Wikipedia?

This is circular referencing and isn't acceptable in any serious resource. This also applies to Wikipedia mirrors as their information is copied from Wikipedia. Even if it weren't a circular reference, Wikipedia is a wiki, which fails the third criterion below.

What exactly is a "reliable source"?

A reliable source is a source that (1) discusses the subject in some depth, (2) has no direct connexion to the subject or surrogates of the subject, and (3) has an editor-in-chief or equivalent position that oversees fact-checking on articles it publishes and is able and willing to issue retractions as needed. Failing any of those criteria means that the source generally is not reliable.

I don't understand....

Here is a list of commonly-invoked bad sources, and why we don't use them.

• Press releases, advertorials, and black-hat SEO: Written or commissioned by the subject or their surrogates.
• IMDb: Wiki. See above.
• Wikipedia: Wiki and a circular reference. See above.
• Subject's own website: Written or commissioned by the subject or their surrogates.
• Interviews with the subject or its principals: Written or commissioned by the subject or their surrogates. Where the interview is published is irrelevant; an interview published in a newspaper of record is as useless as an interview by Borat. At best these sources can be used to verify what a subject says, but they cannot be used for notability.
• Gossip magazines and other scandal rags: Ineffectual editor-in-chief, thus poor or no fact-checking or retractions. Citing unverified rumours violates our biographical policies anyhow.
• Routine business news (i.e. merger/acquisitions/real estate/funding announcements): News articles like these never count towards a business' notability simply because they are routine; every business is going to be reported on in this manner in some way.
• Google or website tag search results: Not in-depth. Search results are good for finding articles, but citing them is useless because they tend to pull up unusable sources as readily as they do usable ones.
• Trivial or passing mentions (name-drops and sound bites): Not in-depth. A source should explain more about the subject than their name, occupation, and a one-liner.
• Random Wordpress/Blogger/Blogspot blogs: Little to no fact-checking. Blogs can be cited if the subject is an acknowledged expert and the topic is in their field of expertise.
• Random online videos: Use of online videos as a source are only allowed if the video(s) were created by a news agency and uploaded by them to their own channel on that service. Videos uploaded by others may be copyright infringements (which we cannot link to under any circumstance) or otherwise unsuitable to cite (such as works of fiction or music videos).
• Profile sites (Business profiles/who's-whos): Not in-depth and possibly written or commissioned by the subject or their surrogates.
• Social media: Written or commissioned by the subject or their surrogates. We avoid linking to social media if at all possible, and whenever we do cite it, it's in the same context as interviews.
• Scans of newspaper clippings: Copyright infringement. We do accept offline sources as long as enough bibliographical information is provided to look the source up in a library or archive.
• Online storefronts (e.g. Amazon): Written/commissioned by the subject or surrogates (product descriptions) or lack of fact-checking (user reviews). We shouldn't link to these in the first place anyway.
• Streaming websites/services, particularly as regards music: Either a copyright infringement or uploaded/commissioned by the subject. The subject's own music doesn't help for notability anyway; we would need reviews of that music.

Why're you deleting the stuff I borrowed from my website? I wrote it!

Per Berne, all-rights-reserved full copyright is automatic upon publishing unless an alternative copyright licence is explicitly specified at the time the content is published. As a result, even if you wrote that material, it is still a copyright violation because Wikipedia's licences (CC-By-SA 3.0 and GFDL) are fundamentally incompatible with standard copyright.

Why isn’t my draft on a person being accepted? I have sources!

You don’t have enough sources. Every claim about a living person an article makes that could potentially be challenged for literally any reason must be cited to a strong third-party source that corroborates it or (if no such sources exist) removed. (For information as to why this is a requirement, read Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident, which is the reason our biographical policy was created.)

Why won't you help me move my page out of draft?

We will not help users bypass the draft review process, especially if their sole apparent motivation is a payday. Most of the time, those who ask this have an article that would be deleted or draftified on discovery anyway for being unsuitable.

Why won't you assess my non-English source?

When it comes to sources that are not in English, we generally have to rely on automated translation (such as Google Translate), and Google Translate is known to have issues translating languages that are not Germanic, Semitic, Slavic, or Roman in nature. East (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) and South (Indic and Dravidian) Asian languages normally return nonsensical or unintelligible word salad when subjected to automated translation.

Why won't you accept a straight translation from (language code).wp?

The other Wikipedia projects all have their own communities, which are responsible for setting policies on the local level with regards to sourcing, notability, etc. Because of this, what works on, say, ar.wp will not necessarily work for zh.wp, and vice versa, and policies on both differ from en.wp. The only policy that is consistent across all Wikipediae is m:Neutral point of view, which is a de facto Foundation-level policy that can't be overridden at the local level.

Article content

Why doesn’t (foo)’s article say (bar)?

Wikipedia, as an encyclopaedia, requires third-party reliable sources to back up its claims. If a given claim is at odds with the sources, is based on an alternative interpretation of the sources, or is sourced to online rumour mills and social media, then we can’t include it. This is doubly so for articles about living and recently-dead people.

Why is (foo) in namespace when I have to go through a drafting process?

There’s a few possible reasons, which aren’t generally mutually exclusive.

1. The article was originally created directly in mainspace, generally before drafting was made a requirement for new users.
2. The article has third-party reliable sources that are properly cited in the article.
3. One of the 500+ active administrators responsible for the 6,925,437 articles on the English-language Wikipedia missed it, and you pointing it out now allows us to correct the situation, whether it be finding better sources or deleting it.

Conduct and blocking

Why can’t I edit about American politics/Eastern Europe/alternative medicine/etc.?

American politics, Eastern Europe, alternative medicine, and a host of other broad topic areas are under discretionary sanctions (or the closely related general sanctions). Articles under a general or discretionary sanctions regime are under heightened scrutiny by administrators due to extreme and intractible behaviour by users in those topic areas. Discretionary sanctions are only issued as a result of an Arbitration case while general sanctions require a community discussion and consensus. For a full list of topics under discretionary or general sanctions, see WP:General sanctions#Active sanctions.

Why was my company’s account blocked?

Our username policy forbids usernames which imply shared or “official” use, in part because of issues of attribution as required by Wikipedia’s content licences. Employees and interns are also required to disclose their employer and what edits they will be making on their behalf as part of the terms of use for Wikipedia and its sister websites. Not disclosing is not just grounds for a block, but we are under no obligation to help users who flagrantly disregard the Terms of Use.

How do I disclose a conflict of interest?

You disclose a conflict of interest by writing on your userpage your username, the employer, and the sort of edits you'll be making on that employer's behalf. This need not be an elaborate template; a simple sentence in the vein of "I, (username), am editing (articles) on behalf of my employer (employer)" will work. It does need to be on your userpage specifically, and not your draft or user talk page.

Why won’t you unblock my account?

Discussions about blocking are, as a rule, out of #wikipedia-en-help’s remit. Your user talk page, #wikipedia-en-unblock, and UTRS are your options for contesting your block, in descending order of importance. Note that channel policy not only prevents us from helping blocked users, it also allows channel operators to kick, ban, and/or remove blocked users who refuse to leave when asked.

I'm in an argument with someone and they're clearly wrong!

We will not exacerbate or intercede in an obvious content dispute. For one, attempting to recruit others from off-wiki (and IRC counts) to support your position is unacceptable. For two, even if there are conduct issues involved, taking administrative actions based on an IRC discussion isn't acceptable save for bright-line issues (block evasion, egregious and persistent vandalism), of which edit-warring does not qualify. The same applies to deletion debates, RfCs, and AN discussions.

Administration

How do I become an administrator?

Becoming an administrator on Wikipedia requires a long edit history, the patience of a saint, a thorough understanding of policy, and a hell week where every single one of your flaws, follies, and foibles WILL be exposed for everyone to see. A new user who registered one month ago is just not going to have a successful hell week.

I want admin rights to lock down (foo) so only I may edit it!

This is not only technically impossible (administration is not page-level and protection is not granular in scope), but it would violate the protection policy. Any administrator who would attempt to force an article to have specific content in it through the use of their tools risks their tools being revoked.

I want to talk to your boss/supervisor!

Every helper in #wikipedia-en-help, just like the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia editors as a whole, is an unpaid volunteer who helps there on their own time and of their own volition. There is no higher-up to contact that would care about what their employee is doing off company time (and attempting to contact employers anyway is a good way to be blocked from Wikipedia and banned from its IRC channels). Even if we were employed directly by the Wikimedia Foundation, we would not be helping or editing content in our capacity as paid staff.

Images

I have a company logo I want to upload!

First, we would need to determine its copyright status. Logos that are merely text (no matter how creative the font) or simple geometric shapes can't be copyrighted under US law. Anything more complex is almost certainly under full copyright and would need to comply with our non-free content criteria to be used.

I found an image on Google I want to upload!

It's more likely than not the image is fully copyrighted and thus needs to comply with the nonfree content criteria above, unless the image is explicitly in the public domain or explicitly under a copyright licence compatible with Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. (This would be CC-0, CC-By, and CC-By-SA; images with the No Derivative Works (ND) or Noncommercial (NC) prongs are treated as fully copyrighted as far as Wikipedia is concerned.)

Miscellaneous

Why don't you offer help in private messages?

For practicality's sake and to allow other helpers to chime in as needed (in case a question requires advanced permissions or a helper is uncomfortable answering/needs to leave suddenly), we won't help users via private message barring extraordinary circumstances. We have also had users outright attempt to hire us or otherwise proposition us via PM.

Google's box on the right side that pulls information from Wikipedia is wrong!/My article isn't showing up on Google!

Nine times out of ten, the information Google is using for its Knowledge Graph is from an out-of-date revision or not from Wikipedia to begin with, and Google's cache has not updated to reflect this. This is also why Wikipedia articles in mainspace don't immediately show up in a Google search. (Drafts, userspace pages, and many project-space pages won't/shouldn't show up under any circumstance due to being noindexed.)

There's a technical question or issue I'm having...

While #wikipedia-en-help could technically handle such a question, you're more apt to get a response from #wikimedia-tech, which is set up to handle technical issues with the MediaWiki software (which is what Wikipedia uses) and has users who are more knowledgeable about the software than the helpers in #wikipedia-en-help.

I need legal/medical help!

CONTACT A LAWYER OR DOCTOR IN YOUR AREA. We cannot (and will not) attempt to engage in the practises of law or medicine. See also Wikipedia's legal and medical disclaimers.