Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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How about: Sectioning off of/possible banning of Fictional Universe articles

Information is, in general, good. But not all of it is really valuable.

And I, like many people, enjoy some computer/video games/science fiction/fantasy stories/worlds. But think about this: How much do articles like "Star Forge," "Luccia," or "Sarah Kerrigan" really add to our knowledge of the world?

I propose that there should be a separate "Fictional Universes" wiki. We know that games/movies like Star Wars, Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings have influenced world pop culture, and that they often have huge amounts of detail, but with the goal of Wikipedia being useful knowledge, too much information about those things begins to seem frivolous.

Put another way, I don't think Wikipedia needs to be a competitor to Gamefaqs, or starwars.com, or battle.net.

I just think that Wikipedia, assuming it is an encyclopedia, might be best limited to at least real information about completely real things.

Please criticize/respond. --Zaorish 21:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I am strongly opposed to this idea. First of all, we are an encyclopedia- and, as such, we need to contain encyclopediac information. Time and the Rani is perfectly encyclopediac. Second, anything that factions Wikipedia, as a community or an encylcopedia is a very, very, bad thing. So, again, I'm strongly opposed to this idea.--Sean|Black 22:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support the idea to move this to a separate wiki. The information should not be lost, but it would be excellent to move it elsewhere. --Improv 22:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ummm no. Mememory alpha is worrying enough. The articles are not doing any harm and tend to be fairly accuret. As long as thier minor characters lists don't suddenly tern into lots of stubs I don't see a problem.Geni 23:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to adopt a mergist approach to these -- fewer larger articels are better than more smaller articles, particualrly stubs. I especially oppose the creation of stubs for minor fictional characters, adn will merge these with the appropriate article on the larger work. But fictional works are often of significant cultural importance and there is no simple way to draw the line between thsoe that are and those that are not. I do wish WP:FICT was more rigourously followed, however. DES (talk) 23:08, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Where would Sherlock Holmes, Horatio Hornblower, Elizabeth Bennet, Tarzan, and Sam Spade go? Dsmdgold 23:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I hate to discount you so lightly, but this is a perennial proposal and the subject of endless contention. See Wikipedia:Fancruft for example. This isn't changing overnight, and I personally favour the status quo. My policy is, if I see a topic about a fictional entity that is too obscure, I merge it with related entities into a summary/list article such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time characters. For what it's worth, I think Sarah Kerrigan is an excellent article consolidating plot information from diverse primary sources across many games (perhaps overdoing it a bit on the links). She may not be as notable as Link or Mario, but I hate to see good content obliterated. Deco 23:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no problem with covering the subject matter of fictional characters on Wikipedia. The problem is instead how they are covered. It is mostly done with very little context—no attempt to firmly tie everything that is said to be true about the character to the works of fiction in which they are depicted. See Radioactive_Man_(Marvel_Comics) for an example of this flaw; excepting the word "fictional" in the intro sentence and the infobox details, the article is written as if the subject were real. No reference is made in the article text to a single writer, artist, or even comic book issue or title. See also the "character history" of Spider-Man, which starts with summarizing a plot about his parents having been spies that was not written until after over thirty years of publication history. These articles merely paraphrase fiction rather than describe it, and appear to be written from a fan perspective rather than a cultural historian.

Compare those with Captain Marvel, a recent featured article, or Superman. Both summarize the history of the characters in the real world, revealing the "facts" of fiction according to that framework. We need a very clear set of guidelines to make sure all articles about fictional characters are written in this manner. Postdlf 23:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, that's a problem, but that's what {{sofixit}} is for.--Sean|Black 23:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think both fiction-oriented and real-world-oriented presentation orders are each appropriate in different circumstances, sometimes both in one article. Summarization of the plot of a fictional work in chronological order is an integral part of many articles on books, movies, and other fictional works. On the other hand, an article should never exclusively summarize the fiction, but should also talk about the entity's history, practical aspects of its creation (e.g. influence on gameplay), and cultural impact. Deco 23:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just think that Wikipedia, assuming it is an encyclopedia, might be best limited to at least real information about completely real things. Someone better tell Brittanica that their article on Hamlet ain't encyclopedic. And I can't wait for the deletion wheel war on Jesus. android79 23:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: the interest in "fiction-oriented" presentation, I think the chronology we should be most concerned with is real-world. A story written later but "taking place" earlier should be described as such, but the publication order should dictate the structure of the article; fictional canons are not our concern, but instead how the character has been used at different times. A true history of the character will only get obscured if the present bleeds into the past. Why should a recent story lead the info given about a character that has a much older body of work depicting him? Summarizing the plot in an article about a book is necessary and appropriate. But in an article about a murder mystery novel, for example, you wouldn't start the summary by describing who done it and how even though the murder is what happens first in fictional chronology, if the book reveals the murderer's identity last. The order in which things are revealed to the audience, whether within one work or across a series, is of utmost importance.
But the lack of real-world context is not only a problem of academic integrity, but an issue of copyright infringement. Both of the major comic book companies, as well as the Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi franchises have officially published numerous encyclopedia-style books about their characters and associated fictional universes. I suspect that many of the cruftiest, context-less articles are mere paraphrases of these (or of video game manuals, role-playing games, etc.). Even those that aren't are still doing more than merely reporting facts—they are simply summarizing fiction without transforming it or adding new information to it. This arguably makes these articles mere derivative works of the original fiction.
This is a systemic problem probably because the ones most driven to write about certain fictional characters are fans who are mostly concerned with "knowing" the complete and "true" story of the fictional universe. We need a guideline page (something like Wikipedia:Writing about fictional characters) that sets out the principles I've described above, with an accompanying template that will label and categorize an article about fictional characters as lacking that context (the trick is finding the right concise language). We have Template:Fiction, but it needs to be made clear that inserting a "this character is fictional" disclaimer in the introductory sentence of a ten paragraph article is not enough. I lack the time to solve this problem on my own, but I will definitely assist anyone else who wishes to contribute to solving it. Postdlf 00:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would favor soemthing of the sort Postdif suggests here. DES (talk) 00:31, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
User:Uncle G/Describe this universe might be a worthwhile starting point. —Charles P. (Mirv) 14:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the examples of good and bad writing that Uncle G used make it clear that he's getting at the same point that I am. Postdlf 15:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We do have the ability to create interwiki links to many, many other wiki projects, like those over at Wikicities (I'd like to see these become more transparent, but excepting MΑ and Wookiepedia, there's not much completeness over there). I'd like to see some of the cruft trimmed, true (and am working on it with The Wheel of Time series), but if it helps our regular editors to do a [Star Wars]] article or three before jumping back into quantum physics, it does little harm. -- nae'blis (talk) 00:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I'm impressed that this 'perennial proposal' caused so much controversy. Looking over the responses, it seems that Consolidation of those articles might be best--ie, an article about "Star Wars," then maybe an article on "Minor Star Wars Characters" and not an article about every single Jedi and their favorite ice cream flavor. In the future I'll try to generally put this into practice, by suggesting merges.

It's true, assuming Wikipedia has unlimited space, then articles about fictional universes could/should indeed be unlimited, because there is no harm in posting them. I was just taking into account the fact that Wikipedia is nonprofit and that more space/server power costs significant amounts of money.

And obviously Jesus and Sherlock Holmes are more important than something like Star Forge. Your argument, friends android and Dsmdgold, is something called reductio ad absurdum.

Postdlf: Your idea on a new fictional character template could be valuable, to put fictional concepts/characters in their cultural context before delving into obscure details.

And thank you all for your (generally) well-reasoned responses. ; 3 --Zaorish 14:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm checking back. I found this article: StarCraft Secret Missions. It's literally a /verbatim/ transcript of a few levels from a computer game. I personally would move to delete it. Any objections? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.216.217.174 (talk • contribs)
What an awful article. The text forgets that it's describing a video game and instead tells a story. I can't even tell who the player is supposed to be, what the player controls, what events are mere contingencies, or what events are actually experienced in game play versus read about or seen in movies. This is not an article. Postdlf 15:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose such an idea. Fictional universes are an important part of our culture. I would possibly support the merge/removal of fictional stubs, but content which can make a decent article should be kept. -- Astrokey44|talk 15:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree. Wikipedia is not paper and to make restrictions of this sort on content would, IMO, open the door for further content restrictions to the point where Wikipedia will become nothing but a bunch of articles on nuclear physics and Shakespeare (and even then, banning an article on, say Mr. Spock means you'd have to ban articles on Shakespeare's characters, right?) and that's not what this place is about. I've already seen some people grumbling about banning articles based on film and TV shows, for example. I've nothing against guidelines, but creating a separate wiki for this would be a mistake. The priority should be on improving articles if substandard ones arise. 23skidoo 15:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two points:
    1. Wikipedia is not infinite, but we are specifically advised by WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia not to worry about space limitations. Our concern should always be only on the encyclopedic nature of the topic and the quality of the article.
    2. I think the real problem is not so much that there are all these fictional-universe articles, it's that so many Wikipedia editors lavish so much attention on them rather than the more mundane topics like "Gary, Indiana" or "Container Security Initiative". But there are many dimensions of perceived imbalance in Wikipedia, like "not enough people articles" or "too many stubs" or "not enough cleanup being done" or "too much focus on the manual of style". We must remember that the whole project operates on the assumption that a worldwide community of freelance editors will eventually get around to working on any perceived deficiencies — and do them justice as well. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • As a sub-point to this one, I thought I should mention that although Wikipedia's space is unlimited a lot of people still think that the effort spent on editing stuff is zero-sum - ie, that if someone spends an hour working on a Star Trek article, then that's an hour they didn't spend working on something of "real importance." I think this is not the case, personally, and eliminating the "unimportant" articles would have the opposite effect; people who come here to tinker around with Star Trek articles and every once in a while toss something useful into one of the real science articles would just leave altogether. They almost certainly wouldn't turn all the energy they spend refining articles on their favourite fictions toward topics they aren't interested in, these are all volunteers here. Bryan 16:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose this idea, but also empathise. I think a compromise is good. A lot of Fictional Universe articles and all their linked sub-articles have too many sub-articles. For instance, you probably don't need a sub-article for a character that appeared once on a show. Or in Stargate Atlantis, for instance, you probably don't need an article for the minor few-episodes character Bob (Wraith). So scrap the stubs and unneeded articles, but certainly keep the main bulk. Fiction like Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and so on are massive cultural influences and have shaped both our history and television/cinema's history. And to be honest, I feel that most of the articles under these are concise whilst being detailed, informative, without POV or fancruft, and ultimately also useful. -- Alfakim --  talk  16:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal is hopelessly bad, IMO. But if it does make any progress towards being implemented, by some chance, I insist that we also include sports-related articles under its umbrella. There are thousands of articles in Wikipedia about trivial unimportant sportsmen who play trivial unimportant games that have nothing to do with curing cancer or military battles or whatever it is that're supposed to be "serious" subjects. Since I have no interest in sport, there's obviously no value in having articles about it and it's just a waste of everyone's time writing them. (The preceeding opinion is only a semi-parody :) Bryan 16:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Templates are always a good idea, though. --Happylobster 18:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, deja vu all over again.  :) I well remember the contretemps at Talk:Mithril, lo these over three years ago.  :) User:Zoe|(talk) 19:09, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ultra-extreme oppose This is an incredably bad idea. Here is why:
    • Some articles provide practical information, like where to watch TV shows, or backround info to unconfuse new fans. An example of this is: List of Stargate SG-1 episodes
    • Many fictional articles are about classics and are naturaly part of history.
    • Many are so largely know, like Harry Potter that it would be stupid not to have an article on them.
    • Fictional articles on video games act as a guide for players to do better in the game.
    • The whole reason I contribute to wikipedia is that wikipedias vision is having all of humankinds knowlage in one place is an achiveable goal, which I try to work towards. If we start exporting info, this goal will be lost, and many users who follow this vision will stop contributing. Tobyk777 01:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I disagree with the idea that we should delete articles on fictional places / concepts / characters &c. I do however agree that it should be clear in the opening paragraph that the subject is fictional and what particular fictional universe it relates to. As for having lots of stub articles, surely this was why the Wikipedia:Fiction guideline was written? -- Lochaber 15:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I generally agree with what User:Sean Black said above. Articles on fiction need to be presented in that context. They exist in a fictional universe but were created by someone real and the article needs to convey that connection to reality. These fiction articles on popular culture draw in a lot of potential editors who can (theoretically) practice their wiki-skills on these and satisfy their fanboy urges before moving on to real-world articles. Also, as User:Nae'blis mentioned above there are wikis dedicated to each show, like Wookieepedia and StargateWiki. --maclean25 05:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As part of this (perennial) discussion, I'd just like to briefly discuss a retort to the classic Wikipedia is Not Paper argument. It is true that we have an unlimited capacity for topics, and I frankly don't buy the "articles use resources" argument (the total sum of all articles ever deleted is unlikely to exceed a few megabytes in disk space and network bandwidth). However, topics on obscure fictional entities can be disruptive for several reasons:

  • Each article must independently establish the context of the universe, leading to a great deal of redundant content which is difficult to maintain.
  • These articles can be very difficult to expand. In the real world we can always derive new information about real people, places, and things. In fiction, we know only what the creator tells us; if a character appears in only one chapter of a book, it's quite unlikely that after proper summarization we'll be able to say more than a paragraph about the character, ever. Articles this short are not particularly useful, spending more time establishing context than describing the subject.
  • Attempting to learn about the universe as a whole involves a difficult, unorganized navigation between many small articles, each different in its style and assumptions, that can frustrate readers.

This is why I recommend that groups of related articles about obscure fictional entities be merged into a single summary or list article, or into a "parent" article: the context need only be established once, all together they have enough detail to fill out an article, relationships can be established between entities by direct reference instead of cumbersome links, and the order of presentation can be controlled for maximum brevity and clarity. In fact, I recommend this approach for any group of strongly related small articles - if one of them later outgrows the list article, it can easily be moved back out, as occurred for example with Agahnim. Deco 05:21, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of using sub-pages, e.g., Stargate/Daniel Jackson instead of Daniel Jackson, and having big colorful templates at the top of all the fiction-based articles clearly indicating that they are fiction-based with the name of the source work (book, show, etc.) and genre, to aid the many clueless wikisurfers out there. James S. 10:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Subpages in the main namespace were deprecated long ago, and with good cause. Should Daniel Jackson be a subpage of Stargate, or a subpage of Fictional character, or a subpage of Michael Shanks? As a subpage it can only be under one of these, and I hate to imagine the many pointless and time-consuming arguments all over Wikipedia about which articles should be subpages of which other articles. This is the sort of thing that categories are for instead. Bryan 20:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose: I've heard this argument many times and I always have a few unanswered questions.
    • I never understand why people want to move this information to other wikis. Why not have it here? It still uses 'resources' if it is hosted on a separate wiki. Considering how articles should have their sources cited, most of the information that is available on Wikipedia is indeed available elsewhere. Instead of having a (mostly) pointless article about Still Sick... Urine Trouble (which was the first article forthcoming from the Random Article link), why not just tell our browsers to go to another site? Is that not what hosting on another wiki would do? I thought that one of the goals of Wikipedia was to consolidate knowledge so that people do not have to search around on multiple websites.
    • If you do move such information to another wiki, what's to stop users from recreating the articles? Would a "crime" that be treated as innocent ignorance (we do, after all, encourage new users to try the wiki out) or as something more serious, like vandalism? I'm sure those editors will want to return after they receive a friendly warning not to edit "like that" again.
    • As well, I've never understood why fictional information is targeted. Why not also move everything that is mathematical to another math-related wiki, as Bryan has said? Or sports? Where do we stop? Where do we draw the line? Before we can decide exactly what constitutes "irrelevant and over-obsessive fancruft" and what is "actual fact belonging in an encyclopedia", we should not remove anything.
    • I’m also worried about estranging users by moving/removing information. Certainly there are those who only contribute to fiction-based articles such as these, but others help out in other areas as well. I'm proof of that, for I've touched up a Jedi article or two while also restructuring the ringette article at the same time (not yet done, btw). What message are we sending to potential editors if the "global encyclopedia" does not allow information of one of their many preferred subjects?
    • However, I do have to agree with what others have said before me about quality. There are certainly articles that are unwikied, unclear and unintelligent. Every article that fits that description should be deleted. Some articles do not have enough information to justify their existence and that is the nature of fiction: we can only document what the creator gives us. I still would like to see articles of high quality created and maintained, and some of these fiction-based stubs have merit. While a few/some/most articles should definitely be merged and combined, others have potential and should be expanded upon, not banned. Maybe we cansystematically check every What Links Here section as potential critera for what can be merged? Take the HoloNet article, for example (a Star Wars one; I followed links for a stub, trolling for an example to use here). I initially thought that it could be merged into a larger article, but with twelve "real" (i.e. non-user) articles citing it, I don't think that moving it/removing it would be a simple task, especially if you consider all the articles that a major sweep would entail.
    • In short, I don't see the point of moving/removing articles resulting from fictional universes. Moving them still uses resources, while removing them detracts from Wikipedia's main goals. Both need clear and precise guidelines; else, everything will eventually be sectioned off into other wikis or even deleted entirely. And both moving to another wiki or deletion will alienate editors who bear knowledge; a precious commodity. I vote that we keep all articles derived from fictional universes. –Aeolien 04:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously Very Strongly Absolutely Agree and am Willing to Killl People to Make it Happen. I say we get rid of all the fictitious crap in Wikipedia. Dumb fictitious stories and twerps who write nothing but crap they make up, based only some-what on the truth. Who needs any of it? I know I could've done without it during my life-time... *ahem* Sorry, the urge to comment was overwhelming. Heavy dose of sarcasm. 203.173.22.63 08:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose: Many have rebutted the motion in general terms, Let me answer the direct question asked by the original poster of this topic.
How much do articles like "Star Forge," "Luccia," or "Sarah Kerrigan" really add to our knowledge of the world?
    • When I hear or read one of these terms and I have no idea what it is, so I look them up in wikipedia. It tells me first off that they are Fictional devices or characters. The some basics about them so I can understand the reference to the character location or item without having read the original fiction. If I am then interested in this particular fiction it then gives me the reference (i.e. the original books/games/movies/etc) where I can see/learn experinece more about this fictional item/character and/or location.
    • It is true that anyone particular article on a fictional thing is not likely to be relevent to any particular person. But by the same token almost all articles on fictional things will be relevant to some person at some point when they come across something which they may or may not realise is a reference to a fictional thing.
Waza 04:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is the worst idea ever strongly oppose -- Truth is, we don't even know if Moses is real -- should we get rid of the article? After all, he's probably just a character in some really old book. What about god? Just because these ideas may be fictional doesn't mean they shouldn't be included. Same goes for all of these other notable works of fiction as well -- I love that Wikipedia has an article on chewbacca and pikachu. -Quasipalm 04:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

STRONGLY OPPOSE for reasons stated above. The Wookieepedian 01:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

STRONGLY AGREE I have seen poets, authors, socially relevant people, events and historical articles, all deleted in this Wikipedia, all while Pokemon and other such articles survive? No doubt Pokemon (and Star Wars) are of interest to people, but you have to wonder what their roll is here. Take Star Wars for example, Star Wars was socially significant in the 70’s, 80’s and made a comeback in the 90’s. But in the big picture of humanity (and Wikipedia), it merits recognition in its proper context. It does not merit having every bit of its minutia trivia recorded here, and there has to be some limit. A separate Wikipedia (with reasonable policies) for subjects like this would enable those interested in recording the minutia of perhaps socially interesting but not socially significant things would have that forum. When Pokemon is displacing real life people and events, our priorities have become skewed. (Incidentally, I LOVE LOTR, however would count it in the same category as Star Wars. Interesting, worthy of note perhaps, but should not consume, monopolize or displace more relevant articles. LinuxDude 08:05, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

STRONGLY GROK like I get really tired of seeing the fictional stuff when I plunk Random Article, and I would LOVE to have a choice, a check box, where I could tune my Randoms (this idea could be expanded further) ... And would anybody really mind having a different color background on ALL of the fictional stuff? (let's argue about the color for a few weeks, but would you believe "#CCFFFF" light cyan? ;Bear 02:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whilst I agree in principle with the concept of readily identifying articles about fictional things, this is a slippery slope because there will then be lots of argument over what is fictional. This will include almost all religious articles. And where does a technical article about, say, a fictional film film go? (BTW1, I think the fictional artciles should be in the main wiki, but fewer larger ones is best.) -- SGBailey 08:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wait a minute, I sort of get what you're saying, Bear, but what's that grok word mean? I know, I'll look it up on the Wikipedia. Hmmm, "...was coined by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is part of the fictional Martian language..." Oops, it's about fiction. I better go and nominate it for deletion now. Anville 15:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A word can be sourced from fiction and yet become part of real-life usage. Grok is one such, muggle another. (If you don't consider muggle to be a valid word as you consider wizrads to be fictional, then try Geo-muggle which relates to Geocaching. -- SGBailey 08:56, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Conditionally Oppose: I see Zaorish's point, however the hundreds of hours already put into such articles would seriously discourage those people to come back and contribute elsewhere. I agree however that these articles need to be tightened. Stubs should be avoided and, when found, quickly merged with the appropriate main or more substansive article. Lady Aleena | Talk 09:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Use alternatives to SVG where possible

I really think we should hold back with the use of SVG format images. I personally hate to see them because I have to use IE and the blue background is so very annoying. Why are people pushing a format that simply isn't compatible with the browser used by the vast majority of our readers? violet/riga (t) 20:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but... works fine here both with Firefox and IE. Wikipedia actually spits out a bitmap anyway... Thanks/wangi 23:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Works For Me.
But even if it didn't, MS is working on IE now anyway. But even if they're working on IE now, I don't care. Firefox has working-ish SVG support already, and it's a free download, so no excuse. (And the SVG support lib is free as in speech too, so MS and Opera and Apple and whoever can just use it, unless they're being contrary). Once SVG support is solid in at least one browser, we should switch to putting out SVG native, this will reduce bandwidth usage and server costs considerably. If this gets people to switch to free browsers more quickly, I won't be sorry. Kim Bruning 00:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The software renders SVGs as PNGs in articles, which I think is an excellent solution to this compatibility issue (current version of IE has some transparency problems with PNGs, but it's easy to add a background shape to an SVG if necessary). I think they should send down the original SVGs for users of browsers that do support it though, which is not the current behaviour. Deco 00:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, some organizations have reasons to keep Internet Explorer. Yes, it may not be necessarily wise, but hey, that's something beyond Wikipedia's control. We're on a multi-platform environment anyway, and it's not as if Internet Explorer's market share is insignificant yet. In any case, spitting out a raster file for an SVG is a perfectly fine compromise and pretty decent default behavior IMAO, even if there is some kind of server load cost associated with it. — T-Boy: (complain bitterly) (laugh contemptuously) 00:53, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Theres a simple hack to fix PNG transparency for IE... see http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/pngbehavior/pngbehavior.html  ALKIVAR™ 00:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm against any change that will require a browser switch, as every browser has serious problems (at least on Mac) and users should be able to use the one that works the best for what they use it for. I have one main browser and use three others depending on the application. -- Kjkolb 01:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Getting back to the original question - as it stands Wikipedia renders SVG files as PNG bitmaps for display, and this works well on Internet Explorer. Obviously violetriga is having a problem with something, but it's not a generic issue. T/wangi 14:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And the problem is nothing to do with SVG in fact... After a bit of digging in Violetriga's contribs (note - always a good idea to give examples!) I came up with:
The second, SVG-based, one will display with a grey background on IE. The problem isn't SVG, but rather IE's handling of transparent PNGs. Thanks/wangi 14:39, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In a case like this, the obvious solution is to stick a white rectangle behind the check in the SVG. If IE ever gets fixed, it's easy to remove. Deco 01:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why would you want to put a white background? I use classic skin and it has a pale yellow background... Grey is fine. -- SGBailey 23:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW that second one shows a pale green background in my IE. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 14:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User hints he will delete content on Monday night

A dispute is brewing at Talk:Canadian federal election, 2006 that could use some attention.

Canada is having a national election on Monday. The polls close at 7:30 PM EST in Newfoundland, 8 PM in the Atlantic Time Zone, 10 PM in the Eastern, Central and Mountain time zones and 10:30 PM in British Columbia.

Under Canadian law, it is illegal to publish or broadcast results from any district in a way that makes them available in a place where the polls are still open. For example, a local TV station in New Brunswick can announce results at 8 EST, but the national network cannot announce the results to Manitoba.

Because the Internet is available everywhere, it's illegal to publish results from anywhere on the Internet before 10:30 EST. A guy in Canada was fined $1,000 for doing that in 2000.

However, Canadian censorship laws do not mean anything to Wikipedia, which is not based in Canada. (Theoretically, a Canadian could be held liable for posting results to Wikipedia, but I suppose the only way a prosecutor could find out who the user is would be if he was a user with an IP address for an ID.)

In the past, Wikipedia has ignored censorship laws of other countries, including Canada. Last year, there was a period of a few days in which it was illegal to publish some information on the sponsorship scandal. People did anyway on Wikipedia.

User:E Pluribus Anthony has hinted that he will revert any attempts to post results before 10:30, even if the information comes from reputable sources. To me, this is vandalism.

How should this issue be dealt with? -- Ray Oiler 01:00, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You shouldn't have to do anything. Someone like you will revert the deletions, he'll revert again, you'll all talk about it on the talk page and come to a consensus. There's no reason this has to involve the rest of Wikipedia. We do not have to my knowledge any policy for or against this, nor really need one, and I don't think anyone's going to get in trouble by posting the content if that's what they decide to do. Deco 01:04, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would add that he only gets three similar reverts before being subject to a block. I agree that in principle it's up to each Wikipedia editor as to how or if they want to participate on the page. The servers are in Florida, USA and are presumably protected by US first amendment rights (PS I'm not a lawyer). Wyss 01:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is a can of worms, and not likely to make an impact here. I doubt this will result in anything more than a temporary dispute between Wikipedians, but Wyss, I think you're missing the point. The US has specific reciprocity agreement with other countries which cover the mutual acceptance of the laws other countries pass, in exchange for the acceptance of US law outside the US. Canada is the US's biggest trading partner, and has the most agreements between these two countries. This includes but is not limited to areas of law such as Copyright, Criminal Codes, etc. Although those treaty’s don’t trump the US Constitution within the US, the Constitutional protection of free speech does not extend to non-Americans especially if they are outside of the US. So if Canada passes a law not to publish its election results until such and such a time, and that law is covered under one of the reciprocity agreements (and I'm fairly sure it is, for Canadian election law is governance), Wikipedia can be made to honour it, as long as it wasn’t an American publishing the results. You shouldn’t rest so heavily on your Constitutional protections not knowing international law. LinuxDude 08:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The idea that the American legal system would go along with subpoenas of IP addresses from the Wikimedia Foundation in an attempt to help the Canadian government enforce its censorship law is completely out of the realm of possibility. There have been several instances of Canadians using American-based websites to skirt Canadian publication bans, as in the case of the Bernardo trial, the Gomery inquiry and that mass murder in BC. In each case, the American publishers relied on information from Canada. But Canadian prosecutors never even thought of trying to take action against the Americans or trying to pressure them to find their Canadian sources. If an American court ever were to acquiese in a foreign government's attempt to enforce censorship laws, the outcry in the U.S. would be enormous. That's why it's never happened and never will. -- Ray Oiler 01:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You make me think there are some aspects to this which would be even more murky than I thought and also, I should have been more thorough in my remark. I for sure was thinking more in terms of Americans (US citizens) posting to a US server. Obviously a Canadian posting un-anonymously from anywhere, or even anon from Canada (maybe even the commonwealth, I don't know) would be breaking the law. The point you make about Wikipedia's general liability is interesting and I'm not a lawyer but ultimately I don't think the Canadian government can effectively shut down a server in Florida which is carrying content which is legal in the US, whatever the source. However let it be said, even I wouldn't rely on my own opinion here without knowing more. I should add, given my own affection in principle for the rule of law and my sympathy for the spirit of this Canadian one, personally, I wouldn't participate on the page. But then, I'm not a Canadian who might be anxious for information Monday night! Wyss 13:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another note -- be careful about throwing the word "vandalism" around. I'll agree with you if you say that it's inappropriate for him to revert the changes, but vandalism has a specific meaning and this does not fit. --Improv 14:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Censorship" seems a fairly harsh word for the situation as well: the results will be freely available after 22:30 EST (03:30 UTC on Tuesday). The extent to which content providers are protected by the First Amendment against cases brought in foreign countries is not at all clear, as the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit demonstrated recently in the LICRA v. Yahoo! case (note that this case has now been going on for five years). I would suggest placing a banner at the top of the page explaining that results cannot be published until the polls have closed and that any purported results which are added should be treated as unverifiable speculation. Physchim62 (talk) 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that "censorship" actually fits (although it is of a very mild form with little possible harm) -- it is government supression of the publishing of information that the press would (presumably) like to print, which meets my basic definition. Personally I see little harm in people publishing reports of information people have, so long as they include a source. Verifiability of information does not always imply the same time scope as the censorship -- instead people must wait until the end of the elections to verify the data (although whether it is the data or that the source said it is the important part of verifiability is an open question). In any case, I don't think we should be thinking about the Canadian law or trying to respect it, but there may be unrelated good policy reasons (verifiability-related or not) that should affect how we handle this) --Improv 16:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • See my comments on the election article's talk page for my critique of the template. Regarding the LICRA v. Yahoo! case, you appear to have taken it well out of context. That case was filed by Yahoo in California in an attempt to overrule a French court's decision. Yahoo lost in the appeals court not on the issue of free speech but on the technical issue of whether or not the company had standing in the court. -- Ray Oiler 01:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Something like Template:ElectionResultsCA, for example. The Foundation seems OK on this problem, as the offense requires intent (s. 495(4)(d) Canada Elections Act), but any editor posting results is liable to a fine of up to C$ 25,000 if the Canadian authorities can find them. Physchim62 (talk) 15:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've nominated that template for deletion as a blatant violation of WP:NLT. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 05:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This template should not be used. Provided no citizen of Canada posts the results, there is no risk here to anyone. Canadian criminal law cannot be enforced in the United States. It is a fundamental principle of U.S. law that one jurisdiction will not enforce the penal laws of another, let alone when to do so would violate the First Amendment. Another issue is whether you actually think it plausible that Canada would even attempt to reach across its borders to restrict the free speech of a U.S. citizen or U.S. based company. Postdlf 01:25, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • U.S. courts will not enforce foreign judgments if they are deemed to violate public policy. For instance, there have been several instances where they refused to enforce libel judgments made under British-derived law on the basis that these did not meet the stringent requirements of the First Amendment. See [1]. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 05:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, there is a public policy exception to the recognition of foreign judgments generally, but when the foreign judgment imposed a criminal sanction, the penal law exception applies per se without the court having to even consider policy. Postdlf 05:10, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • That template is nothing to do with US Courts. Why are you bring US Courts or US Law into it. It was simply information to Canadians, who probably don't even know their own law. Surely this discussion should be NPOV, which means not discussing that template in terms of US, East Timoran, or Uzbeki law. Nfitz 06:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • We're discussing policy issues. WP:NPOV isn't at question here. Your statement above would justify slapping disclaimer templates on virtually every single article in Wikipedia. First, let's put disclaimers on all articles related to Tibet, Taiwan, and Falun Gong telling Chinese citizens they could get in trouble for reading/posting there. Then let's put disclaimers on all Nazi-related articles telling the Germans and French they could go to jail for posting a picture of a swastika. And then we can put disclaimers on all pages with photos of unveiled women saying that they violate Saudi Arabian law and that no Saudis should read those pages. Where does it stop? My answer: According to Wikipedia policy and guidelines, particularly Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates and Wikipedia:No legal threats, it doesn't start. We nip this in the butt right now. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 07:36, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I have no idea what NPOV has to do with anything here. Wikipedia is based in the U.S., so it's only natural that U.S. law would be of chief concern to Wikipedia because that's the only law that Wikipedia must follow. Individual Wikipedians must take responsibility for themselves when it comes to their own country's laws and use Wikipedia at their own risk. Laws from nation to nation vary so much that as Crotalus aptly pointed out, we'd end up putting warnings on just about everything. Postdlf 07:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • NPOV is relevent here, because all these people not involved in the debate, are suddenly quoting US law; yet none of the people involved in the debate ever mentioned the US. Besides, the template is neither a disclaimer, nor a threat. Nfitz 08:03, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • The part of the template which is most objectionable is "Editors who post such purported results are breaking Canadian law." No one outside of Canada's jurisdiction is breaking Canadian law by publishing these results: to break a law, one must be subject to it, and Americans are not. If the template were rephrased to apply to Canadians only, it would be correct, but problematic, as others have pointed out, given that peculiar laws in many countries would require a disclaimer on nearly every page here. Xoloz 18:21, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Would it not be sensible to put a paragraph on the page about elections in Canada about this law, and why it exists? To me it seems a very reasonable law to have, and it seems a fundamental part of Candian elections. Don't prhase it as a warning, but as part of an encylopaedic article informign people about elections in Canada. Thryduulf 11:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe an article about similar laws across the world: I know France has one. What should we call it? Election blackout laws? Physchim62 (talk) 12:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good idea. In Britain it is also illegal to broadcast results/exit polls/etc until the polls have closed. Perhaps call it Election reporting restrictions? Thryduulf 12:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We still have a fundamental problem here. The User orginally the source of this discussion, is still implying that he will remove results before 10 pm Eastern. Current discussion at Talk:Canadian federal election, 2006#Removal of early results. While I personally feel that a well-worded warning template is appropriate, and that Canadians shouldn't be flouting the currrent election law (no matter how unjust), I also don't think anyone should be removing apparently valid results in a vigilante fashion. Not sure anything can be done about this until it starts happening this evening ... except more talk. Nfitz 16:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

People are missing the point. Why is Election Canada have such ban? It is because it does not want the posting of election result influcing on people of whom to vote in western Canada. reverting those result, IMHO, is not censorship but rather, as not to influence on people whom to vote. SYSS Mouse 14:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Cool Cat/Checkuser lite

This is a proposal for semi-checkuser privileges to check for sockpuppets. See below for a draft. This idea was first mentioned by User:FrancisTyers on IRC during a casual conversation. The original version of the ideas below are a result of the discussions between User:FrancisTyers, User:Robchurch and User:Cool Cat

Procedure:

  1. Two wikipedia usernames are inputted: User:Username A and User:Username B (anon usernames (aka IPs)) should never be a valid input so as not to compromise privacy.
  2. The IPs (logged on wikimedia servers) are checked for simlarities
    • If people are making identical edits thats generaly adequate enough to (blindly) block them both for sockpuppetary. This tool would only reinforce such blocks.
  3. Returns Likely (very similar or identical IPs) / Maybe (similar but not so close IP range) / Unlikely (IP range not similar) for a comparasion of the ips of users.

Further suggestions:

  1. This could also be a single username input checked for edits by other users from same ip. Which may...
    • Return the list of users who have used the IP
    • A yes/no value if the user has made edits as an anon without revealing his ip. (if an anon and non anon user is making identical edits they obviously do not care about their IPs privacy)
      • This may be bad though I am not so sure about this suggestion.
  2. Checked checkuser lite maybe either...
    • Selective list of users whom are preferably Administrators
      • I for one am not an admin who does RC patrol and if many users are vandalising the same article (with same IP or in a similar IP range) this tool would be a great help to me.
    • All Wikipedia:Administrators
    • Every user (Since the IP isnt revealed)

What this tool is not:

  1. This tool is just a tool there are valid reasons for multiple users to have same IPs (such as proxies). This tool should never be used soley to block users.
  2. This tool is not an invasion of privacy, the IP is never evealed

Have a read of the original proposal. Before comenting please. --Cool CatTalk|@ 12:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Have you thought about what consitutes "likely"? There exists to my knowledge no simple algorithm for that. Checkusering is way more complex than you imagine. Radiant_>|< 13:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • This tool will compare ###.###.###.XXX and @@@.@@@.@@@.YYY. If I were to design this likely would be when ###.###.###.XXX = @@@.@@@.@@@.YYY. Again if I were designing this maybe would be where ###.###.### and @@@.@@@.@@@ are identical. Unlikely would be everything else. Reliying strictly on a tool to ban people is bad taste. Real Checkuser is an art. THis tool is not a replacement of existing checkuser privilages that would be an insult to people like davidgerard whom mastered the art of checkusers.
    • This tool is intended to relieve stress from people like DavidGerard. It is to identify if two users claiming to be diferent people who make similar/identical edits/reverts also have similar/identical IPs. Suspected sockpuppets are blindly blocked, this tool would discourage sockpuppetary.
    • If two users with identical IPs are making completely unrelated edits there is no reason to use this tool. Blocks to such users (such as people using proxies) is a violation of a number of policies and guidelines. --Cool CatTalk|@ 15:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that, fundamentally, you need to see the IP address and understand it to use CheckUser. This isn't a scientific process; it's an art. Without seeing the actual address, you can't tell if it's an AOL proxy server - potentially used by 22% of the internet - or a single dialup line in rural Finland. And the implications of a match in those two contexts are very, very different. Shimgray | talk | 15:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a relacement of checusers. Checkuser is an art which few (only 2 people I know) can preform. This is to have a check for people suspected of being sockpuppets. This tool is to check two people with similar edits suspected of being sockpuppets. If people have identical IPs and edits its safe to conlude they are sockpuppets. However, just because people have identical IPs is no valid reason to block them. Evidence to suspect sockpuppetary must exist prior to the use of this tool.
Real checkusers can be bothered if this tool returns an 'unlikely' for a more indepth analysis. --Cool CatTalk|@ 15:53, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Um, we don't block people for sockpuppetry alone, "blindly" or not. I'm not sure what you want to achieve with your proposal.  Grue  16:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure we do. Any block on suspected sockpuppets is strictly based on the POV of the admin weather the edits of two parties are simmilar enough or not. Similar edits with identical ips are stronger sockpuppet candidates. What am I trying to achieve? A tool to detect sockpupepts without bothering David Gerard. Something will tell me if a person I or someone else blocked is still making similar edits or not. If two diferent ips are making similar ips they should undergo real checkuser rahther than being blocked on sight. --Cool CatTalk|@ 17:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What is your aim in this? Are you expecting all admins to be given the right to use it? If so, I think it's a bad idea. You can quite easily say "I know where this user comes from" and find out if another user matches the range of IPs, even if that user doesn't want to display where they're from. I don't think that's unreasonable. This tool could easily be misused. [[Sam Korn]] 20:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, is it extremely difficult to tell if two users have the same IP? ArbCom members have access, not just David Gerard. Why can't they use regular checkuser? If the ArbCom members are unable to use checkuser effectively, then they should not have access (or a tool should be made that makes it easier, but only they should have access, not admins). Access should be granted to a few users able to use it well and who can be trusted. -- Kjkolb 20:52, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like the attempt at privacy, but it seems like it will lead to mistakes in banning and blocking. If you know the IP address, you can see if it has any contributions and if it has Wikipedia user or talk page, which may have a notice on it that it is a dynamic or static IP. Having the IP also allows you to trace it to the ISP, where you can get more information. -- Kjkolb 21:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am not seeing ips. Wikipedia servers know your ip. they simly tell me if you and another has an identical or similar ip or not. It is a simple tool that returns Green tickYGreen tickY or Green tickYRed XN or Red XNRed XN. --Cool CatTalk|@ 23:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps this should be used as a vindication that those aren't sockpuppets, rather to check that they are. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 17:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Admins should be able to be more "confortable" in blocking people whom have sockpuppet behavior and identical IPs or "less confortable" in blocking distinct ips. Thats all there is for this tool. The tool isn't abusable as far as privacy is concerned. --Cool CatTalk|@ 23:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why checuser privilages is ineficent: I cannot have prompt responses from checkusers. I generaly have to wait lenghty aminsts of time as checkusers unlike common belief have a life. Checkuser privilages to arbcomers is really useless as most arbcomers dont have the time to scratch their head. This tool ment to be a quickie check. Real checkusers wont be bothered about incidents where obvious inpersonation or sockpuppetary is present. --Cool CatTalk|@ 23:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is checkuser really hard to operate? -- Kjkolb 02:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Real checkuser isnt as much as "hard" but more "time consuming". Want the real check users to be concerned about incidents where their art is necesary. If it takes a scrible to take care of some sockpuppets no need to summon Leonardo Da Vincci. "Check user lite" is an over simplified version of the real checkuser art. If a number of people are vandalising with same ip or range its safe to assume what to do about that. --Cool CatTalk|@ 13:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Merger

I have a question about proposing merging pages. How long should this be left open? I noticed one that has been open for 7 months. Isn't this way too long? Thanks... Davidpdx 15:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have worked on some 30+ mergers, and imo, a week's notice should suffice after initiating the discussion, especially, if there is no opposition or more importantly, no discussion apart from yours. I always specify that I would complete the merge after a week if I do not hear any objections. Whenever there is opposition, upto a month could be provided - after that, a decision needs to be taken by the editors involved. --Gurubrahma 15:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Some time ago I had a similar problem, and found no page specifying how long one should wait before doing a proposed merge (or split). I think that most editors wait from a couple of days to some weeks, but having some precise statement about that somewhere could be useful. - Liberatore(T) 15:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I guess it depends how WP:BOLD you're feeling, but one to two weeks would seem reasonable to me. It is difficult to give a hard and fast rule, as some articles have much lower traffic than others. Physchim62 (talk) 16:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A week? The one or two I did, I gave it a day. Put notices on the talk pages of the people that looked like recent editors from the histories and then, when no one said anything (in one case) or everyone said go for it (in the others) just did it. Merging can be undone (although it's a hassle, it's not THAT bad...) since the histories are still there. Is a day too short for small closely related low traffic technical articles? if so... Ooops! ++Lar: t/c 20:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, if you get no response in a week, it's fair game regardless. On high traffic articles this should never happen. If you get a couple positive responses from regular contributors, that should be enough (it can always be moved back if new dissent appears). If an article is "abandoned" (no edits in months), I'd just leave a message, go ahead and do it, and see if anybody cares. Deco 20:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Davidpdx 13:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Will the real policy please stand up?

Just fyi:

Guidelines
Essay
recently marked as wikipedia humor

Can people find other such policy craziness?

Kim Bruning 18:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Be bold in updating craziness. [[Sam Korn]] 20:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure what your point is? Consensus = policy because it's a founding principle. AGF/POINT = guidelines because they're not that clear-cut as most policy. 5P is a description, hence essay. WP:ENC is a restatement of policy, and as such is policy, but it's worded in a humourous way. Any questions? And please be clear rather than gnostic, eschew obfuscation. Radiant_>|< 22:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Consensus is marked as not policy. Assume good faith and Don't disrupt to illustrate a point have lead to Arbitration committee bans (as opposed to say, userboxes or Categories for speedy deletion). If you mess up on the 5 pillars you won't be around for long. There's something odd going on here. Kim Bruning 01:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, the true craziness is that most people don't know what the difference is between a policy and a guideline, and yet many people assume that there is some sort of difference, leading to bureaucratizing remarks such as "you cannot just turn this into policy without a wikiwide vote on it". My personal rule of thumb (and mind you, I'm probably responsible for classifying at least half of them) would be that all founding principles are policy, as well as any rule that defines our process or process pages, as well as anything that, when breached, gets you in trouble almost instantly. For instance, while assuming bad faith is a patently bad idea, many people do it without getting in any kind of trouble - unless they start making personal attacks and are blocked for that. Most corollaries of the above are easier classified as guidelines (or, of course, merged). There's scant policy pages that don't belong - WP:DVAIN is doubtful, and WP:HAR is mainly a corollary of WP:CIV.
      • I should also point out that there's too many pages that attempt to simply restate all basic policies - that includes WP:5P, WP:8W, WP:ENC and probably others. Redundancy is not particularly useful. Radiant_>|< 11:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Replying on the page where talk was initiated, or on the page of the initiator

I have seen various practices for replying to comments on user talk pages. Some reply on the page where talk was initiated, some reply on the talk page of the initiator, some have statements on their pages regarding how they will act, and some request specific actions while initiating talk. Certain discussions are indeed touchy, and shifting questions and answers between two pages may help masking the touchy stuff. However, I have seen several examples of discussions being misunderstood (by third parties, that is) because the threads are divided, where one or the other editor's comments may seem totally out of place. This may affect not only subsequent editing but also voting. I wonder if the semi-privacy of divided talk outweighs the disadvantages. Could this issue be mentioned in some policy regarding user page editing or wikiquette? Even if the guideline would allow any practice, I'd feel easier at mind. --Eddi (Talk) 10:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hate trying to follow discussions where people replied on different pages, so that you only see one side of a conversation in any one place. I wish conversations would stay in one place instead of being spread all over. *Dan T.* 18:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm one of those with a statement. I reply to folks on my talk page that initiate on my talk page. I watch any page (for a week or so) where I initiate. When folks mistakenly reply on my talk page, I copy and paste their response back on their talk page, and reply there. I wish there was a bit more of this guideline in Wikipedia:Talk page#How to keep a two-way conversation readable, but that's what I follow.
I recommend (that's what I do) you to reply on the user you're talking to talk page (it's more polite), but always copy his and your replies to your and his page so you would have a consistent and understandable discussion. CG 19:23, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I reply on both, and then continue the discussion on whichever page the other person replies on. --Carnildo 07:05, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dealing with images with no license/copyright info

Would it be possible to add a policy where the image uploader is notified of any lack of information so that they can have the opportunity to add it, rather than just deleting the picture and leaving the articles that use it pointing to a dead link? Thanks, --Rebroad 15:43, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, three things:
  1. It is already our policy to notify anyone whose image is nominated for deletion on their talk page, and using a tag on the image description page in case they're watching it.
  2. It is already our policy (as far as I remember) to leave a tag on unsourced images for a while requesting more information.
  3. It is definitely already our policy to orphan images before deleting them.
Deco 19:56, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This may be policy, but this has definitely not happened in many cases. I had two images deleted recently, and was not notified about either. I only found out when I visited the articles in which they were used. Neither was orphaned before deletion either. Mushintalk 20:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that a lot of uploaders aren't notified simply because most uploaders never respond to being notified. Alr 01:55, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mushin: to help prevent this in the future, I advise you to keep all images you've uploaded on your watchlist. They may forget the talk page note, but they'll never forget the IFD tag (the people on IFD would notice). Deco 01:56, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately once you get a decently large watchlist your standard watchlist view drops to a measly 12 hours making it extremely easy to miss stuff Plugwash 02:11, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've got a bot (User:OrphanBot) running to try to fix this. If the image is in Category:Images with unknown source, Category:Images with unknown copyright status, or Category:Uploader unsure of copyright status, the bot will notify the uploader and, if the image is more than six days old, will remove it from any articles it's in. Of course, this all depends on getting the backlogs in those categories down to the point that the bot can get to the images before the seven-day limit is up and the images get deleted. --Carnildo 07:10, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to have the bot put a message on the articles talk page also, so others users can fix the problem? Also, perhaps it should remove the image from the article a couple days earlier (say 3 days), as that's an effective way of getting people to "pay attention" before its almost to late to save the image (by finding needed source info). --Rob 08:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's already sticking an HTML comment in the article text and notifying the uploader. Do you really think that adding a comment to the talk page will help? As for earlier removal, I'm trying to strike a balance between the people who want the image removed immediately, and those who don't want the images removed until after deletion. --Carnildo 08:17, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong Submissions, part 3

In one article, I had to delete some unverified information that was also unlikely to occur. However, people keep on placing false information into the article. This is the third instance, what should I do? --WikiPlayer 21:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Will this work if say, the submissions are done by more than one person? --WikiPlayer 00:34, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • The three revert rule doesn't protect against colluding vandals (or a group of well-meaning opposers), but I'd advise you to bring it up on the talk page, encourage the other users to enter discussion, and seek out some more interested users for comment. You may discover they had a good source for the info after all. Deco 01:23, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that anybody would look at the TALK page. It hasn't been used in almost a year. So far, I have found one entry that was absolutely false, and several that are extremely unlikely. --WikiPlayer 02:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since the article is being actively edited, most likely any comment you put on the talk page would be responded to. Why not try? —Wahoofive (talk) 21:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's not the right page, but I see your point. I'll try it. --WikiPlayer 22:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Font sizes: bigger and smaller

Is there any styleguide guidance on when to change font sizes? Some articles have notes and links with size=75% but most don't. patsw 04:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you point to these? People shouldn't be changing font sizes. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see this often in featured articles... (e.g. Planetary habitability, which has smaller fonts for "Notes" and "References"). I think people often follow such practices used by featured articles, but not aware of any specific style guidelines on this. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 16:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I copied this question to Wikipedia_talk:What_is_a_featured_article#Font_size_in_references.2Fnotes_sections. People who review featured article candidates might have a better idea where this practice comes from. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 16:43, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Manual of Style says:

Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases.

Wikipedia:Footnotes insists that only special templates (which incorporate CSS) should be used for notes. The "How to cite sources" guideline doesn't mention any special formatting and none of its examples use it. In other words, I'd say all existing policy discourages such usage. —Wahoofive (talk) 21:09, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Requests for rollback privileges

Please vote on the requests for rollback proposal, a proposal which would give good contributors, who are not admins, access to the rollback privilege.

Local versus global consensus

I have serious concerns about some of the actions that have taken place recently on Canadian federal election, 2006 and {{ElectionResultsCA}}. Throughout most of the election, the large, ugly warning template was posted on the top of the page, warning Canadians that they were violating the law if they posted results, and stating that any such results were speculative and unreliable (even if they came from legitimate news sources). This, to my mind, clearly violates the Wikipedia guideline of no disclaimer templates and the Wikipedia policy of no legal threats. Unfortunately, a large number of contributors on these pages disagreed. My question is what constitutes "consensus" in these cases. Is it a consensus on the pages involved only, or a global consensus throughout Wikipedia? In other words, can the contributors to an individual page really create a consensus to deliberately violate Wikipedia guidelines on that page? I've heard arguments that the messages posted didn't rise to the levels of a legal threat, but I don't buy it. Everyone who makes legal threats on Wikipedia denies that they are making threats, usually preferring to categorize it as a "warning" of what "might" happen if Wikipedia doesn't do what the threatener wants. Before a similar situation comes around again, I'd like to get more input on what the Wikipedia community as a whole thinks constitutes violations of WP:NLT. This seems like a pretty straightforward case to me, but obviously some others disagreed. I'm trying to understand these positions. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 04:52, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't address your central question, but to me a "threat" is when the author implies that s/he will take action personally if you don't do what they want. A reminder that a certain action might have legal consequences isn't really a "threat" in my book. —Wahoofive (talk) 05:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In fact the template was placed on the article by User:Nfitz at 23:29 (UTC), and effectly removed by an edit from User:Crotalus horridus at 01:08 (UTC). In my opinion, the wording is no more of a threat than, say, {{fair use in}}, which states Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement. It does not imply that any individual editor will take legal action, which is the behaviour that WP:NLT is supposed to prevent. I would welcome a calmer discussion of the points in dispute, now that the Canadian election is over and no similar case is arising in the near future. Physchim62 (talk) 13:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Poll for naming convention of television content

There has never been a naming convention for television programming on Wikipedia so there are articles currently named:

Please help out by voting at the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)/poll and voting on through February 15 2006. There have been two previous polls [2], [3], which failed to reach a consensus and proved to be divisive. Make your opinion heard and fix this issue! Thanks for your input and votes --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 01:04, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia NPOV and privacy

I write this as an objective visitor, touching on a potentially contentious issue in this community. Nevertheless I've decided to make my point here and it will either be accepted and discussed, or rejected and pushed away.

It seems to me, and I think it is the right time while the Google supoena is in the collective conciousness of the internet community, that Wikipedia needs to outline its boundaries in regards to privacy of the individual. I don't believe it is a reasonable enough argument to say "This is of interest to a sum of people, and therefore it belongs in an encyclopedia". This logic is a red herring, and I believe it contains flaws, which I will attempt to illuminate.

Firstly, it must be realised that the regular contributors of Wikipedia, of which predominantly all of you are, are a closed community. You are a very large community, but you exist independantly from the collective conciousness of 'general' society. Secondly, this collectivism is further concentrated by the very design of Wikipedia. By that I mean, the like-minded or polarised swarm on a particular topic, and thus give it energy and life. This is a good thing -- this is what creates great articles, allows the process of refinement and drives Wikipedia. And a side-effect of this is that an article can become, at times, inflated for what it is. This is of course a subjective comment, but look up some anime series articles or other subcultural influence articles to see the overstated and obfuscated effect of the collective 'importance' that is placed on some articles.

Even that is not my issue. But it leads me to it, in regards to privacy of the common individual.

I refer to two examples, the Daniel Brandt article and the Brian Chase article. They are perhaps intrinsically linked, but they are how I came to see this side of Wikipedia after using it for many years. Due to the controversy surrounding one of these particular figures, I'd like to make clear that I have never been in contact or any interactive context with either of these figures beyond reading and absorbing the text that flows around these names. And in order to keep the responses to this on topic, I'll refer more to Brian Chase.

In the first instance, it is overwhelmingly clear that Daniel Brandt does not want his article on Wikipedia. In the second, Brian Chase certainly never asked, wanted, or imagined that he would be the focus of an article. He is, of course, the archetype everyman afterall. And yet both these men have articles. And so I ask why. The common response, so I can gather from the resulting delete/keep votes is the argument I paraphrased earlier -- "This is of interest to a sum of people, and therefore it belongs in an encyclopedia".

But this negates the very real issue of moral obligation. If someone does not want their article on Wikipedia, is it morally right to oblige? What constitutes a public figure? In assessing that constitution, should it be taken into account the inherent closed-circle collectivism of a non-mainstream community? Should it then be assessed whether the agenda of the community affects the reasoning towards these articles?

I chose these two examples because they outline what I see is a dangerous precedent, and one that should be openly and objectively discussed. David Brandt "critisied" Wikipedia. Brian Chase inadvertantly brought the integrity of Wikipedia into the temporary spotlight. And it is impossible to remove the motivations that spawn from a community that has this put onto them, from the objective assessment as to whether there is to be a need for the article to exist.

My strong contention is that these articles are a violation of the basic principles of privacy. This is further reinforced by the shift of power that places the opinion of one person into the subjective hands of potentially thousands. When the swarm surrounds the article, and the polarization process occurs, an angle is thus formed. So Brian Chase (hypothetically) the church going family man who enjoys his old Beatles LP becomes Brian Chase (Wikipedia hoaxer). It is of course undeniable that he placed a hoax on wikipedia. But by process of selection, the internet now knows him through the black and white context of being, essentially, stupid. Nevermind important factors such as intent or awareness. This information will concievably be retrievable instantly for the rest of his life. As a result, the mass concencous has a prepacked opinion of this man, and that will affect his day to day work and personal life.

Please assess the ethical and moral implications of this. Put yourself in that situation if it makes it easier.

I believe this man does not warrent enough importance to have his own article. But that is my opinion. Where is the line drawn? I believe this article made it to publication because of the link with Wikipedia. This inflated the relevance to the community, and thus it was assessed as relevant to the broader community. Secondly, it was not balanced with the moral and ethical repercussions that would affect this man.

Unlike a traditional encyclopedia, Wikipedia has no real issues in regards to space. This has positive consequences. But it does effect the relevance when writing about living persons. If extrapolated, one can assume that these types of articles will continue to grow. These men are not famous. They are not prominent outside of the Wikipedia community. They do not deserve their own articles, regardless of the role they have played in Wikipedia history. They are noteable to you. Indeed, these articles exist because the people that make the focus of them have touched on Wikipedia history in some way. But does how does this balance with the ethical and moral obligations such a community should possess? And doesn't, in a holistic sense violate the communities rules of NPOV? I believe Wikipedia should assess whether it has exercised a communal POV in these cases, and in doing so with no major opposition, has not felt the need to place checks on themselves.

You are in charge of a powerful tool. But articles about science and history are very different to biographical entries. Especially so when it comes to living persons. And even more so when it comes to living persons of little cultural or historical relevance outside of the Wikipedia/internet community. I believe the Wikipedia community needs to have a meaningful discussion about this. Focus on the articles that spring up involving the "little people" -- people that outside of your community have no cultural or historical relevance -- and decide on where to draw the line. "Rational"/Logical thought argument has been the general response. So now it is time to look at these articles from a moral and ethical perspective, strongly taking the effect on the subject into account, and their inability to do anything about it.

You'll forgive me for signing without a username. 210.10.166.48 13:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those people were written up in mainstream press outlets such as the New York Times. We didn't publish any personal information about them that was not already public; it's not like we published their home address, Social Security number, or things like that. And, while it's true that Wikipedians are a community and might, on the whole, have values or perspectives not exactly matching the "outside world", it's not really a "closed community" either, since it's open for anybody to join, much more easily than is the case for typical other communities. *Dan T.* 19:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy on Biographic Articles

Several previous comments could be merged into a discussion of biographic policy. Which people are of sufficient public interest to make a biographical article desirable? Should living and historical people be treated differently? Should the subject, family or friends have control over the material.

I suggest that a concept of public figure can be used with reasonable success. For an enclopedia this probably does not include everyone who has been in the news for 15 minutes, but would include anyone who has been substantially public over a period of time, or who is a significant figure in an event that is of significant importance. John Wilkes Booth only did one thing of interest, but he should have an article.

I also suggest that a standard of good taste must be used, but individuals cannot control public discussion of their actions. The public has a right to publish articles critical of public individuals, such as politicians, writers and industry figures. A company or individual has a right to protest inaccurate articles, but not to veto truthful bad publicity.

I think a policy could have a general statement of principles and a list of helpful examples. It would make sense to have a list of reasons that are and are not sufficient to justify an article.

For example, I would suggest that an article is justified for every person who has every been a supreme court justice. I am not sure if an article is justified about every person who has been nominated for the supreme court. (Timely question, I hope.)

I think there would be a long list of easy cases: every head of state, every four star general, every supreme court justice, every nobel laureate etc.

Other cases would require more thought and discussion.

Cre 16:26, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We have WP:BIO and WP:BLP which would seem to address these issues. Physchim62 (talk) 16:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Creative Commons content

Can content that is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license by submitted to Wikipedia? I would have thought not because of the "only under the terms of this License" and "You may not sublicense the Work." parts under Restriction but IANAL.

Apologies if this is already covered somewhere, but after searching for an hour I couldn't find it any of the obvious places. AlistairMcMillan 19:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No. Written works must be compatible with the GFDL. Image use is somewhat more liberal, but must be sufficiently free to allow for commercial reuse (and the possibility that we might want to generate income by selling CD or books derived from Wikipedia content someday). Becauase of this cc-by and cc-by-sa are acceptable for images, but cc-nc is not. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags if you are interested in more details about images. Dragons flight 19:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of Disambiguation at Talk:Ravi Shankar

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation.

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerk's office

Multipost removed. See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerk's_office.

Lists of X in (year)

Problem: We have tons of lists of politicians, religious leaders, artists, literature, etc. organized by year. While these series are nice for inflating edit count, I find organization of individual articles by year to be unmaintainable, and not very useful. I (subjectively) say not very useful for lack of imagination; I'm open to justification of utility.

They are unmaintainable because they're lists of incomplete information, blatantly duplicated across many articles, and they are neglected. Duplication of information that needs to be changed is always bad. This requires lots of human labor to do something a computer can do easily. For an example of an unmaintained series, look at List of state leaders in 18BC. The adjacent years are all practically empty.

Some individual articles have been nominated for AFD, but there was no chance that a single article would be deleted considering the "precedent" of all the other year articles.

Solution: Either this needs to be automated, or reorganized to be more maintainable. Categories are normally a maintainable alternative to lists, but the current technical features of Categories are not ideal for such lists: a political leader that ruled for 50 years would need 50 category tags. We would need a technical change to allow "range" categories.

One idea that does not require software changes is to organize by decade instead of by year: that would increase maintainability by a factor of 10. And it would be more useful to the reader than browsing lots of year articles and manually comparing the differences. We can think about the optimal granularity for lists: obviously "List of political leaders in September 1984" would be too small, but "List of political leaders in 1000s" is too large. I think decade is the right granularity. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-25 19:20Z

I agree that we should change it to decades rather than individual years. That makes these lists a potentially useful resource, which they most probably aren't at the moment. -Chairman S. 23:20, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reason why they are not by decade is in recent history, like List of state leaders in 1984, they are quite full, and doing them by decade would be more troublesome. Also, they are in many senses parts of the general year pages, like 18 BC, or 1984, and so doing them in decade form would be difficult because of that, also. I would suggest you contact the people who made the first few edits to various of them, and ask them to comment on this. Regarding automating it, that is a good idea - doing it with a bot is the customary way such things are handled on Wikipedia, you should probably mention this on Wikipedia:Bot requests. This is a good point to bring up, thanks for mentioning it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I did contact some people. The sole author of the 17 BC, 16 BC, 15 BC, ad nauseum state leader articles has effectively refused to update those pages with the information from 18 BC. Normally when I see such a thing I would fix it myself, but as I've said above, I feel that would only be perpetrating a system that is unmaintainable in the long run. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-28 00:01Z
If you are talking about this discussion;

it looks like there was some confusion in how you asked; you pointed out a simple typo that needed to be merged, and hinted(in the last part of your request), that you really wanted to talk about all those pages, but said nothing about your opinion on them; the person you spoke to misunderstood this, and responded only to the specific request that you made, not the possible offer to discuss the whole issue of List of state leaders pages. I'm glad that you contacted some people, but I don't think it was a case of anyone refusing anything - just a misunderstanding due to a less than totally clear request on your part. I strongly encourage you to post on Bot requests, asking people for ideas of ways to semi-automate the creation and maintanence of those pages, and/or coming up with such ideas on your own. This is a good point you bring up. JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it appeared he misunderstood in the beginning, but his final message to me on my talk page indicated to me that he was not interested in working on the other articles. (This is why fragmented talk pages suck.) Anyway I don't wish to single him out as I have gotten bored of particular pages in the past as well. I will think about a way to do it with a bot as you suggest. Thanks. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-28 06:45Z

sources of promotional material

This question was placed on my talk page, but I don't feel comfortable giving a definitive reply. Does someone here feel conversant enough in this matter to reply? (RJFJR 00:36, 26 January 2006 (UTC))[reply]

OK, i finally have a question! As discussed at Wikipedia:Fair use, posters and DVD covers found at such places as the IMDb may be considered fair use at low resolution. I have found hordes of posters for tokusatsu films at other sites, e.g. The Official Godzilla Site and GojiStomp (a fan site). May i assume the same guidelines for borrowing (and, possibly, shrinking) images from such sources?—Crazillatalk|contribs 21:30, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Good articles

The talk page has recently had a question about why the {{proposed}} tag has stayed on the page for so long when the guideline portion (the front matter before the TOC) has remained stable for so long. One editor simply replaced the template with a box of his own creation, and someone else replaced it, and then it got replaced again, and I restored it. The argument is that the proposed box detracts from the page, and should not remain on it indefinitely. Should this article become a {{guideline}}? Or something else? --TreyHarris 07:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not list it at Centralized discussion? Consider a straw poll. My first impression is that it's just redundant, despite being well-intentioned. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Redundant with what? It's specifically not Featured Articles, for the reasons described there, if that's what you're saying it's redundant with. --TreyHarris 19:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's not proposed, it's not a guideline, it's a list of good articles, and hey, it's a list! It's working, it's there. We're fine with it. No one opposes it, some people actually like it. It's FINE. Congratulations with your working project namespace page.
Now stop waving around tags in peoples faces, before you find someone silly who takes offence. *sigh* Kim Bruning 18:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Check the history Kim, several people have opposed this in the past (mainly because this list also adds templates to every article that's on it), hence the "proposal" tag in an attempt to get more interest. Radiant_>|< 21:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the goal here is to get GA as well-accepted as FA, i.e., a standard part of Wikipedia. How is that done? Walkerma 20:43, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By running it. If it's useful, everyone on wikipedia will use it one day. If it sucks, it'll peter out. Kim Bruning 20:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Use of pre-1923 "copyrighted" stock images

There are a couple of images on Corbis I would like to use for articles, but am reluctant to upload images from such a commercial stock image site. The images in question are pre-1923, as stated in the image information on the website. I do not know if they were in fact published before 1923 though. Corbis claims copyright on the digital version. What has been the general practice or policy with inclusion of such images on Wikipedia? — Eoghanacht talk 14:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

if you can asscertain they were published long enough ago tag as {{PD-US}} or {{PD-art}} depending on exactly how old they are. Plugwash 15:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Corbis can claim whatever it likes, but even reputable institutions and companies frequently claim copyright over things that are in fact public domain, because they lose nothing by doing so and will discourage plenty of copiers. This chart is very helpful in determining what is and is not in the public domain in the U.S. Regarding whether something was published, if the author died prior to 1936, it's irrelevant; it's all in the public domain. What can you tell us about the images that would help us figure out what category they belong to? Postdlf 15:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They are black and white studio portraits of George Jay Gould II (aka "Jay Gould" or "Jay Gould, Jr."). The pictures are very obviously professionally done -- but with no photographer referenced. The first seems to have an older non-Corbis copyright tag in the lower corner -- although I cannot read all of it (only the city) at the preview resolution. This first one also has a 1910 date in the Corbis info. Unfortunately I just realized that this first image has a faint "CORBIS" watermark over it (not particulary visible in this particular image, though). The second image does not have a date, but he looks several years younger than he is in another image dated 1925. I have a version of this second file without the watermark. — Eoghanacht talk 16:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would imagine they are safe to use, providing the Corbis marks and etc are stripped off of them. I really hate it when big companies and institutions make false copyright claims. They definitely know better, they just hope people believe their lies so they can sell them for big bucks. If you need help stripping stuff or want a more thorough opinion, you can post the image to someplace like yousendit.com or rapdidshare.de (I think that's the name) and link to it so one of us can look. DreamGuy 18:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just as a note: Corbis claims the copyright to a ton of known-PD images (including a bunch of PD-USGov images). When one is sure that the image is in the public domain, one should not hestitate to ignore their blanket claims. I once tried to e-mail them about a few images I knew were PD and they responded that they don't care. --Fastfission 19:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, here is what they wrote me back (this was some time ago):
Thank you for taking the time to write with your copyright query regarding images NA007397, IH132146 and IH129444. Corbis owns the copyright to our digital scans of these images. The underlying images are in the public domain in which no one owns the copyright.
Which is complete nonsense -- scanning an image does not generate a copyright, at least not in the United States. I wrote back to them:
I'm fairly sure that it was clearly ruled in Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corporation (1999) [1] that exact photographic copies of two-dimensional public domain images could not be protected by copyright because they lack originality.
So how can Corbis claim a copyright to something which is an exact photographic copy of something which was created by the federal government and not eligible for copyright? [2] That's my question -- it seems to me that Corbis is clearly out of line in claiming such a copyright, and is really opening itself up to a class action suit for anyone who has paid you for a copyright license.
If I'm wrong about this, I would really like to know.
References:
[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm
[2] http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/105.html
OK -- I'll admit. Using footnotes was a little pedantic. Anyway I got no reply. --Fastfission 20:02, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You say that like it's a bad thing! Personally I'd award major style points for using footnotes in a letter to a big corp that uses footnotes themselves, but YMMV. ++Lar: t/c 20:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another useful user attribute

With the recent proposal to grant certain (non-admin) users access to the "rollback" tool--thus creating an additional class of non-admin users (in addition to the current 2--logged in and anonymous), here is my proposal for yet another class of users. Technically, this attribute could be considered orthogonal to the other user attributes of interest, but I would expect that any user who is an admin or higher, or who has rollback priveleges (should they be granted), would also deserve access to this new privilege:

And the privelige is this: To be able to edit Wikipedia, while logged in, from a blocked IP address.

One of the big problems with IP-blocking, and especially Wikipedia:autoblocking, is the collateral damage they create. If Joe Vandal posts anonymously from a shared IP, and gets blocked, any logged in user who also posts from that IP will be affected. While it wouldn't be a good idea to let any logged in user bypass an IP block (for obvious reasons), users who are well-known members of the Wikipedia community in good standing, shouldn't be IP-blocked when they edit while logged in.

It may be possible (or desirable) to have 2 levels of IP blocks--a soft block which is bypassable by the privelege I describe, and a hard block, which disables any edit from the IP, regardless of the user, and works like IP blocks work today. The soft block would be what gets used when dealing with ordinary vandalism (and is what would normally be generated by autoblocks); the hard block would be reserved for exceptional cases, such as known untrustworthy IPs (open proxies, static IPs belonging to banned users, spam domains, etc.)

I have little knowledge of how difficult this would be for the developers to implement.

Thoughts? --EngineerScotty 19:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See bugzilla:3706. --cesarb 20:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help needed at Talk:The Song of Hiawatha

CJLippert bills himself as a knowledgable source on the Ojibwe language, and I believe him. I'm rather puzzled about what to do about a table he has contributed to The Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow used many Ojibway words in his poem, which has an appendix giving their meaning. Lippert has contributed a table comparing the spelling and meaning given by Longfellow with their modern equivalents.

Now, I don't want to be a jerk about this, but I am convinced that in fact this table does not comply with our policies on no original research, verifiability, and citing sources. I don't think there's any urgency about dealing with this and I'm not eager to delete it... but...

What is the best way to cite sources for a table contributed by an Ojibwe language expert which pulls together information from multiple published sources and his own experience? Is there a way to keep this material, comply with policy, yet not require that an individual source be given for the meaning of each individual word?

Please discuss at Talk:The Song of Hiawatha. Please approach this in the spirit of problem-solving. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Should "Trivia" be a valid sub heading for Wikipedia Articles?

In the course of my browsing today, I chanced upon the Moonlight Sonata article, about Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C#m, which contains (inter alia) the following pieces of information, under the sub heading "Trivia":

  • Brazilian heavy metal band Viper made a version of the "Moonlight" Sonata with lyrics in their 1989 album Theatre of Fate.
  • The first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata figures in the first Resident Evil video game
  • The videogame "Earthworm Jim 2" uses the complete first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata as background music
  • The videogame Jet Set Willy plays a small portion of the "Moonlight" Sonata during the introduction sequence
  • A rendition of the Sonata, performed by Alan Wilder, is included as a B-side on Depeche Mode's single Little 15.
  • A variation of this song is also on the first track of Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Beethoven's Last Night album.
  • Yannis Ritsos has written a poem called Moonlight Sonata.
  • The musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown features a song that uses the tune to Moonlight Sonata
  • Bass player Stuart Hamm made a version of the "Moonlight" Sonata in his album Radio Free Albemuth using a two-hand tapping technique. He performed his rendition of the Sonata at a live concert with guitarist Joe Satriani in 2002 ("Joe Satriani - Live In San Francisco").

This is utter dreck which I have deleted with satisfaction, but it raises in my mind a bigger question: why does Wikipedia tolerate a "Trivia" subheading in articles at all? By definition, trivia is unimportant, non notable material. Is there not be a guideline saying "please don't include pointless trivia"? If there isn't, shouldn't there be? ElectricRay 00:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see "Trivia" or "Other information" sections as a group of small but interesting pieces of information that have not yet been expanded into complete sections. I don't think "completed" articles should necessarily have them, but they're a handy mechanism for corraling away little bits of info that need future expansion. Deco 00:32, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
...or just make a new page Moonlight Sonata in market-driven culture, pack plastic recycling bags with the content and eject it into deep space, retaining a subheading Main article: Moonlight Sonata in market-driven culture and the wording "The Moonlight Sonata's familiarity has generated many trivial references in market-driven culture." --Wetman 00:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can't tell, Ray, whether your objection is to the content, or just the heading. If the latter, I agree; just change it to something more suitable, such as Quotations in popular culture. If it's the content, address it on that article's talk page (or boldly remove it); our policies already address such things. Still, the fact that the theme is recognizable enough (even in our post-musically-literate society) to be so often used in pop culture is a significant piece of information about this composition, even if the entire list is overkill. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eww Eww Eww. Incorporate the info into the article somehow or I will come after you with a vengeance for making such headings. Even a different heading such as Uses... or Mentions in Popular Culture as is said above. If they're not all related to each other, then find a way to incorporate the info into the article. (Have you noticed yet that I hate these trivia sections?) — Ilyanep (Talk) 01:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Similar things were discussed at wikipedia talk:trivia - I'll move this discussion there too, when it's finished. --Francis Schonken 07:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hate these. I hate them. I HATE THEM. Look at the last 50 edits to Marduk (as of this post): almost all of them are additions of such valuable gems as "In Namco's PS2 game Tekken 4, one of the playable characters is named Craig Marduk" and "In the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Evangelion pilots are chosen by a mysterious organization called the "Marduk Institute." The Institute is actually a front for SEELE, who are in possession of secret dead sea scrolls that fortell the fate of humanity and the end of the world.". Drivel, written by teenage boys, which has only the slightest tangential relevance to the topic of the article.

Look at the article right now. The crap now fills half of it—in spite of User:A Man In Black's valiant (but doomed) excision of the previous junk not three months ago—and it's only going to grow.

Okay, finished ranting. User:Wetman's suggested solution is the right one; the kiddies can scribble to their heart's content, and people who want to read about classical music or Mesopotamian mythology aren't distracted by poorly-written irrelevancies. —Charles P._(Mirv) 08:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wetman's suggested solution is an excellent one, but for the fact that those opposed to "elitism" (etc.) would object to it. Yes, this trivia is dreary, as are "References in popular culture", which I've seen somewhere. How about the solution of a link from the (very shaky) article on Citizen Kane to "List of references to Citizen Kane in other work"? Failing that, a "Trivia" section is a good idea, given that WP is editable by all, and that thousands of earnest teenagers (of all ages) take this stuff seriously and will insist on sticking it somewhere. Better that it's labeled "trivia" than for it to muck up substantive sections of an article. And of course if some item within it is not trivial, people are free to move this item elsewhere, while leaving all the "Simpsons" references (etc etc etc) as they are. -- Hoary 08:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All very good suggestions. Wetman, I have done as you suggested on the Marduk article - see now References to Marduk in Popular Culture and when I get a moment I will do the same for LVB. Hoary, I sort of see your point, but think there's a fine distinction between elitism and plain irrelevance - it would be equally irrelevant to the topic of Mesopotamian mythological figure - and deserving of jettison to the black expanses of deep space - that there was a character named Marduk in the Book of Kells.ElectricRay 09:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't agree more with Deco ElectricRay; I can't really go along with Wetman's idea, though. It would solve part of the problem, but another part of the problem is that trivia sections trivialise Wikipedia; making separate articles for them will do pretty much the same. Just delete them all. If something's trivial, then it doesn't belong in the article; if it belongs in the article, then it can't be trivial, and should fit into the appropriate place in the main text.
How about starting up "Trivipedia" for all the teenagers out there who add this rubbish? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Funny that you say you couldn't agree more with me, yet I disagree very strongly with you. I think it's fine to have these sections around and that they will, in time, develop into more integrated and expanded content. I might remove them from a published or stable version, but not from any working article. Your generalization about teenagers and proposed project are also offensive to the well-meaning contributors who add this content. Deco 22:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was too hasty in tracing the writer of the original comment (aided by the absence of a space between comments). I've corrected it. Oh, and it wasn't my generalisation, though I repeated it, and pretty well stand by it. There are too many train-spotters here, and people who know (and care) about nothing other than the trivia of celebrities and popular culture. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
and its comments like that which keep wikipedia as the pile of shit it currently is (and is generally perceived as). those "well-meaning contributors" are dumb-ass schoolboys who play videogames all day, indulging them simply creates more cruft articles about Klingon etc that makes wikipedia = trivipedia already. gotta be harsh. KILL ALL CRUFT.
Although these trivia sections should be thoroughly cleaned of cruft (and wontedly have far too many references to cover songs and other knock-offs generally unrelated to the topic), they provide a helpful way to give the reader bits of additional, characterizing information which might otherwise bog down the article's main narrative. I'm strongly in favour of trivia sections in biographical, film and music articles. I mean, what better way to fluidly let the reader know Frances Farmer let the studio shave her eyebrows off in 1936 but had rebelliously grown them back... and untrimmed... by 1937. This would seem, uhm, trivial to mention in the main text but adds context, depth and interest to the subject. Wyss 23:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cruft should be stamped out. If something has had a genuine impact on popular culture, a sub-article should be created if not a sub-section (see, i.e. Nuclear weapons in popular culture, which grew out of just such a crufty-subsection). --Fastfission 20:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been having the same sorts of problems all over the place. Lilith, Chimera, Dragon, Dracula, Behemoth, Jack the Ripper, Werewolf, etc. etc. keep getting filled up with all sorts of trivial references to video games, anime, roleplaying game supplements, one off mentions in tv shows, incidental one off lyriucs in songs, etc. I remove this dreck constantly every day. One of the major problems is that it's difficult to have real consensus to remove them because so many kiddies all get together to try to claim that info is vitally important. "Castlevania is the most well known and important video game series of them all, so I am going to list all the details here." etc. About the only way I've been able to have any lasting sanity is to create Werewolves in fiction, Jack the Ripper fiction, liberally move the crap to disambiguation pages and then just give up on trying to keep the cruft out of that offshoot article. It's like segregation or something. Whenever someone puts crap in the main one I suggest the offshoot, and then the offshoot is total crap but oh well. I personally think Trivia headings should just not be used, and that it's very, very clear that trivial mentions... some character named after some mythical character, one off appearances in comic books, D&D or other RPG adapting something, Magic the Gathering card, Pokemon character, etc... do not belong in the main articles unless those articles are specifically about that fictioncruft and not the main topic. We desperately need stronger policy on this, and maybe, I don't know, something to make it more clear that this is supposed to be an ENCYCLOPEDIA and not just long fanlists of every silly trivial fictional reference you can think of. DreamGuy 22:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think that trivia helps pique the reader's interest. As for relevance, the word encyclopedia comes from the Greek words enkyklios paideia, meaning "general education," or "well-rounded education." Thus, in Wikipedia--the largest encyclopedia ever created--any knowledge can be included. Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged defines an encyclopedia as "a work that treats comprehensively all the various branches of knowledge and that is usually composed of individual articles arranged alphabetically". Stroll by a library reference section and you will find encyclopedias of agriculture, of computing, of slang, and so on. The inclusion of trivia shows just how much encyclopedic Wikipedia is. Besides, deleting trivia will turn off many contributors from adding other information to Wikipedia and possibly turn to vandalism. Further, many of the users who add trivia are younger. If we alienate them, we destroy our future.
    --Primetime 22:43, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of young people adding real encyclopedic content here. Alienating the bad contributors to keep the good contributors is a GOOD thing. Some people just are not cut out to write encyclopedias. This shouldn't be controversial, it just is. If their only contributions are to say that some pokemon character kind of looks like Pazuzu if you squint real hard, let the alienation proceed unfettered so we don't destroy our future by having the clueless kiddies running the show while knowledgable editors get alienated. I know I don't like having to play janitor to a bunch of people whose only experience in the world is videogames and anime who think articles on other topics can be improved with the latest kewl thing they saw. I'm here to write an encyclopedia. DreamGuy 17:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you want a trivia encyclopaedia, there's a far bigger one than Wikipedia - it's called Google. If some method of differentiation between trivia and useful information can't be imposed, we may as well give up on wikipedia and just use Google. It's a line call whether that's a better idea already. Now it's a sociological fact that anime heads will keep adding this stuff - it's not irrelevant to them - so the answer is to give them their outlet - a "references in popular culture" page which is referenced by, but doesn't form part of, a main article achieves that very neatly. Xbox nuts are not alienated, the page isn't disrupted - that sounds to me like a workable compromise. That's certainly the approach I'm going to take from now on. ElectricRay 23:17, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like it would make them very difficult to find. I don't think trivia authors would be too keen on that idea. I admit, though, that it is better than just deleting the information. --Primetime 08:56, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
maybe i didn't explain it properly: there would be a link on the page from the main article - very easy to find. see, for example, Marduk. ElectricRay 09:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't we distinguish between trivia that actually relate to the subject of the article, and trivia connected with persons or entities that just happen to have the same name? Many of the points in Marduk in popular culture don't relate to Marduk (that is the subject of the Marduk article) at all, they relate to fictional characters that just happen to have the same name, so they should surely go to a disambiguation page? --rossb 15:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Many are expressing views I agree with, in effect, trivia's fine if it relates directly and helpfully to the subject, but the trivia sections are often used for content which is no better than link spam. Perhaps references in popular culture "see also" pages would give the cruft (cartoon characters who play Beethoven and so on) a home. Wyss 15:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PD-art vs. PD-US

Does the tag PD-art apply to photographs of art from before 1923 without life of author plus 100 years? If not, does PD-US apply to recent photos of pre-1923 art? Justin Foote 01:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That depends on the nationality of the artist for copyright purposes. The photograph has the same copyright status in the US as the original work, as long as the original is two-dimensional (ie, painting, but not a sculpture; see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.). Pre-1923 work by American artists is certainly PD: for other jurisdictions it might be trickier, I would have to double-check the relevant laws. As for the template, {{PD-US}} fits the bill, but please give as much info as possible on the description page (artist name, date of death, date of production of the work) to help users in other jurisdictions. Physchim62 (talk) 12:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Netoholic, {{Main article}}, {{Further}}

Something odd is going on. I'm seeing a bunch of changes:

I've not seen any discussion of these changes. These are cited in various guidelines, so I'd expect there to be a lot of discussion before deployment.

--William Allen Simpson 02:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy summaries

There is an almost comprehensive Wikipedia:list of policies. Would anyone like to add the two or three remaining summaries, check it and offer their comments or opinions? Stevage 07:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Attacks on non-contributors

It has been suggested that current policy on personal attacks be extended, in some manner, to give some protection to non-contributors (e.g. the subject of a bio article). See Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks#Non-contributing personal attacks. --Rob 11:37, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Proposed deletion

This is a proposed very simple way to deal with non-controversial article deletions. The proponet propses a live test in the near future. I think the idea is a good one, but that some degree of community support is needed to sanction a live test. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion to express your views. DES (talk) 17:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Song copyrights

What's the policy on quoting lyrics in songs? Do we state copyright holders - and if so, what's the prefered format here? --Flatulus 02:10, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean just a line, or a full song? If a full song, don't do it. It's copyrighted material. If it's just a line or two, then that falls under fair use I think. --Golbez 02:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Do quote the authors. Usually, this is clear in context. Superm401 - Talk 03:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cite the people who wrote the lyrics. Sometimes the liner notes don't make it clear who this is - in this case just credit everybody listed as a writer on the song. There's no standard format - you can use a footnote, put it after the quote, before the quote, whatever. Don't quote more than a stanza. Deco 08:50, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Recipes

What is Wikipedia policy on recipes in articles? Captain Jackson 18:56, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not... Instruction manuals - while Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places, and things, Wikipedia articles should not include instruction - advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes. Wikibooks is a Wikipedia sister-project which is better suited for such things. --Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not -Raul654 18:58, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikibooks has a recipie book! :-)
Not just recipes, but a whole b:Cookbook. Gentgeen 10:04, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy trifecta now entirely controversial

The policy trifecta , consisting of neutral point of view, ignore all rules, and don't be a dick is now entirely under fire from all sides, but especially from newer editors. :-)

The original writers are mostly doing foundation work now, so they're too busy to defend or explain their position on any of these rules.

As these policies have long been thought the cornerstone of wikipedia, I am beginning to doubt if simply rewriting these will actually have any meaning. (That is, won't people just keep following them anyway, or else we would have no wikipedia altogether?)

Anyway, it would be nice if people would look into this some more.

Kim Bruning 21:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is inevitable that as the number of editor grows, editable policy docuents enter a state of continuous flux. As a recently arrived editor, I have found the WP policy and guideline documents to be very helpful, despite somewhat chaotic organization and a mild case of endemic inconsistency. Even if there is a lot of tug-of-rope editing and reverting going on (which I haven't really dug into the edit histories and talk pages to discover in most cases), these articles still seem to be useful and relevant, and I imagine they will continue to be. Perhaps being "under fire from all sides" will lead policy statements to become as resilient, flexible, and strong as possible? [[User:Ben Kidw ell|Ben Kidwell]] 21:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Let's hope so. They're important policies, so it'd be useful if people looked in, helped out, and thought really hard... :-) Kim Bruning 22:19, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that policies need to be continually revised not only to address previously nonexistent situations, but to better suit the modern body of contributors. Nevertheless, founding principles like NPOV function as design goals for every article and are at this point essentially irrevocable except by forking - there's already one fork of Wikipedia based on disagreement over this policy. Deco 09:39, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, consider forking to MAINTAIN your view of NPOV in the near future then. Pay attention please. :-P Kim Bruning 09:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, my point is that it seems like the only way to actually change policies like NPOV is to drastically update every article, which is infeasible. Any meaningful change to the policy cannot be implemented. I think a lot of the discussion about these foundational principles isn't about changing what they mean but about spelling out details that were before implicit or vague. I hope anyway. Deco 09:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Less hoping, more helping. Kim Bruning 10:01, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I haven't already made myself clear, I don't think there is a significant danger that these founding principles will be undermined by the current edits that they are undergoing. They're intended for clarification and they're not yet settled. Deco 10:04, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good luck thinking. Don't be a dick got moved to meta, ignore all rules is under threat of deprecation. I'm sure NPOV will be clarified in a similar fashion :-) Kim Bruning 10:08, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, to be honest I've only participated in the IAR discussion, and there doesn't seem to be any consensus for change there - the straw poll alone (without even looking at the various reverted conversions to redirects and moves and disagreements over rewrites) seems to indicate that nobody seems to agree on anything about IAR. It's important to be flexible, but I think consensus incorporating old blood will control drastic changes. I have no idea what the motivation was for moving DICK to meta. Deco 10:17, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Re: Ignore all rules, you missed Wikipedia:Process is Important. If you view the talk page, you will see that this page is intended to replace ignore all rules. Kim Bruning 10:21, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you may be overstating the danger a little bit. For instance, the deprecation of WP:IAR was raised by one lone editor and garnered only brief discussion. I hadn't been aware of Wikipedia:Process is Important, which in my personal opinion is dangerous, but it's just a Wikipedia essay. --Nick Boalch ?!? 10:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The project namespace is a mess due to user apathy. People refuse to participate in discussions, thus even key policies get warped beyond recognition. Kim Bruning 10:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's a pretty POV statement, considering that you're complaining about NPOV being in danger. Perhaps you could point to some concrete examples of POV articles, than we might have a better understanding of what the problem is? - brenneman(t)(c) 11:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

3D Images on Wikipedia

I am alarmed at the large number of "compatible" red/cyan 3D images that are currently being added to wikipedia articles. The problem with the images is that the images look bad without the required glasses (which the majority of readers won't have). For example, User:3dnatureguy has uploaded over 100 3D images and plans to add thousands more. These images shouldn't be treated as standard article illustrations, instead being treated as an alternate media type. I feel the images would be a positive addition if they where uploaded to commons and linked to articles with the standard {{Commons}} or maybe a new template specifically stating 3D images are available at commons. Is there any existing policy on this? --Martyman-(talk) 06:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Figure out something sane. Do it. Then write down what you learned. Tag your writeup as a guideline.Kim Bruning 10:32, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am not feeling authoritarian enough to try and write a guideline based solely on my opinion. Is there any way to judge general perception on these things before jumping in at the deep end? --Martyman-(talk) 11:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
*grin* Well, since no one has a good idea, try something. But before you do that, read through the image policies a bit, and see what you can find in old polls or what not. You might get some ideas. Try and do something that seems sane in respect to what's already there. Discuss with folks too. I know this is tricky at first. Once you figure something that works, go and do it. If it works well, PLEASE also write it down on the wiki, so other people can learn about it. (that's what the guideline bit was about). Most importantly, have fun! :-) Kim Bruning 11:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bringing it up here is a good start, IMHO. Then maybe create a new template tagging these images as having issues? Put one or two up for deletion to judge consensus? Start a discussion page somewhere in the Wikipedia namespace (BTW where ARE the image policies to be found?) and try to put down the pros and cons, maybe invite a few noted metapedians to comment on it, as well as the image uploader that's uploading all of them. Personally, after going to look at a few of these (and in particular looking at an article, Custom car where they are used), I think they're distracting and make the articles look "gimmicky", and your thought that they should be treated as a separate media type rather than being acceptable as the only images in the article seems a good one to me. Hope that helps. All IMHO only, and I'm just some newb. ++Lar: t/c 19:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can see there are not many image guidelines/polcies. The ones that exist seem to be entirely about copyright issues, rather than content. I am feeling a bit lost, and don't really know where to start. I don't feel IFD is the right path, though. I am also concerned that "anachrome" being used by the uploader to describe the images is the trademark of his company that sells 3D glasses. --Martyman-(talk) 21:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have tried to scrape together my ideas at User:Martyman/Sandbox3 Wikipedia:3D Illustrations. Any comments? --Martyman-(talk) 22:01, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Martyman, if I can chim in here - my issue with the 3-D photographs is 1) the sheer number that are being posted in these articles per each article and 2) Are they illustrative of the subjects, or are they simply showing off what the process car accomplish. Here's the thing, any illustration for an article should at least provide examples of the article - a lot of these 3-D images just show a part of the car being written about (fender, or a radiator cap, etc). The problem that I have with the 3-D process images is that they are not universally accessible to Wikipedia's user unless they have access to the glasses which they have to buy or otherwise obtain. In there proper context, (an article on 3-D imaging, etc.) are more appropriate. Still, I really would like to encourage this user to start submitting regular images that don't showcase this limited technology. Stude62 22:23, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have moved the proposed guideline from my sandbox to the wikipedia namespace at Wikipedia:3D Illustrations and tagged it as a proposed guideline. I am unsure how to go about generating discussion on it now. I have asked for the opinion of a few wikipedians I respect, but am not sure where else to ask. --Martyman-(talk) 23:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response from User:3Dnatureguy. Me have a chance to respond to the "tempest" that seems to have arisen over my 100 pictures posted. First I want to stress that they a generally good pictures in terms of color and relevancy. Secondly,they are supposed to look at least average, overall compared to the typical illustration at the thumb size. Has anyone bothered to look at them with any of the millions of paper glasses distributed each year? These are actually offered FREE on several websites.

Here are three images posted in small thumbnails, to illustrate:

Detail of facade: in 3D
Commodus in lion skin in 3D.
Modern, but very Basic '32 roadster

Anachrome is a process that places very high value on "backward compatiblitiy".There are only about 5 topics where bad 3D images ought to be "tolerated" on Wikipedia, articles about 3D and perhaps some NASA related articles. On that, we agree!

I ask you to consider that the ideal encylopedia is no longer the Britanica 1911 format, but rather something like a fusion of modern Britanica and National Geographic. Good color has come to be a staple in National Geographic, but there were many in the thirties, who couldn't conceive that a 35mm camera and a roll of Kodachrome could capture the real world in color for the magazine. Let me send glasses to the first 10 editors who take any interst. Look at these images, form an opinion on the over-all value of what you see. In the meantime I will refrain in posting more than 10 images per month, They will all be of the best possible quality in terms of "compatibility" and of course, relevancy. Finally, and most importantly I think thumbs for 3D should restricted to no larger than 150px wide, and always marked 3D as a warning to readers. Also, when both a flat version option is posted as primary, a secondary can be thumbed at one third the size of the primary. A good example is a NASA artwork, which, I think could be offered both ways. Another option would be for "stereo fans" to create our own Stereopedia, using Wiki text with our images. Is that legally doable?3dnatureguy 02:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Above comment copied to Wikipedia talk:3D Illustrations, please try to keep discussion on the proposed policy page. --Martyman-(talk) 02:08, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tutorial: how to circumvent guidelines & consensus-building

See: Talk:List of Polish monarchs#Aftermath

I'm presently a bit discouraged by ethnic/nationalistic cabals driving home a firm grip on page naming, scorning wikipedia's general guidelines & policies.

The example above is about how a subset of Polish wikipedians were successful; as we all know the Icelandic subset is not less successful, for example presently holding back the adoption of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (thorn).

In a funny way, this connects to the problems mentioned above by Kim: the same people that are successful in bending the guidelines at the outskirts of the project namespace (the "thorn" & "Polish Rulers" Naming Conventions are definitely outskirts), often as easily engage in modifying general guidelines, example Wikipedia talk:Ignore all rules#Change proposal --Francis Schonken 15:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I find it interesting, that when I listed the page on various noticeboards, RfC, W:Naming convention sections and talk pages, almost nobody came to debate this. But months after first proposal, after we finally gave up on attracting more opinions and started moving the pages, suddenly the case is reopened and people who invested hours into doing the research, making the proposal and such are accussed of being a nationalist, POV-pushing cabal :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:05, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Piotrus, don't worry too much about the name-calling - in fact I had to say the same to your opponents here --Francis Schonken 17:15, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Funny thing is, his opponent (i.e. me) never actually called him these names. Piotrus is merely claiming this in order to make out that he is being victimized (defense being, as the old saying goes, the best form of attack ;) ). He claimed this on another page too, I asked him to point to an example and, funny thing this, he never did. Others have used these terms for him, but not me; of course, not having done it doesn't mean I disagree with these. On the other hand, I have a growing number of examples where he did indulge in name calling, and I'll be more than happy to post links should Piotrus desire it. :)- Calgacus 18:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mini-guidelines

Is there a page where guidelines specific to a small number of articles and which were created after lenghty discussions are compiled? For example Capitalizing prophet in "Prophet Muhammed" or using in this order "Judaism, Christianity, Islam" when referencing to the Abrahamic religions. CG 16:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I believe the latter has been discussed, and has largely been decided that the order of the three is not defined and should not be defined (concerted efforts to impose a standard order by individuals will likely meet opposition). If one is speaking about "the Prophet Mohammad", it would be capitalised as being part of a proper compound noun, as per the rules of English. --Improv 00:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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