I recently learned that there is no way to view the edit history or old talk pages for deleted pages (unless I guess you are an admin?).
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This seems contrary to the "Wikipedia spirit" in a way. I asked this on the help desk and everyone said, why should everyone be able to see a deleted page, in that case what's the point of deleting? That argument doesn't make sense to me. Why should be able to see ANY edits then? If someone adds non-notable/reliable content to an existing page, anyone can go look at the history. But for some reason if there is a whole article that's not notable/reliable, no one can view it.
Reasons why this might be useful to be able to view:
Would like some clarity around the reasons for this. Thanks! -KaJunl (talk) 22:47, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Even in terms of non-notable deletions, why would you want to view it? You wouldn't want to copy that information anyways. It was deleted for a reason. Mirroring or going off of that data will just result in another deletion. This discussion has been talked about dozens upon dozens of times. Non-admins being able to view deleted content is not going to happen for the reasons above and many more. For more information on this perennial proposal see this. --Majora (talk) 23:01, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't spend much time bothering with vandalism - it occasionally crops up on my watchlist and I revert it with a disinterested yawn. Very occasionally, I will block without bothering to leave any template or notice. I think WP:RBI and WP:DENY are good practices to follow. Anything more than this is diverting my attention away from improving the encyclopedia.
With this in mind, I have been concerned for some time about things like the Counter-Vandalism Unit Academy. Putting aside the name sounds like something the Government would give to something once called Counter-Vandalism Secondary Modern, this really does seem like a solution in need of a problem and is giving too much attention to what should be a low-key task done with the minimum of fuss. Any time we are spent in a lather of managing those who screw around is not improving content. In particular, I think templating clear and obvious vandals is a complete waste of time, and would be interested in any evidence that such warnings are actually successful in making people suddenly stop and make good faith edits. My experience shows that somebody who is only interested in bad-faith contributions will never show any sign of repentance and reformation, so why bother? I am concerned about things like a "leaderboard" that seems to be "making important what one can measure" and appears in my view to go against the philosophy that Wiki is not about winning.
So what can we do? The obvious thing is to make our automated tools such as ClueBot do more of the grunt work. When we process vandalism, do we add the reverted material to a Bayesian filter corpus that allows the bot to be even more effective and minimize false policies? If not, why not? ClueBot isn't perfect - I've seen it revert good faith edits (in all cases they were made by IPs with no edit summary) and logged false positives. We should be delegating out boring, repetitive work to machines wherever possible, leaving the humans to do the creative job of writing content. I'd also like to ask people to think about whether they have an effective audience before they hit their "template spam" buttons, and I would question admins who refuse to block unless somebody has got a particular "quota" of warnings. Save your warnings for the good faith but disruptive editors.
I don't hope to get the CVUA dismantled tomorrow and all editors redistributed to working on improving articles to FAC, but I thought I'd lodge these thoughts here and see what people have to say about it. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:50, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
I'll only comment on one aspect as others have been mentioned. A large majority of vandals stop after a couple of warnings. They might have stopped anyway (in fact, likely would have). But the point is, a block would not have been necessary. So requiring enough warnings means that blocks are made only when truly necessary. If vandals were reported sooner to admins, admins would waste their time going through the reports, making unnecessary blocks, and it would thus take longer to deal with the persistent vandals that do need blocking. We don't have enough admins to handle every vandalism edit. Doing away with the requirement to warn vandals would quite simply ruin the system. (AIV would be a constant backlog of dozens of reports... such an experiment wouldn't last long.) Cenarium (talk) 18:11, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
Blocking is very important in cases where the user indulge in persistent personal attacks, vandalism, copyright issues, etc. However, as identified by the community numerous times, newcomers are often not totally aware of the policies and guidelines that are ought to be followed on Wiki English. Even after repeated warnings, some new users try to contribute to Wikipedia in good faith and end up being blocked to prevent further disruption. They are even blocked from editing pages in their namespace. I'd like to raise an idea here. What if perpetual disruptive editors were allowed to edit their user namespace, or, at least their Sandbox and possibly create draft articles, while gradually getting acquainted with the rules here. Editing their own namespace has little possibility to disrupt Wiki English.
Hello. I have a question about consensus regarding the notability of schools. I recently nominated a school article for deletion at Wiki: Articles for deletion/Good Shepherd English School, because I felt that the school did not meet our notability requirements, but also as a bit of a test case. The AfD has been closed as snow keep, after some editors pointed to WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, which suggests that secondary school articles are typically kept. Now, that page is not presenting a policy or guideline, but rather summarising typical results of AfD discussions. Isn't closing an AfD as keep because an essay says that such AfDs are typically closed as keep a case of circular reasoning, though? How would one challenge this consensus? If I try to challenge WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, then editors there can reasonably point to all of the recent AfD keeps, but some of those articles are clearly being kept precisely because of WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. It would be interesting to hear other editors' thoughts on this. How and where would one go about challenging this consensus, for instance? Cordless Larry (talk) 16:18, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Noting that Wiki: Articles for deletion/Good Shepherd English School has been closed as delete. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:40, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
In general, we have a number of outcomes essays, which, on their face, merely state what the usual results of AFDs are. However, they are often cited by !voters both to Delete and to Keep as if they were guidelines, and are sometimes cited by closers as if they were guidelines. This, as User:Cordless Larry points out, is circular reasoning. We need to approach this issue in one of two ways. Either we need to elevate the essays to the status of guidelines, or we need to add language to the essays stating that, since they are only essays and not guidelines, they may not be cited by closers, and citing them by participants in deletion discussion has no strength of argument. If we want to elevate them to the strength of guidelines, we can either change the language in them, or we can merge them into existing guidelines, such as corporate notability guidelines. If we wish to have them continue to be only essays, then caveat language should be added to them that they may not be cited by closers and any citations to them should be ignored by closers (and citing them by closers is an error that can be appealed by DRV). There are several outcome essays that are similar, such as one about clergy, but the school outcomes one is the most controversial. We need to do one of two things, to upgrade the outcomes essays to guidelines, or to clarify that the outcomes essays may not be cited. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
Template:Infobox telescope currently imports data from WikiData, an unreliable source. Even if citations are included in an article to support the data from WikiData at the time the citations are added, the WikiData information can change without any corresponding change in the citation. Should Infobox telescope be reverted to a version that does not import data from WikiData? Jc3s5h (talk) 12:46, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
It is appropriate to modify existing infoboxes to permit Wikidata inclusion when there is no existing English Wikipedia data for a specific field in the infobox (option 4 of the first question). There is sufficient support for option 3 however, to indicate that this modification should be done carefully and deliberately, at least at first.
It is, on the other hand, not appropriate to use Wikidata in article text on English Wikipedia at this time (option 1 of the second question). There is a valid point raised that while running text is clearly not suitable for Wikidata use, it might be worth discussing use in tables specifically – but not consensus regarding this has been reached in this discussion.
Looking at the Hale telescope article as it existed at 20:35, 29 January 2016 UT, it doesn't seem this idea is working out very well:
You seem incorrectly to be interpreting the comma as a decimal point. This is incorrect per WP:DECIMAL.
I expect the other concerns will be worked out as each article is converted to use Wikidata (except the date of course--Wikidata devs are working that now). --Izno (talk) 15:19, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'm looking at serious ongoing behavioral issues, and don't know where to turn. WP:ANI doesn't seem to work. WP:NPOVN doesn't seem to work (although i would encourage everyone to watch that page and check it often to help others who are asking for help!) I have found admins who act abusively, instead of helping. I'm seeing bad editing practices all over the place. I'm seeing people unilaterally, archiving talk page sections that they don't like, re-reverting that when it's restored, refusing to acknowledge that it's a problem, insisting that there is consensus when there is not, hatting talk page sections that they don't like (to shut down the dialogue), people calling other editors names all the time, people using bad dialogue (like strawman/misrepresentation and rhetoric in place of substance) and the like. I'm seeing gang-like editing behaviors, where several editors seem to work together to maintain a page in a certain point of view. I'm seeing serious takeover of Wikipedia without a genuine regard to the policies. I'm seeing so much absurd stuff going on that it seems Wikipedia (at least in some topics) is broken. There is so much edit warring instead of discussion. There is unilateral action with complete impunity. There is very little actual enforcement of policies. There is WP:POV RAILROADing. I'm sorry i can't be more specific, but i have been observing these things in general for too long now, and the arbitrtion and enforcement structures simply do not work. It's broken. There is too much pushing and bullying. Where is the respect for each other and for "the sum of all human knowledge"? Rant over. Had to get that off my chest, and hope to hear your experiences, similar or different. SageRad (talk) 21:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
In the end, you're basically someone who joined a game, tried to cheat at it, got caught, and now you run around telling everyone how stupid the game is. The game may or may not be stupid, but your motivations are so transparently self-serving that they invalidate your criticisms. MastCell Talk 16:27, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
That said,- That said and ignored. Your comment simply pours fuel on the fire. Others' behavior does not justify yours. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:22, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Hopefully we can all be learning and evolving together, and not polarizing all the time against each other. Hopefully people who have had past issues can evolve to work better with each other. SageRad (talk) 21:37, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm not saying that this is good or bad, it's just the nature of how slowly organizations change, especially decentralized groups like the Wikipedia editing community.), a sentiment with which I concur wholeheartedly; fifteen years of inertia isn't going to shifted just by wishing it so, and if you want major changes you need not only to identify the nature of the changes you want made, but identify a means of getting them implemented and a means of persuading people that doing so will be worthwhile. Make the quote
Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change itif that suits you better. ‑ Iridescent 17:42, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
It's easy to be civil and it's easy to not be a bully, if you're committed to doing so. It's easy to edit according to policy and to hold ourselves to high standards of integrity, if we want to. I also edit in areas that are extremely civil, and it's a wonderful experience. I want that same level of integrity and civility in other areas that are contentious, but there does not seem to be the critical mass of editors willing to stand up for civility and principles as there needs to be to change the general culture. There is instead impunity and gang behavior. Many good editors have been intimidated out of editing in such areas, and have stated so explicitly. When you do try to use ANI or NPOVN or other structure which are supposed to be the next-level way to address it, they typically result in no action or blowback action against the person making the appeal. Therefore, the system is broken in certain areas where there is contention. I think we can foster a critical mass of integrity, and the first step in doing so is to name the problem. The second step is to step up and address it. Stand up for what's right, even in small things. If an editor is repeatedly deleting other editors' comments on talk pages, isn't that a signal that they don't have the innate integrity needed to function well in discussions of possibly contentious topics? If another editor is consistently name-calling, acting bully-like, being emotionally abusive, etc... that's a signal that they are probably a source of problems. Other editors may react in the moment sometimes to those centrally problematic editors, and that's to be expected. They even know how to bait, how to get others to blow up and then use that as ammo against them. There is this stuff going on. This stuff is toxic, and drives away good editors who really do want to apply the policies like NPOV and RS to to correct goal of writing a good encyclopedia useful for the human species. SageRad (talk) 15:05, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
The parent discussion is useful, but too blue-sky to actually achieve change. I would like to take one of the things mentioned (by me) and frame it as a formal proposal.
PROPOSED: Confine each ANI complaint to addressing the behavior of one editor. If the opponents of that editor have behaved badly, handle that separately. Avoid linkage. Do not allow User X's bad behavior to mitigate User Y's bad behavior.
Ricky81682: First, this is about ANI, not AN3. This is not an edit warring context. Also, it doesn't say we must have a separate discussion for User X, only that User X's behavior may not be used as a defense by User Y. As for your last sentence, I'm not sure what you mean. Are you referring to User Y "using the behavior of others" in their own rationalizing, or as a defense at ANI? If the latter, that may be true, they may try the defense regardless of this culture change, but that defense would be futile. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:50, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Calidum: I don't know what that means, or why it would be an Oppose rationale here. Could you elaborate? ―Mandruss ☎ 22:50, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Blueboar: Not so. If the person who was reported first was not judged to have committed actionable bad behavior, no action would be taken. But their behavior would not be excused by someone else's behavior. Regardless of the outcome of the original complaint—or even before that complaint is resolved—a complaint may be filed against the person who filed it, and that outcome may be more serious than that of the first complaint. No change except the elimination of linkage. The need to keep the complaints physically separate is simply a matter of organization. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:14, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Both of these are not new behaviour, rather behaviour that was tolerated far more in the "old days". If I make a distracting spelling error why should someone not correct it? If a thread needs closing why should it not be closed? The ossification of the community has made both of these actions ones which were looked askance upon, and then (unofficially) frowned upon, and then over which people were taken to task.
My advice is, be very careful editing others' comments, and annotate anything non-trivial (indeed consider notifying the editor instead) and be careful closing ANI sections.
The reason I suggest more caution over editing others' comments is that the action is less obvious. ANI closes can be, and often are, reversed: so while it is a good idea to close "correctly" a mistake should not be a major problem.
Wiki is (or was) a bit like the Wild West, and where reversible actions are concerned this has stood us in good stead. Almost all the problems stem from irreversible actions. And we tend to compound this by taking more irreversible actions as a remedy.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC).
I believe the sad reality is that many should just leave the project. Before things can get better first they have to get worse. The current editors seem not at all interested in changing their ways, things just are not bad enough. Or things are going just fine the way they are, it depends on your perspective.
I think the problems are many and obvious. There are countless ways to identify the problematic editors. For example: If you are reading this and your mind is fixated on pretending I've experienced- or physically are- the problem then you are one of them. As long as you maintain that bad faith assumption you and me can not write an encyclopedia together. -> This is not my problem. You are doing this every time you see someone raise an issue. Don't expect that on the man approach to ever fix anything.
It is like filling a bug report "that link overthere doesn't work", then getting a response like "you can still get to that page by doing A, B, C, D" Here the person who is suppose to fix the bug pretends it is the user who is having a problem. This while the person filling the bug was trying to help him.
As noted above, the Wikipedia system was bad from the beginning. There never was peace on Wikipedia nor was there sufficient effort to enforce the rules. There are these illusory pillars and edit guidelines but they are like having a law book without a police force or a court system.
It is perfectly acceptable for overly active long time editors to cite guidelines they've made up themselves. If their buddies, or shall we say, random other editors agree, then: that is what the guidelines "says" and it will be enforced the way it was imagined to work.
As an IP editor I get to see this again and again. The usual response is that I should make an account, which fails to appreciate the issue raised. It is as if I'm interested in treating the sympthom, as if it is acceptable for editors who know better to "accidentally" fabricate convenient guidelies.
But that is not all, much like any article the guidelines and pillars are written and guarded by teams of users who by understatement are really not interested at all in your participation or views. Endless debates and small tinkering will never accumulate to serious changes to any of these ideas. Those who would have agreed with your proposal left Wikipedia long ago or avoid the page like the plague. That is what WP Consensus refers to in this context.
If you can see- or think-that the small club (or shall we say cult?) controlling the guideline is wrong or insane you should really abandon the project. Do continue to edit some trivial mainspace mistakes 2 or 3 times per year or post 2 or 3 talk page comments, but limit participation to that.
Admins, the wikipedia law enforcement, can and do randomly shoot people on the street without consequences while being reluctant to enforce even the most obvious guidelines.
I've seen one editor, who I cant blame at all, with an edit history that should be described as a multi-year river of insults. I estimate he cost Wikipedia roughly 2000 users as people simply don't care for cynical and insulting feedback on their constructive legitimate effort. It was amazing to see administrators ban users on his request after they simply insulted him in return (which should be an entirely acceptable deed for a newbie repeatedly insulted by a long term user) The guy had so many insults in his name that we can hardly blame him for it. He clearly didn't know any better.
Meanwhile on a different page far far away editors are ganging up on a contributor who simply lost his cool for 1 minute.
It is hard to imagine admins not to be entirely and fully aware of these double standards.
But you wanted solutions, I find it hard to see where to begin but ok.
Lets enrich ANI by having involved parties provide links pointing at their X most recent mainspace contributions. Restoring deleted content doesn't count and minor contributions may be skipped if the editor desires it.
That way administrators don't have to read endless horror stories but they can adjust their bias to the wonderful contributions made by the user before banning her.
While the report might be valid and filling it might contribute to the project constructively: If the editor filling the report is not an active contributor his ideas about the way the article writing process should work are not based on experience. It was someone else who was trying to write an article and he chose to get in the way of that process. That choice might be legitimate, the goal of the project is certainly not to make antagonizing the writing of the encyclopedia as comfortable as possible.
The reality is that editors who are willing to do the research, make the citations and format the pages are perfectly capable of self-policing among their own. (not directly of course)
In the current paradigm vandal fighters are a precious type of users in contrast with article writers who are considered a disposable commodity. But face the music, the vandal fighter is never going to teach the new user how to write articles, all he can do is tell her how not to do it. again and again and again...
Personally it is the first thing I look for when a user is disagreeing with my contribution. I look at their edit history to see how many years ago their activity last involved article writing. If I'm impressed by their contributions I will make far greater effort tying to debate the disagreement, if there are any I respect their emotional outbursts and continue to calmly explain why I think it is valuable to the article and so on. If their contributions are laughable however, I will systemically avoid debating the art of article writing, not because I don't want to but because it is pointless. You can only have a serious discussion if participants share the same goal.
I believe administrators are very capable of making that call if they are conveniently provided with the stuff that makes valuable editors.
Ill consider against to be a vote against article writing per WP:Making Stuff Up. 84.106.11.117 (talk) 22:17, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
Can we incorporate text into Wikipedia from works that are public domain in the US but not in their country of origin? I'm currently thinking of this[1] (likely still under copyright in UK because author died in 1953), but there are many similar works. This one is a nice biographical dictionary that would let us start stubs on many notable people. Thanks, Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:57, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Viewers here may be interested in Wiki: Mouse! ϢereSpielChequers 23:03, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
The article on SodaStream keeps pressing that they employ 500 Palestinians, and they mention more than once how the company had to let go of them because they had to move the factory from Ma'ale Adumim in the West Bank after boycotts.
The whole tone of the article is biased, it quotes the people, and state the facts that help its case in regards to the Palestinian land situation & the controversy that surrounded it and led to the move in the end.
I find it biased to keep mentioning that they employed 500 Palestinians (and not mentioning other employees, which include Jewish Israelis, and Palestinian-Israelis) without mentioning what the same process might have done to other workers. They also mention that they are expected to employ Bedouins (who are in fact Israeli citizens) in an upcoming plant.
I'm requesting a neutral-party reading of the article. And I need more details on this particular situation (reporting only the facts that give a good image, but not all the facts or the ones related to it), vis-a-vis Wikipedia's editing policy (WP:SOAP, WP:NPV). I'm also asking if the way it's written warrants a {{advert}}, or if it reads like it was written by a PR firm to present a better public image as means of damage control after the controversies and boycotts. ¬Hexafluoride (talk) 21:11, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Views are wanted at Wiki talk:Sock puppetry#RfC: Should WP:FAMILY be deleted from WP:SOCK? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:54, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Dear all Wikipedia users,
I would like to release a statement that will argue to eliminate the CheckUser tool from both the English Wikipedia and the global Wiki Foundation. I understand that this will require a major change in the WMF software and will require intervention of Jimbo, but there are several reasons why I strongly feel that the tool should become history.
Wiki is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. When a user registers an account, it is said that registering hides your IP address. It makes no mention of the CheckUser tool. To me, that's deceiving. Also, a user's IP address and physical location is private. I don't think it's right for another user who may have no connection whatsoever to the subject, to be able to find private information that could compromise the user's security without that user's permission. In this case, I would be for keeping CheckUser in place, but only if the policy could be altered to require that the user's permission must be granted first.
I am also strongly aganist the deletion of {{Checked by CheckUser}}, because now Checkusers cannot notify their subjects. This just adds on to my argument. Now, something that is already a potential privacy issue is now being done without permission or even general knoweledge of the subject. I definitely feel that it is wrong. I don't see any problem with users using multiple accounts, and why it would need to be determined that they are the same person. Many people on other websites use multiple accounts, and those sites equivelent to Wikipedia's ArbCom does not scrutinize it at all.
Regardless of what others think, I will continue to stand my ground and am willing to take this matter directly to Jimbo himself if needed. This is a matter of user privacy above all else. 50.153.133.28 (talk) 01:13, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
A block is not a warning though. It is an action to prevent further disruption to the wiki. The warnings come before that and should be taken more seriously than they are by users who end up blocked (else they wouldn't be blocked--misuse of tools is actually not the epidemic that many would suggest it is).
You may be interested in WP:CLEANSTART. --Izno (talk) 16:42, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
I propose that we do the following:
--Guy Macon (talk) 02:34, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Heaya WMF! We love that you take reader privacy so seriously! We were wondering if it could be even better. We were talking about tracking pixels, locally stored data technologies such as cookies and local storage, anonymizing/hashing/encrypting/deleting reader data. We decided to simply ask if you'd be interested in looking over the matter, seeing if there is any more you could do on your end. That would be awesomesauce! Thanx!
Wiki talk:Videos/Archive 1#RfC: Full-length films/videos in articles
An RfC concerning how to handle full-length videos/films in articles about those videos/films will be ending in a few days. I posted here when it opened and there was some talk about moving it here, but as that hasn't happened I thought I'd post again for good measure.
The basic question regards articles about films/videos for which the full-length version is on Commons. In such a case, for a reader to watch the video should they click a still image to launch the video on top of the article ("embedding", as with A Day at the Zoo) or click on a text link in the external links section which takes them to the Commons page to watch it? (or neither). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:04, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
I recently looked at the article for a well-known book, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. The "Overview" and the "Summary of chapters" sections together constitute an over 10,000-word description of what's in the book. Isn't this way excessive, in terms of what WP articles normally do for synopses of books, films, etc? Moreover, isn't description at this size and level harmful to the author? If it's written well, it may hurt book sales, because people now think they know everything that's in the book. Or if it's not written well, it's going to hurt the image of the book, because it gets details wrong or it isn't written as well or misses some important themes. Yet I couldn't quite find a policy that said that what this article is doing is wrong. Is there one? Wasted Time R (talk) 00:46, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
The undisputed champion of "inappropriate level of detail" remains this article, not only individually describing every single building in a (long) road, but listing every map the original author was aware of that showed the road. – iridescent 2 13:25, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
For me, I would just delete it, if it harms the quality of the article. See WP:HERE. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 23:19, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
It's come up at MFD quite a bit that WP:V applies only to mainspace and on that basis, essentially statements in drafts and userspace drafts that are unverifiable (or just plain not verified at all) is irrelevant for determining whether a page should be kept, deleted or not. This seems counter to WP:BLP which applies to all namespaces. The proposals to demand that a draft apply WP:GNG and other notability standards is another matter but it seems like a glaring hole to state that I could create a page in my userspace that is completely unverified and as long as it's never in mainspace, nothing can be removed for lack of verification. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:00, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
I won't name names unless I'm told by an administrator or WMF representative that it's okay, but can provide examples of editors who are clearly trying to contribute, but who aren't quite getting it right.
On these editor's talk pages, can often be found months of notices and warnings about often good faith edits being reverted because they weren't referenced or that they were judged to be in some other trivial (it's often trivial to find a reference for additions and/or changes that weren't referenced by the editor, rather than reverting and warning) way unacceptable (it varies, but even a lack of edit summary is enough justification for some to revert). And often the subject editors have not really been engaged in conversation anywhere.
I'd like to think that part of building an encyclopedia - online by crowdsourcing - is as much about encouraging and educating editors, as it is about all the other work that gets done.
I can imagine why an editor might not feel inclined to enter into discussion with a deluge of templates telling them they're risking being blocked for this, that and the other, but they do continue to edit, and if the responses weren't quite so BITEy (as they often are) maybe they could be brought around to learning how better to contribute.
A happy friendly email might turn a potential frustration spree or retirement into a valuable and valued editor. fredgandt 04:24, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
T99174 It is either proposed or has already happened that MediaWiki, and hence English Wikipedia, along with the other WMF sites, passes referrer information to external HTTP sites as well as HTTPS sites.
User:John Vandenberg points out
Actually matters are somewhat worse: an eavesdropper will also be able to tell which pages have been visited, negating the whole point of using HTTPS in the first place.
I believe we should be a silent referrer, as far as possible.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 31 March 2016 (UTC).
Hi @Rich Farmbrough:, et. al. We did a review of the concerns you raise with both the WMF Security and Legal teams in light of the implemented change. Both have described this change as not weakening our support of user privacy, because:
In light of these considerations, we cannot find any point of significant risk, and as others mention above, there is a net benefit for creating relationships with organizations which could partner with our community to further our mission and goals. Please let me know if that resolves your concerns, or if you have any further questions. Sincerely, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Should we list the in-universe (fictional) former names, aliases, middle names only ever mentioned rarely or in non-canon material, and other name variants of fictional characters, in the leads of these characters' articles? Example:
A recent discussion of this matter, with editwarring and WP:ANI drama surrounding it, can be found at Wiki talk:WikiProject Soap Operas#Middle names, maiden names, married names, birth names, etc.... This relates closely to previous discussions like Wiki talk:WikiProject Comics/Archive 48#Lead section and character names, about changing comics character leads (for articles at the name of the superhero/supervillain) to begin with the fictional "real" name of the character in everyday "life", as if these were articles on real people.
An excessive genuine example of the issue is here ("Nicole "Nikki" Newman (née Reed; previously Foster, Bancroft, DiSalvo, Abbott, Landers, Chow, and Sharpe) is a fictional character ..."), but is not representative of typical cases, and the RfC question is more general; i.e. it should be taken as using the first of the above examples as typical. It should also be noted that the simple formula "Superman is a fictional superhero.... As Clark Kent, he is a journalist by day...", or "Iron Man (Tony Stark) is a fictional superhero...", is typical in superhero/villain articles, and many other fiction (novel, TV series, etc.) articles on fictional characters with aliases, and this RfC is not challenging that. There are more complex cases as at Spider-Man, where the "real" (fictional) person who is the superhero has changed over time; these generally approach this matter with prose explanations, not long strings of alternative names, and is often handled outside the lead, as at The Shadow. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:02, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
Procedural note: I've included a bio
tag on the RfC specifically because the style matter in question is mimicry of biographical style but for fictional subjects, and it's expected that bio-focused editors will have opinions on whether it is great to do this as a win for consistency, or is a detriment as a confusion. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:04, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In keeping with the Ratification and Amendment section of Arbitration Policy, this is a petition that
be amended to
The options will start with the following:
Please indicate your response in the appropriate section.Evangeliman (talk) 01:44, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Look, we elected ArbCom as a group of grownups to handle issues that the "community" isn't capable or competent to address. They reviewed the evidence and acted in these cases, as is their responsibility. Finally, frankly, if we took 0.001% of the self-righteous energy devoted to advocating for editors like TDA, and applied it instead to supporting and retaining sane, constructive, marginally mature, well-socialized editors, we'd have a very different and much better Wiki English. That's the aspect of these sorts of discussions that I find most dispiriting: the infinite willingness to argue wiki-technicalities in defense of people who were irredeemable net-negatives as editors, while virtually every other aspect of this project decays. MastCell Talk 18:55, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
By this point I think it's clear enough that the community is overwhelmingly opposed to the ArbCom doing this. Ordinarily, that would be enough: the proposal was shot down, crashed and burned, and we all move on. The ArbCom, however, has already made this proposal an ongoing practice, and it has so far not responded and has not stated whether or not it plans to continue this practice (or reverse the decisions that were already made in line with this practice). The matter can't be considered settled until we know whether the ArbCom intends to respect the community's wishes. Everyking (talk) 23:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose to that Wikipedia make changes to its referencing policies. In my personal opinion, "personal information" or "personal knowledge" should be allowed. People who write paper encyclopedias aren't required to cite all of their sources - some of it is written based on just what they know. AgrAVE BAnks 17:32, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
some of it is written based on just what they know.- Sadly, many, many people know things that are not true, or are unable to distinguish between fact and their own subjective opinions. And paper encyclopedias are not wide open to every person on the planet who has a computer and Internet access and is old enough to use them (about 4); they are far more selective about who writes for them. No offense, but if one set out to propose a non-starter, it would be something like this. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:27, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
The reason that paper encyclopedias don't cite all their sources is that there are editors there who are hired to spend their time checking the writers to make sure that what they say is accurate. We don't have them and the Verifiability policy, which is the policy which requires references, is what we have that stands in the place of those editors. Without it, nothing here could be trusted. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:52, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Proposal: Should we remove from {{Infobox person}}
the |religion=
parameter (and the associated |denomination=
one)?
Rationale: This would be consistent with our treatment of sexual orientation and various other things we don't include in infoboxes that are matters which may be nuanced, complex, and frequently controversial. The availability of a parameter encourages editors to fill it, whether they have consensus to do so or not, regardless of instructions in template documentation to gain consensus first; new and anon IP editors generally do not read documentation, they simply see a "missing" parameter at article B that they saw at article A and add it.
While written for categories, the concerns of WP:CAT/R and WP:NONDEF may be logically applicable here, since the context-free data in infoboxes serves a categorization/labeling purpose, not an expository one; their reasoning is frequently applied to navbox templates, at least informally. So is that of the WP:BLPCAT policy, which explicitly covers them, and lists. Per WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY, WP:LAWYER, and WP:GAMING, if the community's consensus is to avoid certain kinds of arbitrary, contentious, or factually questionable labelling, this consensus must not be evaded by moving the label to a different spot on the page in a different wrapper.
|ethnicity=
parameter.— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:26, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
|religion=
parameter causes constant strife and disruption (for multiple reasons), across a wide range of articles, with no end in sight. There are real reasons we don't have "|orientation=bisexual
", and why things like |ethnicity=Hispanic
are subject to a similar ongoing RfC; these reasons mostly apply to religion as well. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:26, 24 March 2016 (UTC)|belief in afterlife=
. This is about which religion a person follows, while alive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:29, 24 March 2016 (UTC)|religion=
field? I believe they already do, and they make clear (unless I have misunderstood) that use of the |religion=
field is restricted to cases where the subject's religious belief is a defining characteristic of their public notability. In short, their religious beliefs must be why they are notable. Xenophrenic (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2016 (UTC) Categories regarding religious beliefs (or lack of such) or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources. Note that it says "public life or notability". --Scott Davis Talk 01:37, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
"non-clergy"- Popes use {{Infobox Pope}}. Another straw man. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:44, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
"Permit inclusion in individual articles' infoboxes (through the template's ability to accept custom parameters)...": This is a horrible, horrible cludge, One of the purposes of infoboxes is to provide clear, structured information, with using unambiguous label:value pairs. We increasingly also have the option to transclude data from Wikidata, also. This suggestion is counter to both. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
label=value
pairs are just a feature of the templating language. Unambiguous ones, in the sense you mean, are an edidor convenience not a requirement. Our generation of metadata is an afterthought, not a requirement. There are are theoretically 1,000+ pieces of metadata we could generate about a topic; our deciding not to do for one because it's nuanced and complicated has no implications for anything. Existence of a datum in Wikidata, some day, does not require that en.WP accept it; our sourcing, relevance, and other standards are local to this particular WMF project, and the relevance varies with context within that project. The likelihood that Category:Roman Catholic activists should have their religion shown in their infobox is why the proposal would permit exceptions. I think this covers all the points you raised. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:00, 24 March 2016 (UTC) |alma_mater=
, |employer=
, |spouse=
, and so on. Used without harm. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 24 March 2016 (UTC)religion=
it is possible that we are bringing undue attention to this facet of their life. Beyond that, massive disruption caused by conflict on-wiki about this parameter causes more problems than the, very limited, benefit the information provides to our readers is worth. JbhTalk 14:41, 24 March 2016 (UTC)|religion=
having their documentation updated and standardised to be more explicit that |religion=
and |denomination=
are only filled in if they are described and referenced in the text, which is the standard required for many infobox parameters. There are many parameters of infoboxes that are used in hundreds of articles for information which is not relevant to their notability, but once their notability is established, are relevant to their description. Most people are notable for something they have done, yet the infobox on an article about them includes name, date of birth, age, nationality, a photo, spouse, ... which are not relevant to their notability, but are relevant to summarising the information about the notable person. --Scott Davis Talk 08:05, 25 March 2016 (UTC) |religion=
field. One opposing argument equates date of birth (an objective point of public record data) with religion (a subjective notion which can only be self-declared, and rarely accurately summarized in 1 or 2 words), and ignores the highlighting done by the neon-light billboard known as the Infobox. One argument was based on the woefully inaccurate assessment, "I do not see this as equivalent to sexual orientation or ethnicity (which I agree have no place in infoboxes...)"; when Wikipedia strongly disagrees (see WP:CATGRS, WP:OPENPARA). One argument bemoans by way of example, that "Category:Roman Catholic activists should not have their religion shown in their infobox beggars belief", yet when I examined the (all 200+) entries in that category, the vast majority aren't even using the |religion=
field, and the minority that do are not using a standardized data format. One argument defeats itself by admitting that an infobox "is to provide clear, structured information, with using unambiguous label:value pairs", when entries in the |religion=
field have frequently shown themselves to be anything but clear and unambiguous, and are often contentious. One argument suggests we can keep the |religion=
field if we only extend "the guideline at WP:MOS—'Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless it is relevant to the subject's notability.'—to the infobox", oblivious to the fact that we already have, and it has failed to solve the problem. (See WP:CATGRS, WP:BLPCAT.) Two other arguments were either clueless about the issue, or amounted to "me too". I'll continue to watch for just one substantive argument against removing the problematic field. Xenophrenic (talk) 19:09, 25 March 2016 (UTC)|political party=
field. Whether I would argue for its inclusion in other infoboxes (say, of actors, or sportspeople) - I don't know, but I suspect I wouldn't. But this goes back to my original point - this parameter is useful a lot of the time, and should not be removed just because it is the source of what I am sure are annoying disagreements. Adapt the documentation if we must; don't burn the place down. Frickeg (talk) 22:51, 25 March 2016 (UTC) |religion=
field is still a perennial source of contention and misinformation. It is also anything but standardized, as one would expect from a metadata field. Xenophrenic (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2016 (UTC)"do not have the deep involvement", is a different type of thing. The religion field is for establishing that a relationship exists between the subject of the article and the thing named in the field (organization, group, religion, etc.) – it does not define the quality of that relationship. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 20:43, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Call for snow close by any uninvolved editor per WP:SNOW. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Related:
|religion=
in infoboxes--Guy Macon (talk) 04:20, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
All this removal of things - infoboxes will start removing date of birth soon at this rate and pictures will be removed because they are not the definitive picture of the person or show them at the wrong age or something like that. The basic problem is that people are putting in things which aren't really relevant and for some things we really require that it have some weight. Isn't what's really necessary to rename the parameter from'religion' where people think it is okay to just find it out, or even feel obliged to find it out, and stick it in, to some name like 'religion_if_has_wp_weight' so people think for a moment if the religion is actually something people associated with the person as part of their interest? We should be concentrating on the actual problem not on removing things because clueless people might misuse them. Dmcq (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
|religion=
empty in an article, so they fill it and move on. Their next stop is an article where the entire parameter is missing (because consensus discussions the editor doesn't know about remove it). So they add it and fill it, and move on. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:09, 24 March 2016 (UTC)|religion=Something here
, on page after page. Better to just leave it out, in my view, and the RfC asks the broader editorial community if it collectively agrees. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:18, 26 March 2016 (UTC) Question for clarification of scope Is this conversation about all biographical infoboxes as the section header says, or specifically about {{Infobox person}}
as proposed in the question? A significant difference in the current layout is that {{infobox person}}
generally highlights the personal information before the positional information, whereas {{infobox officeholder}}
tends to put official positions first and personal information further down the infobox. I wonder if the supporters' "highlighting" concerns can be addressed by changing the layout of infobox person to emphasise positional over personal biographical information. --Scott Davis Talk 08:33, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
|religion=
parameter seems to be contentious in under 300 of them, less than 0.1%, which says to me that in the vast majority of cases, it is handled well under existing policies on the talk pages of individual articles, and does not require heavy-handed mass removal. At most, the "short form" blank template examples could be modified to not show an empty religion field suggesting that it would normally be filled. --Scott Davis Talk 01:39, 26 March 2016 (UTC) {{Infobox person}}
, and no other infobox, And since you refuse to tell us where you have posted notices about it, it's reasonable to assume that that does not include the talk pages of the other infoboxes to which you now attempt to extend it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:15, 29 March 2016 (UTC) This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article Archive 126, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
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