Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 91

Where is the guideline for "don't take edits to your contributions personal"? IIRC there was one. --Subfader (talk) 11:43, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Assume good faith, but I don't think that's what you mean. It may be that you're looking for an essay, not a guideline. Can you remember anything else about the page you're looking for? KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 17:32, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Assume good faith is what I was lookign for. Thanks a lot! --Subfader (talk) 06:45, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I draw your attention to the RFC at WT:Verifiability#RFC - Compromise proposal re first sentence re proposed changes to WP:Verifiability. As this relates to a core policy, it is hoped that we can receive comments from a wide spectrum of the community. Please swing by, read the proposal and accompanying rational, and leave a comment. Blueboar (talk) 12:40, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

What is the policy on organizing public workshops at conventions of professional associations? The aim would be to increase the numbers of active and informed new editors and to make sure that they are properly informed of policies and aims. I assume that the sessions should be well publicized both within the particular association and on Wikipedia, though I do not know how to do the second one. One obvious way is through relevant Projects, but this would not reach all the interested editors who might be active but not members of the Project. I searched the Help pages for "Outreach," "collaboration," and the like, but could not find a project that is now going on. I would be most thankful for any help or advice. ch (talk) 06:28, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I found Wikipedia:Meetup -- seems to cover it? ch (talk) 06:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi. That sounds like a fantastic idea. :) I have never really organized anything of this sort myself, but I asked some staff members where you might start, and they suggested that you'd probably be interested in having a look at the outreach Wiki. There are all kinds of resources there that might help you and give you ideas. If you have any questions or run into any issues, please drop me a line at my talk page. I'll be happy to try to help put you in touch with people and resources if I can. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

There is quite a lot of this going on, but obviously real-life events have to start with the geography. I presume you are talking about the US. These things are normally organized by local chapters, which are a bit different from other countries there. Johnbod (talk) 15:39, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

THanks for the feedback -- I'll be in touch if I can get my plans more specific. The Outreach page looks very helpful. ch (talk) 05:22, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

It has been brought to my attention that the Italian language version of the Wikipedia FREE encyclopedia is in danger of being deleted because of an Italian language law. I couldn't hold myself back from voicing how grievous a mistake this would be. Not only is it bowing down to one state's laws that go against free speech and take public liberty and constitutional rights a giant step back, but it also undermines and punishes the Italian speaking community outside of the Republic of Italy. It would hardly be fair to delete the Spanish language version of wikipedia because of censorship laws in Cuba, or the French language version because of some new directive in a single French speaking nation. The same is true for Italians. It is a gross assumption that the Italian language is dead outside of Italy. Italian is in fact an official language of Switzerland as well as in parts of Croatia and Slovania. More significantly it is the language of a community of descendants from one of the largest diaspora in the last few centuries. United States, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and France all contain populations of Italian speakers exceeding a million persons. Also significant populations reside in Canada, Australia, Germany, Egypt, Libya. This is a terrible discrediting of the voices and rights of these people who are not bound by any law of the Italian Republic. This is an open commons that does not represent the laws of any country but of the human condition. The moment that a website like this caves in to such an atrocious attack on the free speech, wikipedia ceases to be what it has set out to be and is not deserving of any respects or funding. If the Italian language version is upheld, I will go on a campaign to make sure it's funding is strongly upheld. If it is deleted, I will personally make sure that everyone I know will be advised not to fund of utilize the website and in turn try and start telling their associates to do likewise starting a movement. This would be the definition of democracy and in a democracy the people cannot comply with a system that stifles any kind of freedom or right nor ignores the needs of any community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattk0516 (talk • contribs) 17:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

• For those (like me) who somehow missed reading about this until seeing Mattk0516's post, there's a summary of events at Italian Wikipedia#2011 mass blanking protest, but the links provided there to discussions on Italian Wikipedia now lead, of course, to blanked pages. There's a discussion in the comments section of the Wikimedia Foundation blog here: Regarding recent events on Italian Wikipedia. If anyone knows of other places, on Meta or elsewhere, where there are useful links to information or constructive discussions, the links would be most appreciated. --Arxiloxos (talk) 18:18, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
• This is a protest - causing issues for legitimate users is the point and how they get their message across. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
  • See also User talk:Jimbo Wales for a discussion of this.Griswaldo (talk) 18:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
    • In the (I hope) unlikely event that the Chamber of Deputies decides to pass this, would the effect not pertain to all posters in or from Italy, in any language? In a practical sense would that not preclude any WMF assets being located in Italy? If Italian citizens and residents would not be legally able to edit BLPs to which the subject chose to disagree, might they not simply use edit requests on the associated talkpage, to then be implemented by editors who are not subject to that law? Or is there an extraterritorial aspect to the law? LeadSongDog come howl! 20:49, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
      • Based on the summary at Italian Wikipedia#2011 mass blanking protest, it is targeted at websites, not simply whomever posts on them, because the remedy is to force the website to accept a counterpost or reply to the offensive statement. I think in practice this would be unenforceable against any website not based (i.e., hosted on servers physically located) in Italy; the U.S. government certainly would never respect it (nor could they constitutionally). It's also not stated what would happen if the website refused to allow a counterreply--what are the teeth of the law, so to speak? So while I think it's nice to have an expression of solidarity by the Italian wiki editors with those websites that would be affected (which is all I think this blanking is), I think it's rather absurd to believe this could affect any Wikimedia project. Unless we have a bunch of servers in Tuscany that I'm not aware of. postdlf (talk) 21:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
        • Websites can be fined 12000 euros per instance, but it is not clear whether they can do anything against individual contributors. Many editors based in Italy are pretty scared of the thing though. Dragons flight (talk) 21:43, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
          • You'd sure want to keep your mobile on a short leash! LeadSongDog come howl! 22:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

"The bill, due to begin its journey through parliament next week, includes a clause that puts blogs on the same footing as news websites. It stipulates that anyone who believes they have been defamed or misrepresented in a blog has a

Perhaps it's me, but how many times do we need to have our noses rubbed in the "Italian Wikipedia Issue" (AN,ANI,VP*). Co-ordinate and put out 1 main discussion section and then do a minor blurb with the link to the central discussion. The way it's being covered you would think that they were killing kittens and drinking their blood on national TV for the amount of coverage it's getting on the noticeboards. Hasteur (talk) 02:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it's just me, but I find all of this noise about the "Italian Wikipedia Issue" a refreshing change from that other news topic from Italy. The way the tv media in my part of the world has been covering this, you'd think the entire Italian legal system were deciding innocence & guilt by killing kittens and drinking their blood. (Hey, it's all Berlusconi's fault in both cases, from what I've read.) -- llywrch (talk) 21:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

An ongoing

• I have not looked yet at the example case. However, I agree with the general principle as stated by Griswaldo. We should not be basing entire articles on PR materials, which are by definition not independent, reliable sources. Once a show has aired, if independent criticism is written about the program, we can use that to create a reasonable article LadyofShalott 14:19, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
• Could this be expanded to cover movies and video games as well? Just a thought.
  (Ni!) 14:23, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
  • What we have to remember is that much of the pre-release press for a published worked, while PR, can also provide lots of details in regards to development, filming, creation, etc. Many AAA title video games have developer diaries published by the publisher, yes, purely for potential buyers to be excited about the game, but from an encyclopedic standpoint, these are excellent sources to assemble the challenges and changes over a development period. So just because something has not been published and the only sources are ones that are effectively PR doesn't mean we shouldn't have an article on it. We do want to distinguish between when it is just preliminary PR (the initial announcement and release date, and teasers and the like), and the pre-release PR that explains more of the behind the scenes. --MASEM (t) 15:17, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
    • Then it provides a great resource for additional information once other sources have already covered the topic. During the period of time that the promotional materials is actively trying to promote a product release and/or upcoming event it's aim is to promote not to provide us with neutral and objective information. It needs to be treated within the context it is produced.Griswaldo (talk) 15:21, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
      • In the approach done for video games, these development PR materials are published by the developer and then picked up by third-party sources (gaming news sites) that link and comment on them. Now, I agree that these are doing the job of PR as is, but the fact that other sources have picked up on them means it is a matter of note - that is, there's a strong change the game will meet notability guidelines once released. As such we should be using these materials but not to promote the unreleased game but to describe the development in an encyclopedic manner that when the reception comes along, a complete article is easy to achieve. It is not PR to discuss a work that is known to be released in the future in an encyclopedic manner that way. --MASEM (t) 15:37, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
• I don't see the requirement that a source be independent as having anything to do with WP:CRYSTAL, and indeed there probably is no more reliable source for information about a TV episode not yet aired than the network that plans to air it. You are instead sliding into concerns relevant to notability or NPOV, which if we're talking about a TV series that we already agree is notable, the episodes of which always satisfy GNG at least after they've aired, it doesn't seem like a meaningful concern, or at least not one relevant to WP:CRYSTAL. Obviously promotional statements, such as if the BBC were to assert that "this Christmas episode will be better than anything else on TV", are easy to exclude; others that are more borderline, such as if the producer said "this special will show the Doctor as you've never seen him," can be contextualized if deemed informationally useful at all. So I don't see anything here but normal editing concerns. postdlf (talk) 14:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• Except
  WP:CRYSTAL says, "take special care to avoid advertising and unverified claims" and "short articles that consist only of product announcement information are not appropriate." I think this is inline with general principles as well. I think having an article in the form of a stub, unless independent coverage is available, is not a problem. My problem is with basing articles on promotional materials, which is what is happening, because upcoming TV shows have no other information available usually.Griswaldo (talk) 14:31, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• At least in its current state, all of the information appears to be objective facts about its production and a neutral description of its content. So again, I'm not seeing any unverified claims or promotional language or concerns. If we were talking about a fly-by-night production company claiming, "yeah, we're gonna get Tom Cruise to guest star in our TV show", then I'd take that with a grain of salt. But this is the BBC we're talking about, and Doctor Who. General principles are satisfied here in my judgment. postdlf (talk) 14:37, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• How can you or anyone else who hasn't seen the episode or read an impartial review from a third party who has, possibly judge the description of if its contents as "neutral," or the facts about its production as "objective." Entities release tidbits of information about upcoming products or events specifically to promote them. I don't think neutrality or objectivity enters that equation one bit. This is the crux of the problem. Sure, the entry doesn't say "this is going to be the best episode ever," but why do you think they have released names of actors who will supposedly be in it, tid bits of the plot, or even the inspiration for the plot? To wet people's appetites, to promote the event. Just because it doesn't seem particularly promotional to you in its tone doesn't mean it isn't promotional. This is how PR works. We're playing into their PR game perfectly here. Also, as more PR material is released, entries like this will get sucked further into promoting the upcoming events if not limited in their scope.Griswaldo (talk) 15:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• The way you're characterizing this just doesn't work. You're dismissing information purely based on whether someone may benefit from its distribution, without regard to whether that information is nevertheless NPOV, V, and material to a notable topic. Those actors either have or haven't been cast to be in the TV special, the cast of a TV show is encyclopedic information in an article about that show, and the BBC is a reliable source for that information. The fact that the BBC may hope that someone will watch the special because of who is in it doesn't make cast information "promotional" in any relevant sense. postdlf (talk) 16:27, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• I don't agree. I'm dismissing information based on the nature of the sources ... which is what policies like WP:V suggest we should do. What I feel like you're saying is that we ought not to dismiss them, even if they are marketing materials, because they may be
  true. I'm not sure we're going to progress this particular conversation any further since we disagree on what is "promotional." From a PR/marketing/advertising perspective this is promotional, and that's exactly the perspective within a company like the BBC that dictates the release of this material. Anyway no point in continuing if you disagree. Cheers. Griswaldo 17:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• My personal preference, particularly dealing with video games, is that if it is only a PR with a date and some simple facts is to try to find some other article to talk about it and use a redirect until there are third-party sources about the work. But I disagree, in that as long as there is high confidence that the topic will be a wholly notable topic on its own, it is a waste of time to make the effort to delete stubs based only on PR that someone else happened to create. --MASEM (t) 14:28, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
• Pure PR stuff should always get removed, whether it is about a future event or something that already happened. But that doesn't mean that any article on a future event (TV episode, movie, ...) is a PR article, or that it should be deleted or even redirected. An article like
  Fram (talk) 14:41, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
• There are two problems with using a reliable but not independent source, it cannot be used to assess notability, and it may not provide a neutral coverage of the subject. For notability, as long as there is no dispute over whether the subject is going to be notable once the episode airs, or the game is released, this isn't an issue. As for neutrality, as long as the claims are quantitative, and there is no reason to doubt the credibility, I don't see an issue with using a non-independent source. If the BBC says an actor is going to be in an episode it is producing, or some event will happen in the episode, I think we can trust it will.
  WP:Crystal should be limited to situations where the notability of the future subject is seriously in doubt, or where the claims are speculative, and may not end up being true. Monty₈₄₅ 14:53, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

When there is information about a future TV episode it doesn't need its own article straight away. It could be covered under the season it forms part of, or the show in question. For a video game it could go under developer; for a film, the studio. Alternatively - perhaps it's just wikinews material. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• WP:Crystal is already crystal-clear. Is/will the event be notable? Is it scheduled? Is the information reliable(tm)? GNG talks about independant coverage to establish notability. So if we exclude the Radio Times as obviously partisan and the BBC as the source this still leaves us with a host of media outlets ranging from the tabloid (The Sun) to the more serious (Belfast Telegraph) who picked up the story as a headline. Each of these mentions says in effect "we think this episode is notable and you as the reader need/want to know about it". In fact I find it quite telling that a load of news items (RS or not) focus on a particular actor so editorial choice and not just restating a pressrelease. We just had an editor de-sysoped who thought we have to punish COI editors by putting bad stuff into their articles. This proposal goes in the same direction. You want to punish the source by denying an article despite the fact that information passes GNG due to independant sources taking note. We do not want to created a buerocracy/rulelist on what we can include and what not. So whatever our rules are they have to fit a large segment of situations. If we can't have a future episode/film we cannot have an article about the upcoming NASA spaceflight mission, the upcoming district reform in whereever or the London Olympics. P.S. We not need any article - we used to live quiet happy before wikipedia. Agathoclea (talk) 15:58, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
• I think it's pretty straightforward. If there are sources that meet WP:N even if those are based on "PR" we can have an article. If the BBC put out a press release and no one covered it, we shouldn't have an article. Further, in some cases people put up an article a bit early. It happens with soccer players all the time--they are reported to be starting their first professional match and so a few days beforehand an article goes up. In general the article stays because by the time an Afd finishes they qualify for inclusion. I don't think CRYSTAL stops us from using reliable sources just because the coverage is about a future event... Hobit (talk) 17:17, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
• WP:CRYSTAL -- the episodes have been taped or filmed, the advertisers, the affiliates, etc. are committed, etc. -- so much is already in the past, nothing is speculative, and the only the airing is in the future. patsw (talk) 21:34, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
• I believe no change in current guidelines or practice is necessary. The proposed change would result in the deletion or non-creation of articles containing information that readers might well want to look up, thereby reducing the value of Wikipedia to those readers. Such a trade-off is necessary, or at least understandable, when deletion promotes other values of the encyclopedia such as reliability, but I don't see that as being the case here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:04, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
• Griswaldo is seeking to address a problem that doesn't really exist. As long as notability and reliable sourcing requirements are met, there isn't a significant issue here. Prioryman (talk) 08:05, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
• Such articles should be deleted on sight, but there really isn't a need to have a new policy here. The problem is not that the article is being created before the TV show airs, it is that the article is being based on primary sources.
  WP:V permits the inclusion of primary sources, but says that articles need to be based on material from independent, third-party sources. The vast majority of articles about individual episodes of television episodes fail that test both before and after the air date, and should be deleted and redirected until such time as someone can construct an article that contains primarily information derived from independent sources (and no, people, a verbatim reprint of a plot summary and cast list provided by the production company is not an independent source of information).—Kww(talk) 18:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
• In my opinion, if the widely anticipated
  WP:TVEP, why not have an article called "Unreleased episodes of X Show" and then have the 22 unreleased episodes listed there in separate sections. Then when it is released, WP can give it its own article. Peace, MPS (talk) 16:00, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
• I agree with folks who think this is primarily an
  WP:NOR. IMHO, existing policies cover this.--Northernhenge (talk) 15:28, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the best solution is here? While we can create a policy to address this, the only real change will come when these drive-by taggers change their behavior and realize that their originally well-intentioned actions are really not helping and their tags are just stagnating on articles, increasing backlogs, and discouraging other editors from getting involved. If anyone has any suggestions on how to deal with this, or other comments on this issue, feel free to add here. WTF? (talk) 13:54, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that there are far too many tags around, but don't have any idea (short of war) as to how to moderate the taggers. Perhaps any time we consult a WP article and find a tag there that hindered us as readers more than it helped, we should quietly remove it (I sometimes do that). --Kotniski (talk) 14:04, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing inheriently wrong with drive-by tagging - just as there are volunteer editors, such people can be seen as a QA department, noting articles that don't fly without knowing the subject itself. And many tags are self-explanatory. It is the fringe cases where people place tags that don't seem obviously wrong, where we need these people to communicate to the talk page on the reasoning. But there's no way to enforce that.

And there's really no problem with stagnating tags. We've no deadline to meet, so there's no race to fix up articles to meet with these tags. --MASEM (t) 14:07, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

My view, FWIW, is that to the extent we use tags, they should be posted at the bottom of the article, not at the top. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:09, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Tags that are about technical aspects on-wiki might belong at the bottom or on the talk page. Anything to do with warning our readers about potential content issues (NPOV, unsourced, etc) should be prominently displayed at the top of the article. --Onorem♠Dil 14:31, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

You should read the documentation at Template:POV, which directly prohibits its use for "warning our readers".

IMO if the reader can't figure out that an article is unsourced simply by reading it, then the reader has far more severe problems than Wikipedia will be able to address. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Drive-by tagging is an issue in my mind. And I think the best way to fix the situation and has been brought up in the past I believe is to restrict those sorts of flags to talk pages. Putting them at the bottom as suggested by Tagishsimon is better than how we currently do it as well as they definitely should not be at the top. -DJSasso (talk) 14:10, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec - reply to Masem) Well, it's a problem because if people add tags fairly thoughtlessly, we end up unable to distinguish the articles that really do need attention from those that are just slightly imperfect in some way (and of course, every article is imperfect in some way). So the tags cease to be useful, and we get more and more articles cluttered up with tags that hinder or even mislead readers.--Kotniski (talk) 14:12, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's put it this way, and borrowing from Fram's example below: it is very hard, from a strictly process POV, to distinguish from bad faith drive-by tagging, and well-intentioned mass tagging; any policy we write to address that would likely harm the latter. Irregardless of where the tags are placed (top, bottom, talk, whatnot), tagging articles is a behavior, and thus improper tagging should be handled via user behavior measures and not be content policies or process metrics. If a user is tagging 100s of articles and clearly the tagging is out of line in more than a few of the cases, that's a case for talking to the user or starting an RFCU on them.

And the thing to remember is: we want those tags clear and visible on the article page, as that is one of the few means we can use to draw in new editors. But I do agree that we should be more careful on only adding the tags to articles that are grossly out of line. Common case I've seen is {{

plot}} being added to episode articles that are just over 700 words (the TV MOS limit). Tagging that is completely out of line because it's not a significant problem, those raising the issue is important. If we were to have editors consider only using such tags when the article is woefully lacking in those areas, and then developing an equivalent set of "minor" cleanup tags that can be placed in a header box on the article's talk page , auto-categorizing these and the like, then that might be a better solution. --MASEM (t) 14:28, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec)I don't think people will ever agree on these things. E.g. the tags you find useful for the GA and FA process: they are for our background processes, not for readers, so in my opinion they shouldn't be in the article but on the talk page (or hidden). Only things which are of interest for readers should be on the article, everything that is more aimed at editors should be on the talkpage. An article that is truly dreadfully written needs some "cleanup" tag on the article: an article that needs some extra links and markup ("wikify", "orphan", "deadend") should be tagged on the talk page or with hidden tags (which only add categories).

I don't agree though that tags should go at the bottom: we shouldn't hide the serious problems many articles have (like being unreferenced or slanted towards a US perspective or whatever), they are used to inform the readers, and you don't inform them by putting the tags at the bottom. Make a distinction between tags that are important for the reader, and other tags: but leave the important ones at the top.

As for drive-by tagging vs. sofixit: as an example, I created the BLPunsourced tag (way back) and tagged the first 10,000 articles or so of the eventual 50,000 that got the tag. Now, by the efforts of dozens of editors and months of work (and the BLPprod process), the backlog has been cleared and only 150 articles remain so tagged. If I hadn't drive-by tagged these articles, chances are that the scale of the problem wouldn't have become apparent, and the cleanup-drive for those 50,000 articles would never have happened at all. On my own, I wasn't able (or willing) to fix those articles instead of tagging them.

Fram (talk) 14:18, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Ee, but that's only because of the drama that was successfully created around that issue, that made everyone think (or feel they ought to think) that unsourced BLPs were the Most Important Problem. Tags have the property of directing people's attention to certain places - that doesn't mean that those places are really the ones that most deserve that attention; and once you have too many tags around, they cease even to perform that role (or they encourage people to solve the "problem" in a relatively haphazard way just in order to reduce the "backlog").--Kotniski (talk) 14:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec * 3)As one of the "Drive-by taggers" consider the following. You're reading a paper book and you come across a odd term or fact. You go to your favorite compendium of knowledge (Wikipedia) to find out more about it. You see that Wikipedia has an article about the subject but it's missing some criteria that we use to judge good articles. Because you came to the wiki as someone who doesn't know about the subject, you probably don't have the knowledge to improve the article yourself so you mark it with one or more of the appropriate maintenance templates because you think it could be improved. The flip side is you're browsing Wikipedia at random and stumble across a page with some maintenance templates. Because you're somewhat knowledgeable about the subject you resolve the issues at hand and remove the template. I strongly disagree with Tagishsimon and Djsasso that these templates should not be at the bottom. If you're a casual reader who knows some about the subject you aren't very likely to go all the way to the bottom and notice that the article has maintanance templates. Having them at the top of the article serves as a notice to casual readers that the content may not be 100% correct and attracts the more active editor's attention to see what the problem is in the page. Hasteur (talk) 14:28, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

So you think (or we should encourage readers to think) that articles that are not tagged are 100% correct? I agree that articles that have egregious problems should be marked for all to see, but often these tags are added to articles that, by WP standards, are actually pretty much par for the course. The worse ones are perhaps the "neutrality" tags, which make readers think that the article must be terribly biased, when in fact it often turns out that it only got tagged that way because it used e.g. a German placename instead of a Polish one somewhere down the line.--Kotniski (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

That is my view of things, tags are more often than not added when the pages don't really have that much of a problem and are generally decent articles. Often they are added without the reasoning on the talk page of why they have been added which is supposed to occur when you add the tag. In essence the tags actually make the article worse than they would be without the tags more often than not so that when a truly important tag is added it is ignored. -DJSasso (talk) 14:35, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec * 2)No, what I'm saying is that if at least one user thinks enough that there's an issue with the page to apply the template, it allows the reader of an article to know that there may be a problem with the article and to use their critical thinking skills when reading to decide if they want to use WP as a source. It's the same with the warnings page that you get in the first few pages of an instruction manual warning you about things that could happen with the device. (Do not use the Toaster in the bath-tub) Hasteur (talk) 14:41, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I do understand what you are saying, but the problem is that those templates imply that the entire site thinks that article has the issue. Not just a single person. And when that one person doesn't actually explain their reasoning it becomes that much worse. That is where I think the problem lies. -DJSasso (talk) 14:43, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Tags are not like the toaster-in-the-bath warning, quite the reverse. Such a warning should appear on every Wikipedia page, or not at all. Tags are as if someone went round putting individual warning stickers on a few (but not all) electrical applicances in a building. If anything, it's going to make people think that the unstickered appliances are quite safe to take to the tub.--Kotniski (talk) 14:56, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Let me mention again a proposal I made years ago that was shot down: Self-expiring tags. The idea is that someone who thinks are article needs cleanup, for example, informs the editing community for 90 days with a tag. Either the problem is resolved, or no one cared, and the tag expires (i.e. a bot deletes the tag on its expiration date). patsw (talk) 14:36, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

That is an interesting idea. I like that. -DJSasso (talk) 14:40, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't. Just because no one has gotten around to fixing it after, say, 90 days, doesn't mean a poorly written article has spontaneously cleaned up its own prose. LadyofShalott 14:43, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Well it would have to be a longer term than 90 days. But far to often single users add a tag that isn't really relevant and no one wants to remove it because the tags are treated like they are omnipotent where if it says it then it must be true. So they sit there for years "unfixed" when there actually is no problem to be fixed. I think a one year expiry would work wonders. -DJSasso (talk) 14:45, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

While this would help reduce the number of tags, I don't think it really addresses the issue. If a tag was placed appropriately (article really does have big problems that readers should be alerted to), then we want it to stay there for as long as it's needed. The problem is that people place tags on articles that don't really have big problems.--Kotniski (talk) 14:59, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

You missed the most common instance of mis-use. Sourcing tags used as weapons in POV wars and pissing wars where the tagger does not seriously question the material. The simplest answer to that is to establish a routine where the tagger includes the reason they question the material. North8000 (talk) 14:49, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

The NPOV tag is a good example that works well with Patsw's suggestion of expiry. I like that idea. But not all tags are good candidates for it. Maybe that idea can be developed for certain problematic tags while leaving others as is. If editors aren't working to clear up NPOV issues on the talk page, the tag should come off as we don't want them to be a badge of shame.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 15:23, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

When a bot deletes an expired tag, it could note the fact on the talk page and it could add the article to a category "articles with expired tags".--Northernhenge (talk) 15:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

• Comment, there was a proposal on this a while back where it was suggested to use the format of the small tags used for individual sections (for example
  template:copy edit-section) as standard for all cleanup templates, so they take up less space and are not as annoying. I don't remember the links, but it seemed like a good idea to me. Yoenit (talk) 14:52, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

• Following from my above comments and a direction I see going: I would propose the idea that article-space cleanup tags should only be limited to those where the article has a gross violation of WP's core principles: no or significant lack of references, clear bias/non-neutral, clearly original thought, blank/incomplete sections, and specifically calling out what's needed for BLPs per the Foundation, etc. These are issues we want to bring new editors in to fix, those that have an idea of what the topic is and can drop in information even if it is not perfectly formatted or cited correctly. Issues such as inconsistent reference formatting, excessive plot summary, under-referenced articles, or anything that is on the edge but not a gross violation shouldn't be advertised on the article page as such, but instead put to the talk page, ideally in a header box, with auto-categorization and the like. These are the ones that require one to be a more avid participant in WP to understand the process behind these.
• This still doesn't prevent drive-by tagging, and may cause more tagging on the minor nits that should go into the proposed talk page header (not a bad thing, consider these preliminary GA/FA reviews), but this does two things: we're making the tags more relevant to the potential editor that is reading the article, instead of a mess of tag soup at the top, and that now it becomes easier to check those uses that are drive-by tagging the article space in bad faith. We'll still have some tags at the top, but they should be tamed, and I would even call to the point that if there are multiple issues with an article, there should only be one header tag of the most troubling aspect that needs attention (eg: an article is unsourced and biased: the biased, to me, is more the problem and those would only have the header tag to address that). --MASEM (t) 15:15, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Those who tag articles may be competent to identify problems eg poor grammar, lack of specific citations but less able in the area of copyediting (unsure of their own skills) or finding sources (access to books listed in references). Tagging articles with problems is not creating a backlog of work for others, it is identifying work that needs to be addressed. The backlog exists (and probably always will) but its scope is then known. Some projects (eg
  WP:AVIATION) have their specific checklists within the project template on the talk page by which they can generate lists of the work to be addressed - within the projects this form of tagging is seen as useful. Use of tags such as NPOV etc in disputes wars is a relatively obvious issue but one that can be addressed through existing mechanisms (ANI etc) just like other aspects of an edit war. Last point - Assume Good Faith, in the majority of cases the tagger is probably trying to help. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:30, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
• Short answer: No. Long answer. No. Tagging is immensely useful to identify which articles need cleanup, and criticial in article improvement. We need problems to be made prominent so
  books} 19:08, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

"Work" is perhaps an exaggeration. This seems to represent the problem; the people who add these tags want to feel that they are doing something useful, so they want everyone to see how clever they are, by putting a nice big tag right at the top of the article where the whole world can see it. If the tag is just goes on a talk page, the taggers feel undervalued - so they oppose such suggestions. Frankly, if there's a major problem with an article, then any editor who may chance on that article will be able to spot it - they don't need a tag to tell them about it. If the taggers really want to do something useful, they can try to actually fix the problems they are so deft at spotting. And if they're really so unskilled as not to be able to solve any of the problems that Wikipedia articles have, then they probably don't even have the judgement to decide which problems are serious enough to be brought to everyone's special attention.--Kotniski (talk) 10:06, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

That you don't like these tags is no reason to collectively insult every tagger. Please focus on why these tags are supposed to be a problem, and leave speculation about the motives of the taggers, their skills and judgment, out of this discussion.

Fram (talk) 11:17, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't insulting every tagger, only the indiscriminate ones. And since we're discussing the problem, it's entirely appropriate to discuss why the problem exists - and that certainly includes at least the motivation of the people who produce it.--Kotniski (talk) 13:34, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Nothing in your post indicates a difference between "indiscriminate" and "discriminate" taggers, and baseless negative speculation on their motives ("they want everyone to see how clever they are") is not appropriate at all. Do you really think that anyone will read such a post and go from a pro-tagging position (or a neutral one) to an anti-tagging position? "Oh, so that's why they put those tags, blimey, in that case I have to oppose it." If you can't assume good faith on why people may do something you don't like, then please keep such thoughts for yourself.

Fram (talk) 13:46, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I can assure you that it isn't the goodness of anybody's faith that I'm questioning. --Kotniski (talk) 13:50, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, you can't, if you want to play semantics.

Fram (talk) 13:55, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

If by that you mean that I can't "assure" you because you don't believe me, then it seems you're now questioning my good faith. (But maybe you don't mean that, so I won't assume you do, because that would be questioning your... oh never mind, EOT).--Kotniski (talk) 13:59, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

You are questioning people's good faith based on thin air, I am questioning your good faith based on your own statements on this page. I have evidence of the lack of good faith you display, and so I don't have to assume good faith any longer. You don't have any evidence for the lack of good faith you display against taggers, so you are acting against the

Fram (talk) 14:11, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, what????? Evidence of my lack of good faith? Where? When? Anyway, please take it to my talk page if you have such evidence - I'm not going to annoy people here by responding any longer. EOT for real this time.--Kotniski (talk) 14:20, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

• Let me add one more "me toos" to the "this is not a problem" camp. Tags are useful for people who have the ability to detect a problem in an article, but do not have the skill-set or resources necessary to fix it. It is absolutely NOT because people are lazy; but it is a useful way to identify problems with articles prominently, alerting readers to problems and also alerting editors to what needs to be fixed. Absolutely, totally, not a problem that needs any fixing at all. If an individual editor is individually by themselves misusing tags, then that individual user needs to be approached by you, and you need to start a discussion with that user to educate them on the proper use of tags. But there is no need to tear down the whole system because occasionally someone makes a mistake. --Jayron32 22:12, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
• No it shouldn't, because it isn't a problem. Wikipedia is a work in progress, and there's still lots of sub-standard content. The matter of the many objections that are made, on purely aesthetic grounds, is something that should be addressed, not tagging. How it looks is not the issue. They are usually there for good reason, and should remain until the highlighted issues are adequately addressed. --Semitransgenic (talk) 22:45, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any possible way to put citation needed tags on the Talk page or at the bottom of the page. How would anyone possibly know what you're questioning?

I think that tags are immensely useful for the article, the editors, and the reader. But they are also often abused as methods of warfare, POV pushing, and a way for people to act out their anti-social tendencies and personality defects which they have to keep stifled out in the real world. I think that recognizing this, getting the related policies and guidelines written better and more realistically, and other related evolutions will tend to reduce the latter. I don't think that this can be dealt with as a tag generality. North8000 (talk) 14:42, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Glad this tagging topic has come up again. I like patsw's idea of having some tag which expire (because the same idea had occurred to me). I'm fed up with drive-by tagging because the tagger seldom if ever explains their thinking. Having found them inexplicable added to sections of articles on matters that I have some in-depth knowledge on and finding that some taggers only appear to mainly edit articles on popular cultural topics (e.g., pokemon, pop stars etc.) and not technical subjects, I too agree in part with Kotniski. On a psychological point that hasn't been mentioned yet: Speaking with WP editors tête-à-tête I have come to the conclusion that a very large percentage don't get involved in the sort of discussions we are having here. They just read through articles and make improvements were they see opportunities. However, they seem to leave tagged sections alone because they think it is already being dealt with and the don't want to interfere and perhaps get involved in talk page discussions. Even after I point out the the tag is an invitation to them to improve it, they still don't want to touch a tagged section. I have found their various reasons understandable to an extent. Is it not better to improve WP to better suit the many rather than the few? This maybe why so many tags are ignored even on frequently read articles. Personally, I like to see an invisible start/end tags, only seen in the edit window which can be used to alert editors reading the talk page to the place in the text. If the Wiki software could be rigged so that the tags only got accepted when its corresponding tag was added to the talk page, that would be great. That would encourage taggers to realise the rest of us are not psychic enough to know what their perceived issue is without some explanation. This would - I think - go along way to reducing drive-by tagging and smarten up the articles.--Aspro (talk) 17:20, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Because your assumption is that they don't need cleanup. Go look at Category:Articles needing cleanup and see the articles tagged from December of 2006. They are still in need of work. (If I didn't think they were in need of work I'd have removed the cleanup tag.) Your solution to cleaning up an ugly article is to remove the cleanup tag and conclude it is now a better page. (Those ones from 2006 are the hard ones where I can't even figure out how to improve them to be reasonable articles, though we're slowly making progress.) And since I spend my time working on article for cleanup let me thank you for telling me I've been wasting my time. RJFJR (talk) 20:15, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Are you replying to me? I don't get the assumption bit, etc. --Aspro (talk) 21:30, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I'll throw out the following suggestion: let's encourage people to fix at least one tag for each one they leave. On one hand, this would help others to assume good faith when they encounter tags they feel are, well, ill-considered. On the other, it would address the problem tags are meant to help with -- fixing problems in articles. And no, I'm not going to tell anyone here to do this; but if someone won't try to do this -- fix one tag for every one they leave -- but take the time to argue that they don't need to, then it will be hard no to conclude this person isn't that interested in improving Wikipedia content, & regard their comments here accordingly. -- llywrch (talk) 00:09, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

This whole discussion is a bit pointless. Tags are applied to articles, not to editors, nor to the subject of said articles. So it makes no sense to take tagging as a personal thing. I'm working in an article with an "unreferenced" tag, but I'm not concerned by that, as yes, the article was indeed unreferenced, and I will remove the tag... after I get to a point in the work when I have checked and referenced everything written.

And, as pointed, a well applied tag is a manifestation of a problem, not the problem itself. To remove tags that have not been fixed (which includes setting a bureaucracy to difficult or discourage tagging) is simply setting for lower quality standards. Cambalachero (talk) 22:21, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I have to admit to being a drive-by tagger. But this is just because I'm also a new page patroller, and trying to clear the backlog! Sometimes I'm the only person working on the back end of the NPP queue, for hours at a time, and sometimes I can patrol as many as 70 pages in a session. I regularly come across pages which I can honestly only pass as 'fit' if they're appropriately tagged to bring other people's attention to the fact that they desperately need more work. "References needed" is the most common problem out there in new pages - people write articles which are either totally unreferenced, or vastly under-referenced, and we really do need our articles to comply with our

verifiability policy. It's vital. Like WP:V says, "People have to be able to check that you didn't just make things up." What kind of encyclopedia would we be if people could just make up 90% of an article, and then it was passed as OK, and "fit for an encyclopedia"? The purpose of tagging is so that attention can be brought to the fact that the article needs more work done on it. Ideally, of course, people writing those articles would have done it properly in the first place, and cited their sources for what they've written - but for as long as people don't write articles that are "fit to run", we will need people going around tagging those articles for further attention. The answer is simple - do it right the first time around! Then the article won't attract tags. Just adding - in my own defence - when I come across something that I can fix fairly quickly, then I do it as I go along. My conributions show a lot of edits labelled as "tweak" or "fix refs" or "c/e" (copy-edit) - but when faced with 5,000+ bytes of unreferenced, very poor English, I just don't have the time to re-write and source the entire article. Not until the backlog on new page patrol gets down to a week or less. Getting rid of copyright violations and so on, before they cause us major problems, has to take priority over copy-editing and referencing, for me, anyway. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 21:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

• Laziness is not the issue I suppose I could be accused of being a "drive-by tagger" in that if I'm reading an article and come upon an uncited statement that seems questionable, I'm going to slap a {{cn}} or {{dubious}} tag on it. I feel no obligation to fix it on the spot; I don't generally have the time, and anyway I don't feel that my brief forays into editing on the basis of my reading obligates me to become a researcher and writer on the spot. After all, if I'm reading, it's usually because I need a quick summary of the subject; that tends to preclude being able to do decent research on the spot. From time to time I have gone through the lists of articles with tags to try and fix some of them, but again I don't feel I am obligated to work on articles in areas that I don't know enough about to do good research or subjects that I cannot bring myself to care about. People who are interested in soccer players or TV shows will have to take care of those; I will not apologize for not having sufficient interest in those topics to do so. In most cases I find that fixing missing citations and fact-checking are nearly as much work as writing the article in the first place, and with (at least for me) not a lot of reward. And I'm ruthless now about simply reverting additions of uncited "in pop culture" material rather than searching out a source. It's that sort of "drive-by" that is the biggest source of a lot of this grief. Mangoe (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

• Those "drive-by" taggers that add "citation needed" are nothing but vandals and should be banned from editing. In particular, I am irritated by users who add numerous "citation needed" edits without any edit summaries. (example) In those cases, a bot should simply remove the tags. Q Science (talk) 05:10, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

• I looked at the case in question, and it seemed entirely reasonable to me that a claim to primacy ought to be cited—which I have done. Mangoe (talk) 12:35, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Repeating the thread name: Should Wikipedia re-examine its policies and procedures regarding tagging of articles?, the entire policy, purpose, and performance of New Page Patrolling under which this discussion broadly falls, has already been under serious review and discussion, and solutions to improve page patrolling and new article creation flow are currently being developed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:16, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

What would make everything work better would be people doing it right first time. Today, so far (14:03), I've patrolled 243 new pages. And a scant handful could actually be passed as 'fit to go'. Honestly. Taggers aren't vandals; taggers are trying to ensure that there's some kind of Quality Assurance in place, and sometimes it feels just like banging our heads against a brick wall! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 13:05, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

The Wikimedia foundation and the developers have dealt the time of Wikipedia volunteers a blow by not allowing testing of the idea that newbies need more than ten edits before they have enough experience to create a new article.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:28, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

• There are times that I have added a {{
  cn}} tag, not because I felt that the material required a citation, but because I wanted anyone reading to properly discount the material.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:28, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
• I think any tag that is not discussed on the talk page is fair game for being removed on that reason alone.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:28, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
• I'd like to someday see a requirement that each tag have a discussion.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:28, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

It's a nice idea - but as things are at the minute with NPP, particularly on that backlog, pages would just be dropping off unnoticed and unpatrolled if I had to start a discussion for every tag :o(. Perhaps when the back of the queue is only three or four days old, or so? As I said above, sometimes I do get in there and do some c/e, or tweak a few things, and now I've discovered Reflinks (thanks to Sp33dyphil) I send that in instead of hitting the linkrot tag, but it's really a case of more people doing NPP, giving people time to add a bit to the talk page, or whatever. I shudder when I think of the number of copyvios that would waltz on through into the mists unpatrolled and un-dealt-with if I had to take three or four times as long over every page .... Pesky (talk …stalk!) 05:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

When someone drops notability and unreferenced tags on an article with 0 references that barely manages to avoid

cn}} on a claim that a living person did something notorious, its a clear BLP violation not to have it cited. (And they could, maybe even should, have removed the text completely) Some tags are self explanatory to anyone with a good grasp for article guidelines, others deserve an explanation. Requiring the arbitrary copying of template language to the talk page when the template adequately explains the problem would be a pointless waste of time. Monty₈₄₅ 15:59, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Exactly - "any tag that is not discussed on the talk page is fair game for being removed on that reason alone" is definitely too harsh. On the other hand, if one sees a tag, the meaning of which is not clear (for example, a "POV" tag with nothing on talk page or edit summary even helping to guess which POV is overrepresented and which one is underrepresented), of course one can remove it (and say so in the edit summary - "Tag removed - not sure what it meant). But I don't think that there is anything in the current policy (or "customs", or "precedents") that prevents anyone from doing that... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 16:19, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

• Never been a fan of the "LARGE" tags. However I do believe they are useful in motivate editors to fix problems in articles that are close to their hearts. As see on my
  WP:AUTOCONFIRM ones) should have the capability of placing this tags. Most tags should be smaller and many only implementable after a talk has been forth coming. Lets make it a bit harder to spam them. Lets make it so that fixing a problem would take just as long as placing a tag. lets encourage editors the fix over the tagging because they both require the same type of action. Moxy (talk) 16:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

• The inline tags are sensible because they are right next to the problem which needs fixing. It's the banner tags at the head of the articles which need changing. They are ineffective because of
  tag-bomber. Warden (talk) 16:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Just thought I should announce this: I made a bold change to Wikipedia:Orphan.. a semi-guideline page I suppose.. anyway, an orphan is now officially an article with ZERO incoming links as opposed to one with less than three incoming links. Relevant discussion is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage#Orphan criteria. -- œ^™ 06:47, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Autoblog.com is a reliable news source with millions of readers. Unfortunately, its name suggests that it is a blog. It certainly is not, but many Wikipedia editors jump on any citations referencing it as a violation of

Aha! I have been pointed to this discussion on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. It seems to support the position that Autoblog.com can be considered an RS, but do we need another discussion with more participants to reinforce this one? Ebikeguy (talk) 02:34, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

en:wiki included several categories such as "victims of communist repression" or "victims of political repression". They were subject to a discussion in which some wikipedians suggested that they should be kept and others that they should be deleted. No consensus was reached, however the categories have been deleted. There is no indication about who took the decision to delete them and why, if no consensus has been reached. Afil (talk) 01:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

A recent discussion was at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 December 22#Victims of political repressions clean-up. Is that the discussion to which you were referring? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:36, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes. That is the discussion. However there was no consensus on deleting the category. Many of the participants in the discussions were of the opinion to keep the category.

In many cases, in the communist regime, people were imprisoned or sent to various camps without being judged or sentenced. Even if they were, in the Soviet Union and in most communist countries political prisoners were a category which was distinct from the common criminals. Eliminating the category of political prisoners, created the following situation. Various persons are included in the category "Inmates of .... prison" (or similar) - both if they have not been sentenced for a crime or if they have been sentenced for political reasons. In both cases this puts them into the same category as any other criminals (murderers, thiefs, etc) who have been imprisoned sometimes in the same camps or prisons. This is totally incorrect and extremely offensive.

The scope of the discussion was to improve the categories not to eliminate them so as to cast a denigratory image on some people. It definitely implies that Wikipedia is taking the part of the oppressors, which can hardly be considered a neutral or fair point of view.

Therefore the conclusion not only does not reflect the lack of a consensus but is incorrect.

I have my doubts that User: Kbdank71 has any knowledge about political repression in communist or any totalitarian regime. Anyway, for those who have had contacts with the problem the lack of understanding is extremely offensive. NPOV does not mean denying facts. On the contrary, denying facts means taking parts.Afil (talk) 01:34, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

If you think that the discussion was improperly closed, the place to look for a review of the close is at

WP:DRV. - TexasAndroid (talk) 21:08, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

However I have found out that such cases are not even looked at and obviously no corrective measures are taken. Something should be done about it and somebody should have the responsibility of investigating such cases. And an easily accessible way should be found so that the persons who are upset about such cases should know where and how to flag them. Maybe it exists, but I have looked and not been able to find it.Afil (talk) 01:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Until you explain just what it is you think is going wrong, nobody here can do anything about it.

talk) 20:03, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

What I am trying to find out is where such cases should be reported and if there is anybody in charge of looking into them. This creates the impression that nobody is interested in the issue. It they are simply treated as normal disputes, in which a majority can rule, the result can be wrong. Afil (talk) 20:16, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The first step is that you decide to become the "somebody" who

WP:BOLDly

fixes any problems you encounter.

If, however, you've attempted to resolve the problem and need help with a specific dispute, then

WP:NPOVN is a typical place to address questions of bias. Depending on the subject matter, you might also find help at WP:Countering systemic bias

, a group of people interested in improving coverage on non-white-people and non-English subjects.

NB that the English Wikipedia defines "neutral" as meaning whatever correctly reflects the major, high-quality sources on the subject, not whatever

treats all viewpoints as being equally valid. This occasionally results in claims of "discrimination" by tiny minority groups. To give one particularly extreme example, some pro-pedophilia activists have said that Wikipedia "discriminates against" their "minority group" by not re-writing our articles to make pedophilia sound like a perfectly acceptable alternative lifestyle. We do not apologize for that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

If the situation ~does not involve content~ (for instance, harrassment based on belonging to a protected class) you can report it by email to me: philippewikimedia.org. If it involves content, the editing community and the links above are the best options. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

How should display honorifics? Your comments are invited. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:44, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout#Against putting nav boxes in their own section. Mangoe (talk) 14:14, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Post this at

WP:RSN with specific questions to your dispute. SchmuckyTheCat (talk

)

No, they are not. They are replies made from any random internet user, not by any reputable author, and there is no control over the accuracy of the answers. The sites are not more reliable than our own Reference Desks Cambalachero (talk) 17:10, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Also see

WP:CIRCULAR. Those two sites frequently link directly back to Wikipedia. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 17:12, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

ask.com is a search engine, not a forum.

talk) 21:36, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

There is a discussion about updating our blocking policy in relation to blocking users as a punishment. Everybody in the community is welcome to comment here. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 19:48, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I moved the page into the Manual of Style. I forgot to add it to the category (the MOS header does not, unlike hte "guideline" one) so the notice that WP:Manual of Style/Images has been marked as a guideline will probably come through soon. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 08:47, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I posted a query at BLP regarding nationalities. If you have any comments please post there.Eldumpo (talk) 08:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

There is currently a proposal to merge

Can we have some more eyes on this? A merger implies a re-structuring of WikiProject Politics, and possibly other related projects such as the controversial Conservatism project, so it would be good to have some more people involved. --Kleinzach 02:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

There is an RfC here about whether to remove from the lead of Wikipedia:Verifiability that "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."

[insert begins here]

Note: the link above should read that the RfC can be found at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#RFC - Compromise proposal re first sentence  Unscintillating (talk) 19:08, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

[insert ends here]

The RfC is likely to close in a few days so if you want to comment, please do so soonish. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 23:45, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

This does not accurately present the situation or the change. Please see wp:ver and the wp:ver talk page. North8000 (talk) 00:47, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the proposed change is a lot more complex than SV makes out... but you can read the proposal and the rational for it at the RFC. The RFC was announced on this page back on October 6th... but its good to have a reminder for any one who missed it. Blueboar (talk) 02:46, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

More specifically, of the portion which Slim claims that the proposal is removing from the lead, the actual proposal RETAINS all but two words of it in the lead, and moves the two words ("not truth") into a following section. North8000 (talk) 13:25, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

It's even more complex than that... the proposal does change the wording of the sentence SV is concerned about, but it seeks to retain the concept behind that sentence, and tries to explain that concept more clearly by expanding on it to an entirely new section of the policy. Please just go to the RfC, read the proposal and the rational that accompanies it, and make your own decision. Blueboar (talk) 14:52, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

That's an improvement, but there still needs to be made a change to Verifiability + Veracity. Carrite (talk) 00:56, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

If you look at XpressMusic, there is a notice advising readers that numerous specific articles have been marked for merging.....for over 18 months. What policies exist to monitor merge suggestions, and what policy exists which deal with long time editors like myself who feel it's better to just remove the notice and get on with our lives? Summary - are "Is has been suggested that..." templates ignored and what can be done about it? doktorb _words^deeds 13:25, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

The WP:Editing policy is that someone (you) eventually looks at the relevant talk pages, determines whether there is any agreement to do the merge, and either boldly merges the pages him- or herself, or boldly declares the merge proposal to have failed. You should feel free to do this for any page whose merge proposal is more than a few weeks old. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

You may also (hopefully) bring it to the attention of a larger audience at Wikipedia:Requested moves - Nabla (talk) 23:46, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I've seen some merge tags in place for over a year myself. Perhaps some sort of centralized place where to list these would be good. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Part of a series on... or portals have been use to promote special interest groups? Do you happen to have an example of that. Yoenit (talk) 23:24, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Id be interested in seeing an example too. Thank you!Thelmadatter (talk) 00:58, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll put it in it's own section, easier to remove..

Take for example the "Part of a series on Feminism" in the Template:Feminism sidebar; and all the articles related to feminism

French structuralist feminism

Waves of feminism ; First-wave feminism ; Second-wave feminism ; Third-wave feminism ; Postfeminism ; Postmodern feminism ; Post-structural feminism

Pro-life feminism ; Atheist feminism ; Christian feminism ; Feminist theology ; Jewish feminism ; Orthodox Jewish feminism

Lipstick feminism ; Ecofeminism ; Fat feminism

Feminism and modern architecture ; Feminist literary criticism ; Feminist science fiction ; Feminism in culture

Men and feminism ; Feminist effects on society

Liberal feminism ; Marxist feminism ; Socialist feminism ; Anarcha-feminism ; State feminism ; Transnational feminism ; Feminism in international relations ; Global feminism ; Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World

Separatist feminism

Sex-positive feminism ; Transfeminism

Feminism in 1950s Britain

Just a small sample, wouldn't want to take up the whole page.

Considering the amount of books about every subject and it's relation to feminism, like

Cyborg theory

Haraway’s cyborg called for a non-essentialized, material-semiotic metaphor capable of uniting diffuse political coalitions along the lines of affinity rather than identity. Following Lacanian feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Haraway’s work addresses the chasm between feminist discourses and the dominant language of Western patriarchy. As Haraway explains, “grammar is politics by other means,” and effective politics require speaking in the language of domination. [4] To counteract the essentializing, and anachronistic, rhetoric of spiritual ecofeminists who were fighting patriarchy with modernist constructions of female-as-nature and earth goddesses, Haraway employs the cyborg to refigure feminism in cybernetic code. As she details in a chart of the paradigmatic shifts from modern to postmodern epistemology within the Manifesto, the unified human subject of has shifted to the hybridized posthuman of technoscience, from “representation” to “simulation,” “bourgeois novel” to “science fiction,” “reproduction” to “replication,” and “white capitalist patriarchy” to “informatics of domination.” [5] While Haraway’s “ironic dream of a common language” is inspired by Irigaray’s argument for a discourse other than patriarchy, she rejects Irigaray’s essentializing construction of woman-as-not-male to argue for a linguistic community of situated, partial knowledges in which no one is innocent.

The side-effect of this bias is that women who don't owe their fame to feminism are marginalised. Look at the publications in archaeology written by women: 1991 in archaeology "Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory"; 1993 in archaeology "The Archaeology of Korea", but when you go to the authors page: "She has also conducted extensive research in the archaeology of gender" 1996 in archaeology "Gender and Archaeology (University of Pennsylvania Press)." 1997 in archaeology two books from the same author, one called "Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige"

Anthropology and psychology are even worse, especially when you read some of the studies published by "university professors"; the methodology is about what you'd expect from a second year student around here. They have created "gender" studies so they can talk about themselves, and good women scientists get even less attention than before.

Don't know what is worse, these special interest groups or the new skeptics movement where every fact is weighed against the possible misuse by fringe groups before it can be included in an article. There seems to be no escape from POV-pushers on wikipedia, apart from maybe mathematics. </rant> DS Belgium (talk) 02:37, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Not all women's articles are confined to feminist topics, I don't know why you make that claim. For example, there's a "Women in Society" sidebar/bottom menu template, which is more general. Most articles that happens to be about a woman, or women, are of interest to more than one WikiProject and get another sidebar attached to it (like WikiProject Islam or WikiProject Buddhism, lots of projects have topical templates).
WikiProject Military has 14 Infobox templates, plus a Navigation box for military campaigns. WikiProject Chemistry has several templates. If the Marie Curie article doesn't have any, maybe one could be added. WikiProject Medicine has several templates too. Women in medicine could have those added to them.
Your logic that a WikiProject Feminism sidebar results in articles about women scientists getting "less attention than before" doesn't follow, neither does your statement "women who don't owe their fame to feminism are marginalized". I realize you could possibly be trolling for an argument over whether feminism or gender studies are even a valid academic subject, that seems to be your point; unfortunately for you, a lot of universities seem to think that it is. So I don't think you'll find this is a useful place to have that debate. I don't think Wikipedia ought to debate whether or not an academic discipline is philosophically justifiable or not if it's widespread, historic, commonly known, verifiable academic discipline. Feminism and gender studies are areas of academic study. (And are also political influences, and cultural influences, and economic influences, etc.)
It may be true that to certain people who have a visceral aversion to feminism or gender studies, that seeing such a template on an article would perhaps drive them away from the article. I guess if they understood liberal arts theories, like post-structuralism and the interplay between signifier and signified... that might help. OttawaAC (talk) 07:14, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

That rant is TLDR. I still read most of it, and understood more than half, I think. But I don't understand what it proves. If you reply with something long and hard to understand, I'll probably stop trying. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:54, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

With a portal you get to put your template on every page you feel is related to that portal; But it looks like I posted part of another post I was preparing as well, about how special interest groups can crate articles that rely on self-published sources without being challenged. DS Belgium (talk) 04:46, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I understand better now. I don't get what portals have to do with it. Not exactly, at least. For instance, Atheism has one of those boxes. It has a link to a portal, but it doesn't seem obtrusive. (the thing about self published sources is a widespread/longterm problem that isn't interesting to me right now, since it's so hard to fix). - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:20, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I dont think these examples relate to my question as all of these portals and marking are related to topic and or ideology. Im looking for a way to give credit to an educational institution which encourages its faculty and staff to contribute by creating or significantly improving articles, not matter what the topic. I think some kind of tag on the talk page is better.Thelmadatter (talk) 01:46, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes; see above.  Chzz  ►  10:49, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

An RfC has been put out on the proposal to promote Notability (astronomical objects) to a notability guideline. Please join the discussion. This is the result of a long discussion at WikiProject Astronomy. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 01:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Greetings! I have been a Wikipedian since 2007 and am an English teacher at ITESM- Campus Ciudad de México. I have worked for some time to get my school to take contributing to Wikipedia seriously and have made headway. Not the least of the reasons for this is that they see the public relations possibilities.... very important in Mexico and to a private institutions dependent on tuition money!

Anyway, in the Commons, there are ways to categorize and otherwise mark contributions as coming from an institution to encourage institutional donations. I dont see much in the way of this here on en.wiki and Ill assume that is the case as well in es.wiki. I have managed to create this category Category:Projects related to Instituto Tecnólogico y Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, with a subcategory for some of the instruction and student pages related to when I had students write for WP at the Toluca campus back in 2007.

My question is this. Would it be possible to create and place categories such as "Articles created or significantly expanded by faculty at ITESM-CCM" on say articles themselves? I could put such on the 300+ articles I have created or expanded about Mexico. Related question, could a "tag" (for lack of better term) be put on the talk page of these articles announcing same?

Im sure both are technically possible, but the real issue is whether or not the community would accept something like this. Thanks! Thelmadatter (talk) 12:51, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I am sure there will be no objection to a template on the talkpage like {{WikiProject Articles for creation}}, which will automatically categorize the article talkpage. Categorization in the actual article? Absolutely not. Yoenit (talk) 13:11, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

You could create a portal or project and add a template "Part of a series on ..." to those articles. It's been done to promote special interest groups which could hardly be called NPOV, so yours would be one of the more neutral ones. And you get to put a "This article is within the scope of ****, a collaborative effort to improve ****** on Wikipedia." notice on every talk page. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/WikiProject for more DS Belgium (talk) 14:28, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Part of a series on... or portals have been use to promote special interest groups? Do you happen to have an example of that. Yoenit (talk) 23:24, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Id be interested in seeing an example too. Thank you!Thelmadatter (talk) 00:58, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

You could perhaps use a talk-page template similar to {{WAP assignment}} (shown here)  Chzz  ►  10:41, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I suggest that Thelmadatter or ITESM contact the Foundation (here) about participating in the Global Education Program (also known as the Ambassador Program) before using that particular template. Please contact me for information about the program and/or assistance in joining it. -- Donald Albury 11:31, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't actually suggesting that; just saying the user might create a similar template, perhaps copying the code of that one. (But of course, if they're interested in the program, that's fine too!) Chzz  ►  21:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

RPP and AIV often get absolutely enormous backlogs, even though we have more admins than any other Wikimedia wiki (by far). Any ideas on how to solve the backlogs?Jasper Deng (talk) 03:29, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Fix RFA? How many admins are regulars at those notice boards? Not that many. Also, how does en. compare in terms of active admins/IP edits per day? Just because the total is higher, doesn't mean the workload per admin is lower. Monty₈₄₅ 03:36, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

A first step might be identifying exactly what RPP and AIV are. I have no clue, speaking for myself. How about using full names of obscure acronyms at first mention? Carrite (talk) 05:14, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

In general, Wikipedia-related capitalized acronyms are found by searching for WP:(thing), for example WP:AIV. It's also good practice for posters to either wikilink or spell out full names once in discussions. ---Lexein (talk) 16:06, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Requests for Page Protection and Administrator Intervention against Vandalism, I see after doing research... Here's a suggestion: requiring people to register and sign in to edit. Probably 2/3 of vandalism would be blown away instantly, thus eliminating the demand on scarce janitorial services. Carrite (talk) 05:17, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:PEREN#Prohibit anonymous users from editing. Anomie⚔ 15:37, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Jasper - how big of a backlog are you noticing? Last I checked, AIV was impressively promptly handled. Did someone leave to take a restroom break? If something is urgent and clear-cut, ask at irc://irc.freenode.net/wikipedia-en-help , either !helper or !admin . --Lexein (talk) 16:06, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

The wait was once fully two hours. I'm a little more concerned about RPP.Jasper Deng (talk) 17:42, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Two hours is not a long wait. I would define anything which got done at Wikipedia in two hours as "prompt". --Jayron32 01:54, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Not when it's urgent, which is pretty often (Backlogs are OK at AfD and other admin-requiring processes that aren't as urgent).Jasper Deng (talk) 01:59, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I've always gone to IRC for anything urgent (rapidfire, defamation, policy blankers), especially if I've noticed 3 or 4 AIV events ahead of me. Perhaps IRC should be more prominently recommended for urgent matters? --Lexein (talk) 02:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Not everyone knows how to or bothers to use IRC (including admins).Jasper Deng (talk) 02:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

So, in other words, you can't be bothered to do the thing that will fix the problem you are having, so you expect the rest of the world to conform to what you want. I just want to get this straight before we decide how to address the problems you are having... --Jayron32 02:50, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

(Now now, I took his point as valid, while seeking a longer term solution to the foundation issue ...) --Lexein (talk) 02:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

You'd be surprised how many admins hang out on IRC. But I hear ya; though I'm happy with the IRC turnaround time I've gotten, that's beside the point. How would one improve AIV and RPP response times? --Lexein (talk) 02:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC) (edited) --Lexein (talk) 03:19, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

One idea I was contemplating is "Report reviewers." They would review all RPP and AIV requests as "endorsed" or "declined", saving admins a bit of time.Jasper Deng (talk) 03:27, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

It is an interesting idea, but if someone is trusted enough that an admin would block someone based on their endorsement of the report without further review, they really should be made an admin and cut out a step. If they are not that trusted, it doesn't really help does it? Monty₈₄₅ 03:34, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The admin does not necessarily have to agree.Jasper Deng (talk) 03:59, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Would these "support"/"oppose" comments be inline, or would this necessitate another pipeline as used in DYK? If they're non-binding, then I'm afraid I don't see the utility. If they're binding, admins will (correctly, IMHO) balk. I think the best approach is more admins. Recruit, nominate, and approve admin candidates even if they express a desire to focus in particular areas. I can think of one editor (not me), talented and fair-minded, nominated for adminship once, who would rock at clearing the very backlogs mentioned. --Lexein (talk) 05:58, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem is the amount of workload. There are backlogs all over. If you try to adjudicate many of the discussions, you are often taken to task for being wrong. All of this wears on you over time. Would more admins help? Sure. Something like RPP is not a simple drive by and cleanup. It means looking at what is happening and then deciding what is the correct action. However, if everyone would pitch in and clear up stuff that does not need an admin, then some admins could spend more time on admin work. Anyone want to clean out the misclassified stubs in the list of suspect articles? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

(

WP:Wikignome demurs with a terse mumble, nimbly diving back into the mushroom forest, goes back to Category:Articles needing link rot cleanup, etc.) --Lexein (talk) 07:12, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is so much about "support"/"oppose". It's more that if the community saw it as useful, non-admins could step in and provide useful information to allow administrators to better handle the action being proposed. I've done this before at

WP:RFPERM

- basically if someone is requesting something like autopatrolled, the admin is going to go and have a look and see if the user meets the requirements to be given the permissions: a non-admin can help here by doing some of the legwork. It isn't so much about whether there is consensus (which is why you'd have "support"/"oppose" statements or !votes) but about simply gathering the information together to allow admins to make a better decision. This is technically what is supposed to happen at AfD, but whether or not we grant someone rollback or semi-pp an article for a week or so is a bit less contentious than whether to delete something so shouldn't ideally end up in there being discussion.

(That said, the flipside to this argument is the simple one: the people doing this kind of work should go to RfA and become admins. Obviously, that makes sense. But not everyone wants to spend a week having rotten fish thrown at them.) —Tom Morris (talk) 17:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

As someone who watches RFPP there aren't that many challenges. Ultimately if you want to reduce the number of times you as an admin get challenged the only way you are going to achieve that goal is to make the relevant policy clearer and more deterministic. If you want to reduce the drama caused by being challenged you need to be prepared to agree to disagree earlier and/or have a more productive escalation process - possibly including some way of getting another admin(s) to give a second opinion. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Disclaimer: If this is the wrong place to ask, please delegate me to where it would be more appropriate :)

Where can I find the policies (if they exist) about how to get access to the Special:OAIRepository (OAI = OAI-PMH = Open Archive Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)? The background story is, that there is the DBpedia project, which, in a nutshell, is about extracting structured data from Wikipedia articles and freely publishing that data as downloads and via publicly accessible databases (called triple stores/SPARQL endpoints). As the structured data enables one to ask complex queries on Wikipedia, DBpedia already received quite a lot of attention. At the University of Leipzig we have developed a live-synchronization module which keeps the data in such triple store up to date. However, so far we have done the extraction only for the English Wikipedia, as we do not have resources for maintaining multiple instances. But other research groups have already announced their interest in setting up the DBpedia live extraction for other languages. So we would like to know how they could apply for access or who they should contact. Aklakan (talk) 10:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)Aklakan

Take a look at meta:Wikimedia update feed service. Looks like you have to ask Kul Wadhwa. On Wikipedia he is User talk:Kul Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much, that really helped :) Aklakan (talk) 13:04, 3 November 2011 (UTC)Aklakan

Dear administrators of English Wikipedia

Can you please block this user?

Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.214.128.70 (talk) 05:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I blocked him one month for now - he seems to spend all his time spamming people's talk pages instead of making useful contributions. (It doesn't really seem like he speaks English, in any event.) Anyone can lengthen the block if they see fit. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I also mentioned it to stewards, and apparently there was some history, so the global account has been locked. [2]  Chzz  ►  21:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I've started a discussion on exactly what 'Wikipedia is not censored' means. Comments are welcome at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#What WP:NOTCENSORED is not. Robofish (talk) 18:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

All rollbacker rollbacks should be clearly labeled in the edit summary with [[WP:Rollback|RB]] along with the action (undo edit by xxx, tttt dddd), if no edit reason will ever be offered.

1. The generic rollback edit summary is necessary, but not sufficient. It indicates action(undo), but not reason(vand, blanking) or source(rollback).
2. Unidentified as a "rollback" edit, it is indistinguishable from an "undo" with no reason given (specifically discouraged in
   WP:Edit summaries
   ).
3. It allows masquerading: An editor can say "oh, that wasn't rollbacking, it was just an undo with no reason", or vice versa.
4. Accountability (labeling in edit summaries) is required of all other semi-automated actions by bots and scripts (Twinkle, others). Rollbacker rollbacks should be no exception.
5. It is anti-convenient for every other editor faced with a reasonless edit summary, forced to diff. WP:Wikipedia is a volunteer service - action by one editor (in this case a rollbacker) should not force more work on other editors: one click, but 5 - 20 seconds of boring unproductive waiting.
6. Breeds discontent (see 5); it gets worse when an editor (unknown to be a rollbacker) is encouraged to included a reason in edit summaries. The replies are priceless. Point: tools should not lead to more work, or surprise, due to their unrevealed operation.
7. Per
   WP:Edit summaries (linked from WP:Editing policy#Be helpful: explain, Help: Editing, and WP:Etiquette
   ) every editor is encouraged to summarize the action and its reason, such as "rv v" as an aid to other editors and in content disputes. I see no reason for any editor to be excused from that by a coding implementation, especially when the tool can be coded to mark it automatically.
8. Argument against: "The reason for the edit it already clear" - false. It's only clear when looking at diffs or at old pages, and in the rollbacker's User Contributions, but not in watchlists, where many, many editors live. (How many? Does anyone know?)
9. Argument against: "We shouldn't change anything - I don't like it." Well, that's not a reason. Mute, reasonless edit summaries go against the open nature of the editing process. They fail to inform following editors. They are yet an inequity, a privilege which lacks direct accountability.

I'm starting here at (policy), because it all starts with policy: all edits should have action and reason, and/or tool used, unambiguously stated. --Lexein (talk) 05:54, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Um...I thought the whole point of rollback was that editors with its 'power' are trusted to only use it appropriately. It's almost always obvious why someone used it -- when it's not, they probably shouldn't have in the first place. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 06:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not obvious without looking at the diff. Or viewing the two page versions. Or looking at the rollbacker's Contributions. Not very obvious from the edit summary, which only states that there was an undo. Please note that I'm asking for two letters to be added to the edit summary to identify it as a rollback. All other bot and script tool edits are required to be identified. That's it. --Lexein (talk) 06:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, so, currently if you use actual

So - you're suggesting we add a link to 'rollback' on the letters 'RB'? Can you clarify, because at the top you wrote ...along with the action (undo edit by xxx - and when using actual 'standard' Rollback, it wouldn't have any additional info - unless the user has something like User:Gracenotes/rollback.js (which allows use of Rollback with custom edit summaries).

If it's just adding RB and a link to the standard Rollback edit summary, then yes, OK, fair enough, I support that.

However, if you are suggesting that Rollback edits need any other edit summary - not just a default one - then I oppose, because the whole idea behind Rollback is that it's a quick way of removing something that so obviously needs removing that no additional details are required - and if that is abused, the userrights can be revoked -

You understood me well: the default, adding RB (and/or a wikilink) is exactly what I meant. Based on your info, any of these would be helpful to editors, because the tool used is disclosed, even if the edit reason is still not:

1. (Reverted edits by 23.34.45.56 (talk) to last version by 12.34.56.78) -- links "last version"
2. (Reverted edits by 23.34.45.56 (talk) to last version by 12.34.56.78 using RB)
3. (Rolled-back edits by 23.34.45.56 (talk) to last version by 12.34.56.78 )

--Lexein (talk) 08:31, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Well if THAT is all you want, why didn't you just say so? What was the whole point of all that text about undo and suggested edit summaries and having to check diffs and so on? But really, rolling back has its own unique format that looks nothing like undo or anything else, so I'm still missing why you're even making a big deal. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. It's a process; the prior discussions were pretty gnarly, and I wanted to address that and existing policy, while proposing this change. Chzz's point helped focus my thinking about the options available. I never saw rollback summaries as looking unique, really; my bad, I guess. But still, looking unique isn't the same as being explicitly identified (named). Yes, it's a small change, so hopefully, easily adopted. --Lexein (talk) 03:37, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I support providing a link to that guideline in the automated edit-summary. It's less confusing to the newbies with a link, and I don't see any downsides to providing it. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:48, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Support what Chzz has suggested, and oppose what Chzz has opposed. Adding an "RB" link is handy. The presence of the links at the end of edit summaries for AWB, Huggle and Twinkle have enabled me to create non-automated contribs, which is basically a way for you to look through a user's edits with the automated edits excluded (and thus hopefully providing a practical response to the "Too many automated edits" crap we get at

WP:RFA far, far too often). Being able to choose to filter out rollbacks this way means they can be excluded when searching for substantive edits, or checked for specifically to see whether or not a user is using rollback properly. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I've narrowed the options to #2, similar to Huggle's summaries. --Lexein (talk) 14:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Having now worked on English WP for a number of years, I have still not yet ceased to be surprised at the huge amount of articles here about matters that one could assume are of miniscule notability and of little or no general interest, reasonably, to the readers of English WP. Why, for eaxmple is a large number of Swedish celebrities, who have never done anything noteworthy of any kind in any English-speaking country, or been covered in English anywhere else for their notability at home, covered so extensively here? Is the goal that we are to be able to read all about everyone in the world who has done anything notable in any country, whether or not they, reasonably, can be considered totally irrelevant to readers of English? I'm not complaining, but I don't understand, and I'd like to. Any specific English WP policy on this that I can read up on? SergeWoodzing (talk) 16:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Articles here are required to be written in English. That's all.

Nicholas Sarkozy, and Saddam Hussein are not English speakers, yet their notability cannot be doubted. Notable is notable, regardless of why and where. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:29, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanx, but you completely miusunderstood. Maybe I can't explain the question, as I see it, clearly enough. It has nothing to do with what language they speak. The people you named are are internationally famous, but I'm talking about people that are totally unknown outside of their non-English speaking home countries and (thus?) not really notable anywhere else. For example (just one of hundreds) a fellow who has been in 3 Swedish television programs, broadcast only in Sweden in Swedish, and done nothing anywhere else, had no publicity anywhere else and is likely to be of no interest to anyone anywhere else. SergeWoodzing (talk) 18:05, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I guess the answer is, we do not make any presumption as to whether anyone will or will not be interested in the articles we put together. We merely check that the notability criteria can be met. And if that means your Swedish chap is sufficiently notable in Sweden, then he gets to have an en.wikipedia article, whether or not he will ever be of interest to an English speaker. To do other than this would be to require us to second-guess whether or not the article will be of interest to an English speaker. Taking your example again, a) there may be English speaking Swedes who use en.wikipedia and have an interest in the gentleman or b) a native English speaker may find herself in Sweden and come across the individual in some context and wish to know more. And besides all of this, having the article is relatively cost free, and so why not? --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:10, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

(

TALK 18:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both! Particularly, Tagishsimon's situational aspects altered my thinking, especially b. SergeWoodzing (talk) 18:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)