Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 4

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Images of Saddam Hussein

There wasn't actually a decision to keep, it just languished on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old for a long time without anyone deciding what action to take. Apparently the debate is now resumed at Talk:Images of Saddam Hussein. --Michael Snow 21:24, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is not a repository of recipe

Hi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWhat_Wikipedia_is_not&diff=4770834&oldid=4770819

On this edit, an editor added a policy. The problem I have with the addition is that I have no memory that this was ever clearly agreed by the community, quite the opposite as I remember quite well a long discussion on the topic and many mails. To me, it looks like a policy added by someone just because he supported it and because of the habit of a few editors like Gentgeen to get rid of recipes on Wikipedia. However, if there is an habit of a few bold editors, I do not think it is correct to put it as a policy as I did not see clear agreement for this. I would like to see the voting page where this was decided if this should stay here. Thanks SweetLittleFluffyThing 19:50, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Last discussions to show there is not a wide agreement on the topic :

A couple of mails http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-February/010882.html (optim)

If some one want to be bold and remove them, fine. But a rule should only be something most people agree upon, something over which people can be punished if they do it.

SweetLittleFluffyThing

So, now you unilaterally remove a clause from a policy that has been there for 6 months, and survived over 100 edits. From Policies and guidelines, Wikipedia policy is formulated for the most part by consensus. This consensus may be reached through open debate over difficult questions, or it may simply develop as a result of established practice. From the same source, Discussions sometimes also happen in IRC and on our mailing lists, but keep in mind that official policy must be agreed to on Wikipedia itself. Here's some discussion and established practice from the project itself, not some outside communications not all users participate in, and definatly more recent than last February --> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Gentgeen 10:02, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
We need a non-policy guide, a compendium of areas in which it has been well established that there is simply no consensus, and none is likely to be reached in the foreseeable future. Debate on these areas is virtually guaranteed to be sterile. All actions in these areas are taken on the collective judgement of editors on a case-by-case basis on the particular article or portion of articles in question. Editors commenting on edits involving these matters ought to avoid making statement that imply that there is consensus or policy on them.
Three well-established non-consensus areas where it is clear that there is no policy include:
Recipes
How-tos
Articles about secondary, primary, and elementary schools
Dpbsmith (talk) 15:35, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Nod. I really agree with this comment you made. A non-policy guide might be a useful way to avoid tipping in these areas. You found exactly the right words. Thank you :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing

I completely disagree on your assesment about recipes. I will concede that there was no consensus to delete in February 2004, however, Wikipedia is not static. There has been nothing but consensus to delete since April 2004. Anthere, find some evidence that there is no consensus, or revert your actions in this matter. Gentgeen 00:53, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Those seem (I haven't checked them all) to be references to individual VfD votes on individual articles, not policy discussions. I could list individual articles with recipes in them that went through VfD and were kept. That wouldn't show the existence of consensus, in general, just consensus that these individual articles had encyclopedic value. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:48, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There has been nothing but consensus to delete since April 2004. Anthere, find some evidence that there is no consensus, or revert your actions in this matter.

I digged up last opinions to report on current state of discussion on wikipedia-l on the matter

Opposed to systematic removal : *http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-January/036902.html (Jimmy Wales)

Favoring systematic move to wikibooks

Unclear

Interesting comment

Others talked on the topic, but I could not clearly see whether they supported removal of recipe or not.

There is NO consensus to delete. Clearly.

And there is still my proposition made here in october. Wikipedia:Recipes proposal. There was discussion here, and several people where either 1) totally opposed to deletion or 2) would favor keeping recipe of significant recipe from a cultural point of view. I agree there were also a couple of people favoring plain removal, but actually, in the page, they were a minority. While I agree some recipes were listed on vfd and consequently moved to wikibooks, you also forget all the cultural recipes on which there was no discussion whatsoever, but that you moved in all cases. Of course, since there was no discussion but just a removal of content, there is no link to show on vfd for all those articles.

While i recognise your position and respect it Gentgeen, it is not valid to say there is a consensus to remove all of them.

There is no such consensus. Sorry, but really, there is not. I would personally not object to removal of minor recipes no one has never heard about.

SweetLittleFluffyThing

I am in agreement with SweetLittleFluffyThing: there has never been a true consensus that recipes are always, under all circumstances, inappropriate on Wikipedia. There are a few who are adamant that they are not appropriate. There are those who are equally strongly opinionated the other way. I do not recall any forum in which a true consensus was established on this matter. If this rule survived on this page for 6 months, then all it is evidence for is that many established contributors don't check What Wikipedia is not for changes very often. I know that if I'd noticed such a rule had been added by someone, I'd have removed it too. I think most of us, for good or ill, read a page like this once, and then, once we understand what Wikipedia is for, we never go back and check again. —Morven 19:18, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

How about this rule: Wikipedia is NOT a portal for recipes. --Cool Cat My Talk 15:30, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

It sounds like we need a WikiRecipe site for recipes, then we can move any recipes from Wikipedia to there, and add links, rather than deleting the recipes. StuRat 18:10, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
We already have such a site. See Wikibooks:Cookbook. Any editor can transwiki a recipe over to the cookbook. Rossami (talk) 19:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Good, sounds like there is no probblem then, just move recipes there and link to them. I support this addition as long as it is made cear that recipes should be moved, not deleted. StuRat 19:54, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not therapy

I'm not sure exactly how to expand on it, but the phrase sounds good. It might even mean something significant. Any takers? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 04:47, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia community exists to write an encyclopedia. If you are disrupting the writing of an encyclopedia through problems that make you unable to work well with others, it is not the community's responsibility to allow the disruption to continue while you resolve your issues, sympathise as we might. In particular, Wikipedia is not chlorpromazine. — How's that? I'm thinking of it for the sort of disruptive idiot who is actually insane and considers it our responsibility to deal with that; we've had many real examples - David Gerard 8 July 2005 02:05 (UTC)
Would you be an example of such an editor? Your userpage (partly reprinted below) contains admissions of mental instability and your use of Wikipedia as a form of therapy. Perhaps you should consider banning yourself for the sake of Wikipedia. --FlatulentCorpulentDavid 05:00, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
"David Gerard is an utter wikipediholic. ...
My wife foolishly directed me here and I became an instant addict. Like Barney Gumble having that first beer.
My life has been spent filling my head with unbelievable quantities of trivia and rubbish. Here's a chance to get some of it out.
As a recovering editor, I can't see a grammatical or spelling error without my red-pencil hand twitching. Wikipedia provides tremendous opportunity in this field."
Hi, Alberuni! One day you'll actually sit out your year's ban ... - David Gerard 23:08, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Why not? Contributing to a public work is certainly a therapy of sorts. A person should feel good about improving Wikipedia, and anything that makes a person feel better about theirself can be therapeutic. --Dan East July 8, 2005 13:55 (UTC)
Because what's good for them is not necessarily good for Wikipedia, See WP:ANI for another recent case - David Gerard 23:08, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

For another example, I give you User:Amorrow, as anyone who's been receiving multipage rambling emails from him over the past few days will tell you. His page http://home.earthlink.net/~amorrow/wacky.html is down now, but it started with something like "I have recently been using Wikipedia as a form of therapy ..." It didn't work. - David Gerard 22:33, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base" is illogical

I think the overarching point of this section is to discourage trivia. The subheadings aren't really about "general knowledge" (eg What is the capital of France?) at all but rather about types of information which is deprecated as trivia and also about non-encyclopedic styles of content. The most mainstream Wikipedia articles like United States and William Shakespeare contain more "general knowledge" than things like travel guides and genealogical dictionaries. I don't think this subheading is helpful at all. I suggest that it is abolished, that the sub-subheadings below it are promoted, and that a further subheading is added along the lines of, "Wikipedia is not a repository of trivia. Information should only be added if may be of interest to a range of people." I think it needs to be short and sweet like that - we can't even say "broad range" because that would exclude specialist academic matter, and going into more detail would just open up all the other issues on the page over again. But the current heading should go because Wikipedia is the world's largest collection of "general knowledge". Virtually ever subject which might be asked about in a general knowledge quiz is covered by Wikipedia. The section simply doesn't mean what its title implies it means and at the same time the main point about trivia is obscured. CalJW 05:02, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, the title is misleading. ··gracefool |☺ 06:17, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I also agree. By most people's definition a "general knowledge base" is exactly what Wikipedia is. Perhaps the section should be "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information," which is a phrase already used in the section's introduction. - SimonP 14:38, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
The phrase is misleading. Coming from the B-road debate I would prefer something like "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of data". An encyclopedia is not a heap of data but a digest, it is data that has been distilled into information . 82.10.33.159 22:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC) Pilatus 22:45, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
You're reading it wrong. It should read Wikipedia is not a general "knowledge base", rather than Wikipedia is not a "general knowledge" base. A knowledge base is anything that provides some form of information. General is used as the antonym of specific. I.E. if Wikipedia was a general knowledge base, it would not have a specifically defined structure for its information. However, Wikipedia does have a specific structure. It is that of a comprehensive encyclopedia about notable topics. Superm401 | Talk 23:39, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an academic text - proposed addition

Wikipedia is not an academic text. Our readership is anyone in who searches the internet for English-language information. The style, language and approach of Wikipedia articles should be such that as many people as possible can understand them. Clearly they should be factually correct and academic subjects should be written about and be sourced from academic texts, but we should not replicate academic wording. Writing about a complicated subject in a way that the general public can understand it is a very fulfilling thing. Albert Einstein did it with his General and Special Theory of Relativity! So can you! jguk 10:42, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Many of our scientific articles are inpenetrable to 99% of people. The 1% who can read them, probably have access to texts and journals - and they will be there first point of call, not an encyclopaedia. We should write to a level that people can actually understand... Dan100 (Talk) 22:22, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of the introduction is to give a layman the general idea of what the article is about. For the rest of it, jargon and technical language are acceptable (within reason). →Raul654 22:41, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. Plus, we already have Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles, which is a guideline (not a policy) for a reason. WP policies don't regulate how content should be presented - that is up to individual editors. --bainer (talk) 02:26, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
This doesn't mean jargon shouldn't be used at all. Reading about it here helps by giving you terms to search for if you're doing more research on the subject. IMO we should use scientific wording if we can, but clearly explain it to the layman.- 131.211.210.10 12:59, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm not saying jargon should never be used - just that it where it should be used we should think of the reader. This would mean not using too much jargon, and explaining in the article what the jargon means. I do disagree strongly with Raul654 - or maybe it's that I see "within reason" as a stronger requirement than he suggests. Maybe if we imagine our readers have the reading ability and background knowledge of a broadsheet newspaper we won't go far wrong, jguk 19:07, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
That attitude would have us excluding all kinds of information that Wikipedia currently (rightly) has. There are some things that simply require an awful lot of background material and the average reader will never understand without reading and learning all that background. While I agree articles should be made as accessible as possible, some subjects simply do not lend themselves to being fully understood by everyone. Numerous math and science articles would fit this description, and if you'd like an example try reading tensor. If you didn't already know what it was do you think that could be explained much better? The best that can be done is to give an approachable lead section, and try to give as much context as possible for technical terms. The only facet of an academic paper we should avoid, is not covering the background material anywhere, and assuming the reader understands all the jargon. If that's all you're saying for "is not an academic text", I'm ok with it, but the guidelines already say that. - Taxman Talk 19:41, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
It's really a very, very small number of articles which, with clever wording, will be inaccessible to laymen, and it probably is maths and science ones that would fit this exception - and then only in the more esoteric areas. The problem at present is that very many articles which do not need to be restricted to academics, are. We really should be encouraging people to write articles that everyone can understand. Yes, the line needs to be drawn somewhere, but that should be as far as possible in favour of making as many articles accessible to all as possible, jguk 19:57, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Well the way that needs to be done is the way it already is. A factually correct, but incomprehensible article needs to be edited for style and readability to improve it to a better state, that not only contains the juicy details for the specialist, but also is as approachable as possible to the uninitiated. As said before, that should involve the most accessible lead section the subject allows and the minimum use of unexplained jargon. Sure, we could add another section to this policy page to make that even more clear (even though it is in many guideline and style pages), but you have to reallize, every time we expand policy pages and add new ones, there is a cost to the rest. Ever expanding policy is just harder and harder to use. So instead of adding a section, how could this be integrated into the guidelines to make them all easier to undertand? That would be the ideal solution to your aim and accomplish it not only for articles, but also for the guideline and policy pages. - Taxman Talk 22:14, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with bainer and Taxman. Maurreen 05:49, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

If we adopt this, can we also get "WP is not a primary school textbook"? I'll have concise articles with the correct terminology hyperlinked for people who don't understand it, over wordy blathers full of colloquialisms and smart similes, any day, thank you. Sure, improve article style where you can, but without dumbing down or drawing out of the text. After all, there is simple: to point people to. Otoh, there is no academic:, so technicalities that we cannot put here will not be in WP at all. dab (ᛏ) 21:36, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't like this proposal at all. If an article is difficult, the remedy is to add an accessible introduction, not to remove the difficult material. Print encyclopedias have continuously dumbed themselves down to reach a high-school-student market, but we shouldn't. Take a look at the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica to see what encyclopedias were like before the dumbing-down process occurred. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:24, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

The way I see it, no information should ever be removed from Wikipedia because it is too academic or complicated or inaccessible. Instead, the information should be made accessible, by whatever means necessary. That may include linking to more basic articles, explaining terms as they are introduced, or anything else. If this causes the article to become too long, that's never a problem. Just use summary style to handle it. Superm401 | Talk 00:30, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

I would make this "Wikipedia is not JUST an academic text", to emphasize that info of use only to PhD's is permitted, so long as an introduction is provided which is readable to the majority of people. As for the use of complex jargon, if it is the simplest way to describe a concept, it should be allowed. However, academics frequently use needlessly complex wording to explain basic concepts, in an apparent attempt to make themselves seem more intelligent. This should not be allowed. StuRat 18:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not CliffsNotes

I'd like some comments on the status of extremely detailed plot summaries like those at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Full Plot Summary and Harry Potter (plot). Is it worth having if it is too long to fit on the main page for the book or movie? James 23:03, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki to Wikibooks. Not here, not here. Summaries should tell someone, as briefly as possible and with minimal spoilers, what they'll get out of that book/movie/game/llama. GarrettTalk 00:17, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
A dust jacket will tell you what you might expect with extremely minimal spoilers. That is advertising, this is supposed to inform. I agree, there is a possible problem of telling someone what they did not want to know, but i think there is a greater problem of failing to tell them what they are here looking for. This is more a problem of organisation, rather than content. Myself, I looked at HP articles after reading the books, because I wanted to see what i had missed. I was rather startled to see the amount of long description deletion which has been going on. As with any article, the amount of input is likely to be proportionate to the amount of interest. Why is there still a debate about too much content on a non-paper encyclopedia? I would agree, a short jacket type introduction might be appropriate at the start of an article, but this is inadequate and needs an accompanying longer description, of a length which would make it a reasonable article by itself. I checked wikibooks, their own policies officially preclude hosting simple long plot summaries. Sandpiper 02:41, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Propose renaming & split of "not a soapbox" heading

"Soapbox" is a word that is not well understood by all English speakers in the sense that it's being used there. Also, there are items of two sorts in this list: outright propaganda, which is blatant abuse, and earnest critical thinking which is easy for newcomers to get into.

Since this page is an important reference for new users, which I am of, I suggest clarifying the topic by breaking up the section heading "Wikipedia is not a soapbox" into:

"Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought"

  • no original research / essays
  • not a discussion forum
  • no critical reviews

"Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine":

  • propaganda / advocacy
  • self-promotion
  • advertising

User:Bob2000

Please sign your posts on talk pages with four tildes (~). And why not just link to soapbox, which explains the idiom? —Cryptic (talk) 17:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
A link will not solve the problem raised. The term is already explained within the section, and there is a link indeed. The problem is with the heading, which is cryptic (no pun intended). I must say that I don't find the beginning part of contributing to Wikipedia to be a very simple or enjoyable experience. In fact it's pretty discouraging. There's all these rules that you only know about after making the mistake--you provide another very good example: how was I supposed to know you've got to quadruple-tilde your messages to sign them? So as a newcomer, I view any kind of jargon in introductory documents as a roadblock to efficiency. Bob2000 18:03, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Talk pages

Sam, could you say what you meant with this edit? [1] Specifically, what kind of talk pages did you have in mind? SlimVirgin (talk) 00:39, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

I was trying to claify that disruptive WP:POINT based edits arn't allowed on talk pages of any kind. ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 00:47, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Okay Sam, sorry, I misread it. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:00, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Quite alright, have a good one. ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 02:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm still unsure what it's supposed to be stopping; could it be explained before being added? It looks very much like an attempt to change policy in order to help SS in his dispute with FeloniousMonk. Changing Wikipedia official policy as a move in a personal dispute is surely unacceptable, even if the change turns out to be OK on other grounds. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Question

There are a lot of promoting websites like google or Yahoo and aren't taken off? why is that. Brett1 (talk) 04:22, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the question, I'm afraid. Could you clarify? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:43, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

when you are writing a Article the Begining to get to get this site is no Promoting yourself, Websites or something i can not remember.but what i was trying to say was we have a lot of websites like google in Wilkipedia so i was confused on that.so if you could clarify this it would be appreciated ~Brett1

Articles about websites are allowed, but the site itself has to be notable. Most web users have heard of Google and Yahoo and their sites are significant in the history of the internet, so they get detailed articles. Websites like Slashdot may not be so well known but they are also significant. However, if someone just writes their own website, it doesn't become notable merely by existing on the internet. Anyone who then puts an entry on wikipedia is likely to see it nominated for deletion on grounds of 'vanity' (that is, imagining oneself to be more important than one actually is). Of course it would be ludicrous to suggest that the CEO of Google wrote the entry on Google because otherwise no-one would visit his site. Hope this helps. David | Talk 20:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

so does this count i will write this article if you say I can Seinor League Hockey -Brett1

no one has ansered me?

  • Speaking personally, my opinion is that if you write this article it will probably be nominated for deletion as advertising and non-notable, and deleted. This is because I don't see any obvious reason for putting in an article about this site other than to try to promote it.
  • If you feel the need to test this then be bold and create the article There's no other way to find out. Unlike traditional publications, there is no process by which we accept or reject articles prior to publication. If you go ahead, I strongly suggest that the article be at least two paragraphs long, and that it mention something about the site that makes it notable and different from every other fantasy-sports game. Can you cite a source that mentions it; for example, an article in a well-known print gaming magazine that calls it the best on-line sports game, or something like that? Any celebrities that have complained in interviews that they're not getting their work done because they spend too much time online playing Ice Hockey Manager?
  • WIth regard to "other" articles, they're irrelevant. There's no exact line between what's encyclopedic and what's not, so there's inconsistency about how borderline articles are handled. If you see an article that is obviously advertising, you should nominate it for deletion. Do not try to use borderline articles as a justification for inserting other borderline articles, or for expanding the borderline; it's like asking a judge to revoke a speeding ticket because the cop didn't stop other cars that were going faster. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:46, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy addition

It was just a thought (briefly thrown around on IRC), but given the amount of wikilawyering I've seen going around (and increasing, at least from my subjective viewpoint), I thought it'd be simply to go beyond "bureaucracy" and get down to what people seem to throw policies and guidelines around for, not as procedural guides (which is what "bureaucracy" implies), but as things with force of law. Hence, "In particular, Wikipedia is not a system of law." Thoughts on this? Should it even be necessary as a reminder? --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 14:29, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... makes some sense to me, in light of wikilawyering I've seen about things that should be so obvious as to not need a rule (I.E., don't put a VfD subpage up for deletion). Although, is there a potential downside, in advancing the "WP:IAR! WP:IAR!" defense of "Anything stupid's allowed, there are no rules."? The Literate Engineer 22:24, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
WP:IAR perhaps needs to be expanded or commented on - it's like, two paragraphs, and too often misunderstood and abused as a mantra. As I noted on Wikipedia talk:Wikiblower protection, WP:IAR is not a license to moon everyone - it's a plea for common sense. That's not the same as saying there are no rules, it's asking that people resolve things by discourse rather than by rigidly adhering to writ-in-stone rules... and what the addition is about. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:41, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Structured lists?

In the 'repository of links' section, the term 'topical list' was changed into 'structured list' and the link was changed from a guideline page to another page (created by the person making the change). I did not see a discussion of this edit. Is it actually backed by consensus? --IByte 23:35, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not certain that it's a meaningful change, since either way I don't agree with making the exceptions. I'd like to insert a clause in here prohibiting all stand-alone lists of any sort, but I realize there's little chance of a consensus for that. The Literate Engineer 06:59, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Majoritarianism

Perhaps a more apt title would be Wikipedia is not a Majoritarian Democracy, since the vote tallies are not totally ignored, Wikipedia could be considered a sociocracy, which is in itself, is an evolutionary byproduct of democracy, and is close enough to it to be considered a close cousin since both sociocracy and traditional democracy depend on the "will of the people", if only in different ways. Karmafist 22:39, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the page currently says it best. "Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy". It doesn't care what political structure it has, and doesn't waste time trying to define it or follow a particular method of decisionmaking. Instead, it just goes about its business, and that includes not wasting time determining its actual power structure here. I oppose any change to the page. Superm401 | Talk 00:10, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
It is stated in policy that "Wikipedia is not a democracy." Well, I am formally challenging that statement. When I looked up the word "consensus" on Merriam-Webster online, it has the word "unanimity" in its definition, which gives me the idea that a procedural action on Wikipedia, such as deleting an article or promoting someone to the status of administrator, must have the support of everyone—every single person—who renders an opinion on that action. If this were the case, much fewer articles would be deleted from Wikipedia and much fewer editors would see their candidacies for adminship succeed. Well, that is not the case here. It is very clear to me that procedural actions that affect what grand path Wikipedia takes do not need the support of everyone who votes on them in order for them to go through. Sorry, but I do believe that the community behind Wikipedia is indeed democratic.  Denelson83  02:02, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Consensus does not require unanimity. Unanimous consensus does, for obvious reasons. According to the excellent American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, consensus means first "An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole." That certainly fits with the description of the page. I also agree that our opinions and positions are reached largely by discussion. Superm401 | Talk 02:13, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

The addition of "majoritarian" isn't needed. The line "Wikipedia is not a democracy" is intended as a simple statement about certain ways of behavior; it is not inteded to be following formal definitions used in political science. Radiant_>|< 12:07, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. Superm401 | Talk 19:51, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it is a simple statement, I think it is confusing- especially to those who are more familiar with the term democracy. The article Democracy (varieties) states that a "Direct democracy is any form of government based on a theory of civics in which all citizens can directly participate in the decision-making process."; Isn't this what happens in the wikipedia? Wikipedia is a directly democractic encyclopedia. I think we need a better name for this policy. Intangir 23:13, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Also, where do I vote to change the policy name to "Wikipedia is not ruled by majority" hehe? Intangir 23:13, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

After the recent debate at Wikipedia:Votes_for_undeletion##Wikipedia:Conlangs.2FVotes, User:Kim Bruning deleted some text explaining how VfD does not constitute democracy in the strict sense because we don't go strictly by a majority vote. I think we should add back some text along those lines, modified to meet objections; something like:

Votes for deletion and votes for undeletion may seem to be a countexample; some argue that these should be called polls since the results of the voting (or polling) is not strictly binding.

Can someone else think of a better way to phrase that? --Jim Henry | Talk 20:45, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer to go back to a somewhat modified version of the "original" ; i.e.:
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. That is, majority opinion does not necessarily rule in Wikipedia. Various votes are regularly conducted, but their numerical results are usually only one of several means of making a decision. The discussions that accompany the voting processes are crucial means of reaching consensus. For example, a very important Wikipedia process is determining which articles are not encyclopedic and should be deleted from Wikipedia entirely. These decisions are made on the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page. However, voting is only a part of the process, along with discussion through which Wikipedians work to reach a consensus.
What do you think about that, Jim Henry? Superm401 | Talk 20:53, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
That sounds good, but then, the original version sounded good to me too. Kim Bruning objected to it for some reason, which seems to have something to do with objections to calling this process "voting" when the results are not binding. I tried to rewrite it more briefly and in a way that addressed M. Bruning's objections. I'll wait till said user replies here to your proposed rewrite. --Jim Henry | Talk 21:00, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
The text was added by old hand Rednblu, who was trying to clarify things, but unfortunately made it more confusing instead. (sorry dude! ^^; ). On wikipedia, vote is shorthand for majority vote, which is certainly not permitted on wikipedia. A poll is an opinion poll, which is considered a nescesary evil. Kim Bruning 21:10, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
On Wikipedia, foo is shorthand for bar is always a recipe for pain. When we say vote, we should mean what it commonly means; if we want to say "majority vote", say "majority vote".
The reason why majority voting is not permitted on wikipedia is because it cannot be used to determine encyclopedic content:
2+2=5?
  • Support
  • Oppose
  • Support
  • Support
Accepted, 2+2=5!
(User:Kim Bruning wrote the above.)
It's simply incorrect that majority voting is not permitted. It may not be used often but is allowed and is used. Consider all of our elections(i.e. Board, Arbitration Committee...) as well as the Criteria for Speedy Deletion recently. Superm401 | Talk 22:23, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

What about this alternative text, then?

Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. That is, majority opinion does not necessarily rule in Wikipedia. Various votes are regularly conducted, but their numerical results are usually only one of several means of making a decision. The discussions that accompany the voting processes are crucial means of reaching consensus. For example, a very important Wikipedia process is determining which articles are not encyclopedic and should be deleted from Wikipedia entirely. These decisions are made on the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion page. However, the results of this voting is not strictly binding on the administrators; they In closing debates, Administrators use the votes and comments to see whether a consensus has been reached and what it is. For this reason some Wikipedians prefer to call these procedures polls instead of votes.

Is that acceptable to everyone? --Jim Henry | Talk 21:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Almost. The final sentence is unnecessary semantics, and I twiddled one sentence with a strike, hope you don't mind. -Splash 21:28, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, sound better. (I bolded the words you added to my text.) I agree the last sentence sounds a bit odd, but it seemed necessary to address Kim Bruning's objections to any use of the term "vote". Let's give M. Bruning a while to read this and reply before we modify the text on the main page. --Jim Henry | Talk 21:38, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia uses the term "vote". It is incorrect to say otherwise. As a matter of fact, the official name of our deletion mechanism is still Votes for deletion, and this page should reflect that. Otherwise, I like the paragraph without the striked portion and without the last sentence. Superm401 | Talk 22:23, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, you twiddled all the bits, except the bits that were actually confusing in the first place. As stated above, vote==majority vote==not permitted, poll==opinion poll==(bad, but what can we do?)
Some poll pages are currently called "Votes for" , this is confusing, and these pages are being moved.
Note that this is not a question of naming: votes and polls have very different objectives, and thus very different methods and applications. We have experimented with voting in the past. See if you can track down the old arbcom voting procedures. We've discovered that voting is typically a really bad idea. (see also: the (trivial) example above where an incorrect conclusion of fact is reached, based on vote-count).
People have suggested in the past that voting only in the wikipedia namespace would be an ok idea (Quickpolls, IIRC (inaptly named too!) ). That too was shown to be fallacious, as quickpolls style voting quickly colonised the main namespace, and had to be stamped out. Kim Bruning 22:24, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
How do you distinguish between a poll and a vote? I am unable to determine your criteria from context. As for VFD and other "votes" pages, no consensus has yet been reached to rename VFD. Please do not imply otherwise. Superm401 | Talk 22:28, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
OK, I give up. I see no way of reconciling the opposite positions held by Kim Bruning and Superm401. As far as I can tell Kim Bruning's position seems to be more of a fringe position -- I've never seen this vehement insistence on poll rather than vote before -- but until fairly recently I've been mainly involved in, you know, editing articles rather than policy pages (until the recent conlangs policy debate sparked by somone nominating a bunch of conlangs for deletion back in July). So I admit I don't know all there is to know about Wikipedia policy. Y'all hash it out. --Jim Henry | Talk 22:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
If you seriously think that Kim's position is "fringe", I am both desperately disappointed and rather surprised. Kim is absolutely correct: we don't do binding polls (called "votes") ever for wiki things (the only binding votes people comment on are the Arbitrator elections, which aren't - they just inform Jimbo of community opinion, who can then appoint whomever he wants to to the Committee - and Board elections, which are very much not a wiki process). The policy as I understand it (and helped form it) is that binding polls are banned on Wikipedia. Happy?
James F. (talk) 22:49, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Absolutely not. There isn't anything anywhere that says polls are banned on Wikipedia. If there were, somebody would have pointed to it. You may understand it to mean that, but, well, yeah. The fact is, of course, that anybody can try to revise anythning at anytime. So a poll cannot really be binding. That doesn't mean they 'banned' in quite the sense you imply, however. -Splash 23:40, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Feel free to read it as "binding polls are banned on Wikipedia [unless you know exactly why, and can defend to the hilt your violation of acres of policy and years of practice in ignoring this]", then. And for a policy page, see m:Polls are evil, obviously. No, it doesn't say the word "banned", because in general we used to expect our editors to show rather greater level of better judgement than we've learnt we are able to do so.
James F. (talk) 00:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
The Arbitrator elections are now binding votes(or elections). Jimbo does not select people using his judgement. The Arbitrators are chosen directly through voting. He has the right to dissolve the Committee completely, but has never used that right. Superm401 | Talk 23:28, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
Look, I think of anyone I'd know about how Arbitrator elections are conducted. :-) You're wrong, FWIW, but this is not the place for this discussion. Thanks for your input, however.
James F. (talk) 23:38, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I apologize. You're probably right(given that you have been on the Committee, which I didn't know when I made that comment). You should explain it to me some time. However, there are still other binding votes, like for the CSD issue. Superm401 | Talk 00:21, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
No worries. :-)
James F. (talk) 00:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't see Kim's position as "fringe". Actually, it seems to me that Kim's position is most closely in line with both the official policies and the ideals of Wikipedia. If it is less vocally defended here it is only because it doesn't always occur to people that the sentiment is changing and that there is any need to defend it. Most of what I have to say is already expressed at m:polls are evil; I'm somewhat at a loss for what to say on top of that to make that position clearer. Our primary purpose is to build an encyclopedia. We are a collection of people who all have the nerve to think that we are qualified to do this, and have the intelligence to have our own ideas as to how this should be done. If we take differing positions it's probably with reasoning behind it that deserves to be examined and weighed rather than summarised in one word as "support" or "oppose" for weighing and discussion to take place, and thus I believe voting has no place on Wikipedia. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 22:50, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree that most issues should be resovled through discussions. However, Wikipedia requires and uses voting to resolve a small minority of issues, some of which are important. That should not be ignored completely. Superm401 | Talk 23:30, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, "fringe" was probably the wrong word. What I was surprised at was his insistence on avoiding any use of the word "vote", even for the opinions expressed in a non-binding poll (like "votes for deletion" and "votes for undeletion" and various policy discussion pages), -- even to the extent of unilaterally deleting a page that had the word "Votes" in the title. Can either of you suggest a specific rewording of the text that Kim wanted to delete, and for which Superm401 and I suggested an alternate version? --Jim Henry | Talk 23:14, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
How about: ...
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. It is guided in editorial decisions by consensus, which is discovered through discussion. Attempting to short-circuit this through "polls", or binding votes, is highly unhelpful and is generally considered unwiki and bad practice. Consensus does not mean majority rule, and certainly does not mean plurality rule. For example, when a sysop is needed to close a debate, they will use the stated opinions and comments to evaluate consensus opinion, if there is any.
James F. (talk) 23:38, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't like that. Binding votes do exist on Wikipedia, and are appropriate in some instances. We should discourage unnecessary voting, but that version goes too far in condemning all votes and polls. Superm401 | Talk 00:21, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
They don't, honest. The CfSD debacle is a good example of why not.
James F. (talk) 00:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
The CfSD was a binding vote. You may wish that it had not been(which I can understand) or believe the outcome was a debacle. However, regardless, that is the form the decision took. On this page, we are trying to explain how Wikipedia is, rather than decide how it should be. It would be wrong to imply that Wikipedia never has binding votes when it in fact does. If you disagree with my assertion that it was a vote, please explain why. Superm401 | Talk 02:27, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
OK... but that doesn't address the fact that "votes for deletion" and similar processes look like votes to the naive user, or explain why they're not really votes and yet called such. Maybe eventually this will be a dead issue if "votes for deletion" is renamed, but that hasn't happened yet. --Jim Henry | Talk 23:51, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Votes for Deletion is misnamed (they're neither votes nor is their deletion being discussed), indeed; consider this one step on the way to getting it fixed.
James F. (talk) 00:06, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to wait until Kim explains what he sees as the difference between the vote and a poll. We can work from there. Superm401 | Talk 23:28, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
Kim meant exactly what policy distinguishes a vote is a binding poll, whereas we only have non-binding, "straw" polls. It's really quite simple. And BTW, Kim is a "he". :-)
James F. (talk) 23:38, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I think the desire to avoid even using the word "vote" is a valid one is we wish to avoid the idea that we are actually voting—there's currently a push to rename "votes for deletion" which has gained significant support, for example—as language does affect the way we think about things. I'll look at the text to see if I can come up with a better version. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 23:31, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry to yell, but this point is being constantly ignored. WE HAVE BINDING VOTES!! The recent vote over criteria for speedy deletion is a prime example. Some of our votes/polls are not binding, but some ARE. We must say that in the WP:NOT page. Also, if you come up with a better version we'd be glad to consider it. Please don't add it unilaterally, though. Superm401 | Talk 00:21, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
We're "ignoring" you because you are incorrect. The CfSD "vote" is a prime example of why we don't have binding votes, ever.
James F. (talk) 16:28, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think that the word vote necessarily means the same thing as a binding poll. Merriam Webster defines it as
"1 a : a usually formal expression of opinion or will in response to a proposed decision; especially : one given as an indication of approval or disapproval of a proposal, motion, or candidate for office "
Nothing about the definition implies that it must be binding. Furthermore, M-W defines poll as
" 4 a (1) : the casting or recording of the votes of a body of persons (2) : a counting of votes cast b : the place where votes are cast or recorded -- usually used in plural <at the polls> c : the period of time during which votes may be cast at an election d : the total number of votes recorded <a heavy poll>"
All of the definitions for poll specifically state that people voted. While straw poll is definitely a more precise word to use, the word vote is not wrong, only imprecise. (copied from Wikipedia talk:Conlangs/Straw poll) Intangir 23:35, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree. You can vote in an election, binding referendum(to make up a specific term), or a straw poll. I would still like to hear what Kim thinks the difference between poll and vote is, but in the mean time what about something like the below, which might satisfy him. By the way, I don't like VFD as a name either, but we have to describe the way things are, not how we wish them to be.
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting. Majority opinion does not necessarily rule. Various votes are regularly conducted, but their numerical results are usually only one of several means of making a decision. They are sometimes referred to as "straw polls" or just "polls" to further emphasize their limited authority in decision-making. The discussions that accompany the voting processes are often more important when reaching consensus. For example, Wikipedia decides which pages to delete on [[Wikipedia:<wait for name to settle> for deletion]] page, partially through polling. However, in closing debates, administrators use votes and comments to see whether a consensus has been reached and what it is.

--Superm401 | Talk 00:21, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Count me with the "fringe". We have recently fallen into the habit of "voting" (that is, binding votes decided by either majority or supermajority) and it has been destructive to Wikipedia in almost every case. As a community, we are now moving away from that bad habit and back to our wiki-roots of discussion and consensus-seeking. As part of this course-correction, we need to return the wording of this page to it's old wording and intent. Looking at the history, I see that this change was made in March and, as near as I can tell, was not discussed here first. I'm all for being bold, but I think a mistake was made here and should now be corrected. Rossami (talk) 03:13, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

for reference, the pre-March version of this paragraph simply read:
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy. Its primary method of finding consensus is discussion, not voting.
Hm. This is more like it. If we must, perhaps a sentence clarifying the role of polls: "In difficult cases, straw polls may be conducted to help determine consensus, but are to be used with caution and not to be treated as binding votes." Mindspillage (spill yours?) 22:39, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, returning to the old wording would be ideal. I'd be happy with that wording to a supplementary comment, too, if people feel that it is needed, though to me it seems a trifle unnecessary.
James F. (talk) 02:13, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
I'd accept that, with the poll line preferably. Superm401 | Talk 02:27, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
Despite my being an anti-voting crusader I like the supplementary line myself (well, I guess I ought to, or else I'd just have been trolling ;-))—because polls are indeed conducted, all the time, and we might as well spell out for those who are wondering just what they are and how they should function. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:00, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
And now you've implemented it. Good move. :-)
James F. (talk) 01:21, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Not a democracy ? To me consensus and democracy are synonymous. If you mean that 51% majority isn't necessarily a "consensus", there are many cases where democracies require a supermajority, such as when changing a nation's Constitution. StuRat 17:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a blog / merge?

I see no particular problem with doing this. ¦ Reisio 07:58, 2005 August 24 (UTC)

  • I've merged this. Since "WP is not a blog" has hardly seen any edits, please copyedit, clarify and/or remove the section if redundant, as appropriate. Radiant_>|< 12:48, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors - but is that really fair for the minors?

Well, for all you morons know it should be. Sure, you know how many hits you get everyday, but I'm sure you don't know how many of these hits are being made by minors. We're people too, you know, and just because we may not be able to vote or other such things doesn't mean we should be ignored here. --Wack'd About Wiki 14:28, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm a minor in my country, but I can moderate what I see myself as needed. I require no external bodies to censor themselves for me, and don't think I have the right to ask them to do so. I don't think Wikipedia should censor for anyone. To do so is POV. Superm401 | Talk 22:09, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
Are minors ignored here in the wikipedia? They shouldn't be. I don't know of any wikipedia policies that discriminate by age. Anyways, what does that have to do with censorship? Intangir 00:11, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I didn't claim I was discriminated against, or that censorship was discrimination. I did say that Wikipedia should not censor itself for me or other minors. Superm401 | Talk 00:21, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I was responding to Wack'd About Wiki :) Intangir 00:42, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
My apologies(I've been saying that too often lately...). I should have noticed that. I don't know why I didn't. Superm401 | Talk 00:54, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I'm confused... Wack'd About Wiki, are you saying you wish that Wikipedia were censored for your protection? And, if so, is this because you actually run into anything on Wikipedia, that you weren't expecting, that bothered you? Dpbsmith (talk) 01:28, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm a minor, too, but I am (I hope) mature for my age, I can handle the stuff on here. But there's another aspect to be thought of: law suits. If a minor (read: an innocent 5 year old) was to see....questionable material, the parents might get angry. And yes, you can sue websites (*cough* Napster *cough*). Ideas and comments? HereToHelp 20:32, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

The statement does not mean that content allowed to stay on Wikipedia is not moderated at all. A great amount of content is ultimately censored, for example under the Neutral Point of View and Verifiability rules, certain language is not allowed to stay. Moreover, there may be censorship of content according to the desires of the community and editors of the page. The statement Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors is really a technical one.. we have no technical means available to censor content in a way that would be adequate to protect minors, without compromising the way the Wiki works (I.E. that anyone can edit the page); to effectively protect minors, EVERY edit, and EVERY upload would have to be approved by a human before it could appear on the site -- this would break the foundation principle, that any visitor can edit any page (and don't have to register). In the situation where anyone can edit any page, how do we tell if some piece of text or imagery is bad enough that it needs to be censored or not, because every user's community has different cultural ideas about what it is ok for minors to see, versus what needs to be hidden from them, different people will have different ideas of what we are claiming if we said Wikipedia is censored for the protection of minors -- in some cultures, it may be just fine for minors to see pictures of anatomy, they wouldn't expect this to be censored; in others, merely a picture with people in scant clothing, any appearance of distasteful language (even in say a quote, or article about the word), profanity would expected to be censored -- to respect other cultures, Wikipedia might even have to suppress certain political ideas and imagery as well as violent, gory ideas, sexual ideas, etc. By trying to or claiming to do any censorship, Wikipedia would be opening up a can of worms, possibly opening itself up to action, if the measures taken to censorship weren't drastic enough so that nobody could say the statement was a lie -- by offending any culture that finds something distasteful, which happens to not be censored, and by attempting to say Wikipedia is safe for minors, the result is probably a big mess.

To even attempt a censored edition of Wikipedia, it would need to be a read-only version frozen in time based on stable revisionins of articles, and careful review by some exceptional censors. (The ability to edit an article on the fly is something that has to be lost to achieve such a goal) --Mysidia (talk) 01:18, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

If they go looking for porn and profanity it's their own problem,not our's or Wikipedia's. Dudtz 9/29/05 4:26 PM EST

I believe we should provide some level of censorship for minors, such as banning hardcore porn links on an article on Deep Throat (the secret Watergate source). StuRat 17:47, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Other Wikis

Shouldn't we make an article called What a wiki is not so we can describe the overall circumstances of Wikipedia and other Wikis? I mean, don't other Wikis have censorship? and are they not supposed to be link farms? --SuperDude 08:09, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

It would be a good idea, but you really can't genralize. If it's out of wikipedia and her sister projects, even if it's inspired by Wikipedia, it can be anything, so long as it's editable by the public. HereToHelp 20:34, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

No blogs in pages, please!

We need to revise WP:NOT to make it clear to everyone that Wikipedia is not a repository of links, images or other media! Just look at this diff for the Hurricane Katrina article and you'll see what I'm talking about. I don't mind having links to rescue relief wikis, lost persons message boards, but am I the only one who thinks this is excessive? --Titoxd 23:49, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Huh? You want to do something about policy because of one questionable link in one article? I think this falls in the "so fix it" category. Assuming the link is currently still there, and assuming you have good reasons for thinking it's inappropriate—not just because it is a blog, but because this particular link is irrelevant to this particular article--well, delete it with a reasonable edit comment and be prepared to discuss it on the article's Talk page.
  • I am personally very sensitive about the danger of linkspam, particularly linkspam to blogs, but you wouldn't get consensus that Wikipedia articles should never link to blogs (My position would be: What, never? No, never. What, never? Well, hardly ever...). And even if you did, it wouldn't stop people from putting the links in.
  • I don't see that link there today, anyway. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:54, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Because we decided to be bold and get rid of them. That problem is solved. However, I now see that the problem of anons adding edits is something that can't be addressed with policy... I just would like to see a stricter wording of the rule so IPs aren't as adamant about adding their links. I don't know if that is doable, though. Titoxd 23:41, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
Sorry to interrupt, but a wiki-pet-peeve of mine is people using bullets * when they should use colons : to indent on talk pages. Sorry... had to get that off my chest MPS 15:18, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia not tittle-tattle

Should we say something that Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminat tittle-tattle about people's private lives? In particular, it is not in the business of broadcasting information about people's medical history which most people would regard as confidential, particularly any mental health problems they may have had, which if it was widely broadcast could possibly exacerabate their problems. PatGallacher 01:55, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

  • Absolutely not. Any information relevant to the article's topic and notable should be included. If it's not relevant and notable, people already know not to include it. Superm401 | Talk 03:05, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • This is already covered by Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia. →Raul654 03:09, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Also note that Wikipedia:Verifiability has an impact here. Confidential medical details are often, by the nature of the confidentiality, unverifiable. Uncle G 10:38:07, 2005-09-10 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a babysitting service

I propose adding the following section at the end of the "What the Wikipedia community is not" section:

Wikipedia is not a babysitting service

If you can't figure out how to behave civilly on your own and read and follow appropriate policies, there's no rule that we have to spend months trying to rehabilitate you. We're glad to welcome newbies and guide them around potential mistakes. But if you continue to break the rules or push the limits when you've already been called on it, don't expect us to continue to put up with it.

Jdavidb 16:43, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

There must be a more polite wording, but I agree with the general sentiment. --Icarus 17:14, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't think this is necessary. We can tolerate the confused as long as they are not disruptive. Superm401 | Talk 19:45, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I mean a message aimed at the disruptive, not the confused. My point is some folks disrupt and then when they are called on it they like to drain resources by bogging people down in discussion about what they are doing is really appropriate or not. Some expect to be put on some kind of probation and then try to push the limits during that time. Jdavidb 20:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_bold covers it well. - Bevo 20:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Moreover, no one has to engage in any discussion that they think is a waste of resources. 205.217.105.2 22:24, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Noone has to engage in any discussions, but policing those who violate policies is still necessary. Such policing usually involves interacting with the violator to some extent. Jdavidb 23:06, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

WP:BEANS. -Splashtalk 23:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I concur with Splash. I hadn't known about WP:BEANS; it's relevant here. Expression the above sentiment is very, very unlikely to have a positive influence on anyone's behavior. It is also not very concordant with assuming good faith and Wikilove. I tend to think we err too much on the side of patience and "babysitting," but better to err in that direction than the other. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:59, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy?

Then why is there a position called bureaucrat? Dudtz 9/25/05 4:23 PM EST

I wondered about this one too. The neutral definition of bureaucracy is "systematic administration characterized by specialization of functions, objective qualifications for office, action according to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority".
I think we have this in WP, except it's a very "flat" hierarchy of users, admins, board, and Mr. Wales
Of course what they "mean" is the negative definition of bureaucracy as "a system of administration marked by constant striving for increased functions and power, by lack of initiative and flexibility, by indifference to human needs or public opinion, and by a tendency to defer decisions to superiors or to impede action with red tape".
I think it's worth clarifying the difference in the article, because WP does have self-administrating characteristics covered by the neutral definition of bureaucracy. (P.S. quotes are from unabridged.merriam-webster.com) -- Sitearm | Talk 04:57, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Censorship

We should start a new edition of Wikipedia:

Proposal application: 

-Language:English
-Theme:Censored for the protection of minors
-Identity code for new edition:Enc
-Things to be censored:
--Swear words:
---Code for censorship (Swear word=----- ----)
---Ass=$$@
---Bitch=317)#
---Fuck=6!(3
---Nigger=^1663R
---Shit=$%)7
--Pornography and nudity will be blurred unless there is some graphic censorship applied.

--A way to censor condemned words shall be to automatically substitute them with random symbols.

Some minors are utilizing an encyclopedia, but censorship may be needed for some audiences.

(unsigned comment from anon)

DG's Edit

It looks like [DG's edit] may be vandalism, since it takes a personal issue between another user and himself and puts it up as official policy. He also [edited] the article on Otherkin to insert a demonstrably false and unsourced statement about people in the otherkin subculture believing themselves to be "werehouses". The Otherkin page has since been reverted by me to the earlier version. I haven't reverted this one, however, since some of what he wrote may actually be good if cleaned up to remove the interpersonal issues referenced and if he realizes that Wikipedia is not his personal encyclopedia either. Thoughts? Jarandhel (talk) 02:02, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I reverted this. It had no place in the main article. Marskell 03:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
These kinds of edits seem to be becoming a pattern with this user; I just had to revert Otherkin again after he re-added the werehouses thing and "cited" it with a link to a "Research Paper" that actually pointed to the Illinois Movers and Warehousemen's Association. I'm new to Wikipedia, what's the procedure for dealing with a user like this? Jarandhel (talk) 03:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
First, actually try talking with him. If, despite your best efforts, that's unproductive, try a WP:RfC. Superm401 | Talk 05:35, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. I've written something on his talk page, maybe that will help defuse things. I can't say I'm too hopeful, though... I've never seen blatant vandalism done to a forum by a non-newbie in this manner that wasn't the intentional work of someone acting as a dedicated internet troll. I hope I'm proven wrong, as dealing with those is annoying and a serious waste of time at best. Jarandhel (talk) 15:40, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
However with the personalities removed, and the agreesive tone altered, some of the content of this edit should perhaps be retained, or at least could well be. DES (talk) 15:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
That's what I was thinking at first too; his main error seems to be thinking that it would not apply to himself as well as others. I'm not sure, though, adding it in even modified to be more NPOV might be taken by some users like himself as endorsement in their conflicts with others. Particularly those users operating from MPOV may see it as an endorsement of their positions rather than considering its applicability to themselves. Jarandhel (talk) 15:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought" covers the implication of his edit. Marskell 16:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a travel guide?

Forgive me if I overlooked something, but shouldn't "not a travel guide" be considered? I have been looking at Cambodia entries and the one for Siem Reap reads like a travel guide. I've started an edit, but came here for guidance and didn't see what I was looking for. Sections such as "Getting to Siem Reap" and "Tourist information" don't seem to fit. Any takers?

Yikes! Forgot to sign this. --Easter Monkey 17:53, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
It's already there under Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.
Oh, oops. Yep, there it is. Thanks. --Easter Monkey 23:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Template:Offensive

Template:Offensive in the not-censored section is offensive to me. The section clearly states that we will not change our content to avoid offending. Template:Offensive counters that. The section claimed the goal was only to "allow" censorship on mirrors, but in reality, the warning is visible here on Wikipedia, and despite the fact that no content is being removed, that entails censorship. I oppose the template and especially its inclusion in WP:WWIN. Superm401 | Talk 05:46, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, yes, there are various opinions on what is offensive. It does not mean you can not continue to post up "offensive" material. It is used to contain "offensive" material for forks and mirrors as a different version so minors and others can use Wikipedia. -- Zondor 05:49, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not a question of difficulty determining what's offensive. The issue is that Wikipedia's decided that we don't care if it's offensive to everyone. If it's legal, relevant, and illustrative, it will be included without looking back. Furthermore, if the only purpose of the template is to alert mirrors, why is it visible on Wikipedia? Just keep the template blank and you've served the purpose of allowing mirrors to filter out the pages. Something's fishy. Superm401 | Talk 06:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
As in a stealth version: Template:Offensive/StealthVersion. Otherwise I will try tagging/categorising images that contains genitalia. -- Zondor 04:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
How do you know what forks/mirrors want? I think we should let them decide on their own. You seem to be tagging images that only contain genitalia; what about other possibly "offensive" images? Did you know that followers of the Bahá'í Faith prefer not to see their prophet's photo? Will you be tagging that image as offensive? What about photos from Abu Ghraib? ~⌈Markaci⌋ 2005-10-20 T 09:06:58 Z
I now see that anything that is described as "offensive" is biased itself. But tagging images that are genitals is not biased, is it? If there are many photos of prophets then they can be all lumped together as "photos of prophets" to be removed. No, I am not an authority to know what is or not is considered offensive because I have said it is very much open to interpretation. I would like a better understanding of this. But to begin with, certainly pictures of genitalia is one that many agree is inappropriate even in the West. So in the end, we have categories of these pictures and categories of those pictures. Mirrors and forks then do have an easier choice to not include which ever categories they want to. Perhaps an article in the Wikipedia namespace can list those categories that are considered offensive for each denomination as a guide. -- Zondor 09:58, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I find your endeavor to be misguided. If an organization wants to fork/bowdlerize/mirror/etc Wikipedia, that's fine. The GFDL allows that. However, we're here to create Wikipedia, not Bowdlerpedia. I think you're focussing on the wrong goal. ~⌈Markaci⌋ 2005-10-20 T 10:48:18 Z
Any category or tag used to mark some of wikipedia's content as offensive is inherently PoV and should be promptly deleted. A "stealth version" that is not redily visible in the tagged articles is even worse than an onply visible version, IMO. Any device used to mark some content as offensive is PoV, and unless we adopt a policy by consensus explicitly allowing some such device and creating standards and procedures on how to use it (which I don't expect) any such device violates WP:NOT. Any fork is free to select or edit wikipedia's content to its own stndards, but it will have to do that without our assistance. That is why all three versions of the template, and the category that they use are all up for deletion. DES (talk) 16:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Following the law is itself inherently biased, in regards to image copyright tagging, isn't it? We have to follow the obligations of a particular organisation being the government. We have to respect it because there is no other option for it. In the same way, I see there is a need to respect a majority who are offended by certain content which is why traditional encyclopaedies do this well. However, I also appreciate that Wikipedia strives to be free from external pressure to give accuracy and freedom in its content. So I do not wish Wikipedia to be bowdlerized or censored. Wikipedia can still continue to be the way it is, and more by offering differing versions of itself in content, format, and delivery even as read-only. I don't think this is too much to ask if a good information management system can easily provide this. See also m:Should Wikipedia Use Profanity. -- Zondor 17:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Following the law does reflect a bias, but that's okay, because Wikipedia namespace pages are allowed to be biased and POV. Articles are not. Your comparison is invalid. Nowhere in our copyright articles do we claim copyright is just or that people should obey copyright law. We do so to avoid a lawsuit possibly destroying Wikipedia, and possibly because of members' sense of ethics. We are not doing it to "respect" the government, though it would still be a flawed comparison even if we were. We do not only respect the majority. If we did, we would have only one POV in each article(the majority's); instead, we describe multiple POVs in accordance with NPOV policy. This is not the same as "traditional" encyclopedias, nor does anyone want it to be. You may claim(perhaps genuinely), that you don't want censorship. However, just as US studios censor themselves to maintain low MPAA ratings, even though the ratings are not government-required, {{Offensive}} tagging will manipulate Wikipedians into censoring articles. Superm401 | Talk 00:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I do and have already acknowledged all that. -- Zondor 04:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
That's not necessarily a permanent and undisputed position as it is not one of the five pillars of wikipedia. An assumption that wikipedia should celebrate its lack of taste and restraint reflects wikipedia's unfortunate origin in the office of a soft porn company, and the biases of the highly skewed early contributors, but it can change as the balance of users changes. CalJW 13:17, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposing additional paragraph

I propose to add the following paragraph to the section Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia

Wikipedia not being a paper encyclopedia also includes that wikipedia tries to take advantage of web-navigation techniques, see for example wikipedia:easy navigation.

--Francis Schonken 04:00, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

It seems out of place to me. Most of WP:NOT is a commentary on content. To a lesser degree, it is a commentary on process. In both cases, it is a reinforcement of our primary mission - to create an encyclopedia. The page you suggest linking to is a style guide. While useful, I don't think it fits well on this page. Perhaps there are better places to add it? Rossami (talk) 04:54, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think this should be added. This is an example of what Wikipedia is, not what it is not. Guinness 09:03, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

is not the real world

I propose something like the following:

Although Wikipedia may be analogous, it is not the real world and real-world processes do not necessarily apply.

This is in response to discussion on VFU and restructuring ArbCom (particularly on the mailing list), where many participants are assuming that Wikipedia equivalents to appeals courts must function the same way as their real-world (specifically, American) equivalents do. This line of thought was refuted a few times, but persists. It occurs to me that "Wikipedia is not the real world" has a more general application, and so could be useful in WP:NOT. --fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 06:06, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Remove the term "analogous" and just say "Wikipedia is not the real world and real world processes do not necessarily apply."

It's all getting a bit silly, really. Perhaps this should be printed in mirror writing on the forehead of every single Wikipedia editor. --Tony SidawayTalk 08:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

What What Wikipedia is not is not

Wikipedia is not is not an indiscriminate list of subjects that already exist on Wikipedia, but you think they don't belong.

What this means is: let's keep it descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Wikipedia has evolved fairly successfully because of its userbase, who alone decide what Wikipedia is. --Tony SidawayTalk 08:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes indeed! Trollderella 03:13, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Is Not A Memorial

Didn't that entry used to be on this page? I'm slightly tired of having to tell people that Wikipedia is not the place to commemorate the dead. I swear that used to be on this page. Whatever happened to it, it needs to be added again. Deaths are tragic, but unless they're notable, they shouldn't have an article. That may sound cold, but that's the way I see it. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde 02:20, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

It's still there. See #Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, subline 4. Rossami (talk) 03:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
That section actually doesn't say that they need to be notable, it says "Memorials. It's sad when people die, but Wikipedia is not the place to honor them. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must have a claim to fame besides being fondly remembered by their friends and relatives." it later goes on to say "Biography articles should only be for people with some sort of fame, achievement, or perhaps notoriety. One measure of achievement is whether someone has been featured in several external sources (on or off-line)." I raise this only because it is clear that verifiability, not notability, is the practical guideline. Trollderella 03:12, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
  • You're arguing semantics. "Must have a claim to fame" is roughly synonymous to notability. Please realize that most of your actions against the term seem based on the fact that you're using a different definition of "notability" than most people do. Radiant_>|< 11:56, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it's about semantics at all, and I don't think there is any agreed upon definition of notability. Why is it that everything in the actual guidelines or policy is always claimed to be a synonym of notability, and people never actually reference the real guidelines or policy? Trollderella 21:30, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
  • For articles on people, I can cite a number of guidelines or policies against arbitrary memorials, without actually using the term "notability". These include WP:VAIN, WP:BIO and WP:CSD#A7, and the very existence of the 9/11 wiki.
  • By far our most policies and guidelines are descriptive, rather than proscriptive. If many people intuitively use a certain term that is not definied in policy, it is not useful (nor, in fact, effective) to tell them to stop using it. Instead, the term should be described somewhere in policy or guideline, and consensus should come to a rough agreement over its definition. As an example, for bands, the statements "band X passes WP:MUSIC" and "band X is notable" are, for practical purposes, synonymous. Radiant_>|< 01:12, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
    • So why introduce another layer of cunfusion, why not just stick to 'Article does not meet criteria in WP: US Presidents'? Trollderella 15:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
      • Because people are lazy. I'm not making them use the word "notable", they do that of their own accord (and in fact lots of people do that, implying the word makes perfect logical sense to lots of people). People use words like "fancruft" all the time as well, and I wish they wouldn't, but I understand what they mean by it and see no point (or possibility) in making them stop. Rest assured that if I found somebody calling the Rolling Stones NN, I would certainly point out to him that while he has the right to his opinion, consensus has a different view. Radiant_>|< 22:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

"When you wonder what to do": reference to WP:WIWO -- obsolete?

This section currently begins:

However, Wikipedia:What's in, what's out is headed "This Wikipedia page is presently inactive and kept primarily for historical interest." So, I think the reference to Wikipedia:What's in, what's out should be removed. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Thoughts? Dpbsmith (talk) 02:28, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. References to obselete pages are inappropriate. They provide an undeserved air of legitimacy. Superm401 | Talk 04:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
In the absence of further comment, I'm going to remove the reference to WP:WIWO. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:20, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

"When you wonder what to do": reference to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents -- problematical?

This section currently begins:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents is not tagged as either a policy page nor a guideline. However, we seem to have a sort of syllogism:

It seems to me that either

Thoughts? Dpbsmith (talk) 01:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Interesting suggestion. I'd go with the following:
    • WP:NOT is official policy, and several parts of it are clear and absolute rules. However, it partially relies (like most of our policies) on common sense.
    • Deletion precedents is a list of samples of 'common sense', as affirmed by what usually happens in the community. It consists mostly of sliding gray areas, as common sense seldom deals in absolutes.
    • Hence, the latter is a guideline. And should probably be tagged as such. Many of our policies are in supplemented by guidelines - such as the fact that we have Naming Conventions (which is policy) and the wording of individual conventions (which are guidelines).
  • Radiant_>|< 01:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy...or a monarchy

I've encounted a pair of users (maybe more involved, I'm not sure) on a template page that are running something of a monarchy there. They claim that each and every change to the template should be brought up on the talk page and voted to consensus. Sounds reasonable right? Well when you do that, they always cast a dissenting vote for every change proposed and then declare that their dissent votes mean that no consensus was reached. Anyone trying to make a change to the template is quickly reverted. I believe it should be spelled out in writing that Wikipedia is not monarchy. These guys are running a dictatorship in a free encyclopedia and I am determined to stop it. There is probably othere instances of this elsewhere in Wikipedia. Thoughts? -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

WP is not an anarchy

Anarchy and anarchism are not the same thing, the title of the 'is not' is clear in its meaning of chaos, however where it says it is 'not a place to test anarchism' the writer nseems to be confusing the legitimate political system of anarchism (roughly meaning a decentralised form of comunity government - which wikipedia certainly does resemble closely) with the misconception that it means lawlessness.

DavidP 16:04, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is absolutely not an anarchy. Jimbo Wales, the Board, and ArbCom share absolute authority. Superm401 | Talk 03:59, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Crystal Ball

I reverted a June change to the section that was not discussed here. Minor tweaks may have been lost in the revert. Superm401 | Talk 20:01, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

I added the paragraph below to the article before I noticed this section.

The above prohibitions are not intended to suppress discussion of current trends and tendencies and how they may affect future events. In particular the Wikipedia allows discussion about the arguments for and against whether developments and proposals will be successful provided that they are well grounded and sourced.

--Carl Hewitt 14:42, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Carl, as the box at the top of the page says, you must have consensus before making significant changes to a policy page. It is not enough to remove them when controversy arises. You have to have general agreement beforehand. Please leave this talk page section around for at least five or six days to see what people have to say. If there is general agreement or still no responses after that time, then it is more reasonable to add a paragraph. Those general statements apply for any change, and are not my take (except for the specific recommended times) but Wikipedia policy. Therefore, because policy requires consensus, I have removed the addition. My personal opinion on this specific change is below. Superm401 | Talk 23:40, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
I would rather it be rephrased as, "It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the success and future developments of proposals and protects, provided that discussion is properly cited. It is not appropriate for an editor to insert their own opinions or analysis, because of Wikipedia's prohibition on original research." What do you think about that? Superm401 | Talk 23:40, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that the above be ammended as follows:
"It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success or failure of future developments, proposals and projects, provided that discussion is properly referenced. It is not appropriate for an editor to insert their own opinions or analysis, because of Wikipedia's prohibition on original research."
Also I suggest that the top of the page be ammended to state that suggested changes must remain on the talk page for a specified time before editing the policy page. Otherwise it is just your say so that my suggestion must remain on the talk page for five or six days before editing the policy page.--Carl Hewitt 23:53, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
Carl, I like your version--I can't think of any improvements, and if nobody else chimes in during the next few days, I think it's close enough to Superm401's version that it could be added to the page as having consensus. It certainly reflects current practice fairly well, I think. As far as the 5-6 day limit, I think Super's comments (if you re-read them) simply suggest 5-6 days as a reasonable standard--he says "please" after all, not "you must". Perhaps a note should be added to this page. The rationale for his comment, which I hope you can understand, is that this policy page is often used in settling disputes. The most minor changes to the document may seriously influence people, since they come here and read the document, and assume what they read is policy. As a result, it's just standard wikipractice that, any time you want to edit or alter a page that is officially policy, the proposal goes to the talk page until you can get a few folks agreeing to it, and nobody disagreeing (in other words, consensus). Maybe that should be made more clear here. Honestly, it's a good habit to get into for editing any established page--usually, if I want to make a significant change to an article that is very stable (say a featured article), I do the same thing...posting the change to the talk page and inviting comment. It can be frustratingly slow, but it ensures that consensus prevails, and it avoids edit wars and hurt feelings pretty effectively. Thanks for the suggestion here--I really think you and Super have refined your idea into a solid addition to the page. Jwrosenzweig 00:05, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments.--Carl Hewitt 20:12, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm fine with you're proposed changes, Carl. However, on second thought(I should have said this before; sorry), doesn't it sound a bit awkward to speak of a development succeeding? I normally would say "something devloped", or "a development occured", but not "a devlopment succeeded". Does anyone understand what I'm saying? It's a minor detail, but I'd like to work out a better phrasing. Can someone suggest a fix? Superm401 | Talk 01:25, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
What do you think of the following ammendment:
"It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, provided that discussion is properly referenced. It is not appropriate for an editor to insert their own opinions or analysis, because of Wikipedia's prohibition on original research."
--Carl Hewitt 02:40, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Great. Superm401 | Talk 03:00, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

An addition like the following has been proposed by Dpbsmith at the end of this article:

It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, provided that discussion is properly referenced. It is not appropriate for an editor to insert their own opinions or analysis, because of Wikipedia's prohibition on original research. Forward-looking articles about unreleased products (e.g. movies, games, etc.) require special care to make sure that they are not advertising."

--Carl Hewitt 01:58, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Thanks. Sorry to have jumped in independently. You seem to be coordinating this, so... The most important thing to me is to have a special mention of a category of articles which present special problems, which you've done above. Can you think of some concise wording that expresses two of my concerns: first, all statements about the future are necessarily opinions and need to be handled as such (hence subject to NPOV, citing sources, etc.); second, forward-looking articles about unreleased products have a special danger, in that promoters have an obvious interest in publicizing such information; therefore much of the information publicly available about such products is likely to have originated from promoters and to reflect the promoters' POV. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:29, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
Coordinating is probably too strong ;-) I share your concerns about categories of contributions that present special problems. However, there is only so much that the Wikipedia can do in policy statements. Fans and promoters is not banned from contributing to the Wikipedia. However they have to cite public sources. Also detractors and critics can chime in with other points of view.--Carl Hewitt 17:12, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, I have no problem with your wording above—"It is appropriate... no advertising"— and would rather have it in the article than not. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:32, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
If you mean the most recent version proposed in this talk section, with the advertising sentence at the end, I'm fine with it as well. We should leave it up here for a while before putting it in the main article to give others a chance to look. Superm401 | Talk 03:46, September 13, 2005 (UTC)
I'm now adding it in. Superm401 | Talk 07:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposed addition to "Crystal ball"

  • Information on unreleased products, software, games, or movies may be appropriate when the plans for the product are so notable that they are affecting many people in the present. However, promised characteristics or planned features should never be reported as if they were facts. For example, in 2004 it would have been inappropriate to state that "WinFS is the new storage system in Longhorn" or that "Wind turbines will provide 20% of the Freedom Tower's energy needs," despite official statements to that effect. Nor is it enough to quality such statements with words like "claimed" or "planned" or "expected." Instead, descriptions should be provided only when they can be backed up by citations from independent sources who have had an opportunity to examine the work in progress and can report accurately on what has or has not actually been achieved.

Thoughts? Dpbsmith (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

    • I don't like it. It's valid to report the claim of what will be done. However, you can also include other sources' opinions that it will not be done. The kind of independent verification you specify is very difficult in practice. Superm401 | Talk 00:37, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
      • OK, how about:
Information on unreleased products, software, games, or movies may be appropriate when the plans for the product are so notable that they are affecting many people in the present. However promised characteristics or planned features should never be presented as if they were simple facts. For example, in 2004 it would have been inappropriate to write that "WinFS is the new storage system in Longhorn" or that "Wind turbines will provide 20% of the Freedom Tower's energy needs," despite official statements to that effect. It is necessary, but not sufficient to qualify such statements with words like "claimed" or "promised" or "expected." A positive effort must be made to insure that the presentation is neutral and not promotional.
I like it. Now, what you have at the end is basically a summary of the WP:NPOV policy. Superm401 | Talk 14:43, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
Dpbsmith (talk) 20:23, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
In it goes. I expect putting it in will generate some more discussion. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:11, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
I've taken it back out. The second proposed version was only on the talk page for one day. Give it about a week. Then, you can put it in and no one will have any grounds to complain. Superm401 | Talk 18:03, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
OK. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:30, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
I think it is going too far and is unnecessary. The difference between "The tower's designers say that 20% of the Freedom Tower will be powered by wind turbines" and "Wind turbines will provide 20% of the Freedom Tower's energy needs" is not sufficiently important for this page. By all means offer such detailed advice on a particular page advising how to talk about expected future events, but on this a policy rather than advisory page it is a unnecessary addition to an already too long page. Pcb21| Pete 21:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Surely anything which is affecting many people right now is worthy of inclusion? How does that help to distinguish more difficult cases where some people might be affected now, or many people might be affected in the future? Or many people might be interested in something which has a better than 50/50 chance of happening, but unless it does no one will be affected? What about possible earthquakes in major cities? Very uncertain when they will happen. Certainly not on schedule. Might be considered important nonethelessSandpiper 02:25, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No Instruction / merge?

While generally I agree that Wikipedia articles should not be HowTo's, I do not agree that the instructional parts of Condom and Wart are inappropriate. Condoms serve a very specific purpose which requires specific usage. The only problem with Wart is that the article "recommends" a procedure instead of merely informing of its existence as a home remedy. ¦ Reisio 08:15, 2005 August 24 (UTC)

Disagree with merge and with the object itself. — Xiong熊talk* 07:24, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

The 'no instructions' policy should be ratified as official policy before any merger takes place. Ingoolemo talk 21:49, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

  • Strongly disagree with making this change at this time. Weakly disagree with "no instructions" policy itself. The section heading, "Wikipedia is not instructive," seems to me to be almost an argument against the policy in itself. Let's try putting Wikipedia:How-to and How-to up for deletion first, citing the no-instructions semi-policy, and see what happens. It is very inappropriate for one policy page to prohibit something which another (and very long-standing) policy page encourages. Dpbsmith (talk) 09:53, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I oppose the merge, on the grounds that some how-to content can sometimes be very useful even necessary for a complete discussion of a subject or procedure, beyond what No Instructions encourages. --Mysidia (talk) 13:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Certainly there are instructions that seem important or relevant see Babcock test -- a description of the procedure for the test is certainly a reasonable part of an article on the subject, but it can also readily be viewed as instructive or howto material. --Mysidia (talk) 03:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Crystal ball section

This was aggressively worded to favour deletion. In my experience, proponents of deletion who rely on this section in debates on an article very often lose. It did not reflect the balance of opinion revealed by votes. If we can have an example of one that (probably) would be deleted, we can have a more realistic illustration of what it likely to be kept. CalJW 23:03, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Please do not add proposed changes so quickly. For a major policy page like WP:WWIN you should give several days for people from around the community to comment. Four hours doesn't suffice. Also, propose changes in specific terms, so that people know what they're discussing. Superm401 | Talk 03:18, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
Here it is the proposed amended part. It describes the actual state of play. On the other hand the existing section describes what deletionists would like to happen, but does not reflect the facts about the articles that exist or what happens when future events are put to the vote. There at least several hundred articles about future events in Wikipedia, but the existing section would make you thing there would only be a handful.
Future events are sometimes unencyclopedic, especially if they are unverifiable until they have actually occurred. In particular:
Individual scheduled or expected future events, should only be included if planning or preparation for the event is already in progress; or speculation is well documented, such as with the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Some events may be notable well in advance: 2020 Summer Olympics survived a deletion vote in 2005. The schedule as a whole may also be appropriate.
CalJW 22:31, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I'd keep the first part, but for the second just put:
Individual scheduled or expected future events, should only be included if the event is notable. If planning or preparation for the event isn't already in progress, speculation about it must be well documented. Examples of appropriate topics include 2008 U.S. presidential election and the 2020 Summer Olympics. A schedule of future events itself may be appropriate.
--Superm401 | Talk 21:37, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
What you put in the article is neither what you first proposed nor the modified version I suggested. You have to specify exactly what you're going to put in before you do so. I'm reverting the changes you made. Place further comments or exact proposals about the crystal ball section in the talk section above. This section will be removed in four days to simplify this page. Superm401 | Talk 03:41, September 13, 2005 (UTC)
It was somewhat more softly worded. Today, as so many days, a debate in which the crystal ball argument has been used is going overwhelmingly in favour of retention (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ronald W Reagan Doral High School. It just isn't on to have a policy favours a hard line that fails to meet with approval over and over and over again. I'm restoring the section:
Future events are sometimes unencyclopedic, especially if they are unverifiable until they have actually occurred. In particular:
Individual scheduled or expected future events, should only be included if the event is notable and almost certain to take place. If preparation for the event isn't already in progress, speculation about it must be well documented. Examples of appropriate topics include 2008 U.S. presidential election. A schedule of future events may also be appropriate.
As things are hardly ever deleted on this basis of this section, it isn't really a threat to Wikipedia's coverage of events of current interest. Conversely, as it fails to achieve the desired effect from the deletionist point of view, what is the point of insisting on maintaining a misleading version? CalJW 15:29, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Some future events, especially natural ones, like eclipses or the return of Haley's Comet, are highly predictable and should be listed even if no "planning" for the event has yet occurred. StuRat 17:41, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a video game strategy guide

I propose adding "Video game strategy guides." to the list under "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information", with a note that such guides are appropriate to create on Wikibooks. While informative articles on video games are appropriate( in some opinions, I realize this is also debated), strategies for getting through specific sections or beating certain bosses are not really encyclopedic information. What do other editors think? Specifically, does anyone have reasoned disagreement? -- WikidSmaht (talk) 05:10, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

  • I think it should be more general than that. No tutorials, video game or otherwise, belong on Wikipedia. →Raul654 05:18, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
    • I think video game strategy guides are a special case, though. First of all, "tutorials" has overtones of the above "no instruction" discussion. Also, "tutorial" has a specific meaning in video game terminology, refering to instructions or practice regarding the basics of gameplay such as play control and on-screen displays. Strategy guides, on the other hand, usually offer detailed walkthroughs and instructions for performing techniques and beating enemies and bosses. Regardless of the outcome of the "no instruction" debate, I would think we can all agree that strategy guides, as I've jsut defined them, are unencyclopedic. Am I wrong? -- WikidSmaht (talk) 07:05, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

For a few, out of the many, examples of how Wikipedia and Wikibooks are already being used successfully in combination for games:

Wikipedia Wikibooks
EverQuest EverQuest
Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Super Mario 64 Super Mario 64
Super Mario World Super Mario World
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Medal of Honor: Frontline Medal of Honor: Frontline
America's Army: Special Forces America's Army: Special Forces

Uncle G 10:38:07, 2005-09-10 (UTC)

  • I agree. It would be possible to write an encyclopedic article about, say, a specific boss, but a strategy guide isn't encyclopedic. I'm not sure if I'm wording this well, so here's an example of each (with a character I'm making up off the top of my head; any resemblance to a real video game or character is purely coincidental).
Encyclopedic: "Colonel Affeschlüssel is a character in Attack of the Werkzeugkasten. Little about him is revealed in the course of the game, beyond his hatred for Schraubenzieher, the main character in the game, and his strange affinity for using bananas as projectile weapons. In the novelizations, however, much more about his past is revealed..." et cetera
Non-encyclopedic: "Colonel Affeschlüssel is the third boss in Attack of the Werkzeugkasten. His main attacks are a flying kick that hits high, banana projectiles that hit mid-section, and the leftover banana peels that come to life and bite Schraubenzieher's feet. The best way to get past him is to first disable his banana gun by clogging it with the peanut butter you found on submarine in level one." et cetera
--Icarus 00:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Truisms

This was recently added to "not an indiscriminate collection of information." I'm moving it here because I don't think it's been discussed here yet. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:53, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Truisms. Wikipedia is not a place for stating the self-evident. Wikipedia is not a Brochure, Personal Improvement Book, Motivation Seminar, Examples Book, Infant's Encyclopedia, Collection of Philosophical Axioms, or List of Half-Baked Ideas. While it might be perfectly true that "setting realistic deadlines improves an employee's performance", statements of this type are unencyclopedic.

First of all, let me apologize for being so brash and not discussing this entry first! My motivation for including "Truisms" were a number of articles that were voted for deletion simply for being "unencyclopedic", but without further explanation.

A good example is the deleted article Moon Time. It went something like this:

Moon Time refers to the time experienced by a visitor to the Moon. Relativistic gravitational effects cause time to pass slower on the moon. Austronauts must adjust their equipment to adapt to moon time

After browsing through "What Wikipedia is not" I couldn't find any points that would have objected to this article, so I added "Truisms".

It may seem trivial to include this, but I feel the deletion process could be speeded up if users could simply quote the official policy "truism" in the AfD page. Apart from that, it's not always immediatly clear that an article contains truisms, for example when they are obscured by verbose mumbo-jumbo. I remember an article called "Communication Strategies" that contained a lot of elaborate truisms hidden behind business jargon. -- Klafubra 22:04, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

My own comment: true enough, and a valid category of "true yet not encyclopedic," but I'm not aware of it's being a common problem. I don't think it needs to be in WP:WIN. I don't like the particular example, either ("setting realistic deadlines improves an employee's performance") because at least one academic study found that programmer productivity was twice as high when no deadlines were set as when deadlines were set. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:44, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I would agree to including this entry. It would cover many of the things seen in speedy deletions as well as some non-encyclopedic entries on VfD. No harm in telling users what is not a good article. - Tεxτurε 21:05, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I oppose it. The page is becoming too long. This section, while intentioned, is as general as much the articles it criticizes. We're better off with the specific sections we have now. If something more precise needs to be added, suggest it. This is unnecessary. Also, sometimes Wikipedia is the place for stating the self-evident, like on Windows 95, which states that Windows 95 was released in 95. Superm401 | Talk 04:29, September 13, 2005 (UTC)
"like on Windows 95, which states that Windows 95 was released in 95". That's not self-evident in my opinion. The reader has many valid reasons to assume why Windows 95 might not have been released in 1995 - perhaps is was developed in 95? perhaps it was only intended to be released in 95? perhaps Microsoft chose some future date for marketing resons? etc. -- Klafubra 22:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, you know, 1.7, even though broken into 7 subsections, is still pretty explicit: Wikipedia Is Not An Indiscriminate Collection of Information. Yeah, there's seven specific examples, but there's still the 1.7.* to cover everything that's unencyclopedic or unnoteworthy. It's the catch-all. The Literate Engineer 01:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Wording issue (Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia)

I had to read these sentences three times before I understood what they meant: This also means you don't have to redirect one topic to a not fully equivalent topic that is of more common usage. A "See also" section that states further information on the topic is available on the page of a closely related topic may be preferable. My suggestion would be: The availability of space in Wikipedia means that it is not necessary for a somewhat obscure topic to be redirected to another topic which, though of more common usage, is not truly equivalent. It may be preferable to supply a "See also" section on both pages stating that further information on a closely related topic is available. Chick Bowen 18:30, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not instructive

This is a rather unfortunate way of putting it. "Instructive" means "serving to instruct or enlighten; conveying information" — something that I thought we were meant to be doing... Perhaps "Wikipedia is not an instruction manual", or "Wikipedia is not a practical guide"? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:14, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

  • I propose the section be taken out -- it seems apppropriate that some Wikipedia articles do give what can easily be construed as advise or how-to information, that describe a process. Strong objection to the addition of this section. --Mysidia (talk) 01:27, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree, Wikipedia should be instructive, whenever possible. StuRat 17:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Suggested addition

Wikipedia is not a repository of failed plans and might-have-beens. This could be an ancillary point to "not a crystal ball."

I voted and recently commented on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy which I expect, unfortunately, will go no consensus. George Lucas verifiably said he wanted to make a trilogy of sequels to Star Wars. He now says he won't and there is absolutely no plan for it. So why do we have a page entitled "The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy"? The person who created the page wants to describe what they believe the non-existent movies would like if they were actually made. I really find this unbelievable. Marskell 21:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, personally I'd like to see any verifiable information on the subject provided in Wikipedia. The editor's summary of the purpose of the article is atrocious and invalid under the "no original research" rule, among others, and the existing title breaks naming conventions ("Star Wars sequel trilogy" would be better, but we could probably do even better than that). Phenomenons such as "the virtual sequels project," which last I checked appeared to have aborted, could be included as well. I'm not sure a separate article is really the right way to do it, though. Jdavidb 22:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, a seperate article is not the right way to do it, which was my thought in posting the above comment. Of course it could be included on Star Wars speculation or even George Lucas. Despite OR and despite crystal ball it's getting keeps: I'd just like a formal rule to point to. Do you agree with adding the above? It could be useful in general. Marskell 09:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

But where and/or under what title? The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy does not exist anymore than the Al Gore Presidency exists. I'm not saying don't mention, I'm saying don't give it a page. Marskell 13:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Another proposed addition

Expanding on some thoughts in the talk page for Wikipedia:Importance, how about this?

-- begin proposed text --

Wikipedia is not an arbiter of importance or taste

Wikipedia is not an arbiter of importance or taste. We are not in the business of determining the worth or merit of a topic to society. We are not a Social Register. We do not exclude topics based on the belief that they may be considered controversial, offensive, politically incorrect, low-brow, pseudoscientific, or apocryphal (although when we do cover such topics, we will note controversy where it exists, as required by NPOV). Nor does Wikipedia exhibit a preference for high art over pop culture, Beethoven over Britney Spears, or museums over monster trucks. We are concerned with compiling the knowledge and experience of all mankind, regardless of social status.

While we do occasionally reject articles due to lack of importance, this is done to exclude such things as vanity and self-promotion. Any real-world topic which is encyclopedic, verifiable, and which is (or was at one point) of demonstrable interest to some segment of humanity, is appropriate for Wikipedia.

-- end proposed text --

Comments? --EngineerScotty 18:35, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that "Wikipedia is not an arbiter of taste," and the specific examples you give in the first paragraph are true and well-chosen.
I have a problem with saying that Wikipedia is not an arbiter of importance.
By your own showing, Wikipedia must be an arbiter of what is "encyclopedic." Whatever that means.
And you say a topic must have "demonstrable interest to some segment of humanity." Well, that means we must indeed be arbiters of whether a topic is of some interest to "some segment of humanity." If that's not "importance," I don't know what is.
Now, what do we mean by "some segment of humanity?" You dodge this. The topic of a vanity biography is of enormous interest to "some" segment of humanity, namely one person, and in most cases of "some" interest to that person's couple of hundred personal acquaintances.
If we are going to exclude vanity biographies, and verifiable descriptions of the five fire hydrants located on East Brewster Street, Harvey, North Dakota, and individual articles on the astronomical events expected to take place in the years 2619, 2620, and 2621—and I happen to think we do—then, by golly, we have to be "arbiters of importance."
So, while I endorse the first paragraph and think it might do some good, I think the second is yet another failed attempt to cut the Gordian knot of "notability/importance" and is better omitted. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree; add the first paragraph, and not the second. As a preference, I'd prefer removing "Wikipedia is not a Social Register". First of all, it detacts from the style to have a "Wikipedia is not" within another. More importantly, the statement is mere repetition, and seems to implicitly condemn Social Registers. It's not that important, though. Superm401 | Talk 21:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
When it comes to "cutting the Gordian knot of importance/notability", guilty as charged. :) I have no objection to keeping vanity articles out, and such. Regarding articles on North Dakota fire hydrants and astronomical events six centuries hence (and other such trivia), the biggest factor excluding those is likely to be a lack of editors willing to write such articles, except possibly as violations of WP:POINT. At any rate, when such things occur, I have no problem with excluding them. However, it seems that the level of notability which is required in order to filter out vanity, useless trivia, etc. is often used to filter out subjects which are arguably notable (not vanity, not trivia) but only of importance to a particular region or subculture. (WP:MUSIC is a good example; it practically demands that a band be nationally noticed before being deemed "notable"; I can think of many well-established, well-known regional acts that wouldn't qualify for inclusion under WP:MUSIC. Maybe I should go take it up there). I'd like to find ways of lowering the bar, to include more regional/alternative material, while still finding ways to keep out the true rubbish. And my bias is to err on the side of inclusion. --EngineerScotty 22:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I think the bar is, if anything too low on many topics. In any case, whereever we set the bar, i think some level of notability is essential to an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia:Notability proposal is an attempt to make this explicit. It would amend WP:NOT to say that wikipedia is not for articles about non-notable subjects. DES (talk) 23:24, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Nonsense - notability just means 'what I like' - verifiability will deal with all the strawman fire hydrant articles we've never had a problem with. Trollderella 18:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
You continue to make that assertion that "notability just means 'what I like'" ignoring the fact that many of us (and based on my own analysis of the way the term is used, the vast majority of us) do not use it that way. Please stop putting words in other people's mouths. Rossami (talk) 22:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
If you have an objective definition of notable, please, don't hold it back from us. patsw 23:57, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Notability proposal

Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES (talk) 23:21, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Page of images serving as a visual index?

I would like to get input from some more Wikipedians on this topic which may have wider implications. There is a discussion in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Images of castles which refers to the page Images of castles. The Images of castles page is a collection of castle images sorted by country with links to the appropriate pages for each castle. The page was nominated for deletion on the grounds that it is a collection of images. I and a few others feel that such a page actually serves as a visual index which provides value added information in terms of improving the ability of a user to find the appropriate page they desire. In this case, a castle can be found if you know what it looks like but have no other information (e.g. name or location) to allow a search string-based search. It is possible that other such indices scattered throughout Wikipedia would be extremely useful.

Does anyone know if there have been any discussions about the use of such pages? Do others feel a visual index is a useful thing to have? Hilmar 11:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

What is Wikipedia??

Question and proposed answer:
Well sure it's an online encyclopedia. But why? What is it's purpose? Well the best use I've seen of it was David Morgan-Mar[2]. In his Irregular Webcomic[3]. Whenever he has something he wants to explain to readers like a complex mathematical principal or something, he adds a link to the appropriate wikipedia article. I've hear it said by users that wikipedia is not in fact an encyclopedia. I think a section like "What Wikipedia is" would do well here for the benefit of new users. Olleicua 13:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:About, Wikipedia:FAQ, Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers, and especially Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is so great. Superm401 | Talk 23:26, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I added those links to the see also section Olleicua 21:22, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

It's time for "Wikipedia is not a crystal ball" to be renamed

I have already had the tone of this section moderated, but I now think it needs a name change. People continue to use it on articles for deletion, and it continues to be heavily rejected whenever the topic is of any substance and significant information is available. Current nomination Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ottawa municipal election, 2006, which relies on this clause, has been rejected by all eight people who have commented on it so far. The phrase is needlessly provocative, and its main effect seems to be to give people false hope that doomed nominations have a chance, thereby creating frustration and ill feeling. I suggest it should be retitled: "Wikipedia is not a repository for unverifiable speculation about the future" The introduction should be made more positive along the lines of "All forward looking articles must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred."

This isn't going to change the outcome of any votes, but it should reduce the number of pointless nominations and cut down on any resulting ill feeling. Even with the text of the section softened, the attention grabbing title misleads would be deletionists about what the consensus really is articles about the future. The number of articles about the future is in four figures, but some people still seem to think that this section implies forward looking articles should automatically be deleted. They are being misled by the title. CalJW 15:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm okay with a rename, but your suggestion is too long and excessively formal. Shorten it and put in laymen's terms. Then, we'll talk.  :)Superm401 | Talk 20:13, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
It is supposed to be somewhat offputting, in the sense that it should lead to the section being quoted less often than it is now. I suppose collection could replace repository. But repository is not a technical term or jargon as you imply it is. CalJW 21:15, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
All right, I can deal with it. Superm401 | Talk 14:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

No objections, so I'm implementing this, but I will omit the redundant clause "about the future". CalJW 13:07, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Trivia

i think there should be a mention of Wikipedia:Trivia especially in the indiscriminate collection of information sectio -- Zondor 10:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Note that the Trivia guideline doesn't make a blanket statement "include if interesting but not important." It starts out with this thought in mind and unpacks it, offering advice like moving to a sister project etc. I'd suggest "Trivia may have a place on Wikipedia but should be evaluated with Wikipedia:Trivia in mind" if you want add a sentence. Marskell 10:42, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

What is a directory?

I read back in the archives to see when this section was added (originally "wikipedia is not a general knowledge base") and it seems while there were people agreeing on the draft, no one actually discussed what the bullet points MEANT. There are tons of lists and categories on wikipedia on everything (like all the "list of all software of this type" lists), but no criteria on what would qualify them as "directories." There's also the whole host of rambot and school articles which would be a "directory" as well, but those are included anyway.

I think this either needs to be clarified or removed, because clearly there are "directories" on Wikipedia that are widely accepted.

Nathan J. Yoder 23:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Turn it back

I don't know if not a "collection of unverifiable speculation" really improves on not "a crystal ball." The latter is more memorable, says the same thing, and is better distinguished from other points on the list. It often gets shot down in AfD?--so it does. I don't see how the new name makes it more effective. Edit the content, but why not go back to "crystal ball?" It's extremely well-established. Marskell 23:13, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I strongly second this. It seems to have been renamed after startlingly short discussion for such a well-known and often-quoted section of policy. Although it is often misunderstood and could use some clarification, it's important to keep the snappy old version so it can be easily quoted in the places where it does indeed apply. --Aquillion 03:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
It was renamed after an entirely properly process, stood for some time and was then reverted rather quickly. It is needlessly provocative and, as explained before, seriously misleading as wikipedia has many articles about the future. It is too colourful and when it is invoked on articles for deletion, so often in vain, it comes across as insulting, implying that serious well meaning users who have written articles about conventional real world subjects are fanticists. The phrasing is designed to meet the rhetorical wishes of deletionists, who have too much control over this page. I see no justification for it at all. It does not reflect practice on articles for deletion, where it fails so often. It is needlessly confrontational. It is not npov. Its use seriously misleads new voters on articles for deletion, who think that it means that articles about future events are not legitimate, when it has been agreed that they are acceptable in vote after vote. Finally, it doesn't even work. Please accept that this page should reflect actual practice, not what deletionists would like to be practice. CalJW 08:17, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't follow a word of your reasoning. A crystal ball is something in which you magically divine the future. Wikipedia is not a place for people to attempt to magically divine the future. The reason why Wikipedia is not a crystal ball is such an effective summary for this is because it perfectly captures the hocus-pocus nature of what is forbidden; articles can report verifiable plans or circumstances that will affect the future, or to report on properly encyclopedic predictions, but editors cannot play Nostradamus and try to predict the future themselves. The fact that it summarizes this policy colorfully is just another point to its credit. --Aquillion 09:33, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't follow a word of your reasoning. The phrase is not used to argue for deletion of "hocus pocus", but for things like elections and films. Why would you want this section to be "colorful" unless you were hoping to influence people in favour of deletion more than a neutrally worded policy would do. As I said, this section is a pov tool created for use by deletionists and does not reflect practice on articles for deletion. They must hope that newcomers will be influenced by the "colour" and not read the policy to find out that the detail is far less supportive of hard-line deletionism, or look around Wikipedia and discover that a hard-line is not actually taken. In my opinion the phrase is misleading about both policy and practice, and deletionists exploit that. CalJW 23:02, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Here are all the references to "crystal ball" I could find on AfD in the past few days. Note that this includes every one in the period I examined; I didn't omit any, and just went back from today until I thought I'd collected enough to serve as a representitive sample. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. Out of these, all but one are either near-solid deletes, or near-solid redirect/merges to a general page for a series (e.g. the speculative Mad Max 4: Fury Road to Mad Max); unanimous deletes are in the clear majority. The only one I came across where Crystal Ball was cited in a case that was not, by current consensus, a fairly clear and obvious delete or redirect case was in the debate on Dirth, where Radiant mentioned it in a weak delete vote. In short, the facts do not seem to sustain your beliefs; if I may be blunt, I think you could be allowing the fervor of deletionist/inclusionist debates to cloud your judgement. I don't doubt that there are people misquoting Crystal Ball somewhere (just like there are people misquoting every policy), but I don't see any evidence that it's the significent problem you claim. Judging from the number of times above where it is brought up in clear delete cases, though, I think it is plainly an effective and memorable solution to a real and uncontroversal problem. --Aquillion 04:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I see 3 votes that are going the wrong way there. Mad Max 4 has verifiable "speculation," including interviews with Mel Gibson. Fisker is a real company that has produced actual cars, the fact that it's not notable yet is an issue of notability, not crystal balling. Ditto for realm fighter, real product, there is no crystal balling, it's just not notable. Nathan J. Yoder 06:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it does not imply that you cannot write about the future only that your own speculation doesn't belong. I really think you're over-stating it being "confrontational" or somehow offensive. Marskell 13:15, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

  • How does it do that? It is used to demean articles, and frequently deletionists who use it misrepresent the actual state of play, eg by implying that articles about future films are illegitimate when there are many of them. The phrasing is an attempt to bias the policy towards deletionism. CalJW 23:02, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

That may be true, but the lack of it would mean that users could create articles on stuff that is not even close to happening yet with little factual information in them. It should be made clear in Wikipedia policy that Wikipedia is not the place for speculation and rumor. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:21, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

helpful warnings

I think there needs to be some policy on helpful but unencyclopaedic warnings and advice given to readers in articles. Some examples of this are warnings in medicine articles to see a doctor in a case of overdose and not to look at the sun in the sun article. I have participated in some debates in other articles and it seems that some of these warnings, while no-one disputes that they may be helpful are not encyclopaedic and there is no clear line do draw on what warnings to allow and to not allow. I have no problem when such warnings are written into the article in an encyclopaedic tone, but when they are bolded or put in special boxes I think it crosses the line into being encyclopaedic.--Clawed 09:47, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

When these have gotten turned into templates, they've always been deleted at TFD. (See, for example, the deletion discussions for {{warning}} and {{medical}}, and Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates and Wikipedia talk:Risk disclaimer for the general case.) It doesn't make sense to have individual versions for specific articles if there's always consensus to delete general versions. —Cryptic (talk) 11:42, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a song lyrics database

Hi, I want to add this to the guideline. Does everyone agree?

"Copyrighted song lyrics are not allowed to be printed in whole in any Wikipedia article. Song lyrics that are in public domain are allowed, but you have to provide additional information about the song, not only the songwriter, performer, album name and year of recording, but also the background, history or (unbiased) analysis of the music and content of the song."

My reasoning is, articles that only include the song lyrics and have no additional info are not encyclopedic. --84.188.177.89 12:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

No need, since we already have guidelines on source material and on copyright. Trollderella 15:49, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course, but this isn't just about copyrights. The main point is about the encyclopedic value of articles. This issue was handled in Wikipedia:What's in, what's out but since that page is obsolete, we need a similar guideline.

It's also about source material, which we also have plenty of stuff on - are there many songs with extensive lyrics on them that you're worried about? Trollderella 16:42, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
We shouldn't have all that much source material unless it is being used for comment. Encyclopedias, including this one, are tertiary sources. Source material belongs on wikiquote. -Splashtalk 17:09, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
The above would imply that quotes from songs are not acepteable, whereas they are valid fair use when a short quote is used as the basis for a discussion or analysis of a song. And the question of the encyclopedic value is really unrelated to the question of copyright status. A long article that is nothing but a series of texts of Kipling's verse, say, would not be a copyvio, because they texts are all PD by now, but it still wouldn't be a proper article. Nor do we want pages that are only the texts of Shakespear's sonnets, say. DES (talk) 17:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
How about the following:
  • "Wikipedia is not a song lyrics database. An article should not consited entirely or mostly of song lyrics, but rather should be about the songs or the artists who composed or performed them. Short illusttrative quotations of lyrics may be appropriate in the context of an article. Complete lyrics would belong on wikisource if anywhere, and there only if not proteced by copyright." DES (talk) 17:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
But we already have guidelines on source material - no one is advocating that we should put large amount of source material here, it goes in WikiSource. Is there a problem that this is supposed to address, or just more instruction creep? Trollderella 17:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, it would be useful to mention that the palce of public domain lyrics is wikisource. mikka (t) 19:19, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Notable means something other than important or significant or of interest

Please help me out with this word, notable, that keeps showing up in the Wiki namespace. Why is this word used and not common words like important, significant, or of interest

For example what is notable, and at the same time not important, significant, nor of interest?

What is important, significant, and of interest and at the same time not notable?

A related question to people who think the word has a clear meaning, is why do people argue about it so much in talk pages? patsw 02:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

The debate isn't really over which word is used, but over divergent visions of what Wikipedia should be. An attempt was made to recast notability in terms of importance, but it didn't really help. If the word "important" were used, we would simply have the same debates; people would just say, "Delete, unimportant," "Keep, important," and argue about whether "importance" is a valid organizing principle for an encyclopedia.
If you are seriously asking why the particular word "notable" happened to be used, I'd guess it's because this is a word frequently used in encyclopedias and almanacs as the title of lists whose content is based on the judgement of the editor rather than something that can be objectively measured. Thus, in the 2005 Time Almanac I see "World's Tallest Buildings," but "Notable Modern Bridges. I also see Famous structures, World's Largest dams, and Notable tunnels.
Listing something, including something as an item, is "making note of it" or "noting it," hence "notable" is a natural word to use. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
The appeal to the dictionary (i.e. Noah Webster, the ur-Wikipedian) does not work because notable there focuses on the odd, the unusual and the uncommon -- and we don't make a note of what's normal, usual, and common -- but somehow the Wikipedia includes a lot of stuff that's not notable according to that definition. In many cases, it's every U.S. President, every professional (American) football team, etc. because every U.S. president is important, every professional (American) football team, etc. is important.
My New York Times Almanac lists the Tallest buildings by the way. I guess the editors there were tired of the disputes among themselves about what was notable about a building except for height. Now we'll just have to wait for Time Warner and the New York Times Company to merge to find out. patsw
It's an appaling word, that means 'what I am interested in'. Trollderella 19:35, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Trend of companies trying to use Wikipedia for marketing

I'm seeing a lot of new entries where it appears that a company representative cut-and-pastes the company's history and mission statement, with a link. The mission statement has a lot of POV/marketing language. For now, I've been using the following blurb on the poster's talk page:

Creating an entry for notable countriescompanies is fine, as long as they are written in an objective style. It is not acceptable to cut-and-paste directly from the company's website (unless the copyright issues are handled properly). Even if copyright issues are resolved, a company's own materials are usually not written in an objective fashion.

References:

Thanks,

Does anyone think this topic merits the addition of a new template for handling these entries? Jasmol 01:29, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I think you've got a good idea there, but it'd probably help if you started talking about companies, not "countries" :-) --fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 02:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I detest this kind of article as much as you do, but personally I don't think it is actually company representatives that are doing this. I think it is a kind of "fan" activity, rather like wearing a T-shirt advertising a beer one identifies with, or a theme park, or a sports team.
A very common response to such articles is for people to vote them for deletion (properly) as "advertising," and for the article creator insist that they are not advertising because they are not connected with the company and do not make any money from publicizing it. Dpbsmith (talk) 03:02, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
You might want to add a note that "The entry does not appear to meet the recommended inclusion guidelines." Rossami (talk) 03:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the great suggestions. I'll definitely include the 'inclusion guidelines' next time as well. I'll work on the wording a bit and come up with a template proposal. Jasmol 21:28, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

...what it used to be.

I miss the good old days of Wikipedia, when people obsessed with it, who spend 5+ hours each day involved with it, were a minority rather than a dictating majority; when the only rules were to reflect truth and consensus; when Wikipedia's goal wasn't to compete with Encyclopedia Brittanica and Wikipedians didn't feel compelled to conform in order to achieve mainstream acceptance; when Wikipedia's basic nature couldn't be altered at the drop of a hat just because of a critical news article; when Wikipedians dealt with abuse of the system through their own effort rather than attempting to graft an artificial authoritarian system on to something that had grown up organically.

I don't really see what the point of Wikipedia is anymore. When it was open and free (speech, not beer), and the contributors dynamically determined what was appropriate rather than a small committee of overinterested zealots, it felt good to contribute. Now, with the ever-increasing, ponderous body of rules and restrictions -- enforced with manic efficiency by monitors who devote an abnormal amount of time to this police activity -- the average contributor is likely to just feel that they are being exploited. And since so-called official sources are now the only kosher source of information, contributors have been reduced to mere relayers of information, plagiarists and pirates.

And yet, despite these frantic efforts, Wikipedia has not transcended its stigma, and the quality of content has not increased. However, a lot of former Wikipedians have departed.

Have fun with your Council of Nicea. I am joining the exodus, farewell. -- Captain Roger Ames (preceding unsigned comment by 209.97.196.196 (talk • contribs); only 10 edits at this IP with no relevant search matches for "Roger Ames"-- Superm401 | Talk 17:20, 9 November 2005 (UTC))


  • agree These people like Zoe keep me from writing freely, as suddenly there is a no religion

requirement, and I don't remember reading it anywhere!--Masssiveego 19:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Reverted to wishy-washy

With respect to this revert: That paragraph started with "Of course, an article can and should always begin with a good definition" at least until March 2005 and that had been the wording for more than three years. I don't know why or when it was dropped or whether there was any discussion, and in any case, "sometimes" is not only wishy-washy but outright wrong. A reader of an enyclopedia article is looking for facts. In recognition of that, encyclopedists of all epochs of history have included definitions for each and every topic of their articles. I can not imagine any reason why Wikipedia should depart from that tradition. Kosebamse 22:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with the version you changed it to. However, others might, and they deserve a chance to weigh in. If no one objects after a week or so, feel free to add it in. Superm401 | Talk 04:13, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
It would be very interesting to know why that wording was changed at all. This is one of our central policy pages and I really wonder how such an important change can occur without receiving much discussion. I'll try to find out more about this. Kosebamse 08:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Having looked into the matter some further, it seems that it was an acciddent. In March 2005, the text of the paragraph was rewritten in this and this edit. Most of the new text was then removed, however the rewording of the introductory phrase that made sense only with the rewritten version was not. Thereafter, the text has remained essentially unchanged until now. The matter does not seem to have been discussed on the relevant talk page. Note that my version of yesterday was slightly different, but I'll be happy to revert to the original version (the one that we had before March) unless there are serious objections. Kosebamse 08:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
In consideration of this, I'll reinstate my change; please feel free to return to the original version or otherwise modify it, but not to "sometimes", as that had been obviously introduced by accident and is clearly against the spirit that has prevailed here for over three years. Kosebamse 08:45, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

One major annoyance I have with Wikipedia is linkspam, as well as long lists of mediocre-quality external links at the end of articles. I believe the length of external link lists should be limited and include only a small number of the highest-quality, reputable, and informative websites. Preferably the linked websites would also be ad-free or minimize use of ads. I have come across articles with 50+ external links (e.g. Hybrid vehicle), sorted through them (a tedious process) to only find 6 links that were truly informative and worthy. How do we expect readers to discern those 6 informative references out of such a lengthy list?

I propose a WikiProject where we nominate and work on such articles that need their external links weeded through to get rid of linkspam and be quality-checked. I have also put forth guidelines and philosophy regarding external links — primarily drawn upon "official" Wikipedia policies set forth here and on Wikipedia:External links. I expanded on "What should not be included in external links" and welcome discussion on these ideas. Maybe we could use these to improve the "official" Wikipedia external link policy.

Further information: User:Kmf164/External_links and Wikipedia:Wikiproject/List_of_proposed_projects

If interested in helping out, please indicate your interest on the List of proposed projects. ---Aude 23:49, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I disagree that external links should go only to NPOV sites, as oftentimes articles express disputes, and the best way to reference these disputes is to offer POV articles from all the sides of the dispute. Also note that if you have an article about a political party, their official website would necessarily be POV, so you would exclude that? While I understand the thrust of what you're trying to do, and agree that NPOV links should be regarded more highly than POV links, I also think that excluding POV links by rote could be very damaging to the Wikipedia. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right about NPOV/POV links. I think they're okay, as you say for articles about political parties or other topics that in themselves are POV. Also, they're okay if POV links try to balance each other by including links from across the spectrum of an issues (e.g. democratic-leaning and republican-leaning). NPOV is more a guideline or preference when selecting external links, but is a case-by-case judgment. ---Aude 05:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I trust you removed the useless links from Hybrid vehicle? No. Why not? I don't think we need a Wikiproject for this. Most of the spammish links are hit-and-run. If I see a new link in an article I'm watching, I check it, and if I don't think it adds significantly to the article I just remove it. The people that put them in usually aren't serious Wikipedians, they just want to promote a site, and they don't usually come back to check. Or if they do, they don't revert-war. If they do, they can be engaged in Talk.

If I'm being particularly responsible, I check the "contributions" because frequently they will have added their link to every page they can think of.

For semi-useful links, you can add a one-sentence description if one isn't provided. A description can be neutral and yet give guidance as to which links the reader will want to follow.

99% of this is just normal editing. No need to set up a special Wikiproject. Links don't seem to me to be very different from regular article content. If anything, they are easier to deal with because spammers are not (usually) as noxious or persistent as POV-warriors. They are usually interested in promoting a site, not conducting a breaching experiment and will go look for other ways to promote their site once they get the idea that Wikipedia isn't going to be as easy as it looks. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:14, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I removed the links. Though, it was a tedious process. I couldn't do in one go at it, and had to come back later and finish. Maybe there could be a place to list articles with very long lists of links that need help to sort through? The process I used for deleting the links was to copy all the links to the talk page and add my comments (delete, keep, maybe, ... and why). I left that on talk for more than enough time for others to weigh in with their opinions. No one did, though. A couple weeks later, I got around to finishing off this task.
For other articles, like New York City editors (I and others) are always keeping on top of it, as you suggest. When someone adds linkspam, I also check their edit history and take care of linkspam they put elsewhere. That's ideal to deal with external links as they are added.
But, should I come across other articles for the first time and see a long list of links... (1) it ain't useful to me (2) it's tedious to go through and weed out the bad ones. — if more people helped out, it could be done quicker. ---Aude 22:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

A place for free speech.

Hatespeech moved to User talk:209.97.196.196. Kosebamse 08:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Are slang guides always a bad thing?

Body parts slang (an article I originally created by separating content from Sexual slang) was recently deleted by a second near-consecutive AFD vote that was arguably not even a consensus but rather a slight majority of delete's to keep's.

I see no problem with comparative slang guides, as they seek to inform by the comparison and by the grouping. Understanding the full range of slang in a particular category (e.g., body parts or sex) is indeed useful and encyclopedic (isn't understanding the meaning of others' speech useful?). Now, one could easily argue that in the case of the vast majority of slang entries in such a comparative article, they would not merit individual articles, and I agree with that argument.

However, a comparative guide to a wide range of slang in use is what should be regarded as a structured list, which is indeed approved for inclusion in the Wikipedia.

I would like to see the reference to "A usage guide, or slang and idiom guide." revised to allow comparative/grouping articles of slang, but continue to disapprove (generally) of individual articles for such things. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I find "list of" articles to be frequently not useful. There are exceptions, but I don't see that a list of slang is one of them. Friday (talk) 21:15, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I think if you could see how extensive Body parts slang was and List of sexual slang is, it might change your mind. They are highly informative, even if you don't personally like this particular kind of information (i.e., you find it vulgar). — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I saw it. I recommended deleting it. It was a magnet for people who wanted to legitimize their own neologisms. Vulgarity bothers me not at all, but non-verifiability is another story. Friday (talk) 21:35, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
If it was a magnet for neologisms, I don't see that as a reason for deletion of an entire informative article, but rather a reason for challenging the neologisms that were added. It's like saying we should delete the George W. Bush article because it attracts vast amounts of vandalism. Just because contributors cannot keep up with verifying newly added content does not constitute an argument for "throwing out the baby with the bath water." — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 21:39, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

How does a list of slang terms begin to qualify as an encyclopedia article? Examples are not description. The Literate Engineer 22:06, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The article in question included category descriptions, and the groupings within said categories are descriptive (i.e., the groupings explain how many terms are used to mean the same thing, and that should be informative to many). Further, many terms included info on their origins. There's no dispute that neologisms and cruft found their way into this article, but that's not an argument for wholesale deletion of the article. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 22:17, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't believe that information makes it a proper encyclopedia entry. Rule of thumb, if it can't be expressed in prose, it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. I don't think that the issue of cruft/neologisms slipping in is what was the problem. I think the problem is that the only thing Wikipedia should do is describe what (in this case) the type of slang is, why it's used, and who uses it, which isn't what the entry was, but not to compile a list of examples - which is what the entry was. The Literate Engineer 22:29, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
WP:NOT 1.5.2 supports structured lists that assist in the organisation of articles. Body parts slang and List of sexual slang do just that. I believe 1.5.2 already provides the "legal language" to back up my position, but I am seeking to extend the "slang guide" language to ensure that as long as 1.5.2 is satisified, then 1.2.3 is obviated. Further, these are guidelines to be used in making a decision--you think an article must be entirely prose, and I think it's not always necessary or appropriate--that's what the AFD vote is for. And regarding the vote on Body parts slang, that's almost outside my request here, as that "consensus" was decided with a slight majority vote, which almost nobody would reasonably see as a true consensus. I believe there is full legal standing to undelete Body parts slang and to avoid List of sexual slang getting the boot. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 22:53, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Read it in full. It gives "structured lists that assist in the organization of articles" an exception to the rule regarding a page that's nothing but internal links. It's also questionable; I feel it should be cut off after the phrase "disambiguation pages" and the structured list portion, which you aren't the first person I've seen misapply it this way, removed altogether. While we're on the subject of lists, though, I think it's past time for a section explicitly stating that making a list of items unacceptable individually does not make them collectively become acceptable because they've been compiled as a list. The Literate Engineer 04:45, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I think that such lists are far more lexical than encyclopedic. They fit only poorly in Wikipedia but tend to fit very well in Wiktionary. I would argue that they should generally be transwiki'd to Wiktionary and a cross-link provided in the appropriate Wikipedia article. There are of course some exceptions but the vast majority of such lists that I've reviewed really would fit better in Wiktionary. Rossami (talk) 22:58, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

PPOV

Seeing the Propaganda injunction can I suggest the acronym PPOV , for propaganda point of view . People could sling it at me, quicker than soapbox , and it could avoid the counter charge of ad hominem ; being all official , like . EffK 20:29, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Not a chat room?

The oft-repeated statement that "Wikipedia is not a chat room" seems to have been removed on October 28 without much explanation. This should be returned to an appropriate place in the policy, as it is an important clarification of why general chit-chat is not appropriate, even on Talk pages, and is likewise thus referenced in the guideline "Refactoring talk pages": "When refactoring a talk page, remember that Wikipedia is not a chat room." — LeFlyman 17:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The section was probably removed because of its triviality in its past form. the real problem is not that two wikipedians exchange opinions, but lengthy political rants and discussions of irrelevant things at talk pages. You are welcome to formulate the "not chat" section based on the Wikipedia:Talk pages and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. mikka (t) 23:00, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

bold fixing

I'm being a bold newbie and changing the structured list link in Wikipedia:NOT to point to Wikipedia:Lists, since it's a redlink, and the Lists guideline page is ostensibly where the link is meant to point. SchrödingersRoot 14:37, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Notability

Why is notability a touchy subject? My personal belief is that Wikipedia is not the place for random information. I also feel that a consensus needs to be reached on what is and what is not notable. A lot of people seem to not get why creating an article on Joe Blo just because he won the high school spelling bee is a bad idea. This subject is too important to stay an unwritten rule or just meekly addressed. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 07:52, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't get why the case of your example is a bad idea. — David Remahl 13:50, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • His example was to illustrate the levels of WP:Notability required to qualify for inclusion. An article on a local spelling bee winner would not appropriate, as the winner is not notable-- even the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee is mentioned in that article only by name. As noted in the policy, "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information." Eric is right, a statement about "Notability" is appropriate to this policy. — LeFlyman 19:29, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Notability is inherently POV and thus should not be part of Wikipedia policy. As you must be aware, this issue has been discussed ad nauseum in deletion debates and other places. I don't think it is possible to come to a consensus about it. — David Remahl 20:19, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I feel that strict guidlines for notability need to be set in stone, via a consensus. Some of the stuff I see around Wikipedia and on the deletion pages (where they should be) is just plain ridiculous. I've seen local science teachers with no claim to fame even in their hometowns. The list is endless. Local heroes, unknowns, bands with 2 fans, random people, useless trivia, pointless subpages... Something has to happen, the question is what? -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 03:30, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

The subject of a "Notability policy" is discussed earlier on this page (see above); however the issue Eric raises was actually decided by vote in July of this year: "Deletion of Vanity Articles." In particular, Jimbo Wales wrote this, "Articles are to be deleted if there is no assertion of notability, but it's pretty easy to simply *assert* notability, so this isn't much of a barrier." —LeFlyman 06:26, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Notability is an excercise in POVmongering. Verifiability will deal with nearly all the articles you are worried about. Trollderella 19:32, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Claiming (and sourcing) that someone won a spelling bee is asserting notability under the speedy deletion guideline that you quoted. — David Remahl 19:42, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
How does a claiming (and even sourcing) that someone did something unnoteworthy count as an assertion of notability? The Literate Engineer 19:54, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Apparently someone noted it, so it cannot be "unnoteworthy". — David Remahl 20:25, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Realize that you will have to come to an agreement with me and people who have similar views in order to reach consensus on "notability". It simply isn't possible. — David Remahl 20:28, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
It's silly semantic wordplay to say that if "someone noted it", it's notable. The two aren't equivalent. Verifiability by itself doesn't fulfill the requisite needs of an encyclopedia: the organization of knowledge (not mere trivia) in an easy-to-use and understand way. This is the conclusion of the "Verifiability" policy itself: "[J]ust because some information is verifiable, doesn't mean that Wikipedia is the right place to publish it." It's specifically differentiated in the criteria guideline "Wikipedia:Trivia", and discussed in the proposal "Wikipedia:Importance." —LeFlyman 05:28, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Here are my predictions. You're free to prove them wrong: There will never be consensus on notability. Wikipedia will never primarily be a repository of knowledge, merely of information. And one man's (or culture's) trivia is another man's (culture's) information. Any definition of notability is non-NPOV. — David Remahl 12:39, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Consensus doesn't require everyone to agree. So long as there is a minority who believe everything and anything can be included in Wikipedia, then there will be those who claim that "notability is non-NPOV". There's a vast difference between "subjective" and "non-neutral": the gathering of worthwhile information and editing of articles is a subjective process, because language itself is subjective. Yet, this does not equate to the claim that deciding whether a subject is notable is a non-neutral task, just because it is a subjective one-- and repeating the same proof by assertion is the reason this issue has become argumentum ad nauseam. Your prediction is likewise circular reasoning: "we can have no consensus because I do not agree with others who believe in notability, therefore we shall never have consensus on notability." —LeFlyman
Of course I realize it's a circular argument. And consensus doesn't require _everyone_ to agree, but almost. There is nowhere near consensus on notability, as a trip to AfD will show. There may almost be a consensus that _some_ notability measure should be applied, but that's useless since noone agrees on what that measure should be. Eventually you'll find that every discussion on notability will deteriorate to this point, and that's the only WP:POINT I wanted to make. — David Remahl 18:05, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • While this may not be the place, I'd like to float the proposition that the word "notable" is at fault. We get tied up in the semantic construct of what it means to be "of note." It's a difficulty with strict definitionalism, whereas the meaning is what we're trying to eke out. The problem with "notable" is in it being a protean word, which neither "side" of the debate can define satisfactorily. Perhaps we need a different word altogether, that doesn't fall into the subjective morass of whether something is (or isn't) notable. I'd propose "significant" as an alternative term, as it has both a quantitative and qualitative value (e.g. a significant issue, a significant number.) One can more easily say that "X is more significant than Y", whereas one can have difficulty with the claim that "Y is more notable than Z." While it's still a subjective term— as all qualitative comparatives are— in my view, it's less restrictive and less definitionally loaded a term than the "Wikipedia:Importance" proposal. It's an established term outside Wikipedia used by educational, government, business and literary sources. See, for examples of usage:
—LeFlyman 00:43, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I like "significant" a whole lot better than both "notability" and "importance". But I still think that anything with a > 0 significance has a place in Wikipedia. — David Remahl 00:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
It might be a bit better, but it's still pov-mongering. What's significant to the USGS is not necessarily significant to me, and vice versa. Trollderella 01:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Why should your opinion on floods matter as much as that of the USGS? Are you an expert in floods, and thus qualified to compare floods to each other? Are you qualified to distinguish between what someone who doesn't care about floods does need to know and what someone who doesn't care about floods doesn't need to know? I take Sturgeon's Relevation as a minimum: no less than 90% of everything is crap, ergo no less than 90% of everything in any given field doesn't need to be any any encyclopedia (i.e., no more than 10% of anything in a particular field belongs in an encyclopedia, and arguably no more than 10% of fields do, either). And I trust the USGS's call on what 10% of all flood-related information I need to know more than I trust yours. Does that mean I trust it to be infallible? No, and I may well disagree with its reccomendation of what <10% of all information about floods in the United States a general encyclopedia needs to include - especially if it reccomends an amount of information that starts creeping upwards. An encyclopedia's not supposed to contain the information people care about, it's supposed to contain the information they need to be able to start specialist research about something they don't care about. The Literate Engineer 05:47, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Your last sentence is a very interesting analysis of the purpose on an encyclopedia. I would only change one word - "don't care" -> "didn't care". I do think it is a goal of an encyclopedia to create new interest where none may have existed before. Your core argument - that an encyclopedia can not and should not attempt to include all possible data - is persuasive. Rossami (talk) 15:01, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Here's the problem. I didn't say that my opinion on floods should matter as much as the USGS, just that my opinion that Japanese Manga is important should be taken as seriously as the USGSs opinion that floods are important. I'm not talking about what goes in, just whether the topics are notable. By the way, your faith in the US government to tell you what you need to know about flooding is touching - I wonder whether the former residents of New Orleans are as trusting? Trollderella 16:08, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
BTW, you opinion that we should only cover 10% of all information on a topic reveals a real disagreement. I believe we should have both broad and deep coverage (verified, neutral and sourced, of course). We shouldn't stop at 10% just because traditional encyclopedias ran out of paper. Trollderella 16:16, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm really inclined to agree on the basis of 'not paper', but something still seems off about being able to write articles about all my friends, or my pets, or quantum althieodynamics (the field of metaphysics which I just made up). I think the problem is that having an entry in an encyclopedia implies some level of notability on the subject's part, which to pick a furry example, my cat is not (but other cats are). So in some sense maybe it does violate NPOV to write about not-particularly-significant subjects, unless perhaps the articles note their own (un-)importance. (Pleasantly, it seems like requiring a nice notice at the top of the page saying, "The subject of this article is not particularly noteworthy. Wouldn't you like to look at one of our featured articles instead?" would cut down on the allure of vanity articles substantially.)
On the other hand, while I'm aesthetically attracted to having threads of articles which spiral into progressively more obscure and (globally) insignificant topics, I don't think it conveys quite the level of professionalism that WP is trying to present. Image is important. — Violet Fox 11:08, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposed addition: "Wikipedia is not a fan site."

As one of the editors involved in the constant battle to clean up articles about fan-favorite Lost (TV series), I've found that many new users are confused about the level of detail appropriate to encyclopedic content, versus fan content. I've used the refrain "Wikipedia is not a fan site" repeatedly, and think it's appropriate to state explicitly. Last year, another editor floated a similar suggestion, regarding sports fans.

Under such "not fan site" category would be the rubric of other fannish activities, such as: inclusion of extreme trivia; speculations on future events; archiving multiple promotional images; and chat-room like commentary on Talk pages (as I mentioned above). A note that Wikipedia is not "spoiler-free" might likewise be appropriate.

Thoughts? —LeFlyman 20:02, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

For me, the issue is not necessarily even detail, but rather the tone and nature of coverage, and the audience for which it's written. The problem with a 'fansite' article is that it is useless to someone who doesn't already know about the subject. An encyclopedia article is written for the non-expert.
My concern for listing this in WWIN is that it will add legitimacy to the 'delete, fancruft' crowd. Fancruft generally needs merging and intensive editing, not deletion. Matthew Brown 20:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I think like many things, it's a case-by-case basis as far as cruft goes. There's a subjective line between important detail and excessive minutia. I agree that editing is preferable, when deletion is unwarranted, but we need a policy basis for reigning in the excesses of certain individual fans. In the end, it comes down to the consensus of editors on a particular set of articles as to what level of detail should or shouldn't be included; having this in WWIN would provide guidance in reaching that consensus. —LeFlyman 20:49, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Writing policy to "provide guidance in [reaching] consensus" would be the Wikipedia version of "legislating from the bench." I agree that it has more to do with the nature of the coverage than the detail. For example, "speculation about future events" falls squarely in the "original research" and/or "lack of verifiability" categories. — David Remahl 21:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Most of this is already covered under other policies in this page. I'm not sure the instruction creep is worth it. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 22:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmm. Good point about the instruction creep, Matthew. The Literate Engineer 22:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • You're quite right in that much of the proposed addition is connected to established policies-- as is nearly everything in "What Wikipedia is Not." For example, The first two sections, "Not a paper encyclopedia" and "Not a dictionary", merit expansion on their own separate policy pages. "Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought" is a restatement of "No Original Research." Likewise, "Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine" is derived from both NOR and WP:NPOV policies. As with those, this proposal aims to consolidate the disparate policy elements that would clarify why content that might be appropriate to a fan site would not be appropriate to Wikipedia. Such a differentiation is as valuable as pointing out that, "Wikipedia is not a free host or webspace provider." — LeFlyman 23:41, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I support anything that makes wikipedia's content simultaneously more academically selective and more accessible for non-experts. This proposal seems to do that. The Literate Engineer 20:34, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Going back to Lost and, more specifically, Episodes of Lost (Season 2), the real problem is that people are using Wikipedia as a crystal ball. Since this is already banned, why not just add a fourth item to the crystal ball section that says something like: "Wikipedia is not a repository for speculation on minor future events such as the plot of a future television episode, the outcome of a future sports game, etc." I do agree, though, that the Lost article should be cut down to only past episodes and official press releases from ABC. — MATHWIZ2020 TALK | CONTRIBS 00:33, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I hope that we will hold all topics to the same standard. Broad, deep coverage of science, art, literature and pop culture, all, of course, rigorously verified and sourced should be our goal. Trollderella 00:49, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
A pleasure to agree with you. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:08, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with Leflyman's proposal and with The Literate Engineer's take. However, I'd also like to note that this is something I think is particularly important to state specifically. From games to movies to TV series, the line between what is crufty fan-site material and what is "essential information" may be blurry, but there are some real standards that can be easily teased out from common sense and editing effort. After these standards are determined, the editors who have worked hard to do this should have an explicit reference to the rules... citing the policy on speculation, NPoV, and others frequently isn't enough. Stating explicitly in the rules that "Wikipedia is not a fan site" would be a great assistance, because most people with familiarity with the Internet have probably seen a fansite, and know how it is different than an encyclopedia. The problem this proposal aims to fix, while directed initially at our never-ending battle over at the Lost pages, is, in my research, enough of a problem across Wikipedia that, regardless of its overlap with other standards, it needs to be explicitly stated. Baryonyx 03:10, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Nonsense - not unless you want to say Wikipedia is not a science enthusiast site and start deleting details on scientific theories. If it's verifiable, neutral and not OR, it's in. Trollderella 03:21, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • There's a difference between being a mere enthusiast and being someone who adds excessive, extraneous and non-encyclopedic trivia. The task of writing useable articles requires that editors differentiate between what goes in and what stays out. There's an overwhelming amount of information about every single thing in the world, and not all of it can be included here. The aim of any encyclopedia is to synthesise the important elements, and provide a jumping off point for those who want to research a topic more fully. At some point, perhaps Wikibooks will become the veritable "sum of all human knowledge" and supersede all the world's libraries and Web pages— but Wikipedia isn't the place to put everything. Fans have numerous resources available to present material that isn't appropriate to being included here, from Web sites to discussion forums to fan clubs and newsletters. My proposal is to clarify why we shouldn't be attempting to be a substitute for fan sites— who have a specific, extremely detail-interested audience, which isn't the general audience that Wikipedia serves. —LeFlyman 17:28, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I support the addition of this item to WP:NOT, but only on the basis that a fan site basically never is NPOV (not on the basis that fan sites have excessive detail.) — David Remahl 18:07, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Well what you're really asking for is that we hava a policy on NPOV then. Thankfully, we already do! No need for more rulecruft! Trollderella 01:27, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not really asking for anything, but WP:NOT exemplifies other policies (including NPOV), for example "Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine". — David Remahl 15:07, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I support LeFlyman's proposal, strongly; I believe that "not a fan site" deserves to get special policy mention, after seeing the constant barrage of fan-like material getting added/deleted on the Lost article. It's nothing at all like saying Wikipedia is not a science enthusiast site, because that's not been a problem across Wikipedia, as is the fan site issue. -- PKtm 00:55, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I was waiting to get comments to point out that Wikipedia does have a section of guidance in line with this proposal at Wikipedia:Fancruft, whose contents seem to support the proposition that "Wikipedia is not a fan site." —LeFlyman 04:57, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Disagree What you call mere Trivia is history data.

Fan data is most of the time the same as historical data, as long as they don't add rumors, or half truths, Getting fans to give information about their favorite artists is a very good source for authors. --Masssiveego 03:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

In regards to memorial

It should be noted that we have a September 11 Wiki dedicated for September 11 memorials... See: sep11:In Memoriam --AllyUnion (talk) 09:41, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

But note that that that's a seperate project at sep11.wikipedia.org, not part of the English-language Wikipedia, and thus outside the scope of this page. --Aquillion 07:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Example of what Wikipedia is not?

There's a request to keep some articles as an example of WP:NOT over on: Articles for deletion/Central Galactic Union and Articles for deletion/CGU-verse - is there a place for "example articles of what wikipedia is not" somewhere? I don't support this proposal, but I wondered if anyone had heard of such a concept. Thanks Srl 07:43, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I've never heard of that idea either, but I agree with you that it sounds like it would be detrimental to implement. The Literate Engineer 18:32, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds unsound. Seems unseemly. Wikipedia is not an illustration of what Wikipedia is not. Violates WP:BEANS.
There is, of course, WP:BJAODN... perhaps that's what is being referred to. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:40, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Hm, would anyone like to comment on the afd then? Srl 19:30, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Angela's Page?

I really don't want to get in another row with Kim Bruning. However, I really don't think a link to a userspace page should be here, regardless of whose it is. Superm401 | Talk 15:02, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it should be here either. It might be useful if it were an actual essay (like the fascinating pages I keep stumbling across in Uncle G's userspace), but it's just a list of quotes. —Cryptic (talk) 21:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I can't resist noting that linking to one of Angela's user pages (and defending the link by saying it's ok because it's Angela, of course) seems to substantiate the quote on top of that page: "Policy pages such as "What Wikipedia is not" are, for the most part, the opinions of just a few important people." Even if that's true, I don't think we should so dramatically prove it. --Aquillion 02:37, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
It'd be ok anyway, it's a pretty tidy page :-) Kim Bruning 02:47, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
It may be tidy, but it isn't policy, or even a Wikipedia namespace page. Linking to it implicitly implies otherwise, and I think that's wrong. Can I remove it? Superm401 | Talk 21:18, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
In my very humble opinion, linking generally implies that there is a link. :-) Kim Bruning 02:11, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Linking makes a link. What it implies does depend on context. Superm401 | Talk 20:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Add "Not a thesauus" to "Not a dictionary"

In order to encourage the use of the Wikisaurus category at Wiktionary, clarify what Wikipedia is not, and give the Wikipedia better protection against entries that do not take the form of an encyclopedia entry, I think it would be a good idea to change the working from "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" to "Wikipedia is not a dictionary or thesaurus".

This may require an additional subsection, perhaps to be worded along the lines of: 4. Lists of terms or synonyms. Wikipedia is not the place to list words without definitions, or to list various labels for the same concept.

Thoughts? The Literate Engineer 17:29, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree, and I write and edit accordingly. However, I think there's a difference between having the terms "dictionary" and "lexicon" go to a page that begins "A dictionary or lexicon is a globule of molten lead useful for enhancing the growth of chickens." which is desirable and I think what you're talking about, and writing a list of terms. In the first case, the focus is on the concept (the globule), and the terms specified just for thoroughness and clarity, while the second has the focus on the words ("dictionary", "lexicon", etc.) and not the concept. The Literate Engineer 17:49, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Disagree To ease reading and understanding sometimes definitions are added into better clarify a subject.

For instance, Yellow Journalism, or Mccartism. We define yellow journalism as tabloid journalism, however the historical confines of this definition is that sometimes media can cause wars to happen. History sometimes helps coin phrases or words as part of the dictionary, not the other way around. --Masssiveego 03:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


Exceptions to the rule

I have noticed that occasionally future projects are acceptable to make pages on, so long as they fulfil certain criteria. So what are the precise critera? For example, Predator 3 is confirmed to be in production and has its own IMDB database entry, with the specifics yet to be released, but is due to be released in 2006. Yet for reasons that I don't understand, it is going to be deleted. So where is the line in the sand there?

There was another article about "the world's biggest rollercoaster" that was again being built, and was confirmed that when it is completed, estimated early 2007, it will be the biggest rollercoaster in the world - and that article was kept.

So where is the line in the sand? I understand that when a project is yet to be confirmed that it shouldn't have an article, but when it is definitely happening, I would suggest that that is when we should allow it. What is the ruling? What do other think? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 08:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

This has been discussed before, somewhere in the archives, in probably a number of different incarnations. Really, it's quite hard to work out how to draw that particular line since some future things are damn near certain to happen (and thus require no crystal ball) while others are tentative at best (such as NewBandX ever releasing anything). I think that, generally, AfD tends to remove articles that deal with things that we do not currently have any stable information on. In the case of a film, this might be a stable and known cast-list, or to know that it is being filmed, or that it is a sure part of a series of movies or the like. We need to have something verifiable to put in the article, and media speculation isn't really encyclopedia material (imo). So I think the only way to handle such potential crystalball articles is to consider them one at a time in AfD. -Splashtalk 13:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I dont see the problem

I dont see the problem with (temporary) storage of non-encyclopedic entries such as grocery lists, notes to self, etc. You seem to have unlimited bandwidth ,and all kinds of pages get deleted anyways. If I would have put it on my home page instead of a seperate entry it probably wouldn't have been deleted.Organized Shopper 17:59, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Our last bill for bandwidth was a quarter million dollars. Our next bill is projected to be higher. If you'd care to write a check, we will gladly allow you to store your grocery list. Kim Bruning 19:37, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
If you want to store your grocery lists online, set up your own wiki to do it. My household has a wiki, and one of the articles in it is, in fact, a shopping list. (Unfortunately, the server it was on blew a motherboard, so it's down right now. I need to get it back up sometime.) Wikipedia is not a free hosting service. Kelly Martin (talk) 19:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

EffK is forced to Abandon a Corrupted Wikipedia

I refer you to my response of a few moments ago at 15 December [[12]],http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/EffK/Evidence#3_December_2005 EffK 02:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not on a deadline

I added this section because it comes up from time to time; I didn't seriously think anyone thought Wikipedia was on a deadline; but it was reverted. I'm putting this here for discussion so the dissenting voices can name a date. Demi T/C 14:59, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

If you think everyone already knows this, why does it need to be on the page? As someone said, that's needless "instruction creep". When I reverted, I wasn't disputing whether it was true, but rather whether it should be enumerated. Wikipedia isn't a pizza, but we're not going to say that because it's obvious. Superm401 | Talk 17:54, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
  • People do argue from a sense of urgency, however, from time to time. I can't quite tell what your point is: that we shouldn't include this section because while you agree with it, it's obvious? Or we shouldn't include it because you don't agree with it? Demi T/C 19:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not on a deadline. But remember what wikiwiki means. And remember that the first impressions we give to new users matter, so don't suppose that saying "we're not on a deadline" is carte-blanche to allow rotten articles to fester. -Splashtalk 19:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Clarification of "not paper"

Earlier on this page, someone points out that part of the "Wikipedia is not paper" section is confusing. And it is. I've tried to clarify by pointing out that Wikipedia content is always encyclopedic, but not necessarily exactly what would appear in Britannica or World Book. Right now, the explanation of this section really only has to do with article length and depth, not with subject matter. The second paragraph deals with subject matter is opaque. I tried to make it less so by adding:

Another way of stating this precept is that Wikipedia is not (only) a general encyclopedia; it can also be a set of specialized encyclopedias.

Demi T/C 20:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we need to be careful with the language. Wikipedia is foremost a general encyclopedia, but it is also a specialist encyclopedia in so far as it doesn't conflict. This is usually possible because wiki is not paper, but it should be considered when we decide how to seperate up articles, how we write intros, etc. Kat and I have discussed this a number of times.. I'll come back and propose some more language after my flight, and perhaps after talking to her some more about it. --Gmaxwell 21:48, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Who says that it is foremost a general encyclopedia? Trollderella 03:14, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
The word "encyclopedia" is a real problem for wikipedia. It plays into the hands of deletionists who want to restrict the scope of the project, but wikipedia has burst all bounds of previous encyclopedias and that is a thoroughly good thing. It should encompass reference books on every subject about which reference books can be written in prose, and is increasingly doing so. Please don't try to cramp it again now. You will only be wasting your time in any case. CalJW 23:08, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I can't even begin to describe how strongly I disagree with that sentiment. Have you studied any of the other wiki-efforts and why they have failed? Have you done any academic readings on why Wikipedia is one of the very few successes? Again and again, the researchers attribute our survival to our community commitment to one goal - the creation of an encyclopedia. Yes, we are in some important ways different from prior encyclopedias but we still retain the self-image that we are creating an encyclopedia and deliberately choose to limit ourselves to that. History has repeatedly shown that when groups drift away from their unifying vision, the project inevitably fails. I strongly urge you to read (or perhaps re-read) Wikipedia:replies and to look up Social Software and the Politics of Groups by Clay Shirky, first published March 9, 2003 on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list [13]. Rossami (talk) 01:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
The word "encyclopedia" is a real problem for Wikipedia because there are those who really do not want Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia... but try to obfuscate the issue by trying, like Humpty-Dumpty, to redefine the word to mean "that which I want Wikipedia to be." As evidence, I present this exchange from a current AfD: Dpbsmith (talk) 02:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Keep The mere fact of something's existence makes it notable enough for inclusion. --a Wikipedian
Does this mean that you think Wikipedia should be an indiscriminate collection of information so long as the information is verifiable and not a copyright violation? Dpbsmith (talk) 01:45, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
That's what an encyclopedia is, yes. --that same Wikipedian.

Personally, I'd kind of like to see that section axed all together and replaced with "Wikipedia is to be an extensive general encyclopedia but nothing else." The Literate Engineer 18:50, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I used to be of the view that since Wikipedia is demonstrably not paper, there should be no unreasoable limits to people wanting to write articles on (to take a topical example) every single one of the several hundred Pokemon characters. If they want to write them - and the amount of disk space and bandwidth they consume is trivial - why not? However, having spent time writing articles (about cars, Lego and computers mostly) and getting one of them all the way from being a stub to being the front page featured article, I've come to understand why my earlier view is wrong - and that Wikipedia's scope must be artificially limited to some extent. The reason is that there are only a finite number of people who are able to contribute to things like Good Article review, Peer Review and Featured Article candidacy. If a large proportion of perfectly well written, illustrated and fact-checked articles are about matters so trivial, then the number of reviewers per article for each of those stages in an article's progress to Nirvana will be reduced and the quality of IMPORTANT articles will suffer. So whilst the physical infrastructure of Wikipedia Is Not Paper, the number of brains able to review and maintain it are limited in ways comparable to that of a traditional paper encyclopedia (perhaps more so because we aren't paid for doing this!). SteveBaker 16:25, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource wants to delete all source and data

I've added a parenthetical note to Wikipedia articles are not collections of source material because Wikisource is currently contemplating deleting all mathematical and astronomical tables (including expansions of transcendental numbers, tables of logarithms, ephemerides, and so forth) and all source code. See Wikisource talk:What Wikisource includes for the discussion of this. Uncle G 10:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

reference to the Five pillars

Yesterday, Zondor added a sentence about the Five pillars in the introductory paragraph of this page. Aquillion just reverted the edit with the comment that "five pillars, while old, is essentially an essay, not a policy page. It's not approprate to cite it authoritatively in a policy page's first paragraph.

I'd like to discuss that decision some more. I understand Aquillion's point that the Five Pillars page does not have an official "policy" tag on it but I think the page does accurately reflect Wikipedia's vision, sustaining values and guiding philosophy. I think it does illuminate the core topic of "What Wikipedia is not" by directing the reader to very well written discussion of what Wikipedia is. For new users who discover WP:NOT first, it's a way to tell that that we are not overwhelmingly negative - that we do have a positive approach. I'm inclined to ask to put the reference back in. Other thoughts? Rossami (talk) 15:12, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't have so much objection to it under "See also". I think it's important, though, to avoid giving the impression that WP:5P, itself, is the definitive statement of our philosophy, because it isn't, and there's a definite risk (given its phrasing) of that happening if it's linked to from the top of a major policy page. New users on its talk have already asked why "such an important policy page" isn't protected; it's important that they understand that WP:5P is currently just an attempt to describe Wikipedia's philosophy, albeit a good one. --Aquillion 17:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
If you believe you have a better summary of wikipedia policy, could you please write it down or link to it? Kim Bruning 02:17, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Most policy pages aren't protected. Why would Wikipedia:Five pillars need to be protected? At a quick glance it doesn't seem to be particularly subject to vandalism, and edits have been conservative and helpful. Casual vandals mostly hit mainspace pages. (It does surprise me a bit is that it hasn't attracted the disruptive attention of people who (I'm trying to avoid WP:BEANS here) have a strong point of view about a certain belief system that is sometimes associated with a similar number of columnar objects. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:58, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Structured Lists to help organize articles?

I'm concerned about that final third of a sentence in Section 1.5.2, "and for structured lists to assist with the organisation of articles." I have two concerns about it:

  1. It does not give any guidance regarding what counts as assisting with the organization of articles.
  2. It does not clearly specify whether the exception applies to any and every structured list that assists with the organization of articles, or only, as the section title would indicate, to structured lists of internal links.

I think it would be useful to discuss both those issues, although I admit that I'm motivated by having seen people use this clause as justification for several lists that I believe should not be a part of the Wikipedia. The Literate Engineer 21:59, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Not a public forum

I added the WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a public forum or a message board. Seems like a no-brainer, right? Zocky 01:36, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Many things that happen around here, it seems like a no-brainer that they shouldn't. We can only wonder if that means many people around here have no brains. On the topical note, seems like this was already covered in part of "what the Wikipedia community is not". The Literate Engineer 01:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Agreed, no brainer, yet has become the most common activity on Wikipedia. I don't think it was adequately covered in the Community section. At least, the evidence says otherwise. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-11 01:46

You're right, it's not in the community section, and actually, I should've been thinking "Not a soapbox" instead of the community section. Actually, what if under "Not a propaganda machine", in 1. Propaganda or advocacy of any kind, we change the wording from

"Propaganda or advocacy of any kind. Of course, an article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to approach a neutral point of view. You might wish to go to Usenet or start a blog if you want to convince people of the merits of your favorite views."

to

"Propaganda or advocacy of any kind. Of course, an article can report objectively about such things, as long as an attempt is made to approach a neutral point of view. You might wish to go to Usenet or start a blog if you want to convince people of the merits of your favorite views. The project and talk pages, likewise, are reserved for discussing changes to articles and the encyclopedia, not expressing opinions about the material covered"?

Actually, I'm not sure that's any better... But point is, does this need it's own section (1.x), or will a subsection (1.x.y) work for it?The Literate Engineer 01:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the fact that it's so rampant on Wikipedia means it needs its own section, or nobody will ever notice. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-11 02:14
Honestly, my experience is that even with things explicitly in here, nobody seems to care. Anyway, what's anyone else think? I don't think 3 people's inconclusive discussion is enough to justify adding a section to a policy page. On which note, I think Zocky should've proposed it here before inserting it. The Literate Engineer 16:55, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, if it makes things clearer, then it should stay. After all, we do see quite a lot of people going round 'posting' in wrong 'forums' when they are merely adding sections to the Help desk when they should be adding to the Reference desk. It is also quite rampant on some talk pages. However, really, this is just a minor annoyance. But I don't think it's truly clear at the moment. x42bn6 Talk 04:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Disagree Sometimes you make huge mistakes about what you know, or something is wrong with the source data, only by discussions such as a public forum would such mistakes be uncovered, and corrected. I believe you would stiffle the very essence of the correcting the data feature of Wikipedia of you make this a policy. --Masssiveego 02:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • comment I'm sure it's more important to question the humanity of fellow persons - as in "We can only wonder if that means many people around here have no brains." Certainly makes a stronger point when you put it that way - I would agree with almost anything if not agreeing meant that my brain would be vaporized by a tautology. Benjamin Gatti 22:45, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Surely this is the purpose of the talk page for each article to be effectively used as a public forum. Crippled Sloth 15:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of the talk pages is editorial, not conversational. Coyoty 18:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Propose addendum to Wikipedia is not a Democracy

I proposed that the following list of clear exceptions be added to the section asserting that wikipedia is not a democracy so that newcomers are not intentionally mislead into the false allusion that in fact voting isn't how everything meaningful is decided.

Notable exceptions include
  • The Selection of Arbitrators
  • The Decisions of Arbitration
  • The Selection of Administrators
  • The Demonstration of Consensus
  • The Deletion of Articles
  • The Establishment of Policy

On second thought - someone decided to maintain the allusion - patently dreadful really. Benjamin Gatti 05:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

You proposed nothing: your only prior edit to this page in weeks had nothing to do with that. What you did was make an unproposed & undiscussed (and thus invalid) edit to a page that lists policies. Now you've proposed it. The Literate Engineer 05:40, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Funny I had just read that the technical details of a proposal were not grounds for invalidation - but others would know better surely. Benjamin Gatti 06:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Any edit to a page that's already policy, as this one is, has to have affirmative consent backing that change before it's made. The Literate Engineer 06:07, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the Zen of non-democratic policy is a Shangri-la. There is already overwhelming and demonstrated consensus for elections in the choice of Admins, ArbCom, RfD, etc ... Is it here suggested that truth ought to be vetted through the filter of popularity? What is - is. It is policy to use elections to decide almost everything - it is apparently also policy to state that such is not the case. Truth should start at home. Benjamin Gatti 06:54, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

So now it's not a democracy, instead of not a bureaucracy you take exception to. It still is not a democray. I sometimes wish AfD was democratic, since as it now stands a minority can prevent a consensus from being reached. The system is consensus-forming. The ideal would be for discussion to continue until everyone agrees on a position, but we are too dispersed and too busy to achieve that, so we settle for a 'rough' consensus. -- Dalbury(Talk) 12:24, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
It should have said Democracy all along - I conflated the terms in midnight error. The point is that we certainly use elections and strawpolls, even retrospective polling (position summaries) to justify actions (rather than say an appeal to principles such as respect of diversity or factual accuracy) This constant appeal to populism IMO prevents the quality of the pedia from being competative. If a majority want the moon to be made of cheese, they could quite easily prevail over the few voices who have actually been there. Rather than striving for the common denominator, we should establish precendents in which better research trumps original research, better cites trump lesser authorities, and a plurality of authorities trumps a single source - in other words, we should tally by content rather than pieholes. Benjamin Gatti 16:13, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah, you want something that Wikipedia is not (sorry about that, I couldn't resist). Open editing is fundamental to the idea of Wikipedia, and I don't think you're going to be able to change that. For myself, I'm concentrating on pushing for better referencing of articles by example and by nudging other editors. And elections and other decisions are by consensus, not by majority vote, and however frustrating that is to me on certain issues, I really would like to see it succeed. -- Dalbury(Talk) 16:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Benjamin, please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia process before making comments such as these. Of the six processes you mentioned, only two can be considered democratic, and at least one of those has a mitigating factor. A third often looks democratic to newcomers but really isn't. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which three I refer to. Radiant_>|< 01:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I Believe there are all every bit as much a Democracy as is for example the United States of America, and other classic examples (which need I remind one is itself a rather messy and undemocratic affair). Benjamin Gatti 05:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

A crude view says, that some of these are generally decided by voting, but it's still dubious if that makes them a democracy. The agreement to abide by a vote is not your right or anyone's right, as such. The test of that is, if it changed tomorrow, you would probably have no recourse to change it back. FT2 (Talk) 10:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)