Misplaced Pages

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NOTCENSORED and content control

Another editor at Misplaced Pages talk:Child protection#Content control says the WP:NOTCENSORED policy would stop Misplaced Pages supporting user self censoring preferences or helping content control software, e.g. so a person could have a good chance of avoiding coming across pictures of nudes or articles about sex acts. This would not involve any banners or markers on the pages themselves or special work putting tags on them. Do you think NOTCENSORED means that the content of Misplaced Pages is not censored so one can have articles about sex positions for instance on it? Or do you think it means a principled stand that any link with censorship is a contaminating influence like helping the communists in China and must be resisted, even if it means a parent can't have a good chance of stopping their child seeing sex positions on it except by blocking the whole site or using some text filtering that stops articles with things like 'he made a clean breast of it' and 'Horniman Museum'? Dmcq (talk) 18:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Sounds great, as a pacifist atheist I think the souls of children do require protection of weaponry and military related articles, as well as religious articles. On the other hand as a humanist I think the human body is not something to be ashamed of, so I would not put any censorship tags on articles talking about that.

But no kidding, this opens the door for the pushing of value induced point of views. As the values of not all persons are equal (see my example above) this would create huge subjectivity. Arnoutf (talk) 19:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much unworkable, and definitely a violation of a range of WP policies. Suppose Misplaced Pages had a button which said "I find evolution offensive, please do not show me anything about it." This would clearly violate WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE. There are many pieces of commercially available software that will filter content. Here, without advertising, are two of them: . People are free to buy and use this type of software, but it is beyond the scope of Misplaced Pages policy to get involved in this area.--♦IanMacM♦ 19:35, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah in that case I would like a button which says "I find creationism offensive, please do not show me anything about it.". Unworkable indeed. Arnoutf (talk) 19:49, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

There is wide support for self-censorship using third-party filtering tools external to the WMF websites, which can be configured to meet individual needs. I'm in the process of working on such a set of tools, in the form of browser plug-ins. There is no need for the WMF sites or their editors to get involved. Dcoetzee 19:39, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Obviously we can't stop people from using their own text-filtering software. NOTCENSORED comes into play when it gets to the stage of adding tags to articles and images to assist such software or proposing that the WMF develop their own filtering software. Mr.Z-man 19:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Well it certainly looks like those so far are on the contamination side. It's not something I fully understand - I'd be quite happy wearing a serial rapists sweater but I know a lot of people would not be able to bear doing such a thing. And obviously here it is stronger than any desire to help protect children from nude pictures or sex so it is pretty strong.

Anyway for Dcoetzee what I was thinking of was allowing lists of categories to be associated with a censorship name so images or articles could be removed on that basis. It could have been applied in a better and more fine grained way in Misplaced Pages, but you could probably do quite good filtering based on recognizing the categories at he end of pages, I think it would be worth doing special work for Misplaced Pages so the whole domain doesn't get blocked. Categories like Nudism for instance can be used as a primary filter and then the filtering on words could be lightened so it didn't stop things like Horniman Museum above. Unfortunately this wouldn't catch the categories of images though some extra work on images when you know they are from Misplaced Pages could probably fix it. Dmcq (talk) 20:08, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

And here is the problem: Why would nudism, a rather harmless expression of the human body be singled out while weaponry or even genocide is apparently not a problem for children to look at. This is a value loaded POV that you (Dmcq) try to push onto the whole project. Arnoutf (talk) 20:15, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Quite. In an earlier rehash of this, Dmcq (who is of course entitled to censor his own viewing) suggested setting Misplaced Pages up so creationists wouldn't have to read anything that espoused evolution. Where will it all stop. WP:NOIMAGE is quite sufficient - you don't want pictures, you got it. For anything else, get the NetNanny in. I can't see why Misplaced Pages would want to (let alone agree how to) censor its content. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:17, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be assuming that we deeply care whether some overly-conservative ISP blocks Misplaced Pages. While we would like editors and readers stuck on that ISP to be able to continue editing and reading, I don't think it's something most of us would lose sleep over any more that we worry about the blocking of Misplaced Pages by the People's Republic of China for political reasons. See also Internet Watch Foundation and Misplaced Pages for an example involving a block related to nudity. Anomie⚔ 20:33, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Plus of course Scunthorpe problem for some famously bizarre decisions by filtering software.--♦IanMacM♦ 20:54, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah, me... As I have said before, NOTCENSORED has only one reasonable interpretation on wikipedia: to prevent material that has encyclopedic value from being exclude on purely puritanical grounds. If editors would recognize that NOTCENSORED is not carte blanche for defending any old thing they pruriently want to add to wikipedia, and would instead use it to defend sober, restrained, and informative material needed on difficult articles, then we wouldn't need to worry about content control (or this issue) ever again. --Ludwigs2 21:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, we would. In an earlier round of this discussion, Dmcq came up with quite a list of things that might be censored - allow the type of content to be adjusted according to local custom of what is anaethma, e.g. naked children, sex, violence, science conflicting with religion, local politics, leaked information about scientology or whatever. One example was creationists who might not want to see information about evolution. While I agree that if people edited sensibly we would have less problems, this isn't that argument. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:25, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

No, Elen, conflicts on issues like this only arise when editors decide to promote/oppose material without considering what encyclopedic value of that material. you have some editor who try to remove useful, instructive material because it offends them, and you have other editors trying to add/retain gratuitously offensive material because it tickles them to do so, and you have a certain amount of gray area where the only reasonable behavior is to weight the encyclopedic merits of material against the offense it might cause. I suspect that you will ind that the vast majority of the applications of NOTCENSORED on wikipedia are designed to forestall that reasonable behavior, and that's just wrong. --Ludwigs2 23:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Given my previous interactions with you in this article, if it "forestalls that reasonable behaviour", then the policy is working exactly just fine. The offense it might cause is not our concern, that's the gist of NOTCENSORED. --Cyclopia 21:51, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Are you talking to me or to Elen? I've never edited that article, so far as I can tell. --Ludwigs2 17:21, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

To you, but I had slightly wrong memories -I refer to this discussion which leaked from the discussion on that talk page. --Cyclopia 17:39, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

oh, that discussion. I still think I'm right about that (mostly because I am). are you bringing that up because you want to restart the debate? --Ludwigs2 18:25, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be an assumption in some posts here that I want to censor the information people receive. I do not. I wish to extend the reach of Misplaced Pages to people who would not now use it. Also it would make it obvious to them when they were trying to see something they said they didn't want to see. If you really want to propagate straightforward NPOV views of things the best way is to let people with views like creationism access it and yet feel safe. This is a softly softly approach rather than forcing them towards things like Conservapedia or some extreme Muslim sects safe site where they get extreme views and never see the light as it were. It would also protect the content in case fashions change in what is prohibited in the states or elsewhere, being able to say it had mechanisms in place to support such stuff would defuse much such silliness. Dmcq (talk) 21:36, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

While your motives maybe good, I think this would open the door to true censorship. And to be honest, I think the conservatives will see this as a victory over Misplaced Pages (in which they would be right), while I am pretty sure they will still not use the project and will still flock to conservapedia (in which case we sacrifice a lot, for nothing). More generally; talking to people convinced about their own Truth is a mission impossible, so we should direct our effort elsewhere, i.e. making the project as good as possible. If conservatives don't read it, I couldn't care less, their loss. Arnoutf (talk) 21:44, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that Misplaced Pages could do a bit more to facilitate such uses (see strategy:Proposal:Provide services to facilitate "child-safe" and selective mirror sites). But if a group wants to do content tagging, it needs to be able to control who applies the content tags, to ensure that only their own definitions are used for notoriously vague distinctions between e.g. art and pornography, to apply their own screening and their own sanctions. It has to be a third party site. Misplaced Pages could provide much of the computing power for such a site, issuing selected historical versions of the articles to appear in the other site's frames by their choice. We might even allow such organizations to alter an article to meet their particular ideas, storing it as a historical version with a "self-reverting edit" designed to ensure that generally Wikipedians see only the uncensored version. That's a lot of heavy lifting we could do for them, but allowing them to edit-war over their tags and definitions in our article spaces and disrupt our production of the content? That's just not reasonable. At some point we have to assume that if they have so much support that they could put up at least the outer shell if not a full mirror of a Misplaced Pages site. Wnt (talk) 21:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

All that "heavy lifting" done by Misplaced Pages has two serious problems that need to be solved outside Misplaced Pages. First of all Misplaced Pages resources needs to be compensated for resources spent if foundation time and server capacity is used for this. Second, Misplaced Pages should not under any circumstance be deemed responsible for upholding such "censored" articles, even if the server with the 'historical' version crashes and reverts to full versions.

I think both are unfeasible. My suggestion would be that the people wanting such 'censored' Misplaced Pages just found their own foundation, buy and maintain their own servers, create the "censored" versions of the unfit articles on those servers and link the rest through to Misplaced Pages proper. I think such an outside Wiki option would be the only solutions that is not unreasonably taxing for Misplaced Pages itself. (Of course I expect that the target group for this service are much more likely to adopt the rambling on conservapedia as truth than founding such a thing, but as I said above, that is their loss.) Arnoutf (talk) 21:58, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

You can see an example of the sort of thing that can be produced at 2008/9 Misplaced Pages Selection for schools. This was co-produced with the Foundation. It is totally closed and desn't have anything in it saying you're trying to access forbidden material which is what I'd like to see but then again it is very well vetted and safe for small children. Dmcq (talk) 22:08, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure the pictures here and here are "completely safe for small children". Additionally for example this article treats sexuality as something related to psychology of humans not biology; which in my view sounds a lot like synthesis driven by the urge to make sexuality 'harmless' . Indeed, all these articles lack references, and therefore do not conform to core policies like WP:V. I would not want the whole project going that way, ever. Of course, as Misplaced Pages allows reuse of materials under creative commons someone setting up a "Safipedia" or "Censoripedia" they are free to do so but, just like the Wiki for schools that should be outside the main project, and thus should not be discussed here. Arnoutf (talk) 07:21, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy with junior schools just using a bowdlerized version, but I would like secondary schools to be able to access it more completely. The proposals I had been making would not affect normal users so there's nothing about 'the whole project going that way'. Exactly why should things like reaching out to schools and Conservapedia rednecks not be discussed here when the first statement of wmf:Mission_statement is "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." Misplaced Pages is collecting one type of material very effectively and far as I can see it the main question should be how best to disseminate it. Dmcq (talk) 07:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Let's try to disentangle this.

1)"Misplaced Pages is collecting one type of materials very effectively." I agree, that is what we do best (although I am not sure what you exactly mean with "one type" but I guess that refers to verifiably sourced information on a large range of topics)

2)"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the wolrd to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain". Of course I do agree, educational content is however not necessarily aimed at any age group, and should therefore in extremis cover all possible topics. Misplaced Pages, the flagship project of Wikimedia is exactly doing that, providing an extremely broad and uncensored coverage of almost everything you can think of (even those things you do not want to think of).

3) "and to desseminatie it effectively and globally" Since adults are the majority of people the noncensored version of Misplaced Pages is doing nicely. On the other hand there is a possible contradiction with globally if states put in place content filters there is a problem; however to solve that you have to violate the empowerment of people in creating content. Not easily solved, and it was agreed that state blocking of Misplaced Pages should not reflect on Misplaced Pages policy.

Your argument is that Misplaced Pages is not meeting all the aims of the Wikimedia foundation (note the subtle difference in naming) in detail. I do agree, you are unlikely to reach certain groups of people with the open uncensored Misplaced Pages. Your solution would be to build in certain restrictions into Misplaced Pages. I disagree there. My solution would be to create sistersites (not unlike your school-wikipedia example). That would fullfill the aims of Wikimedia while leaving the core ideas of Misplaced Pages in tact.

My conclusion after disentangling the argument is that we do not much differ in the analysis of the problem (some people avoid Misplaced Pages) but we differ in the solution (Misplaced Pages should allow them to customise (you); Specific sister projects outside Misplaced Pages should serve them (me)). My solution places this discussion outside the Village pump domain and into Wikimedia foundation discussions. Arnoutf (talk) 09:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Please can I repeat again. I do not want to put any restrictions into Misplaced Pages. I want to enable people to restrict themselves. And the problem I see with your solution is that like the schools project it hides the restricted content rather than making it obvious they have bumped against a barrier. I'm in favor of the schools project but I'd like a much easier but less secure way for people to do the same sort of thing which wouldn't let them hide the barriers easily. Dmcq (talk) 09:56, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

As to the one type I meant as oppose to Wikibooks, commons wikiversity and suchlike things or all the educational stuff places like MIT are releasing. Dmcq (talk) 09:59, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

It would be essentially technically equivalent to perform content filtering based on user account preferences. However, implementing opt-in filtering directly by the WMF would be a very unpopular move - it raises slippery slope concerns. I also strongly prefer the use of browser plug-ins to the use of "sister sites", as I think fine-grained filtering based on individual preferences is essential, and I don't want users to be unable to edit, whether they are children or adults engaging in self-censorship. Dcoetzee 19:16, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I do not want to put any restrictions into Misplaced Pages. I want to enable people to restrict themselves. - But people can already restrict themselves a lot better using third-party software, so why should we bother? --Cyclopia 21:51, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Well I've suggested a wikipedia specific browser plug-in above which would act in a more fine grained manner than most filters. It would put an additional burden on Misplaced Pages bandwidth and processing if it was used widely compared to being internally supported but as I said I think Misplaced Pages use is widespread enough to support a special plug-in filter. Supporting such a thing directly would give better visibility and control, it would tick various tick boxes about child protection and NSFW sites is concerned, and it would help defend the content if Florida starts thinking table legs are porno and suchlike silliness that societies periodically pass through. Dmcq (talk) 12:05, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I disagree, not Misplaced Pages's task. If a reader wants to "defend" themselves or their children against whatever they think is unacceptable they are free to install net content monitoring software on their computer.

If Misplaced Pages wants to facilitate such protection and we want to offer such "plug ins" then we will end up in an endless debate what falls under child protection. Who determines what should be limited; some obscure US Christian fundamentalist sect? Acceptability to all Christians (unlikely as that is - I know of at least some Christian churches that believe nudity is important part of life, and who bless same-sex marriage in their churches)? A separate setting for each of the dozens (if not more) Christian churches? Why not offer neutral content from the POV of Muslim fundamentalist? Or extreme pacifists or atheists? Or Scientologists? Or hollow earthists? By adopting a plugin for one specific group of people only Misplaced Pages implicitly agrees that their take on life is worth protecting more than that of others. The alternative: creating plug ins for all possible kinds of beliefs is plain impossible.

Let people protect themselves if they think they should. Arnoutf (talk) 13:16, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

If you would just read what I proposed you would see that there is no need for agreement on Misplaced Pages anything like 'what constitutes nudity' as far as this is concerned. That is already done by the categories. It would be up to whoever wants this to decide what categories they are interested in. An argument about nudity as far as censorship is concerned as opposed to simply a category of article or image would be irrelevant. If somebody has some classification that doesn't fit in cleanly then it would have to figure out a category to go through the standard rationale for categories and which supported what they wanted. If somebody sets up a browser plug-in as I pointed out the exact same thing will happen. If their new category doesn't fit in with wikipedia it will be deleted by CfD, if it does it is saying something useful about what it categorizes. Dmcq (talk) 13:53, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Which is back to the argument that nudity is something that needs to be singled out; which is exactly the reason why I object (per above). Either you provide such filters for each and any group of people that want "something" to be singled out (be it taboo foodstuffs, be it violence or weapons, be it nudity, be it whatever their sect thinks should be blocked) OR you place the needs of one sect over those of another throwing away any claim to neutrality Misplaced Pages may have. Arnoutf (talk) 16:02, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

It wouldn't be singled out. There already is a Category:Nudity because it is a reasonable categorization criterion. Whether somebody used that category or some combination of others would be up to them. There already are criteria for reasonable categories. Nothing new that way is needed. It would not be up to anyone to provide filters. Some people might set up their own filters and share them with others of a similar mindset but that's it. It's not up to you or me to decide what they want. There is no requirement to place the needs of one sect above another. I do believe that what a sect thinks is important probably will correspond with some boolean condition satisfied by the categories but if it is meaningless as far as any reasonable criterion is concerned Misplaced Pages will not be required to support it. What it would mean though is that some people will be more careful to categorize things properly because the categories will have more exposure. I see no problem with the categories receiving more attention and mistakes being fixed quicker though. Dmcq (talk) 20:42, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

If you want to write such a browser plugin (or pay someone to write it for you), feel free. But please do so off-wiki, as it seems obvious the community will not "officially" support such a thing. Anomie⚔ 16:02, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Dcoetzee above seems to be engaged in such type stuff and I had come to the conclusion fairly early if you will read the beginning that there was some gut reaction against it in Misplaced Pages and people kept misinterpreting what it was about. I felt that such a thing would be very useful in a number of ways to Wikipedias mission and was just responding to queries in case somebody could get past the misty haze of 'no censoring' to see what it was about. There obviously is some support for censorship as the foundation itself is helping implement it for schools and another person here has outlined their alternate plans for such support. Dmcq (talk) 16:27, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that the school project is OUTSIDE/BESIDES the main Misplaced Pages project. EVERYONE (including me) here agrees to such filters if they are OUTSIDE the main project, but not INSIDE it. Please accept from all comment above that you will not get consensus to set up filters within the main Misplaced Pages project. Arnoutf (talk) 18:51, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I have read your opinions. I see no need for your SHOUTING especially if you had read my previous contributiuon that you were supposedly replying to. And by the way I am one of the EVERYONE. thank you. Dmcq (talk) 19:32, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes I was shouting as you have not shown any serious considerations of the many points I and others made. You have basically two responses: Your own and reframing comments by others to reflect your own points. That is not helpful at all in consensus finding, and in fact does not show you have tried to see/understand the overwhelmingly worried/negative reponses of others to your proposal. (PS I should have used "everyone else") Arnoutf (talk) 19:42, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I will pose my questions to you again (and you may notice that these do not even relate to the question whether Misplaced Pages should do such a thing, but how we can make sure it works in a balanced way). Until I have answer on this questions (and not some evasive thing I got so far) I will assume you have no true interest in making this balanced

1) Who is going to maintain this?

2) Who is going to decide on what parameters the filters can be set, and who will guarantee a neutral point of view in that serving all possible sects equally?

3) Why is Nudity singled out? This is not the only clearly defined category (I would even say that our Military History project is very good at categorising all weapons and war articles) So sticking to this example gives at least the suggestion of a bias towards US fundamentalist Christians. Arnoutf (talk) 19:51, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

For part 2 how I envisaged it was that it would simply be someone or a groups choice for each filter. Since it would require some wiki software support it might be that there was a restriction that was needed from that or bit of talk might decide something different. If someone disagreed they could set up another one. That answers part 1, it would be whoever wanted to and whether they agreed or disagreed, if they disagreed too much they could always fork. For part 1 a bit of wiki software would be required to set it p in the first place and after that it would purely be up to people who were interested and wouldn't affect the articles. As to part 3 I was not singling out nudity. I was showing an example. There is a category nudity but filters that used it might for instance be called Filter:Prude which just used that or Filter:ReligiousNut that combined it with lots of religious ones, Filter:Peace might exclude everything categorized as military. There would be no requirement for a neutral point of view. I don't know what this fundamentalist christian business is about, I was just giving examples that people tend to worry about as far as children are concerned. I know in America people are more worried about sex than violence so filtering guns wouldn't mean much whereas in France for instance it might be the other way round (though I think they're changing a bit).

Anyway as I pointed out to you before "I had come to the conclusion fairly early if you will read the beginning that there was some gut reaction against it in Misplaced Pages". This is simply to explain in response to your query. I believe there is enough of a market to do it via a browser plugin and it can be done fairly easily just that it would put an additional burden on WIkipedia with the way it would go around checking images and it would not contribute so directly to improving or supporting Misplaced Pages in extending its reach to other groups and to provide protection for children or to defend the content against changes in the law never mind all the Fox media type troublemakers and all those fundamentalists that run around the place in America. Dmcq (talk) 20:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I would not object to such a plugin being developed, but I would still not see why it should be within Misplaced Pages, even if it were under the auspices of the Wikimedia. My suggestion would be to develop such a plugin/filter either indepdently from Misplaced Pages or through a sister project under the umbrella of the foundation. In either case, I think it should not be part of the main Misplaced Pages. But after all arguments that we have exchanged I think we can agree that we disagree on that point. Arnoutf (talk) 20:44, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I mentioned this before, but perhaps I should be more explicit: rating content within Misplaced Pages would require a disciplinary structure for those who mis-rate material. Right now, one of our local comedians might end up before AN/I eventually for putting pictures of sea slugs and cypress trees in Category:Nudity, or taking out pictures because they're also in Commons:Category:Women wearing necklaces... but there's no quick and certain punishment for inadvertent mis-rating, nor a strict way to arbitrate philosophical questions like whether lingerie and nakedness are mutually exclusive. Any effort to do rating here would make all the arguments, all the policy debates, and ultimately all of the disciplinary action needed to uphold the scheme into burdens for Misplaced Pages. We don't want this.

But I do think that Misplaced Pages could stand the burden of distributing particular historical versions of article on request, even to facilitate the operation of a censored site. Any one of us can call up a revision from the History for any reason we like, without explanation. We should not condemn an individual or outside site for doing the same, whatever their motivation; and it is only a courtesy for us to consider ways to trim down that content to a narrower frame rather than leaving an external site to do the processing. It is within the purview of WMF to help distribute the resources generated here. Wnt (talk) 22:21, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

It wouldn't be anybody's responsibility to ensure categories are accurate any more than it is now, and no categories would be specially marked as for such purposes. Misplaced Pages would not know that Category:Nudism was used for self censoring any more than Category:Articles to be split. Anyway you'll be glad to hear the foundation agress with you too for schools, my problem with such extracts is that they completely hide the links to censored information rather than make it obvious that they have come against a wall. I know they're entitled to do that but I'm still unhappy that we're forcing them along a line where that becomes the obvious thing to do. Dmcq (talk) 22:57, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

No wikipedia but amusing, well I hadn't expected that - I see someone is now selling a filter especially to filter out religious propaganda!, see GodBlock, I was expecting ones tuned towards a particular religious slant. Dmcq (talk) 21:34, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Oops sorry - it's vapourware Dmcq (talk) 21:38, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Policy question re inline citations

Hi, not sure if I'm asking this in the right place, so I'll just be bold and come out with it!

At Hugh Paddick there is a long list of film, TV, theatre and radio listings. When I first added these back in 2007 I provided an inline citation for every individual listing however this was removed as it made the references section at the bottom too large and unwieldy (see this former version of the page). I am concerned that at some point someone is going to remove this list because it is now largely unreferenced using the preferred inline method. Is there a way of providing a reference for every entry in a list without having them lined up "a thru aq" at the bottom, and am I being paranoid that at some point a great deal of hard work researching that list is going to be removed? -- role 16:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

You could try to solve this by adding a line like "Unless otherwise specified, entries in the list below are based on Times or IMDB " on top of each section. Arnoutf (talk) 16:57, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

You could also add an invisible comment referring to the history, so anyone trying to delete would see that there had been refs. Peter jackson (talk) 10:27, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, I will bear both those suggestions in mind. -- role 10:56, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to make the references section collapsible? RJFJR (talk) 21:28, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Technologically speaking, yes, but IIRC the MoS frowns upon that for accessibility reasons. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:50, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

See WP:SCROLL. If you collapse the References section, the in-text citation links don't work. The number of backlinks are not as bad as I have seen; one article recently had 1043 backlinks on one reference. See Template:Bug. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  22:46, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Assume bad faith has been marked as a policy

Misplaced Pages:Assume bad faith (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Change was made by an IP with no discussion, presumably as a bad attempt at a joke. I've reverted it. Alzarian16 (talk) 02:08, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

How is Misplaced Pages a gazetteer? How is Misplaced Pages not a gazetteer?

I have started a new discussion in the policy article: Misplaced Pages talk:What Misplaced Pages is not#How is Misplaced Pages a gazetteer? How is Misplaced Pages not a gazetteer? because I saw WP:NOT as seriously lacking in this area. patsw (talk) 15:33, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

New template needed for hidden comments, or does it exist?

I looked at an article's history and saw that an IP had made a valid criticism of one sentence, but put it right there for all to see (this was reverted). Now such a comment could go in a form that can only be seen when editing. Is there a template that can tell newcomers to do that?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:43, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

<!--You do this. Not aware of a template for it though I'm sure there is one.--> --erachima talk 16:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Erachima's talking about the syntax for HTML comments. It works fine. - Denimadept (talk) 16:50, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No you should not put content remarks in article space at all. There are 3 options for such cases, none of which include hidden comments.

1. The comment should be made on the talk page, after which a discussion starts and the change is made.
2. The (new) editor has to be bold and make the necessary changes to the text him/herself. After all Misplaced Pages is the encyclopedia everyone can edit.
3. In extreme cases a headnote can be added to the section alerting editors something needs to be done

BTW there is indeed code for hidden comments <!-- Everything in between will be hidden --> but that should be used extremely sparingly, and only to be used for reoccurring issues (e.g. I used it in the infobox of the Dutch articles after a dozen or so people added Frisian as an official language of the Netherlands (which it is not); or in the article on the Way of St James where about everyone in the world wanted to add the name of their own local language). However, in your case that does not seem to be the problem. Arnoutf (talk) 16:56, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

You can add comments within any in-line template. For example:

{{verify source|date=July 2010|The cited source does not support this statement}}

The comment does not show, but provides a clue for later editors. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  17:07, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I gave the person wrong advice, but I referred him/her here.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:26, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

By the way, here is the diff in question.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:31, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

That template doesn't seem to exist, but it's fairly easy to make if anyone thinks there's a use for it. let me know. --Ludwigs2 17:36, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Let's not opt for template cruft. This is a relatively simple case. I would advice the anon editor to be bold and change it, if the editor is confident to do so (nobody will mind and the editor will actually have improved Misplaced Pages, instead of notifying others that it should be improved). Alternatively, if the editor is not confident in writing good enough English, the talk place is the spot to notify regulars that the sentence is not well written. Arnoutf (talk) 17:58, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

We have a number of inline cleanup templates. {{Awkward}} does the job here. Fences&Windows 18:15, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Notability (sports) has been marked as a guideline

Misplaced Pages:Notability (sports) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

BLP photo policy

At Karla Bonoff a user uploaded a photo that he released under a Commons license File:Karla Bonoff at Knuckleheads Saloon.png. An editor removed it, saying that the person wanted it removed. The uploader added it back, but the other editor just removed it again. What is the policy on this? Bubba73 , 20:03, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

First of all, the user must have taken the photo him/herself. But checking their userpage this seems to be the case.

Secondly, there maybe exemptions to copyright. For example Dutch (German, French and Portuguese a.o.) have exceptions to copyright when it concerns recognisable portraits of people. This is call portrait right . The pictured person can stop publication of such images simply requesting this. Something similar in anglosaxon law may be the reason for deletion. Arnoutf (talk) 20:15, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Equivalent concept is personality rights. However, it is relevant to unwanted commercialization of another's image, and I'm not at all certain that it applies here. No edit warring, on the other hand, definitely does, since this is not a clear-cut BLP violation. Take it to the noticeboard, perhaps? --erachima talk 20:26, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

FYI Dutch law covers any type of reproduction. But indeed, stopping edit war is first priority. Arnoutf (talk) 20:34, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

She is looking straight into the camera, she obviously knew her picture was being taken. If she finds this picture unflattering or whatever she can feel free to take a better one and upload it. I don't know about the legal end of it but clearly the photographer did not take this surreptitiously, and the only law that matters for our purposes is the law in Florida where the servers are located. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:36, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

By the way it's more likely you will find experts in this particular policy area at Misplaced Pages:Media copyright questions. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:40, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

There is no concept of personality rights in US and British law, as far as I am aware, and in this case US law is what is relevant. The uploader owns the rights to the image, so there is no copyvio issues; the image is not disparaging of the subject so there is no BLP issue. I have restored the image back to the article. – ukexpat (talk) 21:17, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

The only personality rights in U.S. law would prevent unauthorized commercial exploitation of someone's image, i.e., putting her face on a candy bar wrapper. It wouldn't even necessarily stop someone from making money off of many uses of an image. Cf. Nussenzweig v. DiCorcia. And those personality rights couldn't possibly restrict the use of that photo in an article on that subject. postdlf (talk) 22:00, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Well it seems to ME that if this were text content, everyone would say it's irrelevant if she wanted it there or not, so long as it was keeping with the BLP policy and relevant to the article. Why should a picture be any different? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:03, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

If they or a authorized representative wants it removed, they should probably be pointed in the direction of OTRS. Peachey88 23:09, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Company bashing

I was the last contributor to the article before this diff. I often go back and look at pages I added to in order to see if my edit "took", but that also makes me a part of the recent changes patrol. Given the article's length, I really think it was too much and I put a note n the talk page, stating that perhaps some of the information could be used since at least some of it was sourced (there was no question about what was unsourced), but it would surely have to be formatted differently. I wasn't saying it could never be there, but it just seemed too much to me.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:52, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

You were absolutely right to remove it. I would probably have been far less charitable; the content added appears to be bordering on personal attacks, and the edit summary ("2010 update") was pretty much a lie. This problem turns up on a lot of articles about companies or people who some editors don't like, and isn't really acceptable unless it's neutrally written and fully sourced, which this lot wasn't. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:17, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I just checked the person's contributions and this is all the person did.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:20, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

"Unmatched for two millennia"

Exceptional, unprovable claim or not? Keep or remove? Please see Talk:Chinese armies (pre-1911)#What to do with this claim?. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

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