Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:56, 9 March 2006

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Policy archive

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WHERE DID MY DISCUSSION GO?

It went to this additional archive so I don't end up actually deleting any discussions. Sorry if I accidentally archived a discussion in progress. My sincere apologies, and feel free to put it back here.

Ok, the nomic is over

All those playing nomic with wikipedia guidelines are hereby informed that they have won. All those playing calvinball, you too, you've won. Congratulations. Now get the heck out of here so we can get back to writing an encyclopedia.

The current wikipedia process is so darn acidic that even experienced mediators who have seen it all have left. This includes people like Nicholas Turnbull and Redwolf24. Only experienced usenetters hold on for longer periods of time, and now even they are getting quesy.

People with established wikireputations get pounded on and driven off by people who are CLEARLY and OBVIOUSLY not here to write an encyclopedia.

I've seen featured article writers quit, I have seen them walk out of wikimeets.

And I am telling you now. This has gone too far. The buck stops here.

Who's with me?

Kim Bruning 13:42, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

When Misplaced Pages was a few people, the people were mostly quality. Large groups of people with easy access will invariably have a small group creating a lot of trouble. It seems to be the nature of mankind. Requiring registration would help (my opinion) but would not reduce Misplaced Pages quality. As Misplaced Pages grows larger and more popular, the problem will grow worse because beanbrains will disrupt and disperse honest efforts. In societies, police are established, on Misplaced Pages, (my opinion) we are going to need registration and dedicated policing-type people because there are people who know with certainty that knowledge should be destroyed. Terryeo 15:41, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

This is neither support nor opposition; I'm sick of the terms. This is to state, here and now; that those who are here to write a free content encyclopaedia will always have my firm support. And that's the short and tall of it. Rob Church (talk) 13:48, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Relax a little :) Forget about the policy pages for a while. Forget about all the litigation and silly arguing going on and go back to editing articles for a while. Last month mainspace edits were 2% of your contributions - make Misplaced Pages space edits 2% of your contributions and your wiki-health will improve! :) Haukur 14:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

There's no point if I'm going to have to fight every step of the way anyway. It's gotten trickier and trickier to even get people to recognise that maybe there's such a thing as an encyclopedia out there. "Policy" trumps encyclopedia every time, and good editors leave in disgust. Note how "Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia" is considered funny by some people around here. Fine, laugh, but then apply it, dang you! :-) Kim Bruning 14:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

It's kind of hard to ignore the policy pages with so many editors, on the one hand, trying to change the rules so they can insert their POV edits, and other editors, on the other hand, wanting to tie WP up in increasingly complex rules. And then there are the trolls filling up the talk pages. I try to ignore them, but I still feel I have to stay aware and not let them slip in changes that no one else has agreed to. I try to support anything that advances WP in conformance with the three content-guiding policies. I try to oppose anything that detracts from that. I agree with Robchurch that we are here to write an encyclopedia, and I get impatient with the obstacles. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 14:36, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

There's something to that - while you look away someone changes the rules :) Instruction creep is rampant. Just yesterday the following proposals were upgraded to guidelines (since downgraded again):

• Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics)
• Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Czech)
• Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Swedish)
• Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (hockey)

This is a well-intentioned effort to split up a thorny problem but it's awfully complicated. Basically: "Use diacritics in names if some complicated criteria are fullfilled. Unless it's a Czech or Swedish person in which case you should definitely use diacritics. Unless it's a hockey player in which case you definitely shouldn't." Haukur 15:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Nothing that a little editing won't fix! Let's apply the well-practised rule from poetry that removing the last line of the poem improves the poem. Indeed, applying this rule recursively is essential to producing good poetry. Having said that, I propose the following improvement: "Use diacritics." Hope this helps. -- Mareklug 17:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as a member of WP:HOCKEY, we didn't push Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (hockey) as anything but an internal project guideline. It was elevated (not by a project member) because we were finding articles we'd started all of a sudden winding up as redirects with diacritic markings and generally impinging on our carefully-tread order. Naming conventions for Czech, Swedish, Finnish etc were all created by the same user who created WP:Naming (hockey) as an attempt to make us all use diacritics when we create articles about people from those countries, and as a statement that "it's going to happen anyway despite your wishes, so deal with it."  RasputinAXP  c 17:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Err, I think I'm with you, Kim, but I'm not really sure what you're talking about... android79 14:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, the nomic is over. However, there is still a focus. I also wanted to leave, but I do continue to have a focus on article validation for accreditation purposes and how to implement the ideas. That focus does infringe upon matters that affect mainstream articles. Further, in the words that started article validation: 07:45, 6 June 2004 "Some potential expert editors refuse to edit, because they think their content will be damaged by vandals or non-experts. Providing a checking service might help them feeling more confident with the process." I've put a lot of time in on work within a small range of articles. I hate to see valid contributions by any editor lost so easily, and for those editors to be discouraged that they would leave or be banned. I hate to see Misplaced Pages become "the encyclopedia of the sum of human knowledge minus one". — Dzonatas 15:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to propose a new rule that Misplaced Pages editors not be allowed to give up on the project out of frustration unless there is a clear consensus for that editor being allowed to leave. Also, I would like to nominate the Misplaced Pages: namespace for deletion on the grounds that it is disruptive. -Silence 15:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm am sorry, but if you want to nominate that for deletion, you have to do so in triplicate and notify all one million contributors of the change on their talk page. You also need to hold a discussion, an unofficial poll, an official poll, a vote, and a tea party before the motion can be carried. Don't forget to notify the village pump, the announcements page, the community portal, Wikizine, The Signpost, all 28 IRC channels, the Arbitration Committee, the Mediation Committee, the Mediation Cabal, Esperanza and BJAODN before starting any discussion. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 17:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, for the tea party, can we invite everyone over for a Boston tea party?, everyone can come dressed as indians! Kim Bruning 18:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be dressed as indigenous peoples of North America of the Eastern Woodlands culture?

I think I will just stick a feather in my cap and call it macaroni. But I will point out that the easiest way around all those rules and regulations is simply to perform a military coup. Do you think a bunch of computer geeks are going to protest if you bust into the Misplaced Pages server room with a machine gun? —Mike 03:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I am with you, Kim. But do you have any plan to "stop the buck", as it were? DanielDemaret 21:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article

I came to the problem with national alphabet letters in article name. They are commonly used but I have found no mention about them in naming coventions (WP:NAME). The only convention related is to use English name, but it probable does not apply to the names of people. National alphabet is widely used in wikipedia. Examples are Luís de Camões Auguste and Louis Lumière or Karel Čapek. There are redirects from english spelling (Camoes, Lumiere, Capek).

On the other hand, wikiproject ice hockey WP:HOCKEY states rule for ice hockey players that their names should be written in English spelling. Currently some articles are being moved from Czech spelling to the english spelling (for example Patrik Eliáš to Patrick Elias). I object to this as I do not see genaral consensus and it will only lead to moving back and forth. WP:HOCKEY is not wikipedia policy nor guideline. In addition I do not see any reason why ice hockey players should be treated differently than other people.

There is a mention about using the most recognized name in the naming conventions policy. But this does not help in the case of many ice hockey players. It is very likely that for American and Canadian NHL fans the most recognised versions are Jagr, Hasek or Patrick ELias. But these people also played for the Czech republic in the Olympics and there they are known like Jágr, Hašek or Patrik Eliáš.

I would like to find out what is the current consensus about this. -- Jan Smolik 18:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The only convention related is to use English name, but it probable does not apply to the names of people - incorrect. "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things" - Misplaced Pages:Naming :conventions (common names). Raul654 18:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I mentioned this in the third article but it does not solve the problem. Americans are familiar with different spelling than Czechs. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, since this is the English Misplaced Pages, really we should use the name most familiar to English speakers. The policy doesn't say this explicitly, but I believe this is how it's usually interpreted. This is the form that English speakers will recognize most easily. Deco 19:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well it is wikipedia in English but it is read and edited by people from the whole world. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

It's is still the English Misplaced Pages. The standard naming convention policy should apply as well to people's names as to anything else. Not only that, but there is the additional problem of many of the rabid adders of squiggles not indexing the categories properly. Gene Nygaard 05:03, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

abid adders of squiggles? That hardly seems civil to me. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 11:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

There was a straw poll about this with regard to place names: Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (use English)/Archive 3#Proposal and straw poll regarding place names with diacritical marks. The proposal was that "whenever the most common English spelling is simply the native spelling with diacritical marks omitted, the native spelling should be used". It was close, but those who supported the proposal had more votes. Since, articles like Yaoundé have remained in place with no uproar. I would support a similar convention with regard to personal names. — BrianSmithson 19:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm the user who initiated the WP:HOCKEY-based renaming with Alf. The project Player Pages Format Talk page has the discussion we had along with my reasoning, pasted below:

OK, team, it's simple. This is en-wiki. We don't have non-English characters on our keyboards, and people likely to come to en-wiki are mostly going to have ISO-EN keyboards, whether they're US, UK, or Aussie (to name a few) it doesn't matter. I set up a page at User:RasputinAXP/DMRwT for double move redirects with twist and started in on the Czech players that need to be reanglicized.

Myself and others interpret the policy just the same as Deco and BrianSmithson do: the familiar form in English is Jaromir Jagr, not Jaromír Jágr; we can't even type that. Attempting to avoid redirects is pretty tough as well. Is there a better way to build consensus regarding this? RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 19:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you misread my statement above. My stance is that if the native spelling of the name varies from the English spelling only in the use of diacritics, use the native spelling. Thus, the article title should be Yaoundé and not Yaounde. Likewise, use Jōchō, not Jocho. Redirection makes any arguments about accessibility moot, and not using the diacritics makes us look lazy or ignorant. — BrianSmithson 16:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Tentative overview (no cut-and-paste solutions, however):

• Article names for names of people: wikipedia:naming conventions (people) - there's nothing specific about diacritics there (just mentioning this guideline because it is a naming conventions guideline, while there are no "hockey" naming conventions mentioned at wikipedia:naming conventions).
• wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles) is about royal & noble people: this is guideline, and *explicitly* mentions that wikipedia:naming conventions (common names) does NOT apply for these kind of people. But makes no difference: doesn't mention anything about diacritics.
• Misplaced Pages talk:naming conventions (Polish rulers): here we're trying to solve the issue for Polish monarchs (some of which have diacritics in their Polish name): but don't expect to find answers there yet, talks are still going on. Anyway we need to come to a conclusion there too, hopefully soon (but not rushing).
• Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics), early stages of a guideline proposal, I started this on a "blue monday" about a week ago. No guideline yet: the page contains merely a "scope" definition, and a tentative "rationale" section. What the basic principles of the guideline proposal will become I don't know yet (sort of waiting till after the "Polish rulers" issue gets sorted out I suppose...). But if any of you feel like being able to contribute, ultimately it will answer Jan Smolik's question (but I'd definitely advise not to hold your breath on it yet).
• Other:
  • Some people articles with and without diacritics are mentioned at wikipedia talk:naming conventions (use English)#Diacritics, South Slavic languages - some of these after undergoing a WP:RM, but note that isolated examples are *not* the same as a guideline... (if I'd know a formulation of a guideline proposal that could be agreeable to the large majority of Wikipedians, I'd have written it down already...)
  • Talking about Lumiere/Lumière: there's a planet with that name: at a certain moment a few months ago it seemed as if the issue was settled to use the name with accent, but I don't know how that ended, see Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Astronomical objects, Andrewa said she was going to take the issue there. Didn't check whether they have a final conclusion yet.

Well, that's all I know about (unless you also want to involve non-standard characters, then there's still the wikipedia:naming conventions (þ) guideline proposal) --Francis Schonken 19:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Note that I do not believe no En article should contain diacritics in its title. There are topics for which most English speakers are used to names containing diacritics, such as El Niño. Then there are topics for which the name without diacritics is widely disseminated throughout the English speaking world, like Celine Dion (most English speakers would be confused or surprised to see the proper "Céline Dion"). (Ironically enough, the articles for these don't support my point very well.) Deco 20:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Sticking diacritics, particularly the Polish Ł is highly annoying, esp. when applied to Polish monarchs. It just gives editors much more work, and unless you're in Poland or know the code, you will be unable to type the name in the article. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) File:UW Logo-secondary.gif 20:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Redirects make the issue of difficulty in visiting or linking to the article immaterial (I know we like to skip redirects, but as long as you watch out for double redirects you're fine). The limitations of our keyboards are not, by themselves, a good reason to exclude any article title. Deco 20:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Deco, I should rephrase what I said. I agree with you that some English articles do require diacritics, like El Niño. Articles like Jaromir Jagr that are lacking diacritics in their English spellings should remain without diacritics because you're only going to find the name printed in any English-speaking paper without diacritics. RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 21:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I checked articles about Czech people and in 90 % of cases (rough guess) they are with diacritics in the name of the article. This includes soccer players playing in England (like Vladimír Šmicer, Petr Čech, Milan Baroš). And no one actualy complains. So this seems to be a consensus. The only exception are extremely short stubs that did not receive much input. Articles with Czech diacritics are readable in English, you only need a redirect becouse of problems with typing. This is an international project written in English. It should not fulfill only needs of native English speakers but of all people of the world. --Jan Smolik 22:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Very many names need diacritics to make sense. Petr Cech instead of Petr Čech makes a different impression as a name, does not look half as Czech and is much more likely to be totally mispronounced when you see it. Names with diacritics are also not IMHO such a big problem to use for editors because you can usually go through the redirect in an extra tab and cut and paste the correct title. I also don't see a problem at all in linking through redirects (that's part of what they are there for). Leaving out diacritics only where they are "not particularly useful" would be rather inconsequent. Kusma (討論) 22:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, "Petr Sykora" and "Jaromir Jagr" are not alternate spellings; they are incorrect ones which are only used for technical reasons. Since all other articles about Czech people use proper Czech diacritics, I don't know of any justification for making an exception in case of hockey players. - Mike Rosoft 01:13, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Man, I feel like the bottom man in a dogpile. Reviewing Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (common names), there'sWhat word would the average user of the Misplaced Pages put into the search engine? Making the name of the article include diacritics goes against the Use English guideline. The most common input into the search box over here onthe left, for en-wiki, is going to be Jaromir Jagr. Yes, we're supposed to avoid redirects. Yes, in Czech it's not correct. In English, it is correct. I guess I'm done with the discussion. There's no consensus in either direction, but it's going to be pushed back to the diacritic version anyhow. Go ahead and switch them back. I'mnot dead-set against it, but I was trying to follow guidelines. RasputinAXP _{talk contribs} 15:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

There are many names, and even words, in dominant English usage that use diacritics. Whether or not these will ever be typed in a search engine, they're still the proper title. However, if English language media presentations of a topic overwhelmingly omit diacritics, then clearly English speakers would be most familiar with the form without diacritics and it should be used as the title on this Misplaced Pages. This is just common sense, even if it goes against the ad hoc conventions that have arisen. Deco 18:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Czech names: almost all names with diacritics use it also in the title (and all of them have redirect). Adding missing diacritics is automatic behavior of Czech editors when they spot it. So for all practical purposes the policy is set de-facto (for Cz names) and you can't change it. Pavel Vozenilek 03:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Naming policy (Czech) --Francis Schonken 11:01, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

and: Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (hockey) --Francis Schonken 17:41, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

There are those among us trying to pull the ignorant North American card. I mentioned the following over at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Player pages format...

Here's the Czech hockey team in English compliments of the Torino Italy Olympic Committee Here they are in Italian: , French: . Here are the rosters from the IIHF (INTERNATIONAL Ice Hockey Federation) based in Switzerland: .'

Those examples are straight from 2 international organizations (one based in Italy, one in Switzerland). I'm hard pressed to find any english publication that uses diacritics in hockey player names. I don't see why en.wiki should be setting a precedent otherwise. ccwaters 02:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Over at WP:HOCKEY we have/had 3 forces promoting non-English characters in en.wiki hockey articles: native Finns demanding native spellings of Finnish players, native Czechs demanding native spellings of Czech players, and American stalkers of certain Finnish goaltenders. I did a little research and here are my findings:

Here's a Finnish site profiling NHL players. Here's an "incorrectly" spelt Jagr, but the Finnish and German alphabets both happen to have umlauts so here's a "correct" Olaf Kölzig. Who is Aleksei Jashin?

Here's a Czech article about the recent Montreal-Philadelphia game Good luck finding any Finnish players names spelt "correctly"... here's a snippet from the MON-PHI article:

Flyers však do utkání nastoupili značně oslabeni. K zraněným oporám Peteru Forsbergovi, Keithu Primeauovi, Ericu Desjardinsovi a Kimu Johnssonovi totiž po posledním zápase přibyli také Petr Nedvěd a zadák Chris Therrien.

Well...I recognize Petr Nedvěd, he was born in Czechoslovakia. Who did the Flyers have in goal??? Oh its the Finnish guy, "Antero Niitymakiho".

My point? Different languages spell name differently. I found those sites just by searching yahoo in the respective languages. I admit I don't speak either and therefore I couldn't search thoroughly. If someone with backgrounds in either language can demonstrate patterns of Finnish publications acknowledging Czech characters and visa versa than I may change my stance. ccwaters 03:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I support every word Ccwater said, albeit with not as much conviction. There is a reason why we have Misplaced Pages in different languages, and although there are few instances in the English uses some sort of extra-curricular lettering (i.e. café), most English speaking people do not use those. Croat Canuck 04:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I must make a strong point that seems to be over-looked: this is not the international English language wikipedia. It is the English language wikipedia. It just so happens that the international communty contributes. There is a reason that there are other language sections to wikipedia, and this is one of them. The finnish section of wikipedia should spell names the Finnish way and the English wikipedia should spell names the English way. The vast majority of english publications drop the foreign characters and diacritics. Why? because they aren't part of the English language, hence the term "foreign characters". Masterhatch 04:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree in every particular with Masterhatch. The NHL's own website and publications do not use diacriticals, nor does any other known English-language source. The absurdity of the racist card is breathtaking: in the same fashion as the Finnish and Czech language Wikipedias follow their own national conventions for nomenclature (the name of the country in which I live is called the "United States" on neither ... should I feel insulted?), the English language Misplaced Pages reflects the conventions of the various English-speaking nations. In none are diacriticals commonly used. I imagine the natives of the Finnish or Czech language Wikipedias would go berserk if some peeved Anglos barge in and demand they change their customary linguistic usages. I see no reason to change the English language to suit in a similar situation. RGTraynor 06:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized. I intentionaly wrote the names without diacritics. I accept the fact that foreigners do that because they cannot write those letters properly and use them correctly. There are also technical restrictions. I also accepted fact that my US social security card bears name Jan Smolik instead of Jan Smolík. I do not have problem with this. I even sign my posts Jan Smolik. But Misplaced Pages does not have technical restrictions. I can even type wierd letters as Æ. And it has plenty of editors who are able to write names with diacritics correctly. The name without diacritics is sufficient for normal information but I still think it is wrong. I think that removing diacritics is a step back. Anyway it is true that I am not able to use diacritics in Finish names. But somebody can fix that for me.

I do not care which version will win. But I just felt there was not a clear consensus for the non-diacritics side and this discussion has proven me to be right. As for the notice of Czechs writing names incorectly. We use Inflection of names so that makes writing even more dificult (my name is Smolík but when you want to say we gave it to Smolík you will use form we gave it Smolíkovi). One last argument for diacritics, before I retire from this discussion as I think I said all I wanted to say. Without diacritics you cannot distinguish some names. For example Czech surnames Čapek and Cápek are both Capek. Anyway we also have language purists in the Czech republic. I am not one of them. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized -Fine we'll use the spellings used by the IIHF, IOC, NHLPA, AHL, OHL, WHL, ESPN, TSN, The Hockey News, Sports Illustrated, etc, etc, etc.

This isn't about laziness. Its about using the alphabet afforded to the respective language. We don't refer to Алексей Яшин because the English language doesn't use the Cyrillic alphabet. So why should we subject language A to the version of the Latin alphabet used by language B? Especially when B modifies proper names from languages C & D.

My main beef here is that that the use of such characters in en.wiki is a precedent, and not a common practice. If you think the English hockey world should start spelling Czech names natively, than start a campaign amongst Czech hockey players demanding so. It may work: languages constantly infiltrate and influence each other. Misplaced Pages should take a passive role in such things, and not be an active forum for them. ccwaters 20:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized Great, in which case for Czech Olympic pages, especially on the Czech Misplaced Pages, spell them as they are done in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, in the NHL-related articles, we'll spell them as per customary English-language usage. RGTraynor 08:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I wish I understood why User:ccwaters has to be rude in his posts on this subject. "Stalkers of Finnish goaltenders" isn't the way I'd describe a Misplaced Pages contributor. Also, since you asked, Aleksei Jashin is the Finnish translitteration of Alexei Yashin. Russian transliterates differently into Finnish than into English. Of course you must know this, since you have such a habit of lecturing to us on languages. As for diacritics, I object to the idea of dumbing down Misplaced Pages. There are no technical limitations that stop us from writing Antero Niittymäki instead of Antero Niittymaki. The reason so many hockey publications all over the world don't use Finnish-Scandinavian letters or diacritics is simple laziness, and Misplaced Pages can do much better. Besides, it isn't accepted translation practice to change the spelling of proper names if they can be easily reproduced and understood, so in my opinion it's simply wrong to do so. Since it seems to be obvious there isn't a consensus on this matter, I think a vote would be in order. Elrith 16:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Alas, a Finnish guy lecturing native English speakers on how they have to write Czech names in English (not to mention the lecturing regarding the laziness) is but a variation on the same theme of rudishness.

So, Elrith, or whomever reads this, if the lecturing is finished, could you maybe devote some attention to the Dvořák/Dvorak problem I mentioned below? I mean, whomever one asks this would not be problematic - but nobody volunteered thus far to get it solved. Am I the only one who experiences this as problematic inconsistency? --Francis Schonken 21:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

So is "Jagr" the Finnish transliteration of "Jágr"??? On that note, the Finnish "Ä" is not an "A" with "funny things" on top (that's an umlaut), its a completely separate letter nonexistent in the English language and is translated to "Æ". "Niittymaki" would be the English transliteration. "Nittymeki" or (more traditionally "Nittymӕki") would be the English transcription.

In the past I've said our friend's contributions were "thorough." I'll leave it at that. There will be nothing else about it from me unless asked. ccwaters 21:02, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

My opinion on the Dvořák/Dvorak issue is that his name is spelled Dvořák, and that's how the articles should be titled, along with redirects from Dvorak. Similarly, the article on Antero Niittymäki should be called just that, with a redirect from Niittymaki. You're right that it is a problematic inconsistency, and it needs to be fixed.

The only reason I may sound like I'm lecturing is that there are several people contributing to these discussions who don't understand the subject at all. Ccwaters's remarks on transliteration are

one example. It isn't customary or even acceptable to transliterate or transcribe Finnish letters into English; the accepted translation practice is to reproduce them, which is perfectly possible, for example, in Misplaced Pages. Niittymaki or anything else that isn't Niittymäki isn't a technically correct "translation". The reason North American, or for that matter, Finnish, hockey publications write Jagr instead of Jágr is ignorance and/or laziness. Misplaced Pages can do better that that.

However, since this discussion has, at least to me, established that there is no consensus on Misplaced Pages on diacritics and national letters, apart from a previous vote on diacritics, I'm going to continue my hockey edits and use Finnish/Scandinavian letters unless the matter is otherwise resolved. Elrith 04:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Elrith, your new batch of patronising declarations simply doesn't work. Your insights in language (and how language works) seem very limited, resuming all what you don't like about a language to "laziness" and "ignorance".

Seems like we might need an RfC on you, if you continue to oracle like this, especially when your technique seems to consist in calling anyone who doesn't agree with you incompetent.

Re. consensus, I think you would be surprised to see how much things have evolved since the archived poll you speak about. --Francis Schonken 23:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

My 2 cents:

1) This should NOT be setteld as a local consensus for hockey players, this is about how we name persons in the english wikipedia. It is wrong to have a local consensus for hockey players only.

2) I have tried to do some findings on how names are represented, it is wrong to say that since these names are spelled like this normally they should be spelled like this, many wrongs does not make it right. So I did a few checks,

If I look at the online version of Encyclopædia Britannica I get a hit on both Björn Borg and Bjorn Borg, but in the article it is spelled with swedish characters, same for Selma Lagerlöf and Dag Hammarskjöld, I could not find any more swedes in EB :-) (I did not check all..)

I also check for as many swedes as I could think of in wikipedia to see how it is done for none hockey swedes, I found the following swedes by looking at list of swedish ... and adding a few more that I could think of, ALL had their articles spelled with the swedish characters (I'm sure you can find a few that is spelled without the swedish characters but the majority for sure seams to be spelled the same way as in their births certificates). So IF you are proposing that we should 'rename' the swedish hockey players I think we must rename all other swedes also. Do we really think that is correct? I can not check this as easily for other countries but I would guess that it is the same.

Dag Hammarskjöld, Björn Borg, Annika Sörenstam, Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, Selma Lagerlöf, Stellan Skarsgård,Gunnar Ekelöf, Gustaf Fröding, Pär Lagerkvist, Håkan Nesser, Bruno K. Öijer, Björn Ranelid, Fredrik Ström, Edith Södergran, Hjalmar Söderberg, Per Wahlöö, Gunnar Ekelöf, Gustaf Fröding, Pär Lagerkvist, Maj Sjöwall, Per Wästberg, Isaac Hirsche Grünewald, Tage Åsén, Gösta Bohman, Göran Persson, Björn von Sydow, Lasse Åberg, Helena Bergström, Victor Sjöström, Gunder Hägg, Sigfrid Edström, Anders Gärderud, Henrik Sjöberg, Patrik Sjöberg, Tore Sjöstrand, Arne Åhman, so there seams to be a consensus for non hockey playing swedes? Stefan 13:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I also checked encarta for Björn Borg and Dag Hammarskjöld both have the Swedish characters as the main name of the articles, Selma Lagerlöf is not avaliable unless you pay so I can not check. I'm sure you can find example of the 'wrong' way also, but we can not say that there is consensus in the encyclopedic area of respelling foreign names the 'correct' english way. Stefan 14:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

This seems like a very constructive step to me. So I'll do the same as I did for Czech, i.e.:

1. start Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Swedish) as a proposal, starting off with the content you bring in here.
2. list that page in Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions#Conventions under consideration
3. also list it on wikipedia:current surveys#Discussions
4. list it in the guideline proposal Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics)#Specifics_according_to_language_of_origin

OK to work from there? --Francis Schonken 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Works for me :-) Stefan 00:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Tx for finetuning Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Swedish). I also contributed to further finetuning, but add a small note here to clarify what I did: page names in English wikipedia are in English per WP:UE. Making a Swedish name like Björn Borg English, means that the ö ("character" in Swedish language) is turned into an "o" character with a precombined diacritic mark (unicode: U+00F6, which is the same character used to write the last name of Johann Friedrich Böttger – note that böttger ware, named after this person, uses the same ö according to Webster's, and in that dictionary is sorted between "bottery tree" and "bottine"). Of course (in English!) the discussion whether it is a separate character or an "o" with a diacritic is rather futile *except* for alphabetical ordering: for alphabetical ordering in English wikipedia the ö is treated as if it were an o, hence the remark about the "category sort key" I added to the intro of the "Swedish NC" guideline proposal. In other words, you can't expect English wikipedians who try to find something in an alphabetic list to know in advance (a) what is the language or origin of a word, and (b) if any "special rules" for alphabetical ordering are applicable in that language. That would be putting things on their head. "Bö..." will always be sorted in the same way, whatever the language of origin.

What I mean is that "Björn Borg" (in Swedish) is transcribed/translated/transliterated to "Björn Borg" in English, the only (invisible!) difference being that in Swedish ö is a character, and in English ö is a letter o with a diacritic.

Or (still the same in other words): Ö is always treated the same as "O" in alphabetical ordering, whether it's a letter of Ötzi or of Öijer--Francis Schonken 10:56, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

For consistency with the rest of Misplaced Pages, hockey player articles should use non-English alphabet characters if the native spelling uses a Latin-based alphabet (with the exception of naturalized players like Petr Nedved). Why should Dominik Hasek be treated differently than Jaroslav Hašek? Olessi 20:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

If we are using other encyclopedias as litmus tests, we don't we look at a few hockey players: Dominik Hasek at Encarta Dominik Hasek at Britannica Jaromir Jagr at Encarta Teemu Selanne in Encarta list of top scorers

Last argument: We use the names that these players are overwhelming known as in the English language. We speak of Bobby Orr, not Robert Orr. Scotty Bowman, not William Scott Bowman. Ken Dryden not Kenneth Dryden. Tony Esposito, not Anthony Esposito. Gordie Howe not Gordon Howe... etc etc, etc. The NHL/NHLPA/media call these players by what they request to be called. Vyacheslav Kozlov used to go by Slava Kozlov. Evgeni Nabokov "americanized" himself for a season as "John Nabokov" but changed his mind again.

ccwaters 22:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Cont'd

Masterhatch has stated somewhere above that "this is not the international English language wikipedia. It is the English language wikipedia."

Well, if this opinion prevails, it will be the worst thing that could happen to Misplaced Pages. A lot of topics here are covered by non-native English speakers and a lot of them would not be covered without them at all.

None of the other, to a large extent national, wikipedias, like German or Swedish, grows so quickly. Some non-native English speakers even prefer editting English wikipedia to editting their native language wikipedia, because they consider it international.

Please, do not push them on the edge, do not make them feel this is not their wikipedia as well.

This request has not been written to support using diacritics.

Jan.Kamenicek 01:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Being an EAL myself, I adapt. I adapt to English wikipedia when writing here. I adapt to Dutch wikipedia, when writing there.

I'm thoroughly disturbed by nationalist/ethnic POV pushers. I write One gets used to anything, except a guy, when I want to write about Alles went behalve een vent in English wikipedia, and look for references in English to accompany such article. I'm disturbed by pro-Indian POV pushers, when they want to re-define the common name for Arabic numerals in English. I'm disturbed by message boards, like the Polish one, if they're used to push POV (applying a gloss of "being specialists"), etc...

There is no shortage of content contributors (that's no "revolutionary" POV, just quoting Jimbo when he spoke at FOSDEM a year ago - there has not been any reduction of number of editors the last year, afaik)

If you want to write Czech, just go fill up the Czech Misplaced Pages. Articles can always be translated. Maybe it's kind of a backward mode of operation of wanting to fill up English wikipedia with every imaginable non-notable town/village of the world (etc), and because of that activity neglect that your native tongue's wikipedia would reach a same level of sophistication as the English one. If you prefer to write in English (like I do), there's only one message: adapt. If you can't adapt, no love lost. You know, unbelievable as it may sound, there are still other interesting things in the world apart from Misplaced Pages.

Anyway, I never felt as if English wikipedia would not be "my wikipedia as well". Apart from when having to read names like Þorláksson, Guðbrandur – whom I think an interesting person, I'm merely disturbed when having to read the name of that person in that format, e.g. at List of mathematicians#Ti — To. The Icelandic POV-pushers club is responsible for that. I'm just waiting for some of them to start feeling just a little less comfortable at English wikipedia, and stop behaving as if they own the place.

In other words, the dictum against word ownership is not alleviated when the ownership is claimed by POV-pushing nationalist/ethnic groups. --Francis Schonken 11:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I have been misunderstood despite the fact that I stated in the end of the contribution that I did not write it to support using diacritics. I just objected when I read that somebody claimed something like: This is our Misplaced Pages, not yours (although in different, not so strong words).

I have also never felt that way, just warned against trying to raise such feelings. I respect everybody who came with a sensible argument why diacritics should be omitted (and some arguments were sensible), but I have to object to the above mentioned statement.

Whenever I see wide consensus (which is, however, not the diacritics case), I always adapt to it. If I do not see it, I try to explain my point of view but never revert people with a different opinion (as I have seen many times).

I do not understand why you write about some articles on non-notable villages. Which part of my contribution does it react to? Or do I contribute to such articles? Maybe this irrelevant objection should be moved under some message dealing with such a subject.

I also do not understand, why do you consider my contribution, supporting the opinion that English Misplaced Pages is (unlike wikipedias in other languages) international, to be nationalistic.

I agree with all people from both sides of the discussion who have claimed that at this moment it is not very fertile and have withdrawn from it. So do I, there is a lot of more useful work to do. Jan.Kamenicek 20:27, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Dvořák

Could someone clean this up:

Article/category name without diacritics

Category:Compositions by Antonin Dvorak

Category:Operas by Antonin Dvorak

Cello Concerto (Dvorak)

String Quartet No. 11 (Dvorak)

String Quartet No. 12 (Dvorak)

Symphony No. 6 (Dvorak)

Symphony No. 8 (Dvorak)

Symphony No. 9 (Dvorak)

Violin Concerto (Dvorak)

Page name with diacritics

Antonín Dvořák

List of compositions by Antonín Dvořák

Symphony No. 7 (Dvořák)

I'd do it myself if I only knew which way the wikipedia community wants it... --Francis Schonken 10:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been bold and renamed the articles to use diacritics in the title, since they already use them in the text. I've also slapped {{categoryredirect}} tags on the two categories: a bot should be along shortly to complete the job. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Tx!!! - I'll remove Dvořák as an exception from Misplaced Pages:Naming policy (Czech)#Exceptions --Francis Schonken 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Why concealing user contributions to deleted pages? (2)

This new question got archived, so I'll repost it:

You say you've forbidden us to see deleted edits in articles' histrories, because users write foul stuff in the edit summaries.

But, if I go ahead and register User:Joe Smith rapes baby donkeys, won't it dangle forever on the block log? Or will you deny everyone access to the block log from now on? --tyomitch 15:36, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Aside from this concern, the concealing policy has one very, very damaging effect: it takes the deletion notices, especially speedy deletions, off user watchlists. There are overaggressive editors and admins whacking valid articles with speedy and prod tags, and editors who are interested in the subjects and could easily improve the articles given a chance -- but not everybody makes daily visits to Misplaced Pages. For speedy tagging, it's even worse; an article can vanish almost tracelessly in 15 minutes. Monicasdude 15:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that user contributions for deleted pages should not be concealed. Perhaps non-admin user edit comments can be auto-deleted? I think concealing this does more harm than good. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 21:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so out of those who chose to express their opinion above, there is a clear consensus.

Admins! Please give us back our deleted histories! Their concealment won't stop calumniators, but it does bring us confusion and fret. --tyomitch 19:11, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Category:Drugs cheats in sport

I have a problem with the word "cheats" in the name of this category Category:Drugs cheats in sport and its subcategories. Some people who have been disqualified for doping (and are listed under this category or its subcategory, such as Olga Pyleva) were not cheats at all but alledgedly accidental victims of ingestion of a banned chemical.

At the top of the category page it is stated that such people may be listed in this category ("and/or 2. Publicly admitted such use.") -- note the "or": they may have *not* admitted such use.

Also, if anything, it should be "Drug cheats" not "Drugs cheats".

Could we change the category name(s) to something more NPOV like Category:Doping cases in sport? If so, could someone carry out this renaming? -- Mareklug 15:40, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

This was previously discussed at Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion/Category:Drugs cheats in athletics in 2004, where it was inexplicably left as "unresolved" despite what appears to be a consensus in favor of deleting the category outright. I'm still perplexed by the phrase "drugs cheats." Because of the inability to frame a concise category title that functions as an objective and clear classification, this is the kind of grouping that's better maintained as an annotated list. It should be listed again on CFD. Postdlf 15:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, in the current form the cat name may even be subject to libel. You should renominate it on CFD for renaming the section. --Gurubrahma 16:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I put it on WP:CFD#Category:Drugs cheats in sport, proposing to rename it to "Doping cases in sport", mentioning this discussion and the fact that it was considered for deletion. -- Mareklug 20:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (hockey)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Naming conventions (hockey) - Should Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (hockey) become a naming conventions guideline? --Francis Schonken 17:38, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

No. And neither should any other existing proposed guidelines concerning the use of diacritics. Diacritics should be used, period. Just as words should be correctly spelled, etc. There is no need for such guidelines. -- Mareklug 17:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Diacritics should be used, period. That sounds a lot like a guideline to me. android79 18:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

A guideline? The formulation proposed by Mareklug is policy stuff. No problem: Misplaced Pages:Naming policy (diacritics) --Francis Schonken 20:12, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I hope you're just being silly. android79 20:20, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

If Mareklug is convinced that is the rule we should abide by, I'm convinced (s)he'll show us it is based on consensus. No unwritten rules, please! --Francis Schonken 20:25, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Err... okay... let's not make our points in this manner, eh? android79 20:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I maybe did (the point thing I mean), for which I apologise. Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics) was the seriously meant proposal. But it started to attract "point" people. So here's my proposal: why don't you have a look at that proposal, and see for yourself whether it's any better than Mareklug's rule. Anyway, the Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Naming conventions (hockey) RfC has been concluded. --Francis Schonken 00:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know whether we have consensus to always use diacritics or not, but I'm certain we can establish the consensus for hockey player biographies to follow the same naming convention as other biographies. Zocky | picture popups 03:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I researched a bit, and this is truly preposterous. We have Jaroslav Hašek and Dominik Hasek although both of them have the same last name. The fact that somebody plays hockey has nothing to do with their name. Zocky | picture popups 03:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Mareklug says Diacritics should be used, period, and I say "Diacritics should not be used, full stop." (just semi-joking). This topic has been done to death at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (use English) with two views on the subject almost as polarised as that in the first sentence I just wrote. Francis Schonken's attempt is to try to solve the problem is to salami slice it, and although I give him credit for trying, I think the whole approach is floored. The reason for this is that we will end up with dozens and dozens of small guidelines for specific areas and they will be in conflict with each other (as does the proposed guideline Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (hockey) and Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Czech) (another of Francis's new proposed guidelines)). We would need to maintain a matrix of guidelines with weightings just to work out what the Misplaced Pages guideline for naming a particular page was.

At the moment the consensus (or lack of it) for naming pages with or without diacritics is kept in one place WP:UE, (There are a couple of exceptions to no agreed rule about diacritics, but they are both academic areas where a good case has been argued for having a rule and they are not going to overlap into other areas). If there is a dispute over a page name then as often as not it ends up on WP:RM and can be considered on a case by case basis. It is not perfect but given the size Misplaced Pages, it seems to work reasonably well as a compromise between the two views over names with diacritics.--Philip Baird Shearer 18:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

You wrote There are a couple of exceptions to no agreed rule about diacritics, but they are both academic areas where a good case has been argued for having a rule and they are not going to overlap into other areas - would you mind mentioning which areas/conventions you're referring to? I'd be interested. I found Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (Ireland-related articles): I take it that you don't define every Ireland-related article with an Irish title to be by definition about an academic topic, so probably you alluded to something else (which I missed thus far). --Francis Schonken 11:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair use (yet again)

The image illustrating Hobart Freeman was uploaded as a fair use image, but wouldn't the fair use only apply if the image were illustrating an article about the book whose cover art the image came from? Illustrating the article about the person would seem to be a violation of the fair use doctrine. User:Zoe| 18:21, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Hm. The image description page says it's the author image from the back of the book cover, so I'd say it's an okay fair use image, but {{bookcover}} is the wrong image tag (since a book front cover is a graphical design and not just a photograph in most cases). It should use {{fairusein}} plus a good rationale. IANAL-- grm_wnr Esc 19:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

if the same image is really on all his books you could probably fairly tag it promo (or explain that it is a promo image using fairusein). Arniep 01:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to jump on this train and ask a similar/related question. Stills from films and other footage - fair use allows us to use a still frame to illustrate the film/character it shows, but what about the actor? Is this pushing it too far? Example - whilst thinking about getting a new lead image for Eric Clapton's page, I thought it might be an idea to use a screen capture from Tommy, but thought it wouldn't be covered by fair use as the page has very little to do with the film. Any thoughts? - MightyMoose22 00:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

A film still would be appropriate if it is placed close to some halfway detailed discussion of the role or film in question - e.g., just a mention in a list of appearances wouldn't cut it, in my opinion, and neither would using it somewhere else in the article. Since the lead of the Clapton article does not mention Tommy (and probably shouldn't, since it's hardly one of the things Clapton's most famous for), I'd not use a film still there - in fact, a fair use/promotional (as is used now - I can't see what's wrong with it, by the way, except that the image information is somewhat lacking) or even free image of a person of Clapton's caliber shouldn't be too hard to come by. -- grm_wnr Esc 23:05, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I thought. That's why I didn't suggest it, I was just curious in retrospect. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a plethora of free/promo Clapton images out there, I just have no idea how to identify them myself. I tried Googling Clapton promotional and various similar image searches, but didn't find anything particularly good that wasn't too similar to Image:Eclapton_cardiff.jpg. (see here for what we were/are looking for). - MightyMoose22 18:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I removed these two images Image:Claptonprofile.jpg, Image:Claptonsixties.jpg as we have two similar free images so we don't really have a good fair use argument, plus the fact that the images don't have info on the copyright holder or original source. Arniep 01:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes as Corporate Branding

Aaron suggested that I raise my concern about Infoboxes here. The original discussion can be found here. I believe Infoboxes have the effect of corporate advertising. They look like magazine ads, especially when the corporate logo is placed at the top. Also placing a box around particular facts privileges them by drawing attention of the eye: the current Infobox template does not include facts that would be of interest to labor (OSHA violations) or small investors (SEC violations, class action suits, etc.). These infoboxes currently cannot be removed without risk of Admin blocking because the people who place them (in the case I'm involved with, a corporate employee) can appeal to "policy" and "precedent". Does the Encyclopedia Britannica feature corporate logos? Using infoboxes to extend a corporation's brand campaign amounts to using Misplaced Pages for free advertising. I think the promotional aspect would be instantly recognized if a person posted their picture on an article with a list that highlighted laudatory facts. If infoboxes cannot be outright discouraged, it should at least be legal for a dissenting editor to remove them. --Pansophia 23:38, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that infoboxes look like advertising, for one thing all company infoboxes contain the same basic factual information. Items like OSHA, SEC violations, if relevent, can be added in the company specific article, but I don't see any valid reason for a dissenting editor to remove verifible, factual information. There is no field in the infobox for "laudatory facts". Facts are facts. However, if the fields are filled in with more than just the information (e.g. "Revenue $xm, (best in the industy") then the field info should be corrected, but the infobox should remain. MartinRe 00:09, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with MartinRe. -- Kjkolb 02:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Let's not withhold information from readers out of fear that we "look like" something we're not. Clearly our infoboxes are not ads, as long as they present the same information for each company in the same way. As I've said before, I believe your real complaint is that our infoboxes are promoting capitalism. This isn't true, unless you think our movie articles are promoting moviegoing and our sports articles are promoting sports events. Rhobite 22:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify my position, I'm not against capitalism. I'm against various abuses fostered by capitalism and very much for ethical capitalism. I am against corporate propaganda - especially when businesses exploit free media. Infoboxes propogate brands because the information is a) highlighted in a special, prominent box, and b) conveyed through a visual cue. The top right placement of the Infobox is the most desirable position and displaces any other image that could be placed there. I also disagree that "facts are facts" as far as Infoboxes are concerned: the selection of facts favors corporate interests. --Pansophia 01:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Is this the most appropriate place for this? If the purpose is general discussion about "Infoboxes as Corporate Branding", then probably. But if the purpose is the specific removal or addition of fields to the Template:Infobox Company, then proposals for such removal/additions belong at Template talk:Infobox Company. Furthermore, the use of logos on Misplaced Pages, such as in Misplaced Pages:Templates, is guidelined by the contents of Misplaced Pages:Logos. If the purpose is to change policy guidelines regarding the use of logos on Misplaced Pages, then such a proposal belongs at Misplaced Pages talk:Logos. Kurieeto 19:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it belongs here at least in part, since an admin threatened to block me for editing out an infobox. The justification is that these infoboxes are "policy", and they therefore can't be challenged by editors. This is a really disturbing position since it basically puts permanent protection on something that looks like an ad. --Pansophia 19:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Ultimate authority for other language wikis?

I just read with interest about the controversy, the wheel warring, the suspensions, and the eventual actions of the ArbCom that took place in early February over the matter of some userboxes Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2006-02-06/Userbox warring, Misplaced Pages:Deletion review/Userbox debates, and Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Pedophilia userbox wheel war. I do not want to discuss those events. I want to discuss the matter of the ultimate authority for other wikis.

The ArbCom when ruling on that dispute, mentioned among the principles that it had agreed on and that it considered when coming up with its "findings of fact," that "Jimbo Wales has ultimate authority on Wikimedia projects, as a foundation issue that is beyond debate." I am fine and I agree with this. However here is my question: what about the other wikis? Who is the ultimate authority on the projects in French, Spanish, Thai, Korean, etc, etc.? Are those wikis left to fend for themselves and sort out things alone? Suppose a situation similar to that of the userbox above happens in another wiki, and the end result is very diffeent than the one here; say they end up allowing that kind of userbox to stay and they don't delete it. Is there a way to escalate the issue from one of those wikis to this one, the english one -which by virtue of being the mother wiki, the first one ever, I assume would also have ultimate authority over the other ones. If this is correct, how are things escalated? BTW, I do not know of any issue that would warrant such action. I ask just as the result of intellectual curiosity. Thanks. Anagnorisis 05:05, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo is also the ultimate authority on them. Since to be created, they had to interact with the English-speaking staff of Wikimedia and Meta, there is very likely an English-speaking ombudsman to translate for him in the rare case this is needed. However, since every Misplaced Pages is different and has different rules, this may not be an issue on them. The German, Polish, etc. Wikipediae administrations may not have a problem with userboxes, or have certainly not had the nasty fight over them. --Golbez 06:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I am using the userboxes was only an example. Not an example to be considered specifically: like discussing they having userboxes or not. When and how it is appropriate to escalate issues and bring them here? Say there is a serious dispute, in one of those wikis, can I bring it to the ArbCom here? Under what conditions? --Anagnorisis 06:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

So far as I know, the ArbCom only has jurisdiction over the English Misplaced Pages. Other Wikipediae large enough have their own ArbComs, created as needed, I think. --Golbez 06:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Does that mean that the buck stops at those other languages ArbCom? Then that would mean the english Wiki cannot overturn a decission at another Wiki if it is found extreme by the members of this one? Intersting. --Anagnorisis 07:29, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The English Misplaced Pages has no jurisdiction over other language Wikipediae, period. Only Wikimedia does, and so far as I know, the only universal guideline is to maintain NPOV. --Golbez 07:57, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Understood. So I guess it would then be to Wikimedia to resolve very extreme things. Yes, I have noticed that different wikies have different policies. Some things, like copyright issues (what is allowed in one is not on another), differ a lot from one wiki to another which can be annoying at times -but that is another topic. Thanks for the info. Cheers. --Anagnorisis 08:02, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The only requirement for copyrights is, I believe, that they conform to US/Florida law, since that is where the servers and foundation are located. However, some (particularly the Japanese Misplaced Pages) have chosen a stricter standard, in ja's case, to conform to Japanese copyright law, just to protect those who work on the pedia. Fair use, for example, is not allowed on ja, I don't believe. --Golbez 18:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Policy on copying and pasting non-copyrighted information

I know that using copyrighted text, like copyrighted anything, is against the rules- but what if you find a website that isn't copyrighted, and it has the info you need: can you copy the text and paste it here unchanged? Andrewdt85 09:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

It would have to be explicitly non-copyrighted/public domain - all material in American law is considered copyrighted when published, it needs no notice. --Golbez 09:21, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Products of the United States government generally are not copyrighted, however, and I have copied from U.S. Coast Guard sites a couple of times with only minimal editing. And, of course, anything on which copywrite has expired, such as the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, is fair game. But, these are well defined and very explicit exceptions, and you cannot assume something is in the public domain simply because no copyright notice is visible. And even some material produced by the U.S. government is copyrighted, so always check the status. Oh, and if you do copy public domain material, make it clear in the References section that you have done so (see {{1911}}, for example). -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 12:03, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, unless it's common knowledge or you yourself are the source of the information, add a footnote to the site/book/etc. you got the information from, even if you changed the wording and all that. Amina 01:39, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Policy on quoting sources in articles

Is there any particular way that you usually quote someone in an article? I just said

According to author ---- ----: "-------"

Is this right? Andrewdt85 09:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Anyone? Andrewdt85 18:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

What you are doing is as correct as most other possibilities such as X said "---", and the one selected is primarily a matter of style. The things to keep in mind when quoting someone is to provide an appropriate citation to satisfy the requirements of Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, and to avoid implying some type of bias with the words chosen as per Misplaced Pages:Words to avoid#Words which can advance a point of view. --Allen3  18:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

1RR instead of 3RR for not logged users ?

Would replacing 3RR with 1RR for non-logged users be useful for Misplaced Pages ? Hopefully it would reduce the number of revert wars at no extra cost. If someone insists of revert-warring, let him at least register. --_Lysy 10:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Many editors choose to contribute without creating an account, and this would penalize them simply because they don't have an account. As the ability to edit by anyone is an important principal in Misplaced Pages, I do't think this restriction on reverts will gain much support. It would be difficult to enforce, in any case, as many anon editors would not be aware of the rule. There would be many violations of a 1RR, with many unproductive blocks, if enforced. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 12:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The ability to edit by anyone- yes, but revert ? You're right about the diffulty of implementation. How about not encouraging anonymous users to revert by not providing the link to edit past version instead ? --_Lysy 12:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the need to do this, or any major benefit. You'll need to present strong arguments to convince enough editors to get a consensus on this proposal. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 13:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'm only looking for opinions. My motivation is that in my (limited) experience the anonymous users are on average much more inclined to ruthless revert-warring instead of discussing. The assumed benefit would be that all the users (both registered and IP) would spend less time on hostilities and more on productive editing instead. --_Lysy 13:12, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Something like fully half of our anonymous users are useful to have around, I think. Currently I'm more worried about useless logged in users dragging us down, really. Even so, shouldn't everyone be applying 1RR, or better yet, join the Harmonious editing club ? :) Kim Bruning 13:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree, 1RR for everyone would be even better. Any hopes for this ? (how can anonymous users join the WP:HEC, BTW ? :-P)--_Lysy 13:12, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Oooh, good one. Well, they can certainly join in spirit, if not in name, right? :-) Kim Bruning 13:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

That is more a matter of courtesy and cooperation, which are kind of hard to legislate. I'm not convinvced that a 1RR will improve the atmosphere in 'discussions'. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 14:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Daily premier anonymity

I'm sure if this feature described here ever gets implemented that this section title won't be used for it. The idea sparked above with the suggestions to divert or prevent edit wars and the users' desire to stay anonymous.

• When you see any entry for a change made, the user's name or IP address is not shown in that entry. After you make an edit to the page that was changed, you then get to see who edited it in the entry, but that view is only available for a day from your last change.

This would encourage people to focus on quality of content rather than who made the content. The would also apply for administrators. Only stewards and bureaucrats can see who made the change at anytime.

For example, if you have not edited a page and you view its history, you would see something like:

• (cur) (last) 13:31, 4 March 2006 (good q!)
• (cur) (last) 13:12, 4 March 2006 (→1RR instead of 3RR for not logged users ?)
• (cur) (last) 13:12, 4 March 2006 (→1RR instead of 3RR for not logged users ?)
• (cur) (last) 13:08, 4 March 2006 (→1RR instead of 3RR for not logged users ?)
• (cur) (last) 13:07, 4 March 2006 (Hmm, everyone should do it anyway :))

The watchlist would look something like:

• (diff) (hist) . . Computer system; 06:31 . . (→See also)
• (diff) (hist) . . Misplaced Pages talk:Stable versions; 03:39 . . (→Semi-automation - recent stable version detector)
• (diff) (hist) . . m Computer programming; 02:04 . . (→Software development - bypass disambig)
• (diff) (hist) . . Computer security audit; 01:01 . .

Recent changes would look something like:

• (diff) (hist) . . Fiscal conservatism; 14:33 . . (→Notable Fiscal Conservatives)
• (diff) (hist) . . End of the Spear; 14:33 . . (replacing deprecated {{web reference}} with {{cite web}} using AWB)
• (User creation log); 14:33 . . Lettaylor (Talk) (New user (Talk | contribs | block))
• (diff) (hist) . . Talk:Dogon people; 14:33 . . (→Completely by Robert Temple? - Re)

As you see, there is no significance to who made the changes in the above views. This does not prevent somebody that reverts vandalism to track down who made the vandalism, as, once the vandalism is reverted the users name is then seen as we common know. Anything further vandalism by that user can be tracked down as usual.

Of course, if anybody signs their name, who made the entry is always revealed. If we want a feature to doublecheck if the tildes were used to sign (in case somebody forges a name), an extra flag on the change entries could be made to denote that.

Some worry that I don't spend enough time in article space, but I also am a developer of a wiki.

Can I get some feedback for this kind of policy that is really more technological? — Dzonatas 14:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The method I use for spotting vandalism is to look down recent changes for a change which (a) has no change log and (b) comes from an IP address. Obviously, that combination does not in any way imply that vandalism has taken place, but it does correlate. So, I guess what I'm sugegsting is that anonymised reports should state whether the user was logged on or an IP address. Nick Levine 14:53, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm concerned that such a flag might cause differences between edits of those logged in and not. If the flag showed only on the Recent changes report, it might not be much of a concern. — Dzonatas 16:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really sure I understand all that your proposal entails. But I very much rely upon seeing WHO made a change in determining whether I want to take a closer look at it. I've come to trust many users and don't bother to scrutinize their edits (unless it is to see whether they've added something of interest). But when an anon IP or a user I don't recongnize (especially red-linked names) make an edit to a page on my watchlist, I usually examine these more carefully. If this user information were no longer available, it would make my watchlist virtually useless. I guess I don't even really understand why you might even consider something like this a good idea. older≠wiser 17:45, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

If this were implemented, how would attribution of edits be maintained? Some editors edit under multiple copyright schemes, e.g. if someone releases all of their edits to PD, how would you know what 'their' edits are? xaosflux /_CVU 17:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict edit) I was asked to expand on this, This proposal seems to go against the GFDL requirements for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work and other sections related to histories. GFDL applies to all works on here, but some contributors also edit under multiple licenses such as Public Domain, but in order for these contributions to be usable under these licenses, they must be identifiable. A hybrid of both of these solutions could be that users would have to choose to be identified when they want to, and have attribution accordingly.

In another view, having the ability to find a users contributions is highly useful when dealing with vandals, rfc's, arbcom cases etc, although you suggest having this info available to 'crats, 'crats don't generalyl open arbcom cases, and not being able to identify a problematic contirbutor could lease to other issues. xaosflux /_CVU 20:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

As for the GFDL, I did research it and found that attribution does not need to be directly linked to each modification. The current histort page indirectly creates such attribution. The GFDL actually just wants a list of authors, so a link at the bottom of the web page, "Authors," that brings up that list complies to the GFDL. That hybrid option is a good solution for multiple licenses. — Dzonatas 20:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I strongly oppose any scheme to anonymize edits, as fundamentally bad for the Misplaced Pages editing process. Those who choose to edit under an account should be able to be held accountable to those edits - and also should be able to take pride of creation in saying "hey, look at all my contributions to this Featured Article." FCYTravis 20:24, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not meant to keep everybody completely anonymous. There are still ways to reveal identities, but they become not so obvious to the casual reader. As for implementation, the first step would be to provide such anonymity as an user preference. The user would be able to set if they see or do not see identities. This doesn't force anonymous edits. I doubt the "User contributions" link on the user pages need any anonymity. — Dzonatas 20:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Revolution within the form

For a long time at Misplaced Pages, I have been trying to restore "the old meanings" of words. I understand this concept (of "revolution within the form") and how it affects knowledge and learning. This concept is very important for understanding modern culture and society and how we got here. (This is very connected to Antonio Gramsci's Transformation of culture)

This is a danger to all knowledge and encyclopaediests who categorize and set down knowledge. Is what passes for knowledge really "revolutionized" meaning? And yet where is the congnization of this concept and an understanding of this? What is the response of Misplaced Pages to this? Do they even have one or do they actually participate in this "Revolution within the form"?

Let us look at some examples: Effeminacy and the Classical definition of effeminacy. That the word "effeminate" has undergone a change in meaning From something to be avoided as it is a *****character trait or vice**** to where it is an approved character trait of the gay community and "defined" as something as a "gender role" and tied to homosexual behavior. I consider this a "reading back" into history, modern understandings that was not at all the case for the ancients. For 1800 years the Christian Church in use of the word "malakos" has always translated and understood the word to be "effeminate" with NO sexual conotations. Now, all of a sudden, the word has now been translated as "boy prostitute" and is simply not right. The word "malakos" has undergone a "Revolution within the form".

Another example is the term Republic and the Classical Republic. Here the word has been transformed from it's original meaning to something else. And yet, Misplaced Pages teaches the "revolutionized" definition. Where is the Old meaning??? And then a seperate article on "mixed government" and "classical republic", shouldn't they be combined? And where is the old meaning in the Wikipedian "Classical republic"? Where is the discussion of governments as such. As of now all the articles pertaining to Republic all slant toward the modern "revolutionized" meaning on Misplaced Pages.

Is this the purpose of an encyclopaedia??? Do you not acknowledge the fact that people do purposely change the old things to bring about a revolution in society? What is the response to Revolution within the form?WHEELER 16:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem here is that the concept (which exists, and appears to be very much what Orwell was talking about with Newspeak) is bieng conflated with the term, which appears to be a neologism with strictly limited currency. I am sure that if you ask the closing admin (whoever it might be) to userfy it, you could wth some thought fix that problem, possibly within newspeak, but as it stands there is little evidence that this term has been used outside of the single cited source, and that is what is likely to get the article deleted. If it is deleted and not userfied drop by my talk page and I'll rescue it to your user space for you. Just zis Guy you know? 17:54, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment but I think Orwell's "double speak" is not the same level as "Revolution within the form". "Double speak" is an element of propaganda. It is similar to disimultude; for example, it talks about adjectives of war to be used as a means of peace. Double speak doesn't seek to redefine and reorder whole forms of government or the meaning of concepts. "Revolution within the form" existed well before "Double speak", it has greater historical provenance, and it is the great thinkers Aristotle and Machiavelli, one who exposes it and the other who uses the technique, that give it an impact and greater use. "Double speak" was created by one author, "Revolution within the form" is a technique observed in classical Greece and used by Machiavelli and Fabians and Gramsci democractic socialists. Revolution within the form is much more insidious because it seeks to fundamentally change one object for another.

It is how humanism advanced its agenda under the cover of old words. "Double Speak" is not a revolutionary strategy but a tool of propaganda. "Double Speak" is a sleight of hand technique. "Revolution within the form" is much more evil and corrupting. Furthermore it speaks to the human character of tradition and how this human character is manipulated for revolutionary purposes.

Well, it has been pointed out and it has received attention. It is there and now you are aware of the situation irregardless if it succeeds or fails as an article. In this post here, I want to bring it to the attention of Wikipedians because you are in the business of building an encyclopaedia---You need to be aware how information is manipulated to further revolution. I think it a very important subject for encyclopaedia builders, editors and contributors to be aware of. Anyway, It is on Wikinfo. I have it there and will probably transfer it to the talk pages of Joe Sobran Garet Garrett, republic and the JBS page.WHEELER 20:39, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Putting redirects in categories

Is there a policy on putting redirect pages into categories?

Looking at Category:Invasive species, I was surprised that Cane Toad wasn't there. The article is there but under Giant Neotropical Toad which is the redirect from Cane Toad. I've added the category to the redirect but wondered if this is generally thought to be a good thing.

I can see some advantages (users are more likely to find the article they are looking for or spot one that is of interest) but also problems (big categories will become even bigger if the same article appears multiple times with different titles). --Cavrdg 17:24, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I like the idea of having redirects in categories (only where appropriate, though). For example, (sorry I can't recall the specifics off hand), some townships in Michigan have incorporated as cities (sometimes with a completely different name from the city). The old township name generally would not merit an article of its own, but merely redirect to the city. But I think it would make sense to categorize the redirect as Category:Defunct townships in Michigan. It certainly would not be appropriate to apply that category to the city article. older≠wiser 18:30, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

This seems a bit like deliberately not avoiding a redirect. -Splash 22:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, in the particular case above with the toad names, I think it probably should not be categorized -- Cane Toad appears to be only one of several alternative names. Since Giant Neotropical Toad is already in Category:Invasive species, I don't think it is appropriate for the alternative names to be in the same category as well. Now, *IF* there were subcategories like "Invasive species in X" *AND* this creature were known exclusively by an alternative name in that place, then it *MIGHT* make sense to include the alternative name redirect in the subcat -- but that doesn't appear to apply in this case. older ≠ wiser 16:28, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Censorship poll

Express your opinion about Misplaced Pages:Censorship at Wikipedia_talk:Censorship#Poll. Gerard Foley 02:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Citing Misplaced Pages as a method of searching

Hello, I was wondering of someone could help me. I am involved in publishing a book and Misplaced Pages has been listed as a method of searching not as a source per se. To make it very easy to understand, basically all that was mentioned is the website URL. That's it.

Is this worthy of being listed somewhere on Misplaced Pages in terms of listing it as a source that was used? I'm just curious. Davidpdx 08:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you may consider listing your book at Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages as a book source and possibly at Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages as an academic source. AxelBoldt 17:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

It seems to me that Misplaced Pages policies or guidelines should include a discussion of how criticisms of topics fits into the Misplaced Pages articles about those topics. For exmaple Igor Stravinsky contain's a "Criticism" section while the criticisms of Country music where removed from that article and, presumably, some articles have criticism in each appropriate section (hypothetically, criticisms of Stravinsky's rhythmic prodedures could go in the "Rhythmic procedures" section of his article). Anyone else feel this need? Anythoughts on a guideline?

There is Misplaced Pages:Words to avoid#Article structures which can imply a view - maybe, after all the transformations that section underwent, it's no longer at the best place, which is now at the end of an elaborate guideline that was supposed to be about "words", not about "structures" - and it is about how to present criticism in a wikipedia article. --Francis Schonken 12:43, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism of featured articles

It seems that any article featured on the main page is an immediate target for vandalism. Why don't we have a policy to semi-protect the articles before they are featured on the main page. it would save editors a lot of time from reverting the continual stream of vandalism from random IP anons. David D. (Talk) 20:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Amongst other reasons, because quite a few of these makes substantial corrections of typos and grammar stuff that Wikiepdians themselves wouldn't spot, as they wouldn't read through a Featured aArticle just because it's being featured on the Main page. Circeus 20:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, now I can see how the benefits might out weigh the random vandalism, thanks for the input. David D. (Talk) 20:14, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

How did an article get to be featured if it is so obviously littered with typos and grammar stuff. If a page is being held up as the best that Wiki can produce, how come no-one with a brain has proof read it? David91 03:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Policy proposal: Main Page on April Fool's Day

Please read the following proposal: Misplaced Pages:April Fool's Main Page

With the approach of April Fool's Day, I'd like to propose how we present the Main Page to readers on this day. To sum up, I'd like us to make the Main Page as factual as possible, but with unusual facts and articles to convince readers that we are pulling their leg on April Fool's Day. However, the joke's on them: we are actually presenting the truth, not a bunch of jokes! I'd appreciate any comments you would have at Misplaced Pages talk:April Fool's Main Page. --Deathphoenix ʕ 22:10, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I love the idea, and fully support it. It will send an undeniable message out there: there are articles in WP that you cannot find anywhere else. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 22:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I like the absurd silliness, too, but this is a great idea. — Omegatron 22:46, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Great idea! android79 22:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh this is a delicious idea! KillerChihuahua 23:00, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a fine idea to me. -- DS1953 23:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I am against this (on that day). April Fool's Day is limited to only a few countries. However, Misplaced Pages is (supposed) to be universal, regardless of the language in which it is written. I think the only reason we see this proposal in this wikipedia -as opposed to wikis in other languages- is due to the ǀSystemic bias of Misplaced Pages. And this being something for which there is an ongoing project: Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks. If we are to do something for April Fool's Day on that day, then something similar should/could be done for similar days in non Anglo-Saxon cultures, like December 28, which is the day many Spanish speaking countries have a day similar to April Fool's. And I am sure a similar day exists in other cultures. Anagnorisis 23:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

But it won't be Systemic Bias, because the proposal is not to put any jokes on the main page (which would be in keeping with April Fool's day), but simply to put some lesser-known facts than usual on the main page. Only the people familiar with April Fool's day will be the people who make make the unfactual inferences. --Rebroad 17:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The solution to systematic bias is not to stop doing things that from one culture or region but to do more from others. If there is another holiday/event that we could do somthing for then we should organize that as well. BrokenSegue 23:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

A little of both. If you keep doing mostly one (just because) that is the one you know about, you end up sending a certain message. Sometimes, then it helps to tone it down. Helping reenforce that bias helps some "different" people stay away and feel shy about proposing other things. Now, given that you propose to include things about other cultures, what about also having April Fool's day share honors with Republic Day from Iran which is also celebrated on April 1st, and also with Cyprus that celebrates its National Day? But before we get to that day, as you suggest we may do something for other dates. Say we do something in honor of "World Day for Water" which is an international celebration on March 22. We have also the "International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination" which is celebrated every March 21st (but it will compete with Ostara-Spring Equinox (which is a very important day for Druids, pagans and the like). March 20 is also "World Frog Day" which I am sure is very important to frog lovers. I am sure there are plenty more we can find. Yes, this thing of systemic bias is a bitch, and no easy solution without one having to start going back on things one likes -which is no solution at all. Yes, yo do have a valid point. However .... :-) Anagnorisis 23:45, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Good ideas. Sounds like someone needs to start the "The Special Occasions Wikiproject" or somthing to organize special main page displays (Get Water featured, etc.). BrokenSegue 23:53, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there a general proposal to modify the Main Page on every day which is special, e.g. for the major religious and national holidays, when items relevant to Hindus, Moslems, Buddists, etc. and to Independence Day can be highlighted. Or are we only going to honour the silly season when it becomes more socially acceptable to try to deceive people. David91 03:00, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

No, my proposal is only for April Fool's. Misplaced Pages has historically undergone a lot of vandalism in a variety of pages, all under the title of "pranks". This proposal is meant to address that one specific case. I'd rather not see Misplaced Pages face even more vandalism than normal on that day. I'd say that's more important than honouring the silly season when it becomes more socially acceptable to try to deceive people. --Deathphoenix ʕ 05:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

But why would this holiday (if it can be called so) get a special treatment over the others? I am fine then if we also do something special in the sane cover page on "World Day for Water," "International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination," "World Frog Day" and also for the upcoming spring equinox. Anagnorisis 05:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

At a time when the issue of vandalism is of increasing significance, it seems in poor taste to try to outprank the pranksters. All the inclusion of silly but true information on the main page will achieve is to offer some degree of legitimacy to those who wish to place non-notable information in other articles and/or provoke more determined reponses from the pranksters. Although I acknowledge that serious media institutions do engage in this nonsensical activity, modifying the main page seems an extreme act and sets a precedent for modifying the main page to relect other internationally significant events. I therefore propose to use this proposal as a precedent to make relevant modifications to the main page to highlight Labour Day/May Day to honour all those who are employed around the world (including those of us who work on Wiki). Unless, of course, you think that is not justified? David91 06:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Let's just put Wet blanket (I can't believe this page doesn't exist!) up on the main page and be done with it. Ewlyahoocom 06:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for agreeing that the main page should set the tone of Misplaced Pages as a serious attempt to provide reliable information to users. If editors wish to introduce more frivolous information elsewhere, we can deal with that on its merits as and when it appears. David91 08:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Response in Misplaced Pages talk:April Fool's Main Page. --Deathphoenix ʕ 12:49, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

also responded to there, in depth, but I think it's important to point out here that I feel David91 is presenting a false dichotomy here. The alternative is not between THIS proposal and no pranking at all (unenforcable... I mean, think about it) Rather, it is between this proposal and uncontrolled/unchanneled pranking. In my view David91 has not adequately addressed that point. Further discussion perhaps should be taken to the page. ++Lar: t/c 13:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Ironically, David91 has presented no false dichotomy whatsoever (he didn't say "between THIS proposal and no pranking at all", all he said was that Misplaced Pages shouldn't endorse the spread of frivolous information or April Fool's Day pranking just for the hell of it), whereas you, Lar, have created a false dichotomy: "it is between this proposal and uncontrolled/unchanneled pranking". This dichotomy is false because (1) it assumes that if we don't use this proposal, pranking will be "uncontrolled/unchanneled", when in fact there will be plenty of pranking and disorder either way, and in fact it's incredibly likely (I'd say close to 100%) that using a proposal like this would cause many times more pranking than it would prevent, because it would remind so many more readers about April Fool's Day and that this is the day for mischief-making, and implicitly endorse such mischief by playfully fucking up the main page and including technically true, but highly misleading (see the example given on this policy's main page utilizing an out-of-context photograph and poorly-explained event), information, and (2) it assumes that if we do use this proposal, pranking won't be "uncontrolled/unchanneled", which doesn't make any sense whatsoever: having a joke on the main page doesn't make pranking "controlled" or "channeled" (and I don't see how it would be a good thing to "channel" pranking anyway, even were it possible), it just references pranking and is itself a "prank" of sorts, designed to mislead and confuse our readers (which will lead to a lot of complaints and bad press for Misplaced Pages, and will probably give Misplaced Pages vandalism a huge boost while upsetting a lot of Misplaced Pages's hard-working and dedicated editors in that it makes Misplaced Pages itself look like a big, dumb joke, little better than Uncyclopedia). If you really want to "control" pranking, toughen up and enlarge the counter-vandalism groups on Misplaced Pages so they can more effectively and speedily combat it. If you really want to "channel" vandalism (and channel it somewhere it won't cause harm, rather than doing the exact opposite and channeling obscure and trivial vandalism into a main-page fiasco), provide users with better ways to express their jokes, like their Userpages and Uncyclopedia. Rather than countering David91's worries with an even-handed, accurate assessment of the available options here, you've just fabricated a more inaccurate analysis. The option is between having misleading and obscure information on the website in order to trick our foolish readers into thinking Misplaced Pages is making nonsense up when it's really just taking information out of context and presenting it in a misinforming way (rather than letting our foolish readers continue thinking Misplaced Pages is a reliable source of significant information on April 1st), and between just leaving it the same as any other day, and it's just that simple; it is not a choice of whether or not to "channel" or "control" April Fool's Day pranking by having the main-page endorse and satirize it. (Also, I do wonder at what you'll do if this proposal goes through and something important happens in the news on April 1st. I'd find it amusing if we had the entire main page covered with ridiculous noninformation and then had to include info in the upper-left corner about some terrorist bombing or rockslide that killed a bunch of people. Yeah, the main page is a great place for an April Fool's Joke... simply perfect...)

But the real reason it's a bad idea, besides that it probably wouldn't be very funny at all, is that we should have crazy and inexplicable facts on the main page every day, not just one day out of the year. We shouldn't have to save up weird-ass "did you know"s or FAs for a single day; if it's interesting and noteworthy, put it up there on August 7th or February 22nd! It doesn't matter! -Silence 13:45, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

So what do you think we should do for April 1, 2006? The same as for April 1, 2005, where the featured article was something like Nintendo 64 and we had a news article about Encyclopedia Britannica taking over Misplaced Pages linked from the Main Page? (I thought the article was pretty funny, just not sure if it was appropriate to link from the Main Page) --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:57, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why we have to do anything on April 1st. How will it benefit Misplaced Pages or improve its reputation to turn the main-page into an elaborate joke for one day of the year? How will it benefit our readers or better inform them to try to trick them, just because we can? There's a whole wide world out there to play pranks in; why does Misplaced Pages's main page have to participate as well? There are very few potential benefits and significant potential risks, and every joke we could make with the main page would be better-made elsewhere, such as on Uncyclopedia or at least a Misplaced Pages:-space page (so we'd at least only be pranking Wikipeida's editors, not its readers). Why this bizarre compulsion to make the entire universe adhere to a specific holiday of a specific culture? We don't put Christmas decorations on Misplaced Pages on December 25th, change the default background color to a festive green for St. Patrick's Day, or put fireworks in the "Misplaced Pages" logo on random countries' independence days; we're an encyclopedia. -Silence 15:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Well said! I agree. I tried to drive the same point, with my other silly suggestions. However, I am not as eloquent as brother Silence. I certainly find disturbing that 'compulsion' (as Silence calls it) many have here trying make the whole world adhere and follow one culture, theirs. Anagnorisis 23:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

If we're an encyclopedia, what's wrong with showcasing some of our unusual, but good articles? Like it or not, unusual articles are a part of Misplaced Pages. Take a look at exploding whale. It's a featured article. --Deathphoenix ʕ 02:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

As a separate issue, I draw attention to the timezone problem. Arbitrarily picking any one set of twenty-four hours from around the world means that the main page will be displayed before the day or after the day depending on where the viewer is located. Thus, the screen will be read by those not expecting an April Fool because it is not the 1st April where they are. The alternative would be running the main page for a sufficient period to cover the 24 hours constituting the 1st April in everyone's timezones. I hope that this proposal will be rejected. If those who control Misplaced Pages wish to risk the Wiki's reputation and allow it, then I hope that this foolishness will only be on display for the 24 hours in whichever timezone is selected and that there is some mechanism to show how that time is elapsing, e.g. by having a clock show date and time in a prominent position on the page. David91 15:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

(There seems to be a lot of conversation on policy here. Would there be any objections if I moved this to the talk page for the policy, or would you prefer to continue the conversation here, and I'll move it later?) Please read my response in Misplaced Pages talk:April Fool's Main Page. --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Since it directly affects Wiki's reputation, this would seem to be the obvious place but, as a mere footsoldier here, I have had my say on the issue and will leave it to my Wiki elders and betters to ruminate further wherever they wish. David91 02:42, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not just try to get April Fool's Day featured by April 1, and put it on the main page? We could do that for other holidays, too. -GTBacchus 03:08, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

That's been proposed before, and I don't know if it's a good enough showcase.

Limit proposal to just a featured article

Okay, now I'm hearing from the people who are pretty extreme on the other side, that Misplaced Pages should be completely formal and do nothing for April Fool's at all. I seriously doubt that's going to happen, but how about a bit of a compromise. How about we can the whole proposal and just bring up an unusual article to featured article status? THere;s nothing "against policy" with that. smurray had a good suggestion: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. That is a normal article, except for the name. --Deathphoenix ʕ 13:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

List of (religion) (profession)

Is there a policy on articles titled "List of (religion) (profession)"? List of Muslim athletes was previously deleted by AfD, the main reason being that those who contributed to the AfD discussion agreed that "the faith of none of those people had an influence on their chosen profession". However, this article has recently gone through a few cycles of recreation/deletion and I feel that it is kind of unfair to delete this for the above reason when we have articles like List of Jewish American athletes and List of Catholic American entertainers (amongst many others). If there is no policy, is it worthwhile having a discussion as to whether to keep/delete all such articles rather than subjecting them to AfD on a piecemeal basis? (note that I write this as the admin who deleted List of Muslim athletes following its AfD rather than as a contributor to any of the above articles) JeremyA 02:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

IIRC, ] has been up for AfD in the past, and kept. As yoy imply, you can't look to Afd for any consistency on application of policy or precedent. As for clarufying the policy, Isuspect it will be impossible to get a consensus. Too many editors vote for what they like, rather than for consistency and the best interests of Misplaced Pages. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 12:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding links and double links

What is Misplaced Pages's policy on double links besides "don't use them?" If there is an image linking to an internal page on Misplaced Pages, and the same internal page is linked to within the image, what is the policy? Delete one link, and not the other? Keep both links? Thanks for your time. — Ian Manka Talk to me‼ 03:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Solved on #wikipedia. Thanks anyway! — Ian Manka Talk to me‼ 03:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Seeking Specificity in Policy over at Misplaced Pages:Featured article removal candidates

Ahoy all! There is currently a poll taking place on here about defining a set time period after an article's promotion to featured status for initiating a FARC. Thanks! --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 04:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Putting tags without explanation and refusing to discuss them

What is the policy if some user puts a disputed tag on regular basis yet refuses to state reasons for doing and refuses discussion ? Is removal of such a tag after a time considered vandalism ? --Molobo 13:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

If it's one of those like {{NPOV}} which say "Please see the discussion on the talk page", and there's no discussion on the talk page about it (the discussion does not need to be started by the same user, so be careful), the tag is bogus and can be removed. On other cases, it's less clear (the tag might be or not bogus); however, the removal would probably be considered a content dispute, and not vandalism. --cesarb 16:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I have experience of the converse problem. Fairly recently, I put up two tags together with explanations of the reasons on the talk pages, only to find both tags removed immediately by "guardians" of the page, outraged that anyone should criticise "their" page with one stating, "You're coming across very confrontational and arrogant, some consider that to be uncivil. I will try to assume good faith, but you'll have to stop acting like you hold a monopoly on what is or isn't. I'm removing the clean up tag, I think it's unwarranted." simply because I listed some of what I thought was wrong with the page. With some people, you just cannot win. David91 16:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Is restoring my own comments on discussion page a violation of 3RR

If somebody is deleting my own comments from discussion page, will I break 3RR for restoring them more then 3times ? --Molobo 20:35, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Based on the reasoning I'm seeing, yes, since you initially deleted someone else's comments. The general rule is: If you have to ASK if something violates 3RR, it does, and seek other resolution methods now. 3RR is not an allowance, it is a guideline. --Golbez 20:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

is there a word for this?

is there an accepted wikipedia word or term for when someone (whether it be a corporation, an employee or the person himself) who watches over their own article and immediately deleted any derrogatory or negative things about them on. what has been done to combat this, which will only get worse in the future.

also, same thing, only and interested party writes the bulk of the article.

thanks

Sparsefarce 23:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:AUTO. -Splash 23:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

that helps, but what about if it's a peon at a major corporation that changes the article? would it still be referred to as autobiography?

Sparsefarce 23:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

found one... POV-pushing? but is this an official term?

Sparsefarce 23:35, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

See also WP:OWN. FreplySpang (talk) 23:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess you're referring to MC Hammer? I'd say it's more likely that there's a rabid fan out there somewhere removing anything critical rather than MC Hammer himself or one of his employees. Lots of fans feel a lot of ownership over their beloved's pages. · Katefan0/poll 23:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I just replaced a bunch of unflattering text in that article that had been removed, and blocked the IP that had been doing it for a week. Its only edits were to the Hammer article. Postdlf 23:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

against any deletion / erasing policy

I'm stunned on how far we can forget the primary goals when we get immersed into a good project. I've done this several times myself, caught myself going too far into a way because it sounds and look right, but I'm just forgetting what I was supposed to do in that project at first.

I feel like all wikimedia foundation projects are going that way today, specially when considering how difficult it might be to realize that deleting an article is just totally against any of the primary goals. And it happens for obvious reasons: there's no space for every single little thing.

Is that true?

The way wikipedia is done comes to avoid ambiguity in a very logical and simple way: there's a limit of characters, so all that's needed to do to keep it within the limits is calculating how much hardware space is needed to a certain number of total characters for any article. That will bring the theoretically infinite number to a real amount that we can deal with.

The vote for deletion attacks me so deeply in what I believe it's better for this community that I get even disturbed, so I might say things I don't want to, but the idea is just proposing to change the way articles get deleted. There are several things that could be done.

Please, refer to my user page to read the rest. I'm not sure where to put this suggestion, and getting tired of rewriting it. :D

Thanks.

--Cacumer 01:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Admin on Duty

Would it be possible to have a list of "Admins on Duty" which could be used to find an Admin quickly? Several times I've wanted to find an admin but not known who was online except for recognising them in Recent Changes. Could there be a list, say on the Community Portal, which admins can sign into when on WP and the sign-out of when they leave for the day. This would be like a "the doctor is IN" sign to channel people to those performing that duty at that time.

It need not be obligatory for Admins to sign into this list whenever they are here, but requested that all take a turn once a week or so. That way there is always someone who is publicly saying "I'm on duty NOW" yet they do not have to be so all the time. This would spread the load as well as increasing speeds of vandal blocking and mini-arbitrations.

What do you think? Witty lama 05:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, immediate attention of admins is required for vandalism alone. WP:AIV should help, no? --Gurubrahma 07:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I just use Special:Log to see who is active. - brenneman 08:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Or, even quicker, click on Special:Recentchanges and look for the first admin-ish edit. In cases like vandalism, designated pages such as WP:AIV should be used rather than approaching an admin. However, if the request is for something that there is already a page for, e.g. WP:RM, and especially if the admin is not familiar with the requested procedure or if there is a question of the motivation for the request, then the admin should feel free to refer the user to the appropriate page. Several users have already done this with me and most of the time I'm happy to oblige. - BanyanTree 15:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Getting rid of fair use

I'm seeing this issue come up over and over again. Most wikipedias prohibit fair use. Although I can see legit reasons to include some truly fair use images on en, I've observed that in practice it just leads to a whole lot of problems. A lot of people are claiming fair use for any image that they want to include, regardless of the legitimacy of the claim. A lot of people are spending time arguing over what is/is not fair use. I'm beginning to think that it's really just not worth it and it's greatly reducing the freeness of the english wikipedia. I know that a lot of people will object to depreciating fair use on wikipedia, but I also know that I've heard a lot of people voicing similar concerns to mine. How can we move towards putting this bad idea behind us? Matt 00:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for it, with one exception: when the image itself is the subject of an article, such as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. --Carnildo 03:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Err, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If we remove all fair use images, we'll leave a great many articles with no illustrations (perhaps permanently):

• Almost all articles dealing with modern art. This includes basically all movies, TV shows, paintings and other graphic arts, etc.
• Almost all articles dealing with fictional subjects.
• Many articles dealing with aspects of modern history not witnessed by US government photographers. Note that this would probably include all situations where the exact copyright status is unclear (i.e. Nazi photographs).
• And various others.

Aggressively pushing for free content is very good, of course; but let's not forget that we also want to be an encyclopedia, and one that can be competetive with commercial ones. Decimating our image libraries isn't really going to help in this regard. —Kirill Lokshin 05:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I am not convinced that the "baby" in this case is all that valuable. We might end up with articles without illustration, so what? It would be interesting to see what percent of EB's articles include illustration (I don't know the answer to this). EB's article on Salvador Dalí (from what I can see from ) has no images. To say that we need "fair use" to compete with non-free publishers seems to me to be an argument for why a 💕 can't be done. But de.wikipedia.org is doing it, and by most measures has been more succesful than en (unless you measure an encyclopedia by the number of pokemon articles). Matt 17:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Userbox policy

Other efforts having failed, we still face the need to build a workable UBX policy. With some trepidation I've posted a starting point for further work.

I should very much like users to edit the proposal directly rather than attempt to vote on it. This is a wiki; we can work it out. John Reid 05:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Not logging IRC discussions is harmful

Not having a log of IRC discussions is harmful because important decisions, such as whether to block a user or IP address and what should be done with a problematic article are made there. Also, what happens on IRC sometimes spills over onto Misplaced Pages, such as a user being blocked from posting on Misplaced Pages for his or her actions on IRC or a user with a grievance about his or her treatment on IRC. Unlike talk pages, or even the mailing list, there is no way to determine what was said. The only thing we have is hearsay from people who participated in the discussion. Those users who were not present have no way to address the arguments of the other side, even after the fact. I only watch IRC occasionally, and it is frustrating when I find an issue that I have an opinion on was decided on IRC. Also, from what I have seen, consensus on IRC is sometimes all in the mind of the user, as some call it a consensus if there are only a few objections while the majority of users keep engaging in idle conversation. If there was a log, users could see what was said and write a rebuttal rather than starting the conversation all over again, which others are sometimes reluctant to do. Not logging IRC goes against the open nature of Misplaced Pages. If IRC continues to be unlogged, important decisions should not be made there without a full explanation posted on Misplaced Pages. -- Kjkolb 06:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

• AFAIC, nobody should claim consensus based on IRC conversations. Nor should people be blocked on WP for IRC conversations. There is here, and there is there. Now, it might be useful to quickly discuss some subject matter via IRC, but if a WP decision is made, it needs to be well documented on WP. Logging IRC would never happen, that place is just noise. SchmuckyTheCat 07:08, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
• If you have seen someone blocked or otherwise sanctioned in Misplaced Pages for something that happened on one of the IRC channels, please give us some details here, along with the applicable hotlinks. I can't think of any tolerable examples of how that could possibly be proper. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 08:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I want to point out that I am not suggesting that anyone has acted improperly, just that this has become common practice. Here are some examples that I have found. I'm not completely happy with the list and I think I could find better examples, but it would take a lot more time. I just skimmed through these and some may actually be irrelevant. Also, in some cases what happened is unclear because part of the conversation took place by email, IRC or on another talk page. Many of them are not that big of a deal, but it becomes a problem when it occurs frequently.

• Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_adminship/WikiFanatic
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Denelson83/first
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Robchurch 3
  • IRC behavior affecting adminship. The most troubling aspect is that allegations cannot be effectively disputed. If you do not like someone nominated for adminship, I suppose that you could say they acted improperly on IRC a few months ago and no one would be able to disprove it. I found many cases of this, but limited it to the first three I found (cases affecting adminship, I do not know whether the allegations are true or not).

• User_talk:Doc_glasgow/30Nov05#Valhalla_yearbook
  • The decision to delete an article was based on an IRC discussion

• Misplaced Pages:AMA Coordinator
  • Town meetings on IRC in place of an election?

• User talk:Zanimum/Archive 1 (see spam)
  • Whether to (mass?) revert a user's contributions was decided on IRC

• User_talk:Gwalla/Archive_1#User_talk:Maximusnukeage
  • User page protection decided on IRC

• User_talk:Xed/Archive3#Did_I_just_encourage_an_admin_to_block_you.3F
  • User blocking is discussed on IRC

• User_talk:Charlemagne_the_Hammer#Email_to_Jimmy_Wales
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Njyoder
  • Arguments on IRC spilling into Misplaced Pages

• User_talk:Nonenmac#There_was_a_big_debate_about_this_on_irc...
  • Discussion of whether material should stay on Misplaced Pages

• User_talk:Sam_Spade/_-_archive_March_2004_2#My_first.2Flast_name
  • Claim of divulging of personal information, which cannot be verified if logs are not kept

• User_talk:Andrea_Parton#McCloskey
  • Whether a person should be referred to as a male or female after a sex change in an article

• Misplaced Pages:Bots (Tawkerbot2)
  • Discussing the appropriateness of a bot on IRC (or whether to run without a flag?)

• Template_talk:In_the_news/archive#Election_irregularities
  • A complaint that an issue is being discussed on IRC instead of the talk page

• Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Archive_4#rambot
  • User says that bot policy was decided on IRC

• Block of User:Grue
  • Whether a block was appropriate was discussed on IRC

• User_talk:172/Final_talk_block#North_Korea
  • User blocked on Misplaced Pages for actions on IRC

• User_talk:Erwin_Walsh#Complaint
  • Mass blocking of IP address is discussed on IRC

• User_talk:SushiGeek/Archive_2#blocking_without_warning
  • A claim is made that support for a block came from IRC

• IP's posting legal threats
  • Consensus for a 6 month block on IP addresses making legal threats was made on IRC

-- Kjkolb 10:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The use of English in Wikipaedia

Why is there not a clear provision (that is to say a named moderator or a moderating committee) in The Wikipaedia organisation to ensure that all material published as the agreed substance of this encyclopaedia is written grammatically (at the least) and also - if possible - in a respectable style?

One good reason for having this safeguard is that technical advice simply cannot be trusted if the writer or speaker is not completely literate.

Someone who cannot in any event write grammatically surely cannot be relied upon to communicate accurately and economically the specifics of the topic in which he claims knowledge. Well-educated people know this and disregard professional or technical advice and comment from people who can only convey it in dubious or defective language.

Literacy - or the lack of it - is a direct and immediate indicator of the quality of the communication.

For example: we have seen in these pages the adjective "NOMIC" used as if it were a noun; we have seen "LAY" used where "LIE" was obviously intended; we have seen the noun "QUALITY" used as if it were an adjective of praise, and meaning "superior" or "excellent quality".

People whose knowledge of English does not enable them to distinguish between the two separate verbs "TO LAY" and "TO LIE" are not yet ready to edit directly Wikipaedia pages and should submit their words to a suitably-educated moderator.

Solecisms that may pass in informal conversation are not acceptable in an encyclopaedia.

Kirkby Stephen, e-mail: pedantryrules@hotmail.com

I'm sorry to hear that you have difficulty comprehending the language on this discussion page. We will try to do better. Additionally, can I refer you to the page Prescription and description? Cheers, Ziggurat 08:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not? Oh, for various reasons. Just one of them is that most potential suitably-educated moderators would find the designated job of ensuring what you term "grammaticality" to be extremely onerous. I'd like to think that I for one am suitably educated and am literate in English, but I wouldn't take that job unless I were paid -- and paid a lot.

Incidentally, I find your comment rather odd in various ways. First, if "lay" is used where "lie" is obviously intended, this is not a grammatical but a lexical error; secondly, if this mistake is obvious then it is hard to see how it could be misleading; thirdly, no matter how little you may like to see "quality" used as a prenominal adjective (and I don't like it much myself), this use is well established; and fourthly, the good pedant would note that "Misplaced Pages" is so spelled. Anyway, you are very welcome to switch "lay" to "lie" where appropriate, and so forth. Before you start, however, you may consider obtaining a username.

In the meantime, while I too am irritated by poor English, I'm much more worried about errors of fact and bias -- Hoary 08:25, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

You say, "Literacy - or the lack of it - is a direct and immediate indicator of the quality of the communication". Not always. A counterexample is your highly literate post. Please don't troll. — Matt Crypto 13:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, mostly literate, anyway. You failed to spell "Misplaced Pages" correctly, for example. — Matt Crypto 13:31, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Nomic is a noun when it is used to describe the rule-changing game that is so named. *Dan T.* 13:31, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

We have large numbers of editors for whom English is not their first language. Although they are in general well able to make themselves understood, their edits are, at times, less than grammatical. It doesn't mean their contributions are invalid, we just clean up after them as we can. And I've seen posts from lots of people from outside of North America who claim that American English is ungrammatical. Do you propose to ban us from editing in our native language? User:Zoe| 17:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Take a look at "Kirkby Stephens"'s email address, and then decide for yourself if you want to continue feeding the troll. android79 17:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Eggs in the user page

Misplaced Pages's policy states that "You might want to add quotes that you like, or a picture, or some of your favorite Misplaced Pages articles or images (free licensed only), or something like that"

Do eggs fall within that category? I wanted to put some on my page, just for fun, but thought I'd better clear it first. --Eilu 11:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Are they public domain? You can only use things that are freely copyable (public domain, GFDL, etc.) on your user page. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury) 12:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Admin 0RR proposal

A proposed policy limiting the authority of administrators to reverse one another is currently under discussion. Please take a moment to review and discuss the proposed policy. Kelly Martin (talk) 12:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Cory Doctorow and the 'Autobiography' Guideline

I find it a bit disturbing that blogger Cory Doctorow's sole contributions to Misplaced Pages are to edit the hell out of his own biography and that of his blog. Is the fact that the Misplaced Pages:Auto-biography guideline is a guideline and not policy mean that this is acceptable? — WCityMike 19:00, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm a fan of Cory's work (both his blog and his novels) so I'm a bit biased. Take this with a grain of salt, I suppose.

His edits to Boing Boing are pretty much above-the-board, with a detailed explanation either in edit summaries or on the talk page.

His edits to Cory Doctorow seem to be okay, though there may be a little bit of original research in there, regarding the meaning of an Amazon sales rank. There's also one meaningless personal detail about his hair (that he clarified, but did not add originally) that probably ought to go. He seems to be conscientiously editing the article on himself. I don't think it'll be a problem as long as there are neutral third parties keeping an eye on things. android79 19:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The issue is not of "conscientiously editing the article". The issue is that editing one's article is strongly discouraged:

Avoid writing or editing articles about yourself, since we all find objectivity especially difficult when we ourselves are concerned. Such articles frequently violate neutrality, verifiability, and notability guidelines. Contribute on the talk page instead. Feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself.

... for very obvious reasons. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @

Yes, strongly discouraged. Not verboten. Did you even examine his edits? They're mostly of the "feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself" variety. android79 20:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages policy on Nazism

All vandalism is serious, but I may consider nazi-type vanadism super serious. If I came across it *anywhere* on wikipedia, I would get a consensus to block the relevant user(s) for up to three years. Nazism is racist and should not be tolerated on wikipedia. This includes adding any Nazi type greating or images to articles (or even discussions and user pages) where they do not make it more informative.Myrtone (the strict Australian wikipedian)(talk)

What makes Nazi-type vandalism any different from any other sort of personal/collective attack? --Carnildo 20:53, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) I disagree with that. Nazi-type vandalism isn't in general done by nazis, but by bored teenagers, etc. The actual content of the vandalism is irrelevant. The seriousness of vandalism is related to the frequency of it, and the amount of removed or added text. The length of blocks should reflect that; not the content. So I would support long blocks for vandal bots; and standard policy should apply to nazi vandals. Eugene van der Pijll 20:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

There are far too many categories of offensive edits to single out "Nazi" vandalism for special treatment. I can think of many utterances more objectionable than the display of a swastika or declaration of the superiority of the so-called Aryan. I agree in spirit that vandalism containing inflammatory content is theoretically a greater offense than that consisting merely of "woot woot"; but a much greater danger is calculated vandalism in which, say, dates and names are subtly altered.

All vandalism is wrong; I would be happy if any vandal were blocked forever from further editing. But anon IP editors are, truly, anonymous; blocking the IP may block legitimate users. And -- for those who believe in the potential for redemption in the human heart -- it is always possible that a registered vandal may reform, given patience and understanding as well as a firm hand. Given these considerations, the current policy on vandal blocking is about the best. John Reid 21:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

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