Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:51, 9 May 2006

This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed. Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

VFD Nominations

• Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Criticism of Misplaced Pages
• Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Criticism of Wikipedia2

Archives

Archive 1

Difficulty of Editing

It is difficult for users to know what changes have been recently added to articles, or how long the article has been in its current state. This makes the examination/discovery of subtle changes and deletions more difficult to detect.

Some have proposed highlighting recent changes a different color to alert readers that the information is new and as such has not had much time to be reviewed/corrected by the community. On Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals) (see Misplaced Pages talk:Provenance), Pseudo Socrates made a proposal to provide temporal provenance by placing a Temporal Provenance button on each article that would produce a dynamic page that was a version of the current article modified as follows: Each interval of text would be colored according the following algorithm: Text of vintage less than 24 hours would be colored red, vintage more than 24 hours but less than one week would be colored green, remaining text would remain black.

No Original research

It seems there are a number of refutations to criticism that are "Original Research." One Example "Waldman gave this interview on October 26, 2004. By March 28, 2005, without counting subarticles, the Chinese art article had become three times as large as the article on Hurricane Frances, while the article on Tony Blair was 50% larger than the article on Coronation Street. Proponents of Misplaced Pages point to such statistics to show that systemic bias will diminish over time. Opponents point out that these articles drew attention from the Misplaced Pages community because they were specifically mentioned by Hoiberg, and this increase in size was not universal." This violates WP:NOR and needs to be deleted or sourced. This isn't the only one. When will this page be unlocked? --Tbeatty 06:14, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Unintended consequences criticism

Needs to be added: Siegnethaler said: "I'm glad this aspect of it is over," But he was also concerned that "every biography on Misplaced Pages is going to be hit by this stuff — think what they'd do to Tom DeLay and Hillary Clinton, to mention two. My fear is that we're going to get government regulation of the Internet as a result." --Tbeatty 06:14, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that

Here's another article. Isn't it nice.

JHJPDJKDKHI! 17:31, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Review

Does anyone know what happened to the wikipedia review link? It looks like there was some revert wars and such but AFAIK our policy does not cover removing what seems to be a fairly valuable notable (albiet notorious) link? Just another star in the night 21:43, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

(1) Check the archive. It's a thoroughly beaten dead horse. (2) It's not notable. They seem to think that are (and have been creating new accounts to insert the link, in violation of previous bans/blocks), but that does not make them so. Raul654 21:48, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - I was just wondering :). Just another star in the night 21:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Notability is not required for external links. Only relevancy and quality. It's obviously relevant, so now it's a quality argument - but don't trot out "notability" please. --Golbez 01:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

It fails a test for inclusion using any measure. It's a forum for disgrunteled ex-users to vent their ideas about how about how the OMG ABUSIVE ADMINS conspired to kick them out, not to mention previously mentioned low-point discussions about Snowspinner's teeth. 'Nuff said. Raul654 01:05, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Fine, I'm not saying it has to be there - I'm trying to encourage you to give a better reason than "notability", which doesn't apply, so that succeeded. --Golbez 01:17, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Raul654, your views are nothing to do with being named as one of the abusive admins would it? =]—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.155.95.163 (talk • contribs) 14:55, 5 May 2006.

AFAIK, the 'teeth' discussion was on another forum, at proboards.com -- there has never been any such discussion on wikipediareview.com; and on proboards, that discussion took place in an off-topic forum which could arguably be considered to be part of a different forum. Furthermore, the fact that the forum is run by disgruntled ex-users does not necessarily make it invalid, anymore than a group of army veterans criticizing the army would be invalidated -- in addition, Blu Aardvark became an ex-user after he joined the forum, and arguably because he joined the forum. Of course, as Golbez has noted, the forum is relevant, and its 'notability' is not relevant. So, with your top complaints being thus refuted, Raul, I think you have to consider your POV in this issue, the manner in which you have repeatedly violated the rules regarding admin behavior, and the fact that the only thing which has been "beat to a dead horse" is your tendency to misrepresent the facts and censor critics. Whisperknot

At the very least, wikipediareview.com has an RSS feed of news sources about Misplaced Pages, which thus makes it a useful site for anyone interested in criticism of Misplaced Pages. Whisperknot

The original and the new forums are run by most of the same people, and at least two of the people who are still moderators/admins on the original one are also staff on the new one. Also, the supposed physical descriptions of Wikipedians didn't take place in any sub-forum. The posts were eventually moved to one, but they were on the main board for quite some time. I don't see how Raul is violating any rules. He's acting as an admin to stop the spamming of a link to a non-notable website maintained by a very small number of posters, and containing a lot of arguably defamatory material. SlimVirgin 13:23, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

NOTE Whisperknot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)'s only contributions are to his userspace and this talk page. Yet another Misplaced Pages Review sock.

Misplaced Pages Review doesn't meet the tests of relevancy and quality when they don't even live up to their name. They ban users who don't toe their party line. They preach about freedom of speech but don't allow it on their own site. They bemoan censorship on Misplaced Pages and in the same breath suggest that it somehow illegally makes pornographic material available to minors. Oh and about the teeth disscussion? Does post on David Gerhard's pictures make the site more relevant? Before you start putting words in Golbez's mouth, consider this eloquent quote:

"This is a forum for people who were banned from Wikipeida and want to complain about it. There is no review here, just empty complaints from people who...probably deserved to be banned considering how disconnected they are from reality and civil discussion." -Golbez on Misplaced Pages Review (post was deleted by Selina)

I was banned from the site for having that quote in my signature. -- Malber (talk · contribs) 13:22, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I do enjoy that quote. The thing is, I just wanted to make sure the proper process was followed on this link, as not to give them any further ammunition. I stand by my quote, and had left WikipediaReview until Internodeuser/Zordrac made a comment so mindblowingly stupid about David Gerard that I had come out of retirement. Now I'm trying to slowly wean myself again. I do not have any interest in engaging in or defending the multiple attacks on the personal aspects of some admins, and I do not enter those threads (except of course in the David Gerard example). I keep wanting to think WikipediaReview has potential, and they keep stealing it back away. --Golbez 15:23, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like to clarify this claim. Malber was not banned for having that quote in his signature - in fact, I specifically stated on numerous occasions that I considered that quote to be acceptable. Even when I removed other objectional things from his signature, that qoute remained. Malber was banned for changing his avatar to a picture of a penis. Although WR has few official "rules", I believe that we had been very clear on that. --72.160.68.9 22:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Hello Blu Aardvark. Are you referring to the picture of the Prince Albert piercing from Misplaced Pages that you liked to put on my userpage? Or how about the "Yep, I'm gay!" navy picture that Selina has replaced as my avatar without my ability to alter it? Yep, definately a hotbed of intellectual, constructive criticism. :-\ -- Malber (talk · contribs) 00:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• • Malber's guess was correct. I spotted a half-dozen Lir socks this morning, including Whisperknot. As such, Lir is about to get the same LARTing previously used on Wonderfool. Raul654 14:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages Review is notable to this article. It's only natural for the banned/outcasted/expats of a community as large as this to gather someplace. It's certainly more notable than some of the solo rants/crusades getting inked/linked here, and it's entirely misleading for a section like Criticism_of_Wikipedia#Abuse_of_power to mention only users who have "quit" and not those who've been "banned". heqs 00:54, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

• Having reviewed this discussion, and having seen what goes on at that site, may I suggest that this article is not entitled "Abuse of Misplaced Pages administrators" but is in fact entitled "Criticism of Misplaced Pages". The site should not be added as an external link on this article, this would be insulting to true critics of Misplaced Pages. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The link should be added. There is no requirement of notability for external links, only relavancy, and as one of the major bastions of criticism against Misplaced Pages it should be included in the article. This is not linkspam, this is a relevant external link in a article, and whatever has been done with the link outside of this article (spamming, vandalism, etc) does not change that fact. Additionally, many active members of Misplaced Pages post, reply, and discuss on Misplaced Pages Review (admittedly, myself included, amongst many others). Additionally, compared to some of the other links we have in the article, this surely belongs. --Avillia 17:25, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Please Unlock

Do we really have to lock the whole page over a dispute concerning a link to an external site? Let 3RR and consensus decide the link. Locking the whole page over a link to a super-low traffic site smells more like a desire to censor than a legitimate concern about an inappropriate link. Please unlock the article and work out the external link issue separately. --Tbeatty 15:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

So far as I can tell, the consensus is not to include the link, and the problem with letting 3RR decide is that the WR banned users are creating sockpuppets to revert, and so page protection becomes necessary. SlimVirgin 15:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

3RR only works when there aren't sockpuppets at play. The moment that happens, a protect is the only option, until things die down. The protection is not because of a 3RR violation, it is because an edit war was occurring. I don't think semiproect would work - they seem to be using sleeper accounts. (look at Pigfodder's contributions) --Golbez 16:00, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't disagree. It just seems silly that a single external link is so "contentious" that the whole page is locked. Wouldn't it be better to let these "sleeper accounts" surface so their IP's can be banned and the sock puppets exposed? It seems that it would be worthwhile to expose them over an external link as opposed to false information or vandalism. And wasn't this one sockpuppet that could easily be dealt with? Please unlock it and deal with the sockpuppets as sockpuppets are dealt with. There are plenty of articles that are hit with sockpuppets that aren't completely locked.--Tbeatty 16:53, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

There are a number of technical problems with your suggestion, Tbeatty, which I won't elaborate on in case the socks don't know them all, but page protection was the best, if not the only, solution. SlimVirgin 17:42, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

What's technical about unlocking a page and making it semi-protect? Just warn anyone who puts in the link faces permanent IP and user banning. --Tbeatty 00:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Except for a handful of special cases, permanently banning IPs is about the worst thing you can do. IPs tend to be shared and easily redistributed. In most cases, it is trivial for a banned user to be re-assigned a new one; anyone unfortunate enough to get that IP afterwards would be unable to edit wikipedia. Raul654 00:49, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

It's handled for over a million other pages without needing complete lockout. Please unlock. Jimbo's page explains that security at the expense of "you can edit this page right now" is not an acceptable solution. --Tbeatty 04:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Why was this protected again after only two reverts? We can't keep this protected forever. Just another star in the night 17:44, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

• I have reduced the protection level to semi-protection in case there are lingering sockpuppets. Other admins should feel free to completely unprotect if desired. -- Beland 20:38, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks--Tbeatty 20:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Date of Larry King Vandalism

Is there a source or at least a date associated with the flatulence-related vandalism of the Larry King article? I looked through the history and didn't find anything (I imagine it was deleted). Does anyone know the date this occurred?--Ejconard 21:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

NOR

I pulled stuff that is unsourced and appears to be Original Research.

• While it has long been one of Jimmy Wales' goals to distribute Misplaced Pages in the poor nations of the world, the current Misplaced Pages would give them a product that does an inadequate job of covering their regions. Below is a comparison between how many times Canada and Nigeria are mentioned in four encyclopedias. The second column is the ratio of mentions of Belgium to mentions of Rwanda.

• Waldman gave this interview on October 26, 2004. By March 28, 2005, without counting subarticles, the Chinese art article had become three times as large as the article on Hurricane Frances, while the article on Tony Blair was 50% larger than the article on Coronation Street. Proponents of Misplaced Pages point to such statistics to show that systemic bias will diminish over time. Opponents point out that these articles drew attention from the Misplaced Pages community because they were specifically mentioned by Hoiberg, and this increase in size was not universal.

I think this is fair enough. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:53, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

If mailing lists, web forums, etc. are legitimate sources of information, then someone could "fix" this just by posting the arguments to some forum or mailing list.

Of course, if they are not legitimate sources of information, then we have to get rid of references like these:

"Others have suggested that while Misplaced Pages may not be an encyclopedia, this is not such a bad thing. A discussion on MeatballWiki on the topic contains the following introduction:"

"Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade noted on his online webcomic that..."

"Former editor-in-chief of Nupedia, Larry Sanger, stated in an opinion piece in Kuro5hin that..."

Ken Arromdee 14:28, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Citation needed for weasel word sections

The following sections are filled with weasel terms and are in need of citation:

• Anonymous editing
• Copyright issues
• All of Criticism of the community

I suggest that they either be cited or deleted. Criticism of the community is very suspect because this is difficult to cite and is very self referential. It wouldn't stand on its own as a notable phenomenon. This should not be seen as an opening for a certian obvious troll site for disgruntled banned users because they don't meet the criteria of a reputable publication.

In general, I think this article has become bloated. It's already larger than the main article on Misplaced Pages. Do the sources for Criticism of Misplaced Pages indicate that it is such a widespread phenomenon that it warrants an article of this magnitude? -- Malber (talk · contribs) 17:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Misplaced Pages Review

Is it my imagination, or did Talk:Misplaced Pages Review just get nuked? While WR does not, at this time, merit an article of its own (it's still pretty non-notable, even if Daniel Brandt and Andrew Orlowski occasionally show up and post there), it's talk page wasn't hurting anything.

--EngineerScotty 23:52, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you but as I was involved in the active conversation that the deleter was clearly trying to disrupt, I feel it would be inappropriate if I did the undeletion and would prefer if someone else did it. Pcb21 Pete 00:04, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing of any use or interest on it, and lots of posts from at least one banned user. I can't see the point in restoring it. SlimVirgin 04:44, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

comic

Misplaced Pages is not important

Would they put this in any other encyclopedia? I don't think so. 75.3.4.54 03:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Merge from Wikitruth.info

Sounds like a dandy idea to me. Wikitruth.info isn't any more predominate than other critical sites, in fact, it's much less so than a lot of the national news. When we think about the prohibition on self reference it this case, the question should be "would another similar but unrelated online encyclopedia say these words?". I can certainly see another encyclopedia having an article on Misplaced Pages which was large enough to split the criticism out, but I just can't see Wikitruth having it's own article in such an encyclopedia, unless their bar for notability was much lower than ours. I also believe that it would be unlikely that a non-wikipedia-editing reader would care to read about wikitruth without reading about the other criticism. --Gmaxwell 15:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

WCityMike wanted to setup a poll , but I think thats premature. Lets discuss a little first. --Gmaxwell 15:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Gotta ask you, Gmaxwell, since when is it cool on Misplaced Pages to remove people's contributions on a talk page, even if you disagree with their procedure? — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 15:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Material restored and poll proceeding. — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 16:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The poll is completely inapproiate from multiple angles. We need to discuss not poll. No decisions on wikipedia are made via pure polling. Plus, everyone the poll is voting keep.... Well, duh, it's not proposed that we delete it, we're proposing to merge it. --Gmaxwell 17:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

According to WP:DR, "Note that informal straw polls can be held at any time if there are enough participants in the discussion". While deletion of other people's comments from the talk page except for the purposes of archiving or when severe personal attacks are present is usually considered vandalism. -- noosphere 22:37, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

2 of the most bad editors on whole Misplaced Pages want Wikitruth deleted:

• Tony Sidaway ---- Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Tony_Sidaway_1 -- Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Tony_Sidaway_2
• Doc Glasgow ---- Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/February_userbox_deletion

Conflict of interest with gmaxwell, has personal interest vested in removal of WIKITRUTH:
www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Quotes#Our_Reviews - see "ladyboy" part —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Seoul Jjang (talk • contribs) .

As far as I know I've never been mentioned on that site. --Gmaxwell 17:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You have. Click the above link.--Nick Dillinger 17:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Ha! Indeed. In any case, it's completely irrelevant. --Gmaxwell 17:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, the fact that it's not clickable is a story in and of itself, ain't it? — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 17:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

That fact certainly kept me from following the "link". -lethe 22:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

April/May 2006 Straw Poll Re: Merge to 'Criticism of Misplaced Pages'

(Restoration of material deleted by Gmaxwell. Gmaxwell, please do not remove people's contributions to talk pages, even if you disagree on how procedure should be carried out.)

We're not holding a vote right now. --Gmaxwell 21:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

During the AfD I'd originally voted to merge, as there was far too little information in this article to merit its own article. However, even before the AfD was over it expanded in quality and size, and I decided to change my vote to Keep. Now the article is better still. It definitely deserves to stay. Also, if you look at the AfD debate, you'll see that only about 1/4 of the editors wanted it merged, 1/4 deleted, and 1/2 wanted it kept, iirc. -- noosphere 15:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

We're not suggesting it be deleted right now, we're trying to discuss merging it with Criticism of Misplaced Pages. --Gmaxwell 21:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

the website does follow the spirit of inclusion of content into Misplaced Pages. The only reason a large page with actual interest among user is under deletion/merge considerations is because of the subject.--Nick Dillinger 17:44, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

We normally add such content into the article on the site, in this case it would be Criticism of Misplaced Pages because the wikipedia article has become big enough to split. How would treating this like we'd treat any other such site be a sign of bias? It seems to me that the opposite would be true. --Gmaxwell 18:18, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it shouldn't be merged, as it is a decent article in its own right now. As a disclaimer I worked on the article quite a bit while it was on AfD and a little afterwards. Just another star in the night 15:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Oppose merge, per another star/RN and Gmaxwell. Ombudsman 03:02, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's just delete it. That'll show those boys who say we censor stuff that doesn't reflect well on us! Grace Note 07:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Strongly opposing merge. Criticism of Misplaced Pages is already long enough as is, and wikitruth.info is more than significant enough in and of itself (the breach of security, the public accusations from Jimbo that it's a "hoax", the indications of serious dissent within the ranks of admins, the intensely unflattering personal attacks on admins and censorious users) that it deserves its own separate article. As a site which is apparently so very dangerous to the foundation that the very act of linking to it could merit blocking, it moves far beyond "just another criticism."Captainktainer 10:09, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

As above. Don't merge. Shaun Eccles-Smith 04:58, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Strong oppose to merging. Wikitruth is beyond criticism of Misplaced Pages. It should be kept separate so that legitimate and sourced criticism about wikiepdia (and not external blogs about wikipedia) can be maintained. This page should be dedicated to the documented criticism of wikipedia by reliable sources, not about the goings-on of a website. --Tbeatty 05:24, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Oppose to merging. I think here we are looking at a situation regarding level of difficulty. Wikitruth focuses heavily on the internal politics of administrators of wikipedia: conflicts between admins and the office, conflicts between admins on policy, abuses by admins, conflicts regarding software writers and admins, details regarding how administrators do things (command level details). The site assumes a knowledgeable editor to be understandable at all. The criticisms article conversely focuses on users of wikipedia with a light focus on editor's issues. They really are two different topics. As an analogy criticisms of congress by lobbyists might be about things like how badly the bathrooms are laid out, the poor organization of the offices on the 3rd,4th and 5th floor; problems with voice mail forwarding system.... That isn't what your average American would think of when they talk about "criticisms of congress". jbolden1517 18:26, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Fix incorrect link when page is unlocked

The Penny Arcade link should be Penny Arcade--BigCow 20:45, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

As this is just fixing a disambig link, I will do so. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 21:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Anonymous editing

Is the criticism of anonymous editing limited to IPs, or to users with usernames (such as myself) that are not their own legal name? I was curious on this point and found: "so-called 'anon' votes, as if Misplaced Pages usernames were less 'anon' than IP numbers" http://www.aetherometry.com/antiwikipedia/Section_III_5.html - although that is a rather odd-looking site, and a blog post: "Thus it's a little misleading to call unregistered contributors "anonymous," since registered usernames actually provide greater anonymity both for mischief and for good." http://slashdot.org/articles/05/12/05/2010247.shtml There's an article that touches upon WP and anonymity here http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters but that is in reference to IP editing. Шизомби 17:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Use of "American" English

Perhaps we should also discuss how the American way of doing things is insidiously pushed on Misplaced Pages in respect of the forced use of "American" English. e.g. total denial of the hyphen (cooperation instead of co-operation is a classic example), no "u" in favour,colour etc, advise instead of advice. Why should the rest of the English speaking world have this rammed down their throats? Misplaced Pages is supposed to be neutral, not a vehicle for Americans to force their culture onto others.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.107.122.20 (talk • contribs) 09:56, 5 May 2006.

Have you visited humour recently? I don't think this is a frequently voiced criticism -- remember, this page isn't for us to journal our beefs with Misplaced Pages, but to document the major criticisms that have been published. — Matt Crypto 11:28, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

How is using British spelling any more neutral than using American spelling? -- noosphere 20:20, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your childish comment, thought you were a fan of no personal attacks? Ahh, the hypocrasy of the academic is indeed alive and well. A little confused as what "journal our beefs" means? Clarification please.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.107.127.70 (talk • contribs) 12:00, 5 May 2006.

What personal attacks? See humour. But thanks for calling me a hypocrite. Next! — Matt Crypto 13:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Personal attack, as in lecturing the underclass in how to behave with - "this page isn't for us to journal our beefs" . What gives you the devine right to decide how this page is used?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.107.119.57 (talk • contribs) 13:20, 5 May 2006.

By "journaling your beefs", Matt meant listing things about wikipedia that you personally don't like. This article is only for well-documented (i.e. published) criticisms. Furthermore, this talk page is specifically for discussion about how to make this article (Criticism of Misplaced Pages) better. It's not a place to lodge new complaints. For your personal complaints, visit Misplaced Pages:General complaints. There, you can complain about our predilection for American English. By the way, we do have a policy about national varieties of English, see WP:MoS#National_varieties_of_English. We try not to be too American-centric, but we're only as good as our volunteers. Maybe you can help? -lethe 13:28, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I have tried in vain on many an occasion but the wikipedia guardians always revert to the previous version.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.107.119.57 (talk • contribs) 13:56, 5 May 2006.

Wouldn't it be just as much "forcing things down people's throats" if American contributors were compelled to use all those quaint British spellings with superfluous extra letters and stuff? *Dan T.* 13:34, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Was wondering when someone would trot out that tired old chestnut. The point I am making is that people visiting this site (who speak English as a second language) are being given the impression that "American English" is the accepted way of doing things English wise. Gross hypocrasy on the part of a site that advocates neutrality.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.107.119.57 (talk • contribs) 13:56, 5 May 2006.

Righty, this looks like trolling to me; I suggest we ignore. — Matt Crypto 14:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

How is it that administrators like Matt ("You will assimilate" "resistance if futile")routinely get away with personal attacks, accusing people of trolling for advancing reasonable concerns? A valid criticism shared by many, whose documents I would cite if I were inclined to donate more than a comment to this project, is not so much that Misplaced Pages doesn't provide nationally appropriate language for diverse dialects, but that the group process after several years has still failed to resolve these critiques, leading to inevitable conflict between users in the absence of policy. C right thru 19:14, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Based on these comments there is no reason to call 'troll'. Could be an upset person who's had legitimate edits reverted just because they are using an ip (this is pointless and happens far too often on WP lately). heqs 07:49, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Dear user: in addition to WP:MoS#National varieties of English, you may also be interested in Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. heqs 07:49, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I hate to say it, but I find the dismissive replies from established users here almost as offensive as the supposed trolling remarks. Anonymous user raises valid complaint (albeit in the wrong place and in an inflammatory way), and is greeted with derision. I think if you don't feel like responding in good faith, then just don't hit the edit button at all. -lethe 07:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

When people start using words like "childish" and "hypocrite", that typically gets people's backs up, oddly enough. — Matt Crypto 08:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I understand. Like I said, anon was inflammatory. There's always the high road option, though. -lethe 09:32, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, point taken. Will try to be less tetchy! — Matt Crypto

Perhaps we should have uk.wikipedia.org, ca.wikipedia.org, us.wikipedia.org, au.wikipedia.org, nz.wikipdia.org, ie.wikipedia.org, and any others I forgot... so that users who desire a particular dialect of the English language can browse Misplaced Pages in peace, secure in the knowledge that they will never encounter a superfluous or missing, depending on your POV, letter u during their browsing experience. Seriuosly, (and in full observation that this isn't really the correct place to discuss this), Misplaced Pages policies concerning regional dialects of English are well-established; and no, they don't permit or encourage arbitrary conversion of pages from one dialect of English to another, without a good reason (it would be awkward, for instance, were the page on Manchester United to be written in anything but a UK dialect). It probably happens that US-based editors outnumber our UK-based counterparts; and often times the dialect used by the initial editor of a page becomes the dialect used throughout the page's existence. If you have a better suggestion than that, I'm all ears. --EngineerScotty 19:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

POV slant.

Can we break off statements like "Also, to stop the continuous reverting of pages, Jimmy Wales introduced a "three revert rule", whereby those users who revert an article more than three times in a 24 hour period are blocked for 24 hours." and "Misplaced Pages's policy is to fairly represent all sides of a dispute by not making articles state, imply, or insinuate that only one side is correct" into a section called "Misplaced Pages's Reply to Criticism", or, better yet, just shift it completely to WP:RCO? Reading the article fully for the first time it sounds a lot like Misplaced Pages is trying to defend itself or negate negative arguments rather than show the criticism it generates. (Oh, hey, look at the irony of the quotes I picked.)--Avillia 17:36, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. WP:NPOV says, "Even when a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinion, an article can still radiate an implied stance through either selection of which facts to present, or more subtly their organization — for instance, refuting opposing views as one goes along makes them look a lot worse than collecting them in an opinions-of-opponents section." -- noosphere 20:22, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I also agree. This isn't a forum for bickering pro-wikipedians versus anti-wikipedians. This is an article about the criticisms of wikipedia's failings. And wikipedia does has its limitations, as we've learned the hard way. -lethe 21:25, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Avilla you are removing most of the citing info also, a few parts should be removed of course, especially the one sentence in the lead but others including info on the Nature study should stay. Lets discuss what sections would be removed and what not. Thanks Jaranda 00:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Alright. Re-add what's in contest, just been getting a lot of browbeating before I even -made- the removals. --Avillia 00:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed the obvious though Jaranda 00:46, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed expert editors guideline

While this page isn't normally the place to address policy proposals; this one is relevant. A new proposed guideline, Misplaced Pages:Expert editors, is in the works; and further comment and suggestions are now being sought in advance of a vote to adopt. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, feel free to contribute at Misplaced Pages talk:Expert editors. --EngineerScotty 21:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Guarding the Status Quo

I wrote this in wikipedia talk:Why Misplaced Pages is not so great#Why NPOV is not so great, but I think it applies here too. Tell me what you think:

"Another point : It favors well established and widely accepted ideas over ideas held by minorities. This is the kind of thinking that helps the status quo, strenghten those who are in power and harms possibilities of social and economical change.

Example: Some centuries ago most people thought the Earth was plane. According to the idea of NPOV, in those times saying that the earth isn't plane would have been dismissed as a marginal and not notable idea, as it actually happened at the beggining. That, of course, served those in power: the church. It slowered the spread of ideas contraries to those approved by the church, ideas that later on undermined its authority.

This is just an example among thousens I could give. I'm not sure I'm allowed to post this directly in the page couse Misplaced Pages is not a place tu publish original thought (another problematic point BTW), and I happened to have thought this by myself. Of course, this is not wholly original, it's a pretty obvious consequence of marxist thought and neo-marxist criticism as applyed in many other fields, and it wouldn't surprise me to find a similar argument somewhere else. The marxist idea that the established way of thought (part of the superstructure) is meant, first of all, to justifie the established relations of power (and above all the production relations, the infrastracture) is widely explored in literary, media and cultural studies. Sorry for my english."

--Rataube 09:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Flat Earth is a nonexample, as that article will explain. Scholars (and the Church) have known that the Earth is spherical since early antiquity. The idea that before modern times people believed in a flat Earth is a myth, part of a range of modern backlash against medieval thought. There were (and are today) particular people who have held the belief in a flat Earth, but now and throughout history, the educated majority has believed in a spherical Earth. Therefore, following mainstream thought is correct in this instance. Your thesis that "well establish ideas" are somehow wrong and harmful is dubious. But you'd be much better off citing belief in meteorites as an example; for a few decades, the bulk of scientific opinion refuted the existence of meteorites, even after direct evidence was observed. Didn't last too long though. -lethe 10:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Change the example if you like, use the meteorites thing or whatever. The example is just an illustration of the idea. Pardoxically, I had to choose a widely accepted idea as the examplification, for the sake of simplicity. Besides, I am not saying that mainstream thought is harmful in itself, the harmful thing is to mark any thought as legitimate on the grounds it belongs to the mainstream. The automatical bias in favor of mainstream thought is indeed harmful, and that´s what the NPOV does.--Rataube 22:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I would say this criticism is a reasonable "theoretical objection". That is, if someone described Misplaced Pages's NPOV policy to me and I didn't know anything about the content actually on Misplaced Pages, I would definitely come up with that potential problem. However in practice it does not seem to be a problem at all. Pcb21 Pete 09:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Not Notable

We have Misplaced Pages:Criticisms, Misplaced Pages:Why Misplaced Pages is not so great, and Misplaced Pages:Replies to common objections. Doesn't this article seem just a bit redundant? Outside of Misplaced Pages this isn't a notable subject of discussion except by disgruntled banned editors. We don't need to keep it around just to acknowledge criticism of the project. That's not the point of the project! This article is flame-war and edit-war bait and saps the resources of talented editors and administrators. The topic is only mentioned in the press when Misplaced Pages itself is discussed. Why can't this be condensed and merged into the Misplaced Pages article? Then we can just delete it. -- Malber (talk · contribs) 15:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

• Some of the criticisms of Misplaced Pages are notable, if for no other reason than they are well-publicized and/or come from notable sources. No notable criticsm (which isn't repeated elsewhere) is found on WR, unfortunately; unlike most critics, several of the ex-Wikipedians there seem determined to piss in the well. However, this page is a good summary of some of the interesting criticism; and I think that writing about our deficiencies in a NPOV-way is a good thing.

You're free to propose another AfD if you like, of course. This page has already survived at least one.

--EngineerScotty 15:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Generally I view this subject as not being substantially notable by itself, but this article doesn't exist alone... it's a section of the main Misplaced Pages article which has grown too large to avoid being split out. So the question is not "should we delete this?" but rather "should we shrink this down?" or "should we delete Misplaced Pages?" and I think the answer to those two are clearly no. ... Now why are we making seperate article for various non-notable criticism sites rather than just including them here? The only thing I can say is that we're falling prey to our own bias. --Gmaxwell 17:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's redundant, as the Misplaced Pages namespace articles are not encyclopedia articles. For example, the they do not need to be written from the NPOV. — Matt Crypto 17:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Malber. It is notable. Malber has also made this and this personal attack (as well as uploading an attack image WRquote.JPG that was deleted)and reverts any talk page edits that mention wikipedia critcisms. DyslexicEditor 19:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages controversial topics