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How do you feel about articles that reveal the plot of books? Doesn't that take away from the creators?

Curious about your opinion about articles revealing all the key plot elements of a book and how it ends, such as in The_Hunger_Games#Plot. Are people less likely to buy a book if they know everything about it? Does it not ruin the surprise and thus enjoyment for those that would later read it? Is there any encyclopedic reason to reveal that information instead of a brief overview of what the book is about? Dream Focus 08:57, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

See WP:SPOILER. The consensus from past discussions on this issue is that articles should have plot summaries, and that a disclaimer should not be necessary.--♦IanMacM♦ 09:01, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The spoiler policy was introduced through massive abuse of the rules, including using an automated tool to change 20000 articles contrary to principles about not using it for controversial areas. Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, some people hate to have plots spoiled and some don't mind. I used to refuse to see a movie if I knew the ending. I even tried to avoid watching trailers for that reason--so I think people who really hate spoilers will probably know to avoid reading the plot sections of our articles. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:11, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

• Formerly (in 2006, as you may recall), WP had "*** SPOILER ***" warnings (now forbidden) in sections where the plot resolutions were revealed (typical in sections named "Summary" or "Plot"). However, the ban on spoiler warnings was naive, because many film/book articles have listed characters described by plot events (such as "became king at the end"), and those should also have posted **SPOILER** tags (now even forbidden in "List of characters"). Meanwhile, the plot-spoiling in many cases has reached the intro line, "This mystery is about 2 mismatched travellers who eventually meet, but one dies on climbing the 3rd mountain, then the other marries someone else anyway". So, you're thinking, How is it that people could spoil the plot in the first sentence? The practice is unfortunate for people who only wanted a vague idea of whether a murder mystery would be fun to read, or the names of actors in the film, not how it ended (and all plot twists) in the first words about it. This whole issue of spoiler-warnings is an area where the quality of book/film articles could be improved to discourage revealing the plot resolutions outside of the "Plot summary" sections. The fantastic benefit about the *SPOILER* warnings (now forbidden) was that they could be put at the very start of an article if the whole article was intentionally written to spoil the plot for all other readers. I, personally, never agreed to ban the spoiler tags, and obviously, they should be reinstated, now that people understand that wp:consensus is about compromise with everyone, rather than rules declared by a majority who responded before the vote was shutdown ruthlessly. So, thank you for asking about this issue, and perhaps Jimbo will have some time to offer advice about how to improve the situation. It is an issue akin to revealing a company's proprietary secrets or an illusionist's techniques, except that the secrets are revealed according to a planned release, rather than not at all. As for writers who want to avoid WP spoiling their stories, it might be necessary to write books in part-1, part-2, part-3 plot installments, because the Internet will not allow secrets to be kept for long. The problem is far beyond the scope of Misplaced Pages alone. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:39, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages article about Agatha Christie's 1952 play The Mousetrap has been the subject of enduring debates and edit wars over this issue. It has even been the subject of a New York Times article.--♦IanMacM♦ 17:16, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

For those readers who care, the information can be in a show-or-hide box, where it is hidden by default.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:24, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh no, they kill Old Yeller behind the barn! Oh no Eli is blind! Oh no, Jesus is crucified! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 17:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

If someone looks up an encyclopedia article on a book or film they have not yet read or seen, then that is their problem, really. Same with those who Tivo television shows; if they go looking on popular entertainment websites before they get around to watching what most of the country has already seen, that's their fault. Tarc (talk) 17:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

A Misplaced Pages article is not a review intended for someone to read to decide whether to enjoy a work. It's intended to describe the role the work plays in society, its content, structure and impact - for example, it could serve as a starting place for scholars interested in writing about the work. Spoiler warnings make this very difficult, as suddenly editors have to be conscious at every point in the article of whether they're spoiling or not, and contort the structure of the article to condone it off into labelled sections. In brief: this is Misplaced Pages, not Wikireviews - the latter role is served pretty well already by IMDB. Dcoetzee 17:48, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

While I feel plot details are an important part of articles and am opposed to spoiler warnings feeling that ultimately people have to take care when reading articles on subjects they don't want to know about, your comment is incredibly country(American?)-centric. Broadcast dates for TV series can vary significantly from country to country. On some occasions, even American series are broadcast elsewhere before being broadcast in the US. Depending on local laws and the availability of the TV series in other media, it may not even been possible for people to legally watch a series without doing something stupid like flying to another country to watch it. So while 'most of the country has already seen' something, it hardly surprising if plenty of people in other countries have not. It's still their responsibility to take care when reading, but it's not just people recording stuff causing problems for themselves as you seemed to imply. Nil Einne (talk) 06:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• What about my original question? Is there any encyclopedic reason to reveal that information instead of a brief overview of what the book is about? It doesn't seem to serve any purpose. That New York Times article has a good example of this problem. Someone hears about a play and wants to know what it is, how long its been around, its reviews, is it worth seeing, etc, but they certainly don't want the mystery ruined by the ending revealed to them. I read news articles about the Hunger Games film based on the book, saw the official Taylor Swift music video for a song she made for the soundtrack, and looked up information to see what it was. I would've rather not have seen the last sentence in the plot section reveal the ending to me. Does ruining the surprise help the article be more encyclopedic? Dream Focus 21:48, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

  Completeness is important to an encyclopedia, DF, and readers' ability to enjoy or not enjoy an outside work is, well, outside our purview. Not our job. Our job is to inform, not to tantalize people into consuming media. To go a bit reductio ad absurdum for a moment, if we're not willing to provide complete information on a book because someone might not know the ending, why would Smallpox not also end coyly before informing the reader that global eradication was successful? The ending of the history section there - the fact that humans "won" the "conflict" with the smallpox virus, is as much a spoiler as the ending of The Mousetrap, and probably nearly as many people read that article while not knowing the fate of the smallpox virus as read the article about The Mousetrap without knowing its famous ending. Why would we be willing to provide complete information for one topic (say, medicine), but not another (say, a super-famous play)? A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

  Hopefully most people can see the difference between a complete historical article and one about a work of fiction that doesn't just give out historical data about it along with critical response and whatnot, but instead goes into great detail about its plot. Mentioning the plot in such detail isn't something that has any educational value at all. Dream Focus 22:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

  am I the only editor here who finds it absolutely hilarious that this particular editor is championing a threshold of "any educational value at all." be applied to Misplaced Pages content? -- The Red Pen of Doom 22:01, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

  If we are going to be concerned with any potential loss in profit from "spoilers" appearing here, then we also need to offset the free "advertising" we give from being linked one of the top trafficked websites. -- The Red Pen of Doom 22:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

  Endings, obviously, are an important part of most works - especially those where the ending is surprising. My rule of thumb: might a scholarly article on this topic mention this aspect of it? If so, we should discuss it. Dcoetzee 02:53, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

  "Mentioning the plot in such detail isn't something that has any educational value at all" - be sure to point that out to the students who try to use Misplaced Pages to study for literature exams. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:47, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

  It's not just students either. I'm sure I'm not the only one who checks out articles and decides they either don't plan to watch/read/whatever the subject or does but doesn't care if they find out about the plot and would find the article woefully incomplete if it doesn't tell them about it. (Or I'm watching something bur decide I don't want to watch to the end and just check out our article.) If you want more detail, the article may not be enough, not the fault of wikipedia, but for a simple overview it should be. To give an example, it would be rather bizzare if Romeo and Juliet doesn't actually describe how they both commit suicide in the end and would clearly fail to inform our readers. In fact, even the discussion mentions it. For something like The Mousetrap mentioned above, or as Dcoetzee mentioned, any surprise ending, the ending itself is usually fairly notable, so failing to mention is a clear failing of wikipedia. (We also get similar complaints with stuff like magic tricks although in that case we often don't have any sourced info on how it's done.) Nil Einne (talk) 06:38, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Why would a scholarly discussion of any work of fiction fail to discuss the climax or ending of that work? Misplaced Pages is intended to have an educational purpose, not to serve as an advertising medium. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:50, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Being "educational" or not is a very arbitrary or abstract concept particularly in Misplaced Pages. As long as there's no law preventing we "spoil" the whole plot of the fictional work, whether it damages the work production or its audience or not does not concern us. (I do know that some video game publisher does request video site like Youtube to ban ending spoiler video within a set time-frame. But I suppose it is not law-binding and merely restraints their adv investment to the said site if not complied.) -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 03:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Response to NYT piece on SOPA

I'm sure you've seen the Cary Sherman piece in the NYT. I was discussing it on Slashdot and someone suggested you ought to write a quick response to the NYT piece, specifically the implicit charge that Wikipedians were 'misled' over SOPA/PIPA. As the commenter says on Slashdot, they'd probably publish it. —Tom Morris (talk) 00:18, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, as that piece is nearly a month old now, it seems unnecessary to respond to it directly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

The misrepresentation in that piece is annoying. We didn't protest for our right to "sell stolen goods" - though copyright is not a workable system in the digital age, and that metaphor should be rejected. We protested for our right to be able to say that there are people selling stolen goods somewhere in plain sight of the police, without being prosecuted in their place. Wnt (talk) 01:15, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

"We did not protest for our license to pirate copyrighted texts". Denial is not just a river in Egypt.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Your post indicates the precise problem -- that is your assertion that copyright is not a workable system in the digital age. I suggest that such is not a quote which one would like the NYT to pick up on, and is absolutely one which Jimbo would be extraordinarily ill-advised to use as an arguemnt in any venue. Misplaced Pages has far too many copyvios (inder the guise of "fair use" such as in Charles Lindbergh where one editor asserts that "fair use" trumps "copyright" in any case. ("Always there was some new experience, always something interesting going on to make the time spent at Brooks and Kelly one of the banner years in a pilot's life. The training is difficult and rigid but there is none better. A cadet must be willing to forget all other interest in life when he enters the Texas flying schools and he must enter with the intention of devoting every effort and all of the energy during the next 12 months towards a single goal. But when he receives the wings at Kelly a year later he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has graduated from one of the world's finest flying schools." "WE" (p. 125) used as a caption for a picture of the book cover). Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:00, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not the Misplaced Pages spokesman - I'm sure Jimbo will be more diplomatic, but I have no patience to pretend that copyright can be salvaged in the long term. It can't. Not unless every single computer drive in the cosmos is under the constant and eternal vigilance of the Copyright Police, unhindered by encryption, anonymity, or the risk that someone other than the registered owner is able to pick it up and read something on it. We need to come up with a new way to reward authors that is not infinitely inefficient. I've suggested ideas about that here before. In the meanwhile, I don't think someone who has a search engine or an encyclopedia should have to deal with a constant stream of court orders telling him not to say what people are talking about on the Web. Even by the analogy of theft, it's not the responsibility of the guy owning a bar to stop every customer from saying to the others that there's some guy down by the docks selling stolen jewelry who the police already know about and can't stop themselves. And that's what SOPA was going to force the non-profit organization owning Misplaced Pages to do - to comply with court orders by hiding edits by individual writers that talk about where some material is available online at sites which are not prosecuted and might not even be illegal according to their local sovereign national authorities. It was censorship, pure and simple, even if you don't count copyright as censorship. Wnt (talk) 17:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

The kickback is going to be that for $500,000 wikipedia sided with those profiting from the sale of counterfeit drugs. John lilburne (talk) 19:56, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

• FIXED as essay WP:Overquoting: Well, at least I have created a draft essay, WP:Overquoting, to explain problems of quoting sections which are too long. That essay should help reduce borderline copyright infringement, where editors seem obsessed to parrot massive tracts of text into articles. The problem might be an issue of fandom, or perhaps some think that quoting from an expert might be viewed as "more scholarly" or have weighty impact to force ideas into an article. I hope other editors will feel free to expand that essay WP:OVERQUOTE (or any others) with better ideas to reduce the problem. -Wikid77 18:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I already added Misplaced Pages:Quotation#Copyrighted_material_and_fair_use long ago. Dcoetzee 23:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
    • • That particular post, however, implies that the limit is generally over 400 words (the claim is that it is an "extreme example" to find that 400 words is a copyright violation). I find such a statement to be a bit improper for Misplaced Pages, as Misplaced Pages can be used commercially, and in one commercial copyright case a single sentence was found to be a copyright infringement. Collect (talk) 13:39, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Cite? If the courts have seriously started copyrighting sentences, we don't need another policy, we need another country. Wnt (talk) 22:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Even just phrases -- see Copyright Protection for Short Phrases. Collect (talk) 23:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

People who want a "word limit" before copying becomes copyvio are not going to find one. It's extremely dependent on context. The point of the "400 word" citation was to point out that copying a very small portion of a work (<1%) could still be a copyvio. Please feel free to expand Misplaced Pages:Quotation#Copyrighted_material_and_fair_use with citations to other relevant case law. Dcoetzee 23:23, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

One defining line is whether the infringement in any way affects the value of the work to the copyright holder. Best practice on Misplaced Pages is to use nothing which is not of specific value to the article in which the quote is used, and where other wording would not be of use to the article. My response, moreover, was addressed to an editor who seemed predisposed to allow all "fair use" despite this best practice. Collect (talk) 00:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Well... copyright is a fine system for the modern age as long as we as a society update it from time to time to keep pace with technology. It would be politically risky for Jimbo or anyone representing an important content organization to argue that the law needs to be changed to facilitate their mission, and in fact the law is just fine as it is. DMCA is part of copyright law, and it gives Misplaced Pages and other user-submitted content sites the room they need. Sure, Misplaced Pages hosts a fair amount of copyright infringement, and it is not illegal under the law for Misplaced Pages to do so. We have our community methods for catching and getting rid of it, and as a backstop there's the notice and takedown provision under DMCA. The essay seems like a good start, but there's no word limit for copyright infringement. AFAIK the 10 words, 10%, and 30 seconds guidelines are completely arbitrary - if anyone knows of a legal basis that would be useful. Anyway, WP:QUOTE has a lot of good stuff, it's well thought out. Although we'd do well to keep a wide margin around copyright infringement and avoid legal grey areas, and overly long quotes are unencyclopedic to boot, I wouldn't be so sure that very long quotations is a copyright violation in the first place. In this order a US district court recently ruled that somebody posting an entire news article to a comment page, with attribution, was protected by fair use. That's on appeal to the 9th circuit, although it's not clear that a ruling will come out. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Please make images a privilege not a right.

Now I am not super computer savvy but I'm under the impression, which I obtained many years ago, that hosting images costs vastly more than hosting simple text. So when I see something like this, as a donator, I get quite upset. Images don't need to be something that every single article needs. Even a strict or corporatist notability requirement doesn't seem to deter hundreds of relatively unknown bands from making pages full of images. Their only claim to legitimacy seems to be having a few lines about them in different language wikis which I assumed they google translated or being indie/vegan - which to me is a rabid cultish sub-culture that is detrimental to the project as a whole(both inclusion and deletion). I see this as a big problem and my suggestion is to make images a privilege especially for those "15 minutes of fame" articles. Privileges to post an image should either be thru a paid service or certain amount of acclaim. I see mindless deletion of articles as stupid as mindless inclusion of images to this encyclopedia.24.4.67.101 (talk) 09:05, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Christ almighty... Just looked at The Mountain Goats and noticed that a band of marginal notability has its own template listing FORTY NINE child articles. That, IMO, is more of a cause for concern than the amount of images. ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹ 09:26, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Things have moved on since the days of dial-up Internet access and people expect some images in articles. The question of notability for The Mountain Goats is a separate one (I'd never heard of them, but with over 3 million articles this is unsurprising).--♦IanMacM♦ 11:08, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I think what 24.4.67.101 is driving at is that some individuals/organisations may use the Commons and then Misplaced Pages as venues to distribute images for their own self-promotion - instead of putting up an album on Facebook, they put it on here where it can be seen by (potentially) far more people. We may be at the point now where a Misplaced Pages article is worth more to a band than a write-up in a major magazine. ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹ 11:44, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

The sources in The Mountain Goats are not strong, and many articles about pop groups have been deleted for this reason. On the issue of excessive data use, a few images are not a problem, but Misplaced Pages has never been heavily involved in hosting videos because they are much more bandwidth intensive.--♦IanMacM♦ 11:52, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Pitchfork search results for Mountain Goats This is actually a great little group. Quirky, narrative-type songwriting, I've enjoyed these guys for years. The Interior (Talk) 15:15, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of them either, tbh– too busy listening to Grandaddy, who've just reformed! :D For a few shows, at least... Nortonius (talk) 15:20, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Glad to hear it, Sophtware Slump was a great album. The Interior (Talk) 15:28, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand your concern about the images. There are only three in that article, that doesn't seem excessive to me. The notability issues are significant, though - take the article on one of their recent albums, The Life of the World to Come (album). According to that article, it peaked at number 110 in the album charts and the article makes no other assertions of notability. How is that a notable album? I suspect speedy deletion is the correct way to deal with most of the articles about this band. --Tango (talk) 16:01, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Notability is in terms of substantial, third-party coverage (in this case Spin and Pitchfork), not Billboard stats. Please let us not use Billboard stats to determine our music coverage! The Interior (Talk) 16:16, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Those are just reviews. They review pretty much every album released. That doesn't constitute substantial coverage. High positions in the charts or winning major awards are the main ways an album could be notable enough for its own article. If you want to establish notability based on news coverage, you would need much more than just reviews in online music magazines. --Tango (talk) 17:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Spin and Pitchfork review pretty much every album released? That's news to me. is an interview, not a review. The Mountain Goats have played live on national television three times, and six of their songs have been used in two fairly popular television series. They are so far beyond garage band status that this whole section should be archived. 71.212.231.71 (talk) 02:12, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

An awful lot of bands play live on national television and an awful lot of music gets used in television shows. This group may themselves be somewhat notable but that doesn't mean that they warrant FORTY NINE articles! This band exemplifies a wider problem with music articles - the editors who create them seem to think it's acceptable to churn out as many pages as possible, regardless of propriety or quality. The result is that instead of having a single good, informative article there are twenty (or 49) lousy articles that serve no purpose whatsoever except existing (and appearing on "my creations" sections of userpages). ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹ 02:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree with Tango on the images. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the use of images in that article. The ridiculous number of articles dedicated to the band is another issue though. If the band itself is notable (I wouldn't know), then most articles could probably be merged into a discography child. Resolute 16:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Your impression is many years out of date. Images cost more than text, yes, but they're still cheap. At a guess, I'd say that the three images on that page cost Misplaced Pages at most a dollar per quarter-million pageviews. --Carnildo (talk) 10:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

As an aside, I'll note that the three images on the page total 36 kB (14.3 kB, 9.1 kB, and 12.6 kB), whereas the HTML for the article is more than twice that, clocking in at 82 kB. If we dropped all the images, we'd only be shaving about 30% off the downloaded file size. Most images displayed in our articles are reduced-size and reduced-resolution thumbnails. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:18, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Is Jimbo listening?

I haven't seen his name here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.11.71.124 (talk) 04:39, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

You haven't looked closely enough - he does respond here occasionally, and I suspect he reads a lot that he doesn't bother to respond to. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Every user in Wikimedia has their own freedom to decide if they want to respond to the messages in their talk page. And this is no exception for Jimbo. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 05:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

...even when he's been asked directly to respond, regarding issues about which he has expressed concern, so it seems! Nortonius (talk) 10:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo is not dead, but he has been quiet in the last few days. If he were dead, his article would have been updated by now:)--♦IanMacM♦ 11:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

"Shout more loudly, for he is a god; either he is conversing, or he has stepped aside, or he is in a journey, or perhaps he sleepeth, and must be awakened." Sorry, couldn't resist.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

What is it they say in the movies? Something like "it's quiet, too quiet– the natives are restless!" ;op Nortonius (talk) 11:18, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I actually was on vacation last week and did not look at this page much. I do try to read everything here, and I do try to respond to direct inquiries. Often, though, I find that inquiries are well-answered by others and then in those cases I may choose not to respond. It has happened that people have gotten upset about that, thinking that I was ignoring or evading their question, when I was just thinking, oh, the question has already been answered. I try to avoid that but it sometimes happens. In any event, I'm back from vacation now, and should be here on this page quite a bit this week.

: Nortonius, I followed your link but I'm unclear what your question is exactly. I recommend that you start a new discussion here with a precise title, and a precise question, including direct links to any background reading I should be aware of, and avoiding or explaining acronyms as much as possible. You mention, for example, an "NPP Proposal" and discuss policy around IRC, but I'm unsure what you are asking specifically.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:32, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes, holidays! I'd forgotten about those. ;o) Did I miss an "out of office" message or something? Sorry if I did. I wasn't so much "upset" as deflated, especially when the thread in question went to archive; I'm still low on steam for all sorts of reasons, however, but thanks for the suggestions, I'll try to work something up if need be.

For now though, a specific question is, would you be inclined to comment at Misplaced Pages talk:IRC/wikipedia-en-help? Discussion there concerns a perceived need for the live IRC channel "en-help" to be explicitly controlled by the WP community, as opposed to the group who run it, vs. a view that "it ain't broke so don't fix it" (though I don't mean that to be a demeaning characterisation); it was started by Chzz (talk · contribs), who has withdrawn from WP until en-help's relationship with WP is clearly defined, with the WP community in control (that's how I understand it: look at his current talk page). An issue here is that "en-help" is effectively advertised from within WP, for example in numerous, heavily-used "help" templates, even though it seems not to be part of, or controlled from within, WP. Discussion has pretty much ground to a halt, with strong emotions being expressed, and I'm hopeful that a clear contribution from you might give it direction.

The quickest way for me to explain what I mean by "NPP proposal" is to point you to the lead article in this September 2011 edition of The Signpost, which refers to "a heated altercation between English Misplaced Pages community members and MediaWiki sysadmins". It seems to me that all of these issues are related, indicating a worrying disjuncture between the skills and experience of the voluntary WP community, who are contributing freely to a 💕, and have their own, empirical understanding of "what really makes WP tick", and the perhaps inevitably more business-minded plans of the WMF; and, I'd like to hear your views on that.

Short of me starting out on a whole new explanation, could I ask you to have another look at the original thread on your talk page (its final form is here, though it sounds like you already found it)? It did grow rather long, but it includes lots of diffs and other links which I would only repeat if I started again here– but feel free to ask for further clarification…? If I can't supply it, I'm sure there are people who can.

I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I were to say that we're talking here about some fundamental issues for the future of WP, as it has to do with satisfaction among WP editors new and old, and new article creation; and, apart from anything else, I imagine that you'll know plenty more about what's gone on and what's being planned than I can, so I'd appreciate your input. Especially since, as far as I am aware, no-one from WMF was inclined to contribute on your talk page in your absence. Thanks for your time. Nortonius (talk) 16:06, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

This just highlights IMO one aspect and reason that editors seem to be fleeing Misplaced Pages at an unprecedented pace. In the last month we've list more than a dozen experienced and dedicated editors including Bishonen, Chzz, Kumioko (that's over half a million edits between them) and a pile of others. All for slightly different reasons but at the core of it are issues of incivility, equal treatment of editors and a return to the old days when people generally assumed good faith and hadn't yet been mentality of "if I haven't seen them here before then they must be a vandal of some kind" or "I must protect my articles". 71.163.243.232 (talk) 23:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I would appriciate your input on this AFD

I may of tagged it to soon but I felt an AFD was warranted here is the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/List_of_products_endorsed_by_Jennifer_Lopez. Thanks TucsonDavidU.S.A. 07:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC),

Never mind don't want to seem like I'm trying to swing the vote on it. TucsonDavidU.S.A. 07:25, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Just because you mention it here doesn't mean we're going to agree with you; in any case, a single strike isn't going to deter us. Wnt (talk) 17:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Useful rivendale bikes articles

Rrecent southwest durham blog — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.80.226.88 (talk) 08:43, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

How can I find this out?

How can I find out how many categories there are in Commons? How can I find out how many categories there are in English Misplaced Pages?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:28, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

commons:Commons:Database reports/Page count by namespace / Misplaced Pages:Database reports/Page count by namespace - Kingpin (talk) 12:31, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

(ec)There are now 850,875 categories on the English Misplaced Pages, including all the uncreated but populated categories (there are many thousands of those) (my count, no database reporrt that lists this apparently). Without the uncreated ones, there are now 824,783 categories on the English Misplaced Pages. My search for it at least led me to discover that we have many, many cats waiting to be created, and many, many cats in articles waiting to be corrected to an existing one. Yet another thing on my to do list...

Further: there are apparently 1,904,529 categories on Commons. Fram (talk) 12:43, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

How many top level or second level categories? After all "naked children" ought to be enough for most purposes without adding up "naked child standing up", "naked child stitting down", "naked child running", "naked child with legs apart", "naked child being molested (old drawing of)". John lilburne (talk) 13:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Putting aside the pejorative nature of this for a moment, "naked children" would clearly not be a top level category either. Wnt (talk) 17:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I do wish you would stop impugning comments by shoving your own interpretation into them. There was nothing pejorative in the list I gave above. I could equally have exampled "Objects used as sex aids": 'Carrot used as masturbation device', 'Cucumber used as masturbation device', 'Corgette used as masturbation device', 'leek used as masturbation device', "nokia mobile phone used as masturbation device', 'iphone used as masturbation device', 'android phone used as masturbation device', 'toothbrush used as masturbation device', ... 'gerbil used as masturbation device' John lilburne (talk) 19:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

• Top-level rank is somewhat subjective: As noted, the stratifying of categories is not "perfect" and a top-level category could be a category-page which contains no category links in the internal text. However, a redlinked category name has no "internal text" so would have no category links inside and appear to be a top-level category, rather than a sub-category name which was never described with a category-page. Perhaps a typical ratio could be calculated, such as "4% of many categories are top-level" by running statistical samples and counting how many of those were truly intended (redlinks and all) as top-level category names. Beware there seem to be many "categoryholics" who can put 9 items into 27 subcategories, as there is no physical limit to stereotyping or categorizing items into a billion invented categories. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:32, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

English Misplaced Pages has Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Categories, whose members are especially qualified to answer questions about categories in English Misplaced Pages.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

hey new to board

Hey i am sam from pakistan i am new to this board hope i will particapte alot here sorry for bad english . :) Peace — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.214.169.123 (talk) 12:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)