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How about: Sectioning off of/possible banning of Fictional Universe articles

Information is, in general, good. But not all of it is really valuable.

And I, like many people, enjoy some computer/video games/science fiction/fantasy stories/worlds. But think about this: How much do articles like "Star Forge," "Luccia," or "Sarah Kerrigan" really add to our knowledge of the world?

I propose that there should be a separate "Fictional Universes" wiki. We know that games/movies like Star Wars, Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings have influenced world pop culture, and that they often have huge amounts of detail, but with the goal of Misplaced Pages being useful knowledge, too much information about those things begins to seem frivolous.

Put another way, I don't think Misplaced Pages needs to be a competitor to Gamefaqs, or starwars.com, or battle.net.

I just think that Misplaced Pages, assuming it is an encyclopedia, might be best limited to at least real information about completely real things.

Please criticize/respond. --Zaorish 21:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

• I am strongly opposed to this idea. First of all, we are an encyclopedia- and, as such, we need to contain encyclopediac information. Time and the Rani is perfectly encyclopediac. Second, anything that factions Misplaced Pages, as a community or an encylcopedia is a very, very, bad thing. So, again, I'm strongly opposed to this idea.--Sean|Black 22:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
• I support the idea to move this to a separate wiki. The information should not be lost, but it would be excellent to move it elsewhere. --Improv 22:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Ummm no. Mememory alpha is worrying enough. The articles are not doing any harm and tend to be fairly accuret. As long as thier minor characters lists don't suddenly tern into lots of stubs I don't see a problem.Geni 23:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I tend to adopt a mergist approach to these -- fewer larger articels are better than more smaller articles, particualrly stubs. I especially oppose the creation of stubs for minor fictional characters, adn will merge these with the appropriate article on the larger work. But fictional works are often of significant cultural importance and there is no simple way to draw the line between thsoe that are and those that are not. I do wish WP:FICT was more rigourously followed, however. DES 23:08, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Where would Sherlock Holmes, Horatio Hornblower, Elizabeth Bennet, Tarzan, and Sam Spade go? Dsmdgold 23:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I hate to discount you so lightly, but this is a perennial proposal and the subject of endless contention. See Misplaced Pages:Fancruft for example. This isn't changing overnight, and I personally favour the status quo. My policy is, if I see a topic about a fictional entity that is too obscure, I merge it with related entities into a summary/list article such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time characters. For what it's worth, I think Sarah Kerrigan is an excellent article consolidating plot information from diverse primary sources across many games (perhaps overdoing it a bit on the links). She may not be as notable as Link or Mario, but I hate to see good content obliterated. Deco 23:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

There is no problem with covering the subject matter of fictional characters on Misplaced Pages. The problem is instead how they are covered. It is mostly done with very little context—no attempt to firmly tie everything that is said to be true about the character to the works of fiction in which they are depicted. See Radioactive_Man_(Marvel_Comics) for an example of this flaw; excepting the word "fictional" in the intro sentence and the infobox details, the article is written as if the subject were real. No reference is made in the article text to a single writer, artist, or even comic book issue or title. See also the "character history" of Spider-Man, which starts with summarizing a plot about his parents having been spies that was not written until after over thirty years of publication history. These articles merely paraphrase fiction rather than describe it, and appear to be written from a fan perspective rather than a cultural historian.

Compare those with Captain Marvel, a recent featured article, or Superman. Both summarize the history of the characters in the real world, revealing the "facts" of fiction according to that framework. We need a very clear set of guidelines to make sure all articles about fictional characters are written in this manner. Postdlf 23:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that's a problem, but that's what {{sofixit}} is for.--Sean|Black 23:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I think both fiction-oriented and real-world-oriented presentation orders are each appropriate in different circumstances, sometimes both in one article. Summarization of the plot of a fictional work in chronological order is an integral part of many articles on books, movies, and other fictional works. On the other hand, an article should never exclusively summarize the fiction, but should also talk about the entity's history, practical aspects of its creation (e.g. influence on gameplay), and cultural impact. Deco 23:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I just think that Misplaced Pages, assuming it is an encyclopedia, might be best limited to at least real information about completely real things. Someone better tell Brittanica that their article on Hamlet ain't encyclopedic. And I can't wait for the deletion wheel war on Jesus. android79 23:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: the interest in "fiction-oriented" presentation, I think the chronology we should be most concerned with is real-world. A story written later but "taking place" earlier should be described as such, but the publication order should dictate the structure of the article; fictional canons are not our concern, but instead how the character has been used at different times. A true history of the character will only get obscured if the present bleeds into the past. Why should a recent story lead the info given about a character that has a much older body of work depicting him? Summarizing the plot in an article about a book is necessary and appropriate. But in an article about a murder mystery novel, for example, you wouldn't start the summary by describing who done it and how even though the murder is what happens first in fictional chronology, if the book reveals the murderer's identity last. The order in which things are revealed to the audience, whether within one work or across a series, is of utmost importance.

But the lack of real-world context is not only a problem of academic integrity, but an issue of copyright infringement. Both of the major comic book companies, as well as the Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi franchises have officially published numerous encyclopedia-style books about their characters and associated fictional universes. I suspect that many of the cruftiest, context-less articles are mere paraphrases of these (or of video game manuals, role-playing games, etc.). Even those that aren't are still doing more than merely reporting facts—they are simply summarizing fiction without transforming it or adding new information to it. This arguably makes these articles mere derivative works of the original fiction.

This is a systemic problem probably because the ones most driven to write about certain fictional characters are fans who are mostly concerned with "knowing" the complete and "true" story of the fictional universe. We need a guideline page (something like Misplaced Pages:Writing about fictional characters) that sets out the principles I've described above, with an accompanying template that will label and categorize an article about fictional characters as lacking that context (the trick is finding the right concise language). We have Template:Fiction, but it needs to be made clear that inserting a "this character is fictional" disclaimer in the introductory sentence of a ten paragraph article is not enough. I lack the time to solve this problem on my own, but I will definitely assist anyone else who wishes to contribute to solving it. Postdlf 00:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I would favor soemthing of the sort Postdif suggests here. DES 00:31, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

User:Uncle G/Describe this universe might be a worthwhile starting point. —Charles P. (Mirv) 14:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the examples of good and bad writing that Uncle G used make it clear that he's getting at the same point that I am. Postdlf 15:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

We do have the ability to create interwiki links to many, many other wiki projects, like those over at Wikicities (I'd like to see these become more transparent, but excepting MΑ and Wookiepedia, there's not much completeness over there). I'd like to see some of the cruft trimmed, true (and am working on it with The Wheel of Time series), but if it helps our regular editors to do a ] article or three before jumping back into quantum physics, it does little harm. -- nae'blis _(talk) 00:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I'm impressed that this 'perennial proposal' caused so much controversy. Looking over the responses, it seems that Consolidation of those articles might be best--ie, an article about "Star Wars," then maybe an article on "Minor Star Wars Characters" and not an article about every single Jedi and their favorite ice cream flavor. In the future I'll try to generally put this into practice, by suggesting merges.

It's true, assuming Misplaced Pages has unlimited space, then articles about fictional universes could/should indeed be unlimited, because there is no harm in posting them. I was just taking into account the fact that Misplaced Pages is nonprofit and that more space/server power costs significant amounts of money.

And obviously Jesus and Sherlock Holmes are more important than something like Star Forge. Your argument, friends android and Dsmdgold, is something called reductio ad absurdum.

Postdlf: Your idea on a new fictional character template could be valuable, to put fictional concepts/characters in their cultural context before delving into obscure details.

And thank you all for your (generally) well-reasoned responses. ; 3 --Zaorish 14:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm checking back. I found this article: StarCraft Secret Missions. It's literally a /verbatim/ transcript of a few levels from a computer game. I personally would move to delete it. Any objections? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.216.217.174 (talk • contribs)

What an awful article. The text forgets that it's describing a video game and instead tells a story. I can't even tell who the player is supposed to be, what the player controls, what events are mere contingencies, or what events are actually experienced in game play versus read about or seen in movies. This is not an article. Postdlf 15:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose such an idea. Fictional universes are an important part of our culture. I would possibly support the merge/removal of fictional stubs, but content which can make a decent article should be kept. -- Astrokey44|talk 15:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree. Misplaced Pages is not paper and to make restrictions of this sort on content would, IMO, open the door for further content restrictions to the point where Misplaced Pages will become nothing but a bunch of articles on nuclear physics and Shakespeare (and even then, banning an article on, say Mr. Spock means you'd have to ban articles on Shakespeare's characters, right?) and that's not what this place is about. I've already seen some people grumbling about banning articles based on film and TV shows, for example. I've nothing against guidelines, but creating a separate wiki for this would be a mistake. The priority should be on improving articles if substandard ones arise. 23skidoo 15:27, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• Two points:
  1. Misplaced Pages is not infinite, but we are specifically advised by WP:NOT#Misplaced Pages is not a paper encyclopedia not to worry about space limitations. Our concern should always be only on the encyclopedic nature of the topic and the quality of the article.
  2. I think the real problem is not so much that there are all these fictional-universe articles, it's that so many Misplaced Pages editors lavish so much attention on them rather than the more mundane topics like "Gary, Indiana" or "Container Security Initiative". But there are many dimensions of perceived imbalance in Misplaced Pages, like "not enough people articles" or "too many stubs" or "not enough cleanup being done" or "too much focus on the manual of style". We must remember that the whole project operates on the assumption that a worldwide community of freelance editors will eventually get around to working on any perceived deficiencies — and do them justice as well. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • • As a sub-point to this one, I thought I should mention that although Misplaced Pages's space is unlimited a lot of people still think that the effort spent on editing stuff is zero-sum - ie, that if someone spends an hour working on a Star Trek article, then that's an hour they didn't spend working on something of "real importance." I think this is not the case, personally, and eliminating the "unimportant" articles would have the opposite effect; people who come here to tinker around with Star Trek articles and every once in a while toss something useful into one of the real science articles would just leave altogether. They almost certainly wouldn't turn all the energy they spend refining articles on their favourite fictions toward topics they aren't interested in, these are all volunteers here. Bryan 16:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Strongly Oppose this idea, but also empathise. I think a compromise is good. A lot of Fictional Universe articles and all their linked sub-articles have too many sub-articles. For instance, you probably don't need a sub-article for a character that appeared once on a show. Or in Stargate Atlantis, for instance, you probably don't need an article for the minor few-episodes character Bob (Wraith). So scrap the stubs and unneeded articles, but certainly keep the main bulk. Fiction like Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and so on are massive cultural influences and have shaped both our history and television/cinema's history. And to be honest, I feel that most of the articles under these are concise whilst being detailed, informative, without POV or fancruft, and ultimately also useful. -- Alfakim --  talk  16:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

This proposal is hopelessly bad, IMO. But if it does make any progress towards being implemented, by some chance, I insist that we also include sports-related articles under its umbrella. There are thousands of articles in Misplaced Pages about trivial unimportant sportsmen who play trivial unimportant games that have nothing to do with curing cancer or military battles or whatever it is that're supposed to be "serious" subjects. Since I have no interest in sport, there's obviously no value in having articles about it and it's just a waste of everyone's time writing them. (The preceeding opinion is only a semi-parody :) Bryan 16:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Templates are always a good idea, though. --Happylobster 18:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, deja vu all over again.  :) I well remember the contretemps at Talk:Mithril, lo these over three years ago.  :) User:Zoe| 19:09, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• Ultra-extreme oppose This is an incredably bad idea. Here is why:
  • Some articles provide practical information, like where to watch TV shows, or backround info to unconfuse new fans. An example of this is: List of Stargate SG-1 episodes
  • Many fictional articles are about classics and are naturaly part of history.
  • Many are so largely know, like Harry Potter that it would be stupid not to have an article on them.
  • Fictional articles on video games act as a guide for players to do better in the game.
  • The whole reason I contribute to wikipedia is that wikipedias vision is having all of humankinds knowlage in one place is an achiveable goal, which I try to work towards. If we start exporting info, this goal will be lost, and many users who follow this vision will stop contributing. Tobyk777 01:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose - I disagree with the idea that we should delete articles on fictional places / concepts / characters &c. I do however agree that it should be clear in the opening paragraph that the subject is fictional and what particular fictional universe it relates to. As for having lots of stub articles, surely this was why the Misplaced Pages:Fiction guideline was written? -- Lochaber 15:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
• I generally agree with what User:Sean Black said above. Articles on fiction need to be presented in that context. They exist in a fictional universe but were created by someone real and the article needs to convey that connection to reality. These fiction articles on popular culture draw in a lot of potential editors who can (theoretically) practice their wiki-skills on these and satisfy their fanboy urges before moving on to real-world articles. Also, as User:Nae'blis mentioned above there are wikis dedicated to each show, like Wookieepedia and StargateWiki. --maclean25 05:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

As part of this (perennial) discussion, I'd just like to briefly discuss a retort to the classic Misplaced Pages is Not Paper argument. It is true that we have an unlimited capacity for topics, and I frankly don't buy the "articles use resources" argument (the total sum of all articles ever deleted is unlikely to exceed a few megabytes in disk space and network bandwidth). However, topics on obscure fictional entities can be disruptive for several reasons:

• Each article must independently establish the context of the universe, leading to a great deal of redundant content which is difficult to maintain.
• These articles can be very difficult to expand. In the real world we can always derive new information about real people, places, and things. In fiction, we know only what the creator tells us; if a character appears in only one chapter of a book, it's quite unlikely that after proper summarization we'll be able to say more than a paragraph about the character, ever. Articles this short are not particularly useful, spending more time establishing context than describing the subject.
• Attempting to learn about the universe as a whole involves a difficult, unorganized navigation between many small articles, each different in its style and assumptions, that can frustrate readers.

This is why I recommend that groups of related articles about obscure fictional entities be merged into a single summary or list article, or into a "parent" article: the context need only be established once, all together they have enough detail to fill out an article, relationships can be established between entities by direct reference instead of cumbersome links, and the order of presentation can be controlled for maximum brevity and clarity. In fact, I recommend this approach for any group of strongly related small articles - if one of them later outgrows the list article, it can easily be moved back out, as occurred for example with Agahnim. Deco 05:21, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of using sub-pages, e.g., Stargate/Daniel Jackson instead of Daniel Jackson, and having big colorful templates at the top of all the fiction-based articles clearly indicating that they are fiction-based with the name of the source work (book, show, etc.) and genre, to aid the many clueless wikisurfers out there. James S. 10:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Subpages in the main namespace were deprecated long ago, and with good cause. Should Daniel Jackson be a subpage of Stargate, or a subpage of Fictional character, or a subpage of Michael Shanks? As a subpage it can only be under one of these, and I hate to imagine the many pointless and time-consuming arguments all over Misplaced Pages about which articles should be subpages of which other articles. This is the sort of thing that categories are for instead. Bryan 20:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose: I've heard this argument many times and I always have a few unanswered questions.
  • I never understand why people want to move this information to other wikis. Why not have it here? It still uses 'resources' if it is hosted on a separate wiki. Considering how articles should have their sources cited, most of the information that is available on Misplaced Pages is indeed available elsewhere. Instead of having a (mostly) pointless article about Still Sick... Urine Trouble (which was the first article forthcoming from the Random Article link), why not just tell our browsers to go to another site? Is that not what hosting on another wiki would do? I thought that one of the goals of Misplaced Pages was to consolidate knowledge so that people do not have to search around on multiple websites.
  • If you do move such information to another wiki, what's to stop users from recreating the articles? Would a "crime" that be treated as innocent ignorance (we do, after all, encourage new users to try the wiki out) or as something more serious, like vandalism? I'm sure those editors will want to return after they receive a friendly warning not to edit "like that" again.
  • As well, I've never understood why fictional information is targeted. Why not also move everything that is mathematical to another math-related wiki, as Bryan has said? Or sports? Where do we stop? Where do we draw the line? Before we can decide exactly what constitutes "irrelevant and over-obsessive fancruft" and what is "actual fact belonging in an encyclopedia", we should not remove anything.
  • I’m also worried about estranging users by moving/removing information. Certainly there are those who only contribute to fiction-based articles such as these, but others help out in other areas as well. I'm proof of that, for I've touched up a Jedi article or two while also restructuring the ringette article at the same time (not yet done, btw). What message are we sending to potential editors if the "global encyclopedia" does not allow information of one of their many preferred subjects?
  • However, I do have to agree with what others have said before me about quality. There are certainly articles that are unwikied, unclear and unintelligent. Every article that fits that description should be deleted. Some articles do not have enough information to justify their existence and that is the nature of fiction: we can only document what the creator gives us. I still would like to see articles of high quality created and maintained, and some of these fiction-based stubs have merit. While a few/some/most articles should definitely be merged and combined, others have potential and should be expanded upon, not banned. Maybe we cansystematically check every What Links Here section as potential critera for what can be merged? Take the HoloNet article, for example (a Star Wars one; I followed links for a stub, trolling for an example to use here). I initially thought that it could be merged into a larger article, but with twelve "real" (i.e. non-user) articles citing it, I don't think that moving it/removing it would be a simple task, especially if you consider all the articles that a major sweep would entail.
  • In short, I don't see the point of moving/removing articles resulting from fictional universes. Moving them still uses resources, while removing them detracts from Misplaced Pages's main goals. Both need clear and precise guidelines; else, everything will eventually be sectioned off into other wikis or even deleted entirely. And both moving to another wiki or deletion will alienate editors who bear knowledge; a precious commodity. I vote that we keep all articles derived from fictional universes. –Aeolien 04:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Seriously Very Strongly Absolutely Agree and am Willing to Killl People to Make it Happen. I say we get rid of all the fictitious crap in Misplaced Pages. Dumb fictitious stories and twerps who write nothing but crap they make up, based only some-what on the truth. Who needs any of it? I know I could've done without it during my life-time... *ahem* Sorry, the urge to comment was overwhelming. Heavy dose of sarcasm. 203.173.22.63 08:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose: Many have rebutted the motion in general terms, Let me answer the direct question asked by the original poster of this topic.

How much do articles like "Star Forge," "Luccia," or "Sarah Kerrigan" really add to our knowledge of the world?

• • When I hear or read one of these terms and I have no idea what it is, so I look them up in wikipedia. It tells me first off that they are Fictional devices or characters. The some basics about them so I can understand the reference to the character location or item without having read the original fiction. If I am then interested in this particular fiction it then gives me the reference (i.e. the original books/games/movies/etc) where I can see/learn experinece more about this fictional item/character and/or location.
  • It is true that anyone particular article on a fictional thing is not likely to be relevent to any particular person. But by the same token almost all articles on fictional things will be relevant to some person at some point when they come across something which they may or may not realise is a reference to a fictional thing.

Waza 04:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This is the worst idea ever strongly oppose -- Truth is, we don't even know if Moses is real -- should we get rid of the article? After all, he's probably just a character in some really old book. What about god? Just because these ideas may be fictional doesn't mean they shouldn't be included. Same goes for all of these other notable works of fiction as well -- I love that Misplaced Pages has an article on chewbacca and pikachu. -Quasipalm 04:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

STRONGLY OPPOSE for reasons stated above. The Wookieepedian 01:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

STRONGLY AGREE I have seen poets, authors, socially relevant people, events and historical articles, all deleted in this Misplaced Pages, all while Pokemon and other such articles survive? No doubt Pokemon (and Star Wars) are of interest to people, but you have to wonder what their roll is here. Take Star Wars for example, Star Wars was socially significant in the 70’s, 80’s and made a comeback in the 90’s. But in the big picture of humanity (and Misplaced Pages), it merits recognition in its proper context. It does not merit having every bit of its minutia trivia recorded here, and there has to be some limit. A separate Misplaced Pages (with reasonable policies) for subjects like this would enable those interested in recording the minutia of perhaps socially interesting but not socially significant things would have that forum. When Pokemon is displacing real life people and events, our priorities have become skewed. (Incidentally, I LOVE LOTR, however would count it in the same category as Star Wars. Interesting, worthy of note perhaps, but should not consume, monopolize or displace more relevant articles. LinuxDude 08:05, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

STRONGLY GROK like I get really tired of seeing the fictional stuff when I plunk Random Article, and I would LOVE to have a choice, a check box, where I could tune my Randoms (this idea could be expanded further) ... And would anybody really mind having a different color background on ALL of the fictional stuff? (let's argue about the color for a few weeks, but would you believe "#CCFFFF" light cyan? ;Bear 02:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Whilst I agree in principle with the concept of readily identifying articles about fictional things, this is a slippery slope because there will then be lots of argument over what is fictional. This will include almost all religious articles. And where does a technical article about, say, a fictional film film go? (BTW1, I think the fictional artciles should be in the main wiki, but fewer larger ones is best.) -- SGBailey 08:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wait a minute, I sort of get what you're saying, Bear, but what's that grok word mean? I know, I'll look it up on the Misplaced Pages. Hmmm, "...was coined by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is part of the fictional Martian language..." Oops, it's about fiction. I better go and nominate it for deletion now. Anville 15:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

A word can be sourced from fiction and yet become part of real-life usage. Grok is one such, muggle another. (If you don't consider muggle to be a valid word as you consider wizrads to be fictional, then try Geo-muggle which relates to Geocaching. -- SGBailey 08:56, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Conditionally Oppose: I see Zaorish's point, however the hundreds of hours already put into such articles would seriously discourage those people to come back and contribute elsewhere. I agree however that these articles need to be tightened. Stubs should be avoided and, when found, quickly merged with the appropriate main or more substansive article. Lady Aleena | Talk 09:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Meh-style conditional support. Yes, the argument to compile all human knowledge at Misplaced Pages is a good one, but a list of every television episode of shows like Dilbert and Stargate SG-1 isn't helpful to achieving this goal. Maybe start another Wiki, call it something like "WikiSeries," and transwiki all of those articles there. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule (Memory Alpha being a good example) where the wiki's contents make it near manditory to keep lists of that sort of thing, and synopses and all that, but Misplaced Pages should not be TV Guide. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 04:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Oppose The effects fiction has on reality has been well documented such as Star Trek communicators, making way for the cell phones. --Masssiveego 18:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Agree A project such as Wikiseries exists. It focus only on TV series. I think it's a good idea to have a short article on Misplaced Pages, and an interwiki link on a more specialized Wiki such as http://www.wikiseries.org (build by a TV series fan, only a french speaking version). This TV wiki needs some help yet. Anonymous guy 14:00 GMT+1 2 February 2006.

Oppose According to the sister wiki Wiktionary, an encyclopedia is supposed to be comprehensive]. That means everything is fair game. Part of the allure of Misplaced Pages is that you can theoretically enter just about anything and find something on the topic...and if not, you can write about it! Applejuicefool 22:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Oppose Many people spent hours of work only to create articles about ficitonal people, technology, episodes of a series, etc. If we would get rid of them, many people would be angry for doing so much work for nothing. Also I think as an encyclopedia Misplaced Pages doesn't have any borders about which should be added or not. And as mentioned above what is fictional and what not. The borders are too fuzzy. Diabound00 16:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Strongly oppose this idea. Fictional universes doesn't mean that they're unencyclopedic. If one is against the creation of an article, a compromise definitely could be reached. As of writing there's nothing wrong with the inclusion of the above mentioned universes. --Andylkl 10:22, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Poll for naming convention of television content

There has never been a naming convention for television programming on Misplaced Pages so there are articles currently named:

• Television or TV? Century City (television), Hunter (TV), Miracles (tv)
• include TV? The Boondocks (television series), Lost (TV series), Beauty and the Beast (series)
• Show type? The Chair (game show), Joey (sitcom), Martha (tv program)
• Show/show? Charlie Rose (show), Los Luchadores (Tv Show)
• ??? Academic Challenge (national)
• Network? Bullseye (CNBC), It Takes a Thief (Discovery Channel), The Late Late Show (CBS)
• Country of origin? A Current Affair (US) and A Current Affair (Australia), Blind Date (US television) and Blind Date (UK television), Big Brother (USA TV series) and Big Brother (UK TV series)

Please help out by voting at the Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (television)/poll and voting on through February 15 2006. There have been two previous polls , , which failed to reach a consensus and proved to be divisive. Make your opinion heard and fix this issue! Thanks for your input and votes --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 18:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I have started to use (TV series). I even got a new entry renamed when I saw that (TV series) seemed to be the most used naming convention. However, here is where the waters get muddy. If there are 2 or more TV series with the same name, it is suggested that the convention be (YEAR TV series).

Example:

• The Invisible Man (1958 TV series)
• The Invisible Man (1975 TV series)
• The Invisible Man (2000 TV series)

There may also instances where there are 2 series with the same name in different countries, though off the top of my head I can't think of any. The convention should be SHOWNAME (COUNTRY TV series).

Lady Aleena 10:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. You may want to consider voting for the poll. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 21:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Use of pre-1923 "copyrighted" stock images

There are a couple of images on Corbis I would like to use for articles, but am reluctant to upload images from such a commercial stock image site. The images in question are pre-1923, as stated in the image information on the website. I do not know if they were in fact published before 1923 though. Corbis claims copyright on the digital version. What has been the general practice or policy with inclusion of such images on Misplaced Pages? — Eoghanacht 14:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

if you can asscertain they were published long enough ago tag as {{PD-US}} or {{PD-art}} depending on exactly how old they are. Plugwash 15:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Corbis can claim whatever it likes, but even reputable institutions and companies frequently claim copyright over things that are in fact public domain, because they lose nothing by doing so and will discourage plenty of copiers. This chart is very helpful in determining what is and is not in the public domain in the U.S. Regarding whether something was published, if the author died prior to 1936, it's irrelevant; it's all in the public domain. What can you tell us about the images that would help us figure out what category they belong to? Postdlf 15:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

They are black and white studio portraits of George Jay Gould II (aka "Jay Gould" or "Jay Gould, Jr."). The pictures are very obviously professionally done -- but with no photographer referenced. The first seems to have an older non-Corbis copyright tag in the lower corner -- although I cannot read all of it (only the city) at the preview resolution. This first one also has a 1910 date in the Corbis info. Unfortunately I just realized that this first image has a faint "CORBIS" watermark over it (not particulary visible in this particular image, though). The second image does not have a date, but he looks several years younger than he is in another image dated 1925. I have a version of this second file without the watermark. — Eoghanacht 16:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I would imagine they are safe to use, providing the Corbis marks and etc are stripped off of them. I really hate it when big companies and institutions make false copyright claims. They definitely know better, they just hope people believe their lies so they can sell them for big bucks. If you need help stripping stuff or want a more thorough opinion, you can post the image to someplace like yousendit.com or rapdidshare.de (I think that's the name) and link to it so one of us can look. DreamGuy 18:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• Just as a note: Corbis claims the copyright to a ton of known-PD images (including a bunch of PD-USGov images). When one is sure that the image is in the public domain, one should not hestitate to ignore their blanket claims. I once tried to e-mail them about a few images I knew were PD and they responded that they don't care. --Fastfission 19:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, here is what they wrote me back (this was some time ago):

Thank you for taking the time to write with your copyright query regarding images NA007397, IH132146 and IH129444. Corbis owns the copyright to our digital scans of these images. The underlying images are in the public domain in which no one owns the copyright.

Which is complete nonsense -- scanning an image does not generate a copyright, at least not in the United States. I wrote back to them:

I'm fairly sure that it was clearly ruled in Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. v. Corel Corporation (1999) that exact photographic copies of two-dimensional public domain images could not be protected by copyright because they lack originality.

So how can Corbis claim a copyright to something which is an exact photographic copy of something which was created by the federal government and not eligible for copyright? That's my question -- it seems to me that Corbis is clearly out of line in claiming such a copyright, and is really opening itself up to a class action suit for anyone who has paid you for a copyright license.

If I'm wrong about this, I would really like to know.

References:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.htm

http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/105.html

OK -- I'll admit. Using footnotes was a little pedantic. Anyway I got no reply. --Fastfission 20:02, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

You say that like it's a bad thing! Personally I'd award major style points for using footnotes in a letter to a big corp that uses footnotes themselves, but YMMV. ++Lar: t/c 20:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all your comments. If someone would like to take the time to upload and explain the use of Corbis images IH185261 and/or IH179075 for article George Jay Gould II, you are welcome to do so -- otherwise I'll add the task to my to-do list, as I am a little too busy at the moment. Also, I will make a note of this for future reference for other images/articles. — Eoghanacht 14:57, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Should "Trivia" be a valid sub heading for Misplaced Pages Articles?

In the course of my browsing today, I chanced upon the Moonlight Sonata article, about Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C#m, which contains (inter alia) the following pieces of information, under the sub heading "Trivia":

• Brazilian heavy metal band Viper made a version of the "Moonlight" Sonata with lyrics in their 1989 album Theatre of Fate.
• The first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata figures in the first Resident Evil video game
• The videogame "Earthworm Jim 2" uses the complete first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata as background music
• The videogame Jet Set Willy plays a small portion of the "Moonlight" Sonata during the introduction sequence
• A rendition of the Sonata, performed by Alan Wilder, is included as a B-side on Depeche Mode's single Little 15.
• A variation of this song is also on the first track of Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Beethoven's Last Night album.
• Yannis Ritsos has written a poem called Moonlight Sonata.
• The musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown features a song that uses the tune to Moonlight Sonata
• Bass player Stuart Hamm made a version of the "Moonlight" Sonata in his album Radio Free Albemuth using a two-hand tapping technique. He performed his rendition of the Sonata at a live concert with guitarist Joe Satriani in 2002 ("Joe Satriani - Live In San Francisco").

This is utter dreck which I have deleted with satisfaction, but it raises in my mind a bigger question: why does Misplaced Pages tolerate a "Trivia" subheading in articles at all? By definition, trivia is unimportant, non notable material. Is there not be a guideline saying "please don't include pointless trivia"? If there isn't, shouldn't there be? ElectricRay 00:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I see "Trivia" or "Other information" sections as a group of small but interesting pieces of information that have not yet been expanded into complete sections. I don't think "completed" articles should necessarily have them, but they're a handy mechanism for corraling away little bits of info that need future expansion. Deco 00:32, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

...or just make a new page Moonlight Sonata in market-driven culture, pack plastic recycling bags with the content and eject it into deep space, retaining a subheading Main article: Moonlight Sonata in market-driven culture and the wording "The Moonlight Sonata's familiarity has generated many trivial references in market-driven culture." --Wetman 00:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I can't tell, Ray, whether your objection is to the content, or just the heading. If the latter, I agree; just change it to something more suitable, such as Quotations in popular culture. If it's the content, address it on that article's talk page (or boldly remove it); our policies already address such things. Still, the fact that the theme is recognizable enough (even in our post-musically-literate society) to be so often used in pop culture is a significant piece of information about this composition, even if the entire list is overkill. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Eww Eww Eww. Incorporate the info into the article somehow or I will come after you with a vengeance for making such headings. Even a different heading such as Uses... or Mentions in Popular Culture as is said above. If they're not all related to each other, then find a way to incorporate the info into the article. (Have you noticed yet that I hate these trivia sections?) — Ilyanep (Talk) 01:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Similar things were discussed at wikipedia talk:trivia - I'll move this discussion there too, when it's finished. --Francis Schonken 07:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I hate these. I hate them. I HATE THEM. Look at the last 50 edits to Marduk (as of this post): almost all of them are additions of such valuable gems as "In Namco's PS2 game Tekken 4, one of the playable characters is named Craig Marduk" and "In the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Evangelion pilots are chosen by a mysterious organization called the "Marduk Institute." The Institute is actually a front for SEELE, who are in possession of secret dead sea scrolls that fortell the fate of humanity and the end of the world.". Drivel, written by teenage boys, which has only the slightest tangential relevance to the topic of the article.

Look at the article right now. The crap now fills half of it—in spite of User:A Man In Black's valiant (but doomed) excision of the previous junk not three months ago—and it's only going to grow.

Okay, finished ranting. User:Wetman's suggested solution is the right one; the kiddies can scribble to their heart's content, and people who want to read about classical music or Mesopotamian mythology aren't distracted by poorly-written irrelevancies. —Charles P._(Mirv) 08:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Wetman's suggested solution is an excellent one, but for the fact that those opposed to "elitism" (etc.) would object to it. Yes, this trivia is dreary, as are "References in popular culture", which I've seen somewhere. How about the solution of a link from the (very shaky) article on Citizen Kane to "List of references to Citizen Kane in other work"? Failing that, a "Trivia" section is a good idea, given that WP is editable by all, and that thousands of earnest teenagers (of all ages) take this stuff seriously and will insist on sticking it somewhere. Better that it's labeled "trivia" than for it to muck up substantive sections of an article. And of course if some item within it is not trivial, people are free to move this item elsewhere, while leaving all the "Simpsons" references (etc etc etc) as they are. -- Hoary 08:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

All very good suggestions. Wetman, I have done as you suggested on the Marduk article - see now References to Marduk in Popular Culture and when I get a moment I will do the same for LVB. Hoary, I sort of see your point, but think there's a fine distinction between elitism and plain irrelevance - it would be equally irrelevant to the topic of Mesopotamian mythological figure - and deserving of jettison to the black expanses of deep space - that there was a character named Marduk in the Book of Kells.ElectricRay 09:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more with Deco ElectricRay; I can't really go along with Wetman's idea, though. It would solve part of the problem, but another part of the problem is that trivia sections trivialise Misplaced Pages; making separate articles for them will do pretty much the same. Just delete them all. If something's trivial, then it doesn't belong in the article; if it belongs in the article, then it can't be trivial, and should fit into the appropriate place in the main text.

How about starting up "Trivipedia" for all the teenagers out there who add this rubbish? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Funny that you say you couldn't agree more with me, yet I disagree very strongly with you. I think it's fine to have these sections around and that they will, in time, develop into more integrated and expanded content. I might remove them from a published or stable version, but not from any working article. Your generalization about teenagers and proposed project are also offensive to the well-meaning contributors who add this content. Deco 22:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I was too hasty in tracing the writer of the original comment (aided by the absence of a space between comments). I've corrected it. Oh, and it wasn't my generalisation, though I repeated it, and pretty well stand by it. There are too many train-spotters here, and people who know (and care) about nothing other than the trivia of celebrities and popular culture. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

and its comments like that which keep wikipedia as the pile of shit it currently is (and is generally perceived as). those "well-meaning contributors" are dumb-ass schoolboys who play videogames all day, indulging them simply creates more cruft articles about Klingon etc that makes wikipedia = trivipedia already. gotta be harsh. KILL ALL CRUFT.

Although these trivia sections should be thoroughly cleaned of cruft (and wontedly have far too many references to cover songs and other knock-offs generally unrelated to the topic), they provide a helpful way to give the reader bits of additional, characterizing information which might otherwise bog down the article's main narrative. I'm strongly in favour of trivia sections in biographical, film and music articles. I mean, what better way to fluidly let the reader know Frances Farmer let the studio shave her eyebrows off in 1936 but had rebelliously grown them back... and untrimmed... by 1937. This would seem, uhm, trivial to mention in the main text but adds context, depth and interest to the subject. Wyss 23:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Cruft should be stamped out. If something has had a genuine impact on popular culture, a sub-article should be created if not a sub-section (see, i.e. Nuclear weapons in popular culture, which grew out of just such a crufty-subsection). --Fastfission 20:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I've been having the same sorts of problems all over the place. Lilith, Chimera, Dragon, Dracula, Behemoth, Jack the Ripper, Werewolf, etc. etc. keep getting filled up with all sorts of trivial references to video games, anime, roleplaying game supplements, one off mentions in tv shows, incidental one off lyriucs in songs, etc. I remove this dreck constantly every day. One of the major problems is that it's difficult to have real consensus to remove them because so many kiddies all get together to try to claim that info is vitally important. "Castlevania is the most well known and important video game series of them all, so I am going to list all the details here." etc. About the only way I've been able to have any lasting sanity is to create Werewolves in fiction, Jack the Ripper fiction, liberally move the crap to disambiguation pages and then just give up on trying to keep the cruft out of that offshoot article. It's like segregation or something. Whenever someone puts crap in the main one I suggest the offshoot, and then the offshoot is total crap but oh well. I personally think Trivia headings should just not be used, and that it's very, very clear that trivial mentions... some character named after some mythical character, one off appearances in comic books, D&D or other RPG adapting something, Magic the Gathering card, Pokemon character, etc... do not belong in the main articles unless those articles are specifically about that fictioncruft and not the main topic. We desperately need stronger policy on this, and maybe, I don't know, something to make it more clear that this is supposed to be an ENCYCLOPEDIA and not just long fanlists of every silly trivial fictional reference you can think of. DreamGuy 22:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

• I think that trivia helps pique the reader's interest. As for relevance, the word encyclopedia comes from the Greek words enkyklios paideia, meaning "general education," or "well-rounded education." Thus, in Misplaced Pages--the largest encyclopedia ever created--any knowledge can be included. Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged defines an encyclopedia as "a work that treats comprehensively all the various branches of knowledge and that is usually composed of individual articles arranged alphabetically". Stroll by a library reference section and you will find encyclopedias of agriculture, of computing, of slang, and so on. The inclusion of trivia shows just how much encyclopedic Misplaced Pages is. Besides, deleting trivia will turn off many contributors from adding other information to Misplaced Pages and possibly turn to vandalism. Further, many of the users who add trivia are younger. If we alienate them, we destroy our future.
  --Primetime 22:43, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

There are plenty of young people adding real encyclopedic content here. Alienating the bad contributors to keep the good contributors is a GOOD thing. Some people just are not cut out to write encyclopedias. This shouldn't be controversial, it just is. If their only contributions are to say that some pokemon character kind of looks like Pazuzu if you squint real hard, let the alienation proceed unfettered so we don't destroy our future by having the clueless kiddies running the show while knowledgable editors get alienated. I know I don't like having to play janitor to a bunch of people whose only experience in the world is videogames and anime who think articles on other topics can be improved with the latest kewl thing they saw. I'm here to write an encyclopedia. DreamGuy 17:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

• If you want a trivia encyclopaedia, there's a far bigger one than Misplaced Pages - it's called Google. If some method of differentiation between trivia and useful information can't be imposed, we may as well give up on wikipedia and just use Google. It's a line call whether that's a better idea already. Now it's a sociological fact that anime heads will keep adding this stuff - it's not irrelevant to them - so the answer is to give them their outlet - a "references in popular culture" page which is referenced by, but doesn't form part of, a main article achieves that very neatly. Xbox nuts are not alienated, the page isn't disrupted - that sounds to me like a workable compromise. That's certainly the approach I'm going to take from now on. ElectricRay 23:17, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like it would make them very difficult to find. I don't think trivia authors would be too keen on that idea. I admit, though, that it is better than just deleting the information. --Primetime 08:56, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

maybe i didn't explain it properly: there would be a link on the page from the main article - very easy to find. see, for example, Marduk. ElectricRay 09:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't we distinguish between trivia that actually relate to the subject of the article, and trivia connected with persons or entities that just happen to have the same name? Many of the points in Marduk in popular culture don't relate to Marduk (that is the subject of the Marduk article) at all, they relate to fictional characters that just happen to have the same name, so they should surely go to a disambiguation page? --rossb 15:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

• Many are expressing views I agree with, in effect, trivia's fine if it relates directly and helpfully to the subject, but the trivia sections are often used for content which is no better than link spam. Perhaps references in popular culture "see also" pages would give the cruft (cartoon characters who play Beethoven and so on) a home. Wyss 15:50, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

• except that trivia is, by definition, trivial. If it's worthy of inclusion, is it "trivia"? ElectricRay 18:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

• rossb, that was exactly what I was coming here to say. There is a distinction between material that really is important enough to a topic and just hasn't been integrated yet and that which isn't important to the topic. For example the WWII article doesn't need a trivia section remarking that it was referenced in X anime show. That's an extreme example, but not far off what is going on. Pop culture trivia or other things that aren't demonstrably important to the given topic should not be on the page, they should instead be in that pop culture topic's specific page. That makes it really easy to include important information in the right place. - Taxman 16:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

• By the way, we're having a specific and contested discussion of this at Talk:George Frideric Handel. -Sesquialtera II 17:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's my take, illustrated with two examples (though these are not editing suggestions for the LvB article):

"Helpful trivia":

• During the advanced stages of his deafness, while composing Beethoven aided his hearing by placing the end of a wooden pencil directly on the soundboard of his piano, then pressed his forehead directly on the other end and struck the keys. Sympathetic vibration transmitted the sounds of the notes through the bones of his skull directly to his inner hear.

"Unhelpful trivia"

• A retrogade chord progression based on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata was used as the basis for a Beatles song by John Lennon. Wyss 14:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Trivia as a category does not belong. It means "unimportant" and suggests a waste of time. If soemthing is important then say so. Rjensen 16:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I do disagree with your interpretation of the working definition of trivia, however I continue to assert that there is a difference between informative trivia and spam-like cruft. Wyss 17:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that trivia sections should be blamed on teenage boys. For example, the Richard Stallman article has a sizeable trivia section, and I doubt that many teenagers are really into him, as the oldest current teenagers were only born in the late 1980s (the youngest about 1992-1993). Also, most teenagers have probably never heard of Amiga. Adding trivia is probably more related to interest in the topic than age or sex. -- Kjkolb 17:34, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

One quarter of Gorilla article is taken by "popular culture" references, most of them bellow even trivial value. I suggest to always create leaf article when the amount of trivias reaches certain level. Since it is practically impossible to get rid of trivia at least they can be moved away from more serious encyclopedic stuff. Pavel Vozenilek 03:53, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikiprojects dealing with Templates

While this policy proposal is directed at Wikiproject:Userboxes, it may as well be directed to any Wikiproject with associated templates (i.e. chemical infoboxes for the Chemistry wikiproject, school infoboxes for the Schools wikiproject, etc. etc...). I would like to turn control of the deletion of Wikiproject-related templates only to the Wikiprojects themselves and not sent to TfD. TfD is for templates that matter and templates that have value, like Misplaced Pages message boxes and Speedy Deletion tags and things like that. TfD is not for cruft, specifically cruft that lives in the User namespace and is not encyclopedic. (I'm not saying that chemical infoboxes are not encyclopedic, but like I said before, this policy practically singles out Wikiproject:Userboxes...) Why isn't this a policy? I don't see why TfD should be filled to the brim with flame wars about why "usrboxen r sux" and why "usrboxen r kewl lol," and since Userboxes have sweet give-all to do with the Misplaced Pages article namespace, why the hell are we dealing with it in a place where templates that don't suck should be dealt with? I'm not saying that userboxes suck, I'm saying that people need to take that crap elsewhere. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 19:19, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

• Why not just create Misplaced Pages:Userboxes for deletion? That would sequester all the userbox debate on a separate page, and dramatically reduce the amount of clutter at WP:TFD. Plus, since some userboxes contain both a template and a category, this could handle both at once. In practice, I suspect most nominations would end in no consensus, but that already happens at TFD. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 19:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

You want to create a page solely for the purpose of reaching no consensus? Wow, that's a great idea. (I realise that's not quite what you mean, but you are basically saying that would be the effect). Sam Korn 19:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I want to create a page where unproductive, pointless discussion can be sequestered so that the rest of TFD can concentrate on important stuff. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 19:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Easy to do. It's called archiving. I'll speedy keep any template on TfD where consensus is clearly not going to be reached by discussion on that forum. What you are suggesting is a place for userbox wars to be held out of sight. If we keep them in sight, we can tell people what idiots they're being. Sam Korn 19:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I really think this is no longer a major issue. While there are people who still vote in a black-and-white way over userboxes, that has now basically ceased and those who continue can be ignored. A month is a long time on Misplaced Pages, and I think that the furore has now died. I won't go into the logistical problems of such a policy, except to say that they are myriad and not easily resolvable. Sam Korn 19:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Black-and-white voting is, in fact, alive and well. —Cryptic (talk) 19:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

But petering out, as far as I can see. Not many people vote "keep OMG userbox DELTIONIST VANDAL" any more. Those that vote in that idiotic way can be ignired, as I said. Sam Korn 19:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away, though. I think a UBfD page would be a great idea (sort of what I'm getting at). And granted, keeping things in sight allows us to tell people what idiots they're being, but they're still in sight for those of us who actually want work done and not cruft debates. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 03:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Illegal links?

This is an interesting edit. An anon user deleted external links with edit sum removal of copyrighted material.

Well, the links actually seem to me to be a form of linkspam, but maybe not. They don't actually point to video files; I went to a couple and got a little runaround before being dumped into (in one case) a link farm and (in the other) a link farm plus what may actually be a link to a video. I suspect this dynamically-generated link will not work for anyone else. On sight, I suspect that if there is a video at the end of this rainbow, it's probably bootlegged -- but I certainly don't know this. But all these are side issues, are they not? Another side issue is the question of whether -- assuming that the links were good, that they really pointed to videos, and that those videos were legitimately released -- it would be appropriate to include them in an article about the band that made them. I think so, but I don't think that's the key issue here.

Can we link to illegal content? Easy to say no. But I don't see how we are capable of vetting all our external links in this way. Link to, say, a major film studio's trailer site -- probably legit. Link to one of the many trailer/promo sites (such as http://www.movie-list.com/), maybe okay too. But there is a continuous spectrum of such sites shading right into the Ukranian Mafia "copywho?" sites. Where do we draw the line? It's clear to me that a link itself violates no copyright.

Take the issue out of the context of copyvio and it sprouts more hair. Some site advocates the violent overthrow of the US Government; if the people that run it are notable, we might create an article about them. Should we not link to the site itself? Note that the site is in violation of US law; free speech does not protect at this limit. (cf this Mississippi State Statute.) "Patriots" will say no link; but put the shoe on the other foot. Another site advocates the independence of Taiwan from China. This site is in clear violation of Chinese law. Can we link to it?

Either:

1. We must allow external links without regard to the legal status of their destinations; and thus forbid the kind of edit I first referenced; or
2. We must develop some clear procedure for verifying that external sites violate no law; and thus forbid external links until they have been so vetted; or
3. We must set some policy describing which laws we will permit external sites to violate and develop some clear procedure for verifying that external sites comply with our policy.

What shall we do? John Reid 13:56, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Under US case law, knowingly and intentionally linking to material that violates copyright or a site whose primary purpose is to do so constitutes a form of contributory infringment and is illegal. Such links should be removed whenever they are discovered. As long as effort is made to clean up after such things, the Wikimedia Foundation is unlikely to have any liability, so it is not really necessary to test links in advance of being posted. Aside from copyvios, it is difficult to imagine any other class of material that would be so illegal to even link to. Dragons flight 15:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Come on, it's not that hard to imagine another class of material you cannot even think of linking to. --cesarb 16:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair point. Dragons flight 17:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's a need for new policy here. We can just keep on the way we've been doing things. Links to obvious copyvio content get the axe; if something's in a gray area (promotional material like movie trailers, for example) try to find a source that's approved by the copyright owner, but don't sweat it too much unless we're asked to remove; use good judgement and common sense with regard to linking external sites likely to be considered 'offensive'; don't link to stuff that the laws of the United States or Florida forbid us to link, because that's where our servers are. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, but I smell trouble. If we make an effort to remove illegal links and overlook some that are illegal, then it seems as if we've been negligent. If we declare that we are unable to determine the legality of the sites that we link, we're taking a higher ground. Better if we don't assume the responsibility.

I'm certainly not going to restore any questionable external links; but I'm not going to remove any, either. John Reid 17:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Anon edit summaries

Would it be possible to require that anon's enter edit summaries beyond the section heading. I imagine most petty vandals (e.g. schoolkids) would also vandalize on the edit summary. It might make it easier to pick up on vandalism to less obvious targets such as Treaty of Ghent, which sometimes get missed for a longish while. This seems like a pretty small extra burden for anon's, as we're all supposed to do that anyway. Derex 22:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Having no edit summary is better than a meaningless edit summary, though. Usually, people stumbling upon Misplaced Pages and see a typo won't know what an edit summary is and won't bother to find out. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, how about calling it "a summary of your edit", then? If a user doesn't grasp english well enough to understand that, i'd really rather they didn't edit en.wiki. Not to quarrel with your response, but I'm not sure why you regard no summary as better than a meaningless one. A meaningless one indicates to me that it should definitely be looked at -- either editor is clueless or adding nonsense. An empty one only says that the user didn't bother; so I can't distinguish between the vandals, the clueless, and the lazy (but good faith) editors. This is my point in essence, that a filled in edit summary is more informative than an empty one. Derex 23:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's perfectly clear what an "Edit summary" is. However, not every vandal is out to make a scene and draw attention - many will either put misleading messages ("fixed comma") or put random junk. Many legitimate users would put random junk too, so it's not useful for catching vandals. You can't compel someone to use a feature properly. Deco 23:52, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'll leave off responding after this, because it's unseemly to argue. However, of course, you can't compel everyone to use a feature correctly. And of course you can't catch a dedicated vandal this way. All I want to do is catch idiots putting "so & so is gay" in articles. Those are usually schoolkids, who probably have no idea at all how we go about catching vandals. My guess is that they would put crap in the summary too. So, my point is not that this would eliminate vandalism; my point is that it might make it easier to catch some (not all) idiots, and it might just encourage some useful summaries along the way. It won't eliminate the need to check edits; it will optimistically just make it more likely that RC patrol catches quickly them rather than watchlisters catching them slowly. Derex 00:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

You might be right - really I'd have to see how it plays out in practice. Deco 00:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, please do not multipost! Deco 23:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by that. You deleted my post elsewhere with a note that it was being moved here. I didn't see it here, so I assumed you had inadvertently forgotten to complete the move. Or did you move it elsewhere, or just delete it? Derex 00:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually I said I was moving it to proposals, not policy (since it's a proposal). I got interrupted though, and I foolishly assumed you created this section at the same time as the original one. Sorry about that. Deco 00:44, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

• or, you know, we could stop making up silly rules that only anons have to follow, that would be nice--152.163.100.200 23:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • nice talk page ;) (couldn't help myself) Derex 00:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

• Trustworthy enough editors should be allowed to fill in blank summaries. This would help in review of article history. If someone misuses it it can be reverted all in once. Pavel Vozenilek 21:32, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

POV debates in bibliographies?

In history some topics are so hotly debated that there are “schools” of interpretation. For example, regarding Reconstruction, the New Deal, or the Cold War. Book reviews in the history journals usually tell us which book belongs, more-or-less, to school X, Y or Z. In keeping with Wiki POV policy, the article should mention the main schools. The question is whether the bibliography of the article should mention that book A belongs to school X, or Y, or Z—-or perhaps say it is “balanced” or “neutral.” Some editors have objected that any such annotation of the bibliography is itself POV and should be avoided. I propose that we encourage that sort of annotation so that the user can follow up on the different schools. Rjensen 01:03, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

There is nothing POV about claiming that a book follows a particular school of interpretation if it in fact does so. Per NOR, however, try to find a claim either in the book itself or from another author asserting the book's school. Deco 01:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I think we should be very careful about adding too many editorial comments to the references. If the comment is something that is not in dispute, or as you say, some sort of clearly defined school of interpretation, then that's fine. But the problem I and other users have been having with some of Rjensen's edits are POV editorial comments like "best biography" or "series of well written essays", etc. We shouldn't be reviewing books here. We should be discussing the article content, we don't need to add a whole new level of dispute about comments in the bibliography. --JW1805 (Talk) 04:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Wiki guidelines require editors to make value judgments on books: "you should actively search for authoritative references to cite. If you are writing from your own knowledge, then you should know enough to identify good references that the reader can consult on the subject... The main point is to help the reader and other editors." The point is that "good" is a POV--that is we have to review books and make judgments that they are in fact "good". The worst disaster is to have a grab-bag of books collected from Amazon or somewhere with no quality evaluation by editors. That does not help users and degrades our quality. Useful books are reviewed in the journals and bibliographies, and it is not POV to say that a particular book has been well received. If some editor disagrees then we certainly should discuss it in the TALK page. In fact I do not recall any example of anyone disagreeing with my evaluation of a book--they are afraid of any evaluation whatever. So I think we should have a policy decision. I suggest that if an editor decides a book is a "good reference" the editor should say so, and why. Rjensen 04:37, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Bibliographies are the recommended reading of an author. Thus, they are an opinion in themselves. When the author is not an authority on the subject (or is anonymous, as is often the case here) they should probably justify their listing of the works in question, as well. It is usually clear which works are the most respected on a subject, especially to someone who has done print research to write an article here. Bias can also be discovered by scrutinizing adjectives used in the work and whether it is up to date can be determined by looking in the front of the book or by reading evaluative studies. Encyclopedia Britannica's bibliographies are very opinionated, as are those from Colombia Encyclopedia. --Primetime 04:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I just can't see why we need to open up this can of worms. Is every article's talk page going to have debates on all the book reviews on all the references in that article? The debates need to be about the article content, not what precise language should be used to characterize the goodness of each of the references (i.e., is it "good", "very good", "the best", "one of the best", ... ) What if a lot of people like the book and a lot of people don't? Are we going to have long complex NPOV comments for each references? Are we going to have to cite references for our reviews of references? --JW1805 (Talk) 05:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

We need to open this can because some editors are blanking comments on books--not because they think the commentary is mistaken but because they think Wiki should have a "no comment" policy. I strongly disagree. If there is going to be a Wiki policy let’s set it here and not have blanking of one editor by another. If a user wants a book on a topic we can help by saying in a few words what is involved. As for debates: the controversial topic itself can be red hot (like "Cold War") but there seldom is much debate about the quality of the books. In terms of the books that go into bibliographies, there might be debate whether A is better than B, but that is not at issue. What readers need to know is the POV of the book, and its reputation for quality. A new user will not know that, but an experienced editor will know that, and I think we should share our knowledge not keep it hidden lest someone disagree. Thus far I have NOT seen much debate on the quality of a specific book in a bibliography--very little indeed compared to the huge debates on the content of the article itself. Rjensen 05:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

(unindent)

We should not be giving opinions about books in articles. We certainly need to evaluate them to determine whether they're suitable for citing, but professing the wonders of a reference in the article itself is a clear violation of NPOV. If you must describe a reference, describe it objectively and briefly as you would the topic itself, and describe only the parts of it that pertain to the topic. If you want to emphasize the quality or notability of a reference work, use an objective measure such as its number of citations, some of the universities it's used in, or whatever. Deco 07:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed that commentary should be objective and based on visible characteristics of the book, such as citations and the ratio of favorable to unfavorable reviews it receives in the scholarly journals. Rjensen 16:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

It depends. The majority of portrayals can be proven by simply reading the source referred to. These include portrayals of bias, currentness, and completeness. If the author compares it to other works, they can cite the other works that they referenced. For example, if I wanted to say the Dictionary X is the best Spanish dictionary available, I can cite (if requested) the other dictionaries I compared it to. Such a statement can also be qualified to read "in this author's opinion, Dictionary X is the best." Such a statement would need no citation.

So, to summarize: bias, currentness, completeness, and statements preceded by "in this author's opinion" shouldn't need a citation, in my opinion. Comparisons should need only a reference to the other works it was compared to. --Primetime 21:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

True, but such a statement is original research, which is forbidden. We do not as editors make value judgements, implicitly or explicitly. Deco 22:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I doubt that rule was meant to apply to bibliographies. Rules must be interpreted so that we enforce the will of the rulemakers (i.e., the spirit of the rule). In this case, I can find no mention of bibliographies on the talk page of the original research regulation. In any case, bibliographies are not part of an article. They are set off in printed material by headings while sections within the body of the work are set off with subheadings. The main headings thus include the body, preface, and bibliography--among others. --Primetime 22:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe it is intended to apply to every part of every article. It has never been mentioned on the talk page because, simply put, you're the first one to come up with such an idea. Drop a comment on that talk page and see what some of the people with interest in that policy think. Also, the use of the phrase "in the author's opinion" contradicts communal ownership of articles, in which different authors of the same article can have differing opinions. Deco 02:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Original research of course applies to the substance of an article, which is not at issue. Wiki has the positive statement that editors "should actively search for authoritative references to cite.... identify good references that the reader can consult on the subject". I read that as saying the editors should pick out the best references and include them. When editors are asked to help the readers "consult on the subject" that means tell them something about the content or thrust of the recommended books. The information is asymetric: when the editors of an encyclopedia know something that readers don't know, we should reveal it and not keep it secret. Rjensen 02:54, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe this is how it should be. We should offer the best presentation, and in selecting that presentation we make a lot of subject choices, but the end goal is an objective discussion of the topic. Sometimes information asymmetry is desirable if the information either contradicts policy or is only tangentially relevant. Misplaced Pages is not just a dumping ground for everything in our heads, it needs to be organized and verifiable fact distinguished from non-notable editorial. Deco 23:57, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Let me explain how I (as a former librarian) go about selecting titles for a short Wiki bibliography on a controversial topic like Cold War. The goals is to have every major school of interpretation represented, as well as useful surveys. A good place to start is with major scholarly books that usually have a bibliography or footnotes or historiographical passages that evaluate the literature. In addition there are numerous compendia that historians and scholars use that summarize what are the evaluations of thousands of books, In diplomatic history we rely on Beisner, ed. American Foreign Relations 2v (2003), a 2000 page compendium of book reviews. For political & Economic topics we rely on the Harvard Guide (1954 and 1970 editions, abour 1500 pages of book evaluations) and the AHA Guide to Historical Literature (2v 2000), about 2000 pages of book evaluations. For new books the most important sources are the American Historical Rev, Journal of American History, Diplomatic Hist, and J of Military History (these print about 3000+ pages of book reviews a year). Whn scanning for titles to include I will use maybe one book in 20 or 1 in 50. (In some areas like Civil War there are over 50,000 books! For Cold War the numbers probably approach 10,000 books and scholarly journal articles.) History is strikingly different from science in that old items --say 30 or 50 years old--are often essential, so we really have a lot to sort through. Rjensen 00:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Precedents on application of policy

Is there someplace on Misplaced Pages that collects precendents on application of policies, especially for "borderline" cases? For example, on RfC, we are currently debating a possible violation of 'no scatological usernames' which is not clear cut. I would like to review past similar cases. Is there somewhere that already exists where I would look for this? ike9898 01:23, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the 3D image issue: The Wikipedian contributor who posted most of the so called "compatible" 3D images, can't have a say because he has been blocked or deleted. This is not air, when he is being asked to co-operate in establishing guidelines. Can this be fixed. 69.226.54.6 04:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Unregisted users creating pages

Does anyone know when unregisted users are allowed to create pages again?

Sadly, it might never happen. Jimbo Wales personally created this policy, and although many disagree with it, his word is bond. Sarge Baldy 05:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The way I heard it this an "experiment" for Jimbo, to see how effective it is at decreasing vandalism. Unfortunately, to my knowledge no one is quantitatively measuring the effect of the change - which makes any kind of experimental result we might have derived inaccessible. We do as a community have weight with Jimbo, but without clear evidence that it has a negative impact, I don't know if we'll see it get changed back any time soon. Deco 08:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Any editor who ever spent an hour or so under the previous arrangement, attempting to effect triage on the steady flow of garbage, would likely be under the impression that nothing of value is currently being lost. This impression will be easily dismissed as "anecdotal"—even "elite". --Wetman 08:51, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I've spent many hours doing exactly that, and I am, to the contrary, under the impression that much of value is being lost, and moreover that much of the trash continues to be created by fresh user accounts. Deco 22:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. The contributions of new editors and user IPs are of equal quality, and by preventing IPs from creating articles all we're doing is reducing the amount of new articles being created, not improving the overall quality of the ones that are. Sarge Baldy 23:45, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Systematic violation of rules by administrators at international Wiki sites

How are the other international Misplaced Pages sites monitored so that they follow the Misplaced Pages spirit and policies? I think there is danger that a small group of bureacrats can hold the new encyclopedia to themselves and keep out the users from editing, for example, by adding protection to articles for no reason, but then continuing to edit the article how only they want. This has happened. Another question, how are the first adminstrators of a new international Misplaced Pages site selected? 192.100.124.218 10:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

This kind of discussion is more suited for meta, since it's there that all international and cross-wiki issues are discussed. You should look there — there is, for instance, a page where new language encyclopedias are/were proposed and discussed. --cesarb 14:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

To be fair, meta isn't exactly the most active wiki. You may want to post a link to advertise it here. Deco 20:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, I have asked the question at the Meta discussion page 192.100.124.218 11:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

wording of ((guideline)) and ((style-guideline))

The wording of Template:guideline and Template:style-guideline have quite different tones to them--

• style-guideline: This page is a style guide for Misplaced Pages. The consensus of many editors formed the conventions described here. Misplaced Pages articles should heed these rules. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

• guideline: This page is considered a guideline on Misplaced Pages. It illustrates standards of conduct, which many editors agree with in principle. Although it may be advisable to follow it, it is not however policy. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose any major changes.

The former is much more restrictively worded than the latter - cf 'is' and 'is considered', and 'should heed' and 'advisable to follow it'. Should there really be this much divergence of authority between the two guidelines? --moof 11:39, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

And then there's still the divergent wording of {{Misplaced Pages subcat guideline}} used for, for instance, naming conventions guidelines, for which I have to plead guilty.

I think I started to get used to these divergences in formulations, for instance the MoS guidelines being nearly as strict as {{policy}} - but that might be a mild form of Stockholm Syndrome kicking in. So please go ahead if you think you have good improvement proposals. Maybe Misplaced Pages talk:Template messages/Project namespace would be a good place to keep (or ultimately store) such discussions. --Francis Schonken 12:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Used with permission "for educational and noncommercial uses only"

I have come across Prosocial behavior. The article states at the top "This article, or parts of it, has been retrieved from Indiana University with the rights to be reproduced for educational and noncommercial uses only.". I suspect that this is not compatible with the GFDL license, and I wonder how we should deal with this and other cases like it. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Well either it's deleted as a copyvio or a complete rewrite, I'd say. Certainly isn't compatible with the GFDL/wangi 11:51, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Put a {{copyvio}} tag on it and rewrite the page on the temporary subpage, using any "clean" content from the original if there is any. Deco 02:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Fanlistings

Is there ever a time when a fanlisting is appropriate as an external link? Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 16:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

If they have valid information which is not in the article, but it's hard to know when it's valid. If they have a quotes page or a picture gallery, I suppose would be okay. User:Zoe| 19:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ohio Schools

I've proposed a standard form for naming articles on Ohio school districts: Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Ohio school districts), which could easily be extended to apply to districts in other states. I'd welcome some feedback on this. PedanticallySpeaking 16:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Naming convention for Companies and Businesses

I just wanted to draw attention and comment to on a draft poll to determine naming convention for companies and businesses. I have looked around a number of places and have only seen comments to the effect of "we should have a convention" or "do we have a convention" on how to name a XXX company. This has either the effect of drawing a few uninterested comments or a stirring up a heated debate. In either case the net result is generally zero. Your comments to help clarify this poll and later corresponding vote would be greatly appreciated. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:No original research is a bad policy

Misplaced Pages:No original research is a bad policy. I tried to analyze the semantics of George W. Bush's Sixth State of the Union Address, which keeps on getting vandalized (and no administrator has taken action), and was told this was against policy. I assume Howcheng, who referred me, meant:

"In this context it means unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, and ideas; or any new interpretation, analysis, or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, arguments that, in the words of Misplaced Pages's co-founder Jimbo Wales, would amount to a "novel narrative or historical interpretation"."

Interpretation or actual original research is one thing, but analysis should not be included in this list. We dont need a source to say that "we remember the events of september 11" is a reference to the September 11 Attacks. Please see the page and my expansion of the page to see what I mean. KI 22:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

My interpretation is that very simple synthesis or analysis of documented facts is okay, but various people have various levels of tolerance for this. Just use your discretion and try asking interested parties on Misplaced Pages talk:No original research if you feel unsure about a particular scenario. Deco 02:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Any time anyone draws from a body of existing research material, the editorial choices on what to include and what to exclude produce an original document, i.e. no-one has done it that way before. The simple collocation of existing evidence may, of itself, produce new insights without a commentary being necessary, i.e. the implication is clear when the two or more previously separated elements are seen juxtaposed. Sometimes a commentary is required to explain when the readership may not have the relevant infrastructure of knowledge to make the connections or the elements now brought together are evidence relied upon to produce a coherent argument. This latter case is the originality that Wiki sets its policy against. Those who write here can refer to any existing verifiable source and leave it to be readers to do the work, but the authors here cannot articulate those thoughts for the readers. Except that when writing on a page that touches the sensibilities of those more politically than academically inclined, even the hint of improper thought brings down the wrath of those POV pushers offended: a consequence that has implications for the credibility of the Wiki enterprise. David91 03:07, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Please view Democratic response to 2006 State of the Union address and see if that seems to be original research. Uncle G and Howcheng have both insisted my contributions to 2006 State of the Union address are original research - and since I wrote it (all other changes have been page moves or grammatical/formatting changes) this would mean 99% of the content would have to be deleted. KI 03:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be taking an original speech and applying your own expertise to analyse it rather than operating as a reference editor to point readers to verifiable sources of commentary on the speech. The same could be said of whoever wrote the page on the Democratic response. Since I have no status in this place I can freely offer my advice which is to walk away from this one. You could consider starting a new page on semantic analysis, introduce the different forms of rhetorical device and then use either or both speeches as examples. That might be half-way justifiable if someone else has verifiably done the same thing (although not necessarily using the same speeches). The culture of this place requires you to be nimble and flexible. David91 11:47, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

He should not be applying his own expertise. There's nothing notable about his opinions and they don't belong anywhere. Superm401 - Talk 23:47, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I shouldn't point this out, but the quick and dirty solution is to open up a web page somewhere and post your original research there. Then you can cite that page here. This may or may not be in policy, but it will probably fly. John Reid 17:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Illustration examples under "Fair Use?"

I've been looking at articles about famous illustrators such as Robert McCloskey and noticed that many of them do not have examples of these illustrators' work. Most of these images are unfortunately not in public domain, but could it be considered "Fair Use" to supply, say, one example for each artist? --PlantPerson 12:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If it is useful for understanding their work, and their importance as an illustrator is discussed in their article, then yes having an example would generally seem to qualify as fair use. Dragons flight 13:08, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

For example, Image:MakeWayforDucklingsBookCover.jpg... Physchim62 (talk) 21:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

This seems like legitimate fair use, but to improve the claim do not use current works with ongoing sales or very high resolution scans. Deco 22:36, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Copyright status of U.S. coin photos/scans

According to the image use policy: "Also note that in the United States, reproductions of two-dimensional artwork which is in the public domain because of age do not generate a new copyright — for example, a straight-on photograph of the Mona Lisa would not be considered copyrighted (see Bridgeman v. Corel). Scans of images alone do not generate new copyrights — they merely inherit the copyright status of the image they are reproducing." Does this mean that images taken from coin auction catalogs, like this one, could be uploaded under a {{Money-US}} license? This and similar images are clearly either scans or straight-on photos, with little or no creative work involved. Can they be used in compliance with copyright law and Misplaced Pages policy? Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 21:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe so. Entire pages from said catalogue could be copyvio, since they arguably contribute organizational value, but single images with no creative additions are under the original license. The common sense argument for this is that if the coin were in your possession, you could plop it on a scanner and get the same thing.Deco 22:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Harsher Sentences For Repeat Offenders

Who else thinks that blocking policy on wikipedia is too soft? It's ridiculous how many vandals cost hours of wikipedians' time only to get blocked for a couple a minutes before allowing them to do it again... and again... and again...

Is it really worth letting people back on, just on the offchance that they might contribute something useful? Weight the costs against the benefits. Benefit; 1 in 100 vandals turn normal editor worth two hours editing time per week. Cost; 99 in 100 vandals remain vandals and cost 198 hours of editing time per week. --Username132 22:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Repeat offenders are blocked for much longer periods like days or even weeks, but many of them use web proxies or dynamic IPs and so we can't afford to block them indefinitely. And don't forget that editing time is not interchangable - if a specialist with a Ph.D. in, say, modern dance happens to be using a vandal's IP, and would have become a regular contributor to a very sparse area, that's a loss that cannot be replaced. Deco 23:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If I am fairly sure that blocking an IP will only hit a vandal, then I will gladly make long blocks. A month for the second offence is not unreasonable IMO. IIRC there was a similar discussion at wikipedia talk:Vandalism in progress with the consensus being that long blocks are good as long as they don't hit bystanders. Thue | talk 13:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

3D images again

A guideline proposal for 3D image use is under development at Misplaced Pages:3D Illustrations. The uploader who's prolific 3D image uploading brought this about is seeing the low numbers of people involved at the proposal as an indication that it is not the general opinion of wikipedians and can be ignored. How does a proposed guideline go from a few people hashing out a proposal to something that actually carries some weight behind it? --Martyman-(talk) 05:39, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Links to web pages

If webmaster of a site requests link to his site to be removed from Misplaced Pages, shoud that be done or is it considered vandalism? --Dijxtra 14:32, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The answer is 'It depends'. We're under no obligation–legal or internal policy–to remove links on request unless they are somehow illegal under U.S. law (we're notified that they contain unlicensed copyrighted material or child pornography, for example).

If the link is good and informative, it's obviously preferable for us to keep it—and people who post things on the Internet should not be surprised when other people link to it. There's no reason for us to be a 'bad neighbour', however. If the webmaster made his request because referrals from Misplaced Pages are hammering his bandwidth and taking down his site on the first of every month, we should probably pull the link. If you can find a different external source to which we can link, that would be an ideal solution.

If you do remove a link without replacing it, leave an explanation on the article's talk page explaining why you've done it. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Thing is: the webmaster has account at Misplaced Pages and is contributing POV info. And is being reverted. So, he decided to stop the edit warring, leave Misplaced Pages and remove his links. Should I revert the links to his web pages? --Dijxtra 14:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

If the links are relevant, informative, and on a publically-accessible website, there's no good reason not to retain them. (Of course, if they were being used solely to advance a slanted viewpoint, then we might be better off without them.) You might want to post a request for comment on the article(s) in question if you're not sure about the value or appropriateness of the links.

Removing a link from an article doesn't (usually) fall under the Misplaced Pages definition of vandalism, it's more of a content dispute. Keep in mind that the three-revert rule does apply, if an edit war should crop up. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Could have fooled me. Earlier today I came across an editor rather randomly deleting links from several articles without any substantive explanation, which appeared to me to be simple vandalism. (The links had previously been inserted by different editors, unrelated to me.) After I restored them, the other editor summarily deleted them again (marking some of the restorations vandalism). After a short round of reverts, the other editor broke 3RR (having already reverted another's changes to the same article's link section). What happens when I report the 3RR violation? It's excused, on the grounds that I'd somehow excited the other editor, and the admin involved commented that I must be following the other editor around, since I'd been one of several users who objected to the other editor's inappropriate, repeated deletion of comments from a discussion page a few days ago. Meanwhile, the innocent but excitable editor pulls up my contributions list, finds every AFD/FAC I've commented on recently, casts a contrary vote, then runs back to the friendly admin to accuse me of stalking him/her in those discussions. That seems to be OK. Any thoughts on that? Monicasdude 21:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Said "other editor" has behaved clumsily enough as to get others watching his or her edits. Keepin' eyes open ;-) -- Marvin147 03:26, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

What are the policies governing the (non)deletion of Talk pages for deleted articles?

Hi. I would like to gain some understanding of the Misplaced Pages policies governing Talk pages that are left in place even though the article they were associated with has been deleted. I have tried to ask about it on Wikipedia_talk:Speedy_deletions, but have not gotten any answer - perhaps it was not a proper forum for the question, and this will prove to be a better one. The particular focus of my questions are the Aetherometry Talk pages. The Aetherometry entry itself was recently deleted, but the Talk pages were left in place, with the following explanation from User:Howcheng, who closed the AfD vote:

This article was nominated for deletion on January 14, 2006. The result of the discussion was delete. However, in the event that the article can be re-created with citing reliable sources, I'm intentionally leaving the talk pages alone. They can be deleted at a later time if editors feel they are no longer necessary.

I have the following questions about this:

• Who are the people referred to as "editors" in the above explanation? As far as I know, there are only two people who have significantly contributed content to the entry: myself and User:Pgio. However, neither of us has been consulted concerning the deletion or non-deletion of the Talk pages. On the other hand, when, after the removal of the Aetherometry entry, I submitted these Talk pages for speedy deletion, my request was briskly rejected by User:William_M._Connolley as being "silly". Are these Talk pages somehow a fiefdom of User:William_M._Connolley? Has he been nominated to be in charge of them? If so, by whom and on what grounds? As far as I know, his only contributions to the Aetherometry entry consisted of jeering, and of persistent and aggressive attemtpts to insert his own bias into it by labeling it as "pseudoscience". I realize that a lot of you share this bias, but unless you can quote reputable scientific sources to support it, it is just that: your own bias. Does Connolley's particular brand of aggressiveness and rudeness in expressing this bias somehow qualify him as an "editor" and as the appointed decision-maker about the Talk pages? Is there any policy governing this issue?

• The above explanation by User:Howcheng implies that someone regards these Talk pages as being "necessary" right now. Who are the people that decided the pages were "necessary"? What exactly are those pages thought necessary for? They cannot be necessary as references to "reliable information" about Aetherometry, because all information sources quoted in them have always been rejected, by Connolley and others, as being unreliable. And neither can the Talk pages themselves serve as "reliable information" about Aetherometry - if they did, there would be no need for contemplating a new entry based on "reliable information". What, then, is the reason for keeping them? Is there any policy governing this issue?

• Who, on what grounds, when, and by what procedure, is supposed to decide at "a later time" that these Talk pages are no longer necessary? If the word "editors" in Howcheng's explanation has the standard meaning, then surely the decision procedure should prominently include myself and User:Pgio. Does it? If not, whom does it include and why? Is there a policy governing this issue?

Many thanks in advance. Helicoid 17:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no policy regarding this, but in general we delete talk pages along with articles, because discussion of an article that no longer exists and should probably never exist is rather moot. It's really the deleting admin's discretion. Deco 19:27, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your response, but in this case, it doesn't seem to be the deleting admin's discretion. When I contacted the deleting admin, User:Howcheng, for guidance concerning my submission of the Talk pages for speedy deletion, there was an immediate intervention from User:William_M._Connolley, who instructed Howcheng as follows:

Please ignore this request. The talk pages should be kept. I've removed them from the SD page. William M. Connolley 16:01, 2 February 2006 (UTC).

Helicoid 19:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• Anyone can remove a speedy tag that s/he feels is unwarrented, anyone else can put the tag back, but warring over such tags is considered very poor form. WP:CSD says "Talk pages of already deleted pages, unless they contain the deletion discussion and it isn't logged elsewhere. (CSD G8) but if the deleting admin feels that the talk page might be useful in future, s/he can choopse not to delete such a page. If significant discussion about why a page should or should not have been deleted is on the page, it should probably be kept, unless that info is copied elsewhere (say to the AfD's talk page). I would treat "editors" above to mean simply which evner wikipedia editors express an interest in the matter, which includes you. If you post a note on the talk page suggestign deeltion, adn no one responds with a reaosn not to delete in a reasonable time, you can apply a speedy tag. Or you might try the about to be tested system of Proposed deletion. DES 20:29, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm unclear as to which of the criteria for speedy deletion the pages meet. Nor is it clear to me what urgency there is in deleting them (any more than I can see the need to keep them). Is there some hiddn agenda here of which I'm unaware? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I am a bit puzzled by your uncertainty about the applicable speedy-deletion criteria. Point (8) in the "General" category lists, as a candidate for speedy deletion:

8. Talk pages of already deleted pages, unless they contain the deletion discussion and it isn't logged elsewhere.

The Talk pages for Aetherometry do not contain the deletion discussion, so isn't this criterion quite clearly applicable?

Nothing to be puzzled about; I hadn't looked at them lately, and I wanted you to do the work; perfectly normal editorial laziness... --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

As for hidden agendas, there is nothing hidden on my side. I would like the Talk pages deleted for two simple reasons:

(1) They contain unfounded, unsubstantiated derogatory claims about Aetherometry, its creators, and anybody willing to regard Aetherometry without scientific bigotry. A number of people freely and deliberately made such unsubstantiated, hurtful claims on the Talk pages under the excuse of "on Talk pages, I can say whatever I please" - thus misusing Misplaced Pages as a vehicle for venting and legitimizing private prejudices, and for deliberately attempting to damage other people's reputations.

(2) There is no guarantee that these pages, if they continue to exist, will not continue, in the future, to be misused in the same way - as a vehicle for new derogatory and damaging statements.

I have yet to see anybody openly coming out with a reason for why these pages should be kept. Helicoid 22:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've looked at the pages, and I'd have said that the criticism of aetherometry was well-founded — showing (on the whole) a reasonable grasp of the nature of science. Those defending the article (and attacking attempts to make clear the status of aetherometry within science) were often hostile, aggressive, and insulting, and the emotional temperature rose. I agree that there's no reason to keep it, but I don't see any special reason to delete. Still, given the CSD, I'll toddle over there and do the job. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget all the archives while you're at it. howcheng {chat} 23:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much for toddling over. Permit me, however, to disagree with your statement implying that there were people "attacking attempts to make clear the status of aetherometry within science". This is simply not true. There has never been, on the part of the "proponents" of Aetherometry, any claim that Aetherometry is mainstream science. I know that you are of the opinion that there is no such thing as non-mainstream science. But you know, it is perfectly possible to follow the scientific method (even as it is defined in Misplaced Pages) and yet not be a part of mainstream science. In the discussions on the Talk pages, the "opponents" of Aetherometry frequently and deliberately used the term "science" and "scientific" as if it was synonymous with "accepted within the mainstream". It is this conflation that the "proponents" of Aetherometry vigorously opposed, and I must, yet again, make the same point: "following the scientific method" and "mainstream" are really not the same concept.

And since you were so kind as to delete the most recent Talk page, could you please do the same for the archived talk pages? They are Talk:Aetherometry/Archive1, Talk:Aetherometry/Archive2, Talk:Aetherometry/Archive3 and Talk:Aetherometry/Archive4. I see that Howcheng already asked the same. Again, many thanks. Helicoid 23:24, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• I quote from Speedy deletion criterion 8, "Talk pages of already deleted pages, unless they contain the deletion discussion and it isn't logged elsewhere" (may be speedily deleted). >Radiant< 11:07, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Archived Talk pages

OK, here I am again. Now I am curious why the archives for the Aetherometry Talk pages are being left in place. Aren't they subject to the same policy as the most recent Talk page? It seems to me that archiving is just a technical convenience to decrease the size of the page editors have to work with. Am I wrong? The archived pages are full of wanton, unsubstantiated, unverifiable derogatory statements, some of which are simply slanderous. Here are some random examples (note that none of these "claims" have any basis in fact):
"I have proven the science of aetherometry is a hoax."
"I think this is nothing but a hoax and a fraud to gain false donations. I'm on the stage of reporting you people to the authorities immediately" "No peer-reviewed journal on Applied Sciences has or will accept a paper on this stuff."
"While we're here... is anyone up for a wikiproject 'keep wacko psuedo-science out of wikipedia'"
"Poor Tesla deserves better than you lot."
"The Correas are not a contributor to Misplaced Pages. Therefore to bash them on a TALK PAGE (not an article) is hardly slander."
"If the only place you can publish is in a magazine (IE) then there is something majorly wrong with your methodology."
"The process followed by the Correas has some superficial similarty with the scientific method, but only as a farce."
"OK, the Google spider did its job and our article is now indexed, in the moment it's the 4th hit when searching for 'Aetherometry'. Now we should better fulfill our noble mission."

Is there any reason why these are being kept? Helicoid 20:05, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

• No. *zap*. >Radiant< 01:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks. Helicoid 02:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Are these really fair use?

I would like to bring this discussion to the village pump to get input from a broader cross-section of wikipedians. My concern is about the widespread use of questionable fair-use images, and there's a clarification to the policy WP:FU that I'd like to make. The specific issue I'd like to address is the use of images from news sources. To cite a few examples at random; 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. These images are all copyright by Reuters, a company that makes its money (in part) by licensing images to people who want to use them to illustrate articles (usually news articles). So my argument is that almost all cases, using a photo from the popular media, whether a news service like AP, or an independent newspaper, is not fair use and should be subject to speedy deletion as a copyright violation. My arguments in support of this are:

• WP:FU#Counterexamples point four says "A work of art, not so famous as to be iconic, whose theme happens to be the Spanish Civil War, used without permission to illustrate an article on the war." This issue is the same, should read "A press photo or work of art, not so famous as to be iconic...".
• WP:FU#Fair_use_policy point two say "The material should not be used in a manner that would likely replace the original market role of the original copyrighted media".
• From this site which comments on fair use law in the U.S., it says that "In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court emphasized this first factor as being a primary indicator of fair use. At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new, or merely copied verbatim into another work." In almost all cases, our use of an image isn't transformative in any way; our use of the image is the exact same as the intended use of the original.

So what do other people think? Can we speedy delete press photos as copyvios? Matt 00:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use#Counter_examples for previous discussion. Matt 00:12, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Using contemporary material from a competing information service is in most cases bad. However, I wouldn't generally suggest speeding them. Instead, I would suggest removing them from the articles where they are occur and tagging {{fairusedisputed}} or something similar. Dragons flight 00:21, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I've attempted to delete news photos before, ones that were shown on the front page. The uploaders argued against it pretty vociferously, citing various legal precedents that I couldn't verify. Don't know what the state of things is here. Deco 02:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I sympathize with your point of view, as an editor who risks three years inprisonment for each time I see a fair use image, but I still think your solution is too drastic given current policy. To answer your points:

• No, we should never use a fair use image where a free use image would do the job just as well;
• In the case of agency photos, we should and do use lower resolution versions than those which appear in printed media;
• Misplaced Pages is a derived work under copyright law: our use of copyrighted material is inherent on us placing it within an article and commenting on it, so "creating something new" in the sense of the U.S. Supreme Court judgment. Each use of a fair use image should be justified individually (I am not pretending that this always happens).

Please nominate badly used fair use images to WP:CP, but be aware that the copyright of press agencies is (under U.S. law) no greater than that of a book publisher or a TV firm or a movie studio. If the image is not used in an article, it should be tagged as {{or-fu}}. Physchim62 (talk) 03:23, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Using a current photo in the examples you gave is almost never going to be fair use under US law. Fair use is spelled out in the Copyright Act. Although it is a factual question (i.e., there is a conceivable fair use scenario for every work), your context doesn't seem to meet any of the tests. Using a photo taken in Iraq by a photographer could probably be safely used in an article on the photographer, as an example of his work, but could not be used to illustrate an article on Iraq. On the other hand, pulling dozens of photos of a single photographer together as a retrospective and publishing them in a book, even though characterized as a "critique" or "review" of his work, would almost certainly violate fair use (under US law). -- DS1953 03:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

If you know where fair use is spelled out in the Copyright Acts, I'd be grateful if you could let me know... It is a defense, based on the constitutional basis of U.S. copyright law. There are legal exemptions to copyright in the U.S. and in in other jurisdictions, but that is not what we usually mean by fair use. Physchim62 (talk) 05:41, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

It's in section 107, which is essentially repeated verbatim in this U.S. Copyright Office explanation. Again, it is a factual question that courts have to grapple with, which makes it very difficult to generalize. Even an experienced copyright lawyer faced with specific facts can often only address situations in "probabilities" (my apologies to mathematicians and statisticians for the loose use of that term). That's why cases get to court! -- DS1953 06:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not that I'm arguing that press agencies have greater protection than book publishers, but rather fair use must consider the nature of the original work. When we use {bookcover} to illustrate an article on a book, we're 1) transforming the use (we're not using the image as a book cover, but as an illustration in an article) and 2) not significantly impacting the value of the original (the value of a book is not in its cover, but in the content inside). So the nature of a press agency photo is different than a book, TV show, or movie. Matt 04:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't consider the nature of the original work; this is particularly true for book covers and CD covers, where much of the financial value does actually rest in the design (for example, American booksellers are reimbursed on their unsold copies on returning the cover, not the entire book). An extreme case is that of foreign bank notes. In these cases, we try to insist on a reduced resolution image, so that nobody could confuse an image taken from Misplaced Pages with the original. Physchim62 (talk) 05:41, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Bookstores return the cover to the publisher not because of the intrinsic value of the cover, but as proof that the book wasn't sold. I think that you'd have a hard time coming up with a single example of a book or CD whose value principally resides in the packaging. I'm not sure how your example of banknotes relates to this issue of agency photos; the purpose of a bank note is not to illustrate anything. Matt 15:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

To clarify - most (ie, mass-market cheap) unsold books are, in theory, returned to the publisher and destroyed. However, it's rather pointless to ship a tonne of paper back to the publisher, so they can send it off to destroy it, when it could be sent direct to the recycler or incinerator. So, the retailer removes the cover, sends that off - you have one cover per book, and you can't sell a coverless book, so this is a very good way to confirm how many books were destroyed - and then gets rid of the books. This is one reason a lot of books have wording like "This book is sold subject to the condition that it not be in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published" - to make it illegal to resell books from which the cover has been removed in this way. Shimgray | talk | 02:47, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

The nature of the work is one criteria but so is the nature and extent of the use, and whether it is for profit or not. Even a for profit magazine can generally publish an excerpt of a book in a book review, but if you put the same excerpt on a T-shirt for sale to the public, you would almost certainly be violating the author's copyright. Using a copy of the photos taken by the participants in Abu Ghraib prison scandal are news and their use is fair use, not because they illustrate the news but because they ARE the news. Using a news photographer's shot of one of the accused participants leaving a courtroom, in my view, is not fair use in most cases, though someone could probably create a scenario where there is at least a gray area. -- DS1953 06:21, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Middle group?

Should there be a mediation group between conflict and arbcom? My idea is made on Misplaced Pages: Board of Appeals. What do you think? WikieZach 00:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

m:Instructioncreep Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy. User:Zoe| 04:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The Arbcom was still established, yet those rules are there. here is more on the idea:

I want to make an Appeals board (for use of a better name), that would resolve issues before they go to the Arbitration Committee as well as help enforce there (arbcom's) rulings. Now back to the idea: The board would have nine members, three selected by the Arbcom, five selected by the public (users) and one selected by Jimbo. They would each serve six-month terms (I can always change this) and would require a simple majority to make a descision. So I ask for your comments, good or bad (hopefully good) WikieZach 04:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Policy page I can't find

On a past VP, a user responding to my comments found some policy or guideline admonishing linking from articles to user space. I have looked through Misplaced Pages:List of policies and Misplaced Pages:List of guidelines, taken a fairly good look at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style and a cursory look at Misplaced Pages:Shortcuts, but cannot find anything that says this, even though I followed the link that user gave and it was there at the time. As this was a while back and the Village Pump is archived only a week, it cannot be found that way. Lee S. Svoboda tɑk 01:27, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:CSD Criterion R2 says: "Redirects to the User: space from the main article space. If this was the result of a page move, consider waiting a day or two before deleting the redirect. " There may be other policy pages as well, but that is one. DES 01:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

It's Misplaced Pages:Avoid self-references. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

That refers to referencing Misplaced Pages. It was something about referencing the author.Lee S. Svoboda tɑk 17:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

It's still a self-reference because it's a reference to Misplaced Pages users. Superm401 - Talk 23:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Copious links to authors are available in the Talk page and history. Do not link to user space from articles. We expressly prohibit signing your name in articles, and it is a clear self-reference (just think print: how much sense would that make in a paper publication without the user page in it?) Deco 21:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion

This new and simple process for article deletion has gone live for a test run. Please use {{prod}} to mark articles for deletion. If you disagree with such a proposal, please remove the tag, and while you're editing the article anyway improve it to alleviate the concerns. >Radiant< 11:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Request for rollback privileges poll closing soon

The requests for rollback privileges poll, a poll to gauge consensus on whether good contributors who are not admins should be given the rollback privilege, is closing at 00:00 UTC on Tuesday, 6 January 2006. If you haven't weighed in, please do so! Talrias (t | e | c) 11:14, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

A problem with voting

There seems to be a problem with voting for stuff on an article's talk page, namely that fans of the article tend to visit more commonly than "the general public". One obvious problem is in fan sites, where a lot of original research gets through because nobody normal wants to fight the rabid fan. Also has to deal with geographic names- we have articles on Braunschweig the city but on Brunswick-Lüneburg the state. There was a vote on the city article, but obviously more germans are interested in that page than in the normal population. Borisblue 15:26, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

RfC: No personal attacks, Policy Extension to non-contributors

After inclusive discussion, I've started an RfC on whether to extend the No personal attacks policy to non-contributors, living and dead. See RfC: NPA Policy Extendsion --Iantresman 15:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation Links to Nonexistant Pages?

Yesterday I added a disambiguation link at the top of fiduciary that linked to the nonexistant page fiduciary markers. This link was then removed with the explanitory note that the other page should exist before putting a link to it. What is standard policy in this matter? I would have thought that having such a link would be desirable, as it would potentially inspire someone to make an article about the other meaning of the term. 24.81.28.51 01:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

• Having redlinks is okay, we have redlinks all over the place. However, avoid having disambig pages with a lot of redlinks, and avoid creating a disambig page that has only one bluelink (because in that case there's no real reason to disambig). >Radiant< 01:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

A prominent redlink at the top of a page is a bit different from one buried in the text. This isn't about a disambiguation page, but rather a disambiguation link at the top of an article, which doesn't go to a separate disambiguation page, but links directly to another, currently nonexistant, page. Could you address this situation specifically? 24.81.28.51 01:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

There shouldn't be a disambiguation link at the top to a non-existant article. That is the same situation as having a disambiguation page with only one blue link. Mushin 03:12, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

What about top disambig links that include related but not absolutely necessary links, such as in the article Sophism? 24.81.28.51 05:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the link on sophism should be removed. A red link on an already necessary disambiguation page is okay, but when it is a top of the page disambiguation, I don't think it should ever be a red link. By already necessary disambiguation page, I mean there are at least two articles that have been written and they have the same name. Also, if one usage is far more common, a link to the other page, or a disambiguation page, should be made on that article instead of having a disambiguation page at the shared name. This is just my opinion. -- Kjkolb 05:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

The guidelines for Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#Disambiguation links don't permit a link to a non-existant article.

The guidelines for a Misplaced Pages:Section#"See also" line at top don't explicitly address the issue, but it should be a link that many readers are likely to follow instead of reading the article. Rather unlikely to follow a link that doesn't actually exist.

--William Allen Simpson 11:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

If you think an article should exist and the only reasonable place to link it is in a disambiguation page, create a stub and link the disambiguation page to the stub. The number of articles on the English-language Misplaced Pages is getting to a point where redlinks more often point out a misspelling or a needed redirect than an actual needed page that hasn't been stubbed out yet. --TreyHarris 11:21, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Major changes in Misplaced Pages:Verifiability policy

On January 31, User:Jguk made a new rewrite of this policy live in an unilateral decision: Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Jguk's_version#Big_Bang

The old version sure offered some scope for improvement so it's sure applaudable to tackle the issue, also several of the changes were applauded in the discussion but others were disputed - most of those were settled in an unilateral decision of User:Jguk.

The discussion page of the rewrite as well as the discussion page of the policy and the editing history since (with several whole and partial reverts) show that there is evidently no consensus about the policy change as a whole and about parts of it.

In this situation I think that the whole issue should be taken up by a broader community, though I'm not sure which form would be most adequate to the issue. An RfC has been started by User:Jossi, but it might be that a Survey or a discussion here would be a better way. --Irmgard 16:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Pages regarding the issue:

• Version before the change
• Rewrite implemented on January 31
• Current talk page of WIkipedia:Verifiabilty
• Talk page of the rewrite in the making

Blanking user talk pages

I know that blanking one's own user talk page is frowned upon, but is this backed up with any policy or guideline? Thanks in advance for any help! CLW 18:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Try Misplaced Pages:Talk page and the pages that it is currently tagged to merge with. --Martyman-(talk) 20:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I tried looking there first of all, but couldn't find any references to blanking. (Perhaps I'm being daft and missing something there, but I don't think so...) CLW 21:05, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Talk page#Etiquette touches on it. Misplaced Pages:Talk page guidelines#When there is too much text says to archive (though doesn't explicitly mention user pages. Other than that, I don't think it is explicitly spelt out anywhere I have seen. It probably should be though, I find it very frustrating when people blank their talk page. --Martyman-(talk) 21:14, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it is entirely understandable and no objection should be made at all. Why should people retain a page which contains criticisms of them? They have to keep looking at it, which no-one else does. CalJW 18:38, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

There isn't a policy against this and probably won't be. We're very tolerant about what people do with their own user pages, userbox wars aside. Deco 11:22, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I think we're talking more along the lines of someone deleting vandalism warnings off their talk. I don't see a problem if its a valued long time member deleting a "Thanks for experimenting..." message they got on their first day here, but for a vandal people need to know if they've already been warned to give the appropriate test message. VegaDark 08:04, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Suspicious User Accounts

I cam across a talk page, User talk:Crouton, for a user that appears to have been created solely so that the user talk page could be used as an attack page. The user's only edits have been to the talk page and to the December 12 and 1988 pages, adding the birth of the subject of the page. Do I speedy tag this as an attack page, or is there some other policy on pages like this one? Does it matter less because it's in the user talk space? Thanks. -- Vary | Talk 02:21, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and deleted it and posted a warning; the user has not yet made a single valid contribution. This was a clear abuse of the talk page, not merely a questionable use of it. Postdlf 02:26, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Great, thanks! -- Vary | Talk 02:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

'Ethan Blatt', who he added, is almost certainly nn. Tintin (talk) 03:30, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Another proposal about userboxes

See Misplaced Pages:Use of userboxes. Basically, this proposal is about putting all userboxes (except Babel templates) into the user namespace, so that they can be treated like all other user pages. Discussion to the talk page, please. --bainer (talk) 03:30, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Rumor, Speculation, and Tabloid Use in Articles

Should rumor and speculation be included in articles? Is it encyclopedic to include rumor/speculation if its unverifiable nature is made explicit? Ditto concerning mention of information contained in tabloids: is it ok to say "in Y article the National Enquirer said X" as long as it is included as speculation? Wondering what everyone else thinks... Turly-burly 04:23, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Only verified facts belong in Wiki. We'd grow pretty fast otherwise! Rjensen 04:31, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Generally, only if the reporting itself became notable, or was verifiable from other sources. For instance, if a celebrity sued a tabloid over claims that were alleged to be libelous, and that lawsuit was reported in the mainstream media, then that should be included in the article. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 04:43, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

You should not state anything in an article unless you can point to some other source that has already said it first. And even that generally doesn't lead to very good articles. Raul654 04:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it's obvious that rumors presented as facts don't belong in articles; however, I am wondering if the fact that a rumor/speculative comments exist make them relevant enough to merit addition as explicit rumor/speculation, e.g. "The Playstation 5's release is rumored to be March 2007" or "Certain publications have speculated that the creator of 'Hey Arnold!' was a heroin addict in the early 70s". With appropriate citation, of course. Turly-burly 05:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I think what Turly-burly is referring to is the inclusion of information that U.S. President George W. Bush began "drinking again", and having it be a reliable reference in the article George W. Bush substance abuse controversy and the reference from National Enquirer is from here. I am not a big fan of rather slick tabloid media for a reference base of pejoritive information. I find it rather slanderous and unencyclopedic, but I may be entirely incorrect in that assumption. I would be more than pleased if a reference of the information from a media source of a more respected nature was available.--MONGO 08:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

The rumor comes down to this "The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope." Encyclopedia quality? well no. The more junk that goes in the junkier we become. Rjensen 08:57, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

WP should have a clearly written policy regarding tabloid sources (both the periodicals and supermarket books) specifying when they might be appropriate to use (such as when lawsuits, as reported in reliable sources, have been provoked) and when they are not appropriate (most other times), since they amount to unverifiable hearsay and can sway the content and tone of an article completely away from the documented record. This issue has been an editorial cancer in the social sciences, especially in biographies. See Nick Adams and the talk archives for Elvis Presley for how disruptive and unhelpful the use of tabloid material can be on WP. Wyss 19:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I think this should be left up to editor discretion. Although most people realise tabloids are outrageous fabrications, they can help to demonstrate popular culture about a topic. They should never be presented as fact. Deco 21:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

How does one reconcile your statement, "I think this should be left up to editor discretion," with "They should never be presented as fact"? Wyss 21:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's a matter of policy that we don't present things as fact that are known to be false. I meant that their inclusion should be left to editor discretion. I guess occasionally tabloids publish true things, but they're not exactly reputable enough for anybody to trust. Deco 21:38, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

If tabloids are "not exactly reputable enough for anybody to trust," what criteria would make a cite from a tabloid acceptable? Wyss 22:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

As long as the citation makes it clear that the information is false, it can be used to support things like claims of notability: "The dinner became so notorious that it was referenced in a Pentagon press conference and was the subject of a hoax in The Enquirer claiming that aliens had prepared the food." Deco 23:48, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

So you're saying a tabloid citation would only be acceptable if it is used to cite a falsehood published by the tabloid? Wyss 02:13, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I think in this case, tabloid is being taken to mean specifically the junk magazines in supermarkets that publish exclusively false information that is amusing (not unlike Uncyclopedia). Just like Uncyclopedia, they are probably not appropriate for use as serious sources of information. If you're talking about other types of junk magazines, it may be necessary to handle them on a case-by-case basis. Intellectual Integrity and research standards of the publication are the central thing to consider. --Improv 02:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

If soemthing is covered in a supermarket tabliod, that may be evidence of significant interest in the subject, or of notability. It may be evidence of a poo=culture meme. it is rarely if ever evidence of the truthefulness of the facts asserted by the tabliod. DES 02:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm referring to the junk magazines... and gossip books... found in supermarkets. Anyway I agree they're not at all reliable (except as indicators of notability). I'm asking because I'm interested in other opinions. Wyss 02:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Until January 31, 2006 when User:Jguk posted a rewrite, Misplaced Pages:Verifiability (Dubious sources) stated that: "For an encyclopedia, sources should be unimpeachable." As such, this change in long-standing policy seems to leave it wide open to quote junk Tabloids or any other such publication so long as you state the source. - Ted Wilkes 19:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Names vs trademarks - ex. Life vs LIFE, Time vs TIME

Standard copyediting practice for encyclopaediae and other formal repositories of writing/information is to use the name of a magazine, company or product without resorting to the trademark itself, with a few understandable exceptions (XP or OS X don't become xp and os x, of course).

In numerous articles on Misplaced Pages there is some confusion followed by needless edit wars over this subject - can we please set down a policy to clarify it to editors, for once and for all? (Or if there is one can someone please point me to it?) -- Simonides 05:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (trademarks) - English presentations are preferred, i.e. Time and Life not TIME and LIFE. Dragons flight 05:14, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, now can you please let User:Wisco know too :) ? -- Simonides 05:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Help: Meaning of NPOV policy: Proportion of representation among experts OR among concerned parties

I posted this in the HelpDesk but it might properly belong to this place. Please also see the reply of Eequor below. Thanks for any help, confirmation of my interpretation or Eequor's, or my response to EEquor's, but I would prefer an "official interpretation." Where can I get this? I suppose this is the place? Lafem 05:25, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

The NPOV policy states: "we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties."

Since the conjunction used here is or implying that the second part is but an alternative, should we take this to mean that if there are experts on the subject with different points of view, there is no need to look into how the topic itself affects concerned parties nor much less how the ordinary people opine about the subject.

I base my interpretation in that the decision on what is majority and minority viewpoints is based on reference texts (experts I presume) and prominent adherents. See NPOV policy: "From Jimbo Wales, September 2003, on the mailing list: If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;* If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents." Also the policy of No Original Research seems to back this up.

To summarize: the "or" means that if there are experts, commonly referenced texts and prominent adherents, we should not look into the opinions of ordinary people or how people in general feel about the subject? Thanks. Lafem 12:33, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

The comma in that statement is a hypercorrection. I think this is a poorly-written way of saying "we should present competing views in proportion to their representation among concerned parties and experts on the subject" — that is, we should present all views to an appropriate degree, which is what the rest of the policy says. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 15:50, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Eequor. That's a very scholarly response. It seems very bad writing indeed if that is the intent and policy-makers could have just chosen another conjunction such as and. That is why I am bringing this up for others to see. Thanks again. Lafem 05:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:PANIC

Following a recent conflaguration at Misplaced Pages:Administrators_noticeboard#Blocking_self-identified_pedophiles, I had an idea for a possible guideline that I hope could help in the future. I'm thinking something along the lines of WP:PANIC as the shortcut, and the short form of it is that it might be used to defuse some common situations where people have an intense emotional reaction to something, perhaps in the form of moral panic (as an example). If something like this exists already, please let me know. If the idea is dumb, then lemme know too! Here's the link to my proposed guideline idea: User:Chairboy/Panic - Thanks! - CHAIRBOY (☎) 06:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if we already have something like this, but it sounds like a great idea to me. We need to do something to help fix the wheel-warring situation. Keep up the good work.--Alhutch 07:15, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

The original poster was something of a troll here - I'm guessing someone from the anti-userbox lobby. It could be nice to have a guideline called Misplaced Pages:Don't panic (in the spirit of the classic Douglas Adams phrase) with a discussion of inflammatory topics, trolls, and the general conservatism of Misplaced Pages in adopting outrageous new policies. Deco 11:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

time line Graphs

it's can be really diffucult sometimes to get an accurate feel for time scales when graphs on certain page are on a left-to-right time scale, and some are on a right-to-left. this is (or was) perhaps most prevalent on pages related to Global Warming, or Climate Change, or other geological time scale articles.

could we put in place a policy of all timescale moving from left-to-right? that seem the most appropriate to me, as in mathematics left is generally negative, and right is generally psitive on graphs, and we read left-to-right as well.

I'm no so fussed about the direction, just about the standardisation.--naught101 22:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree that the direction (later dates to the right, earlier dates to the left) is a pretty standard convention, whether it's mentioned in the style guide or not. On the other hand, we have to work with whatever graphs our contributors give us...I'm not sure that I'd discard an otherwise excellent figure because the scale was unusual. You can always ask a figure's contributor if they would be willing to provide a version with an inverted axis. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

NPOV As a new user, doesn't the 'criticism' in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/Invitrogen violate the NPOV guideline...? If not why? If so, how does one change/delete it without vandalizing?

user: hebertbrian Hebertbrian 00:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The discussed section does not violate NPOV as far as I can tell. It lacks specific sources, which is a problem, but as long as the information describes the point of view of an external, attributed source, rather than just the contributors who wrote it, it is well within NPOV. Deco 00:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

It needs a source, but it doesn't violate NPOV if it is truly the way people feel. Guettarda 13:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Internet meme notability criteria

I regularly watch internet phenomenon / meme type pages and I think that there needs to be some sort of guideline as to what constitutes a notable internet phenomenon. (I posted something similar on the talk page a month or so ago at internet phenomemon but there weren't any takers.) Some questions that arise:

• When people unwillingly become the subject of the internet meme (see the debate over Brian Peppers), what should be the procedure? Essentially, they are private citizens who have done nothing other than have people make fun of them. Private individuals generally do not meet Misplaced Pages's standards for notability. Can a person's notability be made for them? If the meme is basically attacking the private individual, does repeating the meme contribute to the attack, and therefore violate Misplaced Pages's "no attack page" policy. How careful should we be, particularly in light of Jimbo Wales' new "living persons" crusade?
• Is there some sort of criteria for humorous videos? Mainstream media coverage (or otherwise moving beyond the internet)? A certain number of hits on Google? What about videos that were basically popular otherwise first? Like the Howard Dean scream?
• Catch phrases: how do these differ from memes?

Just some things to think about. --Hamiltonian 01:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, John Bobbit's notability was made for him. Deco 03:08, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

True, but he also made some for himself as well. But I appreciate your point. --Hamiltonian 03:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

John Bobbit's notability is self-evident through the widespread mainstream media coverage of the incident. In the case of Mr. Peppers, there has been no such widespread mainstream media coverage - his only "notability" comes from the fact that people have made fun of him on Teh Intraweb. That's not notability, that's people on the Internet being morons. Perhaps we should have a page on the first person who was insensitive and pathetic enough to make fun of this poor guy, and expose his asshattery to the world. FCYTravis 04:59, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the key point here is not about "internet memes" in general but rather about permitting private individuals to remain outside the glare of the limelight if they so choose. There are laws on this, IIRC, in every state in the USA, and I would imagine elsewhere as well. Information that is true and even interesting is still not permissible for publication if it compromises privacy. This is still true with public figures but the standard favors publishers more. "Internet memes" that are not personally identifiable, such as the "lost frog" meme, do not pose a problem. "Memes" based on public figures, such as the flash cartoons from whichever U.S. presidential campaign it was, do not pose a problem. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 05:47, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The Star Wars kid falls under this category as well. If not permissable, his page would have to be deleted, as he didn't seek out notability. VegaDark 06:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that gets to my point of notability. The Star Wars kid had tonnes of mainstream media coverage, was parodied on various TV shows etc. So, I'm fine with that. Peppers? Not so much. Perhaps a two line thing on the internet phenomenon page would do.--Hamiltonian 06:51, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

To my reading, the relevant policies address this on three points:

• Has the person been part of a newsworthy event?
• Has the person been the subject of mainstream media attention?
• Has the person chosen to become a public figure?

If the answer to all three questions is no, then the person deserves respectful privacy from Misplaced Pages. Durova 09:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

• • There was a local FOX News article on the dissemination of his photo as an external link on the Brian Peppers article at one point. The story has since been deleted on that page, but it's evident that he at least made television news.--Aleron235 20:47, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

User RFC Straw Poll

I've opened a straw poll on the User RFC process. See Misplaced Pages:User RFC reform. All comments are welcome. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 04:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Should articles that just redirect to Wiktionary be deleted?

I've seen a number of articles that are either hard or soft redirects to wiktionary definitions and have no other content in their history. These seem like candidates for speedy deletion to me, but I don't know if there's any consensus or policy about this. --Zwilson 06:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Some people think these are good to have and I've seen them say as much. Others disagree. So, no consensus it appears. As for what you're supposed to do when there's no consensus in this case... not sure. Deco 07:15, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd say they're useful, and they also discourage anyone stubling across them from adding their own dictionary definitions (which are speediable) to Misplaced Pages. If anything, we need more links to Wiktionary. Ideally, every page (whether existing or not) with a corresponding Wiktionary entry should automatically have a prominent link to it. What's the point of having a separate dictionary if we don't link to it? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes. wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wiktionary is a dictionary. Simple. If you cannot do better than a dicdef (note this excludes dab page, which have function), zap them. — Dunc|☺ 13:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but could you please clarify whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with what I wrote? Out of context, I'd say I agree with what you wrote above, but it doesn't seem to relate to my previous comment. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

They don't seem very good to me, we don't really want to have people find, to their surprise, that they are no longer in Misplaced Pages. If it were a soft redirect, with something that says, "Misplaced Pages has no article on this subject but there is a definition at Wiktionary", and then a link they can click on, that would be okay. User:Zoe| 17:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Like {{wi}}? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. User:Zoe| 18:26, 7 February 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)

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)

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)

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)

Semi-disambiguation pages

There are quite a few disambiguation pages that are stubs or even sizable articles that have a list of links below to more specific terms. For example, hose has two small paragraphs explaining what they are and then links to things like fire and garden hoses. I don't like this example very much because almost everyone knows what a hose is and it is not as long as some other articles, but hopefully you'll be able to get the idea. When making a link, this kind of disambiguation page is often the most appropriate (like if you wanted a link about hoses in general). The problem is that links to disambiguation pages are discouraged and the pages tend to have unrelated disambiguations. Hose is not too bad. It just has pantyhose and a village named hose. Should these pages just be linked to as is, should the disambiguation tag be removed (if all of the disambiguations are subtopics of a main topic, either naturally or by moving related terms to a new article) or should a new page for the overall topic be created, like "hose (tube)"? -- Kjkolb 22:59, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

A better example of this is pseudoprime, which discusses pseudoprimes in general, then links many specific kinds of pseudoprimes. I think you really have to look at things on a case-by-case basis. It definitely seems odd to me to talk about X in general then link 7 unrelated uses of the word; in this case, I would either remove the general material if it's completely obvious, or create a separate article for it if it isn't. Deco 23:15, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Fair use art

Is it possible to illustrate an article on an artist with multiple images of that artist’s work under fair use terms. Justin Foote 01:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

2006: Ilyanep asks a very important question

What is the policy on article headers such as '1992-1995: Early times', '1995-1997: Public recognition', etc? I personally think they seem odd. — Ilyanep (Talk) 02:21, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

There isn't any. They do seem odd. But that's an article-level style choice and I can't imagine we'll make a global policy one way or the other. Deco 02:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I think reversing them would be better (e.g. "Early times (1992-95)"), but I suspect that it's just a matter of personal preference. —Kirill Lokshin 02:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

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