Wikipedia:Village pump/December 2003 archive 2

Should one create articles that are of little use to the general public?

I'm as newcomer as possible, and I was wondering whether one should consider the relevancy of an article before posting it, or post it, assuming that if it is of little relevance few articles will link to it, and no harm will be done. For instance, I could write an article about my high school, but I very much doubt whether this will be of interest to anybody. Should I do this, so as to broaden the scope of Wikipedia, or should I dedicate my time to things of greater use and importance, such as juggling bananas?

--81.218.180.201 23:36, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)Itai

The debate about high schools is an old and ongoing debate, I think...you can create other sorts of articles that may not be of everyday general interest (I would say a lot of the history articles I have created fit that description), but it may not be a good idea to start out with your high school. Adam Bishop 23:40, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/schools. Angela.

I'm a newbie here myself. So far, I've found that if I try looking up any article on a topic on which I have any significant degree of knowledge, I instantly find things that I think should be added, things that I think are not quite right, things that I think can be phrased better... so I suggest that's where you start.

If you look through an existing article, often you'll find links that display in red—for example, this one: Raymond Loewy. This means either that there is no article at all on the great industrial designer Raymond Loewy, or that I've misspelled his name.

When an existing article already links to an article that doesn't exist, that's a reasonable excuse for creating the missing article.

In your case, you mention juggling bananas. As you can see, there is an article about juggling and an article about bananas. Both look good as far as they go, but it seems to me that there might be more to write about. What do you think?

In other words, before creating a questionable article, why don't you see whether there is some contribution you could make that would be just as much fun to do and more likely valuable to users of Wikipedia?

Oh, one more thought—I grew up in Scarsdale so I know a little about the town. Well, almost every town in the U. S. has a Wikipedia article based on census data. I'll bet your town is there. And I'll bet you know something about it that isn't in the article. In my case, I added a snapshot of one of the stranger-looking buildings in Scarsdale and some notes on famous people who lived there. I don't know if anyone really cares—but I'll bet that there are at least as many people interested in knowing that Gish Jen lived in Scarsdale as in knowing that 32.8% of its inhabitants are under the age of 18 Dpbsmith 01:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Indeed, I have been doing the same for towns on Oahu where I live. I would suggest beinging your new material to the top, and have "Demographics" as one of the last subtitles. Census data are there not because of intense interest in the numbers. - Marshman 01:53, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I strongly disagree. There is a WikiProject and a guide for these articles at WikiProject Cities, with the suggested template given farther down the page here. It actually is a good convention to be consistent about. I (like many people) first found Wikipedia through these articles, and it's one of the things that people tend to expect consistency in. It's fine to add more info, but it would not be good for them to have the information arranged in completely different orders. -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 02:42, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Case of Internet TLDs?

Should the Internet TLDs of countries not be in lowercase? Anjouli 07:23, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I would agree that lowercase is the de-facto standard representation. Daniel Quinlan 07:42, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Such Qs are more appropriate on Wikipedia:Reference desk. --Menchi 07:46, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I beg to disagree. This is not a Reference Desk question since it relates to the standard format used in all WP country pages. It is therefore a WP format issue, presumably best discussed in Village Pump (WP related issues) before making into a style guideline, if agreed. I though that was clear from the countries link, but perhaps I should have been more specific. Anjouli 05:59, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I have moved this back to VP where it belongs. All our Countries of the world Internet TLDs are still in upper case which is incorrect. Volunteers to help me change them all to lower case please? Anjouli 17:49, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In this context let me draw your attention to Wikipedia:Reference desk#Countries of the world -- abbreviations. I really believe that there should be a page with a name that is easy to remember and guess (which I believe would rule out ISO 624-213-5 or whatever it is) where the various abbreviations are juxtaposed and where users can easily browse through them without being distracted by additional information. --KF 18:12, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Uppercase isn't incorrect. Of course, you can change them all to lowercase if you like, but it's fairly pointless, and arguably less readable. The reason they're currently uppercase is probably because they were originally added to the articles as ISO 3166-1 codes rather than TLDs. --Zundark 23:13, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I would not agree that it is pointless, since lower-case is correct and upper-case is wrong. I refer you to the ICANN General TLD Policies, which clearly state this. [1]. This is an encyclopedia after all and we are supposed to care about things like that. I don't buy the readability argument. The same argument could justify having all of WP in upper-case. Anjouli 16:50, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Uppercase is not wrong. No ICANN document says otherwise (though ICANN certainly prefers lowercase). See also the relevant RFCs. As for readability, I was talking about 2-letter codes - paragraphs of text are a completely different matter. Anyway, I have no objection to you converting them to lowercase, as long as you don't make a single mistake. --Zundark 23:44, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Have oyu ever seen me make a mitsake :) Anjouli 13:56, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How to move an article to another Wiki

I frequently see (for instance on VFD), the suggestion to move an article to Wiktionary, Wikisource, or to the Memorial Wiki. What is the process for doing this as a non-sysop? Should the page history, talk page, talk page history, any other subpages be moved as well? How? Is this something that can be done as a "bold edit" or is a more formal process required?

-Anthropos 18:05, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

See m:Transwiki and Wikipedia:Transwiki log. -- Cyan 18:35, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Sysops don't have a special tool for this. Basically, it's a matter of cutting and pasting as you can't actually move the page history (yet). Whether this is a problem depends on your reading of the GFDL. The since we are on legal matters ... thread on Wikilegal-l last month looked at the issues of moving text between pages within Wikipedia, but left many unanswered questions. My view is that is that it is ok to move text as long as you note "at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five)" (see section 5.4 of the GFDL). When I move a page, I either list the authors in the edit summary when creating the new page, or I list the authors on the talk page (see m:Talk:Wikistress for an example). There is a function to output the full history (Special:Export), but not, as yet, any method to import that elsewhere. So, I would say – be bold and make the move yourself. If you are unfamiliar with the wiki you are moving it to, you may want to leave it in their transwiki pseudo-namespace rather than their main namespace. The page "Transwiki" here, and at Wiktionary, Wikisource, and hopefully in future other places, will redirect you to a page where you can log such moves. Angela. 19:43, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. Once the content of the page is question is copied to the destination Wiki, what is to be done with the article that remains on Wikipedia? Should that be listed at VFD? Is there some other mechanism for having someone with authority delete the page? -Anthropos 14:30, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Currently policy (depending which one you read) allows these to be deleted instantly, but there are issues with that, so I think listing on VfD is best. Angela. 08:01, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Adding html tables to wiki pages

Hi. I maintain a list of remote sensing satellites (www.matox.com/agisrs/arsist) and I love so much wikipedia that I'd like to share the table within wiki. However, it is not in a "normal html table" format. What should I do ? What do you propose ? (Plenty of people (www.matox.com/agisrs) are using this list and it would be great to make them participate in wikis :) You can contact me on arsist@matox.com, thanks !

Something that size would be problematic on a wiki page and very hard to edit without making a mistake and messing the table up. Is there a way it could be split into a number of smaller tables? Angela. 07:52, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

For something like that, http://sources.wikipedia.org might be more appropriate Dori | Talk 08:03, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

What to do?

What can sysop do when someone keeps creating the deleted topics? (There was a hot argument about if we should keep so-called lixiang-yu or not in Chinese Wikipedia, but when I deleted it according to the result of vote, I noticed that there was already 50 deleted edit! Someone kept creating that again and again after deleting) --Samuel 02:59, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You could blank the page and protect it. This has been used as a short term measure here before on some pages. Angela. 07:48, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Relax. Go get a cup of tea. You will be here longer than them. Martin 00:08, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Certain characters becoming question marks on my talk page

All of a sudden, on my talk page, all of the bullets (•) and this character that I use in my sig (¤) have turned to question marks. This happened to me once on VfD a couple of months ago, but I haven't seen it since. Anyone know why this is and if it's a bug or not and why it would happen so rarely? Thanks, BCorr ¤ Брайен 04:37, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps someone who doesn't have a Unicode-enabled computer edits the page, and subsequently doesn't transfer the Unicode glyph properly. It's not your fault, I don't think. Dysprosia 04:45, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Dysprosia above is correct. The last editor of your Talk (TonyClarke) does not have extended Unicode apparently. I'd assume • is a very basic character though. --Menchi (Talk)â 11:44, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thank you both. And I actually thing it was Ajd who made the edit.... -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 15:20, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Phrase "towns, villages and townships" in all Dutch municipalities articles

The phrase "towns, villages and townships" occurs in all the articles for Dutch municipalities (in Dutch: gemeenten) and is an attempt at a direct translation from the Dutch "plaatsen, dorpen, gehuchten, stadsdelen" (see all the entries in http://www.sdu.nl/staatscourant/scdata/gemeentenindex.htm ). Although the Dutch names have official meaning in the Netherlands, that's lost in the looser English translations (where we even go from four designations to three, since the translator presumably ran out of English words to express the Dutch distinctions!) Unfortunately, after I'd corrected Nijmegen to replace the phrase with the all-encompassing "settlements", I noticed that over 300 articles have the same problem :-( Solution? Can this be automated? Leaving the articles as they are is an option, but the phrase sounds extremely peculiar in English and doesn't even capture the Dutch distinctions.---Spellbinder 14:05, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I can't help you with the automation question, though my guess is that someone out there will. I'd like to comment though, that the use of the term settlement may not be the best. As a typical mono-lingual US American, when I hear that word, it tends to bring to mind a village of newly arrived pioneers. I'd suggest the word community as a generic term for a village, town, villages, etc. I'm not sure what other English speaking peoples would think. -Anthropos 15:03, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well a hamlet is a small village (in UK English at least). I think "community" doesn't work as the name of a town. I've only ever seen people use township to refer to South Africa. I think settlement is ok. Secretlondon 15:13, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

Township seems to be used by the US as well. ("Define:" in google is your friend [2]) Township: "Generally, a square tract of six miles on a side containing thirty-six square miles of land. A name given to a civil and political subdivision of a county in the U.S." Note that the term "township" as used in the South African context refers not to some nice little town, but to a squalid collection of shacks, often on the outskirts of major cities. --snoyes 15:34, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hurriedly: the word "township" is indeed used more or less throughout the U.S., but its meaning is complex and technical and varies very significantly from state to state. The meta-information that it's complex is really the only thing I can say for sure; I'm not an expert, and an expert is required. The Google definition refers only to the midwestern states that were surveyed during a big land-surveying project sometime in the nineteenth century; you can see the results on any airline flight, where the roads, farms, etc. follow an obviously squared-off pattern.

In these states, every piece of land is specifically tied to "range and township;" a 160-acre farm might be described as the NE quarter of section 11, range 40W, township 78N.

In New England, there is an entity officially and informally called a "town" is county-like in the sense that the land is fully apportioned and every square inch of it falls within one town or another. The U. S. census, however, I believe, calls New England towns "townships." Anyway, broadly speaking a) the word exists in the U.S.; b) nobody really knows what it means; c) it means something different depending on what state you're in. Dpbsmith 17:26, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'd imagine that the best translation would be hamlets, villages, towns and cities, as this probably covers the equivalent English concepts (i.e. groups of residential and other buildings above the size of the single-family or extended single extended-family units or something like that). sometimes word-for-word translations just aren't possible, I suppose. Bmills 17:30, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

"Village", "town", and "city" are about the only terms in English that are broadly understood to have a generic meaning in addition to any specific legal formulations. I would use just those, then supply the specific Dutch term in italics and parentheses following, ideally linked to an article so us non-Dutch-speakers can understand what the term is supposed to mean. Stan 18:03, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It really varies. In states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as Michigan and most of the Midwest, a township is a municipality, is the basic division of counties, has a government, etc. Almost everyone there knows what a township is, just as they know what a city is. Also, in most of New England, the state is divided into towns, and then counties are composed of towns (the opposite of Michigan). Maine, however, has cities, towns, townships, plantations, and unincorporated townships. Etc., etc. -- BCorr ¤ Брайен 19:49, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The translation of the word "gehucht" is hamlet or settlement. The word is derived from the middle Dutch "gehochte or gehuchte" and originally meant a collection of farmhouses. Nowadays the word is used for verry small villages.

The word "dorp" is translated with village or town. A "dorp" used to be every larger settlement in the country which had no "stadsrechten" i.e. oficial priviliges which only cities had. Nowadays the word "dorp" is used for every village which is larger than a "gehucht" and has less than 10,000 inhabitants. The size of a "gehucht" is not defined but in contrast to a "dorp" a "gehucht" usually doesn't have a church.

The word "stad" means town or city. Since "stadsrechten" are now abolished, a "stad" is every settlement with more than 10,000 inhabitants. The Dutch distinguish between small, middle large and large cities, which depends on the number of inhabitants.

A "stadsdeel" is a quarter, area, district or part of a town/city. The word "plaats" (literally: place) can be used for every settlement and includes both "dorp" and "town"

Jurriaan 18:43, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Returning to the original comment, I do not think that "towns, villages, and townships" sounds peculiar in American English. To me, what it communicates is actually quite accurate: it sounds like a list of names of town-like things that have technical and legal distinctions that need not bother me. That is, although perhaps "village" may not be a technically accurate translation of the individual plaatsen and "village" may not be a techically accurate translation of the individual term dorp, I suspect that "towns, villages and townships" is a very good translation of the entire phrase.

If you ask people what the meanings of the words are in the United States you'll get general agreement that a village is small, a town is bigger, and a city is even bigger, but beyond that few people know or care about the exact distinctions.

It seems to me that, at least in the Northeast, "community" is the generic word used e.g. by makers of street atlasses; the table of contents of an Eastern Massachusetts street atlas would probably list ll the place names (Dorchester, Norwood, Waltham, etc.) under the heading "communities" in order to avoid fussing with the fact that Norwood is a town and Waltham is a city... and goodness knows what Dorchester is (a zip code? a neighborhood? a village?) Dpbsmith 20:37, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think that a more accurate translation of "plaatsen, dorpen, gehuchten, stadsdelen" would be "towns, villages, hamlets, districts" though. Jurriaan 21:17, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

OK, sounds reasonable. One more thought, though. I'd consider dropping "hamlets" and just making it "towns, villages, and districts," unless there's a strong feeling that the translation should be word-for-word. The dictionary definition of "hamlet" is "small village." However, in the United States, it is very rarely used other than as a jocular archaism. Nobody ever says "I grew up in a little hamlet named Barneveld near Blue Mounds State Park." One might say "all the little burgs and hamlets out in the boondocks." Indeed, even "village" is rarely used to describe an isolated community. The only times I've ever heard the word, it referred to small residential clusters with their own small commercial centers within a large town; as in Scarsdale, New York which contains the villages of Scarsdale, Heathcote, etc; or Newton, Massachusetts, which contains the villages of Newton Centre [sic], Chestnut Hill, etc. "Village" to me means a small isolated settlement in some other country e.g. England--or the Netherlands. Hamlet has one very specific and peculiar association: for some reason, it was the word invariably used to describe small settlements in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. Not helpful and we're now down to shades of meaning that are debatable and don't matter, but I think "village" is a better word than "hamlet." People in the U.S. who live in places with populations of, say, less than a thousand, usually call them "towns" with some descriptive adjective or phrase ("tiny little town, just a bend in the road."). Just musing. Dpbsmith 12:01, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My goodness, I'm the originator of the thread and I didn't think so many people would contribute; I thought I'd be lucky to get a couple of comments! Anyway, the subject has moved on a bit; at the moment, I'm investigating with the help of some of those who contributed above, whether the lists that use these words are actually valid - they appear to be at best idiosyncratic and at worst misleading, so no more comments for the time being please. Thanks to everyone who commented. Spellbinder 13:44, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I just wanted to add a link to Wikipedia's own article on townships which seems to have been missed in the discussion. Rmhermen 13:46, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

Hostile experience on Wikipedia

On December 15 a poster on one of our game boards alerted me to a Wikipedia article that referenced one of our products. A Table Top RPG called The Morrow Project.

I went to the Wikipedia site and sure enough we were mentioned but the link page was empty. I thought I would contribute a general description of the game. I placed a section of text from our website describing the game on the page. Then I went back into edit mode to add some comments and more info. Before I even finished the edit someone (Silsor) had come along and voted to have the page deleted. They stated it was a rehash of an old RPG. While I don’t disagree with the statement that it was an older game I thought that a general description was a good way to start. I went to the indicated page and gave my reasons why and pointed out that it was a work in progress having only been up less than 5 minutes. At least one other person agreed with me and voted to keep the page.

The same person (Silsor) voted to delete the page then marked it as possible copyright infringement. I suspect this was more out of spite than a true desire to protect my copyright.

Another person (an editor) that goes by the handle of Smack then looked at the page. For some reason he believed it was copyright infringement. He sited a geocities site where someone had copied 3 lines from our description page onto their site. Since this geocities site was obviously a game related fan site and could be construed as a review we normally don’t pursue sites like that. I went to the your copyright site to explain that I was the copyright holder. This Smack person wrote a response but did not answer my questions just asked another question. I did my best to answer this ambiguous question. It would seem obvious that since I was the copyright holder and also the person that placed the text on the site that I did intend for it to be read on Wikipedia. His response was to ask the inane question “I don't understand whether you support or oppose the inclusion of the content on Wikipedia. -Smack 00:04, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)” I answered the quesiton that I did indeed support the inclusion of text. No response was ever give to that. The page is still listed as possible copyright violation.

It would seem that your editor is not performing his due diligence. The company website is listed in the original article. If this Smack has even bothered to go there he would have seen that it is a company website. The site he listed (if he even bothered to visit it) is obviously a personal fan website.

At looks like you have a fine idea here. I would like to contribute but the experience I have had makes it difficult to justify the time involved in doing so. If not for the people Silsor and Smack working against my efforts I would have been done in 15 minutes.

Chris Garland
President
TimeLine Ltd.
Chris(at)timelineltd (dot)com

I guess you are talking about The Morrow Project. The problem with that article in it's original state is that it doesn't give any context about what it is about. If it had an introductory sentence like "The Morrow Project is an online RPG game" the first Vote for Deletion nomination wouldn't have happened. Keep in mind we are trying to build an encyclopedia here, so a marketing text for the game is not fitting here - as I would have voted to delete it in its current state as well. As for copyright violation we are sometime too much paranoid to spot them, but as it is so easy to copy-and-paste text from any other website here it is a common problem. Of course there are sometimes false positives posted by the holder of the copyright, but these are rare. I hope that'll explain it a bit to you. andy 16:38, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Chris, sorry about your negative experience, but perhaps I can clear some things up for you:

1. Wikipedia does not employ any editors. The users you had conflict with are just free users just like everyone else. The users you had conflict with were just using due-diligence. We have to work hard to keep copyrighted material off Wikipedia to avoid any lawsuits. If you add copyrighted material to an article for which you own the copyright and are allowing its inclusion, note that on the Talk page for the article (click the "Discuss this page" link on the left). That should clear up any questions about copyright infringement.
2. You might get more cooperation if you create a (free) account and sign your posts (by using three or four tildes ~~~~ at the end of your posts) (only on Talk pages, not in articles proper). Anonymous posts are usually frowned upon. Signatures also make it easier to keep track of who said what. You don't have to create an account to sign your postings, but a handle of some kind is easier to refer to than an IP number.

Please don't let this negative experience discourage you from contributing to the 'pedia. It's addicted several hundred people already and we'd hate to lose one potential addict due to a negative first experience. :^) I'm sure after this initial bump in the road, things will go much smoother. :^) —Frecklefoot 16:42, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You also must understand that there is no such thing as an "Editor" of Wikipedia. We are all editors, it's a joint project. In addition, for items to be released under the Wikipedia aegis, you must specifically release the material under GFDL. Have you done so? If not, the material is a copyright violation, and must be deleted. RickK 16:41, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Surely this is not true? He's the copyright owner. If he places his original text on Wikipedia, then that's implicit approval under the GFDL. I agree that as it appears elsewhere on the Web a release is a good idea, but I think you're overstating it when you say it must be deleted without one. It's not a copyright vio at all, and it never was. It just looked like one. And now we know it wasn't one. Andrewa 18:28, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I See. Some very good suggestions. I have created an account. Also I will rewrite the info this evening and repost. Thanks for the great info.TimeLine 17:01, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Meantime, I have reverted this article to, well, to an article, the most recent version that is an article. IMO the chat that was there belongs in the talk page, which is where it is now. I hope this meets with approval by other editors. IMO it was not acceptable to make the article a de facto chat page. The copyright vio and VfD notices are still on the version I've reverted to. Andrewa 17:07, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hmmmm, I now see that the text I regarded as "chat" is actually the boilerplate from Wikipedia:Possible_copyright_infringements#Copyright_infringement_notice, which concerns me a little!

I think this boilerplate needs a rework. Remember, this is the article namespace. It's our product. I don't think a signed letter such as this fits here very well at all. If the article must be blanked (and is this really necessary if the only evidence of copyright vio is that the text also appears elsewhere, and the copyright status is unknown?) then I think a link to the talk page is more appropriate. But interested in other views. Andrewa 18:28, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think the boilerplate is essential. No, it's not an article, and it isn't usual to have a signed letter in the main namespace, but it is only there for seven days and is, in my opinion, highly preferable to having copyrighted material there. The message is meant to be more friendly to newbies as it clearly explains what the issue is, where to discuss it, and what to do if you want to rewrite the page. Having this prevents someone trying to edit the page further, and then causing problems where the copyvio remains in the page history, which happened a lot before the boilerplate included links to the "temp" page. I don't think that this boilerplate being in the main namespace is any worse than the normal VfD boilerplate being there, particularly since that has been expanded and is now signed as well. One solution might be to immediately take the copyvio out of the main namespace, such as moving it to talk:article name/potential copyvio but you'd still need something in the main namespace explaining where it was, or at the least, a redirect. Would this be better than having the whole letter there? Angela. 19:18, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Fair enough. I think the response to this particular case was over the top, and I was a bit surprised to reflect that the procedures seemed to have been followed. The only evidence of a problem was that the text appeared somewhere else on the web. The website owner hadn't objected, or even been contacted. The article could easily have been replaced by a m:good stub, which would seem to me to be a good response to many copyright vios. But what happened was that the text was removed, a very non-standard page was inserted into the article namespace, and the page was listed for deletion. Not good IMO.

Have a look at my m:good stub proposal on the Meta. It cuts across some of what is said on the existing stub and copyright vio pages. It's short and to the point, and intended to encourage the proper use of stubs. Comments and updates welcome. Andrewa 00:31, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes, replacing it with a stub is a good thing, but not on the same page. This means the original copyvio can not be deleted. See Wikipedia:Copyright violations on history pages for the justification of using temp pages for copyvio rewrites. Without this boilerplate, there would be no link to the temp page, so anyone wanting to rewrite wouldn't know to go there instead of the actual article. Angela. 01:02, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Good point! I'd missed that. Andrewa 01:22, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hmmmm. I see what it's trying to do, but it's ugly. We shouldn't need to delete an entire page and its history in order to remove copyvios from the history. I notice that a developer can delete specific versions from the history, and that this is the recommended procedure when copyvio material is added to an existing page. It seems to me that there should be a tool to allow an admin to do this conveniently and perhaps even reversibly. This would simplify everything. Possibly not a top priority, but if Wikipedia grows as many of us hope things that are rare now will become common enough to need elegant tools. Andrewa 02:59, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It seems to me that there is an issue here, perhaps not as important as copyrights, that we Wikipedians are missing. TimeLine (as anon.) was in the process of editing the article when it was placed on VFD? Doesn't anyone else see this as an issue? Shouldn't we all be a bit careful not to "jump on" a new contributor. If the article is patently offensive or nonsense, there's may not be a need to wait (though, practically, I think we should). But if an article seems trivial, or POV, shouldn't we give some time to it before we place it on VFD? I mean, would an hour, or even a day be too much time to wait? -Anthropos 22:06, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

IMO this delay should be standard practice. Without it we waste everybody's time in edit conflicts and incidents like this one. Andrewa 00:31, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I had the same bad experience. In fact it is still ongoing. While in the process of editing my first (and last!) Wikiproject, RickK swept through with indiscriminate deletions of whole sections and all the images in the entry. When I pointed out, on the Talk pages, that Wikipedia's editing policy guidelines discourage such blanket revisions and subsequent reversion wars, he replied, "Really? Who says?" After a period of broader participation, the copyright and fair use debate ended, and my position carried. With full knowledge of that outcome, Gentgeen began pursuing the alternate route of suggesting that all games' documentation (including chess, go, and many other games with substantial Wikicommunities) be moved to Wikibooks, which by his own admission is still nonexistent. Likewise, RickK continued to pursue two votes for deletion against the Catan Wikiproject, one regarding the same images that were already shown to be legitimate, at Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements (*cough* double jeopardy *cough* and the voters have been voting without reading the prior Talk page discussion and its resolution), and one regarding the Wikiproject's secondary pages, at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. These secondary pages are under construction; people are working on them as well as on foreign language translations. And yet, as in the situation highlighted by Anthropos, they are already on the VfD. Since RickK himself has sysop controls, I have no doubt that he will delete whatever he can as soon as seven days pass from the time of the two VfD listings. Is this just? ~ stardust 09:31, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I just read the first talk page you linked, and there were at least three people explaining to you why those images were, at the very least, questionable. Alfio 18:39, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Your extensive attacks on me don't warrant responses. Kinda glad to see you won't be sticking around. RickK 16:43, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Please tell me if I've violated the canons by zapping my own ill-considered comments that were here for a short time. I have no opinions, except a doubt that a curt dismissal is a good response when a subject comes up in a public forum where almost no one has heard of the issue. I'm taking up space with this note just to explain my self-censorship. Dandrake 23:33, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

Quoting the reply to the conclusion that you jumped to, after having read part of the Catan copyright discussion:

You replied to a portion of old discussion quoted here, which includes a completely wrong definition of fair use which was refuted in later discussion. I've set all of the quoted portion to italic to reduce the chance of others doing the same. Jamesday 22:59, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Please read the discussion itself. ~ stardust 03:13, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've read a great deal of that very long discussion, and I think it would be unconstructive to put down my opinion of it. But that's unconstructive too, so: a classic flame war in which the main antagonists of both sides make efforts to conceal the merits of their case because they're so busy slanging each other. Constructive comment: it really does illustrate problems in how Wikipedia works. Dandrake 06:08, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

Today an anon user came and I guess clicked on a link to sour, entered some junk and saved it. I put a {subst:test} on his page, and went to check out the "what links here" for sour. Less than two minutes, and the page was gone. Now imagine if that user was really just testing. Types something, doesn't get it immediately, and by the time he tries to edit what he's done the page is deleted, gone, non-existent. The only impression a chance user could get out of that is: "The editting feature doesn't work". Is this really what we want? Zocky 03:32, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That's why we go to the effort of putting a message on their talk page telling that their test did work, and giving advice on where future tests should be done. So, I don't think we do give the impression that editing doesn't work, just the impression that vandalism doesn't work, which has to be a good thing. Angela. 03:38, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

You know, Angela, this is exactly what happened to me at the zh wiki. I specifically went to Sourceforge and submitted a bug report because I thought the edit feature wasn't working because my page kept disappearing. Not only did I not receive notice of deletion on my User Talk page, but I received a warm and fuzzy welcome from the same guy who had deleted the stub page. Then we got into a feedback loop: I didn't want to start translating in earnest without being sure that the edit feature worked, and the page was getting deleted over and over again because nothing had been translated on it. A helpful admin at Sourceforge helped me figure out the real reason my edits had vanished three times. Of course your judgment of what happened to me was that I was unfair in accusing zh wiki of not using due process. Your above assessment of the impression given by Wikipedia is flat out wrong. ~ stardust 12:39, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My assessment was based on what I do at en, not what Shizhao did in this situation at zh. If I delete a page that looks like it was test, or even if it is outright vandalism, I leave the author a note stating precisely that their test worked and has been deleted. I doubt any confusion could occur over that. Perhaps you need to address that at zh, but the procedure here is that authors are informed of deletion, either on their talk page where it is instant, or on the article itself if it is being listed on VfD. I fail to see how you can say I am "flat out wrong". Are you saying that a message containing "your page has been deleted" could be misinterpreted to be a software failure? Angela. 13:23, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Your m.o. is far from a standard procedure followed by your peers. For instance, Jiang just deleted one of my stub pages (which I suppose is fine since our top New Shores player hadn't gotten started on the page). No notice given. I only noticed because the links to that page went red. I knew where to find to the deletion log, but most wikinewbies don't know that it exists, or know how to use the Talk function. Even if a newb knows there ought to be a deletion log, he has to be able to find it (think an english-as-a-second-language situation). Also, in the foreign language wikis, the translation for "deletion log" may not be obvious (e.g. native speaker of portuguese having trouble finding it at pt wiki). The truth is that new users do get the impression, at various language wikis including this one, that Wikipedia edits don't go through. ~ stardust 16:35, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Also, new users are not used to checking top right for new messages, and might have no clue what really happened before they wander off. I'd say wait 15 minutes before deleting a page.

Maybe "you have new messages" for anon users should be more prominent, and maybe it should include the summary of the last edit to the anon talk page. Zocky 16:59, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:bug reports for instructions on submitting this to sourceforge. I think for anons, this is a good idea, particularly when bans are justified on the fact that the user was warned. If they aren't seeing that warning, they are not getting fair notice of the ban. Angela. 00:10, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Another topic

related to comments made in Wikipedia:Village pump/December 2003 archive 2

I have to agree with the section title which describes hostility. I think that copyright notices are placed a lot of times out of spite. other users' thoughts? Greenmountainboy 20:10, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I don't really think that's the case (from reading over a lot of the cases). I'll grant you that the copyvio notice is a tad abrupt, and there are several wikipedians with the social skills of a tasmanian devil, but in general I think most notices reflect someone's honest caution in the face of any amount of willful abuse. -- Finlay McWalter 20:18, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Agreed. If people are hasty -- it's often simply that they want to bring attention to a problem before it grows into a big problem. We certainly don't want someone to go to a huge amount of work and create something huge and THEN tell them, weeks or months later, 'Oh, by the way, all that stuff you did, we're deleting it'. Better to question it early.

It's not helped, of course by the facts that a) Not every volunteer editor understands copyright law very well, b) that exactly what our standards are for IMAGE copyright aren't too well defined, and c) that the laws are not all that clear in the first place ('fair use', especially, is open to question at times). --Morven 02:36, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Of course copyright notices aren't added out of spite! They are added because the person finding them believes a violation has occured and genuinely wants to do something about that. Angela.