Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please try to post within policy, technical, proposals or assistance rather than here. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Saints Row Wiki

There's a wiki site for saints row if anyone's interested. We could sure use some contributions. I think the last one was by me. Here's the link: saintsrow.wikia.com - Aspiring Astronomer Racecarlock

Befuddled by my old submarines article

I served on the submarine USS Topeka and have been monitoring and helping maintain that page for a few years. The problem is that a lot of what is listed on there is unreferenced and the page is tagged as such. I have looke dfor references online but there aren't many. Despite that I personally know that most of whats on there is fact.

Do I effectively have to make a website somewhere with all the info just so I can provide a reference to prevent the deletion of the info? That just seems redundant... is there a solution for this?

thanks! Webprofessor (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Website references are not required. If you have paper references (ie: training manuals, US Navy Newspaper/Magazines that list the boat, local newspaper articles etc.) then list those paper references. A valid reference is a valid reference. It's nice if we can click on it to see it online, but if not, then just list it as an old fashioned paper reference. I'm sure that you can get some stuff released from the Navy under Freedom of Information rules also. Although doing this would probably be original research, hope this helps! :-) S/Lt fr33kman (talk) 14:30, 5 September 2008 (UTC) RNR

Dude, there are online references. The Naval Ship Register for one, this Navy site, this site also, and a few others. fr33kman (talk) 14:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I know about those but they don't have any real info on them. If you look at those sites there is no historical info on the ship. Things like past CO's etc... thanks for pointing them out though :-) Webprofessor (talk) 16:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Paper sources then, 'bout the only thing you can do. It's not your fault if I can't click on the source but have to get up and go to a library. Old-school! US Library of Congress should be able to help, perhaps for a fee. Take care, good luck! :-) fr33kman (talk) 01:56, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Why am I to be merged?

Riddle me this: anyone know why my talk page is being listed at Category:Articles to be merged since September 2008?

It appears when I edit any section (including section 0), so it can't be a template.

Worst yet, I tried adding a new section, and still got the "This page is a member of 1 hidden category" message.

Whisky tango foxtrot? EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Because you had a merge tag on your talk page! It's gone now. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:44, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I totally missed that, but I'm surprised that it was affecting sections that didn't feature it; the hidden categories thing is obviously something I have limited experience with. :)
Thanks! EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Categories (hidden or otherwise) are done by page, not by section. --Tango (talk) 18:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

If you click on the edit link for this (or any) section, you'll notice that you don't see Category:Wikipedia noticeboards at the bottom. That's the behavior I was expecting to see in regards to the template; usually it'll only show up if you're editing the section it is included in. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

XLinkBot: Worst. Bot. Ever.

• diff: I improved the Peter Doig article by adding that his big 2008 retrospective is also jointly organized and held at the Schirn in Frankfurt, and adding two links to two good and large galleries of his paintings.
• diff: User:XLinkBot just reverted it all, apparently because it doesn't like a blogspot link. (Said blogspot links displayed as much good Doig paintings as all other links combined.)

Unsupervised deletion of material: what a great way to throw the baby with the bathwater! 62.147.36.245 (talk) 21:05, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You added a link to blogspot, those get deleted. Corvus cornix_talk 23:44, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The IP is right that a bot shouldn't be blanket reverting blindly like that, as it did in fact clobber good material in addition to the offending links. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I probably shouldn't say this, but XLinkBot won't revert again if you undo its reversion. Algebraist 13:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep, and having been reverted by this bot when it was just coming out of a final trial run many months ago, full of indignation, i must say that what i found in the WP:BAG discussions, and other discussions by Versageek and Beetstra regarding this, was one of the most careful, open-minded, patient, fair, responsive and well-researched balancing of pros and cons and concern for our core values of almost any new introduction to the wiki. 86.44.29.35 (talk) 04:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

The bot has options which can revert all edits by a user, or just one. Both options have their own problems (the former may revert genuine edits as well; the latter may not remove all offensive material, as editors sometimes make mistakes in their external links, which get repaired in a subsequent edit). The very best would be to filter out the offensive links; however, at a technical level that is extremely difficult & error prone. Commonly, total reversion seems to be the least problematic, so this is the option we use. If you believe the edits are proper, you can just undo the edit by the bot, it will not re-revert to a version it created. --Versageek 13:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Why are links to blogspot forbidden in the first place? I can see many situations where it's legitimate. --Bachrach44 (talk) 20:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

They aren't. Links to 'blog sites' are discouraged if they can be replaced with something better, but not if they're a relevent primary source. The "Badsites" proposal, that there should be hard rules about not linking to 'certain' sites like YouTube or Wikipedia Review, failed and by a large margin of oposition. Having a bot enforce 'rules' on external links by deleting content is a very bad idea.

However, that said, this bot only appears to run spam-check style protections on anon and newly created editors addition of links. It may need monitoring to ensure it's not producing too many false positives, and upsetting new users by it's actions. --Barberio (talk) 00:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

As the other 'operator' of the bot, indeed, the bot only reverts new and ip accounts, and follows quite a number of protections (refuses to revert more than 3 times in 30 hours on one page (which may consistute different editors that get reverted anyway), does not revert when the previous edit is by itself or by another antivandalism bot, tries to detect if the links are in references, templates or remarks (and does not revert those), and does not revert actions like 'rollback', 'undo', and does not revert users on a whitelist of trusted users (where new users or trusted, static IPs can be placed after discussion), etc.). On the very first reversion the bot leaves a remark (not a warning), and suggests how to respond. If an editor then switches to another page, and continues to perform edits including links, then the spam-warnings follow. If that runs up to 4, then the edits can be judged as questionable anyway ('linkspamming'). The warnings get 'forgotten' after 4 hours of not adding a revertlisted link. Only after the 6th addition of a (in that 4 hour period) link the editor gets reported to WP:AIV, where an admin will have to have a look at the edits before more drastic measures are taken.

Links like blogspot are on this list as there are often problems with them. Not only in terms of the external links guideline (which discourages blogs), but also for conflict of interest, copyright, reliability, linkfarm or internet directory reasons. Other links (sometimes for short periods) include links which are pushed by (one or more) (IP-)accounts to this wikipedia. Though the latter the links may be very appropriate (and hence can still be added by established editors) such link-additons are generally prohibited by our spam guideline (again backed up by linkfarm or internet directory reasons).

This type of bot is already active for almost 2 year on wikipedia (first as Shadowbot, later as AntiSpamBot and shortly as SquelchBot), and generally, the majority of mistakes are on the first reversions of an editor (as links then sometimes tend to be OK; of the type 'http://subject.blogspot.com' to subject) (though these 'appropriate links' are not always necessery as well (we don't need a full list of blogspot, flickr, yahoo groups, youtube channels ..); and I think that on first reversions it is still in way over 95% of the cases correct in reverting (here taking into account that this 'first addition' may not have been the first addition, other accounts may have pushed it earlier as well)). That percentage increases drastically for the next reverts (which generally consitute link-additions which better had to be discussed anyway as they may be a proceed/start of link-pushing/spamming).

I hope this clarifies the matter. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Modifying the apostrophe template, Template:'

This is a request / suggestion for modifying the {{'}} template to fix a minor formatting issue.

Recently, Sswonk created {{'s}}. That template is very similar to {{'}} - but it has one distinct advantage. The new template avoids the situation where the apostraphe crashes with italicized text by using this code to surround the apostraphe in the template:

<span style="padding-left:0.1em;">'</span>

which is equivalent to:

<span style="padding-left:0.1em;">&#39;</span>

See for example:

1. ''Kroonland''{{'}}s = Kroonland's
2. ''Kroonland''{{'s}} = Kroonland's

In example #1 using the existing {{'}} template, the apostraphe crashes into the italicized "d", while in the example #2 using the new {{'s}} template, this issue does not exist. See also the discussion at WT:SHIPS#FYI problems using apostrophe after an italicized name.

Would it be acceptable to have template:' modified to use this modified snippet of code to insert a thin space prior to the apostraphe? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to be extra clear, the code doesn't add a thin space ( ), just a CSS hack to add padding to the left of the apostrophe. I tested it on IE6, IE7 and Mac FF3 and Safari 3, and also Lynx 2.8.6. Everything works fine, and testing a screen reader also showed no issues. Sswonk (talk) 22:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

To be extra-extra clear, it is not a CSS hack, but a simple use of CSS for visual kerning without affecting the semantics of the underlying content as would a  . :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I restate that here: I am a CSS hack. For fun, type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sswonk into the Web 2.0 validator. How about blinking apostrophes? Sswonk (talk) 01:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me; I've used similar tricks with {{" '}}, {{' "}} and {{" ' "}}. This really needn't be a VP discussion, though. Something this simple is better as a Template talk:' item. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I posted this initially at Template talk:', and the only reply was to use {{editprotected}} and to post at WP:VP. So, I posted here to see what comments were received prior to adding the "editprotect" tag. As there's prior precedence on other templates, I'll proceed with submitting the "editprotect" tag now. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Noted. That's kind of contradictory advice; I think someone got confused. Anyway, I've already filed an editprotected there. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Oops - edit conflict at {{'}}. Thanks for posting the request! --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Open source governance

I just want to make this community aware of an emerging kind of governance structure, born out of the concepts developed in Wikipedia (esp. consensus and transparency). The project is called the Metagovernment. Have a look: they could use some more help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stubborrnn (talk • contribs) 02:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

About Wikipedia:Recent changes article requests and Template:Recent changes article requests

Please add zh:Wikipedia:最近更改條目請求 and zh:Template:Recent changes article requests to the corresponding English Wikipedia pages, administrators. I know the two pages are protected due to the vandalism by auto-confirmed users, but this does not mean the Chinese interwiki links should not be added to the two pages. By the way, I think Wikipedia editions having more than 100,000 articles should have the function showing requested articles on the recent changes Wikipedia pages, since this function can let editors there are some important topics which do not have articles. And the English edition should have more lines in the two pages since there many important topics in WP:RA and WP:MEA. --RekishiEJ (talk) 09:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Templates for timelines

I have created {{timeline-item}} which (with {{timeline-start}} and {{timeline-end}}) generate a definition list for a series of dated events, each being wrapped in an hCalendar microformat, with the date generated by {{Start date}}. The example on the template's documentation is taken from Iraq disarmament crisis timeline 2001–2003.

{{timeline-links}} can optionally be added to a page, to pass its hCalendar events (generated by the aforesaid templates, or others) to external timeline-generating and other hCalendar-using websites.

I'd be grateful for constructive suggestions for improvements; and as to where there templates might be best employed. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 21:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Haas Vs. Nichols Blue water Navy Lawsuit

(removed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.105.128.37 (talk) 01:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox or a place to garner support. Understand that while I agree that it is a serious issue, it shouldn't be discussed here. Thank you. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 02:22, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the soapboxing. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

RBAG Spam

Per WP:BOT

	Chris is currently being considered for BAG membership. To view the discussion and voice your opinion, please visit Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Chris G.

--Chris 12:44, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Using the Template:Unreferenced template

I think only registered Wikipedians should be allowed to put in the Template:Unreferenced template. Any opinions?? Georgia guy (talk) 13:58, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

First, why? Second, I am unaware of how we would prevent IP editors from typing {{unreferenced}} into an article. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Hard to explain. The best answer is that unregistered Wikipedians have to show they know what they're doing. Georgia guy (talk) 14:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

All that {{unreferenced}} does is says an article does not have any references. This is extremely easy to confirm, and I don't see how this can be abused by an IP editor. If they are knowledgeable enough to know about {{unreferenced}} then they can figure out when it is required. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Eww, makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I think this would fundamentally go against the grain of what Wikipedia is supposed to be: i.e.: an openly editable source of knowledge for everyone. Anyone must be able to challenge what is said here, it's fundamental to democracy. Free speech includes the right to ask for references and free speech shouldn't be limited to groups, dangerous! :-) fr33kman (talk) 02:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Fair use policy

I have seen this image Image:YouTube logo.svg and on its Non-free use media rationale Low resolution?' description it says that:The logo is a size and resolution sufficient to maintain the quality intended by the company or organization, without being unnecessarily high resolution.. Acoording to my knowledge SVG files can be used very high resolution, so is it ok to use SVG files for non-free use or not? --Manco Capac (talk) 14:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

SVG just scales gracefully, that image itself is low resolution, 546 by 247. What you mean is that SVG files don't lose much when you scale them to a different resolution. Other image formats can scale as well, they just don't produce very good-looking results when they do so. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 16:46, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

redirect vandalism

In the last few days, I've noticed a bit of redirect vandalism, and I just want to bring this issue to some more people's attention. Due to its nature, someone changing a redirect will almost never show up on our various anti-vandal tools, and people rarely have them on their watch lists. The most often way I see it used is when someone redirects a phrase or word they consider derogatory to point to the biography of someone they don't like in an effort to change Google ratings. I actually did a quick skim of the redirect pages to both Barack Obama and John McCain as a small sample and found at least two vandalized redirects that no one had picked up - alcoholic for Obama and bomb Iran for McCain. I honestly can't think of a better way to audit for these than to go through redirects to controversial targets, which is a horribly slow and painful process. If anyone has a better way to check for vandalized redirects en-mass, I'm all ears. --Bachrach44 (talk) 20:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Small changes to very short pages (smaller than 200 characters) in article space. Unfortunately, the page size is not supplied in the IRC recent changes feed (though it is available in the recent changes API) -- Gurch (talk) 12:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I saw this section, and decided to have a little look myself, and came across Phony Bliar, Tony the bear, Tony Whoopdeedoo Blair, Whoopdeedoo, Whoopdeedoo Blair, and Reverend Tony for Tony Blair, who is the first person I thought of to do this for. I think these could do with some speedying. Deamon138 (talk) 01:42, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Me and someone else have got em all tagged for speedy deletion. Now to wait for the sysops to do their thing! Deamon138 (talk) 01:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Lol, is it just me, or do speedies go faster if you list them on the Village Pump as well? :D Deamon138 (talk) 02:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

PATROL!

List of unpatrolled pages

Everyone, hop on and do just 10. Come on, you can do it! --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:35, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

And do it right. DS (talk) 01:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

How????? 76.5.198.72 (talk) 01:49, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Anons can't participate, and neither can people who've been members for less than a week or so.(And remember, abusing the patrol feature will get you banned.) DS (talk) 02:08, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I am having trouble with the "[Mark this page as patrolled]" button sometimes appearing, sometimes not. For a highlighted yellow item I have to try opening it in multiple tabs to get a version with the button. Is anyone else having this problem?--Commander Keane (talk) 10:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The only time it doesn't show up for me is if I come to the page from somewhere other than Special:NewPages, such as through search. If I go through NewPages and the message appears, then make an edit, the message will no longer appear. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 10:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes that was it, thank you.--Commander Keane (talk) 11:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Sigh. Corvus cornix_talk 19:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

NP patrol is permanently backlogged. Pages are removed from the list after 30 days, whether they've been patrolled or not. At the current rate, there are a good number of pages that simply "expire" in that fashion rather than being patrolled. --Bachrach44 (talk) 20:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest extending the "expiration" past 30 days; perhaps to 60 days. I have a cynical feeling that we will just let the backlog build up to 60 days if we do that, though. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 20:12, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest for everyone who reads this to just pull up the link once a day and do an "open new tab" (middle button) on -say- 10 pages at random, and see if anything interesting pops up. Hey, it's free edit-count, don't people need that for RFA these days or something? ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC) Pop quiz: Why should people click "at random"?

Ha ha. I started patrolling NewPages about a day before you posted this. I will either a) ignore things I can't quickly decide; b) genuinely attempt to fix articles that seem notable, but lack something important; or c) put up for speedy deletion. Clicking the [mark this page as patrolled] doesn't affect your edit count, though. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. You actually need to do something useful to the article too! O:-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:51, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

CheckUser data now kept for five months instead of three

Thought I'd point out this change to MediaWiki, since they have a tendency to make these changes without telling anyone. (Your browser's user-agent string is stored, too, in case you didn't know) -- Gurch (talk) 09:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a default. I remember hearing at one point that wikimedia keeps checkuser data forever. --Random832 (contribs) 17:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, I heard it's kept for "a couple of weeks". The fact that your user-agent string is stored isn't that surprising, it's mentioned in WP:CheckUser. What would be interesting is if CheckUser is able to reveal anything not available in the apache server's access.log or whatever the access log is. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 22:43, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

hi

hi may i know about infosys —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.167.140.101 (talk) 10:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Try Infosys! — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 10:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes you may, you have my permission. :P Deamon138 (talk) 01:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia in the news.

Wikipedia has made the news in Australia on the News Limited site News.com.au.Wikipedia users divided over sexual material. Bidgee (talk) 22:27, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Lol go us! Anyway, that's a stupid article, and the day that Wikipedia is censored is the day that the world ends.

This person is silly: "Does that mean that when you type in 'murder', you should actually see someone murdering someone else?" she says. "Do we really need to see a woman masturbating on Wikipedia? Do we really need to see so many seconds of ejaculation?"

1. No, if you have a picture of a murder, it's called evidence! It would also violate WP:BLP, and said image would probably be illegal too.
2. Yes we do, you can filter the internet if you don't like explicit (legal) images. Why were you reading the article and playing the media anyway?
3. Same as 2. Plus, how many seconds would you like to see?

Say no to Wikipedia censorship!! Deamon138 (talk) 01:20, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The article doesn't mention anywhere the whole concept of parents monitoring their children while they're online... it's all our fault, not that of the parents or teachers who don't know what their kids are doing, of course. =P Tony Fox (arf!) 16:00, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that concept is long gone in the US; now, everyone expects the nanny state to live up to its title. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 16:45, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Everest University

An anon is edit warring to replace the external link at Everest University from everest.edu to everestonline.edu. The two links go to different pages. I have no clue which is correct, nor why there are two different pages, but if there is anybody out there with a clue, could they please look into this? Corvus cornix_talk 22:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Both websites are for Everest University, the online.edu is for their online courses, the other is for the whole shebang (and includes a link to the other one in tiny writing at the bottom). DuncanHill (talk) 22:41, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Hm. Thanks. Corvus cornix_talk 22:45, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Watermarks

I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to images, and I've been wondering - does Wikipedia have a specific stance on watermarks on images? Usually this is an easy way of spotting copyvios, but I've seen at least one where it was apparently marked by the uploader. Personally, I don't think such images should be used, but don't remember ever coming across anything forbidding them. faithless (^speak) 06:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Image use policy#User-created images "Also, user-created images should not be watermarked, distorted, have any credits in the image itself or anything else that would hamper their free use, unless, of course, the image is intended to demonstrate watermarking, distortion etc. and is used in the related article." Bidgee (talk) 06:26, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

That image just needs to be cropped at the face waist. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

If the user has released it under a "free" license, it would by definition permit derivative works, including those which omit (or digitally remove) the watermark. — CharlotteWebb 21:24, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

In this case, even that isn't really necessary: there's an earlier version of the image without the watermark. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to disband Wikiquote

• Link: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub/On_disbanding_Wikiquote

There is currently a proposal on meta to disband Wikiquote projects, comments are welcome there. Mr.Z-man 21:20, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Rodger Ebert

I would like to open a debate over what I deem to be the ridiculous over referencing of Rodger Ebert when talking about film's reception. He is one (not very good) critic and yet his opinion seems to straddle almost every film article on this site. Is there any chance we could cut down on references to Rodger and maybe even remove him from some articles so as to get a wider range of voices heard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.198.210 (talk) 11:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Examples? Algebraist 11:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

You could begin to implement the opinions of other critics. Including a broad range of criticism is good, so I don't think we should remove his criticisms from many places. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

May we assume you mean Roger Ebert? And I would agree that from an encyclopedic point of view, he would not be a terribly important critic to cite, although he is very representative of (and influential on) popular tastes in America. I think he's quite citable on a Hollywood blockbuster; I wouldn't be terribly interested in him on, say, Fassbinder or probably even Robert Altman. - Jmabel | Talk 18:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Cultural Struggle, the Weapon of Effacement, and a Theory of Hierarchic Wikis

• GENERAL LANDSCAPE

In the ambiguous zone of cultural struggle to which falls discussion of politics, philosophy, and religion, citation for Wikipedia page construction amounts to the presentation of cultural support for bias. Where esoterica becomes so sparse as to glean insufficient cultural support in the way of books, journals, or even many web pages, the contested contributions are repeatedly created, then "edited" (effaced) by opposition factions to stubs, then removed.

• SPECIFIC EFFACEMENT TACTICS

One encroachment device serving to facilitate this is the category marker. Proliferation of the use of pejorative category identification facilitates the infringement of pages and categories with critical oversight from which this effacement may take place. Those who have a vested interest in seeing particularly targeted categories or pages effaced merely patrol the zones of their interest and repeatedly employ the Weapon of Effacement.

• INSTANCES OF DEPTH PRESENTATION OF EFFACEMENT

At least 3 instances of attempts to bringing this problem to greater light have recently been attempted here at Wikipedia. I presume that there may have been others, but how to see and recognize them is not immediately apparent to me, let alone how to address it with any deftness, or start campaigns or proposals to rectify it (i have neither the time nor the interest to do more than analyze it and comment upon it, myself). Therefore i'll point out these 3 instances here so that others might track them down somewhat if they have the interest to do so and/or use them to their advantage:

-- One instance of bringing the matter up on the Village Pump as a cite taging and culture war, along with a suggestion for a solution to this problem: edit-credits.

-- One instance of attempting to address a particular user's employment of the Weapon of Effacement, presented as an ANI-Proposal.

-- One instance of attempting to launch a protest removal of abused Pseudoscience category tags, subsequent discussion about that protest, and an explanation as to the abuse of the Pseudoscience tag as part of cultural struggle.

-- Realizing the depth of the cultural struggle ongoing at Wikipedia, another tactic was attempted in association with this problem: the placement of defensive category tags upon the categories and pages under assault. Here is the discussion of the Call for Deletion of these new tags, wherein the whole of the issue is aired with particular reference to Pseudoscience as an abused, pejorative category tag and the remedial, defensive category tag is supported.

• HIERARCHY OF WIKIS: The Bowl-Shape Wikipedia

Imagine that the ideal Wikipedia is a sphere-shape of knowledge or data. What is being created instead, by virtue of the Weapon of Effacement, is a bowl-shape of hard scientific data supporting a fuzzy or fluffy fluctuating residue of unchallenged popular culture, entertainment, and other matters which those employing the Weapon of Effacement have little interest in combatting. Repeated attempts are being made to extend this bowl toward greater depth of record and therefore toward the spherical shape of its ideal, and in some cases (at least temporarily) these extensions remain, often under a heavy burden of supporting the point of view of scientific skeptics who have infiltrated their categories and required conformance to their citation and support-standards alongside their negating evaluations.

Those who are not willing or interested in arguing with or combatting with the editors employing the Weapon of Effacement (i.e. without an investment in Wikipedia.org specifically) are gradually shifting to wiki projects that are more friendly and supportive of their interests. These, by virtue of their experimental nature and their dependence upon private individuals (rather than institutions) to support and maintain them, will of course have a fluctuating existence en par with what are called MUDs or, in general, web pages. They will come into existence, thrive for a time, and then go out of existence due to a lack of administrative/technical support or participant interest. Their GNU Licensing feature, however, makes it possible for what is constructed on these wikis to be archived and moved forward to other venues if obtained prior to their disappearance.

With the proliferation of wiki software and the growing interest in it as a means of presenting knowledge, more and more wikis are coming into and going out of existence. The more that exist, the more specialized is their application and what type of material that they are hosting. We are already seeing numerous wikis that feature the works of prominent authors, for example. These are but the preliminary wave of the type of condition which may yet come to be, along with numerous specialized wiki projects by factions whose principles or policies are different than that of Wikipedia (whether with regard to participation, such as with Citizendium and its requirement of full disclosure for participants, or with regard to article writing/editing itself, such as Kiamagic, whose premise is apparently anti-authoritarian).

Projecting into the future somewhat, and supposing that nothing about the methodology of Wikipedia will in fact change due to its momentum and the character of those assembled to pursue its aims, what will develop will be numerous wikis with differentiated protection and orientation within the zones of knowledge in which they may seek to specialize. Rather than bowl-shapes, they will assume all manner of appearance, metaphorically speaking, and be comprised of less and more coherent and supportable data as well as coverage. Due to the fact that so many of these wikis are accepting the GNU Licensing standard for text, however, this makes possible what we might call a 'meta-wiki', which will effectively become a 'Best of Wikis', using the 'You Edit It' wiki backdrop as raw material to incorporate information from all of the various protected wikis operating, but excluding by editing standards and top-down direction (much like a conventional encyclopedia or other print reference source) the factional disputes and net results of the Weapon of Effacement that may be employed at any specific wiki due to cultural struggle.

• HIERARCHY OF WIKIS: Spectrum From Personal to Meta

With this in mind, contribution to wikis will perhaps change somewhat in that wiki software (or something much like it, displaying knowledge sets more adroitly) will be employed extensively and having a wiki will become as commonplace as having a web page. What will apply at that point will be what i call a 'hierarchy of wikis'. Individual users will create their own knowledge sets of varying type, quality, and extensiveness (prolific writers of encyclopedic knowledge effectively replicating or improving what has emerged from conventional wiki projects), and these may or may not accept the GNU Licensing standard of copyrights. Focussing solely on those which do, the interchange between them will reduce what we are seeing now as the employment of the Weapon of Effacement (due to our limited perspective on wikis and their importance to overall knowledge presentation) to the character of a boundary-setting device used by factions and editors to limit what is contained within any specific wiki based on its standards of knowledge vetting or inclusion.

Extending from these individual wikis operating in numerous literate places in cyberspace will be intermediate 'edited wikis' which feature collection caches from GNU Licensed personal wikis of a specialized type but which do not attempt to achieve the same level of inclusion as an encyclopedia. Up on the top of the heap of these individual and edited wikis (or at the bottom of a collection trough, if you prefer) will be what i am calling 'the meta-wiki' which attempts to actually produce the sphere ideal that Wikipedia may one day become.

• CONCLUSION

As long as Wikipedia supports and allows the employment of the Weapon of Effacement in its policies and procedures, so it will effectively exclude to other wikis those editors whose efforts might have been employed to achieve its lofty goals (and thereby lose valuable resources). Instead of a complete encyclopedia, what will be created by Wikipedia is a restricted edifice of substantial worth to a specific group of people, a helpful reference source on topics substantiated by conventional citation or so fluffy and peripheral as not to interest any in dispute.

Let this post stand as a prophetic and referential strand between the Wikipedia that exists today, the wikis that exist in comparison to it, and the Meta-wiki that Wikipedia should eventually become. It should be seen as an interested attempt to describe or troubleshoot from a distance what it may take decades to realize and effect in pursuit of encyclopedic coverage of contested zones of knowledge. It is based on peripheral observation of the dynamics and social policies which currently exist, as well as a brief and intriguing foray into Wikipedia before moving on to wikis where esoteric data is allowed greater protection against those opposed to it.

• NOTE: This may seem to be burying an evaluation of what is ostensibly a significant problem at Wikipedia, but as there doesn't seem to be any obvious place wherein such problems might be brainstormed, and i have here no specific proposal to put forward, this will have to do. Feel free to copy this essay with proper reference to other venues should you desire, or simply make reference to it in the archives of Wikipedia's Village Pump, where it will lay indefinitely for future generations.-- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 18:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

At a quick skim, the above may have something to say. It seems, however, to make an awful lot of use of neologisms and imprecise jargon; I didn't have the patience to slog through it, and there seems to be nothing like an executive summary. Does someone care to provide one? - Jmabel | Talk 18:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

transplanted with additions from JMabel Talk:

* EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The current policies and atmosphere in Wikipedia are not conducive to fostering coverage of esoteric subjects in any depth. Instead, it facilitates effacement of substantative articles, using such mechanisms as hostile cite-tagging, hostile category tagging to categories and pages, and the Weapon of Effacement, by those opposed to such coverage, and those whose interests extend to esoteric topics that want to work within a wiki are making their own wikis rather than attempt to negotiate for their existence and contributions. Predictably, the result will be an array of wikis focussed and covering a variety of topics, leaving for some future 'meta-wiki' the kind of edited inclusion which should be the ideal and aim of Wikipedia. ... -- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 19:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

If something is actually "esoteric," doesn't that pretty much preclude anyone with inside knowledge writing about it in an encyclopedia, in a citable manner? Conversely, certainly there is nothing to stop those people from publishing elsewhere, either in a wiki or in any other form. - Jmabel | Talk 02:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

re 'esoteric' -- see the Wikipedia org page which linked from that original essay. 'small' or 'inner' as regards the terminological portion 'eso' is relative. some esoteric subjects are very well-sourced, even by unaffiliated individuals, academics, and are broadly covered by a variety of quality interests, pro and con. there is nothing consistently which makes esotericism secret, though some of it may be so. citation is strictly possible, but it will depend on interest in keeping supportable data in Wikipedia by those who aren't exercizing hostile cite tagging, hostile category/page tagging and the Weapon of Effacement to eradicate to stubs what they oppose, ideologically (there is already Wikiversity interest in this matter, and i suspect that some portion of this message is getting through the hostile editors mentioned).

re elsewhere publishing -- very obviously so, but it is NOT in the interest of Wikipedia to see substance-contributors flee there based on hostile editing, and it is not to the public's best interest to see Wikipedia, which is given heavy weight by Google, show up above it with less substance and depth than third-party interests. we're not talking about function here but the application toward and against principles. supplementally, re 'meta-wikis' -- there appears to be one in existence already at Veropedia. I contend this is a trend that will continue in part as a response to the enabling of the Weapon of Effacement and cultural struggle as it continues unabated.-- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 19:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The poster appears to be complaining about the existence of Category:Pseudoscience in the most roundabout way imaginable. They also don't like {{fact}} tags because they think the demand for scientific references with regard to subjects that claim to be science is unfair. --erachima talk 19:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

tl;dr. Corvus cornix_talk 20:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Abridged version: I think the poster is complaining about mass amounts of percieved bias in articles concerning Pseudoscience. He's been doing various edits and most are deleted or removed by editors, check his contribs. Basically he's saying most editors, admins, and bureaucrats are biased and in some sort of cabal, and Wikipedia's structure does not allow opposition, as we use policies for deletion. Something about original research, too.

He cites a Village pump policy discussion and an ANI-proposal by his wife (who in turn seems to have a conflict of interest problem regarding WP:AUTO), a request for explanation of his very major editing concerning Category:Pseudoscience, a reverting of all of it because of that, a proceeding complaint about how the category is currently biased, and the creation of an "opposing" category which was deleted with an overwhelming majority, citing WP:POINT. They also have their own web pages. [1][2][3]

I strongly suggest finding someone to explain Wikipedia to him, but he has noted(at the bottom) that he is unwilling to make a bigger, perhaps proper protest due to this bias, and the tediousness of the policies. I suggest something like ANI if everyone believes that it cannot be done. Either way, I don't think this belongs here. - Zero1328 _Talk? 21:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

where does it belong?-- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 19:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

tl;dr. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I already summed it up as best I could; read my version. I didn't read most of it either y'know. - Zero1328 _Talk? 22:13, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

In all seriousness, beyond evangelizing, the original poster doesn't propose a solution to address his perceived problem, nor ask for help developing one; what exactly do you want us to do? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 05:15, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

If this is not the proper place where such an observation of a perceived, extensive, ongoing problem at Wikipedia may be stored and allowed to remain, for reference by interested others, then please point out where it should be moved and i'll helpfully do that. I could move it to a non-Wikipedia website (more hostile and less cooperative ventures have been undertaken by such sites as (especially) WikiTruth and WikiReview, for example), but i understand that Wikipedia may have some forum or outlet for discussion and/or consideration of such things and i am attempting to get it recorded for future reference rather than, as with the data about which i complaining is evaporating, simply effaced from perception by those who have a vested interested in perpetuating their agenda. btw, a helpful description of this 'game' employing the Weapon of Effacement and other hostile technical tagging is a brief essay called 'What is Wikipedia)', which see.

This is in part why i didn't want to place it on the Policy, Technical, or Proposal sections of the Village Pump, because i could see that it didn't actually qualify for those spots either. Thank you for your constructive assistance.-- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 19:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject tags

Is there any reason wikiproject tags for images and categories shouldn't be in the main (image/category) namespace instead of talk? Those talk namespaces get little actual discussion traffic and it'd be easier to watch (via namespace recentchanges) if there weren't so much wikiproject-tag traffic. --Random832 (contribs) 21:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

It would require substantial hours of recoding, as most wikiproject banners incorporate namespace-sensitive switches and the like. There's also general opposition to putting meta-data in the non-talk namespaces, though for images at least that's a rather minor point. --erachima talk 22:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Can I create a wikipedia entry about myself?

I'm not famous or anything, but can I create a mini autobiography on wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jojorules83 (talk • contribs) 01:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Only notable people can have articles about them in Wikipedia. You could add a bit about yourself to your user page though. It's here. Algebraist 01:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

New Wikia: Wiki of Mana! Admin: ME!!!

Link! YAY! Help wanted please! P.S.: About the Mana series, if that isn't already obvious which, IAH, it should be. Yellow Mage (talk) 10:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Best article

What is considered to be Wikipedia's best article? If there is no clear winner, what are considered to be the top choices? Lucas Brown 42 (talk) 03:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)