Could I get some extra eyes at Special education? We have a newbie who keeps removing a large section on the grounds that it's unsourced (despite containing ten foonotes to seven different sources).

If someone else wouldn't mind watching the article for a few days, I'd appreciate it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I've added it to my watchlist and posted a warning about edit warring on the talk page. I may not be around much next week though, so more even more eyes would be good. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I've added it to mine as well. oknazevad (talk) 04:08, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

We could particularly use a couple of people who are here over the weekend. She keeps trying to remove information, or to say that it's exclusively US-only concepts (which is wrong, although two of the terms are American terms, since the article is written in American English).

At least three different editors have reverted the mess over the last couple of days, but most of them are gone for the weekend, and the steady opposition doesn't seem to have any impact: She just puts it back to what she wants to believe. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I have proposed the renaming of a category, and wanted to know if you would consider commenting on the proposed renaming over at that link. ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 04:43, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

A search on +x +y returns hits not found by a search on +x. Any idea why?Racconish ^Tk 09:23, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The search engine uses a logical OR between statements?—RJH (talk) 17:41, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually I meant +x +y on one side, +x +y +z on the other. I find it weird that adding a "z" search term returns hits including "x" and "y" not found by the +x +y search.Racconish ^Tk 17:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, according to Help:Searching it uses a logical AND rather than an OR. So yes, that seems a bit odd.—RJH (talk) 21:39, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Could it be that there are just too many hits under the looser search so it ignores some? Peter jackson (talk) 10:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Possibly. I could speculate that the search engine weighting function works differently when there is a single term than when there are multiple terms, and maybe it has a weight cut-off. But I don't really know. The help page recommends posting technical questions to Wikipedia talk:Searching, so you might try that.—RJH (talk) 17:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I posted a suggestion at Template talk:Talkback for adding an automated signature to that template. The template is fairly widely used but I suspect most users don't have the template itself on their watchlist. Is this Village Pump page a good place to solicit additional input in a case like this? If not, what's an alternative? I considered simply putting in an editprotected request and seeing what the responding admin did, but that seems like passing the buck, and an RfC seems a bit excessive. What's good protocol for something like this? Mike Christie (talk – library) 04:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully this post will be sufficient to draw more attention to it, a lot of people watch this page. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I moved the discussion to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#DATERET conflict.—RJH (talk) 18:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

since Wikileaks is no longer a wiki, it is misleading to advertise itself as such. Serendi^podous 14:26, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia is neither the only wiki, nor does it hold any control over the term, and since I very much doubt Wikileaks cares a whit about what Wikipedia says, I see no point to this. --Golbez (talk) 14:29, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

The WMF already made WikiLeaks change their name once; it's initial incarnation was "The Wikipedia of Secrets". Wiki is a general term that can't be copyrighted, so the only terms under the WMF's control are "Wikipedia" and "Wikimedia" (and of course Wikia, which is its own separate entity, is copyrighted). When Julian Assange first founded The Wikipedia of Secrets, the WMF forced him to change the name, because that was infringement; WikiLeaks, however, is not. And before this gets asked, someone at the WMF defensively registered the WikiLeaks domain, and the domain transfer hasn't been completed, hence it may appear that WikiLeaks is owned by the WMF. But if people can't be arsed to do their goddamn reading, and confuse the two, it's their fault, not WikiLeaks or the WMF. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikileaks really is a poor name considering they've long since abandoned the wiki model; they are not editable and carefully weigh the consequences before releasing any information (just about the only thing they have in common with wikis is accepting contributions from anonymous sources without verification of their identity). However, the name is so widely recognized now due to press coverage that it's become a powerful brand; changing it would be counter to their interests. Dcoetzee 12:57, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

They do, however, use the MediaWiki software. While Wikipedia may have created the "wiki-" prefix, it doesn't have any say in how it is used outside of the project. 174.20.220.94 (talk) 02:27, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia did NOT create the term or prefix Wiki. It may be the most famous website to use it now, but the term existed for some time before Wikipedia. According to the article Wiki the term was first used on a Wiki-style website as early as 1994. Neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation has any right or claim to being the first or only site to use the term. --Jayron32 04:59, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is right to request that Wikipedia 'urges' Wikileaks to change its name here. This sort of thing should be done by the WMF, IMO. Kayau Voting IS evil HI AGAIN 11:47, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I must be the only person on Earth to have thought Assange had taken the "Wiki" part of his name not from Wikipedia, but from Ward Cunningham's inspiration for the name "Wiki" -- the Wikiwiki bus at the Honolulu airport. Thus "WikiLeaks" was supposed to imply "Speedy Leaks". Oh well. -- llywrch (talk) 07:21, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it came from "Wiki[pedia]"+"leaks". Apparently "when Wikileaks first launched, they put out a press release calling themselves something like "the Wikipedia of secrets"" (quote from Jimbo Wales, WP:NOTLEAKS), so I think that means that "Wiki" probably refers to Wikipedia. --Yair rand (talk) 16:11, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Ran across this on the Internet the other day - a prominent Mormon apologetic site (run by the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research) is tracking editors that are active on Mormon articles - with what appears to my (admittedly cynical) eye to be an attempt to discredit them, or the pages they work on. Maybe this it totally legal, and maybe this has happened before, but I am quite offended by it since some of the editors mentioned are people I have worked with a great deal on Mormon related articles. It feels like an attack. Here are a few links:

• http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_Wikipedia
• http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_Wikipedia/Editors

Thoughts? --Descartes1979 (talk) 22:37, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

It could become a problem if the site is being used to coordinate attacks within Wikipedia. Otherwise, unless they are "outing" otherwise anonymous editors, I'm not sure it's worth worrying about.—RJH (talk) 23:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

There's precious little we can do about it in any event. While I don't care for their list of users, the other page where they instruct users on how to edit actually contains some very sound advice. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:17, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you, though I think their list of editors gives a fairly fair view of how they edit. And yes, I realize that last sentence sounds sorta punny... ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 16:56, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi! If anyone wants to help checking files that does not seem to have a valid license there is this list of more than 2,000 files User:MGA73/No license.

There could be a valid license hidden in file history (removed by vandalism) or the template could be substed. If so just add the right license. If there is no license please tag file and inform uploader. If there IS a valid license on the file please give me a notice so the script can be fixed. --MGA73 (talk) 19:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You can also just add the correct license if you know which one it should be. This should only be done if you are sure of which license it should be listed under. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 23:56, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Not true, as you can't license something unless you own it. However, you could mark it as containing no copyrightable material if such were the case. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:08, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

However if something is clearly in the public domain, such as marking something as {{PD-old}} or as you say not containing anything which can be copyrighted.... that would clearly fit. I think the above comment is more about if you can dig through the comments when the file was uploaded or find something from the original "uploader" who says "I want this under the GFDL" or "adding Creative Commons License", would that count as proper licensing of the image? Also, if you can find the source of the image and there is licensing information there, clearly you can mark the license based upon the licensing information from the original source. Just because the license template isn't properly formatted shouldn't be an automatic rationale to presume that licensing for use on Wikipedia was not intended... although I'll be the first to admit that somebody being sloppy with licensing generally is uploading stuff that should have the copyright licensing questioned. --Robert Horning (talk) 15:12, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes there are cases where you can see from the text what uploader wanted. Sometimes they subst the license template and in that case you can just add the right license. I suggest we just fix all the easy ones and save the hard ones untill later. --MGA73 (talk) 15:32, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I was disagreeing with Nihonjoe, not MGA73. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, like I said (and others here agree): if you know what the license should be, you should put the proper license on the file rather than tagging it for deletion. If you can't determine it, then you should ask the uploader which license it should be and have them put the correct one on it. Otherwise, feel free to tag it for deletion. Remember, this is a cooperative project, so if you can fix something correctly, then do so. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 16:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The only way to "know what the license should be" is if the uploader has said so. The way you're phrasing it suggests that people can just go "oh, I know that was supposed to be CC-BY-SA". Unless the uploader (assumed to be the rights holder) has explicitly said so, it is not a valid license. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 22:10, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

If you go into google maps, activate the "wikipedia" overlay, and then hover your mouse over wikipedia articles that appear in bodies of water, you will see that there are quite a few articles that are obviously misplaced simply because they refer to land features (e.g. I found a village in Turkey, a mountain in Slovakia, and a FEATURE OF A JOVIAN MOON in the Pacific ocean).

I find that it's kind of fun to go hunting for these and fixing the coordinates. Just make sure that you indicate on the article talk page that you've done so, because Google takes a little while to re-index these things, and we don't want the same article to be "fixed" more than once. AGradman / how the subject page looked at 06:09, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this could be done partially automatically: If almost all coordinates of pages in Category:Geography of Slovakia are clustered in quite a small space and few of them are far away, those could be reported, so that someone could have a look at them. Svick (talk) 16:48, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

There's already been a deal of work done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates including looking for coordinates which specify a country and a location falling outside the bounds of that country. I think in almost all, or all cases, the root cause is that the coordinates were entered into wikipedia (including other language versions than EN) incorrectly, and for whatever reason, google hasn't updated its wikipedia layer to the corrected coordinates. The North Sea to the east of Great Britain is a great place to look for this sort of thing, as westings are entered as eastings. If you do come across borked coordinates and do not know how to fix them, bringing them to the talk page of WikiProject Geographical coordinates. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I found some in the North Sea and some in the Great Lakes, among the U-boats and islands. Fences&Windows 23:44, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello. Does anyone know this church/cathedral ? (long debate on fr:wiki; apparently not Rouen). Jack ma (talk) 13:13, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done We've found it: Ely Cathedral, seen from the market place. Jack ma (talk) 15:30, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't want to join in celebrating Wikipedia's anniversary, and if I did, I still wouldn't want to store a cookie for the privilege of not being asked to again for eternity.

No, I don't want to apply for a scholarship for Wikimania 2011 (whatever that is), and if I did, I still wouldn't want to store a cookie for the privilege of not being asked to again for eternity.

No, I don't want to meet Wikipedia's sister projects, I don't care if there's more, because I already knew there were more, though I didn't personify it as female siblings, and if I did, I still wouldn't want to store a cookie for the privilege of not being asked to again for eternity.

Yes, if I thought storing the hidesnmessage cookie would only disable nonsense ads that I don't care about and not disable notices I do care about having to do with things actually important to the project like those having to do with policy or voting, etc., I would store it, but...

No, I don't think people should have to look at these nonsense ads regardless.

¦ Reisio (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

hear, hear!--92.251.255.11 (talk) 22:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I happen to think all of these deserve a sitenotice. Wait 3.5 more days, and they'll be gone. --Yair rand (talk) 22:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

(Actually, the WM2011 scholarships notice will probably stay up until applications close on January 31, and steward election candidate submissions open on the same day as WP10, so there will probably be a new sitenotice about that...) --Yair rand (talk) 22:37, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Mmm. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, well, they can be annoying, but do you have a better way to get these kinds of things done? --Yair rand (talk) 22:49, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The text ones bother me significantly less, and as I said, I would happily store that cookie forever if I didn't think I'd miss policy discussion notices & bureaucrat voting, etc. (separate out social event stuff and policy stuff into two cookies?). It's also more annoying because first the page loads and then the JS pops the notice in and moves everything down, much like the old edit page JS toolbar did (but not the new/vector one), which was the same kind of annoying. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Just to let you know, this is also being discussed in proposals (giant banner section).--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 18:02, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Mmm, it's too bad we don't have a village pump anymore, only these spread out pumps. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:41, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Would like to get one of them thar surname pages set up. Sort of like Tanner (surname) but covering all the Zweifels. I set up Richard G. Zweifel.

Was a little befuddled how to physically just make the new page (usually I do some redlink thingamijigs for normal pages, but I'm a disambig page virgin.

Help graciously appreciated. TCO (talk) 20:11, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Zweifel (surname) and steal the layout of Tanner (surname). --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:21, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

HA! So did you use this talk page, to creat the incoming link? Hmm...good trick! TCO (talk) 21:28, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

If you write a nonexistent article title in the nav/search box, you should be invited to create the article, as if you had clicked a red link. —Tamfang (talk) 22:11, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. TCO (talk) 23:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I occasionally come across dead tools — not because the tools are dead but because people's accounts expire on the toolserver. The latest I've come accross is Eagle's expired account on the toolserver. So the "search an, ani, cn, an3" function no longer works on templates such as {{UserSummary}}, {{rfp}}, {{IPSummary}} and {{User toolbox}}, which are important tools used to examine users in detail.

Should I go through and remove that link from all those related templates?
OR
Should we try and keep people's accounts open on the toolserver even after the users have left Wikipedia? -      Hydroxonium (talk) 03:00, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

You can't keep someone's Toolserver account open for them. The best thing to do would be to ask on WP:VPT or WP:BOTREQ for someone to make a replacement. Mr.Z-man 05:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I think the best thing would be to use Eagle's tool directly, just under different account. Which is what I did. The templates can use this address now instead. The code is licenses under GPL, so I think it's okay to do that, but I sent an e-mail to User:Eagle 101 to be sure. Svick (talk) 02:31, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I've just written tswiki:Expired accounts which should explain a bit more. — Dispenser 04:58, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

• A site called Newswise has posted links to its own pages in a lot of WP articles, rather than to the original source articles. (Google "newswise" +site:wikipedia.org) Is this a common and/or acceptable practice? Just wondering. 111.69.253.124 (talk) 05:51, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
• The search link is http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22newswise%22+%2Bsite:wikipedia.org&aq=&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=553387615f302e90

  Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:07, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, that finds one more item than http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=psy&q=%22newswise%22+%2Bsite:wikipedia.org . —Tamfang (talk) 07:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

LinkSearch finds 296 links. Johnuniq (talk) 10:42, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

For instance, in Wikipedia speedy deletion tags like {{db-f8}}, what does "db" mean? Rehman 09:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

From WP:CSD: "[...] with "db" standing for "delete because"." Fram (talk) 09:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply! Kind regards. Rehman 09:55, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Does a tool exist which functions just like soxred93s, except that it can show the top main space edits of a user on other Wikipedias than en-wiki as well? --Saddhiyama (talk) 09:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Soxred93's tool can be set to other Wikipedias. See the main page at http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/ec WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but I am interested in the kind of list the Main space top edits list provide, only for other projects than en-Wiki. --Saddhiyama (talk) 01:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a discussion in giving explicit guidelines for sorting Icelandic names in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Iceland#Sort_keys_for_Icelandic_names. Please, raise your voice. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay all, as folks may or may not know, the increasing rigour of our Featured and Good Article processes favour shorter and more esoteric articles. One way I thought about addressing this was reactivating a collaboration or two. In this case I came across the Wikipedia:WikiProject United States which is being reactivated, and thought this might have a collaboration worth reactivating and a good opportunity for neophyte and experienced editors to work together. See Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board/USCOTM, and its history page at Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board/USCOTW/History for an idea of what articles have been worked on and what happened. Ideally I am thinking that good candidate articles to work on are broad topics which have significant comprehensiveness deficits, with general knowledge bits either missing or unsourced so that there are roles for fact gathering and content addition without jumping into high end formatting and prose perfection. Thus Wall Street is an article which I see alot of this in - if anyone has come across others which might fit the bill, you're welcome to nominate or brainstorm a bit. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:47, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the hard work Casliber. I also want to add that if anyone needs some inspiration of what to submit here is a link to a table with the Most popular pages that fall under WikiProject United States. --Kumioko (talk) 03:25, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I have seen it before when there's some earthquake. Now it's with the Congresswoman's shooting in Arizona.

Some people want a reactions section. Typically, Obama is mentioned. If it's an earthquake, the Pope will be mentioned.

There are 3 major scenarios, possible more. Please discuss.

1. There should not be a reactions section. After all, all major politicians will comment. All will express sadness or shock. Nobody will say the tragedy is good.

2. There should be a reactions section.

2a. Reliable sources should decide whose reaction is notable. It is original research for Wikipedia people pick and choose who they want. If CNN reports some reactions, they are deemed notable reactions.

2b. Wikipedia editors should decide who they want listed. Ignore all rules and let me pick and choose. Then majority votes for who's reaction stays.

I tend to lean to 2a. However, I can understand 1. Hakkapeliitta (talk) 00:32, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Please stop forum shopping. Nakon 00:34, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Please stop hounding me. This is not forum shopping. This is to decide the issue from a Wikipedia standpoint. It can help with future events, like the 2012 giant earthquake, the 202x killing of a famous person, the 2012 typhoon, Hakkapeliitta (talk) 00:38, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

This is the incorrect venue to discuss the content of the article. You need to discuss it on the talk page of the article. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 00:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

This is the CORRECT place for discussion. It is most applicable to articles that do not yet exist but we know will exist. I will be a fool if I create an article called "2012 huge earthquake" and start a discussion on the reactions section. Hakkapeliitta (talk) 00:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

H has a point. What is the proper place to propose a policy for a potentially large but necessarily ill-defined class of articles (and future articles)? —Tamfang (talk) 01:47, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

It's hard to generalise these situations, and the relevant policies are already established elsewhere. Do we include some reactions? Sure, some are notable. Do we include every reaction? No, it would normally be undue weight in an often short and developing article. We intelligently use the external sources to assess the importance of a reaction, and include the most important in the article. What else is there to say? Trebor (talk) 02:21, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Hakkapeliitta, some of the relevant concepts are explained at WP:Reception. It doesn't deal very specifically with your issue, but the principles are there.

Tamfang, the place to propose a change to an existing policy (any single advice page) is on that policy's talk page. Alternatively, you can discuss it at WP:Village pump (policy) (especially appropriate if you don't know what policy/other advice page applies). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

It would be very easy to write something like "politicians usually express sorrow after major disasters. The listing of them shouldn't be in WP except if they are especially noteworthy". I am sure the Pope will regret that the big 2012 earthquake in some country occurred. Hakkapeliitta (talk) 01:52, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE and talk page discussion should be more than enough to handle this. --Jayron32 03:26, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there is a large difference between reactions to events involving no human cause (for example, an earthquake) and those where there is (for example, a shooting, or the cleanup and rescue effort after an earthquake). - Jmabel | Talk 18:36, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the correct place (if anyone knows a better place let me know). Over at List of common misconceptions I asked who common was defined by and when no one replied I moved to List of notable misconceptions this was reverted and it was pointed out that only misconceptions which a WP:RS called common where listed and there was no need to define common.

This made sense to me but it doesn't sit well with me.

For example take List of association football club rivalries by country which use to be at Major football rivalries, I'm sure plenty of WP:RS could be found using words like Classic, Epic, Intense ,Fierce, Important,Violent . Should we have List of Classic/Epic/Intense/Fierce/Important/Violent association football club rivalries by country lists?Gnevin (talk) 15:40, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Where was your discussion, if any, on the Talk:List of common misconceptions page? Is it in one of the archives? That's probably a better place to begin a discussion about the article name.—RJH (talk) 18:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"Common misconception" is a common phrase, and the article discusses misconceptions that are commonly made, but not every notable misconception that was only made by one or more individual. --AerobicFox (talk) 22:47, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

This wasn't an attempt to shop but I think what I'm hearing is that Common misconception" is a common phrase while Epic assocation football club rivalries isn't Gnevin (talk) 12:14, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I just got this in my inbox today:

Dear Wikipedian,

(Apologies for cross-posting. Please ignore this email if you are not interested or have participated the survey)

My name is Sesia Zhao. I am a PhD candidate of City University of Hong Kong (CityU). The success of Wikipedia greatly benefits from the effort and contribution of every Wikipeidan, such as you. I am so honored to have this opportunity to conduct a research on Wikipedian's contribution behavior. It would be greatly appreciated if you could help us by filling out the questionnaire with this URL (endorsed by CityU): http://cityucb.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eYjIyeu3sKwrxhW

The survey has only 25 questions and may take you appropriately 15 minutes. To express my gratitude for your participation, two IPod Touch (8G) are provided as lucky draws.

Thank you very much!

Best Regards,
Sesia
City University of Hong Kong
http://www.cb.cityu.edu.hk/is/index.cfm?lang=en&category=student/research&page=suzhou

It looked pretty legit (despite its unsolicited nature), so I participated. Did anyone else receive this e-mail? --Ixfd64 (talk) 06:29, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen it yet. --Kumioko (talk) 18:31, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I have. I have not clicked the link so far, but that does not look particularly "phishy". Did the survey seem reasonable? LadyofShalott 18:47, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

It may well be perfectly legit, but if they have your username, and they are asking you to respond to an e-mail, they may be fishing for your IP. I'd not respond. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:49, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I didn't receive the e-mail but I think it's probably legitimate. The sender, Sesia Zhao, is listed as a PhD candidate on the website of the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. This appears to be research for her thesis, and she may have e-mailed users using the e-mail link on the left side of the screen. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:04, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd have to do some digging to find it, but I'm positive this came up somewhere before a few months ago, and the view at the time was that it is in fact a legitimate research project. It would be nice if they gave some sort of on-wiki identity so we could talk to them directly, but perhaps that would invalidate the research in some way. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I thought this was pretty funny...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&q=%22boiled+egg+region%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=fd0f73886609171d

guess where it all comes from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_construction

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roof_construction&diff=327692272&oldid=327545001

Yup that vandalism detection really works!

Jarwulf (talk) 19:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hey, sometimes we don't catch it right away. ClueBot can't catch everything, although it's programming has been improved since the time these diffs are from. It speaks more to the laziness of these so called roofing experts that blindly mirror WP without checking for errors. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:45, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

To be clear, this piece of vandalism stuck in the article for 14 months despite a dozen or so subsequent vandalisms being removed. We need to make sure that we go back further then the last non-vandal edit to make sure we catch it all. Not everyone will check for vandalism in the entire article before fixing a typo, for example. If an article is subject to frequent vandalism (and I am not sure why this one is such a target), I frequently check a month or three of edit differencesafter I rollback the immediate vandalism. And while the vandal-checking bot is good, I doubt it can tell that boiled egg is an acceptable phrase in a cookery article but not a roofing one. We still need real eyeballs for some things I think. Rmhermen (talk) 17:31, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

See notice here on AN/I about a new user neutrality board. Input welcome. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 21:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

We still have over 7000 articles linking to the deleted expand template. Can I please have some help in reducing the backlog? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 22:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Surely fodder for Wikipedia:Bot requests? --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:57, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't work since we need hands to determine whether it should be replaced with another template in each instance. See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Holding cell. But maybe... Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 23:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

ETA: Already a bot request there. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 23:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Gregory Kohs, who appears to be extremely disliked, sited Charity Navigator in comments to an Economist article that I read today.

From Charity Navigator, Wikimedia Foundation receives one stars out of four, for "Organizational Efficiency". I compared this to the first charity which popped in my mind, American Red Cross.

Organizational Efficiency:

We assess four key indicators to determine how efficiently and responsibly a charity functions day to day.[1]

Explanation	Wikimedia Foundation rating	American Red Cross rating
1. Program Expenses: Percent of total functional expenses spent on programs and services. (higher is better) This measure reflects what percent of its total budget a charity spends on the programs and services it exists to deliver. Dividing a charity's program expenses by its total functional expenses yields this percentage.	65.0%	91.8%
2. Administrative Expenses: Percent of total functional expenses spent on management and general. (lower is better) This measure reflects what percent of its total budget a charity spends on overhead, administrative staff and associated costs, and organizational meetings. Dividing a charity's administrative expenses by its total functional expenses yields this percentage.	15.1%	4.4%
3. Fundraising expenses: Percent of total functional expenses spent on fundraising. (lower is better) This measure reflects what a charity spends to raise money. Fundraising expenses can include campaign printing, publicity, mailing, and staffing and costs incurred in soliciting donations, memberships, and grants. Dividing a charity's fundraising expenses by its total functional expenses yields this percentage.	19.7%	3.6%
4. Fundraising efficiency: Amount a charity spends to raise $1. (lower is better)	$0.13	$0.17
Overall Efficiency Rating	1 star out of 4	3 stars out of 4

Interested how many stars the average national charity gets. Why exactly does Wikipedia only gets 1 of 4 stars? Errectstapler (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I doubt anyone here can actually answer that. This site is more geared toward building an encyclopedia than managing the Foundation itself. I'd ask this again at Meta Wiki. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: the Better Business Bureau gives Wikipedia an A+ rating. --AerobicFox (talk) 23:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

  They also call it the "Wikipedia foundation". The chart above seems inaccurate. According to the annual plan, the foundation spends only about 8% of the budget on fundraising, not 19.7% as indicated. --Yair rand (talk) 00:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Charity Navigator offhand, but I wouldn't place much faith in a "rating" that uses Criterion 2 ("Percent of total functional expenses spent on management and general") as a straight measure of "goodness". There are three issues I can see with such a rating: 1.) In general, large entities that raise a large volume of funds will tend to have a higher "efficiency" than small entities with small budgets, all other things being equal. Hence, this will just tend to prefer large entities over small ones. 2.) In actual practice, large entities are much more likely to be less efficient than they can be, because they will have more middle-managers and reporting structures and the like. Since the naive measure here tends to report the opposite, it's not actually a useful measure of "efficiency". 3.)In general, an entity that raised much more funding than it needed would be reported as "efficient", even though it would be extremely market-inefficient. Again, not a good measurement. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:13, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I would give a whole lot more credit to Charity Navigator than you have, and certainly would try to compare the operations of the Wikimedia Foundation to other more highly rated charities. In general, my "gut" tells me that the rating criteria are pretty accurate but can only be compared to general charities as a whole and not a direct comparison.

One of the problems that a comparison with the Wikimedia Foundation suffers from is that there really isn't another organization like it that does anything similar. This hurts in terms of comparisons as any comparison is going to be an apple-to-orange comparison. Keep in mind that the overall rating for the WMF is three stars, as the only real complaint here is in terms of fundraising expenses and executive compensation. It really isn't nearly as bad as perhaps this smear piece would have you think it is.

Why having other organizations for comparison is that the Charity Navigator does take into considerations similar kinds of organizations, to give an example community food pantries/food banks. These kind of charities tend to run very lean on their operating funds, so they are more generally compared to each other (different food banks) than to other organizations in general. If anything, the Wikimedia Foundation ought to be compared more to groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the Free Software Foundation, but even those aren't really good comparisons. Perhaps a better comparison would be with the Debian Project via Software in the Public Interest, but that isn't currently rated by the Charity Navigator. If there is a problem here, it is due to the fact that what the Wikimedia Foundation does is so unique... but then again that is more of a reason to continue supporting the WMF too. None the less, the problems highlighted by the Charity Navigator are things to worry about and show concern. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The figures quoted above are for the year ending June 2009, incidentally; for the most recent financial year, we spent 13% on fundraising, 10% on "general and administrative", and 76% on "project costs", and the fundraising ratio was ~$0.10 rather than $0.13. All the overhead ratios have improved by approximately a third, in other words. Shimgray | talk | 21:16, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

A question here though.... what on earth would cost a million dollars in terms of fundraising? Considering that to the best of my knowledge the bulk of the fundraising came from banner ads/project pleas during the annual fundraising period, that seems to be a figure that is not just a little high but excessively high. I suppose you might be able to separate server costs for displaying the banner ads for the fundraising effort, but even that seems to be a little excessive.

That these issues have been showing improvement in a positive direction over the past year is a good sign, but it does show there is something going on in terms of a significant cost. The main problem comes when "charities" turn out to be nothing more than fundraisers for those trying to collect the cash... something I agree is a problem with some formal charitable groups. The purpose of a charity isn't to raise money but to do something productive with donated money they receive. --Robert Horning (talk) 18:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The annual plan notes that 09-10 explicit "fundraising costs" represented $330k, which was $100k greater than planned for the charmingly odd reason that we raised 50% more than planned and so had to spend more on credit card fees and processing and so on! The plan and the report don't use quite the same accountancy method - I presume the difference is in the report accounting for overheads, staff time "assigned" to the fundraising, etc - the bulk of the money spent is from the salary and "operating expenses" totals. (Interestingly, the "salary" element of fundraising remained constant both years despite overall salary spend jumping 50%...)

As to over-fundraising, yeah, it's a worry. (Not as much of a worry as the other way around, though!). For the past couple of years WMF has had something of a problem with spending less than planned - partly due to conservative estimates of how much would be needed, and partly because major expensive projects got deferred or came later than intended - whilst still raising all the money they originally aimed for (or more), so surpluses have grown larger and larger. This may change sharply in the next year - the current annual plan calls for raising an extra $5m but spending an extra $12m! - but we'll see; my gut feeling is that we'll still see a surplus in 2010-11, but one on a much smaller scale than last year. Shimgray | talk | 19:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The main reason that Wikimedia scores low is because most of the "programs and services" work is done for free by us. Other than Wikimania, running the servers, and a few paid/contract developers, (and I'm not sure if all or any of those are considered program expenses) the only major expenses Wikimedia has are administrative and overhead. In terms of organization, I believe the entire volunteer community is "managed" by 2 or 3 paid staff members, it used to only be 1. Being a smaller organization probably has some effect as well. The Red Cross's CEO makes almost 3 times as much as the WMF's; but they also have $3B in total expenses, so its only 0.01% of their expenses. For us to have the same percentage, we'd have to pay our CEO $500 per year. Mr.Z-man 00:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I am extremely impressed by the caliber of the replies here. I was really afraid of ad hominem attacks on me for bringing it up, or attacks on Gregory Kohs, but instead you all gave extremely reasoned and convincing arguments. Based upon this small sampling, the quality and intellectual ability of veteran editors here is incredible. Thank you!

I am interested:

1. what other charity watchdogs rate Wikipedia, and
2. if there is another charity like Wikipedia which is rated by Charity Navigator. User:Robert Horning response above was a great start.

Suggestions, thoughts? Errectstapler (talk) 19:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Just seen: by searching "forgeting" one finds over 18.000 this error. I proposa that when someone experienced enough sees an ortographical error inputs a bot to repair it in all the pages. I presume it's possible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.125.97.102 (talk) 21:21, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

There's some error correction built into the default search so the 18000 is picking up all forms of "forget", whether rightly or wrongly spelled. If you search this way, there's only 11 and fixing them won't require a bot. -- 99.164.111.40 (talk) 21:41, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Done, and suggestion left at AWB/Typos --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a job for someone using WP:AWB. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:43, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

But please remember that we use a variety of different but equally valid English spellings on Wikipedia. DuncanHill (talk) 22:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you don't know about this page which does more-or-less what you suggest. However there are generally enough false positives that you don't want an unsupervised bot to just jump in and trample over what may be intentional miss-spellings. For instance, you would not want a bot to correct the sentence, "'Soop' is not the correct way to spell 'soup'". -- Derek Ross | Talk 22:50, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, plus you might run into issues with British vs. American spelling or have a literal quotation with archaic spelling.—RJH (talk) 17:57, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

What do you think of when hearing Chihuahua, a dog, a city, or a state? Despite view statistics that show 94K views for the dog and only 19K for the plain name, i.e. despite the fact that the bare leads to the state article, that article gets only 19K much less than 94K for the dog. Still some people claim the state to be the primary topic. If Chihuahua would be a dab page likely would the view stats for the state go down.

Currently the discussion seems to be biased, because people related to the state see the move proposal more easily than people not having the page in their watch list. I think the village pump is a nice neutral place.

What I wonder, there is a guideline WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and it seems that if enough people come together than that can be overthrown by simple majority voting.

Is there any way to prevent majority voting if that goes clearly against the guideline?

Reference: Talk:Chihuahua#Requested move - Chihuahua (state)

TopoChecker (talk) 21:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

"Is there any way to prevent majority voting if..." Yes, there is. Consensus. See also WP:Not a vote. Rmhermen (talk) 17:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

And one should consider at some point whether the reader is best served by simply turning "Chihuahua" into a disambiguation page. -- llywrch (talk) 17:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Some list articles get divided into a number of separate and smaller articles (typically, by alphabetical sub-groups) simply because they are too large for a single Wikipedia article. For example, List of aircraft is subdivided into about a dozen smaller list-of articles, and each has it's own separate Talk page.

My question: Is it possible to consolidate the many Talk pages on multiple-article "List of ..." list articles into a single Talk page? As it currently stands, with multiple Talk pages, it is very difficult to get a consistent article-consensus in place that applies to each of the sub-lists, which are (in reality) all a part of a giant list on a single topic. Thanks. N2e (talk) 02:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea at all. I recently asked a question on one list page that was relevent to two list pages, only split because of length. Obviously one could do this with redirects, I guess. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

See Help talk:Cite errors for an example using {{central}} and {{editnotice central}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 05:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

That's what we do with standard uw templates already, I don't see why it wouldn't work here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad to see that it is possible. Would someone be willing to help me implement this on the List of aircraft series of 13 pages? Maybe set up the central page and do the requisite magic on one of the other twelve pages. Then I could rinse and repeat on all the other affected pages. Cheers. N2e (talk) 07:14, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've taken a deeper look at the Help talk:Cite errors as an example using {{central}} and {{editnotice central}} templates. I can see how to do it now, from a technical point of view. I've even made a proposal on the (very infrequently) read Talk page at Talk:List of aircraft page that we do this. I suspect many editors won't see it. Would appreciate any interested editors who read this weighing in on the subject being discussed there. N2e (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again to all who offered opinions and pointers. I have made the changes to the dozen Talk pages associated with List of aircraft; all Talk now redirects to Talk:List of aircraft. Furthermore, I've suggested the idea more generally on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aviation where the idea received good reviews as a good idea for consolidating other large groups of aviation-related Talk pages as well. Cheers. N2e (talk) 23:41, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

This is an attempt at a neutral notification because I don't feel enough neutral people (not associated with the related Wikiproject) are commenting. Please see [2]. Thus far, the majority of people commenting are members of the Wikiproject itself who are, understandably, voting keep. However, those requesting deletion are basing their decision on policy as it exists. Hopefully this isn't breaking policy and in no way is this intended to sway a vote, but to implore those not directly affected to share their opinions. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 17:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

"However, those requesting deletion are basing their decision on policy as it exists" is far from a neutral statement, with its implication that those opposing deletion are not basing their decision on policy. A neutral notification should be worded in such a way that the reader can't tell what the writer's opinion is of the matter, but your notification makes your opinion blindingly obvious. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:23, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

This has been closed as delete. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Search engine spam has become a big issue in the last two weeks. Search news (with, inevitably, Google) for "Google search spam". There are about 80 current news articles. The Spamdexing article could thus use an update. I'm involved in that area, so I won't edit the article. I did put some notes on Talk:Spamdexing, though. Search neutrality also needs some attention. --John Nagle (talk) 19:20, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

There's an RfC on whether to use the mugshot of Jared Lee Loughner in the article about him, and if so whether to place it in the infobox, or further down in the section about his arrest. As the issue has led to reverting and page protection, fresh eyes would be appreciated to make sure the RfC offers clear advice. See Talk:Jared Lee Loughner#Placement of Image. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 23:02, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

On the talk page of Sassenach there is a note saying it has been transwikied to Wiktionary. Doesn't that mean that WP should not have the article anymore? Jaque Hammer (talk) 04:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Not necessarily. A version of the page was transwikied in 2005 [3], the page was put up for deletion afterward [4], and the deletion discussion closed as "keep" [5]. Regardless of the merits of the present article, the "keep" decision meant exactly what it said in 2005, and in any case a "delete" decision in 2005 wouldn't be an obstacle to a policy-compliant article now so long as the reason for deletion was addressed. If you think the article shouldn't be here (in which case I do sympathize), you would have to open a second deletion discussion now. — Gavia immer (talk) 05:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I will go ahead with that. Jaque Hammer (talk) 05:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I don't know if this is really the right place to make an announcement like this, but I'd like to put forward a proposal for all Slavists here: I've begun a dictionary of the Gospel of John contained in the Codex Marianus. It was intended to be an improvement of the famous edition of Vatroslav Jagić. However I've now dropped out of university and if someone is interested in carrying on my job, I'd gladly transform it in a Wiki-dictionary so that everyone may contribute in its completion. Thank you --AleCes (talk) 15:09, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

P.S. If everyone here knows there's a better place to contact Wikipedian Slavists, please let me know. Thank you. --AleCes (talk) 15:12, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

How about the Old Church Slavonic Wikipedia? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:27, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Orangedog, I did it. --AleCes (talk) 11:43, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Is there a WP:COPYVIO noticeboard? I'm not conversant in COPYVIO generally, and am totally ignorant of what tools might exist to automate the checking, so would appreciate some help. I'd like to turn the automated COPYVIO checker (if it exists) lose on the Commercial Spaceflight Federation article. Some of the recent plethora of edits look like they may be COPYVIOs. Cheers. N2e (talk) 07:31, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

wp:CP is the copyvio noticeboard, but in this case I would just tag the page {{Copypaste}} and explain your suspiscions on the articles talkpage. It will be posted on the noticeboard then and adressed after a week. Automated copyvio checkers/Bots exist but are no substitute for a human check. Yoenit (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the suggestion as to how to handle this. I did what you suggested. Will now wait a week. N2e (talk) 16:09, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

In the future, you can also use this tool to automagically google a variety of phrases from the article to check for copyright problems. It's not 100% accurate, but it can be a good start. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:35, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Those edits were copyvios, so I deleted them. Thanks for the report. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Ooh shiny! Up to now I'd used this, by viewing an article in print view and copy-pasting content into it. It included mirrors by default plus it was slow. That tool's a much more efficient method. Thanks for posting it. –Whitehorse1 21:47, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I just discovered today that wikipedia hands out pentagram "stars" of varying degrees to editors along with titles as Service Awards [6]. My query is if this is connected with or derives from Masonry. RobertRosen (talk) 10:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

What history we have is in the opening paragraphs of Wikipedia:Barnstars. I very much doubt a masonic connection. Stars as awards for good work or good behaviour are familiar to me from primary school. Quite why you should think there is a masonic connection is a puzzle to me. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:14, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. See articles like this [7] and use of titles like "journeyman" RobertRosen (talk) 10:24, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Traced back far enough, there seems to be a masonic (small m) connection, in that our barnstars are based on a star anchor, a form of Anchor plate used to tie walls together. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:33, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

We have an article on Barnstars, which claims: "Some Wiki-based communities give their users an award called a 'barn star', as a continuation of the 'barn raising' metaphor. This originated on MeatballWiki. The image that is frequently used for this purpose is actually a photo of one of the structural tie plates described above, not of a barn star proper." wp:Service awards seem based on the military Service medals and are unrelated to masonry as far as I can see. Ranks like novice, apprentice, journeyman and master are very general and not specific to masonry. Yoenit (talk) 10:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Specific terms are likely to overlap, as both organisations use the metaphors of building and construction. Likewise you wouldn't accuse all masons of being Masons, despite their use of set-squares and compasses. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:43, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

He's right to be concerned you know. I always saw barnstars as a subtle nod to the Satanic powers that run Wikipedia. Fences&Windows 21:19, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Quiet, you'll bring the Masonic cabal that secretly runs Wikipedia down on us all! Seriously though, a star and a pentagram are not the same thing. We don't call the American flag the "stars and pentagrams" because they are obviously just stars, a common and easy to understand piece of imagery used around the world by thousands of unrelated organizations. The award and ranking systems are just an unofficial thing to motivate and reward good contributions, nothing more.(besides everyone knows Wikipedia is secretly run by the Rosicrucians, not those johnny-come-lately Masons) Beeblebrox (talk) 00:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

It might be worth reading our article on Pentagram. Many religions and other groups use a five-pointed star as a symbol. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:58, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

The high council and I object to this discussion, and declare it closed. :) </tongue in cheek> (and a pointed nod to RobertRosen, who has let us play with his serious historical question, and endured it in good humor.) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:00, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

It is actually an interesting question, but ultimately the barnstar is a Five-pointed star, generally considered a different symbol than the pentagram, which by definition is composed of five straight lines. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:07, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I move to replace the barnstar with a "barn asterisk" like this one: *. -Fennec 04:17, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Masons? I thought that Wikipedia was secretly run by the Stonecutters or the "No Homers" lodge MBelgrano (talk) 04:36, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Trying to get a video file to play properly, so that I can put it in article. (see: [8]

Right now, three users who tried it could not get it to work. Two with some particular browsers or addons could. But most not. Obviously, I can't put content in article if the majority of readers (civilians, non-techies) can't use it, or make them download some special program for my one little video. All the rest of my images and text work fine. And I got this sweet donation, coordinating with a state government or licencing and all. I just want it to play. Works fine on youtube! But translated version hosted here has major problems. Any way to fix this, so we can have best content for the reader? TCO (talk) 21:28, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Is it a common problem for new or occasional users not to know of the existance of the "click on thumbnail to get expanded image" facility?

I have recently spoken to several users who expressed surprise when I told them that if they wanted to see an image in more detail (particularly in the case of maps), they could simply click on the thumbnail and a larger version would be loaded. Not knowing that this is possible means that they were unable to get information that would have been useful at the time. If this problem is relatively uncommon, I guess it can be ignored - you cant expect everyone to get things right all the time... However, if it is a frequent problem, perhaps a more obvious icon would be helpful, but before suggesting that this be done we need to know the extent of the problem - maybe I associate with a larger concentration of internet illiterates than average, but possibly it is widespread and significant. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:35, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

It may well be that you do know a lot of people who are not very internet savvy. Anytime an image is a captioned thumb it has the little "expand" icon on it, similar to what you might see at YouTube, Netflix, etc. If you hover your cursor over it it will even say "enlarge." I'm not sure what else we could do, adding "click here to enlarge" to every single image on WP doesn't seem like a good solution. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:15, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I am aware of the "expand" icon, however I get no tooltip when I hover the cursor on it. Likewise no tooltip for a hover on the image. All that happens is the cursor changes style to a pointing finger. Some users do not know that that implies a link. The icon is small and inconspicuous and it is not obvious what it means until you know what it means.

I was thinking that either a larger, more obvious "expand" icon, possibly in the same colours as a link, and/or a standard tooltip message. I dont know the technology well enough to know if these would be trivial or a big deal. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:02, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think this is really a problem that needs a solution. "Fixing" it would needlessly clutter pages. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

No great clutter if done as suggested above. I am assuming that a change of this kind could be done so that all images would automatically show the changes, in which case the amount of work would probably be relatively small and once-off. Something that can give even a small benefit to a small percentage of users might be worthwhile for the amount of effort I am guessing is required, and for the low impact on general appearance. If the numbers affected are moderately large, it would be really worthwhile. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:02, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

That is odd that you don't see the tooltip, I just re-checked and I get it every time. Maybe it is browser specific? Beeblebrox (talk) 00:28, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I am using IE8, which is probably used by a significant proportion of users. Can anyone confirm/refute that this (no tooltip) is a common roblem with IE8? Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:20, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

On further investigation I find that if there is alternative text I get a tooltip on the image, but not on the expand icon. Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Works in Firefox, but not in IE9 for me. If it's not working in IE, then its no wonder why so many users seem to be unaware of what the icon means. --Dorsal Axe 00:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Why are so many of the maintenance lists not updated regularly? It's beyond annoying, especially when they are promoted to encourage editors to help clean them up, only to be totally discouraged when you find a list of pages that are either already fixed, deleted, or innapropriately listed.

• Special:DeadendPages - last updated 19 October 2009.
• Dormant pages (now Special:AncientPages)- last updated 19 October 2009.
• Special:LonelyPages - last updated 19:58, 1 October 2009.
• Special:FewestRevisions - last updated 07:35, 2 September 2007.

(the list is probably longer than this, I don't have time to go through the whole lot) If these pages are not going to be maintained, can they be got rid of and links to them removed? Derek Andrews (talk) 15:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Those specific examples are no longer updated because they are considered a waste of server resources/and or replaced by categories. Where exactly were they promoted? If you want to work on a specific backlog, please use Category:Wikipedia backlog. Yoenit (talk) 15:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I assume you found them on Wikipedia:Maintenance. It seems that page is seriously in need of an update. Yoenit (talk) 15:40, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

They crop up all over the place, often within template boxes, such as at the top of Special:RecentChanges, in Template:Resources for collaboration , Wikipedia:Community_portal, even Special:SpecialPages via the Toolbox. It's rather unfortunate that these pages don't have a 'what links here' link in the toolbox when they are displayed. - Derek Andrews (talk) 16:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't see links to any of those in the pages you give (other than the list of Special Pages). OrangeDog (τ • ε) 00:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

One specific example: Template:Resources_for_collaboration under 'Stubs' has a link to Special:ShortPages. The first 40 pages listed here are all redirects or disambiguation pages. These are obviously going to be short pages. I cannot see what point this list serves in its current state. Why is it promoted in places like Template:Resources_for_collaboration when in fact it is likely do nothing other than discourage editors to collaborate. -- Derek Andrews (talk) 13:24, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Special:ShortPages could probably be made to filter redirects, but would require opening a request on bugzilla. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 00:52, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

There is lots of regularly-updated reports at Wikipedia:Database reports if that's what you want. Svick (talk) 00:37, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

No. I guess I am not making my point very well. What I am trying to highlight is the misdirection that seems to occur. Perhaps what is needed are maintenance tags for the maintenance and help sections? While the main body of the encyclopaedia seems to be well organised and managed, I can't help but think that much of the backroom material is itself badly maintained. Some seems very convoluted which makes it hard to maintain. -- Derek Andrews (talk) 14:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

A true observation. I doubt that anyone who knows where things are ever visits those pages, so they are never updated. I'd never been to any of them until just now, and I've been here 5+ years. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 00:53, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi all,
While trying to find the Latin word for Finland, I came across this little gem of an an article at the National Center for Biotechnology Information website: Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. OK, so its target audience is scientists, and it would seem to only address editing in English. Looks useful to me. But where to include it, if at all?
--Shirt58 (talk) 11:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Wow.. that's a nice article! I especially like that it encourages those in the field to participate, rather than to just poo-poo us. This should get some promotion. Maybe mention it on Jimmy's page?Thelmadatter (talk) 15:13, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be up on a couple of project pages and would probably benefit from being on more of them. (Search "ten simple rules" in project pages to find the list.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The citation is PLoS Comput Biol. 2010 September; 6(9): e1000941. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000941. The NCBI's PubMed Central is a mirror site. User:Rockpocket and User:Magnus Manske are both authors of that paper. Fences&Windows 03:52, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I decided to include the whole thing at Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia, with some extra wikilinks. It's under a CC Attrib License. Fences&Windows 04:32, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Fantastic, and thank you. This really is a great, straightforward introduction. Thanks to the authors as well, for creating it in the first place.oknazevad (talk) 04:40, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Does anybody know of an alternative tool to autoblockfinder? This one has expired. :/ I'm trying to work on some of the unblock mailing list requests, but that tool is pretty valuable. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:46, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe somebody will know at WP:AN. :) I'll ask there. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

hello,

• If I write, for example {{Masters of Russian Animation|volume1}}, I want, that the first template in {{Masters of Russian Animation}} will open to see all animation in this compilation and the other templates should be capped. Any idea? Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 14:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

First, all of those lists are quite short, I don't see a reason to hide them at all. Second, boxes like this are used for navigation. That means that most items in the lists should have an article about themselves (or at the very least a section in another article). In the case of this navbox, there are only two links, so I don't think it's very useful. Svick (talk)

Yes I will create this articles later, but please answer my question.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 15:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Not possible with the Navbox code you are using as far as I'm aware, might be possible if you manipulate the code from scratch, but that's beyond me personally. Do you really need 4 nav boxes though? Could just use with with 4 different sections similar to Template:Lost navigation. Rehevkor ✉ 15:23, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. I don't think I will change this template as I like this template now. This is actually not so important to change it like I would like to have, I just wanted to have it better.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 15:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

This user User:Shirt58, has reverted a number of my edits to talk pages (notifications here: [9]). This isn't kosher, is it? Aaadddaaammm (talk) 11:29, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

It is perfectly "kosher". Your edits are clearly vandalism and the other editors acted correctly to revert them and warn you. Roger (talk) 12:11, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Did you read anything except the title of my section on the talk page? I really do want to discuss whether platypus should be written with a p or a P. Next time I'll avoid trying to bring any kind of humour to WP. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 12:14, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect WTF has capitalism got to do with birds or monotremes? Your attempt at humour was clearly a miserable failure. If you want people to treat your posts seriously please don't try so hard to make them resemble the incoherent ramblings of a nutcase vandal. Many editors (myself included) have "hair triggers" for anything that even slightly resembles vandalism.

You made no attempt to actually discuss your position, you simply said you don't like it without providing anything that even vaguely resembles a reason. Roger (talk) 12:35, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

In fairness to Aaadddaaammm, I must point out that Chzz has strongly supported Aaadddaaammm's opinion here. But much thanks for all your support, Roger.

All that said, this is the wrong forum for this kind of discussion. Hopefully this will be worked out between ourselves. --Shirt58 (talk) 12:57, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Just for the sake of clarity - my comments are purely about the form of Aaadddaaammm's posts. I have no opinion on the substance of the issue. If something looks like a pile of dung from a distance very few people would bother to examine it very closely in case it might contain a diamond. Roger (talk) 13:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

For the record, everything is OK now. Sorry for my hair trigger post here too. Let's never fight again! Aaadddaaammm (talk) 16:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a site rip-off of English WP located at qwiki.com (basically they deliver WP articles in spoken form, enriched with mainly commons multimedia). While they state the text to be Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, they fail to attribute WP as their source. cf. e.g. their article on Niki de Saint Phalle. Is there anything WP can do about it? As their site policy exhibit the usual aggressive this-is-our-intellectual-property-copying-forbidden-by-death terms, I doubt them reacting to a single WP editor's mail. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.5.234.167 (talk) 16:09, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe that the onus is on the editors to protest, rather than the Foundation, since the Foundation only owns copyright on its logos, which that site isn't ripping off? --Golbez (talk) 17:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

They do provide a link back to the Wikipedia article which is the source for their article on a topic. I thought that that was all they needed to do. Am I missing something? -- Derek Ross | Talk 18:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Its pretty borderline. There's a link back to the Wikipedia article at the end of the video thing, but it's not clear that that's the source of the text, so it would be questionable as to whether or not that's really "attribution." And if you look at the actual text (click the Contents tab at the top), there's no link at all. Mr.Z-man 19:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Well you know "we" put all the photo attributions down on a file page and not in article at all. So...;-) TCO (talk) 19:40, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but the photo page is easy to get to (click on the photo), and there's no ambiguity as to who the author is. With this, is Wikipedia the source? Or is it just a convenience link like the 3 links around it? Mr.Z-man 20:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The link to the WP just appears at the end of the slides as "more on: <topic>" together with other external links that provide further coverage on the topic. There is no differentiation whether these external links are totally unrelated to the content's origin (like Google) or whether they are actually the source of it (Wikipedia). And neither does the uninformed reader have the slightest clue that this might be the case. So in my opinion it's clearly violating attribution. Whether they have to bring the hint more prominently is to be discussed, but they clearly have to come up with something like "source", "based on", "using material from", or "original authors". As the haven't material on any of the articles I've been involved with (that's not much at all on the en:WP) it does not make too much sense if I do complain to them. 77.5.234.167 (talk) 21:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, they have the Dartmouth BASIC and Japanese Village, Knightsbridge articles, which are almost entirely my work, so I suppose I could. But I thought that the Foundation followed up on these cases on our behalf. That's what I remember from the time when third-party mirrors first became an issue anyway. -- Derek Ross | Talk 05:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

According to WP:Mirrors and forks#Non-compliance process, communication is done by the user holding the copyright. I've seen this come up a few times, and I think the advice given was consistent with that page. Flatscan (talk) 05:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, folks. In many articles, categories are always sorting in alphabetically order, but results seems to be odd and inconvenient. For example, categories started with number (i.e. born year, etc.) are less significantly for users, but always on top of categories. Is there any role rule about it ? Or, if not exist, can we stop the re-sorting of categories ? Please give me your advices. --Clusternote (talk) 19:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorting in alphabetical order makes finding the category you want on a page significantly easier, especially on articles with many categories. Choosing another random method just ends up making a specific category harder to find and would involve a significant amount of POV in determining order. I would also note that some wikiprojects have guidelines to alphabetize cats on articles under their scope, however I believe there is no such wiki-wide guideline. Although it would be good if there was, because when categories are out of alphabetical order they hinder the reader quite alot. -DJSasso (talk) 19:51, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice. Absence of global rule may mean I have a chance to change the situation through the further discussions in the future ... --Clusternote (talk) 20:51, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Instead of [[Category:Example]] you can use [[Category:Example| ]] or [[Category:Example|*]], which will sort that page to appear at the start of the category page. This is done for the most important or general pages in a category. Fences&Windows 20:12, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe they mean the order of the categories on the actual articles, not the articles in the categories. (based on looking at a recent edit of theirs) -DJSasso (talk) 20:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I meant the categories in the articles. --Clusternote (talk) 20:51, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll note that most sorting is done ASCIIbetical instead of alphabetical which would put numbers after "Z". — Dispenser 21:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Since we're discussing things I' say I'm against the pointless alphabetization of categories. the particular case which I think is most annoying is when there is a category named for the subject, such as category:Barack Obama in Barack Obama. I think those should go first. Another issue is of grouping together related categories. suffice it to say there are various opinions on the matter. This is an issue that should be discussed somewhere, though consensus might not be possible.   Will Beback  talk  21:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

It avoids the inevitable edit wars over which order the categories should be in. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 23:12, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• Hi, Will, that's exactly my worry ! Probably some kind of guidelines (or local rules) per wikiprojects, hinted by DJsasso, may solve my problems ... --Clusternote (talk) 15:43, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

• Put me down in the "who cares" category when you get around to the great debate on what order categories should be listed in. What an utterly pointless thing to edit war over or even discuss. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• That's right. I can't understand what drive a few users to cause reverting war on order of categories, so I came here to consult about it. --Clusternote (talk) 01:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I often find that a logical sequence is not necessarily alphabetical. For example, an article on a defunct company might have

[[Category:Companies established in 1980]]

[[Category:Companies disestablished in 2005]]

which is chronological; alpha sorting would not be sensible in this case. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I find alpha sorted categories to be most useful, but yes, in cases like that a small break in form is desirable. Resolute 18:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm returning to editing Wikipedia after a gap of 8 months. A article I remember contributing to regularly Annette Ackroyd has been deleted for copyvio. Being off-Wiki I couldn't participate in that discussion. Assistance needed - a) Can the old article be viewed somewhere so maybe I can salvage it or spot the copyvios ? b)If there was copy vio, then oughtn't only those bits be trimmed out when Annette Ackroyd is (i) dead and (ii) her notability is not in question. Annette46 (talk) 17:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The article was actually at Annette Akroyd. I was not the administrator who closed the listing, but I am the person who tagged the copyright problem. Whether an article listed at the copyright problems board is deleted or trimmed depends on the extent of the copyright violation and the point of the areticle's development when copyright violations entered. It does not prejudice creating a new article. In this case, the copyright problem was foundational, as this was one of a series of copyright problems created by that contributor, and spread throughout the entire article, with content identified from [10] and Kopf, David (1979). The Brahmo Samaj and the shaping of the modern Indian mind. Atlantic Publishers & Distri. ISBN 9780691031255. Retrieved 18 August 2010.. There were other sources used by that contributor which were not available online and could not be checked. Since the copyright problems were foundational, edits building on them constituted a derivative work. Excluding infobox and els, but including references, the article only expanded from the point of its creation from 1,149 words to 1,194 words. Trimming would not have been possible in that case. Generally, articles that are deleted for copyright problems are not restored, but if you want to salvage it (which would require rewriting from scratch), I'd be happy to pull it back up with the copyright template still in place so that you can do so in the temporary space provided. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

P.S. If you want to discuss it further with me, particularly, please drop by my talk page. :) I've checked back in a few times, but this page is not on my regular rotation. I only picked up this request because I noticed the words "massive copyvio" in the edit summary on my watchlist. Those words catch my eye. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:32, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Everyone!

I wanted to let you know about a study that we are getting together to start next month. As I’m sure many of you are aware we have had a decrease in new editors over the past couple years.

As a community we have a lot of ideas but We’ve been stymied by a lot of options and little data.

We want to conduct a study over the next couple months (with some resources from the Wikimedia Foundation) to help craft strategies to develop new users, to get data on exactly how our new users are finding their first, and later, experiences on Wikipedia and of course to help share the experiences of the experienced users who are here to find out what works, what doesn't and what resources they need to make their work easier.

The plan at the moment is to have several groups of users, 1 group that is just followed (the control) and several other groups with guides who actively reach out and try to help them edit and join the community. I hope that you can help us as we get ready for the study start next month and help the new users once we start! You can find out more information and sign up on the project page and if you can think of anyone who might be interested please please PLEASE point them this way or let me know so I can reach out to them personally! Jalexander--WMF 22:03, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there any reason to believe continued growth is a good thing? At what point are editor numbers allowed to start consolidating? When we have reached 7 billion? Hans Adler 15:23, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The data may need to be adjusted for the effects of the economy. If you are out of work and can't afford a DSL connection, odds are probably good that you won't be editing Wikipedia.—RJH (talk) 15:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

But if you are out of work and do have a DSL connection, you have plenty of time to write an encyclopedia ;) --Physics is all gnomes (talk) 17:12, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. How else have I had the time to rack up 25000 edits since I lost my job (1 July 2009)? DSL isn't that expensive - I'm paying GBP 6.00 per calendar month for DSL, whilst some jobless people spend more than that in one day on cigarettes and/or beer. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:30, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I have activated the e-mail function on my user talk and I am trying to e-mail another user. The option to e-mail that user on his page will not show up even though I have followed all the instructions on my user talk page to make this option available. Any suggestions? --Apocalypto13 (talk) 00:34, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

If the other editor hasn't activated the email function it won't show up. ~~ GB fan ~~ 00:37, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The option is to make your email visible, not others'. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:21, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I thought that such an analysis was carried out, and even gained some publicity, but I cannot find any links to it. Anybody can point me in the right direction? What I am looking for is something that says "35% of Wikipedia articles are about natural sciences, 20% about social sciences, 40% about pop culture..." and so on. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:50, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The MOS specifies that articles on American topics use American spellings and articles and articles on British topics use British spellings.

But what if the article's topic is an American-made movie whose own topic is an event from British history? Do we have an explicit guideline on that?

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 20:54, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Probably fall back on the "Original version" rule - continue the method it had when you came to it. Only consensus should change it from there. --Golbez (talk) 21:19, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'll do that. (Same poster, different IP.) --70.48.228.57 (talk) 05:05, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Please forgive me if I am in the wrong place but I was going blind looking for the right place. It looks like an entry was created mainly for the purpose of advertising on facebook (by linking to wikipedia entry). Is this allowed. I am a newbie (maybe something worse) so maybe I am overly zealous. Imasomething (talk) 04:47, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be for advertising; WP:NOTADVERTISING and Wikipedia:Spam discuss this. Violating Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is against policy. Whether Facebook or other websites link to it doesn't affect Wikipedia guidelines. Which article is it? --Closeapple (talk) 05:57, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

It is the hotchkiss article and they are using it on the hotchkiss Facebook site. I actually found it because someone had recognized one of my edits (they had help me find the information). Imasomething (talk) 14:22, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Hotchkiss is a disambiguation page, can you link the specific article you are talking about? ~~ GB fan ~~ 14:58, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Very sorry about that, I hadn't realized it. Here it is (Hotchkiss School) and if you look them up on Facebook it is the same thing, Imasomething (talk) 16:23, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The page is the same and it is properly attributed, at the top of the page it says:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and then at the bottom it says:

Description above from the Wikipedia article Hotchkiss School, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors here. Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic.

This makes everything they are doing legal. Reading through the article it does not read like an advertisement. I don't think there is any problem here. ~~ GB fan ~~ 17:23, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah , that is what confused me. But the context it is being used in is what is confusing me. It is being used as a fan page which are not normal facebook pages and are used for generating advertising. I think there were some questions on the hotchkiss school talk page about it being written like a advertisement . It doesn't bother me either way I just thought I would point it out since it got pointed out to me. Imasomething (talk) 17:32, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Relatively recently, Facebook began serving up Wikipedia information about places such as schools and cities. —Ost (talk) 15:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

yes but considering where it is cut it looks like someone (and in this case it is most likely someone from hotchkiss) had to put it up there. I talked with a friend who has a fan page and he said essentially the same thing (fortunately for him he does not have a Wikipedia page). Maybe it needs to be passed up the admin chain? Maybe they know and have okayed it already. Imasomething (talk) 16:26, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Unless there's actually something wrong with the content of the article on Wikipedia, nothing else really matters. We encourage people to use our content elsewhere, and they're allowed to do so for any usage. What other sites do with our content is not our concern as long as they use it within the requirements of the license. Mr.Z-man 21:22, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks that was exactly what I was looking for in terms of an answer (GB Fan had said it also but in a different way). Sorry for any unnecessary headaches Imasomething (talk) 07:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Sinebot is acting weird, but so is the signature autogenerated using the four tildes. It added a second signature to previously signed material. [11] [12]. The autogenerated signature looks different from normal. NOTE: since I am on an IP account, my signature is unmodified, it is Wikipedia default.

Has a change in Wikipedia default signature occurred, which in turn is breaking sinebot? (This is signed using four tildes) 65.94.45.238 14:03, 8 February 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.94.45.238 (talk)

When you sign you no longer give a link to your talkpage, which is probably breaking the bot. Did somebody change the default signature? Yoenit (talk) 14:45, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

test 89.146.39.186 (talk) 14:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It would seem your signature is not standard, despite editing from an IP adress. I have no idea how that would happen. 89.146.39.186 (talk) 14:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I have added {{NoAutosign}} to your talkpage, which should stop Sinebot from bothering you for now. Somebody should probably file a bugreport, but I have no idea how. Yoenit (talk) 14:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Whatever caused it, it seems to have disappeared again. My signature is now normal once more. 65.94.45.238 (talk) 19:15, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I have been looking around for an appropriate place to post this message - having initially done so at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications_committee, I've just noticed that no one else has posted there for two years, so it's probably not active.

Basically, I want to raise an issue regarding this article in the UK Daily Mail:

Christina Aguilera FLUBS the lines to the National Anthem at the Super Bowl - by singing botched lyrics found on Wikipedia

The article is blaming Wikipedia for the error in Aguilera's lyrics at the Superbowl, implying that she read a vandalised version of the article before her rendition.

However, the vandalised version (as cited in the article) was actually this one, added *after* her performance and reverted eight minutes later, so Wikipedia had nothing to do with it. I think we should look into contacting the Daily Mail as this kind of press isn't very good for the encyclopedia. I could contact them myself, but it might be better coming from someone within the organisation? Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 10:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems like something the WMF should make a statement about. Yoenit (talk) 11:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

You can email the WMFs press liaison at the address found at WMF:Press room. That seems the best way to do it. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 11:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

As if living in the damn country all your life isn't enough to learn your own goddamn national anthem... The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

And the tune - sing the notes as written, no more, no less, it's not an exercise in improvisation or scat. – ukexpat (talk) 20:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

At least I'm a Green Bay fan, so I was able to enjoy the game after that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, today's example showing that there's a reason that rag gets labeled the Daily Fail... Agreed that the WMF should be looking for a retraction and apology for that. Tony Fox (arf!) 17:26, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't feed the troll. If the daily mail gets something wrong it's best to ignore them if at all possible.©Geni 18:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

For that purpose I recommend KittenBlock. It blocks the Daily Mail site, replacing it with pictures of kittens. Fences&Windows 03:16, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I was recently notified to some activity of Colonies Chris delinking United States and some other items from templates. I am not sure that there is consensus to do this and I am concerned that it is not appropriate to delink some of these. Perhaps some of them but not on a mass basis. --Kumioko (talk) 18:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Please provide a list of the templates that are affected by these changes (or a representative sample, if it's a long list). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Or why not limit it to whatever you think is a problem. Generally, from what I've seen such delinkings appear appropriate, but let's see what you have in mind. Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:01, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

See here for templates that are being discussed. Moxy (talk) 20:02, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Request: Please folks, can we not link to the secure server -- NavPopups doesn't work on them, making a quick review impossible. – ukexpat (talk) 20:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Opps forgot i was in there..I have changed it.Moxy (talk) 20:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This seems to be very similar to the concerns raised at WT:WSS#Delinking of templates and WT:STUB#Valueless links in stub templates.

@Moxy: you could have linked it like this: [[Special:Contributions/Colonies Chris|here]] to be server-independent. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:32, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This delinking is in line with the MoS (see WP:OVERLINK). I raised the question at WT:STUB months ago before I started this delinking. It was also raised at WT:WSS. There were no objections. It has also been raised again very recently at WT:WSS#Delinking_of_templates by an admin who wished to confirm that there were no objections. There were no objections. Colonies Chris (talk) 00:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I thought the community had moved on from this one. Wikilinking is optimised where linking is undiluted by links to extremely well-known and general article topics such as whole country articles. I have rarely seen a link to common countries that was not either (1) unnecessary (i.e., so unlikely to be clicked it's not funny); or (2) better replaced by a more specific link (Agriculture in France, not France). Some years ago, the best content contributors accepted without comment that linking needs to be intelligently applied. See FAC, FLC, etc, for examples. The "news" in the templates in question might be linked, but a common country name is not "news", and bluing it is∂ a distraction from the more valuable links. Tony (talk) 01:17, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I looked through about ten of the recent changes, and I think this is great. The work is clearly being done with thought (e.g., <United States> <Armed Forces> became <United States Armed Forces>, which it ought to have been all along), and most of the outright removals are clear instances of overlinking. Colonies Chris deserves a barnstar for doing this tedious work, not complaints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for this support. So often the only feedback is criticism, so this is much appreciated.
I'm now performing a similar process on templates with links to Canada, but they're being consistently reverted by User:CKatz. I really don't want to get into a battle over this but it seems clear that my changes are in line with the MoS and with consensus, and I really don't want to make the same changes all over again - as you say, it's a tedious process to do even once. Can this user be stopped from continually reverting my changes? Colonies Chris (talk) 00:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Please avoid hyperbole, as it really does not help anything - 13 out of 59 edits is hardly "continually reverting". Note that the reverts involved cases where you stripped out useful links, not ones where you actually refined the links. --Ckatz^chat_spy 07:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a note to relevant projects that you are about to change all there temples could avoid this type of confusion. Simply state your intentions with a Copy and pasted version of what your about to do. As some projects may have there own formats they have agreed upon and are not aware of the MoS on this. Moxy (talk) 07:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The "overlink" section speaks to articles, not templates; as an aside, it also directs us to retain relevant links, which the geographical links would appear to be given the nature of the templates in question. --Ckatz^chat_spy 08:04, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

@Moxy: are you seriously suggesting I should gain the approval of every project before bringing anything within their purview into line with the MoS? This is hard enough work as it is without having to reverify basic matters over and over. In any case, this appears to be a personal crusade on the part of CKatz, not a project thing. I can find no discussion of this on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada pages. Colonies Chris (talk) 08:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

@CKatz: perhaps you could explain why you consider the link to Canada to be vital in Template:Canadian television networks but you're happy for me to unlink it in Template:Religious television channels in Canada, for example? This makes no sense to me at all. And what could possibly be the benefit of links to Canada and British Columbia in Template:BritishColumbia-geo-stub, which only ever appears within an article that already would have a prominent link to BC? Colonies Chris (talk) 08:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

@Colonies Chris no i dont mean ask for permission and/or gain approval from the projects..all i am suggestion is a notice to projects that your about to bring the temples in line with the MoS. Or even easier for you would be to add a link in your edit summary to a sandbox page that explains what your doing..as the current edit summary does not realy show the reasoning y. I agree 100 percent that this is not a requirement on your part - however its has come up now a few times by different editors in different forums. We should find a way of communicating whats going on better so we are not here again when others see this edits. Moxy (talk) 22:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The wiki Culture.si was launched in April 2010. Texts about the culture of Slovenia are available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license, the same license as used by Wikipedia. See Enhance Wikipedia! and Terms of Use. Published by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and Ljudmila (media laboratory). --Eleassar ^{my talk} 13:51, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I have made a short post at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (linking)#Oppose delinking inside templates where I list my reasons for not delinking inside licensing templates used for images. This is somehwat related to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Mass delinking of United States above, which I did not see until I composed my post. -84user (talk) 15:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Over the last few days I've noticed a series of articles appearing in PROD that all look the same. The latest example is CHINA: What it fears the most. They all start with "New article name:" and are then followed by what appears to be gibberish. Having only confirmed the pattern today, I didn't save links to previous examples.

So... is this a particular editor posting these? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:01, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks like Tomfaranda only created that one page. That's fairly typical of what we see on new page patrol. There are so many users creating pages that sometimes surprising pseudocoincidences can arise. Sometimes if you dig a bit deeper you might find that a number of inappropriate pages come from the same user, in which case you should warn them, and if they persist, make a report at the Administrator's Noticeboard. If very similar articles (particularly about contentious topics) are being created by different accounts, you should open a sock puppet investigation. Feezo (Talk) 12:17, 11 February 2011 (UTC) — edit: just noticed you're an administrator! The "New article name" problem typically comes from a mangled use of the Article wizard. The article you linked doesn't look like gibberish to me (or it would qualify for speedy deletion). Do you have any other examples of this type? Feezo (Talk) 20:42, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Not any more; I only noticed the pattern after the fact so I didn't keep track of earlier examples. However, I think you've hit on the root cause of this problem. Not having used the Wizard, is there a potential problem we should be looking for? Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:42, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Not that I know of. Articles created with the wizard automatically get {{New unreviewed article}} attached to them. We could have a filter check for the phrase, but it doesn't seem like that big a deal. Feezo (Talk) 22:55, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

There has been a suggestion on the gendergap mailing list that the Foundation hold some kind of event around March 8 (International Women's Day) to encourage new women editors to sign up. A provisional page has been opened on Meta to discuss this. Please see Women on Wikipedia Week, and its talk page. Although it's being called a week for now, it could be for a month. All input welcome. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:39, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I am very sorry, but I have made a mess of Jizzy Pearl, and I do not know how to fix it. I was trying to add a reference section. Please help!--DThomsen8 (talk) 23:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's safe to say that without wikilinks, that statement might lose its context. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 23:07, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Heh. I fixed the article markup, but noticed this section because the title seemed like it was some really funky spam. — Gavia immer (talk) 23:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, guys, for the quick fix. Rock musicians and rock groups choose the most amazing names. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out what the Dave Clark Five were thinking when they came up with that one. -- llywrch (talk) 18:50, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey this ever going to turn up? If so I want to be green, which is my favourite colour. :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I thought this was the best idea I've ever heard of. The only complaint I had was that new articles are assumed unreliable, because the algo looks at who changed parts of it. I think that the trust level should work like the "real world", in that you assume articles by trusted sources are trustworthy, even if no one has edited them - and perhaps especially when no one has edited them. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:01, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's terrible; its entirely too prejudicial and bite-y, and using differently texts colors or highlighting would make for an utterly shitty reading experience.

More importantly, I'm damn sure it's false, unless someone can point me to the on-wikipedia discussion about developing and implementing this. At which point I would promplty object. Just another case of "don't believe everything you read" rumor-mongering. oknazevad (talk) 21:49, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Its actually pretty good. If they would just drop the POV-thing and re-brand it as a super advanced diff checker, I'm sure that most people around here would jump at the thing. — Dispenser 22:01, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

What I'd like to see is a three-way toggle for the display - standard, as now, monochrome, with the colour highlighting off, and a diff mode to see the last edit, without having to look at all the <ref> blah, blah </ref> gobbldygook. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Plus a blink tag, so really dubious stuff flashes at you. And a plaid option, used if we're uncertain how good a reference is! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:25, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I thought everybody knew why we are losing editors. The same handful of problems are brought up over and over again in different places all over Wikpedia. But seeing the Wiki Guides study/project post above made me think twice, so I figured I'd ask everybody. modified post to 2 questions Hydroxonium

^{[citation needed]} Corvus cornix_talk 04:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Question 1

Very briefly, why is Wikipedia losing editors? - Hydroxonium (H₃O⁺) 14:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I almost wonder if it's the size. I'd say the most likely case is that early 2007 was the time when the large majority of "it's obviously missing so I'll create it and noone will deny it's notable" type articles had been created. Just a guess though. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. In addition, I feel that for better or worse, certain types of people are associated with Wikipedia (WP:SYSTEMIC) - white, educated, young, male, academic bent, interested in writing an encyclopedia(!), etc - and that these categories are drying up. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 15:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

What we're seeing is that the "fancruft" has moved on to Wikia and Tvtropes. This is why the place seemed much more active 5 years ago. — Dispenser 18:09, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I would say it's because all the "easy" articles have been made. Five years ago you could throw a dart at the World Book and find a topic that didn't have an article; now, almost all of those subjects have articles, and we're left with the more obscure (yet of course still important) topics that less people are familiar with. Lots of people know about Iowa, or Mariah Carey, or tornadoes; not too many people know enough to help contribute to a list of governors of a small Kazakh district, or a video game that was released only in East German arcades, or a small regional newspaper in North Carolina. Some people know of these, but there isn't nearly the mass penetration that you had early on. So, people come and see very complete and well-written articles on the subjects they know, so... why should they edit? What they were editing is already, in many of their eyes, complete. We're kind of past our mass-market editing stage; now we need to focus on getting academics and experts in to refine the edges. --Golbez (talk) 20:05, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

For example: When I started, there were no, or very few, articles on Washington Metro stations and Pacific hurricane seasons. I created a good many of them. If I were to come along now, I would find well-written and fleshed out articles on most subjects in those categories, so I would have less reason to edit. Check out the difference in Than Shwe from when I tagged it as a stub nearly seven years ago: [13] There was much to edit then. There's still some to edit now, but there was more to edit then. --Golbez (talk) 20:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, Ill be busy for some time. Most articles related to Mexico, what I work on, are either non-existant or terrible. That includes most of the states. If youre looking for articles to write or improve on, look at topics related to non-English speaking countries. You'd be surprised how much work is needed.Thelmadatter (talk) 02:00, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

• I don't think it's losing editors, just slowed down on gaining new editors, which itself shouldn't be alarming, because Wikipedia can't keep on growing indefinately. Just like Facebook, they're rate of new accounts has decreased too (well.. citation needed, but still), because eventually everyone with access to the internet will have already tried it out, or heard of it and decided whether or not to try it. Then the userbase will level off, and it will continue like that as it ages, as new editors reach a certain age, the next generation will replace those that left. -- œ^™ 14:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Question 2

Very breifly, why is Wikipedia not keeping new editors? - Hydroxonium (H₃O⁺) 17:33, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no clear path to contribute to the encyclopedia after registering an account. No online SVG/Image/Audio/Video editor. No email alerts (nag them to come back). No introduction/Hard find an appropriate active WikiProject. — Dispenser 18:09, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments
I can answer both IMO with the following. I believe there are too many editors involved in things like discussions and trying to change policy and not enough in writing articles. This causes 2 problems:

1. They are not editing
2. the changes they are making drives off the editors.

For example, There is too much bickering about things like project scope, whether an article is notable or not, why a certain link should or shouldn't be used, etc. Using the case of notability. Too many editors are too wrapped up about article notability. The issue is just too subjective. Whats notable to me is not to you and vice versa. If the article has references then who cares if its about a Soccer (international Football) player from Brazil and is not notable in the US. They are in Brazil. Another major problem is the sheer complication of the rules. It takes a long time to learn the rules making it too hard for the average newby. There are more rules here than learning to drive a car in most states and many of the rules contradict themselves and then there are catchalls and loopholes like IAR and we are adding more all the time making it more and more complicated. --Kumioko (talk) 21:10, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

If you want to see why there are more and more rules, check the comment two topics down ("National spelling guideline"). Three or four years ago fewer of that sort of complicated questions had come up, and fewer rules had been made in response to them.

It seems inevitable to me that the number of rules would grow as wikipedia becomes more complicated and more complicated situations arise. The alternative to rules is everybody winging it, which is no longer feasible because wikipedia is too important. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:16, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a lot of newbies seem to make edits that are contrary to the Wikipedia conventions, so experienced editors end up reverting their changes. The revert is intended for the benefit of Wikipedia as a whole, but I can see how that can be discouraging to newcomers. (Likewise with the AfD process.) I also agree with an earlier comment that there is less and less room for newcomers to make edits on topics with which they are familiar. Common topics tend to be well-developed and receive frequent oversight, so edits have a higher probability of being stomped upon.

Perhaps what we need is some sort of friendly, encouraging "Mr. Wizard" tool that appears at the top of the article for new editors (with a button to make it go away). The tool could indicate whether a particular article is well maintained and so should be edited with care, or whether the article is poorly developed and would benefit from improvement. The wizard could likewise provide random suggestions for enhancing an article (based on content), or direct the editor to related articles that are in greater need of improvement.—RJH (talk) 23:14, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

A wizard idea would be awesome. I would edit much more if they had something like that. I am a newbie so i can speak well for others (I think) Imasomething (talk) 15:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I am a new editor replacing another new editor that got trashed with rules and jargon by an experienced editor. I've got this bad feeling I am working against an editor who is editing wikipedia for pay. Rather than discuss that specific problem, a general question comes to mind: How could we possibly determine the number of editors who are paid and working as teams on wikipedia articles? Has anyone tried to infiltrate a for-pay group of editors? Has anyone tried to form such a group and will admit it? OoZeus (talk) 04:01, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Just a general overview of paid editing at Wikipedia:

• Insofar as a paid editor does a good job of being indistinguishable from a purely volunteer editor, they are unlikely to be spotted, at least hypothetically.
• Insofar as the motivation for paying an editor is either to a) write an article about a commercial enterprise which doesn't qualify for a Wikipedia article under WP:GNG or b) To whitewash an existing article about a commercial enterprise, political group, or individual so that it accentuates positive aspects and eliminates the negative ones, such editing is obvious and usually goes very badly.
• Wikipedia as a system discourages paid editing both officially and systemicly. Officially, the WP:COI guidelines make it very hard to establish paid editing as a regular practice as accepting money to edit an article with a certain point of view is a direct violation of Wikipedia policies (and if you are paying someone to edit an article, you probably have a clear image of what you want the article to say, and it likely violates WP:NPOV pretty egregiously). Systemicly, Wikipedia has an community ethos which is so hostile to paid editing that such editors are basically driven out of town at the head of a mob bearing pitchforks and torches. This is not wrong in most cases, as editors so run off have usually broken so many rules and burned so many bridges that the same result would have occured even if they hadn't been editing-for-hire.

The basic summation is that it does go on, and when it does it almost always goes badly because there's nothing a paid editor can do correctly that a volunteer editor couldn't also do correctly, and paid editors have motivations which run directly in conflict with Wikipedia's core values, and those motivations are usually so obvious that it never goes well. --Jayron32 04:22, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The TLDR version the the the above -- basically editors need to follow the rules, paid or not. The community is very split on if they should be 'allowed', per se, but if they follow the rules (including neutrality and so on) then there's nothing to be done, officially. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Meanwhile back in the non-hypothetical real world instance of Wikipedia, it is practically impossible for a paid editor to be neutral - he who pays the piper... It is inherently a violation of WP:OWN regardless of any attempt, no matter how sincere, to pay lip service to WP:NOTABILITY, WP:COI, WP:NPOV, etc.

Anyone taking money to write in WP is IMHO comitting fraud as they have no way of ensuring that their "product" will be delivered or if it does manage to survive until it is "delivered", that it won't simply disapear very quickly as such articles are often speedied. Their "customer" often gets a big fat nothing for their money. Roger (talk) 07:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Nevertheless, paying editors may still be profitable, a high-quality article about themselves at a popular page like this is clearly positive. Articles must be about notable subjects and keep a neutral point of view, but for a company that is already notable and stayed clean of conroversies, that's not very hard to do. And yes, there are many other policies to list, but from the point of view of the company, that's nothing special. All areas where a company may desire to expand their activities or promote their name have rules to follow, and most of them are so strict that, once being used to it, to follow our policies is child's play. Only an amateur would write such an article here and not expect rules. MBelgrano (talk) 12:01, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Something that has become clear to me as a new editor is that the search engines always put wikipedia articles near the top. If I were running a company or a political campaign, I would want my view put forth, and I know that could be wrong. Good thing I am not paid! I haven't searched, but I would be surprised if wikipedia was not on the agenda of advertising companies. Perhaps that is internal information for the ad company and never makes it to a posting of "Wikipedia Editors Wanted - Make Thousands of Dollars per week from home". LOL OoZeus (talk) 18:58, 8 February 2011 (UTC) By the way, I am having a hard time starting as an editor. Is there some "junk" job I could do to contribute time but stay out of the line of fire on editing? OoZeus (talk) 19:03, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

If you are looking for relatively easy jobs to do, that is low-intellectual-effort and somewhat simple and repetitive, there is Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask which has lots of good suggestions. My I suggest CAT:UNCAT and Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized, where you can work on categorizing articles which lack categories; this can be a good introduction to the category structure at Wikipedia, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikify which is about converting plaintext articles into house style, with proper use of Wikilinks and section headers. It helps you to get to know basic aspects of the manual of style and how to properly introduce wikilinks and sections into articles. --Jayron32 20:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You might like to see WP:PAID, if you haven't found it before. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It is possible that a company as I have described, already notable and clean of controversies, may consider that they have nothing to fear from our policies and that a good wikipedia article may benefit them, even following all applicable policies and guidelines. Remember Wikipedia's main flaw: users write about the things they want to write about; in other words, an article nobody is interested in writing about will stay undeveloped even if notability, information and sources are everywhere. The "wiki" style, where articles are written by casual users who add a litle more as they passed by, works only up to a certain limit, good and featured articles always need at least one user to focus in the article and work a lot with it. We have ways to control which topics have their own articles, or to control the way the articles are developed, but we don't have ways to expand articles that nobody is interested in and are not developed up to their potencial. MBelgrano (talk) 03:46, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I've stumbled across an idea for one way an established Wikipedian could make some money for writing articles that, as far as I can see, wouldn't violate WP:COI or any other policy. I don't know it would work, & even if it did work for more than a handful of people. But if there is any interest, & I find the time to write about it, I'm willing to share it; since I have a full-time job at the moment, & due to lack of time may vanish from Wikipedia soon, I have no use for it. (And no, it does not require anyone who tries it to pay me any money. Unless you want to. :) -- llywrch (talk) 07:14, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

This is one of the most inevitable problems rooted in the logic of nature itself. You can never tell apart a pair of anything that behaves the same. We'll never see any practical/moral solution to this, and the best we can do is to discourage the paid editors from being too bold. Most paid editors edit news pages linked from the main page, because many people see them, and since they are new events, it is hard to correct deceiving information before everyone who would see it already has. Especially problematic if they make their own temporary sources no one can identify as unreliable until it's too late, which happens FAST. A temporary solution would be to demoralize them with big red warnings about editing news articles, although there is no permanent solution they wont go around. DontClickMeName _talk^{contributations} 02:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

"Paid editor" is perhaps too narrow. I doubt that Jossi[14][15][16] was paid for his actions in the coin of this realm, nor was his interference in the transitory news area. I do think we should be a little skeptical of all editors who seem to have an endless supply of time to spend editing a wide range of articles, and look to see if there's method in it. AndroidCat (talk) 05:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

"Paid editor" is also too wide. No one would want to stop a non-profit from giving experts a grant to expand an area of interest on Wikipedia. In fact, with the Public Policy Initiative, this is already (indirectly) occurring, with the full support of the WMF. Let's not be hasty to look down upon those who produce good, NPOV content in exchange for money. Dcoetzee 11:46, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

interesting? Or not? Well I thought it was. Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:40, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing. I was wondering if the answer was that most people edit while at work. - Hydroxonium (H₃O⁺) 15:53, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems very much dependant on the subject: here's one with an obvious peak at the beginning of the year, and a general trend of being accessed more on Sundays: [17] ;-) AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Nice one. I you look at the main page there is a definite dropview in pageviews during the weekend [18]. Yoenit (talk) 14:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if it's time to try to do something about these again. Some of them, e.g., Category:Fictional characters with superhuman strength, Category:Fictional mutants, have previously been nominated for deletion with no consensus. Some excerpts from the discussions:

• Delete: "too broad", "ill defined", "pointless trivia", "useless", "far, far too broad", "It's chuff and too broad", "no precise real-world definition for a jargon sf term", "Definition for inclusion seems murky",
• Keep: "needs to be pared down, with more sub categories", "and define: humanoid characters who can lift over 1 ton", "make a few nice subcategories"

Few arguments for keeping contradicted the reasons for deleting; in fact, many expressed the same concerns — most were conditional on renaming, subcategorizing, or giving the category a more specific definition. While some were renamed (super strength to superhuman strength) the latter mostly has not happened. The result is an inconsistent and disputed interpretation of how the categories should be defined (see for example Category talk:Fictional characters who have mental powers). Furthermore, many are being used inappropriately, e.g., Category:Fictional crocodiles and alligators as a subcategory of superhuman strength. I've removed a number of similar examples.) The bottom line is that the issues raised in the "super strength" deletion nomination continue to apply to many of its sister categories.

I think we need to either develop a consistent set of guidelines, which should be given on each subcategory, or else delete the problem categories. Feezo (Talk) 21:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a real question, not an insult disguised as a question: Does it really matter? What harm does a crappy category do, really? Categories don't show up atop Google searches, fooling readers; they doesn't block good material. They slightly clutter the very bottom of articles, but otherwise - so what if they suck? They're just a sort of wikified link farm, after all.

I'm a longtime admin and editor, but I've never really seen why people get so worked up over them. It's much more fun to go ballistic over American-vs-British spelling, or some other wikipedia time suck. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

DavidWBrooks—You make a good point, I think. I've often wondered—why the fuss over Categories? The Infobox is more prominent than Categories, so I more understand the fuss over what gets included in Infoboxes. But I don't think either Infoboxes or Categories are important compared to the prose found in the body of an article. A big fuss also arises over what gets to be in the "lead". The lead, like the Infobox, is prominent. I think the fuss over the lead is a legitimate fuss, because a lead is an essential part of an article. While Categories and Infoboxes serve their purposes, I think they are of secondary importance, and I think this is especially true of Infoboxes. I often find the fuss over Catregories and Infoboxes misplaced energy. I understand the importance of Categories. They are organizational elements of the encyclopedia. They help with research. But I think the fullness of language found in the article itself is what matters most.

I would also add that the possibility of misleading the reader is greatest with Categories and Infoboxes. The body of an article is a "safe" place to express information. Material expressed in the body of an article takes advantage of all that language is capable of. Infoboxes and Categories require sometimes unrealistic decisions vis-a-vis inclusion/exclusion. Bus stop (talk) 19:06, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

To some people it does matter. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that some people favor quality over quantity. –MuZemike 03:42, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

As a general rule, even if the category is about some obscure aspect or concept that by itself isn't notable, the argument ought to go into how categories are useful to distinguish and separate articles in terms of being able to find that article or a similar article.

Ontological discussions tend not to happen that often on Wikipedia, and I think the project is poorer as a result. The issue is how do you find information and be able to search for it? Some assume in error that the "search" button is sufficient or that Google is "all knowing" and therefore can provide access to the article. Unfortunately the process of organizing information is a much more complex discipline than that and categories play a major role in that development.

Unfortunately from the perspective of using MediaWiki categories as a data organizing system, it isn't nearly as hierarchical as other systems like the Dewey Decimal system or the Library of Congress cataloging number. You can have circular references and closed loops of categories (outside of the "main" category hierarchy) existing simultaneously with a more hierarchical structure.

As long as somehow there is increased meaning to including the category and it isn't redundant to other categories, I'm trying very hard to see what the harm is for something like a "super strength" category of some kind. Some common sense should prevail and there is a reason to request a review or deletion of a category from time to time, but you shouldn't go over the top either in culling the categories. With 3.5 million articles, it is certainly possible to lack sufficient granularity in terms of having a category be useful for finding content when there are hundreds of articles in that category. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:17, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

No one's going over the top: please note that I'm *not* proposing the categories for wholesale deletion. Rather, I'm interested in defining the scope of the categories, with deletion being the last resort for intractably problematic ones. Feezo (Talk) 21:34, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

IMO the primary purpose of the categories is to help people find articles, not to declare that this or that is a critical aspect of X.

IMO the place to refine the scope of a category is at the top of the cat's own page. Write a description of what ought to be listed. Suggest alternatives for common mistakes.

IMO cats must be kept to a reasonable size if they are going to serve their primary purpose. If Category:Fictional mutants might contain so many articles that readers couldn't find what they wanted, then it's time to consider subdivision of the cat, or tighter criteria (e.g., all the fictional mutants must have originally been humans, or all the fictional mutants must have been the protagonist rather than minor characters). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Over time spent on Wikipedia, I noticed certain problems regarding neutrality that seem to have no solution. Do you have any suggestions to any of them?

• Many Newsworthy articles that are linked from the Main Page are heavily POV. Editors are putting what so ever they want on those articles, regardless of how incorrect they are, because by the time anyone sees the information as incorrect, the damage has been done, and most people who will ever see the article already has, through the duration the Main Page links to it. One example is the Tuscon shootings. During the first few days it was linked from the Main Page, it clearly implied Palin had something to do with it. An unquestionably[[19]] large amount of people saw it. Later on, it was made clear that was only informal nonsense, but by then the article's no longer on the Main Page, sent into the dark labyrinth among 3.5 million articles. Although those who complained about the bias were fooled into being satisfied with the fix when they later read the article, the bias succeeded in making Wikipedia look bad.

• Another loophole is that grassroots opinions tend to be diverse and unfocused while organized opinions are single. Articles would then describe the many different grassroots opinions crudely while expanding on organized opinions. This often misrepresents a grassroots side, by, for instance, mentioning only a supporter's thoughts without explaining the reason for his/her thoughts. A thinks the ball is good, B thinks the ball is nice, C thinks the ball is great, D, E, and F think the ball is bad because it's rotten.

• Another problem is that sources among English speaking countries are considered to be more reliable, because Wikipedia editors generally know little about not-English sources, and are far more likely to dismiss them as incorrect fringe theories when conflict takes place.

• Yet another factor causing POV articles is that vague articles can cause people to think different subjects synonymously. An article that describes evolutionists and radical social Darwinists synonymously, with sentences such as "they state that evolution is harmless despite using it as an excuse to murder millions" would be an imaginary example.

• Government supporting sources are also considered to be much more reliable, even though they do not represent any government in the sense the government they're supporting to can easily deny any relations whenever the sources give incorrect information.

• The last factor of bias that can be added is that articles about controversial subjects automatically focuses too much on unrelated information about everyone with an opinion on it. This is hard to explain, but see it this way: ||Imaginary article about ideology Blahism: Blahism is an ideology in which followers believe war should always be thought as wrong. Bob, a prominent follower stated: "even though war is somethings correct, we must never think of it as correct or else it's a slippery slope to think all war is correct." Bill, another follower stated: "yeah, duuude, totally agree." Bill is an radical anarchist who digs up graves to eat dead bodies, in order to create disorder, and agrees with Blahism because, according to his mother, it creates disorder.|| This factor of bias is that an article can imply that Blahism is disorderly and related to necrophagy simply by giving extra information on Bill. Everything has hideous supporters, so why are they listed on specific topics.

173.183.79.81 (talk) 09:37, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

You might like to look in on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/dispute resolution. Peter jackson (talk) 15:52, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Per, "Another problem is that sources among English speaking countries are considered to be more reliable", I have to question whether this is a personal bias. The issue I have here is not whether there is a degree of reliability based on language, but whether the reviewers can extract the cited information from the source. It is much easier to confirm that a source confirms the cited material when the source is in the native language of the viewer. There are plenty of unreliable sources in English that are used as references and need to be replaced.—RJH (talk) 22:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

If you're not already aware of it Wikipedia:Activist is page you might like to check out. Bus stop (talk) 22:50, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I've been recently looking up fantasy novels to categorise. Tanith Lee's page is a mess. It has a systemic use of links which simply go to redirect pages and straight back to the original page. I've had to remove six links so far which do this! It also seems to be a problem with pages of her novels -- They are frequently merely the tiniest of stubs, and quite a number of them also circle right back to themselves. I don't have much time to hunt this nonsense down, but I feel it ought to be fixed. It does a real disservice to a talented author to make such a ... I don't know what to call it ... an insubstantial tangle of useless links. I'm going to post a copy of this on her discussion page as well. Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 16:59, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you are cleaning this up. You may want to see User:Gadget850/FAQ#Disambiguation which will give you different colors for different links. Redirects would be green and circular redirects would have a green background. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

"Chloe Aridjis (born November 1971 in New York, U.S.) is a London-based Mexican and American Jewish writer".

I dare say she is, but as a London-based English-Scottish-Irish-Belgian-(or-possibly-French) Wikipedia contributor, I can't help feeling we are getting a little over-enthusiastic in our ethnobureaucratic labelling here. I'm not suggesting that this is anything other than an example that caught my eye. At some point, we are going to actually have to do something to prevent Wikipedia converting into a combined DNA database and sociocultural heritage repository. Ms Aridjis seems to consider her heritage significant (see article), but is it actually necessary to state 'P is an X, Y and Z' in such concrete terms in an age when it is becoming more apparent than ever that ethnicity is a state of mind rather than an inborn attribute? I'm sure I'm on to a loser here, but I'd like to think that some day, Wikipedia will stop stating subjective opinions as objective fact. Ms Aridjis seems to have spent much of her life roaming the world, and her influences and works no doubt reflect this. Shouldn't our articles do the same? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. In short, when you see stuff like this, its OK to kill it. Unless the ethnicity is central to the reason why the person is notable, it doesn't necessarily belong in the article. Being verifiable is only 1/2 of the reason to add a true statement to an article. The other half of it is being relevent. In this case, if the person writes about her unique ethnic background, if it is a clear element in her writing and she discusses it frequently as being a motivating factor in her work; if critical commentary by outside sources notes the connection, if SOMETHING like that comes up, it may be worth noting. If it bears no relevence, however, nuke it. --Jayron32 05:24, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that page refers to categorisation rather than the mentioning Andy seems to have brought up. Personally, I'd favour a similar approach. If it's not directly relevant and complex, perhaps we can leave the "Early life" or similar sections to explain place of birth, parents, etc. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:30, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

That is the exact proper approach - if an element is not relevant to the reason we're writing an article, it's not needed in the introduction. After all, why not add red-haired, left-handed, green-eyed, five-foot-seven, bilingual etc. etc. etc. etc. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:59, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. I'm also aware that it is well-nigh impossible to persuade people to actually apply the criteria of relevance when discussing ethnicity (and all too often, even of actually providing a reliable source). I'm sure I could spend a lifetime attempting to remove irrelevant ethnic labelling from articles, without making a noticeable difference. Perhaps there is a need for a broader discussion of the issue, with the objective of making policy clearer. There have been attempts to do so, but they never seem to get very far. Perhaps another approach is needed? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:28, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

You just answered your own question. If the combination of reason and existing policies are not enough to sway some people, they will not be swayed by additional reasons and more policies. Cut your losses and just assume that there will always be some people who don't use reason to arrive at their conclusions. Those people will not be convinced. If it becomes an issue, start a talk page discussion, start a WP:3O or WP:RFC, prove those people wrong, get consensus, make the change. We don't need new policies to deal with every way someone can be stubborn. --Jayron32 20:30, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd also suggest reading through the previous discussion on the Village Pump (policy) about this issue, where some excellent points were made about this issue. There is a reason to mention ethnicity on some articles (Martin Luther King, Jr. comes to mind) but for a great many articles it is irrelevant and POV biased when used. --Robert Horning (talk) 20:04, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I actually started that discussion, and was quite pleased about the response. It doesn't seem to have led to anything concrete though, which is rather the point I started this discussion off with. We seem to get a (near) consensus that this overcategorisation is wrong, but nothing actually changes. This is why I wondered about another approach. I clearly need to think about this further, as I suspect that the problem is in part at least due to the fact that those doing the labelling aren't involved in the general discussions - indeed, some seem to be confined to a very narrow range of topics, and may not even be aware of the debate. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

In terms of concrete steps, either a formal policy could be added (likely a sub-section on WP:NPOV would be most effective) or something put into the WP:Style Guide. I think general consensus can be found from the discussions so far in terms of not overdoing the ethnicity and sticking to sources that explicitly mention the ethnicity of somebody if it is mentioned. For the obvious articles where ethnicity is integral to the article, you would likely have so many sources for the ethnicity of the person or group that the issue would be picking the source, not finding one. Approaching it in terms of verification, requesting at least two sources for the information, or something else along those lines would be a good move. Be bold here and make a change or at least propose a change that can be used as a framework of the debate, in terms of if it should be accepted or rejected. The question here is where to put such a "policy" if one is made? --Robert Horning (talk) 21:46, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Jayron's If it bears no relevance, however, nuke it comment. Really? Because I tried doing that on Valery Shary, a tiny Olympic-athlete article. Half the text there now talks about the guy's supposed Judaism, using this source (and a duplication of the same information here), where Shary is listed as possibly Jewish. The "See Also" section now also links to the non-existent List of select Jewish wrestlers. "Select" here being some peacocky term I don't understand. After having removed both references as bearing no relevance and a BLP violation, it was re-added and I've since been reported to AN/I on two separate occasions for "deleting sourced content against consensus" (AKA: "Don't mess with Jewish articles"). So yeah... clearly the "bears no relevance, nuke it" approach can easily get you in trouble. Bulldog123 08:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not going to get involved in the specifics of an active case at WP:ANI, simply because it may give the false impression that people have behaved appropriately in all aspects of their editing, when they have not. However, if reliable sources don't support relevence, then it should be removed. Relevence is determined by consensus building discussions, however, and when one engages in disruptive behavior merely because they are right, it can lead to the wrong material ending up in the article; i.e. being a pain usually trumps being right, which is a shame, but still the way the world works. If you want to get the article right, work within the existing system. This is, of course, speaking in the general. I have zero opinion on whether or not you were right or wrong in the latest ANI case. Your assertions here are completely irrelevent as to the facts of the case. Your assertions may be 100% correct, or they may be a delusional or selfserving misrepresentation of the facts in a specific case. I don't know which of those situations this is, and I don't care. I still stand by my original statement. --Jayron32 16:46, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you are talking about. There is no active WP:AN/I case regarding this and I'm certainly not asking you to participate in one even if it did exist. I was just giving you an example of how "If it bears no relevance, nuke it" is met with extreme hostility and "shopping for a block" attempts... Bulldog123 17:26, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that this isn't about a particular article, but about a significant proportion of BLPs. I get the impression sometimes that articles are being created for marginally-notable persons solely in order to add the 'ethnicity'. This can introduce a systematic bias into Wikipedia, depending on the numbers of active 'ethno-taggers' involved. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:54, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I don't disagree with that in general at all. There is FAR too much attention given to ancestral ethnicity in just about every Wikipedia article where a person is mentioned. This goes back years, and is systemic in the sense that it covers Wikipedia like a rash. It is problematic in BLPs, but even in BDP's (D= dead), it is rampantly problematic; the Nicolas Copernicus nightmare ran for months and months many year ago, and it always flares up a bit now and again. --Jayron32 16:58, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

What specifically is the problem? Sources say she is Jewish; she says she's Jewish. So why is mention that she is Jewish removed in this edit? Bus stop (talk) 17:27, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The article still mentions she's Jewish and she's in a Jewish category. There's no requirement that one source concerning her Judaism requires seventeen mentions of it. Bulldog123 17:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

"Seventeen mentions"? My position on the subject is that it needs only one mention. Bus stop (talk) 17:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I was using a hyperbole. It does have one mention. In fact, if you count the category, it has two. Bulldog123 18:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Does it have two mentions? It has only a quote from her. In her own language she waxes poetic about feeling nomadic, more Mexican when she is not in Mexico. She mentions her dual citizenship, how she feels at home in England. She mentions the fluidity of her identities. And yes—she mentions her "Jewish identity". Does her mention of her "Jewish identity" rule out our mentioning that she is Jewish? I am not trying to mention that she is Jewish seventeen times. But we don't have to remove all editorial mention of her Jewishness either. She writes about Jewish issues. Her book "'Book of Clouds" touches upon issues specifically Jewish. ("Imagine the sort of energy those children imbibed, playing games in the room where the 'Final Solution' for getting rid of every single Jew in Europe was laid out to top Reich administrators, or going for a dip in the tainted waters…") There is more than enough reason to mention that she is Jewish, just once, in the article. Bus stop (talk) 18:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand what the issue is here. If we're going to have a category describing her here as Jewish, then there should be a mention within the test of the article supported by a reference describing her as Jewish. I fail to see how this means that there are two references or how we should make the arbitrary choice to eliminate only either of them as they are part of a matching set and I see no way to implement your position that the article "needs only one mention" of her being Jewish. Alansohn (talk) 18:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that the article should have only one mention. It was implied that I was in favor of multiple mentions, which I'm not.

A similar argument that I have heard, and which is equally untrue, is that I am in favor of extensive treatment of a person's Jewishness. I am not. Unless there is a particular relevance to such a delving into the nuances of a person's Jewishness, I find inclusion of such material superfluous. I find at an article such as Isaac Asimov there is to be found too many references to him as a Jew. This is uncalled for, in my opinion. At such articles the Jewish identity should merely inconspicuously be mentioned with sources that the reader can follow if they are so inclined. Bus stop (talk) 18:40, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe that people's national and ethnic origins are typical encyclopedic information, on par with their gender, the years of their births and deaths, the places of their births, and the names of their parents. We wouldn't exclude the names of a notable person's non-notable parents solely on the grounds that the information is only listed in one reliable source. For that matter, we have people who insist on including this sort of basic information even when the only known sources are somewhat less than completely reliable, e.g. WP:FINDAGRAVE.

Also, for someone in a distinct minority—here, I'm thinking of someone from Niue as a simple example—the fact that someone else is also from your tiny country might seem hugely important to you, while a less-informed person might say, "Niue? I've never heard of it, so who cares?"

In other cases, the effects might be subtle, but important. For example, it's probably relevant to identify the race of every person born in South Africa before the end of apartheid, because that person's race had a significant effect on his or her education and other opportunities, even if s/he is notable for some unrelated reason.

So while it may seem superfluous, and while we might like to adopt a posture of being so enlightened and color-blind that it can't possibly matter, I'm not convinced that we need to excise this basic information (when it is not disputed). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:32, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the "typical encyclopedic information" argument you present is that while information such as birth date, parents' names and nationality are verifiable facts, ethnicity is always going to be a more subjective and slippery concept. I'm not against mentioning ethnicity in an article if it is reported in reliable sources (or, even better, if the person is on record as identifying as belonging to a particular ethnic group) but I think we need to think about the prominence given to this information (i.e. it's better in the background section of an article rather than being the first item in the introduction) and its use to categorise people. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The extensiveness of the treatment of such information has to be considered. I feel that the extensiveness of treatment should vary with that material's relevance to the individual's notability, or accomplishments. Peripheral information of this nature should be only perfunctorily noted. Bus stop (talk) 19:10, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, we don't typically highlight people's gender (although it becomes obvious through the use of pronouns and names) unless it is relevant to their notability. Bulldog123 19:01, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that such information such as ethnicity is "typical encyclopedic information". This is something that can get incredibly charged and is very subjective, where even in the context of this conversation I could put some incredibly incendiary remark that would pull the focus of this discussion off of what it needs to be about. Ethnicity is something that is very subjective, and unless it is something very much relevant to the article, it simply doesn't belong there if for nothing else than to preserve a neutral point of view. Does the fact that Elon Musk was born in Africa matter if he was black or not? Would he be African-American, since he now has American citizenship? Most people wouldn't consider him such and certainly wouldn't consider him to be in the same category as Barak Obama in terms of ethnicity, yet it technically would be correct. Frankly, I don't know much about Mr. Musk's ethnicity at all nor do I care, but that is the point. It shouldn't matter. Assigning ethnicity is a matter of perspective and unless you can find a verifiable and reliable source (preferably a couple sources that go into depth about the topic) it shouldn't be in the article or for that matter in a sidebar. An editor certainly shouldn't "guess" what that ethnicity is, particularly based upon birthplace or some other silly criteria. --Robert Horning (talk) 19:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

According to QI (Series G)#Episode 10 "Greats", everyone who was born in Europe is descended from the 8th century king Charlemagne. Therefore we're all French. Let's populate that cat! --Redrose64 (talk) 20:01, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

From Charlemagne and Muhammad! Look, I even found a reliable source. Now, what nationality was Muhammad again? Cordless Larry (talk) 20:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

To follow up Jayron's point: how far back do we go in including this information? I was surprised to see Dean Cain and Mark-Paul Gosselaar added to List of Asian Americans, but I see they both have Asian ancestry from two generations back. I think that's cool, and I think it's great to add them to the list to show the diversity of "Americans of Asian descent" (as Asian American defines the term). And I think pointing out African, Asian, Native America, Latina/o, Arab, etc. background is more significant in terms of US history than pointing out that someone is a mix of European ethnicities. But I do think we should consider a cut-off point for these issues: how many generations back do we want to go? Aristophanes68 (talk) 22:41, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

[[Category:Edenite]] is hereby suggested. This stuff about categorizing people has gotten a tad absurd. Collect (talk) 22:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

[[Category:Edenite]] already exists, just under the alternate spelling of Category:People.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• I do not think there is any longer actual consensus to avoid ethnic categorization. People care about ethnicity, on and off Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, the discussions here and elsewhere make it obvious, if you think about it.. Outside, the wide variety and great number of sources devoted to it makes it almost as obvious, if you look. Assignments to write papers on people of given ethnicities have been for decades a staple of school curricula, as a simple way of encourage cultural sensitivity. It is reasonable for people to come here and expect to find this information, not just in individual articles, but to find guide to those articles, and that;s the purpose of categories and lists.

Yes, we generally have mixed ethnicity. But almost always people have one, or two, or three; that an occasional person may have more & thus be awkward to handle is an the sort of exception we should not base a rule around. And ethnicity should not be confused with biological descent—biological descent is only a part of ethnicity. But even with biological descent we may have multiple appropriate designations. We all ultimately had a common pair of ancestors, but have gone different paths since then. People will not normally have significant ancestry in more than a few of them. that we are all ultimately related to each other is not relevant in this context. It's the same with nationality: occasionally people may have a great many nationalities in the course of a life time, but almost everyone has a small number. Ditto for college affiliations. As for Edenit, one can destroy any reasonable scheme by carrying to ridiculous extremes of forced interpretation. The solution to that is of course is to follow the sources, not one's imagination.

It is interesting that the particular case is where the subject has made it plain that she considers specific ethnicity important to her writing, which is the source of her notability. We would be deliberate ignoramuses if we did not accept that as a basis for categorization. I'd in fact hazard as guess that ethnicity is important to the notability of most writers, for people tend to write about their background, and the criticism on them makes much of it. DGG ( talk ) 00:35, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Once again, the discussion is not about eschewing ethnicity from wikipedia all together, it's about eschewing irrelevant mention (and overemphasis) of ethnicity. The latter relevance can be determined just as easily as "finding a source" to begin with. Bulldog123 19:01, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Great talk ....i would also like to point out that there are many cases were someones birth nationality and/or ethnicity and citizenship are combined. Like with all this "Famous" Canadians.Moxy (talk) 00:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems mostly like a no-brainer to add something like this to existing guidelines: Avoid mentioning ethnicity (via a category or list) unless you can find both 1) a reliable source directly establishing that person as a member of that ethnicity and 2) a reliable source (preferably, but not necessarily, the same) that establishes the person as notable for being a member of that ethnicity, not merely notable for something unrelated. Take John F. Kennedy, who you can source as Irish American in a heartbeat and who you can source as notable for that classification because there are entire books apparently devoted to it. However, this doesn't mean that adding Kennedy to Category:Irish-American murder victims (which, I'm sure will exist soon) would be legitimate because you'd need a separate source establishing the notability for that particular intersection. Why is his Irish-American-ness relevant to his death? Now, let's look at another case. Here is a reliable source that calls Chester A. Arthur "Irish American" by including his name in a book about Irish-Americans, but it doesn't give any information for what makes this notable - it just includes his bio. Under normal circumstances, this RS would have him thrust into dozens of Irish-American cats and lists. Yet, upon further investigating, it becomes clear that Chester A. Arthur actually isn't of Irish descent at all - his father being Scottish and merely born in what was Ireland. His mother not being Irish at all. At best, he can be called of Scotch-Irish descent. Arthur seems to have never identified as Irish-American in his life and, more importantly, there are no sources indicating that he is notable as an Irish-American. Therefore, we wouldn't include that... and look... we just made wikipedia a little bit cleaner, a little more accurate, and a little bit less ethnicity-obsessed all by doing one simple extra thing. Point being: reliable sources mention a lot of things about people (especially celebrities) that we just generally avoid adding because it's WP:FANCRUFT or straight-up WP:TRIVIA. I don't see why this should be any different. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Bulldog123 18:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Bulldog, I don't think that accurately represents the community's views, and furthermore, I don't think that it represents normal encyclopedic practice. For example: Show me an article in Encyclopedic Brittanica that is (1) indisputably about a black-skinned person of African descent and (2) doesn't mention that this person is not white. How about a Latino person, that fails to mention that s/he is from Central or South America? How about an article on a Chinese or Japanese person that leaves you uncertain whether he's white or Asian? I can't find one. Can you?

Usually, when people get worked up over this, they really have only one ethnicity in mind—Jewish—and they are concerned about what "really counts" for being Jewish (or ought to really count, according to whether they personally take an inclusive or exclusive notion of the Jewish community). IMO we can and should follow the sources there, giving it as much or as little attention as appropriate (and IMO mentioning this in passing in a section on family or childhood is usually more appropriate than putting it in the first sentence), but never completely excluding the person's race and/or ethnicity unless high-quality sources are actually contradicting each other to the point that we can't figure out what the verifiable answer is. And, yes, that means catting people into cats like Category:Cree people and Category:Dinka people, whenever we are reasonably certain that we can identify the correct category, even if these categories are not apparently hugely important factors and attested to by a notarized document from the person in question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Bulldog, I don't think that accurately represents the community's views, and furthermore, I don't think that it represents normal encyclopedic practice. For example: Show me an article in Encyclopedic Brittanica that is (1) indisputably about a black-skinned person of African descent and (2) doesn't mention that this person is not white. How about a Latino person, that fails to mention that s/he is from Central or South America? How about an article on a Chinese or Japanese person that leaves you uncertain whether he's white or Asian? I can't find one. Can you?

In my mind, and in most encyclopedic definitions, Race and Ethnicity are two different things. They are treated as different by most institutions as well. College applications, for example, ask for race, not ethnicity. I'm talking exclusively about ethnicity here. And it would not "fail to mention" that a Latino is from South America if he's a first-generation immigrant or his parents were immigrants and that made his upbringing different and relevant (which it would)... but that's different because that's in the article... I'm talking about categories and lists.

How about an article on a Chinese or Japanese person that leaves you uncertain whether he's white or Asian?

Well, there would be no question, because the article will likely say "Of Chinese descent" or whatever. But if a 6th-generation "Chinese American" has absolutely no connection to anything Chinese whatsoever... who are we to say he is a Chinese American if he wouldn't consider himself such? His genes may indicate he is "of Chinese descent" unequivocally, but - as mentioned above - ethnicity is more than just blood. Ethnicity is defined as: identifying characteristics shared by a group such as culture, custom, race, language, religion or other social distinctions. Ann Curry is rarely listed as "Japanese" in other encyclopedias despite verifiably being so. She may be "of Japanese descent" and that's fine... but why pigeonhole her into five "Japanese American" cats and lists because of something that may have little relevance. (I'm not saying it doesn't - I don't know. I haven't looked for sources).

Usually, when people get worked up over this, they really have only one ethnicity in mind—Jewish

I think that's for two reasons. One, for some reason, there seems to small sect of users very much devoted to compiling and maintaining as many lists and categories of Jews as possible - and are largely to blame for the horrible states of those lists todays. Two, a large amount of regular Wikipedia users are Jewish and so tend to have greater expertise in Judaism-related areas than others. However, I've seen a similar amount of list and category obsession associated with Irish, German, and Russian articles - though it many not be obvious to uses who don't frequent that part of wikipedia. In fact, the whole List of X-American dilemma is one big example of this unencyclopedic practice in action. Bulldog123 23:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

TL;DR - I'm talking about ethnicity not race. And I'm talking about a standard for category and list inclusion not mentioning it in the article. Bulldog123 09:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

What really is the distinction here between "race" and "ethnicity" in this context? Why is there a different standard for inclusion in an article as opposed to inclusion in a category? To me, in the context of this discussion, they are pretty much one and the same... or at least the same standards ought to apply. Since this is something that can be politically charged and be pushing POV when it is used, the argument I'm at least making is perhaps the standard ought to be a little tougher when racial or ethnic information is applied for either categorization or inclusion in an article.

BTW, I think the whole concern over antisemitism is not the real issue here, but the issue does apply to that and other racially charged topics, of which the national socialism political movement certainly contributed its share of problems in this area. I'll admit here that some people are obsessed with racial/ethnic distinctions, some that go so far as to start wars and enact legislation about racial distinctions so it is certainly a part of human experience that needs to be documented.

Still, a legitimate argument being raised in this discussion: How much is too much? I would have to agree that in some cases it is being carried out too far on Wikipedia and perhaps some formal policies ought to be put forth to cull some of that behavior where it has gone too far. Using the example of Ann Curry, I would argue that even in the article itself the fact that she had an American father of mixed European heritage is inappropriate to list all of the different supposedly specific nationalities... particularly where the source of the information is dubious at best and certainly is irrelevant to the reason why she is notable. This category in particular, Category:American people of French descent, is something that I'm really scratching my head over and wondering just what that has to do with anything in the article or why it is even necessary, even if it is remotely true. It gets back to the issue mentioned above that technically you could throw this category on just about everybody of European ancestry... which to me makes the category meaningless as well.

For this and many other articles on Wikipedia, I think such racial/ethnic information has gone too far and it makes for poorly written articles that violate NPOV principles. --Robert Horning (talk) 14:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your basic position that writing articles requires judgment, and that an excessive emphasis on the less important aspects is inappropriate. But I think that by concentrating on a few inappropriately added tags, the point is being missed that these categories are useful. People want to find out about other people of a particular sort, and such as cross-category as French Inventors is much more useful than trying to manually do a intersection between the two parent categories. Looking at the category you mention, it would be much more useful if it were subdivided--perhaps by occupation. Since these discussions are getting repetitive, I've summarized my views in an essay WP:Ethnicity is notable, abbreviation, WP:YESE (it's still preliminary, until I incorporate more of the arguments I've made on this). It's intended as a counter to the essay WP:Ethnicity is not notable--whose perhaps somewhat misleading abbreviation is WP:ETHNICITYISNOTABLE, DGG ( talk ) 20:52, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Factors of identity should be noted, but not expanded upon unless these factors are somewhat tied to notability. I do not think that a cogent argument can be made for leaving out sourced material relating to a person's attributes of identity. That is not to say that there cannot be exceptions—but I think the default condition should be for inclusion. The real issue, in my opinion, is how much coverage should be given to such aspects of identity. I am obviously speaking right now about prose material included in the body of the article. I am not addressing the questions regarding such indications in the two other areas for this—the Infobox and the Categories. My feeling is that if the person's notability has little to do with these identity considerations, that they should not be delved into to any great degree. Arguments can exist as to the degree that identity considerations enter into the determination of a subject's notability, but the implication of this is just that a sliding scale exists as to the degree that identity considerations should be expanded upon. In the case that no argument can be made that an individual's identity plays a contributory role in their notability—I think mere perfunctory mention of identity factors is all that is called for. But again, I do not feel that in most cases a substantial argument can be made for entirely mentioning one or more identity factors relating to an individual—but I will allow that exceptions to this are certainly also possible. I feel that these are editorial decisions that should be made on a case-by-case basis. Bus stop (talk) 21:25, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I can see the argument for 'factors of identity' being included in the body of a biography, where there is sufficient other detail to avoid giving it undue weight, but this rather begs the question: what exactly is a 'factor of identity'? If one is talking about self-identity, then is ethnicity necessarily a factor at all? The presumption by many Wikipedia editors seems to be that it is, and if it can be sourced, it should be included. To return to a previously-mentioned case, consider Richard Feynman. He was a Nobel-prize-winning physicist, and he was from an ethnically-Jewish background. However, he made it very clear that he did not consider 'Nobel-prize-winning Jewish physicist' to be a valid description of him - His ethnicity and his field of study were two differing aspects of his life, and not significant in relation to each other. Given that few Wikipedia articles are about people notable because of their ethnicity (at least, they shouldn't be), to assume that the subject of a biography will consider their ethnicity relevant in an article about them is questionable. Wikipedia is not a database, and was never intended to be. We should not be collecting data (often of questionable reliability) simply because we can. A person may be 'notable', but is their ethnicity necessarily 'notable'? I'd suggest not, and including often-contentious data for no better reason than to 'help people compile lists' is hardly something we should be encouraging. I surely don't need to comment further on the ugly past history of this particular practice? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say "However, he made it very clear that he did not consider 'Nobel-prize-winning Jewish physicist' to be a valid description of him - His ethnicity and his field of study were two differing aspects of his life, and not significant in relation to each other."

We go by sources. Do sources refer to his Jewish identity as an "ethnicity"? Furthermore, even if we do not refer to him as a "Nobel-prize-winning Jewish physicist", we could still mention that he was Jewish, could we not?

You said above that "…His ethnicity and his field of study were two differing aspects of his life, and not significant in relation to each other."

There are two problems with that:

1. ) Is his Jewish identity an "ethnicity" according to sources?

2. ) Why can't it be mentioned separately from mention of his winning a Nobel prize in physics that he was a Jew? Bus stop (talk) 22:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say "Given that few Wikipedia articles are about people notable because of their ethnicity (at least, they shouldn't be), to assume that the subject of a biography will consider their ethnicity relevant in an article about them is questionable."

I think that to varying degrees a person's attributes of identity could be related to their notability. These are discussions that have to take place on the Talk pages of the article involved. The relationship between factors of identity and that which a person is notable for, I think exists on a continuum. This has to be discussed at individual articles. But I don't think a cogent argument can be made that omitting such information is justifiable, but I hesitate to state that as a rule. I merely feel that the default position should be for the perfunctory inclusion of well-sourced attributes of identity. Bus stop (talk) 22:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Feynman wasn't Jewish by faith, so if he wasn't Jewish by ethnicity, he wasn't Jewish at all. And as for why it can't (or at least possibly shouldn't) be 'mentioned separately' is because he gets an article in Wikipedia because of his work in physics. There are lots of non-notable things about Feynman that could undoubtedly be sourced, and included in a biography if we wished. We don't include others, so why include this? It seems to me that insisting it should be 'mentioned separately', you are suggesting that his ethnicity is notable: if this is so for particular biographies, it should have to be proven with reliable sources, on a case-by-case-basis. To do otherwise is just persisting with the unjustified (and often unsourced) ethno-tagging that has marred Wikipedia in the past. And no, as for anything else in Wikipedia, the default position must be not to include non-pertinent facts (more so in BLPs, and even more so still where the 'facts' are often questionable, and where, as I've already noted, such 'facts' have a long history of resulting in harm to individuals) AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—do sources say that Feynman was "ethnically" Jewish? If not then that is original research. If the best quality sources addressing this aspect of Feynman's identity refer to him as "Jewish", and not "ethically Jewish", then we would not be justified in referring to him as being "ethically Jewish". We follow sources. Bus stop (talk) 22:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say "And as for why it can't (or at least possibly shouldn't) be 'mentioned separately' is because he gets an article in Wikipedia because of his work in physics."

At wp:notable we find: "Notability does not directly affect the content of articles, but only their existence."

Also: "These notability guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not directly limit the content of an article or list." Bus stop (talk) 22:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Our Feynman article puts him in the category Jewish atheists. Are you suggesting that he shouldn't be included in this category? Do you think there are other ways of being 'Jewish' other than by faith, or by ethnicity? If so, I'd like to know what they are. And no, we don't 'follow sources', we follow reliable ones. (can I ask you to try to compose your replies as a whole, rather than entering them in installments - it makes replying difficult) AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:55, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—I agree—we go by the best quality reliable sources available to us. Do the best quality sources refer to him as a "Jewish atheist"? If so then yes—we would be justified in referring to him that way. You say, "Do you think there are other ways of being 'Jewish' other than by faith, or by ethnicity?" This would be original research—it doesn't matter what I think. Sources are our key to answering such questions. Sources tell us if a person is Jewish or not. Sources can qualify Jewishness. If for instance a good quality reliable source says that a person is "Jewish but not religious"—that is probably language that we should try to follow. Bus stop (talk) 23:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

So you are suggesting that there are reliable sources that claim it is possible for someone to be Jewish' in other ways than by faith or ethnicity? As for whether 'the best sources' refer to Feynman as a 'Jewish atheist', I've no idea - this is almost certainly a synthesis cobbled together by the Wikipedia category-tagging crowd, per usual. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say "So you are suggesting that there are reliable sources that claim it is possible for someone to be Jewish' in other ways than by faith or ethnicity?" I am suggesting that almost total reliance on sources is called for. We should not be trying to determine what a person's identity is—sources should determine that for us. Our job is to dutifully report what most of the best quality reliable sources seem to be saying. If we scrupulously avoid original research this is not so difficult. The problem, in my opinion, is that editors inject language into articles that is not actually found in sources. Bus stop (talk) 23:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that is just unhelpful in circumstances like these. A source may be reliable for what it says, but that doesn't make it reliable as a guide to whether what it says should be used in an article. This is where Wikipedia policy and editorial judgement come in. If we have a source that states that Feynman was Jewish, without further qualification, we can't use this to do the same while there are other reliable sources that state that he was Jewish by descent, and saw his Jewishness as part of him (which is a reasonable example of self-defined ethnicity), and other reliable sources that state that he was an atheist. We have to state that he was ethnically-Jewish, and state that he was an atheist, if his ethnicity and beliefs are going to be discussed in an article at all. This isn't synthesis (though putting him into a category Jewish atheists may be, in that the category itself is arguably a synthesis). This is simply finding the best sources for information we have chosen to include. Further, if we were only to discuss his ethnicity, and use a source that described him as 'Jewish' without indicating whether he was also Jewish by faith, we'd actually risk misleading our readers. The fact is that 'Jewishness' is a term with multiple, contested meanings - true of most ethnicities, but more so where ethnicity and faith are intertwined, as in this case. Ultimately, saying 'let sources determine what we say' amounts to suggesting that we blindly copy them, without actually reading them for content, and putting them into context. An article about Feynman should be about him, not about whatever sources we can find that state that he was X, Y, or Z: we have to use our own judgement, in line with Wikipedia policy and guidelines, to determine whether a source that states Feynman was X is (a) reliable, (b) relevant, and (c) precise enough to be of use in the context we desire. If articles could be written by blindly following rules, and by including 'what reliable sources say', I expect somebody would have written an article-bot by now, and automated the entire process. Instead, the process of article creation requires judgement, and an understanding of the complexities of the subject we are discussing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:23, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—is Feynman's Jewish identity integrally tied to his notability? If not, then a mere perfunctory mention that he was Jewish is all that is called for. To do otherwise is to distort the Feynman article. You say "We have to state that he was ethnically-Jewish…" Do you have a source that says that Feynman was "ethnically-Jewish"? What do sources say about Feynman in this regard? What are the actual words used by sources to characterize Feynman's Jewishness? Feynman's notability is as a physicist. Therefore there is little justification for more than a perfunctory mention of his being Jewish. Feynman's Jewishness can be qualified in conformance with the terminology used by good quality reliable sources, but the qualifying of Feynman's Jewishness should be limited because Jewishness is not particularly important to his notability. Do sources say he was Jewish but not religious? If so, I think that is all that an article on Feynman should be saying. An article on Feynman, in my opinion, should just briefly mention his Jewishness. Were Feynman a noted Rabbi or author of books on Judaism for instance—then a greater delving into his identity as a Jew would be warranted. But it is not, as his notability is as a physicist. Bus stop (talk) 15:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

We are going around in circles here. Why should an article necessarily mention ethnicity at all? If there are grounds for including it, this should be done in an unambiguous way - and like it or not, saying someone is Jewish is ambiguous. And no, there is no requirement whatsoever that we use 'actual words' from a source. Finally, to clear things up, can you answer the question I asked earlier: are you suggesting that there are reliable sources that claim it is possible for someone to be Jewish' in other ways than by faith or ethnicity? If there aren't then we can quite reasonably infer from one reliable source that describes Feynman as 'Jewish', and another that describes him as an atheist that his 'Jewishness' is by ethnicity. This isn't synthesis, it is using one source to clarify a possible ambiguity in another. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say, "...there is no requirement whatsoever that we use 'actual words' from a source." I agree that we need not use identical words as found in sources. But our aim should be to conform as closely as possible to the words used. Words have meaning and definitions remain fairly constant. Sources are deemed reliable because of their reputation for fact-checking. I am not an expert on Judaism and I am assuming you are not an expert on Judaism. Therefore we should defer to the best quality reliable sources to set an example that we can follow to determine what language we should put into an article.

You say "Finally, to clear things up, can you answer the question I asked earlier: are you suggesting that there are reliable sources that claim it is possible for someone to be Jewish' in other ways than by faith or ethnicity? If there aren't then we can quite reasonably infer from one reliable source that describes Feynman as 'Jewish', and another that describes him as an atheist that his 'Jewishness' is by ethnicity."

As I said earlier—I am not an expert on Judaism and I am assuming you are not an expert on Judaism. If "… one reliable source…describes Feynman as 'Jewish', and another…describes him as an atheist…" then we put the citation for "Jewish" after that word, and we put the citation for "atheist" after that word. Your suggestion that his "…'Jewishness' is by ethnicity" is wp:original research. You have no citation that you can put after "ethnicity". Sources are not supporting that terminology, therefore it should be left out.

Why would you want to put that terminology in the article? Unless we have special expertise in a field of study—such as Judaism—we should defer to sources to show us the correct, applicable, and most appropriate terminology to use. Bus stop (talk) 17:26, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

That just doesn't make sense. You seem to be saying that we take a statement that Feynman is 'Jewish' from a source we deem 'reliable' without actually understanding what they mean by the term. If you don't know what it means, how do you know that it is reliable, or relevant? And once again, you seem to be suggesting that there are ways to be 'Jewish' other than by faith or by ethnicity. Can you provide a source to back that peculiar assertion up? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:16, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—for our purposes, reliable sources determine if a person is Jewish. Do you find reliable sources conflicting with one another concerning whether or not Feynman was a Jew? Or do you find all reliable sources saying the same thing? In my online searches I am finding all sources saying Richard Feynman was a Jew. The sources I am finding indicate that he was not religious. Some of them refer to him as a secular Jew. Are you finding sources saying anything at variance with what I am finding in this regard? If you find other descriptions or other terminology being used, would you please bring that to our attention? From where are you deriving that I am "…suggesting that there are ways to be 'Jewish' other than by faith or by ethnicity"? I'm just suggesting that we follow reliable sources. Bus stop (talk) 02:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

So, you've found reliable sources that state that Feynman was Jewish - no surprise there. You've found sources that state he was not religious - again no surprise. I'd readily admit that 'not religious' doesn't mean the same thing as 'atheist' (I've actually argued the same thing myself) but I thought that a reliable source had been found for Feynman's self-ascribed atheism too (I'll check, if it is an issue). You seem now to be accepting that it is only possible to be Jewish by faith, or by ethnicity - or presumably by both. Are you saying that given the sources you have, you don't accept that if Feynman was Jewish, it was by ethnicity? Are you suggesting we can't apply elementary logic to our understanding of sources without it being original research? On this basis, a Wikipedia article should probably include nothing other than links to 'reliable sources' - otherwise we are using our interpretation and our logic to create an article, which seems to be WP:OR... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—I do not accept that "...it is only possible to be Jewish by faith, or by ethnicity - or presumably by both". I have to ask you to not speak for me, when you say, "You seem now to be accepting that it is only possible to be Jewish by faith, or by ethnicity - or presumably by both." I did not say anything like that and I do not accept that. Let us be clear that you only speak for yourself and you do not speak for me. Don't imply that I endorse anything you are saying.

I feel that the way to write articles is to use reliable sources and to avoid original research. You say, "Are you saying that given the sources you have, you don't accept that if Feynman was Jewish, it was by ethnicity?" That is original research. Original research is the bane of Wikipedia; original research ruins Wikipedia. You say "Are you suggesting we can't apply elementary logic to our understanding of sources without it being original research?"

Why would you want to stray from what sources say? What is your impetus for wanting to introduce terminology that reliable sources do not use? Do you have knowledge in the area of Judaism that surpasses that of reliable sources? Do you have special expertise on the subject of Judaism? What is your reason for wishing to substitute your language for the language that reliable sources use? Bus stop (talk) 04:30, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I am not attempting to 'substitute' anything. All I'm saying is that if you don't understand what a source says, you can't use it. If a source says that Feynman is 'Jewish by quantum thermo-theo-magneto-dynamic equilibrium on his mothers side' and you don't know what it means, you shouldn't use it in an article. I know of no other ways to be Jewish other than by faith or by ethnicity, so if a source says he is Jewish, and I have reliable sources indicating it isn't by faith, I'm entitled to assume this means he is Jewish by ethnicity, or alternately, I've got to assume that I don't understand the source at all, so shouldn't use it. I can't just quote the source verbatim, because I can't tell whether it is reliable, relevant, or pertinent, unless I know what it means. Any 'language' is only 'reliable' if it imparts meaning. I though that was the purpose of Wikipedia articles - as I've already said, if you aren't trying to do that, why not just give links to the sources, and let readers impart whatever meaning they themselves find? AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:56, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—it is perfectly clear what a source means when it says that a person is a Jew. It means that the attribute of Jewishness is applicable to that person. Bus stop (talk) 16:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

And "the attribute of Jewishness" is what exactly? Define this, and maybe we'll get somewhere... AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:55, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your question is. Do you mean to say that in order for an article on Feynman to make the sourced statement that Feynman is Jewish, we, as editors, have to be armed with a full and perhaps exhaustive definition of Judaism? I don't think so. That's not the way an encyclopedia works. A reader always has more to learn. No statement ever answers all questions associated with it. Bus stop (talk) 18:25, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

At this point I'm no longer convinced you aren't trying to be wilfully obtuse. If you don't yourself have "a full and perhaps exhaustive definition of Judaism" but consider this necessary to determine whether someone is Jewish, how exactly do you determine whether a source which states that someone is Jewish is basing this assessment on "a full and perhaps exhaustive definition of Judaism"? Clearly, you can't. Actually, if understanding what exactly makes someone Jewish requires the degree of learning that you seem to require, we on Wikipedia are clearly unqualified to make any statement whatsoever about (a) whether anyone is Jewish, or (b) whether a source that states that someone is Jewish can be taken to be reliable on the subject. On that basis, we should stop using the description 'Jewish' entirely: is this really what you want?

AndyTheGrump—for our purposes, reliable sources determine if a person is Jewish. Bus stop (talk) 20:00, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

And on what basis can we determine whether a source is 'reliable' in relation to this question? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:05, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—when a source says that so-and-so was Jewish we dutifully report that. A more complicated case is not inconceivable—in which sources contradict one another. But when sources more or less reinforce one another, we just go with what they all say. That is what the reader expects of us. As for which sources are the more reliable I think we look for a variety of factors. Scholarship is a recognized quality. A full-length book on Feynman can probably be depended upon for instance. High profile news organizations would seem to me to be trustworthy. They have reputations to uphold. But these are discussions that have to take into account specifics applicable to a case. Editorial input, discussion, argumentation ultimately lead to wording in an article. It is a sloppy process sometimes. But I would add that it is preferable to original research. Let me also add that in my opinion wp:consensus should never override reliable sources. It happens sometimes. That is detrimental to Wikipedia. Bus stop (talk) 20:20, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

So a source is reliable because we say it is, even if we don't understand what it is claiming. Thank you for making your position clear. Perhaps now we can get back to the main question: are we applying statements about ethnicity (not some bizarre non-ethnic, non-faith based classification) too readily? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

We understand what it is saying. It is saying that the person being referred to is Jewish. This is in response to your statement: "So a source is reliable because we say it is, even if we don't understand what it is claiming." Bus stop (talk) 20:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Given your utter disregard for any attempt at rational debate, I have nothing further to say to you on this subject. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:11, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Editors don't need to deeply grok the meaning of every term they use. They need to know only enough to accurately reproduce what the reliable sources say. If the source says "Foo is type of colorless green baz that sleeps furiously", even if you have no clue at all what a baz might be, you can still cite that source as saying that 'Foo is a kind of baz' in our article about Foo. Determining whether a source says a person is Jewish is no harder than determining whether a source says that Foo a type of baz, or that some cardiac problem produces a prolonged QT interval, or that exterior algebra involves sums of k-blades. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I disagree. You seem to be confusing two issues. It is possible to determine whether a source states that 'X is Jewish' without knowing what is meant by this (there is no need for the source to be 'reliable' for this - you are merely determining that this is what it says). It is not however possible to determine whether they are a reliable source for making a statement yourself in the article that 'X is Jewish' if you don't understand what the source means by the term (you would be asserting as a 'fact' something you are not capable of assessing the factuality of). I can think of few ways of writing articles more likely to produce unintentional errors than by writing on subjects when you don't understand the source - I know I'm unqualified to write about "sums of k-blades", so I don't write about them. This whole issue would be entirely irrelevant to a debate on ethnic over-categorisation were it not for the fact that some contributors seem to use the very ambiguity of ethno-religious categories to avoid any discussion of their validity in a particular context. Wikipedia policy in general, and BLP policy in particular, requires proper sourcing of factual assertions. Proper sourcing requires interpretation of meaning, not just mechanical checking. As I wrote earlier, as far as I'm aware, there are only two meaningful ways to be 'Jewish' - by faith or by ethnicity. If it is claimed that there is another way to be 'Jewish' then fine, provide sources that explain this, and we can then judge which 'meaning' is implied by a source, and determine whether this is relevant in an article. We cannot however accept that because some people seem to suggest that there are ways of being 'Jewish' that we don't understand, we have to accept any assertion that someone is 'Jewish' on the basis that it may be true in the 'non-understood' way. To do this is to accept that we don't know what 'Jewish' means, and are blindly copying the words of others. This is indefensible. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:15, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure why this should be an issue because we find at WP:VERIFY: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." Therefore if clearly all sources say that someone is Jewish, and no sources are contradicting those sources in this regard, that should be information that can potentially be put in an article. Also, I'd be curious to know from where AndyTheGrump derives that "…there are only two meaningful ways to be 'Jewish' - by faith or by ethnicity…" Is there a source for that? Bus stop (talk) 03:14, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

...And Bus Stop comes back with the bizarre argument that you can verify something you don't understand. Ok then, I'm going to assume that any statement that anyone is Jewish must be taken as 'reliable' from Bus Stop's logic (we can't tell if the source it comes from is reliable, because it might be using a definition we don't understand). Fine. Except that now the word 'Jewish' ceases to have any meaning at all. Why bother to include words you don't understand in an encyclopaedia? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:28, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—I didn't say that "…any statement that anyone is Jewish must be taken as 'reliable'…" I asked about the instance in which all sources were in agreement about this. I also asked: from where do you derive that "…there are only two meaningful ways to be 'Jewish' - by faith or by ethnicity…" Do you have a source for that? Bus stop (talk) 05:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say that there are only two ways of being Jewish - I said that I only know of two ways of being Jewish. If you have a reliable source that defines another one, then let us see it. This is clearly significant, because up to now, discussions regarding Wikipedia policy over describing someone as Jewish have been based around the relevant BLP sections on religious belief, and on ethnicity. If this 'other way' is indeed verifiable, we clearly need to consider the policy implications, and determine when, if at all, it is permissible to use a source applying this 'other way' to define someone as Jewish. Failing clarification over this issue, I can only suggest that any source which doesn't make clear the basis on which it describes someone as 'Jewish' should be seen as too vague to be meaningful for our purposes. Once again, I stress that we should not - must not - use words we don't understand in articles. It is an editors responsibility to ensure that any information added to an article is verifiable, and correct, and if you don't understand what the words you write actually mean, you can make no judgement about either. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:21, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—what justification would there be for impeding the addition of information? You may want to know if a person was born Jewish, or converted to Judaism—similarly you may want to know if a person was observant, or nonobservant, or partially observant. But if the only reliably sourced information that was available was that the person was Jewish, by what justification would that information not be included? Also, do you find an analogous situation elsewhere on Wikipedia? Would there be a similar situation in another realm (another topic) of Wikipedia in which the absence of some piece of information required that another piece of information be omitted? Should the absence of one piece of information have as a consequence that another piece of information has to be omitted, and where (if anywhere) else on Wikipedia do you find a similar situation? Bus stop (talk)

That is simply illogical. You insist that there can be "reliably sourced information... that the person was Jewish", while arguing that it is possible to 'be Jewish' in an undefined non-ethnic, non-faith-based way. If something is undefined, it cannot, by definition, be 'reliable': a meaningless statement isn't right or wrong, it is meaningless. Omitting meaningless statements isn't omitting 'information', because there is no 'information' to omit. I repeat, if you claim that the unqualified use of the word 'Jewish' by a source to describe someone may be meant in this undefined way, it cannot possibly be reliable under any circumstances, as long as it remains undefined. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say that I argue that "…it is possible to 'be Jewish' in an undefined non-ethnic, non-faith-based way." Can you show me where I say that? I have only been saying that we follow sources. Sourced information is eligible for inclusion. If a source says a person is Jewish, we can say the person is Jewish. That is the standard way that Wikipedia operates. Do you find a situation analogous to the situation that you feel applies here, but elsewhere on Wikipedia? Where on Wikipedia do you find that we would not include one piece of information due to the fact that another piece of information is missing? Or do you feel that this situation is unique? Bus stop (talk) 19:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I am no longer interested in continuing this debate with you, given your endless circular arguments, and nonsensical interpretation of what constitutes a 'reliable source'. I am not interested in 'analogies', I am interested in the creation of an encyclopaedia based on relevant verifiable facts. That a source stated that someone is 'Jewish' may be verifiable, but if it is unclear what the source means by this, and how the information itself was obtained, the information isn't reliable, because it is free of meaningful content. I had assumed that an assertion that someone was 'Jewish' was always intended in an ethnic and/or faith-based sense, and you chose to dispute this. Until you provide a reliable source to back this up, or admit you were wrong, there is no point whatsoever in debating about the verifiability of unverifiable statements. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd also like to bring forth the example of Leonardo DiCaprio, whose article right now has four long sentences devoted to his ethnic background, including the statement In a 2010 conversation with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, DiCaprio stated that his grandfather was also Russian, and added: "So I am really half-Russian". This is all verifiable information and by the logic put forth by some users: "If it's sourced, it's notable." Unfortunately, whatever DiCaprio meant by the statement (if he even said it that way) is not actually related to reality. It doesn't seem either of his grandfathers were "Russian." Yet, because he said it, and more importantly, because it makes him more Russian (and therefore, I suppose, more appealing to the ethnic pride of Russian people), users are including it. Though, if it had been any other casual remark not related to his ethnicity, there's no way giving we'd be giving it its own sentence. This is a pretty clear example of how some of this "ethnicity is notable" stuff is becoming WP:FANCRUFTy. Another example (and yes, this can fall under the "Jewish" umbrella too) is the article for Beck, where we have this piece of certified gold: Beck's paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, while his matrilineal great-grandmother was Jewish; Beck's mother also has Norwegian and Swedish ancestry. Really? If this was any other type of "trivia" it would be removed (or at least trimmed) on the spot, but again, because it's about "ethnicity" and because it makes Beck more Scandinavian-seeming or more Jewish-ish... it's included. It also, at one point, legitimized Beck to become one of the official poster-children for Norwegian Americans and Swedish Americans. Bulldog123 16:42, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Then there's the example of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie who once claimed that he wasn't a Negro. (He insisted that as the descendant of King Solomon, he was actually Semitic.) I believe he made this surprising claim back in the 1930s when being a Negro -- even the Emperor of an ancient land -- was an insurmountable barrier to acceptance & respect by the "respectable people" of North America & Europe. And I wish to God I had the brains at the time to record the source -- because this is one of those statements no even I wouldn't believe without a reliable source. And even if I could provide one, this statement would get twisted around -- as this thread shows. -- llywrch (talk) 06:55, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

• I think Bus Stop's above comments are generally spot-on. Though Andy does have a point that the discussion here and elsewhere is at times clouded by the gaps in knowledge that some editors flaunt, which often seems not to impede them from discussing subjects.--Epeefleche (talk) 05:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I'll take that as a complement (I think...), but while you're here, perhaps you can enlighten us: is there any other verifiable way to be Jewish other than by faith, or by ethnicity? And if there are, how would one go about verifying it? AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:59, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

(an off-topic aside: can I point out tha Bus stop is still editing his posts after I've replied to them [20]. Can anyone give a rational reason for not ignoring him entirely, given his inability to grasp basic communication skills?) Redacted - apologies to Bus Stop - I'd misread the article history. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—that is not correct. I altered wording in a post of mine that you had not yet responded to. In fact, you still have not responded to the post that I altered the wording in which you linked to. Bus stop (talk) 06:54, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—who is trying to verify it? It is of interest primarily to the Jewish person, who maintains the identity of being a Jew. If they disclose their Jewishness to the inquiring biographer, that bit of information possibly finds its way into a biography, if one gets written. Same thing for inquiring news reporters. Bus stop (talk) 06:47, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Still, I think it is useful to at least question the source and wonder if it genuinely is a reliable source. An interview of a physicist or a biography by somebody who has studied the science and is trying to distill that information to a layman may make an off-hand remark about ethnicity that may or may not be factually correct. On the other hand, a biographer or historian who is discussing the family background and goes into depth about how the subject of the biography was raised in a certain ethnic culture deserves a whole lot more credibility and acceptance. One kind of source is genuinely reliable but the other is most certainly not.

The issue at hand is wondering if perhaps some of these sources really aren't reliable enough to be trusted, or if such claims of ethnicity are exaggerated or fabricated. I think it is reasonable to look at a specific article here on Wikipedia and remove ethnic-related categorizations or even remove the mention of ethnicity from an article if the source really isn't reliable on that particular issue. Obviously this is something which must be weighed on each article separately and for each source, and an absolute prohibition is just as bad as somebody who throws in a mention of ethnicity based upon the flimsiest of sources.

I'll also point out that there are some people obsessed with ethnic backgrounds. My grandmother (to use an example that I hope isn't too charged on a political level for this discussion) was one person that always seemed to point out the ethnic background of everybody that I met when I was with her. Everybody fell into some neat category such as an Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Irish, or whatever the ethnic background she was claiming at the time. I loved that woman, but she got on my nerves at times because this ethnicity theme became nearly an obsession for her in all of her relationships. I'm sure there are people like that here on Wikipedia, and the whole point of this discussion is to be a bit of a push back against what may be encroachment upon ethnicity that is simply unfounded. If you can find reliable sources for the information, use it and incorporate it into the article, but you shouldn't be actively seeking after the ethnic background either. It certainly is a violation of NPOV principles to be pushing everybody into neat ethnic categories when it may not be appropriate or even verifiably correct. Not appropriate in this context is performing an ethnic categorization when the sources for that ethnicity are weak and unsubstantiated... and where the ethnic background of the person is irrelevant for the reasons why they are notable. --Robert Horning (talk) 14:48, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Andy -- I suggest a cup of tea. The last sentence in your last post may well, in the eyes of some, have crossed the line between grumpiness and incivility, and in any event does nothing that I can see to either advance your thoughtful views here or to set the stage for an appropriate, civil discussion. While sipping the tea, you might consider redacting it, so that your intent is not misunderstood by others. Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 11:07, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I've redacted the comment - as you say, inappropriate. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:06, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Andy, you are persistently (deliberately?) missing the point. If all the sources that we normally consider reliable—major newspapers, national magazines, scholarly articles and commercially published biopgraphies, for example—actually say "John Smith is Jewish", then as far as Wikipedia is concerned, John Smith is Jewish. It does not matter—not even one little bit—why the sources say that John Smith is Jewish. For all we care, they could determine that John Smith is Jewish on the grounds that he was born on the moon and has green skin. Their justification for saying that Smith is Jewish does not matter to Wikipedia: It only matters that they do, in fact, say that Smith is Jewish.

This is the point behind "verifiability, not Truth™": Smith might not be "truly" Jewish, but so long as all the reliable sources say that Smith is Jewish, then Wikipedia will report Smith as being verifiably Jewish. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

On this I completely disagree. If an article says in passing "the Jew, John Smith....", I would call that an unreliable source. Certainly the rationale for the Ann Curry article in terms of her ethnicity is based upon what I'd call incredibly weak sources and something that really ought to be thrown out as unreliable.

On the other hand, if the source went into details about the Bar mitzvah, the relationship with the rabbi, and into details about how that person was involved with the ethnic culture of being Jewish, yes that categorization certainly is fitting and it is most certainly a reliable source. You do have to follow what the sources say, but make sure they are reliable and don't go making stuff up either.

Furthermore, because I had an ancestor back about 8 generations ago that was a native American, does that make me a native American? If a biography mentioned that (presumably for somebody notable), would that be cause to include that person in the Category:Native American people? I think it is getting absurd to suggest that and is an insult to people for whom that is a notable characteristic of their life. We should care that some sort of standard apply, and slavish reliance upon the slightest mention in some obscure source ought not be sufficient to note the ethnicity or race of a person. Dang straight it ought to be verifiable. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:35, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Robert Horning—from where do you derive that a person must be reliably sourced to have had a Bar mitzvah in order for Wikipedia to report that he is a Jew, and from where do you derive that a person must be reliably sourced to have had a relationship with a rabbi in order for Wikipedia to report that he is a Jew? Wikipedia requires that assertions be sourced. Sources should fully support any assertion made in an article. A source saying that a subject of a biography was Jewish should serve to make eligible for inclusion the assertion that the individual is/was Jewish. There is no need for references to a rabbi, a Bar mitzvah, or anything else, in order to make the statement that the person was Jewish. This assumes that the source supporting the assertion of Jewishness is reliable. Bus stop (talk) 04:18, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we need to approach this from another angle: can there be a reliable source that asserts that someone isn't Jewish? And if so, on what grounds would they be able to say this? AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—there can be a reliable source that says that someone isn't Jewish. I have never seen one. Have you? I have no doubt that one exists. You ask, "…on what grounds would they be able to say this?" I don't think it matters, for our purposes, why they would say this. We need not be privy to the reason a reliable source might say something. They may or may not choose to share their reasoning with us, and they may or may not choose to share their own sources with us. They are a reliable source for, among other reasons, their having a reputation for fact-checking. Bus stop (talk) 04:51, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

If you've never seen a reliable source that says that someone isn't Jewish, how do you know that one could exist? All you seem to be arguing is that "if a source says someone is Jewish, it is reliable". Or if you aren't saying this, then can you explain how we determine whether or not it is reliable for the statement that someone is Jewish. I'd remind you that WP:RS states that "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context." There are no abstract 'reliable sources' - we have to assess their reliability for the statement being made. We cannot possibly do this if they don't "choose to share their reasoning with us": there is nothing to 'weigh'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:19, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—sorry it took me so long, but I think I've found a source which says that a person is not Jewish. Here it is: "Logan is not Jewish."

And another instance: "Aaron Porter, who is not Jewish…" Bus stop (talk) 17:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say, "If you've never seen a reliable source that says that someone isn't Jewish, how do you know that one could exist?" To me it seems logical that a reliable source—somewhere in the vastness of the Internet, and including non-Internet sources—would have occasion to point out that some individual is not Jewish. But getting back to what I think the topic is—there would be no requirement to establish for instance that an individual had a personal relationship with a rabbi in order to assert in the body of an article that the person was Jewish. Similarly, there would be no requirement to establish for instance that an individual had a Bar mitzvah—in order to assert in the body of an article that the person was Jewish. Sources should support assertions made in articles. If a source supported the assertion that the individual was Jewish, that would be sufficient for our purposes. This is of course assuming that the source supporting the assertion that the person were Jewish were a reliable source. There are no further requirements other than the straightforward requirement to present reliable sources supportive of the assertion that the person was Jewish. References to a "rabbi" and/or a "Bar mitzvah"—or anything else—are unnecessary. Bus stop (talk) 12:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

"Blah, blah, blah, reliable source, blah, blah, blah...". And as usual, a complete refusal to actually answer the question as to how one can know that a source is reliable if one doesn't know what it is saying. If people choose to believe in the infallibility of religious texts, that is their choice, but I see no reason to insist that we should apply the same standards to secular ones. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:40, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you ask, "…how one can know that a source is reliable if one doesn't know what it is saying"? We know what it is saying if it says that a person is Jewish. It means exactly what it says. It means that the person is Jewish. This is for Wikipedia purposes only. You can hold an alternative opinion, but for our purposes sourced information is important—the alternative to sourced information is original research.

At issue here is that you have further questions about a previously sourced point. But the source saying that the individual is Jewish remains a source that provides us with support for saying in our article that the person is Jewish. Our assertion is sourced for Wikipedia purpose—assuming the source has a reputation for fact-checking, and it meets all other requirements for a reliable source. If more than one prominent and respectable reliable source asserts that the person is Jewish then we have even more support for the assertion. But if the existence of contradictory sources on this point can be brought—then the assertion concerning the person's Jewishness is called into doubt, and the conclusion by editors can be reached that the assertion cannot be made in our article.

Our issue here is that we do not need to know the details of whether the individual is religious, secular, half-religious-and-half-secular. Nor do we need to know if the individual is a convert to Judaism or if the individual was born Jewish. That is for the simple reason that we are not asserting any of that in our article—therefore we do not need a source to support any of that. We are merely asserting that someone is Jewish. If we have sufficient sourcing to support saying that that person is Jewish, I don't think there are further issues. Bus stop (talk) 15:56, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, let's see how many other meaningless statements we can add to articles. You clearly don't think that the word 'Jewish' has any meaning beyond "it is in a 'reliable source' so it must be true". If there was better proof that Wikipedia is plagued with misapplied ethnic (and maybe-ethnic-but-maybe-something-else) characterisations, I've not seen it. Thank you for proving my point so clearly. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:36, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say, "You clearly don't think that the word 'Jewish' has any meaning beyond "it is in a 'reliable source' so it must be true"." The opposite is the case. I think that most sources are accurate about this. I think that if it were possible to scrutinize every instance in which a prominent source (journalistic, biographical) stated that someone was a Jew, that they did so accurately. I think that the word Jewish has meaning and that it is probably being used accurately by the vast majority of sources. Do you have reason to believe otherwise—do you have reason to believe that some sources are referring to some people as Jews—who are not actually Jews? Bus stop (talk) 17:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

So tell us what "actually Jews" means then. And without giving us the same old 'it means they are described as Jewish by a reliable source' whitewash. (Why I am bothering to discuss this with you, I don't really know - you seem more concerned to avoid answering simple questions than about actually contributing to the debate in any constructive manner - Unless you can give me an answer to my last question, I am going to assume that you have no wish to do anything other than engage in endless waffle to prevent the discussion moving on). AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:13, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Might a third party suggest that this conversation should probably end now? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:15, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. Do you have reason to suspect that there is a high incidence of sources saying that people are Jewish when in fact those people are not Jewish? Bus stop (talk) 17:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's time to stop replying.

AndyTheGrump apparently has deeply held personal convictions related to who is entitled to be described as a Jew. There's nothing that the English Wikipedia can do about that. The community will continue to follow the sources, as we always have. Further discussion will not change anything; we should just stop. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Given my last posting, and Bus Stop's response, this discussion is clearly finished. However, I find WhatamIdoing's characterisation about my motivations for engaging in this debate to be a gross miss-characterisation of my clearly-stated position, verging on a breach of WP:NPA. I expect an apology. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

deeply held personal convictions related to who is entitled to be described as a Jew Big lol. AndytheGrump? Deeply held convictions? If anything, it's the exact opposite. The users with "deeply held convictions" are the ones whose sole purpose on wikipedia is to edit and maintain Wikiproject:Tag-A-Jew, using the blanket excuse - If an external source says it, we report it in lists, categories, and the whole she-bang thrice over - an ideology which would never be held if "Jewish" were replaced with "Mormon," "Republican," "Red haired," "Alcoholic," or "Owner of a Chihuahua" -- all things that can be easily verified by reliable sources too. There's a lot of "let's play dumb to avoid addressing the real issue" going on here. Bulldog123 20:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Bulldog123—you say, "The users with "deeply held convictions" are the ones whose sole purpose on wikipedia is to edit and maintain Wikiproject:Tag-A-Jew…" and "There's a lot of 'let's play dumb to avoid addressing the real issue' going on here." Can you tell us succinctly what is "going on here", and do you think you can do so without resorting to colorful language such as "Wikiproject:Tag-A-Jew"? In my opinion "Jewish" and "Jew" are reportable attributes of people in biographies, if applicable, and if well-sourced. Whether or not to report that attribute can be decided on a case-by-case basis. But I see it basically completely as being relevant to a personal biography. Including that the person is Jewish is just one more aspect to be taken into consideration by the reader. Can you articulate the other side of the argument: why wouldn't an article on a person mention that that person is Jewish—assuming this is reliably sourced? Is there some reason why we should leave this out? Please present the argument for omitting from a person's biography that they are Jewish. You are entitled to your opinion. But I think you have to present a case in support of your opinion. I find phraseology like "Wikiproject:Tag-A-Jew" not the clearest of language. Not that I don't know what you are saying—but I think if you are holding that opinion, it becomes incumbent upon you to articulate the position that describes the reasons why you might feel that Jewish identity perhaps should not be noted in our biographies. Bus stop (talk) 21:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

No, that is getting things entirely backwards. If you want to include something in an article, you need to demonstrate that it is (a) verifiable, and (b) relevant. Without at least a general notion of what 'Jewish' means (other than the ridiculous claim that it means 'called Jewish in a reliable source'), you fail (a), and I rarely see even an attempt at (b). Wikipedia isn't supposed to be an indiscriminate collection of assertions about anything and everything. On the other hand, if you are willing to accept 'Jewish identity' as valid for a), I'm fine with that, since 'identity' requires self-identification. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—the "relevancy' that you refer to is the relevancy to the person—is it not? If a person is born in Pittsburgh—we report that they were born in Pittsburgh—do we not? Is Pittsburgh relevant to the person? If the person was born in 1898—we report that. Is it relevant? Its relevancy is only to the person. Why write a biography if not to include that which is relevant to the person? Do we have to demonstrate that being born in 1898 in Pittsburgh is relevant to the person? I don't think so. Our job is to present to the reader the applicable factors pertaining to a subject of a biography in accordance with verifiability. That entails using reliable sources. When they tell us that so-and-so was/is Jewish we present it to the reader. Isn't that the way biographies are supposed to be written? I don't think we have to prove or even demonstrate that their being Jewish is any more relevant to them than we have to prove or demonstrate that their having been born in Pittsburgh in 1898 is relevant to their life. If their being Jewish is greatly relevant to their life, we could present greater detail on how that is so. But just mentioning in passing that they are or were Jewish is generally not out of place. Bus stop (talk) 22:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Being born in Pittsburg is a verifiable fact, as is a date of birth. Being 'Jewish' is a matter of (contested) opinion, apparently. Unless you have a reliable source that states otherwise? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—how is being Jewish of "contested opinion" if reliable sources confirm this? Reliable sources determine, for our purposes, whether or not a person is/was Jewish. Bus stop (talk) 22:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you need me to provide reliable sources to demonstrate that who is and who isn't 'Jewish' is often contested? This will be simple enough to find. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—yes, you can present instances in which the fact is contested. But I don't think that would show that we should not include in biographies that a person is Jewish. Bus stop (talk) 22:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying that there are 'instances in which the fact is contested'. I'm saying that 'opinions' about whether someone is Jewish are frequently contested. You are presumably well aware of this, given your extensive editing history in the Who is a Jew? article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—please feel free to present instances in which opinions about whether someone is Jewish are contested. The question here is whether or not it is proper to include mention in the bodies of biographies that a person is Jewish. That there may be instances in which this is not clear does not suggest that we should not include the information that the person is Jewish—when that information is clear according to reliable sources. I do not think the "Who is a Jew?" article is of particularly good quality. I've had little to do with that article other than trying to correct what I perceive as a sizable undue weight defect. But I would appreciate it if you would confine your comments to the subject at hand, rather than to discussing another editor, in this case that other editor being me, such as the discussion of my "editing history". Bus stop (talk) 23:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Undue weight? As opposed to the ethno-tagging-for-no-reason-at-all nonsense you are advocating? I note that you have given no response regarding the question of relevance beyond an assertion that you think it is relevant to label someone as 'Jewish' at any opportunity, so they must feel the same way, and that therefore we must do it. I think this perhaps comes under WP:OWN, though I'm not sure ownership is generally applied quite this far, at least by mere mortals... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:23, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—please tell me why the suitably sourced information that someone is Jewish should not be included in their biography. I think the onus is on someone taking the position you are taking to provide good reason for omitting suitably sourced information. The entire encyclopedia is written with an underpinning of sourced information, or at least in theory. Why wouldn't sources be the deciding factor as to whether or not our biographies indicate that a person is Jewish? Bus stop (talk) 02:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Relevence, meaningfullness... (oh, and the fact that it isn't Wikipedia's job to tell people whether they are Jewish or not). AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:06, 18 February 2011 (UTC)